LargeSlowTarget -> RE: Collisions (6/19/2014 7:10:29 AM)
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IRL ships can even hit *charted* rocks. Can't recall the ship's name but I have read about a British man-of-war colliding with a sub-surface rock pinnacle because the pencil line the navigator had drawn on the map with the projected course track was obscuring the obstacle - and the ship was dead on track. IIRC it happened during the Norway campaign. EDIT: Did some research, found the ship http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Effingham_%28D98%29 On 18 May 1940 Effingham was lost while engaged on transport escort duties. Traveling at 23 knots, outside the Norwegian Leads to minimise the risk of air attack, she was only one hour away from her destination when she struck a large rock in the area of Bodø (Bliksvær), in the Faxsen Shoal, near Bodø (20 minutes from the destination), between Bliksvær and Terra islands. The rock was well known and marked on the ship's charts, but when the navigator had drawn the ship's passage onto the map, his pencil mark had obscured the obstacle directly in the ship's path. No one was killed in the wreck, which was destroyed with a torpedo from the accompanying destroyer HMS Matabele on 21 May after all her crucial papers and equipment had been removed.
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