After decommissioning, carrier’s eventual fate unknown

[thedrifter]

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."

Ellie

[thedrifter]

Kitty Hawk sailors look back <br />
<br />
<br />
Stars and Stripes <br />
Pacific edition, Sunday, May 25, 2008 <br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
Stripes asked: What will you remember most about your time on the USS Kitty Hawk?

[thedrifter]

Kitty Hawk prepares for final farewell


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

YOKOSUKA NAVAL BASE, Japan — The yen-only DyDo vending machines disappeared from the ship this week.

Petty Officer 3rd Class David Santiago is filling up on sushi.

Chief Petty Officer Elison Talabong is looking for someone to buy his car.

Such are the many preparations under way for the final farewell of the USS Kitty Hawk aircraft carrier, which leaves Japan for good this week.

After a decade in Yokosuka, the 47-year-old aircraft carrier will pull out amid parting festivities and farewells from U.S. and Japanese dignitaries Wednesday morning.

The crew of the Kitty Hawk’s Japanese sister ship, the JS Shirane, will cast off the U.S. carrier’s mooring lines for the final time. The Kitty Hawk’s crew, about 3,000 sailors, will "man the rails" and stand in a formation that spells out "sayonara" in kanji characters on the carrier’s flight deck as it leaves.

And when it goes, the Kitty Hawk will leave a big empty space at its pier and a quieted Yokosuka Naval Base community — until the USS George Washington, Yokosuka’s next forward-deployed aircraft carrier, arrives in August.

But the George Washington isn’t on Chief Petty Officer Ace Elacio’s stress list yet. Only about 30 "GW" families have arrived, compared to the 2,000 Kitty Hawk families processing through Yokosuka’s Personal Property Office. His sayonara started in January with pack-outs of up to 100,000 pounds a day, he said.

"It’s been crazy for us," said Elacio, as office personnel extended hours through weekends and even set up shop aboard the ship. "We learned that we have to be flexible."

For another 900 Kitty Hawk sailors, life won’t change much. Sailors like Petty Officer 2nd Class Rudy Liverpool will simply walk over to the George Washington when the two ships do a "hull swap" in Hawaii in June. They’ll continue their jobs on the new ship, eventually returning to Yokosuka.

"I love Japan — the culture, the fashion," Liverpool said. "I wanted to stay here."

Other sailors’ fates are still written in pencil, awaiting hard orders for their next duty stations. Some wait for approval to remain at Yokosuka beyond Kitty Hawk’s official homeport date change of July 15, due to a mistaken Navy message that originally gave people until January 2009 before moving the date up to July.

"The transition is not easy, but we’ve worked extremely hard to ensure that the process is as easy on everyone as we could make it," said Kitty Hawk commanding officer Capt. Todd Zecchin.

The carrier is even trying to help sailors sell their Japanese vehicles to the incoming George Washington crew, said ship spokesman Chief Petty Officer Jason Chudy.

"We have a list of everyone’s cars, motorcycles and bicycles, and we are pushing hard to make sure every one is either sold or junked," Chudy said. "We do not want our lasting memory to be a bunch of abandoned cars."
New ship on the horizon

While there is excitement in waving goodbye to the Kitty Hawk, there’s also flutter surrounding its replacement — the USS George Washington, the first nuclear-propelled ship forward-deployed to Japan.

Accommodating the new carrier required dredging the harbor to handle its deeper draft, and a new power plant is slated to come online to electrify the ship in port. Also, a new waterfront workspace is in place for the 600 Puget Sound Naval Shipyard workers who will make pilgrimages from Bremerton, Wash., to maintain the George Washington’s nuclear propulsion system.

While the Kitty Hawk’s departure will be nostalgic, the George Washington signals a move forward, U.S. Forces Japan commander Air Force Lt. Gen. Edward Rice said last week.

"As strong as the Kitty Hawk has been for the alliance, we are bringing in a capability that’s even stronger, looking toward the next 10 to 20 years," Rice said. "We are going to replace it with an even more capable ship that I’m confident will be, at the end of the day, warmly welcomed by all members of the alliance, and will find a strong home here at Yokosuka."

Sailor Tommy Creaturo, a chief petty officer who will cross decks to the George Washington, called the new ship an upgrade.

"It’s like going from a Pinto to a Cadillac," Creaturo said. Pausing a moment, he rethought the comparison. "Maybe more like going from a Model T to a Cadillac."

In the community, safety concerns about the ship’s nuclear power plant prompted two Yokosuka-based referendum attempts in the past two years. Although citizens’ groups gathered the required number of signatures, the Yokosuka City Council defeated the measure before it could go to a vote of the people.

Even though she has safety concerns, one 48-year-old Yokosuka woman called the carrier’s arrival "inevitable" due to the financial implications.

Kimie Noji, a 76-year-old liquor store owner, took a fatalist view indicative of a woman who has spent her life in a Navy town.

"Ships come and go," Noji said.
Goodbye, for now

But Kitty Hawk still has many nautical miles to go before she sleeps.

After the "hull swap" in Hawaii, the carrier will steam to its former homeport of San Diego for a welcome-home party, then to Puget Sound Naval Shipyard to await decommissioning.

