First hand account of modern day Piracy

[sputnik monroe 102]

I usually don't start new topics here, but the story in the article I'm posting seemed right up the offtopic forums alley.

I found this story on another forum, It's a rather interesting read. It's an article describing a battle with modern day pirates off the coast of Yemen.

http://www.noonsite.com/Members/doina/R2005-03-14-1

[Billabong81 0]

Wow, good story of modern day piracy. Those pirates are unlucky that they attacked ex-USN personel . I'm sure they were trained on how to deal with this problem while in the USN .

[pajama 0]

Damn, good story.

Some one hurry and licencse this into a game!

If you have any more similer types of stories like these please share.

[brgnorway 0]

Actually, piracy is currently a huge problem especially in Indonesian and south american waters. It's not very entertaining and not only do people loose large sums of money but lot's of people loose their lives too. It isn't made any better by the fact that usually you don't stand a chance because the ones who perpetrate these horrendous crimes are often the police themselves or someone protected by them.

[FerretFangs 0]

We didn't train for piracy specifically, but we did train to defend a ship from boarders. In bootcamp, 1990, I recieved small arms training with the M14, and M1911A1. These days, I think the USN is training recruits with the M4, and M9. many USN personel also recieve training with the Remington 870 shotgun, and to a lesser degree with the MP5N.

[EiZei 0]

Now what sane pirate would try boarding a US navy ship?

[hellfish6 7]

I remember in college I'd read the New Straights Times from Singapore (IIRC) for fun (and because I was surrounded by hundreds of miles of corn and I'd cling to anything more exciting than cornfields and college) and every issue would have a piracy report, which I always found totally fascinating.

I also seem to recall that there's been talk of the PR of China sponsoring piracy - where pirates would seize freighters and bring them back to China where they'd be re-painted, re-named and re-registered to a governmental shipping company. Anyone have more info on that? Is it true?

[Tovarish 0]

From the same site:

Addendum to Official Report of Attack on the Sailing Yachts Gandalf & Mahdi

Quote[/b] ]The attack on Gandalf and Mahdi, which occurred on 8 March 2005 in the Gulf of Aden was perpetrated by pirates (?) or terrorists (?). They did not act like normal pirates (how do normal pirates act?). They were certainly trying to kill us from the outset. There is a very real possibility that it was an attempted hostage situation, especially if advance information was sent from Salalah, Oman that 4 US boats had departed for Aden, Yemen. The 2 slower boats were 20-30 miles behind us at the time of the attack. The real motivation for the attack will probably never be known. You would like to think that it is possible to transit the area at night, but the area of reported attacks is too large. You make your decisions based on circumstances at the time and live with them. We have had a lot of feedback concerning the attack from various sources. Most of it supportive, but also some from armchair pundits uttering stupid and ignorant comments and questions. "Walk in our shoes"! The whole episode was very traumatic and we will not respond to any of those.

We have been in contact with Commander Webber, USN at 5th Fleet Headquarters in Bahrain concerning the attack. He seems to think that a commitment to provide an escort for yachts grouping in Salalah, Oman and requesting an escort is possible, but there will have to be some pressure applied from higher sources ("political"?) or it probably won't happen. Let's not attempt to put all of the pressure on the US Navy. There are yachts from numerous nations affected. The international yachting community has the capability of applying some pressure to their governments to follow up on this (please do so).

As far as we can determine at the time of the attack the US Navy and the British Navy were patrolling the Arabian Sea and points north. The German, French and possibly Italians were in the Gulf of Aden. One of the yachts with us was stopped in the Arabian Sea, SE of Oman by the US Coast Guard for a "safety inspection". They asked the Coast Guard for emergency HF radio frequencies that the coalition forces would be monitoring and were supplied with two frequencies. We tried calling on these frequencies over the next several days. It turned out that they were fictitious, and no one was listening. One was actually a broadcast station. All of us tried contacting coalition vessels by VHF radio to clarify the frequencies but no one would ever respond.

At the time of the attack we broadcast Mayday calls on all known VHF and HF radio frequencies. The only response was from a commercial vessel (see Noonsite report ). This vessel sent out reports via satellite. The next morning a German warship was close by and we were able to report the incident to them. This was 12 hours after the attack and they hadn't heard anything about it. When we arrived in Aden we gave the Yemen Officials the report and had a long talk with the Yemeni Coast Guard commanders. They are just getting organized and do not presently have the capability to actually patrol the Yemen coast. They stated that a lot of the Yemen coastal areas are tribal and the central government doesn't have any control at all. They also warned us to be careful of retaliation by the families of the bad guys. We then contacted the authorities in Djibouti to voice our concerns about retaliation and requested that they keep an eye on us between Aden and the entrance to the Red Sea. They assured us that they would inform the naval authorities so that they could provide assistance. We did manage to contact a French warship outside of Aden when we left there. They had no information about our request for assistance and if you can believe this, didn't even know about the attack 8 days before in their patrol area! They did consent to watch over us until we made the entrance to the Red Sea, where we stayed on the west side going north. No sense in tempting fate twice.

