Speaker 1Welcome back to South African Border Wars with me, your host, Tess Latham. This is episode 80. We're picking up where we left off in episode 79 after Captain Baynard de Toye had been captured and two recces were shot dead. Six others were hiding in a coastal thicket surrounded by a favela intent on capturing or killing them. Operation Argonne of May 1985 was one part of a two-punch with the plan to send nine operators heading to oil storage tanks at Cabinda Enclave. They'd been dropped off by a submarine, but it ended up at the wrong layup position. Their tracks were spotted, then a South African hat was found on the trail, and that was the clincher. In the follow-up firefight, de Toye was captured after Corporals van Breda and Liebenbach had been hit and killed. Two others, Captain Nel and Corporal Hoogh, were wounded and lying. Two others had been shot dead, alongside four other operators, inside the thicket. It was late afternoon on the 21st of May, 1985. Dissultory fire was aimed at the thicket, but the six survivors didn't shoot back. They were running out of ammunition and were waiting for the final assault on their position. It was the capture of de Toye and the deaths of the other two operators that caused the Cuban officials, as well as FAPLA, to come to the conclusion that the rest of the South Africans must have got away, but the six hidden in the thicket had no idea what had happened to the other South Africans, except for de Toye. It looked like FAPLA was heading off east in the direction they thought the wreckies had disappeared. The Cuban officers were much more interested in de Toye. They were going to interrogate him. There was also a change of command at the site of the firefight. As darkness drew in, FAPLA fired about half a dozen RPG-7s into the thicket. Everyone tensed this could be preparation for a proper sweep, but it never materialized. Things quietened down in the dark. In the evening, Kwerosh took out his night vision glasses and crawled to the edge of the thicket. There were a few ambush positions scattered around with gaps between. The escape route was tight but available. The problem was, they now had two injured soldiers to carry or at least help out of this jumble of trees. The six waited until 1900 hours, when Kwerosh crept from the thicket to bushes about fifty meters away. Then the rest began their slow leopard crawl through the ground. There was nothing left to do, much of it burned after being set alight in the contact. It was around 300 meters to the tar road to their west, which lay between them and the beach and safety. But they couldn't head directly west. They began a one kilometer crawl just to ensure that FAPLA would be far away and Kwerosh was ahead scouting for danger. Leopard crawling and creeping at times, it took them an hour to reach a water culvert near the road. Military vehicles were passing at regular intervals. But they managed to get across the road, unseen, and then lay in thick grass alongside. Ironically, they were now quite close to the oil depot, which they were supposed to be mining, and saw the security fences only a short distance away. So near and yet so far. They were thinking about hijacking one of the passing military vehicles to get away, but realized this would be a mistake. Instead, they crept away from the facility, then used the road to speed up, carrying Corporal Hoogh, whose ankle was shattered. And finally, Captain Nell, who'd been shot twice. He had to be guided because he couldn't see properly. One of his eyes was badly damaged. They had dropped into the long grass alongside the road when vehicles could be heard. But by using this road, they sped up significantly. Eventually, they found an old farm entrance and dropped to the ground there, exhausted. Kwerosh took stock. Their high frequency radios had been left during the fighting, and only Nell and Kwerosh had their VHF radios in their webbing. The rest of the operators had dropped everything except their firearms. It was a few hundred meters to the sea, and Kwerosh headed towards the ocean in the dark, trying to make contact with the crew on board the inflatables with his VHF. There was no reply. They dragged themselves along the road further north, skirting the town of Malembok. All of this took time, and by now the operators were dehydrated. Then they came across a well. Their thirst quenched, Kwerosh took the lead again and headed back to the beach with his infrared strobe light. Perhaps he could get the boat's attention. He knew where they were, but they didn't know where he was. The problem was, the procedure when it came to using the strobe called for two of these placed in a line, so he waved it about instead. And at the same time, he kept calling on his VHF