USNS COMFORT

We posted last April that the hospital ship USNS Comfort has deployed on Continuing Promise 2015, a five month mission to eleven nations in Central and South America and the Caribbean. Not all has gone well. On July 9, as reported by the Navy Times, the command senior chief of the medical facility on the hospital ship was fired after allegedly getting drunk and acting up at a reception for the president of Panama, according to a source familiar with the incident. Command Senior Chief Aurelio Ayala was reassigned to Military Sealift Command in Norfolk, Virginia, pending the outcome of the investigation.

In the past two years, the Comfort has faced several major command and personnel issues.  As we posted in April, the ship sailed with a new captain — the third, (or fourth) captain in the last 19 months. In August 2013, Capt. Kevin J. Knoop was relieved of duty by Rear Admiral Thomas Shannon and replaced by the ship’s Executive Officer, Rachel Haltner. At the end of March, Admiral Shannon relieved Captain Haltner of her duties as commanding officer. The Executive Officer, Capt. Miguel Cubano, briefly assumed command prior to the arrival of Capt. Christine Sears, Fleet Surgeon for the U.S. Naval Forces Southern Command/U.S. Fourth Fleet, who assumed permanent command just before the ship sailed.

Admiral Shannon’s decision to sack Capt. Knoop was later called into question when a board of inquiry unanimously endorsed Knoop’s leadership and his work.

USNS Comfort  and its sister ship, the USNS Mercy,  are the largest hospital ships on the oceans, the second largest hospital in the US and the fifth largest on the planet.