Warrenpoint ambush
The Warrenpoint Ambush, also known as the Narrow Water Attack, on August 27 1979 was the British Army's greatest loss of life in a single incident during The Troubles.
Inspired by the Kilmichael Ambush in November 1920, this Provisional Irish Republican Army ambush resulted in the death of 18 British soldiers. A 500kg IRA bomb hidden in a lorry loaded with hay, parked close to the castle, was detonated as an army convoy drove past. The explosion killed six members of the Parachute Regiment. 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 British would set up a command centre 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 in to the area following the first bomb detonating. Following the second explosion a gun battle broke out between soldiers and IRA men firing from their position inside the border with the Republic of Ireland. An innocent civilian, Michael Hudson, was killed, and another seriously injured, by British forces in the exchange of fire.[1]
Consequences
Narrow Water happened on the same day as Louis Mountbatten, an uncle of the Queen of England, was assassinated by an IRA unit in Sligo. The death of such a senior royal made the Warrenpoint Ambush a footnote in the day's British news, although ultimately the death of 18 British-born soldiers increased the move to Ulsterisation.