USS Midway Museum

The USS Midway is an aircraft carrier that served the US Navy from 1945 to 1992. Now, its a museum in San Diego which is well worth a visit. The entire flight deck, the ship’s island, and many sections of the crews’ and officers’ quarters are accessible to the public.

Right off the bat, I was impressed by how huge it was from the outside. Once inside, there were plenty of aircrafts for scale that made it quite easy to forget I was in a ship! Once inside, there are three loop tours that involve walking through corridors like this one:

These are reminiscent of WW-II era FPS maps – the Wolfenstein reboot for me! These cover many interesting parts of the ship including the engine room(a huge chunk of which is submerged when at sea!), showers, the brig, and the chapel. One of these tours is of the ship’s island, which housed the captain’s quarters and air traffic controllers.

The flight deck is where aircrafts land and take-off. Its massive, clocking in at 4 acres! There are two very interesting mechanisms here:

• The arresting gears, which are three high-tension cables that hook on to a landing plane to rapidly decelerate the plane
• A catapult system to rapidly accelerate a plane to launch velocity, which could take a plane from 0-160mph in less than 2 seconds!

Overall its a fantastic museum. There are plenty of volunteers happy to share their knowledge. I happened to visit on a Friday, when they had veterans who formerly served on the ship up on the deck talking about their experiences!

PS: Read about Operation Frequent Wind, where the USS Midway was part of a massive evacuation operation