The Midway

After a considerable amount of time avoiding hotels, I seem to be finding myself in them quite often these days. In the past couple weeks, I have been in San Diego three times. This most recent one, however, actually occurred during daytime, so I could go out and explore a bit. I elected to check out the USS Midway aircraft carrier museum. At over $20 admission, it isn’t exactly a steal, but there are only so many aircraft carriers one can walk around on, so I caved. Unlike the Intrepid in New York, which displays any kind of airplane they got their hands on, the Midway stuck strictly to its Naval past and the only aircraft that could be found on board were those that might have actually flown from its decks.

 It wasn’t too crowded, fortunately, because there’s nothing worse than narrow hallways and corridors filled with hundreds of sweaty tourists. After walking around the flight deck, I waited in line for about two minutes to take a tour of the ship’s island. The guy leading the small group was a former colonel who kept using, “in that aspect” after every sentence. After the 30th time (no exaggeration), I was losing my mind. I honestly have no idea what else he was saying, though occasionally he switched to “in that regard.” After about 15 mins and a thousand aspects, the tour of the island ended. I continued a self-guided tour below decks to the crew quarters, briefing rooms, and radar room. I was the only one roaming these parts. There were a few more former naval servicemen in these rooms to educate people as they passed through. The guys I ran across must have been real bored, because they came at me at 1000 words a minute. I can now tell you how to operate a Naval SPS radar system, what the different symbols on the screen mean, and how different sources such as an E-2 aircraft flying overhead can feed data to the system. Maybe someday this information will be useful.

Following this, I headed off deck and back through downtown to the hotel. It was an interesting museum, and far more accessible than other carriers that have been converted to museums. According to its Wikipedia page, the Midway underwent multiple deck and stabilizer conversions to adapt to modernized aircraft and the changing times. One of these proved rather unsuccessful and it was nicknamed the “Rock n, Roll carrier.” The pictures were unsettling. It is best that the Midway is permanently at port now. As I once famously said to a Naval recruiter at age 17, “I don’t like boats.”