18 December 1997 Edition
Britain's Bombay Take-Away
Four years ago the British Ministry of Defence rubbished Celtic League claims about deals to procure junk helicopters to support its air operations in the Six Counties - new details however have emerged which indicate that in a bizarre deal the MOD considered buying back £65 million worth of helicopters the British taxpayers had provided to India, and which Indian pilots refused to fly on safety grounds.
``The nation rejoices,'' Margaret Thatcher announced as British ships returned from the Falklands/Malvinas in July 1982.
Initially humiliated, the British had rallied and dispatched a rapidly assembled task force half way round the globe where it had snatched victory in the face of adversity.
Many in the Celtic countries had welcomed Britain's discomfiture, less out of enthusiasm for the Argentinian junta, more because of the slap in the face administered to the reawakened imperialism epitomised by Thatcherism.
With the war over however, the Union Jacks and the uniformed men lining the rust-stained ships cheered by the waiting crowds said it all. Britain triumphant, Britain as ever a major military force on the international scene.
But it was not that simple. The ramifications of the Falklands excursion would have a curious footnote a decade later in the green fields of South Armagh and in a scrap-yard in the steamy suburbs of Bombay.
On 25 May 1982 as the British fought hard to establish their foothold in the Falklands a surprise attack by two Argentinian Naval aircraft hit the merchant ship Atlantic Conveyor, sending 12 men and her cargo of heavy lift helicopters to the bottom of the South Atlantic. Over the next few days the British paid dearly for this surprise victory as other helicopters struggled to provide the logistics support Atlantic Conveyor's irreplaceable cargo was to have provided. Attrition was high and after the conflict analysts revealed that this factor cost the British many lives as they advanced to the Falklands Capital, Stanley.
In the years after the Falklands War it also became apparent that the British armed forces would never recover the helicopter lift capability that it needed to meet the expanding commitments pressed upon them as Margaret Thatcher sought to retain her, and the United Kingdom's, position on the world stage. The cost of building and maintaining garrisons in the reclaimed Falklands, the conflict in the Six Counties, UN duties in the Balkans etc meant that procurement of basic equipment, always a low priority, was made more difficult.
Towards the end of the 80s it was clear that not only was there a serious deficiency in both medium and heavy lift support helicopters but that the MOD had neither the strategy or the funding to rectify it.
Nowhere was the paranoia over this logistical deficiency more critical than in the Six Counties. Twenty years of sustained guerrilla war in the rural areas had virtually made prisoners of garrisons in isolated areas and due to landmines and sniper attack, logistics support by road was impractical.
The British Army Air Corps and the RAF had adapted to sustain these garrisons and the light reconnaissance machines initially deployed were joined by medium and heavy lift capacity. But there was always a deficit; machines were damaged by ground fire, in accidents, and as always there was operational depreciation and obsolescence.
The procurement by the IRA of considerable quantities of arms from overseas and the quality of their heavy automatic weapons from the early 80s was a major cause of concern as helicopter attrition mounted. However, the clearest indicator of the paranoia the British military had was the periodic assertion in the media that the IRA were on the verge of procuring small portable surface-to-air missiles. This, in effect, was the doomsday scenario the British Army feared.
To meet its perceived difficulty the Minister of Defence set in train one of the most bizarre sequence of events in the annals of their military adventure in Ireland. In 1992 MOD officials started to scour the world for additional helicopters to support British operations in the Six Counties. In tandem, steps were taken to upgrade and up-armour machines already in use. To this end a joint services co-ordinating group was set up.
The main criteria for overseas procurement was that both medium and heavy lift type helicopters should not be costly and should be available for early delivery.
One of the first batches of equipment looked at was lying abandoned on the edge of a Bombay slum. The MOD sent inspectors with a view to buying the 21 Westland W30 helicopters. These are civilian updated versions of the Lynx helicopter operated in the Six Counties.
The MOD were apparently initially unaware that the machines had been supplied as part of a £65 million Overseas Development Agency project to help develop offshore oil installations. However, shortly after delivery there was a series of fatal crashes in which nine people died. Indian pilots thereafter refused to fly the machines and they were grounded in 1989, eighteen months after delivery.
In 1993 the Celtic League revealed details of the bizarre shopping expedition which at the time the MOD denied. The story resurfaced recently when the new British government started to analyse the overseas aid programme of the previous government and discovered that a scrap dealer in Sussex was negotiating to buy the £65 million pounds of helicopters for just £900,000. In September this year The Guardian newspaper repeated our claims and the UK defence ministry was said to be ``checking its files''. They have made no further comment.
