On 21 January 1919, the day that Sinn Féin’s elected parliamentarians met in Dublin and proclaimed themselves to be Dáil Éireann, the first shots of the War of Independence rang out in Soloheadbeg, Tipperary. Unsanctioned by the Dublin assembly, the ambush was entirely the initiative of local Volunteers, with Dan Breen recalling that they felt “the only way of starting a war was to kill someone, and we wanted to start a war, so we intended to kill some of the police whom we looked upon as the foremost and most important branch of the enemy forces.”
War of Independence era postcard, showing a Volunteer clutching a rifle.
While Breen and his comrades wished to instigate a war, there was a crucial problem. Across the island, Volunteers struggled to arm themselves efficiently to wage any kind of war. One of the most daring early raids for arms during the War of Independence period happened in March 1919 at Collinstown Aerodrome in Dublin, now the location of Dublin Airport. As Charles Townshend has noted, “the haul of seventy-five rifles (with seventy-two bayonets) and 4,000 rounds of ammunition was simply enormous in relation to the stocks held by Volunteer units, and would never be exceeded in the whole course of the struggle.” The raid involved poisoning guard dogs, arranging getaway cars and more besides.
Patrick Holahan, a Volunteer who worked at Collinstown Aerodrome, remembered that “I was not long there before I discovered that there were several other Volunteers on the job, working away peaceably enough to all appearances, but awaiting an opportunity to further the cause which we all had at heart.” Holahan maintained that:
Collinstown Aerodrome was, at that time, a regular little arsenal, and, needless to say, it was well guarded by the British military. The choice collection of arms it contained excited our envy, and the Volunteers were badly in need of military equipment; so we decided to notify GHQ and await instructions.
Brigadier Dick McKee, later to lose his life on Bloody Sunday, 1920, sanctioned the raid. On the day of the raid, Holahan recalled that he and other Volunteers who worked in the Aerodrome went about the business of poisoning the guard dogs, two large Airedale dogs, as while “they never attacked a man in khaki, they would not allow any civilian to pass after nightfall.” The dogs died some hours later, before the raiding Volunteers arrived. Patrick McCrea, a 1916 veteran who had fought in the General Post Office, recalled that:
On the night of the raid we mobilised in Parnell Square — about 25 strong. The men were to travel there in five cars and three cars were to take them back on completion of the job. Two cars were deputed to take the rifles end ammunition. One did not turn up, hence we were one car short.
Once within the complex, it was a matter of taking the men on duty there by surprise. The raiding republicans wore khaki, along with masks to conceal their identities. McCrea remembered:
There were two British soldiers on sentry duty and our men got close to them and held them up. They could not give any alarm. After that they rushed the guardroom where, I think, 12 or 14 were taken by surprise before they could reach for their guns. These were tied up and, as far as I know, they gave no trouble, with one exception, and he got tied by the heels to the rafters. One of them was very unconcerned and asked for a blanket to be thrown over him. I think we were two hours altogether in Collinstown.
Many of the weapons captured that day found their way to an IRA arms dump at the Naul in North County Dublin. In the frantic dash to escape, there was chaos when one of the cars transporting arms gave up, and “we had the alarming experience of it breaking down about three miles from our dump. The men in charge of this car, not daring to ask for help, had to get out and push the car for the remaining miles.”
The day after the raid, some of the IRA party returned to Collinstown Aerodrome as civilian workers, with one remembering that “as we passed into the gates we were surprised to see our late captives, the guards whom we had tied up, being led away as prisoners under a heavy escort. We were sorry for the poor fellows, as they seemed to be having a run of bad luck.”
Collinstown Aerodrome was just one of many such raids carried out across Ireland in this period, but undoubtedly it was among the most successful, with zero causalities and a plentiful supply of arms and ammunition taken from the scene. It was daring, and demonstrated just what the IRA were capable of.
