Altered image falsely shared as 'US aircraft carrier damaged by Huthi attack'

A satellite image of an aircraft carrier has been altered to add a crater to its flight deck and then shared in social media posts that presented it as evidence of damage caused by Yemen's Huthi rebels. The posts, viewed millions of times, surfaced after the Huthis claimed they had launched a missile attack on the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower in the Red Sea. Washington has denied any of its ships were damaged by the Huthis.

"The Eisenhower CVN-69 Nimitz-class aircraft carrier is said to have been attacked by the Huthi armed forces," read a simplified Chinese X post shared on June 3, 2024.

The post included a clip showing what appears to be satellite imagery of a naval station. The clip zooms in on one of the docked vessels showing what appears to be a hole on its flight deck.

Yemen's Huthi rebels claimed that they had launched a missile attack on the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower in the Red Sea on May 31, 2024. Washington has not confirmed the aircraft carrier was targeted.

The Iran-backed Huthis, who control much of Yemen, have carried out scores of drone and missile attacks on vessels in the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden since November, citing solidarity with Palestinians over the Gaza war.

Huthi military spokesperson Yahya Saree said in a statement on X the move was in response to 16 people being killed and more than 40 wounded in Yemen's port city of Hodeida alone, including an unspecified number of civilians.

The toll announced by the Huthis, which AFP could not independently verify, would make the strikes some of the deadliest since the US and Britain launched their campaign in January against disruption of the vital trade route.

Similar posts sharing the manipulated imagery racked up over two million views after they were shared on X here and here, YouTube, and on Weibo.

The claim was also shared in English and Thai while AFP has previously debunked similar posts in Arabic.

Washington, however, has dismissed claims the ship had been damaged or struck, according to reports from CBS News and the Voice of America (archived links here and here).

Manipulated image

AFP found the circulating image matches Google Earth satellite imagery taken on April 10, 2023 of Naval Station Norfolk in the US state of Virginia, which is home to the US Navy's largest concentration of naval forces (archive link here and here).

No hole was visible in the deck of the ship in the Google Earth image.

Below is a screenshot comparison between the image in the false posts (left) and the corresponding image from Google Earth (right) with the manipulated element highlighted by AFP:

A reverse image search on Google using a keyframe from the 13-second mark of the clip, when the purported hole is zoomed in on, matches a picture published on US-based stock photo website Shutterstock (archived link).

The stock photo had been mirrored and digitally added onto the satellite imagery.

Below is a screenshot comparison between the purported hole in the ship (left) and the stock photo flipped horizontally (right):

AFP has debunked more false claims about the Huthi attacks in the Red Sea here, here and here.