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Aviation History
1972
1972 - 0048.PDF
lilt ME *i«> &&gt;S^ •••> :.<i: •-• «.,:«£.-. ; -:•',: The border guard ROBERT R. RODWELL reports on aviation in Britain's domestic war. Photography by TOM HAMILL IN 65 MINUTES from London, and little more than half-an-hour from Glasgow, you can fly to the war. If you prefer sea travel a single ticket on the shortest ferry costs just over a pound. To describe Northern Ireland's trauma as war still seems melodramatic in Woking or Wigan and many people in England seem to treat it as the latest Irish joke. But the description takes on stark reality in the battered streets of Belfast. As a reporter I covered three acknowledged wars for Flight—in Malaysia,Vietnam and the Middle East. In the last two I came under fire, but it was on a sunny evening last year in an ordinary British-looking residential road of unpretentious semi-detacheds called Twaddell Avenue, in Belfast, that I came nearest to being shot. When automatic fire rattles closely past my head, aimed by a guerilla firing down the street from behind the counter in a butcher's shop, and somewhere up the road soldiers backed by armoured vehicles are returning similar fire, that—in my book—is war. No soldier, of any rank, who has served in Northern Ireland recently would seriously disagree, even though Whitehall for its own political reasons, and with its ineradicable gift for double-think does not officially recognise them as being on active service. The Army— and I use the term generically from here on, for the Royal Marines are playing a role in this war too, and the RAF Regiment has also been engaged—has handled many internal-security situations before. The RAF itself pioneered aerial policing in Iraq and India, but there are many factors about the Ulster emergency which are quite unique, not least the fact that for the first time ever aviation is being employed in an internal-security operation within the confines of the UK. Not only is the Army at war in the streets of Belfast and Londonderry and, inter mittently in Ulster's smaller towns and otherwise delightful rural areas, but so is its organic aviation, the equivalent element of the Royal Marines, and a small segment of the RAF's tactical airlift forces too. Present air strength in the Ulster operations comprises about 23 Sioux, five Scouts and eight RAF Wessex heli copters of 38 Group's 72 Sqn. The last unit is nominally based at RAF Odiham but maintains a large detach ment at RAF Aldergrove, rotating crews from home. In addition, the AAC maintains a solitary Beaver light transport in the province. Providing logistic support, and particularly engaged in rotating Army units between their emergency four-month tours in Northern Ireland and their permanent stations in Britain and BAOR, are Air Support Command's Britannias, Hercules and Belfast transports. These aircraft operate into Aldergrove and occasionally Belfast Central airport but are not, of course, based in the province. Army aviation's main contribution is in border policing, in which its involvement has recently been much increased. The Irish border is a whimsical thing—it meanders, doubles and back-tracks its way through more than 270 miles of generally lovely countryside, sometimes halving villages and occasionally passing through houses. Patrolling the border over which the majority of the IRA's arms flow, the Army has five units, two of them armoured reconnaissance regiments, equipped with Ferret armoured cars, as the main mobile elements. This force, 5 Brigade, is supported by two air reconnaissance squad rons, each equipped with six Sioux and its own main tenance crews. One such squadron, attached to the 16/5 Lancers, is stationed at Omagh and covers the westerly reaches of the border from Lough Foyle, through the Sperrin Mountains round to east of the Fermanagh
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