Class: Midway Aircraft Carrier
Launched: 20 March 1945
At: Newport News Shipbuilding Co., Newport News, Virginia
Commissioned: 10 September 1945
Modernized: 1955-57; 1966-70
Length: 1,001 feet
Extreme Width: 258 feet
Draft: 34 feet
Displacement: 70,000 tons
Address:
USS Midway Museum
910 N. Harbor Drive
San Diego, CA 92101
(619) 544-9600
Fax: (619) 544-9188
Latitude: 32.7138767016, Longitude: -117.175219141
Google Maps, Microsoft Bing, Yahoo Maps, Mapquest
| Imagine a ship that once embarked on a 47-year odyssey–from the end of WW II to the liberation of Kuwait in 1991–shared by 225,000 American sailors. The USS Midway, longest-serving aircraft carrier of the 20th Century, is now the most-visited floating naval ship museum in the world. Midway routinely set new standards of naval aviation. It was the first to deploy extensively in the sub-Arctic winter and in 1947 successfully launched a captured German V-2 rocket that became the dawn of naval missile warfare. Midway also was the first carrier home-ported in a foreign country when it arrived Yokosuka, Japan, in 1973. It still holds the record for longest carrier deployment at sea, 327 days. As a museum, Midway features more than 60 exhibits from boiler to bridge and a self-guided audio tour narrated by many Midway veterans. Annually it is adding restored spaces to the public tour. The museum’s restored air wing features more than 25 aircraft of WWII to Desert Storm vintage. Midway is moored alongside Navy Pier on downtown San Diego’s Embarcadero waterfront. |
Comments are closed.