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. The organisation also purchased both light and heavy machine guns in order to hamper the British Army supply of border bases by helicopter. The IRA fitted vehicles, specially vans and trucks, with both types of weapons. Vans, trucks and tractors were modified to transport concealed improvised mortars to a launch area near the intended target and fire them, while light and heavy trucks were employed as firing platforms mounting machine guns, particularly M60s and DShKs. Improvised armoured vehicles and heavy equipment were also used to penetrate the perimeter of fortified security bases. The IRA vehicles were often disguised as belonging to civilian companiesTaylor (2018) or even government agencies.
Technicals
Both pick-up and heavy flatbed trucks mounting automatic weapons, known in military jargon as technicals or non-standard tactical vehicles (NSTV), were involved in a number of machine gun attacks on helicopters and security bases in Northern Ireland. The IRA called them "mobile gun platforms".An Phoblacht, 7 July 1994, p. 2 The South Armagh Brigade made of these armed trucks their weapon of choice.
On 25 September 1990, a pick-up truck mounting two light machine guns and one heavy DShK machine gun engaged an Army Air Corps Lynx helicopter approaching Crossmaglen barracks on a resupply mission. The helicopter flew back to its base, but one soldier on the ground was wounded. Another pick-up became the mobile platform for a heavy machine gun attack on a Royal Air Force (RAF) Wessex carrying troops in Forkhill, on 31 January 1991. An 89-round stream was fired at the helicopter, which was hit by a single bullet.
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. There was no immediate reaction from British security forces although the joint RUC/Army base was just 50 yards away. The shooting was filmed by an RTÉ television crew who happened to be outside Crossmaglen's Health Centre.O'Brien, Brendan (1999). The Long War: The IRA and Sinn Féin, Syracuse University Press, p. 206-07; Sunday Life, 3 March 1991. A September 1993 attack on a Puma helicopter ferrying the British Army's 3rd Brigade commander, which resulted in a running gun battle between armed flatbed trucks and Lynx helicopters, known as the Battle of Newry Road, saw the South Armagh IRA employing at least one armed 4x4 pick-up truck in the shooting and one van in the getaway operation.
Vans' boxes were likewise adapted to mount concealed heavy machine guns and automatic weapons to engage personnel, other vehicles and security compounds. On 21 December 1978, a South Armagh Brigade van carrying an M60 machine gun protected with sandbags, an armour plate, and supported by other armed militants on foot, fired on a British Army patrol in Crossmaglen, killing three soldiers. A Toyota Hiace was used to ambush an RUC mobile patrol on Ballymoyer Road, between Whitecross and Newtownhamilton, on 31 October 1983. Three RUC constables were wounded in the shooting. On 11 March 1994 an Isuzu van hijacked in Ballyshannon, County Donegal, was equipped with improvised armour plates and sandbag protection and armed with two heavy machine guns. Nine civilians were held hostage in the owner's house. The improvised fighting vehicle crossed the border at lunchtime and made an incursion into Belleek, County Fermanagh, to engage British troops, but had to withdraw after failing to find its target. 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. The soldiers returned fire. The improvised tactical vehicle eventually fled to the border."Gun attack on checkpoint". Evening Herald, 28 May 1994
Vans were also used to transport heavily armed IRA members to the site of a planned action, like in the occasion of the Loughgall ambush, on 8 May 1987, where eight IRA volunteers were killed by the Special Air Service (SAS) while on board a blue Toyota Hiace, or in the assassination of Shankill Butchers' leader Lennie Murphy on 16 November 1982, when the killers emerged from the back doors of a Morris Marina they managed to drive to the Belfast Protestant area of Glencairn. Vans were involved in two other SAS ambushes, both of them in 1984. On 18 October, an SAS team attempted to stop a van carrying IRA members they were checking near Dungannon with unmarked cars; the vehicle sneaked out from the roadblock. In the subsequent shoot-out, a bystander was hit by a stray SAS bullet and killed. A hot pursuit followed, but the IRA unit got away. Two months later, on 1 December, two unmarked civilian-type cars surrounded a stationary van with IRA members on the process of planting a bomb. The IRA unit realised they were caught and opened fire on one of the SAS teams, killing one soldier. The IRA men attempted to run away through a field on foot, but one of them was shot and killed while still on the vehicle. Another drowned in a nearby river and other two made good their escape. 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. On 10 June 1997, just weeks before the final Provisional IRA ceasefire, an undercover British Army unit on a parked van received small arms fire from IRA volunteers from the Derry Brigade riding on another van on Foyle Road in Derry. No injuries were reported.
