Brenda Marie Rivers
Huntington Ingalls Industries’ Newport News Shipbuilding unit has installed a 726-ton lower bow onto the John F. Kennedy nuclear-powered aircraft carrier, which the U.S. Navy aims to commission in late 2019.
The bulbous lower bow extends CVN 79 by 122 feet and is the final component of the warship’s underwater hull structure that reaches 1,096 feet and spans a length beyond three football fields, HII said Friday.
The bow, over 64 feet tall and 54 feet wide, contains tanks and chain lockers encompassing 84K square feet and is one of the heaviest superlifts lowered onto the ship.
HII laid the ship’s keel in 2015 and recently installed a 905-metric ton superlift unit between the ship’s hangar bay and flight deck, marking the ship’s 50 percent completion.
The Kennedy construction project utilizes the efforts of over 3K shipbuilders and 2K suppliers across the nation.
