Speaker 1Welcome back to South African Border Wars with me, your host, Des Latham. This is episode 37, and we're dealing with a Cuban counterattack targeting the South African paratroopers still being airlifted out of Kasinga in southern Angola. It was the afternoon of 4th of May 1978, and more than half the paratroopers had still not been evacuated from the landing zone to the east of that shattered town. Jan Breitenbach had requested urgent close air support and had also ordered the helicopters at Whiskey 3, which was the helicopter administration area 35 kilometers east of Kasinga, to return and extract his trapped paratroopers. But the Cuban armor was almost on top of them, and there was no sign of any aircraft yet. Breitenbach decided to withdraw into the surrounding bush and try to get an emergency LZ set up, as you heard last episode. In the meantime, some eyewitnesses claim that General Fulun, concerned now about the very real possibility of being captured, removed his badges of rank and his beret and hid them under a stone. He'd flown in on one of the first evacuation choppers and decided to remain very much against Defense Force operating procedure. The commanding officer should not place himself directly in harm's way. He said, Even if he was trying to show, he was as courageous as the rest. The anti-tank platoon had also just arrived at the LZ and strengthened the thin defensive line, when a Buccaneer and two Mirages arrived over Kasinga. Last episode, I mistakenly said that the Buccaneer had been refueled at Ondangwa. It was Grootfontein. Another correction is that the Buccaneer was being flown by Dries Marais. Previously, I mistakenly said he was flying a Mirage. By now, it was around 20 minutes past 2 in the afternoon, and the plane's appearance caused the paratroopers to give off a rather ragged cheer. One of the forward air controllers, or FACs, working with Breitenbach, directed strikes from the aircraft against the advancing Cuban armor, which, as you've heard, had arrived in the south. And another brigade was chugging towards Kasinga from Jamba in the north, along with MK's Captain Joseph Korbel. I mentioned him too last episode. The Mirages viciously strafed the armored force with their 30mm cannons, and soon, six BTR-152 armored personnel, and some of the anti-personnel carriers, were burning fiercely. But the 30mm incendiary shells had no effect on the tanks, which continued rumbling along the road. Fortunately for the paratroopers, the Buccaneer was armed with 54 hollow-charge and 18 anti-personnel rockets. Marais had deviated from a planned run further south, and arrived overhead just in time. He began to attack the T-34 tanks. The large, grey-painted aircraft dived down at the armored column, and released a salvo of 12 rockets. It exploded in a flash of black and orange, torn open by the hollow-charge rockets. A second attack by the Buccaneer destroyed a second tank, before the Mirages also began their attacks, strafing the bushes on the side of the road, where the Russian-made BTR armored personnel carriers had pulled off under cover. Soon though, the Mirages began to run low on fuel and ammunition, and after carrying out a final attack, a kilometer further down the road, which knocked out four more armored personnel carriers, they headed back to the front. Incredibly, despite the heavy fire the planes had sustained, they were not hit. Then, Buccaneer pilot Marais identified a towed, twin-barreled, 14.5mm anti-aircraft gun set up in the road near the tail of one column. He dived directly on this gun through the stream of bullets, before rockets silenced it, destroying its tractor and killing around 12 Cubans. By now, Marais' ammunition was expended, but just then, all 17 of the helicopters began to arrive at the landing zone. On board one of these was critically injured rifleman Dale Packham, who was being tended by the doctor. Because the second wave of helicopters were going to return to Southwest Africa, Packham was packed into a puma for the journey. Ironically, he now first had to be flown back into the battlefield from the helicopter administration area before he could be evacuated. The badly mauled Cubans spotted the choppers flying low over the trees and sinking out of sight, all in the same area. That was crucial, because up to then, the Cubans had been confused about exactly where the South Africans were. This was a clear target indication, and they immediately began moving through the bushes directly towards the LZ, delivering speculative fire as they advanced in formation. Back at the temporary LZ, the paratroopers began to pick up the gunfire and sounds of the Cubans' tanks and armoured personnel carriers approaching. C Company and the anti-tank platoon who were covering the extraction began to hear the vehicles crashing through the trees and bushes, and saw branches and leaves falling from the trees in front of them as the