Six helicopters at treetop height

In 1985, over the bush of southern Angola, South African Impala pilots flying at 550 to 650 km/h and about 15 metres above the ground met Angolan Mi-8 and Mi-24 helicopters. In several encounters they shot down six. The Impala was a light jet trainer, an Italian MB-326 built under licence near Johannesburg, and nobody had designed it to hunt helicopters. That improvisation was the essence of Atlas.

An industry against an embargo

The Atlas Aircraft Corporation was founded in 1965 to give South Africa an aircraft industry of its own. International pressure over apartheid was growing, and from 1977 a mandatory UN arms embargo, Resolution 418, made importing combat aircraft almost impossible. In 1968 Atlas was placed under the new state arms conglomerate Armscor. Its first big programme was the Impala: about 125 two-seat Mk Is built locally from 1966, alongside 40 imported from Italy, then about 78 single-seat Mk II attack aircraft from 1974. Atlas also built the Italian-designed Bosbok and its own derivative, the Kudu.

Cheetah: the Mirage reborn

The Border War of the 1980s brought Soviet MiG-23s to Angola, and South Africa could buy nothing to match them. Atlas instead rebuilt the air force’s French Mirage IIIs as the Cheetah, with canards, new avionics and, according to several aviation sources, technology and engineers from Israel, including some freed by the cancellation of the Lavi fighter. The first Cheetah D was shown publicly on 16 July 1986. The Cheetah C became the air force’s only fighter until the Saab Gripen replaced it in April 2008; some went on to Ecuador.

Oryx and the Rooivalk

Helicopters followed the same pattern. The Oryx was an extensively reworked Puma, 50 built, developed partly with components obtained secretly through Portugal. For an attack helicopter Atlas used the Puma’s dynamic systems to build the Rooivalk, which first flew on 11 February 1990, just as the Border War ended. Atlas also worked on Project Carver, a home-grown fighter that never left the drawing board.

Into Denel

In 1992 Atlas was absorbed into the new state group Denel, forming a major part of Denel Aviation, and the programmes it had under way went with it. The Rooivalk proved slow and troubled: the South African Air Force ordered 12, of which only six were available for operational evaluation in April 2005, and they were formally handed over in April 2011. The production line had already been mothballed in 2007, after attempts to sell the helicopter to Malaysia, Britain and Turkey came to nothing.