Operation Algeciras
Encyclopedia
Operation Algeciras was an ill-fated Argentine plan to sabotage a Royal Navy
Royal Navy
The Royal Navy is the naval warfare service branch of the British Armed Forces. Founded in the 16th century, it is the oldest service branch and is known as the Senior Service...

 warship
Warship
A warship is a ship that is built and primarily intended for combat. Warships are usually built in a completely different way from merchant ships. As well as being armed, warships are designed to withstand damage and are usually faster and more maneuvrable than merchant ships...

 in Gibraltar
Gibraltar
Gibraltar is a British overseas territory located on the southern end of the Iberian Peninsula at the entrance of the Mediterranean. A peninsula with an area of , it has a northern border with Andalusia, Spain. The Rock of Gibraltar is the major landmark of the region...

 during the Falklands War
Falklands War
The Falklands War , also called the Falklands Conflict or Falklands Crisis, was fought in 1982 between Argentina and the United Kingdom over the disputed Falkland Islands and South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands...

. The premise being that if the British military felt vulnerable in Europe, they would decide to keep some vessels in Europe rather than send them to the Falklands.

A commando team observed British naval traffic in the area from Spain during 1982, waiting to attack a target of opportunity when ordered, using frogmen
Frogman
A frogman is someone who is trained to scuba diving or swim underwater in a military capacity which can include combat. Such personnel are also known by the more formal names of combat diver or combatant diver or combat swimmer....

 and Italian limpet mines.

The plan was to launch divers from Algeciras
Algeciras
Algeciras is a port city in the south of Spain, and is the largest city on the Bay of Gibraltar . Port of Algeciras is one of the largest ports in Europe and in the world in three categories: container,...

, have them swim across the bay, to Gibraltar, under cover of darkness, attach the mines to a British naval ship and swim back to Algeciras. The timed detonators would cause the mines to explode after the divers had time to safely swim back across the bay. The plan was foiled when the Spanish police became suspicious of their behavior and arrested them before any attack could be mounted.

Planning and participants

The operation was conceived, ordered and directly managed by Admiral Jorge Anaya
Jorge Anaya
Admiral Jorge Isaac Anaya was a member of the Argentine Navy. He was born in Bahía Blanca, in the province of Buenos Aires...

, who at the time, was a member of the governing Galtieri junta
National Reorganization Process
The National Reorganization Process was the name used by its leaders for the military government that ruled Argentina from 1976 to 1983. In Argentina it is often known simply as la última junta militar or la última dictadura , because several of them existed throughout its history.The Argentine...

 and head of the Argentine Navy in 1982. The plan was top secret and not shared with other members of the government. Anaya summoned to his office Admiral Eduardo Morris Girling, who was responsible for the Naval Intelligence Service, and explained to him the convenience of hitting the Royal Navy in Europe. Girling would be the one who would make the plan and select the participants but Anaya remained in charge of the operation throughout.

Striking in the United Kingdom was considered at first but it was thought that the commandos would have difficulty remaining unnoticed and Spain was chosen because the commandos could more easily pass unnoticed as tourists.

The leader of the operation was Héctor Rosales, a spy and former naval officer. He was in charge but would not participate in the actual placing of the mines which was left to the experts.

Three former members of the Peronist guerrilla Montoneros
Montoneros
Montoneros was an Argentine Peronist urban guerrilla group, active during the 1960s and 1970s. The name is an allusion to 19th century Argentinian history. After Juan Perón's return from 18 years of exile and the 1973 Ezeiza massacre, which marked the definitive split between left and right-wing...

 were convinced to participate in spite of the earlier repression of the Montoneros by the military.

The leader of the commandos was Máximo Nicoletti, a diver and expert in underwater explosives. His father served in the Italian
Italy
Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...

 navy's underwater demolition team during the Second World War and now owned a diving business. In the early 70's Nicoletti had joined the Montoneros and engaged in urban actions labelled terrorist by the military junta. On 1 November 1974 Nicoletti placed a remote-controlled bomb under the yacht of the police chief of the Argentine Federal Police, Alberto Villar, who was killed together with his wife. On 22 September 1975, while the destroyer ARA Santísima Trinidad was still under construction in Buenos Aires, Nicoletti placed an explosive charge under the hull which caused it to sink.

Later in the decade, Nicoletti was arrested by the infamous Grupo de Tareas 33/2 of the Escuela de Mecánica de la Armada
ESMA
The Navy Petty-Officers School of Mechanics , commonly referred to by its abbreviation ESMA, is a facility of the Argentine Navy that was employed as an illegal detention center during the dictatorial rule of the National Reorganization Process...

