page_title: Mine Protected Combat Vehicle
section_title: Combat history
hierarchical_section_title: Mine Protected Combat Vehicle / Combat history
caption_attribution_description: Mineproofed armoured vehicles of the Zimbabwe National Army (ZNA) at Methuen Barracks, 1980. These are being manned by personnel of "C" Company, 1 Rhodesian African Rifles.
context_page_description: The Mine Protected Combat Vehicle – MPCV was a Rhodesian 4×4 Infantry fighting vehicle, first introduced in 1979 and based on the body of the Mercedes-Benz Unimog light truck. It remains in use with the Zimbabwe National Army.
context_section_description: Developed too late to participate in the Rhodesian Bush War, the 'Spook' after independence entered service with the Zimbabwe National Army (ZNA) who, impressed by the vehicle's mobility, quickly adopted it in early 1980.  The MPCV equipped the D Squadron of the Zimbabwe Armoured Corps (formerly the RhACR) and the C Company, 1st Battalion, Rhodesian African Rifles (1RAR), which participated in the large military exercises conducted at Somabula Plain, Matabeleland that same year.
  It was only in November 1980 however, that the ZNA finally got the chance to trial its newly acquired armoured vehicle in combat against ZIPRA troops at the 1st Battle of Entumbane and later in the February 1981 2nd Battle of Entumbane (near Bulawayo, Matabeleland), where it acquainted itself well, and later again after February 1982 by helping to put down the Super-ZAPU insurgency in Matabeleland.
  During the Mozambican Civil War in 1982–1993, the ZNA forces serving at Mozambique also employed the 'Spook' there as a patrol and escort vehicle at the vital Beira corridor in Tete Province, guarding both the Beira–Bulawayo railway and oil pipeline from RENAMO guerrilla attacks.  ZNA's MPCVs found themselves once again performing these same duties in the cadre of the ill-fated United Nations' peacekeeping mission in Somalia (UNOSOM I) from 1992 to 1994, protecting the convoys of UN trucks carrying relief aid en route from Mogadishu port to the refugee camps. The MPCV served with the ZNA contingent sent to the Democratic Republic of Congo during the Second Congo War from 1998 to 2002.
caption: 1RAR troops atop MPCV vehicles assemble at Metheun prior to Entumbane, February 1981.
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