12/27/2023 0 Comments Captain phillipsThe next time all three remaining pirates showed their heads, three SEAL snipers fired one shot each. In the scuffle, a pirate fired his rifle into the sea. Stressed near the breaking point, on the night of April 12 Phillips wrestled with his captors in a failed escape attempt. Castellano proposed that meeting take place at sea. The pirates would need to negotiate with the elders of a rival clan in order to even consider going ashore. On his interpreter's advice, Castellano informed the pirates that they had drifted 80 miles from their own clan's territory. Minutes later, the pirates radioed Castellano's interpreter, announcing they were going to start the lifeboat's engine and "make it to shore, no matter what," according to McKnight. 30-caliber SR-25s.Īt 4:45 that afternoon, President Barack Obama, who had just been in office for three months, authorized the use of lethal force in Phillips' rescue. McKnight says the SEALs brought their own sniper rifles, described elsewhere as. The log mentions six SEALs embarking the ship at 2:30 in the morning on April 11, then transferring via small boat to Bainbridge. McKnight cites the log book from the frigate USS Halyburton, recently arrived alongside Bainbridge. "That tells me that the operation was planned so that they would parachute into the ocean under cover of darkness, probably a high-altitude low-opening jump so that the pirates weren't alerted." "SEALs are understandably concerned about stealth," McKnight writes. Their Air Force C-17 cargo plane refueled in the air no fewer than three times during the 16-hour flight. Photo: NavyĪccording to McKnight, on April 10 six Team Six SEALs flew from Oceana, Virginia, direct to the Somalia coast. But if they could escape the American navy, the pirates seemed willing to die, according to the retired admiral.Ī Navy SEAL with his. In fact, they really just wanted to reach shore and ransom the merchant captain, McKnight writes. "They were pissed," Castellano said of the pirates, according to McKnight. The destroyer "lit up the place" with spotlights, sirens and loudspeakers. The pirates were already on edge when Bainbridge reached the lifeboat on the night of April 9, freeing the Maersk Alabama to continue to Kenya. In this case, "it turned out the pirates had run out of khat," McKnight writes. According to McKnight, the interpreter added a dash of local knowledge, including the fact that pirates often chew narcotic khat leaves to ward off seasickness. In the day it took the destroyer to reach the scene of the attempted hijacking, the crew began synthesizing intelligence from multiple sources, including the ScanEagle, an orbiting Navy patrol plane and reports from Maersk Alabama's crew. Frank Castellano,* Bainbridge* raced toward the Maersk Alabama at top speed. Special Ops forces in Somalia," McKnight writes. "I'll go out on a limb here and guess that the mission had something to do with supporting U.S. While technically part of CTF-151, the Bainbridge had her own unique missions. It also had a beefed-up intelligence team that included one of the Navy's few, and prized, Somali interpreters. The 9,200-ton Bainbridge had swapped its helicopters and pilots for a catapult-launched Boeing ScanEagle drone plus the robot's operators. naval forces off Somalia during the Maersk Alabama standoff, devotes 45 pages of his new book Pirate Alley to the people, methods, equipment and even politics behind Phillips' daring rescue.ĬTF-151's destroyer USS Bainbridge was the first to respond to the maydays from Maersk Alabama, which bobbed near the pirates - and Phillips - in the stolen lifeboat, preventing it from escaping to land. The precision killing of the three pirates by six members of SEAL Team Six, the same unit that would later kill Osama bin Laden in his Pakistan hideout, has rarely been described in detail. And Phillips was on his way home, unharmed but for the psychological strain from four days in captivity in a sweltering lifeboat, unsure whether he would live or die. The fourth pirate, just 16 years old, was in Navy custody. 30-caliber rifle bullet to his brain, courtesy of the U.S. The pirates had a captive: Maersk Alabama's captain, Richard Phillips.įour days later, three of the four pirates were dead - each from a single. They may not have captured the Maersk Alabama, nor looted its millions of dollars' worth of food and humanitarian aid bound for Kenya, but they didn't leave empty handed. But after a brief scuffle with some of the 20 crewmembers, the pirates opted to abandon the 508-foot long ship, sailing off in one of its motorized lifeboats. On April 8, 2009, four pirates armed with AK-47s clambered up the side of the U.S.-flagged container ship Maersk Alabama, sailing off the coast of Somalia.
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