- Source: Sanaghanroe landmine attack
On 10 September 1972, a active service unit (ASU) of the Provisional IRA's East Tyrone Brigade carried out a landmine attack against a British Army mobile patrol, along a small road in the rural village of Sanaghanroe near the town of Dungannon in County Tyrone.
Background
1972 was the highest death toll of The Troubles in a single year, with almost 500 people being killed, including 130 British soldiers and 16 Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) members. The Provisional Irish Republican Army (PIRA) themselves lost 62 Volunteers. It was also the year the PIRA's rural units started to become much more involved in the conflict. As in rural border areas, there was much fewer civilians for the PIRA to worry about causing harm to from large explosive devices, so the bombs in rural areas like the ones in West Fermanagh, Mid & East Tyrone, South Armagh & South Derry were usually much bigger than those constructed for use in urban areas like Belfast or Derry City, which from 1969 to early 1972 is where most IRA activity took place, but from the summer of 1972 onwards the rural PIRA units, especially the South Armagh Brigade & the East Tyrone brigade would take a much more active role in the conflict.
Even before the attack at Sanaghanroe 13 British soldiers had been killed in 1972 by PIRA land mines, the first happening on the 21 January, when a British soldier Philip Stentiford, who was just 18 years old was killed when he stepped on a PIRA landmine killing him instantly near Keady, Armagh. Another important incident was the Dungiven landmine and gun attack when an Army Land Rover which was part of a convoy was destroyed when the PIRA detonated a mine destroying the Land Rover, killing three soldiers & injuring another soldier, a few seconds after the blast hidden PIRA gunmen opened up on the convoy injuring three more soldiers.
Attack
Shortly before midnight on Sunday the 10 September 1972 a British Army on mobile patrol was passing through Sanaghanroe on a narrow dirt road close to Dungannon, County Tyrone, just a few miles away from the border. One of the vehicles in the convoy, a Alvis Saracen which was a armoured personnel carrier, struck a PIRA landmine. The blast was so powerful the Saracen was thrown several feet into the air into a nearby field & ripped in half, killing two of the British soldiers instantly with a third dying later in hospital & injuring four other soldiers who had various degrees of injuries. The Saracen had hit an improvised explosive device planted by the PIRA into a drainpipe, the PIRA unit who had studied that the British Army had travelled this road on certain days for the past several weeks. At almost 500 lbs of explosives, it was the largest bomb that either the PIRA or Official IRA had detonated in Northern Ireland at that point in time during The Troubles, the explosion created a crater that was 20 feet deep. A woman driving a civilian car drove into the crater a few hours after the blast slightly injuring herself & suffered some shock. The soldiers killed were, Duncan McPhee (21), Richmond Douglas (21) & William McIntyre (23), all were part of the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders light infantry regiment.
Aftermath
This was the last landmine attack carried out by the PIRA in 1972, the next landmine attack carried out by the PIRA didn't occur until 14 January 1973, when an RUC officer who was on mobile patrol in Aghnagar near Ballygawley, County Tyrone was killed. There was a significant decline in 1973 in the amount of British Soldiers & RUC members killed by PIRA landmine and culvert bomb attacks, 16 were killed in 1972 compared to just nine in 1973, nearly half the amount of the previous year. The deaths from landmine attacks would further decline in 1974 with just seven deaths & even less in 1975 with just four deaths.
Sources
British Pathe
Conflict Archive on the Internet cain.ulster.ac.uk
Air War Northern Ireland: Britain's Air Arms and the 'Bandit Country' of South Armagh, Operation Banner 1969 - 2007 by Steven Taylor
Discover: BBC Rewind
See also
Dungannon land mine attack
Ballygawley land mine attack
Attack on Ballygawley barracks
Provisional IRA East Tyrone Brigade