Navy fires TR skipper

Actually, it looks to me like he's leaving it to the Chain of Command, which is what Modly should have done.
 
A civilian’s POV, if indeed Capt. Crozier is found deserving of reinstatement:

1) Rather than returning him to the TR, give him the next carrier command that comes open. Let him — and the TR crew — have a fresh start.

2) Let the new Navy secretary make the call. No matter what one thinks of the prior Navy secretary’s decision, having CNO make the call would seem like uniformed leadership is superceding/overriding civilian leadership.

Optics are everything at this point. Give all affected parties a chance to save face while respecting our tradition of military governance.
 
If the CO had long enough time in command to receive a full annual fitness report in command, he’s checked the block. His XO was already in training to fleet up, and a short relief process would have occurred just prior to his leaving the ship. His reporting senior probably hasn’t written his detaching fitness report yet, but that will be cleared up soon, along with any administrative “undoing” of the relief for cause, if that is the plan. All other carriers are most likely already in lock-step with officers lined up at least a year in advance to go in as XO, then become the CO. When it’s your time to go, you go, even if earlier than planned.

This matter should never have boiled up to the level it did. There are plenty of admirals between the O-6 in a major command position who can take care of this, with the goal being getting TR back to mission readiness and the crew settled in with a new CO who has been working as the XO. An O-6 in major command can be CO of a carrier or other big deck, a squadron of planes/ships/submarines or other designated command role, important, yes, but still far beneath the senior flag ranks, much less the OPNAV staff and the Secretariat. The deafening silence of the various flags in the chain of command and SECNAV himself taking extreme action - that was a wowzer. As I said in my earlier post, plenty of poop on both sides of this. I have no problem with Capt C advocating for his ship, but the “how” disturbed me just from surface impressions -and I will never have all the facts, who said what and when to whom, to settle the matter in my mind. If I had been his operational reporting senior, I would have “orally counseled” (😡) him, and after consultation with his other boss, the AIRPAC admiral, would have given him a letter of instruction, formal written counseling, then tried to fix the optics with the senior Navy PAOs, while getting the TR taken care of. The LOI would be a dink in his record, but if he got his ship through the virus crisis, and continued to perform at a high level, it would be mitigated.

I think the fact this was centered around the coronavirus and was such a public story on one of the Navy’s showpiece assets, that the affair got out of hand and precipitous decisions were made.
 
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CAPT Crozier had only been CO of TR since last November. the new CO of TR is actually the previous Captain (now RDML select) who was brought back temporarily, not sure for how long, maybe to finish the deployment and give the next guy time.

the career progression for CVN Captain is a little different that other commands. you don't go straight from XO to CO. after squadron command and nuke school (among other things), you become big XO of a CVN, then CO of a deep draft, then CVN skipper.
 
Thanks for the clarification on CO/XO - I was thinking about that last night, was wondering if CVN command had gone to the CO/XO Fleet-up model as the surface ship community had done some years ago. My own DH did squadron>air wing>deep draft LPH>CV. No surprise either they roll a previous CO back to settle things down, or another carrier skipper.
 
quite a bit of discussion about this on FB. The first issue is the questionable decision to allow shore leave for the crew in Vietnam, given the circumstances it was highly risky and most likely how the covid outbreak started; second his decision to send an email to numerous people outside his chain including civilians was a gross violation of OPSEC and he was broadcasting to the world that a major warship was apparently not combat ready. Third not allowing his chain of command an opportunity to work was poor judgement; in my view he was likely going to be relieved for the shore leave issue so he figured he would get for his 15 minutes of fame and go down swinging.
 
Using the timeline in the Defense One article below, we see that on Friday, February 28th, Modly stated that all 7th Fleet ships will spend at least 2 weeks at sea between port calls for COVID-19-related safeguards. The TR arrived in Guam on February 7th, left on an undisclosed date, & arrived at Danang, Vietnam on March 5th; 28 days between port calls. The article does not mention when the TR sailed, but It would've had to have sailed by February 20th to comply with the order. At that time (March 5th) Vietnam had no active COVID-19 cases with 16 resolved & those were reportedly all were located in the Hanoi area. However, 3 days later on March 8th, new cases were reported including 2 British tourists in Danang.
It should be mentioned that Vietnam is a Communist country. How much credibility you give info. given from communist countries (& other countries as well) is your personal decision. Obviously I do not know the US Navy's level of trust in matters concerning Vietnam's COVID-19 reports.
The TR sails out from Danang on March 9th. I assume all of the crew has to be onboard a day earlier, the 8th, so if that's true, 2 weeks from March 8th is March 22, the date the 1st TR sailor is diagnosed! From the docking date of March 5th to Vietnam's announcement of new COVID cases on March 8 is 3 days...3 days; 72 hours! So close...how much pain could've been avoided (some self-inflected)...

