The United States Navy’s Kitty Hawk-class of aircraft carriers replaced the Forrestal-class carriers.
All three of them, USS Kitty Hawk, USS America, and USS Constellation, were built between 1961 and 1965 and served for nearly 50 years.
However, in terms of remembrance, the Kitty Hawks are almost an afterthought beside the more famous classes.
Kitty Hawk-Class Carriers: The Forgotten Workhorses of the U.S. Navy
The Navy produced a fourth carrier, the USS John F. Kennedy, but the differences in production were so different that the Navy decided it was in its own class, the ship of the Kennedy-class.
The Kitty Hawks were well-traveled, serving from Vietnam through the Gulf War and returning home with a piece of a Soviet submarine embedded in its bow.
They served the country well. The USS Kitty Hawk even had her moment in Hollywood, appearing in a cameo as the USS Nimitz in the film The Final Countdown.
One of them, the USS America, was sunk after her retirement to study the amount of damage the carriers can take. Those studies served the Navy well in designing future carriers, like the Ford class.
Meet the Kitty Hawk-Class Aircraft Carrier
The Forrestal-class was the first class of supercarriers that we know today. But they had their quirks of design. Especially the elevator placements, which were situated on the launching and landing path of the waist catapults.
First, the improvements made in the Kitty Hawk-class are the elevator placements. Two are forward of the island, one aft of the island, and another on the portside stern. Moving the No. 4 elevator from the forward to the aft end of the angle made it more practical for aircraft movement.
The repositioning of the elevators allowed the carrier to carry on flight operations and utilize the elevators simultaneously, which significantly increased the efficiency of flight operations, increasing the sortie length.
Kitty Hawk-Class Specs
The Kitty Hawk class was too big to transit the Panama Canal. They all saw combat in Vietnam, Operation El Dorado Canyon, Operation Desert Storm, and Operation Enduring Freedom. Except for one, the Kitty Hawks have all been scrapped.
Type: Aircraft carrier
Displacement: 60,933 long tons (61,911 t) light, 81,780 long tons (83,090 t) full load
Length: 1,069 ft (326 m) overall. 990 ft (300 m) waterline
Beam: 130 ft (40 m) waterline, 282 ft (86 m) extreme
Draft: 38 ft (12 m)
Installed power: 280,000 shaft horsepower (210 MW)
Propulsion: 8 × steam boilers with Westinghouse geared steam turbines, 4 × shafts, 4 propellers
Speed: 32 knots (59 km/h; 37 mph)
Range: 12,000 mi (19,000 km)
Complement: 5,624
Armament: 24 × Sea Sparrows and RIM-116 Rolling Airframe Missiles, 3–4 × Phalanx CIWSs
Aircraft: Up to 90
The Russian Submarine Incident
The US and the Soviet Union/Russia have always played a cat-and-mouse game of submarines and surface ships trying to move into close proximity to one another. In March 1984; the USS Kitty Hawk was off the coast of South Korea during the annual Team Spirit exercises.
A Russian sub, a Victor-class submarine later identified as K-314, kept trying to come close with the Kitty Hawk. The surface ships, part of the Kitty Hawk’s carrier group, worked up solutions where they would have sunk K-314 15 times had it been an actual combat encounter.
But the carrier group then decided to use deception tactics to elude the Russian sub. They worked until the sub got confused and surfaced right in the carrier’s path. The Russians later told their side of the story.
An aerial starboard bow view of the aircraft carrier USS AMERICA (CV-66) underway.
“The (K-314) commander ordered the start of an urgent dive to avoid a collision. Shortly after the start of the dive, the submarine felt a strong blow. After a few seconds – a second powerful push. It was clear that the submarine did not have time to go to a safe depth, and it was hit by some of the American ships. As we learned later, it was a Kitty Hawk aircraft carrier.”
The USS Kitty Hawk returned to port with a piece of the propeller screw stuck in the gash of her bow as a souvenir, along with some of the tiles from the submarine’s anechoic coating, polymers that enable it to be quieter in the water. The Kitty Hawk crew temporarily painted a red submarine “victory mark” on the carrier’s command center, indicating they “sunk” a Russian submarine.
The Sinking of the USS America
After she retired, the USS America was initially due to be scrapped, but the Navy decided to sink her to test her defenses, which led to a surprise at how good those actually were. For four weeks in 2005, the USS America was incredibly punished.
USS America Aircraft Carrier Sinking in a Controlled Detonation in 2005. Image Credit: Creative Commons.
But the proud carrier took it all. Finally, explosives were placed on board to scuttle the ship. She now rests in 16,860 feet of water outside Cape Hatteras, North Carolina.
The last of the three ships, the USS Kitty Hawk was finally decommissioned in 2009, and was scrapped.
About the Author:
Steve Balestrieri is a 19FortyFive National Security Columnist. He served as a US Army Special Forces NCO and Warrant Officer. In addition to writing for 19FortyFive, he covers the NFL for PatsFans.com and is a member of the Pro Football Writers of America (PFWA). His work was regularly featured in many military publications.
