Episode 99 – The SAAF tests a top secret weapon while new recruits come to terms with giant moths and skulking MiGs

[Music] Welcome back to South African Border Wars with me, your host, Desi Latham. This is episode 99. We're approaching the date of Operation Hooper, but first a bit of bad news for the S.A.D. of providing disease. The heavy rains through November, December of 1987, had created a perfect breeding ground for the flowers and mosquitoes that carried hepatitis and malaria. This was impacting morale, let alone the operational capacity of the army. The replacement throopies were on their way by the 19th of November, but they had to receive additional training on the border before they were let loose on Fubla. Fubla 2 was re-arming itself, and new recruits were also arriving at 21 Brigade, and the other units stationed around Kwito Kwanawali. There was a real expectation building on both sides, that something significant was going to happen over the next few months. This kind of war couldn't continue. It had changed from a low-intensity guerrilla war, ostensibly fall to through of Umberland, to a conventional war, fought exclusively in southern Angola. The troops arriving to replace the national servicemen had no idea what they were in for. This was an old trick of the S.A.D. of most of these men only realized that they were going into Angola once they were inside the country. The law in South Africa stated they had to volunteer to fight outside of the country, but the S.A.D. of Topras had got around that, by asking if the men were prepared to volunteer once they'd crossed the border. Had these troops not volunteered in inverted commas, they would have left their brothers to fight with fewer hands. So it was a contorted and rather malicious psychological trick. These blokes played on the minds of the youngsters, most of them 18 or 19 years old. So the men who volunteered to join 61 Mac were told they were going to end up at its HQ near Rundu, and then realised they were being driven in the opposite direction, finally crossing the Covangar River with Unita soldiers armed with AK-47s, welcoming them. That was a shock. Take Klaav Holt, for example, an NCO who thought he'd be spending the second year of his service in some kind of office in Umberland. After bouncing through the bush on the back of a truck for a few kilometres, I noticed a very large river ahead of us, he writes in his book, at die call. We were heading straight for the water, and thanks to my school geography lessons, I realised that this was the river that formed the border between South Africa and the Goa. Indeed. Once across the river he was told he'd be fighting alongside Unita, and he was even more shocked. An uncomfortable silence descended on us as we crossed the bridge and entered the foreign land. There had been misled, he wrote, and the men had a sheer sense of disbelief to the extent to which they'd been deceived. Holt then realised that quite a few of his colleagues had been listed A-Wall after the last pass. There must have known more than he did. Their idea believed that the National Servicemen would be a source of leaks, so kept all information strictly need to know, but this had led to situations where many soldiers immediately distrusted their officers, who'd obviously known, and where they understood South African law, they knew this was not ethical. Too late. Once they were in Ingoda, they could not let their brothers down by backing out. It would have been a gap in their defensive capacity. They would have weakened their own forces. This is what Petorea was relying on. Months of brainwashing and mental preparedness about doing anything for your body, working like a single organism, a military machine to overcome the enemy. But this was not a total lie, the troops would be based south of the Kavango or Kneni rivers, and they were trained for weeks in conventional warfare, and by then most began to guess what was going on. They could have left a little earlier. Why, bush orientation was so important, was not explained, however had the soldiers sat back and thought about it, it was kind of obvious. Still, deception was going to cause moral issues. Dealing with the flowers was one thing, but it was the piss-moth that really made most shudder. The large moth would settle on the inside of tents at night, and if disturbed, it would fly around spring, some kind of liquid, and if this hit your skin, nasty blisters would form. On the 28th of November, these 61 mech replacements headed back from the bush to Rundu, then boarded a plane for Mavingo deep inside Angola. Then it was onto trucks once more, another 10 km drives through the bush, which was wet and tropical. Rain was falling and they set up their shelters. Nothing happened that night. The next morning, fliers were everywhere. This was their future, underground sheets and ponchos tied together, living on the sand. A few of the troops apparently went into shock there and then, some were flown back to Rundu when that appeared they were suicidal. It was the next day, the 29th of November, that they took delivery of the vehicles from the outgoing national servicemen heading home for Christmas. They were meant by men who had not shaved for months whose clothes were ragged, whose eyes were wild. The rottles were battered and needed fixing. The next few days were