Ornoth

Saturday I got out early and took a cab down to the Black Falcon terminal in order to get aboard the USS John F. Kennedy, a 40 year old aircraft carrier that is about to be decommissioned.

Why do that? That doesn’t sound like the Ornoth we know.

Well, back in my high school days I was a bit of a naval enthusiast, and also a gamer. One of my group’s favorite games was Fletcher Pratt’s Naval War Game, which used 1/700 scale waterline models on a gymnasium-sized floor. For an adolescent, that was a lot of fun.

As an adult, I’ve had the opportunity to visit a number of different warships. Many were World War 2 vintage: the destroyer Cassin Young here in Boston, the heavy cruiser Salem just down the road from here, the battleship Massachusetts a bit further afield, the battleship North Carolina in her home state, and the destroyer Laffey and aircraft carrier Yorktown in South Carolina. And then I’ve also visited some active NATO warships, as well.

So I figured I’d check out the JFK, while it was here. As warships go, the JFK is almost incomprehensibly immense. It’s 1052 feet—nearly a quarter mile—long and displaces 82,000 tons. Its length is measured in football fields and city blocks. The flight desk is, oh, four and a half acres in size; enough space to park 325 cars, and still have plenty of room for each to leave independently. It typically hosts about 70 aircraft.

I took up position in line at 7:40am. Three very long and painful hours later, I climbed up the gangway. By that point, the line was already four wide and well over a mile long, and they’d stopped allowing anyone else to join the line.

The good part was that the weather was great. It was mostly sunny, and temperatures climbed into the mid-50s. The sun was strong off the starboard beam, which put most of the island in shadow as you stood on the flight deck, but it made for some dramatic lighting.

The bad part was that we were only allowed on the hangar and flight decks, which basically are just big open spaces full of nothing. We were kept out of the conning tower and below decks, which is where all the really interesting stuff would be found.

I only wasted 10 minutes on the hangar deck before stepping out onto one of the aircraft elevators for a very cool ride up to the flight deck. Once topside, I spent a half hour walking the circumference of the ship, checking out what was to be seen and taking a few quick snapshots, mostly of the island.

Then I went around a second time, taking three times as much time to seek out and find the really interesting shots. It was a lot of fun, and a good chance to get my picture taking skills back into shape.

A few of the highlights included looking back down the catapult, and shooting little features like runway lights, speakers, radar domes, the ship’s bell, various valves and controls. The high deck offered great shots of the Boston skyline, Fort Independence, Castle Island, and Logan airport. I got some good shots of police and fishing boats, and aircraft taking off and in flight. I even caught a couple Army helicopters as they flew directly overhead. But most of my “film” was spent on the conning tower and all its complexity.

And I got my good deed of the day in, snagging two pylons that had been blown down by the wind, so that the crew could come by and tie them down properly.

After a couple hours topside, I took the opposite elevator back down to the hangar deck, where there was absolutely nothing of interest. Then I debarked and limped home with aching back and legs after several miles of walking and being on my feet for over seven hours without rest.

But I really enjoyed the ship, and the opportunity it gave me to get some photography practice in.