{"id":4566,"date":"2009-04-12T14:05:44","date_gmt":"2009-04-12T19:05:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=4566"},"modified":"2009-04-12T14:10:27","modified_gmt":"2009-04-12T19:10:27","slug":"happy-easter-courtesy-usn","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=4566","title":{"rendered":"Happy Easter, Courtesy USN"},"content":{"rendered":"

I don’t normally blog on Easter, but I read this, and had to sound off
\nThis time, when Captain Phillips jumped overboad, the Navy was ready.\u00a0 Three pirates are now chum<\/a>, and Captain Phillips is free.<\/p>\n

An American ship captain was freed unharmed Sunday in a swift firefight that killed three of the four Somali pirates who had been holding him for days in a lifeboat off the coast of Africa, the ship’s owner said and a U.S. official said.A senior U.S. intelligence official said a pirate who had been involved in negotiations to free Capt. Richard Phillips but who was not on the lifeboat was in custody.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

His crew was duly happy:<\/p>\n

When Phillips’ crew heard the news aboard their ship in the port of Mombasa, they placed an American flag over the rail of the top of the Maersk Alabama<\/a> and whistled and pumped their fists in the air. Crew fired a bright red flare into the sky from the ship. <\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Thank God and the US Navy.\u00a0 And God Bless America.<\/p>\n

NOTE: There are two kinds of people in the world who still know Morse Code; old sailors, and Special Forces signal operators (and, I guess, Navy signalmen, now that I think about it…OK.\u00a0 Three <\/em>kinds of people in the world who still know Morse Code, as well as people who took their ham radio license before about 1997…Four <\/em>kinds of people who still know Morse Code…)<\/p>\n

OK.\u00a0 From the top; here’s a fearless prediction: five’ll get you ten when this story is finally told, it’ll involve someone surreptitiously signalling to Phillips “let’s do a mulligan on that whole ‘jumping from the boat’ thing; we’ll be ready this time”.<\/p>\n

Just a prediction. Not putting any money on it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I don’t normally blog on Easter, but I read this, and had to sound off This time, when Captain Phillips jumped overboad, the Navy was ready.\u00a0 Three pirates are now chum, and Captain Phillips is free. An American ship captain was freed unharmed Sunday in a swift firefight that killed three of the four Somali […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4566","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-war-on-terror"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4566","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4566"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4566\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4566"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4566"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4566"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}