Alameda and Aircraft Carrier

 USS Hornet, aircraft carrier, built during the Second World War. Now a museum, based on the island of Alameda, East San Francisco.  The urchins tried out the flight simulator first. That gave them a feel of taking off and landing on the aircraft carrier.

 The Hornet participated in the first Moon Landing missions, and recovered the Apollo 11, and Apollo 12 space capsule and astronauts.

This is the practise capsule, that was used to before finalising the design. This one landed on the ground, and the back end crushed. They decided to land in water after that.

Captn' Jack Sparrow?

 Our tour was about one and a half hours, and we went below deck to see the engine rooms and how the crew lived.

These were "hot" beds, which meant when your shift started, another crew mate got your bed.

 There was more than one engine room, to cover a damaged one.

 I can confirm that the nuclear weapons were held beyond this door.  Marines guarded this door when the ship was in active service.

The Brig held two crew members in jail per door.

The corridors and doors and rooms created a huge maze on each deck.  Glad we had a map.

 We could see San Francisco across the bay when we were on the flight deck.  

 On the flight deck we saw how the catapult worked to get the plane off the carrier.

 It was a long walk from one end of the carrier to the other.

 The USS Hornet went 15 months without docking in a port while serving in the Pacific during WW2.

 The USS Hornet was attacked 59 times, but never hit by an exploding bomb, torpedo or kamikaze aircraft.

 It only took 16 months to build USS Hornet from start to finish.  Most of the Construction crew were women.

 There were several other Naval vessels alongside the Hornet, these 3 below, as well as a huge transporter ship.

 After walking all over the ship, the urchins were hungry.  We tried In and Out. The burgers were okay, and we got small drinks and chips.

Lots of tunnels on the route to Alameda, on the way back to Muir Beach, we went through this portal.  It curved and went up hill.