THIS Midway
Deserves to Win
USS Midway’s towering superstructure rises from the flight deck
an OSCAR
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Giant Carrier is a Blockbuster Visit
By COLIN SIMPSON
THE wartime epic Midway has come under heavy bombardment from the critics. Empire magazine’s reviewer awarded it just two stars out of a possible five, while RottenTomatoes gave it a 42 percent rating.
There is another Midway you can go and see, however, that deserves – if not a five-star review – then certainly four.
The USS Midway Museum in San Diego, California, lets you explore the aircraft carrier named after the battle in the Pacific that’s featured in the film.
Expert docents, or guides, including former crew members, help you to understand what you’re looking at and get the most out of your visit.
The carrier was commissioned in September 1945 a week after the end of the Second World War. She remained in service until 1992 and played key roles in the evacuation of Saigon in 1975 and Operation Desert Storm – the military response to Iraq’s seizure of Kuwait – in 1990.
The Midway was moved to San Diego’s harbour, and in 2004 opened as a museum.
Visiting a warship may not be everyone’s idea of a vacation treat. But in fact this is a terrific visit, providing intriguing insights into life on a carrier. Sue, who came along under sufferance and dismissed it beforehand as “boys and their toys”, was fascinated as we toured the ship.
As with so many attractions in the US, there’s just so much to see, and we ended up spending several hours on board.
Twenty-six restored carrier aircraft can be seen on the vast flight deck. There is a figure of a catapult officer, known as a shooter, on deck. In fact, the most interesting part of the entire visit for us was a talk by a former navy pilot on the art of taking off and landing safely at sea.
This technique was mastered by the navies of a number of countries in the years after the First World War, when flat-deck carriers were first used.
An interesting thing we learned when we lived in Beijing was how far behind China was in this area. Much was made in the newspapers about the commissioning of the country’s first carrier, a former Soviet vessel renamed the Liaoning, as recently as 2016.
USS Midway in Numbers
45 seconds: Time between daylight landings; 60 seconds at night.
95 percent: Successful landings; 88 percent at night.
0 to 170 mph in 3 seconds or less: Catapult acceleration.
38 mph: Ship’s top speed – so fast you could water ski behind her.
900 gallons to the mile at 34 mph – fuel consumption.
225: Number of cooks.
3: Number of chaplains.
80,000 haircuts on board annually.
90 tons: Weight of blueprints used to build ship.
2 million pounds of laundry annually.
Source: USS Midway Museum
The overwhelming impression when you’re on board is the sheer size of the Midway. The flight deck is 305 metres long, and fully loaded the vessel weighed 62,600 metric tons.
Until 1955 she was the world’s largest ship, and she carried 120 aircraft.
However, she was dwarfed by another vessel that was docked in the harbour at the time of our visit – the nuclear-powered supercarrier USS Ronald Reagan. She is 333 metres long and weighs 103,000 metric tons.
More aircraft can be seen on the massive hanger deck, along with the mighty anchor chains and many other exhibits.
They include a Battle of Midway display, and there is also a theatre show so you can learn what really happened rather than the Hollywood version.
A near-full-size replica TBD Devastator torpedo aircraft that was built for the Midway movie is the museum’s newest exhibit.
Smaller but still interesting items include a survival kit for ditched airmen.
As you delve deeper into the lower decks you can see the ship’s store, the brig where offenders were put on bread and water, and sleeping quarters. The crew consisted of 4,200 men, average age 19, plus up to 300 aviators. Between them, they ate 10 metric tons of food per day.
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Shuttle Visit
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Battlezone Staycation
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China's Top Gun
The U-2 incident, when the Soviets shot down a US spy plane, happened in 1960 during the Cold War. But this wasn’t the only U-2 that was lost.
Shuttle Visit
SPACE enthusiast Colin Simpson visits the space shuttle Endeavour in Los Angeles, and reflects on the current state of human space travel.
Visible from the flightdeck is a giant statue based on Alfred Eisenstaedt’s famous photo of a sailor kissing a nurse in Times Square, New York, on V-J Day.
The Midway plays an important role in San Diego life, hosting 300 events a year. The most fabulous, in my view, are the Top Gun Party and Movie Nights. Guests bring along garden chairs and watch screenings of the classic eighties movie on the flight deck – now even Maverick would find that cool.
