Speaker 1Welcome back to South African Border Wars with me, your host, Des Latham. This is episode 68. We're in April 1983 and beyond when SADF intelligence picked up that SWAPO had begun improving their military position in Angola and that the armed wing plan had managed a major incursion into Avambaland. Then things went very quiet and intelligence reports suggested there seemed to be a link between SWAPO's special unit Typhoon being withdrawn and the signs of a further large incursion into South West Africa, which was to follow in early 1984. At the same time, the SADF Chief of Staff Operations in Pretoria noted that the build-up going on across the border was the biggest ever and had ordered a series of countermeasures, including Operation Mirbos, which we heard about last episode. While the politicians fretted about the global impact on the ground, top SADF officers were calling for another urgent invasion. As the discussions raged, it was clear that something needed to be done and that something would lead to one of the most significant actions of the border war called Operation Ascari. This was going to be very different from previous ops because this time, FAPLA, the Cubans and SWAPO were going to respond more aggressively and this time the SADF would face two far more serious challenges. The Soviet T-54 and T-55 tanks and a new radar, and the SADF's self-controlled missile system. As you will hear in a later podcast, the SADF was also going to lay its hands on extremely rare technology worth millions of US dollars. A real coup for Western military, who had only seen one other version in the world up to then that was badly damaged. By July 1983, SWAPO had begun withdrawing its units inside South West Africa and over the cut-line into Angola, further north to Lubongo and Dongo for what they called "refresher training". The special typhoon unit had grown to around 1,400 strong and was prepping for another major invasion into a Womberland and the Triangle of Death. They had sown chaos in 1982, including the ambush and blowing up of a rattle and the assassination of political leaders, as well as the murder of farmers. They had also mined dozens of roads. The SADF and SWA territorial force were determined to stop them from repeating that carnage. The Reckies also picked up continuous supply and reinforcement movements in Southern Angola. The Reckies also picked up continuous supply and reinforcement movements in Southern Angola. The Reckies also picked up continuous supply and reinforcement movements in Southern Angola. The Reckies also picked up continuous supply and reinforcement movements in Southern Angola. The Reckies also picked up continuous supply and reinforcement movements in Southern Angola. The Reckies also picked up continuous supply and reinforcement movements in Southern Angola by the third quarter of 1983, including a large quantity of land mines that began arriving virtually daily in the towns of Kahama, Kuvulai, Mulondo and Kuitavi. SWAPO always began their attacks in mid or early rainy season, and it was estimated that this time their incursions would start by the end of January 1984. And this is where the SADF decided to try and stem the invasions and change their strategy when it came to invading Angola. In prior attacks, the large-scale mechanized attack on the SADF was a major success. In prior attacks, the large-scale mechanized attack on the SADF was a major success. In prior attacks, the large-scale mechanized attack on the SADF was a major success. In prior attacks, the large-scale mechanized movements were planned for the dry winter or early spring months between July and September, where the SADF vehicles had an advantage. Now they were going to gamble on an invasion during the wet season. As you're going to hear, the ground attack would be slowed down by this decision, while above, the SA Air Force was going to find their overhead support was stymied at times. The SADF had got used to relying on their topside comrades, not being able to rely on allied gunships, spotters and Puma support along with the Impalas and Mirages could be fatal. There was another factor in this upcoming series of battles that the SADF soldiers on the ground would rue, a real gap in some of the intelligence gathered prior to one battle in particular. You're going to be surprised by some of the ad hoc decisions taken during Ascari, particularly in how the plan to hit Kuvalai unfolded, where the commanding officer didn't even have a proper map. That seat of the pants military tactic may have worked during Savannah, but this was almost a decade later, and the Angolan army was a very different proposition by now. Meanwhile, Pretoria's political leaders were locked in a battle of wits with both the Americans and the Europeans, who began to withdraw their support for the Apartheid government at precisely the point they needed it most. On the 28th of