To Combat Piracy, Revive The Armed Guard

During World War II, my father was a U. S. Navy Signalman assigned to a relatively obscure outfit named the Armed Guard.  The purpose of the Armed Guard was to protect and assist merchant shipping, which was vital to the war effort.  My father made several convoy runs during WWII - - around the Cape and the Horn of Africa to Arabia; through the Mediterranean Sea to the Black Sea; and the notoriously dangerous Murmansk run.  His job was to communicate with semaphore flags (during the day) and a light (at night) during times when radio silence was necessary.  Other Armed Guard crewmen manned machine guns and cannon, operated the radio and radar, and stood watch duty.

Also little known is the history of the German privateers during WWII.  A privateer is a pirate with a commission.  The Nazi government outfitted merchant-type vessels with guns and torpedoes and sent them out to raid commerce, knowing how vital the sea routes were to the survival of Great Britain and Russia.  The Armed Guard was effective in many cases in protecting merchant ships against the Nazi privateers.

The recent Maersk Alabama incident showed that a determined resistance can overcome Somali pirates.  Since the pirates have now, in essence, declared war on American shipping, an Armed Guard type of response is appropriate.  The Somali pirates rely on fast, small boats to catch and board merchant ships and count on a lack of resistance; the discouraging effects of, say, a modern Gatling gun would be considerable.

Another WWII-era idea, the Q-ship, has been recently commended by several sources.  The Q-ships were merchant vessels outfitted with armor and guns as an anti-U-boat measure. The Q-ship was effective if and when a submarine approached, but the odds that a U-boat would pick a Q-ship out of the thousands of vessels in the Atlantic was slim.  The advantage of the Armed Guard was, and is, that all American merchant ships could be outfitted and manned.

The United States have a two-century history of fighting pirates, going back to the Tripoli raiders of Thomas Jefferson's day.  We can beat this bunch, as we beat others, and we should take action now before American lives are lost.

REFERENCES:

Hitler's Secret Pirate Fleet: The Deadliest Ships of World War II

Naval Armed Guard Service In World War II

Engagements With German Surface Raiders

We Delivered: The U. S. Navy Armed Guard In World War II

Unsung Sailors: The Naval Armed Guard in World War II

Comments

[foutsc]

Hopefully we'll adopt some sensible measures like the ones you recommend. Curtis Sliwa had a suggestion from his merchant marine father's experiences on the high seas: A fire hose hooked up to the ship's boiler does an awesome job peeling a pirate off the side of your ship.