The Flying Tigers

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Amusing little story on the background of the civil war in Sri Lanka. The tamil rebels in the south, the Tamil Tigers, did a few air strikes on targets in the singhalese north.

It's not only that the Tigers really dent the illusion that Buddhists are all serene, wise and calm. It was iirc the Tamil Tigers who invented the suicide bomber vest. The air strikes are remarkable in themselves, since 'rebels' are not supposed to have an air force, or a navy for that. The Tamil air force presumably consists of five czeck Zlin-143 lightplanes that grew bombracks. Which is hilarious. Even funnier is that the Sri Lankan air force was unable to intercept them - the 'bombers' were too slow and too low.

Revolution? Genius? Nope. They have studied military history and have thought. During WW-II German pilots of fabled Fi-156 Fieseler Storchs repeatedly and probably to their great relief found that they could escape enemy fighters by flying low and as slow as 32 mph. The much faster fighterplanes even of that day were unable to hit them.

And as for arming such slow planes - a crazy swede named Carl Gustaf von Rosen did the same thing before in Biafra. He smuggled into the country and converted swedish light trainers of the type Saab Safari to warplanes by arming them with pods for unguided rockets. He wreaked havoc on the Nigerian air force that sported modern jet bombers and fighters, without being able to save the Biafrans though.

The whole thing is quite remarkable as it is an intelligent, inventive, cheap and low tech answer to an opponent who is superior numerically and technologically. For maximum payoff it would be consequent to use these aircraft against enemy airfields in an attempt to destroy the Sri Lankan aircraft on the ground to deny the Sri Lankan's the air advantage. And it seems the Tigers tried just that.

No matter what damage they caused, for the Tigers it is enormously successful PR wise, it makes the Sri Lankan air force the butt of jokes for the time being.

[ June 04, 2007, 14:37: Message edited by: Ragusa ]

 

*chuckle*
I always thought it was pointless to spend so much on a militarity budget.

 

That IS hillarious. I mean, it's turning a toy plane into a bomber. (OK technically not a toy, but certainly in the arena of recreational aircraft.) I wonder how much of a payload they could carry and still be able to take off.

 

Well, in WWII I think both sides used obsolete planes for such raids. I remember reading something about the Night Witches / Nachthexen, who used the Polikarpov Po-2 biplane and often avoided faster planes by flying under their stall speed.

Then again, why not? As the saying goes, when there's no fish, crowfish is also fish - and even antique planes can be very useful when you haven't had any before. This is especially true given how most modern weapons are designed to counter other modern weapons.

@Aldeth: given its empty weight and takeoff weight? I'd be surprised if it could take on 100 KG (appr. 200 pounds), and would expect something like half that amount. Still, if you don't expect it, 300 kilograms of bombs can wreak a lot of havoc. Political goals tend to require less firepower than military ones.

[ June 04, 2007, 16:57: Message edited by: The Shaman ]

 

Here's a bit on the Biafra story I mentioned:
http://www.brushfirewars.org/aircraft/mfi_9b_biafran/mfi_9b_biafran_1.htm

and one more article on Sri Lanka, with some more details:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/6496381.stm

 

My first thought was "What's that air shipping company gotten into now, if it's in AoLS?"

Then I wondered why we were looking back in history to the American Volunteer Group?

But it's good to see that the Tamils haven't rolled over and become assimilated completely...as unsettling as a civil war/rebellion/etc can be.

(In the '80s Newfoundland became host to a LARGE influx of Tamil refugees that were cast adrift offshore by people-smuggling freighters; as such, at the time I did some research into why they fled)

And Rags? I knew you'd reference von Rosen! I've always had aerial combat as an interest of mine, and I came across him in my hobbish studies - the man was...well, not a genius per se, but one of those lateral thinkers who see a loophole that everyone else's missed - and once they point it out, we all go "huh. So simple; how come we never thought of that?"

 

Admittedly, it was an allusion. I had a P40 E model kit in national chinese colours on my desk for a while, years back

And indeed, von Rosen is obvious in this context.

 

I don't find this amusing at all. LTTE is a terrorist organization that has killed hundreds of civilians. They use suicide bombing tactics, children for soldiers, and extortion as means for continuing the fight.

They have taken part in several campaigns with the goal of ethnic cleansing and routinely execute POW's even after agreeing to abide by the Geneva convention (over 700 have been so executed).

That they managed to find a weakness in the air defense system is not suprising or humorous. The same weakness was found in the US a number of years ago when a man landed his small airplane on the White House lawn.

I just hope Sri Lanka can close this avenue of attack soon. The death toll could be quite high if they do not.

 

T2,
I don't want to go into the 'who's the good guy, who's the bad guy' debate. It reliably leads nowhere. Usually there are two bad guys.

The root of the conflict lies in Singhalese pursuit of policies of Buddaisation. The 1972 constitution accorded Buddhism 'the foremost place' and directed the state to 'protect and foster it' - Buddhist supremacist policies. The Tamils are mostly Hindu. By 1989 the Singhalese had managed to resettle roughly 163.000 people in Tamil dominated areras, so they made up roughly 7% of the local population. The intent was obvious.
A defining moment of the relationship between the Singhalese government and the Tamils was 1983, when after an LTTE attack, riots broke out in Colombo and hundreds of Tamils were murdered by mobs, and the government waited for a couple of days before letting security forces restore order. The LTTE couldn't ask for a better recruiting argument. The LTTE started in 1972 as a student movement in opposition to the new constituition and the corresponding singhalese encroachment, especially re-settling of Buddhists into Tamil lands.

Of course, the history of the conflict goes even deeper than that. An interesting read from The Hindu, a large Indian Newspaper. Another backgrounder from the impeccable Asia Times.

I find Sri Lanka interesting because it shows you to what lengths an enthnic minority, much more with a religious difference to the majority, will go to maintain their way of life or achieve independence. That is no praise, just an observation.
Sri Lanka is one of Robert A. Pape's model cases for when suicide terrorism emerges. Preconditions are (a) foreign occupation (b) ethnic or especially religious difference and (c) the occupying power having a democratic government. Say hello to the US in Iraq, hello to Israel.

[ June 05, 2007, 11:31: Message edited by: Ragusa ]