Warrenpoint ambush

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Warrenpoint ambush
Part of The Troubles/Operation Banner
NarrowPoint-79.jpg
A British Army lorry destroyed in the ambush. The hills of the Cooley Peninsula in County Louth can be seen in the background, behind Narrow Water Castle.
Date27 August 1979
Location
Narrow Water Castle near Warrenpoint, County Down, Northern Ireland
54°06′42″N06°16′45″W / 54.11167°N 6.27917°W / 54.11167; -6.27917
Result

Provisional IRA victory

  • Deadliest attack on the British Army by the Provisional IRA [1]
Belligerents
Flag of the United Kingdom.svg  United Kingdom IrishRepublicanFlag.png Provisional IRA
Commanders and leaders
Lt Col David Blair   †
Maj. Peter Fursman   † 		Brendan Burns
Units involved
Flag of the British Army.svg  British Army South Armagh Brigade [2]
Strength
50 soldiers[ citation needed ] Unknown
Casualties and losses
18 killed
Over 20 wounded [3]
1 RAF Wessex helicopter damaged [4] 		None
Civilian: 1 killed, 1 wounded by British Army gun fire
Relief Map of Northern Ireland.png
Red pog.svg
class=notpageimage|
Location within Northern Ireland

The Warrenpoint ambush, [5] also known as the Narrow Water ambush, [6] the Warrenpoint massacre [7] or the Narrow Water massacre, [8] was a guerrilla attack [9] by the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) on 27 August 1979. The IRA's South Armagh Brigade ambushed a British Army convoy with two large roadside bombs at Narrow Water Castle outside Warrenpoint, Northern Ireland. The first bomb was aimed at the convoy itself, and the second targeted the incoming reinforcements and the incident command point (ICP) set up to deal with the incident. IRA volunteers hidden in nearby woodland also allegedly fired on the troops, who returned fire. The castle is on the banks of the Newry River, which marks the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland.

Contents

Eighteen British soldiers were killed and over twenty were seriously injured, making it the deadliest attack on the British Army during the Troubles. [3] An English civilian was also killed and an Irish civilian wounded, both by British soldiers firing across the border after the first blast. The attack happened on the same day that the IRA assassinated Lord Louis Mountbatten, a close relative of the British royal family.

Ambush

The ambush took place on the A2 road at Narrow Water Castle, just outside Warrenpoint, in the south of County Down in Northern Ireland. The road and castle are on the northern bank of the Newry River (also known as the Clanrye River), which marks the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. The Republic's side of the river, the Cooley Peninsula in County Louth, was an ideal spot from which to launch an ambush: it was thickly wooded, which gave cover to the ambushers, and the river border prevented British forces giving chase. [10]

First explosion

On the afternoon of 27 August, a British Army convoy of one Land Rover and two four-ton lorries—carrying soldiers of the 2nd Battalion, Parachute Regiment—was driving from Ballykinler Barracks to Newry. [11] [12] The British Army were aware of the dangers of using the stretch of road along the Newry River and often declared it out of bounds. However, they would sometimes use it to avoid setting a pattern. [10] At 16:40, as the convoy was driving past Narrow Water Castle, an 800-pound (360 kg) fertiliser bomb, hidden among strawbales on a parked flatbed trailer, was detonated by remote control by IRA members watching from across the border in County Louth. [12] The explosion caught the last lorry in the convoy, hurling it on its side and instantly killing six paratroopers, whose bodies were scattered across the road. [13] There were only two survivors amongst the soldiers travelling in the lorry; they both received serious injuries. The lorry's driver, Anthony Wood (aged 19), was one of those killed. All that remained of Wood's body was his pelvis, welded to the seat by the fierce heat of the blast. [10]

According to the soldiers, immediately after the blast they were targeted by rifle fire from the woods on the Cooley Peninsula on the other side of the border, [14] [15] and this view was supported by two part-time firefighters assisting the wounded, who were "sure they had been fired on from the Omeath side of the water". [16] Shortly afterwards, the two IRA members arrested by the Garda Síochána (the Republic of Ireland's police force) and suspected of being behind the ambush, were found to have traces of gunsmoke residue on their hands and on the motorbike they were riding. [17] The IRA's first statement on the incident, however, denied that any shots had been fired at the troops, [18] and according to Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) researchers, the soldiers might have mistaken the sound of ammunition cooking off for enemy gunfire. [19] Nevertheless, at the official inquiry the soldiers declared on oath that they had been fired on. [20]

