During the CBS evening news on October 19, 1971, Walter Cronkite read this news bullet.

In Cork, Ireland the day, six trunks taken from the ocean liner Queen Elizabeth II were found to contain submachine guns and grenades,

but the owner of the trunks was not to be found.

The QE2 was a glamorous, oil-fired passenger ship.

It had just arrived in a small harbor town in the Republic of Ireland called Cove.

It was the first stop on the journey from New York to Southampton, England.

About a hundred passengers disembarked, and after they cleared out a customs official,

noticed six large blue suitcases, unclaimed.

He walked over to them, tried to lift one up.

It was surprisingly heavy, so he popped it open and was suddenly face to face with a pile of weapons.

Police officers and then bomb specialists were called in.

They checked that the trunks were in booby-trapped.

And once they got the all clear, the police placed them on the dock and left them unattended to see if anyone would come to pick them up.

No one ever did.

Inside the suitcases were hundreds of rounds of ammunition, pistols, rifles, and even some hand grenades.

They assumed that the weapons were bound for Northern Ireland, the six counties in the north of the island that remain a part of the United Kingdom.

This was 1971, just a few years into the troubles.

And the conflicts would go on for almost three decades.

Over 3,500 people would die, and half of them were civilians.

There were over a dozen different groups that participated in the violence,

but the most infamous was a provisional Irish Republican army.

And that's the group the guns were heading to.

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