Friday, Oct 14

Today I finished the west coast part of the perimeter and turned eastwards along the Mexican border. The main city en route was San Diego, which is a glorious place, but I have visited several times before and did not feel the need to stay again. During my spring trip I visited the battleship Wisconsin in Norfolk, VA which is the Atlantic home of the US Navy. Since San Diego is the Navy’s Pacific home I decided to visit the aircraft carrier USS Midway.

After the disappointment of the Queen Mary yesterday I wondered if another ship visit was a good idea but I had already purchased the ticket online and I had never been on an aircraft carrier before. My concerns were soon alleviated as the ship has been preserved as it was when it ended 47 years of active service in 1992. In addition the ship has been turned into a real museum with a self-guided audio tour with 66 points of interest, informative displays and a horde of enthusiastic volunteers stationed throughout to answer questions and provide colorful context. The size of the thing is difficult to imagine – it was the largest ship in the world until 1955 and carried up to 4,500 personnel – but I thought that they had a good visualization in the engine room which is mid-ship. There they explained that each engine drove a single propeller and the shaft connecting the engine to the propeller was 472 feet long which is about 50 feet longer than a home run in most baseball parks.

It was also fascinating to  see all the functions it fulfilled that I hadn’t even thought about. In addition to being a “city at sea” this is also an “airport at sea” and provides air traffic control, flight planning facilities as well as the aircraft hangar and maintenance shops. I was annoyed that I did not make an earlier start today so I could have spent more time aboard but I knew I still had a significant drive ahead of me and needed to get out of San Diego before the Friday rush so I missed things like the bridge and officers’ quarters but I expect they were similar to other ships.

Today’s drive was not particularly scenic but the map of the route and road video are here.

This was just the forward third of the flight deck (you couldn’t see end-to-end)

and this is just half of the hangar deck

Almost all areas seemed to be as they were in 1992 and the six control rooms were displayed as they would have been when in operation. This is air traffic control

San Diego is a beautiful city with wonderful weather. Here is a view of part of the harbor from the flight deck of USS Midway