USS Harry S. Truman (CVN 75) Got Bumped Ugly

big ship, small ocean

By now, I am sure everyone has already seen the above pic of the TRUMAN’s sponson right aft of the #3 elevator on her starboard rear quarter.

On the 13th, she had a collision with the Panamanian flagged, Turkish owned bulk carrier Besiktas-M. The Besikas-M is 550’ long, and the TRUMAN 1,093’ long … so there is a lot of energy even at slow speeds.

No one was killed, no flooding, no injuries.

We got lucky.

The Navy gave the following update Sunday:

The Nimitz-class aircraft carrier USS Harry S. Truman (CVN 75) arrived at U.S. Naval Support Activity (NSA) Souda Bay, Greece, on Feb. 16 to conduct an Emergent Repair Availability (ERAV) on the ship’s starboard quarter following a recent collision.

Damage assessed includes the exterior wall of two storage rooms and a maintenance space. External to the ship, damage assessed includes a line handling space, the fantail, and the platform above one of the storage spaces. Aircraft elevator number three sustained no damage and is fully operational. Forward Deployed Regional Maintenance Center (FDRMC) will lead the pier side ERAV, including an assessment and follow-on repairs to damages sustained.

“While the ship is fully mission capable and the ship conducted flight operations following the collision, pulling into port for emergent repairs will enable the ship to continue deployment as scheduled,” said Capt. Dave Snowden, Harry S. Truman’s commanding officer.

An assessment team will conduct a full survey of damaged areas and develop a repair plan to be executed immediately following completion of the assessment. The assessment team includes structural engineers, naval architects, and other personnel from FDRMC and Norfolk Naval Shipyard (NNSY). They will be supported by ship’s force personnel and local industry partners for the repair effort.

Sal Mercogliano posted a couple of graphics that give you a good idea of the geometry of the collision.

NB: Regarding the second image above, I corrected it because it originally showed a FORD Class CVN instead of a NIMITZ CVN, and I am a pedant.

We will learn more down the road about what happened, and there will be plenty of lessons learned. However, at this point, we simply don’t know much beyond what is available in open sources.

Could this have been nefarious? Sure, there is a non-zero chance it could be, but I would put that possibility in the low single digits given what we know right now.

It was almost midnight in one of the most chaotic parts of the ocean I can think of that isn’t off one of the major east-Asian ports.

As Ilgin Altincik pointed out, the area off Port Said is … challenging. I’ve been through it four times. It makes Thimble Shoal seem like the open Pacific.

If, as initially reported, after TRUMAN gets patched up in Souda Bay and can complete her deployment, well, that is a great thing for the other CVN’s in our fleet. They won’t have to cover her unexpected absence.

Let this be another reminder that we do not have enough aircraft carriers and airwings, and because of decisions made in the last half decade, the problem will get worse. We simply do not have enough CVN authorized to replace the ones that will decommission. Our airwings are short on aircraft, and the aircraft they have are limited in range due to both design and the myopic removal of organic tanking assets (buddy tanking does not count).

People who read too much military fiction and not enough military non-fiction—and are happy to spend billions for prototypes and nothing that will make shadows on the ramp or displace water—are slow-rolling funding and authorization for assets we will need in any Pacific fight west of the International Date Line. Their theories are creating very real damage to what we need in the real world. They are not building anything, but instead are destroying.

The 11 carriers we have now are inadequate for what our nation is asking of them. What if the TRUMAN got t-boned by the Besiktas-M and got holed? What would we do?

Luckily, we don’t have that problem…but were I in the position to do so, I’d call an emergency planning session to tell me exactly what we would do…and I would murder board and red hat it to death.

We got lucky in more than just the minor damage and lack of injury…we have an opportunity to answer a question too few want asked. Someone should ensure the new SECNAV is fully briefed on this within the first two weeks.