The officer commanding paratroopers on Bloody Sunday today said that since then he had never thought about what went wrong on the day 13 civil rights marchers were shot dead.
Colonel Derek Wilford told the Saville Inquiry he saw no significant flaws in his men's actions in Derry on January 30th, 1972.
In his fourth day of testimony at Methodist Central Hall in London, Col Wilford (69) was asked by Mr Gerard Elias QC, counsel for some of the soldiers, whether he could identify any significant flaws in the planning or execution of the Army operation on Bloody Sunday.
"No, I do not think so, but I do accept, of course, that in this sort of situation there are always flaws, but whether you can put your finger on them or not I cannot say," he replied.
Mr Elias asked: "You presumably thought about it these 30 years, have you?" Col Wilford replied: "Not in that way, I have not, no".
Mr Elias asked: "You have never, therefore, sought to identify what might have been flaws in the planning or execution, have you?" Col Wilford replied: "No, I do not think I have".
He said brigade headquarters had drawn up a general plan for dealing with the civil rights march but that there was no detailed plan of exactly what paratroopers would do. "You cannot have a blueprint for this sort of thing because the situation is changing from moment to moment," he said.
Col Wilford said it was always his intention to arrest as many rioters as possible by sending troops through two crowd-control barriers and surrounding troublemakers in a pincer movement. "The arrest operation was successful until the moment we came under fire and that changed everything," he added.
Mr Elias said there had been a serious breakdown of communication between Col Wilford and brigade headquarters on Bloody Sunday. However, Col Wilford said his men were aware from an early stage of what was expected of them.
He was the officer in charge of the first battalion of the Parachute Regiment on Bloody Sunday and went into the nationalist Bogside area through a crowd-control barrier with his men.