US Navy carrier collides with cargo ship near Suez Canal

US Navy carrier collides with cargo ship near Suez Canal

The nuclear-powered aircraft carrier USS Harry S. Truman was involved in a collision with a merchant ship near Egypt in the Mediterranean on Wednesday evening, a Navy spokesman said Thursday.

Accidents at sea: background to the collision

The exact causes of the collision between the US warship and the Panama-flagged merchant ship Besiktas-M are still unclear. The spokesman said the collision did not cause flooding aboard the Truman and the nuclear propulsion systems were not affected. No injuries were reported on either vessel, although the merchant vessel sustained some damage, a Navy official reported.

Collision investigation

An investigation is underway to determine how the collision occurred. However, the official noted that the area near the Suez Canal is typically very dense with ships. The Besiktas-M, a 188-meter-long bulk carrier, had left the Suez Canal and was headed to Romania, tracking website Marine Traffic shows. The Truman, which is 335 meters long and belongs to the Nimitz class, headed towards the canal.

Ship traffic and accessibility of the Suez Canal

Marine expert Sal Mercogliano, a professor at Campbell University, explained in an X Spaces interview that the area where the collision occurred, near an anchorage off Egypt's Port Said, contained around 100 ships at the time. Former U.S. Navy Capt. Carl Schuster, a lecturer at Hawaii Pacific University, said such conditions leave little room for error. “There is not much room for maneuver in a restricted sea area, and both ships require approximately one nautical mile to stop,” Schuster noted.

The USS Harry S. Truman: Operations and background

Last week, the Truman was in Souda Bay, Greece, for a "working port visit" after two months of conducting combat operations in the Central Command area, according to a Navy release. During this period, it conducted and launched several attacks against Houthi rebels in Yemen Air strikes against ISIS in Somalia.

Rarity of collisions between military and merchant ships

The Truman is one of 11 aircraft carriers in the US Navy fleet. Accidents involving these massive ships and merchant vessels are rare, as the carriers usually travel in the company of a battle group protected by a number of destroyers. However, ships entering the Suez Canal must travel in a single file, making them more vulnerable to collisions, experts said.

Historical collisions

The last known collision of a U.S. carrier with a merchant ship occurred on July 22, 2004, when a dhow, a sailing ship common in the Middle East, rammed the former USS John F. Kennedy in the Persian Gulf, the maritime website reports USNI News.

In 2017, two US Navy destroyers were involved in fatal collisions. Seven sailors died when the USS Fitzgerald rammed a cargo ship off Japan in June of that year, and two months later 10 sailors died when the USS John S. McCain collided with a tanker off Singapore and Malaysia.