CNN reports that more than 200 sailors have moved off the USS George Washington aircraft carrier after multiple deaths by suicide among the crew, including three in less than one week in April, according to the Navy.
The sailors are moving to a local Navy installation as the nuclear-powered aircraft carrier continues to go through a years-long refueling and overhaul process at the shipyard in Newport News in Virginia. Over the past 12 months, seven members of the crew have died, including four by suicide, prompting the Navy to open an investigation into the command climate and culture onboard the Nimitz-class carrier.
In addition to the four suicides in the past year, three more sailors assigned to the carrier died by suicide in 2019 and 2020. The carrier has been docked at Newport News Shipbuilding for a major overhaul since 2017.
Extended shipyard periods put additional burdens on the ship’s crew. While in the shipyard, the George Washington is essentially a construction zone, where it can be cramped, hot, and loud for the crew on board. Although the carrier does not have its full complement of approximately 5,000 sailors, the ship still has between 2,000 and 3,000 sailors living aboard during the overhaul process.
The commanding officer of the carrier, Capt. Brent Gaut, made the decision to allow sailors living onboard the ship to move to other accommodations, according to a statement from Naval Air Force Atlantic. On the first day of the move, which began Monday, more than 200 sailors left the carrier and moved to a nearby Navy facility.
The Navy’s investigation will examine whether living conditions on the carrier played a role in the suicides and whether the ship’s commanders did everything they could to make the conditions as acceptable as possible.
CBS News notes that the USS George Washington‘s overhaul is behind schedule — the COVID-19 pandemic and the need for unexpected repairs have kept the carrier in the shipyard for nearly a year longer than expected.
The USS George Washington is not the first carrier to experience a rash of suicides while going through a major shipyard period. In September 2019, four sailors assigned to the USS George HW Bush died by suicide within one week as the ship was going through an overhaul in Virginia.
I would hazard a guess that if the suicides are happening in small clusters of what seems like 3 or 4 at a time, the problem is probably not related to the overhaul. I feel that each grouping or cluster has its own reason.
Perhaps they should be looking deeper to get to the real reason for these suicides. I would think that if you were to blame the suicides on the overhaul or rebuild that the suicides would be spaced further apart not clumped together.
Perhaps the navy, by allowing the officers to take residence off the ship, would distract from the real reason and hopefully make the reporters go away.