machine guns mounted on the armoured vehicles opened fire in their general direction. They began to fire into the bush blindly themselves, putting down a huge volume of rifle and light machine gun rounds, while a few mortars were also lobbed towards the Cuban vehicles. The attack halted as the Cubans tried to figure out who was firing on them. This gave those on the LZ a little more time to scramble aboard the helicopters, which were landing all over an open field. There was chaos at this LZ, as all semblance of combat of the original extraction plan vanished. Originally, each paratroop's stick was to climb aboard specific helicopters, but now it was every soldier for himself. By the way, there's a lot of debate about this moment, with some suggesting it wasn't too chaotic. Paratroopers simply followed orders. But the reality is, except for C Company and the anti-tank platoon forming the defensive line, there was a general breakdown in discipline as men ran for each chopper that landed. Some became dangerously overloaded, and the soldiers were forced to jump off. Watching all of this was General Fulhune, who said later: "There was no proper discipline. The paratroopers were not fit enough for the operation. I was disillusioned by their performance. One man was so exhausted when he was running to get to a helicopter that he collapsed right next to it and had to be picked up by his comrades and dragged into the aircraft." That's not the complete story from the general who had been dropped in at the last minute, and as we've heard, shouldn't have been there at all. These men had been fighting far longer than the original two hours planned. They'd been dropped far from Kasinga. They had to walk or trot back to Kasinga. They'd been going for eight hours, and even the extremely fit Fulhune would have been gasping for air by now. So his comments are not only unfair, they're pretty uninformed. There are many stories that emerged of panic-stricken paratroopers racing frantically from one overloaded helicopter to another in their desperate effort to find a place. The overloaded helicopters? Some of them were unable to get into the air, and excess paratroopers and swapper prisoners of war were unceremoniously booted out by their fellow passengers. Some of the heavier weapons, such as mortar tubes and rocket launchers, were dropped out of the pumice, mainly because there was no ammunition left for these. Some heavy ammunition belts were also dropped, while a number of the all-important parachutes that Fulhune had demanded be returned with the Parabats were thrown off as well. Something else had taken place a short while before that has been debated since 1978. Brigadier Hannes Boerter had pitched up and shown General Fulhune a group of around 40 swapper guerrillas, all of whom had been identified because of the clear bruise marks on their shoulders, indicating they had been recently carrying heavy loads, packs, on their backs. They had been selected to be flown back to Ondangwa as prisoners of war for interrogation. But when it became clear that there would be no room for them in the aircraft, Boerter asked if they should be shot. Fulhune was vehement in his response. I told them emphatically that I would countenance no such thing and ordered them to be released. They were. Things were moving at high speed. A series of mortar bomb explosions on the LZ between the helicopters shook the officers. The Cubans had found their range. Fortunately, most of the helicopters had lifted off by now, and finally C Company and the anti-tank platoon were ordered to head to the LZ. The men stood up and began moving backwards. As they did so, they poured rifle and machine gun fire into the line of trees behind which the Cubans were firing mortars, but had stopped their full frontal assault. The paratroopers continued firing until they reached the helicopters, and some were still firing through the open side doors as the aircraft lifted off. When the choppers moved off, Cubans then emerged from the bushes a few hundred metres away and fired. Marais, who was still overhead in the buccaneer, identified two tanks in the vicinity of the LZ. One of them began shooting at the remaining helicopters, so Marais dived at it, passing so low that he almost hit the trees. He repeated this several times, causing the tank to back off into the cover of the trees and allowing some helicopters to return and collect the last of the paratroopers. And for that, he was awarded the Honoris Crux Medal for bravery. Meanwhile, the ANC-MK member Captain Joseph Corbeau was part of a Cuban and FAPLA brigade that arrived in Kasinga as the last helicopter lifted off. In this episode, how Corbeau had watched the attack from a road to the north earlier in the morning, and how he had joined the brigade as it rumbled to Kasinga from Jamba, around 50 kilometres up the road. The Cuban officer in charge of this group was exasperated