Recent Trip - Bridge is Now Open!

I took a trip to the ship a couple of days ago to get my fix of wandering around and looking for things that I haven't seen before. While I was walking around on the superstructure, I passed by the ladder up to the bridge on the port side, and it was roped off as usual. Much to my surprise on the stbd side, I found that the curator has opened the pilot house portion of the navigation bridge! This is where the skipper would command the ship while it was underway.

I spent quite a bit of time there checking out the newly-opened space. Last winter I got to see it on my walk through with the curator and it looked decent then. However, he did a great job in cleaning and restoring the pilot house, including adding back some equipment that didn't survive being mothballed. The view was great, and it afforded a closer look at more of the superstructure. Here are some shots of/from the bridge:

Stbd side entrance to the pilot house.

Sepia shot of the pilot house.

Check out the armor thickness on the conning tower. The pilot house sits right in front of (surrounds the forward part of) the conning tower.

Even though there is still some work to do, the curator got some instruments installed that looked great.

Another shot of the interior. I checked out the seats and they're pretty comfy. Took a few gratuitous self-portraits in them as well.

Directly behind where you stand in the pilot house is the armored conning tower. Within the conning tower is one of the ship's helms. There is at least one more place the ship can be steered (that I know of); secondary conn, located a few levels up the superstructure is where the ship's XO would be stationed while underway, and there is a helm there too (see post about "Behind Locked Hatches").

This is a view through one of the view ports in the armored conning tower looking inside while standing in the pilot house.

A view of the port side entrance to the conning tower. 16" of armor. I hear from a guy who served on the USS Missouri during the late 80's that inside the conning tower was quite pleasant during hot weather. It apparently stayed pretty cool due to the thickness of the steel.

There's the helm I mentioned earlier.

Overall, this space was great. The curator did a great job cleaning up, painting and restoring this space and I really enjoyed finally being able to check it out for as long as I wanted. As a parting shot, check out the view from the pilot house: