Koos Stadler - Recce - Small Team Operations Behind Enemy Lines

KOOS STADLER is a professional soldier and former Recce who has been awarded, among others, the Honoris Crux (bronze) for bravery. As a member of the Special Forces’ specialist reconnaissance unit, or Small Teams, he was involved in numerous strategic operations behind enemy lines for five years of the Border War.

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Copyright © in text Koos Stadler 2015

Copyright © front cover photo Koos Stadler. Depicted are Stadler and CC Victorino.

Copyright on maps © Eddie Francis and Robin Jay

All rights reserved.

No part of this electronic book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including photocopying and recording, or by any other information storage or retrieval system, without written permission from the publisher.

Cover design by Mike Cruywagen

E-book design by Nazli Jacobs

Available in print:

First edition in 2015

ISBN: 978-0-624-06944-7

Epub edition:

First edition in 2015

ISBN: 978-0-624-06945-4 (epub)

Mobi edition:

First edition 2015

ISBN: 978-0-624-06946-1 (mobi)

The AMD-65 (in Hungarian: Automata Módosított Deszant 1965) was the upgraded paratrooper version (with folding stock) of the Russian AKM assault rifle.

On 19 December the US Senate passed a bill, known as the Clark Amend­ment, to force the White House to terminate its support of both UNITA and the FNLA. The senators were clearly not eager to be trapped on the side of the apartheid regime. See Scholtz, L, The SADF and the Border War . Tafelberg Publishers: Cape Town, 2013.

Sector 10 covered Kaokoland and Ovamboland; Sector 20 covered Kavango and Western Caprivi; and Sector 70 covered Eastern Caprivi.

Later, when the Zambians closed the door on SWAPO and demanded that they evacuate their training bases in the west of the country, the reconnaissance teams started operating exclusively within Sector 10’s area of responsibility in Ovamboland.

Ultra-high frequency (UHF) was generally used for communications with jet fighters, while VHF was used with choppers and slower fixed wings.

FAPLA, or People’s Armed Forces for the Liberation of Angola, originally the armed wing of the MPLA, was the Angolan regular army.

The Ratel, a six-wheeled infantry fighting vehicle (IFV), is still used by the SANDF.

The Buffel was a mine-protected infantry mobility vehicle (or troop carrier) that could carry a section of ten men.

EMLC, the Afrikaans acronym for “electrical, mechanical, agricultural and chemical engineering consultants” (Elektriese, Meganiese, Landbou­kundige en Chemiese ingenieurskonsultante), became highly controversial due to its link with the Civil Cooperation Bureau (CCB) and allegations that it had manufactured different kinds of deadly devices to support the apartheid regime.

The PKM 7.62-mm general-purpose machine gun, developed in the Soviet Union in 1961, is still in wide use today.

Mine-protected infantry mobility vehicle originally developed by the CSIR.

Sawong was an acronym for “Suid-Afrikaanse Weermag Operasionele Navorsingsgebied”, or South African Defence Force Operational Research Area.

The Heckler & Koch MP5 9-mm submachine gun is widely used by special operations and specialised law-enforcement units worldwide.

The Syncal 30 HF radio, as well as the base station radios, were equipped with “hopping mode”, a function whereby the two (or more) radios would use the same code to synchronise and then run (“hop”) through different frequencies while communicating. This was applied as an electronic counter-countermeasure (ECCM) to disrupt enemy listening-in or direction-finding devices.

Food that was pre-cooked, vacuum-packed and then irradiated at Pelindaba to last for months.

FAA, or Força Aérea Angolana, is the Angolan Air Force.