Our Hawaii trip started out in Oahu with a short shuttle ride to the Hilton Hawaiian Village Waikiki Beach Resort located in downtown Honolulu.  The resort had an evening Luau that consisted of an outdoor buffet, featuring pulled port, as is their custom; with ceremonial dancing and Hawaiian songs. We found the show entertaining and lively with fire dancing by native Hawaiian’s as the grand finally.  We retired to our room on the top floor of the Hilton and had a cocktail on the balcony.  The first photo of our trip was the view from the balcony overlooking the marina, resort pond, and the large staging area used to hold events, wedding etc.

The next day was a full schedule that included a tour of the U.S.S. Arizona, U.S.S. Battleship Missouri, Bowfin Submarine and the Pacific Aviation Museum on Ford Island.  To visit the Arizona Memorial you board a shuttle boat to the memorial and visit as a tour group.  The memorial sits on top of what is left of the U.S.S. Arizona and is perpendicular to the hull.  The photos we took show the remains of one of the gun turrets just above the water line and the shrine room where the names of the sailors that perished in the December 7, 1941 attack.  The ship stood about seven stories above the water line and the super structure has been removed for the memorial.  The remains of about 900 sailors are still entombed in the hull of the Arizona.

Prior the our tour of the U.S.S. Bowfin Submarine the only submarine I saw was the U-505 German Submarine at the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago.  The U.S.S. Bowfin is considerably longer at 311’ and much larger with four General Motors V-16 diesel engines and a cruse speed of 10 knots.  Launched on December 7, 1942 it conducted nine patrols all in the Pacific Theater and sunk 44 enemy vessels.  The Bowfin has 10 torpedo tubes six in the bow and four in the stern and carried a maximum of 24 torpedoes.  The average patrol length was 43 days.  The average cost of a torpedo in the 1940’s was $40,000 dollars.

Our next stop on the Pearl Harbor tour was the U.S.S. Battleship Missouri.  The Instrument of Surrender between the Allied Forces and Japan was signed on this ship while at anchor in Tokyo Bay on September 2, 1945 East Longitude Date.  Being a battleship it is loaded with all sorts of armament and its main objective in a naval battle is to take out the enemy’s equipment and position.  The main gun is a 16” that hurls a 2800 pound shell a maximum of 26 miles.  This is a serious message sender.  These long guns were used effectively to soften up the Japanese prior to our Marines invasion of the Pacific’s islands.

We moved on to the Pacific Aviation Museum that houses aircraft used in the Pacific Theater.  We photographed a yellow bi-plane, a Stearman N25-3/PT Kaydet, actually flown by an 18 year old George H.W. Bush in training.  The yellow paint job was applied as an indicator of a novice aviator much the same as a yellow bumper on a racing stock car having the same designation.

In reviewing the photo of the Douglas SBD Dauntless dive bomber with my brother Gary he noted the extended dive brakes on the trailing edges.  His previous research indicated the perforations in the dive brakes were to counter buffeting while diving.  The dives were done straight down at 90˚ perpendicular to the ground not the 45˚ “Hollywood” portrayed in their movies. To see the

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