MORE INFO: USS Midway Museum site.
November 2019
THE wartime epic Midway has come under heavy bombardment from the critics. Empire magazine’s reviewer awarded it just two stars out of a possible five, while RottenTomatoes gave it a 42 percent rating.
There is another Midway you can go and see, however, that deserves – if not a five-star review – then certainly four.
The USS Midway Museum in San Diego, California, lets you explore the aircraft carrier named after the battle in the Pacific that’s featured in the film.
Expert docents, or guides, including former crew members, help you to understand what you’re looking at and get the most out of your visit.
The carrier was commissioned in September 1945 a week after the end of the Second World War. She remained in service until 1992 and played key roles in the evacuation of Saigon in 1975 and Operation Desert Storm – the military response to Iraq’s seizure of Kuwait – in 1990.
The Midway was moved to San Diego’s harbour, and in 2004 opened as a museum.
Visiting a warship may not be everyone’s idea of a vacation treat. But in fact this is a terrific visit, providing intriguing insights into life on a carrier. Sue, who came along under sufferance and dismissed it beforehand as “boys and their toys”, was fascinated as we toured the ship.
As with so many attractions in the US, there’s just so much to see, and we ended up spending several hours on board.
Twenty-six restored carrier aircraft can be seen on the vast flight deck. There is a figure of a catapult officer, known as a shooter, on deck. In fact, the most interesting part of the entire visit for us was a talk by a former navy pilot on the art of taking off and landing safely at sea.
This technique was mastered by the navies of a number of countries in the years after the First World War, when flat-deck carriers were first used.
An interesting thing we learned when we lived in Beijing was how far behind China was in this area. Much was made in the newspapers about the commissioning of the country’s first carrier, a former Soviet vessel renamed the Liaoning, as recently as 2016.
USS Midway in Numbers
45 seconds: Time between daylight landings; 60 seconds at night.
95 percent: Successful landings; 88 percent at night.
0 to 170 mph in 3 seconds or less – catapult acceleration.
38 mph: Ship’s top speed – so fast you could water ski behind her.
900 gallons to the mile at 34 mph – fuel consumption.
225: Number of cooks.
3: Number of chaplains.
80,000 haircuts on board annually.
90 tons: Weight of blueprints used to build ship.
2 million pounds of laundry annually.
Source: USS Midway Museum
The overwhelming impression when you’re on board is the sheer size of the Midway. The flight deck is 305 metres long, and fully loaded the vessel weighed 62,600 metric tons. Until 1955 she was the world’s largest ship, and she carried 120 aircraft.
However, she was dwarfed by another vessel that was docked in the harbour at the time of our visit – the nuclear-powered supercarrier USS Ronald Reagan. She is 333 metres long and weighs 103,000 metric tons.
More aircraft can be seen on the massive hanger deck, along with the mighty anchor chains and many other exhibits.
They include a Battle of Midway display, and there is also a theatre show so you can learn what really happened rather than the Hollywood version.
A near-full-size replica TBD Devastator torpedo aircraft that was built for the Midway movie is the museum’s newest exhibit.
Smaller but still interesting items include a survival kit for ditched airmen.
As you delve deeper into the lower decks you can see the ship’s store, the brig where offenders were put on bread and water, and sleeping quarters. The crew consisted of 4,200 men, average age 19, plus up to 300 aviators. Between them, they ate 10 metric tons of food per day.
China's Top Gun
The famous U-2 incident, when the Soviets shot down a US spy plane, happened in 1960 during the Cold War. But this wasn’t the only U-2 that was lost.
Battlezone Staycation
HONG KONG’S tourism industry has been battered by months of protests. We took a week-long staycation to see what’s happening on the ground.
Visible from the flightdeck is a giant statue based on Alfred Eisenstaedt’s famous photo of a sailor kissing a nurse in Times Square, New York, on V-J Day.
The Midway plays an important role in San Diego life, hosting 300 events a year. The most fabulous, in my view, are the Top Gun Party and Movie Nights. Guests bring along garden chairs and watch screenings of the classic eighties movie on the flight deck – now even Maverick would find that cool.
MORE INFO: USS Midway Museum site.
November 2019
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