The eclectic armada - Military Off Duty, Air Force Travel, hottest destinations - Air Force Times

The eclectic armada

According to a brochure from a local business association, “Without stopping, it takes approximately 15 minutes to walk the San Diego Embarcadero from the Maritime Museum to Seaport Village.”

“Without stopping”? Not a chance. There’s just too much to see. A history lesson awaits you at every ship, sloop and carrier.

Maritime Museum of San Diego

The reigning dowager of the Maritime Museum’s collection of historic ships is the Star of India, the oldest active ship in the world.

The Star was launched in 1863 and made voyages to India and New Zealand until being purchased by the Alaska Packers Association shortly after the turn of the century. For more than 20 years, the Star sailed to Alaska and returned to Oakland, Calif., with a load of fish.

To keep its title, the Star now makes at least one short voyage almost every summer. From ashore, she’s a magnificent sight, especially when running before the wind, all her sails full.

You can get a guaranteed trip for a $5,000 donation. Or you can join the museum, become a volunteer and hope for the best. It’s worth it even if you go only a few miles along the coast.

The Star of India is indeed the star of the museum, but by no means the only thing worth seeing.

The USS Dolphin, the last active-duty diesel submarine, holds the record for the deepest dive by a sub — more than 3,000 feet. And the HMS Surprise, a replica of an 18th-century Royal Navy ship, was used in the movie “Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World.”

The museum owns several other vessels, each with a story to tell. Even the museum’s library, offices and gift shop are afloat, on the old Oakland/San Francisco ferry Berkeley, which crossed San Francisco Bay thousands of times during its 60 years of service. The ferry’s proudest moment was during the devastating earthquake and fire of 1906, when it the city was afire and Berkeley worked around the clock hauling people to safety.

The USS Midway Museum

The USS Midway Museum, just down the way from the Maritime Museum, anchors the southern end of the Embarcadero.

San Diego businessman Alan Uke spearheaded the effort to bring the Midway to San Diego in the early ’90s. It would be a nostalgic icon for a city so attached to the Navy. But even nostalgia comes with strings attached. The Navy doesn’t want its vessels turned into tawdry tourist attractions and insists they be kept shipshape. That’s not an easy task — take it from a guy who spent many an hour on the working end of a swab.

But Uke’s perseverance paid off. After a dozen years and a mountain of paperwork, Midway opened in 2004. Now, the grand old lady draws about 870,000 visitors per year.

Admission includes a self-guided audio tour narrated by former Midway sailors. Punch the number of an exhibit into your recorder and learn what it’s like to bake bread for a thousand people, receive radio messages and do many other things. Throughout the ship, volunteers, some of them veterans, are happy to answer questions and tell stories.You can also fly a fighter plane, — well, a simulation of one. Each of the six simulators is programmed to simulate U.S. and Japanese planes from World War III chose the F4F Wildcat, a magnificent and durable fighter that which took part in our earliest air battles. The volunteer who gave me my preflight briefing told me what to expect and pointed out an escape button that which would shut the program down if it got too tough up there.

Too tough? Me? Hey, I’d seen the John Wayne movies and all that.

Once I was strapped in and the hood dropped, I took off. On a screen in front of me, Japanese planes attacked. I tried to maneuver my Wildcat into position to shoot down as many as possible; I got one.

I decided that being outnumbered six to one was a good time to try the old bird out. I turned the joy stick to the right and held it. Soon I was upside down, half way through a complete barrel roll. Upright again, I didn’t see another Japanese plane. I suspect they thought they’d encountered the ultimate crazy Yankee.

Upon landing, I had but one question for the volunteer: “How damn many octogenarians flew these things in combat anyhow?” Then I walked away with my best John Wayne swagger, but I may have reeled a bit. Up on the flight deck, a former pilot, Chuck Hay, gave us a first-person account of what it was like to approach the flight deck, and be waived off or given the red meat ball (clearance to land), and described the elation of making a perfect landing and the humiliation of being marked down for something less than perfect.

Three former shipmates on the Midway told stories from their time on the flight deck during the fall of Saigon. Vern Jumper had been air boss, and C.J. Herd and John “Boomer” Hackett had been leading petty officers.

Ashore, almost every chopper that could make it off the ground was loaded to the gills and flown to the carriers 20 miles out to sea. So many of them came that choppers that had already landed were pushed out of the way, sometimes over the side, to make room for incoming flights.

Herd and Hackett told of one instance when a strap on a deck sailor’s flight jacket caught on a projectile of a helicopter being jettisoned. “Boomer grabbed him around the belly and held on. I grabbed Boomer and held on,” Herd said. Neither even thought of letting go of a shipmate. At the last moment, the strap broke and the chopper went over the side, leaving behind three shaken sailors.

I also made it up to the island, that protuberance that houses the bridge, flight operations personnel, chart house and status boards. You have to hike up two steep flights of stairs, but it’s worth it if your knees hold out.

In fact, the whole Embarcadero is worth it. But don’t try to make it through in 15 minutes. Take your time. And be sure to say thank you to the volunteers who love history so much they bring it to you for nothing.

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If you go

• Maritime Museum of San Diego

Adults $14; seniors (62+) $11; children (6-17) $8; active military $11.

www.sdmaritime.com

• USS Midway Museum

Adults $17; seniors (62+) and students $13; children (6-17) $9; retired military $10; active military free.

www.midway.org

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Keith Taylor is a retired Navy officer. He lives in Chula Vista, Calif.