“Let The Maniacs Handle It” — How The SAS Destroyed The IRA’s Most Lethal Service Unit In 40 Seconds
Eight men drove into Lgull that Friday evening in a blue Toyota van. 40 seconds later, they were on the ground in a field. Everyone shot in the head. The man the IRA called the executioner face down in the back of the van without a round fired from his rifle. 678 British rounds against 78 Irish ones, 9 to one.
And the British state had known they were coming for 10 days. This was the most experienced active service unit the provisional IRA ever fielded. The South Armag Brigade ran on these men. British intelligence had spent 3 years failing to break them. One senior officer told journalist Peter Taylor off the record that the security forces had no way to engage the unit on equal terms. He was wrong. Dead wrong.
Wait, 10 days early? Yes, 10 days. By the end of this video, you’ll know how the warning reached Stormmont. What the SAS did to a Catholic mechanic and his brother on a road that was not closed, which one of the eight was holding a cigarette lighter when he was shot, and the name the men of South Armar gave to that field afterwards.
Patrick Kelly became commander of the East Tyrone Brigade in 1985. He was 28. The British had arrested him in 1982 on what they called overwhelming evidence. The case collapsed inside 15 minutes. Kelly walked out and went straight back to active service. He brought two men with him to the top of the brigade.
Jim Liner, born in Monahan in 1956, was a sitting sin fine counselor on the Monahan Urban District Council. The guarder had arrested him repeatedly and never once secured a conviction. Inside the IRA, Lynard’s nickname was the executioner. The third man was Padrick Mccernie from Moy County, Tyrone. 32 years old, 15 years of IRA service.
He was one of 38 prisoners who broke out of the maze in September 1983. The largest prison escape in British and Irish history. Within months, he was back on active service. Historians describe him as one of the most experienced IRA volunteers ever to die in British hands. The three of them together ran the most successful soul provincial IRA unit of the late 1980s.
Ballistic tests on the weapons that unit eventually carried would link them to every murder and attempted murder of a security forces member in Tyrone and Firina in the previous 12 months. up to 50 homicides on eight men. The NIO briefing said the combat record of this active service unit is in the assessment of this office the most consistent of any provincial unit currently in the field.
When the SAS finally got their chance, they were not engaging amateurs. They were engaging men who had survived everything the British state had thrown at them for 15 years. Ler had proposed to IRA Northern Command, a campaign modeled on the Tet offensive. Destroy isolated bases, then intimidate every contractor in Northern Ireland out of rebuilding them.
The brigade started executing it. On the 7th of December 1985, Kelly and Liner led the assault on Baly Gory RU barracks. Reserve Constable William Clemens and Constable George Gilland were shot dead at the front gate. Picture Clemens, 51 years old, two children. Standing inside the gate of the barracks where he had worked for 9 years, he sees the van.
He recognizes the men inside as Ira before he reaches for his sidearm. He does not get there. A Ruger revolver is lifted from his body that night and disappears into the East Tyrone Brigade Armory. The building was rad with automatic fire. A 100 pound bomb destroyed the structure. Declan Arthur’s then 19, was on the operation.
The Ruger from Clement’s body would be recovered 17 months later from a man’s pocket in a field in Lock Ghaul. 8 months later, on the 11th of August 1986, Kelly drove a stolen JCB digger with a bomb in the front bucket through the perimeter fence of the Birch’s RU station. The station was empty. The bomb leveled it.
The British had now seen the digger bomb method twice. The second time on video. The Burch’s attack put British intelligence on the highest alert it had been at in 15 years of the troubles. According to cabinet office documents released in 2017, the conclusion was simple. The East Tyrone Brigade was building toward a campaign that would force the British government to either occupy County Armar outright or withdraw from rural Olter entirely.
Neither was politically acceptable. So a different decision was made. Not in the Cabinet Office, not on paper, not in any document that has ever been released. In early May 1987, an intelligence report reached the tasking and coordinating group at Stormmont. The exact source has never been confirmed. The public record indicates surveillance, communications intercept, and the persistent but unproven suggestion of a human source inside the brigade.
