Two men allegedly responsible for the IRA bombings that killed 18 British soldiers in Warrenpoint, Co Down almost 25 years ago are to be named on Friday night on BBC 2.
The programme, The Day Mountbatten Died, also reports a former senior RUC officer claiming that the Fianna Fáil Government of 1990, which was led by Mr Charles Haughey, thwarted an attempt to apprehend the bombers.
British army bungling also ruined a joint army/RUC attempt to arrest the alleged bombers, according to the programme.
The programme deals with August 29th, 1979 when the IRA in Mullaghmore, Co Sligo targeted and killed 79-year-old Lord Louis Mountbatten, two boys and an elderly woman, while at Narrow Water in Warrenpoint they killed 18 British soldiers, most of them members of the British Parachute Regiment.
A 23rd victim of that day, Michael Hudson from London, a coachman for Queen Elizabeth who was birdwatching on the Southern side of the border near the bomb site, died when soldiers fired at him, mistaking the holidaymaker for one of the bombers.
Nobody was ever convicted of the Warrenpoint bombings in which the IRA first exploded a bomb concealed in a load of hay on a trailer killing at least six soldiers. Half an hour later the IRA exploded a second bomb close to the scene where it had anticipated soldiers would seek cover.
Retired RUC chief superintendent Eric Anderson, who was a chief inspector at the time, names two of the alleged bombers on the programme, one of whom he says was IRA member Brendan Burns who died in south Armagh in 1988 when a bomb he was handling prematurely exploded.
Burns was mentioned before as one of the bombers but the second man has never been publicly named, it is understood.
The programme is broadcast on BBC 2 at 9 p.m.
