Hello everyone, you are watching another episode of Military TV,
in today’s session we will explore the role of U.S Navy Hospital Ship.
If you are curious on this topic, stay tuned and watch this video till the end.
The United States Navy has a long history of military strength.
Considering its numerous aircraft carriers, destroyers, and submarines,
it is by far the world's largest and potentially most capable Navy.
But, beyond those, and beyond all the cruisers and patrol boats and other combat ships,
there are two more that lurk in the shadows of the 490 ship fleets, they are: the USNS Mercy
and the USNS Comfort.
These sister ships are the Navy's third-largest vessels, behind the Nimitz-class and Ford-class
aircraft carriers. Mercy began her life as a San Clemente-class oil tanker called
SS Worth and was converted to a hospital ship in the mid-1980s.
The Comfort is also a converted oil tanker, once known as the SS Rose City.
To be specific, it can be seen that they’re the size of cruise ships and comparable in
capability to the largest land-based hospitals. Each holds 1,000 hospital beds including 80
intensive care beds. In comparison, the entire state of Maine has 1,061 total and 64 ICU beds.
Importantly, when nations came together to write the Geneva Conventions, defining the rules of war,
hospital ships were a significant focus. They specifically define these as any that
specifically and solely work to assist the wounded or sick, \with the important
distinction that they cannot carry any arms or ammunition. In addition, these ships also must
be painted white with red crosses to identify themselves, but assuming these requirements
are met, they are officially classified as a hospital ship. Under the Geneva Conventions,
those with this categorization cannot be attacked or fired upon. This was all plenty useful at the
time the Geneva Conventions were signed. However, land-based warfare is increasingly obsolete,
and it just doesn’t make sense to float a hospital to a conflict zone
when field hospitals are more capable, and medical evacuation is easily available.
Moreover, the ships are in a reduced operating status in their home ports.
Fewer than 75 crewmembers are aboard while the Mercy is at home in San
Diego and the Comfort is docked at Naval Station Norfolk, Virginia.
Once activated, the ships are usually ready to be sail within five days,
taking on a crew of about 60 civilian mariners and more than 1,200 military medical specialists.
For the recent updates, the USNS Comfort and the USNS Mercy are rushing to complete their scheduled
maintenance and board teams of medical personnel. Once outfitted, the Comfort will sail to New York
Harbor, and the Mercy will head off to the Port of Los Angeles. Because their purpose is to heal
wounded personnel, the ships are intended to specialize in trauma cases. For a variety of
reasons, they are not designed to deal with an infectious disease outbreak. Because the ships
are unable to isolate infected patients, they will only deploy to support non-COVID-19 cases.
Talking about their service experiences, Comfort and Mercy have both performed a lot of action.
Both of them were deployed in support of Desert Shield and Desert Storm. Mercy, which is based
in the Pacific, deploys on a regular basis for training exercises and humanitarian disasters.
Comfort has shown a lot more action in the past. It was first deployed in 1992 to support Operation
Uphold Democracy, a US military operation in Haiti, and again in 2003 to support the
US-led invasion of Iraq. Additionally, this will not be the first time the ships have
deployed inside the United States. Back then to the past, Comfort responded to the 9/11 attacks,
deploying to New York City to assist hospitals there. It also sailed for New Orleans in the
aftermath of Hurricane Katrina and to Puerto Rico following Hurricane Maria.
Anyway, feel free to leave your comment below If you have any suggestions or certain topic to
discuss further in the next videos. That’s all for today, Thanks for watching and see you next time!