Long-deployed USS Lincoln to be replaced after mental health concerns and reports of poor conditions

[Gilder]

My Uncle Fred was not only a Torpedoman, he was also the boat's steward - one of his escapades involved "liberating" an ice cream machine with one of his cohorts, from one of the carriers while in Pearl Harbor during a refit.
Not sure if it was the Grayling, another boat or the Cavalla, but a feller has gotta do what a fellers gotta do...

Your Uncle Fred must have been flooded with drinks on their next shore leave

 

[Dimlee]

240 days at sea without a port call is not good for a crew. Yes, many people can sustain themselves much longer. A standard rating contract in the international merchant marine used to be 12+ months just 30 years ago, and it was "normal" for shipping companies. But captains and chief engineers had to deal with the consequences and resolve the tensions when they arose, search for urgent replacements, etc. It is always a small percentage, but one insane person aboard is enough to cause big trouble. And it is about the merchant marine, where ships do have port calls, even short ones, and there is no live ammunition aboard.

 

[ThomasP]

Not meaning to make light of it, but while it is not common, there are occasional suicide or attempted suicide on USN ships (and also on the ships of other nations), and not aways on the longer deployments.

As far as submarines go, the US nuclear powered ballistic missile subs used to go to sea and remain underwater around 3 months, and sometimes upto 5 months - without the crew seeing daylight or breathing air that was not reconditioned. I am not sure what they are doing nowadays, but as the mission has not changed much I doubt the patrol times have changed much either.

 

[swampyankee]

Some of the morale issues resulting in sailors trying to commit suicide are -- or should be -- within the purview of the captain and the ship's officers but a) they need the training to recognize problems and b) the professionals to ameliorate it when the morale problem is psychological. The shortage of basic supplies after months at sea is a fault that's above the captain's head. If proper supplies can't be provided, the ship should be relieved. Refusal to do so shows some severe contempt for people in the service.

 

[Gilder]

With about 5,000 people working every day, living cheek to jowl and the inevitable equipment failures that occur on a ship of this age there are going to be suicidal thoughts and actions. The fact that there haven't been any serious injuries or deaths speaks volumes about the skill of the captain and crew.
A significant factor seems to be that there is no end date. If the crew were told that we will be relieved on say 1st November, then there is a hope and a date they can live to. All there seem to be vague statements which will mean nothing to them.


Its a near certainty that there will be some form of inquiry when this is done and dusted. I just hope that in the need to find scapegoats, they don't pick on the senior officers on board. However I wouldn't bet against that happening.

 

[Gilder]

An interesting point re the lack of resupply. Apparently the reason why the ship wasn't resupplied earlier in the war was because Iran seriously damaged the main USN supply base in the area.
It was a loss which was never mentioned by Pete Hegseth or anyone else in the GOP.


View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zfOi_mgrh0M

 

[Shortround6]

Several differences between WW II and now.
One is the different standards of living of the times. Also remember that the US was coming out of the great recession and the US took a while and had several smaller recessions during the 30s.
In WW II many sailors, airmen and troops knew they were signing up for the duration.
Granted war can break out at any time but with the end date changing several times a week the uncertainty factor goes up exponentially.

 

[swampyankee]

An interesting point re the lack of resupply. Apparently the reason why the ship wasn't resupplied earlier in the war was because Iran seriously damaged the main USN supply base in the area.
It was a loss which was never mentioned by Pete Hegseth or anyone else in the GOP.


View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zfOi_mgrh0M

While the reason wasn't mentioned, it is a severe sign of poor planning: once that base was damaged, the first priority of Hegseth would be to make alternate logistics available: it's a basic part of military and naval planning. If you want to have that ship on station, you need to have the crew's needs met. If you don't do they, you have failed at your job. For all the talk about "warriors" (I don't want warriors in my armed forces; I want citizen-soldiers. I want people who don't view fighting a war as their reason for being; I want people for whom it's an unpleasant, but necessary, duty), the members of the US military are human beings, not some fanboi's idea of fighting machines.

Showing the people who make up the military that you don't really care about them enough to feed them is going to damage morale, retention, and recruitment. They're volunteers, not janissaries.

 

[swampyankee]

Several differences between WW II and now.
One is the different standards of living of the times. Also remember that the US was coming out of the great recession and the US took a while and had several smaller recessions during the 30s.
In WW II many sailors, airmen and troops knew they were signing up for the duration.
Granted war can break out at any time but with the end date changing several times a week the uncertainty factor goes up exponentially.

They also knew they were signing up for a truly existential risk, not one that is, at worst, a severe annoyance to its neighbors. People on the East and Gulf Coasts could see the tankers burning, and many of the first generation immigrants knew of the horrors being perpetrated by the nazis and their stoogish allies in Europe.

Regardless of what one thinks of FDR, he didn't spend much time on thud and blunder.

