MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

USS Kitty Hawk en route to the scrap yard in Texas, via the southern tip of South America

USS Kitty Hawk will have to go all the way down to the tip of South America and back up because it is too big to get through the Panama Canal.

USS Kitty Hawk CV63, the last conventionally powered United States Navy aircraft carrier left over the weekend from a naval base at Bremerton, Washington State and pulled by two tugs is on its way to a scrapyard in Texas in the Gulf of Mexico.

Kitty Hawk was reportedly sold to the Texas ship-breaking company in Brownsville for a cent and will have to go all the way down to the tip of South America and back up because it is too big to get through the Panama Canal.

Kitty Hawk served for 48 years before it was decommissioned in 2009. It sat at Puget Sound Naval Shipyard since retirement and was moved into dry dock for a time early last year to remove marine growth from the hull before it began its trip south.

Kitty Hawk was hailed as the first in a “new and greatly improved line of carriers” by then-Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Arleigh Burke /in 1961, according to the US Naval History and Heritage Command

Kitty Hawk was the first carrier of its class and had its own problems back in the day. Then-Navy Secretary John Connally noted in the summer of 1961 that “a large number of discrepancies and deficiencies have shown up” on the carrier due to shoddy workmanship.