The surviving paratroopers radioed for urgent assistance, and reinforcements were dispatched to the scene by road. [12] A rapid reaction unit was sent by Gazelle helicopter, consisting of Lieutenant-Colonel David Blair, commanding officer of the Queen's Own Highlanders, his signaller Lance Corporal Victor MacLeod, and army medics. Another helicopter, a Wessex, landed to pick up the wounded. Colonel Blair assumed command once at the site. [21]

Shooting of Hudson cousins

William Hudson, a 29-year-old from London, was killed by the British Army and his cousin Barry Hudson, a 25-year-old native of Dingle, was wounded when shots were fired across the Newry River into the Republic of Ireland about 3 km from the village of Omeath, County Louth. [15]

The pair were partners in 'Hudson Amusements' and had been operating their amusements in Omeath for the duration of the Omeath Gala. When the first explosion was heard across the Lough, the pair went down to the shore to see what was unfolding. The pair made their way to Narrow Water on the southern side of the border to get a better view of what was happening on the northern side. Barry Hudson was shot in the arm and as he fell to the ground he saw his cousin, who was the son of a coachman at Buckingham Palace, fall to the ground, shot in the head. He died almost immediately. [22]

Second explosion

The IRA had been studying how the British Army behaved after a bombing and correctly predicted that they would set up an incident command point (ICP) at the stone gateway on the other side of the road. At 17:12, thirty-two minutes after the first explosion, another 800-pound (360 kg) bomb hidden in milk pails exploded at the gateway, destroying it and hurling lumps of granite through the air. It detonated as the Wessex helicopter was taking off carrying wounded soldiers. The helicopter was damaged by the blast but did not crash. [11]

Narrow Water Castle c. 2007 Narrow Water Tower - geograph.org.uk - 494487.jpg
Narrow Water Castle c. 2007

The second explosion killed twelve soldiers: ten from the Parachute Regiment and two from the Queen's Own Highlanders. [23] Lt.Colonel Blair was the second Lt.Colonel to be killed in the Troubles up until then, following Lt.Colonel Corden-Lloyd of the 2nd Battalion Royal Green Jackets in 1978. [12] Only one of Colonel Blair's epaulettes remained to identify him as his body had been vaporised in the blast. The epaulette was taken from the scene by Brigadier David Thorne to a security briefing with prime minister Margaret Thatcher to "illustrate the human factor" of the attack. [24] Mike Jackson, then a major in the Parachute Regiment, was at the scene soon after the second explosion and later described seeing human remains scattered over the road, in the water and hanging from the trees. He was asked to identify the face of his friend, Major Peter Fursman, still recognisable after it had been ripped from his head by the explosion and recovered from the water by divers from the Royal Engineers. [10]

Press photographer Peter Molloy, who arrived at the scene after the first explosion, came close to being shot by an angry paratrooper who saw him taking photographs of the dead and dying instead of offering to help the wounded. The soldier was tackled by his comrades. Molloy said, "I was shouted at and called all sorts of things but I understood why. I had trespassed on the worst day of these fellas' lives and taken pictures of it." [25]

Aftermath

The Warrenpoint ambush was the deadliest attack on the British Army during the Troubles and the Parachute Regiment's biggest loss since World War II, with sixteen paratroopers killed. [11] General Sir James Glover, Commander of British forces in Northern Ireland, later said it was "arguably the most successful and certainly one of the best planned IRA attacks of the whole campaign". [11] [26] The ambush happened on the same day that Lord Mountbatten, a prominent relative and close confidant of the British royal family, was assassinated by an IRA bomb aboard his boat at Mullaghmore, along with three others.

