GUAM – Sailors aboard the aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt gave their leader a hero’s send-off in Guam as the ship’s crew battles the coronavirus.
Captain Brett Crozier was relieved of command over a memo he wrote warning Navy leaders that urgent action was needed to save the lives of the crew.
More than 130 sailors aboard the Roosevelt have tested positive for coronavirus so far.
Navy Secretary Thomas Modly said that Crozier showed “extremely poor judgment” and disseminated the memo too widely after he fired Crozier on Thursday.
Information from the memo was published in the San Francisco Chronicle, but Modly said he had no indication that Crozier was the one who leaked it.
He, instead, blamed Crozier for going outside the chain of command and sending the memo over an unsecured system that increased the risk of it being leaked.
Some of the sailors from the Roosevelt will be quarantined in hotel rooms in Guam.
The carrier was sent to the island after crewmembers started testing positive for the virus, but almost all the crew was kept onboard for a few days before the Navy decided to start moving them ashore.
Modly said nearly a thousand crewmembers were now off the ship and 2,700 were expected to be off in the next couple of days.
Some crew will have to remain behind to provide security and maintenance and to run the ship’s nuclear reactors.