as the FAPLA tank drivers kept slowing down. Eventually, the Cuban swore in Spanish and pointed his pistol at his own driver's head. The T-34 sped up once more. As they moved towards Kasinga from the north, Corbeau spotted Marais' buccaneer still dive-bombing in an area to the east. Then at that moment, the Cuban officer, who Corbeau does not name, had obviously reached the end of his tether with his driver and kicked him out of the tank, taking control of the vehicle himself. But it was too late. The South Africans had got away. Though so much had happened, the whole extraction operation was completed in only a few minutes of chaos and not a little confusion. The Sea Company commander gave the time at which the helicopters finally departed from Kasinga as approximately 1400 hours 30. As the chopper formation commander Major John Church led the 17 helicopters back towards southwest Africa, he received a warring radio call. The officers still based at the helicopter administration area east of Kasinga said some paratroopers had apparently been left behind. Although they were already 10 minutes out, Church decided to return to Kasinga to carry out a search. He turned, leaving the formation under Major John Stroh and asked for a volunteer amongst the Pumas to help. Captain Ho Jane, as he's known Cronje, who was a long-time friend of the paratroopers and had participated with them in many fire force operations, immediately rolled his Puma out of the formation and joined Church. When the two choppers arrived over the smoldering ruins of Kasinga, they spotted a group of people huddled together near the old graveyard on the edge of the LZ. There was no immediate sign of the Cuban armor, although we know there was a brigade somewhere in the north of town, perhaps because of fading light and the fact that the T-34s and a few T-54s were now sheltering under the trees. Close inspection revealed that the group of people were not paratroopers. Either they were SWAPO members who had been taken prisoner but left behind during the extraction, or they were a group of frightened civilians, possibly the children I mentioned last episode. With Cronje keeping a lookout for danger, Church flew about four low circuits around Kasinga, searching for any sign of the missing paratroopers. Suddenly, Cronje spotted a Cuban tank which lurched down to the bushes on the southern edge of the LZ, close to the road. He radioed a warning to Church, who banked away as the tank fired a round from its main gun. The gun's elevation was too low, and the round passed below Church's helicopter. The helicopter exploded harmoniously against high ground to the north-east. A final circuit convinced Church that there were now no paratroopers left on the ground, and as he and Cronje were too low on fuel to make it back to southwest Africa, they returned to the helicopter administration area east of the town. The other helicopters had, in the meantime, flown their paratroopers directly to Ianhana, an SADF base near the cut-line in the southwest. According to SADF records, these helicopters carried 216 troops and six medical personnel. These helicopters carried 216 troops and six medical personnel. These helicopters carried 216 troops and six medical personnel. These helicopters carried 216 troops and six medical personnel. These helicopters carried 216 troops and six medical personnel. These helicopters carried 216 troops and six medical personnel. These helicopters carried 216 troops and six medical personnel. These helicopters carried 216 troops and six medical personnel. and deposited all safely at the base. The pilots weren't finished. After refueling and loading two 200-liter drums of fuel each, they returned to the HAA 260 kilometers away. Church called in the reserve superfueling to accompany them with additional fuel for his and Cronje's pumas and to provide additional airlift capacity, should it be needed. Back at the HAA, the remaining choppers were finally refueled and the last paratroopers waiting there climbed aboard. Dusk had fallen. In the darkness, these last soldiers, including the less seriously wounded, were now flying straight back to Ondangwa and they were also carrying SWAPO documents recovered from Kasinga. Then the debriefing began and the propaganda fallout turned a military success into a political disaster for Pretoria. SADF reports on the results of the operation in the north showed no prisoners were airlifted out of Kasinga. Around 200 SWAPO, 120 men and 80 women, were taken as prisoners in the southern attack at Chetakwera by our battle group Juliet. But where were the men and women supposedly nabbed at Kasinga? It appears all were released during the Cuban counterattack and fortunately, Berta had not gone ahead with his suggestion to shoot them down in cold blood. As for the Cubans, things weren't over as the sun set. A lone Mirage had strafed those vehicles still on the road, joined