 (ESMA) but escaped serious punishment by cooperating with the authorities.

Soon, due to his cooperation and expertise, he managed to get himself appointed to carry out a similar submarine attack against a Chilean ship because tensions between Chile and Argentina were high due to the Beagle Channel
Beagle Channel
thumb|right|300px|Aereal view of Beagle Channel. The Chilean [[Navarino Island]] is seen in the top-right while the Argentine part of [[Isla Grande de Tierra del Fuego]] is seen at the bottom-left....

 dispute. This attack was not carried out in the end because the disagreement between Chile and Argentina was finally resolved peacefully. Nicoletti was then sent to Venezuela as a spy but he was discovered and had to return to Argentina. Shortly after he settled in Miami, but when he heard of the Argentine invasion of the Falkland Islands he immediately got in touch with the Argentinean government in case his services were needed and he was instructed to return to Buenos Aires.

The other two commandos, both also ex-Montoneros, were Antonio Nelson Latorre, nicknamed "Diego, el Pelado" (or "el Pelado Diego") and another man who went by "Marciano" and who has remained anonymous to this day. Both had participated with Nicoletti in earlier sabotage plans.

In the event of capture, Argentina would deny all knowledge. The agents were to say they were Argentine patriots acting on their own. They had orders not to do anything which could involve or embarrass Spain, to sink a British naval vessel and to get express approval from Anaya before carrying out any attack.

When planning the operation in Argentina it was decided that acquiring or manufacturing explosives in Spain would prove too difficult and so two explosive mines with timed detonators would be shipped to Spain via diplomatic pouch and would be delivered to the commando in Spain. Italian limpet mines were acquired for this purpose and shipped to Spain in diplomatic pouch as planned.

Situation in Spain at the time

At that time the political climate in Spain was unstable with the government of Leopoldo Calvo Sotelo
Leopoldo Calvo Sotelo
Leopoldo Calvo-Sotelo y Bustelo, 1st Marquis of the Ría of Ribadeo and Grandee of Spain was a Spanish political figure and prime minister during the period of transition after the end of Francisco Franco's regime.-Biography:...

 having political difficulties on many fronts, including with the military who distrusted him. The trials for those responsible for the military coup attempt of 23-F
23-F
23-F was an attempted coup d'état in Spain that began on 23 February 1981 and ended on the following day. It is also known as El Tejerazo from the name of its most visible figure, Antonio Tejero, who led the failed coup's most notable event: the bursting into the Spanish Congress of Deputies by a...

 a year earlier were concluding and this further raised tensions. The Basque group ETA
ETA
ETA , an acronym for Euskadi Ta Askatasuna is an armed Basque nationalist and separatist organization. The group was founded in 1959 and has since evolved from a group promoting traditional Basque culture to a paramilitary group with the goal of gaining independence for the Greater Basque Country...

 were very active and police controls on roads were common. The upcoming 1982 FIFA World Cup
1982 FIFA World Cup
The 1982 FIFA World Cup, the 12th FIFA World Cup, was held in Spain from 13 June to 11 July. The tournament was won by Italy, after defeating West Germany 3–1 in the final.-Host selection:...

 in Spain meant the police were very alert to any suspicious or terrorist activity. The police requested that everybody remain vigilant, and that people should report anything unusual, especially within the travel industry.

Execution

The commandos were issued counterfeit Argentine passports under false names and marked with false earlier entry stamps to Spain. This was done so the Argentine government could deny any involvement in case the commandos were discovered and the passports were made by another ex-montonero, Victor Basterra.

On 24 April Nicoletti and Latorre left Buenos Aires
Buenos Aires
Buenos Aires is the capital and largest city of Argentina, and the second-largest metropolitan area in South America, after São Paulo. It is located on the western shore of the estuary of the Río de la Plata, on the southeastern coast of the South American continent...

 for Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...

 where Latorre's passport raised the suspicions of French authorities but they were finally allowed to continue their onward travel by air to Malaga
Málaga
Málaga is a city and a municipality in the Autonomous Community of Andalusia, Spain. With a population of 568,507 in 2010, it is the second most populous city of Andalusia and the sixth largest in Spain. This is the southernmost large city in Europe...

. They carried the closed-circuit, military scuba gear in their luggage and passed customs without raising suspicion. They carried plenty of cash in US dollars and would pay for all their expenses and purchases in cash.

