Mighty Ships: HDMS Absalon | Season 2 Episode 1 (Full Episode) | MIGHTY

She is the pride of the Royal Danish Navy, H.D.M.S. Absalon, one of the most modern warships on the high seas. Her mission is a dangerous one, hunting pirates in the busiest shipping route on Earth. Pirate attacks are on the rise. They're fearless, reckless and ruthless. H.D.M.S. Absalon is leading the multinational fight against pirates to make the seas safe again. It's the day after Christmas, and the Danish Navy's H.D.M.S. Absalon is in Muscat, Oman. She's resupplied and heading out on her next 14-day patrol in the Gulf of Aden. Absalon was launched in 2008. Her first deployment was as a member of an international task force. Now she's leading it, searching for terrorists who try to sneak into the Middle East from Africa across the Gulf of Aden. A lot of things have happened in the world for the last 10 years, and I think all this started by the terrorist acts that we saw on 9-11. But times have changed, and so has the mission. Today they're hunting pirates, practicing their own brand of terror. Armed with AK-47s and rocket-propelled grenades, they're attacking ships and capturing crews for ransom. It's a dangerous business. They have killed sailors on board the ships, so it's very dangerous for the merchant ship. Absalon's job is to stop them, and she's got the goods to do it. She's called a flexible support ship and comes well-equipped with deadly weapons, sophisticated radar and sonar, a flight deck for a linked attack helicopter, one of the fastest on Earth, and a one-of-a-kind flex deck running from the stern to midship. The flex deck of the Absalon class is the multipurpose deck. We have a roll-on, roll-off capacity. On the stern, the flex deck opens up, allowing tanks, a company of soldiers or a mobile hospital to roll on board. Right now, the flex deck is headquarters of Combined Task Force 150 that commands a fleet of a dozen warships. CTF-150 is a coalition of countries guarding the Horn of Africa. We call it the Coalition of the Willing, and right now there's 22 nations that have signed up for this coalition. As they patrol the Gulf of Aden, they work as the central command post, coordinating rescue efforts on the part of the coalition. Ten percent of the world's trade moves through this narrow waterway, 20,000 ships a year. There's no shortage of targets. Most pirates come from the lawless state of Somalia. With its economy in chaos, many have turned to piracy. And they recruited a lot of young men, young boys from Somalia, and they found out that by hijacking a ship, they could get access to quite a lot of money. Ransoms of over $80 million in cash were paid in 2008. Successful pirates are treated like rock stars at home. But these rock stars use instruments of war. Normally they shoot against the bridge or the superstructure using AK-47 machine guns or rocket-propelled grenades. As the crew ducks for cover, the pirates use ladders to climb on board and capture the ship. The pirates are bold. They have attacked cruise ships, tankers, luxury yachts, even a freighter carrying tanks and missiles. They move quickly and are tough to identify, disguising themselves as fishermen in small boats. CTF-150 has divided the Gulf of Aden, known as Pirate Alley, into patrol boxes. Inside each one is a warship. The location of Absalon's patrol box is classified, but her job isn't. The Navy searches every suspicious boat, seizes weapons, captures pirates, and, if necessary, intervenes with force. And if the pirates shoot back. Absalon's captain, Dan Rasmussen, is ready for action. He's a 26-year veteran who enlisted as an able seaman. He's worked his way up the military ladder and is now in command. He has earned and won the respect of his crew. I think my background actually helps a lot because they know that I came from where they actually were. Cruising at 15 knots, Absalon will reach her patrol box in just two days. The crew uses the time to stay combat ready. Denmark is a maritime nation, and joining the Navy is a time-honored tradition for Absalon's 100-man crew. This mission in the Gulf is a sensitive one. Their last names are not used to protect their identities. On the bridge, 23-year-old Lieutenant Anders is a career officer and right now officer of the watch. His job is to keep an eye on the horizon for the next five hours. Absalon is still hundreds of kilometers from her patrol box, but Anders has spotted a suspicious boat. Normally we go into one nautical miles at first, investigating, and then if the commander wants us to, we go closer, 0.3 nautical miles, and then if there's any suspicious things, we maybe send our boarding team. It looks like a fishing boat. But Absalon's crew knows from experience that nothing in the Gulf of Aden is what it seems. Captain Rasmussen orders a boarding team to stand by. The team is always made up of two units. A special operations force whose skills are classified, and so are their identities, and a boarding party made up of members of the regular crew. Both units prepare to launch their boats. The captain considers the threat and then gives the order to go. The special operations unit approaches the boat first. They look for evidence of pirates, guns, grappling hooks, or ladders. When they confirm that there is no evidence on board, they pull back and the boarding team gets the all clear to approach. Their job is to get more