Although the decommissioning date has been set by instruction at Jan. 31, it is largely dependent on when the Navy’s newest carrier, the USS George H.W. Bush, is ready for commissioning due to an 11-carrier mandate set by Congress.

Former Petty Officer 1st Class Camilo Martinez said he will attend the decommissioning when the Kitty Hawk gets to her final resting place.

"In the Bible book of Ecclesiastes we read, ‘For everything there is an appointed time … a time for birth and a time to die....’ " Martinez said in an e-mail. "Thus, even though the Hawk, in recent pictures, looks as awesome and majestic as when I first saw her, it is time for her to go."

Stars and Stripes reporters Teri Weaver and Hana Kusumoto contributed to this report.

Ellie

[thedrifter]

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.

Ellie

[thedrifter]

After 47 years, sea stories aplenty


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

YOKOSUKA NAVAL BASE, Japan — Joseph Downing’s dad plans to visit the USS Kitty Hawk in Bremerton, Wash., this summer for the typical "this-is-where-I-eat-and-sleep" parent tour.

Then Downing’s dad will "turn to" and give his son the same tour, showing him where he ate and slept aboard the aircraft carrier as a Kitty Hawk plank owner who served aboard the ship on its maiden voyage more than 40 years ago.

"My dad told me it was a tough ship," Downing, a 42-year-old petty officer first class, said last week as the ship’s days in Yokosuka dwindled and it neared its final departure May 28 for decommissioning at Puget Sound Naval Shipyard. "He said ‘If you’re not a sailor before you get here, you will be when you leave.’ "

A personnel specialist and admitted desk jockey, Downing said his dad was right.

"It’s the same old ship … a few new weapons systems here and there, but it’s the same ship that pulled out to sea all of those years ago," Downing said.

Kitty Hawk has racked up sea stories aplenty since its commissioning in Philadelphia Naval Shipyard on April 29, 1961.

Downing’s dad was aboard when the carrier — about 1,062 feet long and 250 feet at its widest point — squeezed through the Panama Canal for the first time.

"It was close — about three feet to spare," Downing said. "I looked up the pictures."

When President John F. Kennedy was assassinated, Vaughn Monigold’s late father, Master Chief Petty Officer Floyd D. Monigold, was aboard the Kitty Hawk in Japan.

"He wrote us that the ship’s captain announced the news at 6 a.m.," Vaughn said via e-mail, adding that the carrier fired guns every 30 minutes the day of the funeral.

That was a long time ago, but Vaughn, a civilian in the States, still plans to attend the decommissioning ceremony in Bremerton "because of my close ties with my father and his fondness of the Kitty Hawk."

The carrier’s veterans find plenty to reminisce about on Internet chat boards. Some are serious: remembering the six sailors who lost their lives in a 1973 fire, as well as sailors killed in action, in accidents, and those who took their own lives.

Others poke fun, describing the carrier’s 1984 collision with a Russian submarine as "the thing that went bump in the night," along with stories of seasickness and wild port visits.

Former Kitty Hawk sailor William J. Byrnes remembers a boatswain’s mate on his general quarters team accidentally replacing the word "imminent" with "intimate" during crucial all-hands messages, he said.

"Many sailors still wonder what an ‘intimate’ atomic attack is. Warmer than most? Really close?" wondered Byrnes in an e-mail to Stripes.

No one would mistake Kitty Hawk for "a new ship," said Kitty Hawk Commanding Officer Capt. Todd Zecchin. He called the carrier "a tough old ship and a unique, grand old lady" that hasn’t slowed in its twilight years.

"We’ve got equipment that is literally more than a half-century old," Zecchin said in an e-mail, using the carrier’s 1,200-pounds-per-square-inch steam boilers as examples. Kitty Hawk sailors operate an engineering plant found no where else in the Navy, he said.

"The challenge of having such an old ship, yet being forward deployed and therefore the hardest working carrier in the Navy, is awesome," Zecchin said.

Kitty Hawk Chief Petty Officer Tommy Creaturo, on his second tour aboard the carrier, agreed that "Kitty Hawk is a tough ship — very tough."

His first tour was when the carrier served as a U.S. Forces joint task force staging base for the war in Afghanistan in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks .

"I’m a New Yorker," Creature said with a thick Brooklyn accent. "When the towers came down … I had friends and family out there. I didn’t care how long we stayed out to sea."

The carrier went 74 days without a port visit.

About 300 Kitty Hawk veterans will sail aboard the carrier on the final leg of its last voyage, from San Diego to Bremerton, said ship spokesman Chief Petty Officer Jason Chudy.

The ship officially changes homeport from Yokosuka to Bremerton on July 15 and is expected to be decommissioned in early 2009, he said.

Along the way, the Kitty Hawk will do its final burial at sea — a last request of a former sailor. Chief Petty Officer Elison Talabong said he volunteered to participate in the ceremony.

"It’s an honor," Talabong said. "A lot of people put their heart and soul into this ship. They gave up a part of them to keep this ship running. And I like being a part of that."

Ellie

[thedrifter]

http://www.stripes.com/08/may08/kh_history.html


Ellie

[thedrifter]

I was on the Kitty Hawk when it was in Philly for the overhaul...

My brother-law was a sailor on her at the time;)

Ellie