One pot end! The French Navy "fished for law enforcement", pretending to be a merchant ship to attract pirates to the bait

In the French Navy, there is such a tattered warship that looks like an old cargo ship, but it is a well-deserved star in the French Navy. Because it has made great achievements in the process of escorting Somalia against piracy.

And the way it made its military achievements was actually obtained through fishing law enforcement. It can be said that it is a laughing miracle in the history of the Navy.

So, what is this warship? How does it combat piracy through fishing law enforcement? In this issue, the army will take everyone to see it together.

The Gulf of Aden now seems to be much quieter than before, but before 2009, the waters around the Gulf of Aden were said to be full of pirates, and even warships were once robbed by this group of lawless Somali pirates.

Although France is one of the five permanents and has a lot of business near the Gulf of Aden, the short-sighted pirates still always hijack French ships, which makes many French shipping miserable. But France is also very helpless, after all, it cannot use its own nuclear-powered aircraft carrier battle group to deal with pirates. As a result, the French Navy could only conduct anti-piracy drills in the waters near the Gulf of Aden again and again to deter this group of pirates.

But what everyone did not expect was that in the course of an exercise, the French warship actually encountered pirates, and successfully resolved the pirate crisis through a oolong.

In October 2019, a rusty ship appeared in the waters off the Gulf of Aden. This ship is the French Navy's supply command ship Somme, which is a well-deserved predecessor in the French Navy sequence. Because the ship was a supply ship that began to be developed in the 1970s, the new ship was designed to concentrate multiple logistical support functions on the same platform, so that it could quickly supply the fleet.

The vessel is capable of transporting a wide variety of fuel, aviation fuel, ammunition and food, as well as medical equipment. At the same time, in order to achieve rapid construction, the somme supply command ship was laid according to the standards of civilian ships, so it looked particularly like a civilian engineering cargo ship from the outside. But in reality, the warship also assumed the temporary command capability of the French fleet.

As a result, the warship was fitted with a 40mm Bofors anti-aircraft gun and two 20mm Oerlikon anti-aircraft guns, as well as two heavy machine guns and a flip-up anti-aircraft missile system, which gave it a basic anti-aircraft alert capability. The size of this warship is actually not a small guy, its total length is 157.2m, the total width is 21.2m, and the displacement reaches 18,000 tons.

The warship left port on October 6 for Somali waters to participate in the European Union's Atlantis anti-piracy exercise. After a day of ammunition consumption, the replenishment of the warships in the exercise was basically exhausted, so the ship was responsible for providing fuel for the exercise warships on the front line.

By 7 p.m., it was getting dark and the Somme began to slow down, sailing along an international waterway 250 km off the Coast of Somalia.

In fact, on this night, however, the pirates came out in search of prey, and they soon found a large ship that looked tattered, as if a cargo ship was moving, and it seemed to be full of containers.

When the pirates saw that a ship was moving in the middle of the night, which was obviously fat meat sent to the door, they immediately sent two small boats, approached the Som quickly from two directions, and began to shout, demanding that the Somme stop the ship immediately.

The sailors on the Somme were already resting, and of course they did not hear the shouts of the pirates, so the enraged pirates pulled out their automatic rifles and began to strafe the hull of the Somme, trying to stop the ship in front of them. But even so, the sailors on the Somme were still asleep. The sound of the waves lapping at the hull of the ship seemed to mask the sound of the pirates strafing.

At this moment, the angry pirates finally could not hold back, and one of the pirates picked up the bazooka and fired a rocket at the Somme, but fortunately, the rocket did not hit the Somme, but drew an arc over the Top of the Somme.

At this time, the Somme finally found itself seemingly being targeted by pirates. At this time, the soldiers of the French Navy felt angry and funny, and although their warships were indeed not much armed, they were attacked by pirates for the first time. So the sailors on the Somme immediately found heavy machine guns and aimed them at the pirate dinghy.

This is actually a warning shot, and does not have the meaning of integrating pirate ships. Little did the pirates expect that the cargo ship they were going to rob would use heavy machine guns to fight back against them. The pirates were momentarily confused, whether they had met their accomplices, which was the Navy's fishing law enforcement. Seeing that things were not good, the two pirate boats immediately turned around and fled.

The French had a Marine Squad on board the warship, and they were immediately ordered to pursue it in a dinghy. The two pirate ships immediately split into two directions to escape, and the French navy stared at one of the pirate boats in pursuit. At this time, the pirates had been forced into a desperate situation, and they pulled out their rifles and aimed them at the French speedboats in a burst of strafing.

But because it was too bumpy, and the pirates' marksmanship was so invisible, after hitting several magazines in a row, the pirates did not hurt the French Marines. The French speedboats continued to pursue it, and the two sides chased after each other for five hours.

In the end, the French dinghy succeeded in forcing the pirates' speedboats to stop and successfully arresting five pirates. They carried five pirates to the Somme and interrogated them. Although another pirate ship had already fled in the night, I believe that they did not dare to come out and rob it in a short time.

