SAS Operating in Ireland (Republic of)

shaneybaby wrote: »

Any idea of a name or around when this happened? Really interested in this if you can, sound.

its in the OP - 1976.

team one were on a job, crossed the border in plain clothes and an unmarked car - met a Gardai checkpoint where they were searched, found to be in possession of weapons and arrested. a toolled up team two go looking for the now missing, and radio silent, team one and meet the same Gardai checkpoint where the same thing happens.

it was a fcuk up.

Avgas wrote: »

That was the 70s. Things were bad. Flares. Glam rock. Map reading errors were common.
Then it was the 80s. Things were worse. What went on then is the question?

MI6 would have alway had people operating and coming and going on tourist trips around Ireland. My guess is after the Libyan arms shipments in the mid 1980s there was probably renewed 'tourism' to help locate same items.

You'd be very naive to think SAS people wouldn't cross the border, either in civvies or ghillied up to the nines. Covertness would be the name of the game...'not taking people out for a chat'. The Provos had forward stores bases a car drive away from the border....places where quartermasters could assemble gear and leave it for a crew.....these needed to be spotted/jarked......etc.

They would have at least tried it a few times. Not to mention overhead photo recce probably.....

Really what is the fuss....what would expect them to do?

Boo Hoo.

That explains the Irish tourism boom in the 80's/90's then

OS119 wrote: »

its a matter of public record, it happened.

misreading maps that are not accurate to within less than a meter is actually pretty easy - it doesn't take much to put a line on a map in the wrong place when the line on the ground isn't obvious and goes all over the place. getting it wrong in practice even when the map is correct is just as easy - just think about how many times you've got lost in your car while trying to read a map, then think about how easy it would be to get lost when you're also spending most of your time making sure you aren't driving into an ambush.

Its easy to misread a map... but for 'the elite special forces' who are supposed to memorise routes and missions back to front and write the manuals on map reading - i doubt they misread a map in ireland of all places where there are towns and villages every five minutes down the road. We are a fairly well sign posted Island, not like 200 miles in the Iraqi desert.
It was an obvious excuse to be a few miles over the border looking into someones back garden or whatever.
Its the job of special forces soldiers to operate 'undetected.' likewise in the 70 - 80 - 90's it was very easy for them to monitor phonecalls/landlines in the south too, just a matter of having the equipment and accessing the metal eircom box at the end of the road.

Everyone associates the SAS in NI with killings and yes i know the shoot to kill policy and all that, yes people were shot and killed obviously - but intelligence gathering wasmuch moreso the day to day main role of those units.

charlemont wrote: »

A manslaughter plea would more than likely be accepted...

manslaughter is what happens when you unintentionally kill someone - if we have a bar brawl, i punch you, you fall backwards and hit your head hard enough to kill you on a kerbstone then i'm guilty of manslaughter because my actions lead to your death, but i'm not guilty of murder because i didn't intend to kill you or cause you serious injury.

justifiable homicide is what happens when i take physical action to stop you doing something that i believe will cause either me, or other people, serious harm or even death. the test is both whether the action i took was reasonable, given what i believed to be true at the time, and whether it was reasonable for me to believe what i believed at the time.

meathstevie wrote: »

In general, not related to Ireland or UK.

If you are a soldier or another armed member of a government service or a recognised belligerent party in identifiable uniform and openly armed it would be a legitimate act of war if there was an ongoing conflict under international law.

If you're a sneaky type in civilian clothes not carrying arms openly and out on your own bat you'd be simply trying to unlawfully kill someone.

But.... Red Dawn

don18 wrote: »

dont think the fca would have been out on the roads thats a bit far fetched...fca in the 70s with WW2 equipment....and the pdf 25,000 strong back then dont think there be any need for them.....the fca still dont do any thing.

Well the fact that the FCÁ dont exist would make it hard for them to do anything

don18 wrote: »

dont think the fca would have been out on the roads thats a bit far fetched...fca in the 70s with WW2 equipment....and the pdf 25,000 strong back then dont think there be any need for them.....the fca still dont do any thing.

You might think otherwise, but many reservists served on the border and some were eventually absorbed into the PDF, maintaining their FCÁ rank.

flas wrote: »

i know for a fact the eru branch of the gardai carry out operations in the north these days. they are constantly working with and for the police service of northern ireland and will continue to do so in the future!

I doubt that. I'd say they cross train with PSNI? yeah. But armed gardai operating in the north? There'd be holy war. Why? Why when the PSNI's own version - the HMSU/SSU are light years ahead of the ERU in terms of experience and actual operations etc... Can't see ERU being authorised like that. Cross border? (i.e. you go on one side i'll go the other) but to operate 'across the border' is another thing altogether.

don18 wrote: »

dont think the fca would have been out on the roads thats a bit far fetched...fca in the 70s with WW2 equipment....and the pdf 25,000 strong back then dont think there be any need for them.....the fca still dont do any thing.

I have 3 S/NCOs who served a few months up on the boarder who would beg to differ.

Also regarding SAS operating in Republican pubs. SAS are SF, inteligence gathering is a lot of what they do. The bog standard SAS man was not however known to be effective at covertly infilitrating Republican Pubs and pulling off an Irish accent.

They mostly nipped about sporting dodgey tache's and manning OPs. The 14Intelligence Company (closely involved with the SAS) aka the Det did however do such sneaky beaky type ops.

Great book on them called the operators http://www.amazon.co.uk/Operators-Inside-Intelligence-Company-Secret/dp/0099728710

goldie fish wrote: »

Another one who has never been to the border, but feels qualified to comment on it's geography.

I have worked with military and I've lived on the border most of my life (on both sides) and probably travelled along it more times than you had hot dinners... point is SAS knew exactly where they were, (some of them lived there for a few years!). People sometimes want to glamourise the border areas out to be some kind of wilds of alaska bandit country - it ain't.