USS Hornet #1

We're back visiting family in the US since Flynn's first birthday party is coming up. However, Monday 17th February was the Presidents Day holiday and some of us decided to drive across to Oakland to visit USS Hornet,an historic aircraft carrier long decommissioned. I and granddaughter Ella, as we shall see, were highly impressed with our experience. The personnel who received us and showed us around were knowledgeable and friendly, and I presume volunteers since many of them had served on the ship and were from my demographic. Talking to them I seemed to gain a realistic impression of life aboard the Hornet and how taking off and landing aircraft was accomplished. The ship also participated in many major US military campaigns and in NASA's landing of men on the Moon. Moreover, nearly all of the ship was open to visitors, though Ella's low height barred us from the engine room.

This is the first of perhaps three postings because the trip was so exciting and detailed. It starts with us crossing the Dumbarton Bridge astride the southern San Francisco Bay area. Colonials, Australian's included, often proved unimaginatively homesick in choice of names and nothing about the Bay area recalls an image of Dumbarton.And Glencoe, near where I live, bears no resemblance to the original! Anyway, here's the bridge:

We soon USS Hornet and it was an imposing sight!

And we walked up the gangplank on the left into the cavernous deck used for storing and maintaining aircraft. There were many exhibits of the aircraft used and also the vessel's engagement with NASA. Here are some of the many images I took:

This exhibit was, I understand, the capsule where the first moon-walking astronauts were housed after splashing down in the Pacific Ocean and being fished out of the water by teams from the Hornet.

And this is one of NASA's capsules used for testing the re-entry capabilities of the space-craft returning astronauts from lunar exploration. The test, in this case, was successful.

Up on the flight deck were more aircraft, the catapults that accelerated aircraft into the air, and the angled deck (added later) that enabled landing aircraft to take off for a second attempt if they misjudged the first or were beaten by the heaving of the ship. We also spied the towers of San Francisco across the Bay in the distance.

This shows the catapult with an aircraft parked at the end.

And here's SF in the distance with part of the bridge to Oakland and the angled flight deck. It was from this window that aircraft landing was supervised.

After this, we had an interesting tour of the rest of the superstructure where command of the vessel occurred - the subject of the next post.