Fate
1 November 1987.
Somewhere above the Hurd Deep, off the coast of Brittany, France.
The former grain hauler Eksund. Fifty years old and showing her age. Onboard: 150 tonnes of arms destined for the Irish Republican Army, courtesy of the ever-generous Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi. A weight of weaponry equal to all the IRA had received from Libya in four earlier shipments of the preceding two years.
When French customs officials boarded the stricken vessel they discovered that the IRA men had tried to scuttle the ship and its deadly cargo. For them, secrecy was paramount. The British government couldn’t be allowed to discover that that IRA now had a large arsenal of modern military hardware.
According to journalist Ed Moloney in his seminal work A Secret History of the IRA the paramilitary group were planning to launch a massive offensive inspired by the Viet Cong’s famous “Tet Offensive” of 1968. In strict military terms Tet was a failure yet is credited with shifting US public opinion towards demanding a withdrawal from Vietnam.
In Moloney’s telling, the success of this offensive relied on the Eksund and its precious cargo arriving in Ireland undetected. The arms aboard the Eksund and the element of surprise were supposedly the two the key ingredients if the IRA hoped to pull off a startling escalation of a conflict that had by then settled into something resembling routine.
Moloney’s central hypothesis is that the dominant personalities within the IRA, conniving with the British, scuppered the Eksund venture to avert an escalation of the conflict many IRA members hoped for, thus saving the Peace Process and setting the stage for the 1998 Good Friday Agreement.
Is this possible?
Variants of this account have been circulated by different authors. Were the IRA prepared for a large-scale military offensive that would have totally changed the dynamic of the conflict? Could the arms carried by the Eksund really have made that a reality? What capabilities could this weaponry have offered to the IRA, in any case?
Revolutionary Toolkit
Firstly it’s important to ask, what was the Eksund actually carrying on that fateful journey in late 1987?
The answer isn’t as straightforward as it seems. Virtually every source gives a different inventory. Media illiteracy on the subject further muddles the picture e.g. claiming one-hundred and twenty missile launchers were seized when they really meant their ammunition. However after combing through various books and newspaper articles here’s a preliminary list:
- x 1,000 AK-47 type rifles.
- x 10 7.62mm general-purpose machine guns
- x 10 12.7mm DshK heavy machine guns
- x 1,000,0000 rounds of 7.62mm and 12.7mm ammuntion
- x 430 Soviet-type grenades
- x 10 RPG-7 rocket launchers
- x 120 RPG-7 warheads
- x 2,000 electric detonators
- x 4,700 fuses
- 9 K32 Strela-2 surface-to-air missile launchers
- 9 K32 Strela-2 missiles
- 2 tonnes of Semtex plastic explosive.
- x 12 82mm infantry mortars
- x 106mm M40 recoilless rifles
- LPO-50 flamethrowers
- Submachine guns
An impressive catalogue. These were the arms that the IRA’s offensive supposedly hinged on. They can broadly be separated into two categories we’ll label Quantities and Capabilities.
Quantities
There’s an old saying in the military world: Quantity has a Quality of its Own.
However in the case of the IRA circa 1987, this arguably had ceased to be the case. Four Libyan deliveries in 1985-1986 had left the IRA with upwards of 1,300 AK-47 type rifles, forty 7.62mm general-purpose machine guns, twenty-six DShK heavy machine guns, and five tons of Semtex, amongst a swathe of other munitions. The only weapons systems not previously delivered to Ireland in some number that were aboard the Eksund were the 82 mm mortars and 106 mm recoilless rifles.
Were formations of IRA members sitting in camps in Donegal and Monaghan, trained in small-unit tactics and large-scale offensive action, waiting with bated breathe for the extra 1,000 AK-47s on the Eksund? Did the IRA’s fortunes really rest on having fifty general-purpose machine guns rather than forty, or thirty-six DShK heavy machine guns rather twenty-six? Before the Libyan donations the IRA had perhaps two heavy machine guns and a handful of general-purpose machine guns.
The IRA by the time of the Eksund’s loss had vastly more guns than they ever had before or indeed would ever need for the tempo of their campaign. Dumping more AK-47s into the organisation would not have transformed the IRA into an army capable of carrying out large-scale, synchronised operations, as former IRA Volunteer John Crawley in his book The Yank explained:
It’s a crude mechanistic view of war to believe that equipment alone is the answer. Training would have to reach a hitherto unimagined level, not just in terms of weapons and tactics but also advanced operational planning. We’d have to change our organisational culture.
