Mirage F1s vs MiG-21s-- South African Border War, Angola 1982 

Thanks for sharing your personal experience!

The SADF was far superior on the ground and in the air to the cuban backed Angolans. What operation were you on?

​yep i was not on the border, was navy diver in SWA - Walvis Bay, good old days and well respected military

@@glenvanzyl8985 does not matter, you did you service.

He refers here to the Ratel (Badger) APC wofhich sported a 90mm gun.

True. Those fights will be reenacted once a high-fidelity MiG-23 is released.

With the assistance of the Israeli's who supported us . Got to give credit where it's due .

@@Mikelockey Makes sense. Both nations were under arms-embargo at the time. And both had developed sophisticated domestic arms-industries as a result. Also got to love how the French really did not give a shit and sold their Mirages to anyone who could pay for them. Lol.

I read a book recently about the last battles around Cuito Cuneval in Angola between the SADF/UNITA vs the FAPLA and The Cubans. One thing that stood out was how the 'tech' of the Cuban MiG 23 jets and the SAM systems did result in the F1s being outclassed, and so much of their mission profile/sorties flown was geared towards getting the mission accomplished and avoiding losses. Similarly on the ground "High Command" demanded that SADF armored units and the famous G6 artillery units avoid casualties (but still accomplish the missions). As a result the SADF operated mostly at night to avoid run ins with the "23s", and engineers would detonate explosives when the G6 howitzers fired so FAPLA/Cuban Migs couldn't tell which were actual cannons firing and which were explosives --and of course, trying to lure the MiGs into 'flak traps/MANPAD ambushes'. I've forgotten the name of the book but I think it was written by Fred Bridgeland.

​@@b.elzebub9252I don't think they could get mirages after the early 70's

Thank you for sharing your personal experience. It is unusual but not rare how combatants meet years after wars in which they were trying to kill each other but all that is gone and they can have a civilized talk about everything.

Thank you for sharing this insight!

The South Africans employed Chilean interpreters to translate intercepted Cuban signals during the conflict. The Chileans saved a flight of F1s from a Cuban interception on one occasion and provided invaluable service overall. At this stage of the war, neither S. Africa nor Cuba wanted outright warfare. They were there supporting their respective allies, MPLA and Unita. S. Africa wanted to secure South West Africa (Namibia) by denying SWAPO and MK guerillas a foothold in Southern Angola, and the Cubans wanted to keep their MPLA comrades in power. By the mid to later 1980s things heated up when Castro tried a hard push against Unita over the Lomba River. It got ugly as MPLA forces were horribly decimated in Operations Moduler and Hooper, and they were forced to retreat to the fortified town Cuito Carnavale. A S. African siege of Cuito ultimately failed after several attempts, but the overall action was a serious setback MPLA/Cuban efforts. Ultimately, neither side won and a peace accord allowed the major players to withdraw from the conflict.

@@andrewmorke in the end, we had to wait for Jonas Savimbi to fell in an ambush and be hit by more than sixty bullets. peace came almost immediately afterwards...

BS story

@@ChiekoGamers How so? What makes you suspicious?

Thanks! I'm glad that people from SA appreciate this.

Thank you very much for sharing your personal experience relative to this historical event.

French sure know how to create pretty things 😊

@@showtime112 French yes but Jewish first.

Thanks for watching and commenting!

Thanks for this positive comment! I intend to keep with rhis for a long time. As for the topics you suggested, I can tell you that you can expect an Iran-iraq story soon. I'm also studying tge Cenepe War and some others.

@@showtime112 Excellent news, the future is smiling, take your time, I 'm waiting for seing some incredible military aircraft adventures in the past which I don't know. .

This war wasn't useless IF I CAN SAY LIKE THIS, it's because an independant state was recreated the Namibia in 1990, It's was a german colony before 1918. The English took his control in 1918, and in 1947 gave it to Souh Africa which became independant with apartheid regime.

Thanl you for this positive feedback!

Thanks for the tip. I watched him on Aircrew Interview. The host pronounced his name like me and Cobus had no complaints 😁 I remember hearing Charlize Theron explaining how her name should be pronounced. I wouldn't have guessed it in a million years 🤣

@@showtime112 Nope... unfortunately you mangled the other South African's name too, in the previous video. Please, get a South African (Afrikaans-sprekend) to help you. It is really disappointing as it sounds nothing like their names, and it would be easy for you to get advice on this over a quick audio call from a South African.

