Operation Algeciras

Operation Algeciras was a failed Argentine plan to sabotage a Royal Navy warship in Gibraltar during the Falklands War. The Argentine reasoning was that if the British military felt vulnerable in Europe, they would decide to keep some vessels in European waters 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 and Italian limpet mines.

The plan was to launch divers from Algeciras, 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 behaviour and arrested them before any attack could be mounted.

The operation was conceived, ordered and directly managed by Admiral Jorge Anaya, who at the time was a member of the National Reorganization Process and head of the Argentine Navy. 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 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 Navy's underwater demolition team during the Second World War and thereafter owned a diving business. In the early '70s Nicoletti had joined the Montoneros and engaged in urban insurgent actions against 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 3.3.2 of the Navy Mechanics School, but escaped serious punishment by cooperating with the authorities.