SOME FORMER KITTY HAWK SAILORS WANT TO SAVE CARRIER

By Kenneth Corn

Curator

Veterans History Museum of the Carolinas

From the time David Cook turned seven years old until he raised his right hand to take the oath to defend his county, he knew he was destined to join the US Navy.

Cook can trace his family’s Navy service back four generations. His father finished his Navy career in the same year Cook completed boot camp. You could say Cook was born to be in the Navy.

Cook said his father ‘pulled a few strings with the Admiral’ to get him assigned to Naval Air Station North Island in San Diego, California, where his father served.
When he arrived at his first command, Cook’s division officer said his father had requested Cook for the next day and for him to wear his Service Dress Blue uniform. Cook asked his father, “What’s going on?”

“He said, ‘I’m getting a Navy commendation medal and I want you standing ranks with me.’ I thought that was pretty cool,” said Cook. “I got to have tea with the Admiral.”

Cook spent eighteen months at NAS North Island keeping Grumman C-1 Trader aircraft in the air. On his second command assignment, Cook traded shore duty (land-based duty) for sea duty. Sea duty meant that Cook would pack up his sea bag and move on to a commissioned vessel.

Cook asked command, “what ship?” The answer was the USS Kitty Hawk. “I was like ‘cool’,” said Cook. “I joined up in North Carolina, so I had a connection with it.”

That connection inspired Cook to read up on the Kitty Hawk’s history. Cook found another fact that made him feel a bond with the aircraft carrier. 

“I was born in 1961. The ship was commissioned in March of 1961,” said Cook. “So, I had a connection with that, being so close to my birthday. It was kind of a spiritual thing between me and the ship.”

Cook’s bond with the USS Kitty Hawk grew stronger early one morning in 1984. After a training exercise with the South Koreans, the carrier continued sailing through the Sea of Japan. Cook remembers that his squadron wasn’t flying that night, but he was still at his post on the flight deck. Sometime near 0300 hours, Cook took a snack break that he would never forget.

“I went down to the berthing area and opened my coffin locker, grabbed a candy bar, and about that time, 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 the Kitty Hawk and the Russian submarine had been playing a game of cat and mouse for weeks.

“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.”

Scared, but not surprised, Cook said these games between Russian and American vessels were common during this period in American history. His own E-2 Hawkeye squadron took pictures of the Russian submarine very close to the carrier’s battle group. 

Cook believes the Russian submarine had already crossed the Kitty Hawk’s bow at least once before the collision.

“Hitting a nuclear submarine about where the reactor is, it’s a good thing that we all didn’t get blown up,” said Cook. “It could have been bad.”

To read rest of story, click on link: https://theveteransmuseum.org/still-hoping-to-save-the-kitty-hawk/