What is perhaps most interesting about this operation was not so much its details or the lack of success, but that it was the first aggressive sortie into Angola by fixed-wing aircraft and, moreover, that it should have been these particular aircraft involved. South Africa certainly had supersonic fighters available for deployment at that time, with the Mirage III fleet beginning to enter service as early as 1963 and the MB-326M Impala Mk I becoming operational late in 1966. However, the careful removal of insignia might indicate a certain amount of caution in exposing South African aircraft to easy identification in Angola where South African involvement had not yet been officially acknowledged. The South African government was extremely tight-lipped about military support given to the Portuguese in Angola but the practical advantages of this were obvious, with the SAAF providing helicopter and light transport assistance in a number of Portuguese military operations.
It is also worth mentioning in this context that a low-key South African military/police presence in Rhodesia had been in place since mid-1967. This was authorized as a consequence of a brief and ill-advised alliance between the guerrillas of the South African ANC armed wing, Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK), and units of Rhodesian ZAPU, which resulted in a rolling security force operation, Operation Nickel, that ultimately accounted for all involved. This alerted South Africa to renewed attempts by MK to utilize insecurity in Rhodesia to infiltrate armed and trained cadres into South Africa, which in turn resulted in the deployment in Rhodesia of some 2,000 SAP members posing as riot police and supported by SAAF helicopters. It is also worth noting that direct South African military support in Rhodesia, in particular in the matter of air assets, was ongoing and tended to run hot and cold depending on the South African political mood at any given time. The most important tool of Rhodesian counter-insurgency warfare, as it was for South Africa’s own growing insurgency, was the ubiquitous Alouette III, and although no accurate records exist to indicate how many of these were in service in Rhodesia, a figure of 50-plus has been suggested by historians Paul Moorcraft and Peter McLaughlin in their book The Rhodesian War. According to Rhodesian military historian Dr J.R.T. Wood, 24 of these were on loan from South Africa. The fact that, in 1980, the incoming Zimbabwean government took possession of a mere eight functioning Alouettes once the dust had settled is suggestive of the fact that a great many more South African ships than this were involved. South African Pumas and Super Frelons also saw periodic service in Rhodesia.
In the meanwhile, the most concentrated and important work done by the SAAF during the early months and years of the South West African SWAPO insurgency was in the comprehensive aerial mapping of the operational zones with a view to updating a wholly inadequate topographical understanding of the region, defined then by little more than the standard commercially available Michelin road maps. Most of this work was undertaken between 1972 and 1974 and was mainly the responsibility of SAAF 12 Squadron, a light-bomber squadron formed in 1939, primarily for service in the East and North African theatres, being disbanded at the end of the Second World War after having been employed in the valedictory task of transporting South African servicemen back home. It was briefly reformed in 1946 for the role of tsetsefly control in Zululand and northern Natal and then as a helicopter squadron flying the early Sikorsky S-51, before being merged as a flight of the medium-transport 28 Squadron. With the introduction into service in 1963 of the superb English Electric Canberra bomber, however, the squadron was once again reformed to fly these aircraft which saw service in the SAAF until 1991 in high-altitude reconnaissance and, of course, in photo-reconnaissance.
Photo-reconnaissance missions were fairly wide-ranging and not limited to the South West African border region but extended at times to cover Angola as far north as Cabinda, the entirety of Mozambique and large areas of Tanzania, including Dar es Salaam. Raw footage was received and organized at the Joint Air Reconnaissance and Intelligence Centre situated at AFB Waterkloof from which a series of detailed photomaps was produced that would prove vital in the planning of precise operations as the pace of war escalated.
CHAPTER THREE:
OPERATION SAVANNAH: SAAF IN A SUPPORT ROLE
“The events of 1974–75 prompted a belated assertion of US regional influence to stem further violence and polarization and to pre-empt further Soviet exploitation of regional strife.”
The sudden abandonment by the Portuguese of their overseas provinces after a 1974 military coup in Lisbon took a great many people at the higher echelons of government by surprise. South African minister of defence, and later president of the republic, P.W. Botha, was quoted in the press only a month before the coup in Lisbon as doubting whether the Portuguese would ever consider abandoning their grip on Mozambique and Angola, bearing in mind the 400-year history of their occupation. This comment contrasted sharply with local intelligence assessments but was forgivable perhaps for the fact that in diplomatic circles, at least, the Portuguese had so sustained their imperial hubris that few could have doubted their determination to hang on. Lisbon fell silent on the matter only once the determinedly blind fascist government of Marcello Caetano had fallen, at which point the abrupt reality of a strategic power vacuum in central Africa became starkly apparent to all.
The simple facts of the situation are thus: the Portuguese had for some time been losing ground militarily in all three major African theatres, in particular in Mozambique, with a discernible discontent and lethargy affecting the armed forces as the death toll mounted and territorial losses accrued. To many in the ranks of the Exército Português, the army, upon whom the brunt of attrition was focused, the economic and human cost of attempting to retain control of Portugal’s overseas territories was simply too high. The government was therefore toppled in a leftist military coup on 25 April 1974, with the abrupt ending of all colonial wars becoming perhaps the highest item on the new national agenda.
Independence for Mozambique and Angola was not immediate, but it was de facto upon the formality of a negotiated, and rushed, handover. This left very little time for those with an interest in the outcome of the process to try and influence it. For Rhodesia and South Africa the prospect of a communist takeover in two such vast entities as Mozambique and Angola was unnerving in the extreme, but on a broader stage the Cold War ramifications of such a power vacuum energized both the United States and the Soviet Union – including Cuba as a nominal proxy of the USSR – to act.