Here are a few 'un-edited' photos I took on the Midway. Enjoy, and be sure to read some interesting facts at the bottom of this post!
Papa was going to take a photo of my mother and I in front of this air plain...but did not wait for me to even smile. ;/ Oh, well...I can't have every picture perfect of me!
The men aboard had an extremely small bed, that lifted up to small compartments to hold their few items.
SMALL closet!
And this is where they all slept. Pretty cramped!!!
This was a massive chain...
HUGE!
There were lots of wires and stuff on the ceiling.
This is a top view of the Midway a long time ago. Pretty massive.
This says- "We could hear the roar get louder and louder as we went down into Engineering. You couldn't hear the man standing next to you, so I also made sure to look directly at him for orders. Then, when I was off duty, it would take hours for the ringing in my ears to stop."
IN JAIL!!!
This says- "The cuts on my arms from the rusted bolts were always infected. Red and hot to the touch. Being the smallest guy around, it seemed like I was always the one who was ordered to crawl inside a boiler. All I had was a small drop light that did not help much. If a guy was small, he'd better not have claustrophobia on the Midway."
This says- "I had to trust the other guys in Engineering to keep from getting boiled when I was working inside the water drum. If someone did not double-check that all of the valves were tagged and stayed shut, the last thing I would see is a wall of scalding water."
This one says- "The heat in engineering was so hot, my skin tingled. It was so hot in the upper level spaces that I promise that the paint on the bulkheads were soft to the touch and the light bulbs would crack. Air that was 98 degrees while we were in the Mediterranean felt good to us guys who worked down where it was 120 degrees most days."
Machine guns.
INTERESTING FACTS ABOUT THE MIDWAY
1945- Commissioned as the largest ship in the world for a decade, the first too large for the Panama Canal. 1946 First carrier to operate extensively in the sub-arctic
165- Midway pilots shoot down the first MiG of the Vietnam War
175- leads the evacuation of Saigon; rescues 3,073 refugees in two days
1991- Rescues 1,800 Americans fleeing Mt. Pinatubo eruption
2010- Surpasses 5 million visitors since opening
SHIP-
$260 million to overhaul
$90 million to build
212,000 horsepower
69,000 tons total weight
2,000 compartments
2,000 electric motors
1,500 telephones
1,001 feet long
258 feet wide
20th century's longest serving carrier
20 ton anchors
18 foot tall propellers
18 decks
12 boilers
4.02 acre flight deck
FUEL-
3.4 million gallon capacity
100,000 gallons used daily
260 gallons used per mile
CREW-
600 men in Engineering
225 cooks
200 pilots
40 corpsmen
5 physicians
3 dentists
40 skippers in 47 years
LOGISTICS-
10 tons of food daily
13,500 meals served daily
3,000 potatoes daily
1,000 loaves of bread served daily
4,500 lbs. beef when served
500 pies when served