The signal that reached Stormmont read in summary form. Source assessment high confidence. A mechanical digger will be used in an attack on an RU station in County Armar. Target loft goal method vehicle-born improvised explosive in the front bucket. End signal. The British had at least 10 days.
By the morning of the 8th of May, they had at least 24 hours of operational certainty. The RU quietly evacuated the part-time officers from Lgull station. The SAS began moving into position. The operation was designated operation dudy. Picture what the village looked like that morning. It is still dark when the trucks arrive.
Over 30 soldiers move into lofall under cover of pre-dawn. Under an officer identified in court documents, only as soldier A, six SAS men in plain clothes climb the internal staircase of the empty police station and take up firing positions at the first floor windows. They have angles on the approach from the north, the approach from the south, and the front gate.
Outside, troops melt into six wooded firing positions covering every approach. Their weapons are M16 rifles, Heckler and Coke G3 rifles, and at least two L7 A2 generalurpose machine guns. By sunrise, they’re in position. They will not move for the next 13 hours. Imagine you are one of the six men inside that station. Your rifle is resting on the window sill.
You hear the bin lorry coming down the road. A postman walks past below you 6 ft under your window. He does not look up. If he did, he would see the muzzle of your rifle resting on the sill above his head. You hold absolutely still. The lorry passes. The postman moves on. You have 12 hours to go. At 9:40 in the morning, a delivery van pulls up at the shop opposite the station.
The driver unloads three crates of milk and stands at the counter chatting to the shopkeeper for 6 minutes. The special air service men in the windows can hear him laughing. The van drives away. Then a tractor passes. Then a woman with a pram. Then a man on a bicycle going the other way. Nobody looks up.
Just before noon, a girl in a school cardigan stops on the pavement directly outside the station to retie the le the lace of her left shoe. She is maybe 9 years old. She is 2 feet under the muzzle of a special air service rifle. She finishes the notch. She stands up. She walks on toward the village shop. The soldier above her exhales. He does not lower the rifle.
The bin lorry comes back through Lgull at 1:15 in the afternoon on its return route. Same driver, same lorry. He nods at the constable on duty at the station’s front door, who nods back. The constable is not a Royal Olter constabularary officer. He is a member of the Special Air Service in a borrowed uniform holding the front of the building open like a stage set.
And here is the detail that has never gone away. No roadblocks are set. None. The road through Lgull runs open in both directions for the entire deployment. The decision is operational made on the ground and is later produced in evidence at the European Court of Human Rights hearing. The reasoning is this. If the road is closed, the Irish Republican Army might be alerted and abort.
Any of those people could have been killed. The girl with the shoelace, the delivery driver, the woman with the pram. Everyone in those firing positions knew that nobody closed the road. While the SAS hold their positions, the brigade is moving. At around 2:30 p.m., two masked men walk into a snooker club on Mount Joy Road in Dungan.
They hijack a blue Toyota Hias van from a Mr. Core. Mr. core is kept in the back of his own van for several hours. By 6:00 p.m., four armed men in Balaclavas arrive at the Mackle family farm at Oin League Upper. A JCB digger is driven into the farmyard. A blue oil drum is lifted into the front bucket. Inside the oil drum is approximately 200 lb of seex wired to two 40-cond fuses.
By 6:50 p.m., the digger leaves the yard. The moment it is gone, the family goes for the phone. Picture the kitchen. Mrs. Mel is holding the receiver to her ear. Her hand is shaking. The line is silent. Not dead air silent. Cut cable silent. She knows the difference. She puts the receiver back down.
She picks it up again. She puts it back down. She does not say a word. From Mr. Mack’s witness statement to the inquest. Quote, “We tried our own line. We tried the neighbor’s line. Both were cut. My wife understood before I did what it meant. There was a target somewhere ahead of that digger and we could do nothing.
End quote. What they do not know is that the warning has already been given. 10 days ago by just after 7 p.m. the unit is on the road into Lul. eight men, three Heckler and Coke G3 rifles, an FN FAL, two FN FNC’s, a Francis P12 shotgun, and the Ruger revolver last seen on the body of reserve constable William Clemens at Bali Gorley 17 months earlier.
