CAB129-33 — Page 291

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One of the most difficult problems facing the Conference will be to find a means of ensuring that hospital ships are not inadvertently attacked by an enemy who cannot see them and therefore does not know that they are hospital ships.

radar device would be the beat older that It has been suggested that a radar device would be the best means;

Prior that this would be open to grave abuse.

but your Sub-Committee fear

agerhey the only safe method is to encourage hospital ships to broadcast their position, course and speed at regular intervals, so that aircraft may be aware that they are in the neighbourhood. For operational reasons it is highly undesirable, however, that such broadcasting be made compulsary; this would, for example, have given away the approach of our naval forces in the North African landings when hospital ships were necessarily in attendance to succour the wounded. At the same time such broadcasting must clearly be encouraged. Your Sub-Committee

therefore recommend that it should be laid down that a hospital ship does not forfeit its immunity by reason of "having on board wireless telegraphy apparatus without which it would be unable to give from time to time due and adequate notification of its position, course and speed."

10.

Your Sub-Camittee consider that Service women and the wives of Service men may properly be carried in hospital ships during the last three months of pregnancy and during the three months following the birth of a child, whether or not they are sick, wounded or shipwrecked; they likewise consider that medical personnel and chaplains over and above the staff of the hospital ship may properly be carried, whether or not they are sick, wounded or shipwrecked. They do not recamend including in the Convention a provision to this effect, because they consider that the Convention should not be complicated by the inclusion of administrative details which experience has shom to be unecessary; but they consider that it should be interpreted in future, as it was in the past, as covering these categories and they consider that if there is pressure at the Conference for the inclusion of such a provision, the U.K. Delegatim should be authorised to agree.

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11. It is proposed to cover in the same way the carriage of medical supplies over and above those required for use an board the hospital ship itself; this is regarded as a legitimate use of a hospital ship, but has been in the past a matter of same doubt. It is proposed to resist the provisio in Article 21 of the 1947 draft (see paragraph 55 below) granting immunity to other ships carrying medical supplies.

Whilst

12. This article prohibits the use of codes and cyphers by hospital ships. The United States allowed the carriage of codes and cyphers in the last war far the receipt of secret messages on the ground that otherwise they would not be able to be informed of sudden changes of plan without jeopardizing operatimas. there is some force in this, your Sub-Committee feel that once codes and cyphers are carried there is no means of guaranteeing that they be not used for sending messages and that it is necessary to avoid this, since it opens the way to illicit military activity.

13. Article 15 of the 1947 draft (see paragraph 53 below) lays down that merchant ships which have been transformed into hospital ships shall not be put to any other use throughout the duration of hostilities. Your Sub-Committee feel this to be unnecessarily restrictive and propose to mit it; as it is not British practice to "denotify" hospital ships, however, they omsider that the U.K. Delegation should be authorised to agree if necessary.

14. Article 20 (see also paragraph 46). The principle adopted by your Sub-Committee in regard to the use of aircraft for medical transport is similar to that described under Article 9 (see paragraph 7 above) for air-sea resous oraft: aircraft must rely on their speed for protection. There has been s desire, exemplified by the 1947 draft, to find a formula that would give

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mmunity to hospital aircraft except in certain areas where operations were going an; all such attempts are reduced to absurdity by considering the dilemma of the Commanding officer of a war ship having to wait to see the Red Cross markings on an nidentified approaching aircraft before deciding whether to shoot at it.

Except by special agreement between the belligerents, therefore, aircraft should not be protected by the Convention.