Eight sailors in USS Lincoln strike group attempted suicide, US Navy says

Washington: Eight sailors who were part of the USS Abraham Lincoln strike group attempted to take their lives during its long deployment in support of the war against Iran, according to a letter from the US Navy.

One of those sailors assigned to the Lincoln’s air wing “went overboard from the ship” in early August and was recovered by one of the carrier’s rescue helicopters, Hung Cao, the acting navy secretary, said in the letter. A second sailor attempted to go overboard in March but was stopped by shipmates, Cao wrote.

The new information about the crew aboard the Lincoln and the other ships in the strike group was released to Democratic Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, who pressed the navy for information about the crew.

Gillibrand criticised US President Donald Trump and the Pentagon on Wednesday (Washington time) for downplaying the strain on the crew. The response from the navy proved that the conditions the sailors faced aboard the Lincoln were “serious and deteriorating”, she said in a statement.

The Lincoln, with its crew of about 5000 sailors, has spent more than 300 days at sea and recently set a navy record for the longest time at sea without making a port call.

After stopping for a week earlier this month in Thailand , the San Diego-based ship arrived in Guam on Saturday. In total, the strike group consists of about 6000 sailors.

Last month, Trump dismissed concerns about difficult conditions reported aboard the ship. Asked whether he was concerned about the crew’s mental health and whether he thought the deployment had gone on too long, the president said: “No. No. No.”

Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth also downplayed the grim conditions aboard the Lincoln, saying the situation had been “misrepresented”.

Gillibrand said Trump and Hegseth had dismissed the sailors’ concerns “with open disrespect”.

“That this administration can find endless taxpayer dollars for bombs, ballrooms and billionaires, but cannot take care of our service members, is completely unacceptable,” she said.

Rear Admiral Donald J. Guter, a retired top judge advocate general for the navy from 2000 to 2002, described the eight suicide attempts as a “disturbingly high number indicating a serious stress level”.

Admiral Brad Cooper, who oversees US operations in the Middle East, insisted in a statement posted on social media in August that “the Lincoln currently has among the lowest number of cases related to mental health” among the navy’s 11 active aircraft carriers.

“That doesn’t mean that all is perfect,” Cooper acknowledged. He said that a long deployment at sea “is uniquely challenging and tough, and every single one of us, including me, reacts to stressors in different ways”.