SAMHSEC
Chairman: Malcolm Kinghorn culturev@lantic.net
Secretary: Stephen Bowker stephen@stephenbowker.co.za
Speaker coordinator: André Crozier andrecrozier@gmail.com
Scribe: vacant
Field trip coordinator: vacant
New Member
We welcome new member Michael Stack in Bfn aboard.
Passing of Andrew Biddlestone
We regret Andrew Biddlestone’s passing 10 March 2025. Andrew was a SAMHS Jhb member who was originally from Port Elizabeth.
SAMHSEC meeting 10 March 2025: 24 Squadron SAAF in North Africa and Italy 1944 & 19h45
Alan Witherden presented the experience of his Father, Lt Wyndham William Witherden (WWW), DFC, as a Navigator/Bomb Aimer in 24 Squadron.
He recounted WWW’s early life growing up: born in Middelburg, Transvaal, grew up on a dairy farm, lucky to survive Enteric Fever as an eight-year-old from which his Father died, shipped off to an Aunt in Brakpan as his Mother couldn’t cope with three young children, high school St Andrews, Grahamstown, B Com Degree at Rhodes University, graduated 1942.
1943 volunteered for military service, deployed to the South African Air Force and mustered as a Navigator/Bomb Aimer at Youngsfield Air Force Base in Cape Town, qualified as an Air Observer in December 1943.
January 1944 sent to Egypt, three months Operational Training Unit near Cairo to prepare for action. March 1944 joined 24 Squadron at Gambut Air Force Base, Libya, flying American manufactured Marauder twin-engined medium bombers, part of the Desert Air Force. Squadron Leader was Lt Col Cecil Margo who became a highly regarded Supreme Court Judge in South Africa in the 1960s/70s. Initial operations focussed on attacking enemy shipping in the Mediterranean and raids over Yugoslavia.
June 1944 Squadron move to AFB Pesacara, Italy and conducted raids on enemy targets that included heavily fortified machine gun and artillery installations on the Gothic Line, bridges, railway marshalling yards, ammunition dumps and enemy formations in close support of the advance of the Eighth Army. As the campaign advanced North, in December 1944 Squadron moved to AFB Jesi.
Promoted to Lead Navigator Bomb Aimer leading the squadron on raids with Lt Col Cecil Margo whose Assessment as an Operational Observer “EXCEPTIONAL” due to successful targeting. Recommended for DFC – “this Officer has invariably displayed outstanding gallantry and devotion to duty”. Tour ended April 1945 after 81 raids and returned to Union.
July – October 1945 volunteered for Shuttle Service SA/Egypt. “An exceptional Navigator who has received excellent reports from Pilots on the Shuttle Service”: Capt. J.E. Cawood. Demobilised.
Alan’s presentation is recorded on the Society's Video Library
SAMHSEC RPC 31 March 2025
Session 1: Captain Thomas Mangelly: Cold War Hero
Christine Mangelly Meimarides told us about the Cold War coffee meetings between Kim Philby of the British Secret Intelligence Service (SIS) and her father, Captain Thomas Mangelly of the American Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), relating to the Albanian Operation 1949 – 1954.
Christine was invited to present her father’s Cold War story by SAMHSEC member Ian Copley. She met Ian years ago when he was Ship’s Doctor and she the Cruise Director on a Greek cruise ship in the Mediterranean. They shared the adventure of the ship trying to sail up the side of the island of Santorini at 4 am. But that’s another story!
Captain Mangelly was involved in a secret Cold War operation by the British and the Americans from 1949 to 1952 for the Balkan country of Albania. He was born in Massachusetts in 1918 of Albanian immigrants and served in the US Army Air Corps during WW 2. He trained at Camp Ritchie Military Intelligence Center in Maryland and instructed there in Air Photo Interpretation. In 1949 he was “borrowed” from the Army by the CIA for a covert operation against Enver Hoxha’s Communist Albanian regime and attended meetings over coffee in the Pentagon in Washington, DC for operational planning with the SIS. The British agent was Kim Philby.
In early 1950 Captain Mangelly was training volunteer Albanian refugees in Munich, Germany, to be air dropped into Albania for intelligence activities. Most of the operatives were captured and executed due to Philby’s betrayal of the plans to the Russians, who then informed Hoxha. Captain Mangelly was burned in effigy and faced a death threat. The mission was recognised as a failure by December 1951.
Kim Philby was suspected and retired from the SIS, but was later exonerated and he returned to the SIS. Captain Mangelly was returned to the US Army, heartbroken for the mission’s failure, the suffering endured by the men and their families still in Albania and not understanding why. He later served a tour of duty in Korea and retired in 1960.
In 1963 when the British finally realised Philby had been a traitor since 1933 and was a double agent, he escaped to Russia.
In 1967 the London Sunday Times revealed the Albanian Operation’s secret existence and Philby’s key role. In 1984 Nicholas Bethel published his book, “The Great Betrayal, The Untold Story of Kim Philby’s Biggest Coup”. Captain Mangelly, although often mentioned in the book, declined to comment as he was still under Hoxha’s death threat. Hoxha died in 1985 and Philby in Moscow in 1988. In April 1995 Thomas Mangelly finally consented to talk about his part in the Albanian Operation and was interviewed in an Albanian newspaper "Illyria", where he was hailed as a Hero to the Albanian people. Christine concluded with details about her father’s death in 2011 on Pearl Harbor Day, his burial at Arlington National Cemetery and his lasting legacy as an Albanian Hero.
Christine’s presentation is revorded in the video library on the Society website.
In session 2, Robin Smith reviewed the book “Conflict: The Evolution of Warfare from 1945 to Ukraine” by General David Petraeus and Andrew Roberts.
