Trivia Questions (Answers @ end)
- Who said, “All of our dreams can come true, if we have the courage to pursue them.”?
- In what movie, and who said it: “Go ahead, make my day.”?
- In what song, and who sang it, did we hear:
I’m about to give you all of my money
And all I’m askin’ in return, honey
Is to give me my profits
My transfer orders read, “Report to USS Kitty Hawk (CV-63) no later than March 20, 1975.”
I’d left my first duty station, NAS Agana, Guam, a month earlier (February), after spending 15 months working one day on and one day off as a Crash Firefighter. It was great duty—lots of scuba diving during the off hours and … I learned to fly (“Airplane Single Engine Land”).
Arriving home on 30 days’ leave, it was the first time I’d seen my mom, dad, and sister, Anne, in forever. Two Thanksgivings and two Christmases away from home, but now, I could make up for lost time.
It was great being home, seeing my family and friends, eating home-cooked meals, and just chillin’.
But I also had the itch to get to my next duty station. Instead of taking a full month’s leave, I decided I’d only take three weeks and then skedaddle out to San Diego and Kitty Hawk.
However, unbeknownst to me at the time, Kitty Hawk was out on RIMPAC (Rim of the Pacific Exercise) maneuvers in Hawaii and wouldn’t return to San Diego for three weeks. RIMPAC was done in preparation for overseas deployment. The Navy wouldn’t fly me out to her.
Well … that sucked!
After spending three weeks at San Diego Naval Station in a temporary holding company (there were three of us), we ran out of working parties. We began duty at 0730 and after cleaning the barracks, we could do whatever we wanted until we had to muster again at 1245. After muster, we took the rest of the day off.
Boring!!!
Finally …
Finally, I got on board Kitty Hawk on March 30, 1975. I had had enough of the boring barracks life in a temporary holding company, but I was mature enough to realize that’s the way it was in the Navy. “Hurry up and wait! It’s not just a job, it’s an adventure!”
Kitty Hawk’s home port was North Island Naval Station, just west of San Diego across the bay.
When I first arrived on the pier, I was looking up at this magnificent aircraft carrier, which was to be my home for the next two and a half years. I wouldn’t say she was beautiful (that would come later), but I would say it felt right.
My good friend from Guam, Glenn Law, was already on board. He had come in a couple of weeks before I did and was aboard when Kitty Hawk left for Hawaii.
When I first arrived on board and checked in with the personnel department (commonly called “processing”), Glenn came down to greet me, and we shook hands like old friends. It was good to see him. He told me that Gary Borne was already on board and in the Crash crew—they called it Crash and Salvage on the ship. That would be my assignment.
While I had already been in the Navy for a year and a half, and I had learned some “colorful” language in boot camp and on Guam, I was about to learn more of this second language aboard Kitty Hawk. As with many Navy traditions I experienced in Guam, there would be more aboard the ship.
Family Day Cruise
During my first week on board, Kitty Hawk sailed for a “Family Day Cruise,” which was a one-day cruise allowing sailors’ dependents on board for a day. In other words, “See what daddy does.”
Since this was my first time on the ship at sea, I was told to stay off the flight deck and hobnob with everyone else. I could watch flight deck operations from Vulture’s Row, an open-air balcony on the ship’s island overlooking the flight deck.
I was okay with that, because I got to see for the first time flight deck operations up close: Navy jets being launched off the catapults and landing on the carrier. It was pretty exciting, and I couldn’t wait to get onto the flight deck.
The ABH Rate
The ABH rate has two types of jobs. One is the aircraft firefighting that I had done in Guam. The other is a combination of tasks that involve handling aircraft (Yellow Shirts & Blue Shirts), hence the rate Aviation Boatswain’s Mate Handler.
These tasks include directing jets around the flight deck, driving aircraft tow tractors, and tying the aircraft down to the flight deck using chains. I would learn it all soon enough.
My first assignment aboard Kitty Hawk was with Crash and Salvage, and that was fine with me. There were fourteen guys in Crash. I would find out later during the Westpac ’75 cruise just how short-handed we really were.
