Having served on the aircraft carrier USS Kitty Hawk during the Vietnam War in 1970-1971, I was saddened to hear that my old ship was to be scrapped by the U.S. Navy.
A piece of American history, and my personal history, is headed to the scrapyard.
Julianne Stanford at the
Kitsap Sun offers a piece on the fate of the Kitty Hawk.
When the USS Kitty Hawk
Veterans Association held a reunion in Nashville at the end of October, one
thing was on everyone's mind: The ship was going to scrapped despite years of
efforts and fundraising to turn the aircraft carrier into a museum.
Naval Sea Systems Command
spokeswoman Colleen O'Rourke told the Kitsap Sun in October the Kitty Hawk was
headed for the scrapyard after years of being held in reserve status at the
Inactive Ship Maintenance Facility in Bremerton. This was the Navy's plan all
along, ever since the ship was decommissioned in 2009, although it had not yet
been officially announced until that point.
The former Kitty Hawk sailors
felt blindsided by the news.
You can read the rest of the
piece via the below link:
You can also read my piece on
the Kitty Hawk on ‘Yankee Station’ off the coast of Vietnam via the below link:
RT,
ReplyDeleteTrue enough, but like a lot of Kitty Veterans, I was hoping the old girl would be turned into a museum.
Paul