information about these sailors. They could still be pirates. They could have thrown their weapons and ladders overboard before Absalon arrived. They claim to be fishermen from Yemen, not pirates from Somalia. Now the team questions the fishermen to gather intelligence about activity in the Gulf. They're happy to give it. The interpreter is blonde and blue-eyed, and she's fluent in Arabic. She actually works like some sort of an icebreaker, you know. And I think that's actually some sort of way she has opened some doors and perhaps have gotten more information than a normal guy would. They say they're fishermen, but the team keep their fingers close to their triggers just in case. Maybe. Now they just have enough fuel to go back to Yemen, so what we're going to do now is continue our questioning of the guys here, and then we're going to tell them to go straight home back to Yemen. As a goodwill gesture, the Danes give the fishermen a care package. Fresh water and a first-aid kit and some ointment. The boarding team heads back to Absalon to report their findings to the captain. The fishermen have told them that there are pirates and they're close by. HDMS Absalon is heading west, deeper into the Gulf of Aden. She's still a day away from reaching her patrol box, but the crew is on full alert. Patrolling in a hot zone, Absalon needs to keep her fuel tanks at least 50% full. She needs to be ready for anything, at any time. So she's constantly topping up at sea, compliments of floating gas stations. This time it's the Japanese Maritime Defense Force oiler, Tawada. A logistics officer, Lieutenant Commander Louise, coordinates the replenishment. Absalon and Tawada maneuver to within 18 meters of each other, measured by a lead line. A second lead line is fired across. Then Absalon hauls across a huge fuel hose with a probe attached. And the probe will go into this and then we are connected directly to our tanks and we can receive the fuel from the Japanese ship. The two ships make it look routine, but it's a dangerous dance. They're refueling while traveling 30 kilometers an hour. The pressure we can receive will be 12 cubic meters per minute. When it's done, Absalon slaps a sticker on the hose as a memento. With her tanks full, Absalon's two diesel engines can crank back up to her cruising speed of 15 knots. Engineer Christian is better known as a stoker, a title left over from the days when they shoveled coal to fuel their engines. Today, he monitors Absalon's high-tech diesel engines constantly. Each diesel engine's 20 cylinders are independent of one another. If one breaks down, they don't all have to be shut down and the problem can be fixed on the fly. They're the biggest fast-running diesel engines ever built and can turn the 6,300-ton warship's propeller shafts at 1,150 revolutions a minute. At full speed, Absalon can hit 25 knots or 47 kilometers an hour. On the open ocean, she's a giant Ferrari and can respond to any action quickly, from a rescue mission to an Al Qaeda terrorist attack. But right now, it's a race to catch pirates. And that race is coordinated right here on Absalon, in the CTF-150 task force operations room. The action of every ship in the task force is coordinated in here. CTF-150 and its commander, Danish Commodore Peer Begum Christensen, have a tough job. We are fighting all kinds of illegal activity, and that is weapons smuggling, that is piracy, that is human trafficking, drug smuggling. CTF-150 patrols over 6 million square kilometers of ocean in the Middle East. Its job is to keep the seas safe. When a threat is assessed in the operations room, a ship or helicopter is dispatched within minutes. Of all the ships in CTF-150, HGMS Absalon is the newest. Her design and communications technology are ideal for modern warfare. The ship is built as most modern warships are built these days, meaning stealth technology to some degree. Absalon's smooth, sleek, low profile makes her hard to see on radar. There isn't a single right angle on her hull. So when radar hits her, the echo scatters, sending back distorted images of the ship to the sender. But stealth can't guarantee that she won't take a hit. So this warship has another design feature to help her keep fighting if she's damaged. Absalon is divided into 16 watertight compartments that can be sealed off from one another. If the hull is breached, as long as the flooded section is sealed off, the rest of the ship can stay watertight and continue to operate. But this feature won't help them when it comes to fire. Like all warships, Absalon is a floating keg of dynamite. But it's still vulnerable. The added insulation only buys the crew more time to fight back the flames. And that's why regular fire drills require every sailor on board to practice fighting every kind of fire imaginable. HQ-1, Absalon's technical division, coordinates firefighting and damage control. Their computers can monitor every fire or explosion on board, allowing them to dispatch emergency teams quickly to deal with any threat. Every day on patrol in the hot zone means Absalon is in a constant state of vigilance. As part of her routine, they dispatch their Lynx helicopter daily on a reconnaissance mission. Before every flight, the pilots are briefed on activity in the Gulf. Surface search in UKMTO. We will use standard call signs. At the weather, we have easily wind 10 knots, visibility 10 miles plus, pure weather, pure