The USS Midway

If you're planning a visit to San Diego, the USS Midway Museum is, in my opinion, a must see! In fact, I'd say it was the favorite stop for my older boys, and the 9 year-old thought it was pretty cool too!

The USS Midway (aircraft carrier #41) was commissioned one week after the end of World War II, and was the largest ship in the world until 1955. It was also the first U.S. warship too big to transit the Panama Canal. She served for 47 years, saw action in the Vietnam War, and was the Persian Gulf flagship in 1991's Operation Desert Storm. The Midway is now a museum in San Diego.

It takes 2-3 hours to explore the entire ship. You'll go through some tight spaces, and up and down quite a few stairs to visit crew's sleeping quarters, the engine room, the ship's jail, officer's country, machine shops, pilots' ready rooms and much more!

You certainly get a glimpse of how cramped things were for those sailors. Heaven forbid you were a tall fellow. They stored many of their personal belongings in that metal compartment underneath their mattress.

Included in your museum ticket is a great self-guided audio tour, narrated by actual Midway sailors. You wear a set of headphones and at each numbered display on the ship, you punch in that number and learn all about where you are. Unless you know a lot about aircraft carriers, this is pretty handy.

In a cool connection to home, the volunteer veterans in this room of the ship knew of Fort Collins, Colorado because we have a connection to the atomic clock. Don't worry, I didn't know what that meant either. But my kids did, so they explained it all to me after the tour.

Officially know as NIST-F1, the U.S.atomic clock, which is located in Boulder, Colorado, serves as the United States' primary time and frequency standard. Apparently this atomic clock is very accurate. It is expected to neither gain nor lose a second in nearly 100 million years. So naturally it is the time standard used by the U.S. military, where accurate timing is of the utmost importance.

On the outskirts of north Fort Collins you can see the antenna broadcasting the signal for the national atomic clock--the signal which radio-controlled clocks in North America  use to synchronize themselves. Supposedly, it is a signal so strong, it can stop nearby cars from starting. One of the volunteers remembered listening to that signal for hours on end. 

Of course, no visit to an aircraft carrier would be complete without a visit to the flight deck. There are 29 restored aircraft on board the USS Midway, spanning World War II to Operation Dessert Storm.

I kept expecting to bump in to Maverick and Goose up here. Wishful thinking.

But I did spot this handsome group of sailors.

If you're curious, the newest active aircraft carrier is #77, the USS George H.W. Bush. Currently being planned or built are carriers 78-80--the Gerald R. Ford, John F. Kennedy, and Enterprise.