SAN DIEGO —— For one night, a group of sixth-graders from Bear Valley Middle School in Escondido discovered what it was like to live aboard a floating city of steel.

Sixty students in Jim Wickstrom's humanities classes slept, ate and breathed the life of Navy sailors aboard the USS Midway, through the aircraft carrier's Live It & Learn It program.

The decommissioned Navy ship, berthed at the San Diego Navy Pier, is now a museum after serving its country from 1945 to 1992. The Midway is America's longest-serving aircraft carrier and will turn 60 this September.

Aside from crew members, few civilians have spent the night aboard the vessel.

Prior to boarding the ship Thursday afternoon, Glenna Stomackin, 11, said she expected the stay on the Midway would give her and her fellow students a real-life taste of history.

"It's kind of boring when you learn from a book," Glenna said, "but when it is right in front of you, then you learn more."

Learning the ship

The Midway returned to San Diego in 2002 and was transformed into the San Diego Aircraft Carrier Museum 11 months ago. The ship hosted its first overnight visitors through the Live It & Learn It program in January.

Live It & Learn It provides activities and tours aimed at giving children a deeper understanding of Navy history and the sacrifices made by sailors of the past and present, said Barry Holm, the Midway's overnight manager and head of the program.

"They are being provided with an education and an opportunity to see how a Navy ship operates and the types of sacrifices that sailors make in doing their jobs every day," Holm said. "My ultimate goal is for the kids to go away with a better appreciation for the sacrifices that are made so they can understand why we have the liberties and freedoms that we take for granted every day."

All hands on deck

The tour began as the 60 children, 15 parents and two teachers —— Wickstrom and math-science instructor Cyndi Griffiths —— boarded the ship and stepped into the dim, cavernous hangar bay, which houses several decommissioned airplanes including an A-4C Sky Hawk bomber.

The A-4C plane is still in use today, said 70-year-old docent Jim Connelly, who served on the carrier when he was 24.

After a review of the safety guidelines and common words used on board, the Bear Valley students were assigned "racks," or bunks, where they would sleep.

Holms told the students that in Navy lingo, walls are bulk heads, ceilings are overheads, stairs are ladders, bathrooms are heads, kitchens are galleys and doors … well, they're doors.

After finding their assigned 6-foot by 3-foot racks among the hundreds of bunks in the tight quarters of the birthing area, the Bear Valley group met their bunk mates, a group of students from Flagstaff Junior Academy of Arizona.

Poking and prodding

Students and parents gathered in the mess hall for a hearty dinner of macaroni and cheese, salad, fried chicken fingers and a slab of chocolate cake. Docent Bill Pond said when the ship opened up its six galleys, it could feed a crew of 4,500 in less than two hours.

Then it was time to tour the ship —— really, a floating city —— try their hands at tying Navy knots, practice flight simulations or watch a video about aircraft carriers.

Students saw the Midway's barbershop, bakery and one of its four engine rooms, which can reach up to 140 degrees Fahrenheit as the ship clips along at up to 30 nautical miles per hour.

Walking up steep ladders and through the maze of tight hallways and cramped rooms, the children talked and joked among themselves as they poked at the assorted equipment and pipes that cover every inch of the Midway's interior.

The pungent odor of paint, fuel oil, grease and 47 years of service permeated the air of the green, grey and blue hallways.

War games

Stepping into the Task Force Control Center, students saw where the Midway's senior staff once held meetings to discuss battle plans. The Midway saw action in the Vietnam and Gulf Wars, as well as in Operation Desert Storm.

Holm said during the Gulf War of 1991, the Midway was the only carrier in the gulf.

"This is in essence a very historical room," Holm told the students.

Although it has been stripped of some of its equipment to stock other ships, the control center contains several radars, which the students toyed with as Holm spoke.

Back in the hangar, some of the children boarded a flight motion simulator resembling a windowless car with a movie screen inside. The simulator took the children through a combat mission over Iraq where they shot down a scud missile convoy.

Others sat in combat flight simulators similar to video games. Each console came with a chair equipped with speakers mounted in the head rests. For the 10-minute "flight," nine students at a time used a joystick to control the direction and altitude of the plane on screen as it sailed above water or a blurry landscape.

Brianna Lindberg, 11, said she crashed several times as she tried to land on the aircraft carrier.

"I think that for real pilots in real life, it might be kind of scary," Brianna said.

A new day

Awakening to a shout of "reveille" at 7 a.m., the students chowed down on a breakfast of scrambled eggs and sausage before heading out to the flight deck and navigation bridge to see where some of the action happens.

Connor Sullivan, 11, said sleeping on the ship made the Midway experience more realistic for him because he got to perform the everyday rituals of a sailor at sea.

"The sleeping over really showed (me) what the Navy had to do when they were on the Midway or in combat," Connor said.

On the enormous flight deck, which stretches across more than 4 acres of water, airplanes were once launched off the ship with a series of catapults.

Holm said when planes took off or landed on the carrier, they had to be at full power. If an airplane missed the cable, which halts the vessel as it hits the deck, it would need full power to make another run or possibly take a spill into the ocean. The long cable extends across the deck, and pilots attempt to snag it with a hook hanging from the back of the plane.

The cable, made of flexible steel, can be used for only 100 flights before being replaced to prevent it from snapping and killing any crew members on deck.

"It's a ballet up here," Holm said. "Everyone has a particular job and they have to do it right."

More than a warship

Once the group was finished touring the flight deck and the airplanes and helicopters planted on its steel surface, the students sat for a closing out ceremony that included receiving certificates and official USS Midway crew member patches.

Holm gave them one more bit of insight into the aircraft carrier, which he called "much more than a warship." The Midway, he said, took part in several humanitarian efforts, including its final mission in 1991 to assist in the evacuation of military personnel in the Philippines following the volcanic eruption of Mt. Pinatubo, Holm said.

As the ceremony came to an end and the children started talking about heading home, Wickstrom surveyed his students and declared the visit a "fabulous" insight into history that he and Griffiths would be able to incorporate into the sixth-grade curriculum.

Erin Morgan, 12, said she learned a great deal about the ship and the military through the program.

"It was like, hands on," she said. "You got to actually touch buttons, you could act like you are in the military. How many times do you get to spend a night on an aircraft carrier that has so much history on it?"