The Dismantling of US Navy’s Aircraft Carrier That Was Sold For a Penny

This is what the USS Kitty Hawk, a 62,000-ton

aircraft

carrier

, looked like in the final days of its life in January 2024, with its bow cut off and sitting on the ground for the first time in a long time. Over a period of 18 months, the ship was dismantled, section by section, piece by piece. They say there's more than one way to skin a cat, but when it comes to this Kitty, it's sad to see them all, especially if you're one of the 130,000 sailors who called Kitty Hawk home during their more than 40 years of service. . In fact, this little flat spot here is the only landmark I can recognize, which is where the hangar deck used to be.

Now, as heartbreaking as it is to see her go like this, Kitty Hawk's deconstruction reveals many parts of the ship that most people, including me, would never have seen or even known existed, like these two giant voids in the arc. Do you know what these are? All

aircraft

carrier

s have elevators, but did you know Kitty Hawk also had escalators? So why not take this opportunity to learn more about this ship while also cherishing the memories she leaves behind? This is the decommissioning of USS Kitty Hawk, CV-63. On May 31, 2022, after traveling for 136 days from Bremerton, Washington, Kitty Hawk arrived at her final resting place in Brownsville, Texas, where International Shipbreaking Limited, which had purchased the carrier for a

penny

, would be wrecking it. ,   after which, 98% of the aircraft carrier's total weight would be recycled.   Shipbreaking would reuse a very small amount of metals to create limited edition coins and other memorabilia that many veterans strive to obtain.

The first major structure to be removed was the island. Most aircraft carriers have one island, but there are exceptions, such as the British Queen Elizabeth class aircraft carriers which have two islands.  Located to starboard, the island houses the funnels, air traffic control and the bridge. But just as one day the island settled on this ship while she crushed the memories under its enormous weight, the day came when the island was no longer there. The only thing that remained were the exhaust ducts protruding from the flight deck. With the removal of the aft section of the flight deck, some of the aft docking racks can now be seen.

Kitty Hawk would have housed about 5,600 people on each deployment, and most of those people would have slept in racks like this one. It was a pretty tight space, which is why sailors on some newer boats really appreciate the redesigned L-shaped ab supports. Located at the stern of the boat is the dovetail. It looks empty right now, but it used to be a trendy place. On the other side of that door was the aircraft shop, where the aircraft engines would have been maintained or repaired. On the ground, the engines are tested at a jet engine test facility, also known as the quiet house, which keeps noise down and accommodates the discharge of engine exhaust gases outside the building.

But on an aircraft carrier, the engines were simply moved from the shop to the dovetail for testing. At other times, dovetails would have been used for target practice or just hanging out. Just around the corner is where the post office would have been in Kitty Hawk.   I know this because the US Postal Service logo 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 the mail. Those are the days before electronic communications became widespread, although even to this day, care packages arriving by mail remain in high demand on ships.

Kitty Hawk had 4 elevators, numbered 1 to 3 from bow to stern on the starboard side and number 4 on the port side. These elevators were used to transport aircraft between the flight deck and the hangar deck. Elevator number 4 was the first to be knocked down. Here you can see workers cutting elevator number 3 with a blowtorch. I don't know exactly how long it took to remove that elevator, but in the footage that was recorded exactly a month later, elevator number 3 was no longer there, and about 3 weeks later, elevator number 2 had been removed. and within 30 days of that, all the ship's elevators disappeared.

Here I noticed a structure located right in the middle of the hangar. As time passed and more of the rear of the flight deck was removed, a large box was exposed. From what I heard, this was the HAZMAT locker, a storage area where things like paint, chemicals, and acids used by maintenance crews were stored, and a HAZMAT clearance was needed to access some of these materials. At some point, the

dismantling

reached the bow of the ship. Here you can see two of the half-removed catapult tracks, but the most interesting thing is that what once used to be Kitty Hawk's anchor room is beginning to emerge here.

It's a little busy, but you can see the two turnstiles here. Here's 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 and each link weighed 360 pounds. And while you've probably seen videos of anchors being dropped while the chain is deployed, do you know where that long, heavy chain was kept while the ship was underway? To check this, we have to peel a few more layers of the bun. These two giant cylinders are called chain lockers. Chain lockers are compartments at the bottom front of a boat and are used to store anchor chain.

Here we only see the rest, but they are actually long vertical compartments. The chain itself runs deep into the chain locker, and somewhere in there, the end of the chain is attached to the hull of the ship. However, this part of the accessory is not very strong and that is by design. In the event of an accident and the anchor drop gets out of control, the attachment point would break without damaging the boat. Fast forward about three weeks and a good portion of the flight deck has now been removed. This is where some of the life rafts used to be installed.

