The agreement reached with the state and tribe also calls for the Navy to add sand, no less than 10 centimeters thick, to the area where the Independence once harbored. That work must be done by the end of Next year is shaping up to be a busy one for aircraft carrier ship maintenance at the shipyard. The Navy has just one dry dock on the west coast for such carriers. The last conventional-powered ship — that is, non-nuclear powered — in dry dock 6 was the USS Emory S.
Land , a submarine tender. That overhaul, known as a phased maintenance availability, was completed in , according to Matt Bailey, a spokesman for the Puget Sound Naval Shipyard. The mothballed fleet in Bremerton also includes the former guided-missile frigates Rodney M. Davis and Ingraham, supply ships Rainier and Bridge and the amphibious ship Dubuque. The Kitty Hawk, named for the North Carolina site of the Wright brothers' first flight, was decommissioned in Puget Sound Naval Shipyard in following 48 years of active service.
Visitors included the U. The ship returned to Yokosuka September for a short period before departing for its summer deployment. After a stop in Sasebo, Japan, the strike group took part in the 18th Annual Exercise, a week-long exercise which had more than American and JMSDF ships training together, between November 9 and After returning to its homeport on December 10, the ship settled down for the holiday season and the New Year.
The carrier then departed May 23, , after completing sea trials and pilot refresher training, known as carrier qualifications. The exercise brought together more than 12, Australian and 20, U. The ship made port visits to Brisbane and Sydney, Australia. The week-long exercise involved about 30 ships, aircraft and 22, U. Airmen, Sailors, Soldiers and Marines who worked together to build joint combat skills. During the exercise, Rear Adm. The ship returned to Yokosuka September This was the first time a U.
Navy ship made a visit to the port. The carrier pulled to its homeport November 27 after 38 days at sea. Search the Site with. But a previous scraping of the ex-USS Independence's hull led to a lawsuit by the Suquamish Tribe, the state attorney general's office and other environmental groups. They argued the scraping in open waters violated the federal Clean Water Act by allowing "truckloads of solid materials, including copper and zinc," to fall into Puget Sound. A legal settlement barred the Navy from scraping the hulls of carriers in Puget Sound.
While it's unknown where the Kitty Hawk will go for dismantling, previous mothballed aircraft carriers in Puget Sound have been towed by a tugboat around the tip of South America on a journey to a scrapyard in Brownsville, Texas, to be taken apart. The decision to scrap the ship has come with great disappointment to some former Kitty Hawk sailors , who would like to see the ship preserved as a museum or other purpose.
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