Bomb da Base

The day before yesterday (the 28th of October) the LTTE carried out one of their (in)famous air raids. Starting from somewhere in the uncleared area they flew their little two-seater Zlin Z-143 light aircraft and dropped bombs on Mannar - and, according to the LKGOV, Colombo.

The attack in Mannar was at the Thalladi base, which injured a soldier. The attack on Colombo damaged a fan at the Kelani-tissa thermal power station.

The attack on Mannar doesn't raise too many questions. After all it is in Mannar. But the one in Colombo definitely has raised questions.

The big question raised is, What was the air force, and army doing for all this time?

It is not as if it takes a short time to fly down from Mannar to Colombo. Especially in light aircraft with a maximum speed of 220kph. So what were they doing?

This is, of course, the subject of much media speculation. Articles are written in all the non-governent papers asking what the government is doing. After all The Beast spent billions of rupees on buying the MiG 27 planes. Some of that money even went towards the purchase of the planes. You lot can figure out where the rest of the money went. It's not exactly rocket science.

Then there were the, other expenses. The costs of buying ground based radar to protect The Beast. The cost of buying loads of anti-aircraft batteries. Maintaining the stuff. Ammo. All of it. After all, the protection of the government is our protection right? Right?

But back to the story. The LTTE attacked Mannar. The little plane flew over, and dropped a few bombs.

Then almost simultaneously, they attacked Colombo. Simultaneously. At the same bloody time!

Now this is not easy. Simultaneous attacks on two different targets are, to say the least, a logistical nightmare. Its not like one of the planes can spend time hovering around one of the targets waiting for the other to be in position. Especially not when your entire air force is two, maximum three planes.

But they managed it. They managed to bomb Mannar, and Kelanitissa at almost the same time. At the maximum within 15 minutes of each other. Using light planes that can be blown off course, face headwinds, or just generally screw up. Attacking targets many hundreds of kilometers apart.

Or what if they didn't? The LKGOV tells us that the LTTE is a ruthless killer team with highly intelligent tacticians. Then they tell us that the LTTE is not as smart as we think. Which is it? Maybe it is both.

In 2007, when the LTTE attacked the Sapugaskanda oil refinery, they flew in, dropped two bombs, flew off. The bombs did not explode. The only casualty of the entire thing was a guy who died in Wellawatta. A suburb of Colombo, about 30 to 40km away. How does he die? When the LTTE attacked, the anti-aircraft batteries opened up. An unexploded shell crashed through his roof, and exploded in his room.

The basis of anti-aircraft artillery is to fire a shell that explodes in the air, filling the area with shrapnel. The currently used one is in the 40mm range. Meaning that it is 40mm in diameter. It goes up. It explodes. It fills the air with shrapnel. But what happens if it doesn't explode? What happens if the shell comes down. Then you are in the realm of ballistics. You have to wonder where the shells come down. And they often do come down unexploded. It was such a shell that killed the man in Wellawatta. Doing more damage than the bombs dropped by the LTTE.

Go get a map of Colombo. I'll wait. They have them all over the Internet. Draw a line from the President's house to wellawatte. Measure it. Now use that distance as a radius and draw a circle. Guess what falls in that radius. None other than Kelanitissa.

Now look at the videos online of all the ack-ack fire over Colombo that night.

While the LKGOV would love to have us think and believe that the LTTE attacked Colombo, it is far more likely that the attack was an unexploded shell. Fired by the forces who opened up at the sky at the merest hint of an attack, an unexploded shell wet into the sky, and came down in Kelanitissa.

With all this, it looks like LKGOV is doing more damage than the LTTE airforce is. I do hope they're proud.