Drumnakilly, 1988: The SAS Were Waiting
Historical Notes
58,187 views
At about four o'clock on the afternoon of the thirtieth of August 1988, on the road between Omagh and Carrickmore in County Tyrone, three IRA men drove up to a broken-down coal lorry to kill its driver, and the SAS were waiting for them in the hedge. It was over in seconds. All three men were dead. No soldier was hurt. The lorry was a decoy, and the man kneeling at its back wheel was a soldier who had been chosen because he looked like the driver. When the inquest finally sat, four and a half years later, it heard that the Army had fired two hundred and twenty shots, and that the one IRA rifle recovered had fired sixteen. What it could not say was who fired first. So how long had the SAS been waiting at Drumnakilly — and why has nobody ever settled the first shot?
The lorry was pulled off the road onto a patch of hard standing, next to a boarded-up two-storey farmhouse. One of its back tyres was flat. The driver had climbed down from the cab and was kneeling beside it, working at the wheel, the way any delivery man does when the day has gone wrong.
This was the road from Omagh to Carrickmore, at a stretch called the Long Bog, near the townland of Drumnakilly, about four miles out of Omagh. And the lorry was a coal lorry that people in the district knew by sight. Its usual driver delivered coal for a living. He was also a part-time soldier in the Ulster Defence Regiment, the locally recruited regiment of the British Army, and his round took his lorry to coal depots across the district and to the barracks in Carrickmore and Omagh. Anyone who wanted to find him only had to learn his route.
The man at the wheel that afternoon was not him. He was a soldier of the Special Air Service, and he had been picked for the job because he was about the same size and shape as the coalman and looked a little like him. The SAS had a plain name for this kind of operation. One of its troopers later listed it among the regiment's tasks in Northern Ireland: target substitution. You find out who the other side means to kill, you take that person away, and you put one of your own in his place.
Across the road, and in the derelict beside the lorry, about a dozen SAS soldiers were lying still. Behind the roadside hedge, the ground fell away into bog.
The men they were waiting for were three members of the Provisional IRA's East Tyrone units: Gerard Harte, his younger brother Martin, and Martin's brother-in-law, Brian Mullin. They were coming to kill the coalman.
What happened next took one afternoon, and the ten days before it. Not the history of East Tyrone, not Loughgall told again, and not a verdict on who was winning the war.
Gerard Harte was twenty-nine. His brother Martin, a labourer, was twenty-one, though one standard record of the dead gives his age as twenty-three. Brian Mullin was twenty-six. All three came from Loughmacrory, near Carrickmore, and the two brothers were known in the parish for something other than the IRA. Gerard ran youth teams for the local Gaelic football club, St Theresa's. Martin had captained the senior side.
20 Comments
The IRA went to murder an unarmed off-duty RUC officer.
No warning would have been given to that unarmed man.
The IRA gave no warnings to victims of roadside bombs.
If they had used a roadside bomb against the coalman what would the Ombudsman have to say about that?
His body was never recovered.
Drumnakilly, 1988: The SAS Were Waiting
Historical Notes
58,187 views
At about four o'clock on the afternoon of the thirtieth of August 1988, on the road between Omagh and Carrickmore in County Tyrone, three IRA men drove up to a broken-down coal lorry to kill its driver, and the SAS were waiting for them in the hedge. It was over in seconds. All three men were dead. No soldier was hurt. The lorry was a decoy, and the man kneeling at its back wheel was a soldier who had been chosen because he looked like the driver. When the inquest finally sat, four and a half years later, it heard that the Army had fired two hundred and twenty shots, and that the one IRA rifle recovered had fired sixteen. What it could not say was who fired first. So how long had the SAS been waiting at Drumnakilly — and why has nobody ever settled the first shot?
The lorry was pulled off the road onto a patch of hard standing, next to a boarded-up two-storey farmhouse. One of its back tyres was flat. The driver had climbed down from the cab and was kneeling beside it, working at the wheel, the way any delivery man does when the day has gone wrong.
This was the road from Omagh to Carrickmore, at a stretch called the Long Bog, near the townland of Drumnakilly, about four miles out of Omagh. And the lorry was a coal lorry that people in the district knew by sight. Its usual driver delivered coal for a living. He was also a part-time soldier in the Ulster Defence Regiment, the locally recruited regiment of the British Army, and his round took his lorry to coal depots across the district and to the barracks in Carrickmore and Omagh. Anyone who wanted to find him only had to learn his route.
The man at the wheel that afternoon was not him. He was a soldier of the Special Air Service, and he had been picked for the job because he was about the same size and shape as the coalman and looked a little like him. The SAS had a plain name for this kind of operation. One of its troopers later listed it among the regiment's tasks in Northern Ireland: target substitution. You find out who the other side means to kill, you take that person away, and you put one of your own in his place.
Across the road, and in the derelict beside the lorry, about a dozen SAS soldiers were lying still. Behind the roadside hedge, the ground fell away into bog.
The men they were waiting for were three members of the Provisional IRA's East Tyrone units: Gerard Harte, his younger brother Martin, and Martin's brother-in-law, Brian Mullin. They were coming to kill the coalman.
What happened next took one afternoon, and the ten days before it. Not the history of East Tyrone, not Loughgall told again, and not a verdict on who was winning the war.
Gerard Harte was twenty-nine. His brother Martin, a labourer, was twenty-one, though one standard record of the dead gives his age as twenty-three. Brian Mullin was twenty-six. All three came from Loughmacrory, near Carrickmore, and the two brothers were known in the parish for something other than the IRA. Gerard ran youth teams for the local Gaelic football club, St Theresa's. Martin had captained the senior side.