by Mark Urban
Although Graham’s killing appears in all probability to have been carried out by Lynagh and Kelly’s units, there is no evidence to tie them to the Gibson killings. But it was following the events of 25 April, an intelligence expert says, that security chiefs decided to allow the terrorists’ plan to attack Loughgall police station to run. An ambush would be prepared in Loughgall as ‘an act of revenge’, he says – adding that the military plan had been cleared at a very senior level. The operation would draw together informer intelligence, expert surveillance and the firearms skills of the SAS – all of the elements practised during the previous decade.
The ASUs involved once more began preparations for the co-ordinated series of actions which would need to be carried out to stage the attack. Early in May, a few days before the plan was due to go into effect, Lynagh and another man were stopped by the Gardai while out walking. Local people say they were hoping to find a weapon on him, so that he might be charged again for possession. They found nothing, but the incident showed ‘how closely he was being watched’, according to a local. Lynagh slipped across the border and the Loughgall plan moved into effect.
24
Loughgall, 8 May 1987: Prayers and Tapdancing
Loughgall is a small, overwhelmingly Protestant village in north Armagh. It is in what the locals call ‘orchard country’, where the slopes of the rolling countryside are dotted with apple trees. It is 13 kilometres from Armagh city, which can be reached in about fifteen minutes by car, and somewhat further from Dungannon, which is twenty or twenty-five minutes away.
The RUC station in Loughgall is a small affair, opening limited hours in the morning and afternoon. It is normally run by a sergeant and three or four other officers. As you approach the village from Armagh, the road slopes gently downhill and there is a walled copse on the right. This is Balleygasey Road; the RUC station is on the left, between a row of small bungalows which are occupied mainly by retired people and a former UDR barrack building, the local football team’s clubhouse, and a small, operator-less telephone exchange. The road then curves slightly to the left and goes uphill into the main part of the village. A church stands at the top of this slope, in the centre of Loughgall. Along the right side of Balleygasey Road is a football field.
In 1987 Jim Lynagh and Paddy Kelly planned to destroy Loughgall police station after it had closed at 7 p.m. Because the RUC officers would normally have left by this time, it would appear that their aim was not to kill but to destroy police stations, as they had done at The Birches. As with the previous attack, they intended to use a digger with a bomb in its excavating bucket to crash through the gates in the wire fence which surrounded the station.
The operation to intercept the IRA team had been taking shape for some days before the attack. Intelligence authorities at the TCG and special forces experts of the Int and Sy Group knew that Lynagh would lead a large, heavily armed group against the station. They also knew from The Birches attack that the preparation for the operation could involve dozens of people across long distances. They decided to bring in enough of their own people to deal with the situation. It was to be, in the words of an officer briefed on the operation, ‘a massive ambush’.
Commanders decided that the twenty-four SAS soldiers resident in Ulster were insufficient for this task, so 22 SAS headquarters in Hereford was alerted. A troop of about fifteen soldiers belonging to G Squadron was flown over from Britain to boost the forces in Ulster. At that time G Squadron was doing a six month spell as the Regiment’s special projects team, which stands by at Hereford ready for an anti-terrorist emergency anywhere in the world.
In addition the Provisionals would be shadowed by Army surveillance experts and those of the Special Branch’s E4A. It is also believed that members of the RUC’s highly trained HMSU were deployed in the area. At least fifty of the Army’s and the RUC’s troops most highly trained in surveillance techniques and the use of firearms were committed to the immediate operation, and several companies of UDR and regular Army soldiers as well as mobile police squads were to be available to cordon off the Armagh/Dungannon area after the operation. Loughgall was to be an operation involving hundreds of soldiers and police.
Lynagh’s group had hidden their explosives in a farmyard some kilometres to the north of Loughgall, close to the Armagh/Tyrone border and the republican strongholds of Coalisland and Washing Bay. It is clear from interviews and press reports at the time of the incident that this cache was under close surveillance for days or even weeks before the attack. It is thought that E4A were given this task.
