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 . Ambush . 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 fertiliser bomb , hidden in a lorry loaded with strawbale s 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 . 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 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 epaulette s 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 . External links .