USS Harry S. Truman conducts routine flight operations in the U.S. 6th Fleet area of operations, Feb. 24, 2025, after departing Souda Bay, Greece, a day earlier, following the completion of repairs. Truman, along with the destroyer USS Jason Dunham, are back in the Middle East, a Defense Department official said Feb. 27. (Facebook/USS Harry S. Truman)
NAPLES, Italy — The aircraft carrier USS Harry S. Truman returned to the Middle East this week after a stay at a Navy base in Greece for repairs following a collision with a cargo vessel in the eastern Mediterranean Sea.
Truman and the destroyer USS Jason Dunham are in the U.S. 5th Fleet area of operations, a Defense Department official said Thursday on background because they were not authorized to speak publicly by name.
Truman’s transit Wednesday through the Suez Canal, which connects the eastern Mediterranean to the Red Sea, also was noted by several ship watchers and analysts citing data from marinetraffic.com.
“She’s back,” Sal Mercogliano, an adjunct professor at the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy and shipping expert, said in a post on the social media site X on Tuesday as the carrier neared the canal.
Truman had turned on its automatic identification system, or AIS, when the ship entered the congested area near Port Said, Egypt, on Tuesday as it prepared to enter the canal, he said.
Mercogliano noted in a Feb. 13 video posted to his YouTube account that Truman wasn’t using the system at the time of the late-night collision with the Panama-flagged cargo ship Besiktas-M near the Suez Canal on Feb. 12.
Jason Dunham, which was escorting Truman, also wasn’t using its AIS but turned it on shortly after the collision, Mercogliano said at the time. He noted that it wasn’t clear why the ships weren’t broadcasting their location.
At the time, the Navy wouldn’t say if Truman was operating its AIS prior to the collision, stating that it was too early in the investigation to comment on the circumstances of the incident.
In 2017, the Navy began requiring all warships to broadcast the signal in certain circumstances, such as high traffic areas.
The requirement followed two deadly collisions that same year involving U.S. destroyers and merchant ships that killed seven and 10 sailors, respectively.
“AIS is primarily and foremost a navigation tool for collision avoidance,” the Coast Guard states on its website. “The AIS corroborates and provides identification and position of vessels not always possible through voice radio communication or radar alone.”
Other factors involved in the collision also offer insight into what may have happened, Steven Wills, a naval analyst with the Center for Maritime Strategy at the Navy League of the United States, told Stars and Stripes earlier this month.
International navigation regulations mandate that ships pass each other port-to-port, meaning their left sides must face each other, he said.
But photos of the vessels’ damage show contact on each ship’s right, or starboard, side.
“A starboard-to-starboard passage is irregular and suggests some kind of navigation problem for one or both ships,” Wills said.
A little more than a week after the collision, the service fired Capt. Dave Snowden, Truman’s commanding officer, citing a loss of confidence in his ability to command.
Capt. Chris Hill, commanding officer of the aircraft carrier USS Dwight D. Eisenhower, was named Truman’s interim commander.
The collision happened as Truman presumably was returning to the Middle East after a port call at Naval Support Activity Souda Bay on the Greek island of Crete.
The carrier sustained damage to a line handling space, its fantail and a platform above a storage space. The exterior walls of two storage rooms and a maintenance space also were included in initial damage assessments.
Repairs and a thorough evaluation of Truman’s hull, which was penetrated well above the waterline on its right back end, required a week stay at Souda Bay.
Those repairs included removing damaged pieces of metal and installing weatherproofing bulkheads, which are interior vertical walls that form compartments in a ship, the Navy said earlier this week.
After leaving Norfolk, Va., in September for deployment to the U.S. 6th Fleet area of operations, Truman entered the Middle East on Dec. 14.
The carrier spent nearly two months in the Red Sea defending against Iranian-backed Houthi militant attacks on shipping before departing earlier this month, first arriving at Souda Bay on Feb. 6.
Carrier Air Wing 1, which is embarked on Truman, has flown over 5,500 sorties since its deployment, the Navy said Monday.
Those missions included two strikes into Houthi-controlled Yemen territory and a strike against Islamic State targets in northeast Somalia in coordination with U.S. Africa Command, the service said.
bath.alison@starsandstripes.com @alisonbath_
