History of The Special Air Service - Northern Ireland

Northern Ireland

In 1969 D Squadron, 22 SAS deployed to Northern Ireland for just over a month. The SAS returned in 1972 when small numbers of men were involved in intelligence gathering. The first squadron fully committed to the Provence was in 1976 and by 1977 two squadrons were operating in Northern Ireland. These squadrons used well armed covert patrols in unmarked civilian cars. Within a year four terrorist had been killed or captured and another six forced to move south into the Republic. Members of the SAS are also believed to have served in the 14 Intelligence Company based in Northern Ireland.

The first operation attributed to the SAS was the arrest of Sean McKenna 12 March 1975. McKenna claims he was sleeping in a house just south of the Irish border when he was woken in the night by two armed men and forced across the border, while the SAS claimed he was found wandering in a field drunk. Their second operation was on 15 April 1976 with the arrest and killing of Peter Cleary. Cleary, an IRA staff officer, was detained by five in a field waiting for a helicopter to land. While four men guided the aircraft in it is alleged that Cleary started to struggle with his guard, attempted to seize his rifle and was shot.

The SAS returned to Northern Ireland in force in 1976, operating throughout the province. In January 1977 Seamus Harvey armed with a shotgun was killed on a SAS ambush. On 21 June six men from G Squadron, ambushed four IRA men planting a bomb at a government building, three were shot and killed their driver managed to escape. On 10 July 1978, John Boyle, a sixteen-year-old Catholic, was exploring an old graveyard near his family's farm in County Antrim, when he discovered an arms cache. He told his father, who passed on the information to the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC). The next morning Boyle decided to see if the guns had been removed and was shot dead by two SAS soldiers who had been waiting undercover. In 1976 Newsweek also reported that eight SAS men had been arrested in the Republic of Ireland supposedly as a result of a navigational error. It was later revealed that they had been in pursuit of a Provisional Irish Republican Army unit.

On 2 May 1980 Captain Herbert Westmacott, became the highest-ranking member of the SAS to be killed in Northern Ireland. He was in command of an eight man plain clothes SAS patrol that had been alerted by the Royal Ulster Constabulary that an IRA gun team had taken over a house in Belfast. A car carrying three SAS men went to the rear of the house, and another car carrying five SAS men went to the front of the house. As the SAS arrived at the front of the house the IRA unit opened fire with the a M60 machine gun, hitting Captain Westmacott in the head and shoulder killing him instantly. The remaining SAS men at the front, returned fire but were forced to withdraw. One member of the IRA team was apprehended by the SAS at the rear of the house, preparing the unit's escape in a transit van, while the other three IRA members remained inside the house. More members of the security forces were deployed to the scene, and after a brief siege the remaining members of the IRA unit surrendered. After his death Westmacott was posthumously awarded the Military Cross. for gallantry in Northern Ireland during the period 1 February 1980 to 30 April 1980.

On 4 December 1983, a SAS patrol, found two IRA gunmen who were both armed. One with an Armalite rifle and the other a shotgun. They did not, allegedly, respond when challenged so the patrol opened fire, killing the two men. A third man escaped in a car was believed to have been wounded.

On 8 May 1987 the IRA suffered its worst single loss of men, when eight men were killed by the SAS while attempting to attack the Loughgall police station. The SAS had been informed of the attack and 24 men waited in ambush positions around and inside the police station. They opened fire when the armed IRA unit approached the station with a 200 pounds (91 kg) bomb, its fuse lit, in the bucket of a hijacked JCB digger. A civilian passing the incident was also killed by SAS fire.

In the late 1980s the IRA started to move operations to the European mainland. Operation Flavius in March 1988, was an SAS operation in Gibraltar in which three PIRA volunteers, Seán Savage, Daniel McCann and Mairéad Farrell, were killed. All three had, allegedly, conspired to detonate a car bomb where a military band assembled for the weekly changing of the guard at the governor's residence. In Germany, in 1989 the German security forces discovered a SAS unit operating there without the permission of the German government.

In 1991 three IRA men killed by the SAS, according to reports at the time they were on their way to kill an Ulster Defence Regiment soldier, who lived in Coagh, when they were ambushed. These three and another seven brought the total number of IRA men killed by the SAS in the 1990s to 11.