This is what USS Kitty Hawk, a 62,000-tonne aircraft carrier
looked like in the final days of her life in January 2024,
with her bow cut off, sitting on the ground for the first time in a long time.
Over a period of 18 months, the ship was taken apart, section by section,
piece by piece. They say there is more than one way to skin a cat,
but when it comes to this Kitty, all of them are sad to watch, especially if you are one
of the 130,000 sailors that called Kitty Hawk home during her 40+ years of service.
In fact, this little flat spot here is the only reference point that I can recognize,
which is where the hangar deck used to be.
Now, as heart-wrenching as it is to see her go like this, the deconstruction of Kitty
Hawk reveals many parts of the ship that most people, including myself, would have never seen
or even known existed, like these two giant voids in the bow. Do you know what these are?
All aircraft carriers have elevators, but did you know that Kitty Hawk also had escalators?
So why not take this as an opportunity to learn more about this ship, while cherishing
the memories that she leaves behind. This is the dismantling of USS Kitty Hawk, CV-63.
On May 31st, 2022, after traveling for 136 days from Bremerton, Washington, Kitty Hawk
arrived at her final resting place in Brownsville, Texas, where International Shipbreaking Limited,
that had purchased the aircraft carrier for a penny, would be breaking her into pieces,
after which, 98% of the all of the weight of the aircraft carrier would be recycled.
The ship breaker would repurpose a very small amount of the metals to create limited edition
coins and other memorabilia that many veterans strive to get their hands on.
The first major structure to be removed was the island. Most aircraft carriers have one island,
but there are exceptions, like the British Queen Elizabeth-class aircraft
carriers which have two islands. Located on the starboard side,
the island houses the smokestacks, air-traffic control and the bridge.
But just like the island was one day installed on this ship as it
crushed the mementos underneath its massive weight, came the day where the island was no
longer there. The only thing remaining were the exhaust ducts sticking out of the flight deck.
With the removal of the aft section of the flight deck,
you can now see some of the aft berthing racks.
Kitty Hawk would have been home to about 5,600 people on each deployment,
and most of those people would have slept in racks like this. It was a pretty tight space,
which is why sailors on some newer ships really appreciate the redesigned L-shaped sit-up racks.
Located at the very aft of the ship is the fantail. It looks empty right now,
but this used to be a happening place. On the other side of that door was the jet shop,
where airplane engines would have been maintained or repaired. On the ground,
the engines are tested in a jet engine test facility, also known as the hush house which keeps
the noise down and accommodates the discharge of the engine exhaust out of the building.
But on an aircraft carrier, the engines were simply rolled through from the shop
onto the fantail to do test runs. At other times,
fantails would have been used for shooting practice, or just to hang out.
Just around the corner, is where the post office would have been on the Kitty Hawk.
I know that because the logo of the US Postal Service is still clearly visible on the wall.
Mail calls used to be very important as sailors would line up at the post office to pick up
mail. Those are the days before electronic communications were mainstream, although even
to this day, care packages that come through mail are still very much in high demand on the ship.
Kitty hawk had 4 elevators,
numbered 1 to 3 from bow to stern on the starboard side, and #4 on the port side.
These elevators were used to transport aircraft between the flight deck and the hangar deck.
Elevator No. 4 was the first one to be taken down. Here you can see workers
cutting elevator No. 3 with a torch. I don’t know exactly how long it took to
remove that elevator, but in the footage that was recorded exactly one month later,
elevator No. 3 was no longer there, and about 3 weeks after, elevator No. 2 had been removed,
and within 30 days of that, all elevators were gone from the ship.
Here I noticed a structure sitting right in the middle of the hangar bay. As time went
by and more of the aft portion of the flight deck was removed, a big box was exposed. From
what I heard, this was the HAZMAT locker, a storage area where things like paint,
chemicals and acids which were used by maintenance teams were stored,
and a HAZMAT clearance was needed to access some of these materials.
At some point, the dismantling made it to the bow of the ship. Here you can see two of the catapult
tracks half removed, but more interestingly, what one day used to be the anchor room of Kitty
Hawk is starting to surface here. It’s kinda busy, but you can see the two windlasses here.
Here is a better angle. If you look closely, you can even see a piece of the chain.
Kitty Hawk had two anchors, each weighing 30 tons. The anchor chains were 1,080 feet long,
with each link weighing 360 pounds. And even though you’ve probably seen videos
of anchors being dropped as the chain is paid out,
do you know where that long and heavy chain was stored while the ship was underway?
To see that, we gotta peel quite a few more layers off the bow.
These two giant cylinders are called chain lockers. Chain lockers are compartments in
the lower forward part of a ship, and are used for stowing the anchor chain. Here
we just see the remaining part of it, but in reality, they are long vertical compartments.
The chain itself runs deep down the chain locker, and somewhere in there,
the end of the chain is attached to the hull of the ship. This attachment part however is
not super strong, and that’s by design. In case there is an accident and the anchor drop
gets out of control, the attachment point would break off without damaging the ship.
Fast forward by about 3 weeks, and now a good chunk of the flight deck has been
removed. This is where some of the life rafts used to be installed. Each ship is
equipped with enough life rafts to support all souls on board in case the ship sinks.
Now here is something I had no idea about: Some older aircraft carriers used to have escalators,
and Kitty Hawk was one of them. Here you can see parts of the escalator
going down through the hangar deck. But what necessitated having escalators on the carrier?