Crawley knew what he was talking about. A former member of the US Marines most elite unit, Force Recon, in his compelling memoir The Yank he recounts that he personally drew up the list of types of weapons in 1984 that the IRA would later receive from Libya.
Frankly, there’s no evidence that the IRA was undertaking this sort of far-reaching transformation at the time of the Eksund’s seizure. A handful of Volunteers were sent to Libya for training on specific weapons but that’s a far cry from what would have been needed. The challenges in retraining and building a new knowledge base in an armed formation were exemplified in 2023 by the Ukraine’s failure to form new army units capable of acting in concert to breach layered Russian defenses.
Having seven ton of Semtex rather than five tons, along with the detonators and fuses, would have no doubt been a boost to the IRA’s engineering department. But it’s a stretch to hypothesise that those extra two tons of plastic explosive were the war winning special sauce the IRA needed.
Flamethrowers: The IRA received ten Soviet-made LPO-50 flamethrowers from Libya. One was seized in Belfast in 1988, another in Derry in 1989. The first outing of the IRA’s flamethrowers was in a famous assault on a border base near Rosslea in Fermanagh in December 1989. That attack was probably the one occasion where Libyan weapons were used near as envisioned by IRA men like John Crawley. It was also the flamethrower’s last outing and they were relegated to arms dumps through the IRA’s final 1997 ceasefire (one was found by Gardaí in County Meath in 1994).
RPGs. Again, the IRA would certainly have appreciated an extra dozen RPG-7 launchers but that surely wouldn’t have enabled the group to prosecute a very different sort of armed campaign then they had up to then. The 430 hand grenades likewise would have been helpful but the IRA improvised and continued to develop their own line of homemade grenades, culminating in the coffee jar bomb.
Soviet-made Strela-2 surface-to-air missiles. Popularly known as “SAM-7.”These were the great hope for republicans in the 1980s and in theory could have been a game changer in border areas, where the British Army was almost totally dependent on helicopters to resupply outlying outposts. However, in actual fact the Strela-2 turned out to be a damp squib for the IRA. It wasn’t until July 1991 that the IRA actually tried taking down a helicopter. In what was either a technical or training issue the missile failed to lock on and landed harmlessly on the ground. The attempt was not repeated; the IRA tried to pass it off as an RPG-7 attack. Gardaí found a Strela-2 thermal battery and grip stock in the same County Meath bunker as the flamethrower in 1994.
It’s been suggested that the capture of the Eksund alerted the British Army that the IRA was in possession of heat-seeking missiles and led to the installation of countermeasures on helicopters. This should be weighed against the famous leaked British intelligence document Northern Ireland: Future Terrorist Trends raising the possibility as far back as 1978. Indeed, a British pilot interviewed in 1979 in the wake of the leak said counter-measures had been available for “six or seven years”. Even if the IRA had the element of surprise, and successfully used a Strela-2 missile to shoot down a helicopter, surely there was no reason the British military couldn’t add flare dispensers to their helicopters at short notice.
Point is, all of these portions of the Eksund cargo simply added to the quantity of weapons the IRA had already received from Libya and were unlikely to represent a game changer.
According to Moloney, the earlier Libyan shipments were placed in dumps to be held in reserve, and it was the Eksund delivery that was to fuel the “Tet offensive.” However if the IRA was truly prepared for a large ground incursion it seems plausible that organisation would have been able to improvise and use the large stocks of Libyan arms already in Ireland.
The surprise factor of losing the Eksund is also perhaps overstated. The IRA already had a close shave when informant-driven intel saw Gardaí uncover a large hide of Libyan weapons in 1986. In January 1988 a huge dump of Libyan arms were found hastily buried on a Donegal beach.
The IRA’s so-called “Tet Offensive” was unlikely to materialise, at least in the spectacular fashion popularly imagined. The reasons were multi-faceted and would probably justify a few articles in their own right. What did emerge in the summer of 1988 was still politically impactful but not at the level of, say, IRA units across Northern Ireland overrunning British bases. The Eksund arms should be examined in that context.
In part II we’ll examine the Capabilities lost aboard the Eksund and whether they really could have changed the course of history . . .
⏩Bleakley is an IT consultant currently living in the south of Ireland. Covid-19 boredom spurred an interest in the nitty gritty of Irish history.
⏩Brandon Sullivan is a middle-aged West Belfast émigré. He juggles fatherhood & marriage with working in a policy environment and writing for TPQ about the conflict, films, books, and politics.
