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.
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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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