After decreasing violence in 1977 and 1978, there was an upsurge of armed incidents in 1979 in Northern Ireland, with the Provisional IRA beginning its "Long War" offensive. 1979 became the worst year for British Army and RUC killings in Ireland since 1974. On 27 August the IRA carried out the Warrenpoint ambush in south County Down near the border, the roadside bomb attack killed 18 British soldiers and injured six others, it was the heaviest loss the British Army suffered at the hands of the IRA during the whole conflict.
Attack
On 16 December 1979 an IRA active service unit from the East Tyrone brigade set up a landmine under a culvert along the Ballygawley Road, just outside Dungannon. The land mine was detonated by the IRA unit using a wireless remote controlled device to activate the detonator as a British Army mobile patrol passed in a landrover, the hidden land mine under the culvert blew the landrover the soldiers were travelling in into the air. The landrover was the second in a patrol of two landrovers with four soldiers in each vehicle. Shots were fired by the IRA at the first landrover and the landrover returned fire, there was no hits on either side. Four British soldiers, William Beck, Keith Richards, Simon Evans and Allan Ayrton were all killed instantly. They had only been serving with the 16 Air Defence Regiment in Northern Ireland for two weeks. The land mine was estimated to have contained between 800–1,000 lbs of explosives in it.
Aftermath
On the same day as the Dungannon attack the IRA's South Armagh Brigade killed another British soldier in a booby-trap bomb attack in Forkhill, County Armagh. They also shot dead a former UDR soldier in Omagh Bringing the total dead to six British soldiers on the day. In the following years, the area around Ballygawley became a death trap for British forces. On 13 July 1983 four UDR soldiers were killed in the Ballygawley land mine attack, at the time it was the worst attack the UDR suffered. On 20 August 1988, eight more British soldiers were killed and 28 others badly wounded in an IRA bombing of a British military bus on the same road.
