“It was our home” Mountain veterans disappointed with sale of USS Kitty Hawk
By Ken Corn
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TRANSYLVANIA COUNTY, North Carolina (WLOS) — Navy Veteran David Cook sat down recently at his friend Machelle Bretz’s kitchen table with a stack of newspaper clippings and magazines, ready to reminisce on the past.
The two say it’s a shame the Navy recently sold the USS Kitty Hawk for scrap, an aircraft carrier Cook served on.
“When we hit the submarine in the Sea of Japan,” Cook pointed to a black and white photograph on the yellowing page, “it came out in Newsweek. We made the world news.”
Cook served on the USS Kitty Hawk as an airplane mechanic. He was on watch in the early morning hours that day in 1984 when the Kitty Hawk collided with a Russian submarine.
“It sounded like a bomb going off,” said Cook. “And I’m like, oh my god they have dropped a bomb on the flight deck.”
The Cold War between the former Soviet Union and the U.S. was in full swing. Cook said that the Kitty Hawk and the Russian submarine had been playing a game of cat and mouse for weeks as both vessels cruised the Sea of Japan.
“Then I heard a scraping noise going down the side of the ship” said Cook. “First, I heard the bomb. Then, I heard the scraping noise and I already knew we were being followed or tracked by them. And I said, ‘I think we found her’.”
According to Newsweek, both vessels escaped without serious damage. But Cook believes this footnote in the Cold War is just one piece of the carrier’s history that should save the Kitty Hawk from the scrap yard.
“Even before they decommissioned her, I was like, I got to do something,” said Cook. “I would be devastated if they turned it into razor blades.”
Vietnam veteran Ray Pavlik thumbs through what looks like a high school yearbook while sitting in the living room of his Transylvania County home. The book contains pages of small square pictures of young men and women lined up in alphabetical order. Only these young adults are impeccably dressed in uniforms covered with patches and medals.
“It was gigantic and every cruise I did, which was three, starting in 1965 to end of 68, there was always action going on,” Pavlik said as he flipped to another page in his Cruise Book.
Pavlik also served on the Kitty Hawk during Vietnam as a plane captain, or a brown shirt. He spent twelve to twenty-four hours a day making sure his plane was ready to fly at any given moment.
“It was always pretty exciting up on the fight deck,” said Pavlik. “There were always things happening, going on. The action was coming and going.”
One evening while on patrol in the South China Sea, the action turned deadly, Pavlik remembers.
“One of the planes that I was in charge of, it was one of those planes on the catwalk at the ready, ready to take off, and one night it did take off because it was called on,” said Pavlik. “It didn’t come back. It got blown out of the sky. That will always be a memory for me.”
Memories of lost comrades like Pavlik’s pilot is the reason Pavlik agrees that the Kitty Hawk should be saved.
“They will be using it for scrap,” Pavlik scoffed. “They could bring it up the East Coast. We could always use one up here, along our battle ship over here in North Carolina.”
Cook also agrees that the aircraft carrier bearing a historical North Carolina name would be right at home docked next to the USS North Carolina in Wilmington.
“It’s a spiritual thing,” said Cook. “280,000 sailors served on the Kitty Hawk. It was our home. It was our safe place to be.”
Cook encourages people to write letters to the Department of the Navy, asking the Navy to reconsider the dismantling of the USS Kitty Hawk.
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