US Navy Announces CVN to Replace USS Kitty Hawk in 2008

[Michael H. Standart]

From The Navy Newsstand

quote:

Special release from the U.S. Department of Defense

WASHINGTON (NNS) -- The U.S. Navy announced Oct. 27 that one of its nine Nimitz-class aircraft carriers will replace USS Kitty Hawk (CV 63) as the forward-deployed carrier in the Western Pacific, and will arrive in Yokosuka, Japan in 2008.

Kitty Hawk is nearing the end of its service life and will return to the United States in 2008 to be decommissioned.

For the rest of the story, click on http://www.news.navy.mil/search/display.asp?story_id=20812

 

[rob scott]

oooooo daddy's vietnam war home, I remember enjoying his cruise books from kitty hawk, 2 tours, 2 books, air ops offshore se asia, a4 skyhawks, looooooong ago

 

[Tad G. Fitch]

Interesting. I have a friend on the USS Kitty Hawk right now, and I believe he's going to be stationed in Japan for 2 more years, so he might end up serving on another ship by the end of his time there.

 

[Jim Hathaway]

Currently US George Washington is supposed to take her place as forward deployed carrier.
The navy also plans to retire USS John F. Kennedy, but the congressman in Florida, where she is based is fighting not to have that happen.
This would give the navy an all nuclear carrier force, with Enterprise being the oldest.

 

[Michael H. Standart]

I think we've had some discussions on the JFK before. The apparant justification is to cut costs and but I suspect there's more to it then just that alone. The ship will be 41 years old come April, and by any account I've heard, it not in very good condition. Another one that will be going within the next 7 years will be the Enterprise which I've heard described as a maintainance nightmare because of the sheer complexity of her propulsion plant.

 

[Jim Hathaway]

Hi Michael,
It makes sense about the Kennedy, I remember when America went, material condition was a factor in that. (I remember something about a deck edge elevator incident that damaged some planes and injured some people.)
Enterprise is no surprise, her 8 A2W reactors are getting long of tooth, and she is the only ship in the fleet with them now. I remember when she received her big refit in the 80s, some thought was given to replacing them with 2 A4Ws, but the economics and technical problems of doing that, let alone in a 20 year old ship, are obvious.
That will be the last of the original nuclear surface ship program in the 60s. The others, Bainbridge, Truxton, and Long Beach are long gone.

 

[Michael H. Standart]

>>some thought was given to replacing them with 2 A4Ws, but the economics and technical problems of doing that, let alone in a 20 year old ship, are obvious.<<

I can well imagine. This sort of thing would a truely major rework which would involve gutting the machinary spaces and rebuilding from scratch. Even what they did in her overhaul in the late 1970's was problematic enough that Admiral Rickover himself was supposed to have gone hunting heads...and you better believe he got them! By all accounts, the blood was ankle deep at the Puget Sound Naval Shipyard by the time he got done.

As it was, the refit took so long that the locals started referring to the Enterprise as Building 65.