Night fell, but Franken and his men kept constant watch on the shadowy silhouettes of the vehicles out on the anhara. Every time figures were detected flitting between the bits of equipment Franken brought down a short MRL ripple to scare off suspected Fapla demolition teams. Come the morning of Sunday 4 October, the SADF intended retrieving as many intact Soviet weapon prizes as possible.
Armscor was hungry for advanced Soviet weapons to see if there were ideas that could be incorporated into its own South African military designs and technology. Other captured weapons, particularly anti-aircraft guns, AK-47 rifles, RPG-7 rockets and Sam-7 missiles, became part of the SADF’s own standard battle inventory and were supplied to UNITA.
With the dawn Franken’s team saw clearly that the ‘strange’ machines out on the anhara were three or more vehicles belonging to Sam-8 anti-aircraft missile systems.
Franken immediately sent a message to HQ and Jan Hougaard, standing by to send in recovery teams to claim prizes, was ordered into immediate action by Colonel Deon Ferreira who realised that with the Sam-8s the SADF had hit a real jackpot. No Western country had managed to capture one of the systems which were first seen in public in Moscow in the mid-1970s.
Each Sam-8 missile system is mobile and consists of three separate vehicles. The launcher is built on the chassis of a six-wheeled amphibious vehicle. Six launcher tubes carry missiles ready to fire. Travelling at twice the speed of sound, a Sam-8 missile is deadly against warplanes up to a height of 12,000 m and at a distance of more than 13 km. They frightened SAAF pilots greatly. At least another eight missiles are carried inside the launch vehicle’s hull, while a logistics vehicle follows with 36 additional missiles.
At the rear of the launch vehicle surveillance radar is mounted, while in front of it there is an array of radars and transmitters for guiding the missiles on to their targets. The third element of one single Sam-8 system is the fire control vehicle. It is a specially modified BTR-60 armoured personnel carrier stacked with all kinds of radio and other electronic technology.
‘I briefed my team all through the night,’ said Hougaard. ‘They were all from 32 Battalion since 61 Mech had moved right out of the area. When Franken told Deon Ferreira that there were Sam-8s standing there, as new, among all the burning, exploding and wrecked machines, the Colonel’s order to me was very succinct: “Get the thing”.
‘That was a hell of a night, because I was trying to deal with the needs of two different army commanders at once. I was the SADF liaison officer at that time with General Ben-Ben Arlindo Pena, a fine chap and one of UNITA’s best field commanders. Colonel Ferreira came in with his orders just as Ben-Ben was telling me that his forces had located the tattered remains of Fapla’s 21 Brigade crossing the Cunzumbia 30 km north of where it flowed into the Lomba.
‘21 Brigade was joining up with elements of 59 Brigade which had fallen back, and together they were trying to form a new brigade structure. Ben-Ben wanted SADF artillery to pound this enemy concentration before it could begin to function effectively: he said his ground forces had pinpointed the location 100 per cent, but when we examined the map together I had to tell him that those forces had pulled back out of the range of our guns.
‘Ben-Ben asked instead for an SAAF air bombardment as soon as it got light. It was a tricky situation. I couldn’t tell him I was busy thinking of how to rescue booty from the field of battle with 47 Brigade. We knew that one of our problems out there would be with UNITA who had sent out three companies of their people during the night to prepare to clear up the battlefield. Those UNITA guys are nobody’s lackeys. They’re deeply into black pride and can teach white South Africans a thing or two about racism. Even though 61 Mech had fought 99 per cent of the battle, Savimbi regarded them as guest warriors on “his” territory. Abandoned enemy weaponry was therefore “his” also.
‘I had to keep Ben-Ben cheerful. The problem was that an air raid took a lot of organising. When the SAAF hit a target they really went for it, but before Air Force commanders would commit their planes they required a lot of information and intelligence. I worked hard on the air attack, but since I couldn’t also delay the Sam-8 rescue I designated Captain Piet van Zyl (of 32 Battalion) and Major Johann Lehman of CSI to get moving with six 32 Battalion guys to rescue the Sam-8s.
‘It was obviously going to be difficult for Piet and Johann. Not only were there swarms of UNITA guys ready to get the enemy machinery, but pockets of Fapla infantry were still stuck, and continuing to resist, from their trench positions inside the southern treeline. Also small Fapla sabotage parties were coming back from north of the river with hand grenades and RPG-7 rockets to destroy the abandoned equipment.’
Van Zyl and Lehman took their small ‘Sam-8 Salvage’ force towards the battlefield in a Casspir. Their mission began in Fred Karno style. Halfway towards the objective the Casspir broke down and they had to thumb a lift in a truck in which the very UNITA soldiers they were trying to avoid were packed like sardines.