In tandem with the Bombay excursion, other efforts were made to procure heavy lift Chinook helicopters. At the time the RAF's existing machines were going through an upgrade programme and this was encountering difficulties. The MOD sought to buy seven second-hand HC1 machines from the Royal Australian Air Force to augment its own Chinook fleet in the short term until problems with the HC2 could be rectified. Again, when the Celtic League revealed this `shopping trip' in 1993 the MOD denied that it had occurred. However, new evidence has now been revealed that the MOD did have problems with the RAF Chinook upgrade, and the House of Commons Defence Select Committee established in October that the MOD concealed the fact that they had to sue the manufacturers of the engine system for negligence.
The Australian deal, like that in Bombay, appears to have fallen through and modified RAF Chinook HC2s were pressed back into service despite concerns from aircrews about engine-control system reliability.
Some believe this premature move resulted in the crash in Kintyre which killed 29 people, including most of the senior intelligence hierarchy in the Six Counties.
As revealed in An Phoblacht (July 1994) the British military fear about the security of air support operations was indeed tested but not as they had feared by surface-to-air missiles but by multiple ASUs deploying heavy automatic weapons, to devastating effect. In fire fights, the most successful of which occurred in South Armagh in September 1993, the IRA raised serious question-marks over the British army's ability to maintain its logistics support operations in the border areas. Within days of the South Armagh battle urgent moves were made to improve air support and units of the Royal Navy with Sea King helicopters were deployed, the first time such units had been used for over fifteen years.
As the first IRA ceasefire was declared, in 1994, there seems little doubt that the British military support operation was at a critical stage. Indicative of this is that in the months following the ceasefire the question of the decommissioning of IRA weapons was catapulted to prominence. Significantly, the usual British media mouthpieces, like Micheal Mates and the Unionist leaders, were calling for the decommissioning of ``some heavy weapons'' as a first step.
Hopefully, the new peace process will deliver a lasting settlement that restores to Ireland the territorial integrity it seeks. The peace process should also remove the clatter of British military helicopters, and their noise and nuisance, from the people of South Armagh, Tyrone and the north generally.
The Celtic League however are cynical enough to believe that peace will not lead to the British revealing the secrets of their shopping excursion for the unsuccessful ``Bombay Takeaway''.
To do so would reveal the fact that the British were prepared to expose their own service personnel to risk, operating helicopters boycotted by Indian civil pilots and helicopters scrapped by the Australians. It would also lift some of the mist that surrounds those 29 deaths at Kintyre.
Bernard Moffatt is the General Secretary of the Celtic League.
``The nation rejoices,'' Margaret Thatcher announced as British ships returned from the Falklands/Malvinas in July 1982.
Initially humiliated, the British had rallied and dispatched a rapidly assembled task force half way round the globe where it had snatched victory in the face of adversity.
Many in the Celtic countries had welcomed Britain's discomfiture, less out of enthusiasm for the Argentinian junta, more because of the slap in the face administered to the reawakened imperialism epitomised by Thatcherism.
With the war over however, the Union Jacks and the uniformed men lining the rust-stained ships cheered by the waiting crowds said it all. Britain triumphant, Britain as ever a major military force on the international scene.
But it was not that simple. The ramifications of the Falklands excursion would have a curious footnote a decade later in the green fields of South Armagh and in a scrap-yard in the steamy suburbs of Bombay.
On 25 May 1982 as the British fought hard to establish their foothold in the Falklands a surprise attack by two Argentinian Naval aircraft hit the merchant ship Atlantic Conveyor, sending 12 men and her cargo of heavy lift helicopters to the bottom of the South Atlantic. Over the next few days the British paid dearly for this surprise victory as other helicopters struggled to provide the logistics support Atlantic Conveyor's irreplaceable cargo was to have provided. Attrition was high and after the conflict analysts revealed that this factor cost the British many lives as they advanced to the Falklands Capital, Stanley.
In the years after the Falklands War it also became apparent that the British armed forces would never recover the helicopter lift capability that it needed to meet the expanding commitments pressed upon them as Margaret Thatcher sought to retain her, and the United Kingdom's, position on the world stage. The cost of building and maintaining garrisons in the reclaimed Falklands, the conflict in the Six Counties, UN duties in the Balkans etc meant that procurement of basic equipment, always a low priority, was made more difficult.
Towards the end of the 80s it was clear that not only was there a serious deficiency in both medium and heavy lift support helicopters but that the MOD had neither the strategy or the funding to rectify it.
Nowhere was the paranoia over this logistical deficiency more critical than in the Six Counties. Twenty years of sustained guerrilla war in the rural areas had virtually made prisoners of garrisons in isolated areas and due to landmines and sniper attack, logistics support by road was impractical.