later by another Mirage and then another Buccaneer. A truck was blown up. Followed by another vehicle. A second Buccaneer arrived at 1600 hours 45 and spotted movement inside Kasinga. The pilots surprised Cubans who were checking buildings. They destroyed another T-34 tank and two more anti-aircraft guns then damaged a building and killed a number of personnel. In his book, Waiting in the Wing, MK's Joseph Corbusier's Kasinga had been razed when they arrived. Six months of logistics work had gone up literally in smoke, he writes. Thousands, millions, millions of people millions of rounds of ammunition were still exploding as we sifted through. There were bodies everywhere, most of them African, most of them further blackened by flames. Chart papers were scattered in all directions, some still in the air. The downdrafts from the Pumas had fanned the fires. I saw bits of priceless documents, maps, information in tiny bits. More T-54s trundled in. A whole Angolan tank brigade had arrived, but too late. I saw a familiar box on the ground and whispered, "Hit it away!" just before heavy tracks crushed it. Though it could have been a booby trap. It was a harmless wooden box of cigars. They said, "Romeo Air Giulietta." While Corbeau watched, another Mirage strike was carried out after 1700 hours, then another at 1835, and finally, in the dark, a buccaneer appeared and destroyed a truck and an anti-aircraft gun. Later, the pilots would claim they destroyed four tanks, 17 armored personnel carriers, seven trucks, and four anti-aircraft guns during the raid. The Angolans, of course, deny this. Initial reports intercepted by the SADF indicated that 16 Cubans had died and 64 were wounded. Later, though, in the early 1990s, during the Truth and Reconciliation Commission process, Cuban archives were sourced which revealed that 150 Cuban troops died in the Casinga and Chatecuerra attacks, the most serious casualty loss in the entire involvement in Angola for the Cubans. We also know that there was a veil of secrecy thrown over the Cuban losses immediately after the raid, at least according to Joseph Corbeau. What of the paratroopers? Well, they were all flown back to Bloemfontein on the 5th of May, demobilized within two days of the raid, and were home for the weekend with their families, then went back to their civilian jobs on Monday morning. SADF casualties were surprisingly light. During the parachute drop, six were injured, though none seriously. But human was missing, as we know. Never to be found again. He was presumed dead a short while later, and it's thought he may have suffered a parachute malfunction or he may have landed in the river and drowned. He was last seen in the aircraft as he jumped. Twelve other paratroopers were wounded, too seriously, and three men were killed in action. However, the Cubans claimed that 40 SADF paratroopers were killed, saying they counted the blood-stained stretchers left behind in the rush. We just know that this is not true. But what is true? Is that the propaganda campaign began in earnest and it was here that the SADF strategy was upended. On the first day or two after the raids, the Cubans said nothing. More than two days later, Radio Luanda told listeners in a communique from the Minister of Defense, Iko Carrera, that the SADF operation in Kasinga had ended when FAPLA troops fought them off. The radio report claimed that FAPLA had entered Kasinga from three directions but hit what they called obstacles in the road. 16 soldiers were killed and 64 had been wounded, continued Radio Luanda. But they fought on and entered Kasinga at 2 p.m. and then shot down a Mirage. Well, that also was not true, and yet the MPLA and SWAPO had actually won a major victory at Kasinga. Pretoria's political strategy had failed miserably, with SWAPO about to gain a vast amount of credibility. It so happened that the World Conference for the Eradication of Racism and Racial Discrimination, which was just about to take place in Baal, Switzerland, between the 18th and 21st of May 1978. SWAPO's Secretary for Information and Publicity, Peter Cacciavilli, was a speaker there, and he denied the presence of any military installations or planned combatants at Kasinga, saying it was a "refugee camp." He tried to explain why SWAPO cadres had died there, and he had let slip that the fighters had resisted heroically and suffered what he called "heavy casualties." So while with so many soldiers lurking around what SWAPO had done, Kasinga was a "refugee camp." Later, they tried to explain this away, saying the soldiers who were in Kasinga were a 300-man and women camp defense unit. And the SADF report concurs: in some ways, the paratroopers who fought through this camp to the northwest of Kasinga say the men and women they fought appeared to be "undertrained." They weren't veterans. Remember, Prime Minister John Forster had given the go-ahead for OPS reindeer, believing it