The USS John F. Kennedy (CVN-79) officially floated in dry dock yesterday (10/29), which is the equivalent of launching for most vessels. It will be christened on December 7, 2019.
They will now proceed with post launch assembly and fitting out.
Of course, they do this, STILL having not solved 90% of the problems with CVN-78.
So soon we will likely have TWO unusable carriers.
And they likely will be laying the keel on CVN-80 within the next year.
Wasn’t there already a John F Kennedy carrier?
Yeah. She was a heavily modified Kitty Hawk class so most naval historians separate her into her own sub class.
Correct me if I’m wrong Safiel but I believe she was the last conventionally powered carrier built by the United States. Enterprise had already been in service for a few years and the Nimitz followed the Kitty Hawks and JFK in the 1970s.
Also I am not surprised about this.
They’re going to end up having to give the early Nimitz boats life extensions if this ■■■■show keeps going with the Ford boats.
Hey, it could be worse. The money could’ve been spent on social programs.
I got curious and looked it up. The JFK Carrier I was thinking of was the last conventionally powered carrier in service before it was decommissioned and is now awaiting (or was as of a year ago) scrapping at the Philadelphia Navy Yard.
https://imgur.com/gallery/4C2llPy
What a shame, there were ernest efforts to secure it after decommissioning in 2007 and make it into a museum but apparently they fizzled.
The issue is the size. The JFK and the Kitty Hawks displace nearly 90,000 tons. They aren’t much smaller than the Nimitz boats. If you take the Fords and the Nimitzs out of the running the Kitty Hawks/JFK are still the largest aircraft carriers ever built.
There aren’t many cities who can host them and maintain them. Hell even the old battleships in museum shape are hard to keep afloat and safe to tour. And they displace about 45,000 tons on the high end.
Interestingly, CV-67 was laid down as a nuclear powered carrier, but the design was converted to conventional very early in construction. And it was a heavily modified version of the Kitty Hawk.
Trouble is, because of the basic nuclear reactor design, there is a “hard” limit to the life of the Nimitz-class. 50 years is the expectation, but they might be able to coax a handful of more years out of them. CVN-68 is expected to decommission in 2022, they might be able to keep it in service until 2025, but anything past that is very iffy.
So starting by the mid 2020’s, we will be forced to shed Nimitz-class carriers, regardless of whether the Ford-class is up to the job by then or not.
Hell, the State of Texas is having a time just keeping the Battleship Texas from going to the bottom and that is a relatively small dreadnaught era battleship. Keeping a huge super carrier is beyond all but the most well funded entities.
Yeah I was reading up on it, so heavily modified that it almost (or did?) become a class of carrier unto itself.
I would have thought the fact she was not nuclear powered would have been a big plus in turning her into a museum ship? Guess not.
I got to see her when she came to Boston for the Fourth of July shortly after her being in New York for the 100th Year Anniversary Dedication of the Statue Of Liberty. My job at the time had my workshop down at the docks on Boston Harbor, and my wife at the time worked at SUPSHIP Boston so she got to get a VIP tour of her, I didn’t. I was going to but that was the time the First Gulf war got going so she had to skeedaddle out of Boston and rush to the Gulf. I missed my window!
Lovely ship, sure hate she is destined to be broken. 
I was reading some of the cruise book outtakes, what a shame that all those who served on her, all that history, all that drama, all that life and death and action…those still living will never get a chance to walk her decks again.
Yeah sad.
I know we can’t keep them all, still, some just seem like they deserve it!
Well if we had a Startrek Enterprise we could just lift her with a tractor beam and set her down on a solid and dry spot so that keeping her afloat would not be an issue!
Oh well!