The truck stopped where General Chilingutila had established a forward base. He told Van Zyl and Lehmann that they could continue through the area, but since it was under UNITA control they would be subject to the commands of UNITA officers. Before pushing onwards the SADF men radioed back for a Withings recovery truck to be sent forward to join them.
‘We quickly located the fire control vehicle for one of the Sam-8 systems in the treeline’, said Van Zyl. ‘It had been abandoned without any attempt to smash the gadgetry. We told the Withings crew to take it straight back to 32 Battalion’s forward HQ.
‘Major Lehman and I were still with UNITA forces, and at that stage we were playing by the rules. We wanted to get on to the anhara and find the Sam-8 launcher. A guerrilla colonel said OK, but his soldiers must accompany us and lead the way among the abandoned vehicles.
‘We were just about to start when shooting broke out from one of the dug-in Fapla pockets of resistance. I started to “black up” with camouflage cream. The UNITA colonel held his troops back because of the shooting and he told me he was refusing me permission to go forward without them. I told him there was no way he was going to stop me and I ordered my men out on to the anhara.
‘We located the Sam-8 launcher. It was stuck in the mud and we could see that Fapla had tried to pull it out. Then we spotted the logistics vehicle carrying the spare missiles just inside the treeline.’
In the Sam-8 launcher Van Zyl found a complete manual on how to operate the whole system, from starting the vehicle engine to firing the missiles. This caused some groans back at CSI because they had paid a great price for just such a manual through one of its clandestine operatives in the Middle East earlier in the year.
The manual was of no immediate use to Van Zyl because it was in Russian, and while he pondered how to get the Sam-8 out of the mud and into the hands of the SADF he came under fresh Fapla fire. He and his men retreated to a stretch of abandoned enemy trenchline, from where they saw a group of Fapla soldiers working under the bonnet of a Ural truck loaded with yellow drums of diesel fuel. Eventually the Faplas got the truck going and moved down to the river. Van Zyl’s party laughed at the irony at having to let such a perfect target get away undamaged because they could not afford to disrupt their own retrieval mission.
‘Lying out on the anhara were lots of tanks and other machines such as Stalin Organs,’ said Van Zyl. ‘Some of the vehicles had been abandoned with such suddenness that their engines were still idling in neutral. I went to a T-55 tank. I’d never been in a tank in my life, though I had driven bulldozers. But I managed to start it, hooked it up to the Sam-8 launcher (weighing more than 30 tons), pulled the launcher out of the mud and towed it back into the bushline. My mastery of the T-55 was minimal. I kept pulling and pushing the wrong knobs and levers. It was like a bucking bronco out of control and we shot right through the UNITA lines before we tamed it. Thank God no one was killed or hurt or there would have been hell to pay.
‘We had to move fast because a unit from 59 Brigade, which proved to be tanks, was coming down again to the north bank of the Lomba. We could see its dust cloud getting nearer and nearer and every so often a Mig would sweep over the battlefield bombing the discarded vehicles.’
Hougaard, having eventually got Ben-Ben’s air raid organised and launched, hiked towards the battle area with a platoon of 32 Battalion infantrymen over difficult terrain and around several continuing firefights between Fapla and 32 Battalion’s G Company, which had been given the task of mopping up. He arrived in time to find Captain Van Zyl charging through UNITA lines in the Soviet tank with the giant and unique Sam-8 missile launcher bouncing along behind.
There was a lot of equipment to retrieve, so Van Zyl began teaching UNITA soldiers how to drive the T-54 and T-55 tanks and adapt them as recovery vehicles. It was a problem at first. Tanks in the hands of UNITA would veer off in totally unpredictable directions, disappearing out of control deep into the bush for five minutes at a time before re-appearing. But eventually the great towing operation was underway and all day long until about 4 pm serviceable bits of equipment were dragged back into the treeline.
‘It was an astounding scene,’ said Hougaard. ‘59 Brigade on the other side began firing its guns again after midday, and then in the late afternoon groups of Fapla were coming across the river and burning vehicles and shooting them up near to us and in amongst us. I walked around on the battlefield to try to assess how much Soviet weaponry was worth trying to recover. There was a stack of equipment there – tanks, artillery, trucks, including lots of brand new Brazilian Engesas whose seats were still covered with plastic from the factory. There was absolutely nothing wrong with many of the pieces. The milometer of one T-55 tank showed that the only distance it had travelled was from the Angolan port of Lobito to the war front. There were other Sam-8s, but they were completely burnt out.’
