On This Day: Queen’s cousin Lord Mountbatten murdered in IRA boat blast as 18 soldiers die in another ambush

August 27: The IRA murdered the Queen’s cousin Lord Louis Mountbatten in a yacht blast hours before killing 18 British soldiers in a double ambush on this day in 1979.

The earl’s grandson Nicholas Knatchbull, 14, and 15-year-old Paul Maxwell also died in the bomb attack while sailing in Donegal Bay in the Irish Republic.

Fishermen pulled Mountbatten alive from the wreckage, which was caused by a radio-controlled 50lb bomb that was triggered by IRA member Paul McMahon.

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But the 79-year-old aristocrat, who often holidayed at his cottage in Mullaghmore in County Sligo, died before being brought ashore.

Irish police had warned Mountbatten that he was at risk of attack since Mullaghmore was only 12 miles from the Northern Irish border and near IRA hideouts.

Four other relatives initially survived the blast but the Dowager Lady Brabourne, his elder daughter’s 83-year-old mother-in-law, died from her injuries the next day.

McMahon, who was later convicted of murder and released in 1998 under the Good Friday Agreement, was arrested for driving a stolen car before the bomb exploded.

But few knew then that only five hours later, the Provisional IRA’s notorious South Armagh Brigade would unleash an even deadlier attack north of the border.

First terrorists killed six members of the 2nd Battalion, The Parachute Regiment as they drove past a 500lb bomb hidden in straw bales near Warrenpoint, County Down.

The heat of the blast was so intense that all that was left of one of the victims, lorry driver David Woods, 19, was his pelvis, which had welded to the seat.

Surviving soldiers in two other vehicles mistakenly believed they were being shot by snipers hiding in woods on the Irish Republic side of the border just 200 yards away.

They began firing into the trees and in the process killed Buckingham Palace coachman Anthony Wood, who was there on a birdwatching on holiday.

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The IRA then rightly assessed that the British Army would reinforce and set up an incident command point at a nearby gatehouse, where they had hidden another bomb.

The 800lb explosive - also made from fertiliser - detonated 32 minutes after the first blast, killing 12 soldiers, including ten other Paras and two Queen's Own Highlanders.

Among the dead was the commanding officer Lieutenant-Colonel David Blair, whose vaporised body was only recognisable by his one remaining epaulette.

Six soldiers – two from the first attack and four from the second – were also wounded in the massacre witnessed by Major Mike Jackson, who became Britain’s top General.

Jackson, who was also present at Bloody Sunday when Paras killed 13 Catholic civilians in Londonderry in 1972, saw fellow soldiers’ body parts hanging from trees.

The Warrenpoint ambush, which resulted in the Army’s greatest single loss of life during the Troubles, came ten years after troops first arrived in Northern Ireland.

Both the massacre and Mountbatten’s assassination caused a well of anger in both the British mainland and among Ulster’s majority Protestant community.

Loyalist paramilitaries carried out a series of deadly attacks on Catholic civilians in the aftermath.
No members of the South Armagh Brigade, which killed a total of 123 soldiers and 42 Royal Ulster Constabulary officers, were ever convicted over Warrenpoint.

The Irish Republic’s Garda Siochana police force arrested two members of maverick IRA unit, but there was not enough evidence to convict them.

Of these suspected culprits, Brendan Burns was killed in 1988 when a bomb he was transporting exploded prematurely.

While Joe Brennan, who later became a successful property developer and novelist, was jailed in 1982 for carrying out an armed bank raid to raise funds for the IRA.

Mountbatten’s state funeral, which was held on the same day as six soldiers, was attended by his nephew the Duke of Edinburgh and the Queen, whom he introduced.