South African Army Armour Formation
military unit
The South African Army Armour Formation provides an Armour capability to the South African Army. The Formation came into being as part of a restructure. South African Armour Corps units previously under the command of various different brigades and other formations were all grouped under one formation. All armour is assigned to the SA Army Armour Formation under the charge of a General Officer Commanding.
History
Armoured Origins
South Africa employed armoured cars as early as 1915 during its invasion of the then-German South West Africa (now Namibia).
After the end of the First World War a single Medium Mark A Whippet light tank was purchased for the Union Defence Force and was operationally employed during the 1922 Rand revolt. The tank in question is now on display at the Army College at Thaba Tshwane.
The formation of an armoured corps was proposed in 1924. An armoured car section was formed the next year when two Vickers machine gun-armed Crossley armoured cars and two medium tanks were imported from Britain.
During the severe economic depression of 1933, the government established the Special Service Battalion (SSB) on 1 May 1933 as a job opportunities and social upliftment project.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 9, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q7565428. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1915, 1922, 1924 and 1933.
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This entry incorporates text from “South African Army Armour Formation” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.