One last time HELGE INGSTAD

Three years after the sinking of the Norwegian frigate, the final questions have now been answered. As is so often the case, a chain of avoidable mistakes led to the disaster.

The Norwegian 5400-tonne frigate HELGE INGSTAD was one of the Scandinavian kingdom's five major naval warships. It was built between 2006 and 2009, mainly at Navantia in northern Spain. The design was based on the Spanish F 100 frigate, also known as the ÁLVARO DE BAZÁN.

Construction number four of the FRIDTJOF NANSEN class collided with the Maltese 113,000-tonne tanker SOLA TS in the Hjeltefjord, the northern entrance to Bergen, on 8 November 2018. The loss of the frigate, which dragged on for days, was more than three years, a pandemic and a war in Europe ago. The main features of this story are well known, but overall the episode is of course only over when a line can be drawn.

This is apparently the point at which we have now reached following the publication of the second part of the report by the Accident Investigation Board Norway (AIBN) together with the navy's national average commission.