@@showtime112 Let me teach you a bit Afrikaans... Just say "Buy a donkey" In Afrikaans sounds like "Baie Dankie" (Thank you very much)

Thanks, I appreciate your feedback!

Interesting additional detail, thanks!

Correction: Johann Rankin was never the Chief of the SAAF.

@@gerhardbenade5869 ok. I thought I read it somewhere. Anyway gone from SA since 1999 and I rarely get a chance to read news about the SA military.

Not Rankin.. Carlo Gagiano became CAF

@@JohnThreeSixteen918 He was a 3 Sqn pilot, MirageF1 CZ.....if I remember correctly.

It is possible. We have AI Su-17 which is very similar to Su-22 flown by Peru. I'm doing some research about it.

@@showtime112 thank you very much! Would love to see those

@@showtime112 from all my understandings the su-22 is the export name for su-17, regardless of variants/ upgrades the looks should be identical or extremely similar besides weapon capabilities

@@ml-fishing1341 Yes, I rhink it just has some systems degraded or removed. There is actually a developer which started working on DCS module but that will probably take a few years.

As for the missiles, Tom Cooper specifies that Cubans carried R3S. Many air forces can't just update their stock very quickly. I recently came across information that Italian F-104s carried AIM-9Bs through most of the 80s. In this case. Early Magic missiles proved not to be very effective too. Cubans were turning lightly so they don't loose speed but after a while, they turned harder which is why the Mirages cought them. Toerien speculates that they still might have been trying to intercept the Canberra.

@@showtime112 to add to that, the Cubans were being supplied by the Soviet Union and they kept most of their top missiles for themselves and gave Cubans "hand-me-downs" or second-hand stock. so it's very unlikely the Cubas would have the latest missiles, especially on the mig21. MI23 would have had better weapons and was a far better plane then the mig21

@@Ghoulza Cuba was actually pretty high up the export quality tree as far as the USSR was concerned - they got equivalent equipment to Warsaw Pact allies, for the most part, without the usual additional level of avionics downgrades that other, less 'reliable' export customers got. It's probable they were just trying to use up the missiles they already had (these things very much have shelf lifes, as well as limits on takeoff/landing cycles) or they weren't able to get their newer missiles to the front yet - or were saving them for homeland air defence.

Thanks for this! I will probably keep using intro music. Here, I couldn't find the right one easily and I was pressed for time a bit. I do get some angry comments from people who hate the music and I occasionally make a video without it as an experiment. Such videos are not more popular, their average view duration is not longer and similar percentage of viewers drops in the beginning.

Hello, thank you for commenting! I intend to cover the clashes between F1s and MiG-23s but not just yet. We only have an AI MiG-23 in DCS but a high fidelity module is being developed. When it becomes available, it will be a much better video.

Thanks! More stuff on the way.

I've already done a two part video covering the topic. Most people somehow missed it 😁

I like those smaller conflicts too. Plenty more left to cover 😁

@@showtime112 agreed

They were, especially in the early stages of the conflict.

Hard to say. Not a historical first though 😁

Maybe the escort for Canberra was not in time and therefore Cuban side thought that only one or two bombers are out there.

they didn't learn because they didn't have the same type of training SA did. Cubans train to fly dog fighting is not part of the training. they also didn't really expect SA to keep matching them in the skies, SA had very few fighters and no spare parts. Cubans believed SA would keep their planes grounded as soon as migs appeared they never expected them to keep coming up to fight. later on in the war SA didn't try go fr the fight, they tried to keep their planes for bombing missions and ground support rather than try take Cuba on in the air. this was because Angolan air defense was the highest in the world, they had far more planes and SA was running out of parts they were taking part from damaged or old planes to fix what they had, they just could risk loosing planes in dog fights anymore, besides artillery was taking out more Cuba planes than fighters so why risk it

@@Ghoulza Mostly correct but the Cubans didn't have the best air defense in the world. They had some good stuff, but not a lot of it like Iraq did.

