Elleda Wilson: No deal
Mar. 24—Last May, this column ran a story, "The proposition," about Bill Nix's proposal to use urban renewal money to put the 1,069 foot long aircraft carrier USS Kitty Hawk (CV-63) at the Port of Astoria to be used as museum, cultural event center and tourist attraction.
"We must consider the economic impact by the prospective 325,000 visitors annually, or 890 daily to Astoria," Nix said. He had a point, and a decision from Astoria was a matter of some urgency, since the vessel had been docked at the Puget Sound Naval Shipyard in Bremerton, Washington, since 2009, and was scheduled to be scrapped.
The Ear recently discovered that the Kitsap Sun reported in January that the USS Kitty Hawk, which had participated in combat operations during the wars in Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq, had begun her 16,000 mile journey around the tip of South America (she can't fit in the Panama Canal) to her final destination, International Shipbreaking Ltd. in Brownsville, Texas, to be scrapped.
Adding insult to injury, @NavalInstitute offered this on Twitter: "... Built for $264 million in 1961 ($2.5 billion in 2021), the Kitty Hawk was sold to the scrap company for the bargain price of 1 cent. For another penny, the company also got USS John F. Kennedy." What a shame.
