USS Midway

The USS Midway was launched in 1945 and decommissioned in 1990.  It is now a museum, berthed in San Diego.  My 2 sons (Tod and Adam) and I toured it last weekend.  It was mind boggling.  The sheer size of the thing and its crew, the complex coordination and timing required to operate an airbase on a ship, the awesome power - it's hard to get your mind around it.

Top speed was 35 knots (40 MPH) but fuel economy was lousy: 20 feet per gallon.  You could water ski behind it but carriers can't turn on a dime, so if you did a face plant into the water, you were gonna be there a few hours.  Pack a lunch and take shark repellent.

Speaking of lunch, 225 cooks prepared 10 tons of food per day for the 4500 personnel on board.  Everyone says the Navy eats well.  Reminds me yet again that I chose the wrong branch of the service.  Nobody ever said C-rations were 'eating well.'  Where's my Tobasco sauce?

Berths for enlisted men measured about 30" W x 66" L x 36" H.  All clothing and personal items were stored in the trays below the bunks.  Cozy.

Anchor chain links weigh 156 pounds each.  Dropping anchors produced one hell of a racket.

Boiler room gauges and controls.

This picture was taken from one of the huge elevators that move planes from hanger deck to flight deck.  Note the giant-sized sculpture of a sailor planting a lip lock on his girlfriend, lower left.

The flight deck had about 20 planes on display, each with it's own 2-minute audio story.

The Phantom F-4.  When I called in air strikes in Vietnam, a pair of these usually delivered the goodies (napalm, rockets, cannons).  I'd pop smoke, give the flight leader the distance and direction to the target, sit back and enjoy the fireworks - provided my unit wasn't taking fire at the time.

This shot shows the catapult connected to the front landing gear.  The 2 steam-powered catapults took a plane from 0 to 170 MPH in 3 seconds or less.  Whoopee!  Launch timing had to be perfectly coordinated with the rise and fall of the ship on the ocean swells.  Mess up the timing and launch the plane when the ship's bow is down in a trough, the plane and flight crew would be propelled straight into the water - and on down to Davy Jones' locker.

Communications center.  Urgent messages were printed out and sent to appropriate areas on the ship using the brass vacuum tubes on the right.  Just like department stores back in the day.

Flight deck personnel wore different colored tops to designate their crew and duties.  Adam (L) and Tod (R) opted to pose with the cute little female sailor on the far left.  They're out of uniform but that wasn't always the case: both served in the military.

Today's US carriers (Nimitz Class) are nuclear-powered and are the largest military ships in the world.  The first of the next-gen carriers (Ford Class) is scheduled to launch this year with highly automated systems that will reduce crew size by 1000+.  They'll cost about 10.5 billion $ to build and 1 million $ a day to operate.  A billion here, a billion there.......