radio. Nothing. He knew where the boats were just offshore, so eventually he took to shouting into the dark instead. This was last chance. Saloon. Miraculously, Commandant Fenter, who was on board one of the inflatables, recognized his voice and radioed the submarine. He knew something had gone seriously wrong, and he asked Captain Stead on board the Johanna to move as closely as possible into shore. Kwerosh shouted there were casualties. The inflatables picked up the operators, but Kwerosh and Tablay stayed behind. They were hoping that their colleagues from Breda, Liebenburg, perhaps even Dutoy, would miraculously appear. Of course. They never did. And eventually, Kwerosh and Tablay were picked up just before dawn at 04:20. But they weren't out of the woods. Captain Stead managed to bring the sub as close as he could to shore, a dangerous thing to do. But they wanted the casualties treated ASAP. By 05:15, all the inflatables were on board, and the SAS Johanna withdrew out to sea. Captain Nell's wounds were severe. The two doctor-medical team went to work saving him. Then Corp. Hoogh. Both would eventually recover. Meanwhile, the second operation called Bennex, which was supposed to kick off shortly down south, was cancelled, and the two strike craft turned from the southerly position and headed north to the rendezvous point, about 100 nautical miles off Cabina. At the sub, they were still trying to find the missing operators, while back in Pretoria there was a whirl of activity and planning. They needed more fuel for the inflatables, while Nell and Hoogh were to be placed onboard one of the strike craft and rushed back to South Africa. It was decided that two Barracuda lightboats on board the Hendrik Mentz strike craft would be used the next night to search along the shore for the missing men. They'd be launched 25 miles offshore, and their speed would give them more time to hang around the pickup point on the beach. They dropped off a special rescue and evasion pack and hid this above the dunes. Fortunately, there was no enemy activity at this stage, it was all taking place further south as they searched for the South Africa. But it was only a matter of time before they'd begin to move north. The submarine was waiting on the surface, an unusual tactic in this particularly dangerous area. By 0400 on the morning of the 23rd, the Barracudas rendezvoused with the sub once more, and its nose was pointing out to sea. That was just in case of an eventuality. And they were lucky. The captain had ordered this position because moments later, Stead saw lights of a ship approaching from the south. His periscope radar detector indicated a vessel was indeed heading their way. Stead wasn't sure they'd been spotted, but the detector revealed that this ship was steaming directly towards them. They hadn't managed to load both inflatables, so the operators punctured one and the sub dived as quickly as possible. The sonar pinged, this approaching boat was speeding up, and now it was very clear that the vessel had them in its sights. Stead was waiting for the next ship to arrive, and the boat was heading straight into the muddy bottom, damaging the blades of both propellers. The sub then struggled into a horizontal position off the mud underwater, and began to move out to sea. Both props were still working, but full speed may be a problem. This was going to be touch and go because to their horror, a second sonar signal was picked up. They were now being hunted by two ships. Both were going to pass within a few hundred meters of where they were. The first of them appeared to be an Osa missile boat I told you about a few episodes ago, which didn't have sub-location capacity, but if anything went wrong and the sub had to surface, it would be curtains. The other Angolan Navy vessel that was pursuing them was a Shoshin torpedo boat, which also did not have sonar capacity. They were criss-crossing behind the sub as it headed into deeper water. Clearly, they'd spotted its wake as it dived and were tracking it westwards. The other Osa missile boats gave up their search and headed off. By now, Johanna was some distance out to sea, and they raised a whipmast and sent a dreaded note back to South Africa. Three operators missing. The Johanna did not head home. It was crucial to try and find the men, so they loitered 100 nautical miles off Kabinda monitoring Angolan radio. It was mid-morning when they heard that two South African bodies were being shown to local media and that a third South African was captured. Pretoria, meanwhile, denied any involvement. They gave up on the extraction attempt. The wounded men were transferred to the strike craft, and the sub headed back to Simonstown at a slow speed, protecting the damaged props. On the 25th of