In fact, George Washington's previous commander, Capt. As a result, quality-of-life programs became bill payers for contract maintenance shortfalls, the report says. The report noted that the entire overhaul was underfunded by $322 million - money meant to pay for both the work on the ship and housing for the crew. There were four, if not more, groups involved in this decision, including inspectors from the commander of the Navy's Air Forces Atlantic the supervisor of Shipbuilding, Conversion and Repair the project office that controlled the money for the overhaul and the leadership aboard the George Washington.Īlso driving this decision was money. While investigators concluded that moving the crew aboard in June 2021 was 'premature,' they also say that their interviews revealed 'divergent opinions regarding who had the authority to declare habitability and the criteria to reach this determination.'

This detail is critical because sailors cited harsh living conditions aboard the ship - it was functionally a construction zone at the time - as one of the key issues that was making life miserable. HousingĪnother major revelation of the report is that the Navy has never properly articulated what makes a ship habitable by crew and who is ultimately responsible for making that call. In all, investigators made eight findings of deficiency or noncompliance by the ship's crew related to either the CRT or the overall command climate efforts.įurthermore, the report said both the current and former commanding officers of the carrier said they were not provided formal lessons learned - reports that documented issues prior carriers had going through during the same type of maintenance and refueling. William Mathis, is supposed to be head of the CRT, but he 'was not aware of this requirement and had not attended any CRT meetings during his first 4 months aboard.' The report goes on to say that the ship's executive officer, Capt. Investigators found that the meetings varied in frequency and were poorly attended. This specialist also didn't know that there was a requirement to keep notes of the CRT meetings. Team members were not formally named by Gaut, and the senior command climate specialist didn't even know that was a requirement. 'USS George Washington CRT functioned poorly and did not execute its duties and responsibilities effectively' and the ship's leaders 'did not provide effective oversight' of this team, investigators found. The Navy investigators also found that the Command Resilience Team, or CRT - a group of sailors who, among other things, were charged with running those climate surveys and putting plans in place to address the concerns they raised - was not doing its job. The sailors who were interviewed pointed to issues like commuting time, challenges with living aboard, and absent leadership as problems far before any Navy report. It took sailors reaching out to after the final incident in April 2022 to make the spate of suicides public. Gaut took command of the ship in June 2021 and has presided over five of the seven suicides that Navy data says occurred aboard the ship between 20. Brent Gaut, the ship's current commanding officer, told investigators that 'there was nothing out of the ordinary that was voiced in that survey that could have given the awareness of a massive problem or anything particularly related to suicidal ideations.' It had as few as 11% of the crew giving leaders their feedback.ĭuring the investigation, Capt. The carrier also struggled to get the crew to participate in the surveys. The report notes that the ship 'did not address this finding.' Plus, from 2019 to 2020, those same surveys showed that sailors' 'awareness of suicidal ideations' on the ship ballooned from 31% to 56%.

In a 2019 command climate survey, the George Washington's results were below aircraft carrier and Navy-wide averages in all assessment categories. Investigators found that the ship had the highest number of suicide-related behaviors from 2017 to 2019 when compared to all aircraft carriers on the East Coast. 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.

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