The Battle of Cassinga also known as the Cassinga Raid or Kassinga Massacre was a controversial South African airborne attack on a South West Africa People's Organization (SWAPO) military camp at the town of Cassinga, Angola on 4 May 1978. Conducted as one of the three major actions of Operation Reindeer during the South African Border War, it was the South African Army's first major air assault operation.
Background
Starting in 1976, SWAPO PLAN combatants regularly travelled south by road from Huambo through Cassinga, an abandoned Angolan mining town that was located about halfway to the battlefront at the Namibian border. The town had about twenty buildings that previously served the local iron-ore mine as warehouses, accommodation and offices.
A group of PLAN guerrillas led by Dimo Hamaambo occupied Cassinga some weeks after they began using it as a stopover point; according to both Charles "Ho Chi Minh" Namoloh and Mwetufa "Cabral" Mupopiwa, who accompanied Hamaambo when the village was first occupied, the first Namibian inhabitants of Cassinga consisted entirely of trained PLAN combatants. Not long after the establishment of the PLAN camp at Cassinga, it began to function also as a transit camp for Namibian exiles. The Angolan government allocated the abandoned village to SWAPO in 1976 to cope with the influx of thousands of refugees from South West Africa, estimated in May 1978 to total 3,000 to 4,000 people.
Two days before the South African raid, UNICEF reported of a "well-run and well-organized" camp but "ill-equipped" to cope with the rapid refugee increase in early 1978. The Cubans, who set up a base at nearby Techamutete when they intervened in the war in 1975, provided logistical support to the SWAPO administration at Cassinga.
According to SADF intelligence, "Logistic planning and the provision of supplies, weapons and ammunition to insurgents operating in central and eastern Ovamboland were undertaken from Cassinga", which they learned from PLAN POWs was codenamed "Moscow". Medical treatment of the seriously wounded as well as the repair of equipment and the assembly of newly trained insurgents on their way to bases in the East and West Cunene Provinces all took place in Cassinga."
South African planning
By the beginning of 1978 SWAPO had improved its organisation and gained strength in Owambo and the Eastern Caprivi, UNITA was under pressure from the MPLA, and it became increasingly difficult for the SADF to operate in Southern Angola. South Africa also feared the disruption of elections it planned to hold in South West Africa excluding SWAPO.
The attack on Cassinga grew out of the plan for Operation Bruilof, wherein the SADF envisaged attacking six SWAPO targets around the town of Chetequera. During the intelligence-gathering portion of the planning for Operation Bruilof, the SADF concluded that the small town of Cassinga was the principal medical, training and control centre for the guerrillas in the region, and one of SWAPO's two regional HQs, the other being further north at Lubango.
The SAAF still held air superiority over Angola at the time, allowing 12 Squadron to conduct aerial photo-reconnaissance with Canberra B12s in the spring of 1978. These photos showed newly built military infrastructure including concrete 'drive-in' bunkers for armoured fighting vehicles covering approach roads, zigzag trenches surrounding the base, foxholes for machine guns/mortar crews – and the highly characteristic 'star-shaped' concrete base structure for a S-75/SA-2 'Guideline' missile battery and its radar/command vehicle. Also identifiable from the imagery was a civilian single-decker bus.
PLAN combatants at Cassinga were aware of the overflights, and in a letter dated 10 April 1978, the camp's commander Hamaambo expressed concerns to his superiors about an "imminent invasion intention of our enemy of our camp in Southern Angola". In response to the reconnaissance flights, defenses were improved through the creation of a secondary camp north of the main camp, the addition of more trenches, the digging of holes for the protection of food provisions, and provision of AAA weapons.
The SADF shelved the plan for Operation Bruilof and planning for a new operation, Operation Reindeer, began. Reindeer was composed of three main actions; the airborne assault on Cassinga, a mechanised assault on the Chetaquera complex at 17°07′43″S 14°53′38″E / 17.1287°S 14.8938°E – that also involved SAAF defence-suppression strikes – and an assault on the Dombondola complex at 17°19′59″S 14°50′00″E / 17.333°S 14.8334°E by a light infantry force.
The planners for the operation were faced with a significant problem. While the Chetequera and Dombondola complexes were only around 35 km from the border with South West Africa/Namibia (then under South African control), therefore making conventional assault possible, Cassinga was deep inside Angola, 260 km from the border. This meant that any conventional assault force would have to fight its way in and out, and would almost certainly have given advance warning to the PLAN (People's Liberation Army of Namibia – SWAPO's armed wing) soldiers in Cassinga, allowing them and leaders like Jerobeum 'Dimo' Amaambo (the PLAN commander-in-chief, then resident in Cassinga) and Greenwell Matongo to escape. Cassinga furthermore was located on a small hill, flanked by a river on its west side, and open fields in other directions, factors that combined to give any defenders the advantage.