To vent their anger, the French officers and men, in front of the five pirates, put their hard-earned weapons on the speedboat and then sunk the speedboat with a 40mm cannon. The five pirates, weeping without tears, were handed over by the French Navy to the Somali government for detention like defeated roosters. It can be said that this time the unintentional anti-piracy operation was a great victory.

After this incident, the French Navy was considered to be a Maoser, believing that the Somme seemed to have a more important task than to be a supply ship, that is, to trap pirates. So on 21 April 2011, the French Navy began its first proactive attack, using the Somme to trap pirates.

On April 21, 2011, the Somme sailed off the coast near Somalia. Their navigation principle was to sail against the sun, revealing only the outline of the ship, so that the pirates thought that this was a normal cargo ship in motion. Sure enough, some pirates could not see the weapons on the ship because the sunlight was very harsh, so they chose to boldly approach the ship. The trick worked so well that two pirate ships immediately approached the Somme.

A pirate on a pirate ship pulled out a homemade ladder and prepared to climb the warship. At the moment when several pirates rushed onto the warship with their rifles in a menacing manner, several French Marines pulled out their rifles and aimed them at the ladder. Several of the pirates, stunned after boarding the ship, did not even know what was happening, and immediately became prisoners of the French.

The pirates who were still in the sea saw that things were not good, and immediately removed the ladder from the ship and threw it into the sea, and then threw the weapons and ammunition on the ship into the water frantically, as if to cover up the evidence.

But what the pirates never expected was that the French were very thieves, and they came prepared. The French soldiers were equipped with cameras before they began their mission, capturing the pirates' entire journey from preparation to boarding the ship to throwing away their weapons. So the pirates obediently tied their hands, and the French once again sank their dinghies. It can be said that this initiative is full of harvest.

During this fishing campaign, French soldiers filmed the entire process of the pirates' crime and shared it around the world. In the past, these pirates would throw their weapons into the sea as long as they were targeted by the navy, after all, they were wearing no different clothes from ordinary fishermen, and the armies of other countries had no evidence, so there was no way to bring these pirates to justice.

Now the French took pictures of the pirates boarding the ship with their filming equipment, which shocked the whole world. But for the pirates, the French approach is really a bit unruly to the rules of the game, too unpretentious to martial arts.

In this operation, the French captured a total of four pirates who boarded the ship. After capturing these pirates, the French believed that they could not be handed over to Somalia immediately, and that they had greater use value. So the French asked the four pirates to lead the way and help them find the pirates' mother ship, or else kill them and throw them into the sea.

After being intimidated by the French Navy, the four pirates trembled with fright and immediately said that they would help the French to make a meritorious deed. So four pirates took the French warship to find their mother ship. Soon, under the leadership of the pirates, the French navy found the pirates' lair, and then eliminated all the pirates on the ship, including two pirate leaders who were on the international wanted list.

The French were a great success in this attack, capturing a large amount of weapons, ammunition and fuel fresh water on the mothership, and a group of pirates in the Gulf of Aden disappeared.

After two fishing enforcement attempts, the French thought they had mastered the perfect means of dealing with Somali pirates, so they carried out several fishing enforcement attempts in succession, each time returning with a full load. After all, the dilapidated warship was so much like a normal cargo ship that so many Somali pirates knew that there were French warships nearby and would still rush to strike.

After several fishing enforcement attempts, the pirates gradually learned to behave. Among the pirate ships in Somalia, there are gradually rumors that the French army seems to be using a cargo ship for fishing and law enforcement, hunting pirates, and in a flash, the whole Gulf of Aden is full of noise, and the pirates seem to be afraid to rob the civilian ships.

These Somali pirate dinghies will simply avoid the French flag vessels as soon as they see them, and they will never move anything. The Somme, seeing this happening, was silent for several months, until the pirates regained their courage and attacked again. In three days, the Somme captured 35 pirates, making it the most numerous warship since the start of the Somali escort.

France's advanced experience naturally attracted many countries to observe and learn, and many invited the warship to visit their own countries to exchange anti-piracy experiences. And the pirates, after several rounds of blows by the French Navy, did not dare to come out of the atmosphere from then on. After 2009, the number of pirates began to decline geometrically, and it can be said that the French really did a good job.

In fact, to this day, the Somme is still in service with the French Navy. Although the old supply ship has long been behind, there is no doubt that its special status has made the French Navy look up to it, and it still performs fishing law enforcement tasks in the waters near Somalia.

Although many of the older generation of pirates have long known the french methods, there are still some stunned young people who do not know the legend of the Somme. Maybe one day, a pirate with a short eye will attack this warship again, so that this warship can once again show its might, and catch a few more pirates to provide a few jokes to the international news.

Although the story of this ship sounds very funny, there is no doubt that this ship did contribute its own strength in the process of escorting Somalia, and contributed its own strength to the safety of the world's golden waterways.