 

[GrauGeist]

Your Uncle Fred must have been flooded with drinks on their next shore leave

Sadly, I do not know which boat he hustled the ice cream maker aboard, alot of family history has been lost with the passing of my elders. I do know that he was on shore leave when his first boat, the Grayling (SS-209) had emergency orders to pull out for a mission and he and another shipmate missed the Grayling's departure. The Grayling was lost with all hands near the Philippines on that mission.
The other boat he served aboard, I do not know the name...this one was sunk by a Japanese destroyer and he managed to escape through one of the foreward torpedo tubes, but suffered the bends for the rest of his life as a result.
His last boat, the Cavalla (SS-244) *may* have been the one that was graced with the glorious source of ice cream. It was also this boat that sank the IJN Shokaku, him being the foreward Torpedoman most likely handled the tordepoes that sank her.

As an observation about the suicide issues:
This modern generation has not seen the personal hardships that the WWII era generation suffered. The great depression was a time of desperation, and a shortage of everything, People had to make due with very little and this created a generation of people who would roll up their sleeves and deal with whatever the problem was at hand. Many joined the military because they were broke, orphaned or just trying to escape the life they were dealing with.

I am not trying to belittle the younger generations, but they have grown up in some of the most prosperous times in human history and are not really prepared for hardship, even with military training.

 

[ThomasP]

Suicide ad attempted suicide occurred in WWI, WWII, Korea, and Vietnam, as well. But it was usually kept on the quiet side - ostensibly for morale purposes. The higher-ups often considered it to be, and portrayed it as, a weakness on the part of the individual soldier/sailor. The older style career soldiers/sailors who eventually became the leaders, could not seem to understand the views of the average soldier/sailor. This began to change after WWI (for the US) but did not really take hold in the general system until after Vietnam. I do not want to make too broad a statement, as it varied to a great degree depending on the commanding officers, but prior to Vietnam the citizen soldier was largely viewed as expendable by the higher-ups.

A number of years ago, I went down the rabbit hole of combat medicine and aerospace medicine, and I read way too many depressing bits and pieces of what actually went on in the past re behavior of, toward, and treatment of soldiers/sailors in the wars - and sometimes between the wars.

Incidentally, there was suicide among the soldiers and sailors of all the various major powers of the past - Ie US, UK, France, Italy, Germany, etc, and all the way back to ancient time of Greece, Rome, Egypt, etc - basically if there were any kind of prolonged hardship on land, sea, or more recently air, there was suicide and attempted suicide - both during and after the wars.

 

[swampyankee]

Sadly, I do not know which boat he hustled the ice cream maker aboard, alot of family history has been lost with the passing of my elders. I do know that he was on shore leave when his first boat, the Grayling (SS-209) had emergency orders to pull out for a mission and he and another shipmate missed the Grayling's departure. The Grayling was lost with all hands near the Philippines on that mission.
The other boat he served aboard, I do not know the name...this one was sunk by a Japanese destroyer and he managed to escape through one of the foreward torpedo tubes, but suffered the bends for the rest of his life as a result.
His last boat, the Cavalla (SS-244) *may* have been the one that was graced with the glorious source of ice cream. It was also this boat that sank the IJN Shokaku, him being the foreward Torpedoman most likely handled the tordepoes that sank her.

As an observation about the suicide issues:
This modern generation has not seen the personal hardships that the WWII era generation suffered. The great depression was a time of desperation, and a shortage of everything, People had to make due with very little and this created a generation of people who would roll up their sleeves and deal with whatever the problem was at hand. Many joined the military because they were broke, orphaned or just trying to escape the life they were dealing with.

I am not trying to belittle the younger generations, but they have grown up in some of the most prosperous times in human history and are not really prepared for hardship, even with military training.

Many of them have grown up with profound social isolation, of a sort that did not often exist in earlier generations, or even mine (I was born in 1953). Social networks -- family and friends -- are necessary.

I don't have access to data regarding suicide rates in the military vs time. I know any data regarding psychological issues more than a couple of decades old are also likely to be very unreliable.

 

[Shortround6]

Many navies, through the years, had problems with poor conditions.
There is only so much "attitude adjustment" you can do once you take keel hauling and flogging out of the punishment menu.

One of the befits for moving to oil fuel instead of coal was reducing the number of stokers (coal shovelers) on board. Stokers were notorious in the age of coal for mutinies.
The US had less trouble than most navies after 1900, in part because the US navy paid more attention to living conditions. Let's face it, what other navy had ice cream machines on their ships in WW II?

See the "Kiel mutiny of 3–11 November 1918" that triggered the German revolution of 1918-1919.

