So today Shorty and I woke up at 4.30AM. Compliments of jet lag. We struggled to go back to sleep and by 5.30AM Shorty fell asleep again but I had given up. I went out for a jog instead in my quiet Sunnyvale, California neighbourhood. It’s only when I ran outside with my shorts did I realize it was 11 degrees celcius out there. Freeezing my ass off.
Fast forward a couple of hours later and Shorty and I had just finished breakfast. We didn’t know how to spend our Saturday. We could go outlet shopping but we already went shopping the last trip and we’re all spent out of shopping money. We thought of driving into San Francisco but considering that I would probably be spending most of my next few work days there I hesitated.
Finally I remembered the one thing I wanted to do last trip but didn’t get to. I wanted to go to Fenton’s.
It’s this ice-cream store in Oakland that was known for great ice-cream and it inspired the ending ice-cream scene in UP.
I had two scoops.
Yes… that is how two scoops look like. It was huge.
So I knew I was going to be down in Oakland and I started looking for things to do in that direction. I googled Top 10 Things to do in Oakland and I found it. My favourite attraction that I’ve been to in all of the Bay Area so far and to think I found it by accident. A chance to visit the now decommissioned USS Hornet Aircraft Carrier.
The USS Hornet is an aircraft carrier that was built by the US in 1943 and served till 1970s. It played key roles in World War 2, the Vietnam War and even the Apollo Program where it retrieved astronauts that had returned from the moon.
Now let me explain to you why I loved this attraction by telling you two things that I love:
1) I LOVE military-stuff.
2) I LOVE modern history.
This is both.
Plus I had never ever been on an aircraft carrier before so this was just… amazing.
This is a picture I took of it just before entering.
Once immediately in the aircraft carrier there was this HUGE open space called the hangar deck. It was this huge indoor space where they used to keep their planes to repair, refuel or arm them.
There were some exhibits of some planes that the USS Hornet used to launch. This particular plane caught my attention because the sign told a story of how one pilot of this plane once shot himself down.
How? He was shooting his guns in a dive but he was going so fast that he managed to hit himself with the very same bullets he shot out. The plane suffered heavy damage and he had to crash land his plane. I’m sure he never heard the end of it from his fellow air force pilots… you know being the guy who managed to shoot himself down.
The aircraft carrier had 8 levels. So much of the lower levels were rooms and riddled with corridors that looked like this.
Connected by ladders that looked like this.
It’s definitely not for the claustrophobic. When I was walking through these corridors I couldn’t help but imagine scenes that we’ve seen in the movies where the ship takes a torpedo and water starts filling up and you gotta get out of there or be dragged down into the ocean with this huge steel ship.
What was also cool was the engine room. We followed a tour led by a veteran who used to serve on board this ship. He told us how everything worked and how life on the ship was.
What’s cool was that there was another veteran on our tour who served on another ship and they shared the things they had in common.
One thing this veteran said was that this ship will never be able to go into action again because nobody else but them knows how to run it. And they’re all old and retired now unless we have something like what happened in the movie Battleship.
The coolest part of the aircraft carrier of course was the flight deck. The top of the aircraft carrier where they launched jets and planes. It’s huge! Like one massive football field.
On the flight deck were some of the other planes this aircraft carrier used to launch. In its early days it used to launch the propeller planes we watch in the World War 2 movies. Then in its later days when jets came into action it launched jets using its catapult system. A technology that I understand only the US has. All the other countries that have aircraft carriers launch their jets in other ways.
Throughout the ship there were little stories about what role the USS Hornet played in history and all but there are too many for me to talk about each and every one of them here. Perhaps its best to read up a bit on Wikipedia or something if you’re keen.
This was probably the most fun I’ve had in the San Francisco. Shorty though looked terribly bored the whole time and said she didn’t understand anything. Well if I had known that it was possible for tourists to visit a US aircraft carrier I would’ve so put that on my bucket list.
Fortunately I didn’t need to put that in and it came really as a surprise to me.
If you love these kind of things like me, be sure to visit the USS Hornet in Alameda.
PS: When I was Googling USS Hornet a “USS Hornet Ghost” came up. I was like whaaat? Apparently the USS Hornet is haunted.
No wonder Shorty kept saying she didn’t like the place and that it felt creepy.
Timothy Tiah – Co-Founder of Colony, Kuala Lumpur Co-Working Space