Throughout September air fighter superiority established by top-cover Cuban and Angolan Air Force Mig-23 fighter-bombers severely limited the South African Army’s scope for action during daylight. The Mig-23s, incorporating latest state-of-the-art technology, outmatched for speed the SAAF’s Mirage F-1CZs, delivered from France in the mid-1970s before the international arms embargo bit really hard.
‘Angolan and Cuban air strikes were spectacularly inaccurate and unsuccessful throughout the war,’ said Commandant Hougaard. ‘But their constant presence in the air placed a major restriction on us. We couldn’t move with our vehicles during the day. And our infantry could only move in more than company strength at night. So we did our movements at night and laid low during the day. At about five o’clock in the morning we would just dig in and camouflage.
‘They missed us because their target acquisition was lousy, with poor ground-to-air co-ordination; they released their bombs from too great a height; and our camouflage was good. Every time their fighters took off from Cuito Cuanavale our recces there on the ground gave us early warning so that we could perfect our cover.’
Brigadier Jan Steyn, director of SAAF operations throughout the Lomba River fighting, said the Air Force senior command had accepted from the beginning that it would not be possible for South Africa to dominate the air space. ‘We realised the technical lag was there, and it would be useless to confront the enemy in air-to-air combat and reveal one of our weaknesses. We therefore set ourselves clear limits, and one of these was to avoid direct combat with enemy fighter planes as far as possible.’
Major Reg van Eeden put it another way: ‘It’s one of the biggest myths of the war that our Air Force was beaten. They certainly had air-to-air superiority in their own backyard. But we adapted our tactics to fit the situation. If you had to fight Mike Tyson you wouldn’t stand up and slug it out. You’d lose if you fought him by the Queensberry rules.’
Nevertheless, the Mig-23s, though they stayed high for fear of UNITA’s American-supplied ground-to-air Stinger missiles, were what Colonel Dick Lord described as a ‘buggerance factor’ because of the limitations they imposed on SADF ground troops’ daylight movements. The Mig-23s tried particularly hard to knock out the G-5s, and there was intense fear that one of their bombs might by chance destroy some of the giant guns, South Africa’s most formidable weapon in the War for Africa.
The ‘buggerance factor’ and the threat to the G-5s led to a high-level decision that the SAAF fighters must at least try to take on the Mig-23s in aerial battle and deter them from constant presence over the battlefields.
★ ★ ★
On Thursday 3 September the pilots and ground crew of the SAAF’s Mirage F-1CZ fighter 3 Squadron at Waterkloof, near Pretoria, had one main collective thought in mind – the scheduled wedding on Saturday 5 September of one of the pilots, Captain John Sinclair.
‘Every pilot in the squadron was to be part of the guard of honour,’ recalled Sinclair’s fellow pilot, Captain Arthur Piercey. ‘And we were looking forward to one hell of a party after the nuptials.’
But later that Thursday six of the squadron’s 13 planes were ordered to fly to Rundu to enter the war. The other plane crews were put on a round-the-clock standby at Waterkloof. Captain Sinclair’s wedding was postponed.
Piercey, a tall, gangly 30-year-old, had been a plane-crazy youngster since his schooldays. On leaving Pretoria’s Clapham High School he joined the SAAF and began his pilot training in 50-year-old piston-engined Harvards before moving on to Italian-designed Impala light attack jet aircraft.
Piercey graduated to Mirages in 1984, but he had never been in combat. Now he was deeply excited as he prepared to fly towards the war zone.
‘It was a frantic rush to get everything ready,’ said Piercey. ‘We were ordered to be in the bush [at Rundu] by Friday afternoon. There were no approach aids at Rundu, so we were told we must leave by 3 pm in order to land before dark.
‘We finally got away at 3.05 pm, and half way there, high over Botswana, the sun began setting. Luckily, Rundu is the only town for hundreds of kilometres in that part of Namibia, so we picked out its lights and then the lights of the airfield. We made a very hairy landing in the dark because the runway is only 2,000 metres long. When we got down, the controllers said they hadn’t been expecting us and it wouldn’t be possible to begin getting us combat-ready before Monday. So John could have got married after all and we could all have gone to the thrash.’
