USS Harry S. Truman collides with a 616' merchant vessel at 11:46 pm local time. Commander in Chief must be proud. Reminiscent of 2017 in the Pacific with two naval ship collisions. US aircraft carrier collides with ship in Mediterranean Sea
I can’t even begin to go through the loooong series of mistakes and terrible choices it takes from multiple people to run a 100,000 ton ship into a 600’ cargo vessel.
the skipper of that carrier will be lucky to be piloting a tugboat. that's a big deal to allow that to happen on his watch.
Although it won't save the Captain of the carrier's career there is a very good chance that the merchant vessel was partially or maybe even primarily at fault.
That could very well be the case. There will be an investigation. One ship is always primarily at fault in these situations, even if the other ship could have acted differently to avoid it.
Of course we need to keep in mind that any merchant ship could have an FSB or Chinese intelligence officer as captain and they aren't shy of cutting underseas cables by dragging anchors, so why should they be afraid of "making a navigational error" or "having a steering casualty" at the wrong time to take an aircraft carrier out of service? Having said that, Port Said is a very busy shipping channel, and on the other hand, that is where the chance of pulling off a maneuver in close quarters would best be conducted to damage a carrier.
According to the Navy, the USS Truman and 2 escort destroyers left the battle group (my term, not their's) in the Red Sea on 2/1 and entered the Mediterranean Sea and sailed to a NATO port in Greece on 2/6. One of the two destroyers remained with the Truman while the second proceeded to the coast of Egypt. The Truman left port and headed for Egypt where it collided with the cargo hauler on 2/12.
