Round-trip flight that prompted Navy boss resignation cost taxpayers more than $240,000

The Golden Horseshoe is a weekly designation from Just the News intended to highlight egregious examples of wasteful taxpayer spending by the government. The award is named for the horseshoe-shaped toilet seats for military airplanes that cost the Pentagon a whopping $640 each back in the 1980s. 

This week, our award is going to the U.S. Navy and former Acting Secretary of the Navy Thomas Modly for a nearly quarter million dollar round-trip flight to Guam that ended in Modly’s resignation.

In case you’d missed it, earlier this month Capt. Brett Crozier authored a letter that was leaked (unclear by whom) to the San Francisco Chronicle about conditions aboard the U.S.S. Theodore Roosevelt as the nearly 5,000-person aircraft carrier experienced an outbreak of the novel coronavirus.

One day after the leak, Crozier was relieved of his command by Acting Secretary Modly. The Roosevelt’s crew were reportedly distraught by the abrupt dismissal of Crozier, and in videos that have since gone viral, sailors cheered and chanted his name as he departed the ship.

Modly, in an effort to explain and perhaps justify his actions, promptly flew down to Guam, where the ship was docked, to address the crew in person. There, he delivered his now infamous reprimand of Crozier.

Modly reportedly told the Roosevelt's crew over the speaker-system: “It was a betrayal. And I can tell you one other thing: Because he did that he put it in the public’s forum and it is now a big controversy in Washington, D.C. If he didn’t think, in my opinion, that this information wasn’t going to get out to the public, in this day and information age that we live in, then he was either A, too naive or too stupid to be a commanding officer of a ship like this. The alternative is that he did this on purpose."

Outrage over Modly’s comments descended swiftly, prompting his resignation several days later.

“Acting Secretary Modly’s decision to address the sailors on the Roosevelt and personally attack Captain Crozier shows a tone-deaf approach more focused on personal ego than one of the calm, steady leadership we so desperately need in this crisis,” said congressman Adam Smith (D-Wash.), who chairs the House Armed Services Committee.

What has since been uncovered is the hefty price tag that went with Modly’s theatrics: His flights to and from the U.S.S. Roosevelt reportedly cost American taxpayers at estimated $243,151.65.

That number is a Navy estimate based on the operational cost of flying the C-37B jet that Modly took to and from the carrier ship. The per-hour cost of flying the jet is $7,000, and the total roundtrip time included at least 35 hours of flight time.

At this point, almost 100% of the Theodore Roosevelt’s 4,800-person crew have now been tested for the coronavirus. Around 600 tested positive for the illness, five are hospitalized, and one sailor has died.

The high cost of Modly's failed mission adds taxpayer injury to his insult of Capt. Crozier.

The U.S. Navy’s office of media relations did not respond to a request for comment.