At Rundu there were none of the comforts for 3 Squadron enjoyed by 1 Squadron further south at Grootfontein. Rundu is a true frontier town with one dismal motel restaurant. 1 Squadron’s accommodation was in army-issue tents next to the runway. ‘We called our quarters Little Siberia because they were as hot and as uncomfortable as hell,’ said Piercey.
Now began a period of utmost frustration for the fighter pilots. Several times they were scrambled for action, but on each occasion they were called back when the emergency passed. As time dragged on most of the squadron members got gyppo tummies in Rundu’s tropical heat. They went on to a diet of flat, warm Coca-Cola and dried bread, so they were unable to take advantage of the one luxury available to them – 32 Battalion’s mess bar at the perimeter of the air base.
Then, on 17 September, Arthur Piercey was one of four pilots on standby duty. Two F-1CZs, Piercey’s one of them, were scrambled for action somewhere over Mavinga to intercept a pair of threatening-looking Mig-23s.
‘We took off in such a smooth and well oiled way that it seemed like a routine training mission out of Waterkloof,’ Piercey recalled. ‘But when we climbed to height and were ordered to jettison our spare fuel tanks, we knew this time it was for real. The adrenalin was really flowing.
‘We were flying at more than 10,000 m (beyond the reach of enemy ground-to-air missiles) just north of Mavinga when we got the sighting of our first two Mig-23s. All four planes flashed past each other, and we turned as a pair behind the Migs. Each Mirage fired a Matra 500 [a French heat-seeking air-to-air missile], but they missed. There was no time to get off other missiles because the Migs plunged towards the ground and we couldn’t follow them down into the enemy missile layer. It was a big disappointment. We think the missiles exploded on the heat plumes behind the Migs instead of going right through the plumes and knocking out the planes.
‘Once they dived we had to go home, but there was a lot of excitement and drinking in the bar that evening and not much talk about stomach troubles.’
Another ten days of sheer boredom followed the action over Mavinga, relieved only by the occasional scramble and the inevitable abort of the mission shortly afterwards. ‘Every time the scramble phone rang we answered it half-heartedly,’ said Piercey. ‘We’d get into the cockpit and begin all the checks, knowing that very soon we’d be clambering out again.’
But on 27 September all hell broke loose when radio operators picked up Cuban pilots speaking Spanish to each other as their flight of Mig-23s headed towards the Lomba River to provide cover for the Hind helicopters rescuing the Soviet advisers from 21 Brigade’s HQ.
‘My letter home went flying as we scrambled,’ said Piercey. ‘It was three in the afternoon and it was very hot. After take-off we hugged the ground. With all the air rising from the baking ground, it was a bumpy ride with great whirls of dust being kicked up at the back from the after-burn and jet blast.
‘Fighter control HQ was passing a stream of information to us about the enemy force. We wanted to know how many enemy there were and in what formation they were flying. I was second man in our formation of four.
‘Then the order came to pitch up, and we soared like homesick angels. Next came the order to jettison the spare fuel tanks, and when I saw a 1,200 litre tank falling away from the lead aircraft I knew it was serious. The adrenalin was flowing again.
‘Soon we realised that at least two Migs had come to rumble with us and were flying only 300 m below us. I must have been flying at something like Mach 1.3 (about 1,600 km per hour) when one Mig passed right through us. My mind is now blank as to what happened in the next fraction of a second, but then I saw the second Mig coming straight towards me. I flicked the trigger release on the missile-firing stick and prepared to squeeze the trigger the moment the Mig flew through the sight.
‘Again there was a minute fraction of a second when I was in a dream thinking what a beautiful aeroplane the Mig-23 was and then remembering that I wasn’t there to admire the scenery. Next I saw a bright orange flash and saw this telephone pole screaming towards me with a white tail of smoke.
‘In training they say: “Fly directly towards the missile. The bigger the angle between its infra-red heat-seeking head and your hot backside, the better. The missile has then got less chance of turning because of its great speed and small fins.” So by heading towards it you try to force it to overshoot because it can’t maintain the necessary degree of turn.
