The SAS commander’s decision to put men inside the police station may have owed something to the philosophy of the ‘clean kill’. Many of those involved in the operation regarded it as a simple ambush, part of a terrorist war. But it was vitally important that a judicious use of force appeared to be maintained and that the soldiers be seen to have acted within the terms of the Army Yellow Card. The IRA assumption that the police station would be unoccupied at the time of the attack might make it hard to justify killing the terrorists, as they were not presenting an immediate danger to life.
An SAS man explained to me the commander’s decision to put men inside the police station in the following terms: ‘The Yellow Card rules are officially seen to cover Loughgall, but of course they don’t. You put your men in the station. That way they [the IRA] are threatening you without even knowing it. That’s how you get around the Yellow Card.’
There were also at least two ‘cut off groups’ in the village. These were where you would expect them to be in a ‘Type A’ ambush (an attack where the enemy comes along a known route), at points on Balleygasey Road on either side of the RUC station. As well as the group in the copse by the Armagh road, there was another SAS group close to the church, probably sheltering behind the stone wall which runs alongside the road. It is likely that there were other groups of SAS men in the village, acting as look-outs and covering other possible routes of escape. There may also have been an Airborne Reaction Force waiting with helicopters at a nearby security forces base in case the IRA men had to be blocked from getting away across the countryside.
The Toyota van entered the village at about 7.15 p.m. It went past the church where the SAS men were hiding behind the wall and went down the hill towards the station. People living nearby had noticed nothing unusual. They had not been told that RUC intelligence had good reason to believe that terrorists were going to try and bomb their police station. The risks of informing civilians, or evacuating them, are considered too great by the covert operators, even in a largely loyalist village. A woman living near the RUC station remembers the blue Toyota appearing: ‘I saw the van go up and down. I thought it was from the corporation.’ The men inside the vehicle were in fact checking the coast was clear.
After a few moments the van came back down the road, past the church, followed by the digger. The excavator trundled down the Balleygasey Road, the bomb in its front bucket concealed under rubble. The van went slightly past the police station and stopped.
Patrick Kelly and a couple of the others climbed out of the van, levelled their assault rifles and opened fire on the police station. It would appear that, unlike Balleygawley where RUC officers were shot, this fusillade was an act of bravado, as the IRA were not expecting Loughgall station to be occupied. At this point the main body of the SAS ambush party opened fire. As at least a dozen SAS men fired automatic weapons. ‘All hell broke lose on the radio net,’ says someone who was part of the operation. The IRA men around the van were caught in a withering deluge of rounds coming from two directions: SAS troops around the police station were firing into the rear and side of the Toyota. Those in the copse opened up with their GMPGs and other weapons, sending bullets into the front of the van.
Patrick Kelly was hit several times and fell to the ground close to the driver’s door of the van. A heavy bloodstain from a head wound was still visible when press photographers visited the area the following morning. Lynagh and McKearney – two of the most experienced men – appear to have realized what was happening and to have thrown themselves back into the van. However the Toyota was under a hail of bullets and Seamus Donnelly, the driver, was mortally wounded before he could move off. Lynagh and McKearney died in the back. The fact that they were wearing flak jackets ‘didn’t do them much good’, remarks an SAS soldier. Eugene Kelly and Declan Arthurs died trying to take cover behind the vehicle.
The SAS men failed initially to shoot Michael Gormley and Gerard O’Callaghan, who had set the fuse on the 200 lb bomb alight with a zippo lighter. The two men took cover as the fuse burnt down. The soldiers had not been expecting such a simple device and were perhaps distracted by the gunfire.
The digger blew up, flattening the end of the police station closest to the gate and the telephone exchange building next door. A shower of masonry came down on the football club house. One of the digger’s large rear wheels was blown 30 or 40 metres through a slatted wooden fence backed by small conifers opposite the station, landing on the football pitch. Keeping the ambush force in the station had held risks, and it seems some police and SAS men were injured by the blast.
The woman living nearby heard the blast: ‘It
