Big Bang

Blast destroys a naval depot

"It was a biggie." Those were the words that a U.S. intelligence official used last week to describe the explosion that ripped through the Soviet naval munitions depot at Severomorsk, 900 miles north of Moscow. Judging from the sketchy details that are known, he was not exaggerating. The blast apparently caused such destruction last month that Western analysts initially thought that a nuclear bomb had gone off. After studying satellite photos and other intelligence, they finally concluded that the big bang had come from the explosion of a large cache of conventional weapons.

How many people were killed or injured remains a mystery. According to some counts, as many as a third of the surface-to-air and cruise missiles in the arsenal of the Soviet navy's northern fleet went up in smoke. But U.S. officials warned against attaching too much strategic importance to the accident. If an actual conflict came, said a senior Administration Kremlin watcher, the Soviets would "fire what they had on hand."

When Western reporters asked him about the explosion, Kremlin Spokesman Leonid Zamyatin replied evasively, "I have not seen that information, so I cannot tell you whether it is true or not." Western analysts suspect that careless handling might have triggered the blast. Located near a cluster of naval installations on the Kola Peninsula, Severomorsk serves as a major ammunition depot for the 148 surface ships, nearly 200 submarines, 425 warplanes and one aircraft carrier that are attached to the Soviet Union's northern fleet.

Normally, weapons would not have been stockpiled in such great quantities in one place. But in April the fleet had conducted the largest Soviet naval maneuvers ever in the North Atlantic; the missiles would have played a vital defensive role in the war games. A senior officer in the British Royal Navy says that if the damage estimates are accurate, "the Soviet northern fleet could not put to sea as a viable combat force for some months."