MULTIPLE SAILORS aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln have tried to go overboard during the aircraft carrier’s marathon deployment in the war with Iran, according to accounts military families have brought to the press and to Navy leadership.
The warship’s roughly 5,000 sailors and Marines are in their ninth month at sea and have logged 250 consecutive days without setting foot on land—the longest stretch for an American carrier in modern times. Families and members of Congress say conditions aboard have pushed the crew to a breaking point.
‘He Thinks His Career Is Ruined’
Annabelle Loma recounted how her husband attempted to jump from the ship after his time at sea was extended again and again.
“He’s scared. He thinks he’ll get a dishonorable discharge, and just because he was burnt out his 13-year career is ruined, just like that,” she said.
Another sailor’s wife described a separate incident aboard the Lincoln in which her husband stopped a shipmate from jumping, grabbing the crew member and pulling them back onto the deck.
‘Broken Trust’
Some 200 family members pressed their fears on Navy leaders at an emotional town hall in San Diego last Thursday, where the service was represented by acting Navy Secretary Hung Cao and other senior officials. One spouse said her husband had texted her that same day to say “he hopes he doesn’t wake up tomorrow.” A woman at the meeting told Cao the Navy had “broken trust between us and the leadership.”
The Navy has said that leadership continuously assesses the crew’s psychological readiness and that it is working to send more mental health professionals to the ship.
Alarm on Capitol Hill
Mike Levin, a Democratic member of Congress from California, catalogued life aboard the carrier—now in its fifth month of combat operations against Iran—in a post on X:
“Moldy showers, broken toilets, laundry down for weeks, long stretches with no hot water, a meal that came down to half a cup of rice and two tortillas. No soap, deodorant, or toothpaste.”
Jason Crow, a Democratic member of Congress from Colorado and a former Army Ranger who served in Afghanistan and Iraq, has warned that “the strain on our service members and their families” aboard the Lincoln is “building week by week.”
A Deployment Reshaped by War
The crisis has been months in the making. The Lincoln sailed from San Diego on Nov. 21, bound for the Pacific, and was redirected to the Middle East once the U.S.-Israel war with Iran began. Its crew has spent just two days ashore since—in Guam in December and in Oman in July. The deployment was scheduled to end in May and has been extended twice as the war grinds on,
Public criticism of shipboard conditions first flared in April, when photos of meager, rationed food circulated alongside reports of water shortages, moldy showers and broken laundry machines. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth dismissed the accounts as “more fake news.”
Levin answered him this week.
“These men and women signed up to serve their country. The least their country owes them is hot water, a working toilet, and a real meal. Hegseth cannot even manage that, and he has the nerve to look their families in the eye and call them liars,” he said.
A Documented Strain
The pressures bearing down on deployed sailors are well established. A study published last year examined the stress factors unique to life at sea and found loud noise, lack of rest, and inadequate mental and physical health care among the most common. Nearly half of the deployed sailors surveyed said they were not receiving adequate help coping with stress. The researchers concluded that “given the high rates of military suicide, including within the Navy, efforts to improve health care access on ships are urgently needed.”
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This is heartbreaking and so damn uneccessary. I absolutely despise this administration and what they are doing to this country and it's people.
Thank you adding the ai reporting. I have dyslexia. Its been a lot of reading and re-reading.