Maersk Alabama Lifeboat - Photo Edition

CHINFO has flooded the photo section of Navy.mil with plenty of photography of the USS Bainbridge (DDG 96) and other interesting stuff from the recent incident involving the Maersk Alabama. These three photos show the lifeboat after the incident.

Image here. Looks like the lifeboat was being towed forward, instead of backward as news reports have suggested.

Image here. Now that is interesting. The starboard window appears to have been shot out.


Image here. Wait a second, the port window forward looks like it has been blown out. That makes sense if the lifeboat is being pulled forward.

However, unless the SEALS were using magic bullets, based on the two windows blown out as evidence by these photos, I don't know that all of the snipers could have been on the USS Bainbridge (DDG 96) and fired at the same time. Was one of the snipers on the USS Halyburton (FFG 40) off the starboard of the lifeboat? If not, did one of the windows get broken later?

Something doesn't quite look right, at least based on the story 3 shots and 3 dead that has been told. I was reading Christian's discussion over at Defense Tech and this sticks out:

One other question (among many) remains open...were there three shots or four? Poole reasons, and Allen and I agree, that someone had to shoot through the lifeboat window first, then fire the kill shots. My limited knowledge of ballistics leads me to believe the snipers could not rely on the effectiveness of the one window shot to actually strike the target where it was aimed based in the potential deflection of hitting that probably plastic (glass) window.

Maybe 5 snipers? 2 shot out the plastic windows and 3 to plug the bad guys, and from two positions potentially 90 degrees apart? This looks a hell of a lot harder than the story as I thought I understood it.

These images are the high resolution images the Navy provides.