African soldier's camo.
Anyone know what type of camo the African soldiers were wearing?
shareIt looks to me like some variant of the classic British denison smock. For a while I thought it might be Rhodesian brush stroke, but the pattern is too large.
The equipment the Simbas use doesn't really make much sense to me -- they're supposed to be equipped and armed by the Soviets (note the Cuban and East German advisors). So why do they have the British Pattern 58 load bearing gear? Or the FN/FALs? I realize that FALs are fairly common in Africa (especially during that time period due to the Belgian colonies, etc), but IMO arming them with boring old Kalashnikovs would have been more interesting.
Doesn't subtract from the movie one bit, though.
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Yep, getting Soviet style equipment for a hundred extras would have been impossible in the 70s, even into the 80s.
propaganda=on IMDB, apparently any movie with Americans as the good guysshare
Yes, EVERYONE had trouble getting Soviet weapons during the 1970s. Only when the Chinese and Egyptians started selling their own AK clones in the early 1980s did movies start getting tons of AKs. (Even though the Yugoslavians started selling their Zastava AKs, people didn't use them that much. They were expensive (but well made) and they looked different enough that movie prop houses preferred the Chinese and Egyptian AK clones).
Actually Until 1983, most of the "AKs" seen in movies and TVs were actually Valmet M71S rifles.
Dr. Kila Marr was right. Kill the Crystalline Entity.share
And I was about to guess that everyone was wearing standard Rhodesian Army 'kit';
NM
Read the titles where various military sources were acknowledged. The soldiers in question were real soldiers hired as extras and turned up with their own kit..58 pattern webbing included...which funnily enough is better than the 37/44 pattern that the cast wore and the ragged selection of weapons.
From the novel the mercenaries were supposed to be armed with Czech made rifles.
the rag tag equipment is very accurate if you read the accounts of Chris Dempster and Dave Tomkins in Angola only two years previous to the film being made.
For a government or rebel-based operation involving mercenaries, yes, but not a situation where the mercenaries are arming themselves, with plenty of funds. As in the book, they would go with the same equipment, in as few calibers as possible.
"Fortunately, Ah keep mah feathers numbered for just such an emergency!"