The Midway Magic

It took me many years to learn the truth in Captain Slocum’s wisdom. In my younger years, life at sea was an adventure, but I dreaded the times when we encountered rough seas. While serving on board the aircraft carrier U.S.S. Midway, my ability to withstand this affliction was thoroughly tested. Our ship the “Midway Magic,” as we sometimes called her, was old but tough. When she was commissioned on September 10, 1945, one week after the end of World War II, she was the largest carrier ever built. She also had the distinction of being the longest serving aircraft carrier of the 20th century. During her lifetime, she was shown time and time again to be battle-ready. In the fall of 1988, the ship encountered a storm that tested the crew’s strength and ability to persevere during difficult times. Reflecting on it, I realize that without hard times, life would be boring.

The voyage started in Hong Kong in the first week of October. We were there for a liberty visit and to take shelter from a typhoon in the South China Sea. After three days of enjoying the city, we got underway to return to our home port of Yokosuka, Japan. As we entered the open ocean, the seas were calm with only a light breeze blowing. On one of my breaks, I went to an outside deck toward the front of the ship. I could see flying fish jumping from wave to wave, hear the ocean spray created by the ship pushing through the water, and feel the salty breeze hitting my face. The ship’s crew was told there would be rough weather, but we had no idea what we were in for.

About one day into the transit the ship started to roll. This is an uncommon occurrence for a ship as large as the Midway, as we seldom felt the effects of the weather. All day we were busy securing the ship for foul weather. We tied down anything that could move, including toolboxes, televisions, and coffee pots. The flight deck crew was bustling about, fitting as many aircraft as possible into the relative safety of the hangar bay, and chaining them to the deck. What they couldn’t fit below, they tied to the flight deck, using double and triple the normal number of chains.

During the rush, I observed my first “man overboard”. While walking with a friend to one of our workspaces, we stopped on an outside deck located on the ships island. The island is a structure on an aircraft carrier that sits on top of the flight, like an island, on an otherwise flat deck. The air crew were tying an A-6 Intruder attack aircraft to one of the elevators so they could bring it into the hangar bay. As they lowered the elevator, the ship rolled right into a large wave. One person was riding the elevator down, and when the wave hit, it lifted the elevator, sent a torrent of water across the deck, and slammed it back down with a boom that shook the ship. The sailor got knocked down and was carried by the water off the edge of the elevator. We had practiced man overboard drills many times and knew what was coming next. The ship would maneuver to facilitate finding and retrieving the sailor, while every division would have to do a head count in order to figure out who the unlucky victim was. My friend and I immediately ran to our division office to report in. We were so quick, we got there before the announcement was made over the loudspeakers. “Man overboard starboard side. Man overboard starboard side. Prepare to launch motor whaleboat.” After what seemed like an eternity spent, waiting to hear the fate of the sailor, they canceled the man overboard and announced that the sailor had been saved by one of the safety nets that surrounded the flight deck and elevators. A tragedy was narrowly escaped.

About a day after the “almost” man overboard, the sea was at its worst. The ship was being tossed in every direction, up, down, left, and right. Occasionally the ship slammed into the oncoming waves and sent shock waves from stem to stern. About half of the sailors onboard were seasick, including myself. My division’s chief was kind enough to let those who were sick stay in their bunks, most likely because he didn’t want to hear or smell the result of their afflictions. In our bunks we did all we could to brace ourselves in, or risk being rolled out onto the deck. This is when I learned the trick of putting my boots and whatever else was handy under the edge of my mattress. This created a raised edge that would help me to stay in place. There were times when the ship rolled further than usual and hung there for what seemed like forever. I would close my eyes tight and silently wish for her to right herself. She always came back.

At some point I decided to go to the office to check in. The scene there was comical. Chief was at his desk, laughingly watching his beloved coffee mug slide back and forth in front of him. The others on watch were braced into a corner or between equipment racks laughing and telling jokes. Seeing them in such good spirits was slightly infuriating. Why did I have to suffer from seasickness, while they were seemingly unaffected? They told me that they had been up to the expansion joint on the ship. The expansion joint is a portion of the ship that allows it to flex in rough seas instead of stressing the steel to the point of failure. They said that they could sit with their backs against one wall and watch the opposite wall close in on them like the ram of a trash compactor, stopping with just enough room for a person to fit.

After the storm was over, it was time to assess the damage. The ship had lost many life rafts due to waves knocking them out of their mounts. My division maintained a large box-like antenna on the tip of the angle deck that was completely missing. Most of the damage was small, but expensive, and as far as I know no one was injured. We began the task of picking up the items that weren’t tied down well enough.

We had endured the wrath of the Super Typhoon Nelson. A typhoon is considered “super” only when it has sustained winds over 150 miles per hour. The ship had only skirted the edge of the storm. In the open ocean, when there is a storm with sustained winds over a long distance, the waves tend to stack up or pile on top of each other making conditions worse. If we had caught the storm’s full force, our fate would have been much different.

We later learned that the ship had exceeded her point of no return of a 24 degree roll with max of 26 degrees at its worst. The naval architects had calculated that she would not be able to right herself if she rolled past 24 degrees. The main cause of this extreme rolling was a pair of newly-fitted blisters that were welded at the waterline on both sides of the ship. These blisters were intended to increase her buoyancy to make up for all the modernizations and extra weight she had gained over the years. The alterations had their desired effect, but they also made her very susceptible to extreme rolls. Someone on board even had a patch commissioned that exclaimed “They say she could do no more than 24,” with a depiction of the Midway and the edge of her flight deck in the water.

Today, I can reflect on the experience, and think about the lessons learned. First, the sea is unforgiving and deadly. Those who choose to test her will pay the price. Secondly, I hate being seasick. Constantly feeling like you’re about to vomit, with no relief even when you do, is one of the worst feelings to endure. The last lesson I could only realize many years later. Even though it was probably the scariest moment of my life to that point, I look back fondly at the experience. I would never willingly go through that again, but I am glad to have experienced it. We need difficult times. Without them we could not appreciate the good things in our lives. To paraphrase one of the greatest seamen to have lived, Captain Joshua Slocum, life without the good times, as well as the bad, would not be very poetic.