- Come on in folks,
we got to get everybody in,
so move down please.
- [Stacy] Aw you get your own sticker.
- I get a sticker.
Yeah. This is where I cut my teeth in the Navy.
(lively music)
- The half stack and all the fueling stations,
yeah the BNA crane, oh, the aircraft that is.
We never had an elevator when I was here.
- [Stacy] I know, right.
- The USS Midway was the longest active aircraft
carrier in the 20th century.
The famous battle of Midway went down in June of 1942.
That's where Midway got its name.
Although it only took 17 months to build the Midway,
it missed World War II by one week.
It was commissioned in September of 1945.
Smell that?
Smell it?
That's the fuel oil.
While we were doing the crossing the line,
the shell back ceremony.
We had to crawl out here on our hands and knees
and then we rode the elevator up to the flight deck,
while they stood on either side of the hoses,
hosing us down.
(laughing)
A lot of fun.
- [Woman] I watch your show.
- Thank you very much, thank you.
The Midway was more than a warship.
It was also a rescue ship,
rescuing more than 3,000 refugees
from Saigon in 1975
and also 1,800 Americans from the
Philippines when Mount Pinatubo erupted in 1991,
which I was a part of that mission.
We turned this aircraft carrier
into a floating hotel for a
couple of days
where the entire hangar bay was filled with
Americans that lived in the Philippines
at Subic Bay and the surrounding areas.
We evacuated them to Cebu, Philippines,
where we offloaded them via helicopter
so they could make it
safely back to the U.S.
It was just nothing but cots and people.
And one of the aft sponsons was where they put all the dogs,
all their pets.
We had many a steel beach picnic up here.
(rock music)
We refueled the ship while underway.
They're called underway replenishment,
in which a fueling ship comes alongside of us,
sends over their refueling hoses,
and we start pumping fuel from them onto our ships so that
we don't have to pull into port.
We can stay on station and we can actually maintain our
course in the direction that we're going.
One time,
one of those fueling hoses popped out in the middle of the
underway replenishment,
and it soaked every one of us on that station
full of fuel.
And at the time, our boatswain,
who was the head Senior Chief Warrant Officer
at the time of Deck Department
told every one of us to strip off our clothes
and throw them over the side because they were fuel-soaked.
And we kind of looked at him like he was crazy
until he started to take off all his clothes
and throw them over the side.
So at the end of the refueling,
we were standing there in our boots, socks, skivvies,
and our orange KPOC life vest
on 30, 60 days in Subic in the Philippines,
it wasn't the best place to be, but you were in port.
So you've got liberty.
This tells you where you are in relationship
to the bow of the ship.
So frame.
- [Stacy] You're good, you're good.
- Frame 55 to 59.
So we're pretty much all the way forward, just about.
So when, you know, when you know,
you're looking at frame numbers,
cause they start from the beginning and work their way aft.
So we're getting close to the front
and it tells you what
level you're on. The O2 level.
So we're two decks up from the flight or the hanger deck.
- I was a Head Cook on here,
1970 and 71.
Ran this kitchen right here.
And we got a Midway sailor.
So I don't know if you remember or not.
When you come down this ladder there's a full bakery
behind that Z hatch.
Okay, that bakery in there, they've got breads, rolls,
hamburger buns, hot dog buns, hot rolls and bread,
all from scratch.
- [Phil] And smelled delicious.
- We made a thousand to
fifteen-hundred bread in one day.
That's one days production.
- Wow.
- Okay.
Now I got another bakery at midships.
That's what made the cakes, cookies, pies, and donuts.
I'm going to be your new best friend.
(Group laughing) Yeah
- [Phil] Oh, and they were.
And then a hamburger galley on the other side of
that bakery.
Here's the deal. The difference between
his Navy and my Navy, these were
Enlisted galleys and bakeries only.
I was an Enlisted cook only.
Now you're not going to believe this.
Up till January 1974,
I was never allowed past that red hatch.
What's on the other side of that hatch?
That's Officers country.
By that time Officers had their own cooks
and we have our cooks back here.
Okay, now its your turn.
Now I need questions, any questions you all got for me.
- [Woman] Weight wise, how much?
Let's just pick like hamburgers.
You're serving hamburgers.
- Okay. It takes 10 tons of cooked food
in one day to feed this ship.
- With over 4,500 crew members and 2,500 air crew members on
board. Midways' galleys were, were humping around the clock.
They have four different galleys.
