Following the south Armagh ambush procedures were tightened. An OP consisting of two to four soldiers would be sited nearby in such a way that its members could be supported by arms fire from at least one more OP of a similar size. They would be backed up by a Quick Reaction Force (QRF) of soldiers and/or police at the nearest convenient security forces base. The QRF would be only a few minutes away from the OP team, able to respond to a call for help over the radio. Despite these new precautions, the scene was set for a sequence of lethal confrontations between 14 Intelligence Company and the republican paramilitaries. At midday on 12 December 1977 the Officer Commanding (OC) Londonderry Detachment of 14 Intelligence Company briefed his soldiers on a forthcoming surveillance operation in the republican Bogside and Brandywell areas of the city. The team was to use five unmarked cars. Each of them, the OC later said in a statement to the RUC, ‘was equipped with covert radio and in addition each member of my staff was in possession of various items of very sensitive military equipment. Such equipment is kept in each car and is concealed from view.’ The OC was referring to advanced photographic and eavesdropping equipment carried on operations.
At 1.30 p.m. the Q cars moved into position. One of them, a red Hillman Hunter saloon driven by a young lance-corporal, was noticed by two young members of the INLA. Colm McNutt, a low-level INLA commander known by the nickname ‘Rooster’, who was carrying an unloaded Webley revolver, and Patrick Phelan noticed the car parked with one person sitting in it. In a later interview with the police, Phelan said: ‘We went over to the car and we told the boy to put down his window. He screwed down the window a bit. Rooster told him he wanted the car. The driver said he wasn’t giving it. Rooster then pulled the gun out of the waistband of his trousers.’
The Lance-Corporal, who witnesses said had long hair and was wearing jeans, got out of the car and Phelan climbed into the driver’s seat. As McNutt walked around to the passenger seat, the Lance-Corporal drew his 9mm Browning and fired at him. McNutt stumbled with the impact of the shots and then tried to run away. The soldier fired again, killing him. Phelan threw himself out of the car and escaped. He was later arrested and charged. Republican activists used what was to become a familiar ploy, saying the SAS were responsible for the incident. They were not and the Army denied it. Although, as we will see, the IRA had discovered a great deal about the activities of 14 Company, it would appear that its propagandists preferred to play on the potent emotional response in republican bars and housing estates which attaching the three letters ‘SAS’ to an incident would trigger.
To the layperson, the use of lethal force by the Lance-Corporal to protect himself and the equipment in the car might seem excessive. Just two days later, however, there was to be another confrontation with quite different results.
Corporal Paul Harman, of Belfast Detachment 14 Intelligence Company, was on duty in the city’s Turf Lodge estate. The soldier had served in the 16/5th The Queen’s Royal Lancers before transferring to the Intelligence Corps and being selected for ‘special duty’ in Northern Ireland. As he stopped his red Morris Marina at the junction of Monagh Road and Monagh Avenue, he was approached by an unknown number of assailants.
It may be that Corporal Harman tried to talk his way out of the situation rather than using force; certainly no republican terrorists were killed during the incident. Later the Corporal was found shot dead with bullets in the head and back. The car had been set on fire and police found no trace of his Browning pistol. The IRA announced that it had captured intelligence files from the car. According to an Army intelligence officer, radio code books and surveillance equipment were also missing from the car.
The officer says Corporal Harman’s death was a major setback for 14 Intelligence Company which then found itself under IRA counter-surveillance. Operations were halted, with the Detachment’s Q cars taken off the streets for several weeks while officers tried to assess what the Provisionals had learned from the incident. Procedures were tightened afterwards, with more efforts made to find different types of car and restrictions imposed on soldiers operating alone.
Six months later there was another incident in Londonderry. Two IRA members approached a Q car with two members of the surveillance unit in it. The soldier in the passenger seat opened fire, hitting Denis Heaney in the chest with three rounds. He was killed instantly. The RUC said they recovered a weapon from the scene. Sinn Fein said Heaney had been shot by the SAS and that night there was rioting in the republican estates.
Heaney’s death was probably a failed element of a deliberate IRA operation to target members of 14 Company. A few weeks later the Derry Brigade were to mount a successful
