Free Republic

Capt. Lawrence Chambers was facing a life and death decision. He could save the lives of a family and possibly be court martialed. Or risk losing them all. It was 1975. The ship was heading to South Vietnam to help evacuate United States and South Vietnamese personnel before the country was overrun by North Vietnam. “I can’t let them die. There goes my career,” Lawrence said, ordering the helicopters to be shoved into the sea. South Vietnamese Air Force Major Buang-Ly wasn’t on the list of evacuees, but knew he and his family would be killed if they didn’t leave....

When 85-year-old Bob Mountz arrived at the USS Midway Museum on Tuesday, his heart, he said, fluttered up toward his throat. The former Navy hospital corpsman served aboard the Midway for two years in the mid-1950s, toward the end of the Korean War. He hadn’t seen the aircraft carrier since. So it was, you might say, the wish of a lifetime to see the old ship again. Mountz, from Fort Wayne, Ind., is dying of lung cancer. His daughter nominated him to be sponsored by a charity that grants the final wishes of older people. The Denver-based group Wish of...

Mitt Romney’s opening pitch for a third shot at the White House left many Republicans scratching their heads, in part because his plans to fight poverty and tyranny seemed to borrow the lexicon of liberals like FDR, LBJ and Woodrow Wilson. With a full house of Republican National Committee members listening aboard the USS Midway in San Diego, Mr. Romney implored his party last week “to lift people out of poverty” and “to make the world safe.” The first phrase is a favorite of liberals who gush over Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s New Deal and Lyndon B. Johnson’s Great Society programs...

US NAVY AIRCRAFT CARRIER MUSEUMS (Click map for a high resolution image) Currently (July 2013) there are five US Navy Aircraft Carrier museums. Four are of Essex class carriers commissioned during World War II which underwent the SBC-125 refit in the 1950s to modernize them. All were commissioned in 1943 & served into modern times. The last, the USS Lexington, was decommissioned in 1991 after 48 years service. The other is the USS Midway, namesake of a larger class carrier built at the end of the war. She underwent two major refits, in the 1950s & in 1970 greatly enlarging...

Two servicemen missing in action from the Vietnam War have been identified and returned to their families for burial. They are Navy Lt. j.g. Robert A. Clark of North Hollywood, Calif., and another officer whose name will not be released at the request of his family. On Jan. 10, 1973, the two took off in an A-6A aircraft from USS Midway on a mission to suppress surface-to-air missiles in North Vietnam. Near the target area in Nghe An Province in North Vietnam, aircrew reported an estimated 15 surface-to-air missiles fired, as well as numerous antiaircraft rounds. Clark’s A-6A was not...

USS Midway to Become San Diego Museum 53 minutes ago By SETH HETTENA, Associated Press Writer SAN DIEGO - The storied aircraft carrier USS Midway is headed for a permanent home along San Diego Bay's Navy Pier as the nation's biggest museum devoted to carriers and naval aviation. Tugs are pulling the 74,000-ton decommissioned warship from a naval graveyard off Washington state where the Midway has spent the past 10 years. The ship is due in a few days and, once outfitted with aircraft and other memorabilia, will become the San Diego Aircraft Carrier Museum, with a spring opening planned....