Talk:South African Air Force

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[edit] Strange aircraft

Hi, perhaps someone here can help me identify this aircraft that flew low over me on 2 May at about 18h30. I was at Modderfontien and this strange aircraft was flying east from Johannesburg International towards Johannesburg. Although it was getting dark I saw no markings or identification. This is all I can give you: it was a medium size twin turboprop, guessing about 10m plus in length, not sure but I think it had straight wings, it had a sharp nose cone over a metre long, it had a tail what look like a MAD boom, it had a small white object on its belly which looked like those search radars found on maritime aircraft and lastly it had a cable that ran from the nose to the starboard wing to the tail to the port wing and back to the nose. Sorry but that is all I could get although it flew low and slowly over head it was getting dark. It is smaller than the DC-3s that we use for MR if that helps --Jcw69 13:12, 5 May 2005 (UTC)

Sounds like the Spectrum Air Basler BT-67 operated by Anglo-American. Impi 11:18, 7 May 2005 (UTC)

[edit] 2nd oldest independent?

How is this determined? The RAF is the oldest, and the article says the SAAF was indendent in 1951, but the US Air Force was independent in 1947 and the French Air Force in the 1930s. --Awiseman 17:21, 4 October 2006 (UTC)

The following I got of the SAAF website maybe it helps clear up things: Col Pierre van Ryneveld was appointed Director Air Services (DAS) with effect from 1 February 1920 with instructions to establish an air force for the Union. This date is acknowledged as marking the official birth of the SAAF.http://www.af.mil.za/about_us/history.html

Accesed 16 March 2007 -Franco

[edit] huh?

I don't know who wrote this...

"Due to the international arms embargo imposed against South Africa, the SAAF was unable to procure modern fighter aircraft to compete with the MiG-23s fielded by the Cubans in this conflict."

South Africa had both Mirage III's and Mirage F-1's in the air during the Angola war. Both of those were capable aircraft when compared with the MiG-23. The only big problem that the SAAF had was that their air-to-air missile, the V3 Kukri stank on ice. We need to rework this section a bit.

http://www.acig.org/artman/publish/article_184.shtml

Plaasjaapie (talk) 23:07, 18 April 2008 (UTC)

Yes, I was thinking the exact same thing. There are numberous quotes from South African Serviceman stating that in most cases the Angolan and Cuban pilots were laughable. A MiG-23 was only taken seriously when there was a Russian pilot inside. Even then, the Mirages were easily a match for them. The nationality of the pilot could be identified by the language they spoke on their radio. Werner ghost (talk) 08:25, 17 May 2008 (UTC)

I disagree. The MiG-23 had better manoeuvrability, acceleration and rates of climb than the Mirage F1 across virtually the entire engagement window. This allowed MiG-23 pilots to effectively set the terms of an engagement, especially at the altitudes at which they were commonly flown over Angola, as a result of which SAAF pilots were forced to invent zoom-up flight profiles designed to take the MiGs by surprise and escape cleanly if the attack did not work. Further, there's no real evidence of Russian pilots being present in Angola, and if there were any they were in extremely short numbers. Not that it matters, since contrary to your statement the Cubans were not 'laughable' but were actually skilled and dangerous opponents. Indeed, the only Mirage F1 lost in an air-to-air engagement (Capt. Arthur Piercy's '206') was hit by a missile from a Cuban-piloted MiG-23. That said, the usual claims of absolute MiG-23 superiority over Angola are incorrect; S.African F1 pilots scored close-calls or near hits on at least four MiG-23s (none of which are confirmed as having actually been destroyed though), which is a testament to the to training of SAAF pilots. In sum, I agree that the original sentence should be changed to something more neutral and accurate, but we should be careful to avoid falling into the trap of believing the troepie stories that accompany every conflict and get more impressive in every telling. The lack of better aircraft and missiles meant that the SAAF could never hope to achieve air-superiority over Angola. — Impi (talk) 10:39, 17 May 2008 (UTC)