Hi Carlos

Thank you for your message.

I've secretly been hoping that someone would come along and grab the chance to document the 5 Signals story. There is so much to tell, and it should be told.

If you'll be so kind to send me the co-ords of the Phalagat, Louis Trichard and Olifantshoek locations, and include some info on each; I'd be more than happy to post it up and share the story.

Mooi loop

5 Signals Regiment

Was (not sure if they still are) a land based electronic warfare (EW) unit in the South African Defence Force (SADF or now SADNF) based in Wonderboom north of Pretoria. The unit was involved in strategic and tactical activities these were both overt and covert, inside and outside the South African borders. The unit's main goals were, intelligence gathering, electronic counter measures and counter intelligence activities. The unit had several static EW stations dotted around South Africa and in Namibia mostly along the Angolan border, it also had mobile units both soft skin (used in operation inside SA) and hard skin (inside Angola and as UNITA EW support).

The location for 1 Military Hospital (original) is not correct. As far as I know the hospital was just south (200 to 400 metres) of the location shown in your collection of placemarks. It has now been demolished.

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Excellent! Good work. Thanks Clint.

I have updated the above post with a rather bland description of 5 Sigs,

I hope to add a more comprehensive description on Wikipedia (so everyone can help fix my mistakes/gaps in knowledge).

This way to world can know what these guys accomplished.

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There was an excellent programme on on BBC a few weeks back about the Cuban involvement in Angola, some of the points.
1) The Battle of Cuito Cuanavale, was run but Fidel himself via phone from Cuba.
2) there were 450 000 Cubans deployed in Angola.
3) Prior to Cuito Cuanavale they move ALL of they aerial defense systems from Cuba to Angola.
4) 25000 people died during the 6 months of the CuitoC battle.

Nambia was given independence, as an exchange for a Cuba and a SA withdrawal from Angola. (Negotiated by Magnus and Pik in Cairo, while CuitoC was going on)

The way the americans were able to judge the Cuban strenghs were by counting the baseball fields in Angola using sattelite imagery as the Cuban army regulation specified that one baseball field per certian amount of soldiers be build.

Cuba will not release the information on how many cubans perished in Angola.

I was based at the signal base in phalaborwa in 1977 and have not been back since. Do you know if anything still remains of the base and what its coordinates are ? Thanks