Gandalf was struck by bullets about 14 times. Mahdi was struck 3 times. Fortunately none penetrated the hulls and no one on either boat was wounded. Thank goodness for steel boats!

Conclusion: Emergency HF radio frequencies, like 2182 MHz, no longer exist in most of the world. No one is listening. Any request for immediate assistance will probably come from a commercial vessel in the vicinity, but commercial vessels are not capable of effectively dealing with attacks of this type. At the most they might scare the attackers off. These attacks happen so quickly that unless you had an actual escort in the immediate vicinity getting help quickly will not happen. The "Coalition Forces" out here are a myth. It appears that there is no central authority i.e. no one in charge. The right hand does not know what the left one is doing and most certainly there is no communication between them. You are on your own out here and you had better be prepared to stand on your own two feet.

S/Y Mahdi

Rod Nowlin, USN Retired, Rebecca Nowlin, Jamee Nowlin

From Clinton, WA USA

April 21, 2005

Abu Tig Marina, El Gouna, Egypt

[Billabong81 0]

Now what sane pirate would try boarding a US navy ship?  

These guys were ex-USN on yachts . Not actual USN personel .

Yarr! Lookie yonder at ye Virgina-Class Submarine! Yarr! 'tis a good find me mate .

[Winters 1]

Score one for the good guys, i would like to see the end result of all this. Kinda scary to think that these things happen fairly regularly.

[FerretFangs 0]

Now what sane pirate would try boarding a US navy ship?

These guys were ex-USN on yachts . Not actual USN personel .

Yarr! Lookie yonder at ye Virgina-Class Submarine! Yarr! 'tis a good find me mate .

Ex-Navy, is just as effective as active duty, when it comes to defending a boat. One need not be a Marine sniper, to be able to shoot straight. They were armed, had ammo, and could shoot.

Luckily, that was enough.

[Nemesis6 0]

Ex. U.S. Navy or not, those guys are apparently taught to kick some ass!

Avast, ye sandlubbers!

[FerretFangs 0]

Nah, kicking ass is what we do when we get drunk. Then, we burn the hotels, rape the pets, eat the children, and ride off on the women.

However, we are taught to kill.

[Winters 1]

This kinda reminds me of the end of the movie "The Sand Pebbles" when they ram the barricade and duke it out mano y mano.

Another great Steve McQueen movie

[iNeo 0]

http://reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=topNews&storyID=8362141

Quote[/b] ]<span style='font-size:11pt;line-height:100%'>Greek navy investigates incident on Norwegian ship</span>

ATHENS (Reuters) - The Greek navy sent armed forces on Monday to investigate an incident aboard a Norwegian cargo ship which could be an attack by pirates or a mutiny, a defence ministry source said.

The navy sent a frigate, a helicopter and a special forces team to the scene in Greek territorial waters southwest of the town of Pilos on the Peloponnese peninsula, the source said.

"The captain of the Norwegian vessel has sent a coded signal to Greek authorities which signifies that pirates have boarded his vessel," the source said. "Then the Norwegian consul asked for Greece's assistance."

But the source said a mutiny was also a possibility.

In Oslo, the Norwegian Shipowners Association said it had heard of the incident but its information was contradictory and it was too unclear to make any comment on.

"It is a very small ship," association spokeswoman Marit Ytreeide said.

The Greek navy has dispatched a surveillance plane to track the ship, some 80 nautical miles southwest of Pilos towards the Ionian Sea, a defence official said.

The ship has been ordered to sail towards the port of Pilos.

The merchant marine ministry confirmed the incident but could not give any further details. There were no details on the ship's cargo.

[miles teg 1]

If ya want to see TONS of piracy read the reports from the Indonesian archipelgo. Piracy is rampant there because there are literally thousands of islands for pirates to hide on. They often attack even large ships. Alot of mercenaries/security consultants go work for shipping companies that traverse that area. I used to have a website that had current piracy reports from that region but unfortunately can't find it anymore. It was very interesting.

Chris G.

aka-Miles Teg<GD>