And I tell you if you've never had a slider
or beanie weenies, you're missing out.
So when I, when he was talking about
the Officers had to pay for their meals, when I,
when I got commissioned and eventually went back to a ship,
I had to pay.
I think I was paying $210 a month for my meals
when I was in the wardroom. And you know,
you figure $210 for 30 days wasn't that much,
but you still had to pay for it all.
But that just meant we got to pick
and choose what we ate too.
- [Unknown Speaker] Well that's nice.
- Yeah.
- [Unknown Speaker] Instead of a slider.
- So yeah. So in the, in the wardroom,
I can now go in and I could get eggs to
order in the morning.
Yeah.
To sit down with him and you were below his rank,
then you had to ask permission to sit down with them.
And sometimes they were, they could be,
these three seats could be open and he could be by himself.
And sometimes he'd want to sit by himself.
So if you asked to sit and he said, no, you waved off.
And they would start out every meeting the same, you know,
this is engineering, they would start with engineering.
Biggest thing that keeps the ship moving.
Well in there, he started with the ice cream machine.
Where's that part at?
I want to know.
And I was like, man, I love this guy.
Get the ice cream back up.
While assigned to the USS Midway.
I was a Deck Seaman that worked with the Bosons Mates.
Now Bosons Mates are kind of a Jack of all trade
onboard a Navy ship.
I was a watch stander.
I was a helmsman. I was a lee helmsman.
I helped fuel the ship underway.
I definitely painted the sides of the ship many,
many times to include the water line.
We stood watch all the way on the bridge.
The aft lookout was on the after stack or the aft island,
if you will.
I drove small boats. We kind of did everything on Midway.
And we did all of that with very little sleep.
Post office.
So all the mail would come in
on one of the cods and they
would bring it down into the hangar bay
and they would sort it by department.
And they announced when the mail cod landed.
They would say, Miss Piggy safely on deck
with 7,000 pounds of mail and you
would hear a collective clapping and "woo-hoo!"
throughout the ship.
Oh, that's a machinery space.
- [Woman] Yeah.
- So they would make pieces and parts
in here if they needed to.
So remember on the bridge,
when he was talking about ordering up, you know,
one third or the bells,
they would come down,
the EOT here and that's where they
would ring it up.
So when you hear him say,
ring up three bells or four bells or whatnot,
they're talking about one third, two third,
things like that. So it was an actual bell down here.
So this is where the Chief Engineer would hang out.
In 1992, explosions and a fire
that burned for over 10 hours rocked the USS Midway.
Two shipmates' lives were lost on the
initial response to that fire.
I was on board then and I responded as well.
I went down to the affected space two times
as a Hose Man trying to fight the fire.
Onboard a Navy ship, everybody is a firefighter first.
When you're out in the middle of the ocean,
you don't have 911 to call the fire department to come
help you. You are your own 9 1 1,
and you are your own fire department.
This is where they get their pre-flight briefings.
- [USS Midway Volunteer] The brief.
- The mission brief was in here,
but they call these the Ready Rooms.
And I mean, every, like they had,
they had nice cushioned chairs and then they would,
- [USS Midway Volunteer] Well they would want to pamper them
before they go out on their mission.
- [Phil] They would find out what bird they were in,
what their mission was, who they were flying with.
But each squadron would have one of these.
So they didn't have to share
because they were all flying at different times,
different missions, different aircraft.
That's it, that's all your stuff.
- [USS Midway Volunteer] That's everything you own.
- [Phil] And so this little orange thing here was,
so the person that slept up here could climb up.
April 11th of 1992,
Midway was decommissioned right here in San Diego,
after 47 years of service to our country.
(upbeat music)
- Welcome to beautiful Balboa Park.
- Yeah. This place is really beautiful and
Stacy's been to this place more times than I did
when we were stationed here because
I was always working or gone.
- [Stacy] Or gone.
Yeah, I brought the kids here a few times,
but this place is actually bigger than Central Park.
It actually was established back in the late 1890s,
early 1890s. And it has been a park here for that long.
This park actually has 16 museums and it has the zoo as
well. The famous San Antonio Zoo. San Antonio...
see, I'm going to get my 'Sans' all mixed up now.
- San Diego Zoo.
- It's been a long time since we've been back here.
- Yeah, we left San Diego in '99.
- Yeah. So if you come out this way, this is a must-see,
there's something here for everyone.
They have activities for kids, for adults, the museums,
if you like that kind of stuff, or just, you know,
admire these old buildings because they're beautiful.
