A United States Navy aircraft carrier collided with a merchant vessel in the Mediterranean Sea shortly before midnight on Wednesday near a port in Egypt, Navy officials said.
The U.S.S. Harry S. Truman, a Nimitz-class carrier, had been operating in the Red Sea while deployed under U.S. Central Command since Dec. 14, helping to launch attacks in Yemen against Houthi militias there that have been attacking civilian ships and vessels tied to Israel.
There were no reports of flooding or injuries aboard the Truman, and the Navy said in a statement on Thursday that the ship’s propulsion systems, powered by two onboard nuclear reactors, were “unaffected and in a safe and stable condition.”
The Navy also said the crash was under investigation.
The online ship tracking service Vessel Tracker reported that there were no injuries to the crew of the commercial vessel, the Besiktas-M, a bulk carrier built in 2003 and sailing under the Panamanian flag. The ship was traveling from the port of Aqaba in Jordan to Constanta, a port city in Romania by the Black Sea.
The collision near Port Said in Egypt breaks an apparent safety streak for the U.S. Navy when it comes to crashes with commercial ships. Before the Truman’s collision, the most notable recent ones had happened in 2017, and they led to an internal reckoning. Two such collisions in the Western Pacific killed 17 sailors that year. Navy investigations found they had been “avoidable,” resulting from crew errors.
Those crashes led to a safety stand-down of all Navy ships, and the commander of the Seventh Fleet in Japan, which oversees Navy operations between the Indian Ocean and the international date line, was relieved of duty. The Navy’s Pacific Fleet commander chose to retire after the two collisions, when he was told he was no longer in line for a promotion.
On June 17 that year, the U.S.S. Fitzgerald struck the ACX Crystal, a 30,000-ton container ship off the coast of Japan, ripping a hole in the destroyer’s hull. Seven U.S. sailors died, and the warship’s commander and executive officer were both fired after an investigation.
A little more than two months later, a second destroyer, the U.S.S. John S. McCain, struck the Alnic MC, a 600-foot oil tanker, off the coast of Singapore, punching through the warship’s hull. Ten Navy sailors died when their living quarters were flooded with seawater.
By historical standards, the Navy’s record in recent decades has been “extraordinarily good,” according to a 2022 report written by Samuel J. Cox, a retired admiral who leads the Navy’s History and Heritage Command.
And fatal collisions for Navy warships have been relatively rare. In 2004, the U.S.S. John F. Kennedy, an aircraft carrier of an earlier design than the Truman, collided in the Persian Gulf with a small traditional Arab sailing boat used mainly for transportation and fishing. The boat sank immediately, and all aboard are believed to have died. Two warplanes on the Kennedy were damaged.
The U.S.S. Greeneville, a Los Angeles-class fast attack submarine, collided with a Japanese fishing boat, the Ehime Maru, off the coast of Oahu, Hawaii in 2021, killing nine passengers on the fishing boat, including four high school students.
The Truman has nine aviation squadrons embarked and has been accompanied by a cruiser and two destroyers. Together, the Truman Strike Group has recently launched attacks on the Iran-backed Houthi militias, according to Central Command. The U.S. military has carried out a series of strikes on the Houthis, who on Thursday suggested they would continue attacking Israel and ships in the Red Sea if the cease-fire in Gaza fell apart.
The collision on Wednesday was the second-known major mishap of the Truman’s current deployment.
On Dec. 22, two F/A-18 Hornet fighters flying from the Truman were mistakenly shot down by the U.S.S. Gettysburg, the cruiser accompanying the carrier, during an aerial refueling mission.
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