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April 5, 2010 Somalia: German commercial vessel Taipan is being rescued from pirates by Hr. Ms. Tromp
Our team got the objective to save the commercial vessel Taipan from pirates.
There were 10 pirates on board, who had hijacked the ship
and there were 15 crewmembers who were safely in the 'Safe room' downstairs
The sensor operator now throws out the Fast Rope line from the helicopter
he will also guide the men who will use it.
[Machinegun fire] At the moment I'm firing the MAG to give supressing fire
so that the pirates on deck of the Taipan can't fire at us.
On the rightside you can see the Hr. Ms. Tromp
From this moment on we will give supressing fire for the rest of the team that still needs to come down
You can also see that the containers form a sort of natural barrier
so they can take cover, step aside and change their clip, in order to return fire again.
From there on we went to the back, to the stern and went to the bridge to rescue the crewmembers.
Arriving there we took 6 pirates from the lowerdeck
we pulled them through the window, since it was broken.
Then we saw people moving, we addressed them and got out 6 pirates, who we secured.
At a certain point one of our teammembers could hear voices at the stern
so we addressed them as well and thus captured 2 more pirates
they were also unarmed, so eventually we took 8 pirates in custody on that deck.
At this moment, one of the pirates is asked to walk down with his hands in the air
as soon as he's down, he'll be cuffed and captured and finally we had 10 pirates.
With 3 men we went upstairs, to the bridge, to clear it because it was a main objective
then we went down and cleared the accomodation.
Inside the accomodations they flipped everything over
there were laptops lying around, doors were kicked in, some were shot because they couldn't get them open.
In that 4 hour timespan they managed to make a complete mess.
They were definitely armed, they threw away their weapons on the spot
varying from RPGs/RPGs-7, AK-47s and pistols.
The German captain decided to open the doors and emerge with his entire crew
they were really relieved, we rounded them up at the portside of the ship
there we told them what happened, how we entered and they applauded us
yeah, they were really happy to see us.