October 1983, the UN Security Council passed a resolution condemning South Africa's role in South West Africa and rejecting any criticism of the Cuban military role in Angola. What made things far worse, for Pretoria this time, is that the United States abstained from voting despite the fact that Ronald Reagan was president. He was regarded as a supporter of Pretoria in its fight against communism, so to have the US State Department backtrack was a blow. And Moscow had already sent indirect diplomatic notes to Pretoria not to make the mistake of invading Angola again, while Washington had also told the South Africans that they had to stop destabilizing southern Angola. This was ironic, because Washington had special force units in Angola unofficially helping UNITA in its war against the MPLA. All of this had been affected by incidents that took place in August 1983 that I'm going to describe. That's when the SADF and Jonas Savimbi's UNITA had planned an operation together to destroy FAPLA headquarters in Kangamba. That's a small town in central Angola. UNITA's initial assaults had been repulsed and they asked for help in overcoming a strong FAPLA contingent in the town. It was time for Operation Carton. Brigadier Bossie Heyser ordered SAF's commander Dick Lord to Rundu to plan this joint operation, and the chain-smoking Heyser wasted no time when Lord arrived along with his intelligence officer Johan Oppermann before getting down to details. It involved an air strike on Kangamba, which is 150 kilometers northeast of Kueto Konovali and way beyond South Africa's stated defensive zone in southern Angola. By now Savimbi's UNITA controlled almost half the southern border between Zambia and the Atlantic, which released the SADF to concentrate on central Angola, the area around Zangongo and Onjiba. The MPLA, however, had managed to remain in control of Kangamba and were now threatening Savimbi further south. UNITA's leader initially said his men would seize Kangamba within nine hours. Nine days later the town remained in MPLA hands. Over the last year Savimbi had taken to traveling to both Cape Town and Pretoria on board 21 Squadron's Mercurial, the notorious HS125 and in August 1983 he did so once more, this time asking for the South Africans to intervene. But Pretoria was still deep in the throes of negotiating with the United Nations over the future of Namibia and Kangamba was way north of their comfort zone. Any intervention was politically dangerous and yet eventually it was decided to allow the SA air force one shot at an airstrike, and so Dick Lord was flown to Rundu to meet the chain-smoking Heyser. Operation Carton was going to be a little more than just an airstrike. First a Puma and a C-130 were put on standby to fly in arms and ammunition, then be available to fly out casualties. As the Kangamba battle raged on, two more Pumas were needed to send in a South African tactical HQ team including Commandant Mosse Basson. Then four more Pumas flew in with ammunition. Talk about mission creep. Another two Pumas were also required to take in an air defense team. And they arrived with captured Soviet SA-7 Strehler missiles. Five more C-130s followed up over the next few nights carrying loads of ammunition, para-dropping these to the UNITA forces. Savimi had told Heyser and Lord that his men controlled Kangamba except for a small 100 meter by 100 meter stretch of bunkers, which should be bombed. But when Basson arrived on the ground as eyes and ears of the SADF, he found that was untrue. UNITA controlled virtually none of the targets. It was then that a captured MPLA soldier provided a complete description of the bunker complex, and it went so far as to sketch it for Basson. The SADF had gathered excellent intelligence from this man, and the Air Force actually based most of their coming bombing campaign on this one sketch. You'd perhaps think this is unlikely, but as I've said previously, war is full of moments where individuals make a difference, and this was one. The informant's detail was so clear that Basson thought he was wrong. He thought he couldn't be lying, and he wasn't. The MPLA had set up an intricate bunker and trench system with heavy fortifications that meant UNITA's mortars had been rendered useless. The informant's sketch showed an HQ building and a large bunker to the west of Kangamba, so that was obviously the main target. The entrances were tiny and below ground level, and the SA Air Force decided to use AS-30 missiles launched from buccaneers to prise open the bunker system. The rest of the bunkers were empty. The rest would be blown up using the heavy bombs fused at 0.06 seconds and the other half with contact fuses. One would blow a hole in the ground, the second would blow a hole in that hole, so to speak. Because Kangamba was so far north, only the buccaneers and the Canberras could be used, no impalas for this mission. Four of the