This month is the 50th anniversary of one of ITN’s biggest ever exclusives – the filming of Turkish forces landing in Cyprus in July 1974 . Michael Nicholson, cameraman Alan Downes, and sound recordist Bob Hammond were directly inside the Turkish paratroopers’ dropping zone outside Kyrenia. Former ITN reporter Sam Hall was the fixer on the story. For the July 2024 edition of the ITN 1955 Club Newsletter, he wrote this article recalling his memories of what the Daily Mail at the time said was “a remarkable TV scoop”.
Photo: A screen image of Mike Nicholson watching the Turkish paratroopers land. ©ITN
It all began when the Greek Colonels staged a coup and installed an anti-British EOKA terrorist called Nicos Sampson as acting President of Cyprus. Anticipating trouble, ITN dispatched Mike Nicholson, Alan Downs and Bob Hammond to the island accompanied by me on my first foreign ‘fixing’ trip.
Nicholson conducted a punchy interview with Sampson, who was furious at being reminded constantly of his EOKA heritage. The Turks weren’t happy either. Civil war on the island seemed imminent.
Shortly afterwards, Chris Wain, John Collings and Tony Piddington joined the team. The Ledra Palace Hotel was filling up with journalists from all over the world. But with the Sampson interview in the can, along with footage of some ancient Greek tanks, we were ahead of the game.
After dinner, we relaxed in the bar for a while then meandered off to bed. But not for long! Shortly after midnight, Peter Snow, then ITN Diplomatic Correspondent, called: “The Turks are preparing to invade,” he said.
ITN Deployments
After a quick council of war, we agreed that Alan and Bob would head for Kyrenia on the north coast, which seemed the most logical place for an assault landing (although Chris Wain, our Defence Correspondence favoured Paphos on the west coast). By now, Ray Maloney had also joined the team and headed for Salamis Bay on the Cyprus panhandle to the northeast.
At 0430, Downes and Hammond pushed their hired Hillman Hunter down the road without starting the engine, so as not to alert the BBC and other journalists. They didn’t switch it on until they were well out of earshot. What they didn’t realise was that when you hire a car in Cyprus, you are given only enough petrol to get to the nearest garage. Inevitably, after driving through a village, the engine died. What made their predicament worse was that the BBC team had also received a tip-off. Also heading for Kyrenia, they drove past the stricken ITN crew gleefully.
With all ITN reporters and crews dispatched, I went back to bed. I woke up an hour later to what I thought was the sound of thunder. It wasn’t! When I drew back the curtains, I was amazed to see Turkish jets roaring past, flying low and dropping bombs on the capital.
I’ve never dressed so quickly in my life – so quickly that I managed to get both legs tangled into one trouser leg!
On the landing, dozens of journalists were sprawled on the floor in the dark. The electricity had been cut. So had the phones.
Meanwhile, the Greek Cypriots who had waited on us in the dining room a few hours earlier had changed into camouflage fatigues and were setting up a machine gun nest in the lobby. Not long afterwards, a 25 lb shell smashed into a bedroom a few doors down from mine.
Paratroopers
Unable to contact the office (no mobile phones then!), I felt helpless and no less so when an NBC reporter began bragging about the ‘a-f******-mazing’ footage shot from the hotel roof of Turkish paratroopers landing a short distance away. John Collings and Tony Piddington had filmed the machine gun nest in the lobby and Turkish jets bombing the city. But no paratroopers!
Later in the morning, they made their appearance at the bottom of the hotel garden and along the road outside. Coming under fire from the Cypriot waiters, they returned fire, breaking several large glass windows and creating mayhem as holidaymakers and journalists dived for cover in the lobby.
In the early evening, Mike Nicholson, Alan Downes and Bob Hammond appeared, their new safari suits looking distinctly worse for wear, but with an extraordinary story to tell.
Realising they would have to get petrol (or another car) from somewhere, they headed back towards the village nearby. That was when they first heard the drone of C-57 transport planes. They managed to get another car and drive out towards the parachute drop. Alan shot some GVs, then raced across fields to the landing zone.
‘Welcome to Cyprus’
As one paratrooper prepared to land, Alan pointed his CP16 and filmed him –and I have always thought what a huge risk that was. He was lucky not to have been shot. Once the Turk’s feet touched the ground, Mike Nicholson walked up to the soldier and said: “My name’s Nicholson. How do you do?’. He also said ‘Welcome to Cyprus’, which had to be edited out subsequently.
Later, Alan recounted how a Turkish major had taken exception to their filming and ordered them to stop. He demanded to see their identity cards. Alan handed over his 1974 Scotland Yard pass. On the way back to the hotel, the trio came under intense shelling from the Greek Cypriots and were forced to take cover beneath the barbecue of a kebab house. Hence, the shabby safari suits!
Back in Nicosia, there were rumours that the Turkish air force was about to bomb the Ledra Palace Hotel, as it was a focal point of Greek Cypriot resistance. Happily, that didn’t happen. Even so, we all gathered in the hotel cellar to work out a plan of action. Somehow, we had to get the film back to London.
What’s more, we had to do it immediately because Canadian United Nations soldiers were trying to organise a ceasefire so that the journalists could be evacuated. If we were caught up in that, we would lose our advantage, so we decided that Chris, John, Tony and I should try to reach Akrotiri, the RAF base in the south of the island.
Having learned the lesson of making sure there was enough fuel in the car, Alan and Bob Hammond detached a piece of rubber tubing from the hotel plumbing system and siphoned off most of the Daily Mail’s petrol.
We had painted ‘Press’ on the roof and sides of our car, a bright yellow Mazda, and festooned it with a Union Jack and a white pillow slip tied to a broomstick.
As we left the hotel, we drove slowly, hooting the horn. I remember seeing the helmets of Turkish paratroopers on one side of the road – and Greek Cypriots with machine guns on the other.
That they did not shoot us off the face of the earth can only have been down to pure amazement at the sight of this bright yellow vehicle, stuffed with people and equipment and flying the flags of the Union Jack and Surrender.
We had to talk our way through several roadblocks and were fortunate to be able to do so. A couple of hours later, the order went out to prevent anyone leaving.
Akrotiri
We made it to Akrotiri. We had some difficulty with a guard at the gates of the base. Not surprisingly, he was somewhat wary of a bunch of unkempt men who hadn’t shaved or changed clothes for three days – and claimed to be from the UK’s premier television news programme.
Thanks to my training as a cryptographer and telegraphist in the army, I persuaded the RAF telex operators to let me use one of their telex machines to contact London. The squadron leader initially told us a Hercules would be leaving for Brize Norton in the afternoon – too late for NAT.
A few minutes later, he said: “Sorry, got it wrong. There’s a VC10 leaving in 20 minutes. We’ll hold it for you.” I gave thanks for my army training, without which we wouldn’t have made the plane.
I raced across the airfield. Then, I saw a BBC crew and my heart sank. I asked them how they had got out, thinking they had been in Nicosia. The camera operator pointed to the VC10. ‘We’ve just arrived, mate,” he said “Why, what’s going on?”
“Nothing”, I said. “Just wondering.” I ran up the steps of the aircraft, and handed over another pillow slip, this one containing the precious film, to a cabin steward. Five minutes later, the VC10 took off. The rest is history.
Oh yes. The NBC tape with the ‘a-f******-mazing footage’ arrived in New York three days later.
This article was written for the July 2024 edition of the ITN 1955 Club Newsletter.