Abraham Gubler said:
To move away from the work of Brian Gowans for a second I've just started reading "Iron Fist from the Sea", the story of the SADF naval recce commando. There is loads of stuff in there about a few of their special forces boats "Barracuda". I will warm up the scanner when I get a chance but it did spark in my mind the little information out there about the SAS Tafleberg after it was modified to an assault transport and the SAN "Delta" landing craft. Sure these were all built projects but so little information is available publicly about them. I for one would appreciate any imagery other than the paltry stuff available on the internet.
There were quite a few different specialized boats that 4 Recce/4SFR used over the years, I have some good pics of most of them, however for various reasons I cannot post them on the net. BTW just in case there is any miss-understanding, 4 Recce/4 SFR is and never was a naval unit (like the US SEALS), they fall under and report to Joint Ops and to the Chief of the SANDF (South African National Defence Force). They do have a very strong amphibious orientation, however they have also completed quite a few purely land based operations (one being successful tank hunting teams during our war in Angola in the late 1980's).
I wrote a chapter for the book, however I don't have my own copy yet, I am expecting one of the authors to present me with a signed copy once he comes up to my neck of the woods again. So I would be curious to hear what your thoughts are on it (once you have had some more time to read through it).
Covert_shores, there were also something like 3 different locally built SDV's built for 4 Recce/4 SFR (apart from any foreign ones they may have obtained), I'm not sure as to how experimental they were verses how much operational usage they had though. They are rather touchy about them (in the past), so I stayed away from asking about them - I should follow up on it though...
I meant to mention this in another thread, since we are on books I might as well mention it here - I have had two meetings with Helmoed Romer Heitman and he thinks my idea of a book covering all the prototype/projects/secret projects that South Africa started or had going as projects of some sort or another, is a good one. I have been drafting a list of projects (naval/air/army/SF/Medics/Space etc) that I believe falls into the prototype or developmental project categories. We will start working on it slowly and it might see the light of day in about 2-3 years time.
