USS Midway CV 41

Let's visit the USS Midway  aircraft carrier  CV 41.  Its been a museum since 2004, and has been in service since 1945..  Its moored here in San Diego along the city piers just South of the cruise ship docks..

Along the starboard side the ticket windows are by the ships island..  It costs $19 for general admission and $16 for seniors..

Inside the bow of the ship these are the anchor chains under the bow...

We found the search and rescue area of the ship that had Helicopters on the flight deck above...  This is the ready room for the pilots..

Inside the main hangar deck, they must have had a party the night before because it was still all set up for the guests..  As the day progressed they took down all these tables and chairs...  and the stage too.

Up on the flight deck we wandered among the planes on display..

This is an F 4 Phantom and I remember them as they flew missions over Viet Nam....

F 14 ... I think, as I am not good at recognizing all the different planes...

I wanted to go see where they drove the ship......  So I walked toward the island..

This is the center line of the Angle Deck where they recovered the planes..  They did not have any arresting cables stretched across the deck, as I'm sure that would have been something someone could trip on...  They said the cables were 2 1/2 inches in diameter and were positioned 5 inches above the surface..

Is this a Gruman F8?  It doesn't have the drop wing shape of the F4U Corsair....   Sam in St Louis, was stationed on several carriers, and chimed in on a comment below that this is a A1 Skyraider... by Douglas aircraft...

The Island and an A 6 Intruder to the right of the picture...

Inside the Island this was the captains meeting room...

He had this lounge area in his living quarters...

Older turbo prop Airborne Early Warning and Control   E-2 perhaps...  See the control tower office above the planes tail section...?

Maps and charts...

Radar Room... This room was completely dark with colored lights..  The radars were still spinning and had aircraft plotted on their screens..

And as a Ham, I was interested in the radio room....

Pictures of all the commanding officers...

These were the actual radios....  These were the receivers and the transmitters were in stacks in the next row....

More of officer's country...

This is the Air Boss's chair that I have my arm on....  The seat where the lady is facing me is the Mini Boss...   A mini boss sits in that seat for a year before he is moved up to a boss..

Looking forward out of the Mini Boss's window at the bow and launching catapults...

Looking toward the stern from the Air Boss's window...  This would be the same as the control tower on a land based airport...

Just a few steps forward we found the main Bridge...  This is where you drive the ship and the main captain has a chair to the port side...

The docent is explaining how they ran the ship from this platform and that there was always an officer of the deck on duty here when the Captain wasn't present...

The Engine Order Telegraph...    Set the RPMs on the dials at the bottom...

Now here is the steering wheel...  And what I found interesting was that the sailor standing this watch couldn't even see out of the main bridge windows...  The midway has been remodeled several times and the bridge has been extended forward...  But the wheel house is still in the old position in the center of the room...

So I went looking for the other end of that engine order telegraph...  Down in Engineering... That would be the engine room to us land lubbers..

First I found this control room where they must have controlled the boilers...

But here is one of the steam turbines...  HP stands for High Pressure...

And this board is the other end of the Engine Order Telegraph..  These wheels control the amount of steam allowed to enter the turbines...  One wheel to go forward and the one on the very left to go backward..

The senior chief docent that was there in the engine room was adamant that all forward revolutions had to stop before the reverse wheel was turned on...  They had chains and padlocks on the wheels even now..

This next gray box is a giant reduction gearing mechanism..

More of the steam piping from the boilers.....  This is engine room three, and I was told that there are four of them in total as there are four propellers on the rear of the ship...

This ship is 1000 feet long, and I had walked almost all of it several times, so my legs were shot...  Loyce had given up and went back to the car a while ago, so my tour was over....

If I got some of the planes named wrong or you were stationed aboard a carrier and my descriptions are in error please leave a comment, and I will fix it...

This blog could go on forever as there is much to learn about a ship of this size...  But remember this is 1945 technology and I was reminded that it was the analog Navy, and since we are now in a Digital age that is why the ship has become a museum...

But this ship launched many of the sorties that flew into Iraq on Operation Desert Storm in the early 1990s...  She was in service for more than 50 years...

In 1975 she was one of the ships off of the coast of Viet Nam as the helicopters rescued people from Saigon...    The stories seem endless....

USS Midway CV-41 Wiki

Retired Rod

More of San Diego..

Here comes a Navy Destroyer... DDG 88 USS Preble...  Its stationed here in San Diego...

We were out on Shelter Island at the shore line park..   And this ship returned from maneuvers..

Its interesting that the police boat is accompanying it in the small picture above..



After setting for a while at the park we decided to take a drive out to the Cabrillo National Monument...  Its at the very peak of the highest point on Point Loma...  The view up there is like you were flying and airplane..

 You know the part of Coronado Island that you can't drive to because its Navy Base?  Well you can see it from up on the top of Point Loma...  Its all air field...

 And the Submarine Base is quite visible too.. Although they dock the subs on the other side of that big floating dry dock..


We stopped along the shoreline of Harbor Island where the Hilton is located and caught a shot of the Downtown Skyline as the sun was setting over the Point Loma hill....

This almost seems like a postcard......

This is called Unconditional Surrender... A sculpture of Seward Johnson..  It is based on a photograph of Albert Eisenstaedt of V-J Day that was published in Life magazine in 1945...

San Diego had the first statue on loan since 2007 but it was styrofoam based and needed repair...  So it was removed in 2012...

And thanks to a fund set up to purchase a bronze replacement by the USS Midway Museum pictured in the background, and several of their well to do donors, the statue was returned now in bronze and is permanently owned by the harbor...

This is highly controversial here in San Diego and is seen as cheap and sexist by some of the younger set that are not aware of its significance to the end of World War II...

Original Photo

Unconditional Surrender Wiki....  explains the controversy....

This was just erected in the last two weeks and is causing folks to come look at it in large numbers...  I think February 15, 2013 was the date it was done..

Other works by Seward include the statue of Marilyn Monroe that is in Palm Springs...  My friend Rick Blogged about that one Here!

I have tons of more pictures but that is enough for today....!

Retired Rod

San Diego Old Town

Today we were wandering around the Old Town area of San Diego...

It is North of what is now downtown but is the original town square of the community..

Of course there are a number of liberties taken, as I am certain that the streets weren't concrete and black top back in the original town......

The old square is the same as 170 years ago....  Perhaps the flag pole is much different but the location is the same...

 Loyce is headed into one of the old buildings, which now house quaint shops...  I'm not a shopper so I can't explain, but they have artistic items, not run of the mill curios..

This model of the original town is in the visitors center on the North end of the square....

 I was sitting at a table on the front board walk in front of the visitors center..  This must have been an interesting town all those years ago.


I thought these bougainvillea bushes were really neat above the entrance to this restaurant....

This old hotel is on the Southeast corner of the square....  Again, the streets certainly wasn't paved back then..






This was the livery and has its own museum inside....

These wagons are inside of the livery and are not replicas, but rather actual antiques...

If you read the name on the side of this wagon, you will find it is a Studebaker.....  Studebaker History

This was the Leather Shop, but by now I was tired of the whole process, so I didn't go inside...  I needed to go find Loyce as she had walked ahead and was in the commercial area of the newer shop buildings...


In the commercial area on the South end of the park we encountered this Indian group playing the flute...  I grabbed a short video  of the eerie sound of the instrument...

San Diego was the first permanent Spanish settlement started in what later became California...  So this old town area really is the beginning of the territory of California... Today this little community is a California State Park...

We drove around to many other areas of town later in the afternoon, but this is enough pictures and blog length for today....

Retired Rod