Canberras were loaded with 24 1,000-pound bombs and 36 500-pound bombs, as well as eight AS-30 missiles, two for each buccaneer. There were no anti-aircraft guns, so the South African planes could come in low, increasing accuracy. The idea was to fly in from the northeast at 0800 hours out of the rising sun, and UNITA was told to remain at least two kilometers away from the bunkers if they were on the 12 o'clock and 6 o'clock direction of attack. The rest waited about a kilometer away. So the crews from 3, 12 and 24 Squadron flew to Groote Fonteyn on the 13th of August 1983. They were briefed and took off on the 14th. of August. First, the Buccaneers would launch their AS-30 missiles at the bunker entrances, then four Canberras would drop their bombs from low level, and finally the Buccaneers would head over a second time in a dive, increasing the chance of striking the targets. Mirage F-1CZs with drop tanks would top cover, just in case the MiGs showed up. The airstrike began at precisely 0800, and it was called the most effective of the entire border war. A few hours later, Cangamba was in UNITA's hands, with the Angolans and Cubans suffering hundreds dead, 800 say some, and another couple of hundred captured by UNITA. The SA Air Force congratulated those involved, Buccaneer Commander Major Lapis Lapis Cachni, Captain Reem Mouton, Commandant George Snaymon, Captain Brian Daniel, Major Trevor Schroeder, Major Sandy Roy, and Piki Siebritz, along with Captain Neil Napier. It was all backslaps and beers, whiskey and cigars. Unfortunately, there was a big problem following this success. The Angolans called on the Soviets to step up their weapon deliveries, and the Cubans increased the number of troops in Angola by 5,000, bringing the total number to 25,000. This alarmed Pretoria. The air raid was a success. The strategic aim, however, was not. So, in August 1983, France then announced it would stop taking part in the Five Nation Western Alliance called the Contact Group, which had been mediating between South Africa and the UN on the question of Namibian independence. Then Canada followed suit. For the SADF's political minders, they'd made a few cardinal errors. UNITA was happy. The rest of the world wasn't. While the geopolitical effect of Operation Carton reverberated, the SADF was trying to stem another flood of swap due to arrive in the rainy season at the end of 1983 or the beginning of 1984. The planning stage for Ascari kicked into gear by October. There was a rush to deal with Swapur's incursion for 1984, which the political leadership feared was going to be groundbreaking. So, first, November was penciled in for the attack, but that was delayed again as Puk Buta negotiated. By December, the Cubans and the Russians had delivered some very important weapons into Angola. A few hundred T-54 and T-55 tanks arrived, and these were a very different mobile weapon to the T-35. The T-35 was a very important weapon to the T-35. The T-35 was a very important weapon to the T-34. Where the Second World War T-34 armor could be pierced by the 90mm rattle and noddy cars, the Irlands, the T-54 and T-55s were another matter entirely. In some cases, the Irland gunners were going to fire five or six rounds that just bounced off the T-54s and T-55s. The Soviets also delivered modern anti-aircraft missiles, and by the end of the year, the Kanani province of Angola was bristling with these new weapons. Fapla and Swapur had also been trained for the last six months. They were now prepared to take the initiative to the South Africans. They no longer buried their tanks in defensive positions. They had learned to fight how the SEDF had fought. By the end of 1983, Angola was spending 35% of its budget on the military. The conventional war between South Africa and Angola was building towards a climax. The weapons were getting heavier and heavier. The political stakes on all sides were going up. An entire battalion of Cubans and Angolans, more than 10,000 men, awaited the SEDF, who were also going to invade Angola with around 5,400. There were at least 100 of the new T-54 and T-55s in southern Angola, as well as new batteries of artillery and high-tech missile systems. However, the SEDF still had one advantage. The Angolans suffered from Soviet military doctrine with its political commissars who dilly-dallied when it came to decision-making. They were more worried about the situation than they were worried about the situation. They were more worried about making a mistake and paying for it than actually beating the enemy. In most of the towns, the SEDF attacked. This meant the MPLA continued to regard defensive positions and their artillery power as their main tactical superiority, when the SEDF knew that in the vastness of the African bush, being able to move while being protected by a superior air force was how to win a war. What SEDF intelligence didn't know was that the Angolans