Naval cannon gun fired into Simons Town mountain by mistake

The South African Navy is attempting to conceal a training exercise that went wrong after a cannon gun fired at the Simon’s Town mountain range and narrowly missed homes.

The incident is said to have taken place on Friday after a gun was fired from a corvette at the navy dockyard but instead of taking aim at the sea, it took aim at the mountain.

Weekend Argus reliably learnt of the incident from numerous sources including irate residents who confirmed the incident but were told it was being handled “in-house”.

High-ranking sources in the area also confirmed that the navy had a freak- accident during a training session.

“From what we hear, the cannon was fired in the wrong direction, towards the mountain, instead of the sea, and this just missed a few of the houses on the mountain,” said the source.

“The navy is trying to keep this under wraps and haven’t called any other emergency services to the scene to make sure that this doesn’t leak out.”

An irate resident, who wanted to remain anonymous, said there was loud explosion; then something hit the mountain. There was a lot of activity on the mountain moments later. Luckily, no one was injured.”

A source said the navy was conducting exercise Red Lion, a training operation to establish overall operational readiness. Red Lion was to be followed by operation Good Hope where the German Navy would have joined South African forces for training activities at Saldanha port from January 31 to February 13.

But according to DefenceWeb, Good Hope was placed on hold until further notice due to the high Covid-19 cases in Germany.

Defence analyst and expert, Helmoed-Römer Heitman, said this was not the first time such an incident happened.

“I recall three such incidents, two in the 60s. In one of these instances, during a gunnery mission, the barrel was also pointing inland towards the town. And one sometime in the 80s when a decoy flair was launched by accident and a few cars in “So now we sitting with questions like is it a freak accident, is it an electrical or electronic fault like a malfunction or is it just plain human error.”

Heitman, however, believed that the navy had the right to investigate the scene without calling on other emergency services. “They have the capacity and expertise to deal with it. But later the police will have to get involved.”

Heitman added: “If the 76mm was fired then it’s the biggest and main one, that’s called a cannon gun and not the small ones they use in ceremonies.”

The navy had not responded to questions by the time of going to press.