A Navy investigation of an unprecedented streak of suicides aboard the USS George Washington aircraft carrier has revealed failures at all levels of leadership, and the service is now promising to provide sailors better ameneties and pay in the future.
The massive investigation released Thursday, which aimed to look at the challenges for all aircraft carriers undergoing long and complex refueling like the George Washington, found that the ship had woefully understaffed departments and lacked senior leadership. Navy surveys found widespread thoughts of suicide among the crew.
At the same time, the ship was failing to provide many of the programs that were supposed to help the crew deal with stress. During a briefing to reporters, Adm. Daryl Caudle, the man who oversees much of the Navy’s East Coast fleet, said he saw the cluster of deaths as “a 9/11-like event.”
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“It was pointedly obvious that the Navy had failed the George Washington through a host of things that we put that ship into,” Caudle said.
Among the 86 findings of fact and 87 recommendations was one especially striking detail: The warning signs for the pending crisis were captured in the ship’s own survey data but never acted on by the carrier’s leadership.
Investigators found that the ship had the highest number of suicide-related behaviors from 2017 to 2019 when compared to…