This is the first in a series of articles Bleakley and I are collaborating on. Under a collective title of Was the IRA Really in Decline in the 1990s? we will discuss areas and aspects of the IRA's campaign.
ReplyDeleteThe Quillversations covered the same general theme, and we have been careful to steer away from a binary titles such as "could the IRA have succeeded" or "did the IRA fail" - things are rarely so clean-cut. We are instead respectfully challenged what could be seen as received wisdom about the conflict, and the IRA's campaign in particular.
Bleakley led on this article, which I think skilfully challenges the notion that the Eskund was a severe setback for the IRA. The next article will be one that I'm leading on, which looks at the year 1991 and what the IRA would consider successes that year.
The aim is to encourage and facilitate debate around this subject, one which has seen some of the best debate amongst Quillers that I've read.
We'd both welcome direct comments or questions, and would be happy to discuss any of this offline. And we'd be delighted if anyone had any tips or information that could be useful in this series of articles.
Happy Quilling, and festive greetings :)
Regards the Stela's. I distinctly remember hearing at the time of Gibraltar that either McCann or Savage (or both) had been trained by the Libyans in it's use. Whether this is true or not I do not know but it was definitely mentioned in front of me at the time. The insinuation was that this 'marked their card'.
ReplyDeleteThe general population wasn't keen on violence spiralling out of control into a savage door to door conflict. This would certainly have happened if the IRA significantly upped the ante. The question wasn't whether the IRA had an appetite for a larger conflict but whether the population who they depended on were keen on it.
ReplyDeleteAttacks which killed innocent civilians were a real turn off for the public. An escalation would have encouraged a looser hand and more civilian victims. People were starting to enjoy a higher quality of life. O'Neill was correct when he said give them televisions and they will behave. People generally are reluctant to jeopardise their relative prosperity. People didn't want a Balkan type conflict, which was always a possibility. People generally felt the danger and weren't keen to increase it.
This wasn't the Southern counties during the Tan War but a more modern sectarian state-let in which the IRA supporters were a minority of the minority population. When you factor in a belligerent sectarian element in the loyalist community who seemed to relish targeting uninvolved civilians a dramatic escalation would've been inadvisable.
The IRA I guess had to factor in their approx 600 members compared to the might of the Brits technology and manpower together with the tens of thousands of loyalist paramilitaries.
I'm not saying more spectaculars wouldn't have been popular but disintegration into chaos on an unprecedented scale wouldn't have been a popular plan.
Simon well put, probably also worth noting that the Provos were probably about as popular as asbestos in the South by the end of 1980s.
DeleteA few years ago a fascinating document* from the inner workings of the Irish government was declassified. In it Adams expresses his genuine fear that a major upheaval would see the ethnic cleansing of Catholics in West Belfast at the hands of loyalists joined by the UDR and some RUC. The source, solicitor P.J. McGrory (like Pat Finucane, considered a "Provo lawyer" by the British) also shared that since Adams' 1983 election to Westminster he wanted to make a career in politics and wind down the armed campaign.
Indeed, by the start of 1987 Adams had privately assumed a political outlook very close to the SDLP; supporting the Anglo-Irish Agreement and believing a united Ireland was up to fifty years away. It's unlikely anything like the rumoured "Tet Offensive" would (thankfully) materialise under a leadership thinking this way, even if it were physically possible.
That said the thrust of this article wasn't really about the IRA's Tet Offensive per se and assumes its implausibility. The point was what would or wouldn't have happened if the Eksund's cargo had arrived in Ireland, and Part 2 will flesh out that counterfactual more.
Happy Christmas all!
*https://cain.ulster.ac.uk/nai/1987/nai_DFA-2017-4-186_1987-02-16.pdf
Was it Malachi O'Doherty who asked on TPQ years ago what was the reason the shipments that DID land never get into the hand of the frontline Volunteers? Can you remember any reason given Anthony?
ReplyDeleteWe always found it strange that there seemed to be a preference for the DIY job when it was clear they had the gear. Never could understand it.
Great article B&B. Merry Christmas to you both and TPQuillers.
@ Simon
ReplyDeleteThe IRA of the 1980s were arguably *less* dependent on popular support than at any time in armed republican history.
I've never been convinced that the IRA took strategic decisions based on fear or concern about "a belligerent sectarian element in the loyalist community who seemed to relish targeting uninvolved civilians." Teebane, the ruthless targeting of security force contractors, and the consistent killing of off-duty UDR members led to a pretty much permanent state of affairs that, as Andy Tyrie put it, "maddened" loyalists.
