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Fort Chabai Scenes - Part 1
This series of pictures are from Fort Chabai, Kelantan, which in 1953 was the latest jungle fort established in the Malayan Emergency to thwart communist terrorist attempts to exploit the aborigines.
The fort was manned by garrisons flown in by Pioneer aircraft. A new landing strip for the Prestwick Pioneer was opened at the Fort. It lay on the side of a deep valley with mountain peaks on one side and a sheer drop of 50ft into a river valley on the other. To allow the Pioneers to make an unrestricted landing approach, 200ft trees were felled from the top of a nearby hill, and a corridor was cut through the trees into the valley. The Pioneers approach from a height of 2,4000ft, flew over the shorn hilltop then along the corridor through the trees before touching down.
From Left to right the pictures show: Fort Chabai, from the air; In the centre, a police anti terrorist patrol setting out from the fort; and on the right, supplies arriving by helicopter at Fort Chabai.
Click here for Fort Chabai Scenes, Part 2
To read about the Malayan Emergenc, click here.
To view details of Colonel A.E Young and the strategy of the Jungle Forts, click here.
To read more about the Jungle Fort and Airstrips, click here.