You didn’t see the video of nearly the whole ship’s crew standing there to see him off? The Captain is a hero to his men because he stood up for them. I knew the other day when the top enlisted sailor in the Navy openly criticized him that his days were numbered. This retired Army Officer considers him a hero and wishes him God speed in his future challenges.
The Captain is a hero to his men because he stood up for them.
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He’s in trouble for leaking the letter to the press.
You serius lee gonna believe what a Fox new “reporter” tells you happened?
I know why sailors cheer and applaud when the old man gets piped ashore for being an idiot.
“This retired Army Officer considers him a hero...”
This retired Air Force officer considers him unqualified to command. You cannot expect subordinates to obey YOUR orders if you will not obey the orders of your superiors. The military undoubtedly WAS taking action. Action his superiors had the right to choose. And he went around them.
His response to his superiors would have been fine - as a suggestion, and CLASSIFIED.
Not even remotely close to the whole crew which is numbered at over 3000. Perhaps 5-700 sailors cheering this shameful example of a ships captain.
Thank you for sharing the perspective of someone who has actually served in a military position of command.
You didn’t see the video of nearly the whole ship’s crew standing there to see him off? The Captain is a hero to his men because he stood up for them. I knew the other day when the top enlisted sailor in the Navy openly criticized him that his days were numbered. This retired Army Officer considers him a hero and wishes him God speed in his future challenges.
Your assessment may well be correct. I do see some misinformation and possibly relevant factors not being discussed. It seems many, or most, seem to think that the Commanding Officer was the senior officer on the ship, and his upward chain of command started somewhere else. Captain Crozier was the Commanding Officer, but embarked was the Commander of the Fleet, an Admiral, most importantly, a flag officer. There is approximately a zero probability that Captain Crozier did not first run his issue down the passageway and up his chain of command to the Admiral.
Captain Crozier's letter begins with "BLUF:". That is an acronym for Bottom Line Up Front. It is in the general form of a naval letter, but the heading is missing. Among the missing are the sender and addressee lines. The signature line does not state his title of Commanding Officer. This may have been a slightly edited copy of a prior draft of an official naval letter, with the heading deleted, and the BLUF paragraph added.
Bloomberg reported,
After the first three sailors on the carrier were evacuated, Acting Navy Secretary Thomas Modly projected confidence about the ship’s status, saying it would continue sailing.“This is an example of our ability to keep our ships deployed at sea, underway even with active Covid-19 cases,” Modly said March 24.
But two days later, the carrier was sidelined indefinitely in Guam as the Navy tries to contain the outbreak. And there are now more than 40 confirmed cases on the Roosevelt, according to a defense official who asked not to be identified because the Navy is no longer providing ship-by-ship details.
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Like many states and cities, the military’s ability even to test for the virus is limited. Modly said in an interview Friday with Hugh Hewitt that the Roosevelt can test about 200 sailors per day, meaning it would take more than three weeks to test everyone on board. But he disputed the idea that the ship would be out of action if major hostilities erupted.
“If there was a reason for her to go into action she would just go,” Modly said. “She’s close enough to some trouble spots that she could mobilize and go quickly.”
On March 26, 2020, thirty-six sailors in USS Theodore Roosevelt were reported infected. There it was reported, “Earlier this week the Navy disclosed that three sailors aboard the carrier had tested positive, marking the first time that infections had been detected aboard a U.S. Navy ship at sea. By the time the ship arrived in Guam early Friday, the number of cases had grown to 25 according to a U.S. offiicial.”
Captain Crozier's letter is dated 30 Mar 20. The fact of the outbreak was already in the newspapers. The ship was sidelined dockside in Guam, but the crew was still aboard.
By April 1, there were reported to be over 100 infected sailors aboard. The report stated, "we have been working actually the last seven days to move those sailors off the ship and get them into accommodations in Guam. The problem is that Guam doesn’t have enough beds right now and were having to talk to the government there to see if we can get some hotel space, create tent-type facilities,” Modly said.
An April 1 report stated,
“The Navy is preparing to evacuate thousands of sailors off of the aircraft carrier Theodore Roosevelt within days to prevent the spread of COVID-19, according to acting Secretary of the Navy Thomas Modly.“We already have nearly 1,000 personnel off the ship right now,” Modly told reporters Wednesday.
"In the next couple days, we expect to have about 2,700 of them off the ship. One thing I want to emphasize as well is that we cannot and will not remove all the sailors from the ship.”
It is a little late to prevent the spread of COVID-19. The evacuation is needed to decontaminate the ship. It cannot be decontaminated while full of contaminated people. Everyone can be screened before being allowed back aboard.
The preliminary evacuation may well have been the Admiral's RHIP staff and Air Squadron Personnel, with no room at the Inn for the ship's crew.
Not even Captain Rozier suggested removing all sailors from the ship. Ship security is necessary, and there is a nuclear reactor to maintain. But Captain Crozier did want all non-essential personnel evacuated for a limited time to cope with the exploding contamination.
The first issue I noticed was a disinformation press release which made the impossible assertion after the initial report of the presence of an infected person aboard, that other potentially exposed persons were isolated. As the infected person almost certainly walked about for several days before any infection was known or suspected, those potentially exposed would include everyone that went to the mess deck, i.e., everybody. The potentially contaminated area would be the entire ship.
The ship did not immediately head to port or immediately begin evacuation of non-essential personnel. The ship did not show any sign of immediately doing anything realistic to address the contamination problem. There is no way to isolate or maintain any social distancing. The virus is subject to airborne spread. The ventilation system may distribute the infection throughout the ship. The crew all sharing the mess decks will surely pick up shed virus and distribute it throughout the ship. The berthing condition, perhaps four racks high with barely enough room between to allow one to turn over, is like sardines in a can. The exponential spread of this highly contagious virus cannot be contained in such conditions. The curve cannot be flattened.
Some references to the crew of the ship put the number at five or six thousand. The officers and men of the air squadrons are not members of the ships crew. They have their own commanding officer. They fly onto the ship after it goes to sea, and fly off before it docks in home port. The squadron is attached to the ship while embarked, but are not part of the ship’s crew.
The Admiral and his staff are also not part of the ship’s crew. They are more like visiting royalty.
Although a carrier has a significant medical facility aboard, it in no way is a hospital prepared to provide in-patient hospital care to a large number of COVID-19 infected patients who may require ventilators.
Had Captain Crozier sent a message via the comm center, the Admiral would have gotten a copy and squashed it. Captain Crozier deliberately chose a method the Navy could not squash.
An investigation may better reveal what considerations went into Captain Crozier's decision. Captain Crozier had to know what he was doing and what would happen. He knowingly committed career suicide.