Both authors should be very familiar to most of the people reading this newsletter:
General (four star) David Petraeus is one of America’s leading contemporary
fighting generals and Andrew Roberts is the author of a wide variety of books on
notable figures of history from Napoleon to Churchill.
The General was constantly in the news while he served in Iraq, first as Commander of 101 Airborne Division and later as Commander-in-Chief. He was later involved in Afghanistan.
Roberts and Petraeus together wrote this remarkable book which was published in 2023, about eighteen months after Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. Thus, it might be said that the chapter on Ukraine is rapidly being overtaken by the march of events.
The stated objective of the authors was to put Putin’s invasion of Ukraine into historical context. What was intended to be a swift and devastating attack which would topple its government by a coup de main, has had devastating consequences for both Russia and Ukraine.
The first chapter bears the title of “The Death of the Dream of Peace”. This was the world’s aspiration in 1945 after the horrific events of the Second World War. Indeed, it was five years before there was a war involving a cross-border invasion, although there was Civil War in China and the War of Independence in Israel. Korea began the West’s determination to oppose communism everywhere.
The Emergency in Malaya from 1945 to 1960 and conflicts in Aden, Oman and Borneo were examples of Britain’s policy of targeting the “hearts and minds” of the local population. All four of these conflicts had victorious outcomes.
About Vietnam, General Colin Powell reflected that America should have learned more from the French failure in Vietnam: “We should have realised that it was a war as much about nationalism and self-determination within this one country as it was about the ideology of Communism”.
The wars in Israel in 1956 (the Suez War), 1967 (the Six-Day War) and 1973 (the Yom Kippur War) saw very detailed analysis and study by the US Army and Air Force. Despite advances in anti-tank guided missiles and surface-to-air missiles, the tank still had a role to play on future battlefields.
Afghanistan saw a US invasion after the terror attack on the World Trade Centre in New York. It became America’s longest war and the authors argue that it did not need to have been lost. The American voluntary withdrawal has allowed the country to become an extremist safe haven once again.
Iraq took years of effort, but the country was eventually stabilised.
The chapter on Ukraine is illuminating and clearly written by Petraeus. It clarifies much of the uninformed comment we receive in the media daily.
The final chapter on the wars of the future indicates that the world of unmanned machine-on-machine conflict, in every domain of warfare, including cyberspace, and driven by algorithms rather than remote operators, enabled by self-healing communications and surveillance networks, is not that far from becoming reality.
This is a magnificent book and highly recommended reading. Used copies are appearing in bookshops at a substantial discount to new.
The recording of Robin’s review is on Google.
SAMHSEC meeting 14 April 2025
Helmoed Heitman is to discuss German Special Operations during WW 2.
SAMHSEC Requests the Pleasure of your Company to talk about military history on 28 April 2025.
RPC meetings are opportunities for you to share your knowledge of a military history subject or book with fellow military historians. Presentations should last approximately 15 minutes to allow time for sharing the pleasure of one another’s company. You can do any number of RPC presentations per year. Please contact André at andrecrozier@gmail.com if you want to share your knowledge.
SAMHSEC visited the PE SAAF Museum on 22 March 2025
Stephen Bowker, one of the 25 members and guests who participated in the visit, writes “The museum is located on the site of 42 Air School established during WW 2. Our hosts were Claude Wessels and Frank Gallop. Frank is a retired SAA flight engineer.
The main hall of the Museum, which was the Air School Gunnery Building, has various aircraft, engines, uniforms, display cases filled with aircraft models and artifacts of aviation history. There is a display relating to Lieutenant Colonel Allister Miller, DSO, OBE, a Port Elizabeth man who contributed significantly to both military and civil aviation in South Africa.
The first aircraft our hosts showed us was a British Vampire jet fighter. It was the second jet fighter to be operated by the RAF, after the Meteor. Malcolm Kinghorn’s father-in-law, Tom Vanston was a SAAF Vampire pilot in the 1950s.
We then moved on to a Scout helicopter, an Impala jet, an Alouette 111 helicopter and a Mirage F1CZ.
The east wall in the Gunnery Building has patterns of red and blue lines on a white background. These lines were used for air gunnery training during the war.
In the adjacent Bellman Hangar, there is a full-size replica of a Spitfire MK-1X, flown by South African Fighter Ace, Adolph Gysbert “Sailor” Malan DSO & Bar, DFC & Bar. Other aircraft in the hangar include an Auster spotter plane, a Harvard, an Airspeed Oxford and a Puma helicopter.”
SAMHSEC AGM is reconvened for 28 April 2025 at 1900
Too few members to form a quorum attended the AGM convened on 31 March 2025. The SAMHSEC Constitution determines that meetings without a quorum are to be reconvened and the number of members attending the reconvened meeting will be deemed to form a quorum.
SAMHSEC’s AGM zoomeeting is reconvened at 1900 South African time on 28 April 2025.
Centenary of recognition of Afrikaans as an Official Language in South Africa
Afrikaans was officially recognised as one of South Africa's official languages on 8 May 1925 through the Official Languages of the Union Act No 8 of 1925. The Act replaced Dutch with Afrikaans, granting it equal status alongside English.
While SAMHSEC is bilingual, we have had only three Afrikaans presentations in 20 years: Gerhard du Plessis on the Establishment of the Army Battle School, of which he was a founder member, Jorrie Jordaan on the First Military Gymnasium Intake, of which he was a member and Alwyn du Preez on the 1914 Rebellion.
In recognition of the Centenary of Afrikaans as an Official Language, we will give priority to Afrikaans presentations in May 2025.
Indien u tot ons viering van Afrikaans as Amptelike Landstaal wil bydra, kontak asseblief vir André by andrecrozier@gmail.com.