A few days before the IRA operation had begun, the members of the SAS and other elements taking part in Operation JUDY – the code-name apparently used for the security forces plan to defeat the terrorists – attended a briefing. It set out the kind of attack which Lynagh and Kelly were believed to have planned. Most of the details were to be proven correct, although the briefing officers did get some things wrong. They said that it was believed likely that the IRA group would approach the police station across the football field across the Balleygasey Road, rather than by road. They also told the soldiers that they believed the IRA bomb would be set off by a timer or a remote control device (in fact it would be a simple fuse lit by one of the terrorists).
The SAS soldiers went into position many hours before the planned attack. Some of them were spotted by one of the elderly residents of the Balleygasey Road out walking his dog. Despite this ‘compromise’, it was decided that it would be safe for the troops to remain in place.
During the afternoon of Friday 8 May, IRA terrorists wearing masks hijacked a blue Toyota Hiace van from a business in Mountjoy Road, Dungannon. Some time after 5 p.m. they hijacked a digger from a farmyard, also near Dungannon. The digger was driven to the farmyard to be fitted with a powerful bomb.
Lynagh and Kelly had been joined for the attack by six other men: Patrick McKearney, thirty-two, who had escaped from the Maze and who came from the village of Moy halfway between Dungannon and Armagh; Gerard O’Callaghan, twenty-nine, from Benburb in Tyrone; Seamus Donnelly, twenty-one, from Galbally near Dungannon; Declan Arthurs, the same age and from the same village; Eugene Kelly, twenty-five, from Cappagh; and Tony Gormley, twenty-four also from Galbally. The complexity of the plan, and its similarity to the one used nine months before, would indicate that there were many other people involved as well, but these eight men were chosen to ride into the village. Gormley and O’Callaghan rode on the digger itself. The others went in the blue van which was driven by Donnelly. Lynagh was in the back of the van and Kelly probably rode beside the driver.
The men drew their weapons. They had three Heckler and Koch G3 7.62 mm assault rifles – a standard weapon of the German army – two 5.56 mm FNC rifles, an assault shotgun and the Ruger revolver taken from Reserve Constable Clements at Ballygawley. Subsequent tests were to show that the G3s and FNCs had been used in three killings of UDR men. They clad themselves in boiler suits, balaclavas and gloves and set off.
The digger made its way down small country lanes, rather than taking the main road from Dungannon to Armagh. The van went ahead to make sure the coast was clear. Given that the point where the explosive was collected was under observation, it is possible that there was also surveillance along the route, perhaps from unmarked cars or OPs. The undercover operators, after all, needed some assurance that the IRA really was going to attack the target.
The SAS troops in Loughgall were commanded by the most senior NCO in the Ulster troop – a Hereford veteran with the rank of staff sergeant. Their officers were not on the ground. The briefing had stated that the mission was an OP/React – an Observation Post able to react. As we have already seen, this was a coded term for an ambush, and the soldiers’ weaponry and deployment had more in common with what the regiment practises in the jungles of Brunei than is considered normal in Ulster. According to members of the SAS, there were two or more 7.62 mm belt-fed General Purpose Machine Guns in the ambush party, operated by members
of the resident troop. Its other members carried newly issued 7.62 mm Heckler and Koch G3-A4K assault rifles, which had replaced the Armalite and HK53 assault rifles used by SAS troops in Northern Ireland prior to 1987. Most of the reinforcement troop from G Squadron carried 5.56 mm M-16 Armalites.
The main body – what would in Army manuals be termed the ‘assault’ or ‘killer’ group – was deployed in two main groups. The larger, including the belt-fed General Purpose Machine Guns, was positioned in the copse overlooking the RUC station close to the Armagh road in order to be able to concentrate fire on the football field in front of the station, reflecting the SAS commander’s belief that the IRA group was likely to approach across this ground. The other main group was in and around the police station itself. These men were at considerable risk from the bomb: the SAS commander had probably gambled that, because there was a low wall running along most of the front of the station which could not be crossed by a digger, the excavator would be driven into the gate – directing the blast at one end of the building. The SAS soldiers inside the station would have been at the rear and at the other end of the building. One or two may have been crouched behind a blast-proof wall built to protect the station entrance.
