37000 feet

Lohatla

9 SANDF soldiers were killed in a training exercise in Lohatla this week. They were part of a 35mm Oerlikon Gun battery. I was a gun commander of a 35mm gun crew in Rundu in 1987. In those days there were also many accidents. The story in that the only "hit" anti aircraft has in many years was a SAAF chopper that was shot down by SADF anti aircraft at Oshakati. I dont know if anybody knows the detail of this story. .. Anyway I feel sorry for those soldiers at Lohatla.

Slegtroep on Tim's Stoep

Cuito Cuanavale Revisited

An interesting article by Piero Gleijeses was featured in the Mail and Gaurdian on 11 July 2007. The article was titled:

Cuito Cuanavale Revisited

The Famous Falklands War

When I was in Buenos Aires in 2003, I visited the Memorial to Argentinian conscripts and professional soldiers who lost their lives in the Falklands war . What interests me about this war, is the general media and public interest generated by the incident. (Or maybe more correctly, the media dis- interest in the Battle of Cuito Cuanavale and the Angolan war.) In many ways the Falklands War was a much smaller (and less strategically significant) story than the Battle of Cuito Cuanavale. 907 Soldiers died in the

Falklands_war

while at least 4000 troops died at the

Battle_of_Cuito_Cuanavale

At the time, the South African Military PR, tried to sell the battle as a success, history has shown however, that, in fact, this battle set in place a sequence of withdrawals and retreats for apartheid forces in Angola, Namibia and perhaps even South Africa!

This disinterest does not trouble me. I just find it curious!