Warrenpoint ambush

The Warrenpoint ambush  or Narrow Water ambush   (also called the Warrenpoint massacre   or Narrow Water massacre)   was a guerrilla attack by the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA)'s South Armagh Brigade on 27 August 1979. The IRA ambushed the British Army with two large roadside bombs at Narrow Water Castle (near Warrenpoint) in Northern Ireland. The castle is on the banks of the Newry River, which marks the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland.

The first bomb targeted a British Army convoy and the second targeted the reinforcements sent to deal with the incident. Eighteen British soldiers were killed and six were seriously injured, making it the deadliest attack on the British Army during the Troubles. A civilian was also killed and another injured when British soldiers fired across the border after the first blast.

First explosion
At 16:40, a British Army convoy consisting of one Land Rover and two four-ton lorries was driving past Narrow Water Castle on the A2 road. As it passed, a 500 lb fertiliser bomb, hidden in a lorry loaded with strawbales and parked near the castle, was detonated by remote control. The explosion caught the last lorry in the convoy, hurling it on its side and instantly killing six members of 2nd Battalion, The Parachute Regiment, whose bodies were scattered across the road. There were only two survivors amongst the soldiers travelling in the lorry; they both received serious injuries. Anthony Wood (19), the lorry's driver, was one of those killed. All that remained of Wood's body was his pelvis, which had been welded to the seat by the fierce heat of the blast.

Immediately after the blast, the soldiers were under the impression that they were receiving sniper fire from woods on the other side of the border, a distance of only 57 m. The soldiers began firing across the water. An uninvolved civilian, Michael Hudson (an Englishman who was a coachman at Buckingham Palace), was killed by the soldiers' gunfire and his cousin Barry Hudson wounded. They had been birdwatching on an island opposite the castle.

Two IRA members arrested by the Gardaí and suspected of being behind the ambush, Brendan Burns and Joe Brennan, had traces of gunsmoke residue on their hands and the motorbike they were riding on. However, according to Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) researchers, the soldiers may have mistaken the sound of ammunition cooking off for enemy gunfire from across the border.

On hearing the first explosion a Royal Marine unit alerted the British Army and reinforcements from other units of the Parachute Regiment were dispatched to the scene by road. A rapid reaction unit, consisting of medical staff and senior commander Lieutenant-Colonel David Blair (the commanding officer of the Queen's Own Highlanders), together with his signaller Lance Corporal Victor MacLeod, were sent by Gazelle helicopter; another helicopter, a Wessex, landed to pick up the wounded. Colonel Blair assumed command once at the site.

Second explosion
At 17:12, thirty-two minutes after the first explosion, a second bomb hidden in milk pails exploded against the gate lodge on the opposite side of the road, destroying it and sending lumps of granite flying through the air. The IRA had been studying how the Army behaved after a bombing and rightly assessed that the soldiers would set up an incident command point (ICP) in the nearby gatehouse. The second explosion, caused by an 800 lb fertiliser bomb, killed twelve soldiers: ten from the Parachute Regiment and the two from the Queen's Own Highlanders. Mike Jackson, then a major in the Parachute Regiment, was at the scene soon after the second explosion and later described seeing body parts 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 completely ripped from his head by the explosion and recovered from the water by divers from the Royal Engineers. Only one of Colonel Blair's epaulettes remained to identify him as his body had been vapourised 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.

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. 25 years later, Mr. 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."

Aftermath
Two men arrested after the bombing, Brendan Burns and Joe Brennan, were later released on bail due to lack of evidence.

The Warrenpoint ambush happened on the same day that Lord Louis Mountbatten, the cousin (strictly, second cousin once-removed) of Queen Elizabeth II and uncle of Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, was killed by an IRA unit near Sligo along with three others.

Immediately after the Mountbatten and Warrenpoint attacks, the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) retaliated by shooting dead a Catholic man, John Patrick Hardy (43), at his home in Belfast's New Lodge estate. Hardy was targeted by the UVF Belfast Brigade in the mistaken belief that he was a member of the Provisional IRA.

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. Sir Kenneth Newman, the RUC Chief Constable, claimed instead that the Army practice, already in place since 1975, of supplying their garrisons in South Armagh by helicopter, gave too much freedom of movement to the IRA. One tangible security outcome 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 across the security forces and the RUC. The other was the expansion of the RUC by 1,000 members. Tim Pat Coogan asserts that ultimately, the death of these 18 soldiers hastened the move to Ulsterisation.

Lieutenant-Colonel Blair is remembered on a memorial at Radley School.

IRA member Brendan Burns was killed in 1988 when a bomb he was transporting exploded prematurely. IRA member Joe Brennan was jailed in 1982 for carrying out an armed bank raid to raise funds for the organisation. He left the IRA in 1986 and went on to become a successful property developer and novelist.