₦airaland Forum

naptu2:
I can still remember NTA's very first report from Liberia (in 1990) as if it was yesterday. The cameraman was with the troops on either NNS Ambe or NNS Ofiom (I can't remember exactly which of the LSTs) and he was filming the Port of Monrovia from the ship when a battle broke out between Samuel Doe's men and Charles Taylor's men. We could hear the explosions from the port and see the black smoke in the sky.

It took some time, but Doe's men were able to retain control of the port and the Nigerian soldiers landed safely.

I can't remember the name of the NTA correspondent.

naptu2:
1) Landing Ship Tank (LST) : A landing ship tank is a kind of naval vessel that can carry tanks, trucks, SUVs, etc and land them directly on shore without requiring port facilities. LSTs usually have a roll-on-roll-off (RORO) ramp with which vehicles can roll ashore or onto the ship without needing a crane to carry them.

A Dravo built LST landing a tank on a beach during World War II.
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Landing ship tanks were very important in the Pacific theatre of World War 2, when Commonwealth and US forces battled the Japanese from island to island. They ferried men, vehicles and other materials from captured island to the next island battlefield.

LSTs were also very important to Ecomog operations in Liberia and Sierra Leone. They carried nigerian troops and equipment to Liberia and Sierra Leone and they also carried refugees in the opposite direction.

NNS Ambe. NNS Ambe has a regular ramp at the rear of the ship (just like the World War 2 LST pictured above) and it also has an articulated ramp in front (which is why the front is higher than other parts of the ship). The ramp in front can be lowered and extended when the ship wants to offload its cargo in very shallow water. NNS Ambe played a very important role in Nigeria's Ecomog operations in Liberia.
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naptu2: NNS Ambe (LST1312)
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The landing ship tank, NNS Ambe, undergoing repairs.

I first knew what it was in 1990. On the 9 o'clock news they showed troops preparing to sail to Liberia. Its hull opened and armoured tanks, personnel carriers and fighting vehicles were rolling into it (or was it its sister ship, the Ofiom?). It's a Landing Ship Tank (LST)! The C130 of the navy.

I wish we had amphibious landing ships and amphibious assault ships.

Racoon:
Let's see what is building naptu2.I appreciate your good grasp & understanding of our national histroy.

naptu2:
The big issue has been maintenance (particularly during the military era) and the two examples that best illustrate this fact are NNS Aradu and NNS Ambe.

Ships can serve for a long time. The US used World War 2 era battleships up into the 1990s. The key thing is that you maintain them properly.

NNS Aradu is a Meko 360 class frigate (probably the first one ever built). This means that its parts are perfectly interchangeable, therefore it should not have to be alongshore for a long time, but it was not maintained properly and so it spent almost 12 years alongshore. It has run aground several times because of bad seamanship. Thankfully it has been better treated since 1999 than it was during the military era.

I do not think that we would have been successful in Liberia without NNS Ambe and her twin sister NNS Ofiom (they were used to transport troops, armoured cars, tanks, etc from Ecomog countries to Liberia and Sierra Leone and their ro-ro capabilities ensured that we could land the equipment despite hostile fire from shore). Yet we have treated both ships badly. NNS Ofiom is practically dead. The roro ramp of NNS Ambe has been welded shut. What use is a Landing Ship Tank without its ramp? It has suffered fires and a naval training exercise had to be abandoned in 2004 because the Ambe did not arrive shore when it was supposed to (it broke down).

NNS Obuma suffered similar fate when it was still alive and that's what made the government decide to replace it with NNS Aradu. I reckon that it could have served us for 10 to 15 more years.

These ships are not really that old, but they have not been maintained properly (credit to Admiral Adekeye for what he did with NNS Andoni, NNS Aradu and what he planned to do with NNS Obuma)

NNS Ambe Hippo-class Type 502 class LST

The Type 502 class LSTs Ambe and Ofion were designed by HDW as a private-venture for sale to the West German navy, which was not interested. The warship displaces 1,750 tons fully loaded and has a length of 87m and a beam of 14m. The ship is powered by two diesel engines each driving twin shafts and can maintain a speed of 17 knots. She would normally carry a crew of 59. Armament is light, consisting of several anti aircraft guns and two 20mm machine guns. They are of ro-ro design, with a lowerable stern loading ramp and articulated bow ramp. The machinery is unusual in that each engine drives multiple shafts instead of the normal other way around.

Typical load configuration options

5 T-54/55 tanks + x4 trucks or artillery pieces + x35 fully-equipped marines

10 BTR-60 APCs + x66 fully-equipped marines

540 fully-equipped marines

Both ships suffered minor fires during the 1980s which were repaired, but maintenance on the bow ramp machinery was poor and by 1992 both vessels had non-operational ramps. Several sources state that both ships had ramps welded shut, rendering them transports instead of LSTs.

Ofiom was severely damaged during a failed beaching in 1992 and was abandoned pierside. In 1999, a contract was signed with foreign technicians to repair the ship however in April 2001 they departed due to non-payment, with only half the repairs completed. NNS Ofion had not been operational for over two decades while some of her parts had been used over time to replace some faulty parts of Ambe. In 2011 it was announced that the Nigerian navy again planned to finish the repairs.