Every man wears a blue boiler suit, a flack jacket, gloves, and a balaclava. Up in the windows, the order is given. Hold fire until the digger crosses the line. The van and the digger make two reconnaissance passes of the station. According to one IRA member who later spoke anonymously to researcher Ed Maloney, the unit noticed the station looked too quiet. There was an argument.
They went ahead anyway. Picture Patrick Kelly in the front passenger seat of the van as it turns onto Lu Ghoul Road for the second time. 30 years old, 15 years on active service. He looks at the police station as the van passes. The lights are off. The windows are dark. He turns to the man next to him and says something. We do not know what.
He turns back to face the road. He has less than 90 seconds left to live. At approximately 7:15 p.m., Declan Arthurs takes the wheel of the JCB. Tony Gormley and Jared O’ Caligan ride alongside him. One hand on the bomb, one hand on a lighter. You’re going to want to remember this detail. The lighter. The van pulls up outside the station.
A man emerges from the rear sliding door. He raises his rifle. He opens fire on the first floor windows. The SAS open fire from six positions simultaneously. The digger crashes the perimeter fence. The fuses are lit. The van takes fire from three angles. Three men jump out of the rear, return fire, then take cover behind the vehicle, then inside it.
The bomb in the bucket detonates against the front wall of the station. The blast throws debris into the field opposite Lgore Football Club. When the firing stops, the soldiers reload and hold position. Recovery teams later collected 678 spent cartridge cases from the SAS firing positions. The IR had fired 78 rounds. The ratio was almost 9:1.
The official record of what happened in those 40 seconds was reconstructed from three pieces of inquest testimony. Statement of soldier A, commanding officer. Quote, I gave the order to engage when the lead vehicle crossed the demarcation line. My men opened fire from six pre-desated positions.
The engagement was concluded within 40 seconds. No SAS personnel sustained injuries. End quote. Statement of Soldier S. Rear Cordon. Quote. A white Citroen entered the contact area from the north. The driver was wearing dark clothing. The passenger was wearing what appeared to be a blue boiler suit.
The vehicle reversed at speed in the direction of incoming fire. I engaged in accordance with the rules of engagement. End quote. Statement of Soldier X, Perimeter Lane. Quote, “I observed a male, unmasked, running across the road from the direction of the disabled digger. He had something in his right hand, which I assessed as a possible detonation device.
I engaged with two rounds. The object was later identified as a cigarette lighter.” End quote. Three statements, three soldiers, three killings inside 40 seconds, none of them named. Now look at where the bodies fell. Patrick Kelly, 30, was found at the front of the van. A rifle was on his body.
Debris on his clothing indicated he had gone to ground before the bomb detonated. Jim Liner, 31, was found diagonally inside the van, ammunition still in his jacket pockets. The man the South Armar Brigade had called the executioner, had been killed without firing the FNFAL that was found near his body. picture liner through the scope of one of the SAS rifles.
He is the second man out of the rear sliding door. The boiler suit, the flack jacket, the balaclava, the fnf coming up to his shoulder. The crosshairs settle on the center of his chest, the trigger is pulled. He goes down before he has fired around. Patrick Mccernie, 32, was face down in the rear of the van, his flack jacket still buckled with a dozen wounds across his torso and head.
Declan Arthurs, 21, was found in a lane near Loaul Football Club. He was unarmed. The soldier in the lane saw something metallic in Arthur’s clenched fist and fired two rounds. The metallic object was a cigarette lighter. Arthur’s job had been to light the fuse on the bomb. Tony Gormley, 24, was on the pavement.
Eugene Kelly, 25, was in the driver’s seat. Gerardo Callahan, 29, had 12 post-mortem wounds. Sheamus Donnelly, the youngest at 19, had at least 20 separate wounds. One entry wound on the side of the neck showed gunpowder residue, indicating the muzzle had been within several feet when fired. Picture the moment. Donnelly is on the ground. He has stopped moving.
