Kittyhawk,decomissioned.

Hi All,

When I visited the USS North Carolina in Wilmington, NC, a few months ago the director of the USS North Carolina Battleship Commision told a group of us that the government wants to berth the USS Kittyhawk somewhere along the N. Carolina coast as a museum ship, preferrably in the Wilmington / Southport area. She is too large to make it up the Cape Fear River to be docked alongside the battleship. We were told the Battleship Commision is against taking on the management and upkeep of a ship so large because they operate on donations and tour ticket sales and recieve no government assistance. The USS Kittyhawk would bankrupt them in no time at all. I havent heard anything lately.

emo07

Heironymous, I agree fully with your comments about fuel and steam turbine powered and all. I served on the USS Intrepid the summer of '66'. I was  a dental tech so I didn't know much about how to operate a carrier,but I knew my part.Interesting to see the rumors going around about whats going to happen to her. Looks like we just lay down one of our big guns to pick up another.

Hi there,

yep you are right the Kitty Hawk will be decommissioned pretty soon. She was replaced by the Gorge Washington after some disputes because the Japanese government did not want a nuclear powered carrier based in Japan.

There is only one fault in your post, The Kitty Hawk was (or should I say is) not Diesel powered, instead she uses geared turbines, something completely different to a Diesel engine, These engines do not even burn Diesel but Fuel Oil a much cheaper oil than Diesel.

Actually she is what most people would not believe a "steam powered" ship just like all Carriers currently operated by the US Navy, (including the nuclear powered carriers and subs too!!!)

I do not know what the future for Kitty Hawk will look like, but I do not buy the story that the Indians are going to buy here, way to expensive to operate and I'm afraid the Indians lack the experience to operate a carrier of such a size. Don't forget you need a LOT of personnel to operate such a ship and most of all experienced and CTOL carrier-qualified pilots! Add in the money for all carrier-based-aircrafts, new electronics and maybe another overhaul for the ship itself and you are in need of some HUGE pile of money!

Some years ago the story was spread that Brazil was interested in buying Independence CV-62 after being decommissionend. As soon as they realized what this would cost them, (see above) they dropped the idea rather fast...guess why?

Keep on modeling 

René

www.usns.biz 

Rumor has it that the sale of the Admiral Gorshkov, a Kiev class carrier, to the Indians is going south and that the indians are considering buying the Kitty Hawk and a bunch of FA-18s instead.

Thanks for the links. Yeah, the newspaper article in the paper here said deisel powered. I just threw that out to see if anybody was awake. I suppose it'll wind up a fish reef eventually, would really rather see it go to building wind turbines or something like that. Kinda spendy to maintain those things in mothball. I was stationed in Bremerton for awhile during Nam and there was quite the mothball fleet there. The base had a whole company assigned to the maintanence. Good duty.

The Kitty was the only aircraft carrier that I have been on, did a little tour a couple of years ago when I was in Yoko.

So, the Sh***y Kitty is finally going to be put to sleep. Sad.

EdGrune wrote:

ps1scw wrote: Lots of links, you can plan your trip to Japan from here. The Hawk has left Japan and is in SanDiego (arrived 07-August), awaiting decommissioning

Plan you trip to Japan to see the George Washington that is....

ps1scw wrote:

Lots of links, you can plan your trip to Japan from here.

The Hawk has left Japan and is in SanDiego (arrived 07-August), awaiting decommissioning

 

--edit

I see the Kittyhawk,the last deisel powered ACC, is going in for decommisioning soon. Anybody know the particulars?

The Hawk is not driven by diesel engines.   True she is an oil burner,  but the oil is burned to boil water which makes steam which turns turbines ...

http://www.kittyhawk.navy.mil/command/passdown_links.html

http://www.kittyhawk.navy.mil/index.htm

 

Lots of links, you can plan your trip to Japan from here.