Warrenpoint ambush

The Warrenpoint ambush,[4] also known as the Narrow Water ambush,[5] the Warrenpoint massacre[6] or the Narrow Water massacre,[7] was a guerrilla attack[8] 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.

Warrenpoint ambush
Part of The Troubles/Operation Banner

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″N 06°16′45″W
Result

Provisional IRA victory

  • Deadliest attack on the British Army by the Provisional IRA.[1]
Belligerents
 United Kingdom Provisional IRA
Commanders and leaders
Lt Col David Blair †
Maj. Peter Fursman †		 Brendan Burns
Units involved
British Army South Armagh Brigade[2]
Strength
50 soldiers unknown
Casualties and losses
18 killed
Over 20 wounded[3]		 none
Civilian: 1 killed, 1 wounded by the British army gun fire
Location within Northern Ireland

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 Mountbatten, a member 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.[9]

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.[10][11] 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 had to use it sometimes to avoid setting a pattern.[9] 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.[11] 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.[12] 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.[9]

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,[13][14] 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".[15] 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.[16] The IRA's first statement on the incident, however, denied that any shots had been fired at the troops,[17] and according to Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) researchers, the soldiers might have mistaken the sound of ammunition cooking off for enemy gunfire.[18] Nevertheless, at the official inquiry the soldiers declared on oath that they had been fired on.[19]

The surviving paratroopers radioed for urgent assistance, and reinforcements were dispatched to the scene by road.[11] 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.[20]

Shooting of Hudson cousins

William (Bill) Hudson, a 29-year-old from London, was shot dead by the British Army, and his cousin Barry Hudson, a native of Dingle, was wounded by shots which were fired across Carlingford Lough into Omeath, a village on the Cooley Peninsula in the north of County Louth.[14]

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 happening. The pair made their way to Narrow Water on the southern side to get a better view of what was happening on the northern side of the Lough. 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. He died almost immediately.[21]

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 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.[10]

Narrow Water Castle.

The second explosion killed twelve soldiers: ten from the Parachute Regiment and the two from the Queen's Own Highlanders.[22] Colonel Blair was the highest-ranking British Army officer to be killed in the Troubles up until then.[11] 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.[23] 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.[9]

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".[24]

Aftermath

The Warrenpoint ambush was a victory for the IRA. It 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.[10] 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".[10][25] The ambush happened on the same day that Lord Mountbatten, a prominent member of the British royal family, was killed 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".[26] The day after the Mountbatten and Warrenpoint attacks, the Ulster Volunteer Force retaliated by shooting dead a Catholic man, John Patrick Hardy (43), at his home in Belfast's New Lodge estate. Hardy was targeted in the mistaken belief that he was an IRA member.[27]

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.[28] Burns died in 1988 when a bomb he was handling exploded prematurely.[29] In 1998, former IRA member Eamon Collins claimed that Burns had been one of those who carried out the Warrenpoint ambush.[10] No one has ever been criminally charged.[30]

According to Toby Harnden, the attack "drove a wedge" between the 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.[31] 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.[32] One result was the appointment of Sir Maurice Oldfield to a new position of Co-ordinator of Security Intelligence in Northern Ireland. His role was to co-ordinate intelligence between the military, MI5 and the RUC. Another was the expansion of the RUC by 1,000 members.[33] Tim Pat Coogan asserts that the deaths of the 18 soldiers hastened the move to Ulsterisation.[34]

Lieutenant-Colonel Blair is remembered on a memorial at Radley College, Oxfordshire.[35]

References
  • Harnden, Toby (1999). Bandit Country. Hodder & Stoughton. ISBN 0-340-71736-X.

Footnotes
    • 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. Moloney, Ed (2007). A Secret History of the IRA (2nd ed.). Penguin Books. p. 176. ISBN 978-0141028767.
    • Bowyer Bell, John: The IRA, 1968–2000: Analysis of a Secret Army. Taylor & Francis, 2000. p. 305. ISBN 0-7146-8119-9
    • Faligot, Roger: Britain's Military Strategy in Ireland: The Kitson Experiment. Zed Press, 1983, p. 142. ISBN 0-86232-047-X
    • Ellison, Graham, and Smyth, Jim: The Crowned Harp: Policing Northern Ireland. Pluto Press, 2000, p. 145. ISBN 0-7453-1393-0
    • Carr, Matthew (2007). The infernal machine: a history of terrorism. New Press, p. 173. ISBN 1-59558-179-0. "...the assassination of Lord Mountbatten at his holiday home at southern Ireland on 27 March 1979, the same day that another IRA unit ambushed and blew up eighteen British soldiers at Warrenpoint in a more conventional guerrilla operation."
    • Geraghty, Tony (1998). The Irish War: The Hidden Conflict Between the IRA and British Intelligence. JHU Press. pp. 212. ISBN 0801864569.
  9. Jackson, General Sir Mike (5 September 2007). "Gen Sir Mike Jackson relives IRA Paras bombs". The Daily Telegraph.
  10. 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
  11. Sanders, Andrew. Times of Troubles: Britain's War in Northern Ireland. Edinburgh University Press, 2012. pp.139–140
  12. Harnden p. 198
  13. Taylor, Peter (1997). Behind the mask:The IRA and Sinn Féin. TV books. p. 266. ISBN 1-57500-061-X.
  14. 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
  15. "From the Archives: August 29th, 1979". The Irish Times. Retrieved 12 July 2020.
  16. Harnden, p. 204
  17. "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.
  18. Harnden, p. 200
  19. Reynolds, David (1998). Paras: An Illustrated History of Britain's Airborne Forces. Sutton. p. 257. ISBN 0750917237.
  20. J. Bowyer Bell (1997). The secret army: the IRA. Transaction Publishers, p. 454. ISBN 0-8156-0597-8
  23. 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.
  24. "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
  25. "Shoot to Kill" – Transcript. BBC. Retrieved 20 May 2015.
  26. 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.
  27. Taylor, Peter (1999). Loyalists. London: Bloomsbury Publishing Plc. pp. 163–164
  28. Harnden, p. 205
  30. 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.
  31. Harnden, p. 212
    • "But Sir Kenneth Newman, the RUC Chief Constable, was adamant that the policy of 'police primacy', introduced by Merlyn Rees, should be 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
  33. Arthur, Paul (2000). Special Relationships: Britain, Ireland and the Northern Ireland problem. Blackstaff Press, Chapter 8. ISBN 0-85640-688-0
  34. 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.
  35. "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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