Republicans portrayed the attack as retaliation for Bloody Sunday in 1972 when the Parachute Regiment shot dead 13 unarmed civilians during a protest march in Derry. Graffiti appeared in republican areas declaring "13 gone and not forgotten, we got 18 and Mountbatten". [27] The day after the Mountbatten and Warrenpoint attacks, the Ulster Volunteer Force retaliated by shooting dead John Patrick Hardy (43), a Catholic civilian, at his home in Belfast's New Lodge estate. Hardy was allegedly targeted due to the mistaken belief that he was an IRA member. [28]

Very shortly after the ambush, IRA volunteers Brendan Burns and Joe Brennan were arrested by the Gardaí. They were stopped while riding a motorbike on a road opposite Narrow Water Castle. They were later released on bail due to lack of evidence. [29] Burns died in 1988 when a bomb he was handling exploded prematurely. [30] In 1998, former IRA member Eamon Collins claimed that Burns had been one of those who carried out the Warrenpoint ambush. [11] No one has ever been criminally charged. [31]

According to Toby Harnden, the attack "drove a wedge" between the British Army and the RUC. Lieutenant-General Sir Timothy Creasey, General Officer Commanding Northern Ireland, suggested to Margaret Thatcher that internment should be brought back and that liaison with the Gardaí should be left in the hands of the military. [32] Sir Kenneth Newman, the RUC Chief Constable, claimed instead that the British Army practice, since 1975, of supplying their garrisons in South County Armagh by helicopter gave too much freedom of movement to the IRA. [33] One result was the appointment of Sir Maurice Oldfield to a new position of Coordinator of Security Intelligence in Northern Ireland. His role was to coordinate intelligence between the military, MI5 and the RUC. Another was the expansion of the RUC by 1,000 members. [34] Tim Pat Coogan asserts that the deaths of the 18 soldiers hastened the move towards Ulsterisation. [35]

Lieutenant-Colonel Blair is remembered on a memorial at Radley College, Oxfordshire. [36]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Warrenpoint</span> Town in Northern Ireland

Warrenpoint is a small port town and civil parish in County Down, Northern Ireland. It sits at the head of Carlingford Lough, south of Newry, and is separated from the Republic of Ireland by a narrow strait. The town is beside the village of Rostrevor and is overlooked by the Mournes and Cooley Mountains. Warrenpoint sprang up within the townland of Ringmackilroy, and is locally nicknamed "The Point", which also represents the town's full name in Irish, An Pointe".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Provisional IRA East Tyrone Brigade</span> Brigade of the Provisional Irish Republican Army

The East Tyrone Brigade of the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA), also known as the Tyrone/Monaghan Brigade was one of the most active republican paramilitary groups in Northern Ireland during "the Troubles". It is believed to have drawn its membership from across the eastern side of County Tyrone as well as north County Monaghan and south County Londonderry.

This is a chronology of activities by the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) from 1970 to 1979.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Provisional IRA South Armagh Brigade</span> Military unit

The South Armagh Brigade of the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) operated during the Troubles in south County Armagh. It was organised into two battalions, one around Jonesborough and another around Crossmaglen. By the 1990s, the South Armagh Brigade was thought to consist of about 40 members, roughly half of them living south of the border. It has allegedly been commanded since the 1970s by Thomas 'Slab' Murphy who is also alleged to be a member of the IRA's Army Council. Compared to other brigades, the South Armagh IRA was seen as an 'independent republic' within the republican movement, retaining a battalion organizational structure and not adopting the cell structure the rest of the IRA was forced to adopt after repeated intelligence failures.

On 28 February 1985, the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) launched a heavy mortar attack on the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) base at Corry Square in Newry, County Down, Northern Ireland. The attack killed nine RUC officers and injured almost 40 others; the highest death toll ever suffered by the RUC. Afterwards, a major building scheme was begun to give police and military bases better protection from such attacks.

The Drummuckavall ambush was an attack by the South Armagh Brigade of the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) on a British Army observation post in Drummuckavall, southeast of Crossmaglen, County Armagh, on 22 November 1975. The attack, which occurred along the border with the Republic of Ireland, resulted in the deaths of three British soldiers and underlined the inefficiency of conventional military skills to deal with the situation in South Armagh, prompting the deployment of the Special Air Service (SAS) in this area.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">South Armagh Sniper (1990–1997)</span> Sniping campaign against British security forces from 1990 to 1997

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The Ballygawley bus bombing was a roadside bomb attack by the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) on a bus carrying British soldiers in Northern Ireland. It occurred in the early hours of 20 August 1988 in the townland of Curr near Ballygawley, County Tyrone. The attack killed eight soldiers and wounded another 28. In the wake of the bombing, the British Army began ferrying its troops in and out of County Tyrone by helicopter.

