What? U.S. Aircraft Carrier Harry S. Truman Collides with Merchant Ship off the Coast of Egypt
On Wednesday February 12 the USS Harry S. Truman (CVN-75), a Nimitz class aircraft carrier, collided with a merchant ship off the coast of Egypt. U.S. Naval Institute News has the story: USS Harry S. Truman Collides with Merchant Vessel in Mediterranean Sea:
USS Harry S. Truman (CVN-75), the flagship of the Harry S. Truman Carrier Strike Group, collided with M/V Besiktas-M on Wednesday evening near Port Said, Egypt, in the Mediterranean Sea, the Navy said Thursday.The carrier did not experience flooding and the crew did not report injuries, Cmdr. Tim Gorman, the spokesperson for U.S. 6th Fleet, said in a statement.Truman‘s propulsion plants are unaffected. The collision, which occurred at approximately 11:45 p.m. on Wednesday, is under investigation. The damage is above the waterline of the carrier, a Navy official told USNI News. No aircraft aboard the deck were damaged, another Navy official said.The Harry S. Truman CSG deployed in September 2024 from Naval Station Norfolk in Virginia. After exercising in the North Sea, the strike group entered U.S. Central Command in December.Truman and destroyer USS Jason Dunham (DDG-109) made a port call to U.S. Naval Support Activity Souda Bay in Greece last week.Port Said, Egypt, is at the northern tip of the Suez Canal, where it meets the Mediterranean Sea. The position of Truman suggests the carrier was returning to the Red Sea after a port visit to Souda Bay, Greece. It’s unclear whether Jason Dunham was sailing with the carrier at the time of the collision.Based on AIS data, Besiktas-M had just transited the Suez Canal and was bound for the Black Sea port of Constanta, Romania. Besiktas-M, a bulk carrier, is more than 550 feet long with a deadweight of 53,000 tons. It’s unclear who owns and manages the ship.The merchant vessel previously collided with M/V Common Spirit in August 2016 in the Bangladesh port city of Chittagong, according to the ship tracking site Vessel Tracker.The last known collision between a carrier and a merchant ship was on July 22, 2004, when the former USS John F. Kennedy (CV-67) collided with a small dhow in the Persian Gulf during night helicopter operations. The commander of the carrier was relieved after an initial investigation.
Here are a couple pictures of the damage suffered by the Truman and the Besiktas:
You may be wondering how an aircraft carrier can possibly run into a merchant ship, but as the end of the USNI News article suggests, these types of incidents are not impossible.
And that is correct. In fact, mishaps at sea happen a lot more than you might suspect.
For example, here is a picture of USS San Francisco (SNN-711) after she ran aground in January 2005:
And here is a video of the damage after USS John McCain collided with a Liberian-flagged tanker off the coast of Singapore in August 2017 (note: the hole in the side of the ship isn’t supposed to be there):
And here is a fun one involving a sub and a surface ship:
And it’s not only U.S. military vessels that have issues…who can forget about the explosion aboard the Russian submarine Kursk that resulted in the loss of all hands in August 2000:
And there have been several collisions between U.S. military vessels and Russian units:
So how did the Truman collide with the merchant ship Besiktas? Well, for one thing, as you can see from the above photos, operating any military vessel at sea is an inherently hazardous undertaking.
And we probably won’t know for a while what caused the Truman collision until the official Navy investigation is released, but I am going to go out on a limb and predict that the Commanding Officer of the Truman is likely to lose his job. I’m not saying that the Captain Dave Snowden is substandard in any way. On the contrary, he seems to be quite the experienced naval officer. But something happened that caused this collision, and it will likely not be explained by someone making a simple mistake…these things are usually a failure at the top of some sort.
And maybe even the admiral in charge of the Truman Strike Group will get fired, as the Truman collision comes on top of the recent shooting down of a Navy F/A-18 by one of the Truman Strike Group’s own ships:
For an example of when a senior officer got fired for a seemingly simple mistake, see the case of the USS San Francisco grounding (see picture of the damaged sub above), in which one sailor died and 98 were injured; initial reporting suggested that the sub had simply hit “an uncharted seamount.” Turns out that wasn’t the whole story – the bottom topography was shown more clearly on a chart that the sub had on board but failed to use. The Captain was fired and six other crewmen were reprimanded because “‘several critical navigational and voyage planning procedures’ were not being implemented” aboard the sub.
We’ll see. In any case, fortunately no one on Truman was hurt and the damage seems pretty minimal.
Stay sharp out there!
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