I spent 6 months on the Midway in 1980 in VAQ-136. During that time, she was in drydock in Yokosuka for a couple months. The night before they refloated her, me and a few friends had been out drinking, as usual. The drydock was normally crawling with dock personnel and workers 24/7. This night it was pretty much empty. So we had the bright idea of taking a stroll down the stairs into the drydock for a look/see. To this day I am amazed that A, we never got caught, and B, we didn't fall off the freaking stairs and splatter on the concrete floor. So we were down there for a while. Took a bunch of pictures, carved our initials in the brand new paint on the hull, and walked the full length of the ship underneath it while it sat on the blocks. Pretty spooky being under there in that dark with 50,000 tons of steel a few inches above your head. One of the things they did to her was replace the two inboard four blade 18 foot screws with 25 foot five blade screws (I THINK they were five blade...?). Anyway, I use to have a picture of me leaning up against one of the blades on the new screws. So we finally decide we better start heading back up out of the thing. We got maybe a third of the way back up and realized they had started flooding the dock to float the ship. I guess we left about the right time. Anyway, true story, from Yokosuka Japan, 1980.
I was aboard her out of Yokosuka in early 1978, TAD for 90 days to learn NTDS in OI Division. If anyone remembers going DIW for several hours while they searched for a man overboard that turned out to be a bag of trash, you have me to thank. We were to hold an "Oskar overboard" drill that day, and I was aware of that. I saw just a splash of orange out of the corner of my eye while manning forward lookout, and ASSUMED that it was the orange lifevest that "Oskar" wore. Long story short...it wasn't. It was a bag of trash. But I had the enire ship and her escorts looking for a man overboard for several hours. LOL
I spent 6 months on the Midway in 1980 in VAQ-136. During that time, she was in drydock in Yokosuka for a couple months. The night before they refloated her, me and a few friends had been out drinking, as usual. The drydock was normally crawling with dock personnel and workers 24/7. This night it was pretty much empty. So we had the bright idea of taking a stroll down the stairs into the drydock for a look/see. To this day I am amazed that A, we never got caught, and B, we didn't fall off the freaking stairs and splatter on the concrete floor. So we were down there for a while. Took a bunch of pictures, carved our initials in the brand new paint on the hull, and walked the full length of the ship underneath it while it sat on the blocks. Pretty spooky being under there in that dark with 50,000 tons of steel a few inches above your head. One of the things they did to her was replace the two inboard four blade 18 foot screws with 25 foot five blade screws (I THINK they were five blade...?). Anyway, I use to have a picture of me leaning up against one of the blades on the new screws. So we finally decide we better start heading back up out of the thing. We got maybe a third of the way back up and realized they had started flooding the dock to float the ship. I guess we left about the right time. Anyway, true story, from Yokosuka Japan, 1980.
I was aboard her out of Yokosuka in early 1978, TAD for 90 days to learn NTDS in OI Division. If anyone remembers going DIW for several hours while they searched for a man overboard that turned out to be a bag of trash, you have me to thank. We were to hold an "Oskar overboard" drill that day, and I was aware of that. I saw just a splash of orange out of the corner of my eye while manning forward lookout, and ASSUMED that it was the orange lifevest that "Oskar" wore. Long story short...it wasn't. It was a bag of trash. But I had the enire ship and her escorts looking for a man overboard for several hours. LOL
77-79
S-3 Division
I got to Yokosuka in 1991; this looks older than that!
Has F-4's on deck so before '88 at least.
👍🙂
大失敗の大改修
Say what