USS Kitty Hawk (CV-63)

First steel for the Kitty Hawk was laid down on December 27, 1956 at the New York Shipbuilding Corporation yard in Camden, New Jersey. She was launched by flooding the drydock she was constructed in on May 21, 1960 and commissioned on April 29,1961. If I’m counting them properly, it looks like she made 20 deployments up til the time she was forward deployed to Japan for the last 10 years of her service life. She was decommissioned on May 12, 2009 after more than 48 years of service. It does not appear the Kitty Hawk was ever made available for donation status as a museum. Not sure why, but my thought is maybe she was in pretty rough shape after such a long service life and the Navy knew it? Regardless, Kitty Hawk was towed from Puget Sound Naval Shipyard on January 15, 2022 and arrived in Brownsville, Texas on May 31, 2022 for scrapping. The image of Kitty Hawk above is from Seaforces.org and the line drawing of the Kitty Hawk below is credited to Dr. Dan Saranga.