After decommissioning, carrier’s eventual fate unknown (USS Kitty Hawk)

Stars and Stripes ^ | 5/25/08 | Teri Weaver and Allison Batdorff

[Dawnsblood]

Nobody likes moving day — the packing, the lifting and, at day’s end, the echoing of an empty home.

Now, imagine emptying out an 80,000-ton ship with 2,550 compartments. It makes for an awful lot of refrigerators to unplug.

The crew aboard the aircraft carrier USS Kitty Hawk already is preparing for such a historic move, one that will end the ship’s 47-year career in the U.S. Navy.

As the carrier sails for Puget Sound Naval Shipyard, sailors will begin going through 19-point checklists to make sure the proper items get unplugged, collected and stored before the ship drops anchor in July at Bremerton, Wash. About 430 crewmembers will stay with the ship over the following few months, before the official decommissioning in January, the Navy said last week.

From there, the carrier’s eventual fate remains unknown.

A group in North Carolina wants it for a museum, homage to CV-63’s namesake location in the state. Congress this month talked about keeping the Kitty Hawk in ready-reserve status during the next few years.

After decommissioning, the carrier will be assigned to the Navy’s inactive ship inventory. The secretary of the Navy will make the "ultimate decision on disposition," Navy Lt. Clay Doss said in an e-mail to Stars and Stripes.

[al baby]

why don’t we melt it down and turn it into oil drilling eq. and refinery’s so we can afford gas for our cars

[Secret Agent Man]

I really think it’s a mistake to take them down. If anything, convert ‘em to nuclear power and upgrade them. I think we’ll be needing them very soon. I have a feeling we’re going to lose a few carriers in the near future and you just can’t put one together quickly.

[BroJoeK]

[Fox_Mulder77]

My brother served 3 years on the “Shitty Kitty”....... LOLOL!!!
We were just talking about this boat yesterday......... he was complaining about the nightmare it was to serve on such an old boat........... while I was jealous as I told him serving on that boat gave him an opportunity to serve on a boat with a personality.......... I told him he and his crew mates were “real” sailors for sailing on the only boat of its kind right now in our modern military............ I told him he should be thankful.

He just whined about taking showers that were either ice cold, pure steam, or after lathering himself with soap out of water for 2 hours. HEHE!

But I could tell in his voice he missed the “Shitty Kitty”!!!

[BroJoeK]

[Rudder]

Boy, the title is scary. It’s hard to believe that no one knows what’s going to happen to this warship.

[2ndDivisionVet]

Wasn’t there talk of selling her to India for their navy?

[mkjessup]

If they were going to sell the Kitty Hawk, it should be sold to either Japan or Taiwan, under the most generous lend-lease style purchase agreement.

[Dawnsblood]

Yes there was some talk about that. I guess they decided to stick with the russian ship instead.

[Strategerist]

It appears the talk of the sale to India was a fabrication on the Indians so they could pressure the Russians on their rip-off massive cost overrun refit of the Gorshkov for the Indians.

[A.A. Cunningham]

Saturday, May 24, 2008

After decommissioning, carrier’s eventual fate unknown


By Teri Weaver  and Allison Batdorff, Stars and Stripes
Pacific edition, Sunday, May 25, 2008

YOKOSUKA NAVAL BASE — Nobody likes moving day — the packing, the lifting and, at day’s end, the echoing of an empty home.

Now, imagine emptying out an 80,000-ton ship with 2,550 compartments. It makes for an awful lot of refrigerators to unplug.

The crew aboard the aircraft carrier USS Kitty Hawk already is preparing for such a historic move, one that will end the ship’s 47-year career in the U.S. Navy.

As the carrier sails for Puget Sound Naval Shipyard, sailors will begin going through 19-point checklists to make sure the proper items get unplugged, collected and stored before the ship drops anchor in July at Bremerton, Wash. About 430 crewmembers will stay with the ship over the following few months, before the official decommissioning in January, the Navy said last week.

From there, the carrier’s eventual fate remains unknown.

A group in North Carolina wants it for a museum, homage to CV-63’s namesake location in the state. Congress this month talked about keeping the Kitty Hawk in ready-reserve status during the next few years.

After decommissioning, the carrier will be assigned to the Navy’s inactive ship inventory. The secretary of the Navy will make the "ultimate decision on disposition," Navy Lt. Clay Doss said in an e-mail to Stars and Stripes.

