- Yes, as a tech tree vehicle
- Yes, as a premium vehicle
- Yes, as an event vehicle
- Yes, as a squadron vehicle
- No, I would not like to see SAS Jan Smuts (P1561) in game.
- As built
- 1980’s refit
- 1990’s refit (recommended)
- Doesn’t matter to me
- None; I would not like to see SAS Jan Smuts (P1561) in game.
There are really not many pictures of this ship, and by not many I mean not any. This is about as good of a photo as we’ll get and shows the crew of Jan Smuts battling rough seas. While the ship is small, don’t mistake that for weakness - she packs a punch inherited from her Israeli predecessors.
Introduction
Projecting military force isn’t just about intimidating potential adversaries. It’s about annoying them whenever they decide to be dumb enough to get within interception range. The South African Navy’s Warrior (ex-Minister)-class strike craft were very good at all facets of force projection. While these ships never fired a shot in anger, they did have rather colorful careers, especially in the case of the first one: SAS Jan Smuts, who got involved in a high-profile incident just two years after sneaking her way from Israeli shipyards to South African harbors. Jan Smuts continued the time-honored tradition of small ships engaging in disproportionate amounts of nonsense but like her sisters lived a relatively peaceful life. The biggest thing she did was introduce the SAN to a new frontier of naval warfare with her advanced electronic systems and missiles giving any hostile forces good reason to stay on guard.
TL;DR
- High speed missile attack boat
- Backbone of the SAN’s surface presence
- Semi-active radar homing anti-ship missiles
- Two automatic 76 mm main cannons
- 20 mm autocannons and 12.7 mm machine guns for close-in defense
- Search and track radar for air and surface targets
- No armor besides the steel structure
Why it should be in the game: Jan Smuts and the rest of her class can be considered similar to the Albatros-class as found in the German tech tree. While not as fast as Albatros, they are still plenty zippy and have a steel hull for better survivability. Assuming the Warrior-class were added without missiles they would still outdo Peacock and Orla by every conceivable metric and so they would be a solid add to the top ranks of Britain’s coastal forces. However, I think these ships are a good opportunity to break into the territory of anti-ship missiles outside of the Saetta’s. I haven’t explained how Jan Smuts’ Skerpioen missiles work yet - they are beam riders with a semi-active radar homing terminal phase. This means that the ship needs to keep her target in her sights for the full duration of the missile’s flight. It has a minimum engagement range of 6 kilometers and is not particularly fast. Combined with the third person view of War Thunder’s ship captains allowing the missile to be detected and avoided/shot down far earlier than might otherwise be possible it is reasonable to say that it will be a situational but devastating weapon which would make an interesting addition to naval battles.
History
The Israeli Sa’ar 4-class fast attack craft cuts a neat silhouette against the clear blue skies in this photograph. Comparing it to Jan Smuts, besides the armament it’s pretty obviously the same boat. This should not really be surprising to anyone familiar with South Africa’s other military endeavors as they were pretty good friends with clandestine Israeli suppliers during the embargo period.
On October 21, 1967, an event occurred which shocked the admirals and captains of the world: the sinking of INS Eilat. Eilat was famously sunk with heavy casualties by two Egyptian Project 183R vessels which combined displaced under a tenth of the ex-Royal Navy destroyer. This was made possible by Soviet P-15 anti-ship missiles striking from previously inconceivable distances. The incident served as a wake-up call for the Israeli Navy which led to a focus on missile and electronic countermeasures development. Sa’ar-1 class patrol boats were converted to Sa’ar 2-class missile boats with Sa’ar 3 and 4-class fast attack craft becoming the backbone of Israel’s surface power. In the 1973 Yom Kippur war the Navy’s efforts paid off handsomely with the previously deadly P-15s being defeated by electronic countermeasures and superior tactics. Despite the Israeli vessels’ Gabriel missiles having a shorter range, they were able to employ them against Egyptian missile boats with good effect, managing to sink several. This was a demonstration of what the future of naval warfare would look like and the impact that even a small vessel could have against much larger opponents.
