Walking the Plank

The captain of an aircraft carrier is like a father of 5,500 children—and when the kids mess up, Dad takes the fall. That appears to be what happened to U.S. Navy Captain Thomas Hejl, until last week the commander of the aircraft carrier U.S.S. Kitty Hawk. After a string of alleged criminal acts by crew members of the Yokosuka-based ship, the Navy removed Hejl from his post 'due to a loss of confidence in his ability to lead his crew and carry out essential missions and taskings,' according to a statement by U.S. Seventh Fleet command. Six members of Hejl's crew have allegedly been involved in crimes committed around the ship's homeport, including a break-in, a carjacking and attempted marijuana smuggling. 'There had been some minor incidents from time to time before, but never anything like house-breaking, or incidents in such frequent succession,' says Yoshiaki Yasuda, liaison to the Navy's Yokosuka base for the Kanagawa prefectural government, which, along with the Yokosuka government, formally complained to the U.S. Navy twice in August. Extra-curricular shore leave activities weren't the only reason for Hejl's dismissal. The 41-year-old Kitty Hawk recently failed an engineering assessment and earlier this year in Singapore struck a buoy while Hejl was at the helm. The dismissal of a carrier captain is rare, but with U.S. forces fighting the war on terrorism, the margin of error for those in charge has shrunk.