Somebody won't be making Admiral!

ISTANBUL, April 27 (Reuters) - A Russian naval intelligence ship sank off Turkey's Black Sea coast on Thursday after colliding with a vessel carrying livestock and all 78 personnel on board the navy ship were evacuated, Turkish officials said.

The rescued crew members of the Russian ship Liman were in good health after the collision with the Togo-flagged Youzarsif H, Turkey's Transport Minister Ahmed Arslan said.

The incident took place in fog and low visibility 18 miles (29 km) from Kilyos village on the Black Sea coast just north of Istanbul.

Turkish authorities dispatched a tugboat and three fast rescue vessels, the coastal safety authority said.

Advisers to Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim conveyed his sadness over the incident to Russian counterparts, according to sources in his office.

Relations between the two countries have suffered from political disputes over the civil war in Syria, where Moscow and Ankara support different factions.

Russian warships frequently pass through the narrow Bophorus Strait, which cuts through Istanbul, on their way from the Black Sea to Syria's Mediterranean coast.

A spokesman for Hammami Livestock which owns the Youzarsif H said there had been no loss of life on board the vessel. "It is considered a slight hit, for us," he told Reuters in Lebanon, adding he had no information about the cause of the collision.

"We don't know our losses yet, but thank God there is no loss of life - neither from our side nor from the other ship," he said, adding the livestock carrier was heading to Jordan's Red Sea port of Aqaba from Romania.

The Youzarsif H was built in 1977 and has a capacity of 2,418 tonnes, according to Thomson Reuters shipping data.

The Bosphorus, which cuts through Istanbul, is one of the world's most important waterways for transit of oil and grains. The 17-mile waterway connects the Black Sea to the Mediterranean.

When the collision took place, at 11.45 am (0845 GMT), the Bosphorus had already been closed to shipping because of the poor visibility, shipping agency GAC said.

(Reporting by Can Sezer and Humeyra Pamuk in Istanbul, Tuvan Gumrukcu in Ankara and Yara Abi Nader in Beirut; Writing by David Dolan and Dominic Evans; Editing by Andrew Heavens)

Hope they had insurance.

Intelligence ship? Somebody musta bumped the "Off" switch on their radar. Yeah.

quote:

Originally posted by newtoSig765:
Intelligence ship? Somebody musta bumped the "Off" switch on their radar. Yeah.

That's what caught my eye.

These things are always appalling fiascos at some level. I went to Emergency Ship Handling School in the Navy. We spent the better part of a week on the collision between the Andrea Doria and Stockholm. Those ships couldn't have hit each other if they had tried to, but in manuevering to avoid, they managed to collide.

I hope the US Navy helps them retrieve their vessel.

quote:

Originally posted by newtoSig765:
Intelligence ship? Somebody musta bumped the "Off" switch on their radar. Yeah.

I don't know about this particular ship, but many intel-gathering ships are more of 'collectors' instead of 'transmitters.' Their job is to sail around and soak up and record everybody else's' transmissions. Many milirary ships don't use radar a lot; this may have been one of them.

They will probably accuse the US Navy of secretly casuing this!

quote:

Originally posted by deepocean:
I hope the US Navy helps them retrieve their vessel.

Didn't a James Bond movie start with similar plot? An intelligence vessel posing as a fishing boat sank and the race was on to recover the sensitive equipment?

For Your Eyes Only

quote:

Originally posted by Rightwire:
Didn't a James Bond movie start with similar plot? An intelligence vessel posing as a fishing boat sank and the race was on to recover the sensitive equipment?

A long time ago I sailed in the area and just outside of the bosphorus strait is a shipping nightmare...

quote:

Originally posted by Hound Dog:

quote:

Originally posted by newtoSig765:
Intelligence ship? Somebody musta bumped the "Off" switch on their radar. Yeah.

I don't know about this particular ship, but many intel-gathering ships are more of 'collectors' instead of 'transmitters.'...

I imagine they may re-write their operations manual to include "collect info on anything you may be about to run into."

Apparently a Russian Intelligence ship looks a whole lot like a rusting, Central American POS. Just sayin'...

As above, they probably had their radar turned off to be more stealthy. In thick fog and heavy traffic a collision could be expected.

quote:

sank off Turkey's Black Sea coast on Thursday after colliding with a vessel carrying livestock

I guess someone had a beef with them.

They should have been able to smell them from 500 yards. Maybe the wind was wrong.

quote:

Originally posted by bigdeal:
Apparently a Russian Intelligence ship looks a whole lot like a rusting, Central American POS. Just sayin'...

It's traditional. Apparently most of them used to look like fishing trawlers.

quote:

Originally posted by zoom6zoom:

quote:

sank off Turkey's Black Sea coast on Thursday after colliding with a vessel carrying livestock

I guess someone had a beef with them.

What happened to the lost livestock shipment?

Nobody's herd.