17 Oct 2000: USS Kitty Hawk gets buzzed by Russian jets

The USS Kitty Hawk (CV-63) get overflown by Russian jets. This should never happen.

The photo above was taken by a Russian reconnaissance jet as it buzzed 200 feet above the USS Kitty Hawk as the ship steamed in the Sea of Japan on 17 October 2000. As you can see, the flight deck was far from being ready to launch CAP aircraft. According to some reports, it took over 40 minutes for the Kitty Hawk to launch any aircraft in response to this overflight. Even then, rumor has it that all the ship could muster to launch was a lowly EA-6B Prowler, no match for the Russian jets.

The skipper on that day was Captain Allen G. Myers, who had assumed command 27 May 2000. Ordinarily when a skipper gets caught with his figurative pants down like Captain Myers apparently did, he winds up pushing pencils at some far-flung outpost, never to be seen again. Myers bucked that trend, though, retiring as a Vice Admiral before beginning a lucrative career last year as a vice president at a defense contractor.

Once upon a time I admired the Navy’s flavor of military justice, with it’s deep tradition of a captain’s accountability. By custom as well as international and maritime law a captain at sea is essentially God. With this awesome responsibility comes ultimate accountability. Or so I thought. My first skipper, uh … “bent” our ship, sliced through our sonar array, and made other mistakes that would’ve sunk mere mortal captains. His Naval Academy buddy happened to be Secretary of the Navy, though, and having friends like that makes mistakes magically disappear. My CO went on to retire with three stars and eventually I realized that military justice is a crock.

The Kitty Hawk overflight has become a bit of a legend, actually, and it took some work to track down this photographic proof. The photo ran in the January 2003 issue of the Proceedings of the United States Naval Institute, where author LCDR Mike Studeman offers the photo and a brief mention the incident:

To be sure, the USS Kitty Hawk (CV-63) would have found [detailed accounting of prior Russian aircraft activity] such as this useful prior to the Russian Su-24 Fencer and Su-27 Flanker flyovers in the Sea of Japan in fall 2000, after which photos of the flight deck were e-mailed to the aircraft carrier’s commanding officer.

Other than that, you’ll find few mentions of the incident. A story in the Stars and Stripes military newspaper has since disappeared. Old links to the photo on websites have since gone dead. No mention is made of it in the ship’s official command history for 2000. And of course, it’s been scrubbed from the ship’s Wikipedia page. The Naval History site for the Kitty Hawk casts doubt on it with an accounting peppered with “purported” and “alleged:”

17 Oct 2000: While operating in the Sea of Japan Kitty Hawk was overflown by a pair of Russian aircraft, allegedly a Sukhoi Su-24 Fencer and Su-27 Flanker. The overflight purportedly surprised the ship, which failed to launch her alert aircraft in time to intercept the inbound Russians, due to communications errors. Additional flyovers occurred on 12 October and 9 November 2000, without the ship being surprised.

The only substantial news story on the incident comes from the Los Angeles Times on Nov 16, 2000:

MOSCOW — Crowing with pride, Russia’s air force chief claimed Wednesday that a group of Russian warplanes buzzed the U.S. aircraft carrier Kitty Hawk in the Sea of Japan, taking pictures of the reaction on deck, in an episode that flashed back to the cat-and-mouse games of the Cold War.

“For the Americans, our planes were a complete surprise,” boasted Gen. Anatoly M. Kornukov, the Russian air force’s commander in chief. “In the pictures, you can clearly see the panic on deck.”

Having seen hours of carrier flight operations from the vantage point of my ship acting as plane guard, I can tell you this photo shows a flight deck caught totally unprepared. Up until yesterday, I didn’t know this photo existed. I enjoyed tracking it down.