Today was overcast and cool so we decided to visit the U.S.S. Midway aircraft carrier, which is now a museum. This ship is large, very large, it's flight deck is 2.4 acres.
We discovered that the ship has four main areas. Right at the top is the flight control and bridge, which is sort of stuck on the side of the flight deck. Then there is the flight deck , which is the top of the ship, below that is an enormous space called the Hanger deck and below that are about four floors of ship, which house the crew, parts, engines and things. We started at the hanger deck.
Fortunately their is an elevator to take us up to the hanger deck. Once there we could roam around looking at all the bits to do with storing and maintaining the aircraft, as well as see a number of aircraft on display, including the famous Bird Dog plane that was used by a South Vietnamese major to escape from Vietnam in 1975. He and his family just flew out to sea, hoping to find somewhere to land(?) fortunately they found the Midway. in order to land on it the captain ordered that about $10 million of helicopters be pushed over the side to make room for it! It succeeded in landing safely amid huge shouts of support.
We then went up to the flight deck, where all the planes take off and land. There are two runways, one for take off and one for landing. We listened to Bob, an ex pilot talk, about the take off system, which uses a steam catapult to accelerate the planes up to 160 mph in 150 yards!
Following this we went right back down to explore the rest of the ship, looking at the crews quarters, the dining halls, the post office, the engineering shops and the officers quarters.
All in all we had a great day, which was helped by the ship being quite accessible for handicapped visitors.
Finally we visited the Fish Market area, where there is a giant statue of the now famous couple kissing, which is taken from a photograph of Times Square on VJ Day.
No comments:
Post a Comment