Last voyage of the Kitty Hawk: Aircraft carrier with deep ties to San Diego heads to scrapyard
ANDREW DYER
The San Diego Union-Tribune January 23, 2022 3:00 AM SAN DIEGO — The aircraft carrier Kitty Hawk steamed into San Diego in the fall of 1961 with fanfare usually enjoyed by royalty, wrote the San Diego Union’s Lester Bell in a story announcing the warship’s arrival.
A swing band on a barge at the mouth of the newly dredged harbor channel played “California Here I Come,” and fire boats spraying plumes of water escorted it to North Island. The Kitty Hawk would call San Diego home for the next 37 years, before spending its last decade of operations in Japan. It was decommissioned in 2009.
For the next 12 years, it would sit with other retired ships in Puget Sound, Wash. As is often the case, the men — and, starting in 1994, women — who served on the Kitty Hawk through the years came to see it as home, and many harbored deep attachments long after their service.
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