Episode 54 – Operation Protea wraps up but the Russians and Cubans want revenge

Welcome back to South African Border Wars with me your host, Derslayton, this is episode 54. Operation Proteo has wrapped up, and that was by the 2nd of September 1981. Battle Group 1-0 had reverted to being 61 Mac, while Battle Group 2-0 was disbanded. As the SCDF began their debrief, it was clear that this operation had been a tactical success, it was much to satisfy the purists who dreamed up the new mobile warfare doctrine. The final figure once all the counting was complete, was 831 enemy killed, 25 taken prisoner, the SCDF lost 10 men, and 64 wounded. Around 4000 tonnes of military hardware was captured. I mentioned some of these, but the list is pretty impressive. 9T34 tanks, 4TT76 and Fabius Reconnaissance tanks, 4 BRDM armoured cars, 2 120mm rocket launching systems, 16 Soviet ZJ23mm anti-aircraft guns, 17 14.5mm, and 13 M55 Yugoslav 20mm triple-barrelled AA guns, along with 97 SA7 shoulder fired anti-aircraft missiles, 240 trucks, 1,800 small arms. So it all appeared a major victory for South Africa, except for one infinitely more important area than that was political strategy. Fabius was now going to be on the offensive against the SCDF, whereas before they were responding to Yenita further east. Much more important though was the future role of the Cubans and the Russians. Partly because of the embarrassingly high number of casualties from birth nations during Pratia, Moscow could no longer tiptoe around the fact that it was fighting directly alongside the Angolans. The Cubans were now flying mixed, whereas previously mostly each Germans had been roped into the work with the Angolan Air Force. The Russians were on the ground in Anjiva, and they died there. It was clear that since there had been a number of Russian and Cuban casualties, Moscow could no longer pretend it was just observing. But this would have a positive effect from Luwanda's point of view. More Russian help, more Cubans soldiers, more material, more East-block cash and arms. During Operation Pratia something else had happened which indicated a change in the area and that was aviation. Enemy MiG-21s had been sniffing around the battlefields and soon one would be shot down in a major development in the regional war. Because of the power of the SAF was presence during Pratia, the MiGs had refrained from attacking directly, but the South Africans were monitoring their conversations and they were all in Spanish. The Cubans would up their numbers in Angola and also increase the pressure on their commanding officers for results. This pushed them into a more aggressive stance close to the South-West African border. However, immediately after Pratia's Swapra action in the Avambalan dropped noticeably, they were keeping a low profile as Major General Lloyd said. But the SDF also extrapolated incorrectly that the citizens of South-West Africa now thought that Swapra were not able to beat the South Africans militarily, which is not, but the people on the ground were saying to us. So about the last few months of 1981, intelligence reported that Opts Pratia had bloodied Swapra's nose, but they were not down for the count. There were sharp decreases in intimidation and sabotage, mind-laying and firefights. The context in Avambalan and the Caprivi went down. In October though, a more sober reflection was distributed by the SAF Chief of Staff Operations, which stated, "A single operation will only have a limited effect on the internal political situation." This meant that constant operations were needed to keep Swapra at bay in southern Angola, or that the SDF would have to move their forward positions into southern Angola and that would change the entire doctrine of mobile warfare. A number of decisions had been made which were logical and showed rapid learning on the behalf of the South African Defence Force. One was the fact that operational surprise was impossible. Swapra's arm-dring plan had a top-notch unofficial telegraph system which informed its high command as the mobile SDF units began moving in these operations. They just weren't sure exactly where the South Africans were going but once the SDF triggered these intel releases the mobility of the SDF forces was crucial to maintain the initiative. Zangonga was case in point. Foupler commanders there thought the SDF would never attack such a heavily defended point directly and that alone caused shock and surprise when the SDF did. It was also densely populated adding to Foupler and Swapra's misconceptions about what Pretoria was up to. The fact that Foupler appeared to have made the same mistake repeatedly regarding their defensive positions was another area where the South Africans maintained technical supremacy. However, Foupler was going to learn fast and the Russians and Cubans realised