Bangkok: The crew of the beleaguered USS Lincoln put in for shore leave today in the coastal city of Pataya in Thailand where they were sent for rest and recuperation after over nine months at sea and six months on active combat duty in the Persian Gulf. The Lincoln - a Nimitz class carrier with a crew of almost 5000 sailors, airmen and marines - was forced to leave the Persian Gulf Theatre after reports became public of several sailors trying to commit suicide by jumping off the main deck because of battle fatigue and exhaustion. Shortages of fresh food and - particularly fruit and vegetables - were also reported for several weeks as it became clear that supply lines for vessels in the Persian Gulf and Arabian Sea were being severely strained because of the destruction of regional US supply depots and bases by Iranian ballistic missile and drone attacks.
The Lincoln was part of the second carrier strike group deployed to the region in February this year, moving from the Indo-Pacific region to join the US campaign against Iran. The beginning of the campaign saw saturation bombing of alleged Iranian military sites by US sea based air assets and Iranian retaliation that targeted US fixed position supply and radar bases around the Persian Gulf and the wider region. Destruction of these bases meant that US supply ships needed to redirect from the US naval base in Guam rather than easily accessible base in Oman or Bahrain, where US force have historically resupplied.
Strains on logistics and a robust Iranian response forced the Lincoln to stay deployed in the theatre but removed from the front of active combat because of Iranian missile threats. The stress of constant deployment, low resources, and preserved food was reportedly too much for many sailors with officers concerned about mutinous talk, followed by two widely reported suicide attempts by crew members trying to jump off the flight deck that emerged after private text messages were leaked to the press.
"Dr. Phillip Hunt, a former US Navy physician with extensive experience treating deployment related mental health issues, described the compounding stress of an indefinite extension saying, "You have guys getting anxious, you have guys getting depressed... I just – I feel so, so badly for that crew. It's just – it's tragic."
"If you don't have a flight deck job you don't just wander up on to the flight deck, Because its a dangerous area a lot of things moving around, and you're basically living inside a steel box....and you're living inside of this for weeks at a time without ever seeing the sky," said former Navy Seal Matt Bracken in an interview when asked about conditions on the ship.
The Lincoln crew are joined in Thailand by those of two other ships from the strike group - the destroyer USS Frank E Petersen Jr, at Chonburi’s Sriracha port and the cruiser USS Robert Smalls in Map Ta Phut in neighbouring Rayong province. The Lincoln is expected to depart this week back to port in the US.
