Plan
Finery would have involved a helicopter assault on Unguja, the main base of revolutionary power, by Royal Marines from the commando carrier HMS Bulwark. The plan circumvented the need to operate from Kenya, where secrecy could not be guaranteed and the government did not support intervention, but as Bulwark was required for operations in the Middle East it would take 14 days for Finery to be launched once it had been ordered. In order to provide a more immediate response plans were put in place for a smaller scale operation which could be launched within 24 hours should evacuation of remaining British citizens in Zanzibar be required. The merger of Zanzibar with Tanganyika to form Tanzania on the 23 April may have provided the catalyst for the Umma Party to attempt a coup and so from around this date Finery was supported by Operation Shed, an airlift of a battalion of troops, accompanied by scout cars, to seize Unguja's airfield and protect Karume's government. The expected coup did not occur and Finery was scrapped on 29 April 1964, although Operation Shed remained in place.
Read more about this topic: Operation Finery
Famous quotes containing the word plan:
“The nonconformist and the rebel say all manner of unanswerable things against the existing republic, but discover to our sense no plan of house or state of their own.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“I have never yet seen any plan which has not been mended by the observations of those who were much inferior in understanding to the person who took the lead in the business.”
—Edmund Burke (1729–1797)
“The inference is, that God has restated the superiority of the West. God always does like that when a thousand white people surround one dark one. Dark people are always “bad” when they do not admit the Divine Plan like that. A certain Javanese man who sticks up for Indonesian Independence is very lowdown by the papers, and suspected of being a Japanese puppet.”
—Zora Neale Hurston (1891–1960)