what the SDF was up to. Let's take another look at a factor in the Angolan's weakness which by the way we've just seen taking place in Ukraine. Even Soviet military tactics include what they're called hedgehog positions, something which they learned from the German Wermer. What is a big surprise to anyone watching the Ukrainian war, for example, is that we're witnessing the same command style that Foupler used. Foupler always used the roads when moving their armored cars, even in 1981 that was stupid but low in behold the Russians are using Ukrainian highways to move their troops. Then when setting up a defensive position or hedgehogs, the armored troops stopped moving and going to ground. They are a series of independently defensive positions which could deploy weapons in 360 degrees. Sounds clever. Each position was quite difficult to overcome but also disconnected. So any attacking army merely targets them one by one. By breaking up or atomising their positions and making them static, the Angolans and Swapu were weakening their capacity to respond to movement. Think of it as a group of islands being attacked by an enemy fleet. All the fleet has to do is to take out each island because the defending troops on the islands have been beeched. They were not tactically inclined to quick and decisive counterattacks. This is what the Russians have just rediscovered in the town's north of Kiev. They split up their tank forces for example and then placed them between houses instead of moving them out of the urban area where tanks are pretty much sitting ducks. The Germans learned this 70 years ago as they tried to enter Stalingrad for example and paid the ultimate price like the Russians appear to be paying in 2022. In Angola the T34s had been dug in. There were no longer tanks. There were armoured artillery points. What he had to do was get behind the tank and throw a Molotov cocktail into its engine bay where in Angola fire a 90mm round into its thinner rear and kaboom. Sangongo, Piu Piu and Hume all featured these static positions. If you think about the African felt, the thick bush and the off-road possibilities of Angola. It's somewhat confusing why the Angolans who supposedly had knowledge of their own backyard just sat and waited like someone marooned on one of those islands, I mentioned. As a soldier at the time I remember how pre-worn we were about the large popular mobile reserve just up the road in Kahama. We waited every day for them to launch a counter strike but it never came. Combat team Charlie of Major Joe Reyes, part of the 61 Mac Group or 1-0 at the time of Prater, rolled up just 15 kilometers east of this Fuplar Brigade three times his size. Veya's small combat team positioned themselves across the Kahama Sangongo road facing North and then waited. The enemy's mobile reserve remained rooted to the ground as Roland of Reesputz. Another positive point welcomed by the SIDF was the role played by the Air Force. The coordination had been a lot better both in the initial bombing and the use of close air support as well as casualty evacuation. During Operation Prater, 1,112 individual sorties were flown from Krut Vantane and on Dungwa. 333 tons of bombs were dropped, 1,774-68 mil rockets were fired along with 18 AS-30 missiles. A Mirage 3 was damaged by an SA-7 but landed safely and Alawit had been lost along with the crew near Mongua. Even so, these were regarded as sustainable losses and damage. In fact, the Air Force was so motivated that they kept complaining to the Army during Prater that their planes were not being fully utilized. Prater had also set another trend that would continue to the end of the border war. What happened from now on was the helicopter transport and light aircraft crews began to deploy at higher rates than the fighter jets. The fast jets, as they were called, were only summoned from home bases in South Africa for a specific large ops-like Prater. At no time were the Canberra's Buccaneers, Mirage 3 or Mirage F1's ever permanently deployed to South Africa, and that was according to its commander Brigadier General Dick Lord. Only one thing would have triggered their permanent deployment to Avambaland, and that was an all-out war between South Africa and Angola, but that never happened. Shortly after the up, South African Air Force fighter intelligence and human, along with signals picked up that Swapu, shifted their military command post to a position in thick bush north-east of Tecumutiti. And despite the blood on the ground in southern Angola, Swapu was now planning another large-scale infiltration into Avambaland in early 1982, and they were focusing on the rainy season. Then Moscow also began putting its money where its mouth was. Fapu began replacing its old T-34 tanks with the T-54 and T-55s, which were used operation starting from 1983. The older armoured personnel carriers, the APCs, were replaced by BTR-60s, and more artillery pieces such as the 100. 