THE MIDWAY

Yesterday we toured the aircraft carrier, USS Midway. We were aboard the ship for 4 hours, and still didn't see everything. The Midway is a huge ship, with a flight deck about the length of 3 football fields. It was built for $90 million in 1945, and received a $260 million overhaul in 1966-70. The Midway was decommissioned in 1992, and is harbored in San Diego as a Museum.

A few interesting facts about the Midway:
When it was commissioned in 1945, it was, and it remained, the largest ship in the world for a decade.
It was the first ship to be too large for the Panama Canal.
The Midway spanned the years from the end of WWII to the liberation of Kuwait in 1991.
In 1965 the Midway pilots shot down the first MiG of the Vietnam War.
In 1973 the Midway pilots shot down the last MiG of the Vietnam War.
In 1975 it lead the evacuation of Saigon, rescuing 3,073 refugees in two days.
In 1991 it was the flagship of the Persian Gulf air operations in Operation Desert Storm.
It carried a crew of 4,500 men of which 225 were cooks.


And it got one mile per 260 gallons of gas!

From the flight deck of the Midway, you can see, in a small park across the harbor, this statue based on the famous photograph of Alfred Eisenstaedt which captured the famous kiss on V-J Day in 1945 of a sailor and a woman. (This photograph is Time-Life's most requested and reproduced image. Another interesting fact about this photo is that a re-enactment of this kiss takes place annually in Times Square by many couples dressed in replicas of the clothing of the original couple.)

Excuse quality of this photo. The statue was qite a distance from where I was and I had to zoom as far as my camera would zoom.