Talk:List of attacks on British aircraft during The Troubles

February 1991 Crossmaglen shootdown

O'Brien writes in The Long War - The IRA and Sinn Féin:

• Page 206-207 One such helicopter attack, from outside Crossmagien Health Centre, was filmed by a Dublin TV crew in March 1991. The shooting was done by a machine-gun mounted on the back of an old square-shaped lorry. A car carrying other IRA men accompanied the lorry. Meanwhile, the shooting, which lasted less than a minute, was watched by locals in the street. In security terms, the significant factor was that no RUC or British Army personnel came on the scene for a protracted period of time. This allowed the lorry and car to escape undetected and unhindered, even though the RUC/Army base was within 50 yards. They would have heard the shooting but would not risk further attack A on the ground.

"Filmed by a Dublin TV crew" is in reference to a clip from an RTÉ Television Today Tonight report produced and broadcast in 1991. This footage has been widely shared online; no doubt it exists and the camera crew indeed captured an actual Provisional IRA attack on a British Army helicopter from outside Crossmaglen Health Centre.

However the date offered, "March 1991", has been the cause of some confusion. Efforts to find any reference (aside from O'Brien) to an attack on a helicopter of any description in Crossmaglen or South Armagh from March 1991 has been entirely unsuccessful. The best fit appeared to be an attack on the nearby British Army/RUC base on 2 March and no accounts of that incident mention a helicopter.

An excerpt from the Police Federation for Northern Ireland's in-house magazine, Police Beat (Volume 13, No.4)

• Page 17 Crossmaglen, 4.30pm, March 2nd: A house is taken over at Rathview Park, and the elderly occupants held captive. The intruders then carry out an attack-using automatic gunfire on the local police station and army base. The elderly couple, in their mid-60s, are later treated for shock..

The IRA's own account of the incident, from a March 1991 "War News" published in republican magazines:

• Page 17 Crossmaglen, 4.30pm, March 2nd: Within 24 hours of the attack in Armagh city, Volunteers in nearby South Armagh launched a sustained gun attack on the British army's main garrison base in the border town of Crossmaglen. An ASU armed with assault rifles and one heavy calibre machine-gun had taken up position facing onto the front of the post. Having waited for several hours for a patrol to emerge from the base, the Volunteers decided to engage their secondary target; the base's main observation tower. Over 500 rounds of ammunition were fired at this position. There were no confirmed crown forces injuries.

The Belfast Telegraph (4 March 1991):

• Page 1 A Crossmaglen couple in their 60s were treated for shock after gunmen took over their home to launch a gun attack on the local police and military base. The gunmen forced their way into the 2 house at Rathview Park shortly before 4.30pm on Saturday and opened up on the base with a number of high velocity weapons. Fire was returned, but there were no reports of any injuries, said a police spokesman.

The Irish Press (4 March 1991):

• Page 2 Also over the weekend a bomb exploded at the perimiter [sic] fence of the British army's Girdwood Barracks in north Belfast and a fierce gun battle took place around the military base at Crossmaglen, south Armagh. Security spokesmen said several hundred shots were fired at the heavily fortified base by a gang of men who took over the home couple. of an elderly.

There were no other security-related incidents in Crossmaglen in March 1991. None of the details of the 2 March incident correlate with the helicopter attack described by O'Brien (including, Rathview Park and the British base are at the opposite side of of Crossmaglen from the village's Health Centre).

The closest incident chronologically to O'Brien's helicopter attack is an incident on 13 February when a British Army Lynx helicopter was shot down in the vicinity of Crossmaglen. A British Ministry of Defense after-action report on the ambush declassified in 2015 following a freedom of information request (https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/560009/20161010_-_FOI_06484_75411_Lynx_Response_Redacted.pdf) describes what happened in detail, including the attack being carried out from Crossmaglen's Health Centre.

1.On Wednesday 13 FEB at 15:18 hrs, Lynx 5 and Lynx 7 were inbound to XMG SF base (Lynx 7 had an underslung load of rations, Lynx 5 PSA personnel.) 2.Lynx 7 on approach to the SF base from the east was engaged by two different types of weapon (G50 report the differing sounds) from the area of behind the Community centre, GR H 912 151. 4.One firing point was identified at GR H 9125 1515 by the presence of 7.62 link, 7.62 single and some 3 metres away a number of 12.7 round cases. 5.At GR H 9123 1523 near the Health centre car park and track leading to Mill lane a 12.7 case was found.

LOCATION & GRID: F.P. Rear of Community Centre, Mill Lane, Crossmaglen, South Armagh. Grid: H9125 1515.

I've removed the 2 March entry in the meantime solely for lack of corroborating sources, but it does appear that O'Brien was in error in writing that the incident he described took place in March 1991. FarSouthNavy NelsonEdit2 (talk) 14:06, 29 September 2023 (UTC)

Hi Nelson. I originally listed the incident mentioned by O'Brien because the RTÉ clip seems to confirm the attack. The date, however, always looked problematic, though I felt confident that the IRA shooting was unrelated to any other involving helicopters at the time. My only mistake was to wrongly assume that the 2 March assault cited by some sources was indeed the attack o'Brien refers to. I concur with yo on the removal of the alleged 2 March incident; nevertheless, I for merging the mention of the RTÉ team at the Community Centre with the February Lynx shotdown, since it is quite obvious when you read the 2015 BA report that the television clip was shot on 13 February. Neither O'Brien, nor the RTÉ crew heard nothing about the eventual fall of the Lynx a couple of miles away, so none of them reported the actual outcome of the action.Darius (talk) 23:44, 29 September 2023 (UTC)

Hey, well said agree on all points! I attempted to merge the the two entries earlier but quickly realised the scope of the entry had grown to such a point where it didn't really seem appropriate for the list format the article employs. I've decided to create a separate article for the incident, following the precedent set by similar existing articles.

Regards, NelsonEdit2 (talk) 19:16, 30 September 2023 (UTC)