To return to the point of the article though, a major escalation could have taken place *without* the Eskund. I think the capture of that arms shipment did not have a serious impact on IRA strategy.
Not only "Maddened" was perceived as proof positive of a sectarian campaign against Protestants. We really did see it this way. Regardless whether you don't believe it was, the reality for us was tangible.
DeleteSteve. I'd wager Catholic members of the security forces and contractors were killed in rough proportion to how these groups were made up. Perception doesn't make it true although it has to be recognised that it was a genuine belief.
DeleteAnd when it comes down to it that's the issue Simon. It was unshakable in us.
DeleteBrandon, I know some in the IRA didn't care what loyalists would do and I remember speaking to people in the early 90s who were in favour of outright civil war and what that would entail but if you think the IRA didn't factor in loyalists (30,000 UDA men, a couple of thousand UVF men) coupled with the might of the British security services with their technological superiority and bottomless resources compared to 600 IRA men then you must think they were poor strategists.
ReplyDeleteTeebane, contractors and off duty and retired security force personnel would've been considered a success by practically all Republicans at the time. Of course they maddened loyalists and of course the IRA didn't care but to say they didn't consider what response a major escalation would provoke is fanciful.
I agree with you that if nothing was intercepted coming in nothing would have changed. The peoplepower wasn't there and neither was the appetite.
You have to remember the majority of Nationalists during the conflict were opposed to the IRA and in all opinion polls the bulk wanted to remain in the UK. I was on marches in the late 80s and early 90s and they weren't as well attended as you would think. We were shot at from the peacewall at one and constantly prevented from reaching City Hall. Being shot at wouldn't have put us off but even us civilians factored it into our thinking.
@ Steve, Simon
ReplyDelete"I'd wager Catholic members of the security forces and contractors were killed in rough proportion to how these groups were made up."
I would guess at a statistically higher rate - but it is just a guess. Killing a Catholic RUC man, or contractor, would cause a different kind of terror among other from that cohort, and also keener societal pressures from family to resign.
"And when it comes down to it that's the issue Simon. It was unshakable in us."
That, and its mirror image. To give you an example, a Scottish friend and I were discussing sectarian murder once. He said "but the IRA never just shot a Protestant cabbie, for example." I said that they literally did just that, though in smaller numbers and in a smaller timeframe. I could see him struggling to accept it, and he was no Provo sympathiser.
It's taken me a while to accept the sincerity of those who felt that the IRA committed genocide along the border. I don't think they're correct, but I can accept that's how they felt, and that's how they experienced it.
Republicans maybe saw those from whatever religion who joined groups in whatever capacity as different from Protestants who were killed for no other reason than their assumed faith.
DeleteIn their minds the first group chose to join organisations who were involved in shoot-to-kill, collusion, violent disruption of funerals, torture in holding centres, mass murder events such as Bloody Sunday or Ballymurphy Massacre
murder of children with plastic bullets etc whereas the latter group had no say in the demographic they were in.
Uninvolved people, whether Protestant or Catholic had no choice in their status and their murder would be inarguably sectarian if targeted for that reason. The others made a conscious choice to participate in a conflict, giving proactive support at whatever level. If a member of the IRA or INLA was killed it wouldn't be sectarian as they weren't killed because of their religion either.
I'm not trying to excuse the inexcusable just pointing out the difference between being killed for something you have no control over like your religion and on the other hand for a status of being part of a group active in the conflict.
Their membership was the deciding factor, both for Protestants and for Catholics not their religion.
That's not to say sectarian murder didn't occur or bombs weren't placed in primarily Protestant inhabitated towns. That was sectarianism. In our discussion the common denominator wasn't religion as Catholic and Protestant security force members were killed in equal measure.
I don't believe there was ethnic cleansing along the border. Just easy targets who were killed opportunistically. I read Ireland's Violent Frontier by Henry Patterson and although well written the arguments didn't stand up.
Perception can be as strong in people's minds as reality but facts are the final arbiter.
"That, and its mirror image."
Delete100% Brandon. Credit to both of you for treating this subject with sensitivity too.
"Perception can be as strong in people's minds as reality but facts are the final arbiter."
ReplyDeletePerception is all it takes.
"Even if the IRA had the element of surprise, and successfully used a Strela-2 missile to shoot down a helicopter, surely there was no reason the British military couldn’t add flare dispensers to their helicopters at short notice."
