The QE 2 Connection

Ever since militant members of the Irish Republican Army began exporting their campaign of violence from Ulster to Britain, Scotland Yard has suspected they were smuggling in explosives and weapons aboard an unlikely gunrunner: the 1,800-passenger liner Queen Elizabeth 2. In 1972 two of the vessel's kitchen porters were charged with possession of rifles and hand grenades on board, following one of the ship's stopovers in New York. An I.R.A. bomb factory was discovered last December in Southampton, the liner's home port, which has long been a center of I.R.A. activity in Britain. Last week, following a police raid that netted the biggest haul of explosives since the terrorist campaign began in Britain, Scotland Yard authorities believed they were closer than ever to establishing the QE2 connection.

Stem-to-Stern. Acting on a tip, police broke into a storage locker belonging to a resident of Albion Towers, a 15-story Southampton public housing project, and uncovered a 400-lb. cache of gelignite. That is enough explosive material to make about 80 bombs of the type that have terrorized London since the I.R.A. opened a new campaign of random bombing three months ago. The gelignite was later traced to an Irish explosives manufacturer and presumably had been transported into Britain directly across the Irish Sea. But shortly after finding it, police rounded up 46 suspects, including a number of "past or present crew members" of the QE 2, and held them without charge under Britain's antiterrorism law.

Some 100 cops and customs officials also swarmed on board the luxury liner, which was in berth undergoing some repairs prior to a Caribbean cruise, and began a stem-to-stern search for more explosives. They forced open crew members' lockers and sampled the air from dozens of compartments with a sophisticated explosive detector known as a "gas chromatography" machine. The QE 2 was clea -her 1,176 closely searched passengers left on schedule Thursday for their holiday -but Scotland Yard's bomb squad will clearly continue monitoring her comings and goings with considerably more than casual interest.

One hypothesis the police intend to investigate further: that I.R.A. sympathizers in Ireland smuggle weapons and explosives aboard the QE 2 at Cork, where she sometimes stops on her trans-Atlantic route. The illicit cargo is kept undercover during the Manhattan turn-around and then smuggled off the ship when she returns to Southampton. British authorities also suspect that weapons smugglers are receiving financial and other help from U.S. sympathizers, especially Irish-American enclaves along the East Coast.

For its part, the I.R.A. has clearly not been forced out of business by losing its cache at the Albion Towers. Three days after the raid, a bomb was hurled through the window of London's chic Walton's restaurant, two blocks from Harrods department store in the Knightsbridge district, killing two diners and injuring 20 others. It was the 16th such terrorist attack since August 27, and it brought the toll in the current bombing campaign to eight dead and 187 injured.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.