# Mountbatten and Warrenpoint Attacks (27 August 1979)

URL: https://allhistories.com/ireland/timeline/1979-mountbatten-and-warrenpoint-attacks
Themes: Wars & Battles

Louis Mountbatten, Earl Mountbatten of Burma, was a cousin of Queen Elizabeth II, the last Viceroy of India and a former Chief of the Defence Staff. He spent summers at Classiebawn Castle in Mullaghmore, County Sligo, with little security. The Provisional IRA had recently intensified attacks on prominent British figures, killing the Conservative MP Airey Neave in March 1979. On the morning of 27 August 1979, a bomb planted by the IRA exploded on Mountbatten's fishing boat, Shadow V, in Mullaghmore harbour. Mountbatten, his fourteen-year-old grandson Nicholas Knatchbull and fifteen-year-old local boat boy Paul Maxwell were killed, and the Dowager Lady Brabourne, aged eighty-three, died the next day. Later that afternoon, at Narrow Water Castle near Warrenpoint, two IRA bombs killed eighteen soldiers, sixteen of them from the Parachute Regiment, in the deadliest single attack on the British Army during the Troubles. In the confusion, soldiers' fire across the Clanrye estuary killed an English civilian, Michael Hudson. Thomas McMahon was convicted in Dublin of Mountbatten's murder and later released under the Good Friday Agreement. The attacks strengthened Margaret Thatcher's hard line on security, and led to closer cross-border security cooperation. In 2015 Prince Charles visited Mullaghmore and spoke of reconciliation.

## Why it matters
The same-day killings of a royal figure and eighteen soldiers marked one of the IRA's most devastating days and hardened British policy.

Ruler at the Time: [Patrick Hillery](https://allhistories.com/ireland/rulers/patrick-hillery)

Taoiseach: Jack Lynch (Fianna Fáil)

## Sources
- [Wikipedia — Warrenpoint ambush](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warrenpoint_ambush)
- [Wikipedia — Lord Mountbatten](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lord_Mountbatten)
- [CAIN Archive — Chronology of the conflict 1979](https://cain.ulster.ac.uk/othelem/chron/ch79.htm)
- [Encyclopaedia Britannica — Louis Mountbatten](https://www.britannica.com/search?query=Louis+Mountbatten)
- [Wikipedia — The Troubles (period overview)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Troubles)