Everett, Wash.
Published: Wednesday, September 3, 2008

On the Kitty Hawk's last watch

Sailors who were first assigned to the USS Kitty Hawk 47 years ago take one last voyage as the old carrier comes to Bremerton to retire.

By Bill Sheets
Herald Writer

 BREMERTON -- Lance Weeda was on board for the first voyage of the aircraft carrier USS Kitty Hawk 47 years ago, and he was on board for the last.

Weeda of Bothell was one of 65 Kitty Hawk veterans who accompanied the ship on its farewell journey from San Diego to Bremerton.

The ship left San Diego on Thursday and arrived in Bremerton early Tuesday. It's scheduled to be taken out of service in January.

Of the Navy veterans who made the trip, 38 were "plankowners" -- men who were stationed on the ship when it was commissioned on April 29, 1961.

"How special is that? I don't know; it hasn't sunk in yet," said Weeda, 67, just after returning home from his trip. "To even do it is a little beyond my imagination even now."

The USS Kitty Hawk is a sign of changing times.

"The main reason the ship is being decommissioned is it's old," said Chief Petty Officer Jason Chuda, the ship's spokesman. The ship will be kept in Bremerton and maintained in case it's ever needed in the future, he said.

Every carrier built since the late 1960s has been driven by nuclear power. The USS Kitty Hawk is the last aircraft carrier still in service that's powered by diesel fuel, he said. It's getting hard to find parts for it, Chuda said.

Weeda served on the catapult system for the Kitty Hawk, which helped the planes take off and land safely, from 1960 through 1963.

Two other Snohomish County residents, Larry Bonar of Mill Creek and Gilbert Ralston of Everett, were among those who made the ship's final trip. Ralston was not reached for comment.

Bonar, 69, spent nearly 10 years on the ship, from 1962-66 and from 1970-76. He held various jobs, including aviation radar and missile systems, and moved up through the ranks, retiring as a chief warrant officer in 1980 after 22 years in the Navy. He went into teaching and contract work for the Navy afterward.

Bonar was on the crew when it launched planes that dropped bombs on North Vietnam in the early 1970s. The ship was involved in some of the more famous conflicts of the late 20th and early 21st centuries.

The Kitty Hawk provided air support for the humanitarian mission in Somalia in the early 1990s. It served as the launching point for Special Forces troops and helicopters after Sept. 11, 2001, against Taliban and al-Qaida forces in southern Afghanistan. The carrier also took part in the initial strikes against Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq in 2003.

The ship's destiny was linked with that of President Kennedy. Weeda remembers when Kennedy spent a night aboard the ship during his presidency in June 1963.

Bonar remembers when the ship, while in harbor in Japan, was sent out to sea following Kennedy's assassination later the same year. This was to keep it from being too easy a target, in case the president's assassination was part of a war against the United States, he said.

Bonar ran into quite a few old friends on the farewell voyage.

"The opportunity to serve on the ship like I did for that number of years, there was a lot of people you do remember. We all kind of grew up together."

Weeda, who went into the auto parts business after the Navy, didn't encounter anyone he knew. The ship at times had as many as 6,000 sailors on it; typically its crew numbered about 2,700.

Still, he traded stories with other veterans, made new friends and enjoyed talking with the current crew members.

"I can't even stress enough the courtesy and respect they had," he said. "We're learning what they're doing and they're learning what we did. It was a very memorable trip from that standpoint."

Changes in technology were the biggest difference from when Weeda and Bonar were on board the ship.

When Bonar was on the ship, its electronic systems relied on transistors and vacuum tubes, he said. Now, it's fitted with microchips and lasers.

"We went from doing things electronically with a piece of wire to light rays and light beams."

While the ship is different in many ways, it's the same in others, the former crew members said. Weeda, for instance, said the catapult system is not that much different from how it was.

The ship is powered by eight boilers, each 2 1/2 stories tall, Bonar said. At one point on the last voyage, seven of the eight were going full steam on the trip up the coast, he said.

The ship was moving at about 32 knots, about 38 or 39 mph, he said.

"It takes a lot of loving care to keep those babies burning," said Bonar, who also worked in maintenance on the carrier.

"We were really churning some knots, the water coming off the back of the ship looked like the Grand Coulee Dam," he said.

There's also one other thing that hasn't changed a bit.

"The water out there is still that deep cobalt blue," Bonar said. "Really beautiful."

Reporter Bill Sheets: 425-339-3439 or sheets@heraldnet.com.
© 2009The Daily Herald Co., Everett, WA