‘But faced with reality I found it took a lot of willpower to fly straight at something I knew was hunting me and trying to kill me. However, I kept breaking towards it and I watched it shoot over my shoulder. Then I heard a thud, but there was no indication from the gauges that the aircraft had been damaged. At the same time the Mig which fired the missile was flashing past me, and when I looked back it had gone.
‘I told the leader I thought I might have been hit, and he said: “OK, let’s go home.” In the SAAF we believe in live cowards rather than dead heroes.’
With hindsight, Piercey worked out that the whole fight lasted no more than 20 to 40 seconds from the time he got the ‘pitch-up’ order to the ‘go home’ command. His fighting manoeuvre in that short period of time had consisted of one 360-degree turn.
‘The next moment I was pointing the Mirage straight at the ground,’ he said. ‘The nearer you get to the ground and the faster you go, the less chance there is of a second missile picking you up. I left the throttle stuck and I was screaming downwards thinking “I’ll not get out of this in one piece.” But I bottomed out.
‘By now I was separated from my leader and I was getting an audio warning in my helmet that someone at 6 o’clock [from behind] was looking at me on radar. I radioed to the boss that I thought someone was behind me. I was petrified. In a situation like that you don’t look back. You just keep going as straight and as fast as you can. If you turn you allow your pursuer to cut the corner and close the gap.
‘I told the leader I was so low that I was raising a dust cloud. Those crazy American Road Runner cartoons flashed through my mind. I assured the leader that I couldn’t get any lower, or fly any faster than the 750 knots I was doing.
‘At this stage I was beginning to think that I’d over-reacted, that I might not have been hit and had got out of the fight too early. Despite the cockpit radar warning, the plane was not handling too badly and there was no vibration.
‘Five minutes later, half-way home, the first orange warning light flashed on, telling me that the electro-pump which maintained constant fuel pressure to the engine had failed. I recalled all the checks I’d gone through a hundred times in the flight simulator, and finally told the boss I’d got a failure. He pulled out his emergency check list, and started reading it to me. I affirmed that I’d followed all the correct procedures.
‘He hadn’t finished reading when a second failure showed on the panel, this time the right-side fuel pump. The boss began reading me a new set of procedures, but he hadn’t gone halfway when my panel showed a failure in the hydraulic H-2 system. [The main hydraulic system is known as H-1, and the standby system is H-2].
‘This worried me because so many of the controls are hydraulically operated, including the flaps, undercarriage and brakes. However, the controls were still working off the main hydraulic system, and the only important thing I knew I’d lost completely was the nose-wheel steering.
‘By now I was beyond the area covered by the Angolans’ radar, so I started climbing to a height where flying was safer and fuel consumption lower.
‘Next I began getting audio warnings, but no panel warnings, which I didn’t understand at first. Then I remembered from the simulator that this particular warning pattern meant there was an oil failure caused by oil dripping out. That really alarmed me because the throttle works through a mechanical system which requires oil.
‘I had to go on to emergency throttle. I threw a toggle to switch on an electric motor which replaces the normal throttle functions. But it was very unresponsive, so I realised there had also been some loss of electric power.
‘By now the boss had come alongside me again, and he reported fuel streaming from the right hand side, lots of shrapnel damage on the tail, and the drag-chute gone.
‘Flying a perfectly healthy F-1CZ into a 2,000 m runway without a drag parachute is hard work. It is very difficult indeed in emergency conditions when the chute is gone and the engine’s response is unpredictable.’
Piercey, approaching Rundu, got streams of advice from his flight leader and ground control on how best to get the crippled Mirage down. The techniques of landing are very complicated. But basically what Piercey decided to do was to come in very steeply so that the moment he touched down as much as possible of his forward momentum would be absorbed downwards. He also aimed to land as near the end of the tarmac as possible to give himself the maximum length of runway to try to halt the aircraft. It was a dangerous action: if he miscalculated and came in too steeply the plane would simply be smashed to bits on the runway.
Piercey pounded his Mirage safely on the end of the runway. ‘But when I slammed on the brakes the only thing that changed was the expression on my face,’ he recalled. ‘I was travelling along that tarmac at 170 knots and my main thought was: “This plane will not stop.”
