The commander of the coronavirus-afflicted USS Roosevelt Pacific carrier who dared to write a letter to Navy officials calling for urgent measures to disembark crew members as the virus spread rapidly must wait another month to know if he will ever command his ship again.
Following a preliminary investigation, the spokesman for Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Mike Gilday has called for a deeper dive.
“Today, the Chief of Naval Operations, Adm. Mike Gilday, directed Vice Chief of Naval Operations, Adm. Robert Burke, to conduct a follow-on command investigation into the events surrounding the COVID-19 outbreak aboard USS Theodore Roosevelt,” spokesman Cmdr. Nate Christensen said in a statement Thursday.
The fuller investigation will be submitted by May 27, unless an extension is granted, and aims to answer questions left unaddressed in the preliminary investigation reviewed by the Navy and briefed to Defense Secretary Mark Esper on Friday.
Gilday and acting Navy Secretary James McPherson had recommended that Esper reinstate Capt. Brett Crozier, until McPherson changed his mind pending a broader investigation.
Crozier was summarily dismissed as commander of the carrier April 2 by then-acting Secretary of the Navy Thomas Modly for allegedly going outside his chain of command when he sent a letter to “20 or 30” people pleading for more decisive action to prevent the coronavirus from spreading on his ship, Modly said at the time.
Modly implied that Crozier was inviting his “hometown paper,” the San Francisco Chronicle, to publish a leaked copy of the letter, and Modly scoffed at the possibility that sailors would die of COVID-19.
A sailor did die of COVID-19, and nearly a thousand were afflicted by the contagion. The USS Roosevelt remains sidelined in Guam as sailors complete quarantine and return on board.