NNS Ofiom emerged winners of the First Nigerian Navy Ship 2009 WEY C.O's Cup after defeating the NNS AMBE 4-2. The event which began on September 18th 2009 saw the two contending sides NNS Ofiom and NNS AMBE qualifying for the grand finale. Both sides dismissed their opponents with ease on their way to the final and Navy Town residents looked forward to a great final. The competition came to an end at the Road 3 Football field Navy Town, Lagos, after weeks of exciting football action.

NNS Ambe, one of the two amphibious vessels acquired by the Federal Government of Nigeria in 1978 was said to have been the country's only operational Amphibious war ship used for lifting a battalion and their equipment as the second, NNS Ofion, was almost a carcass as major parts have been used to keep the burnt Ambe in shape. The ship had a capacity of lifting a battalion of 600 soldiers and their equipment at once. NNS Ambe, which became fully operational in the 1980s, played a significant roles during the ECOMOG operations in Liberia and Sierra Leone.

Over 72000 refugees were sea-lifted from Liberia to Nigeria by NNS AMBE and some merchant ships. Transport ships loaded with troops and equipment of the five-nation Economic Community of West African States Military Observation Group (ECOMOG) entered the port of Monrovia. During the afternoon of 24 August 1990, Nigeria’s NNS Ambe (LST 1123) and Ghana’s MV Tano River maneuvered to the mouth of the jetty area of Freeport. They temporarily withdrew after receiving some sporadic mortar fire and reentered the port later that evening. After docking, a small mix of troops debarked.

In Liberia during the ECOMOG operations, the NA could not integrate fully with NN. The problems encountered by the 2 Services was the delayed movement into Liberia from Sierra Leone as a result of malfunction of the loading ramp on the LST. Even when the ramp was repaired through combined efforts of the NN and NA Engineers, the problem re-occurred on landing at Freeport Monrovia. Also the armaments carried by the LST were not functional. This had impacted negatively on the confidence and high morale of the NA troops. The reason for these problems were attributed to lack of training for joint operations by the NA and NN before induction into the operation in Liberia.

On 02 December 1997 Sierra Leone's military junta accused Nigeria on Tuesday of moving an amphibious tank landing ship and two support vessels into Sierra Leone's territorial waters. A military spokesman said the NNS Ambe and two support ships had anchored 30 nautical miles off the Sierra Leonean coast before pulling back into international waters. "The three Nigerian warships which anchored about 30 nautical miles in Sierra Leone territorial waters have sailed back into international waters from their former position," the spokesman said.

She was also used in ferreting of drug from Europe to Nigeria at a time when there was said to be scarcity of drugs in Nigeria. In July 2001 naval authorities said that five warships in the Nigerian Navy inventory, including NNS Siri, NNS Ekun, NNS Nyam and the Frigate, NNS Ambe, would be seaworthy by December 2001 after undergoing retrofitting. In 2004 the Navy commenced refitting activities on NNS Ambe and NNS Ofiom. But within a few years NNS Ambe was reported out of commission in a poor condition.

Operation TAKUTE EKPE (Lion Trap) was held 10-15 May 2004. There were difficulties in establishing radio communications between NNS AMBE, the ship that was to beach land the troops and other participating forces. TAKUTE EKPE was aborted at the last minute because NNS AMBE, the main amphibious ship, failed to arrive at the designated landing site at the scheduled time ostensibly due to defects. On that occasion, NN operational efficiency suffered due to no ship availability. The NN landing ship that was to land troops in the theater of operation never got there until after the exercise had been deactivated because the state of the ship was not considered in the planning of the exercise. The NN ship was unserviceable and yet it was earmarked for the exercise. This was a typical example of an exercise marred by poor logistic planning and lack of coordination due to the absence of a joint logistics system.

Nigerian Naval Dockyard at Wilmot Point, Lagos was commissioned in 1990 to undertake refit of Nigerian Naval Ships. Although the naval dockyard has been in commission from 1990, it was only in 2003 that a comprehensive and structured program of refitting the entire fleet began in earnest. In 2007 NNS Ambe was undergoing refit. some marine engineers were carrying out some repairs that required welding when fire at about 2130 hours on 20 November 2007, in the superstructure of the ship. The fire was extinguished by the timely action of the Lagos State Fire Service, but by some accounts the vessel was reportedly destroyed by the fire. The fire was confined to an above deck section of the ship and the damage is considered to be minor. This happened at a time there was renewed tension in the Bakassi Peninsula, itself an Island, that would require the use of the NNS Ambe to lift troops.

In 2010, troop carrier landing craft NNS AMBE of the Nigerian Navy under repair at Navy dock yard, Wilmot Point, Lagos had caught fire under her starboard bridge deck. Ambe suffered a severe fire which started in her cargo deck and spread upwards under the starboard side of the bridge. The bridge and radio room were destroyed, and the crew berthing spaces severely damaged. The fire burnt out the entire bridge and part of the accommodation, leaving the main mast tilted to starboard on top of the compass deck which had also been seriously damaged.

In August 2010 a civilian company, Atlantic Marine Services, was contracted to remove the mast. AMS was called in to remove the mast as it was threatening to collapse. With the help of their tug EXPLORER they mobilized their 1000dwt barge H457 and their Leibherr HS871 crane alongside the NNS AMBE. The mast was secured, cut and lifted off on 13 August 2010 and delivered to NNS Olokun maintenance yard for further dismantling and repair. Since them Ambe was moored at the Wilmot Point naval dockyard in Lagos awaiting repairs.