T. A. Gardner
Serial Thread Killer
I used to regularly head back to berthing or wherever after watch by going up to the hanger bay. That way I got some fresh air and a little sunshine. The suicide rate is mostly due to the most junior, and usually youngest, crew members being treated horribly. The leadership didn't give a shit about them. Many were never even told what they needed to do to advance in rank, so they just stayed stuck at E-3. They were usually given the shittest jobs too.
I remember one time I had to go to #4 JP 5 pump room to do some minor check on an electrical controller in it. Access is down a vertical ladder in a trunk that goes down like 5 or 6 decks. The safety nets, as usual, were not in place if you fell. So I was climbing down with a tool bag in hand. Not easy.
The pump room was nasty. The bilge was full of JP 5 that leaked from the pumps and valves. It shimmered in the air. There were two E-nothings in purple shirts sitting in the room. There are large "NO SMOKING" signs everywhere. One of them was dragging on a cigarette and both looked totally stoned from the fumes.
I pointed at the signs. The guy shrugged and tossed his lit cigarette in the bilge. "Won't burn" he said.
I finished up my maintenance and got the hell out of that hell hole ASAP. My bet is those two guys were assigned to sit there and turn a valve or make sure the pump was restarted if it went offline and did that for the whole WestPac. They came aboard as E-nothings. Got lungs full of jet fuel and left at the end of the cruise as E-nothings. If they'd died in there, it would likely be weeks before they were found.
Deck Division's office (starboard on like the 02 level under the island) had a sign on the door, "E-6 and above only." You weren't a 6, you needed special permission to enter. The Chiefs and officers were in there and they weren't having much to do with the junior enlisted. The E-6's were expected to take care of that. So, if you were stuck in Deck, your chances of advancing or getting a better job were damn near nil. Nobody was helping those guys get ahead and they rarely knew how to do it on their own.
In nuclear power, it was different. If you could advance, you got advanced. That was one way the Navy hoped to keep nukes in, throw globs of money at them. There weren't a whole lot of other incentives available.
I can tell you that you hit a wall at about 72 hours. I had to stay up more or less 24 hours a day during a RefTra where I was working at night and had damage control drills to go to all day. That went on for about a month. Hegseth is NOT the problem here. All that sort of shit long predates him and it's not just the Navy that does it.
On sailors jumping overboard, I can remember two cases of that. One was kind of hilarious, the other typical.
The first was a guy that couldn't take it anymore. He got a life raft like the pilots use if their plane goes down and jumped overboard. It was days before anyone noticed he was missing. For about a month afterwards, daily muster was a big deal until things died down and went back to usual
He died out in the Indian Ocean. Some fishing trawler found him. He didn't know how to use the solar still to make water and had almost zero food.
The other was a E-nothing that got chewed out by his Div O for something or another for the Nth time. At one point in that, the sailor said something like "I should just jump overboard..." or so the rumors went. The Div O told him something like "Go ahead, see if anyone cares..." So the guy went down to the hanger bay, took off his boondockers (boots) on elevator #1 and jumped overboard--as we were transiting San Francisco Bay near Alcatraz Island.
The local news had the whole thing on video as they had their news choppers following the ship.
There was a Navy helo up and they fished the guy out of the bay PDQ. He was taken to mast in front of the Captain where his defense was his Div O told him to do it. Not that that got him anything...
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