I don't know what happened to Lukapa, but this UNITA already knew that Shao Limu was attacked by unknown armed men, the airport was occupied, and the UNITA soldiers stationed at the airport suffered a crushing defeat after launching a counterattack!

In the previous battle plan, the "combined forces" forces that raided the Shaolimu airfield would not have attacked the UNITA garrison in Shaolim with all their might without encountering significant resistance.

But this fight, bullets flying, can not carefully judge what is meant by "obvious resistance"!

Anyway, it's all UNITA's army, let's talk about it after fighting!

The first batch of contractors who landed in Shao Limu and then came out of the C130 transport plane in armed Humvees quickly resolved the resistance of the airport defenders, and then placed the main defensive force on the north side of the airport, near the city line.

As expected, nearly an hour after the attack, a large number of vehicles and armed men appeared in the direction of Shaolimu City, and UNITA was eager to retake the airport: no hurry, the rainy season is coming, as UNITA is an important town in northeastern Angola, the role of Shaolim and its airport is very important!

The airport is the only large airport with a reinforced concrete runway within a radius of 400 kilometers, and if the airport fails, the main forces of the UNITA army elsewhere will be largely unable to mobilize heavy firepower to support Shao Limu for four months at most.

After more than ten years of civil war, the people in the northeast have run nine times out of ten, let alone the roads!

Although Angola was once known as the "Brazil of Africa", that was in the sixties and early seventies, and it has always been that the western coastal areas are more developed than the eastern interior.

After so many years of war, the original railway system is paralyzed, and only less than 300 kilometers of coastal railways are being repaired in the areas actually controlled by the SPLM government along the western coast.

The state of the highway is not optimistic, the bridge is basically destroyed, the road is basically dirt pavement, in the rainy season, this truck is definitely not faster than the ox cart, many sections of the road will become difficult to walk because of the mud!

The conditions in the west are a little better, but the roads in the east are sparse and badly damaged, and even tanks will not dare to run around after the rainy season.

This is a bit similar to the heavy snow in some countries in high latitude and high altitude areas in winter, closing mountains and roads, and you can't go at all without waiting for the snow to melt, so you can only rely on airplanes!

The city of Shaolimu was nearly twice as large as Lukapa, and the garrison was four or five times the size of Lukapa, with about 2,500 men. Armed with a small number of mortars, there are quite a few cars, but there are no tanks.

This is in UNITA's strategic depth, and most of the tanks they have are on the central and south-central Angolan fronts against SPLM, and the overall number is not large.

At the beginning, the Soviet Union and Cuba were able to give the "SPLM" a large number of tanks and armored vehicles, and the "SPLM" also represented the Angolan government internationally, and the number of heavy equipment was significantly stronger than UNITA.

The United States and South Africa, which support UNITA behind them, can't give them too many heavy weapons, and the C130s chartered by the CIA that took off from Zaire alone can't transport too heavy guys.

Similarly, the Zairean army, which supported UNITA, did not have too many tanks to support UNITA, which led UNITA to follow the strategy of "rural encirclement of cities" in previous civil wars: interestingly, the U.S.-backed faction used the usual tactics used by the communist side guerrillas.

Note that the political outlook of UNITA and its leaders is resolutely anti-Gong!

Without the airport, for the next four months the defenders of Shao Limu would have to deal with the invading "SPLM" largely on their own – so they have thought so far, and they have said so when they reported to their superiors by radio.

And then...

You have been fighting for more than 10 years, and you "SPLM" dare to rely on the superiority of the air force to play the drama of raiding the airfield, but this is UNITA's territory! The garrison has more than one regiment, and who is afraid of whom!

With all the equipment they could bring, they almost poured out, and more than 2,000 soldiers divided into two ways and slaughtered towards the airport!

After that, I was blinded!

Accurate mortar shells, grenades exploded like rain around you, and anti-tank missiles flying from a road or two away hit cars like they didn't need money.

