Family Day at the Long Beach Naval Shipyard - July 1968 (& The Queen Mary!)

Back in July of 1968, "Family Day" was held at the Naval Shipyard in Long Beach, CA.  It was an event that was open to the public, and allowed visitors an up-close look at some U.S. military ships.  My dad shot all of the vintage color images in this post, except where otherwise noted.

This first ship is the U.S.S. New Jersey (BB-62), an Iowa-class battleship, which was launched on December 7, 1942 (on the first anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor).  The ship was decommissioned after World War II, but reactivated in 1968 and sent to Vietnam.

My dad took another photo of the ship, but I'm not sure why he aimed the camera so high.  I would have rather seen more of the ship and the people on the ground, and less of the sky.

Here's a family photo, with the U.S.S. New Jersey in the background.  I don't know the name or the type of boat that was docked in front of it (on the far right), but the boat on the far left is the R.M.S Queen Mary.

The R.M.S. Queen Mary had arrived at the Long Beach Naval Shipyard 7 months earlier, for it's conversion into a hotel and tourist attraction.  However, this was not to be it's permanent home.  After undergoing renovations for 4 years, the Queen Mary was then moved to it's current location, at Pier H.  This aerial view shows both the Queen Mary and the U.S.S. New Jersey, docked at the Naval Shipyard.

And this photo from Wikipedia, shows the U.S.S. New Jersey in it's current home of Camden, NJ.  In 2001, the ship was opened to the public as a museum.

Another ship that was on display during Family Day, was the U.S.S. Hornet (CV-12), an Essex-class aircraft carrier.  Again, I wish my dad had aimed a little bit lower, so we could see more of the ship!

The U.S.S. Hornet was put into service in the Pacific, during World War II (1943).  She later played a minor role in Vietnam, and she also recovered both the Apollo 11 and Apollo 12 astronauts, upon their return from the moon.

The U.S.S. Hornet was decommissioned in 1970, just two years after these photos were taken.  The structure on the far right is a shipyard crane, and not a part of the ship (which is visible to the left of the crane).

Designated both a National Historic Landmark, and a California Historic Landmark, the U.S.S. Hornet opened as a museum in Alameda, CA, in 1998.

It appears that this was the designated parking lot for the "Family Day" event.  The Naval Shipyard would have been behind my dad when he took this photo of the Gerald Desmond Bridge.  The bridge had opened just one month earlier, at a cost of $13 million.  The new bridge created a connection between Long Beach and Terminal Island, and replaced a pontoon bridge that had existed since the 1940s.  The Gerald Desmond Bridge was recently demolished, after being replaced by the new Long Beach International Gateway, which opened in October of 2020.

In 1968, my family was living in Lomita, CA., so we were able to use this new bridge to get to Terminal Island, and then continue on towards home by also using the fairly new Vincent Thomas suspension bridge.

This shot was taken from the front seat of my grandparents' Lincoln Continental, as we approached the brand new Gerald Desmond Bridge:

And this shot shows us being just a little bit closer.  Gee, look at all of that brand new asphalt and concrete!

The last photo my dad took that day, was this elevated view, with the Queen Mary and U.S.S. New Jersey in the distance.  We can also see cars parked below, and people walking in the direction of the shipyard  I don't know exactly where the car was at this point.  I don't believe this was taken from the Gerald Desmond Bridge, since we would have been traveling on the north side of the bridge (heading west), and this view is looking to the south.  I thought maybe it was taken while crossing the bridge in the other direction, on our way into Long Beach.  However, it is the last numbered slide in this batch, therefore it was the last shot taken on the roll of film.  I also tried looking at current aerial views to try and locate this spot, but was unsuccessful.  Remember, the location of the Queen Mary in this shot, is not where the ship is located today.

Now, I had also mentioned the Vincent Thomas suspension bridge, earlier.  Traversing the two bridges (one after the other), would take drivers up and over the Port of Los Angeles, creating a short cut between Long Beach and San Pedro.  I found this next shot (taken five years earlier), in a separate batch of my dad's slides.  It shows the Vincent Thomas Bridge under construction in July of 1963 (just four months before it opened, in November of 1963).  This view was taken from the San Pedro side of the bridge, looking east toward Terminal Island, and Long Beach beyond that.  The building on the far right is the then-new Los Angeles World Cruise Center.  It was once home to the "Love Boat," and could be seen in most episodes of the classic TV show.

Would you like to see one more image of a ship in the Port of Los Angeles?  Well, my dad took this last photo in September of 1967 (ten months before the photos of the other military ships in the Long Beach Naval Shipyard).  This was taken on the San Pedro side of the port, and shows the U.S.S. Thomaston (LSD-28), sitting in the Bethlehem Steel Corporation's dry dock.  The ship was a Thomaston-class dock landing ship, launched in 1954, and scrapped in 2011.  I tried to find more information about this ship and what was being done to it here, but the information was conflicting.  It stated that the U.S.S. Thomaston was undergoing an extensive overhaul in San Diego, from June to December of 1967.  But this was taken in September of 1967, and this is the Port of Los Angeles, because we can see the Vincent Thomas Bridge in the background (on the far left).

****BONUS****

I was a little surprised to see that during the "Family Days" event at the Long Beach Naval Shipyard, my dad didn't take any other photos of the Queen Mary.  That might have been because we had already driven to Long Beach to see it, just four months earlier.  I posted this pic back in June of 2018, but this is the first time I've shared the one below it, which includes my brother and me.

These were both taken in March of 1968, just three months after the Queen Mary had completed it's very last voyage, and arrived at it's new home of Long Beach.