22mm D30 houses were imported for use by a fapler. The D30s gave the Angolan's a 15km capability. Moscow was not fiddling around. They sent a few other bits of kit which gave the SAD a plan as pauseful thought. A number of 122mm BM-21 multiple rocket launchers were shipped out which gave fapler and swapper a stand-off capability of up to 20km. MIG-23s and Sukhue 22 Grand Attack aircraft were introduced into the Angolan airspace in the next year. While this all looked impressive on paper, Africa isn't made of paper. The felt, particularly the sandy terrain of southern Angola, takes its toll on vehicles. All these Soviet machines were designed for a European theatre of operations none resuted to the African bush. The only vehicle which was able to perform with any degree of usefulness and retain its loose mobility was the Lada 4x4, lightweight and with an excellent chassis. It meant it could cope with the shifting muddy sand of Angola a lot better than its big brothers and sisters. The new tanks, armoured personal carriers and multiple rocket launchers were ill-suited to the terrain and the enemy. Remember fapler's main enemy right now was not the SADF, it was UNITA. The resistance movement had adopted guerrilla tactics and between 1977 and 1981 UNITA had become increasingly effective at mobile war. UNITA was also standardizing its units and deployment across its operational area at this time. Each military region was provided with units that were really dispersed guerrilla formations of up to 50 troops. Then the Relanger 150 man guerrilla companies and 500 strong semi-regular infantry battalions, they had reinforced all of these with artillery, mostly mortars, rocket launchers and highly mobile field guns. By now there were around 30,000 unit of troops in southern Angola and these were constant threat to fapler and swapu. The civilians in southern Angola had suffered significantly during Operation Protier. There were orders to avoid injuring civilians and the rules of war were abate. Being in the vanguard of these attacks and picking up the pieces as a medic, these civilians arrived back to the towns that fell within a day and they were not fearful of the SADF. Passing civilians in the towns, they merely ignored the troops. Apart from personal experience, there were other signs that the civilians were putting up with soldiers of all types, although they clearly thought of the SADF as aliens and fapler as the home team, so to speak. We also heard there was another soccer match that took place not just our kick-around at the local and Jiva airfield, I mentioned last episode. In Zangongo, battle group 1-0's Commander Roland DeFreet suggested that the soldiers take on a local citizen team in a hearts and minds of display. 61 Mech lost the game 3-1 and a few hundred spectators turned out to watch. None of this is to diminish the effect of what war does to people that merely serves to explain how not all wars are equal. Watching how the Russians have treated Ukrainians civilians in a despicable display of savagery, whatever Putin's criminal and propagandist are spinning as apology is case in point. When battle group 2-0 entered on Jiva to clear away after fapler and Swapua withdrew, this meant grenades lobbed into houses, buildings and trenches. They would trigger booby traps, but civilians were in some of these houses, and close to fapler's HQ complex, this caused the real problem. Our Commander Dippenar stopped and ordered loud speakers to be deployed to warn civilians to come out and stand on the road as the South Africans went house to house. And this the civilians did, but soon after they emerged, some went on the rampage, looting shops and the bank. Much of the food found in storage facilities was redistributed, most of it and a kind of mass free market laid out at on Jiva Airport. More than 30 civilians were critically injured and casavet out of on Jiva. One man we worked on at the airport had lost both his legs. He'd been hit by a rifle when he rode his bicycle on on Jiva's main road, and the crew brought him in. We saved him, but wherever he is today, he's disabled. There's no nice ending to these tales, as veterans of war will know. But there are moments where compassion and human empathy eclipses the sting of violence, such as the birth of the babies, I mentioned last episode. So by August 29th, battle group 2-0's officers were holding meetings with on Jiva town officials, trying to restore water, power and transport and policing. Ironically, one of the gaps in conventional operational training that grew from this immediately was the lack of expertise regarding town management, which is not something you think about as an invading army. Again, watching the Russians blunder around the Ukraine, this