Each ship is equipped with enough life rafts to sustain every soul on board in the event the ship sinks. Now, here's 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 that goes down through the hangar deck. But why was it necessary to have escalators on the carrier? To protect the pilots against Kamikaze or similar attacks, the pilots' waiting room was located several 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, to the flight deck.

Later, the introduction of armored flight decks on newer aircraft carriers meant that ready rooms for pilots could be built closer to the flight deck, which is why newer aircraft carriers do not have escalators. I'm not 100% sure about this one, but according to some comments I read, they used to be freshwater storage tanks.  What was interesting was the purpose of those holes in the bottom of the tanks, which had two purposes: first, to help reduce water sloshing, but also, the hole created low spots in the tank for sediment to settle, since the drinking water would have been pumped from near the bottom of the tank.

Very cool design, huh? Following the attacks of September 11, 2001, and the beginning of the United States' war on terrorism, the 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, was missing!  “But, unusually, we didn't have our planes.  We kept them in Japan. That's where the ship was parked, and then we loaded up all these special operations helicopters and a task force made up of rangers, SEALs, special forces, and even CIA operators. In fact, it was helicopters launched from Kitty Hawk, transporting 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 place for the LSOs. Landing signal officers or LSOs would have been standing here to direct the aircraft during landing, assisting them with the correct approach.  And you see these marks right next to the LSOs? This is where Kitty Hawk's 4 arresting cables would have been installed. The cables would have been laid in such a way that they would bring a fast-moving aircraft to a complete stop in about 2 seconds. And then they would be retracted in preparation for the next arrested landing.

If there had been an emergency, barricaded landings would have been used. And those rectangular plates are jet deflectors that would have been raised before the launch of a catapult, to prevent damage to the planes that were in line and injuries to the flight deck crew. Traces of the catapults are also visible. Here, on the sides, is where the operators would have been on standby, waiting for the shooter's go-ahead to catapult one plane after another. The USS Kitty Hawk was the last conventionally powered aircraft carrier in service with the United States Navy.   Do you remember the island?

The chimneys channeled the exhaust gases from the fire rooms, where the boilers were located. As the name suggests, the boilers converted water into steam, which in turn powered the steam turbines that drove the 4 shafts connected to Kitty Hawk's 4 propellers. The same 4 propellers that were on her flight deck while the ship was being towed to the scrapyard. A burning rod would be inserted into the boiler to ignite the burners. Now, if you could take a look inside the boilers, you would see something like this: a bunch of pipes where water passed and turned into steam. Some veterans told me that the flight deck staff sometimes stayed near the island to warm themselves from the heat of the fireplaces.

Currently, all US aircraft carriers are nuclear-powered and therefore do not have smokestacks inside the island. But, in essence, the propulsion continues to work in the same way. The nuclear reactors on board generate heat. That heat is used to create steam, and that steam spins propulsion turbines that provide power to the propellers. These platforms that would protrude from the side of the boat are called sponsons.  Some sponsons were used to house radar and communications systems, and others to mount weapons systems. A sailor who had been stationed at Kitty Hawk told me that this particular sponsor is where they dumped their trash.  I wish they were only compostable materials!

But I found it interesting to contrast that with how garbage disposal works on newer supercarriers, like the USS Roosevelt. Here, in the garbage room, they get rid of everything from food scraps and packaging to clothing and plastics. Although they are quite strict when it comes to separating incinerator, palpable, plastic and stowage, because they have different machines to process them. For example, things like plastic are shredded and placed in special machines that melt and compress them. What comes out are small discs that then fly off the ship. Other things, such as dunnage, are shredded or ground and then can be thrown overboard.

On the other hand, papers and rags are thrown into the incinerator and burned. Kitty Hawk was the only American aircraft carrier to destroy a Soviet submarine, and purely by accident! On March 21, 1984, a collision occurred between the Soviet submarine K314 and the USS Kitty Hawk. Both ships were damaged, but the Soviet submarine was in pretty bad shape. Pieces of the submarine's tiles were recovered from the carrier's hull, providing the Americans with information about the anechoic layer of Soviet submarines. A red "victory mark" of a submarine was also painted on Kitty Hawk Island, but only temporarily! Because everything, good or bad, comes to an end.

Although ships are inanimate objects, they are alive. 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 nearly half a century. But let's be real, what gives life to a ship is not its missions. It's your crew. In essence, the 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 to documenting the

dismantling

of Kitty Hawk month after month and made all the images available to us free of charge.

If you enjoyed this video and want to show Michael some love, please consider donating to the fundraiser in this video. YouTube sends 100% of proceeds to St JudeChildren's Research Hospital, chosen by Michael.