The Navy’s next hospital ship will be called Balboa, the beloved nickname for Naval Medical Center San Diego, one of the largest military care centers in the world.
Secretary of the Navy Carlos Del Toro unveiled the name during an appearance Friday at the medical center, drawing crisp applause from an audience mostly made of sailors and Marines.
The USNS Balboa will be the second vessel in a new class of expeditionary ship that’s meant to give the Navy the ability to move rapidly from place to place to serve military personnel, especially in Indo-China. The vessel will be 361 feet long and capable of traveling about 35 mph, and it will handle V-22 Osprey, a vertical takeoff and landing aircraft that is vital to expeditionary forces.
Balboa will be less than half as big, and roughly twice as fast, as USNS Mercy, a well-known hospital ship that operates out of San Diego.
“Imagine a really fast ferry that has all the capabilities of a small hospital,” Del Toro told The San Diego Union-Tribune. “You have an intensive care unit that can take care of approximately 60 individuals and can manage medical care from the simple to the far more complicated and be able to do surgeries as well.”
The ship, which is scheduled to be built in Mobile, Alabama, by Austal, will feature three operating rooms and a medical laboratory.
Del Toro told the crowd why he chose the name Balboa: “The contributions of this medical center over the past 100 years, represented by the care its personnel delivers to our sailors, Marines, and families, are absolutely incredible.”
The first of these new expeditionary medical ships will be known as USNS Bethesda in honor of the Bethesda Naval Hospital, the former name of the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland.
