How many in the Irish DF in 1969

FACEPALM

Hi all
hopefully you could answer a question for me .
Im watching IF LYNCH HAD INVADED and was wondering how many soldiers were in the DF in that time

Thanks again

cork1

i was watching it to. im not sure how many troops we had but it was alot more than 120!!

FACEPALM

Im sure if Ireland was to invade the north we would have sent 1000.s of troops along the whole border of the north . I dont think so many buses would be involved

sliabh

FACEPALM wrote: »

Hi all
hopefully you could answer a question for me .
Im watching IF LYNCH HAD INVADED and was wondering how many soldiers were in the DF in that time

Thanks again

There was a little over 8000 at the time.

Poorly equipped, trained and organised. It would have been somewhere between a farce and a massacre.

FACEPALM

How many people are in the IDF now and Would ireland be equipt excluding help from third party to regain control of the north if what happened in 1969 did happen again ( I know it wont )

Morpheus

FACEPALM wrote: »

How many people are in the IDF now and Would ireland be equipt excluding help from third party to regain control of the north if what happened in 1969 did happen again ( I know it wont )

Not to be pedantic but IDF is the acronym for the Israeli Defence Forces. The Irish army is known usually as just that, The Irish Army, or the acronym for its constituent parts... "PDF" as in Permanent Defence Forces, or "RDF" for the Reserve Defence Forces.

You can quite easily find out the strength of the Irish army if you google it. but its not that strong in numbers when compared to our european counterparts.

Ireland would not be equipped to carry out an incursion into the north in the sense that ... yes initially we might be able to rush into newry, enniskillen or derry if we were able to maintain complete secrecy (which i sincerely doubt could happen) but once the forces up there got moving, combined with the naval and air support assets that they have available as well as pressure on the diplomatic front, we would be mopped up quite easily. Britain may no longer be a colonial powerhouse but we would be even less likely to cause trouble for them than the argies did in the falklands!

It would totally destabilise the north however and terrorism would grip this entire country in a cold stranglehold.

irish Army vs HM Army = a speedbump for the british and would blow us back into the stoneage both militarily and diplomatically.

sliabh

The PDF is back down to about 8,500 from about 13,000 in the 1980's with another 13,000 in the RDF.

Equipment, training and organisation is far better today. But any idea the Irish army could go toe to toe with the British Army (140,000 personnel trained and equipped for a far more serious level of conflict, and battle hardened from 7 years fighting in Afghanistan) in their back garden in a conventional conflict is so far out there it hardly bears thinking about.

sliabh

There is one scenario where an Irish Army "invasion" could have been contemplated. Back in the 1970's for a moment the British government briefly considered washing their hands of the North and just giving it its independence.

If they had kicked the North out of the UK and,
If a hypothetical Unionist dominated government instigated persecution/pogroms against the Catholic minority and,
If the British goverment decided not to provide military support to such a government and,
If they and the international community provided backing to the Irish Government, or an agreement to stand back,

then there might have been a set of conditions wherby an Irish government could have considered invading the north. How that would have turned out is anyone's guess. But I don't think it would have been pretty. Mixing sectarian and national conflict, with a possible last ditch stand of a soon to be minority would give you a mix of something like the Arab-Israeli, Yugoslav and Rhodesian wars.

Morpheus

note: RDF strength isnt even half that figure.

daithicarr

as far as i am aware the current PDF has about 10,500 members, with 8,500 being in the army and a reserve of around 13,000 .
even a few more thousand on to that wouldnt have made much difference as the british army was also much larger and equipped to fight the soviets, our army wouldnt have a chance, we had(have) no offencive aircraft, effective anti aircraft weapons, naval vessels, armoured vehicles and just about lacked every other material a army would need for such an operation.

it wasnt a very good documentary , they kept repeating them selves and showing as many clips of modern dublin and belfast as they did of the period in time, and didnt really explore the more likely aspects of the armys planing. the fact that we could only have sent a couple of hundred men across the border would have been a sobering thought for any in the government , even the hot heads calling for action.

the most likely course of action would have been the use of irregular war fare which would was outlined in the military plans but only briefly mentioned in the programme. it would have been much more interesting if they had also examined this option instead of repeating themselves and showing repeated clips of the presenters and modern ireland.

gizmo555

daithicarr wrote: »

it wasnt a very good documentary

You can say that again . .. where would you start? The nausea inducing zooming in and out on speakers' faces? The "scary" music which was so overdone that my 8-year old son came down from his bedroom to ask me to turn the TV down because it frightened him? Tom Clonan making a fool of himself driving around Newry in an ex-army MP Landrover? The dramatisation of a firefight between Irish and British soldiers where the Brits have for some unknown reason turned up wearing riot helmets with huge perspex visors?

