Synopsis
Through late 1987 and early 1988, the battlefields of southern Angola moved ever further away from the border with South West Africa/Namibia, until the showdown between the Soviet and Cuban-supported government in Luanda and South African-supported insurgency of UNITA culminated in the controversial and still much disputed Battle of Cuito Cuanavale.
During this period, Angolan and Cuban airpower slowly grew to a point where it outmatched the SAAF, in turn limiting the freedom of movement of the SADF and UNITA ground forces, and reducing their operations to attritional battles, with little chance of achieving major victories on terms acceptable to the government in Pretoria.
As the changing political climate between East and West, and in Africa began to bring about and end to the South African intervention in Angola and the occupation of South West Africa/Namibia, the government of Angola was able to switch its attentions to dealing with UNITA.
Volume 5 of War of Intervention in Angola examines in detail this final period of Cuban involvement in the long and tragic civil war that ruined Angola between 1975 and 1992. While the emphasis is upon the operations of the Angolan and Cuban air forces, it also details how these impacted upon the ground operations of all parties. This volume is richly illustrated with original photographs of the forces involved, specially commissioned maps of the ground operations, and a range of full color artworks.
About the Authors
Adrien Fontanellaz, from Switzerland, is a military history researcher and author. He developed a passion for military history at an early age and has progressively narrowed his studies to modern-day conflicts. He is a member of the Scientific Committee of the Pully-based Centre d’histoire et de prospective militaries (Military History and Prospectives Center), and regularly contributes for the Revue Militaire Suisse and various French military history magazines. He is co-founder and a regular contributor to the French military history website L’autre cotè de la colline.
Tom Cooper is an Austrian aerial warfare analyst and historian. Following a career in worldwide transportation business – during which he established a network of contacts in the Middle East and Africa – he moved into narrow-focus analysis and writing on small, little-known air forces and conflicts, about which he has collected extensive archives. This has resulted in specialization in such Middle Eastern air forces as of those of Egypt, Iran, Iraq, and Syria, plus various African and Asian air forces. Except for authoring and co-authoring more than 30 books - including about a dozen of titles for Helion’s @War series - and over 1000 articles, Cooper is a regular correspondent for multiple defense-related publications.
José Matos is an independent researcher in military history in Portugal with a primary interest in operations of the Portuguese Air Force during the colonial wars in Africa, especially in Guinea. He is a regular contributor to numerous European magazines on military aviation and naval subjects, and has collaborated in the major project ‘The Air Force at the end of the Empire’, published in Portugal in 2018. This is his first instalment for Helion.
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