On a cold, dreary Thursday in Philadelphia, a smattering of people came to the waterfront to see the former Kitty Hawk class aircraft carrier U.S.S. John F. Kennedy (CV-67) begin its final journey. Nicknamed “Big John,” the Kitty Hawk class sub-variant began a trip from the U.S. Navy’s Inactive Ships Maintenance Facility to the International Shipbreaking Limited facility in Brownsville, Texas. There it will be cut up and its remnants sold for scrap.
After 17 years in Philadelphia, Big John is expected to arrive at its final destination sometime next month, a Naval Sea Systems Command (NAVSEA) spokesman told The War Zone. It will transit south through the Atlantic Ocean, around the Florida peninsula, and then across the Gulf of Mexico. No date has yet been set for the ship’s dismantling.
Big John and the former USS Kitty Hawk were sold for a penny apiece in October 2021 after years of debate about their fates. For a brief time this even included talk of returning Kitty Hawk to service and rumors of selling Big John to India. There were several more grounded but unsuccessful attempts to keep them from the scrapper’s torch. The Navy set the John F. Kennedy aside for possible conversion into a museum ship after it was decommissioned. Multiple groups attempted to secure the vessel for that purpose, but none of those efforts proved successful. Nuclear powered supercarriers cannot be museum ships, so these were the last opportunities for such a second life for the Navy’s largest warships.
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Commissioned on Sept. 7, 1968, the flattop was the first Navy ship to be named John F. Kennedy and was the last U.S. conventionally powered aircraft carrier built. It was retired from service in 2007, 39 years later.
The USS John F. Kennedy at the U.S. Navy’s Inactive Ships Maintenance Facility. (Brian W. Schaller via Wikicommons)
The vessel was a one-of-a-kind derivative of the Kitty Hawk class design originally intended to be nuclear-powered. It entered service at the height of the Vietnam War, but did not see service there. However, it did support a variety of other missions, including the U.S. response to the bombing of Marine Corps Barracks in Beirut, Lebanon, in 1983 and the first Gulf War in 1991. The carrier and its air wing were called upon to provide combat air patrols after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, and the ship also took part in the early stages of the war in Afghanistan.
An aerial view from off the port bow of USS John F. Kennedy in the Atlantic Oceano. The ship was deployed to the New York area in response to terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, in New York City and Washington, DC. (Photo by Lisa Marcus/Courtesy of the US Navy/Getty Images) U.S. Navy
That such a large and storied ship – more than 1,000 feet long and displacing 87,000 tons – was sold for a penny highlights the challenge and expense of scrapping such large vessels. That problem is only about to get far more amplified. Scrapping a nuclear powered vessel of similar size is far more complicated and plagued with hazards. By comparison, the net cost to dismantle the former USS Enterprise – the Navy’s first nuclear-powered aircraft carrier – could be as high as $1.55 billion, according to a 2018 Government Accountability Report.
This won’t be the last flattop to bear the 35th president’s name. The future Ford class USS John F. Kennedy (CVN-79), the second Ford class supercarrier, was procured in Fiscal Year 2013 and scheduled for delivery this July, according to Navy documents.
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Some Images of the USS John F. Kennedy (CVN 79) during the construction phase at Newport News Shipbuilding, Newport News, Virginia, USA.
As of Thursday evening, the decaying Big John was still close to shore in the Delaware River, a sea-going tugboat towing it down the channel to the Atlantic Ocean. According to NAVSEA, once the ship hits open waters, it won’t be visible again from shore until it nears the Texas city of San Padre Island on the Gulf of Mexico.
Here’s to the Big John’s legacy and all the sailors who called her home!
Contact the author: howard@thewarzone.com
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