Warrenpoint ambush

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Warrenpoint ambush
Part of The Troubles
Date 27 August 1979 Location Warrenpoint, County Down Result British Army lost freedom of movement by road in and around South Armagh
Belligerents
Provisional Irish Republican Army	British Army: Queen's Own Highlanders Parachute Regiment Royal Engineers Royal Marines
Commanders
Thomas Murphy Brendan Burns	Lieutenant Colonel David Blair †
Strength
1 ASU	About 50 troops
Casualties and losses
None	18 dead

The Warrenpoint ambush, also known as the Warrenpoint massacre,^[1] on 27 August 1979 was a guerrilla action by the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) that resulted in the British Army's greatest loss of life in a single incident during the Troubles in Northern Ireland.

Contents 1 Ambush 2 Consequences 3 See also 4 Notes

[edit] Ambush

This IRA ambush resulted in the death of 18 British soldiers. A 500 kg bomb hidden in a lorry loaded with hay, parked close to Narrow Water Castle, was detonated as an army convoy drove past. The explosion killed six members of the 2nd Bn. Parachute Regiment ("Paras"). Twenty minutes later a second device exploded close to the gate lodge on the opposite side of the road. The IRA had been studying how the British Army acted after a bombing and correctly assessed that the soldiers would set up an Incident Command Point (ICP) in the nearby gate house. The second explosion killed 12 soldiers, another 10 from the Paras and 2 from the Queen's Own Highlanders who had been airlifted into the area following the first explosion.^[2]

Following the first explosion the British soldiers, believing that they had come under attack from the IRA, began firing across the narrow (57m) maritime border with the Republic of Ireland. An uninvolved British civilian, Michael Hudson, was killed by British forces, and another seriously injured, in this small arms fire. According to RUC researchers, the soldiers may have mistaken the explosions of live ammunition from one of the trucks destroyed in the original explosion for enemy fire from across the border.

[edit] Consequences

Warrenpoint happened on the same day as Lord Louis Mountbatten, a cousin once removed of HRH Queen Elizabeth II, was killed by an IRA unit near Sligo. The death of such a senior royal made the Warrenpoint ambush a footnote in that day's British news although, ultimately, the death of 18 British soldiers increased the move to Ulsterisation. The ambush also reinforced the British Army practice, already in place since 1975, of supplying their garrisons in South Armagh by helicopter. The IRA had effectively denied them the use of roads in the region.^[3]

[edit] See also

• The Troubles in Warrenpoint

[edit] Notes