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A good start to the year, at sea

By Our Defence Correspondent
It was still an hour before dawn on Thursday, January 7, when the Sea Tiger boat showed up as a blip on the Dvora’s radar screen, a few miles off the coast of Mullaittivu.

Up to then, it had been a routine patrol for the navy boat. But now it swung into action.

Racing in on its quarry with guns blazing, the fast attack craft quickly scored hit after hit on the hapless Sea Tiger craft, which soon went down in flames.

Senior officers in the navy’s eastern command were happy. It was their first kill for 1999.

Especially as, three days earlier, on Jan. 4, their colleagues in the northern command had "opened the bowling at sea by fighting a fairly large battle off Talaimannar, in which four high speed Sea Tiger craft were disabled, and at least eight cadres killed and more wounded. In that skirmish, the navy suffered no casualties. The next day, Jan. 5, in an unrelated incident, navy sailors on foot patrol discovered and recovered a huge landmine on the island of Kayts, also in the north.

Modest though the hit off Mullaittivu was, it was a good omen for the year, and there were many smiles in the navy base at Trincomalee that night. Naval headquarters would be pleased. The navy’s command structure had just undergone key changes in all its senior posts, which would normally have meant a slowing down of efficiency for a short time as the new appointees got used to their posts. But things were still going like clockwork.

But on shore at Mullaittivu, stronghold of the LTTE, top Tiger cadres were also smiling, although in a different sort of way.

The Tigers were trying to sail a convoy of supply boats from the Batticaloa area to Mullaittivu, carrying ammunition and other war material.

The single Sea Tiger craft had been a reconnaissance boat, whose mission was to find out the strength of navy patrols off Mullaittivu.

When the top LTTErs learned that only a single Dvora was sighted, and involved in the skirmish, they were happy.

A single navy boat could never hope to battle the 10-boat convoy. It would, in fact, be a good opportunity for the Sea Tigers to sink their first navy boat for the year, if the Dvora launched a foolhardy attack on the heavily protected convoy.

So, despite losing one boat, the Tigers were happy. The convoy sailed that same evening from somewhere in the Batticaloa district.

But unknown to the Tigers, the navy had outmaneuvered them already.

When details of the Jan. 7 skirmish came to be known, the navy, wary of the obviously increased Sea Tiger activity, had taken the precautionary step of boosting its patrol strength off Mullaittivu.

Thus, when the Sea Tiger convoy arrived close to Mullaittivu shortly after midnight, they were in for a big surprise.

We will not give details of how many navy boats were involved, or the officers who led the battle, for obvious security reasons.

The battle raged fast and furious, with the navy group blocking the Sea Tigers route and raining death from their 37 mm and 20 mm big guns.

Soon, the convoy formation was broken, and the LTTE craft scattered, trying to get to the beach and escape with their lives.

For more than five hours, the gunboats hunted them, and by the time it was over, at 5:30 on Friday morning, six Sea Tiger boats were destroyed.

It was later confirmed that at least eight cadres were killed, and more than 25 wounded.

On the navy side, two fast attack craft were slightly damaged, and two officers were wounded. A trifling loss for a massive gain.

The battle meant far more than simply sinking Tiger boats and killing cadres.

As this column noted in December (BEWARE THE TIGERS IN JANUARY), " Historically, the Tigers have used the lull afforded by the northeast monsoon from November to mid January, to regroup, plan new attacks, and strike at an army camp when the rains end.The Jan. 8 convoy was clearly part of this preparation, bringing in supplies from the east.

With the convoy shattered, Prabhakaran plans have suffered a setback. Whatever target he had chosen to attack, gets a reprieve for a while, at last.

This may also allow the army to strike first, when the rains stop, and possibly catch the Tigers short of supplies and ammunition. That remains to be seen.

In any case, the army, including officers at the new Joint Operations Bureau, which had started operating only a few days earlier, was ecstatic.

But the day success was not yet complete. Even as navy officers celebrated that night, a guard boat spotted another Tiger reconnaissance boat, this time just outside Trincomalee harbor. In a short, sharp clash, the navy craft chased away the Tigers, but was unable to sink it before it escaped in the darkness. Whatever its mission, the Sea Tiger failed.

The run of successes didn stop there. Tuesday morning, shortly before dawn, navy gunboats sighted and destroyed two more Sea Tiger craft off Kuchchaveli, killing at least eight cadres. One of the boats made it to the beach, where an army patrol found it, with two dead bodies inside. Once again, there were no loses to the navy.

Meanwhile, the navy’s western command was busy on a mission of mercy. On Monday night, the oil tanker "Hamriya 4 sprang a leak in its hull and sank, as it lay at anchor only four miles from Colombo harbor.

A navy craft rushed to the scene, and rescued the nine crewmen, seven of whom were Indian, and two Sri Lankan.

Luckily, the 800-ton tanker, flying the flag of Belize, had no cargo at the time, or there would have been a major disaster for Colombo. It was not clear how much fuel it had on board for running the ship electricity generators.

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