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. The odds of the IRA members involved being killed or captured by British security forces while escaping the scene was deemed too high and instead the IRA attempted a bomb attack which ended in disaster for the organisation.
Improvised armoured vehicles
Improvised armoured vehicles were also occasionally produced by the IRA. 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, 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. The armoured vehicle smashed backwards through the gates of the compound, allowing the IRA volunteers to dismount and break inside the base, supported by the weapons of the improvised armoured carrier. Two British soldiers were killed in action. In spite of the fierce exchange of fire, the British Army did not claim officially any hits, though at least five shots seems to have struck the truck's rear. A van bomb left by the assailants at the checkpoint only exploded partially. Despite a counter-attack by a patrol of the KOSB assisted by an RAF Wessex, the heavy vehicle fled to the border, where it was disarmed, booby-trapped and abandoned by its crew. The unarmed helicopter received fire from the armoured truck and was forced to disengage. The British troops in Northern Ireland were equipped with Luchaire 40 mm anti-tank grenades after the assault.
In July 1991, the IRA planned a similar attack on a vehicular checkpoint, this time by delivering a bomb in the trailer of an articulated lorry. The cab unit had been cladded in improvised armour and the hydraulics had been modified to allow the driver to quickly disengage the trailer and activate a short timer for the bomb. The plan, to tow the bomb into a border checkpoint and abandon the payload before driving away, was foiled when the Gardaí confiscated the vehicle in Lifford, County Donegal."Official describes British-Irish border as '300-Mile Difficulty'", Associated Press, 12 May 1992.
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. Author Toby Harnden listed another sniper vehicles like vans and jeeps armoured in the same guise. British soldiers fired back on at least two occasions, both of them without consequences. British soldiers fired on the sniper on 17 March 1993 in the environs of Forkhill, after a successful attack in which a Royal Scots soldier was killed. The other engagement took place at a British army mobile checkpoint near Newtownhamilton, on 31 July 1993.
Mounting turrets were built in several cases on technicals to shelter DShk heavy machine guns and their operators. In other incidents involving armed vans, the gunners were protected with sandbags and armour plates.
Heavy equipment was sometimes employed by the IRA as improvised assault vehicles to tear down fences, walls and even observation posts. In 1972, a British Army watchtower at a timber yard in Belfast was torn apart by the bucket of an IRA excavator. There was no reaction and no casualties among the British troops. On 11 July 1972 there was another attempt to destroy a military outpost with a bulldozer at Lenadoon, Belfast, during the Battle of Lenadoon. The machine carried a bomb in its bucket. An IRA volunteer crashed the heavy tracked vehicle into the observation post supported by small arms fire, but the device failed to explode properly.
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.
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. The heavy machine was previously used to smash through the railway stone wall and pile up stones and wooden planks to construct a ramp to line up the van bomb with the rail tracks.
Some days later, on 7 May 1992, according to an IRA report, the South Fermanagh Brigade used a tractor in County Tyrone to plant a bomb beside an unprotected wall of the RUC base at Fivemiletown. The tractor was driven through a hedge and a garden before delivering the explosive device. The base was heavily damaged by the huge blast, as well as surrounding residential areas. Ten civilians were injured. A British Army sergeant was killed by one of his company's soldiers while providing a security detail in the aftermath of the attack, in a blue-to-blue incident.Fortnight, Issues 302-312, p. 33