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‘The floating White House’

There’s only one ship in the U.S. fleet that can say it served under President John F. Kennedy and even that it hosted JFK overnight. Only two years into its commissioned service, Kitty Hawk was the pride of the U.S. fleet in the early 1960s. Operating off San Diego on June 6-7, 1963, Kennedy and an entourage including the secretary of the Navy, chief of naval operations and the rest of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, visited Kitty Hawk overnight viewing a weapons demonstration where Kennedy spoke to the crew and assembled visitors.

While on the ship, JFK spent the night in the captain’s inport cabin while the crew commemorated the occasion by calling the ship the “floating White House.” The ship and carrier task group presented Kennedy with a special “old Carolina porch rocker” rocking chair embroidered with the ship’s seal by Boatswain’s Mate 2nd Class Jesse R. Johnson of Atlanta, Ga.

U.S. Navy National Archives
Kennedy’s speech included mention of the Cuban Missile Crisis the previous fall, saying the “Events of October 1962 indicated, as they had all through history, that control of the sea means security. Control of the seas can mean peace. Control of the seas can mean victory. The United States must control the seas if it is to protect your security …”

Later, Kennedy wrote of his visit to Kitty Hawk in a letter to Generalissimo Chiang Kai Shek of Taiwan that the Kitty Hawk and her crew at sea “gives real meaning to the phrase, ‘Our first Line of Defense.’”

In honor of the visit, an engraved steel plaque was placed on her flight deck. That plaque is long gone now — but the memory of his visit lives on.