CLOSE HAUL

Helicopter pilot prevented disaster as blades spun just feet from vessel

- BY MICHAEL O'TOOLE Crime and Defence Editor

THE Defence Forces operation to seize the MV Matthew came within feet of disaster - and only the skill of an Air Corps pilot saved the day.

Sources say the Air Corps helicopter which flew an Army Ranger Wing team to seize the cocaine-laden freighter off the south coast came so close to the ship that its blades were within feet of large cranes on it.

An officer who commanded the air mission told us the chopper would have crashed if any of its blades struck the giant yellow cranes.

He said: "If we clip the blade we're gone. In the best case, we might get to ditch it on to the vessel, or ditch it into the sea. But it's not good."

Now, as eight men begin jail terms over the September 2023 plot to smuggle the drugs here on the freighter, we can reveal new details about the Defence Forces plan, called Operation Piano, in which the ARW, Naval Service and Air Corps combined to seize the ship and her cocaine cargo.

The three arms of the Defence Forces teamed up with Revenue Customs and gardai to form a joint task force to take down the MV Matthew, a Panamanian-registered freighter that had sailed across the Atlantic Ocean with 2,200 kilos of cocaine - worth €157million.

But gardai and Customs had received international intelligence on the plot - and worked with the Defence Forces to foil it on September 26.

Operation Piano started five days earlier, on Friday, September 22 when the captain of the Naval Service ship LÉ William B Yeats was summoned to a short notice meeting at its HQ at Haulbowline in Co Cork.

PATROL

He and his crew had just spent two weeks at sea - but were ordered back out again.

He told us: "I was briefed in broad terms about an impending counter narcotics operation that was expected to happen off the south coast of Ireland within a matter of days.

"I was given instructions to return the ship immediately to sea."