City Beautiful Tours

The Intrepid — one of New York’s most unusual museums — is a real aircraft carrier.

The USS Intrepid has been around the world, fought in World War II, survived kamikaze attacks, served in Vietnam, and even played a role in Cold War spy missions. From its flight deck, the Intrepid launched propeller planes during World War II, fighter jets during the Vietnam War, and helicopters that recovered NASA astronauts.

If ships could talk, the Intrepid would have quite a story to tell. Its story would be worthy of an old war veteran who has been through thick and thin — and survived to tell the tale.

The Intrepid Military and Civil Resume

The ship was launched in 1943 and commissioned into the U.S. Navy during World War II. She played a major role in the Pacific Theater, where she survived five kamikaze attacks and a torpedo strike. After World War II, the Intrepid was decommissioned and placed in the Pacific Reserve Fleet in San Francisco. But her military career wasn’t quite over. She was modernized, returned to active service, and in the 1960s made three deployments to Vietnam. Around the same time, the Intrepid took on a rather different mission. She served as a NASA recovery vessel, helping to retrieve astronauts returning from space missions.

By the early 1980s, however, the Intrepid was nearing the end of her service as a working warship. Destined for the scrap yard, she was saved by philanthropic efforts.

And with that, the old military carrier began a completely new chapter. The Intrepid opened as a museum ship in 1982 and was later designated a National Historic Landmark.

But even retirement didn’t mean the end of her adventures.

The FBI’s New York Office used the Intrepid as a command post for the Counterterrorism Division and Joint Terrorism Task Force immediately after 9/11. According to the FBI’s own archived account, they worked from the Intrepid for four months. The museum says approximately 500 agents worked around the clock aboard the ship. She served, retired, turned into a museum, and found herself serving the country again.

The Intrepid Exhibits

At 912 feet long and 192 feet wide, the Intrepid is roughly the length of three football fields. And her enormous flight deck is now home to an extraordinary collection of machines that once flew through the skies — and even into space.

The Space Shuttle Pavilion is home to NASA’s Space Shuttle Enterprise. Enterprise was the first space shuttle orbiter built for NASA’s Space Shuttle Program. It never actually went into space, but it was used for critical atmospheric flight and landing tests that helped prepare the shuttle program for its future missions.

The USS Growler is a Cold War-era submarine that carried nuclear missiles. It is the only American nuclear missile submarine open to the public. You can step inside and see the remarkably cramped crew quarters, control rooms, and even the once-top-secret missile guidance and checkout spaces.

The Hangar Deck and Exploreum feature restored military aircraft from different eras. Up on the flight deck, you’ll find some real stars — including a Lockheed A-12 Oxcart, the sleek Cold War reconnaissance aircraft capable of flying at more than three times the speed of sound; an AV-8C Harrier, famous for its ability to take off and land vertically; and a Soviet MiG-21 fighter.

The British Airways Concorde G-BOAD is parked right at the edge of Pier 86. This legendary supersonic passenger jet could cross the Atlantic in under three hours — a journey that takes a conventional airliner roughly seven to eight hours.

The Intrepid and Hollywood

And if that’s not impressive enough, the Intrepid, late in life, launched yet another career — this time in Hollywood.

In National Treasure (2004), Nicolas Cage’s character, Benjamin Gates, escapes from the FBI by jumping off the flight deck of the USS Intrepid into the Hudson River.

A few years later, in I Am Legend (2007), Will Smith’s character is seen hitting golf balls from the wing of an A-12 Blackbird parked on the Intrepid’s flight deck.

The Intrepid Takes Center Stage

The Intrepid takes center stage each year during New York’s annual Fleet Week, when the city gets a taste of life in the Navy. Fleet Week is a weeklong tradition in which active-duty ships from the U.S. Navy, Marine Corps, and Coast Guard visit the city, giving military personnel a chance to experience New York while the public gets a closer look at life at sea.

Visiting warships dock at the cruise terminals just north of the museum, while sailors, military demonstrations, and special events take over the museum grounds and the Intrepid’s flight deck.