‘With only 500 m of runway left, I pulled on the emergency handbrake. At the end of the runway there’s a big sandpit to break the momentum of any aircraft which overshoots. It was now my main hope, but the plane went through it like a hot knife through butter.
‘There was a dip beyond the sandpit going down towards a perimeter fence with a river beyond. The question flashed through my mind: “What will stop me, the fence or the river?”
‘As I went through the fence the nose wheel hit a boulder and instinctively I put my hands up in front of my face. The force of the plane hitting the boulder must have fired the ejector seat because it went off with a loud bang and I felt the chute hit me in the face as it began to unravel. I obviously blacked out because the next thing I knew I was lying on my right side in the sand with the fire brigade rushing towards me.
‘I told them not to touch me until the doctor arrived. The seat had not separated as it should have done: it was still strapped to my back.
‘The fact that I couldn’t move my legs didn’t bother me so much as the pain in my left arm which was badly broken. I asked for painkillers and must have passed out again. When I woke up my boss was standing there with doctors: I learned later that he had been so shaken by the incident that he had had to make three landing attempts before he was able to get down successfully.
‘The doctors gave me an injection, and I was out even before they put me in the ambulance. I woke up ten days later in the intensive care ward of 1 Military Hospital, Pretoria, and didn’t leave it for another seven months.’
Captain Arthur Piercey had fought his first and last aerial battle. In the accident his sixth and seventh vertebrae had been badly fractured and his spinal cord partly severed. He is now confined to a wheelchair as a quadriplegic, but his sparkling humour and lively mind are undimmed. Still a member of 3 Squadron, he is working on the unit’s computerisation programme at Waterkloof.
That Piercey survived at all staggered those of his colleagues who reached the scene of the crash. ‘When I saw him lying there, my first thought was: He’s in such a mess that it will be best if he dies,’ said Colonel Dick Lord. The doctors told Piercey’s father that his son had only a one in 20 chance of living. He had hurtled through the air at great speed for 100 m with the heavy ejector seat strapped to him: the ejector parachute failed to open properly.
An inquiry into the accident found that an elastic safety net at the end of the Rundu runway was not raised as Piercey made his emergency landing. It would probably have saved Piercey from his extreme injuries. The results of the inquiry have never been published, but rumours persist that SAAF men responsible for raising the net had been drinking before the Mirage landed.
★ ★ ★
Captain Piercey’s tragic accident also meant the abandonment, after only two dogfights, of any further attempts by the SAAF’s principal fighter-interceptor aircraft to challenge the Cuban and Angolan Mig-23s in air-to-air combat. 3 Squadron’s F-1CZs were taken out of the war and redeployed to Waterkloof.
From October onwards the SAAF limited its fighting activities to low-level bombing attacks, with the Mirage F-1AZs playing the central role backed up by British-manufactured Buccaneer strike aircraft.
However, there was a third dogfight involving one of the F-1AZs, which have a secondary air-to-air role.
Commandant Johan Rankin, the officer commanding 1 Squadron, is the SAAF’s fighter pilot ace of today, achieving the only two SAAF ‘kills’ of enemy aircraft since the Korean War. In Korea South African Sabre jets flew more than 2,000 missions as part of the United Nations force fighting the Chinese and North Koreans.
Twice when Angolan Mig-21s tried in the early 1980s to interfere with SADF operations against SWAPO bases in southern Angola, Rankin, then flying F-ICZs with 3 Squadron, had taken them on and shot them down.
Now, in October 1987, flying the lead F-1AZ in a ground attack bombing mission just north of the Lomba River, Rankin saw Mig-23s at altitude over the target area. The Mig-23s were always reluctant to descend from the heights into the range of UNITA’s Stingers, but on this occasion one Mig pilot came down to low level to try to mix it with the South Africans. Rankin took him on and succeeded in getting inside his foe’s turning circle and then behind the Mig. To Rankin’s frustration, he found he could not close on the enemy plane because of the Mig-23’s greater speed. The nearest Rankin got to the Mig’s tail was 700 m, and despite firing two missiles and 139 rounds from his 30 mm cannons he was unable to bring down his opponent although he outmanoeuvred him in the air.