Helge Ingstad: Warship collides with tanker in fjord

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-46136564

Norway has evacuated the entire crew of one of its warships after it collided in a fjord with an oil tanker.
Seven people were lightly injured in the collision in the Hjeltefjord near Bergen in the early hours of Thursday, rescuers say. The frigate has been listing dangerously.
The KNM Helge Ingstad had been returning from Nato military exercises.
The tanker, the Sola TS, was only slightly damaged and it appears that it did not spill oil.
It was not immediately clear what had caused the collision, which reportedly occurred shortly after 04:00 (03:00 GMT), and led to 137 people being taken off the warship.

Glad it sounds like the folks are okay, and also, not being political, but glad it wasn't one of America's warships doing the colliding this time.

Yes, good to know that no deaths reported. The warship does not look too good based on that twitter image in the article!

That video looked bad. Taken lots of water and a serious list to stern and starboard.

Yep. They beached her to stop her sinking. Pretty bad, this. One of our most advanced warships. Wonder who is to blame for the collision.

I wonder how the #%&*$# they managed to do that.

The tanker had the right of way due to where it came from and direction of traffic, so it is entirely the frigate's fault.
How does a modern frigate not manage to detect a supertanker in calm sees with it's sensors or even the Mk IIs or turn away at the last minute? It's not like it takes 2 miles to turn a frigate...

This smells of someone falling asleep on the bridge.

A fifth of our navy crippled :P thankfully they had the sense to sail/tow the ship to the shallows so it won't sink, but still it'll cost a #%&*$# to repair/refurbish it.

That is some gash,

I’m so glad they put that “music” to the video. It made it so much more informative and enjoyable.

Why do people think their music additions improve videos?

I will be surprised if that warship ever sees active duty again. Sad. Hope they prove me wrong.

SHould be easily repaired. Just mostly hull damage and flooding. Just grab a floating dock and ship it a drydock.

That is as long as the drydock stays afloat...



Dry dock sinks

Depends on how damaged the keel is. If it is bent enough to affect handling safely at top speed, it going to get junked.

Glad it didn't sink and take part of the crew with it.


Wheels

She has slipped into deeper water, almost completely submerged now. I can't imagine it ever being cost effective to raise and refurbish this vessel now.

Yeah, I was proven wrong

Lots of speculations in the press here, if the wires keeping it up was erronously attached and so forth. Also about the accident itself.

It will be raised, that is a given. Refurbished is another. The way our pissant #%&*$# military and politicans thinks it'll be probbaly written off and not replaced.

Wow, both ships under VTS control!!!!!!

Don't people know how to slow down in questionable traffic situations.

First thing I was taught when still a deckhand and learning to drive just point to point, "When in doubt, pull em back!". meaning if you have any questions on navigation SLOW DOWN to minimum steerage speed.

Was this Naval vessel inbound to port after being at sea for awhile? If so, that says a lot to me.

Yes it was returning from a NATO exercise. I didn't read the article posted but another article and a watch change had taken place ~15 minutes earlier.

In my old business, a vast majority of near misses, mishaps and, accidents at sea occurred when a vessel was inbound for shore leave, crew changes etc.

When you have been at sea for awhile you take chances to get "home" and off the freakin boat.

I have done it myself, even when telling myself to NOT do it.

Not very often though, and I have pissed off more than a few crew members when I wouldn't go against my judgement to get them home quicker.

Adjacent compartments flooding because of design issues... not nice.

Didn't the Titanic have the same design flaw?

I believe she did Panzer. Possibly excusable in 1911 as she was one of the first 'unsinkable' ship designs but a ship launched in 2007? There's no excuse for that.

Especially not for a warship.

Oh and that design is/was in the running for the US Navy's new frigate.

In a different way, but yes.

Continuing a not very glamorous couple of weeks in Norway’s rich maritime history, a floating dry dock built in 1911 sank outside Bergen a week ago. It was ordered by Winston Churchill when he was First Lord of the Admiralty, and survived both world wars. Amazing that it was still in use! I really hope it will be raised again.

http://www.tynebuiltships.co.uk/M-Ships/medwaydock1912.html

https://sysla.no/maritim/dokken-overlevde-verdenskriger-dag-sank-den-hjeltefjorden/

This shows first the naval explosive divers removing the anti-ship missiles, then you can see some of the damage of the ship.

