1 Recce. Alexander Strachan
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heard this news, it was too late to do anything about the matter – the mines could not be removed as they had already been activated. It became a very long night for them, knowing that Durban harbour with its many fuel tanks was literally a powder keg waiting to explode.
To their relief, nothing happened and the ship put to sea the following day. It was assumed that the delay mechanisms might have malfunctioned or that the mines had slipped off and landed at the bottom of the harbour. Another possibility was that the ship could have departed with all the mines attached and that they had been washed off somewhere in the ocean. The fate of the mines has remained a mystery to this day.
This foray by Cmdt. Jan Breytenbach and his team of Recces was nevertheless the first South African operational diving exercise, albeit that it was executed on home soil.
Their first sabotage mission outside South Africa’s borders took place in 1972. A decision was taken at government level that the regime of President Julius Nyerere of Tanzania should be destabilised because he had made training facilities available to Frelimo. In the view of the decision makers, these facilities were contributing to the escalation of the guerrilla war in Mozambique. The plan was to foment unrest in Tanzania with a series of sabotage attacks.8 It was assumed that the Tanzanians would attribute any act of sabotage to Nyerere’s opponent Oscar Kambona, a former non-Marxist cabinet minister.
The Recces were tasked with conducting the operation, and the Tanzanian capital Dar es Salaam was chosen as the first target. Somewhere en route to their destination, the team would board a Navy submarine that had already sailed from Simon’s Town. The plan was for the submarine to deliver them to a position close to Dar es Salaam, from where they would paddle to the beach in kayaks under cover of darkness and infiltrate the city on foot. Specific infrastructure targets were identified on which they had to plant limpet mines with delay mechanisms. After withdrawing to the beach, they were to paddle in the kayaks to a predetermined RV where the submarine would pick them up.
Breytenbach chose five men to carry out the assignment with him: Trevor, Kenaas, Koos and the two naval members who had dived with them at Swartvlei Lake in December the year before, Ken Brewin and Willie Dewey. Since they were total novices when it came to seaborne operations, the Recce operators first spent four months on sea training.
They used Cockleshell Heroes by CE Lucas Phillips and HG Hasler as a guideline. The book is a detailed account of a similar submarine-launched raid by British commandos during the Second World War. But Breytenbach and company were faced with a practical problem: the group had no kayaks. Koos’s father then came to their rescue by ordering three Klepper kayaks (a kind of collapsible canoe) from Germany for the planned operation. James Moorcroft had very good contacts among the Germans, and the Kleppers were brought into the country clandestinely.
Strict security was maintained throughout the group’s training, and no one except Breytenbach knew where the operation would take place. The Special Forces always used cover stories – which had been planned and coordinated at the highest level – to conceal the real nature and location of an operation.
The team would fly from Pretoria in a Skymaster to the Mozambican coast where they were to be picked up by a Portuguese frigate (a small, fast military ship). Breytenbach briefed the team on the target and the task at hand. Kenaas (their explosives expert) prepared the charges, and each member of the group knew exactly what he had to do and how the task had to be carried out.
On their arrival at Nacala on the Mozambican coast, they discovered that the Portuguese frigate had failed to arrive – it was waiting in Beira. So they flew to Beira, where they boarded the frigate. In the open sea, the frigate made contact with the submarine SAS Emily Hobhouse (S-98), which was captained by Cdr. LJ ‘Woody’ Woodburne, and the operators went aboard.
The initial plan was that the team would be dropped at a distance of 20 km from the target because the Chief of the Navy, V. Adm. J Johnson, was worried that the living coral reefs in the vicinity of the harbour could damage the submarine. When Breytenbach objected vehemently, Woodburne undertook to drop them off secrectly much closer to the coast.
The six-man team assembled their three Klepper kayaks on the deck of the submarine and packed all their equipment and explosives inside. At 20:00 they were dropped about 14 km from the coast. They could see the lights of Dar es Salaam in the distance. The group was very tense, especially as it was the first time they were tackling an operation of this nature.
Each team member was armed with an AK-47 with only one magazine. Koos and Trevor had each strapped a canvas pouch with a few extra cartridges to one of their legs as an emergency measure. The operators were all in civilian dress. If they ran into anybody on shore, the clothing would assist them to explain their presence with a fictitious story.
The sailors helped to keep the Kleppers stable against the hull of the submarine with ropes while the team climbed in. It was difficult because the Kleppers could overturn easily, especially in rough sea conditions. Luckily, the sea was fairly calm that night, and everything went smoothly. The sailors released the ropes, and the submarine disappeared under the water. Now the team were thrown on their own resources. It was dead quiet around them, save for the sound of the water lapping against the Kleppers.
They reckoned that in the favourable weather conditions they would be able to paddle at 6 km per hour and reach the Tanzanian coast within two and a half hours. Koos recalls that at that moment a great calm descended on him, probably because they had practised everything so thoroughly.
Breytenbach, who paddled in front along with Floyd, navigated and led the formation. Koos and Kenaas were to the right of them, with Ken and Willie a short distance behind. At some point, a wave that came surging from behind suddenly thrust Koos and Kenaas’s kayak past that of Breytenbach and Floyd. An annoyed Breytenbach ordered them to keep to the established procedure.
At the target area, the beach was dark and deserted. The two naval members stayed behind there to hide the kayaks and keep guard. By then the sea water had already washed off the ‘black is beautiful’ with which the team had camouflaged themselves on the submarine. To Breytenbach, this was a minor setback: ‘A white guy wearing black is beautiful actually just looks like a white guy wearing black is beautiful.’
The streets were still busy despite the late hour, and passersby paid little attention to the four Recces in their civilian clothes. They first headed for the golf club, sneaked across the green lawns, and placed mines under the vehicles in the parking area. The golf club, which was frequented by dignitaries, had great publicity value. On the spur of the moment, even the British High Commissioner’s Rolls Royce got a mine against its engine block. All the charges were set with time-delay mechanisms. Then they returned to the Kleppers to fetch the charges for the bridge. They followed the course of the riverbed towards the target. Placing the mines on the bridge was nerve-racking, as there was a constant flow of vehicles over it. Everything went smoothly, however, and Breytenbach enquired whether there were any explosives left. Koos and Kenaas placed these against a power pylon to disrupt the power supply for good measure.
Their task completed, the four operators withdrew to the beach where Ken and Willie were waiting anxiously. Everyone was now in a hurry to get out, and they launched the Kleppers through the waves at great speed. According to Koos, they ‘paddled so fast that one could have skied behind a Klepper’. They were about a kilometre away from the beach when the first charges detonated. When Koos looked back, he saw a horizon reddened by the blasts. At the golf club, too, the charges were now going off one after the other.
They paddled uninterruptedly towards the RV point where the submarine would be waiting, determining their direction by constantly taking compass bearings. Excellent navigation was always a hallmark of the Recces. As this was still the pre-GPS era, the group had to rely on time and distance to reach the correct destination in the open sea without the benefit of fixed reference points. Fourteen kilometres on, they reached the RV point at about 04:00. To their dismay, however, there was no sign of the submarine – and their emergency plan was somewhat sketchy. Unlike today, there were no Barracuda boats, helicopters or other surface ships to pick them up. They had to fend for themselves, and the emergency plan was to paddle from island to island in the direction of South Africa – something they were quite game for,