Military ship sinks after mistakenly leaving autopilot on

Published:

Nov 29, 2024 14:55 GMT

This is the first time since World War II that the country’s Navy has lost a ship at sea.

The autopilot of a New Zealand Navy ship caused it to crash into a reef off the coast of Samoa, where It caught fire and ended up sinking, inform The Guardian.

The accident occurred last October and, according to the preliminary conclusions of a military court of inquiry, a series of human errors caused the loss of the ship.

The investigators’ report, published this Friday, indicates that the crew of the HMNZS Manawanui did not realize that automatic driving was activated and assumed that they had lost steering control for a thruster failure.

All 75 people on board were successfully evacuated before the ship capsized almost two kilometers off the coast of Upolu Island. The ship, one of nine that the New Zealand Navy owned until then, is the first that the country has lost at sea since the Second World War.