However, South African Defence Force (SADF) intelligence reports had ascertained that SWAPO – and probably its advisers – was lulled into a false sense of security because of Cassinga's distance from the Namibian border to the south. South African military intelligence briefings before the event indicated no awareness of any nearby supportive infantry or armoured units to support the base against a ground assault, and although SWAPO had been constructing a system of integrated defensive trenches and firing points for wheeled/tracked AFVs and AAA units, they were not then prepared for a joint-arms airborne attack. The SADF had not previously demonstrated any such capability, giving military analysts no reason to suspect that such an option was available to the SADF planners. The planners therefore believed that they could conduct a surprise attack on the base using only a lightly armed airborne force. Earlier in that year, SAAF 12 Squadron had commenced training for a low-level strike role, utilising anti-personnel weapons such as cluster bombs. The South Africans knew about the success of Operation Eland and Operation Dingo, pre-emptive raids conducted in the previous two years by the Rhodesian Selous Scouts against guerilla forces based in Mozambique, and modeled their raid on many of the same principles. Though a risky plan it was decided that the element of surprise would outweigh the disadvantage of not having supporting armour on the ground.
The SADF decided to mount a large airborne assault on Cassinga (by now code-named "Alpha"), supported by South African Air Force (SAAF) fighter-bombers and a fleet of 17 medium-transport helicopters. Using an exercise already underway called Exercise Kwiksilver as a cover story, the army initiated a call up of the Citizen Force (reserve units similar to the US National Guard) parachute units. The paratroopers conducted refresher training at the base of 1 Parachute Battalion (1 Bn) in Bloemfontein and then field training in the area surrounding the derelict Rheinholdtskop farm on the De Brug Training Area.
A top secret document prepared by General Magnus Malan for the then Minister of Defence, P. W. Botha, refers to Cassinga as "a large SWAPO base located 260 km north of the border. It is the operational military headquarters of SWAPO from where all operations against SWA are planned and their execution co-ordinated. From this base all supplies and armaments are provided to the bases further forward. Here training also takes place. In short, it is probably the most important SWAPO base in Angola. The nearest Cuban base is 15 km South of Alpha."
The South African cabinet was hesitant to authorise the operation, fearing an international backlash, but on 2 May 1978 the Prime Minister, John Vorster, finally approved the operation. The date of 4 May was specifically chosen as it was after the United Nations Security Council debate on South West Africa ended so as to "avoid making lives difficult for those countries favourable to South Africa".
Composition of forces
South Africa
Because of the secrecy involved in the operation, and the commitment of most of the professional "permanent force" troops and "national servicemen" conscripts of 1 Bn in other operations, it was decided to use 2 and 3 Parachute Battalions (2 Bn & 3 Bn), both reserve or "Citizen Force" units, in the operation. However, the need for secrecy meant not enough Citizen Force soldiers could be called up to fill both Parachute Battalions. As a result, all three were temporarily merged into a single composite Parachute Battalion, which was commanded by Colonel Jan Breytenbach. The final composition of forces for the attack on Cassinga was therefore the following:
- The entire operation was run by Major General Ian Gleeson, who commanded the SWA Tactical HQ (set up specially for Operation Reindeer).
- Overall control of the airborne forces was given to Brigadier M.J. du Plessis, who commanded the Parachute Brigade HQ. The units under his command were the Composite Parachute Battalion under Colonel Breytenbach that was composed of A, B, C and D companies (all under-strength), an independent rifle platoon, a mortar platoon and an anti-tank platoon;
- The Helicopter Administration Area (HAA) protection force under Major James Hills, consisting of two Hawk Groups (10-man sections of rapid-reaction paratroopers) from 1 Bn;
- An Airborne Reserve under Captain Wesley de Beer, consisting of a company from 2 Bn airborne in a C.160 to be used in the event of reinforcements being required, and the Mobile Air Operations Team (MAOT) under Commandant James Kriel, which consisted of five SAAF personnel to set up and run the HAA. All the paratroopers were equipped with a folding stock version of the R1 7.62 mm assault rifle.
- The South African Air Force contribution consisted of four C-130 Hercules and five C.160 Transall transport aircraft. The helicopter component of the operation consisted of 13 Pumas and six Super Frelons.
- The air attack component provided by the SAAF consisted of four Canberra B-12 bombers, each carrying 300 Alpha anti-personnel bombs; five Buccaneers carrying eight 1,000 lb (450 kg) bombs each, as well as a sixth carrying seventy-two 68 mm rockets, and lastly four Mirage III fighter aircraft, armed only with Sidewinder air-to-air missiles and their 30 mm cannons fitted with high-explosive fragmentation shells.
One crew from the Canberra squadron was tasked with acquiring further photo-reconnaissance imagery, some to be used in the preparation of photo-strip maps for the Tactical Low Flying (TLF) legs that the various aircraft types would undertake – there being inadequate conventional mapping of much of the region – and additional and up-to-date detailed imagery of the Cassinga environs for the Parabat drop zone and Buccaneer target planning purposes. Particular attention was paid to identifying units of AAA deployed in/near the target complex. It was during this phase that a serious error was made, with potentially disastrous consequences.
Air-photo interpreters put the wrong scale on some of the maps that were used in the planning, despite the altimeter readings being clearly visible in the original reconnaissance photographs. Consequently, the air force planners overestimated the size of the DZ, believing it was long and wide enough to drop the paratroopers, when in fact it wasn't. This 'scale error' also mispositioned the 'Warning' and 'Drop' points on the run-in to drop. Compounding this error, the pilot of the lead aircraft was momentarily distracted by the effects of the bombing, and issued the 'jump' signal a few seconds late. The net effect was that many paratroopers overshot their intended DZs, many landing beyond the river – and some in it.