The Gulf of Aden is a must for ships to travel quickly between the Mediterranean Sea and the Indian Ocean, basically a must for international trade ships, but in the past, it was also a paradise for Somali pirates, known as "Pirate Alley".
Somali pirates, with relatively advanced weapons and equipment and experienced in robbery at sea, are often a group of pirates riding on two rubber boats and then operating in batches. They were merciless in their robberies, and most of the cargo ships that came and went were poisoned by them, including many French ships.
In this regard, the French side is also a headache, although it is a European power, but to deal with pirates, it can not always use the national army. French ships passing through the Gulf of Aden could only resign themselves to fate.
On the night of October 6, 2009, the sailors of the French warship, exhausted after a day of military drills, rested on the ship Somme and continued their journey towards Somali waters.
The Somme was a supply command ship of the French Navy. The supply ship was developed in the 1970s, and from the outside it looked rusty and old, not like an ordinary warship, but more like a large broken cargo ship.
In fact, it plays a large role at sea, being able to transport all kinds of fuel, ammunition, weapons, food and medical supplies needed by the army, etc., and quickly providing rear supplies for warships.
Of course, it was a warship after all, so it was fitted with a 40 mm Bofors anti-aircraft gun, two 20 mm Oerlicon machine guns, two heavy machine guns and three anti-aircraft missile systems.
On the night of 6 October, the warships that had been exercising all day had run out of supplies, and the SOM was tasked with supplying fuel to the exercise ships on the front lines. By seven o'clock in the evening, night had fallen, and the Somme slowed down and headed for its destination, just 250 kilometres off the Somali coastline.
A group of Somali pirates saw the large, tattered Som slowly moving at sea, thinking that it was a large cargo ship full of containers, and their eyes lit up as if they saw a rare prey, so they did not think too much about it, and decided to attack the Somme.
The pirates approached the Somme, shouted at the ship, and fired wildly, trying to stop it, but the soldiers on the Somme were sleeping, and they did not hear the murderous cries of the pirates and the sound of bullets strafing.
Seeing that no one on the Somme had responded, the angry pirates fired a rocket at it. Fortunately, the pirates were not well skilled, and the rockets did not directly hit the warship, but just paddled above.
The rocket woke up the soldiers aboard the Somme, who immediately woke up and went into first-level alert. Through the telescope, they spotted a group of pirates attacking the Somme.
The soldiers thought it was strange and funny that there would be pirates who would dare to openly attack the warship, but after reacting, they realized that it must be that the Somme was too worn and looked like a cargo ship, so that the pirates thought it was an easy piece of fat.
The soldiers of the Somme sounded the alarm and took up heavy machine guns to strafe at the pirates as a warning, but at this moment, the pirates did not realize the seriousness of the problem, but were surprised that a cargo ship actually had heavy machine guns and equipment. They did not give up and continued to attack the Somme.
At this point, the soldiers of the Somme were completely enraged and immediately aimed their machine guns at the pirates. The pirates realized that this was no ordinary cargo ship, and the two dinghies turned around and ran, but having offended the French Navy, how could they have run away so easily. The French Navy ordered a victorious pursuit, vowing to take the pirates to the end.
The French Navy, which had a Marine Squad nearby, immediately pursued the Somali pirates' dinghies upon receiving orders. The pirates fled in two groups, and the French navy could only stare at one of the dinghies in pursuit.
The chased pirate dinghy was already panicked, and while quickly escaping, he took up his rifle and opened fire on the French navy, but the disparity between the two sides was too large, and the pirates' gunfire did not hurt the French navy at all.
After five hours of pursuit, the French Navy's speedboat successfully forced the pirate's dinghy to stop, and the five pirates on the dinghy were captured. In order to raise their eyebrows, the soldiers blew up their dinghies in front of the five pirates, and the dinghies were the weapons and equipment that the pirates had painstakingly accumulated.
