The Los Angeles Times website published a report on January 22 titled "The Last Voyage of the Aircraft Carrier "Kitty": This Long-Time San Diego-Based Aircraft Carrier Sails to the Scrap Yard" by Andrew Dyer. The full text is excerpted below:
In the fall of 1961, Lester Bell, a reporter for the United Daily San Diego, wrote in a report announcing the arrival of the aircraft carrier USS Kitty Hawk in San Diego that the battleship was warmly welcomed by the usual "royals".
For the next 37 years, San Diego remained the home port of the aircraft carrier Kitty Hawk until its last 10 years of service in Japan (the home port was changed to Yokosuka, Japan). Kitty Hawk was decommissioned in 2009. For the next 12 years, it and other decommissioned ships stopped at Piggitt Bay in Washington State.
As is often the case, the servicemen who served on the Kitty Hawk over the years have come to see the Kitty Hawk as their home, and many still have a deep affection for it long after retiring.
I'm one of them. From January 2003 to January 2007, during the Kitty Hawk's presence in Japan, I served on the ship as an avionics technician. At that time, we were always busy, always going to sea, and the difficulties we experienced together made the crew form a lasting friendship.
Veterans who served on the behemoth tried to transform it into a museum, but to no avail. The U.S. Navy rejected the veterans' offers and requests that the Kitty Hawk would be dismantled. Its long service life may also be detrimental to it; it has been beaten by some potential competitors. There are currently 5 U.S. aircraft carrier museums, including the U.S. Navy's USS Midway Aircraft Carrier Museum in San Diego. Other cities have other types of museums built around old ships, such as the BATTLESHIP Iowa museum in Long Beach.
Since these museums have been established, there is not much public enthusiasm for converting the Kitty Hawk into a museum.
So, on January 15, the Kitty Hawk was towed out of Bremerton Harbor, Washington, and slowly sailed past Cape Horn at the end of South America to its final bleak end: a shipbreaking yard in Brownsville, Texas. The ship's 60,000 tons of steel will be sold as scrap.
Tom Parker, the former captain of the aircraft carrier Kitty Hawk, wrote: "The aircraft carrier firmly attracts the soul of the crew. The attachment of the ship and the crew may be beyond rational thinking. You put energy, emotion into it, your friends, your dead friends... How many exciting events in a sailor's life had to do with the crew, with the Kitty Hawk? ”
Retired U.S. Navy Sergeant Jason Hsudy, who lives near Seattle, estimates that about 250,000 sailors served on the ship during the Kitty Hawk's service.
The keel of the Kitty Hawk began laying on December 27, 1956, and eventually cost $178 million, equivalent to $1.7 billion in 2022. By comparison, the U.S. Navy's newest aircraft carrier, the Ford-class nuclear-powered aircraft carrier, cost $13 billion.
Kitty Hawk served for 48 years, serving 10 presidents and several overseas conflicts. The warship has been deployed to Vietnam several times, fought in the Gulf War, and participated in operations in Afghanistan and Iraq.
In 1972, riots broke out on the ship as black crews were dissatisfied with the racist attitudes of white crews, who beat up white crews with pipes and wrenches. The ship's captain, Benjamin Crowder, met with black sailors and helped quell the violence. Claude was born in San Diego as a pilot whose father was one of the city's first black police officers.
In Facebook groups, members often share up-to-date information about tracking kitty's location on its final voyage. Gordon Shaw, a veteran of the Kitty Hawk, told the San Diego United Tribune that he was considering renting a boat to escort the Kitty Hawk through San Diego.
Source: Reference News Network