Day 14 - USS Midway Museum (San Diego)

We stayed in Yuma last night, got up this morning and drove to San Diego. We went to the USS Midway Aircraft Carrier Museum. As soon as we stepped inside we knew Grandpa Gray would love this tour! We were given headsets for a self-guided audio tour, listening to presentations as we passed by particular areas. We had 60 different stations to visit and we didn’t quite get to see them all in the four and a half hours we were there! We were able to tour around the entire ship, chat with veteran sailors, see several displays of how things worked, take a guided tour on the bridge and look at numerous planes and helicopters on the flight deck. One of the veteran fighter pilots that we chatted with had well over 600 carrier landings! The Midway was in service from 1942 to 1992 and was the first of its class of carriers. It’s quite something to think that there were only 60 years between the shoot-out at the OK Corral and the commissioning of the Midway. What a tremendous advance in technology in a short period of time! Lots of stairs, narrow passageways and tiny sleeping quarters with 4500 on board certainly did not make for a comfortable Tour of Duty. The ship doctor’s said that there were countless head lacerations with sailors constantly banging their heads on things. When you consider separation from family, constant discomfort and the fact that their lives were often at risk, you really start to appreciate the sacrifice these men made. It was a great afternoon and we all really enjoyed it.

There's a lot of pictures here (David had a hard time trimming it down to these 30+!!). Remember too that you can click on the photo to see it in a larger format if you'd like.

Imperial Sand Dunes that seemed to just "appear" out of nowhere between Yuma & San Diego.

San Diego Skyline

USS Midway

Every inch of the ship was used, it was incredible how many of these bunks were stuck here, there and everywhere... and check out the size!!

One of the many, many, MANY hallways!

Wiring Nightmare! As new technology was added to the ship the wiring, etc. kept encroaching on the headspace. We were told when it was new the ceilings had 8' of clearance, but by the time the ship was decommissioned there were places where it was less than 6'.

Debriefing room.

Controls for 1 of the 4 engines.

It takes a while to get a ship this size to change speeds.

USS Midway Statistics

Chapel

Chaplain's Quarters

Ironing anyone?

For a crew of 4500, there were walls of ovens!!

Kitchen Stats

P.O.W. Table.

Please read the above plaque - it is very moving.

Metal Shop

Flight Deck, looking towards the front. There are 3 active aircraft carriers in the distance.

Part of the bridge

F-14 Tomcat

F/A-18 Hornet

Flight Deck looking towards the rear. Off in the distance you can see the bridge to Coronado Island.

USS Midway

Joshua thought it was pretty cool to be able to sit inside a "real" fighter jet!