re: USS Roosevelt Whats you Guy's Take?

I am a shipyard electrician who helped put the USS Fitzgerald back together. I worked side by side with the sailors who were on board during the collision. Seeing how the Navy treated them before and after the incident this is my take.

1. You don’t become a captain of a carrier by being an idiot. There is no way he didn’t know he’d be canned by letting that email out. This couldn’t have been the first time he asked for help. It might have been his last resort.

2. The Navy let this be a security issue by not taking care of this before it became public. The Navy knew the crew of the Fitz were over worked and continued to deny extended port time. We had so much equipment to repair that had nothing to do with the collision because the crew couldn’t stay in port long enough to make repairs.

3. The big shocker for me:
The Navy could care less about personnel! Not only did they keep the same crew members on a ship that these kids had to watch their shipmates die (they had to close the hatch of a berthing that still had sailors in or the flooding would have reached main deck) but ignored sailors having emotional problems.
Their answer was “if you have a problem tell us”. The ones that did were medically discharged. We lost a young man 3 weeks ago from suicide. Great young man who was suffering. AND THE NAVY KNEW IT!
The Fitz is about to go out and he couldn’t deal with being back to sea on it.

I’m ex Air Force (85-91). There is no way any of us would have been put in that situation. Not a single sailor who was in the collision should ever set foot in that ship again.

So until more info comes out I’m going with past performance of big Navy. They dropped the ball.