The SAS Ambush That Started With a Hairdryer and a Padded Jacket

On the morning of 3 June 1991, an SAS soldier dyed his hair, put on a padded jacket, and drove a stranger's car into one of the most dangerous villages in Northern Ireland. He sat down on a wall. He opened a newspaper. He waited. Three miles away, three IRA men were driving toward him armed and ready. They believed they were coming to kill Allister Harkness, a former UDR soldier who parked in that car park every morning at 7:30am without fail. They had no idea the man on the wall was SAS. This is the full story of the Coagh Ambush, 3 June 1991. One of the most extraordinary undercover operations in the history of 22 SAS and one of the least known. The East Tyrone Brigade at the height of their power. The intelligence operation that exposed them. The preparation nobody has ever fully documented. And the wait that lasted forty minutes and ended in ninety seconds. All information in this video is sourced from publicly available historical records, published accounts, and verified reporting on the Coagh ambush and the East Tyrone Brigade's operational history.