The former aircraft carrier Kitty Hawk sits off the coast of Long Beach, CA, on the way from Bremerton, WA, to a Texas ship-breaking company on Monday, January 24, 2022
The former aircraft carrier Kitty Hawk off the coast of Long Beach, California on the way to a Texas ship-breaking company, January 24, 2022.Jeff Gritchen, Orange County Register/SCNG via Getty Images
  • The scrapyard in Texas received the former Kitty Hawk.

  • The last conventionally powered carrier to be dismantled was the ship.

  • A shipbreaking company was going to dismantle it for a penny.

The last conventionally powered aircraft carrier commissioned by the US Navy arrived at a scrap yard in Texas on Tuesday.

The "Battle Cat" began its journey to the scrapyard in January at a naval base.

The aircraft carrier, which is too large to travel through the Panama Canal, was moved around South America and to Texas.

After nearly 50 years of service, the Kitty Hawk was retired in 2009, which included testing of new military capabilities, combat operations, race riots, and even a collision with a rival power's submarine.

The last of the Navy's conventional carriers, the first-in-class ship, was taken out of service.

The former Kitty Hawk and the former John F. Kennedy, two conventionally powered Navy aircraft carriers that were retired in 2007, will be scrapped by the Navy.

ISL told Insider that the shipbreaking company agreed to recycle the ship for such a low price because it expected to make money from the sale of scrap.

A Russian-made Tupolev TU-16 Badger-A surveillance bomber flies with U. S. Navy escort fighters over the attack carrier USS Kitty Hawk during Cold War activities over the North Pacific Ocean in January of 1963
A Russian-made Tupolev Tu-16 bomber is escorted by US Navy fighters as it flies over USS Kitty Hawk in the North Pacific Ocean, January 1963.Photo by © Museum of Flight/CORBIS/Corbis via Getty Images

At times the service history of the carrier Kitty Hawk has been exciting.

After the U-2 Dragon Lady was commissioned into naval service in 1961, the CIA and the Navy worked together to recover the aircraft from the Kitty Hawk.

According to a report by Naval History and Heritage Command, the spy plane was given the code name N315X and was tested by the pilot.

The aircraft carrier and its air wing were awarded a presidential unit citation forinflicting extensive damage and destruction to sites and installations vital to the enemy's operations during the Vietnam War.

US Navy sailors prepare a Douglas A-4 Skyhawk for takeoff from USS Constellation, a Kitty Hawk-class supercarrier, off of South Vietnam, August 16, 1966.Bettmann Archive via Getty Images

The carrier remained on station through some of the toughest parts of the war, with the air wing conducting hundreds of strikes and dropping millions of pounds of ordnance on the enemy, but the long deployment took their toll.

There were a number of fights between white and black sailors on the Kitty Hawk. The creation of a program meant to address racial issues on Navy vessels came about after more than 40 sailors were injured in the riots.

Tensions with the Soviet Union increased during the late years of the Cold War.

While the ship was conducting operations in the Sea of Japan, known in South Korea as the East Sea, a Soviet submarine believed to be the Victor I-class nuclear submarine K-314 collided with it.

The incident did not lead to a confrontation between the powers.

Sailors man the rails as the aircraft carrier USS Kitty Hawk enters Apra Harbor in Guam, April 20, 2001.US Navy Photo by Lee McCaskill/Newsmakers

The Kitty Hawk replaced the Independence as America's only forward-Deployed carrier in 1998.

After carrying out those responsibilities for 10 years, it left its position in the Pacific to support the two operations. After leaving Japan in 2008, the carrier was retired the following year.

The Kitty Hawk was the last conventionally powered aircraft carrier in its class to be destroyed. A year and a half is how long it will take to disassemble the ship.

Business Insider has an article on it.