Emiliano

The Provisional Irish Republican Army began importing large quantities of weapons and ammunition into the Republic of Ireland for use in Northern Ireland in the early 1970s. With these weapons it conducted an armed campaign against the British presence in Northern Ireland.[1][2][3]
American arms
In the early stages of the Troubles, during the period 1969–1971, the Provisional IRA was poorlyarmed. They had access to weapons remaining from the IRA's failed Border Campaign between 1956 and 1962, but these weapons were outdated and unsuitable for a modern campaign.[4]
After 1969, and the split with the Official IRA, the Provisional IRA gained control of a majority of the stockpiled weaponry still held from previous IRA campaigns. They found that the stockpiles consisted mostly of WorldWar II small arms ranging from Lee Enfield & M1 Garand rifles, to MP40 & Thompson submachine guns (SMG), plus Bren light machine guns (LMG) and Webley revolvers.[5] The Garands were used in IRA operations as late as the summer of 1976, when a British army patrol in South Armagh was fired on by one of these rifles loaded with armour-piercing ammunition.[6]
To continue and escalate theirarmed campaign, the IRA needed to be better equipped, which meant securing modern small arms. In previous campaigns weapons had been secured before hostilities commenced via raids on British Army and even Irish Army weapons depots. In the 1969–1971 period this was no longer feasible.[7] By 1972, the IRA had large quantities of modern small arms, particularly Armalite rifles, manufactured andpurchased in the United States. The AR-18 rifle in particular was found to be very well suited to the Provisionals' purposes as its small size and folding stock meant that it was easy to conceal. Moreover, it was capable of rapid fire and fired a high velocity round which provided great "stopping power".[8]
The IRA's main gun runner in the USA was George Harrison, an IRA veteran, resident in New Yorksince 1938. Harrison bought guns for the IRA from a Corsican arms dealer named George de Meo, who had connections in organised crime. Joe Cahill acted as the contact between NORAID and Harrison. In 1971, the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) had already seized 700 modern weapons from the IRA, including 2 tonnes of high explosive and 157,000 rounds of ammunition, most of which were US made.[9]The Armalite AR-18 - obtained by the IRA from the US in the early 1970s and an emotive symbol of its armed campaign
Harrison spent an estimated US$1 million in the 1970s purchasing over 2,500 guns for the IRA.[10] According to Brendan Hughes, an IRA member who later became Officer Commanding of the IRA inside Long Kesh prison, the IRA smuggled small arms from America by sea on the Queen ElizabethII from New York via Southampton,[8] through Irish members of her crew, until the network was cracked down on by the FBI in the 1980s.[11] These Queen Elizabeth II shipments included M16, CAR-15, AR-18 and AR-15 Armalite assault rifles, accompanied by Browning pistols and Smith & Wesson pistols and revolvers and were driven from Southampton to Belfast in small consignments.[citation needed]In the late 1970s, another IRA member, Gabriel Megahey, was sent to America to acquire more arms and he was able to procure more AR-15 Armalites, plus a number of Heckler & Koch rifles and other weapons. Again, the purchase of these weapons was funded by Irish American republicans.[12] A batch of M60 machine guns was imported in 1977.[13]
Harrison was arrested by the FBI in 1981, butacquitted at his trial.[10] Megahey was arrested by the FBI in 1982 after a successful "sting operation", where he was trying to purchase surface-to-air missiles (SAMs) for the IRA, and sentenced to seven years in prison.[12]
In 1984, the FBI warned Ireland that a major IRA arms shipment was underway from the US, and that the weaponry would be transferred to an Irish fishing trawler in the Atlantic....