I’m Not Old Enough
Over the next couple of months, Kitty Hawk would be getting ready for a forward deployment cruise called WESTPAC (Western Pacific). The cruise would last a six months, and we were scheduled to deploy on May 21. Before that, we would be at sea training for a week here and a week there, and I would learn what an ABH does on board an aircraft carrier.
One of the things that pissed me off at the time was the drinking age in California.
In Guam, the drinking age was eighteen. I was twenty years old now and had been drinking like a sailor for a couple of years. The drinking age in California was twenty-one, so I didn’t have any luck going out drinking with the guys, and I even got kicked out of a bar or two. That meant that I would not be able to drink legally in California until we returned from the Westpac cruise.
Kitty Hawk Stats
Kitty Hawk was 1,065 feet long from bow to stern (about as long as the 77-story Chrysler Building is tall), 282 feet wide at the flight deck level, and displaced over 83,000 tons with a full load.
She had a draft of 38 feet and was powered by eight steam boilers with four bronze screw propellers (each 21 feet in diameter and weighing about 30 tons), producing 280,000 horsepower, giving her a top speed of about 35 knots. She carried about 2,000,000 gallons of fuel.
She also had an onboard desalination plant that turned salt water into fresh water, making about 340,000 gallons a day.
When on deployment, she carried a complement of over 5,500 officers and enlisted men and over 75 aircraft.
The ship’s company (those men assigned duty aboard the ship) comprised about 3,000 officers and enlisted men. The rest of the 2,500 men were the air wing (those men assigned duty to the various air squadrons but temporarily assigned to the ship).
In 1961, her cost was about $265,200,000. In comparison, today’s aircraft carriers cost more than $13 billion. It took $9 million in ship support and another $22 million in airwing support each year to enable Kitty Hawk to perform her mission.
No More …
Over her forty-eight years, Kitty Hawk completed eighteen deployments in support of operations including Vietnam, the Iranian hostage crisis, Operation Restore Hope in Somalia, and air strikes against Iraq.
She underwent three major overhauls in Bremerton, Washington Naval Shipyard in 1976, 1982, and 1998. But its most significant maintenance period was in the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard in 1987. Called a SLEP (Service Life Extension Program), the four-year overhaul added an estimated twenty years to the originally planned thirty-year life of the ship.
Since 1961, Kitty Hawk sailors experienced liberty in many different countries during these deployments, most of them in the western Pacific including Japan, Hong Kong, Hawaii, Philippines, Kenya, Singapore, Bahrain, United Arab Emirates, Australia, Guam, and Thailand. She’s also stopped in ports in Spain, Trinidad, Brazil, Chile, and Peru.
When I was on active duty, 1973-1977, there were twenty-seven carriers in the U.S. Navy. When Kitty Hawk was decommissioned in January 2009, she was the last of the diesel-powered aircraft carriers. I made the trip to Bremerton to help celebrate her life … a great lady.
Now, there are only eleven active aircraft carriers in service. The latest commissioned carrier is the USS Gerald R. Ford (CVN-78). All are nuclear powered.
Until we meet again,
Andy
Andy Adkins is a US Navy veteran (’73-77) and the author of several books (www.azadkinsiii.com), many of which are free downloads (PDF, eBook format). He is currently retired and lives in Gainesville, Florida with his wife and life-long soulmate, Becky.
Previous Blogs mentioned in this Post:
- #53—You Always Remember Your First
- #24—Hurry Up and Wait!
- #10—You Light ‘em, We Fight ‘em
- #186—Westpac ’75: Flight Ops
- #68—Flight Ops: Another Fine Day in the Navy!
- #30—USS Kitty Hawk @ Bremerton Shipyards
- #42—The Shipyards, Part 2
- #31—USS Kitty Hawk, CV-63 Decommission
Answers
- Walt Disney.
- Sudden Impact (1983); Harry Callahan (Clint Eastwood).
- Respect (1967); Aretha Franklin. Written by Otis Redding.