The British Army Air Corps and the RAF had adapted to sustain these garrisons and the light reconnaissance machines initially deployed were joined by medium and heavy lift capacity. But there was always a deficit; machines were damaged by ground fire, in accidents, and as always there was operational depreciation and obsolescence.
The procurement by the IRA of considerable quantities of arms from overseas and the quality of their heavy automatic weapons from the early 80s was a major cause of concern as helicopter attrition mounted. However, the clearest indicator of the paranoia the British military had was the periodic assertion in the media that the IRA were on the verge of procuring small portable surface-to-air missiles. This, in effect, was the doomsday scenario the British Army feared.
To meet its perceived difficulty the Minister of Defence set in train one of the most bizarre sequence of events in the annals of their military adventure in Ireland. In 1992 MOD officials started to scour the world for additional helicopters to support British operations in the Six Counties. In tandem, steps were taken to upgrade and up-armour machines already in use. To this end a joint services co-ordinating group was set up.
The main criteria for overseas procurement was that both medium and heavy lift type helicopters should not be costly and should be available for early delivery.
One of the first batches of equipment looked at was lying abandoned on the edge of a Bombay slum. The MOD sent inspectors with a view to buying the 21 Westland W30 helicopters. These are civilian updated versions of the Lynx helicopter operated in the Six Counties.
The MOD were apparently initially unaware that the machines had been supplied as part of a £65 million Overseas Development Agency project to help develop offshore oil installations. However, shortly after delivery there was a series of fatal crashes in which nine people died. Indian pilots thereafter refused to fly the machines and they were grounded in 1989, eighteen months after delivery.
In 1993 the Celtic League revealed details of the bizarre shopping expedition which at the time the MOD denied. The story resurfaced recently when the new British government started to analyse the overseas aid programme of the previous government and discovered that a scrap dealer in Sussex was negotiating to buy the £65 million pounds of helicopters for just £900,000. In September this year The Guardian newspaper repeated our claims and the UK defence ministry was said to be ``checking its files''. They have made no further comment.
In tandem with the Bombay excursion, other efforts were made to procure heavy lift Chinook helicopters. At the time the RAF's existing machines were going through an upgrade programme and this was encountering difficulties. The MOD sought to buy seven second-hand HC1 machines from the Royal Australian Air Force to augment its own Chinook fleet in the short term until problems with the HC2 could be rectified. Again, when the Celtic League revealed this `shopping trip' in 1993 the MOD denied that it had occurred. However, new evidence has now been revealed that the MOD did have problems with the RAF Chinook upgrade, and the House of Commons Defence Select Committee established in October that the MOD concealed the fact that they had to sue the manufacturers of the engine system for negligence.
The Australian deal, like that in Bombay, appears to have fallen through and modified RAF Chinook HC2s were pressed back into service despite concerns from aircrews about engine-control system reliability.
Some believe this premature move resulted in the crash in Kintyre which killed 29 people, including most of the senior intelligence hierarchy in the Six Counties.
As revealed in An Phoblacht (July 1994) the British military fear about the security of air support operations was indeed tested but not as they had feared by surface-to-air missiles but by multiple ASUs deploying heavy automatic weapons, to devastating effect. In fire fights, the most successful of which occurred in South Armagh in September 1993, the IRA raised serious question-marks over the British army's ability to maintain its logistics support operations in the border areas. Within days of the South Armagh battle urgent moves were made to improve air support and units of the Royal Navy with Sea King helicopters were deployed, the first time such units had been used for over fifteen years.
As the first IRA ceasefire was declared, in 1994, there seems little doubt that the British military support operation was at a critical stage. Indicative of this is that in the months following the ceasefire the question of the decommissioning of IRA weapons was catapulted to prominence. Significantly, the usual British media mouthpieces, like Micheal Mates and the Unionist leaders, were calling for the decommissioning of ``some heavy weapons'' as a first step.
Hopefully, the new peace process will deliver a lasting settlement that restores to Ireland the territorial integrity it seeks. The peace process should also remove the clatter of British military helicopters, and their noise and nuisance, from the people of South Armagh, Tyrone and the north generally.
The Celtic League however are cynical enough to believe that peace will not lead to the British revealing the secrets of their shopping excursion for the unsuccessful ``Bombay Takeaway''.
To do so would reveal the fact that the British were prepared to expose their own service personnel to risk, operating helicopters boycotted by Indian civil pilots and helicopters scrapped by the Australians. It would also lift some of the mist that surrounds those 29 deaths at Kintyre.
Bernard Moffatt is the General Secretary of the Celtic League.