@@dougerrohmer Angela had best air defence in the world at that time. Russia was in Angola helping them and used their latest anit air defences. SA captured one in tact and handed it to the CIA after we had studied it ofcourse. let me amend this, cause i see my mistake. it was the heaviest defended air space in the world with the latest Soveit union anti air defences. they might not have been the best in the world, poor wording choice on my part sorry

Thanks! I'd say Mirage. I haven't yet tested it in a PvP combatbut I will.

@@showtime112 mirage as well. mig 21 is fast but not as maneuverable as the mirage, so once you get into the merge the mirage has the advantage but as with all of these hypotheticals, it relies on the pilot as much as the plane. a good plane in a unskilled pilots can fall to a bad plane in a skilled pilot's hands

Thank you Master! Good to hear from you again it is 😁

No, but it's useful for getting the precise range information.

Glad to hear it! Thank you and keep watching!

The things changed later, yes. Once MiG-23 is released in DCS, those topics will be covered too.

Thank you for commenting and for providing info. In my defense, there is an interview with Toerien on YT and the interviewer is pronouncing his name the way I did. Toerien never complained :)

So I've been told 😁

It's ok broer. Groete uit Kanada. Capt Rankin was my squadron leader at Louis Trihart airforce base.

@@useryggfdcc I hope I at least pronounced his name close enough. Please don't tell me it's pronounced something like 'Roonkine' 🤣🤣🤣

@@showtime112 🤣🤣 Bud!!... no worries, you did ok with the names, more importantly you did OUTSTANDING with the video!! I was a ground pounder in that conflict and was at the Ondangwa airbase getting re-sup for ground patrol at that exact time. I was in the ops bunker de-briefing when the jets came back. We heard the whole story from the radio chatter. SUPER AMAZING to see the detail!!! What an awesome effort! I believe that all 4 pilots, even the 2 Mig drivers survived the encounter!!! Whatever you read in the comments, this is airmanship of a high order and very, very few pilots even today can lay claim to a dogfight in a modern jet.. and surviving a dogfight no less!!!! Superb!!! The Ukrainian/Russian conflict is riveting and we will see lots of air duels there I believe. Great work Showtime112!

@@johndees967 Thank you for this amazing feedback! I sometimes get comments from people who were somehow involved with the events described in videos and that is always special. All Cuban pilots survived the encounter with the Mirages, including the ones from the first clash in 1981. As for Ukraine, once some serious research is done, there will be very interesting topics to cover.

Some say that Angola was the Cuban Vietnam...

@@showtime112 true, I here an Cuban Airforce General who defected in the late 1980s complaining about Angola Civil War the Cuban Armed Force there suffered heavily there 10 thousand or more death, 54 thousand miltary desertion and many more unwilling to fight.

I heard that most of the Cuban infantry where very dark , specifically selected from the very poor, Castro wanted to get rid of them, it would be nice to hear from Cubans if this was true.

@@johnsmith-ht3sy yes, Fidel and Raul Castro drafted the majority Black Cubans for his Angola wars even thou there just 9% of the Cuban populations, worse still the HIV/AIDS scare of that time lead the Cuban Communist Government to isolated returning soldiers for the population of Cuba, discrimination is still on the island, Fidel and his brothers are pretend their not racist their actions show there hypocrisy.

@@johnsmith-ht3sy Afro Cubans, I attend school told me, this fact.

I did one video about Turks sinking their own destroyer during that operation. I don't have much detail about the rest of the conflict except that they bombed some targets and especially the airport.

Thanks. You can send it to email, showtime112b@gmail.com

I'm working on it.

Thanks, more on the way!

Thank you very much. I'm not Hispanic but I have a certain knowledge of two other romance languages (Italian and Portuguese) so that helps. Spanish pronunciation seems quite regular without many exceptions.

Thanks for pointing that out. In my defense 1) nobody knows how to pronounce Dutch names except for the Dutch 2) Mike from Aircrew Interview pronounced it just like me and Cobus himself never corrected him 😂

@@showtime112 It is not Dutch. It is Afrikaans. The pronunciation is *very* different. And Brian is correct in his criticism. Please, accept a helping hand in this.

@@MediaFilter I recruited a guy on the discord for the future

More like Tooreen, with the ee slightly shorter in duration.

Your support is appreciated!

Thanks, I appreciate this feedback!

You are the first to notice in the comments 😁 The skin is not 100% accurate (more of an improvisation), but I wanted to point out that Rankin was flying the first grey skinned F1 in SAAF.

