Improvised tactical vehicles of the Provisional IRA
Throughout the protracted conflict in Northern Ireland (1960s-1998), the Provisional IRA developed a series of improvised mortars to attack British Army and Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) security bases.
[8] Both pick-up and heavy flatbed trucks mounting automatic weapons, known in military jargon as technicals or non-standard tactical vehicles (NSTV),[9] were involved in a number of machine gun attacks on helicopters and security bases in Northern Ireland.
[13] On 2 March 1991 it was the turn of another Lynx to come under fire over Crossmaglen from a machine gun mounted on the back of a pick-up truck in an improvised armoured turret, supported by IRA volunteers with automatic rifles.
On 21 December 1978, a South Armagh Brigade van carrying an M60 machine gun protected with sandbags,[8] an armour plate,[18] and supported by other armed militants on foot, fired on a British Army patrol in Crossmaglen, killing three soldiers.
[20] A couple of months later, on 27 May 1994, a Ford Transit van fitted in the same way with automatic weapons and driven by five members of the East Tyrone Brigade launched a late night raid on a British Army permanent checkpoint manned by eight soldiers at Aughnacloy, opening up harassing fire on the military facilities.
[25] A press report suggests that the East Tyrone Brigade shot down a British Army Gazelle near Clogher on 11 January 1990 using heavy machine guns transported on vehicles, which were spotted by the helicopter just minutes before the attack.
[28] In 1993 the IRA examined attacking the headquarters of the loyalist paramilitary Ulster Defence Association (UDA) on the Shankill Road with a DShK heavy machine gun mounted to a lorry, raking the building with 12.7mm rounds during a meeting of the organisation's leadership.
On 13 December 1989, an IRA flying column used an improvised armoured truck to storm a British Army checkpoint at Derryard, County Fermanagh, manned by members of the King's Own Scottish Borderers (KOSB).
The vehicle, a Bedford TL,[30] armoured with reinforced sides, metal plates protecting the flatbed, sandbags and a crash bar, and mounting two heavy DShK machine guns and an LPO-50 flamethrower, was also transformed to transport a dozen men armed with AK-47 rifles, hand grenades and RPGs.
[34][35] At least one car, a Mazda 626 wagon, used as a mobile platform for snipers in South Armagh in sixteen occasions from 1992 to 1997, was fitted with a metal plate to protect the shooter, hidden in the modified trunk, from return fire.
[40][41] The most notable use of these vehicles was between 1986 and 1987 by the Lynagh unit of the East Tyrone Brigade, when diggers broke through the perimeter fences of the RUC barracks at The Birches and Loughgall, driven by IRA volunteer Declan Arthurs, who had experience in handling excavators in his family farm since his teen years.
The machines carried huge bombs on their buckets in both occasions, and although the security bases were devastated by the explosions, the IRA unit was immediately ambushed and wiped out after the attack in Loughgall; eight of its members, among them Lynagh and Arthurs, were shot and killed by an SAS team.
[5] The South Armagh Brigade build up their attack on the Cloghoge checkpoint in May 1992 by lifting a Renault Master van converted into an improvised locomotive from the road to the railway with a stolen JCB tracked digger.
[52][53] Flatbed trucks mounting machine guns were the main players in the above mentioned running firefight known as the Battle of Newry Road, one of the longest shoot outs between the IRA and British helicopters that took place on 23 September 1993 in South Armagh.
On 20 October 1989 heavy machine gun fire from a flatbed truck destroyed an armour-plated Ford Sierra with two RUC undercover constables on board, between Bessbrook and Belleeks, in South Armagh.
[54] A similar incident occurred on 15 July 1994, when the East Tyrone Brigade set up an ambush on the Dungannon-Ballygawley road at Killeeshil crossroads using a heavy dump truck carrying a number of volunteers armed with automatic weapons.
[74] The East Tyrone Brigade report on the attack says that they took over the area between the checkpoint and the border, set a roadblock, selected a firing point some 400 yards from the target, drove the tractor in and issued a 30-minute warning.
[76] A truck was used instead as firing platform in a deadly Mark-15 attack on Keady RUC/Army barracks in South Armagh on 8 March 1993, when a civilian contractor to the British Army was killed and several other personnel wounded.
On 20 October 1993, around Fort George British Army barracks, on the west bank of the river Foyle in Derry, the mobile launcher was driven to the firing point, from where a passing heavy armoured vehicle was ambushed.
[88] According to IRA sources, a previous East Tyrone Brigade "directional horizontal mortar" attack on an RUC armoured patrol car, to be carried out from an undisclosed type of vehicle, was abandoned when the device failed to activate in Omagh, on 11 July 1992.
[89] A more conventional attack on the RUC barracks at Grosvenor Road, Belfast, involved an IRA volunteer firing a rocket launcher from the open sunroof of a Lada Samara on 28 June 1994.
[90] By 1991, posters warning troops and civilians of the threat of IRA improvised mobile mortar launchers were hanged on the walls of military facilities in Northern Ireland and across the United Kingdom.
[92][93] Another botched IRA bomb attack, this time using a remotely operated tractor occurred on 4 August 1993, when the vehicle, which also carried a dummy driver made of straw, swerved out of the road on its way to a British Army checkpoint in South Armagh.
[94] The IRA had carried out a similar attack in South Armagh on 3 May 1989, when a tractor with a dummy driver towing a 900 kilograms (2,000 lb) bomb in a trailer was left running with its throttle engaged and pointed in the direction of a British Army observation post at Glassdrummond.
[95][96] The action was part of a wave of bomb attacks carried out by the IRA in the South Armagh area that week, one of which killed a British soldier, Corporal Stephen McGonigle.
[95] On 31 May 1991, an unmanned Mercedes truck loaded with a 1,100 kilograms (2,400 lb) explosive device was rolled down on a hill's slope aimed at an Ulster Defence Regiment (UDR) base at Glenanne, County Armagh.
[18] On 4 March 1990, a ten-man IRA unit launched an incendiary assault on the RUC station at Stewartstown, County Tyrone, using an improvised flamethrower consisting of a manure-spreader towed by a tractor to spray 600 imperial gallons (2,700 L) of a petrol/diesel mix to set the security base on fire, and supported by rifles and an RPG-7 rocket launcher.
[102][103] On 12 November 1993 a second improvised flamethrower attack was carried out on the same target, once more time by a tractor dragging a manure spreader, which sprayed the bunker with 1,100 imperial gallons (5,000 L) of petrol.
On the early morning of 9 May 1920 a large group of IRA members (reportedly three hundred-strong) launched an attack on the fortified Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC) barracks in Newtownhamilton, County Armagh.
[106][59][107] Armed IRA volunteers on foot also played a key role in these operations, by taking over and securing the firing area in several mortar,[75][108] directional bomb,[109][106] and flamethrower attacks.
