While the girls went shopping, the guys went to the Navy Seal Museum located on highway A1A in Fort Pierce. Randy, Sean, and I arrived at the museum just in time to hear a presentation about the history of Navy Seals in the WWII section of the museum.
Warfare was changing dramatically during WWII and there was a growing demand for the Navy to develop an elite fighting group that specialized in amphibious assaults with expertise in blowing things up. In preparations for landing on the beaches of Normandy, this elite group would be required to clear many of the 17,000 obstacles placed along the beaches by the Germans. This elite fighting group was originally called Navy Frogmen and their training facility was in Fort Pierce, Florida. Their name was later changed to Navy Seals.
The museum covers the Seals development from its WWII beginnings to present day. It shows how the Seals progressed from WWII, Korean War, Vietnam War, and the current war on terrorists.
The vast majority of their missions are never made public. But the ones that have been publicized have displays in their museum, along with hundreds of artifacts and equipment.
The pictures below show only a small part of the items on display.
This Seal Helicopter has been shot down twice!
Terrorists captured the captain of an ocean freighter and attempted to get away in this life boat. The Seals were called up to rescue the captain and fired three simultaneous shots from a distant vessel killing the terrorists and freeing the captain. Notice the rear window is broken where the shots entered the life boat.
This is Sean holding a 50 caliber sniper rifle
This is a Navy Seal Vietnam-era Patrol boat
Vietnam Seawolf Helicopter
Randy is checking out this Navy Seal Under Water Delivery Vehicle
The Seals were responsible for securing the Apollo Space Capsules after they splashed down in the ocean and retrieving the astronauts. These capsules pictured below were used in their training.
MKV Assault Craft
There's plenty of interesting things to see at the Navy Seal Museum, and you could spend most of the day here and not see everything. But, after taking in so many fascinating stories about the Seals, we were ready for lunch. So, we headed to a restaurant along the Fort Pierce Inlet with a view of the ocean.
After lunch we took a few minutes to walk along the Inlet to the Ocean. It was a great day except for the wind gusts occasionally hitting 25-30 MPH.
Sean and Randy enjoying the Inlet walk.
This pelican is enjoying people watching!
The walkway take us directly to the ocean.
The wind is blowing the waves against the breakwater.
No! This is not Surf City, it's Fort Pierce north of the Inlet.
Our guys outing would not be complete without a stop at Bass Pro. It just so happens, we know of a great place to get some hand dipped ice cream nearby. What a great way to end our outing! This could easily become habit forming!
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