The whole thing was wildly overdone and based on a completely false premise, namely that there was ever the remotest possibility of the Irish army crossing the border. The Irish army "plan" which was breathlessly revealed was obviously the army's way of spelling out to the politicians that such an operation was completely unfeasible and would be doomed to failure from the outset.

cork1

Morphéus wrote: »

note: RDF strength isnt even half that figure.

i agree from what i see its more like 5 or 6 thousand

daithicarr

Sorry let me rephrase that, it was a terrible documentary.
I cant think of one part of it which was even remotely well done.
its a bit harder to figure out what was the worst part, from repeated shots of the presenters, or them making complete idiots of them selves by asking former English army officers incredibly stupid questions , might as well have asked what the British contingency plans are if wales invades Liverpool.

neilled

daithicarr wrote: »

Sorry let me rephrase that, it was a terrible documentary.
I cant think of one part of it which was even remotely well done.
its a bit harder to figure out what was the worst part, from repeated shots of the presenters, or them making complete idiots of them selves by asking former English army officers incredibly stupid questions , might as well have asked what the British contingency plans are if wales invades Liverpool.

Former British Army. Its worth noting that one of did acknowledge that fighting would have been very fierce as there were "high quality men on both sides" and we don't know the full context of the interview, however it has to be said at the time, the Irish Army had been run into the ground by politicians who had no problems sending men to the congo with WWII vintage weapons. Whilst there, they acquitted themselves well, however they would be facing a force that was equipped and trained to fight Britain's dirty or small wars in its remaining outposts around the world, as well as face off against the Red Army. The senior Irish officers interviewed (Savino and Saunderson) said as much themselves and were quite adamant that the RAF would have wreaked havoc on Irish Army who had no real way of defending themselves against them. The Air Corps at the time possessed few serviceable aircraft and even then, they would have been badly outclassed against the RAF.

The scenario envisaged with politians believing that leaving a company outside newry would somehow bring about the end of partition is extremely far fetched, however I think they are right about the potential repercussions had an invasion taken place.

concussion

Neilled - the aim of the proposed operation wasn't to bring an end to partition, it was to provide Catholics with a safe corridor into the Republic.

The scenario chosen for the documentary was probably one of the more attainable ones which were proposed by the Army. I think this is the only thing the producers did right as it was a joke of an operation after that. First and foremost, no mention of any support troops - if you're putting a company into a town with the aim of opening up a safe corridor, who is physically keeping that corridor open? No mention of a local reserve in the town or a larger reserve force for the operation in general.

Tom 'ex-PDF' Clonan mentioned that the troops would conduct a 'Company-In-Attack' when in fact they conducted three separate Platoon operations (once more without a reserve force) and then, for some reason, moved out of the town allowing for a conventional battle to occur. Why they were waiting around in the ditches is another question left unanswered - if they were the only troops around, who was organising the evacuation of refugees? Having Irish troops out of the town would make it much easier for the British to use air and artillery against them as I highly doubt they would have bombed their own citzens to remove 120 Irish troops.

The proposed British reaction was equally amateur - a couple of low passes from jets and then at 1 pm they overrun the Irish company. A minimum of 2 companies, probably a battalion would be required to dislodge the Irish troops. The jets would give general positions but a ground recce would be required to find the Irish and a blocking force would need to move into place to prevent their retreat. Not to mention the time taken to get 600 plus troops into the general area in the first place or the wait for political approval.

I think I'll stop there, I'm getting annoyed again!!

Jo King

In the event of an Irish invasion of any part of the North, the Brits would have reacted by telling the Irish that if they did not withdraw they would bomb vital infrastructure targets in the Republic. Dublin Airport, Gormanston and Baldonnel airfields, the Ringsend power station, RTE, all of the bridges over the Shannon including the railway bridge, Ardnacrusha power station and Shannon airport. That would be for starters and would be done in one night. If that did not bring about a withdrawal another set of targets would be selected. At the time practically all agricultural exports went to Britain. Agriculture would be ruined without an export market. Tourism would be ruined. Most other industry would fail without electricity.
There would be no need for the Brits to attack invading troops and risk losses. A couple of nights of bombing would do just fine.

gizmo555

Excellent review of this thoroughly witless programme by Emmanuel Kehoe in today's "Sunday Business Post":

In August 1969, the news from Ireland was alive with death and violence. The North had erupted after years of sectarian government and the Republic which, for decades, had virtually ignored the discrimination against the North’s nationalist people, was forced to respond to the crisis.

The August skies over Derry were filled with the smell of burning petrol and tear gas. Television showed the ebb and flow of fierce street conflict - baton charges by the RUC, petrol bombs curving through the air and bursting on impact, hordes of young men in pitched battles with the police, the RUC being forced out of the Bogside.

