Finn McCool said:
The US milittary takes on a deadly enemy and triumphs against massive odds yet again! This action has truly made the world safe for democracy once and for all! Now that a qat addicted, ak-47 weilding Somali bandit is dead, America is once and for all safe from Terrorism. However, the US forces never would have survived without their full batteries of million dollar Tomahawks and billion dollar Aegis radar.:rofl: :roll:
But seriously...those pirates are getting out of control. And i have a lot of respect for the USN. They could blow up my house in less than 3 mins probably.
:rofl: Now that was funny..
Turns out those pirates/militiamen fired on the USN RIB(Ridgid inflatable boat) that had been deployed in the water not the CG and DDG..still a dumb move on the pirates/militiamen part. This according to the CO of the St. George.
Captain praises response of crew to pirate skirmish
By JACK DORSEY, The Virginian-Pilot
© March 20, 2006
When suspected Somalian pirates opened fire on two small Navy boats just after dawn Saturday, the captain of the cruiser Cape St. George, waiting a few hundred yards away, had his gunners lay down covering fire long enough to allow the Navy crews to escape.
“From there, it evolved into a surface action, where the suspected pirates started shooting back at us, raking down our side,” Capt. James Russell Yohe said by telephone Sunday from the Indian Ocean near the Somalian coast. That was where the attack on the Norfolk-based Cape St. George and destroyer Gonzalez, along with two small boats the Gonzalez had sent out to investigate the suspected pirates, took place.
Yohe said he ordered his ship to full speed to get ahead of the three pirate vessels and gain an angle advantage so as not to hit the destroyer Gonzalez or its two small boats.
Nine sailors were in each of the 24-foot rigid hull inflatable boats, or RIBs as they are known.
When the pirates began shooting, the sailors returned fire, Yohe said.
Background: Pirates attack 2 Navy warships from Norfolk
The Gonzalez also fired at the larger pirate vessel, a 40-foot diesel boat, hitting a 55-gallon drum of fuel and setting it on fire, Yohe said. The crew aboard that boat dove off, he said.
At the same time, the Cape St. George was engaging the two smaller, high-speed gas-powered boats with its machine guns, he said.
“I was simply amazed they were firing at us, to be so bold as to actually continue the engagement,” Yohe said as he discussed the open-sea battle that left one suspected pirate dead and 12 under arrest. Five of those arrested were wounded.
Of the injured, two are in critical condition, two are in serious condition, and one is in good condition, said Chief Petty Officer Patrick Modglin, one of two hospital corpsmen aboard the Cape St. George who initially treated the injured.
The 12 suspects have since been transferred to the
Norfolk-based amphibious assault ship Nassau, which has a full medical staff.
No one on the Navy vessels was injured.
What began as a routine inspection attempt became the latest in a growing series of exchanges between suspected pirates and the U.S. and coalition navies patrolling that part of the world.
Saleban Aadan Barqad, a spokesman for the Somalian militiamen involved in the incident, on Sunday told The Associated Press that the U.S. Navy opened fire first.
Twenty-seven militiamen, had been “in an operation to protect the country’s sea resources from illicit exploitation by foreign vessels ” before the battle, Barqad said on two-way radio from the central Somalian town of Harardhere.
Geraad Mohamud, of the same militia group, said the militiamen would kill any hostage they capture and attack any ship unlawfully plying Somalian waters unless their men were released.
Yohe denied that the U.S. ships fired first.
“I can tell you, we have some footage that I think will resolve that,” he said . “… It will clearly show the suspected pirates firing at the Gonzalez RIB crew first.”
Yohe said his ship spotted the larger diesel boat towing the two smaller skiffs in the pre-dawn darkness Saturday. The decision was made to await sunrise before inspecting the vessels, Yohe said, and the Gonzalez and Cape St. George shadowed the suspects from a distance.
Yohe said he did n ot think the suspects knew that the Navy was there until just after sunrise.
“When the Gonzalez RIB crews approached, the suspected pirates started brandishing rocket-propelled grenade launchers, and they opened up on the RIB crews,” Yohe said.
“The RIB crews returned their fire and maneuvered. At the same time, gunners on our ship actually laid down covering fire to keep the pirates’ heads down so the Gonzalez RIBs could get out of the way and keep clear.”
It wasn’t long before the pirates surrendered.
“I was very proud of my crew today,” Yohe said Sunday . “They responded with what I considered appropriate force, and once the suspected pirates started waving their arms and we could tell they were giving up, they ceased firing and everyone stopped firing.”
Just as quickly, the Cape St. George launched its small boats to recover the wounded and arrest the other suspects, Yohe said.
“Despite having people shooting at them, they did their jobs and did them quite well,” Yohe said of his crew.
Modglin, of Suffolk, the senior corpsman aboard, said Sunday that he got about 30 minutes of sleep during more than 30 hours of treating the wounded.
Modglin said he set up a triage area on the fantail of the Cape St. George while eight stretcher bearers carried the wounded to the ship’s sick bay.
The Navy has confiscated all three suspected pirate boats, along with a number of grenades, launchers and automatic weapons as evidence in the case.
It wasn’t until the inflatable boats returned to the Cape St. George that Yohe learned some rounds had hit his ship.
“One of the crews said, 'Hey, there are bullet holes on the hull,’” Yohe said.
“You could see the paint chipped off and little dimples in the steel.”
The Cape St. George and Gonzalez were conducting maritime security operations in the area as part of Combined Task Force 150, a maritime coalition task force led by Royal Netherlands Navy Commodore Hank Ort.
Last Wednesday, the U.N. Security Council encouraged naval forces operating off the coast of Somalia to be vigilant and take action against piracy.
Pirate attacks against aid ships have hindered U.N. efforts to provide relief to the victims of a severe drought in the area.
Somalia has not had a coast guard or navy since 1991 when warlords ousted a dictatorship and then turned on each other. The troubles facing Somalia’s fledging 17-month-old transitional government, including piracy, will be discussed at a regional leaders’ meeting today.
The Gonzalez and Cape St. George have been at sea since early November, when they left Norfolk as part of the Nassau Expeditionary Strike Group.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Reach Jack Dorsey at (757) 446-2284 or
[email protected]