@@showtime112 An interesting side note is the Mirage from the first kill, tail number 213, is in the SAAF Museum with a Mig kill mark on it and the name of the last pilot assigned to it - Cobus Toerien - on the cockpit.

Not sure, I need to do some research to see which aircraft types were used.

@@showtime112 Thank you for your hard work your channel is amazing and i hope that you find the info that you need

Thanks. He'll probably say that it looked quite different but that's unavoidable 😁

@@showtime112 I guess he will 😆 but nah, he will be proud that someone tells his story. By the way, he was around 21-23 years at the time... very novice pilots but also very brave ones. Cheers.

@@showtime112 hey... I have some news :D I managed to travel to Holguín where my uncle lives and shown him the video. He was amazed by the quality and quite surprisingly, he agrees with most of what has been shown 😆He was very happy someone told his story, and I have to say that personally it helps him a lot. He also told me two or three curious details about that day... First of all, he graduated of the 1979 class in Moscow and despite that being in 1982 he had never seen actual combat training; neither did Gilberto Ortiz who was less experienced than him. He told me he was transferred to Angola in 1981, more precisely to the Huambo airbase where he spent over a year. I asked him if they were supersonic by the time they found the Mirages and he told me that they were almost supersonic but not quite. He also says that some officers in the DAAFAR never believed that missiles were shot but he confirms seeing a flashy light from his cockpit. By the way, he was the one that gave the order of retreat to Ortiz, and he told me that he was almost unable to speak as he was pushing about 7Gs. And he landed with the landing gear but he said he did not deployed parachutes because by the time he landed he almost didn't had a plane at all 😆. He still claims that wrong orders were given from GCI... he is actually quite pissed about that because that doesn't shown on any record or any official version by the DAAFAR and at the time he was not authorized to speak about it... It's been a while though and I always enjoy a bit of classified information coming to my ears 😂 By the way, they (the MiGs) were operating at the range limit of the ground radars, which contributed to the lack of situational awareness by them at the time. Thank you very much again for this amazing video, cheers.

@@javiermarrero3525 I'm so glad to hear this. Usually, these reenactments should look different to an actual participant but I guess sources were rather accurate. I could have used you as an advisor before the video for extra details but even as a comment, It will still provide more for anyone who is interested. Thanks again!

Good to hear!

Good to hear you liked it!

@@showtime112 Awesome stuff bro just watched your F5E vs the MiG 25 video man that was awesome and unexpected how the Iranians managed to score a gun kill on the Iraqi MiG 25

@@venomsnakeYGBSM It's all about circumstances.

Hello! Thank you for watching and commenting!

Ya , I was a Bokop.

Can you perhaps remember the date of the 1981 clash?

Care to be specific?

I'm gonna do some Iraqi F1 strikes in the future. This CE version can't air refuel and doesn't carry any pods. We will have E version in the future which is more complex. I've read Cooper's Iraqi Mirages, I can't remember that he mentioned non Iraqi pilots flying the Mirages. Was it from something else?

@@showtime112 "Iran-Iraq War in the air" Cooper-Bishop, page 222, him say pilots were mercenaries, "including two belgians, two pakistanies, six germans, one australian, one new zelander AND one south african" Cooper say in the book about iranian F-14 than soviets advisors flew MiG-27/ KH-29 and MiG-25BM/KH-58 plane-missile team, they cause heavy losses and lost planes in the war.

@@alejandrocasalegno1657 Haven't read that one, thanks!

@@showtime112 irakien F1 fitted With refuelling probe weré version EQ4 ,5 and 6.. All irakien pilots weré trained at Orange AB. The Lasts in summer 1984 When arrive. Bécause We have F1B( twin seat) from EC3/5 Comtat Venaissin. It Was thé only OCU for convert pilots on F1C

@@showtime112 irakien F1 fitted With refuelling probe weré version EQ4 ,5 and 6.. All irakien pilots weré trained at Orange AB. The Lasts in summer 1984 When arrive. Bécause We have F1B( twin seat) from EC3/5 Comtat Venaissin. It Was thé only OTU for convert pilots on F1C

Thank you, it's so nice to hear.

@@showtime112 your my favorite DCS YT channel

We will deal with that part of the conflict once we get a high fidelity MiG-23 in DCS.