They both checked in to a hotel in Estepona
Estepona
Estepona is a town and municipality in the region of the Costa del Sol, southern Spain. It is located in the province of Málaga, part of the autonomous community of Andalusia. Estepona is renowned for its beaches, which stretch along some 21 km of coastline...

 and spent some days surveying the area after which they travelled to Madrid in a rented car to meet Rosales and Marciano. They then rented another two cars in Madrid and went to the office of the Argentine Naval Attaché
Attaché
Attaché is a French term in diplomacy referring to a person who is assigned to the diplomatic or administrative staff of a higher placed person or another service or agency...

 to pick up the mines. While in Spain the commando communicated daily by telephone with the Naval Attaché of the Argentine Embassy in Madrid, who would, in turn, communicate with his superiors in Buenos Aires.

The commando of four, travelling in three cars, travelled south using main roads. The mines were carried in the trunk of a car, in a bag and by the shape and appearance would be immediately discovered to be explosives by anyone who saw them. While cover stories could be plausibly invented for the specialized military scuba gear, there was no way to explain the explosives so they had to be careful that they were not stopped at any police control.

They travelled to the south of Spain separately, with Nicoletti going ahead as a scout and the other two cars ten minutes apart each. They had no way to communicate between cars except visually. Nicoletti did come up to a police block and turned around to warn his accomplices but even though he saw them and signaled the first car behind him did not see him and continued until it too saw the police control and turned around. They all met again, their U-turns having gone unnoticed. They then decided to continue south using minor routes.

When they arrived in the area near Algeciras they checked separately into three different hotels and would change hotels often over the next few weeks. They would renew their rentals on a weekly basis and always pay cash for everything, which eventually raised suspicions and lead to their arrest. They kept the explosives in one of the cars and used only the other two for transport.

During the first days they surveyed the Algeciras bay in search of the best place to enter the water and to observe the nautical traffic in and out of the port of Gibraltar. They observed that there was not as much surveillance at Gibraltar as they had expected. Two sentry observation posts were unmanned and only a navy vessel cruised the area around the port.

They bought an inflatable raft, telescope and fishing tackle to give cover to their activities and the raft to be used to cross the bay part of the way. The plan was to enter the water at about 6 PM, swim across, plant the mines at about midnight, swim back, exit at about 5 AM and the mines would explode shortly after.

They would then drive north to Barcelona
Barcelona
Barcelona is the second largest city in Spain after Madrid, and the capital of Catalonia, with a population of 1,621,537 within its administrative limits on a land area of...

, cross into France, then Italy and, from there, fly back to Argentina.

The first opportunity came when a British minesweeper entered Gibraltar but Anaya denied his permission to proceed on account that he thought the target was not worth the effort and it was better to wait for a bigger ship. A few days later a large oil tanker with non-British flag presented itself as a possible target. Nicoletti suggested sinking it would block the port of Gibraltar for a long time but Anaya refused permission because an oil spill and environmental disaster could provoke outrage in Spain, especially if it damaged the tourism industry, and it could affect other Mediterranean countries.

Over the weeks the commandos continued their routine of changing hotels and renewing their car rental. During this time the British task force was already sailing south towards the Falklands.

Finally, a high-value target, the frigate HMS Ariadne
HMS Ariadne (F72)
HMS Ariadne was a Leander class frigate of the Royal Navy .-Construction:Ariadne was built by Yarrow Shipbuilders of Scotstoun and was the last of the Leander class to be completed, and the last warship to be built for the RN powered by steam...

, arrived at Gibraltar on May 2, but Anaya again refused permission, this time because the President of Peru
Peru
Peru , officially the Republic of Peru , is a country in western South America. It is bordered on the north by Ecuador and Colombia, on the east by Brazil, on the southeast by Bolivia, on the south by Chile, and on the west by the Pacific Ocean....

, Fernando Belaúnde, had just produced a comprehensive peace plan and Anaya believed this might produce a peaceful resolution, which could only be undermined by a successful attack in Gibraltar.

But the same day, May 2, the Argentine cruiser ARA General Belgrano
ARA General Belgrano
The ARA General Belgrano was an Argentine Navy light cruiser in service from 1951 until 1982. Formerly the , she saw action in the Pacific theater of World War II before being sold to Argentina. After almost 31 years of service, she was sunk during the Falklands War by the Royal Navy submarine ...

 was sunk by the British nuclear attack submarine HMS Conqueror
HMS Conqueror (S48)
HMS Conqueror was a nuclear-powered fleet submarine that served in the Royal Navy from 1971 to 1990. She was built by Cammell Laird in Birkenhead...

 which meant war was now inevitable.

The following day, May 3, Nicoletti anticipated that permission would now be given by Anaya and, because hostilities had broken out, he asked if the team could claim to be acting for the Argentine military if they were caught. This was refused but they were ordered to execute the plan.

