Out of all the things to see in Charleston, Fantasy RV chose Patriots Point. Hm… more military. At Patriots Point, I saw the USS Yorktown aircraft carrier and the USS Laffey destroyer. They had other exhibits, but I barely had enough time to go through the 2 ships. I have to admit, the ships were quite impressive. One lasting impressive is stairs, lots and lots of stairs. They were everywhere and so steep, they were like ladders.
The aircraft carrier was so long it was hard to get a photo of the whole thing, so I borrowed one to give you perspective.
The Yorktown is the large ship, the Laffey is the small destroyer to the right of it.Here’s about the best I could do to capture the whole boat.
The first part of the tour took you through the day-to-day stuff, like laundry, food, sleeping quarters,, dentist, barber, medical, etc.
I wonder if these are comfortable? As a side note, they also hold kids camps on the ship where the kids sleep overnight on the ship, probably here.Washers on the left, dryers on the right.This was the jail. There were 4 of these units, each with 3 bunks apiece and barely enough room to turn around.
I wanted to go down to the engine room. It involved descending to the bottom of the ship. After about 5 ladders down with everything looking the same, I stopped, but there were still a couple of more ladders to go. It was getting hot down there and everything started looking the same.
The engine room was lots of valves, gauges, pipes, wires, grates above and below you. None of it made any sense to me.This was pretty cool. I didn’t realize they flung the aircraft off the ship with a catapult.This area was part of that catapult, with the ram to the right.
I moved up out the bowels of the ship to the main and upper levels.
This photo was taken while standing on the landing deck of the aircraft carrier. Most of the stuff in the upper part had to do with controlling the ship and all the aircraft.This was a control room. I don’t know what it controls because there was a separate air traffic controller room.This is at the front of the ship. I had to chuckle because it seems as if this unimpressive, brown wheel is what steers this mammoth ship.To me, this looked like a Top Gun room where the pilots get their instructions and assignments.
Back out on the deck, there were lots of historic aircraft.
Here is a Blue Angel airplane, with the city of Charleston across the water.This is the view of the back of the Blue Angel airplane – you can see right through it. I guess this is where all that smoke comes out. (We didn’t have a tour guide at this stop, to explain all this to us and answer our questions.)I liked this one – it looks like an angry bee.
The USS Laffey was parked beside the aircraft carrier. Inside it basically looks the same as the aircraft carrier but on a much smaller scale. They were showing a History channel show about this particular ship which sustained an unrelenting attack by 22 Japanese bombers and kamikaze in the Battle of Okinawa. The USS Laffey downed 13 planes. Wikipedia says “Laffey survived despite being badly damaged by four bombs, six kamikaze crashes, and strafing fire that killed 32 and wounded 71.”
The USS Laffey must have had major reconstruction because I didn’t see where the bomb hit or planes crashed.
Afterwards we all had lunch at the Charleston Crab Company.
Is that crab laughing or frowning? And why is he wearing tennis shoes?There I am with Sharon, left of me. She’s the other single traveler on the tour. We are sitting with my friend Mary and her husband Dan.
