A Global Gateway: The Bureau of Ordnance

My birthday was a jam-packed day, it was fantastic. As I write this it's finally sinking in all that I managed to do, so lets get to it
My day started off at DuPont Circle, which is pretty much Northwest Washington. DuPont Circle is the beginning of Embassy Row, home to most Ambassadors from foreign nations the United States has official relations with. DuPont Circle and the Navel Observatory bookend this length of Massachusetts Avenue.

Embassy of Indonesia

Embassy of Morocco

Embassy of India

Embassy of Estonia

Embassy of Bulgaria

Embassy of Togo...it's a townhouse mushed between two other embassies

Embassy of Chad...

Embassy of Mexico...could it be any other embassy when you think about it?

Embassy of Japan

Embassy of Lesotho...never heard of this country before, which means we probably haven't offended them yet

Canadian Ambassador's residence

Embassy of Brazil


Residence of the British Ambassador / British Embassy

Immediately after the British Embassy is the United States Naval Observatory, the original official time keeper of the U.S. Navy...until recently because apparently the observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona is now the official time keeper. The U.S.N.O. is also the official residence of the Vice President. It's still an active base so the security is tight, which means access is also very much limited

I'd stop, I'd seriously consider stopping if I saw all these signs and barriers

Guard box #2, means we're getting closer to the VP's house

Another entrance

The VP's house

The Observatory is a massive circle essentially, so you could find yourself walking around the whole thing back to where you started. To be honest, that was the plan. THEN, I saw a sign for the National Cathedral, so naturally I decided to blindly follow the signs

This is a beautiful building, but interestingly enough, not the National Cathedral

The first glimpse. You notice the scaffolding to the top right, that has been there since the earthquake in 2011, attending to the structural damage

It's always a little chilling seeing that addition to a street sign, it's a subtle demonstration of the type of city you find yourself in

look at those flying buttresses...

The Coir

the blue wall at the bottom is a partition put up for the conference the cathedral was holding on the future of the Christian faith..so these tables were for a lunch-in later in the morning I was told

On my way out, I saw this, and thinking about the scaffolding, stopped to see if there is a connection..there is! It will cost $60,000 to re-carve them and much more to replace them atop the cathedral

The next leg of my trip was to the Washington Navy Yard. This is also an active military installation, so I had to go in a specific gate and get a guest pass...I thought that meant like a cool laminated ID badge. I was wrong, it was a sheet of printer paper with some codes on it, including my name and such. Quite bland, but it let me pretty much go where ever inside the base.

I got off the Metro and saw this massive building, turns out it's the Department of Transportation. The following pictures are all transportation-related...

This is one of several gates into the Navy Yard, now the pictures are not Transportation-related..

This is a fighting top from the U.S.S. Constitution that was removed during the 1970's refit

I found the only mention of the U.S. Brig Niagara and the Battle of Lake Erie...a picture, cane and spike...that's it

The U.S. Brig Lawrence is in the middle...in tatters, and the Niagara is all the way to the right, coming in majestically for the win

The Medal of Honor was authorized by Congress in 1862, and dozens were awarded to the U.S. Navy for valor during the Civil War, like the two above

If you look closely, you'll notice the man at the bottom missed the prolific facial hair memo the 3 above clearly are adhering to

This is a panoramic painting of the entire U.S. fleet in 1899

One of 12 existing copies of the Japanese Declaration of War on the United State

When Admiral Halsey was a 4-star commander, this was the flag that was flown when he was aboard...I want to have a flag to fly when I go places

Almost a year after the attack on Pearl Harbor, winches finally pull the U.S.S. Oklahoma upright

On aircraft carriers during WWII, like the U.S.S. Wasp, Enterprise, Saratoga, Yorktown and Hornet, there were so many crew members on the deck they had to wear color-coded caps so pilots and deck bosses knew where the crew was and who to go to for a specific duty

mock-up of a bridge on a battleship

This was the ready-room chair used by Admiral Halsey on the U.S.S. Enterprise

You see two distinct sterns at the bottom of the picture here, these two were attached to eight others side-to-side to make a mobile dry dock that was deployed into the combat theater so ships wouldn't need to be towed all the way back to Hawaii

This is what it looks like in full

The atom bomb...I mean, it's not real, but it looks like the real one

Bob Hope on a USO trip in the Pacific

This is the master fire shot map used at Iwo Jima...

...the names in red are of battleships, showing their fields of fire...

....you can see it here too

One of the biggest risks of submarine warfare is sinking to the bottom of the ocean and not being able to rise back up; that's where this little fella comes into play. It's a recovery sub that's able to attach to a disabled sub to evacuate the crew.

This is the probe that's meant to attach to the bulkhead of a disabled sub. Recently, one of navy's rescue subs was used to recover wreckage from the Space Shuttle Columbia

This is the ship that deploys those rescue subs

Wide shot of the museum, essentially a warehouse

a mock-up of the U.S.S. Constitution hull

the battle between the Monitor and Virginia at Hampton Roads

In the Civil War, the Navy's first Admiral, David Farragut, who was in command of the newly formed West Gulf Blockade squadron, called the U.S.S. Hartford his flagship. During the Battle of Mobile Bay, 12 of the Hartford's sailors were awarded the Medal of Honor. None of them were officers

This bugle was tossed over 100 yards off the U.S.S. Arizona when its powder magazine exploded

Take a close look at this uniform, there is something unique about it, less than half a dozen other commanders share this trait...

...here we go, see those five stars? Admiral Halsey is one of four fellow naval officers to earn a 5th star and be referred to as "Fleet Admiral" (he is joined by Chester Nimitz, Ernest King and William Leahy). Leahy was chief of staff to FDR and King was a member of the Joint chiefs of Staff and Nimitz was - like Halsey - a theater commander. The Army also has a 5-star command rank, General of the Army. Only George Marshall, Douglass MacArthur, Dwight Eisenhower, Henry Arnold and Omar Bradley have earned that rank. The rank of General of the Air Force was awarded once, to Henry "Hap" Arnold during WWII, when the Air Force was still a division of the Army. For the Navy, Air Force and Army, these appointments were made across a six years span during and around WWII. LONGEST CAPTION EVER

Painting of the U.S.S. Saratoga under way

period movie posters...

This would terrify me, catapulting off the back of a battleship in a biplane

I wonder how many people disregard the picture of this Navy explorer and look up at the penguins...I know I did

If you look to the back of the image, you'll see a rail car with a barrel sticking out one of the ends. The Bureau of Ordnance assembled several rail guns and sent them to Europe during WWI. That single gun you see above could up as little as 1 of 8 on a battleship during the second world war

On my way home I couldn't resist taking this picture because every time I go to use the Metro I feel like I'm going into the Death Star...

Overall, I was out from about 8am through 5:30pm today. It was absolutely a long day - no doubt about it - but it was a lot of fun. I love history, so this certainly satiated that desire to learn and retain information about our nations past. As I said in my post a couple years ago when I visited the Portsmouth Royal Dockyards, I'm fascinated the most with the Navy, and it was fun to learn more about the U.S. Navy's history today.

"Any man who may be asked...what he did to make his life worthwhile...can respond with a good deal of pride and satisfaction, 'I served in the United States Navy.'"
~Senator John F. Kennedy

I didn't pick some thoughtful, inspiring quote because I thought this fit perfectly, before the inauguration I visited the United States Navy Memorial, and there was the above quote in stone, and I wrote it down, thinking It'd be nice to keep, but that I wouldn't use it for anything...well I think it works here just fine.
Below are some of the pictures I had taken at the Navy Memorial...I'm not sure if I posted these before...