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">1989 Jonesborough ambush</span> Provisional IRA attack on RUC officers during the Troubles

The Jonesborough ambush took place on 20 March 1989 near the Irish border outside the village of Jonesborough, County Armagh, Northern Ireland. Two senior Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) officers, Chief Superintendent Harry Breen and Superintendent Bob Buchanan, were shot dead in an ambush by the Provisional IRA South Armagh Brigade. Breen and Buchanan were returning from an informal cross-border security conference in Dundalk with senior Garda officers when Buchanan's car, a red Vauxhall Cavalier, was flagged down and fired upon by six IRA gunmen, who the policemen had taken for British soldiers. Buchanan was killed outright whilst Breen, suffering gunshot wounds, was forced to lie on the ground and shot in the back of the head after he had left the car waving a white handkerchief. They were the highest-ranking RUC officers to be killed during the Troubles.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">1978 British Army Gazelle downing</span> Helicopter downing incident

On 17 February 1978, a British Army Gazelle helicopter, serial number XX404, went down near Jonesborough, County Armagh, Northern Ireland, after being fired at by a Provisional IRA unit from the South Armagh Brigade. The IRA unit was involved at the time in a gun battle with a Green Jackets observation post deployed in the area, and the helicopter was sent in to support the ground troops. The helicopter crashed after the pilot lost control of the aircraft whilst evading ground fire.

On 11 August 1970, two Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) officers were killed by a booby-trap bomb planted under a car by the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) near Crossmaglen, in County Armagh, Northern Ireland. They were the first RUC officers to be killed by republicans during the Troubles and the first security forces to be killed in South Armagh, an IRA stronghold for much of the conflict.

In the Altnaveigh landmine attack of 19 May 1981, five British soldiers were killed and their armoured vehicle destroyed by a Provisional IRA landmine at Altnaveigh, a rural area outside Newry in County Armagh, Northern Ireland. The landmine was detonated remotely when the vehicle passed over it. The attack happened during a period of heightened tension over the 1981 Irish hunger strike.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">1988 British Army Lynx shootdown</span> IRA helicopter shootdown in Northern Ireland

On 23 June 1988, an Army Air Corps (AAC) Westland Lynx, serial number XZ664, was shot down by the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) near Aughanduff Mountain, County Armagh, in Northern Ireland. A unit of the IRA's South Armagh Brigade fired at the British Army helicopter using automatic rifles and heavy machine guns. The disabled helicopter was forced to crash-land in an open field; the aircraft and its crew were eventually recovered by British forces.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Improvised tactical vehicles of the Provisional IRA</span> List of armed vehicles used by the Provisional IRA

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On 24 June 1972, in the rural townland of Crabarkey near Dungiven, the Provisional IRA detonated an improvised land mine, killing three British Army soldiers in a Land Rover. It was one of many such landmine attacks by the IRA in rural areas in the 1970s.

