Customer Reviews

Taming the Landmine

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Peter Stiff has written an excellent account of the evolution of landmine protected vehicles in southern africa. Apart from an initial section on early armoured vehicles and their protective capabilities, the book focuses on the development thru trial, error and experience of mine-protected vehicles, firstly in Rhodesia in response to the terrorist mining campaign and then in South Africa as the terrorist threat their escalated.

The book contains a large number of photographes of the various vehicles that were developed and used, culminating with the current South African mine-protected armoured fighting vehicles which are some of the best available in the world. All in all, it's a very good read while the accompanying photo's really make the book.

If you don't have this book or have read it, you are simply not on top of the world of mine, countermine and counter-ambush. This book should be purchased en masse by the U.S. Army and made a standard student text at Combat Engineer School. Peter Stiff shows how the armies in the southern africa area SOLVED the land mine, automatic weapons fire ambush, and if we want to avoid learning the same lessons all over again at a high cost in destroyed lives, we should read and heed this book's ideas into our own Army. This is NOT being done as combat engineering concerns have been marginalized by armor/infantry branch officers dominating decision-making even though the LAND MINE is the biggest killer of our Soldiers since Vietnam.

Peter Stiff has written a truely outstanding history of the evolution of landmine protected vehicles in southern africa. Not only well-written but well-illustrated with excellent photo's of a wide range of the vehicles that were designed and built in both Rhodeasia and South Africa. The book starts of with early origins in Rhodeasia, where landmine-proof designs first evolved as a reaction to the terrorist laying of landmines targeting both civilian and military vehicles.

The book then moves on to South Africa and the development and evolution of a range of landmine protected vehicles by the South African Defence Forces for use in South-West Africa and later on within South Africa in the townships. Excellent history of the evolution of these vehicles, the variations, good photo's of them in use and of the damage they sustained when they set off mines. Most of these vehicles are still in use. In fact the Canadian Armed Forces recently purchased a lare number of them from South Africa to use in Afghanistan and India uses the Casspir's they purchased from South Africa in Kashmir.

What's obvious from the book is that the Rhodeasians and South Africans developed a type of vehicle which is outstanding in it's ability to successfully protect it's occupants from landmine explosions and ambushes by lightly armed guerilla forces, is easily repairable after such an attack and which is far better suited to counter-insurgency operations where the opposition doesn't possess armoured fighting vehicles of their own but rather relies on terrorist or guerilla-style tactics than other more conventional AFV's. A type of combat that the AFV's and light vehicles such as the Hummer's used by the US in Iraq (for example) are completely unsuited for as the US Army has shown us over the last couple of years.

Once more, this book teaches us that those who don't study history and learn from it are doomed to repeat it, something the US Army in Iraq is busy proving at the cost of thousands of lives and even more casualties. This book should be required reading for any military force involved in counter-insurgency operations, particularly in the desert, semi-desert or urban environments in which the design of these fighting vehicles evolved. The Rhodeasians and South African's took a practical approach to the strategic and tactical problems they faced, solved the problems of land-mines and ambushes by lightly-armed forces and minimized their casualties whilst consistently inflicting large #'s of casualties on the attacking forces (see also Peter Stiff's book, "Nine Days of War"). The vehicles illustrated in this book were the end result. It's well worth the read. Unfortunately for their soldiers, it appears the US Army is ignoring the lessons learnt from years of combat in southern africa. Hubris goeth before a fall.

As a personal aside, I have friends who fought from these vehicles in South-West (now Namibia) and in Angola and who survived land-mine explosions and ambushes and have the photo's to prove it. They've seen my copy of this book and swear by it's accuracy and that they owe their lives to the design of these vehicles. One friend whose Casspir hit land-mines twice swears he would now be deceased twice over if he'd been in a Hummer or a Stryker. All their Casspir lost was a wheel assembly each time - they were back up and running within a few hours with just a few bruises and the need for a couple of beers to sooth their nerves. Ponder on that when you think that most US casualties in Iraq have been from mines. What a waste.