How Lord Mountbatten’s brutal assassination left survivor with stitched-up eyeballs in IRA bombing
THE water was calm off the Irish coast as a small fishing boat carrying Lord ‘Dickie’ Mountbatten and his family made its way out to sea.
Just seconds later, a deafening explosion and piercing screams rang out across the water as a 50lb remote-controlled bomb - planted the night before by the IRA - was detonated.
It ripped the boat apart and killed Prince Philip's uncle Lord Louis Mountbatten, 79; his 14-year-old grandson, Nicholas; elderly Dowager Lady Doreen Bradbourne; and 15-year-old boat boy Paul Maxwell.
The only survivors onboard were Nicholas’ twin brother Tim, and their parents John and Patricia - with the latter needing more than 120 stitches to her face and eyeballs, which she later dubbed her ‘IRA facelift’.
To add to the horror of that fateful day on August 27, 1979, 18 British soldiers were also killed just hours later in two bomb explosions near the Irish border - the deadliest day for the British Army during the Troubles in Northern Ireland.
It's an event Sinn Fein has finally apologised for, 40 years after his death, just days after the Duke of Edinburgh's funeral. Shockingly, it wasn’t the first time Prince Charles’ ‘honorary grandfather’ Lord Louis Mountbatten had been an assassination target either.
“It was quite a significant noise and I thought initially it might have been a gas cylinder exploding but it became apparent very quickly that it wasn't," he said.
"We did what we could at the scene, and came back to the harbour and waited for the boats who had lifted the casualties to come into the jetty and started to take them to shore.
"We made up some crude stretchers to bring the people from the boats and some of the casualties were tended to in the foyer of the hotel here."
Patricia, who required 120 stitches as a result of the attack, later recalled "a vision of a ball exploding upwards and then of coming to in the sea and wondering if I would be able to reach the surface before I passed out".
‘Agony, disbelief and a kind of wretched numbness’
The Provisional IRA, admitting responsibility for the attack, released a statement saying: “This operation is one of the discriminate ways we can bring to the attention of the English people the continuing occupation of our country.”
The attack was also seen as retaliation for the Bloody Sunday shootings, which saw British forces gun down 13 people during a demonstration.
The fallout was huge for the royals, and Prince Charles was left devastated after hearing the news while in Iceland.
That evening, he wrote in his journal: “A mixture of desperate emotions swept over me – agony, disbelief, a kind of wretched numbness, closely followed by fierce and violent determination to see that something was done about the IRA.
“Life will never be the same now that he has gone and I fear it will take me a very long time to forgive those people who today achieved something that two World Wars and thousands of Germans and Japanese failed to achieve.
“I only hope I can live up to the expectations he had of me and be able to do something to honour the name of Mountbatten.”
Speaking in 2015, Prince Charles directly addressed the incident again ahead of visiting the scene, saying: “In August 1979, my much-loved great uncle, Lord Mountbatten, was killed…
“At the time I could not imagine how we would come to terms with the anguish of such a deep loss since, for me, Lord Mountbatten represented the grandfather I never had.”
A funeral worthy of a king
Mountbatten’s funeral took place on September 5 at Westminster Abbey, with nearly 2,000 guests, including the Queen, in attendance. He was later buried at Romsey in Hampshire, near his country home in Broadlands.
Bereft Prince Charles made a thirty-minute speech and the event was televised in more than 20 countries.
Prince Charles spoke of Lord Mountbatten as “a constantly active brain which was never allowed a moment’s rest".
He added: “There was always a new challenge to be overcome, fresh projects to be set in motion, more opposition to be defeated – all of which were pursued with a relentless and almost irresistible single-mindedness of purpose.
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“Although he could certainly be ruthless with people when the occasion demanded, his infectious enthusiasm, his sheer capacity for hard work, his wit made him an irresistible leader among men.”
While Lord Mountbatten’s death occurred over 40 years ago, it’s obvious the influential figure will not be forgotten.