IRA kill 18 British Para's in an ambush | near Warrenpoint | 27th August 1979

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Follow me on Twitter and Facebook: Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/PAontacht Twitter: https://twitter.com/PAontacht The IRA kill 18 British Army Paratroopers at Narrow Water Castle, on the Dual Carriageway between Newry and Warrenpoint in 2 bomb attacks. The attack was planned by the South Armagh Brigade of the IRA who had positioned themselves across Carlingford Lough and triggered the first bomb by Radio-Control. The Attack: 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 500lb (227 kg) 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 metres (187 ft). 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. 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. Two IRA members arrested by the Gardaí and suspected of being behind the ambush, Brendan Burns and Joe Brennan, had traces of gun smoke residue on their hands and the motorbike they were riding on. 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. 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 British Army behaved after a bombing and correctly predicted that they would set up an incident command point (ICP) in the nearby gatehouse The second explosion, caused by an 800lb (363 kg) 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 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.