would prove to Namibians that SWAPO was weak. However, this violent invasion had completely failed them. And the SADF report confirmed completely the opposite effect. From a military standpoint, there were also a few SADF weaknesses that needed to be addressed, and urgently. The Cuban counterattack from Techemoteti caught the paratroopers unprepared and badly organized. There was much to-ing and fro-ing on the ground between Breitenbach and the sections, with orders being given, then changed. The decision to move Charlie Company to the LZ had created the gap that allowed the Cubans to pull through, heading for the chopper. It was only the timeous and effective actions of the anti-terrorists, the anti-tank platoon, and the SAF were struck that saved them. The final helicopter extraction under fire from the Cubans was successful in that they escaped, but it was also a warning to the South Africans with regards to future engagements. The Angolan army, FAPLA, and the Cubans had also made fatal mistakes by sticking to the road or remaining mounted in their tanks and armored vehicles instead of jumping off the vehicles and moving more effectively through the thick bush. They had been channeled by the road and the bush, making it easier for the air force and anti-tank units to pick them off. Ironically, the SADF would suffer a similar fate similar vulnerability during their mechanised ops in later years, as you are going to hear. Many questions remain unanswered. Why had the Cubans from Teche Motete driven straight into Charlie Company, where they suffered considerable casualties from mines and RPGs? The Cubans appeared confused about the landscape. They had driven into a kind of funnel created by the road and wooded terrain along the tributaries of the Colonga River that ran diagonally across the road, forcing them to keep driving like it was a Sunday on a quiet lane in the bush. SWAPO had suffered a large number of casualties. The final, we'll never know. There was some agreement by military analysts that the vigour of those who died in or immediately around Kasinga was at least in the region of 600. A Cuban journalist said it was more like 1,000. SWAPO then released what they said was the civilian headcount that was to condemn the South Africans. SWAPO began the narrative that women, children and the elderly in Kasinga were being slaughtered, eventually claiming 600 dead and 1,500 wounded. The dead were in what SWAPO called mass graves. There was a photograph which revealed many people lying in, indeed, a mass grave, but no children. From now on, the SWAPO narrative would be consistent, whereas the South Africans were on the defensive. "A bloody massacre!" screamed the headlines internationally. "Cutthroats murder 800 defenseless exiles!" read another. These are the statistics of the Kasinga massacre: 165 men killed, 294 women killed, 300 children killed and 200 people missing, read a third. A confidential report released to SWAPO's Central Committee at the time stated that a total of 326 men and 256 women were killed, but it did not mention any children. The high number of women fighters had surprised the SATF, but it shouldn't have because we know that a high percentage of their cadres were women. They were used as protection teams in bases away from the border mainly, so it's believed by most independent analysts that most of the women who were killed in Kasinga were fighters. South Africa's TRC process gave the official death toll around 800. Any of these statistics are staggering, really, and means this operation caused the greatest loss of life in any single action of the war which South Africa and the African Liberation movements were engaged in between 1966 and 1989. So next episode we'll hear more about the effect of Operation Reindeer on South Africa's international standing, which would drop from pariah to Nazi status. With that, we'll halt and secure the perimeter. Please rate the podcast on iTunes. If you want to comment, you can head off to my website abwarpodcast.com and send an email through there, or you can find a link on my site, desmondlatham.com. You can also direct message me at DesmondLatham.com. You can also direct message me at DesmondLatham.com. You can also direct message me at DesmondLatham.com. You can also direct message me at DesmondLatham.com. You can also direct message me at DesmondLatham.com. You can also direct message me at DesmondLatham.com. You can also direct message me at DesmondLatham.com. You can also direct message me at DesmondLatham.com. You can also direct message me at DesmondLatham.com. You can also direct message me at DesmondLatham.com. You can also direct message me at DesmondLatham.com. You can also direct message me at DesmondLatham.com. You can also direct message me at DesmondLatham.com. You can also direct message me at DesmondLatham.com. Until next, goodbye.
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