Beorn
08-31-2009, 02:57 PM
Ireland plotted to send special forces to attack BBC studios in Belfast as part of plans to invade Northern Ireland, it emerged yesterday.
Codenamed 'Exercise Armageddon', the operations against British targets in 1969 would have stunned the world.
Tensions were running high as the Troubles began in earnest.
http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2009/08/31/article-1210141-000654CF00000258-181_468x286.jpg
'Exercise Armageddon': At the height of the Troubles, Ireland planned to attack BBC studios in Belfast. Pictured here, British soldiers detain a man in Londonderry during the Bloody Sunday riots, 1972
In August that year, Irish prime minister Jack Lynch said he would not stand by as the innocent suffered, fearing a huge onslaught by loyalists on Roman Catholic civilians.
Soon after his comments, British troops were sent to restore order to Northern Ireland - in a mission that was to last more than three decades.
Meanwhile, Irish generals continued to plot their own attack on the province.
With just 2,000 soldiers, they knew they could not mount a conventional military campaign against Britain's vastly superior numbers.
So strategists proposed using 'unconventional operations' - believed to mean bombings or machine-gun attacks - to help defend Catholics from loyalist mobs and gangs.
At the same time, they would launch two infantry-company attacks, involving about 120 troops, into Derry and Newry.
'The document says the operation would have to be unilateral - there would be no declaration of war. It would be an attack without any warning,' said security expert Tom Clonan.
The top-secret memo written in October 1969 observed that 'the majority of the important vital installations in Northern Ireland, eg Belfast airport, TV studios, docks and main industries, are located in the north-eastern corner, some distance from the border.
'Any military operations conducted against these should preferably be of the unconventional type.'
While British attention was diverted by these guerrilla attacks, infantry units would cross the border at two points. But the planners admitted in the memo that such a momentous move would open the way to 'retaliatory punitive military action by United Kingdom forces on the republic.
'Therefore any operations undertaken against Northern Ireland would be militarily unsound.'
The memo also highlighted low morale in the Irish Army, saying that although there might be a surge of pride in assisting those in trouble in the North, 'a motivation programme aimed at indoctrinating our troops' might be necessary.
Planners also realised the invading infantry faced being surrounded by British forces, and would need to dig in for a protracted defence.
It seemed, however, that doubts about their ability to wage such a campaign won the day, and the proposals were abandoned.
Mr Clonan, who will present a documentary about the plan on Irish television this Tuesday, said it could have created chaos.
He said: 'Despite what the British military might say in relation to conventional military operations, guerilla warfare could have had them on their knees in about a year.
'At the height of the Troubles, the Provisional IRA had about 1,000 active service unit members and 60,000 armed elements were not able to control them.'
A retired senior British officer who served in Northern Ireland, Michael Dewar, said the Irish would have faced annihilation.
'It is an absurdity to think that a puny military force like the Irish Army could in any form take on the British Army,' he said.
Source (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1210141/Irish-generals-plotted-attack-UK-forces-Ulster.html)
Codenamed 'Exercise Armageddon', the operations against British targets in 1969 would have stunned the world.
Tensions were running high as the Troubles began in earnest.
http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2009/08/31/article-1210141-000654CF00000258-181_468x286.jpg
'Exercise Armageddon': At the height of the Troubles, Ireland planned to attack BBC studios in Belfast. Pictured here, British soldiers detain a man in Londonderry during the Bloody Sunday riots, 1972
In August that year, Irish prime minister Jack Lynch said he would not stand by as the innocent suffered, fearing a huge onslaught by loyalists on Roman Catholic civilians.
Soon after his comments, British troops were sent to restore order to Northern Ireland - in a mission that was to last more than three decades.
Meanwhile, Irish generals continued to plot their own attack on the province.
With just 2,000 soldiers, they knew they could not mount a conventional military campaign against Britain's vastly superior numbers.
So strategists proposed using 'unconventional operations' - believed to mean bombings or machine-gun attacks - to help defend Catholics from loyalist mobs and gangs.
At the same time, they would launch two infantry-company attacks, involving about 120 troops, into Derry and Newry.
'The document says the operation would have to be unilateral - there would be no declaration of war. It would be an attack without any warning,' said security expert Tom Clonan.
The top-secret memo written in October 1969 observed that 'the majority of the important vital installations in Northern Ireland, eg Belfast airport, TV studios, docks and main industries, are located in the north-eastern corner, some distance from the border.
'Any military operations conducted against these should preferably be of the unconventional type.'
While British attention was diverted by these guerrilla attacks, infantry units would cross the border at two points. But the planners admitted in the memo that such a momentous move would open the way to 'retaliatory punitive military action by United Kingdom forces on the republic.
'Therefore any operations undertaken against Northern Ireland would be militarily unsound.'
The memo also highlighted low morale in the Irish Army, saying that although there might be a surge of pride in assisting those in trouble in the North, 'a motivation programme aimed at indoctrinating our troops' might be necessary.
Planners also realised the invading infantry faced being surrounded by British forces, and would need to dig in for a protracted defence.
It seemed, however, that doubts about their ability to wage such a campaign won the day, and the proposals were abandoned.
Mr Clonan, who will present a documentary about the plan on Irish television this Tuesday, said it could have created chaos.
He said: 'Despite what the British military might say in relation to conventional military operations, guerilla warfare could have had them on their knees in about a year.
'At the height of the Troubles, the Provisional IRA had about 1,000 active service unit members and 60,000 armed elements were not able to control them.'
A retired senior British officer who served in Northern Ireland, Michael Dewar, said the Irish would have faced annihilation.
'It is an absurdity to think that a puny military force like the Irish Army could in any form take on the British Army,' he said.
Source (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1210141/Irish-generals-plotted-attack-UK-forces-Ulster.html)