USS Nimitz returns to San Diego after 10 months of deployment ABC 10News and last updated 2021-02-26 19:48:08-05 SAN DIEGO (KGTV) - After 10 months at sea, service members with the USS Nimitz returned to San Diego on Friday. Parent DJ O'Grady stood by on Harbor Island to watch the warship sail into the San Diego Bay. "We were waving and hoping they would see us," she told ABC 10News. Her daughter is a medic on board the ship. Approximately 5,000 Sailors and Marines were assigned to the carrier strike group which was the first to set sail after the onset of the COVID-19 crisis. Service members are returning to a very different home from the one that they left. There's a new president. Hundreds of thousands more people have died from the virus.