battalions. Four shipments of guns, ammunition and explosives were made between 1985 and 1986, providing large quantities of modern weaponry to the IRA, including heavy machine guns, over 1,000 rifles, several hundred handguns, rocket-propelled grenades, flamethrowers, surface-to-air missiles, and Semtex explosive – an odourless explosive, invisible to X-ray, and many times more powerful than fertiliser-based bombs. From late 1986 onwards, virtually every bomb constructed by the Provisional IRA, and splinter groups such as the Real IRA, contained Semtex from a Libyan shipment unloaded at an Irish pier in 1986. These shipments were partly in retaliation for the British Government's support for the US Air Force's (USAF) bombing attacks on Tripoli and Benghazi in 1986, which in turn were in retaliation for the 1986 bombing of the La Belle discotheque in Berlin. The USAF planes involved in the bombings had taken off from British bases on 14 April 1986, and Libya reportedly suffered 60 casualties in the attack. This second major Libyan contribution to the IRA came in 1986–1987. There were four shipments which were not intercepted, in a huge intelligence failure of both Irish and British agencies, described as 'calamitous' by journalist Brendan O'Brien. The arm supplies from Libya developed as follows: The trawler Casamara took on 10 tonnes of weapons in September 1985 off the Maltese island of Gozo. These weapons were landed off the Clogga Strand near Arklow by inflatable boats some weeks later. The shipment contained 500 crates of AK-47s, pistols, hand grenades, ammunition and seven RPG-7s. Casamara (renamed Kula at this time), left Maltese waters on 6 October 1985 carrying a cache of DShK heavy machine guns. In July 1986, there was a shipment of 14 tonnes, including, according to the authorities, two SAM-7s. In October 1986, another shipment of 80 tonnes which included one tonne of Semtex, reportedly 10 SAM-7 missiles, more RPG-7s, AK-47s and hundreds of thousands of rounds of ammunition arrived aboard the oil-rig replenishment vessel Villa. In total, the arms shipments included: 9mm Browning, Taurus, Glock and Beretta handguns AK-47 Kalashnikov and AKM assault rifles MP5 submachine guns RPG-7 anti-tank rocket launcher Soviet made DShK heavy machine guns FN MAG machine guns Military flamethrowers Semtex plastic explosive Strela 2 man portable SAMs It is also estimated that the Libyan government gave the IRA the equivalent of £2 million along with the 1980s shipments. However, on 1 November 1987, during transit to Ireland,