Up to 7 IRA members 18 soldiers Date 17 July 1981 | None 1 killed
1 wounded | |
 | ||
Unknown Lance Corporal Gavin Dean † Results British Army operation thwarted, IRA retained ability to set up roadblocks Similar Flagstaff hill incident, Coagh ambush, Attack on Cloghoge checkpoint, Clonoe ambush, Attack on Derryard checkpoint | ||
The Glasdrumman ambush was an attack by the South Armagh Brigade of the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) against a British Army observation post. It took place on 17 July 1981 at a scrapyard in Glasdrumman, County Armagh, southwest of Crossmaglen.
Contents
Background
The crisis triggered by the 1981 Irish hunger strike of Provisional IRA and Irish National Liberation Army (INLA) prisoners led to an increase in militant Irish republican activity in Northern Ireland. British intelligence reports unveiled IRA intentions of mounting illegal checkpoints and hijacking vehicles on the IRA-controlled roads in South County Armagh, near the Irish border. To counter it, the British Army deployed the so-called COPs (close observation platoons), small infantry sections acting as undercover units, a tactic introduced by Major General Richard Trant in 1977.
On 6 May 1981, a day after the death of hunger-striker Bobby Sands, one IRA member from a three-man unit was arrested while trying to set up a roadblock east of the main Belfast-Dublin road by 12 members of the Royal Green Jackets, divided in three teams. A second volunteer crossed the border, only to be arrested by the Irish Army. The third IRA man escaped, apparently injured. A total of 689 rounds had been fired by the soldiers.
The attack
After this initial success, the British Army continued these tactics. On 16 July, another operation was carried out by 18 Royal Green Jackets soldiers. That night, four concealed positions – Alpha, Bravo, Charlie and Delta – were inserted into the Glassdrumman area, around a scrapyard along the border. The plan was that another unit – called the triggering team – would ambush any IRA unit on sight, while the other four would block the expected escape routes. On 17 July the commanders in charge of Alpha and Delta teams, suspecting that the operation had been compromised by the presence of local civilians, ordered the withdrawal of their men. Shortly thereafter, Bravo team was suddenly engaged by automatic fire from an M60 machine gun and AR-15 rifles fired by six or seven IRA members. The concealed position, emplaced inside a derelict van, was riddled by more than 250 bullets. The team's leader, Lance Corporal Gavin Dean, was killed instantly, and one of his men, Rifleman John Moore, seriously wounded. Moore was later awarded the Military Medal. The IRA members fired their weapons from across the border, 160 yards away.
Aftermath
British army commanders concluded that "it was not worth risking the lives of soldiers to prevent an IRA roadblock being set up." The incident also exposed the difficulties of concealing operations from local civilians in South Armagh, whose sympathy with the IRA was manifest. Several years later, the IRA would repeat its success against undercover observation posts in the course of Operation Conservation in 1990.