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Juggernaut
The ocean liner SS Britannic is voyaging through the North Atlantic with 1200 passengers on board when the shipping line's owner Nicholas Porter in London receives a call from someone with an Irish accent styling himself as "Juggernaut", who claims to have placed high explosives aboard which are timed to explode and sink the ship at dawn on the following day. The drums are booby-trapped in various ways, and he warns that any attempt to move them will result in detonation, and offers that technical instructions in how to render the bombs safe will be given in exchange for a ransom of £500,000. As an indication of his seriousness, he sets off a demonstration attack with small bombs behind the ship's funnel, which injure one crewman. Unable to order an evacuation of passengers via lifeboats due to rough seas, the shipping line's management is inclined to yield to the ransom demand, however British government officials inform the company that if it does so they will withdraw the company's operating subsidy in line with the Government's policy of non-appeasement of terrorism.
Instead, a Royal Navy officer, Lt. Cmdr. Anthony Fallon, leading a bomb-disposal unit, is dispatched, arriving on the scene by air transit and parachuting, to board the ship and defuse the barrel-bombs before the deadline. Meanwhile, back in London, Supt. McCleod, whose wife and two children happen to be holidaying on board the ship, leads Scotland Yard 's investigation to capture the criminal master-bomber.
After an attempt to drill a hole into a barrel-bomb fails, setting it off and damaging the ship, Fallon decides to split up his team with each man working simultaneously on each of the remaining devices around the ship, Fallon going first with each stage of the defusing operation and coordinating his men by radio link, with the aim that if he fails and his bomb explodes, his men will know what went wrong and continue the process onwards, with his second in command taking up the lead. If two more bombs go off, the ship will sink. Fallon proceeds to disarm the bomb he is working on, apparently successfully, with his men following each step. However, it contains a hidden mechanism, which his second in command, close friend Charlie Braddock, accidentally triggers, resulting in his death when it explodes, causing further damage to the ship. A distraught Fallon abandons the operation and tells the ship's captain, Alex Brunel, to advise the shipping line to pay the ransom to avoid any more carnage. However, when negotiations with Juggernaut break down (in part because Juggernaut sees the trap police set for him when he goes to collect the ransom) Fallon is ordered by the captain to continue disarming the bombs.
Meanwhile, a police search back in London captures the bomber posing as Juggernaut, who is revealed to be an embittered former British military bomb-disposal officer, Sidney Buckland. When told of the news, Fallon, still working on disabling the bombs, reveals that Buckland had trained him and once saved his life. He insists that Buckland be put in contact with him. Buckland is escorted to the police situation room. By this time Fallon has worked out the important details of his procedure but has no way of knowing which of two options (cutting a red or blue wire) will disable the bombs, and if he chooses the wrong one it will detonate them. Time is running out and dawn is fast approaching. Fallon and Juggernaut talk, and, because of their former comradeship, Juggernaut agrees to tell Fallon how to safely disarm the bombs. Juggernaut orders to ‘cut the blue wire’ over audio. Fallon, sensing he is being lied to, cuts the red wire instead and manages to disable the bomb. The rest of the bomb-disposal unit follow Fallon's example, and the ship and its passengers are saved.