spent fixing these and counting and loading ammunition. By the first week of December, many of the rottles were back to working order, and the men began to learn how to interact with unitar, trading cigarettes and red packs. Mavingo used to be a nice place. By the stage of the border war, it had been shot up. Around the town was a jungle. It looked almost like a tropical rain forest at the end of the rainy season. Soon, they began to move north towards Kwitokwana Valley and into range of the MiG-21s and 23 fighter aircraft. When these were spotted, radios would play with the call "Victor Victor" and alarm that the MiGs were around. Feander Lecker Flichtek, enemy aircraft. From now on, these troops are going to hear that alarm call of Victor, Victor, at least once a day, for the next four months. Back in Pretoria, General Cutt Levenbach issued the formal operational instructions for Huper lifting the veil and what the strategy was going to be going forward. Their basic aim was simple. The ground, taken, should not be lost, and the enemy should be destroyed east of Kwitok River. The officers were also briefed that if Kwitokwana Valley could be occupied, it should be, and that the SEDF should stay in part in the area until the enemy was no longer a threat to unitar. Some plans were drawn up by 61 MiG-24 for sure, and Yani Hellness were shown these on the 23rd of December. Unitar would carry on attacking 25 Brigade as a diversion to the south, and Harry 59 Brigade in the centre. That was Fuplers' outer defence of line. Then four-side would attack 21 Brigade to the north, while 61 MiG moved in from the south, protecting their flank. Then 61 MiG would slip between 59 and 21 Brigades and advance directly on 16 Brigade in the second tier of Fuplers' defence of Ring. The South Africans would then swing right or north over the Kwitok River Bridge, or perhaps, wield South to help unitar overcome 59 and 21 Brigades. This was a calculated gamble, and Yani Hellness was not a gambler. He rejected the plan, preferring to focus on one enemy brigade while unitar should lead the fighting. The generals were terrified of the casualty rate, and the new plan was drawn up focusing only on 21 Brigade in the north of Fuplers' defence of line. First unitar would attack, then four-side, with both Ulifanth Squadrons would weigh in, Fuplers would withdraw, unitar would occupy the positions, four-side would withdraw, covered by 61 MiG in the south. A very simple, straightforward operation. As these new troops prepared for the first real fight, to the north, the SID have had been softening up the Kwitok River Bridge. Each G5 was firing up to 200 shells a day, concentrating on the bridge, and Fuplers' brigades dug into defensive positions on the east bank of the Kwitok River. Beguns pounded the bridge so heavily that trucks were sometimes knocked right off the structure, while, in other moments, the external drums strapped to the T-54 tanks were set ablaze. By Christmas of 1987, the bridge supports had been so badly damaged that tanks and heavier vehicles could no longer cross. Tracks were all floated on the west bank, troops would then carry the ammunition and food across, then the trucks would be reloaded on the east bank. But the supplies were still flowing, despite the SAF-US and artillery attempts to leave the road impassable. As the SAD have prepared for Operation Hooper, the SAF-US was testing a new top secret weapon on the back of NER known as the H2, built by Kentron, a subsidiary of arm school. It was a 460kg pre-fragmented folding winged cloud bomb, controlled by a TV link between the bomb and the aircraft. It was a simple form of missile, with a guidance unit in its nose, that had its own power generator, driven by a small impeller at the back of the bomb, and impeller is something like a rotating component of a central fugue pump. A comms part was carried under the opposite ring of the back of the air, which set up the TV link, and the weapon could be controlled after launch by its parent aircraft. What that meant is that the plane could launch the bomb, then turn 180 degrees to escape the intense anti-aircraft fire descending as it went. The cloud distance of the H2 was phenomenal, up to 60km, depending on the head or tailwind, and usually released at around 30,000 feet, at almost the speed of sound, Mach 0.8. After release the bomb would drop with folded wings and a short distance away, the wings would open, it would slow down to 250 knots and then head towards the target. It was supposed to be accurate, two within three meters. Back in the back of the year, the navigator controlled the H2 with the joystick, some control buttons and a mini green and white TV screen. It would communicate back to the plane using various sounds and the flat was tracked by a tape recorder while intercom conversations were also recorded along with a TV picture from the camera in the bombs and those. If there was an issue, a second back of the year could control the bomb. This plane was often at a much lower level far from the anti-aircraft hearth threat environment. But try as they marked the SAF was never managed to completely destroy a quito bridge, hitting it once in a blur I'll explain in a minute. By now the area east of the quito river and the quito bridge was known as the "land beyond the end of the earth", it had been so severely