May, Nel and Hoogh were landed at Valfus Bay, then flown to Pretoria and hospitalised. By the 27th of May, the rest of the wreckies were back at Donkergat for a three-day debrief. It took the Johanna far longer to reach its base. She ended up safe. trailing past Simonstown, all the way up to Port Elizabeth, where she was refueled and took on rations. The long route was to obscure her actions to the northwest of the country but led to the crew being on board for 35 days when the operational maximum was 28. And so ended Operation Argonne which had been a failure. Two operators killed and now Captain Venant Dutoy captured and facing interrogation. What would he say? The Angolan government was particularly angry about all of this. They had just been negotiating with the South Africans and had spent the last year in the Joint Monitoring Commission and here was the SADF trying to blow up the oil storage depots in Cabinda. General Constant Fulun told South African journalists that the SADF was not trying to blow anything up. They were merely collecting intelligence on the ANC. No one believed that. The Americans responded in shock. They had been working with the South Africans, particularly U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs, Chester Crocker. They were trying to negotiate a solution to the Namibian question. Remember, Pretoria had signed an agreement a month before promising that the SADF had been withdrawn from southern Angola. But now, not only had the Requis been rumbled in Cabinda, but in southern Angola, 3-2 Battalion and the Requis had been dressing up as both Swapu and as Unita. It was then that Dutoy appeared at a Luanda press conference where he told journalists that the raid had indeed been planned to blow up oil installations near Molongo in Cabinda Province, and that there had been four other operations of this type. Washington immediately recalled its ambassador to Pretoria, and the United Nations Secretary General condemned the raid. Angola formally suspended all talks. The gloves were coming off diplomatically and militarily. Because unknown to the South Africans, the Cubans, Russians and Angolans were planning to launch a full-scale mechanized attack on Unita and south-east Angola within a couple of months. For the Requis, a few tactical realities needed addressing. They had poor intelligence about the location of the Fafla base so close to their lay-up point at the Cabinda thicket. How they had missed this entire base was caused by an almost seven-month delay between the initial plan to raid the oil installation, which was November 84, and the eventual raid in May 85. Then they had planned insertion and extraction in summer, when the vegetation was thicker. It was May, late autumn, when Operation Argon was launched, the bush was thinned out, and anti-tracking techniques couldn't be deployed. Lastly, there had been a propensity to regard Fafla and the Cubans as incompetent, and their local bases as too isolated to be a threat. Meanwhile, Pretoria was being interrogated. It was non-violent but consistent, and yet he didn't reveal anything that was of real value for the Angolans other than diplomatically. He didn't tell them exactly how the South African Navy could insert special forces, the combination of these three vessels, the submarine, the strike craft, and the inflatables. Dutori told his interrogators the SA Navy had launched the attack from a large ship off the coast. He said they'd launched previous attacks using fishing boats, including one flying a Japanese flag. This was disingenuous. Luanda had been fixating on reports that a Japanese fishing boat was behind some of the previous raids, which the Russians had been inclined to believe because they have a long history of disliking the Japanese. Moscow had gone on record a couple of times scoffing at the South Africans' capacity to launch raids in any complexity, so Dutori's comments seemed to make sense to them. On the other hand, the six operators who got away had performed something of a miracle. They were lightly armed. Two were wounded. They were surrounded. Fapla had dropped the ball with these six. Things could have been far worse if they'd been captured. Two of the operators, Kwerosh and Tablai, were Angolan. They'd have been executed, and their interrogation would not have been without violence. Dutori was to spend two and a half years as a prisoner of war. Internationally, things were changing now. The Americans had decided that Pretoria was not to be trusted, and Moscow had picked up this change in their relationship. The Russians had warned that what they called the Chester-Crocker cycle had ended, and that Washington had virtually washed its hands of supporting the South African government. Two years before, in 