Along with at least 3 Navy ships, including the 7th's flagship Blue Ridge, docking in ports in Thailand on February 23 (The right date? See link in Feb. 28th bullet, DefenseOne article), I think Captain Crozier would be able to make a reasonable argument justifying TR's docking in Vietnam. Someone ordered the TR to dock at Danang, someone above the TR's CO. Crozier would not have docked there if he determined that in doing so it would place the crew (& mission) at risk.

P.S. The DefenseOne's article's timeline states that Modly's Chief of Staff Bob Love gave Crozier his personal cell phone # on Tuesday, March 30th, a day after the letter was released. In one of my prior posts on page 3 of this thread, (The Washington Post article based on their interview with Modly; the Navy Chief "panicking" one):mad: it said Crozier had that # a day before he sent the letter so that would make it Sunday, the 29th. Lastly, both agree that these 2 exchanged emails prior to the letters release, but the Post's said that happened on Sunday, the 29th; DefenseOne said it happened on Saturday, the 28th, (although the DefenseOne article lists Saturday's date in error as the 29.) Either way, the email exchange between the Modly's Chief of Staff Love, & Captain Crozier occurred prior to the release of the letter. And I'm unsure of the date Crozier had the cell phone #.

www.defenseone.com

The Battle of USS Theodore Roosevelt: a Timeline

The COVID-stricken aircraft carrier sailed out of its regular deployment and into international headlines, with repercussions from Guam to Washington. Here's what happened and when.
www.defenseone.com www.defenseone.com
 
Wishful said:
Lastly, both agree that these 2 exchanged emails prior to the letters release, but the Post's said that happened on Sunday, the 29th; DefenseOne said it happened on Saturday, the 28th, (although the DefenseOne article lists Saturday's date in error as the 29.) Either way, the email exchange between the Modly's Chief of Staff Love, & Captain Crozier occurred prior to the release of the letter. And I'm unsure of the date Crozier had the cell phone #.
Click to expand...

If it is Saturday, 3 PM in Washington, DC, then what day and time is it in Guam? What is Navy time on board the ship docked in Guam? WP says Sunday, Defense One says Saturday.

Not that it matters, but maybe that explains the Date discrepancy. Plus I'm curious how the military reconciles the massive time zone discrepancies in general.
 
cb7893 said:
If it is Saturday, 3 PM in Washington, DC, then what day and time is it in Guam? What is Navy time on board the ship docked in Guam? WP says Sunday, Defense One says Saturday.

Not that it matters, but maybe that explains the Date discrepancy. Plus I'm curious how the military reconciles the massive time zone discrepancies in general.
Click to expand...

When you’re working across time zones, operations will typically put times into UTC and local time. (UTC is coordinate universal time, using Greenwich mean time as it’s basis). For instance, when I was working in Seoul, we were a “day ahead” when compared to units back in the states. If we were just dealing with local units, we would denote “India” time which is the local time zone based on being UTC+9 in orders/timelines so folks would know what to use or denote we had converted to UTC time when dealing with folks outside our time zone.

So basically a date/time can have two correct dates associated with it depending on what time zone you’re using...
 
Thanks @Casey.

Makes perfect sense for working with time zones and daylight savings times across hemispheres (North and South).
 
A6E Dad said:
Latest on TR, virus count up to 584

and this article published in NYT https://www-nytimes-com.cdn.ampproj...oronavirus-roosevelt-carrier-crozier.amp.html

according to senior officers on the ship, multiple senior officers wanted to co-sign CAPT Crozier's email, but he would not allow it, know it would end careers.
Click to expand...
Godo link, thanks. I found these statements interesting also:
"The warship’s doctors estimated that more than 50 crew members would die, but Capt. Brett E. Crozier’s superiors were balking at what they considered his drastic request to evacuate nearly the entire ship."
and
"On March 30, after four days of rebuffs from his superiors, Captain Crozier sat down to compose an email."
 
If you handed out the mefloquine without medical examinations, prescriptions and physician oversight you should realize the military often gets medical issues wrong with devastating consequences.
 
Casey said:
When you’re working across time zones, operations will typically put times into UTC and local time. (UTC is coordinate universal time, using Greenwich mean time as it’s basis). For instance, when I was working in Seoul, we were a “day ahead” when compared to units back in the states. If we were just dealing with local units, we would denote “India” time which is the local time zone based on being UTC+9 in orders/timelines so folks would know what to use or denote we had converted to UTC time when dealing with folks outside our time zone.

So basically a date/time can have two correct dates associated with it depending on what time zone you’re using...
Click to expand...
I was born in Guam, and until the day she passed away my Grandma always remembered my birthday wrong, by 1 day. She was stateside when she got the call that I was born.
 
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