Britain Invades Anguilla. The First “Gunfire” Is Camera Flashes.

The flashes looked like gunfire. They were press cameras.

Before dawn on Wednesday, 19 March 1969, British forces approached the Caribbean island of Anguilla.

The operation involved hundreds of paratroopers and police, supported by Royal Navy vessels. They were prepared for possible armed resistance.

The first alarming flashes came from the shore.

Officers briefly thought a gun battle had begun.

It had not. Journalists and photographers were recording the landing with flash cameras.

The invasion itself met no armed resistance.

Anguilla’s dispute was not a simple rebellion against Britain. The island had been joined with St Kitts and Nevis in an associated state, but many Anguillans fiercely opposed being governed through St Kitts. They expelled the St Kitts police in 1967 and sought direct British administration instead.

Britain initially pursued negotiations. When those arrangements collapsed, the government sent in troops and police under Operation Sheepskin to restore its authority and install an interim administration.

British officials had also heard claims about weapons, foreign adventurers and Mafia influence. The expected confrontation did not materialize, and an official later reported finding no evidence of organized-crime control.

The operation quickly acquired an unflattering nickname in the press: the Bay of Piglets.

No battle followed. Anguilla eventually received the separate British administration many islanders had wanted, and it remains a British Overseas Territory.

The landing force arrived ready for hostile fire.

The cameras fired first. And last.