1983, Moscow had sent Pretoria a message to pull out of southern Angola or face the consequences, and that they'd supply all support necessary, in adverted comments, for Angola's defense. So far, Russia's rules of engagement meant that only technical support and weapons were being sent to Angola, not troops. But they began to hint, after mid-1985, that their rules of engagement had changed, which could include battlefield contact with the SADF. Washington still fed intelligence information to the South Africans, and had warned that Moscow and Havana were going to raise the stakes and pour more hardware into this region. They were tired of being humiliated inside southern Angola. By 1985, Soviet hardware had indeed flooded into Angola. This included at least 33 Mi-25 helicopters, 27 Alouettes, and 69 Mi-8 and Mi-17 logistic support choppers. When it came to tanks, 30 more T-62s were sent, along with a whopping 260 T-55s, 150 T-34s, and 50 PT-76 light tanks. The number of technical advisers rose considerably now. Hundreds of Soviet and East German military personnel flew in to help in the air force and maintain the complex comms and other systems. The Soviets didn't see southern Africa as that important in their global perspective. Western Europe and NATO were their big problem. But they saw the Angolan conflict as a place to test some of their weapons and systems. The SADF didn't have long to wait to test those systems in turn. August 1985, the Angolan armed forces began a massive operation simultaneously in the Mojito and Coando-Cobango provinces. Both of these regions were controlled by UNITA and the MPLA wanted them back. Operation Second Congress was duly launched, a two-pronged attack first in the Kazumbo Bight and the second to capture Mavinga. Both were supposed to be secured by early September. The idea was to seize these regions, then FAPLA would continue their offensive in the final assault on Jamba, UNITA's HQ in south east Angola. The Kazumbo enclave was right up against the Zambian border and FAPLA was going to succeed in this objective, driving UNITA out. Shortly after the attack began, UNITA appealed to South Africa for help and Pretoria began to fly in hundreds of UNITA reinforcements to the airfields of Jajao Coutinho and Kazumbo. The SAF was called this Operation Magneto, and positioned teams at both airfields to assist landing and taking off. Everything was being done at night to reduce the threat of mig attacks. In one flight, for example, 183 soldiers were airlifted aboard a Lockheed Hercules which took off from a sand strip and landed at another sand strip, a huge number of troops and possibly some kind of record. The new military strategy adopted by the Russians meant that FAPLA would conduct mechanized and conventional operations as opposed to the defensive posture up to now. Operation Second Congress was spearheaded by tanks and infantry fighting vehicles, IFVs and supported by artillery and combat aircraft. They advanced from Cuito Canavale south east towards Mavinga. That town had an airstrip which was useful to FAPLA as a future airbase and Jamba would then be well within range. But the Angolans operated a lumbering war machine. Their attacks were hopelessly too slow and ponderous and the situation was worsened by bad logistics. FAPLA's supplies were always a problem, as the SADF had noted during the failed JMC process. Food seemed to be a particular problem, along with engineers and ammunition supplies. UNITA leader Jonas Savimbi had been asking South Africa for conventional warfare training and was trying to transform his rebel group into more of an army than a guerrilla movement. Savimbi also ascribed to Mao Zedong's military strategy. "The first phase of a revolutionary war is unconventional warfare. Phase two is semi-conventional." And he thought this was time for phase two. And this put the South Africans into a difficult position. They were fighting an insurgency to the west, an uprising inside South Africa itself and their own special forces based ops. Now UNITA wanted direct assistance because the conventional forces rolling towards them, albeit ramshackle in logistics, were simply too slow. And they were too significant in firepower. As you'll hear next episode, SA intelligence reports suggested UNITA was in real danger of being overrun and destroyed. You'll also hear how the SA air force was to shoot down four of the newly arrived Soviet helicopters over the next few weeks. Please rate the podcast on iTunes, it helps increase the series visibility. If you want to contact me, you can email me through the website abwarpodcast.com or direct message me. As long as Twitter lasts. On Twitter @DaisLatham Until next time. Goodbye.
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