z-logo
open-access-imgOpen Access
THE SECRET SOUTH AFRICAN PROJECT TEAM: BUILDING STRIKE CRAFT IN ISRAEL, 1975-79
Author(s) -
Thean Potgieter
Publication year - 2012
Publication title -
scientia militaria
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 2309-9682
pISSN - 2224-0020
DOI - 10.5787/32-2-132
Subject(s) - craft , navy , government (linguistics) , politics , project team , service (business) , on board , management , political science , engineering , history , public administration , law , archaeology , business , linguistics , philosophy , marketing , economics

Though the history of the South African Navy (SAN) only dates back to 1922, for most of its history it depended on Britain for warships. The British Royal Navy on the other hand had an unbroken involvement with maritime defence along the South African Coast and the protection of the Cape Sea Route from 1806 to 1975 (when the Simon’s Town Agreement was cancelled). However, political tension between South Africa’s apartheid government and Britain caused a break in this relationship, forcing the SAN to acquire warships from alternative sources.

A number of South African efforts to acquire corvettes failed during the 1970s, leaving the strike craft project as the only major warship project of the SAN to succeed for close to three decades. This project had an overseas as well as a local building phase. As part of the overseas phase, a project team was dispatched to Israel in 1975 to oversee the building and commissioning into the SAN, of three strike craft. The project team consisted of the Armaments Board (AB, Armscor after 1977) team as well as the SAN project team. While the AB/Armscor had to oversee the building process, the SAN team had to prepare to take the vessels into service.

The content you want is available to Zendy users.

Already have an account? Click here to sign in.
Having issues? You can contact us here