Navy sells USS Kitty Hawk, USS John F. Kennedy to shipbreaker for 1 cent each
BREMERTON, Wash. — The Navy has sold the former USS Kitty Hawk and USS John F. Kennedy to a Texas shipbreaking company to scrap the aging, defunct aircraft carriers, according to Naval Sea Systems Command.
The price tag: a penny for each.
"The contract values reflect that the contracted company will benefit from the subsequent sale of scrap steel, iron, and non-ferrous metal ores," said Alan Baribeau, a spokesman for the Naval Sea Systems Command.
The contract with International Shipbreaking Limited in Brownsville, Texas, for the tow, remediation, dismantling and recycling of the storied warships makes imminent their departures from the Navy's mothball fleet. For the Kitty Hawk, that likely means a tug boat tow from Bremerton, Washington, around the tip of South America; for the John F. Kennedy, a sailing from the Philadelphia Navy Yard.
No timetable has been established for either ship's departure and dismantling, Baribeau said.
News of the scrapping has come as a shock to many former sailors who worked aboard the warships and had hoped they could continue service, become museums or be repurposed in some way.
"This is a big blow to all association members, all crew members, our families, and our nation as a whole," the USS Kitty Hawk Veterans Association said on its website after the Navy announced the ship would be scrapped in 2017.
As the last remaining conventional-powered Navy aircraft carriers, they had a much better chance to become museum ships than the next generation of Nimitz-class nuclear-powered warships, as the newer supercarriers require a higher level of remediation that would make them much harder to save.
The former Kitty Hawk, nicknamed the "Battle Cat," was decommissioned in 2009 following a 48-year-long career in service. Named for the North Carolina site of the Wright brothers' first flight, the ship's missions included those from Vietnam to Iraq. Its twilight years were spent forward-deployed in Yokosuka, Japan. It was been in Bremerton's mothball fleet, formally known as the Inactive Ship Maintenance Facility, for 12 years.
For the Kitty Hawk, there is some pressure because of what grows under the hull.
The warship's undersides were scrubbed earlier this year in a dry dock at the Puget Sound Naval Shipyard in Washington. The Navy cannot allow the flattop to sit for long or the "biofouling" – microorganisms, algae and marine life that are invasive species in other waters of the world – might come back. And it cannot clean the hull in the waters of Sinclair Inlet, following a settlement with the Washington attorney general, Suquamish Tribe and other environmental groups.
More: Former USS Kitty Hawk will dry dock in 2021 to avoid scraping its hull at Puget Sound
More: Former Kitty Hawk aircraft carrier leaves dry dock in Bremerton
The former John F. Kennedy came closer than the Kitty Hawk to becoming a museum. Removed from active service in 2007, the Navy made it a candidate for donation to a museum two years later. But Navy officials deemed the two applications for it to become a museum "unfit" and "re-designated the ship for dismantlement" eight years later, Baribeau said.
The Kennedy, commissioned just under five years after the president was slain in Dallas, Texas, largely served in Europe and the turbulent Middle East throughout the 1970s and '80s; it also participated in the wars against Iraq and the War on Terrorism before its decommissioning in 2007.
Even without a museum, the USS John F. Kennedy is slated to become a ship of the United States Navy once more. The second of the Navy's newest Gerald R. Ford-class of aircraft carriers, the Kennedy is being built at Newport News Shipbuilding and is slated to join the Navy fleet in 2024, according to Seapower Magazine.
Sailors recently combed the former Kennedy ship in Philadelphia for relics that could become part of the new warship. They claimed the ship's seal among other artifacts.
Today, there are still 10 Nimitz-class aircraft carriers in service, including the USS Nimitz and USS Theodore Roosevelt, both homeported here. The Roosevelt is due for major overhaul work in dry dock at the shipyard; the Nimitz is wrapping up work at the shipyard and could deploy again in 2022.
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The contract for International Shipbuilding is another notch for the company's track record of disposing of the biggest ships the Navy's ever built. In August 2014, the former USS Constellation was the first carrier towed away to its scrapyard. The former USS Ranger left Sinclair Inlet seven months later, and the USS Independence was towed out in March 2017.
The mothballed fleet in Bremerton continues to host many former ships, including the former guided-missile frigates Rodney M. Davis and Ingraham, supply ships Rainier and Bridge and the amphibious ship Dubuque.
Follow reporter Josh Farley on Twitter: @joshfarley
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