Kitty Hawk (CV 63) - Naval Cruise Book

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ost of us, most of the time, live in blissful ignorance of what a small, elite, heroic group of Americans, are doing for us night and day. As we speak, all over the globe, American sailors and submariners and aviators are doing something very dangerous. People say, ' Well, it can ' t be too dangerous because there are no wrecks. ' But the reason we don ' t have more accidents is that these are superb professionals; the fact that they master the dangers does not mean that the dangers aren ' t real. ' Right now, somewhere around the world, young men are landing high-performance jet aircraft on the pitching decks of aircraft carriers at— night! You can ' t pay people to do that; they do it out of love of country, of adventure, of the challenge. We all benefit from it, and the very fact that we don ' t have to think about it tells you how superbly they ' re doing their job— living on the edge of danger so the rest of us need not think about, let alone experience, danger. ' — George Will, commenting during the ABC news special coverage, on Jan. 28, 1986, of the space shuttle Challenger disaster.

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A Tearful Embrace 1 1 ' So it began. A final embrace and the memory of someone dear, with tears staining her face. USS KITTY HAWK was leaving San Diego again. But this time was different. The 80,000-ton carrier would not be return- ing to this southern California city which had been home for 25 years. Instead, the HAWK would wind up its six-month deployment at the Phil- adelphia Naval Shipyard. DEPARTURE 1