Wilmington may save USS Kitty Hawk

Don't break the piggy banks yet, but four decades after pennies from Tar Heel children helped the USS North Carolina avoid the scrap heap, a Wilmington group is considering saving another ship.

The group has its eyes on the aircraft carrier USS Kitty Hawk -- a vessel so large it could easily hold all 3,399 residents of the town of Kitty Hawk. If feasible, it would become a tourist attraction like the Battleship North Carolina, a Wilmington landmark since the early 1960s.

Rick Willetts, a Wilmington banker who organized a recent meeting to discuss the Kitty Hawk, said this week that the idea is all that's being floated so far. Substantial issues of cost and logistics have to be studied, he said, and it would probably be four to six years before anything would happen to the 44-year-old warship.

He said the feasibility should be examined well before the ship's fate is sealed by the Navy. The vessel is now stationed in Japan.

Lt. Herb Josey, a Navy spokesman in Washington, said the Kitty Hawk is scheduled to be replaced by the USS George Washington in 2008. The Navy has made no plans for the Kitty Hawk, he said.

Built in 1961 at a cost of $265 million, the Kitty Hawk was named for the Dare County community that Wilbur and Orville Wright put in the history books with their early airplane experiments and powered flight in 1903. The ship's 5,500 crew members maintain a floating city that has served from the Vietnam War to the current war in Iraq.

At 1,046 feet long, the ship is almost nine times longer than the Wrights' first flight of 120 feet. It has a four-acre flight deck and four steam-powered catapults to launch Navy fighter jets.

But size creates obstacles for civilian duty. For starters, it would have to come up the Cape Fear River, where its 200-foot-high superstructure would not fit under the Cape Fear Memorial Bridge.

Merely maintaining the mass of metal would be expensive.

Capt. David Scheu, director of the Battleship North Carolina, said the 728-foot battleship he manages will have to be towed to Norfolk and put in drydock for maintenance sometime after 2010. That could cost as much as $10 million, he said, adding that drydocking has cost twice that for some older ships.

He said he didn't know whether another ship might hurt the battleship by competing for visitors. The ship attracts about 189,000 visitors a year.

No cost estimates

Willetts, chief executive officer of Cooperative Bank in Wilmington, said he had no cost estimates and could not say how the money might be raised. "Our first concern is not to do anything to hurt the battleship," he said.

Willetts said bringing the ship to North Carolina could be coordinated with future bridge projects and plans to move the Battleship North Carolina for its maintenance. Wilmington is the logical place to take on the endeavor, he said, "unless Charlotte is going to dig a ditch."

The Battleship North Carolina was saved by a statewide effort that relied in part on nickels and dimes given by schoolchildren.

Willetts said he was among the contributors when he was in elementary school and watched the ship as it was towed up the Cape Fear River. After the discussion of the Kitty Hawk became public, he said, he received an unsolicited offer of $100,000 to help.

"I've had nothing but positive feedback," he said.