Eat, Sleep, Work, Repeat: Life on a Floating City

Cramming an entire city into an aircraft carrier is no small feat. Add the citizens, 4,000 19-year-olds from everywhere you can imagine, and things get really interesting. From the doctor’s to the dentist office to the five-and-dime and multiple restaurants — a jail and a church, too — the USS Midway ran like a well-oiled machine in more than one sense. Even the leisure time was bigger than life: skeet shooting and golfing on a steel-beach picnic. Of course, the quarters were a bit tight, and sleep was just a dream; but somehow everyone on this 70,000- ton floating city got the job done anyway.

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While the United States and the Soviet Union engaged in an ‘Invisible War’ regional players took advantage of the vacuum this created. Enter Saddam Hussein.

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The combat missions seemed endless. First, he and his co-pilot shot down two North Vietnamese fighter jets only minutes apart...

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Senior Chief Petty Officer Edward J. Murray Senior Chief Petty Officer Edward J. Murray
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He defied the odds to make sure that Navy aircrews could rely on their 75 planes during combat missions...

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