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The above photo shows the retaking of the M/V Taipan by Dutch marines on April 5th after the vessel was hijacked by pirates 500 miles off the Somali coast.  Information Dissemination has the details:

Yesterday [April 5th] at around 13.30 CET the Dutch frigate HNLMS Tromp has rescued the crew of a German freighter from a pirate attack. At 9.45 CET the Tromp received a distress call from MV Taipan. The onboard Lynx was sent to asses the situation and saw the freighter dragging along two of the pirates skiffs. Meanwhile the crew of the frighter had retreated into a safe room on the ship, after disabling the propulsion of the ship -in line with the MSCHOA ‘best practises’.

After consultation with the Dutch authorities in the Hague -effectively bypassing EU command- it was decided to free the freighter. While approaching, the frigate’s crew detected a mothership on its way to the MV Taipan. When communication with this ship led to no result, the Tromp fired warning shots with its 127mm canon, sending the mothership running.

After the Tromp failed to establish communication with the pirates onboard the MV Taipan the CO of the Tromp, Captain Lodder, gave the order to retake the ship.

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While this is a rather “old” incident, the Dutch MoD has just released some remarkable footage of the operation, made with a helmet camera during the boarding of the vessel.

We’d also like to point out the below video, posted on EagleSpeak.com, showing a new tactic being used by the Dutch to combat piracy.  More on this new tactic can be read about HERE.  While the video is hard to understand (that is unless you speak Dutch), you still get a good sense as to effectiveness of launching smaller landing craft to patrol the pirate infested waters.

Both videos have been submitted to gCaptain.com’s tip line with the following message:

First let me say congrats to the Dutch for taking positive kinetic action against pirates! Next I noted in the second video that the HrMS de Witt is one form of a mothership and it was launching smaller action group support ships i.e its LCUs and LCMs. This is a tactic the USN should IMMEDIATELY adopt.    It should be noted that all the landing craft are covered unlike ours and also the mid-sized Dutch LCMs are far faster them the old old LCM-8 USN designs.   I would also like to comment that the USN already has bought faster utility landing craft in the form of the Krivak MPF-Lighters. So once again the USN has most of the assets needed, and a course change from naval leadership seems to be in order?

The first video from HrMs Tromp pointed out how small the Lynx helos are. I would hope that our Seahawks are much more capable. And am anxious to see our helo gunships enter service. The video footage of Dutch Marines re-taking the MV Taipan is better than anything seen on reality TV!

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