‘);
–>
  E-Mail Article
  Listen to Article
  Printer-Friendly
  3-Column Format
  Translate
  Share Article
  
  Text Size
NEW YORK: The best place fully to grasp the nature of the USS Intrepid - the aircraft carrier turned museum that, after two years and $115 million of repairs and redesign, reopened last week at Pier 86 along the Hudson - is not inside this floating museum at all.
The best place is standing outside on the 900-foot, or 275-meter, flight deck from which planes and helicopters departed for dangerous sorties beginning in World War II and ending during the Vietnam War.
It is here, where generations of warplanes and helicopters are now silhouetted against the New York skyline, that you begin to grasp the expanse of time and space this warship embraces and the scale of enterprise and battle it represents. Looking at the vintage aircraft, you can't help but feel amazed at the scope of the ambition; at the sophisticated feats of engineering; at the hours of combat and suffering once associated with such polished mechanisms.
Descend from that deck, and you can begin to appreciate something else about this ship. More time has passed since the Intrepid saw battle than the years it spent as a commissioned warship. These most recent years, however, have held their own challenges. As is told in a history of the carrier published to coincide with the reopening - “Intrepid: The Epic Story of America's Most Legendary Warship,” by Bill White and Robert Gandt (with a foreword by John McCain, who served on the ship) - despite visionary leadership and bountiful donations, the Intrepid has had an often troubled passage in its transformation from an instrument of war to an instrument of learning.
Zachary and Elizabeth Fisher, military philanthropists, contributed millions of dollars to the ship's refurbishing. Now dead, they are paid homage in a special gallery. But in 1982, when the museum opened, the nearby piers were in disrepair; it was debated whether the area could ever be a tourist destination. The Intrepid survived five kamikaze attacks during World War II, but it was nearly defeated by far less deadly challenges: in 1985, the museum filed for bankruptcy.
Today in Culture
Brutality made real, night after night
In Paris, improv is U.S. chef's specialty
USS Intrepid is restored for a new 'mission'
It came back to life, of course. But more recently, another financial crisis was narrowly averted. The ship and its pier needed extensive restoration and new exhibition strategies. Money was raised, and two years ago, the 40,000-ton ship was hauled to Bayonne Dry Dock and Repair in New Jersey and then to the Homeport on Staten Island, for an overhaul as the pier too was being improved. Last month, the ship was towed home, and at a pre-opening inspection last week it seemed nearly ready for its latest mission. The museum hopes for one million visitors a year, including 100,000 children, half of whom will come on school trips. For Veterans Day ceremonies on Tuesday, President George W. Bush was scheduled to join New York politicians at the ship, formally called the Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum.
This latest tour of the ship is largely a triumph. There are some serious flaws, but they are flaws of omission rather than commission and may, in time, be modified. But there is also more than enough here to appreciate.
You start your tour in an interior hangar deck that spans the length of the ship. At the front of the Intrepid the fo'c'sle provides visitors with glimpses of the officers' quarters, the walls painted a sickly lime green that in these tight spaces seems discomfiting but which the museum's curator, John Zukowsky, assures me was the color thought least likely to promote sea sickness.
These spaces are now crisper than similar restorations I recall from the museum's past incarnation. But what is really new is an extensive exhibition chronicling the Intrepid's history: its construction in 18 months during World War II, its participation in that war's 82-day Battle of Okinawa, its place in Cold War maneuvers and training, its use in recovering astronauts from Mercury and Gemini space missions, and its three tours of duty during the Vietnam War.
Visitors are given an understanding of both the humanity and the hardware behind the ship's history. One long aisle presents the ship as a floating city (population 3,388), with uniforms, a barber's chair, memorabilia. Then there are exhibits, including an enormous 27,000-pound, or 12,300-kilogram, propeller, and planes like the Grumman TBM-3E Avenger, the navy's standard torpedo bomber throughout World War II.
But one of the biggest draws for those not particularly well versed in the capabilities, say, of a McDonnell F-4N Phantom or a Grumman F-11 Tiger is the new Exploreum. Its displays are meant to be touched and climbed, pushed and entered. You can crawl into a typically sized crewman's bunk too narrow to roll over in and stacked too close for occupants to sit up. You can scramble up a cargo net, practice Morse code, sit in a helicopter complete with sound effects.