bike squad rider

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This website was established by former bike squad riders to preserve the history, personal stories, photos, documents, and other information about the small unit. As such it is a work in progress, constantly evolving and expanding. It has been an idea for 20 years, and the average age of the men who served in Bike Squad is now around  62. It’s never too late!

HISTORIC CONTEXT

After the First World War the former German colony of South West Africa, Namibia today, was governed by South Africa under a 1919 League of Nations (later UN) mandate imposed by the Treaty of Versailles. In 1922 SA Prime Minister General Jan Smuts attempted to annex SWA into South Africa but encountered much international resistance to his plan. When the Second World War started in 1939 the situation had been at an impasse for many years, and after the war became progressively more of a political football. In the mid-1950s local opposition to South African rule escalated and culminated in the creation of the South West Africa Peoples’ Organisation (SWAPO) in April 1960. 

SWAPO was a militant organisation from its inception. After Tanzania, itself a former German colony, allowed SWAPO to open an office in Dar es Salaam, personnel were sent to the USSR and Egypt for military training in preparation for an insurgency campaign. The first seven trainees returned to Tanzania and established training camps in the Kongwa area, 300 km inland from Dar es Salaam. By 1965 SWAPO had offices in Lusaka, Cairo, and London. The first six insurgents departed Kongwa for SWA in September, and larger groups followed in 1966 when Group One appeared to have escaped detection by the South African Police. Group Two got lost in Angola, murdered three Angolan civilians, and most were captured by the Angolan authorities or SAP before they reached Ovamboland. A third group infiltrated in July 1966 and a training camp was established at Ongulumbashe, 40 km inside SWA in far west Ovamboland.

The SAP became aware of the camp and assaulted it by helicopter with the support of SADF soldiers on 26 August 1966. Only 17 insurgents were in the camp and the relatively minor battle resulted in two insurgents killed, one wounded, and eight captured. The SAP and SADF suffered no casualties. Both SWAPO and the SADF regarded Ongulumbashe as the start of the ‘border war’, also known as the bush war.

The frequency and intensity of skirmishes and landmine incidents increased over the next several years, and by 1974 the South African Police was no longer able to control the escalating hostilities. On 1 April 1974 the South African Defence Force assumed control of all counter-insurgency (COIN) operations and the ‘police action’ officially turned into a war. Unrest, insurgencies, and upheavals were occurring all over Africa as local populations rebelled against the colonial powers. In 1975 the Portuguese government suddenly withdrew from its former colonies of Mocambique and Angola and dumped both countries into civil war. The former resistance movements turned on each other, and the Soviet-supported FRELIMO in Mocambique and MPLA in Angola soon gained the upper hand because of inconsistent and half-hearted Western support for the anti-Marxist movements.

In Angola, UNITA and FNLA started a civil war against the MPLA that would only end in 2002 and devastate the oil-rich country. With US and CIA support, four South African Defence Force battle groups totalling 3000 men largely equipped with Second World War weapons became clandestinely involved on the side of UNITA and FNLA. They fought the first actions by South African forces since the Union Defence Force in the Italian campaign in 1945, code-named Operation Savannah. In November 1975 Soviet-funded Cuban personnel and large quantities of modern Soviet weapons started arriving in Angola to bolster the MPLA. After the USA halted aid to UNITA and FNLA in December, the SADF withdrew from Angola by March 1976. The FNLA was practically wiped out and UNITA retreated into the densely wooded highlands in southwestern Angola. The vacuum left by the Portuguese withdrawal and the MPLA victory was soon filled by SWAPO, which set up numerous training camps in southern Angola.

SADF

Reorganisation

The SADF, which had seen no action in 30 years except for a fighter squadron in the Korean War, was woefully unprepared for war. South Africa’s defence budget doubled between 1972 and 1977 as new weapons, vehicles, and equipment were acquired or developed, and large-scale reorganisation took place after 1976. Studies of other COIN wars, and clandestine police involvement in the Rhodesian bush war, showed that insurgencies could only be defeated by ‘boots on the ground’. One of the units involved in Operation Savannah named Bravo Group, which later became 32 Battalion, had evacuated two tribes of ‘Bushmen’ or San people, the original inhabitants of southern Africa, from Angola when they withdrew to South West Africa in early 1976.

The fieldcraft and tracking skills of these Bushmen, saved from certain extinction in Angola, were put to use tracking insurgents in the mostly flat areas south of the Angolan border: Ovamboland, the most developed central-western area with a large civilian population; and the Kavango and the Caprivi Strip in the east, which were sparsely populated and densely bushed.

equestrian centre

After taking over COIN operations from the Police, and some harsh lessons learned during Operation Savannah, the SADF experimented with many unique operational concepts. The SADF Dog School, which was also responsible for everything horse-related, had been established at Voortrekkerhoogte on 1 April 1964. In 1974 it was split into separate units to train and handle dogs and horses.

The SADF Dog Centre moved to Bourke’s Luck in the Eastern Transvaal and the SADF Equestrian Centre was established on the farm Welgegund, 13 km north of the Western Transvaal town of Potchefstroom, in January 1974. The size of an understrength battalion, Equestrian Centre’s main focus was training horses and soldiers for the bush war, and raising the level of horsemanship in the SADF. The first operational horse platoon went to northern SWA in September 1974, a few months after the SADF had assumed control of the escalating bush war.

1 SWASPES

During its reorganisation and expansion from 1976-1980, the SADF created several units focused on tracking of insurgents: dogs, human trackers, and horse- and motorcycle mounted specialist troops. A battalion-sized administrative unit named 1 South West Africa Specialist Unit (1 SWASPES) was created in Ovamboland on 1 June 1977 to control and deploy these units after training at their home bases in South Africa. The small specialised units were attached to the larger ‘modular’ infantry battalions that controlled specific areas of Ovamboland: 51 Battalion at Ruacana in the west; 52 at Ogongo; 53 at Ondangwa; and 54 at Eenhana in the east.

All specialist infantry troops were volunteers selected from various army units soon after the National Service intakes in January and July. Within a week or two after the thousands of young men -- most straight out of high school -- made their somewhat rude acquaintance with military life, they were visited by delegations from the specialist units like Infantry School, where ‘Junior Leaders’ ie. platoon commanders and --sergeants were trained; the parachute battalion; special forces; and the various specialist tracker units that made up 1 SWASPES.

The Border War

It is not known exactly when or how the idea of motorcycle-mounted troops originated. However, it is not far-fetched to assume that someone in the first horse platoon in 1974 saw the open terrain of central and western Ovamboland and remarked that it was ideal motorcycle terrain, and that reports to that effect made their way up the chain of command until it found a receptive ear. SADF tactics and culture were historically influenced by mobile guerilla tactics dating back to the Boer War, and motorcycles were likely viewed as modern-day cavalry. General Magnus Malan, a keen horseman, had been a driving force behind the establishment of Equestrian Centre and was most certainly part of the decision chain that gave birth to a specialist motorcycle mounted infantry unit. The first motorcycle platoon was formed at 1 SWASPES soon after its establishment at Okatope in Ovamboland under command of Major Dawid Mentz.

Far from logistic and technical support, and too small to exist on its own, a motorcycle home unit was established at Equestrian Centre at Potchefstroom. Known by most as ‘Berede’ (an abbreviation of its its Afrikaans name, Berede Sentrum) the unit was composed of three Wings, the equivalent of companies in infantry units. Operational Wing, as the horse platoons were officially known, usually had four mounted platoons in training and Motorcycle Wing one or two. Equestrian Wing, the horsemanship and competitive component, was roughly the size of the motorcycle wing. The horse and motorcycle platoons were numbered sequentially. Motorcycle platoons numbered 1 to 14 became known as bike squad during the eight years of their existence and deployment as mechanised cavalry. 

After a tough physical and intellectual selection process, the typical bike squad intake of approximately 120 volunteers transferred to Equestrian Centre. After nine months of training, two platoons of around 30 men each went on operational service. Some intakes of 50--60 volunteers produced only one platoon. Attrition as high as 75-90% between the start of training and the end of operational service gives an idea of the hazards of the job. The six weeks long riding course claimed many victims through injury and others were RTU’ed, ‘returned to unit’, for a variety of reasons.

Bike squad riding courses were intense and fast-paced and added additional stress to standard infantry training, which was very rigorous in the SADF. Bike squad volunteers were a mix of experienced riders and total novices. Those who made it through two years in the unit were invariably expert riders by the end of their National Service. Bike squad created many life-long motorcycle riders and racers.

Bike squad had a permanent Demonstration Team which stayed in Potchefstroom when the platoons went to Ovamboland. Demo Team was composed of highly skilled riders called up for National Service, most of whom were national level competitors in various disciplines of motorcycle racing: motocross, off-road racing, observed trials, and road racing. These men served as riding instructors and mechanics, gave impressive displays of riding skill at venues like the Rand Show and Durban Military Tattoo, and were allowed to race on weekends and fulfill sponsorship obligations. Numerous SA Champions, especially in motocross and off-road racing, served in bike squad.

Motorcycles have been used in military applications since 1914 during the First World War -- and also famously by the Mexican rebel Pancho Villa, who attacked New Mexico in the USA in 1916 after two years of stoking revolution in his own country. The most recent use of motorcycles in wartime was by US and British special forces in Iraq and Afghanistan. In a century of wartime motorcycle use, no unit except SADF bike squad is known to have deliberately ridden into contact like cavalry of old. German motorcycle-mounted infantry units on the Eastern front in the Second World War came closest to the tactics used by the SWASPES bikes, but they did not ride into direct combat either. No other unit had specific formation, ambush, and contact drills as bike squad did.

The 14 bike squad platoons from 1977-1985 formed a unique specialist unit the likes of which will never be seen again on the African savannah, or anywhere else. Of the hundreds of thousands of young South African men who did compulsory military service in the SADF from the 1970s to the 1990s, approximately 450 rode motorcycles into action with bike squad.

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