The SAS commander’s decision to put men inside the police station may have owed something to the philosophy of the ‘clean kill’. Many of those involved in the operation regarded it as a simple ambush, part of a terrorist war. But it was vitally important that a judicious use of force appeared to be maintained and that the soldiers be seen to have acted within the terms of the Army Yellow Card. The IRA assumption that the police station would be unoccupied at the time of the attack might make it hard to justify killing the terrorists, as they were not presenting an immediate danger to life.
An SAS man explained to me the commander’s decision to put men inside the police station in the following terms: ‘The Yellow Card rules are officially seen to cover Loughgall, but of course they don’t. You put your men in the station. That way they [the IRA] are threatening you without even knowing it. That’s how you get around the Yellow Card.’
There were also at least two ‘cut off groups’ in the village. These were where you would expect them to be in a ‘Type A’ ambush (an attack where the enemy comes along a known route), at points on Balleygasey Road on either side of the RUC station. As well as the group in the copse by the Armagh road, there was another SAS group close to the church, probably sheltering behind the stone wall which runs alongside the road. It is likely that there were other groups of SAS men in the village, acting as look-outs and covering other possible routes of escape. There may also have been an Airborne Reaction Force waiting with helicopters at a nearby security forces base in case the IRA men had to be blocked from getting away across the countryside.
The Toyota van entered the village at about 7.15 p.m. It went past the church where the SAS men were hiding behind the wall and went down the hill towards the station. People living nearby had noticed nothing unusual. They had not been told that RUC intelligence had good reason to believe that terrorists were going to try and bomb their police station. The risks of informing civilians, or evacuating them, are considered too great by the covert operators, even in a largely loyalist village. A woman living near the RUC station remembers the blue Toyota appearing: ‘I saw the van go up and down. I thought it was from the corporation.’ The men inside the vehicle were in fact checking the coast was clear.
After a few moments the van came back down the road, past the church, followed by the digger. The excavator trundled down the Balleygasey Road, the bomb in its front bucket concealed under rubble. The van went slightly past the police station and stopped.
Patrick Kelly and a couple of the others climbed out of the van, levelled their assault rifles and opened fire on the police station. It would appear that, unlike Balleygawley where RUC officers were shot, this fusillade was an act of bravado, as the IRA were not expecting Loughgall station to be occupied. At this point the main body of the SAS ambush party opened fire. As at least a dozen SAS men fired automatic weapons. ‘All hell broke lose on the radio net,’ says someone who was part of the operation. The IRA men around the van were caught in a withering deluge of rounds coming from two directions: SAS troops around the police station were firing into the rear and side of the Toyota. Those in the copse opened up with their GMPGs and other weapons, sending bullets into the front of the van.
Patrick Kelly was hit several times and fell to the ground close to the driver’s door of the van. A heavy bloodstain from a head wound was still visible when press photographers visited the area the following morning. Lynagh and McKearney – two of the most experienced men – appear to have realized what was happening and to have thrown themselves back into the van. However the Toyota was under a hail of bullets and Seamus Donnelly, the driver, was mortally wounded before he could move off. Lynagh and McKearney died in the back. The fact that they were wearing flak jackets ‘didn’t do them much good’, remarks an SAS soldier. Eugene Kelly and Declan Arthurs died trying to take cover behind the vehicle.
The SAS men failed initially to shoot Michael Gormley and Gerard O’Callaghan, who had set the fuse on the 200 lb bomb alight with a zippo lighter. The two men took cover as the fuse burnt down. The soldiers had not been expecting such a simple device and were perhaps distracted by the gunfire.