Now, that’s a nice story, but why did I tell it to you? If you read my caption you can anticipate where I’m going with this. The South African Navy was looking abroad for corvettes and frigates that they could acquire for their future requirements. However some within the Navy had taken notice of the developments occurring in missile technology with other naval forces and thought strike craft should be the backbone of the SAN while the opposing point of view maintained that more seaworthy frigates and corvettes should remain the primary ships of the fleet. Most agreed that strike craft would be helpful and in 1974 the Minister of Defence, P. W. Botha, reached out to Israel about acquiring missile boats based on the successful Sa’ar 4 (Reshef) class. Meanwhile the SAN’s efforts to secure corvettes and frigates were not going well, with a corvette design from Portugal falling through due to delays and the eventual upheaval of the Portuguese government and French designs falling through because of the optional arms embargo against South Africa becoming mandatory in 1977. As it turned out, the choice between frigates and strike craft didn’t end up being a choice at all, and the SAN was forced to go with the Israeli vessels.
Fun fact: SAS Jan Smuts was the first ship of what was originally known as the Minister-class, named after South African Ministers of Defence. In 1997 as part of the dissolution of apartheid the vessels were renamed to the Warrior-class. Eight of the vessels were renamed to soldiers and warriors from various points in the nation’s history, but Jan Smuts (the ship) kept her original name because Jan Smuts (the man) was an active military leader during World War I, making him a warrior.
Both Israel and South Africa agreed that it would probably be a good idea not to tell everyone about their plan to make missile ships for the latter country. Israel would build the first three vessels because the SAN wanted them as quickly as possible. In order to prepare for the eventual shipbuilding program for three more in South Africa, an undercover team was dispatched to Israel where they would liaison with IAI. There they would observe the construction process to get as much information as possible as well as getting South African crews to train with the new ships. This would spill over into South Africa’s missile production with the Gabriel II, main armament of the Sa’ar 4-class, being locally produced as the Skerpioen. Minister Botha announced the construction of six vessels in 1975 which actually meant the three in Israel plus the three in South Africa. Construction was messy and resulted in some damaged components, earning the unnamed first ship the nickname “Patches”, the second “Scratches” and the third “Matches”. After some delays with the weapons systems the first ship was fully complete in 1977. It sailed down from Israel to South Africa with SAN crew disguised as Israelis. The second boat would need to be completed in South Africa due to the arms embargo taking effect in late 1977 but the third Israeli-built vessel was delivered fully complete like the first one. Meanwhile South Africa had started building the locally produced group of three strike craft which were complete by 1980. The six vessels would be called the Minister-class and were named after South African Ministers of Defence, with the first one being named SAS Jan Smuts.
This picture shows (in excruciatingly bad quality) one of Jan Smuts’ sister ships, the third one made (P1563), harassing the Soviet aircraft carrier Minsk in 1978. The vessels had not even received their names at this time. South Africa was understandably not too fond of the nation supplying their enemy in the Border War and the SAN crews made their distaste readily apparent.
Before the vessels had even received their names they were put to work on routine patrols. In late 1978 the Soviet aircraft carrier Minsk and her escorts made the mistake of straying into South Africa’s economic exclusion zone, which extended 200 nautical miles from the coast. While military vessels were allowed to pass through this area, the SAN liked to track the movements of those ships for intelligence purposes. Upon seeing Minsk P1563 decided to get rather close for comfort, almost like a sibling taunting another by saying “I’m not touching you” whilst holding their hand a hair’s breadth from their victim’s face. How the Soviets responded to this incident is unclear, but it was probably similar to how the U.S. Navy felt a couple years later. In January 1980 Jan Smuts and her sister known as Frans Erasmus at the time were dispatched to investigate the movements of a U.S. battlegroup. This turned out to be the group headed by the Nimitz on their way to the ill-fated Operation Eagle Claw. The South African ships first encountered the cruiser California. Jan Smuts decided to cut across her bow which is generally considered to be pretty rude. The pair then moved on to investigate Nimitz, getting pretty close but not nearly as close as with Minsk. The Pentagon complained about the incident afterward but the South African government denied claims of SAN vessels “harassing” the USN. Accounts that the strike craft were able to “sneak up” on the USN were probably just misunderstandings of the Navy’s behavior, though the original Sa’ar 4s and by extension the Minister-class were small in an attempt to minimize their radar signatures. In any case nothing much came from the incident. However, some U.S. sailors may have thought twice about entering South Africa’s economic zone afterwards.
