It was concluded after a thorough analysis of the episode that the mission had simply been one too many over that particular location, presenting the enemy with an opportunity to study the SAAF tactics in that particular situation and then ensuring that an air-defence battery was in position for a repeat of earlier operations. After the bomb release and as Every broke off, the missile system locked onto the F1’s exhaust plume, successfully tracking and striking it as it reached low level.
The SAAF at all times sought to avoid predictability, with this sad episode proving the undeniable wisdom of that. A comprehensive search and rescue was immediately launched in the vain hope that an emergency radio transmission would be picked up. In the end, the inevitable was conceded, with salt being applied to the wound by the display in Luanda some time later of the wreckage of Major Every’s aircraft. Every’s death, the last SAAF fatality of the war, was felt very keenly among the compact community of SAAF Mirage pilots.
Two days prior to Every’s death a determined airstrike was aimed at Lubango, the largest combined FAPLA and SWAPO HQ in the region, inflicting serious damage on two facilities. These were the Tobias Hanyeko Training Centre, SWAPO’s most important training and military facility, and an insurgent holding camp located about ten kilometres outside the city. This was a daring attack, bearing in mind how the city bristled with antiaircraft defences, and there was a touch of bravado in it.
A terror bombing in Oshakati, northern South West Africa, had recently claimed the lives of 20 civilians, with SWAPO attempting the ridiculous claim that the incident had been staged by the South Africans. It has been suggested that the strike had the twin of a reprisal for the Oshakati bombing and to bring it home to the Angolans that the South Africans were still very much in the fight.
In the meanwhile, two short and sharp dogfights took place a few days later when two sorties were intercepted by MiG-23s. In the first of these Major Willie van Coppenhagen and captains David Kleynhans and Reg van Eeden turned to fight, upon which the MiGs promptly broke away and fled.
On the second sortie Commandant Rankin alongside Major Frans Coetzee and Captain Trompie Nel were warned that they were being stalked by a Cuban MiG-23. Enemy radio frequencies were being monitored with the help of a Spanish-speaking interpreter who inferred from descriptions exchanged of the Mirage camouflage that the Cubans had the South Africans visual. Rankin immediately ordered the F1 pilots to drop their fuel tanks and broke into the rapidly approaching MiGs at precisely the correct range. Rankin saw two MiGs flash overhead and manoeuvred into position behind them. However, both aircraft and weapons were outdistanced by the fast-moving enemy aircraft and the moment was lost.
Rankin concluded that part of the problem had been that the Mirage camouflage was too easy to spot and took a somewhat risky personal decision to alter it overnight in the hangar, which might have resulted in court martial but in fact ended in a general re-evaluation of the Mirage livery. A project was then registered to develop a camouflage pattern that was better suited to the Mirage F1AZ in its various roles. Aircraft 243 was painted dark blue underneath and dark brown and green above. On 2 March 1988 1 Squadron was stood down from operations and all aircraft flown back to AFB Hoespruit. There, as an interim measure, they were officially modified to a dark-earth and matt-green colour scheme.
Six F1AZs were returned to AFB Grootfontein from AFB Hoedspruit on 19 March, two of which were used for a Donkermaan diversionary strike on an area target near the town of Longa, more or less midway between Monnow and Cuito Cuanavale. In marginal weather conditions the two pilots, Commandant Johan Rankin and Major Willie van Coppenhagen, maintained radio silence and a loose flying formation. Upon return, van Coppenhagen’s aircraft crashed, possibly due to a corroded fuel line which might have caused the F1’s engine to flame out at low altitude, killing the pilot and prompting a massive search and rescue that established within a few days the site of the accident and the fact the van Coppnehagen had not survived.
The last Mirage sortie of the war was flown on 23 March. The operation was intended as a vergooi attack at 100 feet but was aborted because of deteriorating weather conditions.
Two days later the squadron was stood down and returned to AFB Hoedspruit.
CHAPTER ELEVEN:
PEACE, DISENGAGEMENT AND INDEPENDENCE
On the battlefield events were similarly winding down. The highly complex political manoeuvring that had been underway throughout the combined seven months of operations Modular, Hooper and Packer had been salutary for all sides. The South Africans had, through the introduction of the G5 and G6 artillery systems and, of course, the Olifant main tank, inched the war a little further toward a full-scale conventional confrontation; the offensive, in fact, still ranks as the largest land battle fought on African soil since El Alamein and the only set-piece conventional armoured confrontation in sub-Saharan Africa to ever use tanks in their correct mobile role. What was to be the next step?
South Africa could entertain a very slim hope of ever closing the technical gap that was widening in the air war with the arrival in the theatre of the latest MiG-23s, besides which, what, beyond demilitarizing southern Angola for her own protection, could South Africa hope to tactically achieve by an advanced military agenda?
From the point of view of the Angolan/Cuban/Soviet troika, South Africa – even though, as many high-ranking military planners and observers had noted, had entered the ring blind and with one hand tied behind her back – had still delivered the combined forces of the enemy such a profound beating that the notion of engaging in a third offensive seemed distinctly unattractive. Statistics are obviously always unreliable in circumstances such as this but an analysis of many sources suggests enemy personnel killed or wounded in this series of operations run to over 4,000, with hundreds of logistic vehicles, armoured fighting vehicles, aircraft, tanks and allied missile and radar systems, tens of millions of dollars’ worth, possibly more, destroyed or captured by the South Africans. The South Africans, on the other hand, lost a total of 40 men killed, 114 wounded, with three armoured fighting vehicles and three tanks lost.
In terms of the propaganda war, it need hardly be said that South Africa was the loser, particularly since the diplomatic necessity of a blanket news silence covering the entire episode left the battlefield entirely open to the enemy to exploit, which it did. However, if South Africa was running out of breath in the long haul, then the allied enemy front, supported in one way or another entirely by Soviet largess and commitment, was stumbling even more noticeably as the countdown to the end of communist rule in Eastern Europe began.
This, however, also undermined much of South Africa’s claim to be standing alone against the communist ‘total onslaught’ since, if communism as a global ideology effectively ceased to exist then the raison d’être for South African intervention in Angola disappeared with it. All that might remain at the bottom of the crucible would be a congenital reluctance to witness South West African independence for no better reason than racism.
As far as the MPLA and UNITA were concerned, increasing oil revenues in Angola gradually began to replace Cold War patronage as the fuel of war, a war that would continue in one form or another until Savimbi’s death in action in 2002. A separate peace initiative between these two parties was attempted by Zairean President Mobuto Sese Seko and, although a token understanding was reached, there would be no respite in this particular conflict for some time to come. The US ramped up its aid to UNITA in the aftermath of the Namibian peace, with the melancholy result that by 1990 an estimated 100,000 lives had been sacrificed with a further 900,000 people facing famine.