Crew members cheer Navy captain who sounded virus alarm on ship.
Hours after he was dismissed from command of his nuclear aircraft carrier for sounding alarms about a coronavirus outbreak, Navy Capt. Brett Crozier received a hero’s sendoff Friday from hundreds of sailors on his ship.
“Captain Crozier! Captain Crozier!” clapping crew members aboard the Theodore Roosevelt chanted as the Santa Rosa native walked down the gangplank and onto a dock in Guam.
Meanwhile, pressure increased in Washington for answers about his dismissal and the status of the thousands of sailors who remained onboard, fewer than half of whom have been tested for the virus.
Several sailors filmed the moment Crozier departed and posted it on social media. The carrier’s former commanding officer walked alone off the ship with a backpack, saluted a sailor onshore and gave a brief wave to his crew before being driven away.
“And that’s how you send off one of the greatest captains you’ve ever had,” one sailor narrated as he filmed the sendoff, the chants echoing on the Roosevelt’s massive hangar deck. “A man for the people.”
Crozier, 50, was relieved of his command Thursday by acting Navy Secretary Thomas Modly, three days after the captain wrote a letter to his superiors in which he pleaded for more resources to remove most of his nearly 5,000 crew members from the warship. Without such measures, he said, some sailors could die.
Modly said Crozier hadn’t let his superiors know the seriousness of the situation before sending the letter, and complained that he first learned of the situation when The Chronicle reported on the letter Tuesday. He said Crozier showed “extremely poor judgment” in copying the letter to more than 20 people, saying that allowed it to become public and undermine national security.
“He put the spotlight on the Navy in a negative light when all the things he was asking for
“And that’s how you send off one of the greatest captains you’ve ever had. A man for the people.”
Crew member aboard the Navy’s aircraft carrier Theodore Roosevelt
we’re surging for him,” Modly told conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt in an interview Friday. “This was the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do, particularly in this job, because I know that in my heart and in the heart and mind of this particular officer, every single thing that he was doing was with the best interests of the crew in mind . ... I know that the crew loves and respects him. But that’s not an excuse for exercising the judgment that he did.”
The Navy said Friday that 41% of Roosevelt crew members had been tested for the virus, with 137 positive cases. Modly said roughly onethird of the cases were asymptomatic and that no sailor has been hospitalized. Nearly 600 crew members are quarantined in Guam hotels.
A little more than a week ago, the ship had only two cases. The captain told officials it was impossible to keep social distancing and isolation standards aboard the cramped carrier.
Sailors and relatives of Roosevelt crew members who have spoken to The Chronicle have showered Crozier with support for his actions. The Chronicle granted anonymity to sailors under its sourcing policy because they were not authorized to speak to the media.
“I’ve never had a better CO,” one sailor on the Roosevelt said of his former commanding officer. “The guy was liked by the officers, enlisted and their families. You know how rare that is?”
Also on Friday, 17 Democratic senators including Kamala Harris of California wrote to the Defense Department’s inspector general asking for an investigation into the Navy’s response to the coronavirus outbreak on the carrier and Crozier’s dismissal.
“We are particularly alarmed by the stark reversal from the Navy regarding Capt. Crozier’s leadership during this crisis,” the senators wrote. “It is also difficult to understand how Capt. Crozier’s decision to copy ‘20 or 30 people’ on an email to his chain of command necessarily constitutes a breach warranting relief of command.”
The senators added that “given the remarkable show of support for Capt. Crozier by members of his crew, we are additionally worried about the impact of this decision on morale and readiness.”
In a separate statement, Sen. Dianne Feinstein, DCalif., said she hoped Crozier’s dismissal would not deter other officers from speaking out.
“By all accounts, Captain Crozier wrote this letter because he cares deeply about the safety of his crew,” Feinstein said. “The fact that the letter went to individuals outside his chain of command and revealed potential readiness issues would not seem to warrant a disciplinary action that essentially ends his career.”