A soldier is standing over him, rifle lowered to within a few feet of his neck. The trigger is pulled. The gunpowder burns into the skin around the wound. Every one of the eight had multiple gunshot wounds. Every one had been shot in the head. If this is the kind of military history you find yourself watching at 1:00 in the morning, where the documents and the named men actually matter, hit the subscribe button.
Sourced, cited, cold. Back to county armed. A white Citroen followed the Toyota van into the contact area from the north. Anthony Hughes, 36, was driving. He was Catholic. He had three children. He worked as a mechanic and a stonemason. He was returning home from repairing a lorry on a road he had driven a thousand times.
His brother Oliver, 35, was in the passenger seat. Oliver was wearing blue overalls, the same shade of blue as an IRA boiler suit. Imagine you are Anthony Hughes. You are 6 minutes from your own front door. Your brother is in the seat next to you. The road is empty. Then the road is full of muzzle flashes from the trees behind you. You throw the car into reverse.
You stamp the accelerator. The rear windscreen explodes inward. Your brother is screaming. You feel the seat belt cutting into your chest as the car lurches. You’re still trying to drive backwards when the second burst comes through the rear and finds you. Anthony Hughes died at the wheel of his own car, seat belt still buckled.
From the post-mortem report prepared for the inquest of 1995. Quote, “Cause of death, multiple gunshot wounds to the back, neck, and head. Total entry wounds recorded 29. Trajectory analysis indicates all rounds entered the body from the posterior. deceased was wearing a seat belt at time of death. End quote.
All 29 wounds were in his back, his neck, the back of his head. He died with his hands on the steering wheel. Oliver Hughes, struck by 14 rounds, somehow got out of the car alive. He spent months in hospital. He lived. The brother of a man killed by the SAS in 1987, lived to identify his brother’s body, lived to read the autopsy, and lived to spend the next 28 years asking why the road was not closed.
The road was not closed because a roadblock might have warned the IR. That is the answer of the British state on the record. Anthony Hugh’s three children grew up without a father because of an operational decision that prioritized the trap over the lives of any civilian who drove through the kill zone. The director of public prosecutions concluded that prosecution of any SAS soldier involved was not in the public interest.
A 4-day inquest opened in Craigon in May 1995. Lawyers for six of the IRA families withdrew on the second day. None of the SAS soldiers appeared in person. On the 4th of May 2001, the European Court of Human Rights handed down its judgment in Kelly and others versus United Kingdom. Quote, the court is not in a position to reach any conclusion on whether the use of force was strictly proportionate.
It does however find that the investigation conducted into the killings was not effective. End quote. In 2011, the historical inquiries team concluded that the IRA fired first and that the responding fire was within the framework of the rules of engagement. Two official findings. Neither resolves the other.
The inquest has still not concluded. Patrick Kelly’s funeral in Dungan drew between 5 and 10,000 mourners. It was the largest Republican funeral in Northern Ireland since the 1981 hunger strikers. In South Armar, in the years after, the Republican families who lost men that night stopped using the village’s name.
They called it something else. They called it the slaughterfield. The name is not in any official document. It is not in the European Court of Human Rights judgment or the historical inquiries team report or the inquest papers. It is in the funerals. It is in the murals. It is in the way old men in Cross Maglin still lower their voices when the 8th of May comes around.
Patrick Kelly was buried in Eden Cemetery 2 miles from his home in Dungan. Jim Liner was buried in St. Joseph Cemetery in Monohan where he had been a sitting counselor. Padre Mccernney was buried in Moy 8 mi from the prison he had escaped from. Anthony Hughes was buried by his wife and three children in the Catholic cemetery in Kaga Shivney.
His brother Oliver lived another 28 years and gave evidence about that night every time he was asked until the day he died in 2015. The SAS men who fired on the 8th of May 1987 remain anonymous. Soldier A is still Soldier A. Soldier X is still Soldier X. Their names are sealed in court records. The inquest has never opened.
The road they fired across runs through Lgull today, exactly as it ran then, open in both directions.