Sappers first inspected the abandoned equipment for booby traps before the recovery team removed worthwhile equipment from the anhara. One BTR-60 armoured personnel carrier puzzled the engineers because all its hatches and firing ports were shut tight from the inside and there was no way to get in. Then one of the portholes opened and an empty corned beef tin looped out. The iron shutter immediately slammed fast again. The engineers hammered on the side, but the only response was the ejection of another empty meat tin. Eventually a door opened and out stepped a Fapla officer who had made sure he was well fed before surrendering and becoming a prisoner of war.
Commandant Jan van der Westhuizen, who took command of the Artillery Regiment after the death of Johan Du Randt, was also drafted into the battlefield salvage force. He flashed his torch into another BTR-60 to see whether it could be recovered. He climbed in, and seeing only some abandoned clothes on the driver’s seat he sat down to see whether he could get the machine started. Suddenly the pile of clothes began to writhe. Van der Westhuizen, scared silly, climbed out of the Soviet machine much faster than he had entered. The pile of clothes turned out to be an Angolan soldier who had been wounded and left behind by his comrades. He had fallen asleep as the battle raged around him only to be woken up when 20 SA Brigade’s artillery boss sat on him.
Once Hougaard was satisfied that Van Zyl’s virgin UNITA tankmen had minimally mastered their new T-54s and T-55s, he told them he was going to let them get on by themselves with the mass rescue of metal and machinery.
It proved difficult. With Migs occasionally sweeping the battlefield, the UNITA men were reluctant to venture onto the anhara. ‘They were just sitting there laughing at the sight of Fapla demolition teams blowing up their own vehicles,’ said Hougaard. ‘I was swearing at them to do something about recovering the equipment. Eventually I got to Colonel Tarzan, their local commander, and persuaded him that he must get his men into action to get as much stuff as possible. I had to be careful how I spoke to him because I knew they were deeply suspicious about our intentions with the Sam-8s.’
Once UNITA had been badgered to busy itself on the anhara, its officers were mainly interested in bringing out trucks to supplement the convoys on which Savimbi sent weapons and other supplies to his guerrilla forces operating many hundreds of kilometres inside Angola.
Hougaard now concentrated on getting the three pieces of the intact Sam-8 system away to safety. He requisitioned the Sam-8 fire control BTR-60, in perfect working order, as his command vehicle and assigned Major Lehman to secure the logistics vehicle. Lehman, worrying all the time about enemy artillery and small-arms fire, encountered a lot of difficulties in working out how to get his machine started. But he mastered the ignition after about an hour and headed deep into the bush.
Hougaard helped Van Zyl move the vital launcher away from the conflict area. The towing tank, in which Van Zyl had overrun the UNITA lines, developed engine and air filter problems. All the tyres of the launcher vehicle had been shot out and the oil circulation system had been punctured in the blast from one of the SADF’s MRL fragmentation bombs; the skin of the vehicle was peppered by a lot of neat little holes made by spitting ball bearings. But nothing vital had been damaged other than the oil system and the tyres.
Hougaard radioed HQ in Mavinga for advice on how, following the breakdown of the tank, he might get the launcher vehicle moving. He was instructed on how to pour oil through the system by hand. That way he could move the vehicle under its own power, though it would be slow progress stopping constantly to decant more oil.
‘We got the launcher vehicle’s engine going and moved little by little all through the night, stopping every few minutes to flush oil through the works and then starting again,’ said Van Zyl, who did the driving. ‘It was pitch dark as we moved through the trees and across stream beds. We had to be extraordinarily careful because, with all the launcher tubes and radar paraphernalia on top, the machine was very high and it could easily have been damaged by overhanging branches.
‘We stopped moving at first light [on Monday 5 October]. In 12 hours we had moved just eight kilometres south from the battlefield. I was exhausted. I hadn’t had a proper sleep for two weeks. I helped put camouflage netting over the launcher and to layer it with leafy branches, and then just collapsed from where I stood onto the ground and fell into a deep sleep.’
Hougaard at last had a chance to take a really good look at the prizes his men had plucked from the chaos. He was elated at his full realisation of the value of the booty. ‘They were magnificent machines, fantastic,’ he said. ‘The launcher vehicle was massive, much bigger than I’d anticipated.
‘We parked the three machines in the bush with 200 m between each and camouflaged them. As soon as we’d dug ourselves in I contacted Colonel Ferreira to tell him what we had got. He said he couldn’t maintain radio contact for very long for fear of giving away our position. He said our EW people had intercepted messages from the Russians giving orders for a big effort to destroy abandoned equipment so that nothing valuable got into SADF hands. The Colonel said we had to intensify our effort to get the Sam-8 system out.’