Looks like someone wasn’t too happy. To be fair, if I were helming the California at this time I’d be pretty annoyed too. The SAN strike craft liked to test the limits of what they could get away with.
Besides the aforementioned incidents, Jan Smuts’ career was not particularly remarkable. She and her sisters would do routine patrol missions and would not fire shots in anger, though some rogue hulks and target ships would be sunk. Sometime in the mid-1980’s the SAN upgraded the 20 mm Oerlikon guns that were standard for the Sa’ar 4 to 20 mm Oerlikon KAAs in GAM-BO1 mountings. How they managed to get their hands on these (besides illegally, obviously) is unclear, but the crews were probably not complaining about it considering the KAA was an improvement by every metric. During this time three more sisters joined the crowd; two were commissioned in 1983 and one in 1986. After the end of apartheid and the lifting of the arms embargo in 1994 the SAN were able to acquire new warships from abroad, but in the meantime upgrading the existing vessels was determined to be an economical option. The Systems Life Extensions Programme (SLEP), as the name suggests, involved replacing and upgrading the electronic systems aboard the craft. This included communications, mission control, fire control computers and turret drive systems. The turret drive system specifically improved acceleration and training speed with the turret rotating at 70 degrees/s and elevating at 40 degrees/s compared to the 60 degrees/s and 35 degrees/s respectively of the standard OTO Melara Compact mounting. Despite these upgrades the majority of the Warrior-class ships would be taken out of service after the turn of the millennium with the Valour-class frigates becoming the backbone of the SAN. Jan Smuts was the first to go, being scrapped in 2004. Three of her sisters survived to become Offshore Patrol Vessels for counter-piracy duties but two are now out of service and the last’s days are numbered. Overall, Jan Smuts gave the SAN 27 years of service and the class’s lifespan as a whole is approaching 50 years - a testament to its forward-thinking design and powerful capabilities in a small package.
The badge of SAS Jan Smuts. I don’t know if the imagery here has a deeper connection to South African naval history but it does look pretty nice.
Specifications
SAS Jan Smuts (P1561)
Dimensions:
- Length: 58 m (190 ft 3 in)
- Beam: 7.8 m (25 ft 7 in)
- Draught: 2.4 m (7 ft 10 in)
Displacement:
- 415 tons standard
- 450 tons deep
Propulsion: 4 MTU diesel engines powering 4 shafts (12,800 shaft horsepower)
Maximum speed: 63.0 km/h (34 kt)
Range: 7,408 km (4,000 nmi)
Armament:
- As built:
- 2 x 1 76 mm/62 OTO Melara cannon
- 2 x 1 20 mm/70 Oerlikon cannon
- 2 x 1 12.7 mm M2 Browning machine gun
- 6 x Skerpioen anti-ship missile
- 1980’s refit:
- 2 x 1 76 mm/62 OTO Melara cannon
- 2 x 1 20 mm/85 Oerlikon KAA cannon
- 2 x 1 12.7 mm M2 Browning machine gun
- 6 x Skerpioen anti-ship missile
- 1990’s refit:
- 2 x 1 76 mm/62 OTO Melara cannon (enhanced turret drive)
- 2 x 1 20 mm/85 Oerlikon KAA cannon
- 2 x 1 12.7 mm M2 Browning machine gun
- 6 x Skerpioen anti-ship missile
Crew: 45
Additional equipment:
- Common to all:
- EL/M-2208 search radar
- RTN-10X fire control radar
- Chaff rockets
Sources
- David vs. Goliath, SA Navy Strike-craft harassing the US Navy | The Observation Post
- http://www.warinangola.com/default.aspx?tabid=1239&Parameter=1814
- South African Navy Defence Force
- https://www.dynagen.co.za/eugene/scratches/
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p9tHfU8bjew
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n8ItkWeGA2I
- View of THE SECRET SOUTH AFRICAN PROJECT TEAM: BUILDING STRIKE CRAFT IN ISRAEL, 1975-79
- Jane’s Defence Systems Modernisation (December 1995)