I am not a big fan of military installations, but I do find myself interested in visiting military museums. Especially when it's a former aircraft carrier. So the first thing we did on our first morning in San Diego was go to the waterfront area and check out the USS Midway Museum.
The USS Midway was originally commissioned in the 1940s, and was in service until 1992. Since 2004, it has been functioning as a museum in San Diego. And there's plenty of things to see!
Seen from the outside, it is a formidable ship. It is absolutely huge, and consists of several levels both above and below the "ground level". We got ourselves an audioguide, and explored the ship.
As expected for an aircraft carrier, there's plenty of sections serving various functions. We explored them all. We saw for example the rooms that functioned as offices, seen above.
There's also the navigational rooms, filled with interesting complicated equipment. There were several volunteers in the museum, most of them were former military personnel, who were more than happy to explain to us visitors what these gadgets actually did, and how they were used.
I saw these tubes, which contained compressed air, which allows one to send messages all over the ship. One writes a small message on a piece of paper, and then apparently this can get transmitted through these tubes that run all over the place. That was very cool.
The ship's control rooms are huge, and contain plenty of equipment that I have no clue how it works.
Of course, there are living quarters as well. After all, military personnel spend a lot of time here, so there are facilities for laundry, for dining, for medical check ups, and for many other things that are required to make sure that the military personnel are on top shape anytime.
Of course, since the USS Midway is an aircraft carrier, there are aircraft positioned on the deck. I especially liked the informative sessions that former pilots offered regularly. I learned about how aircraft landed on these little strips of concrete in the middle of the ocean. I learned what a "meatball" is in aircraft carrier parlance. Like I said, there's plenty of informative areas in this museum, and we basically spent the majority of the day in here, exploring its various areas.
If you're in San Diego, do check it out, and allocate at least three hours for your visit. There's plenty to see, lots of aircraft to explore, and if you're really interested, several demonstrations and information booths to check out. I definitely learned a lot about how an aircraft carrier runs, so it was definitely an engaging visit for me.
