So, I am minding my own business down at the farm. The transition to Spring is in progress. The gophers have come out, Cat is patrolling her property and I almost stepped in some deer spoor emptying what I hope is the last batch of ashes from the winter hearth.
I am at peace with the buzzards for the moment, and there is the undeniable tug of Spring in the air, and the sense of renewal that comes with the flowers thrusting up out of the rich Virginia soil.
Then my contemplation was broken when I checked the email. Contained therein was an invitation that was hard to ignore, and a challenge slightly more challenging than winning the Lotto, since it is (at present) difficult to go back and change the past.
Shipmate Joe sent it along yesterday, and here it is:
Midway-Class “3 Sisters” Reunion
May 6-9, 2019
Dear Joe,
On May 6-9, 2019, a very special reunion will take place for those veterans who served on any or all of the Midway-Class aircraft carriers – USS Midway, USS Franklin D. Roosevelt, or USS Coral Sea. Three days of tours and activities will be followed by a Grand Banquet on the flight deck of the USS Midway Museum, on Thursday, May 9.
If you served on any or all of these mighty aircraft carriers of the 20th century, you and your guests are cordially invited to attend. Register for this reunion at https://www.afr-reg.com/midway2019/, which gives you several options, including registering online by credit card.
Questions? Contact Jim Hayter at (703) 264-0542 or email mva41vpr@comcast.net.
You can imagine that sent the Old Salt community into cognitive dissonance at the contrast between the lives we live now- what is left of it- and when we all went down to the sea in ships. Old ships.
Forgive me- all the other ships in which I sailed as a member of the crew or embarked staff are now either what you are shaving with, or harboring vibrant marine life as artificial reefs.
I have always been a proponent of encouraging marine life, so long as I am not part of the food chain, but it is with particular pleasure that I am a member of a large corps of sailors who were underway on the most famous carrier of them all- the one known as “Midway Maru” for her time west of the international dateline and home-ported in bustling Yokosuka, Japan.
(Midway Maru in the North Arabian Sea, circa 1980).
USS Midway (CV-41) is special. Her wayward children are legion, since she served as an active warship from her commissioning at the end of World War II until the days after the endless Global War on Terror commenced.
She has been a major tourist attraction in downtown San Diego for several years now. I was one of her kids who opened the wallet to support towing the cold-iron ship down south from the inactive ship facility in Washington State, and to begin the long slow process of restoring and opening up her moth-balled spaces to show the civilians what it was like as an operational aircraft carrier- mess decks, bakery, communications, catapults and power plant.
Less noise, of course, but you can’t have everything.
Slowly, volunteers are cleaning up and opening the spaces where the spooky stuff some of us did happened. I have been following her post-military career with interest, because, for me and several dozen thousand others, she was home when she was alive.
There is no other capital warship on the planet in which I could find the air-conditioning reset button in the passageway outside Bunkroom FOUR in absolute and complete darkness, while steaming in the waters off the Sultanate of Oman.
So, that is why this challenge took me up short:
Joe said: “The configuration below the hangar bay of all three were remarkably similar, particularly the wardroom and mess-deck areas. Coral Sea did have single waist catapult, and of course Midway had a huge flight deck after her re-configuation.”
“FDR (known locally as filthy, dirty and rusty) was exactly that.” She was poised on the edge of retirement, maintenance had been deferred and when brought out in an emergency for her last deployment, it is said you had to watch where you were walking on the catwalks, since some of the deck had been eaten away by the inexorable determination of steel to turn back into iron oxide.
It is a long way down to the water.
Ships of steel, regardless of their state of readiness, can harbor some remarkable people. Joe noted that the air wing he deployed with had some exceptional characters in the airwing, including five future vice admirals (3 in fighter squadron VF-84 during my tour 1970-72).
Sometimes adversity produces remarkable results.
My dog in the fight? I only got two out of three. Midway was home for two years and I visited Coral Maru on two occasions at sea, turning over the duty regarding the Iranian Hostage mess in 1979 that still isn’t resolved.
She was broken up in Philly, near I-95 and I watched her vanish over the two years I was traveling to New York.
When I visited Coral Maru at sea in the Indian Ocean, I was gratified that I could find the dirty shirt (casual) wardroom on her. I bet I could have on FDR, too. But it was better than trying to find Midnight rations (Midrats) on any of the Nimitz-class boats we used to ride.
Joe was the winner, of course. He had deployment time on all three. But like Meatloaf observed, sometimes “two out of three ain’t bad.”
Since I missed FDR, I do want to pay a tribute. On the old Civil Service exams, there were some fairly simple questions to measure potential for government employment. One regarded the meaning of the term “RFD,” or what we know as ‘rural free delivery’ mail service.
One enterprising applicant didn’t know that, and channeled his inner postal service in his answer. “Ranklin Felano Doozevelt?”
Inventive. I would go to sea with him any time. But I would prefer he was not on the catapult team, or a Landing Signals Officer.
Copyright 2019 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.ccm