clouds, air temperature 24. They conduct visual searches, looking for suspicious activity beyond the ship's radar detection. And on this flight, it's not long before they spot something. A fishing boat too close to a merchant ship. A suspicious boat closing in on a merchant ship. A heavily armed attack helicopter hovering above. It's a perfect recipe for high seas drama. On a routine aerial reconnaissance in the Gulf of Aden, HTMS Absalon's helicopter has spotted a suspicious boat. It could be pirates. They move in closer, looking for evidence. Ladders, guns, rocket launchers. But the boat looks clean. The Lynx reports back. More fishermen from Yemen. We don't need any gunfire. Yes, thank you. Are you listening? Yes. The Lynx returns to base on the ship. But mere minutes later, an urgent call comes in. A sailor on a merchant ship may be having a heart attack. The helicopter crew prepares immediately for a medevac. We got a message from UKMTO about a heart disease patient. Apparently stable. It seems like the ship is some 300 nautical miles away from us. Okay, 300 nautical miles. Okay, we need to get the doc inside here and call the Commodore. Yeah, I will call the doc immediately. Yeah, we need the doc in the CCG room immediately. The ship's doctor and a nurse scramble into action. And Absalon accelerates to her top speed of 25 knots. She has to close the distance between the two ships as quickly as possible. 300 nautical miles is too far away for her helicopter to safely fly a round trip. So Absalon was sailing directly to a position in the middle. And the container ship also sailing directly. And when we're inside range, the helicopter will be launched, bring the patient back to Absalon. On the flight deck, the air crew have converted the links from a gunship into an ambulance. The machine gun has been removed to make room for a patient, a stretcher and, just in case, a bodyguard. And one of the soft team members, just to be sure that there are no pirates on board. He'll be able to protect the medical officer we have. On the helo deck, the bodyguard, nurse and doctor suit up and prepare for a long flight and the emergency. We hadn't any news. We hadn't heard any news. But it should be stable and okay. Finally, Absalon has closed the gap between the ships and the Lynx gets ready to take off. The team buckles in and the Lynx lifts off. At top speed, they'll reach the merchant ship, now only 100 nautical miles away, in an hour. So right now we actually only know that the ship is heading this way and our helicopter is, as fast as it can, heading in that direction. The medevac mission is another prime example of Absalon's combat flexibility. She has to be ready for anything. But first and foremost, Absalon is a warship and equipped to fight more than pirates. A lot more. She has some of the world's most advanced weapons and is a deadly adversary. Her Sea Sparrow anti-aircraft and Harpoon anti-surface missiles can eliminate threats long before they ever see Absalon. Basically, the whole idea is being able to engage the enemy at a great distance. A bow-mounted 5-inch gun and twin 35-millimeter Millennium guns destroy targets that get too close. For even closer encounters, the crew trains constantly on their four .50 caliber machine guns. And if surgical precision is required, a specially trained operations force from the Danish Navy's Frogman Corps is called on. They're experts in diving, mine clearing, boarding and counter-terrorism. The odds of an all-out war in the Gulf of Aden are slim. But everyone and everything on board Absalon has to be ready for any mission, just in case. And as a part of Combined Task Force 150, that includes medical emergencies. Right now, the officer of the watch is tracking Absalon's links. Now heading back from the merchant ship with their heart patient. That is understood. Thank you very much for your cooperation and I will be standing by on channel 16. The plan is for the helo to bring in the person that's ill. That's the plan, I think. But it's pretty much just to stabilize him if possible. The links land safely and with no time to waste. Just like a big city ER, the patient is rushed to sick bay. The patient is stabilized and fully assessed. It looks like it may be a false alarm, but just to be sure, the doctor wants to fly the sailor to Oman for more tests. Maybe it could be the muscles between his ribs that are sore. You can often get the same symptoms as a heart attack, but that will time show. But his values are stable and the trip was okay. HDMS Absalon never rests. But tonight, the crew has put aside their weapons to enjoy another kind of fireworks. It's New Year's Eve and they're ringing it in on the signal deck. With traditional songs and a glass of champagne for each crew member. A rare treat. Well, actually I think this moment right now says a whole lot about what we're doing down here. We are in the operation area, we are going at it with patrol and so on. But still we can have 10 minutes of good enjoyment on the signal deck here. Even in the middle of Pirate Alley, there's time for a party. All 10 minutes of it. A lot of the crews are very young, they have feelings about being away from home. So it's more making it a nice evening more than some melancholic thing. Being in a state of battle readiness and on constant alert forges strong bonds between the men and women on Absalon. We are so close together out here and we see each other every day. You can't get away from the people out here. You just need to get along and make the best of it. It's like one big family. Below deck in the galley, the chef and his team are preparing a special meal. We get a lot of gratitude from our people on board. They love our food and we're happy to serve them. Good food goes a long way to keeping a crew happy. Absalon can feed her 150 sailors fresh food for 28 days. I ordered approximately 6.5 tons of flour for our baker. 