The USS Abraham Lincoln left its home port of San Diego on November 21, 2025. Since then, the nuclear-powered aircraft carrier and its crew of roughly 5,000 sailors and Marines have racked up more than 270 continuous days at sea, a stretch that hasn’t been matched since the Vietnam War era.

That kind of endurance record wouldn’t normally make headlines on its own. But stories coming out of the ship in recent weeks have painted a much darker picture, one involving spoiled food, broken bathrooms, and a crew pushed to its limits.

The strike left much of the facility in ruins. With its main Persian Gulf hub knocked out, the Navy had to improvise. According to an unnamed military official who spoke to the Times, the fleet shifted to using its base on Diego Garcia as a replacement logistics hub. The catch is that Diego Garcia sits roughly 2,200 miles away, a remote island in the Indian Ocean administered by the UK, located south of the Maldives.

That distance mattered. Suddenly the Lincoln was pulling its supplies from a base far removed from where it was actually operating, and the ship also lost access to a nearby liberty port where sailors could have gone ashore for a break.

Danielle Rappa, whose son serves aboard the ship, described his account of conditions to NBC News in stark terms, saying he compared it to the television show “American Horror Story,” where people are essentially dead without realizing it.

The toll wasn’t just physical. On August 3, a sailor went overboard wearing a life vest and spent nearly an hour in the water before being rescued. Reports indicated that other sailors had to be stopped from doing the same thing.

Another mother told NBC News that her son described crew members who had stopped functioning entirely. According to her account, one person simply quit showing up for duty, hoping it would get them sent home. She added that she’d heard conditions did improve somewhat in April, but only after parents began raising complaints publicly.

Trump offered his own take the next day, telling reporters that the Lincoln’s deployment was “not nearly long enough.” The comment came just one day after The Wall Street Journal reported that the Navy intended to send the USS George Washington to replace the Lincoln. According to the Journal, that carrier had recently been stationed in the South China Sea. By Thursday, the Associated Press confirmed the George Washington had already arrived in the Middle East.

The Lincoln itself was reported Thursday evening to be heading home, with an expected arrival back in San Diego within a few weeks.

Using satellite imagery, social media footage, and interviews with current and former service members, the Journal found damage far more extensive than what the Pentagon had publicly acknowledged. The base’s command headquarters, more than a dozen other buildings, and two satellite communications terminals all sustained heavy hits. Military officials told the Journal that no one died in the attacks and that broader U.S. operations weren’t significantly disrupted, though only a small staff remained after most personnel were evacuated from the site.