The two UNITA units had to face not only frontal interception, but also a dense barrage of grenades and machine guns from both sides, even from behind!

There are large-caliber machine guns that can break people in two, but the most feared by UNITA soldiers is a medium-caliber machine gun that fires laterally, and the rate of fire is like a waterfall!

Coming from six or seven hundred meters away, there were not one or two, there were bullets rain in all directions!

Many of the Humvees on this trip to the "Combined Forces" were not only equipped with M2 large-caliber machine guns on their roofs, but also suspected that the M2's rate of fire was too slow, so they added a 7.62mm Gatling machine gun to it!

With a rate of fire of 3,000 rounds per minute, it is spectacular to strafe targets on the grassland!

Not only that, but with the absolute superiority of the equipment used in night warfare, the commander of the "combined forces" adopted a tactic that he had never used before: hundreds of contractors divided into small detachments of five to ten people, at a position five or six hundred meters away from the UNITA troops, fired hundreds of rounds of "shmir" at the two UNITA troops within 10 seconds of the start of the shelling!

The maximum effective firing range is 600 meters, which is basically impossible to hit a target the size of a tank at this distance, but as a surface kill weapon, it is still no problem to hit a target area the size of ten tanks with a curved shot!

After less than an hour of waiting for the battle to end, one of the "combined forces" commander commanding the operation said: "Now I finally know how the US infantry battalion blocked Saddam's tank division at the beginning of the year!"

What kind of battle is this called!

A chaotic swarm rushed in the direction of the airport, rushing into the loose fan-shaped defense circle prepared by their own side.

Even if it wasn't raining and the visibility was okay, those UNITA soldiers could vaguely see some buildings on the side of the airport at most, and they didn't know the actual location of their opponents!

The UNITA mortars did not set up positions at all a kilometer or two away, it was possible that they did not have good shelling observers and reliable communication devices, or that the mortar artillery had to see the target in order to be confident that it could hit.

RPG-7 is equipped with a lot, but the rockets launched in a hurry by the Angolans do not even know where the people of the "United Forces" are flying!

As for the use of rifle machine guns, even if the mercenaries of the Tswa tribe on their side do not use night vision equipment, they have long been taught to fire at the enemy's exposed muzzle flame position during night combat, but those Angolans have no concept at all!

The shooters who operated the large night vision sights in the car saw that when the battle broke out, some Angolans were shooting with automatic rifles, and some were lying on the ground, hiding behind the car and sticking out their guns to "strafe"!

I'm convinced, I'm really convinced!

It was an army that had fought a civil war for more than ten years, and it was no wonder that as soon as the South Africans and Cubans left, the civil war on this side stopped: this is called war?

Hit the hair!

Perhaps it was often said in the African news in the past: "According to reliable sources, since yesterday at noon, there was a fierce exchange of fire between UNITA and the SPLM forces in the central and eastern regions, and the two sides used a large number of heavy firepower equipment, including tanks, mortars, and rockets, and at least 1,000 people participated in the battle."

The battle was extremely fierce, and the fierce fighting lasted until the early hours of this morning, and at least a dozen people on both sides were killed and wounded!"

Well, there aren't many such news nowadays, and in a few years, similar news will start with rocking in the West Bank of Jordan and continue to flood Africa and the Middle East twenty years later.

Pitch battles everywhere, pitch battles everywhere, pitch battles everywhere!

A city has been fighting fiercely for three or five or seven months, a year and a half, two or three years, and it hasn't been fought yet!

Three days of fierce fighting often involves a 250 with a machine gun on the other side of the street, shooting at the other end of the street, hitting two shuttles to hide in the corner, and then his friend carrying an RPG-7 to a building on the other side of the street!

There is a reporter wearing a steel helmet and body armor next to him who is filming, and after filming, everyone calls it a day, goes home for dinner, and the "fierce battle" will continue tomorrow!