Then a wave of Migs arrived, sweeping low over the forest and dropping parachute-retarded bombs right among the positions occupied by Hougaard, his men and the Sam-8s.
Van Zyl was shaken awake from his deep but short hibernation as the bombs detonated: ‘I didn’t dare get up because there was shrapnel flying all over the place. When the noise stopped I just had time to run to a bunker and leap into it before the planes made another bombing run. They obviously knew what they were after and roughly where we were. I watched their bomb bays open and the parachute bombs descend. The next moment the whole fucking earth was shaking.’
Men and magnificent machines survived that attack and another, final, one 20 minutes later. But it was imperative to get moving again. Spare tyres had been found to replace the shredded rubber ribbons on the wheels of the launcher, but there was no jack among the vehicle’s tool kit to lift the machine. It was impossible to push on for any significant distance with the improvised oil feed system. Hougaard radioed Mavinga urgently for recovery vehicles, and three were sent forward with a team of engineers.
When darkness fell the Sam-8 convoy moved northeastwards to its next halting place, General Ben-Ben’s UNITA attack HQ, where the three pieces of equipment were again hidden in the bush – some three kilometres away from the base, because Ben-Ben’s HQ was receiving heavy attention from Fapla’s artillery and Migs. Fapla had got bearings on the HQ from the heavy radio traffic coming into and out of the base.
‘It wasn’t safe there, and we were desperate to find the right time to get those things out from under UNITA’s nose,’ said Hougaard. ‘While we waited we had a good look inside the logistics carrier, and there were 25 intact missiles. They were worth a lot to us.’
General Chilingutila then arrived and told Hougaard he had received a message from Savimbi saying all the Sam-8 equipment must be handed to UNITA because the movement had pledged it to its ‘friends’. Down the years UNITA’s ‘friends’ have come and gone and sometimes come back again: but on this occasion the term was a euphemism for the United States, which had abandoned UNITA in 1975 and only resumed arms supplies to its client more than a decade later in 1986.
Hougaard was furious, not least because South Africa had stood by Savimbi during his darkest times, precisely those years when Washington had chosen the soft option. And, unlike the US, South Africa had given the lives of its young soldiers for Savimbi.
‘I told Chilingutila I couldn’t help him,’ said Hougaard. ‘I didn’t set out to upset him, but I was firm. If the Sam-8 system was to be handed to UNITA the decision would need to be taken at the top level in South Africa. Meanwhile, it would stay under my command.
‘I sent a message to Colonel Ferreira saying he’d better do something fast to help me because UNITA was cutting up rough. When I came off the radio net Chilingutila said Savimbi was insistent that the fire control vehicle and five of the missiles were to be surrendered to UNITA immediately. I had to play it by ear. So I said OK, they could take the five missiles: their “friends” would learn a lot from them. But the fire control BTR-60 was now my command vehicle and it would stay with the SADF because it was South Africans who had done most of the fighting against 47 Brigade.
‘Chilingutila, whom I liked, said he wanted to put a company of UNITA troops under the command of Colonel Tarzan with the Sam-8s. Stalling for time, I said OK, fine. Then a team of our top Air Force scientists, engineers and technicians, summoned at top priority from Pretoria by Colonel Ferreira, arrived. They aimed to examine the missile system as comprehensively as possible and learn as much as they could in a short time, because there was clearly a chance that we might lose it to Savimbi and the Americans.
‘Tarzan and his lieutenants said they couldn’t allow our Air Force guys into the launcher. Permission would be needed directly from Savimbi. I said “Listen, it’s not your vehicle. It’s actually my vehicle, and I’m in charge of it. You’re only here to guard it”.
‘They stepped back, but that company followed us all the way back to Mavinga. They stayed with the vehicles until one night the Air Force simply drove them away towards the south. The Air Force made a hell of an effort. They drove those things all the way to Rundu, moving only at night.
‘It was very slow work, and they had to put guys on top of the machines with pangas to chop down overhanging branches.’
So it was that South Africa became the only western country to acquire a complete Soviet Sam-8 missile system. It was of immense intelligence value and Armscor quickly went to work to incorporate any of the worthwhile technology into its next generation of indigenous weapons products. It is possible by now that a powerful Kruger-8 mobile anti-aircraft missile system is ready to roll off the production line!
Some kind of negotiation did take place over the Sam-8s between Savimbi and the top brass of the SADF. But more than a year later the UNITA leader, always touchy about perceived affronts to his dignity, was still complaining to any visitor who would listen that the South Africans had tricked him over the Sam-8s and treated him like some ignorant village chief.