In Belfast, loyalists were burning Catholics from their homes. The B Specials, that wholly sectarian paramilitary force, had been set loose. In the South the mood was turning angry. Those being beaten down by the Stormont regime and its supporters were, after all, ‘our people’, trapped, partly because of our studied neglect, in a gerrymandered statelet.

When Jack Lynch told the people his government could ‘‘no longer stand by - while innocent people were injured ‘‘or worse’’ that August, there was a reaction of rage, dismay, guilt and atavistic sentiments south of the border. That worse had, of course, already happened. In the highly speculative film, If Lynch Had Invaded (RTE 1) Diarmaid Ferriter attempted to put the prospect of a cross border intervention by the Irish army into its emotional context.

‘‘I think emotions ran so high over the summer of 69 that there would have been a significant degree of popular support for the sending of troops over the border. Because I think people would have reverted to the notion that they are ‘our people’," he said.

‘‘People in the Republic can identify with those who are being subjected to what they are seeing as state-approved violence, to this state-sponsored aggression. So I think there would have been those who would have thought that a further step that would have involved the movement of troops over the border wouldn’t necessarily have been the wrong thing to do."

But the message of this ‘what if ‘ film, which featured to great extent the opinions of Irish Times security analyst Tom Clonan, a former army officer turned academic, was that such an invasion would have been disastrous, not just for the Irish troops involved, but for our future as a country for decades to come. Neither country was yet in the EEC, and a nasty border incident that August could possibly have delayed their entry in 1973.

Is the idea that Lynch was contemplating an invasion of the North entirely far-fetched? Is there any basis at all to this piece of speculation? Is it sensationalist and meaningless? Purely academic?

If you look at the rest of his speech, it’s clear that Lynch put the situation in the context of the Stormont government’s behaviour since 1921, and the unacceptability of the RUC as an impartial police force. He stressed the unlikelihood that British troops could restore peace in the long term. He requested that the British government apply to the UN for a peacekeeping force to be sent to the Six Counties, and he asked that the British see to it that ‘‘police attacks on the people of Derry’’ cease immediately.

And it’s in the context of injuries inflicted in these attacks that his government had ordered that Irish army field hospitals be set up near the border.

Lynch went on: ‘‘Recognising, however, that the reunification of the national territory can provide the only permanent solution for the problem, it is our intention to request the British Government to enter into early negotiations with the Irish Government to review the present constitutional position of the Six Counties of Northern Ireland."

That doesn’t sound like Honest Jack had any intention of going in with whatever guns he had blazing, though a couple of his cabinet members wanted him to, and there was a growing feeling in the street that ‘‘something must be done’’. However, the nationalist people and unionists in the North seem not to have heard much beyond the most ringing phrase in the speech.

Eamonn McCann spoke of wild rumours that Irish troops were moving on Derry, ‘‘that so-and-so had seen them, they’re coming on the Letterkenny road’’.

John Taylor was the North’s junior home affairs minister at the time: ‘‘To imply that you were going to invade Northern Ireland meant that the British majority community here were going overboard, and there was a great danger they were going to retaliate against the Catholic minority and that there would be an outbreak of civil war."

Which, you might say, is typical of a unionist politician and a member of the regime that was the cause of the problem in the first case.

But Dessie O’Malley, a parliamentary secretary (Minister of State) at the time takes quite a different view: ‘‘If it caused a certain amount of alarm in Britain and Stormont, well it’s no harm that it did, because Britain was prepared to condone what Stormont was doing and Stormont seemed to feel that it was doing whatever it liked."

But the real ‘what if’ in Michael Hewitt’s documentary concerns the likely outcome of an invasion (at the level suggested it’s more of an incursion) by the Irish army, a force described by retired British Lieutenant Colonel Mike Dewar as ‘‘puny’’ and ‘‘tin pot’’, and by Dr Michael Kennedy of the Royal Irish Academy as ‘‘effectively a World War II standard army equipped with arguably World War I equipment’’.

But the fact is that the Irish regular infantryman of 1969 was armed with much the same weapons as his British counterpart: each had his own army’s version of the Belgian FN rifle, both had the Bren light machine gun (though the British had sensibly re-chambered it to use the FN’s 7.62mmammunition) and the FN General Purpose Machine Gun.

Both had 9mm submachine guns, the Gustav and the Sterling. Each used 81mm mortars and the Carl Gustav 84mmrecoilless rifle, a powerful anti armour and anti-personnel weapon still widely used in upgraded forms today.