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References

Footnotes

  1. ↑
    • Barzilay, David. British Army in Ulster. Century Books, 1981. Vol. 4. p. 94. ISBN   0-903152-16-9
    • Wood, Ian. Scotland and Ulster. Mercat Press, 1994. p. 170. ISBN   1-873644-19-1
    • Geddes, John. Highway to Hell: An Ex-SAS Soldier's Account of the Extraordinary Private Army Hired to Fight in Iraq. Century, 2006. p. 20. ISBN   1-84605-062-6
    • Forest, James J. F. (2006). Homeland Security: Critical infrastructure. Greenwood Publishing Group, 93. ISBN   0-275-98768-X
    • Kennedy-Pipe, Caroline (1997). The origins of the present troubles in Northern Ireland. Longman, p. 84. ISBN   0-582-10073-9
  2. ↑ English, Richard. Armed Struggle: The History of the IRA. Pan Macmillan, 2008. p.221
  3. 1 2 Moloney, Ed (2007). A Secret History of the IRA (2nd ed.). Penguin Books. p. 176. ISBN   978-0141028767.
  4. ↑ Taylor, Steven (30 June 2018). Air War Northern Ireland: Britain's Air Arms and the 'Bandit Country' of South Armagh, Operation Banner 1969–2007. Pen and Sword. ISBN   978-1-5267-2155-6.
  5. ↑
  6. ↑
  7. ↑
  8. ↑
  9. ↑
  10. 1 2 3 4 Jackson, General Sir Mike (5 September 2007). "Gen Sir Mike Jackson relives IRA Paras bombs". The Daily Telegraph .
  11. 1 2 3 4 5 McKittrick, David. Lost Lives: The stories of the men, women, and children who died as a result of the Northern Ireland Troubles. Mainstream, 1999. pp. 796–797
  12. 1 2 3 4 Sanders, Andrew. Times of Troubles: Britain's War in Northern Ireland. Edinburgh University Press, 2012. pp.139–140
  13. ↑ Harnden p. 198
  14. ↑ Taylor, Peter (1997). Behind the mask:The IRA and Sinn Féin. TV books. p. 266. ISBN   1-57500-061-X.
  15. 1 2 McKittrick, David. Lost Lives: The stories of the men, women, and children who died as a result of the Northern Ireland Troubles. Mainstream, 1999. p. 799
  16. ↑ "From the Archives: August 29th, 1979". The Irish Times. Retrieved 12 July 2020.
  17. ↑ Harnden, p. 204
  18. ↑ "At Least 18 British Soldiers Slain In an Attack by I.R.A. in Ulster". The New York Times. 28 August 1979. ISSN   0362-4331 . Retrieved 12 July 2020.
  19. ↑ Harnden, p. 200
  20. ↑ Reynolds, David (1998). Paras: An Illustrated History of Britain's Airborne Forces. Sutton. p. 257. ISBN   0750917237.
  21. ↑ J. Bowyer Bell (1997). The secret army: the IRA. Transaction Publishers, p. 454. ISBN   0-8156-0597-8
  22. ↑
  23. ↑
  24. ↑ Ezard, John (25 April 2000). "David Thorne: The general who served in Northern Ireland and the Falklands, and defended the regimental structure of the British army". Obituaries. The Guardian .
  25. ↑ "These are the last pictures I ever took... I went home & threw out my camera; I was so sickened. Warrenpoint Massacre: 25 Years On We Revisit Horror of IRA Bombings". The Mirror (London, England). Jilly Beattie. 17 June 2004
  26. ↑ "Shoot to Kill" – Transcript. BBC. Retrieved 20 May 2015.
  27. ↑ Somerville, Ian and Purcell, Andrew (2011). "A history of Republican public relations in Northern Ireland from 'Bloody Sunday' to the Good Friday Agreement". Journal of Communication Management – Special Edition on PR History,Volume 15, Issue 3.
  28. ↑ Taylor, Peter (1999). Loyalists. London: Bloomsbury Publishing Plc. pp. 163–164
  29. ↑ Harnden, p. 205
  30. ↑
  31. ↑ Black, Rebecca (25 August 2019). "Narrow Water survivor 'at peace' 40 years after atrocity which killed 18 soldiers". Yahoo! News. Press Association. Retrieved 19 January 2020.
  32. ↑ Harnden, p. 212
  33. ↑
    • "But Sir Kenneth Newman, the RUC Chief Constable was adamant that the policy of 'police primacy', introduced by Merlyn Rees, should remain in all areas, including South Armagh. The Army's decision not to travel by road in South Armagh was wrong, he argued, because it gave the IRA too much freedom". Harnden, p. 213
    • "Since the mid-1970s virtually all military movement has been by helicopter to avoid casualties from landmines planted under the roads; even the rubbish from the security forces bases is taken away by air." Harnden, p. 19
  34. ↑ Arthur, Paul (2000). Special Relationships: Britain, Ireland and the Northern Ireland problem. Blackstaff Press, Chapter 8. ISBN   0-85640-688-0
  35. ↑ Coogan, Tim Pat (1995). The Troubles: Ireland's Ordeal, 1966–1995, and the Search for Peace. Hutchinson. p. 245. ISBN   0-09-179146-4. From the time of the Ulsterisation, normalisation and criminalisation policy formulations in the mid-seventies it had become obvious that, if the conflict was to be Vietnamised and the natives were to do the fighting, then the much-talked-about 'primacy of the police' would have to become a reality. The policy was officially instituted in 1976. But if one had to point to a watershed date as a result of which the police actually wrested real power from the army I would select 27 August 1979.
  36. ↑ "A New Memorial" (PDF). Lusimus. No. 16. Radley College. January 2008. p. 1. Archived from the original (PDF) on 22 July 2011.
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