To protect pilots against Kamikaze or similar attacks, the pilots' ready
room was located multiple floors below the flight deck. So instead of having to climb
stairs and ladders in their flight suit, pilots could simply ride the escalators,
which were built by Westinghouse, up to the flight deck. Later on,
the introduction of armored flight decks on newer carriers meant that pilot ready rooms could be
built closer to the flight deck, which is why newer aircraft carriers don’t have escalators.
I’m not 100% sure about this one, but according to some comments I read,
these used to be storage tanks for freshwater. What’s interesting was the purpose of those holes
at the bottom of the tanks, which was two fold: First to help reduce water sloshing, but also,
the hole created low points in the tank for sediments to settle into, since drinking
water would have been pumped from near the bottom of the tank. Pretty cool design, huh?!
In the aftermath of the attacks on September 11th, 2001 and the beginning of America’s war on terror,
USS Kitty Hawk was deployed to the Arabian Sea on a top-secret mission. Surprisingly,
most of the carrier’s air wing, which consisted of 70 aircraft and 1,500 personnel were missing!
“Unusually, we did not have our jets though. We kept them in Japan. That’s where the ship
was stationed, and we then loaded all these special operations helicopters and
a task force composed of rangers, SEALs, special forces and even CIA operators.
It was in fact helicopters launched from Kitty Hawk,
carrying Special Forces troops that marked the beginning of the war in Afghanistan.
That said, most of the time, Kitty Hawk would have
been busy launching and recovering aircraft. This was the spot for LSOs.
Landing Signal Officers or LSOs would have been standing here to direct the aircraft during
landing, helping them with the correct approach. And you see these markings right next to the LSOs?
This is where Kitty Hawk’s 4 arresting cables would have been installed. The cables would
have been paid out in a way that they would bring fast moving aircraft to a
full stop in about 2 seconds. And then they would be retracted in preparation for the
next arrested landing. If there was an emergency, barricade landings would have been used instead.
And those rectangular plates, those are jet blast deflectors that would
have been raised prior to a catapult launch,
to prevent damage to the aircraft standing in line and injury to the flight deck crew.
The catapult tracks are also visible. Here on the sides, is where operators would have been
on standby, waiting for the go-ahead from the shooter to catapult one aircraft after the other.
USS Kitty Hawk was the last conventionally-powered aircraft carrier in service with the US Navy.
Remember the island? The smokestacks funneled the exhaust from the fire rooms,
where the boilers were located. As the name suggested, boilers turned water into steam,
which in turn ran the steam turbines that drove the 4 shafts connected to Kitty Hawk’s
4 propellers. The same 4 propellers that sat on her flight deck as the ship was towed over to
the ship breaker. A lit-up rod would be inserted into the boiler to fire up the
burners. Now if you could take a look inside the boilers, you’d see something like this:
A bunch of pipes, where water would have been run through and turned into steam.
I heard from some veterans that the flight deck personnel would sometimes
hang around next to the island to warm up from the heat of the smokestacks.
Currently, all American aircraft carriers are nuclear-powered, and therefore they
have no smokestacks inside the island. But in essence, the propulsion still works the same
way. The onboard nuclear reactors generate heat. That heat is used to create steam,
and that steam turns propulsion turbines that provide the power to the propellers.
These platforms that would stick out from the side of the ship, are called sponsons.
Some sponsons were used to house radars and communications systems,
and others to mount weapon systems.
Now I was told by one sailor who had been stationed on Kitty Hawk, that this particular
sponson is where they threw away trash from. Hopefully it was just compostable materials!
But I found it interesting to contrast that with how garbage disposal works on the newer
supercarriers, like USS Roosevelt. Here in the trash room, they get rid of anything from
leftover food and packaging to clothing and plastics. Although they are quite strict on
separating incinerator, palpable, plastic and dunnage, because they have different machines
to process them. For example, things like plastics are shredded and put into special
machines that melt and compress them. What comes out are small pucks that are then flown
away off the ship. Other things like dunnage are shredded or milled, and can then be thrown
overboard. Paper and rags are on the other hand thrown into the incinerator and burned.
Kitty Hawk was the only American aircraft carrier to ever kill a
Soviet submarine, and purely by accident!
On March 21st, 1984, there was a collision between the Soviet submarine K314 and USS Kitty Hawk. Both
vessels were damaged, but the Soviet submarine was in pretty bad shape. Chunks of tile from
the submarine were recovered from the carrier's hull, which provided Americans with intelligence
about the anechoic coating on Soviet subs. A red submarine "victory mark" was also painted
on Kitty Hawk's island, but only temporarily! Because all things, good or bad, come to an end.
Even though ships are inanimate objects, they do have lives. Kitty Hawk was involved in the Vietnam
war in the 1960s and during the Gulf Wars in the 1990s, as part of a life that spanned almost half
a century. But let’s face it, what gives life to a ship is not its missions. It’s her crew. At her
core, USS Kitty Hawk was an example, an example of the history that dedicated crews can make.
Before I let you go, this is Michael Farrell. Michael dedicated many hours
of his time documenting Kitty Hawk’s dismantling month after month, and he made all the footage
available to us for free. If you enjoyed this video and want to show Michael some love,
consider donating to the fundraiser on this video. YouTube sends 100% of the
proceeds to St Jude Children’s Research Hospital which was chosen by Michael.