Guerrillas hunted after abortive air raid

Press, Volume CXIV, Issue 33653, 1 October 1974, Page 17

Guerrillas hunted after abortive air raid

(N.Z.P.A.-Reuter—Copyright) DUBLIN, September 30. Irish Republic troops and policemen are today hunting the I.R.A. guerrillas who forced a former British bomber pilot to fly a hijacked light aircraft on a raid into Northern Ireland.

The raid went wrong when the terrorists found they had no navigation ability — they threw one bomb out of the cockpit, and it bounced off a wing before falling into a country lane. It was later found unexploded, and was blown up by British Army bomb-disposal experts. The authorities believe that the abortive bombing mission was timed, as an Irish Republican Army morale booster, to coincide with the annual conference of the Provisional Sinn Fein, the

political wing of the 1.R.A., which ended in Dublin last night. A single-engined aircraft was commandeered from the Dundalk Flying Club, near the border with Northern Ireland on Saturday night for a raid which was apparently to be in support of a ground attack on a British Army post at Crossmaglen. One of 23 mortar-bombs fired at the post, which is deep in an I.R.A. area where about 30 British soldiers have been killed in the last four years, smashed through the roof and damaged a storeroom. The troops returned the fire, but no casualties were reported on either side. Four masked and armed men arrived at the club and

forced the chief flying instructor, Mr lan Swales, aged 59, to fly two of them, and four explosive cannisters, over the border. Mr Swales, who flew Lance.ster bombers in the Second World World War, said that once they were airborne, the gunmen did not

seem to know where they were.

They were still near the border” when they threw out one of the cylinders, and then decided to abandon the mission.

They told Mr Swales to land, and as soon as he touched down in a field, they ran off. Later, Mr Swales said: “The landing was the roughest I have ever made, and there wasn’t much room to overshoot. I have no idea why the hijackers decided to turn back — we had plenty of fuel.” The I.R.A. made a similar attack last January, when they hijacked a helicopter, and used it to drop milkchurns filled with explosives on a police station in Strabane, in Northern Ireland. The churns failed to explode. Early today, the police said that they had detained a man in connection with the hijacking. At the Sinn Fein conference, the I.R.A. leadership again pledged to continue its guerrilla war to force British withdrawal from Northern Ireland.

In a message read to the meeting yesterday, the I.R.A. Council admitted that 135 of its guerrillas had been killed in Northern Ireland in the last five years. The message said that British withdrawal should be followed by the establishment of an autonomous Ulster in a federally-structured Ireland as “the only solid basis for a just and lasting peace.”