The Battle of Crater or Operation Stirling Castle was an encounter during the Aden Emergency. Following the ambush of British troops by the Arab Armed Police the Crater district in Aden was abandoned by British troops. The British decided to enter Crater and retrieve the bodies of British soldiers.



The Aden Emergency, also known as the Radfan Uprising (Arabic: ثورة 14 أكتوبر, romanized: Thawra 14 ʾUktūbir, lit. '14th October Revolution'), was an armed insurgency by NLF and FLOSY during the Cold War against the Federation of South Arabia, a protectorate of the United Kingdom, which now forms part of Yemen.

Partly inspired by Gamal Abdel Nasser's pan-Arab nationalism, it began on 14 October 1963 with the throwing of a grenade at a gathering of British officials at Aden Airport. A state of emergency was then declared in the British Crown colony of Aden and its hinterland, the Aden Protectorate. The emergency escalated in 1967 and hastened the end of British rule in the territory which had begun in 1839. On 30 November 1967, British forces withdrew and the independent People's Republic of South Yemen was proclaimed.