The nuclear-powered aircraft carrier USS Harry S. Truman was involved in a collision with a merchant ship near Egypt in the Mediterranean Sea on Wednesday night, a Navy spokesperson said Thursday. <\/p>\n
It\u2019s not clear what caused the collision between the US warship and the Panamanian-flagged vessel Besiktas-M, but the spokesperson said it did not result in any flooding on board the Truman and its nuclear propulsion plants were unaffected. <\/p>\n
No injuries were reported on either vessel, though the merchant ship sustained some damage, a Navy official said. <\/p>\n
An investigation is ongoing to determine how they collided, but the official noted that the area they were in near the Suez Canal is typically very densely packed with ships. <\/p>\n
The Besiktas-M, a 617-foot (188-meter) long bulk carrier, had exited the Suez Canal and was heading to Romania, according to tracking website Marine Traffic. <\/p>\n
The Truman, a 1,100-foot-long Nimitz-class aircraft carrier, was heading toward the canal, tracking data indicates. <\/p>\n
Marine expert Sal Mercogliano, a professor at Campbell University, said in an X Spaces conversation that the area where the collision occurred, near an anchorage off Egypt\u2019s Port Said, had around 100 ships in it at the time of the incident. <\/p>\n
Former US Navy captain Carl Schuster, an instructor at Hawaii Pacific University, said such conditions leave little room for error. <\/p>\n
\u201cThere is not a lot of room for maneuvering in a restricted seaway and both ships require about one nautical mile to stop,\u201d Schuster said. <\/p>\n
Small navigation mistakes, misreading of the other ship\u2019s intentions or delayed decision-making from the crew of either ship could have put them in danger quickly \u201cwith very few viable options,\u201d Schuster said. <\/p>\n
Last week the Truman was in Souda Bay, Greece, for a \u201cworking port visit\u201d after two months of combat operations in the Central Command region, a Navy statement said. During that time, it conducted multiple strikes against Houthi rebels in Yemen and launched airstrikes against ISIS in Somalia, the Navy said. <\/p>\n
The Truman is one of 11 aircraft carriers in the US Navy fleet. <\/p>\n
Accidents involving the huge ships and commercial vessels are rare as the carriers usually travel with a strike group, protected by a screen of destroyers. <\/p>\n
But ships entering the Suez Canal must travel in single file, which could make them more vulnerable to a collision, experts said. <\/p>\n
The last known time a US carrier collided with a merchant vessel was on July 22, 2004, when a dhow, a sailing vessel common in the Middle East, struck the former USS John F. Kennedy in the Persian Gulf, according to maritime outlet USNI News. <\/p>\n
Two US Navy destroyers were involved in fatal collisions in 2017. Seven sailors died after the USS Fitzgerald struck a cargo ship off Japan in June that year, and 10 sailors were killed when the USS John S McCain collided with a tanker off Singapore and Malaysia two months later. <\/p>\n<\/p>\n
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