 

[special ed]

I give this info only as an idea to the understanding of a past era. I am 85. When I began work with the company, that lasted 40 years, all of my co-workers, men in particular, were the age of my father. The attitude of those who grew up during the great depression was "If you have a job, better keep it." Should I make a comment of another company's wages or benefits, I would get a comment, "This is a really good Company/Place to work." My immediate supervisor once commented that in the 30s he left a good job for a better only once when he left the garage where he worked at $20 per week to go to work for Hudson for $22 per week. Once our salesman commented, after I expressed "I may have to quit from all the impossible demands." We were being pressed to make one more service call per day using less gas to get there. The salesman said, " Oh, you can't quit."

 

[ThomasP]

re

I don't have access to data regarding suicide rates in the military vs time. I know any data regarding psychological issues more than a couple of decades old are also likely to be very unreliable.

Unfortunately, this statement is relatively correct.

The earliest numbers for the US that I have run across are post-Civil War. Although there was no Veterans Administration as we think of it today, there was the Veteran's Pension Bureau which tracked the deaths of the veterans for obvious reasons, and a fairly well documented network of hospitals and Veterans & old folks homes that kept track of the veterans. The peak rate of suicide among veterans was about 118 per 100,000 in the year 1883.

The lowest rate recorded to date following any major war was post-WWII, where the rate was between 10 and 15 per 100,000 over the following 40 years. However, during WWI and WWII there came into being an active attempt at preventing accurate reporting as well as to prevent such data from becoming publicly accessible, with said attempts continuing through the Cold War.

Today the rate is about 15 per 100,000 veterans of the Iraq-Afghanistan War, with a peak (to date) of 36 per 100,000 in 2020.

For suicides during the active war, WWII theoretically had the lowest at about 5 per 100,000, while Vietnam had the highest reported (so far available) with about 13 per 100,000.

Given the pattern that such incidents are under-reported - whether through poor reporting systems or though passive & active suppression - adjust the above as needed.

 

[edgardo gil]

It´s not easy and cheap to be the police of the world and mantain an empire. And when your economy start to fail, and other country grow faster than you with more resources and capacity, that´s a real problem. Spain knew that, Great Britain knew that, well, it´s the USA turn, welcome to the XXI century. Look that in the horizon? It´s the PRC.

 

[Gilder]

It´s not easy and cheap to be the police of the world and mantain an empire. And when your economy start to fail, and other country grow faster than you with more resources and capacity, that´s a real problem. Spain knew that, Great Britain knew that, well, it´s the USA turn, welcome to the XXI century. Look that in the horizon? It´s the PRC.

You are correct in many ways but I believe that most recent leaders of the USA knew this to. The way to handle it is to form alliances, then you have the mass and the flexibility. I use the example of shipbuilding. The USA cannot match the production capacity of the PRC, with its allies it can.

Submarine production shows this well. In 2025 the USA commissioned one submarine and had three building. Russia also commissioned one and had three building. I don't have the numbers for China but they are producing more than the USA. On its own the USA is bound to lose the race.
In 2025 NATO countries commissioned seven submarines and had another twenty in production. Pacific nations also produced a number of submarines. So with allies, the USA can still call itself the leader of the free world. What it cannot do, is pretend to be the leader of the free world by itself, it does need allies.

To turn a recent phrase on its head. Personally I believe that NATO can survive the loss of the USA, if only because Russia is a shadow of its recent past. But the USA cannot survive as it is, without NATO.

 

[GrauGeist]

You are correct in many ways but I believe that most recent leaders of the USA knew this to. The way to handle it is to form alliances, then you have the mass and the flexibility. I use the example of shipbuilding. The USA cannot match the production capacity of the PRC, with its allies it can.

Submarine production shows this well. In 2025 the USA commissioned one submarine and had three building. Russia also commissioned one and had three building. I don't have the numbers for China but they are producing more than the USA. On its own the USA is bound to lose the race.
In 2025 NATO countries commissioned seven submarines and had another twenty in production. Pacific nations also produced a number of submarines. So with allies, the USA can still call itself the leader of the free world. What it cannot do, is pretend to be the leader of the free world by itself, it does need allies.

To turn a recent phrase on its head. Personally I believe that NATO can survive the loss of the USA, if only because Russia is a shadow of its recent past. But the USA cannot survive as it is, without NATO.

Complancy is a cancer that rots from within - ask the Romans how this worked out...

 

[swampyankee]

Complancy is a cancer that rots from within - ask the Romans how this worked out...

Slavery was a very important institution in Rome. When the empire stopped expanding, the supply of people to brutalize and exploit severely fell. Much of the civil service, agricultural work force, and skilled labor were enslaved.

 

[GrauGeist]

Slavery was a very important institution in Rome. When the empire stopped expanding, the supply of people to brutalize and exploit severely fell. Much of the civil service, agricultural work force, and skilled labor were enslaved.

It's a little more complicated than that.

But a quick summary would be rampant inflation, political infighting, constant pressure from invasion along major stretches of it's borders and so on caused the Empire to falter and eventually fail.