Combat History
At least one PLO UR-416 was captured in West Beirut by the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) in the wake of the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in June 1982 and it is now in display at the Batey ha-Osef museum, Tel Aviv, Israel. The pro-Israeli Christian Lebanese Forces (LF) militia also managed to salvage another such vehicle in early 1983, which one of their ‘Commando’ units employed at the Sidon bridgehead in 1985 against the locally-based Popular Nasserite Organization (PNO) militia. This particular vehicle was later captured from the LF by the PNO who quickly pressed it into service, remaining in their hands until the end of the Lebanese Civil War in October 1990. The fate of the remaining 6 vehicles is unknown, with various sources stating that they were left uncompleted in their West Beirut workshops and were later destroyed in the violent clashes that ravaged the Lebanese Capital in the 1980s.
The Rhodesian ‘Pigs’ were successfully tested in combat by a Selous Scouts’ flying mini-column that raided two ZANLA camps on the Mapai area of southern Mozambique in late 1976 (Operation “Mardon”), though their lack of mine-protection was found to be a major drawback. Despite its flaws, the vehicles served well the Selous Scouts in their operations and even after the disbandment of the unit in 1980 they remained at the service of the new Zimbabwe National Army (ZNA) for several more years.
Read more about this topic: Thyssen Henschel UR-416
Famous quotes containing the words combat and/or history:
“In case I conk out, this is provisionally what I have to do: I must clarify obscurities; I must make clearer definite ideas or dissociations. I must find a verbal formula to combat the rise of brutality—the principle of order versus the split atom.”
—Ezra Pound (1885–1972)
“We don’t know when our name came into being or how some distant ancestor acquired it. We don’t understand our name at all, we don’t know its history and yet we bear it with exalted fidelity, we merge with it, we like it, we are ridiculously proud of it as if we had thought it up ourselves in a moment of brilliant inspiration.”
—Milan Kundera (b. 1929)