Musuem Review - Hornet Take 3

While in San Francisco for the Pokemon World Championships, I made a third attempt to visit Hornet, this time making sure there wasn't a furry convention going on. Things started off well when I decided to take the ferry from downtown San Francisco to the Alameda Seaplane Terminal, which is maybe half a mile from the ship. The trip was lovely if a bit windy, with gorgeous views of San Francisco and a nice pass by Hornet on the arrival end.

Hornet from the ferry

Website

Hornet is one of the Essex class carriers that won the Pacific War, having been named after the previous Hornet, sunk during the fighting in the Solomons. She racked up an impressive score in WWII, then was modernized to fly early jets, with steam catapults and an angled deck. However, she missed out on the second round of modernization and was reclassified as an anti-submarine carrier (CVS), flying SH-3 Sea King helicopters and S-2 Tracker ASW aircraft as a companion to the strike carriers.¹ Just before her retirement in 1970, she was the recovery ship for the Apollo 11 and 12 missions, and the deck is marked with the spot where Neil Armstrong took his first steps after his return to Earth.

Pieces of space history

As a museum, Hornet was more or less like I'd found her when I was last aboard, although they'd clearly been doing work to make her better in the last few years. The planes had been moved around a bit, with their Phantom now looking great and the Tomcat at the back of the hangar being repainted. The flight deck is busier, with the S-2 and A-4 joining the S-3 and T-28 to represent the last planes to operate from her, and the A-4 is on the catapult with a bridle installed, which was something I'd never seen before. Signage was kind of a mixed bag. When they had it, it was generally quite comprehensive, but coverage was spotty, and there were more errors than I would like.² The only thing I really missed from last time was the Mk 45 ASTOR, but that was apparently put into storage as part of their revamp of the torpedo room, which looked amazing. They'd opened up the torpedo magazine down below the workshop so you could see into it, giving a much better sense of how the space actually worked, and the only thing they could do to make it better would be to get a real Mk 13 and open it up so you can see the guts.

The torpedo magazine

The only real problem came when we decided to try out one of the docent tours. These are $12 per person, and there are four, covering the island, life aboard, weapons and engines. This is good pricing, and they're supposed to run an hour each, maybe a bit more for the weapons tour. I was with Rebecca Friedman, who cooks for the meetups, and she really wanted to see the galleys, so we signed up for the life aboard tour, starting at 1 PM. The sign said something like 40-50 minutes. The docent in question took 2 hours and 15 minutes for the tour before we basically ran away. Now, there are undoubtedly a few people who could have used that amount of time well on what we saw (which, in fairness, was a lot), but he did not, often rambling and occasionally saying things that were simply untrue. I interacted with a number of docents who seemed competent, and we may have just gotten unlucky, but his tour ran so long that the last weapons tour of the day, which I had been sort of hoping to do, departed before we were done.

Unfortunately, the Mk 45 was gone and the B57 was roped off

But that aside, we had a good time. A lot of the ship is open, even without the docent tours, although the routing is kind of a mess, to the point that I found her somewhat difficult to navigate. If you're planning to travel to visit a carrier, you should go to Midway instead, but she's definitely worth a look if you live in the area or happen to be in the Bay for another reason. Just make sure there's not a furry convention before you plan your visit.