Borderline: An Oral History Of The Brexit Wars 2020 - 2022 by Declan Daly

Author:Declan Daly [Daly, Declan]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Published: 2020-09-16T16:00:00+00:00

Operation Swallow – Day 7

Comdt Brian Rafferty AC, Ret’d

‘The skipper on Wolf 2 that day, I'd flown with him so many times in the left seat, you know, back from where we thought was the start of everything, that first job on the border that started all this, and a long time before that too. Even after I got my command upgrade, sometimes two captains would end up getting scheduled together, and even then, I really enjoyed flying with him. So even though so many other people lost their life in that incident, in my head it always comes back to him. I know that sounds a bit weird, but you go on with the friends you start with and when you lose one of them, it’s a bigger deal. He was the one I knew most.

His copilot that day was a new guy, same cadet class as Denny, the chap that died in the EC135 in the same area a few months earlier, so there was that horrible irony there too. The other crew members, the two gunners, they were new as well. I had flown with one of them a couple of times but didn't know them as well as some of the older crew guys, but the skipper that day, he was that old thing, a buddy, comrade in arms, we fought together, flown together for a long time. Yeah. We were friends. None of those other things made a difference on the day who he was crewed with or anything else, I’m not saying if I was there it would’ve been different or any of that rubbish.

He was in the middle of a three ship flight, plenty of experienced crew on the other two aircraft as well. They were running in low on the southern side of the Cooleys. That that was thought to be safe by that stage; and most of that area had been cleared out over the week of fighting. So, he was in the middle of the formation and just doing what we had been doing, you know, just fighting into an area with a group of enemy in there, look - just doing what we had been doing.

I was actually on the ground back in Dundalk at the time, refueling. We had just come back from an assault ourselves, not far from the same area. Just a little bit further over the ridgeline on the northern side. So, we were on the ground when we heard the news.

Talking to the other guys in the flight, the leader didn't see anything until it was all over. The first aircraft- they were flying ahead of everything that happened. The guys in the third aircraft saw it all unfold. Even they will tell you that's probably a dramatic way of putting it, it was over very, very quickly.

What happened, appears to be, that one of the areas we had cleared but hadn't been able to patrol into yet, the IRA sent two missile teams

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