Mike got a lot closer to the incident I referred to than he may have remotely guessed! This is a shot from the same spot as the previous (following) image. INTREPID is an ESSEX-class carrier and so is LEXINGTON and that's where the story takes place: LEXINGTON at Pensacola in late 1968. Someone and his buds were visiting Main Side from their satellite training installation and noticed that LEX was having an open house day. So, three relatively recently-minted seamen deuces wandered over and aboard. If you look at the following image, you will see a crane. That day there was a brow (gangplank) at that location and this is what these goobers used to board. Once on the ship, they wandered about and met up with some of the crew who showed them their quarters: pretty spacious as only one out of three bunks were assigned. This was because the other two were installed for a lot of the AA gunners who manned the 5", 40 mm, and 20 mm that you see spitting lead in all the wartime vids on YOUTUBE. Times had changed and so did manning requirements. Well, tour over it was time to leave. These nubes exited the flight deck just a bit ahead of where this picture was taken from and they looked around. The brow they'd boarded on was accessible, but one had to crawl over all sorts of icky ropes and other stuff whereas... LO! and Behold! not 20' away there was another brow with nice canopy over it and it looked a lot sturdier. Naturally they decided to leave that way. (Any squids reading this know what comes next). The sliding door into the flight deck flew open and out ran an ensign and about 6 white hats and the ensign was yelling something like: Where the hell do you people think you're going!? (Back to their own base of course). Splutter, sputter! ... How did you get on this ship? (They used that brow over there.) So why the heck are you using this one now? (Because it was closer.) Suddenly the ensign could not talk any more; he turned to one of the stunned-looking white hats and said: Set them straight. Then he disappeared into the glass door while suppressing a snorting fit of some sort. (About this point, one of the noobs recalled a lesson from Basic Training: officers' gangways are to the front of a ship.) Yup. That was someone's first encounter with a carrier and he decided that smaller ships had to be somewhat more different. Subs had only one brow as he learned later. (There may be exceptions, but that's the story he is sticking with.) In case this ship looks big, it is. It has lots of ladders (stairs) but it also has some elevators to make it more accessible to visitors. So, that's my story. I'm hoping it gave a few laughs around the O club that night. ,,, squirrel! Enjoy; thanks for viewing.