The Navy has relieved the commanding officer of the expeditionary mobile base ship USS Hershel “Woody” Williams two months after the vessel briefly ran aground outside of the African country of Gabon, a Navy statement announced Monday.
Capt. Lenard Mitchell, the commander of the Williams’ “Gold” crew, was relieved by Vice Adm. Thomas Ishee, the commander of U.S. 6th Fleet, “due to a loss of confidence in his ability to command.”
The Navy’s statement added that “the relief occurred as a result of an investigation into the soft grounding” of the Williams near the port of Libreville, Gabon, on May 9 and, “while the investigation is still open, sufficient findings of fact emerged during the investigation to warrant the relief of the commanding officer.”
Read Next: Feds Arrest Former Air Force Base Engineer in Connection to Deadly Mississippi KC-130 Crash in 2017
Typically, the Navy is quick to remove a ship’s commander after a grounding — usually moving within days or, at most, a week or two.
When the cruiser USS Port Royal ran aground on a shoal off the coast of Honolulu in 2009, the Navy waited around four days — until the ship was free — to relieve its commander.
When the USS Howard suffered a soft grounding near the Indonesian island of Bali on Aug. 10, 2023, the Navy relieved its skipper, Cmdr. Kenji Igawa, just nine days later.
In 2014, the Navy took about two weeks to fire the commander of a frigate — the USS Taylor — that ran…
