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Watch video: Captain of US aircraft carrier, fired for criticising handling of COVID-19 outbreak, gets rousing sendoff

Captain Brett E Crozier, the commander of the USS Theodore Roosevelt, was removed on Thursday after he complained about the handling of the coronavirus outbreak on the ship.

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Captain Brett E Crozier, the commander of the USS Theodore Roosevelt, was removed on Thursday
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A US Navy Captain who was relieved of his command after writing a scathing letter about the novel coronavirus outbreak aboard an aircraft carrier received an extraordinary send-off by his sailors as he left the ship in Guam on Friday. 

Captain Brett E Crozier, the commander of the USS Theodore Roosevelt, was removed on Thursday. As he disembarked the nuclear-powered vessel in Guam, hundreds of sailors lined up to give a send-off to their former boss. 

Videos shared on social media show crew members lining up on both sides of a pathway and saluting Crozier as he walked down toward the gangway. As he disembarks, the sailors cheer him on, raising slogans, videos show.

Watch viral videos here:

 

As the deadly virus spread among the crew members aboard the naval carrier, Crozier wrote a letter to his superiors, criticizing the response to the spread of the virus on the ship quarantined in Guam.

The letter angered the leadership which said Crozier did not follow the chain of command in writing the letter which also found its way to various media outlets. 

"We are not at war. Sailors do not need to die," Crozier said in the letter. "If we do not act now, we are failing to properly take care of our most trusted asset — our Sailors."

Announcing the removal of the captain, acting Secretary of the Navy Thomas Modly said, "I lost confidence in his ability."

Modly said the leak of Captain Crozier’s letter had panicked the crew and family members, and embarrassed the Navy’s leadership.

“It undermines our efforts and the chain of command’s efforts to address this problem and creates panic,” he said. 

“And creates a perception that the Navy’s not on the job, the government’s not on the job,” Modly added. 

Modly said that 114 sailors on the carrier have tested positive for the coronavirus. The number would go up, he said. "Maybe in the hundreds."

He said that 2,700 of the 4,865 sailors aboard the Roosevelt would be disembarking this week and only a skeleton crew would remain aboard to maintain the ship.

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