8 tons of meat of various kinds. Each day we use approximately 50 to 60 kilos of meat. Tonight the chef is cooking a traditional dish. They love their pork and bacon and a good steak. That's the best for them. It may be a new year and a new day in the Gulf of Aden. But nothing has changed. In the CTF operations room another distress call is being monitored from a freighter. This one just 10 kilometers away. A suspicious boat is circling it and the freighter suspects it's pirates. Absalon is close enough to use ESM, its electronic support measures, to try and identify the threat. ESM scans a boat for any unique electronic emissions like radar, sonar, homing beacons or GPS. Each one is just like a fingerprint. It emits some kind of a pulse from the radar. We can pick it up and we can put that into a library and we can say we've had that before. But ESM isn't detecting any signals at all coming from this boat. And running silent is typical pirate behavior. Captain Rasmussen orders Absalon to speed up. With night falling he does not want the pirates to escape. In the Gulf of Aden a commercial ship may be under attack by pirates. HTMS Absalon is responding to the SOS and she's close, just 10 kilometers away. To track the pirates the crew are now using the oldest sensor in their naval arsenal, their eyes. In this specific context, the piracy hunt, it is actually the eyeball mark one. That's the primary sensor. On the bridge they've spotted the target, a container ship. And near it, several small wooden boats. Pirates may be poor but they're not stupid. They've learned how to capture big ships by surrounding them in small, fast boats and opening fire, forcing them to stop. Absalon is doing what she does best, speeding to the rescue. Her deck gunners are on high alert. They've caught the pirates right at the scene of the crime. Surprised and outgunned, the pirates know they won't survive a shootout. When Absalon's Somali interpreter orders them to put up their hands, the pirates know it's game over. By sundown, the special operation force and boarding party are dispatched to get a closer look at the threat. The pirates are armed and they're ordered to throw their weapons overboard one by one. Now, the fate of the pirates is in the hands of CTF-150. In the operations room, Task Force Commodore Pierre Bigham Christensen discusses what to do with these pirates. The last time Absalon captured pirates, she was ordered to drop them off safe and sound in Somalia. It's a dilemma. In international waters, when pirates are caught in the act, the government of the attacked ship has the option to press charges. If they don't, the pirates are released. And right now, I know the international community is working on that very, very hard to find a legal background so the criminals, the pirates, can be prosecuted. Until then, we are just doing the job and doing the job as good as we can, and that is fair enough. In just a few hours, a decision is made. These pirates got lucky. Charges will not be pressed. The pirates are released and sent home without their weapons. But right now, they can't go anywhere. Their engine is broken. And since International Maritime Convention says no one can be abandoned on the open sea, Absalon's crew repairs their engine and gives them gas. When they return to Somalia, it's a good bet they'll buy more weapons and be back in the piracy business in a week. Well, that's a classic dilemma, but I will not call it frustration. What we do is to find the pirates and to disarm them, and we do whatever we can. Of course, on the longer term, I and the staff would like to see a long-standing solution. For now, most of Absalon's crew can stand down. It's a good time for a workout, to relieve stress, and to stay fighting fit. For that, Absalon has a first-class gym. And Absalon must stay in ship shape as well. For many centuries, swabbing the deck has been a tried-and-true way to keep a ship looking good. But below in the engine room, it is anything but good. A fuel line has burst, spraying highly flammable diesel fuel everywhere. It's really dangerous because of the high-pressure diesel fumes. The leak has forced engineers to shut down one of Absalon's two engines, limiting their speed to just 15 knots. In Pirate Alley, they always need speed, so they have to repair the fuel line fast. The timing couldn't be worse. An engine down and signs on radar that there are more suspicious boats on the horizon. The operations room is crackling with reports as the crew coordinates response plans. We have had a very busy morning, in fact, with at least two confirmed attacks on the merchant shipping. One in the western part of the Gulf of Aden, and one attack in the eastern part of the Gulf of Aden. The Scantor 2001 surface surveillance system, one of the most advanced radar systems in the world, helps track them. Even in rough weather, it can lock on multiple small targets