AH-12 Haven
These hospital ships were a new type of mobile hospital, moving from place to place, sometimes supporting the Inchon invasion or aiding the Hungnam evacuation, or simply shifting about the Korean coast as needed. Two senior Navy nurses, Commander Estelle Kalnoske Lange and Lieutenant Ruth Cohen, received the Bronze Star for their work on the Navy hospital ships. For the first time helicopters played a significant role in medical evacuations. USS Consolation, USS Repose and USS Haven all were modified with helicopter landing platforms.
The ships were air conditioned, and they carried "luxury" foods like milk and ice cream that were unavailable to servicemen and women in Korea. However, the medical personnel aboard the hospital ships were inundated with patients, and often worked 36 hours without rest. Hospital ships often took on many more patients than they had been designed to carry during emergencies on the battlefield. Often, patients lay stacked in triple bunks. Shipboard life was very crowded, with little room for privacy to reduce stress. Operating rooms were open around the clock.
The successful Inchon invasion by the 10th Corps coordinated with a break-through by the 8th Army perimeter defenders from the south destroyed, captured, and dispersed the bulk of the enemy forces. Psychiatric casualties were numerous during the initial severe fighting, but sharply declined with the collapse of enemy resistance. The 1st Marine Division, who bore the brunt of the fighting for Seoul, suffered heavy battle losses and consequently incurred a large number of psychiatric casualties. Marine psychiatric patients were first evacuated to a Navy hospital ship in Inchon Harbor, since intradivisional psychiatric treatment was not available. Despite the excellent psychiatric staff and facilities aboard the hospital ship few psychiatric patients were salvaged for combat duty. This was in sharp contrast to the results obtained somewhat later in the more primitive environment of a field hospital, where 50 percent of Marine psychiatric casualties were recovered for combat duty by a 1- to 3-day period of rest, sedation, and superficial psychotherapy. Obviously, the comfort and safety of a hospital ship militates against the motivation of psychiatric patients to face again the rigors of combat.
Except for such patients as were flown by helicopter direct to hospital ships in the harbor at Inchon, the 1st Marine Division was supported by rail, from Munsan, through Seoul to Inchon. With the extreme tides that occur at Inchon it was necessary to schedule the trains for the port siding at the time of a high or rising tide. Since hospital ship patients who were evacuated from the ship to Japan also came in by rail from Inchon to the airfield, this was an operation that epitomized tri-service cooperation. The function of the hospital ship in Korea is indicated by the fact that it retains that title yet, while the late "hospital" train is now more aptly called an "ambulance" train. The hospital ship was utilized as a floating hospital, primarily as an evacuation hospital for the 1st Marine Division. Its role in the transportation of patients was only incidental. As ships were replaced and moved back to their base in Japan they might carry along a few special patients; the bulk of their load was transferred to the new ship arriving on station.
USS Haven (AH 12) arrived in Inchon Harbor without a flight deck; its innovative commanding officer improvised a deck with pontoon sections obtained from the Army, mooring them perpendicular to the anchored ship on both sides and equipping them with warning lights, wind-direction indicators, and firefighting equipment. Rope ladders and temporary gangways provided access. Up to four helicopters could be landed and their casualties brought aboard ship with litter hoists.
USS Repose (AH-16), the last of the World War II hospital ships on active duty, was decommissioned January, 1950. She was recommissioned six months later because of the Korean War. The three Haven-class ships saw almost 35 percent of battle casualties admitted through September 1952.
On 25 August 1950, while returning from sea trails, prior to her assignment to the Military Sea Transportation Service, USS Benevolence (AH-13) collided with the freighter Mary Luckenbach and sank off San Francisco. Out of the 518 who were on board the hospital ship 23 perished, including Navy nurse Wilma Ledbetter.
When French colonial rule in Indochina came to a chaotic end in 1954 following the climactic defeat at Dien Bien Phu, the U.S. Navy helped evacuate 721 French troops and transport them back to their homes in France and North Africa. The hospital ship USS Haven, which had already seen action in World War II and four tours during the Korean War, was again pressed into service for the trip. Navy nurses onboard were called to take care of the demoralized soldiers, most of whom were French Foreign Legionnaires.
USS Repose was commissioned for the third time in 1965 and outfitted with a 750-bed hospital. During four years in Southeast Asia, USS Repose treated more than 9,000 battle casualties and admitted a total of more than 24,000 patients. Repose was joined by USS Sanctuary in 1967. After more than 20 years of commissioned service spanning three wars, USS Repose left Vietnam in March 1970 and was decommissioned two months later. She earned 28 battle stars for action in Korea and Vietnam.
USS Sanctuary remained in Vietnam, once spending a record 121 days on the line. She left Da Nang Harbor for the last time in April 1971 and was decommissioned in 1974. She was the first U.S. Navy ship to house a mixed male-female crew and was the Navy's last hospital ship until the current USNS Mercy and USNS Comfort joined Military Sealift Command. The current hospital ships are USNS, rather than USS and are the third ships to carry the name Comfort and Mercy.
During Vietnam, Hospital Corpsmen were assigned aboard ships of various kinds, providing offshore medical support to U.S. forces. The largest commitment here was on the hospital ships USS Repose and USS Sanctuary. Some 200 Hospital Corpsmen, representing the gamut of technical specialties, worked on each ship.
For more than a dozen years -- from the end of the Vietnam era to the launching of USNS Mercy (T-AH 19) and USNS Comfort (T-AH 20) in 1986 and 1987 -- the U.S. Navy sailed without a hospital ship. The history of the hospital ship had been one of ebb and flow. Rarely have hospital ships been maintained in peacetime.
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