is so prescient today. It's like chalk and cheese these experiences. It's doubly ironic that Europeans who would call us African savages would blow up apartment blocks full of women and children without a care about what the Geneva Convention is. In on Jiva in Angola, oddly enough, some of the conscripts who'd had administration experience ended up being enrolled in sorting out the town's infrastructure problems after it was taken by the SEDF. Citizen forces can be useful. The chaplains were also roped in along with the medics to provide some solace to the suffering residents of Zangonga and on Jiva. But there's no getting away from the fact that 130,000 helpless civilians were suffering in the towns of Zangonga, on Jiva, Piu Piu, Hume and Mongua, apart from other places. Their lives had been upended and it wouldn't be for the last time. So, what's up the future? Well, the documents captured during the operation were going to be very useful in the next few months. It was learned that swap was main command and logistics bases were at Bambi Antitequera east of Kasinger and Tecumutiti. This meant another quick raid was being planned to push further north. Operation Daisy would see a much smaller battle group heading 300 kilometers inside Angola. The furthest SEDF would ever advance after Savannah. The op, which began on the 1st of November 1981, was a follow-up to Prater, but without the pure size, and it needed to be because of the intricacies of sending units so far across the border. Things were quieter for a while, along what was known as the "West" in front. Although, on the 2nd of October 3, 2 battalions bravo, Charlie and Delta companies, along with the 81 millimeter motor group and a reconnaissance team were sent across the border to see what was going on. The authorities wanted to keep things quiet, and thought perhaps they'd spot Swapper indulging in a rebuilding project or two. On the 13th of October, Charlie company captured a Swapper member who said that all Foupler and Swapper forces had withdrawn to the north. He was telling the truth. There was no sign of Angolan military movement. At the same time, the South Africans were also scouring the area further east and something that three two battalions called "Operation the Handbag" with companies being deployed for five week stretches. That was around Kahama, and as far north as Tecipa and Pupu, but they also failed to spot any Swapper all Foupler. The SRDF didn't formally mention "Operation the Handbag" because three two battalions were going to row around Angolan until the end of May 1982. Eventually, by mid-October 1981, intelligence sources picked up a large Swapper base that was located west of the bridge near Kahama and slightly south of the river. There were 300 men in that base, while the town was also occupied by Russians, Cubans and Foupler. An attack on the base was planned, but this would be no cakewalk. On the 26th of October, an assault force was airlifted into the area, but the lead Puma drew heavy fire and was hit, making an emergency landing eight kilometers from the target. One of the troops on board was wounded. The rest of the assault force were dropped nearby and approached the target on foot. Foupler opened fire as they approached the river. 11 of the enemy was shot before SRDF units moved further east. They were fired on as they moved, but were determined to target the base. A few kilometers away, they ran into a Portuguese man who confirmed that there was a base at Kahama, but occupied by Russian and Cuban troops, no Swapper. After a hurried discussion, three two turned around and headed back to where they'd drawn fire, and there they found a number of vehicles hidden under trees. Foupler soldiers opened fire, eventually all 30, we killed. The South Africans found 12 gas trucks loaded with clothing and ammunition. There was also a land cruiser and a land rover. The vehicles were all destroyed, sending columns of smoke high into the African sky. These contacts continued across southern Angola through late October, as Operation Daisy planned as put the finishing touches to their blueprint for another invasion. This one would once again combine the SRFs as well as adequate fighter plane backup for the ground troops. The main Angolan defense line was centered on the east west railway line that stretched from Namibiae on the Atlantic coast to Menonque in the east. Two major Angolan airfields were positioned at Lubango and Menonque putting the whole operation well within Meg striking range. As you'll hear, a Meg was going to try and strike, and in turn, it would be attacked by a mirage for the first time since the start of the border war. Please head over to my website abwarpodcast.com. There's a link to send emails if you want to chat, or you can direct message me on twitter @dislaven. That's all next bus bay.