The USS Harry S. Truman aircraft carrier was involved in a collision Wednesday with a merchant ship during its current deployment to the Middle East, according to the Navy.
The Navy’s Sixth Fleet said in a statement that the carrier collided with the merchant vessel Besiktas-M just before midnight local time while operating near Port Said, Egypt, in the Mediterranean Sea.
The collision appears to have occurred outside the city, which sits at the northern opening to the Suez Canal, and as a result is an area of dense maritime traffic, with ships coming in and out of the canal as well as others waiting to begin their transit.
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The Navy, in its statement, said that the collision did not result in flooding or injuries aboard the Truman but stopped short of saying that the ship was undamaged.
However, the service stressed that the carrier’s propulsion plant — powered by a pair of nuclear reactors — was “unaffected and in a safe and stable condition.”
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Meanwhile, the Besiktas is a Panamanian-flagged bulk cargo ship that had just passed through the Suez Canal and was on its way to a port in Romania, according to ship tracking websites.
The cargo ship, with a length of 620 feet and a width of 105 feet, is roughly half the size of the Truman, which measures a bit over 1,000 feet in length and 252 feet at its flight deck.
A Navy official told Military.com that the cargo ship suffered some damage, but none of its crew was injured.
The collision comes just months after the Truman was involved in combat operations in the Red Sea against Houthi rebels and lost a fighter jet to friendly fire.
On Dec. 22, the USS Gettysburg crew fired on an F/A-18 that had just flown off the deck of the Truman aircraft carrier, destroying the aircraft and forcing its two aviators to eject.
One of the two sailors suffered minor injuries.
Since then, few details have been released about the incident and investigations are still believed to be ongoing. However, the Navy’s top aviation officer said in mid-January that officials have already done “a big debrief, basically, to make sure we know what happened and why.”
The Navy’s statement said that the Truman collision is now under investigation and promised to release more information “as it becomes available.”
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