Thanks!

Thank you for your comment!

This particular Mirage will be available in a couple more variants (Spanish E and a two seater). But one thing I'm really waiting for is Mirage III. Razbam is working on it as we can find on their discord but it will probably take a while.

@@showtime112 The VSN mod is also in dev but yea cant wait

🙋‍♂️

Thank you for watching!

Glad you liked it!

Like a younger, cuter sister perhaps 😁

I can tell you that (at least on this version of the Mirage), it's quite difficult.

@@showtime112 i was a kid when this happened, they didn't show much about the border war on the news, but they did show this, the first time I ever saw a gun cam kill, they showed it on the morning news. the first gun kill from a mirage was also shown on the news. it made me want to become a fighter pilot, unfortunately I sucked at math so never followed through

Hvala Medo! Vidim da rješavaš propuštena videa 😁

@@showtime112 😁dobar materijal nikad ne zastarijeva

There's one about South African Impalas shooting down Angolan helicopters. Maybe some others in the future but currently, there's not enough right assets in flight simulations.

I said Mayra?

MiG-23s, a few years later.

@@showtime112 Not so much, but the all aspect missile was. Cobus Toerien says that due to tactics and training, they had no problem taking on the Mig 23, but the missiles did cause problems.

@@dougerrohmer In any case, when MiG-23 gets released (hopefully soon but Razbam can take their time), there will be a video or two about it.

@@showtime112 I'll look out for it! Good work!

Well, with their missiles being what they were, it was either that or ramming them 😁

Thanks for the comment!

Nekoliko zemalja je koristilo tu istu ili sličnu shemu koliko mi se čini.

@@showtime112 da, al fino izgleda ova trobojnica na repu

Thanks. Dogfights was the biggest inspiration for these videos.

@@showtime112 you know, i had similar ideas for warthunder and created a video, but i lacked the willpower to continue and published that One, keep It up. I didn't Remember the name of the series in english, but i loved It when i was a kid

@@alessandromazzini7026 Well, it does take effort and you can't just make five or six of them each week, that's true.

Some sources suggest that one of the MiGs had to do a gear up landing so I thought it would be cool to do it that way 😁

You're a far better pilot than me. Whenever I've tried landing without functional gear in a 21 it always ends in a bonfire.

@@donaldedwards3195 Maybe it's the fuel state. I set it to be almost empty here.

@@donaldedwards3195 Descent rate could be too high, or you're just hitting a nasty bump in the terrain. Generally the 21 is pretty well-behaved when it needs to be bellied in DCS. I usually drop the airbrakes at the last moment as an additional barrier between me and the ground - the real life procedure is airbrakes and manual nosewheel release, but if you drop the nosewheel in DCS it will almost always cause you to flip over and die. Ideally you want to be a bit fast and then just lose the speed in the last few seconds before touching down, minimise vertical speed even if it means touching down fast. Friction can solve the horizontal speed problem, nothing is going to solve the vertical speed one.

Fishbed on its fishbelly.

I think they knew hos to use them but the missiles were generally unreliable.

Ovisi o tome koliko je komplicirano istraživanje i u kojoj mjeri AI i DCS-ov replay track surađuje. Obično od tri do pet dana.

Well, you can always donate and we will make them more expensive.

It wasn't a bad fighter but like MiG-23, it appeared just when fourth generation was being developed. They were both outdated when they entered service. Phantom came a decade earlier so it had a much longer period when it was the coolest thing around.

@@showtime112 not a bad fighter at all, but as for warthunder Is literally the worst you can get at top tier, not even top tier, because of the meta... Meta Is All-aspect and flares or turnfighter/rate fight and flares

Some say it was a proxy war fought on behalf of the USA / CIA etc.

As a South African, I don't think there was any greed in the Cuban's motivation - maybe just a desire to impress the orcs. As for the South Africans, we had a mandate dating back to WW1 to protect the then South West Africa (Namibia) and there were enough reasons to believe that SWA needed protection. Don't let anybody tell you that SWAPO were the nice guys. So from the South African point of view, the motive firstly was pride, and secondly trying to stop the southward rollout of communism. No rights or wrongs implied, just explaining motives.

@@dougerrohmer As a South African, I 100% support the Russians in the Ukraine. Killing Azov battalion Nazi scum.