PART 3 ; Pirates ATTACK The Wrong U.S. Navy Ship – Big Mistake At 0455, 330 miles off Djibouti in the Gulf of Aden, six Somali pirates in a 23-foot skiff come up the port side of what they think is a slow, gray, boxy freighter with nobody on the rails. It is USS Ashland (LSD-48), a Whidbey Island-class dock landing ship on maritime security patrol, and when the first AK-47 burst hits the superstructure 25 yards from the bridge wing, the pirates have started a fight they cannot win. This breakdown follows the engagement from Ashland's bridge, from the Mk 38 Mod 2 gunner's console inside the ship, and from a Marine corporal's security watch on the port weather deck: why a pirate crew approaches from astern and aims for the stern gate, why a ship in the Gulf of Aden sails with her guns already manned, why a gun mounted 30 feet up cannot hit a boat 25 yards away, and how the captain's rules of engagement, one gunner's mate, and two rounds of 25mm HEI-T ended the attack in under five minutes. Then the RHIB reaches the wreck and finds the rocket launcher that was never fired, and the men pulled from the water turn out to be a crew the Royal Navy had already caught and released six weeks before. This is what happens when the boat that costs less than a warship's anchor picks the wrong silhouette, and why five of these men are serving sentences in an American federal prison today.#ukraine #beyondmilitary #russia