The day that saw the destruction of LTTE ships

Lieutenant Percy Rajapaksa, who is the Navigator of the Sri Lanka Navy’s Offshore Patrol Vessel (OPV) Samudura – formerly US warship ‘Courage’ – left with crew members from the Colombo Harbour on September 3 for an unknown but decisive mission in the high seas. Accompanied by a A-520- a logistic vessel, they were to join with more ships within a few days prior to departure to the high seas. “It was just like another day, but some had a gut feeling that this was not a routine exercise.” he spoke to the Daily Mirror from Trincomalee Harbour in the background of his vessel Samudura.

According to Lt. Rajapaksa, Sri Lanka Navy Ship (SLNS) Sayura – formerly an Indian ship, SLNS Suranimal (Israel) SLNS Shakthi (China) and SLNS A-521- a logistic ship had already started sailing towards the high seas. A Navy Captain was in charge of this entire operation and he was based in the ‘Sayura’ On September 6, the two logistics ships returned back while four other vessels capable of fighting continued to proceed towards international waters. Explaining, Lt. Rajapaksa said that the entire crew did not know about the mission. “But we knew that there would be a decisive battle in the high seas,” he said. ``When our fleet passed several hundreds of nautical miles towards the international waters, the Captain of our vessel briefed us on our mission. We were told that there would be more than one ship in the international waters carrying arms to the LTTE and our mission was to find and destroy them,” he explained. “We came to know the details about the LTTE ships, we saw photographs of them and got to know the area where these ships were located.”

The Navy fleet often had passed more than 100 ships, fishing trawlers and other types of commercial vessels in the high seas. By September 10, four Navy ships arrived to search the area where the LTTE ships were suspected to be located. The fleet separated into two groups and proceeded to search for the LTTE ships. Samudura and Shakthi went in one direction “By 8.15 am, suddenly a dot appeared on our radar system and we paid attention to it as this area was not an international sea route, and approached the location at high speed,” Lt. Rajapaksa said.

He said that when the Sumudura ship closed on the suspected object, the Captain of Samudura ordered the crew to prepare for an emergency situation as the object they had detected might be the LTTE ship. “Following instruction from the Captain, I directed crew members to the relevant weapons,” Lt Rajapaksa said.

“Suddenly I realized that another ship was in the vicinity and Shakthi was asked to go for that vessel as we were asked to approach the other”.

He said that when Samudura and the suspected ship had some 10 nautical miles distances, they saw that the suspect ship had a name Koshiya, which was later confirmed as fake. There was no flag or registered name of the Koshiya, which had blue and red colours on its bow. “We matched our details with the Koshiya and started to communicate with the ship,” the Navigator explained.

He said that though they contacted using Internal Maritime Channel – Channel 16, there was no response from the Koshiya .

“Then we fired warning shots over the suspected ship which suddenly started to fire back at us using artillery guns weapons, leading us to retaliate”.

He said that the suspect ship had commenced to move further towards the international waters while continuing to fire at the Navy vessel. “We chased the vessel for at least eight hours. At that time another three Navy vessels joined us after destroying two other LTTE ships. After several hours of gun battle, the Koshiya went down with several explosions on board,” he said.

Explaining further Lt Rajapaksa said that the entire crew of his ship could not have dinner that day or breakfast the next morning as all of them were involved in the attack against the suspected ship. “Even our cook attacked the ship using a 12.7 millimeter gun screaming that LTTE must not damage his kitchen,” said Lt. Rajapaksa with a smile adding “the feeling we had at that time was of happiness for we had succeeded in our mission and even if we didn’t have anything to eat we were strong enough to be victorious.”

(www.dailymirror.lk)