page_title: Battle of Quifangondo
section_title: ELNA
hierarchical_section_title: Battle of Quifangondo / Opposing forces / ELNA
caption_attribution_description: Nederlands: Kamp van Angolese Bevrijdingsbeweging FNLA in Zaire, leden van de bevrijdingsbeweging met wapens Datum 22 augustus 1973
context_page_description: The Battle of Quifangondo was fought on 10 November 1975, near the strategic settlement of Quifangondo, Luanda Province, between the People's Armed Forces of Liberation of Angola, armed wing of the People's Movement for the Liberation of Angola, and the National Liberation Army of Angola, armed wing of the National Liberation Front of Angola. The engagement was notable for marking the first major deployment of rocket artillery in the Angolan Civil War, as well as the last serious attempt by ELNA forces to seize Luanda, the Angolan capital. It occurred on the last day of Portuguese colonial rule in the country, which formally received independence only hours after the fighting.
  After defeating a FAPLA garrison at the nearby town of Caxito, an army of ELNA militants led personally by Holden Roberto began advancing southwards towards Luanda. Roberto's forces included a composite battery of three BL 5.5-inch Medium Guns and two 130 mm Type 59 field guns manned by Zairean and South African artillery crews. Their objective was to dislodge FAPLA from the vital waterworks at Quifangondo and an adjoining bridge which spanned the Bengo River.
context_section_description: In January 1975, ELNA was the largest of the three Angolan armies, with 21,000 armed regulars. However, no more than half of ELNA's manpower was actually inside Angola at any one time, since Roberto preferred to keep his most dependable forces in reserve to garrison their external base camps in Zaire. At the beginning of the year there were 9,000 ELNA troops in Angola. In October there were still only about 10,000 ELNA troops in Angola, nearly all of them concentrated in the northern provinces of the territory. They were swelled by a number of new Bakongo recruits enlisted since ELNA's expulsion from Luanda, as well as the 2,000 ex-FAPLA defectors under Daniel Chipenda. Of these troops, most were needed to garrison ELNA's Bakongo heartland, and Roberto was able to muster no more than 3,500 troops for his fall advances on Luanda. The CIA estimated there were 2,500 ELNA personnel in or around Caxito in August 1975. Between 1,000 and 2,000 of these forces were available for Roberto's final November offensive towards Quifangondo, the remainder apparently being held in reserve in Caxito. According to Roberto's own figures, he had 2,000 troops on the offensive along the Caxito-Quifangondo front. These men were for the most part raw, undisciplined, and inexperienced. A sizeable majority were recent recruits enrolled with little training; few had been under hostile fire. Also in the ELNA force were 120 veterans of the Portuguese Army who enlisted under Roberto. The CIA described them as Angolan-born colonials that had fallen on hard times, and often volunteered with ELNA for ideological reasons. The Portuguese contingent was commanded by Colonel Gilberto Manuel Santos e Castro. Colonel Santos e Castro was ELNA's chief of staff and the senior ELNA field commander present at Quifangondo.
  Roberto insisted on directing the offensive personally, although he had no prior military experience and often ignored the recommendations of his more experienced South African and Portuguese advisers. ELNA lacked a coherent command structure and its units were inconsistently organised. Furthermore, Roberto's ignorance of logistics hampered ELNA's ability to distribute or maintain the equipment it received from its allies. John Stockwell, a CIA observer sent to evaluate ELNA's capabilities in late 1975, noted that ELNA had received adequate quantities of arms and ammunition, but was "not able to organize the logistical systems necessary to deploy them or to develop the communications, maintenance, combat leadership, and discipline to organize an effective military effort". One of ELNA's primary weaknesses was its failure to encourage technical proficiency, which in turn ensured that most of its recruits were unwilling or unable to familiarise themselves with their weapons. Individual marksmanship and maintenance of personal weapons were quite poor. Peter McAleese, a mercenary attached to Roberto's forces during the civil war, declared that the ELNA troops he inspected "were useless. They had been trained by the Chinese at Kinkusu in Zaire and spent their time learning...slogans rather than training with their weapons, which they hardly fired, even on the range."
  ELNA claimed to the press in late August that it possessed tanks, and threatened to use them during future offensives on Luanda. Zaire apparently undertook to supply ELNA with up to 25 Type 59 tanks, but whether Roberto's forces actually received them remains unclear. Only two may have been transferred to ELNA, and they were supplied without crews or tank transporters to move them. The tanks arrived too late to be used in the fighting at Quifangondo. At the beginning of November, the only comparable armour ELNA possessed were nine antiquated Panhard AML-60 and AML-90 armoured cars, all of which were in decrepit condition due to age and poor maintenance. It also had at least one Panhard M3 VTT armoured personnel carrier, likely one of several abandoned in Angola by the withdrawing Portuguese.
  The ELNA infantry was equipped with a miscellaneous array of Western, Chinese, and Soviet small arm
caption: ELNA militants at a training camp in Zaire
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