ReplyDeleteI don't think you've quite grabbed the gravitas of this. If the Provisionals had managed to successfully take out a chopper with a Strela then that made troop circulation in the border areas practically suicidal. This point was not lost on Ian Phoenix who openly advocated for a far more aggressive policy in the border areas coupled with gunship escorts for choppers who'd simply ignore the border and attack any ASU's that dared have a go at them. This was a far more dangerous escalation than many realise. By the 90's South Armagh was OOB's to road troop movements and if the air became the same then the gloves would have had to have come off and Phoenix would have got his way.
re: Strela-2
DeleteThe Provisionals had succeeded in taking down a number of helicopters in 1988-1994 with heavy machine guns and mortars in a marked escalation of their campaign against British air power. The British weren't idle and responded with a significant upping of surveillance, the numbers of helicopters flying in formation and for the first time door gunners returning fire (British government had always been reluctant to endorse this for fear of fueling Provo propaganda that NI was a Vietnamesque warzone). The book "Air War Northern Ireland: Britain's Air Arms and the 'Bandit Country' of South Armagh, Operation Banner 1969–2007" by Steven Taylor is a good account of this dimension of the conflict.
I think the inadequacies of the Strela-2 in the hands of PIRA, whether technical or training, were well aware to them. That they waited until July 1991 to even try firing the thing (versus other Libyan weapons, which all appeared in Northern Ireland in 1988) would corroborate that. It should also be noted that the Strela-2 inherently had certain limitations as a 1960s first-generation MANPADS and within a couple of years the Soviet army was already introducing the Strela-3. The IRA in the 1980s were trying very hard to get their hands on more capable Stinger missiles, as well attempting to create their own anti-air weapon through American sympathisers with links to American aerospace companies.
That said, it has struck me, in light of the British counter-measures on their border military choppers, why the IRA didn't try and use the Strela-2 against a softer target; say a plane carrying British soldiers departing NI. Could have been a horrendous high-water mark of the Troubles.
Bleakly,
DeleteIn propaganda terms taking down a BA helicopter with a manpad would have had a far bigger impact on the British psyche than being collateral damage in a mortar attack. Bringing one down with a dhiska along with concentrated small arms fire was seen as par for the course as this operation required significant personnel by the provos in its implementation and escape. A single operator using a strela would have been a huge issue for the BA and spooks and they knew it.
Separately, it always puzzled why the barrett was never used against a chopper. A single .50 round has enormous kinetic energy behind it and would have caused serious damage against the lightly skinned gazelles and lynx. The barrett was designed as an antimaterial rifle first and foremost.
Steve, re: Barret .50
DeleteYou do raise an interesting point on the IRA seemingly not using the .50 rifles in their intended role. In Part 2 I do mention the SA IRA fired a couple of .50 shots at the patrol ship in Carlingford Loch in '93, but missed. Maybe the low capacity, semi-automatic/bolt-action .50 rifles weren't optimal in terms of rate of fire for targeting a moving helicopter.
However that said one seemingly obvious static targets were the hilltop watchtowers that dotted the area. I haven't researched the subject but it seems unlikely they were reinforced against the .50 round. The DShK would have been suitable for this role too, especially for those adjacent the border. Maybe they weren't always manned but even then disabling surveillance/comm gear is the Barret's envisioned role. Of course it's possible as someone who was never a member of the Provisional IRA in South Armagh there were operational nuances I'm missing here.
Just an extra thought but I recall the IRA did penetrate the Borucki sangar in Crossmaglen with a .50 rifle in late '92 or early '93. So the awareness of its potential against static positions did seem to be there.
DeleteSteveR "Perception is all it takes". Absolutely.
ReplyDeleteI had another comment on this thread but it's not been published? Wasn't anything controversial.
ReplyDeleteSteve - thanks for pointing that out. Your other comment had gone to spam as had one of mine and another from Frankie. One of Barry's went today but I caught it more by chance than design.
DeleteIf a comment fails to appear the most likely reason is that has gone to spam. Just let us know the moment you spot it.
Just posting a second comment in case my first goes to spam no need to publish. Happy Christmas to everyone at the Quill :)
ReplyDeleteHappy Xmas Bleakley
DeleteHappy Christmas from me to all Quillers.
ReplyDeleteHappy Xmas, Barry
DeleteHappy Christmas everyone! Some fascinating discussions recently. Steve R your points are always interesting and well thought out
ReplyDeleteHappy Xmas, Simon
Delete