USS Midway Museum

This USS Midway was commissioned on September 10, 1945, just eight days after Japan's surrender, and for a time was the largest ship in the US Navy. Over 47 years of active service, longer than any other 20th-century US Navy aircraft carrier, it launched the first confirmed American MiG kill of the Vietnam War in 1965 and one of the war's last air-to-air victories in 1973.

Decommissioned in 1992, the carrier reopened in San Diego Bay in 2004 as a museum, letting visitors walk the flight deck among restored aircraft and descend into crew quarters, the galley, and other spaces below decks. The museum drew nearly 880,000 visitors in its first year alone, roughly double what its founders had projected.

The audio tour is narrated in part by former Midway sailors describing what it was like to actually live and work aboard, which can help newcomers unfamiliar with US military history connect the ship's scale to the everyday lives of the people who served on it.