damaged and clock marked by high explosives. One wrecky was based close to the bridge relaying information to the SAF as well as directing the insistant bombardments with the G5 guns south of the MIANA river. artillery commander Colonel Jean Lasberg had received orders to regard the bridge as a high priority target, but it wasn't easy to hit. It was narrow a single lane bridge. Some of the G5s were moved to align with the bridge and they hit the structure repeatedly, but it did not collapse. On the 3rd of January 1988, Riem de Argus team from one wrecky was watching the quito bridge from a few kilometres away. They weren't told why it was so important. Another attack by two bachaneers supported by former Reich F1A Z was on the way with two H2 bombs. After aborting the first mission due to MIG-23s lurking about, Major Bikki Sibritz and Major Neil Napier is navigator with tasked with releasing and controlling the air-to-ground weapon. A second bachaneer accompanied Sibritz with Major Hiel von der Wehr, the pilot and Captain Peter Kirkpatrick, the navigator, they had one H2 on board. They flew in extremely low, around 50 feet, then at what was known as the "pop-up point", the planes shot up to 21,000 feet approaching the bridge from the east. 27 kilometres from the target, Napier launched one of the H2s, then watched it on his little screen on the panel in front of him. After negotiating a few clouds, he directed the H2 into the ground on the southern side of the bridge. Suddenly, Sibritz caught sight of two MIG-23s unroot from Menong to Quito Kwanavali as they rolled out of the attack and headed south. The MIG radar screens picked up the bachaneers, but for some reason the MIGs broke off and flew on to Menong. On the ground, one wreckies rimmed the Yakhine, Justin Firmark and their teams were gobsmacked, watching on telescopes and binoculars. There was a huge splash at the bridge, water shot high into the air, and a 20-meter span disappeared. Firmark spoke about this years later, still impressed, the water mushroomed high into the air when the mist cleared as all that part was missing. It lay there as if a martial arts master had hit it above with his hand and broke it downwards, jacking, hyping into the water, he said. To celebrate Firmark decided to open a bottle of his "razen" beer, the other had exploded already, causing some disquiet when it disintegrated one night. After debriefing one wrecky Ford observation team returned to their position north of the Quart deert river, and were in place ready for the next attack on Fubblers 21 Brigade, set for the 13th of January. They were lying in their layup positions directly east of Fubblers 16 Brigade, gathering intelligence about the size of the Brigade and their position and their movements. The wreckies began constructing dummy artillery emplacements as a decoy, hoping the MiG-23 and SU-22 pilots would attack. Lying in wait was the wrecky team armed with an SA-7 alongside unita troops armed with a fearsome stinger surface to air missiles. All the while the new 61 MEC troops continued to train, readying for the upcoming operation. They of course had no idea what the plan was, all they knew day and night maneuvers were being carried out. Back at the Quitte River Bridge one wreckies rimmed the arch and his team spotted a number of Cubans walking from the structure in a southerly direction. As they lay watching proceedings a G-5 shell landed in the water near these Cubans, blowing one of the men's legs right off. The others ran away, the injured man beckoned for help. They rushed back, began dragging him off the bridge, but in a terrible moment for these Cubans a second shell fell directly on them, they were all killed. It was moments like these that were going to lead to a significant change with regards to Fidel Castro and Havana. He'd had enough, his men and women were dying like flies, and he had nothing to show for it. A few days before the afternoon of Monday 29th December, Major Robert Trotman, who was focusing on 21 Brigade along the Quitte River, was surprised to see a big enemy infantry contingent crossing the river from north to south. He was one of the forward observation post-members monitoring 21 Brigade soldiers and had called on G-5 hits on Fubler as they walked to the river to collect water and buckets. It was close to a spot where he had brought in a massive strike on Fubler troops only a few days before. Now the Petorea Regiment Tank Squadron had been moved up so that its 105mm guns could support the G-5's and 81mm mortars. The latest infantry contingent movement was an advanced guard of 300 members of 21 Brigade Battalion, which had infiltrated north of Quitte, now that UNITO nor the SEDF had detected this movement, but the artillery observer Trotman was alert. He called in G-5 airburst shells, hitting the contingent, dozens were killed. Then a day later in the 30th, an even larger group of men began to cross the Quitte River at precisely the same point. This defied logic, there must have known what was waiting for them. Trotman had his binoculars focused on the latest group of Fubler until they were strung out across the open plain ahead of him, then called in 155mm and 127mm shells on the G-5's and mobile rocket launchers, the Belquii. By now the bodies were scattered across the open ground, then a thunderstorm broke. When it cleared