A U.S. naval blockade of the Strait of Hormuz went into effect Monday at 10 a.m. EST at the direction of President Donald Trump, but in a matter of hours, the blockade was breached without incident by at least four Iran-linked vessels, BBC reported Tuesday.On Monday, Trump said that he had instructe...
So you think a ship that was moving at maybe 5 knots instantly turned around and in less than 30 minutes accelerated past 50 knots?
I find that reasonably unlikely, unless it is a naval ship. I don’t think cargo ships go that fast unless empty, and highly motivated. Possibly not even then.
Do we have a reliable source for this data?
Most naval vessels can do just over 30, if that. Cargo vessels spend most of their life below 10.
50 knots means there’s some fuckery afoot.
I was under the impression that navy ships could go much faster, but didn’t because of wear and fuel consumption. I recall hearing about 60 knots, but I wouldn’t place even a small bet on it.
Same for cargo ships, to a lesser extent. If an empty one felt a need to move, I’m sure they could get a little speed to them. But they aren’t built for it, and “saving money on fuel” is their prime directive.
Although, as someone noted elsewhere, there don’t seem to be any actual measurements of speed. They turned around, and cranked the throttle, but we don’t know how far they were going in either phase.
I’ve read claims that some nuclear aircraft carriers can go a lot faster than 30, but I suspect that’s bullshit.
There’s also a phenomenon known as hull speed, where a displacement hull vessel takes an exponential amount of power to go slightly faster once you hit it. They’re also not going to have an engine that’s massively more powerful than they need, just in case.
50 knots would outrun pretty much any large vessel on the planet.
Sure, but the gif doesn’t show 50 knots. The gif doesn’t show any speed actually, so I really don’t know where the 50 number comes from. But on the tracker the speed was 8.1 knots. Fast for a tanker, but totally believable.
My source is marinetraffic.com. Other AIS trackers also corroborate it.
From the sounds of it the OP and most other articles are based on similar armchair research looking at trackers so I think it’s about as reliable as we’re going to get.