Don't people study history any more?

For the past year I have been seeing the news stories about how hard it is to protect the merchant ships from the Somali pirates because they are so scattered about the region and the naval forces just can't cover all the territory. All I can do is scream at the TV or Radio when I hear these stories... Like there was a similar problem in the two World Wars with German submarines and surface raiders attacking and sinking allied shipping. At the time the allied countered with the convoy system a large group of ships would be collected and a small number of warships would escort them... by 1943 the Germans were suffering 50% losses to their submarine forces and surface raiders could not function at all. Why don't we do that now compared to the warships used by the Germans the Somali pirates are nothing. A couple frigates with helicopters and a few corvettes would be more than enough the convoys could be assembled at Alexandria Egypt, Cape Town South Africa, India, Sri Lanka and Singapore. a much more effective means of protecting them than trying to hunt down the random pirates over millions of miles of ocean.

See related story here ; www.reallypathetic.com/past/popinion236.html