They have started the salvage operation. It's expected to take several days to get it onto the barge to be transported to it's naval port.

A turn of the weather might jepardize the operation and wreck it.


Live feed of the operation

It's now been lifted onto the barge and is being towed to Håkonsvern.

Do the navies don't know how to manage ships without running into other ships anymore

pathetic how this keeps happening. the design flaw was a ridiculous oversight. is this not yacht building 101 - every hole you put in the hull must be sealed or have a very reliable valve to seal it.

KNM Helge Instad sails again!

Using the true and tested McGuyver field repair kit it's now seaworthy again!



Of course its only going to sail into the dry dock it's next to, and there it will be evaluated. In all likelyhood it will be scrapped. It was in shallow oxygen-rich water so corrosion has set in badly - it would need to utterly refurbished from top to bottom and that is probably just as expensive as bying a new ship,

how big does the ocean have to be to keep them from running into each other

Size can't fix overconfidence.

Or complacency.

Accidents happen. Usually because of human error somewhere along the line.

In this case it didn't happen on the ocean.

Maybe the watch should be doubled when sailing in congested waters or areas of limited maneuvering room at night. There’s just no way 2 ships should EVER get close enough to collide. If it means there’s no mid rats because the cooks are on the rail with NVGs or some sailors don’t get to go to bed that night, then so be it.

As I understand this collision it wasn't from a lack of seeing the oncoming ship, but a lack of correctly interpreting its course. In that case more eyes would not necessarily help any.

The best skippers are to be found on the pier, of course. But several factors seem to have compounded
- it was the return from a lengthy exercise, the the crew was anxious to get back to shore
- the captain's decision to run through the fjord under emission control (save for radio traffic)
- confirmation bias that misinterpreted the tanker's position light far too long as the lights of the oil terminal
- change of watch immediately before the collision
- abandoning ship way too soon rather than trying to fight the flooding

Simply reducing speed when they received the first warning that the might be on a collision course might already have helped to prevent disaster, rather than keeping barrelling at 30 knots with radars turned off through confined waters. Even if you dismiss the radio warnings as an error on the civilian ships' side, simply accounting for the possibility that they are right and you might be wrong would have helped a lot to keep an open mind about the situation. At least, that's my take on the whole incident.

They reenacted the accident with another frigate, the same tanker and on about the same conditions in the same location.

It had no problems avoiding the tanker, and they also enacted several other scenarios, like the frigate having reduced speed when the calls came.

As it is, 3 people have been indicted in the accident - the captain of the watch on the frigate, the pilot on the tanker, and the traffic controller on land.

Of course not. They have the benefit of hindsight and therefore cannot experience the same degree of confirmation bias that prevented the original crew from interpreting the situation correctly. The key to avoiding the disaster would have been to consider that the clueless civilians on the other side of the line actually had an idea what they were talking about rather than dismissing their "opinions". You can't enter the simulator without knowing that the situation would develop into a crash. The original crew did not seriously consider that option. Which, of course, is only my take on the situation, which puts about 95% of the responsibility of the collision on the bridge crew of the Helge Ingstad. I don't know if the oil tanker could have done anything, being all oil-tankery. Maybe the traffic controller could have been a bit more outspoken, who knows. But if you're driving with a somewhat stealthy frigate near top speed in lights out conditions into a narrow water way with sharp edges and other traffic you better be fully alert and extra careful rather than dismissive and overconfident.

But then again, we're all arguing from hindsight.

The thing is it isn't an narrow waterway, not really.
It's about 5 km across at the collision point. So plenty of room to move

But yes, plenty of variables - like was the tanker in the right "traffic lane" etc.

(The reenactment was done with real vessels, not in a simulation)

Much narrower than the open sea which, even in coastal regions, has a spiky, ship-sinking rocky edge only in one direction, not both. Either way, I remember from the radio transcripts that the H.I. crew thought that they were too close to the limits of their lane to have room for maneuver (and that it was unnecessary because they weren't on a collision course with anyone, anyway, thank you very much).
Clearly, they had a very wrong picture of their situation, I suppose we can agree on that.