Failure

The following day Nicoletti slept late, as he usually did because the plan was to act at night, while Latorre and Rosales went to the car rental agency to extend the rental for another week. The owner of the rental business, Manuel Rojas, had become suspicious on previous encounters. He noticed that the man had keys with him for cars rented in other car rental businesses, that he always paid in cash using American dollars and that he never came in exactly when he said he would but rather would come in earlier or later. Because of this he had notified the police who asked him to call them next time the man came by and to try to keep him there until they arrived. This he did and the men were arrested. The police then went to arrest the other two men and they found Nicoletti and Marciano still asleep. The police initially thought they had a gang of common criminals but, in spite of the orders to the contrary, Nicoletti soon declared that they were Argentine agents.

Miguel Catalán was the police chief in Málaga at the time and the minister of the interior, Juan Jose Rosón, instructed him to keep the arrests secret. The Spanish government decided to expel the four men without penalty or prosecution and did not want any publicity.

The police were told to take the arrested men to Málaga. Nicoletti, in the documentary says once the policemen realized they were not common criminals their attitude changed and became more favorable. The police let Nicoletti handle the explosives as he had training the police did not have. Then Nicoletti proposed inviting them to lunch and the police accepted so the police convoy (carrying the explosives) stopped for lunch at a roadside restaurant. Then they went to pick up some clothes at a dry cleaners and finally headed for the Málaga police headquarters.

By coincidence, the president of the government Leopoldo Calvo Sotelo
Leopoldo Calvo Sotelo
Leopoldo Calvo-Sotelo y Bustelo, 1st Marquis of the Ría of Ribadeo and Grandee of Spain was a Spanish political figure and prime minister during the period of transition after the end of Francisco Franco's regime.-Biography:...

, was campaigning in Malaga and ordered that the men be quietly taken to Madrid in an airplane which had been chartered for the campaign. The men were not interrogated or put on trial. They were quietly flown to Madrid in police custody, from there were flown to the Canary Islands
Canary Islands
The Canary Islands , also known as the Canaries , is a Spanish archipelago located just off the northwest coast of mainland Africa, 100 km west of the border between Morocco and the Western Sahara. The Canaries are a Spanish autonomous community and an outermost region of the European Union...

, also with police custody, and finally were put on a flight to Buenos Aires
Buenos Aires
Buenos Aires is the capital and largest city of Argentina, and the second-largest metropolitan area in South America, after São Paulo. It is located on the western shore of the estuary of the Río de la Plata, on the southeastern coast of the South American continent...

 without custody. They were returned under the same passports, now known to be false. Spain had recently joined NATO and Sotelo preferred to not create tensions with the UK or with Argentina and quietly returning the men to Argentina seemed like the best course.

The operation was handled entirely by the Spanish Police and the Ministry of the Interior while the CESID
CeSID
The Centre for Free Elections and Democracy is a non-governmental, non-profit organization in the Republic of Serbia founded in 1997. The organization deals with election monitoring in Serbia and the parallel counting up of the votes...

 (Spanish military intelligence agency) was not informed or involved. The operation was kept secret by all and was not openly talked about or disclosed by the participants until many years later. The Spanish police were ordered to destroy all associated records. At the last minute, at the airport, the police chief realized they had not taken ID information of the men and called to give order that photos of the men be taken. At the airport the police charged with taking the photos thought it would look awkward to take ID photos in public and so a friendly, group photo of the commandos with the police guarding them was taken. This photo has not been found.

Aftermath

An article published by The Sunday Times
The Sunday Times
The Sunday Times is a British Sunday newspaper.The Sunday Times may also refer to:*The Sunday Times *The Sunday Times *The Sunday Times *The Sunday Times...

 in October 1983 titled How Argentina tried to blow up the Rock exposes the basic plot but contains many errors because little was known about the operation at that time.

Argentine writer Juan Luis Gallardo wrote a novel based on this operation, Operación Algeciras.

In 2003 a documentary was made where Anaya, Nicoletti and other participants were interviewed. Nigel West
Rupert Allason
Rupert William Simon Allason is a military historian and former Conservative Party politician in the United Kingdom. He was the Member of Parliament for Torbay in Devon, from 1987 to 1997...

, a British writer who specialises in covert operations, told the documentary team that Britain had known about the plot because of telephone-taps of conversations between Argentina's embassy in Madrid and Buenos Aires, but this seems unlikely because if that were the case it would have been the military intelligence who would have intervened. It seems much more likely that, as Nicoletti and others claim in the documentary, the Spanish police became suspicious due to the information supplied by the car rental agency and the Spanish police initially really had no idea that they had caught a military commando.

External links

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