The digger blew up, flattening the end of the police station closest to the gate and the telephone exchange building next door. A shower of masonry came down on the football club house. One of the digger’s large rear wheels was blown 30 or 40 metres through a slatted wooden fence backed by small conifers opposite the station, landing on the football pitch. Keeping the ambush force in the station had held risks, and it seems some police and SAS men were injured by the blast.
The woman living nearby heard the blast: ‘It was very frightening – I went into the hall and just stood there praying until it was all over.’
After the bomb had gone off Gormley and O’Callaghan tried to run away. Gormley, carrying the zippo lighter but no weapon, was shot dead after emerging from behind a wall where he had taken cover. O’Callaghan, carrying an assault rifle, was killed as he ran across the road from the station.
There were later claims that the SAS fired more than 1200 rounds at the IRA men. It is hard to know the exact figure but it was certainly some hundreds. Many of the holes in the wooden fence opposite could still be seen when I visited the area in 1989. The bullet numbers, chalked by CID Scene of Crime Officers after the incident, from 184 to 192, were still visible.
An SAS man later joked to colleagues that he had tap-danced as he used the General Purpose Machine Gun. The angle of the bullet marks in the fence and those in the side of the van suggests that most of the bullets fired in this area came from an area around the entrance to the RUC station.
Concentrating relatively heavy firepower in the village carried risks for the SAS. They were using powerful weapons across open ground and four cars being driven by people uninvolved with terrorism were caught in the ambush area. The group in the copse fired many rounds across the lower ground, where the RUC station and football field are, into the main part of the village. The IRA men had also opened fire. An SAS man recalls, ‘the bad guys were shooting all around, panicking like hell.’ Bullets smacked into the wall of the church hall, where children were playing. Three cars were in the area between the RUC station and the church.
Oliver and Anthony Hughes, brothers from another village, were driving their white Citroën past the church and down the hill towards the RUC station. Oliver Hughes said later, ‘We heard the bang and Anthony stopped the car, not wanting to drive into the troubled area. We decided to reverse away from the scene.’ Soldiers hiding nearby probably thought that the reversing vehicle also belonged to the terrorists and they opened fire.
‘The car hadn’t moved far before the firing started,’ Oliver Hughes continued. ‘The shots were deafening, blazing away behind us and lots of them hi
tting the road. The back of the car must have been hit. There were terrible fumes so I began to wind down the window for air. Then there was a crash of glass and I heard Anthony let a bit of a shout out of him. I didn’t even have time to turn round to see him when I was hit myself.’
Anthony Hughes, a thirty-six-year-old father of three, was killed. His brother survived, despite having been hit at least four times – three rounds went into his back and one into his head. It appeared that the SAS men had poured fire into the car without issuing any challenge or knowing who was in it. The soldiers’ explanation was that the brothers had been wearing overalls, as were the IRA terrorists, and appeared to be about to open fire.
Another vehicle, containing a woman and her young daughter, was going the other way, up the hill towards the church. As bullets began hitting the car, the commander of one of the SAS stop groups rushed over to the vehicle to rescue her. The soldier was awarded the Military Medal for this act of valour.
An elderly couple were in the third vehicle caught in this area. Herbert Buckley and his wife jumped out of their car and threw themselves in a ditch.
On the other side of the RUC station, between the IRA men’s Toyota and the copse where the SAS assault group had opened fire, another motorist had stopped his car. The man, a salesman for a brewery, apparently watched transfixed as hundreds of SAS bullets hit the van just ahead of him. As the firing stopped he jumped out of the car and ran towards the bungalows beside the road. He was rugby tackled by an SAS man and held until his identity could be established.
As the shooting subsided the area was sealed off by armed police. Helicopters flew over as troops scoured the countryside in case other terrorists were in the area. Within half an hour the first SAS troops were on their way out of the area by helicopter. The IRA had lost eight men, its worst single setback in sixty years. Tom King, the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, told an RUC passing out parade, ‘If people do launch terrorist acts, they must recognize they have to face the consequences.’
