Got out Sunday to see the Missouri. Quite a lady!

Pros:

• Air conditioned spaces below deck!
• The teak deck is pretty interesting. They don't do it the same way that they did originally, mostly because there's no army of navy enlisted men to holy-stone the thing all day, but they had some interesting exhibits on the original construction, the replacement methods they used in the '80s, and the modern construction. It is still teak, though... just with a surfacer under it to keep it level.
• The Tomahawk installation is still in place. Four quad-cell launchers. Pretty clearly not part of the original armament, and I sure wouldn't want to be standing around one of 'em when it was fired (not that, you know, the 16-inch guns would be less of an issue!)
• I hadn't appreciated just how thick some of that armor was. The turret magazine plating runs to 17", and even the con is in a massive armored shell. Guess you don't want your steering to take a hit if you can avoid it.
• I also hadn't appreciated just how darned pack in living conditions on ship really are. There just isn't that much space on the racks and they stack 'em in close. And if you consider how much the ship can wallow in the waves... wonder how often people on the top bunk fell out?

Cons:

• The really neat stuff (by which I mean the engines and turbines, and the interior of the gun turrets) are restricted to the special two-hour pay-double tour, which I arrived too late in the day for.
• Not everything is really set up well as an exhibit. They could do a lot more for fire control, which is full of mostly-unlabled, mostly-incomprehensible consoles.
• The place is a real warren - it was kind of difficult to figure out which stairways, etc. were open for use to get to certain parts of the ship. This was exacerbated by...
• Lots of construction. I can't really be annoyed by this - these things take a lot of maintenance even when they've got a full crew aboard, much less sitting on the dock with a few tour guides all day.
• Pricey. At $25 for the visit, it wasn't a cheap date. Makes going back for the $50 go-see-everything tour a little questionable too.

One of my friends had wanted to go to see the Pacific Aviation Museum, but he was busy with hockey playoff games, so I figured we could both go later on. Another pricey one, but hey, sounds like fun...

Posted by: Avatar_exADV at 05:57 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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