USS Intrepid Sea Are and Space Musuem

     Here are Lene and Marcia, a fellow member of the Harlem Yacht Club off to the port side of a fighter jet on the hanger deck of the USS Intrepid, during the third winter exploration I have led for the Harlem. Each tour was a pleasure for me and created an opportunity for us to commingle, learn and nosh afterwards in the cold of winter when our Clubhouse is closed and our boats are put away. (Sorry that my other photos did not come out but the only thing worse than no photos is bad, fuzzy, illegible ones.) 

     In 2009 we visited a terrific exhibition in the NY Public Library about 400 years of charting of New York Harbor and environs, including Long Island Sound which was mounted to commemorate the 400th anniversary of Henry Hudson's voyage here on the Half Moon. Last year we went only a few blocks from our club house to the City Island Historical Maritime Museum.

     For this trip, a month or so ago, I spent four hours here on an exploratory mission, to be able to describe for the others what they would see, and then negotiated our group rates, selected our restaurant, set the menu and figured out parking. Four hours was not enough for me (because I'm a notorious slowpoke in museums), but I timed it for the group at two to three hours, with folks arriving during the first hour at their convenience. We did the touring of the exhibit on our own, in small groups, so everyone could spend as much time with each part of the exhibit as he or she liked.

     Some would want to spend more time on the bridge decks with their high views of the neighborhood. We had some engineers amongst us who helped the Space Shuttle program and would want to spend more time in the large hanger built atop the aft end of the flight deck to house the Space Shuttle Enterprise and lots of explanatory materials about it. Others toured the USS Growler a submarine that was capable of coming to the surface, preparing and launching nuclear headed cruise missiles. It went obsolete when the Navy learned to launch without even coming to the surface. One of my favorite places in the Intrepid was the space near the bow from which the anchors are deployed, each anchor stayed by three mammoth pelican hooked stoppers and with each link in the chains weighing 130 pounds! A large display of retired military aircraft on the flight deck was less popular this time because it was rather cold outside. 

     They have a good multi-media show with lots of emotional content reenacting about how the Intrepid  (but not 69 of its officers and men)survived during and after a notable kamikaze hit. It was very moving. I think I was right to not try to keep us 25 people together during the viewing hours. Some of the spots such as in the submarine, are simply not conducive to such a large group.

     Parts of the ship still have that ineffable, distinctive, not-unpleasant "navy ship" smell; how do they do that 71 years after the boat was commissioned?

      I was talking with one of our members, Tim, a 20 year Marine officer, soon to graduate from law school. We were discussing our respective wars: his in Iraq and mine in Viet Nam, (though unlike Tim, I was not actually deployed there). In both cases US fighting forces did their best to perform their missions as defined by their governments and many died. Both wars were in Asia (at opposite ends), unneeded and harmed the people of the nations in which the fighting took place. In Viet Nam we left and now are again leaving without accomplishing our objective. The harm was not just to those native military and civilian populations who were maimed or killed, but we left the nations for which we fought worse off than when we found them, poorer, with no more freedom and lots less stability. We have to learn to curb our instinct for war. It is a simplistic but blunt instrument for foreign policy to be used only after we have proved that all else has failed. Our planners universally (well except for the Spanish American War) underestimate the cost and duration and get us in without a plan to get us back out.

     I have recently completed a book by George Orwell called Homage to Catalonia, a memoir with political commentary about his six months fighting as a volunteer for the "good guys" on the losing side in the Spanish Civil War (1936-39) against the Fascist forces of Generalisimo Franco. He described the feeling of pride, which he knew were mistaken, but which welled up in him anyway, upon seeing the military might of the forces headed out to the front, where he had been injured. Military training and life can play tricks with one's mind. The Intrepid is a mighty machine indeed. But enough such morbid musings.

     We 25 Harlemites and friends mustered in the warmth of the hanger deck at the scheduled end of the viewing time and strolled together to McQuaid's Restaurant and Bar, at the corner of 44th St and 11th Avenue, only three short blocks from the pier. The food was healthy, wholesome, tasty, inexpensive and the desert was excellent! - warm home-baked strawberry-rhubarb pie ala mode. The agreed menu had said "cake" and this was a welcome surprise ending for our little adventure together.