Five pirates were handed over to the Somali government by the French Navy and held without resistance, while the other pirates who escaped, although they could not be captured, should not have dared to hijack the ships at sea for a short time.
The operation left the French Navy with a frenzy of ragged warships, the Tattered Warship Somme, which could not only serve as a supply, but could be used to carry out "fishing law enforcement", luring pirates from the Gulf of Aden to attack ships, and then the pirates could be eliminated.
As a result, the French Navy made plans, conducted several secret military exercises, and began to carry out law enforcement operations at sea.
On 21 April 2011, the French Navy dispatched the Somme to sea to take the initiative to trap pirates. On this day, the weather was clear, the sea was calm, and the Somme was slowly driving against the sun in the somali waters, looking like a harmless cargo ship, but the French warship was secretly lurking not far away, and the soldiers on the Somme were secretly waiting for their prey to be hooked.
On this day, sure enough, unsuspecting pirates saw the silhouette of the Somme, thought it was an old cargo ship without any weapons and equipment, and excitedly attacked the Somme.
Two pirate boats approached the Somme, and the pirates in one of the dinghies took out ladders and prepared to climb the "cargo ship" before the sailors were ready, snatch the cargo, and take hostages. Before they could board the Somme, the soldiers on the warship drew their rifles and pointed them at the ladder, and before the pirates could react, they were already prisoners of the French warship.
The pirates who were still on the boat sensed that something was wrong and immediately threw the ladder and weapons into the sea, thinking that even if the French Navy arrested them, there was no evidence, they could not arrest them for trial, they just had to deny it desperately.
However, the French soldiers prepared cameras in advance, pointed their weapons at the Somme, and tried to use the ladder to climb to the ship, so that the pirates on the dinghy were caught on the warship, and they could only obediently tie their hands.
The French Navy had never been a good stubble, and after two years, after catching four pirates again, they decided to use these pirates to lead the way and encircle the pirates' mother ship. The French Navy threatened the pirates to throw them into the sea one by one to feed the fish if they did not help them find the mother ship.
Naturally, the pirates could not withstand intimidation, and they trembled with fear, and expressed their willingness to take credit for their crimes and help the French Navy find their own mother ship.
In this way, under the guidance of four pirates, the French Navy found the home of a large number of Somali pirates. The Navy has swept away pirates, including two pirate leaders who are wanted worldwide.
The Navy also confiscated many of the materials hijacked in the past in their old nests, which can be said to be a full harvest. This operation by the French Navy can be said to be a devastating blow to Somali pirates.
After this, the French Navy used the Somme to carry out several "fishing enforcement", each time with pirates taking the bait. In a three-day capture operation, 35 pirates fell into the hands of the French Navy, and the Somme became the largest number of pirates ever since the start of escorts off Somali waters.
After several dramatic arrests, the pirates in the Gulf of Aden were also cautious, and when they saw the French ships, they took a detour, fearing that they were warships disguised as cargo ships to trap them, and even the ships of other countries were not afraid to hijack them. The number of pirates quickly decreased, and the Gulf of Aden ushered in a long period of calm.
The ancient French warship SOM has thus become a legend in the naval community, and many countries have invited SOM and Representatives of the French Navy to exchange experiences in combating piracy in their own countries.
The Somme had been invited by China to visit China, but when the rusty, dilapidated warship sailed into Zhanjiang Port, the mainland's personnel were shocked.
The appearance of this warship is like a cargo ship that is about to fall apart, it does not look like it has any lethality at all, who could have imagined that it could capture so many pirates and make the rest of the pirates feel frightened, which can be described as a representative of "playing a pig and eating a tiger". In other countries, it may be difficult to find a warship like the Somme, so it is difficult to replicate the French approach to fighting piracy.
Over the decades, the Somme has undergone many military operations, but each time it has only played the marginal role of playing soy sauce, and I did not expect that it could play a role in the battlefield against pirates and find another home for itself, which is also doomed in the dark.