a short while later, a third group of Fubler appeared to be making the crossing, another bombardment by the G-5's stopped him. But when night fell, the rest of the brigade began to move forward, as the South African Fied phosphorus flares to keep them under scrutiny, dozens more died that night. By now the SEDF was also dropping pamphlets in an attempt at demoralising the Angolan army, but some unita troops pointed out that many of the men fighting against the SEDF were actually illiterate. Psychological warfare teams headed north, cutting down trees using chainsaws, hoping to persuade 21 Brigade that an SEDF unit was going to use the wood to build another bridge across the Quattia River, perhaps to the north. The SAA force continued to strike 21 Brigade, but was now finding they're going really difficult. Apart from the odd back and near success at the bridge, the Mirageus could not spend much time overhead flying for 40 minutes from Crude Fontaine 500km away. They couldn't use their afterburners to get out of trouble unless it was critical, which meant they were sitting ducks for the migs had they hung around. Facing them were more than 30 Mig 23s and 21s based at Menong, only 180km away, 9 minutes from Quattia Cuana Valley, they had 45 minutes of fuel to burn over the target. Adding to this discomfort was the incredible array of radar types the Angolan could use, the Barlox, Spoonrests, early warning flat faces, Sardinets, Odd Pairs, Squad Eyes, and thin skins, along with second or third line radar as well. As you know by now the East Germans were masters at this form of warfare and in control of this electronic equipment. North of the Chambinger River things got even worse, this was known as the Red Radar Zone, which meant the Mirages and Buccaneers would pop up on the East German radar screens from 7,500m up all the way down to 50m. There was literally nowhere to hide. They were backed up by Sam 8s, 13s, 14s and 16 missile systems, but the SAF was had one major advantage that they used repeatedly. They trained. Fubblers reliant on the rigid Soviet doctrine meant they were hamstring when it came to initiative. When the SAF was pilots approached the target they were operating almost entirely independently, whereas the Angolan Air Force pilots were macro-managed. As they approached the target, Menong based controllers would order them to turn, to hold, to descend, to hold steady, then to drop their bombs. Sixty sorties a day were being flown, but their successes were limited to half a dozen incidents in the entire 23 year war. On the ground though Fubbler Moral was holding, it was the South Africans who appeared to be suffering from months of frustration. And now the Fubbler artillery had become adept at moving around. They were highly disciplined, trained by rations and Cubans. The M-46 big guns, the 130mm, delivered a 33kg shell more than 25km away. Ten less than the South African G5, but they had more of them. The highly maneuverable D-30, 122mm field guns lobbed at 22kg shells, 21km, the Stalin organs to be a part of the world. M21s firing bodies of 78 kg, 122 mm rockets over 20 km. This was beginning to look more and more like the West in front. Trenches were getting deeper, artillery barrages were a daily grind, and the SEDF still did not attack. Every day that pipeline prepared was a day longer, the South Africans would regret. There were moments of macabre relief. On the 2nd of January 1988, for example, Forsyre was moving into position for Huper, north of the Quattia River, when 7 MIG-21s shrieked in overhead, bombing the area. One of the bombs fell straight onto a Forsyre logger, alongside a 10-ton water tanker. Forsyre's Sergeant Major Jacques DeVette radioed the driver and received no answer, then rushed to where the bomb had exploded. There was the driver, standing under the holes in the bowser, stripped semi naked, taking a shower. The shrapnel had punctured the water truck, and the driver said he didn't want the precious liquid to go to waste. De-Day for the attack changed to the 5th of January, but this passed, once more, because unlike early operations, the SEDF needed low cloud and rain to keep the MIGs away. De-Day was a reversal of fortune, and outlines just how the failure to control the air wall was beginning to have a knock on effect. By now, the SEDF top brass had also become totally and utterly obsessed by what they called psychological action. It was the Civil Carpiration Bureau time, CCB in South Africa, a form of Gestapo and KGB mixed with a distinctive blend of post-Brudobont mania. The kind of moral madness had crept into the halls of the Union buildings, and the malevolent poisonous paranoia of fighting a war for decades had finally led to some seriously unhinged individuals being thrust forward. The SEDF was a professional organisation, but these were rank amateurs who spent more time conjuring torture in the offices than actually fighting on the felt, and they had seized control of the system during these final days of war. This was not good news for the South Africans fighting in Angola, as you're going to hear. Please rate the podcast on iTunes, it helps raise the visibility of the series. If you want to contact me, head off to abwarpodcast.com, there's a contact form on the homepage, or direct message me on Twitter @deslathan. Until next, Fuss Pay. [Music]