Moving-day preparations already are under way, even as sailors peel off to different assignments.

Chief Petty Officer Elison Talabong, an aviation ordnance specialist, said the carrier’s operational tempo, advancing age and shrinking crew means everyone does more with less.

"It’s challenging. We have the same mission — just with reduced personnel," Talabong said last week.

His department is currently down about 30 people. "So we all take jobs other than our primary duties," he said.

Once in Bremerton, the ship will get a full-scale shuttering that will take months.

Last year’s decommissioning of the USS John F. Kennedy called for the equivalent of 26,000 workdays, according to Doss. The work included emptying and cleaning all fuel oil tanks, deactivating and covering catapult troughs, deactivating and securing aircraft and weapons elevators, cleaning the ship’s piping system, and rigging for tow, Doss said.

Eventually, "Big John" was towed to a Navy facility in Philadelphia, where it’s held for safe stowage, Doss said.

The Kitty Hawk could end up in a similar mothball stage, at least for the near future. But earlier this month, the House Armed Services Committee approved paying for a study to determine the costs of reactivating the Kitty Hawk and the Kennedy, if needed.

A group in Wilmington, N.C., however, would like to claim the Kitty Hawk for public view.

Retired Navy Capt. Wilbur Jones is part of a statewide group, the Wilmington Kitty Hawk Concept Team, that plans to ask the Navy’s permission to turn the ship into a museum. Jones said the process could take five to seven years, and the team would have to hire a museum consultant and raise money for the project.

The group is in the process of filing for nonprofit tax status, is looking for a possible site, and hopes to hire a chairman soon, Jones said in an e-mail to Stripes.

"The most optimistic projection would have the ship arrive here in 2011-12," Jones said. "The Navy’s detailed bureaucratic application process is cumbersome but can be overcome."

© 2007 Stars and Stripes. All Rights Reserved.

Saturday, May 24, 2008

House considers putting Kennedy, Kitty Hawk back into service in five years


By Leo Shane III, Stars and Stripes
Mideast edition, Friday, May 16, 2008

WASHINGTON — House officials want to explore the possibility of bringing the USS John F. Kennedy or USS Kitty Hawk back into service in five years to keep the Navy’s carrier fleet at full force.

During debate on their draft of next year’s defense budget authorization, the House Armed Services Committee approved an amendment to study the cost and logistics of reactivating the carriers after their decommissioning over the next few years.

At issue is the Navy’s request to drop below the congressionally mandated 11-carrier fleet in 2012, when the USS Enterprise is taken out of service.

It will be replaced by USS Gerald R. Ford, the newest carrier from the class of the same name, but Navy officials have said it won’t be commissioned until 2015 at the earliest.

House officials were even more pessimistic, saying construction delays could leave the Navy with only 10 carriers for up to four years. But for now they’ve rejected the Navy’s request to continue temporarily one carrier short, instead asking for the study.

The committee rejected the idea of extending the USS Enterprise past fiscal 2013, noting the high costs of maintenance and limited nuclear fuel life of the ship. Both the Kennedy, retired two years ago, and the Kitty Hawk, scheduled to be retired next year, are conventionally powered carriers.

Naval officials said annual maintenance on the Kennedy cost more than $120 million before it was decommissioned. The study would also look at the availability of dry docks to repair and maintain the ships if they are reactivated.

Anthony Cordesman, an analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said the study is an important tool for defense planners, if only because it draws more attention to the long-term planning challenges the Navy will face in coming years.

"You can’t really look at this from carriers alone. It has to be where they’re deployed, how it affects the air wings, what that means," he said. "It has to become a total force study, not just a carrier study."

House officials asked for the study to be completed early next year. Senate officials would have to approve the House language before the study could be begun.

© 2007 Stars and Stripes. All Rights Reserved.

Saturday, May 24, 2008

Strange but true: Facts about the USS Kitty Hawk


By Allison Batdorff, Stars and Stripes
Pacific edition, Sunday, May 25, 2008

Seconds anyone?

The second "K" on USS Kitty Hawk’s nameplate is upside down. The letter was skewed when welders transferred the small steel letter plates from the fantail to below the flight deck in the 1960s.

The USS Kitty Hawk is the second U.S. Navy warship to be named after the North Carolina site of the Wright brothers’ famous flight. The first was the civilian ship SS Seatrain New York, which was acquired by the Navy, renamed USS Kitty Hawk, and converted into an aircraft transport ship during World War II. It was decommissioned and given back to its original owners in 1946.

