U.S.S. Harry S. Truman Carrier Collides With Commercial Ship Off Egypt

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.