USS Kitty Hawk makes brief Saipan visit

America’s oldest military warship, USS Kitty Hawk, berthed at the Saipan lagoon briefly around 10:45am Friday for precision positioning, the Commonwealth Ports Authority said. But the ship did not stay that long and stayed outside the Saipan Harbor.

Due to shallow waters, the ship berthed out of the breakwater and left immediately, Saipan seaport manager Tony Cabrera said.

He explained that there was no report as to where USS Kitty Hawk was heading or even what the reason for the berthing was, besides the information provided the Seaport division that it would be on the water for a short period of time.

“I don’t know why they were here. We were just told that they would be berthing. They stayed out on the water. It was merely precision positioning and probably part of their military exercise,” said Cabrera during Friday’s CPA Board meeting.

USS Kitty Hawk is the lead ship of the Navy’s second class of “super carriers” and the second ship in the Navy to bear this name. Since August 1998, USS Kitty Hawk is homeported in Yokosuka, Japan, where she relieved the now decommissioned USS Independence as the only forward deployed aircraft carrier in the Navy.

On March 21, 2002, USS Kitty Hawk became the first carrier in the U.S. Navy to perform test firings with the Rolling Airframe Missile System. It was commissioned in 1960 with overall length of 10,465 feet or 319 meters. USS Kitty Hawk’s flight deck width is 252 feet or 76.8 meters and cost about $400 million in 1961. It can accommodate 85 aircraft and has 2,900 men onboard and a 2,480-men crew at the air wing. It is armed with Mk 29 NATO Sea Sparrow launchers, 20mm Phalanx CIWS Mk 15, and Rolling Airframe Missile system.

The year 2000 saw USS Kitty Hawk and its Battle Group operating in the western Pacific. The carrier took part in Exercise Cobra Gold 2000 and conducted port visits to Phattaya, Thailand; Hong Kong and Singapore.

After the terrorist attacks in New York City and Washington, D.C. on Sept. 11, 2001, the USS Kitty Hawk Battle Group was ordered to deploy to the Indian Ocean and was later involved in combat missions against the Taliban and al-Qaida in Afghanistan. The Battle Group returned to Yokosuka on Dec. 23, 2001.

In 2002, Northern Marianas government officials and business executives were invited to join servicemen onboard the aircraft carrier. USS Kitty Hawk has a 70-man security, a 300-man public works force, a ship-wide, closed circuit television system for entertainment, and holds religious services for several denominations.

Some of the local officials who were invited to the aircraft carrier by U.S. Naval Forces were Gov. Juan N. Babauta, Sen. Paul A. Manglona, Special Assistant for Administration Thomas Tebuteb, and some members of the Saipan Chamber of Commerce.