All Aboard!

When Lindsay and I were in Charleston, we had the opportunity to take a tour of an aircraft carrier from World War II! The USS Yorktown ("The Fighting Lady") is docked in Charleston harbor and open for business!

The Yorktown is the 10th aircraft carrier to serve in the United States Navy and was built in Newport News, Virginia.

She was commissioned on April 15, 1943.

The Yorktown played a significant role in the Pacific offensive which began in late 1943 and ended with the defeat of Japan in 1945. It won 11 battle stars for World War II service. She is 888 feet long and displaced 27,100 tons during WWII and carried a crew of 380 officers, 3,088 enlisted men and an air group of 90 planes.

In the 1950's, she was modified with the addition of an angled deck for jets, and then she was converted to an antisubmarine carrier. In this capacity, she served in the Vietnam War in the 1960's and in 1968 recovered the Apollo 8 astronauts, the first men to reach the vicinity of the moon! Decommissioned 2 years later, the Yorktown was towed from New Jersey to Charleston and dedicated as a museum in 1975.

Here are the 2 guys on board to answer your questions. The guy on the left is a Navy guy and the guy on the right is a Marine. They were trashing each others' branch - too funny!

Down in the mess hall/kitchen area, they had a menu posted for the week of March 20, 1944 - so cool!

Here's the back of the ship from the bridge...

Here are the stairs from the main level down into the living quarters....

This is where the men would 'get pretty' in the morning....

And the potty.....

Here are their hanging beds - pretty primitive!

Here's a view of Charleston harbor from the lower deck of the ship....

Another view from underneath all of those planes!

Here I am in a plane underneath the flight deck!

And then Lindsay hopped in....

Here's the "corner office" on the ship - NOT fancy!

I think this was the infirmary - a little bit nicer beds.....but not much.....

This is some sort of entry to the hangar deck.....

Wow - that looks pretty complicated - "Chemical warfare agents" - SCARY!

And because they were out to sea for long periods of time, they had to have the ability to do medical procedures, surgery, dental work, etc. on board. Here's a medical procedure room - crazy!

Here's where at-sea surgeries were performed....

And when they had down time, here's where they played games!

More swinging beds - these look like the worst! I hope they put some kind of mattresses on them!

And then there's the "torpedo workshop" - the surgery room for weapons!

I guess this is where they worked on and tweeked their torpedos and weapons......

Right before you head outside, there's a 'tactical' room and it had chairs set up classroom-style for briefings or whatever. This was the board at the front of the room, explaining the mission?

And then there was a very dark room with lots of technical equipment and this chart of weather and who knows what else. Very interesting.....

And then you walk out to the bright sunshine and the command center of the ship - the 'wheelhouse' as they call it on Deadliest Catch. :)

This is where all of the control action takes place......

They even have a freaking escalator on the ship!

Here's the side of the ship that we entered - little bridges that we walked over to get on the boat.

It was a great all-access look at an aircraft carrier from WWII! Tomorrow will be views of the flight deck!