like fast-moving fishing boats kilometers away. The issue with all modern systems is to have sensors with enough sensitivity to actually catch those. But it is because it is very small targets or contacts the pirate ships are using. And right now, radar is tracking two separate attacks. One of them, a Dutch cargo ship, is inside Absalon's patrol box. But until Absalon repairs her engine, all she can do is track the pirates. She needs all her power to reach the pirates before they attack again. There's a pirate alert just kilometers from Absalon's position, and a fuel line to one of her engines has just sprung a leak. Absalon's speed has been cut in half. Stoker Christian races to fix the broken line before a fire breaks out, endangering the ship. As he finishes the repair, a new report comes in. The pirate attack has turned deadly. The Dutch freighter is reporting that the pirates are firing on it. Absalon is still 24 kilometers away, but close enough to launch her Lynx to track the action. Meanwhile, on board Absalon, a special forces team gets ready for action. And a sniper prepares his rifle. His deadly aim may also be needed. On the flex deck, the boarding team gets ready to launch an inflatable boat. A crane will launch it off the stern while Absalon is still underway. There's not a moment to waste. When it's deployed, it can reach a speed of 70 kilometers an hour. The Lynx confirms a suspicious boat near the freighter. But Absalon has to be careful. The boat could be a decoy trying to draw Absalon away from a real attack elsewhere. It's a ploy the pirates use called spoofing. Of course, we have seen examples of spoofing where somebody is being attacked and then certainly there's another cry for help in another part of the area. So every time we are hearing things like that, we have to carefully evaluate, is this real or is it spoofing? Absalon is almost at the scene. Now her Lynx returns to refuel for the coming action. To save time, it's topped up in the air. The logistics officer coordinates the refueling. If the Lynx landed, it would take precious minutes to shut down, refuel and then restart the engine. But filling the helicopter's tanks in the air takes less than two minutes. The Lynx has to get back out there. The Dutch freighter's captain is calling for help. This is no decoy. The pirates are shooting and people could die. The sniper is now on deck and so are .50 caliber machine gunners who take their positions. Everyone is getting ready for a firefight. The crew go to action stations. The inflatable boats are closing in on the pirates. On the bridge, there's tension as the captain watches the boarding teams head directly into harm's way. Pirates are fighters, but they are not soldiers. They're unpredictable. Anything can happen. The pirates are now in range of Absalon's guns. Suddenly, there's a surprise. The freighter has decided to fight back. HDMS Absalon is racing to help a Dutch freighter being attacked by pirates. She arrives at the scene of the crime to a startling new development. The freighter is fighting back. The crew have thrown Molotov cocktails and fired a flare gun at the pirate boat. As Absalon's helicopter hovers above, it fires warning shots. The pilots watch the pirates jump into the water as the boat burns. Now they actually jumped in the water in a combination, I think, from the flares thrown plus our warning shots, and then we have another situation. But for us it's important now that they actually did try to push in an attack even though we were here. Absalon's mission has just changed from rescuing a freighter to rescuing pirates. The pirates are hauled into the Special Forces' inflatable boat and escorted back to Absalon as prisoners. Her flex deck is prepared for yet one more use, a jail. But the Danes still can't arrest these pirates. They can only hold them until a decision is made to press charges. Their fate is debated by the Dutch and Danish governments, the captain and CTF-150. The problem is when you have taken them, where are you then going to deliver the pirates? Because not every nation is willing to accept apprehended pirates because their national law might prevent them from putting them to trial. And even worse, most Muslim countries on the Gulf of Aden are dictated by law to execute pirates. So for now these pirates are brought on board and kept under armed guard. They're either going to prison in Holland or they're going home. Finally the verdict is announced. The Dutch government has agreed to press charges. If we can actually take pirates while they are attacking a ship, we can always ask this ship's flag state, do you want to prosecute them? It's your ship, it's your sailors that have risked their life. Are you able to prosecute these pirates? And normally they say, yes, if you can provide us with the right evidence, we will certainly prosecute them. And in this case, the five pirates were caught in the act. International conventions prevent them from being filmed until they've had their day in court. As for their boat, the helicopter crew must ensure it doesn't become a safety hazard at sea. This is one pirate ship that will never sail again. Absalon's work here is done. She's heading for the nearest friendly port to turn over her prisoners. As soon as she does, Absalon will head right back out into the Gulf of Aden to do what she does best. Protect the busiest shipping lane in the world.