- The aircraft carrier USS Kitty Hawk left Bremerton, WA for a scrapyard in Brownsville, TX on Saturday.
- The US Navy previously sold USS Kitty Hawk to a ship-breaking company for just one cent.
- The ship participated in combat operations during the wars in Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq.
The US Navy warship USS Kitty Hawk, the last commissioned conventional-powered aircraft carrier, embarked on its final voyage on Saturday, leaving Naval Base Kitsap in Bremerton, WA to be turned into scrap metal by a ship-breaking company in Brownsville, TX, the Navy said.
The Navy decommissioned the first-in-class ship in 2009 after 48 years of service, putting the ship in mothballs for over a decade before selling the carrier to International Shipbreaking Limited for just one cent in October 2021 along with the ex-USS John F. Kennedy, Insider previously reported.
Because the ex-USS Kitty Hawk is much too large, at over 280 feet wide and more than 1,000 feet long, to traverse the Panama Canal, the "Battle Cat" will make its final journey to Texas via the Strait of Magellan, which is a natural passage between the Atlantic and Pacific Ocean, The Kitsap Sun reported.
The journey around South America could take it across roughly 16,000 miles and over 130 days to complete, The War Zone reported.
Launched in 1960 and commissioned the following year, the USS Kitty Hawk carried out missions around the world and participated in combat operations in Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq. The ship later served as the only forward-deployed carrier for 10 years.
Notable moments from its many years of service include testing whether or not U-2 spy planes could be launched from the deck of a carrier, a race riot, and a collision with a Soviet submarine.
The Kitty Hawk was the last commissioned oil-powered US Navy aircraft carrier to be decommissioned. The current fleet is made up entirely of nuclear-powered carriers.
"As hard as life was on this ship, it's part of my history," Navy veteran Corey Urband told the Kitsap Sun. "While most people were graduating from high school and college, I was 30 feet below the waterline, halfway around the world from home." Urband served as a machinist's mate on the Kitty Hawk in the 1990s, and the former sailor watched from shore as the ship left Bremerton over the weekend.
The aircraft carrier is the last of the Kitty Hawk-class carriers, as the other two ships in the three-ship class were either scrapped or scuddled.