The oldest active ship in the US Navy, the USS Kitty Hawk aircraft carrier, made its final departure from Japan yesterday to be decommissioned after nearly half a century of service.
The Kitty Hawk, with sailors lining its decks, pulled away from Yokosuka port just south of Tokyo to the cheers of hundreds of schoolchildren and the sounds of brass bands.
It flew the “Don’t Tread on Me” flag, which designates it as the oldest ship in the Navy.
PHOTO: AFP
The Kitty Hawk, the last conventionally powered aircraft carrier in the Navy, is to be replaced later this summer by the USS George Washington, a nuclear-powered carrier.
After leaving Japan, the Kitty Hawk will make a stop at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii and then travel on to the Puget Sound Naval Shipyard in Bremerton, Washington, to be decommissioned.
DEPLOYMENTS
The ship, commissioned in 1961, became the first forward-deployed aircraft carrier in the Navy when it was assigned to Japan in 1998.
The carrier has since made 20 deployments in the western Pacific and participated in Operation Enduring Freedom in Iraq.
“Since it arrived in August 1998, the Kitty Hawk has been a visible symbol of strength in a rapidly changing world,” US Ambassador to Japan Thomas Scheiffer said. “Goodbye Kitty Hawk, hello George Washington.”
7th FLEET
The Kitty Hawk and its battle group are the centerpiece of the 7th Fleet, the largest in the US Navy, with 40 to 50 ships, 120 aircraft and about 20,000 sailors and Marines.
Roughly 21 of the ships are based in Japan and the Pacific island of Guam, while the others rotate out of ports in Hawaii and the US West Coast.
Along with the other 7th fleet ships, the battle group in Yokosuka, once a major Imperial Japanese Navy hub, has a huge area of responsibility — covering 134.6km² of the Pacific and Indian oceans, from the international dateline to the east coast of Africa.
Japan’s leadership strongly backs the US military presence in the country. Tokyo says the more than 50,000 US troops in Japan are a stabilizing force for all of Asia.
However, the replacement of the Kitty Hawk by a nuclear-powered ship is controversial among some here because of fears of an accident.
CONTROVERSY
Navy officials have stressed that the ship is safe, and pointed out that nuclear-powered submarines have long transited Yokosuka with no problems.
Concerns about the George Washington were raised again earlier this month when a fire on the ship left one sailor with minor burns and 23 with heat stress.
Sailors extinguished the fire several hours after flames were spotted near the auxiliary boiler room and air conditioning and refrigeration space in the rear of the ship.
The Navy said the fire spread through a passageway for cables.
Kehinde Sanni spends his days smoothing out dents and repainting scratched bumpers in a modest autobody shop in Lagos. He has never left Nigeria, yet he speaks glowingly of Burkina Faso military leader Ibrahim Traore. “Nigeria needs someone like Ibrahim Traore of Burkina Faso. He is doing well for his country,” Sanni said. His admiration is shaped by a steady stream of viral videos, memes and social media posts — many misleading or outright false — portraying Traore as a fearless reformer who defied Western powers and reclaimed his country’s dignity. The Burkinabe strongman swept into power following a coup in September 2022
‘FRAGMENTING’: British politics have for a long time been dominated by the Labor Party and the Tories, but polls suggest that Reform now poses a significant challenge Hard-right upstarts Reform UK snatched a parliamentary seat from British Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s Labor Party yesterday in local elections that dealt a blow to the UK’s two establishment parties. Reform, led by anti-immigrant firebrand Nigel Farage, won the by-election in Runcorn and Helsby in northwest England by just six votes, as it picked up gains in other localities, including one mayoralty. The group’s strong showing continues momentum it built up at last year’s general election and appears to confirm a trend that the UK is entering an era of multi-party politics. “For the movement, for the party it’s a very, very big
ENTERTAINMENT: Rio officials have a history of organizing massive concerts on Copacabana Beach, with Madonna’s show drawing about 1.6 million fans last year Lady Gaga on Saturday night gave a free concert in front of 2 million fans who poured onto Copacabana Beach in Rio de Janeiro for the biggest show of her career. “Tonight, we’re making history... Thank you for making history with me,” Lady Gaga told a screaming crowd. The Mother Monster, as she is known, started the show at about 10:10pm local time with her 2011 song Bloody Mary. Cries of joy rose from the tightly packed fans who sang and danced shoulder-to-shoulder on the vast stretch of sand. Concert organizers said 2.1 million people attended the show. Lady Gaga
SUPPORT: The Australian prime minister promised to back Kyiv against Russia’s invasion, saying: ‘That’s my government’s position. It was yesterday. It still is’ Left-leaning Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese yesterday basked in his landslide election win, promising a “disciplined, orderly” government to confront cost-of-living pain and tariff turmoil. People clapped as the 62-year-old and his fiancee, Jodie Haydon, who visited his old inner Sydney haunt, Cafe Italia, surrounded by a crowd of jostling photographers and journalists. Albanese’s Labor Party is on course to win at least 83 seats in the 150-member parliament, partial results showed. Opposition leader Peter Dutton’s conservative Liberal-National coalition had just 38 seats, and other parties 12. Another 17 seats were still in doubt. “We will be a disciplined, orderly
RSS