What the Irish had was prudence. What they didn’t have, of course, was sufficient transport, any decent armour, any armoured personnel carriers at all, and, critically, nothing you could call air power. It had thousands of FCA reservists scattered around the country in units of varying quality and strength. The 20th Battalion, in which I found myself at the time, was, I believe, the only FCA infantry battalion in the whole country that had all its five companies in one barracks together with their weapons (including mortars and Carl Gustav 84s).

Based on secret plans (which have been in the public domain for years) drawn up by the Irish army in September 1979 for cross border incursions, clearly intended only in the event of a complete meltdown, Clonan’s scenario had a company of Irish soldiers, with apparently no fire support or anti-tank weapons, moving into Newry.

The army’s numerous scenarios envisaged other ‘‘unconventional’’ operations to draw troops away from the conflict, and also arming the Catholic minority, but in the Clonan proposition these don’t figure. The 120 infantrymen are on their own.

This scenario gave Clonan the opportunity to whizz about Newry in a military Land Rover and enthusiastically speculate. What I couldn’t understand was why, having taken the town and commandeered vehicles to get refugees out, his Irish then just seemed to wander off, take positions south of the town and wait to be slaughtered by the British.

RAF Phantoms and Harriers (were they actually in operation then?) would soon have been in the sky over the Irish soldiers, Clonan said. And slaughtered the Irish dutifully were, in the inevitable reconstruction, shot down like dogs as they ran away.

But it might just as easily have been very different. What if the Irish had got in and out fast? What if they’d run into the armed loyalist mobs who, presumably, would have given rise to all those refugees? What if the British hadn’t chosen to send in massive air power to overwhelm the pitifully small body of troops sitting like eejits outside Newry?

And wouldn’t the Irish have been better off holding out in the town if they wanted to make a fight of it? What if they had given a good account of themselves - after all, the British had recently had a torrid time in Aden, while Irish soldiers had proved to be tough nuts under siege in the Congo just eight years before.

‘‘I think the fighting would have been very fierce actually," said retired British Major General Julian Thompson, ‘‘because I think the soldiers on both sides were high-quality people."

But this is military fantasyland. Pick a card, Dr Clonan, the gamble might have gone any old way. Would it have provoked ethnic violence on a Balkans scale, as you suggested?

But hold on, something seems topsy turvy here. Surely the Irish were planning actions north of the Border only if the place had already slid into wholesale genocide and chaos?

Anyway, the ‘invasion’ didn’t happen. What did happen was a tendentious but ultimately pointless documentary, little more than a what if pub discussion shot as if made for MTV, with an eternally restless camera and presenters Clonan and Keelin Shanley constantly on the move, in and out of focus, talking over their shoulder to the viewer.

Because of this frenetic editing and strident music, it was deeply irritating, and after each break came the inevitable tedious recap.

And as for the reconstructions - why do them if they’re not spot-on? Clonan surely would have seen that the Irish soldiers’ gear was simply wrong for the period, and what self-respecting Brit would wear a riot face shield on his helmet to fight in open country? Maybe up against squaddies like that, the Irish might have had a chance after all.

http://www.thepost.ie/agenda/imagining-irelands-war-that-never-was-44041.html

McArmalite

sliabh wrote: »

There is one scenario where an Irish Army "invasion" could have been contemplated. Back in the 1970's for a moment the British government briefly considered washing their hands of the North and just giving it its independence.

If they had kicked the North out of the UK and,
If a hypothetical Unionist dominated government instigated persecution/pogroms against the Catholic minority and,
If the British goverment decided not to provide military support to such a government and,
If they and the international community provided backing to the Irish Government, or an agreement to stand back,

then there might have been a set of conditions wherby an Irish government could have considered invading the north. How that would have turned out is anyone's guess. But I don't think it would have been pretty. Mixing sectarian and national conflict, with a possible last ditch stand of a soon to be minority would give you a mix of something like the Arab-Israeli, Yugoslav and Rhodesian wars.

" Arab-Israeli, Yugoslav and Rhodesian wars. " So who were going to carry this out ? Fat middle aged coppers in the RUC and red neck part timers in the UDR men - :rolleyes:

Oh Gawd !!!!!! and they were going to slaughter everyone if they didn't get down Garvagh Road, if the Anglo Irish Agreement wasn't dropped, if the cap badge of the RUC was changed. They'd have put up as much fight as their brave comrades did in Donegal, Monaghan, Cavan, Leitrim, Dublin (where Carson was from and elected unionists in Trinity, Rathmines in the 1918 election etc ) When britain said - we're going, if you want to have a sectarian bloodbath you'll do it on your own, their wasn't a shot fired out of them.

Peter Robinson's invasion of the border village Clontibret in 1986 when up to 60 of them attacked two Guards and then ran away is about as good an example of the ' unionist bloodbath ' as you could get :rolleyes:

Peter in his younger macho pose