This is a follow-up on one of my previous posts, as I grew tired of posting updates there. To be brief, one (out of five) Norwegian frigates decided to declare war on a Greek/Maltesean tanker, and rammed it in full speed. The frigate sunk, the tanker ship got some minor scratches in the paintwork. In this post I will focus on the minutes before the accident and what possibly went wrong.

Now the radar images from the traffic control, as well as the full sound track from the VHF traffic has been released (or, rather, leaked) into the public (you can find it via the sources below - but it's all in Norwegian, haven't seen an English transcript yet). The brief summary, the tanker repeatedly asked the frigate to turn starboard, the frigate responded it couldn't turn starboard because they would hit "the blocks", the last message from the tanker is something like "so then we'll be colliding". At no time did the frigate say "we have everything under control", like it was said earlier.

Source: Fedje VTS, via VG, then via baatplassen.no

Officially we're supposed to wait for the police and the accident commission to finish their work rather than speculate in the reasons for the accident - and the people that knows something first-hand is not supposed to "leak" anything to the media. Still, I can't help myself from coming with some ...

Speculations

Most or all electronic navigational systems was turned off in the frigate, either due to this being an exercise or due to jamming. (I have my doubts about jamming, nav systems on such a military ship should be more robust against jamming than the radar systems on a tanker, and no evidence of jamming at the traffic control radar systems). I've heard people serving in the navy telling they were blocking the window view and navigating exclusively on radar image, paper maps, ruler and stop watch while exercising.
The military ship didn't have the AIS transponder turned on, and probably they had the navigation lights turned off as well. Their radar signature is also less visible as the ship is designed using stealth principles (nearby yachts reports the ship was throwing "shadows" on their radar). This probably didn't matter much, as the problem apparently was caused by the the frigate didn't see the oil tanker, not the other way around.
One of the perks of having a higher rank in the military is probably that one can sleep during the night (and it's confirmed the captain was sleeping). Those having a higher rank is probably also more skilled at navigation. Based on the radio recordings and the fact that the frigate rammed straight into the tanker makes it easy for me to conclude that the people on the bridge of the frigate probably wasn't the best qualified navigators. Maybe the officer on duty was temporary away for a toilet visit or for fetching more coffee.
People are naturally drowsy at 04:00. From the radio conversation it clearly sounds that neither the people on the frigate nor the people in the traffic control was fully awake. The person on Sola TS seems to be most awake, but even his communication is unclear. "Frigate, is that you coming there?" - generally, when listening to the radio, one has no clue where the radio signal is coming from nor how close it is - possibly a frigate may have a bit more advanced radio systems than what I have in my sail boat, but still I think this is a pretty unclear radio message. The tanker is repeatedly telling the frigate to turn towards the starboard, but does not explicitly tell that it's on collision course until moments before the collision. Well, I guess it's easy to assume the frigate has all the details both on the radar and AIS systems.
If I understand it correctly, they were supposed to rotate the personnel at 04:00. It's very unclear to me if this was already done or if it was a process going on in the moments before the disaster. This may have affected the outcome, one way or another; drowsy personnel just waiting to be relieved, fresh personnel that still haven't really figured out where they are or what is going on, or attention that should have been spent on the navigation being spent on personnel rotation.
The personnel on the frigate had some unknown standing orders and did not want to disappoint (by reducing the speed or turning on navigation systems).
Due to lots of background lights from the oil terminal and what not and some few navigation lights it was hard to understand the situation visually (though, other ships in the area said the tanker was going with full illumination - it should be very visible in that case).
Actually the frigate was the only ship being on the starboard side of the fjord - all other ships was on the "wrong" side, probably for practical reasons. Could it be that the frigate thought the other boats were going the other way?
The personnel on the frigate did not want to turn much starboard due to some fear of colliding with something ("the blocks"). In the very end they turned port, while the tanker turned starboard.
What was "the blocks"?
- There were lots of lights from the oil terminal. If the people on the frigate was excessively drowsy and had no clue about their whereabouts they may have thought it was residental apartment buildings, "blocks" in everyday Norwegian language. This sounds too stupid to be true though.
- There were indeed some skerries close to land, the frigate may have been concerned about that, though there were still quite much distance to go by. Going a bit closer to land and skerries seems preferable over colliding with a tanker ship.
- There is of course the oil terminal infrastructure ahead, fully lit up, maybe that was "the blocks". Indeed, putting the frigate more to the starboard would have caused them to come in collision course with the oil terminal - though they would still have very good time to pass the oil tanker and then correct the course to the port. Perhaps, if they thought the oil tanker was going in the other direction, they concluded there wouldn't be possible to pass on the starboard side.
"Deer in the headlights"-effect
They may have misidentified the tanker for being a smaller ship, and probably thought it still was long distance - it's difficult to judge distances in the darkness, especially when one can't see more than the navigation lights.
Even after the collision (and even though the tanker clearly has identified itself and told about the immenient collision danger), they still don't know what they've hit ("we've hit an unknown object ..."), and the ship sent to rescue them can't find them at first, possibly due to the frigate giving the wrong coordinates.

To go further, some wilder speculations, so wild I'd rather call them ...

Conspiracy theories

Someone on the bridge did this on purpose
The top-secret teleportation equipment didn't work today, sending the ship to the wrong place
It's the Russians
- they hacked the navigation systems
- they jammed the navigation systems
- they had undercover personnel present on the bridge

Putin seen by the wreck, talking in a telephone: "Privjet! Stop building submarines, we need more oil tankers!"
Source: baatplassen.no, user Chiefengineer

Close call

Of course, for the Norwegian navy it's terrible luck to lose one out of their five flagships, but still I'd say we've been quite lucky with this one

First of all, there were no casualties in this accident, even though some people in the frigate was a mere 10 cm away from death.
Also, bobody got seriously injured even though eight person got injuried and two persons ended up in hospital.
There were no serious oil spill and no serious damages on the oil tanker. An aframax oil tanker is about one of the worst thing one can smash into, considering the risk of an Exxon Valdez-style oil spill affecting a longer stretch of the Norwegian coast line.
At the other hand, it's good luck they crashed with a sturdy oil tanker, and not a smaller ship. They could easily have killed everyone aboard if they had been ramming a yacht.
The weather was very nice at the time of the accident

Sources

Update 1: Something I forgot mentioning in the post - I also find it quite bizarre that it took so long time before the word "mayday" was used. There were quite some international shipping in the area, and some sailors says it's incredible that first time something understandable was said in the radio was 50 minutes after the accident.

Don't be afraid to criticize my posts. I will give a 100% upvote to any (unique) reply pointing out typos, grammar mistakes or mistakes in the facts presented. This applies to any post or comment from me, no matter how old. I also usually give upvotes to opposing points of view, particularly when a good and logically valid argument is given.

Moments before disaster: the loss of the Norwegian frigate Helge Ingstad

Speculations

Conspiracy theories

Close call

Sources