Camp Steve - Surviving the ride: a pictorial history of South African-manufactured mine-protected vehicles

Authors note

A few months into our book project we became acutely aware of just what a difficult task we had taken on. An enormous amount of research and development was carried out into mine-protected vehicles in South Africa during the seventies and eighties, yet very little is known about the actual details.

The companies that were involved in those pioneering years have mostly closed down since then, or their intellectual property changed hands and, sadly, many records and photographs have been lost along the way. The people involved have, 40 years on, mostly retired and moved home, some have emigrated and some have passed away.

Another challenge was that much of this development happened in great secrecy because of the UN-led international arms embargo against South Africa. There were many vehicles that never went beyond prototypes and, while through word of mouth we knew these vehicles existed, tracing their history was no mean task. Despite our best efforts, we are sure that there are still some projects and perhaps even vehicles produced in small numbers that we have been unable to identify.

Finding good photos of these vehicles, particularly photos taken in the operational area, proved very difficult, given the secrecy surrounding their development and the strictly enforced SADF policy of not allowing cameras in the operational area. Many of those that we did find were unfortunately not very good from the point of view of reproduction. Apart from these challenges, the industry itself is a very complex one, and it has been difficult trying to complete the jigsaw to establish an overall picture and time line of who was developing what and when, with many of the important details lost to the mists of time.

We have tried our best to capture this important part of South Africas military history as accurately as possible before more of it is lost for good. In some cases, however, there was only scant information available, forcing us to make educated assumptions, which in some instances may not be absolutely accurate.

It has been a fascinating journey, with some interesting discoveries along the way, and we hope we have captured this important aspect of our history adequately. South Africans can be proud of the mine-protection technology that was born in this country and which led South Africa to become a global leader in this field.

Foreword

The pictorial history of mine-protected vehicles put together by Steve Camp and Helmoed-Rmer Heitman in Surviving the Ride is a collectors item and a must read book. Paging through the chapters, I once again realised how innovative and ingenious South African scientists, engineers, technicians, artisans and soldiers have been in conceptualising, designing, developing, testing and producing such a variety of world class mine-protected vehicles.

These vehicles have saved, and still will save, many South African and other soldiers and civilians in unconventional wars where the landmine is employed as a cheap and nasty terrorist weapon.

When the United Nations enforced the Arms Embargo on South Africa in the mid-70s, there were no allies we could turn to for support, and we had to develop our own designs and the test criteria for developing vehicles to protect soldiers and civilians from the devastating effects of anti-tank mine explosions.