Posted on 07/16/2016 9:43:27 PM PDT by rey
Has anyone done the tour of the Hornet in Alameda. What did you think? Was it enjoyable? Would you recommend it?
Thaks
I did two cruises on the USS Hancock, CVA-19. The Hornet and the Hancock are(were) both Essex Class Carriers. For me is was an emotional flashback. My wife and I wandered about the ship and found that except for a few hatches and bulkheads, it was like being “back.” The smells at that time, ten or fifteen years ago, were the same.
I was an aviation ordnanceman in VF211 and at the time, they had one of our F8s in the hangerbay. The hatch on the port side guns was open and I can remember standing there for rather too long staring at the guns where I had spent a bit of my youth. I got a bit misty.
I cannot speak for others but I am glad to have been there.
Pretty impressive. There's also a submarine, USS Drum. Even as a kid, I marveled at how small it was. B-25, Patton tank also on display at that time.
Just looked at the website, and there's a lot more stuff there now.
I’ve done it and thought it was really cool until I did the tour of the Midway in San Diego.
The Midway is 10x the tour as you see the ENTIRE ship.
I know what you mean.
There is something that is unique about the smell of a ship. You could stick me in a box, blindfold me, fly me halfway around the world, put the box inside a ship and open the box, and without hesitation, I could easily tell I was on a ship.
It is a weird smell...part iron, part paint, part oil, part ocean, and even...part human.
Same here. Our group at work had a one-day outing and toured the Hornet about 15 years ago.
On another outing we toured the Pampanito (submarine) in San Francisco, which I would also recommend.
The USS Kitty Hawk had that unique smell, as the last oil-fired carrier in service, so much so that she was known to her crew as the “USS S****y Kitty”.
;^)
They were actually asking people where the nuclear wessels were. Alameda just seemed to get worked in. There’s a couple clips on YouTube of that scene.
Everything is open for the tour of the Midway except the boiler room. It’s down a steep, steel ladder and pretty dark...
I’d like to tour the Iowa before I’m incapable of getting around. We toured the Missouri at Pearl about five years ago. The BB had just come out of dry dock with fresh paint. It was a mix of 1940s and 1980s technology. Recall the Gipper ordered Missouri back to duty for a time.
Again, let's use the comparison cited earlier: someone who once lived in New York City not knowing where Brooklyn is. Brooklyn is one of the city's five boroughs and a huge population center today (if it was its own city, it would be the fourth largest city in the US). There is no doubt every New Yorker knows the location of Brooklyn by heart. But if someone from 2016 went back in time to the New York City of 1716, they would indeed NOT know where to find Brooklyn in the New York City of that era. Here is a map demonstrating how differently the city was laid out 300 years ago. The 2016 resident would wander around Mill Basin in vain looking for "Brooklyn" (which in present day New York, would put them in the heart of the Brooklyn borough), only to be told they're in "Flatlands" and that the community of "Brooklyn" is actually much further north.
>> How could they not know Alameda ?” They all knew Sausalito, where the (doesn’t exist in reality) Cetacean Institute was, and that is far more obscure a place. <<
Again, simple explanation: Sausalito still exists in the 23rd century (and is in the same physical place). Alameda does not. Just because Alameda is a household name in 1986, doesn't mean the name is ever used 300 years later.
>> even if Alameda were renamed, they certainly would’ve learned that in basic geography/history or just learning about the lore of San Francisco of 20th Century yore. <<
Again, let's use another example. I've lived in the Chicago area my entire life. In Cook County, "Western Ave" is a MAJOR throughfare street that runs north to south and was originally the western edge of the city. Everyone from Cook County knows where it is. But I don't even need to go back in time 300 years to be unable to locate the street. The present-day "Western Ave" was built in the early 1960s. It predecessor is now know as "Old Western Ave" and the only part of it remaining is a side street in Blue Island, IL, which runs into a dead end. If you sent me back in time to the Al Capone era (let's say, 1920s), I would have no idea where "Western Ave" is in Chicago, and would have to ask directions to find it.
The same is true of numerous other major geographic landmarks in the city. Today, the city of Chicago's last major street that lines up to the lakefront is "Michigan Ave". My dad had his old 30s crime book and told me that a century ago, the street that boarded the lakefront was "Pine St." (which doesn't exist today), and it was a block further back from the present-day Michigan Ave. They filled in the coast and extended the land area a block further east than it had originally been.
>> they showed the visual computer maps of the bay at SF HQ in their “present (23rd C.) day”, Alameda Island stood out on the (unlabeled) screen, which made it all the more baffling. <<
All that demonstrates is that the island still exists in the 23rd century, not that is named "Alameda" or in any way resembles its 20th century equivalent for what its being used for. Again, if you had gone back in 300 years before present day (1716), they wouldn't know what "Alemeda" was either -- since it didn't get that name until 1850. Why would you presume its still called "Alemeda" 300 years in the future, or that people who were born in the 23rd century would be familiar with the region's old name from three centuries earlier? I'm not familiar with most of Chicago neighborhoods from a century ago, let alone 300 years ago.
If you’ve been or served aboard a carrier it might not impress very much. If not, and you have an interest in ships, it should be interesting.
Good point. Chekov was actually asking the locals where the nuclear "wessels" are located, not where Alameda is (though as I noted, its entirely believable that the region wouldn't be called Alameda centuries later and that 23rd century people would unfamiliar with the term).
I think it would actually seem unlikely if the script did the reverse and depicted Chekov and Uhura knowing exactly where to go because nuclear powered submarines are sitting in the same spot 300 years later.
This is a very interesting debate, I’m not sure what side to come down on.
OK, wait, now here’s the problem... You keep using the example of 300 years ago when most places in the country were either yet to be settled or even named, or even citing streets, which can and often are altered over time. I’m stating Alameda County, which has 1.5 million people at present, is NOT going to be an unknown ingredient to a group of educated individuals 250-300 years in the future that reside just adjacent to it, so that is all an apples to oranges comparison right off.
I wouldn’t necessarily expect truly dramatic renamings or reorganizations in 300 years hence around existing American cities (presuming they survived any future nuclear holocaust or wars). Sulu himself remarked in the scene when they arrived in 1986 SF that it hardly looked any different (save for the skyscrapers and likely denser population of the 23rd century). So again, that’s why I doubt that Alameda would not exist then (even if Alameda became a “borough” of Greater San Francisco). Now, if you wanted to go further into the future, such as 1,000 years or more, you might have a point, but not in this instance.
I think you’re making a mountain out of a molehill. It was a gaffe to try to make a comedic scene, nothing more. The screenwriter should’ve familiarized himself with SF to have avoided such a glaring mistake.
BTW, in that computer visual they had nothing named in it, it was just a geographical outline of the entirety of the SF Bay area.
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