Argentina planned to blow up warship in Gibraltar during the Falklands War

By Graham Keeley in Barcelona

Published: 04 April 2007

TheIndependent

 

It was a spy story with a plot out of James Bond. During the Falklands War, Argentina planned to blow up a British warship in Gibraltar.

 

The main protagonist was a former left-wing guerrilla turned spy who specialised in mine attacks on warships.

 

A Spanish film-maker, Jesus Mora, has made a documentary about Operation Algeciras. For many years, no one in authority would admit the plot existed but Mora got the former Spanish prime minister Leopoldo Calvo Sotelo and the chief of the Argentine navy at the time, Admiral Jorge Anaya, to confirm it.

 

Mora tracked down the leader of the spy team, Maximo Nicoletti, a former member of the left-wing Argentinean guerrillas Los Montoneros. Nicoletti, whose father served in the Italian navy's underwater demolition team during the Second World War, had been involved in a mine attack on the Argentine navy destroyer Santisima Trinidad in 1975. He was arrested after the military coup in 1976 and sent to the Navy Mechanics School in Buenos Aires.

 

He co-operated with the military rather than face torture. After the Argentine invasion of the Falklands in April 1982, Nicoletti was recruited to attack a British ship in Gibraltar, the point of departure for the task force.

 

On 11 April 1982, he and two former guerrillas travelled to Spain on false passports made by the Montoneros. The men travelled under the command of a spy, a former navy officer, Hector Rosales. Admiral Anaya says: "My instructions were that they not do anything that could harm Spain and to attack only warships flying the British flag." A contact at the embassy in Madrid provided explosives.

 

Nicoletti said: "Every time we saw a potential target, Hector phoned Buenos Aires to request authorisation. On 2 May, a missile frigate and a military transport ship entered the port, but they did not give us the green light because they were negotiating at the time." That same night, however, the British submarine Conqueror sank the cruiser General Belgrano, killing 323 sailors.

 

On 30 May, a British corvette entered Gibraltar and the Argentine saboteurs decided to attack the next day.

 

But on the day of the planned attack, the men were arrested by police looking for Argentine bank robbers,with the team's rental of three vehicles on a weekly basis having raised suspicions.

And did you know the British planned to fly a special forces team through Chile - possibly in a Hercules painted in Chilean Air Force markings - on a "one way" mission to attack the Argentine's Super Etendard airbase ?