- Yeah.
- We're going to check out the Automotive Museum.
- Cue the airplanes.
- We are in San Diego.
- Yeah.
- So, there's
- That's how close the airport is.
Or, airplane flight path, is.
- All right.
So we're going to try that again in case I need to cut it.
- Okay. And go.
- Museum of the day is the Automotive Museum.
- This Cadillac is the first Cadillac RV and it was built in
- And the only.
- And the only, yeah, it was built in 1947,
but it came off the assembly line
as just a straight 1947 Cadillac.
- And a mechanic here in San Diego decided he was going to
try something new and different.
- Yeah. And man, did he hit it out of the park.
This thing, not only is it self-contained,
but he wanted to cruise across the country without stopping.
And he was able to do that. Not only once, but twice.
- Yes.
- He went through our country, but he went up to Alaska
and down into Mexico without stopping.
- Now, when we say without stopping, we mean,
literally, the car did not stop moving.
He had several other mechanics that rode with him.
If it needed oil changed, a tire changed,
whatever, this thing was tricked out.
So they would still keep moving
while they changed a tire and changed the oil.
It's crazy what he did with this car.
- Yeah. He had, he built a catwalk
around the car so they could get out
while they were still in motion driving and they could grab
the spare tire from the trailer behind.
He had it rigged so that he could move
or he could change the spare tire
while they were going down the road.
He had hydraulics that popped down on the front and the rear
that had wheels on them.
They kept him going down the road while he changed the tire.
- [Stacy] And he outfitted this car with an ironing board,
a sink, a hot water heater.
He had a drinking fountain on the back.
I mean, it's creative.
A bar inside. He had a hookah inside.
He was ready to go and he does still hold the endurance for
the length of time a car is driven without stopping,
which is 6,300 miles.
- [Phil] This is crazy.
This guy was a genius before his time I guess.
- And I bet you're wondering how he drove that far without
running out of gas, come over here,
I'm gonna show you.
So this was his extra fuel.
He had his own 250-gallon fuel trailer. Isn't that cool?
- He would call ahead of time.
They would let him in the airfield
and he would drive up the airfield,
up and down the airfield while they refueled him
in motion.
- So he never had to stop the car.
- He didn't have to stop. So he,
I mean to think about the logistics that went on
in 1947 to make that happen.
That's incredible.
- Louie put the windows on the hood.
So if they were working on the engine,
he could still see to drive the car.
Also down below, you'll see the running boards.
The boards are actually put on
so somebody could walk up and down to go hook up
to refuel or change a tire.
They actually were on that running board
and they actually stood on the running board
to shower as well.
Not sure how much of the water actually hit them
when they were going down the road.
But that's what they did.
Are you ready to say goodbye?
- Yeah. Bye San Diego, it's been fun.
Time to hit the road.
- [Stacy] Nice little walk down memory lane.
- Yeah. It was a great visit.
It really was. I enjoyed seeing the old ship,
the old Bootcamp.
Just rolling through the old hood of where we were
stationed here for about nine years in the early nineties.
- Definitely way back in the day.
- Yeah. We were here from '91 to '99.
So eight years-ish.
- Yeah.
- The place has changed.
We hadn't been back here to do what we did
since '99 when we left.
- Yeah and of course we had to say goodbye
to Chad and Tara today too. It's so sad.
- Oh yeah, those guys.
Yeah. It was great seeing them.
- Yeah it's always fun when we get together.
- Yeah. We, I mean,
we may go a year in between seeing each other,
but every time.
- But it's not the goal.
- No. But every time we meet up,
it's just like yesterday.
- Yeah.
- So that's pretty cool.
- And that's the best part of this.
You will bump into your friends
on the road here and there.
And it's so nice when you come back together.
And when you separate you know,
eventually, you'll bump into each other again.
- Yeah and it's cool.
And then we've traveled a few times with each other,
so that's pretty cool.
- Yeah.
- When you can caravan,
- Caravan.
- It breaks up the time and you know,
it just, it makes it a little bit more comfortable driving.
- Yeah.
It doesn't seem as long when you're goofing off on the
walkie talkies.
- Yeah. Our nine hour travel day with them
coming into San Diego.
I mean, it didn't really feel like nine hours on the road.
- No, no. It was really cool.
- Yeah.
- So who knows what friends we'll bump into next?
- Yep.
- So you guys just keep watching,
you never know who's around the corner.
(upbeat music)