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After months of waiting, the former USS Kitty Hawk is expected to arrive Tuesday off South Padre Island, officials said.
The USS Kitty Hawk should enter the jetties of the Brazos Santiago Pass off South Padre Island at 10:30 a.m., said Robert Berry, vice president of International Shipbreaking Ltd./EMR Brownsville, which won the contract to dismantle the historic supercarrier, the last conventionally powered aircraft carrier to be decommissioned.
The ship’s arrival is expected to draw large crowds.
There will be a ceremony starting at 9 a.m. at the Cameron County Amphitheater at 53550 Dolphin Cove at Isla Blanca Park on South Padre Island. There is a $12 daily-use fee to enter Isla Blanca Park with $5 discounted rate for veterans.
The ceremony will include veterans remarks and a moment of silence, as the USS Kitty Hawk passes the ceremony.
The Kitty Hawk’s keel was laid at the New York Shipbuilding Corporation in Camden, N.J., on Dec. 27, 1956. The ship was launched on May 21, 1960 and commissioned by the Navy on April 29, 1961.
It was decommissioned in 2009 and had been at Naval Base Kitsap as part of the Bremerton, Wash., “ghost fleet” until departing under tow for Brownsville in mid-January. The voyage has taken the 1,069-foot-long carrier and its 7,268-horsepower ocean-going tugboat, the Michele Foss, all the way down the west coast of the United States, Mexico, and Central and South America, though the Strait of Magellan in southern Chile and up the other side en route to the Gulf of Mexico and Brownsville.
The Kitty Hawk left the Port of Spain in Trinidad on May 14 before making its way across the Caribbean Sea.
Five carriers have been dismantled at the port over the last several years. ISL has done three of them: the USS Constellation (a Kitty Hawk-class carrier), the USS Independence and USS Ranger. Other shipbreaking companies at the port have dismantled the USS Forrestal and USS Saratoga. Berry said the Kitty Hawk may draw a larger crowd than any of the previous carrier arrivals.
