re the sailor suicides, General Blather had a good post:
Gen.Blather to ransomnote
I looked it up. The suicide rate is 14.7 per 100,000. For the crew of 5,000 there should be .7 suicides per year. Their rate is very high. The highest rates are in middle aged white men, which are 69% of the total.
The article’s authors really let us down by not providing any details. What were their ages and races? Where drugs found in their systems? Did they have anything to do with the Clintons?
My guess given there were both senior and junior enlisted from multiple departments, and so closely timed, is that there was some ring - drugs, sex, espionage, etc that was involved and looked like it was going to be exposed.
I know the stress that engineering goes through in dry dock with an overhaul - but the other two were airwing types who would have been less stressed - most likely completely off the ship and at a naval air station - in a dry dock situation.
I could of course be wrong, but one day I’ll share the story of the GMM1 that was running drugs and guns into Japan off my frigate using the US Postal Service FPO.
I REALLY want to know what happened to all these sailors. This story is seriously disturbing.