Former USS John F. Kennedy Finally Arrives in Philadelphia

Saturday was an historic day for my former ship, the former USS John F. Kennedy (CV 67), and I didn’t even know about it until today. So that is why I am posting about this today and not Saturday.  I have pictures of my own, which I will attempt to post soon.

Saturday the John F. Kennedy was towed to the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard where it will be “mothballed” or kept in an inactive status.  I read about it in this article called “An outpouring of memories upon JFK arrival.”  Follow the link to read the whole article.

The USS John F. Kennedy’s keel was laid down on 22 October 1964 at Newport News, Virginia, by the Newport News Shipbuilding and Dry Dock Company; it was launched on 27 May 1967, sponsored by Miss Caroline Kennedy, daughter of the late President Kennedy (she was only about nine at the time); it was commissioned at Newport News on 7 September 1968, Captain Earl P. Yates in command; and it was decommissioned at Mayport, Florida, on 23 March 2007, Captain Todd A. Zechin in Command. 

Those are the basic stats of the ship.  If you want more stats or more information about its missions, deployments, and service you can find them here.  Scroll down until you get to the picture of Caroline Kennedy christening the ship.  That’s where the part about CV 67 starts.  I don’t remember if she came to the decommissioning or not.  I know there was talk of her coming, but I don’t remember if she was there that day.  I was too busy manning the rails and trying not to pass out in the heat.

Yes, I almost passed out.  There was a bunch of us selected to man the rails.  This means standing at attention spaced at “double-arm interval” around the flight deck.  Actually we only manned the pierside side of the ship.  (Double-arm interval means you stretch out your arms and the person next to you does the same and you move away (or towards) each other until your fingers can barely touch.  Then you drop your arms.  You are at a double-arm interval.)  And we had to wear our dress blues.  Dress blues are made of wool and are actually black in color.  And Florida in late March is warm.  And we were out in the sun on the flight deck of an aircraft carrier.  And there were some long-winded politicians down there on the elevator (they were using for a stage).  So is it any wonder anyone would start to feel a little lightheaded?  I did all the things–don’t lock my knees, wiggle my toes, shift my weight–all the ways you learn to move that don’t look as if you’re moving.  They don’t ease the pain of standing there in one position for a very long time much, but they do help some.  Unless of course nothing helps and you seem destined to pass out.  And I almost did.  I had to be helped into the island and sit down and drink water while one of the standbys took my spot.  I’ve always wondered what the audience thought or if they even noticed.  Maybe I wasn’t hydrated enough that day.  I don’t know.  But I do know that when it came time for us to go down and form up on the pier I was fine.  The whole time we were in formation on the pier I was fine.  So I don’t know.  But now you understand why I really wasn’t aware of what was happening in the decommissioning ceremony.

So my stats with this ship is I joined its crew on 27 February 2006 and left it on 6 May 2007.  So I was there for the decommissioning ceremony and for the decom process afterwards.  I spent about 15 months on board–and I mean on board–I lived on the ship.  I slept in what they call a coffin rack.  It was around 26 inches wide and probably about 6 feet long or maybe a little shorter and had a “roof”–you couldn’t sit up in it.  When you lay on your back the ceiling of it was 3 or 4 inches above your nose.  How do you deal with that?  You shut your eyes so you can’t see it and you roll over on your side and you don’t think about it and you go to sleep.  Every night.  Unless you like to fall asleep on your back.  Then omit the rolling over on your side part.

By the time I joined the crew the ship had sat pierside for about a year waiting to decom.  They had gone on their last deployment in 2005 and had been a training carrier, but when I joined it the flight deck was uncertified, meaning it couldn’t launch or recover aircraft, and the catapults were broken.  There were other things wrong too, but that was the major stuff.  The Navy wouldn’t spend the money needed to fix it; it wanted to decom it.  But Congress wouldn’t allow the Kennedy to be decommed because it was convinced the country needed 12 aircraft carriers.  So the Kennedy sat pierside.  Doing nothing.  It was very frustrating.  When I joined the ship the morale was already low, and it just got lower.  I always wondered what the point of having 12 carriers was if one of them was inoperational.  Sure we could put to sea, but we couldn’t fight.  We couldn’t launch birds.  So what was the point of keeping us in the Navy?  It was like keeping a toothless, clawless wolf around “just in case” you needed him at some point when your younger, healthier wolves failed to defend the pack.  !?!

So we waited until the new fiscal year and the new budget.  During this time the main opponent to our decomming switched sides for some reason and convinced the rest of Congress that our country could get by with 11 carriers.  And so we were able to decom.  I thought it interesting in that first article I mentioned that it says:

According to language in the fiscal 2007 defense authorization act, the Navy must maintain the ship so it can be activated in a national emergency, if needed, until the nuclear-powered carrier George H.W. Bush is ready to join the fleet in 2009.

Again, !?!  So they have this ship mothballed because they might want to use it someday?  To use the previous metaphor, this is like keeping a gutted wolf, a wolf skin, around just in case you might need an extra fighter. 

Do you know what a decom process is like?  It depends on what the final disposition of the ship is, but on the Kennedy they basically stripped the ship down.  There was so much equipment taken out.  There was so much stuff thrown away.  The ship was basically stripped down and gutted and then each compartment (room) sealed shut.  If the Navy didn’t want to spend the money to fix the ship in the first place, what makes Congress think they’d want to spend a whole bunch of extra money to both fix the ship and put back all the equipment and stuff that was taken out or thrown away?  (And there was a lot of stuff thrown away.)  But that’s Congress for you.

So the Kennedy is mothballed until at least 2009.  I wonder if they’ll make some decision to do something else with it then.  The article said it could be a museum or a test target or an artificial reef.  Turning ships into artificial reefs seems to be real popular in the Navy right now, and I don’t think any of her decommissioning crew would be sorry to see her blown up (they would probably pay money to get a chance to participate), but I hope she gets turned into a museum.  There was talk that both the Kennedy family and the City of Boston had expressed interest.  Boston would have to figure out where they’d put her if they bought her.  But I think it would be cool to visit it someday when I have kids and say to them, “Look, this is the ship Mommy was on.  She lived and worked here.”  And maybe even show them my rack(s).  (I had three.  But not at the same time.)

So farewell, John F. Kennedy.  I wasn’t sorry to see you go, but it turns out I did learn some things from you.  I learned to persevere in a difficult situation.  I learned to get along with and work for people I didn’t like and who weren’t fair.  I learned that Jesus is my friend.  And if nothing else, I really appreciate my flat!