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.

[1][2][3] 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 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.

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.

His father served in the Italian Navy's underwater demolition team during the Second World War and thereafter owned a diving business.

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.

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 Argentinian government in case his services were needed and he was instructed to return to Buenos Aires.

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.

They both checked into a hotel in Estepona and spent some days reconnoitring the area, after which they travelled to Madrid in a rented car to meet Rosales and Marciano.

While in Spain, the commando communicated daily by telephone with the Naval Attaché of the Argentine embassy in Madrid, who in turn would relay everything back to his superiors in Buenos Aires.

While plausible cover stories could be invented for the specialised military scuba gear, there was no way to explain the explosives, and the team was careful to avoid the Spanish police on the roads.

For the first few days, they surveyed Algeciras Bay in search of the best place to enter the water and to observe maritime traffic in and out of Gibraltar.

There was not as much British security in Gibraltar as they had expected: two sentry posts were unmanned, and only one small Royal Navy patrol craft was observed guarding the waters of the port.

Finally, a high-value target, the frigate HMS Ariadne, arrived in Gibraltar on 2 May 1982, but Anaya again refused permission to attack it, this time because Peruvian President Fernando Belaúnde had just produced a comprehensive peace plan that Anaya believed might produce a peaceful resolution to the conflict, which could be undermined by a successful attack in Gibraltar.

The following day, 3 May, Nicoletti anticipated that permission would now be granted by Anaya as fighting had now had broken out in the South Atlantic Ocean, and asked if the team could claim to be acting for the Argentine military if they were caught.

The Minister of Interior, Juan José Rosón, instructed Málaga police chief Miguel Catalán to keep the arrests secret.

They were flown to Madrid and on to the Canary Islands under police custody, and finally put on a flight to Buenos Aires unaccompanied and using the same passports, now known to be false.