View Full Version : Checkpoint O' Charlie incursion, to be sure to be sure.
'RAF pilot' in an AAC Beaver?
https://www.irishtimes.com/news/ireland/state-papers/british-military-pilot-flew-as-far-as-mullingar-after-unauthorised-border-crossing-1.3331155
He had now been “firmly disabused of this notion”, the note added.
Other cross-Border incursions revealed in the archives include one by a marine boat attached to the gun boat in Carlingford Lough, which did a circle around Greenore Port on July 15th with someone on board waving a Union Jack.
Another in the same month was reported by a woman in Hackballscross, Co Louth, who telephoned local gardaí to say there was a British helicopter in the field behind her house.
Fareastdriver
30th Dec 2017, 13:28
'RAF pilot' in an AAC Beaver?
There were lots of RAF pilots in 'Army' helicopters.
Haraka
30th Dec 2017, 15:56
There were lots of RAF pilots in 'Army' helicopters.
And certainly one Navy ( ex RAF) Pilot flying Beavers during my time ...... and one Army pilot on Wessex - for a while. Mind you this was a decade before 1987.
Conversation in a Scout in 1975.
"If ,as you have just said, the AAC can put any man down with precision into any corner of any field in the province, how come all the telephone boxes that we are now flying over are green?"
diginagain
30th Dec 2017, 16:14
No tales of unplanned excursions deep into Monaghan?
Fareastdriver
30th Dec 2017, 17:57
I went into Monaghan several times.
The small roads that crossed the border would be blocked by a tank full of concrete. The engineers would place the tank on the border and I would come along with a Puma with a skip full of wet concrete. When they were on the border line I would be hovering over the tank whilst it was being emptied. Most of the fuselage would be in Northern Ireland but the cockpit would be in Eire.
The Garda watching the proceedings didn't seem to worry.
Rosevidney1
30th Dec 2017, 18:01
Oh, I'm prepared to believe anything................some of the time.....
Just a spotter
30th Dec 2017, 18:16
Well, this sorry tale is just one of the gems contained in this year’s batch of papers released under the 30 year rule here in Ireland.
A few others that emerged …
The DUP’s (yes, that DUP) leader and founder Rev. Dr. Ian Paisely contacted the Israeli ambassador to London with a request to ‘obtain arms’ for ‘border protection’.
https://www.irishtimes.com/news/ireland/irish-news/ian-paisley-wanted-to-obtain-arms-from-israel-1.3332450
Another senior member of the DUP (again, yes that DUP) and MP, Rev William McCrea, called for airstrikes against Dundalk and Drogheda in Ireland, along with Crossmaglen and Carrickmore in the North.
https://www.independent.ie/irish-news/rev-william-mccrea-urged-air-strikes-on-republic-30867275.html
A claim by the loyalist terror group the UVF that they had been asked by MI5 to assassinate then Taoiseach Charlie Haughey. It seems they declined, saying “We refused to do it, we were asked would we accept responsibility if you were killed we refused” and ““We have no love for you but we are not going to carry out work for the Dirty Tricks Department of the British.”
https://www.irishtimes.com/news/ireland/irish-news/loyalists-told-charles-haughey-mi5-asked-us-to-execute-you-1.3339804
With regard to the reported Mullingar trip, would an AAC pilot in 1987 be allowed to take an aircraft without filing a flight plan that someone would have signed off on?
JAS