were now better prepared and that their morale had improved. As the South Africans who attacked Kuvelai were to find out, the defenders of this town did not run. They fought back for nearly three days, causing many casualties. And the Angolans also began to experiment with their new T-54s and T-55s, trying to seize the initiative from the South African mechanized units. The planners in Pretoria wanted to destroy significant enemy targets far inside Angola, at Kahama, Kotevi, Molondo and Kuvelai. The 3-2 battalion ended up further north, defeating a company of 5-player Teche Mutete, which is actually north of Kuvelai. The irony is that Teche Mutete would be overrun with virtually no shots being fired, while further south of this strategic town, Kuvelai was going to turn into a nightmare for elements of the South African Defence Force. Brigadier Joep Llover commanded Operation Ascari. He was also OC of Sector 10, and Colonel Dick Lord was in charge of the SEDF. The attack would be conducted by four task forces, with a fifth force, or combat group, added later. I'll provide much more detail during each task force deployment, but just for the record, these were Task Force Echo Victor under Colonel Eddie Fulion, i.e. E.V., Task Force Fox under Commandant Tooby van Schalkwijk, Task Force Victor, which was really a conglomeration of citizen force units under Commandant Van Grijling, and Task Force X-Ray under Commandant Geert van Zeeuwel, then Commandant F. van Lul, and finally Commandant Velgemut. It's Task Force X-Ray that suffered from rotating commanders, which is not an ideal situation. There was also Combat Group Delta Foxtrot, a kind of Joint Sector 2-0 force under Colonel Dion Ferreira, which was company-sized, but featured a conglomeration of Echo Company from 1 Para Battalion and a company from 3-2 Battalion. Finally, there was another hastily assembled combat team called Tango, which was supposed to keep the enemy occupied, south of Kuwerai and west of the Kineni River. They were being used as decoys and were not very happy about that. As I said, the initial date for Ascari was the 9th of November, but this was delayed by a full month to the 9th of December, which had implications for both the motorized divisions, which would suffer from the rains, and for the entire operation, because Swapu and Fapla knew weeks before the South Africans arrived that they were on their way. It's Napoleon who said a General-in-Chief should ask himself several times in the day, what if the enemy were to appear now in my front, or on my right, or on my left? It's only the best generals and soldiers who can deal with that kind of surprise. Unlike previous ops, where the SADF caught Fapla and Swapu napping to some extent, things were going to be very different in December 1983. The only soldiers who seemed surprised were Fapla-based in Tecumetete. And once again, political experience was the reason. Just to remind everyone, Foreign Affairs Minister Puk Buta had undertaken a new round of talks with African and Western leaders in the last moments of October and November 1983. Negotiations were well underway. UN negotiator Kurt von Schrending suggested to Secretary-General Perez de Cuellar that they support an agreement reached in Rome between Puk Buta and US Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Chester Crocker. That was, the SADF would withdraw from Angola by the end of January 1984, and the UN would make sure that Cuba, Fapla, and Swapu would stay out of the conflict. of Southwest Africa while further negotiations continued. There were two problems with these negotiations. One was intelligence gathered on both sides precluded any real thoughts of peace. Swapu and Fapla knew that the SADF was about to invade Angola, and the SADF knew that Swapu was about to invade Southwest Africa. What a mess. In our next episode, we will focus on the start of Operation Ascari. I'm going to try and cover this on a day-to-day basis starting from December 9th. That's going to be a lot of work, but I'm going to try and cover it on a day-to-day basis. Some doing because research is published as task force by task force, not chronologically. But by tying the strands together as the battles unfolded will add a big picture element. So bear with me as we cover the assaults on Kahama, Molondo, Tichimuteti, and Kuvalei. By the way, a quick thank you to Donovan for some great pictures, legacy images from the western desert of Iona, where 3-2 attacked a new Swapu base. They're on the website abwarpodcast.com. And also to some of the vets of Ascari who've been chatting to me offline. Thank you for your continued support. Please rate the podcast on iTunes. It makes the series more visible. You can also head off to abwarpodcast.com or direct message me on Twitter at Des Laethen. Until next Fuzzbait. Transcribed by ESO. Translated by —
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