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Sailor Suicides on GW Carrier

Ranb

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Ranb
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Sailors say aircraft carrier that had multiple suicides occur among crew was uninhabitable

https://www.cnn.com/2022/05/06/politics/uss-george-washington-conditions/index.html

In the past 12 months, the crew of the USS George Washington has suffered seven deaths, of which at least four are by suicide, the Navy said.
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I was only stationed on submarines while on sea duty in the USN. Life in port in the sub force is far superior for unmarried Sailors on submarines than on carriers. The sub Sailors get a barracks room which is normally what the Navy calls substandard as they don't normally spend enough money to keep them in good condition or have enough rooms for to keep their people one or two to a room instead of three or more.

But barracks life is far superior to living on a carrier that is being repaired; for junior Sailors anyway. Services like plumbing and ventilation are degraded or inoperable on parts of the ship. The living and sleeping spaces can be noisy. Call me a delicate flower, but what I've seen on carriers in overhaul would drive me nuts if I actually had to live on the thing instead of going ashore each night I didn't have duty.

When several members of Congress visited the ship earlier this week, the spaces they visited, which included galleys and berthings, were well maintained, Myers told CNN on Friday.
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Well no kidding! Of course the members of Congress were only allowed to see the acceptable parts of the ship. I've prepared for inspections before on subs and present my spaces in the best possible light to those touring.

Asked if the Navy was aware that crewmembers were sleeping in their cars instead of on the ship, Myers said every sailor is "provided the means to accommodations," and the Navy will look at whether housing was a factor in the suicides.
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Maybe Commander Myers was misquoted, but CNN is making him look like a coward for failing to give a yes or no answer.

This is why probably the question was directed at someone who was not responsible for conditions on the ship. Had they asked an actual senior officer on the ship, they would have probably got a "no comment" to keep from saying "no, we don't have decent living spaces" or to keep from lying.

But when he told the sailors they should have "reasonable expectations" and that they're not "sleeping in a foxhole like a Marine might be doing," some crewmembers were stunned. The fourth sailor from the ship called it a "laughable, offensive speech."
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This is how Navy leadership tells the junior Sailors to go **** themselves. Even Marines get reasonable quarters when not training in the field.

MCPON Smith most likely knows exactly what the Sailors are going through. He is probably disappointed that anyone found out his men are killing themselves.

Two years ago when USS Roosevelt Captain Brett Crozier went out of his way to protect his Sailors, the Navy fired him. I don't think these latest incidents are going to convince the Navy that they need to take better care of their carrier crews.

Ranb
 
I was on the USS Independence for three years back in the 90s.

But as an airedale, so when we weren't at sea, at least I did get to go back and live in a barracks on base. But I do have some experience living on an aircraft carrier for 6 months at a time. Everyone hates it, except for the port calls.

But what do you really expect, right? It is the Navy after all. Nobody is drafted anymore. Although what you expect when you sign up at the recruiter's office, and what it's actually like are two different things.

Now, I'm not totally shocked that some sailors commit suicide. Is that a new thing? Four sailors in the span of a year? I'm just wondering if that's out of the ordinary. In a small sample size you could get something like that. In the general population, about 2 to 3 men per 10,000 will commit suicide in an average year. In the active duty military, the latest rate is about 29 per 100,000. So 4 in 6-8,000 may just be a roll of the dice.

I do understand that it sucks, that's why I left after one enlistment.

One thing I didn't do though was serve during a pandemic, so there's that.

Just my 2 cents.
 
The reaction by the ship's leadership is disgusting. The leaders tell the junior Sailors to "suck it up" while the leaders have comfortable living conditions on or off the ship. Based on the article, it seems they have no interest in the quality of life for their crew.
 
Be interesting to see who the scapegoats are going to be. I got a feeling the Captain's career is probably de facto over.
No doubt another black eye for the Navy,just when they were planning a big enlistment drive tied in to the Top Gun Sequel....
Another irony is the Navy is making a big deal about 2022 being the centennial of US Air Craft carriers, the first the Langley, was commisioned in 1922.
ANd I think the CNO Is in for a very unpleasent session withe the Armed Services Commitees in congress.....
 
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After re-reading the article, I guess I'm more concerned with why they felt the sailors needed to live on the ship while the ship was still undergoing massive refurbishing?

Was it because the captain was frustrated that the period of dry-dock was going longer than it was originally scheduled to? Was he worried that his tenure as captain would be over before the ship ever put out to sea? This sort of thing would not surprise me. I've long suspected that Commanding Officers are mostly careerists who are primarily concerned with advancing up the ranks as high as they can go, and less concerned with the welfare of the people underneath them.

The nuclear-powered aircraft carrier has been going through its mid-life refueling and overhaul process since the summer of 2017. The process, initially expected to last four years, has been delayed multiple times until at least March 2023, the Navy said.
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Navy captains probably don't like to be the captain of a ship that's in dry-dock for many years at a time. There's not much he can do to speed up the process though. Maybe he thought that moving the crew onto the ship would somehow make that process go faster.

That would be a case of putting his own ambitions above the welfare of his crew.
 
Puppycow said:
After re-reading the article, I guess I'm more concerned with why they felt the sailors needed to live on the ship while the ship was still undergoing massive refurbishing?
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Because military leadership still has a "troops NEED to be treated like crap" mentality.

In my 20 years I did probably half a dozen dry yard periods and for some reason, damned if I can explain it, keeping the crew living on the ship as long as possible was a source of pride with them. Command Triads would announce it as a goal before the yard period started, they would put "Crew lived onboard the entire time" as a bullet point on their after action reports.

No water, no heat, no AC, no galley, no flushing toilets, constant construction noises 24/7. I experienced it.

The closest thing we ever got to a reason was a vague allusion to some half formed idea that we'll "get in trouble" and this is something you hear a lot in the military; no let's keep you at work, on duty, on watch, in the field, deployed, let's keep you "busy" because if we don't you'll "get in trouble." But honestly that never came across as honest, it never really felt like that was their actual motivation.
 
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The USS Tautog had a working barge with offices, classrooms and bunks for the duty section near the drydock when we went into overhaul in 1987. The single Sailors still had barracks though. The barge was just a replacement for the ship when the berthing and mess decks were torn up for the overhaul.
 
Ranb said:
The USS Tautog had a working barge with offices, classrooms and bunks for the duty section near the drydock when we went into overhaul in 1987. The single Sailors still had barracks though. The barge was just a replacement for the ship when the berthing and mess decks were torn up for the overhaul.
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Of all the indignities I had as a submariner, having to live on the boat in port wasn't one of them.....but our duty rotation in port sucked way worse than surface ships
 
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