The Kitty Hawk is the second-oldest active ship in the Navy. The first is the USS Constitution, a wooden frigate that sailed in both Barbary Wars and the War of 1812. "Old Ironsides" is used for ceremonial, recruiting and tourism purposes today.

Different from the rest

Kitty Hawk nicknames include "Miss Kitty," "Battlecat" and "Chicken Hawk."

Kitty Hawk has a rogue elevator. While most aircraft carrier elevators go straight up and down — including three on Kitty Hawk — the ship’s Aircraft Elevator #1 operates on a 6-degree angle to accommodate the enlarged jet blast deflectors that were required for the F-14 Tomcat.

The ship does have an escalator, which serves as a very long staircase, as it hasn’t run for many years. Kitty Hawk also has a post office and a store, but has neither swimming pool nor bowling alley — two common misconceptions.

Kitty Hawk has a key aboard. It doesn’t start the "ignition" of the ship, but it does unlock the rudders in case the ship loses steering power from the bridge.

Kitty Hawk did six tours in Vietnam between 1963 and 1976 and was the first aircraft carrier ever to be awarded a Presidential Unit Citation. The award, the unit equivalent of the Navy Cross, was presented by President Lyndon B. Johnson on Dec. 20, 1968, to the ship and Carrier Air Wing 11.

Kitty Hawk was the "floating White House" June 7, 1963, when President John F. Kennedy spent the night aboard the ship near southern California.

The current most senior-ranking Kitty Hawk alumnus isn’t a sailor. U.S. Marine Corps commandant Gen. James T. Conway was the Kitty Hawk Marine Detachment executive officer back in the early 1970s.

© 2007 Stars and Stripes. All Rights Reserved.

[Strategerist]

fabrication OF the Indians, that is.

[Strategerist]

I really think it’s a mistake to take them down. If anything, convert ‘em to nuclear power and upgrade them.

Physically impossible to convert to nuclear power.

Old ships are old ships. There's a point where it's not worth it to repair or upgrade them.

[Fiddlstix]

Click the Graphic

You'll probably want to see this thread

[Charlespg]

sink it as artificial reef

[sionnsar]

Say WA? Evergreen State ping

FReepmail sionnsar if you want on or off this ping list.

Ping sionnsar if you see a Washington state related thread.

[oldsalt]

I was on board the Kitty Hawk in 1973-74 serving with RVAH-7,an RA5C Vigilante squadron,and I have many memories of that particular WestPac/Indian Ocean deployment.

We had a serious fire in the engineering spaces on the way over to WestPac in Dec 1973.We lost #1 Main Machinery Room,and I really mean lost,the fire gutted it,stuff was melted,the paint on bulkheads on the second deck was charred.It was bad.Six sailors died and a bunch had smoke inhalation problems.

The interior of the ship was filled with black smoke and a large part of us had to evacuate to the flight deck.We were dead in the water for awhile and when we finally could get underway all we could manage was 9 to 10 knots.

This all happened about 300 miles west of Guam and made it necessary for us to become the first American warship since WW2 to transit San Bernadino Strait,since that was the shortest route to Subic Bay,P.I. We spent some time there while Ship Repair Facility,Subic Bay put us back together again so we could go to the Indian Ocean where we got far enough ahead of the supply train to run out of lotsa stuff,including toilet paper.

In other words that six month deployment was the usual. That means it lasted eight months and the unexpected always happened.

[cva66snipe]

I really think it’s a mistake to take them down. If anything, convert ‘em to nuclear power and upgrade them. I think we’ll be needing them very soon. I have a feeling we’re going to lose a few carriers in the near future and you just can’t put one together quickly.

You can't change engine rooms nuke to conventional or vice versa once the keel is laid. That said they should mothball but not sink it or the JFK. In a pinch the boilers could be re-tubed the steam lines replaced and pressed into service.

You can also train and qualify a conventional crew much quicker than a nuke. In event of loss of one or several carriers KH and JFK could be put back into commission probably in about 18 months which is quicker than a nuke or conventional could be built.

Our other ships from Mothball Fleet besides the CONNIE are from the Forestall Class.

[GitmoSailor]

On the first cruise around the Horn (1961) I worked in Ready-Room five near the lower escalator landing.

I remember riding it up to the 04 level on my daily trips (in person)to main-com and CAG-11 to pick up messages that were in written form.