But, on the way back to SWA, something happened to Serfontein’s Combat Group 10 that would be an ominous harbinger of what lay ahead. The plan was for the force to move through the village of Mongua, where it would meet up with Dippenaar’s force and return home. What Serfontein did not know was that a company-size mechanised FAPLA force was concentrated there. It appears that the Angolans were as surprised as the South African advance party (travelling in Buffels) when the two parties unexpectedly bumped into each other, but both recovered quickly. The Angolans charged with three BTR-152 armoured personnel carriers, but the South Africans knocked them out in quick succession. Serfontein immediately sent a reinforcement company to the front, and together they counterattacked. An air strike with Mirages followed, and the Angolans fled.[39]
The fight itself was not that remarkable; the South Africans reacted rapidly to an unexpected situation and came out on top. This would happen countless times in the future. What made this fight especially noteworthy is that this was the first time that the SADF and FAPLA had clashed while the South Africans were fighting SWAPO. Given the circumstances, one gets the impression that it was purely incidental – there was no deliberate attempt by FAPLA to intervene in the war between the SADF and PLAN. Nevertheless, a line had been crossed, and within a relatively short time the South Africans would find it more and more difficult to fight against PLAN without coming up against FAPLA as well.
Conclusion
Operation Sceptic, especially the Battle of Smokeshell, was an important development in the Border War. Its predecessors, operations Reindeer, Rekstok and Saffraan, had been limited in scope and time. Sceptic evolved into a much longer operation, during which PLAN was hunted deep within its own rear areas in Angola for about three weeks. Apart from Savannah, this was the biggest and longest operation the SADF had been involved in since 1945.
Another difference from the Battle of Cassinga was that the result at Smokeshell was never really in doubt, in spite of the sudden setback Combat Team 2 suffered in the south of the complex. Although the troops of 61 Mech were highly trained and motivated, they had seen no action before the battle, yet they acquitted themselves well. The members of Louis Harmse’s Combat Team 2 in particular would be understandably haunted by their experience for decades to come, but even in the face of death they did what they had to do – they attacked the enemy and defeated him.
Nevertheless, Operation Sceptic laid bare a number of deficiencies in the SADF that had to be remedied. These are addressed below.
Intelligence: Several officers were not satisfied with the intelligence they received about the Smokeshell complex. According to Commandant Dippenaar, there “remained uncertainty about the nature of the target”. For instance, even though he knew Smokeshell consisted of 13 bases, it was unclear what “the composition of the enemy” was in each complex.[40] The biggest factor at the time was whether the enemy was dug in or not. The battle plan was based on information that there were only shallow foxholes. The fact that this information was wrong was directly responsible for the problems encountered by Combat Team 2.
The army and SAAF: During this operation the coordination between the SAAF and the army was less than optimal. Firstly, the air attacks in the preceding days either would have warned SWAPO of a planned attack or would have encouraged an evacuation as a precaution against further attacks. Secondly, on the day of the attack on Smokeshell the air attacks were not properly coordinated with the ground assault. Given that the ground forces would reach Smokeshell only later that day, what was the advantage of an early-morning attack? It only gave PLAN time to recover their wits and either prepare for the expected assault or melt away into the dense bush. Reflecting on the battle, Paul Fouché quite correctly wrote in his report: “Air support must be followed up immediately with an attack.”[41] Louis Harmse and Jakes Jacobs also criticised the coordination between the air force and the army.[42]
Underestimating your enemy: In his war diary, Commandant Dippenaar states that intelligence had indicated that PLAN would not stand and fight, and that the leaders would flee first.[43] It is true that the defenders of the northern parts of the complex had fled before the attack started, but many of those in the south stood fast and fought courageously. Combat Team 2’s attack, with the Ratels’ 20-mm guns rattling and the Ratel 90s spewing death and destruction, must have been very frightening. Yet eyewitness accounts tell of SWAPO cadres fighting to the death, spraying the South Africans with deadly fire from 14,5-mm and 23-mm anti-aircraft guns.
In a comment reminiscent of Cassinga, eyewitness Chris de Klerk explained how SWAPO kept at it: “When you shot one terr behind his gun, another jumped in, and if you shoot him another jumps up. If you shot one it didn’t mean the weapon didn’t work any more – they jumped like rabbits out of those holes, and carried on shooting at you.”[44]
It is never a good policy to underestimate your enemy.
Navigation: The terrain in and around Smokeshell was flat and featureless, while dense bush restricted sight and faint paths made navigation difficult. Several times, both during the advance and at the target itself, the South Africans lost their way and floundered about. Once, an SAAF spotter plane guided them back to where they had to be; at other times, they only had a general idea of where they were. This would prove to be an issue for the duration of the war. Only in 1983/1984 did the artillery get a primitive kind of navigation system, along the lines of the Global Positioning System (GPS), which took about 75 minutes to set up.[45]
Equipment: Several equipment problems were identified during Operation Sceptic. Firstly, experience confirmed that the Eland was not really suited to the kind of lightning operations the SADF was conducting. The Eland still burned petrol, whereas all the other vehicles ran on diesel, and its range was considerably less than that of the Ratel (300 km against the 800 km of the Ratel). This made logistics more complicated. During Sceptic, the Elands sometimes ran out of fuel when the Ratels still had more than enough, with the result that the Noddy cars had to be towed.
But even the Ratels gave problems. The accumulation of leaves clogged the air intakes and caused the vehicles to overheat and even to catch fire. More than one 20-mm gun was bent by the vehicle smashing through bushes and trees.
As during Operation Reindeer, the radios gave trouble. Units and sub-units found it difficult to talk to each other; communication with tactical headquarters at Eenhana was problematic; and the SAAF aircraft and the army on the ground could not converse easily.
The artillery dated from the Second World War, and the gunners had trouble calibrating their old guns for accurate fire. Their Magirus Deutz gun tractors overheated, and the old towing equipment sometimes broke down due to metal fatigue.
Operation Sceptic finally proved that the 7,62-mm R1 rifle was not suitable for mechanised operations. It was an excellent weapon, with formidable stopping power, and was very well liked by the troops, but the R1 was too large to be used comfortably from within a Ratel. During his time at the front, General Viljoen carried a 5,56-mm R4, an adaptation of the Israeli Galil rifle, with a folding stock, which would become – and at the time of writing still is – the standard South African Army rifle.
By and large, Sceptic was a valuable learning experience for the SADF and provided several lessons, large and small, which would be applied on forthcoming operations.
One question remains to be answered. Did Sceptic succeed in its objective? The SADF lost 17 soldiers, as well as one Impala light jet bomber and an Alouette III helicopter. The number of PLAN bodies counted were 380. Several hundred tonnes of arms and ammunition were destroyed, and some 150 tonnes, including vehicles and light artillery, were taken back to