(5 of 10)
The U.N. patrols seldom strayed far from these redoubts; the rest of Elisabethville belonged exclusively to Katanga's soldiers, black and white, who wandered the streets or stood guard. There was something unreal about the whole thing. As the U.N.'s General McKeown put it, after a flying visit to Elisabethville early in the week, "We are not fighting a battle in the usual sense." It was masterful understatement.
The Katanga struggle had been a wacky if bitter war with no front line, no clear victories or defeats, and not even very many deaths (13 U.N., 30 Katangese before the U.N.'s major drive). But there was plenty of shooting, especially when the U.N. planes swooped down on the city from their Kamina base, 260 miles away. In a quiet, bungalow-lined side street, where some of the remaining white housewives strolled with their children, the whoosh of a low-flying U.N. jet brought sudden pandemonium as Katanga soldiers and hastily armed civilians jumped from their cars or stepped off the sidewalk to fire excitedly with pistols, tommy guns and rifles.
The U.N. was often using its jets (six Indian Canberras, five Swedish Saabs, four Ethiopian Sabres) as much for the psychological effect as for the physical damage to Tshombe's jittery soldiers.
Atom Smashing. But the planes also had their lethal uses. Out of the blue one morning, the Swedish Saabs showed up with guns blazing over the copper-mining town of Kolwezi, 150 miles northwest of Elisabethville on Katanga's only rail line to the Atlantic Ocean. Within minutes, half a dozen railway locomotives and cars were out of action; then, with a roar, the town's main fuel tanks, filled with thousands of gallons of diesel oil, went up in a leaping column of flame and smoke. Near by was the village of Luilu, site of a big copper and cobalt refinery of Katanga's Union Minière du Haut-Katanga; there, a few rounds of cannon and rocket fire knocked out the powerhouse transformers and punched holes in some building walls. Next day, U.N. Ethiopian flyers zoomed out to strike at other targets—first Katanga's old uranium mine at Shinkolobwe, which produced the U-235 for the U.S.'s first atom bomb, then at Luena, a coalmining center.
At midweek, the U.N. added up its "kills" so far: five Katangese planes destroyed on the ground, 39 trucks, three armored cars, one helicopter, two fuel dumps, and half a dozen railroad locomotives. Crying economic murder, Moise Tshombe accused the U.N. of planning Katanga's industrial destruction. "This day will be marked with a white stone by the capitalist bourgeoisie to mark the story of its decadence," he cried. U.N. officials retorted that they were striking at the industry and transport that might serve Tshombe's cause. But the question arose in many countries: Whatever the merits of the U.N. mission, was this kind of destruction necessary?