CORONADO: The aircraft carrier Kitty Hawk will leave North Island Naval Air Station in Coronado tomorrow en route to its retirement in Bremerton, Wash., Navy officials announced yesterday.

Sixty-five former crewmen – many members of the carrier's commissioning crew in 1961 – will join 1,600 current Kitty Hawk sailors for the voyage to Puget Sound. There, the ship will be stripped of useful gear as it is prepared for decommissioning in January.

The Kitty Hawk was a fixture at North Island from the early 1960s until 1998, when it left San Diego for its new home in Yokosuka, Japan. It is the Navy's last non-nuclear-powered aircraft carrier. –S.L.