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JFK to stop by Hampton Roads before decom

NORFOLK, Va. — Hampton Roads will get a chance to say goodbye this week to the aircraft carrier John F. Kennedy when it makes one last stop at the Norfolk Navy base before it is mothballed.

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The 38-year-old carrier spent most of its active service based in Hampton Roads. It will return to Norfolk on Thursday and stay through Monday before heading to Boston and then to Mayport, Fla., where a final ceremony is planned for next month. The Kennedy has been based at Mayport since the mid-1990s.

The Kennedy will not be open to the public during its short stay, Navy spokesman Mike Maus said. The visit will be strictly business: off-loading a large flight-deck crane and other gear.

The Kennedy — one of only two carriers still powered by fossil fuels — was built at what is now Northrop Grumman Newport News shipyard. Named for the 35th president, it joined the fleet in 1968 and made 18 deployments to the Middle East and the Mediterranean.

The Kennedy’s passing could take a financial as well as emotional toll on Hampton Roads.

Florida officials want the Navy to replace the Kennedy with one of five nuclear-powered carriers currently based in Norfolk. One of those five, the George Washington, already is scheduled for transfer to the Pacific next year to replace the Kitty Hawk, the Navy’s other conventionally powered carrier.

Losing a carrier means forfeiting its annual contribution to the regional economy of about $453 million in personal income and close to 8,200 jobs both in the military and private sector, said John Whalley, an economist with the Hampton Roads Planning District Commission.

Gov. Timothy M. Kaine and other Virginia officials wrote a letter last month to the Navy questioning the rationale for moving any of the Norfolk-based carriers, said Arthur Collins, the Planning District Commission’s executive director.

Collins said it would cost more than $250 million to rig the Mayport base for a nuclear carrier and provide no real benefit for the Navy. Florida officials have said basing carriers in more than one East Coast port would help protect the carrier fleet from a surprise attack.

“It’s not like the carriers are just sitting around the naval base waiting for some kind of Pearl Harbor-style attack,” Collins said.

Rarely are all five — the George Washington, Enterprise, Harry S. Truman, Dwight D. Eisenhower and Theodore Roosevelt — in port at the same time, he said.

Collins said it probably would be at least two years before the Navy decides whether to move a carrier to Florida to replace the Kennedy.

After the Kennedy leaves Boston on March 5, it will return to Mayport for a decommissioning ceremony March 23 and then be mothballed at the Naval Inactive Ships Facility in Philadelphia.