Hopes for a retired sailor’s campaign to try to save the USS Kitty Hawk have been dashed by news that the aircraft carrier has been sold to a shipbreaker for 1 cent.

The Brownsville Herald in Texas and USA Today reported that the Kitty Hawk and another mothballed carrier, the USS John F. Kennedy, will be scrapped.

The news was greeted with disappointment from Bill Nix, who splits his time between homes in Ocean Park and Underwood on the Washington state side of the Columbia River Gorge.

“I am surprised and also concerned,” he said. “It’s the inevitable end of a lot of naval vessels.”

Nix had promoted the idea of the vessel being installed as a floating museum in Astoria. North Coast officials, while sympathetic to his attempt to preserve an important part of U.S. military history, generally did not support the idea — fearing tourist crowds would swamp the community.

The USS Kitty Hawk, nicknamed “Battle Cat,” was launched in 1961 and served in Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq.

The carrier was decommissioned in 2009 at a ceremony Nix attended. It has been docked since then at the Puget Sound Naval Shipyard in Bremerton amid other older military vessels.

Nix was a U.S. Navy photographer who served two tours in Vietnam and retired as a master-at-arms and chief petty officer. Although the USS Midway, which came into service days after the end of World War II, has been preserved as a museum in San Diego, many historic vessels have been scrapped.

“It is unfortunate that they will not preserve any of the supercarriers,” Nix said.

U.S. Kitty Hawk Veterans Association had earlier given up its campaign to save the ship and focused efforts on creating a shore-based museum.

International Shipbreaking Ltd./EMR Brownsville has scrapped three other carriers. The Brownsville Herald reported that executives said the Kitty Hawk was in good shape for towing. The trip from Bremerton through the Strait of Magellan, near the tip of South America, could take 10 to 18 weeks.

The JFK, which was launched in 1968 and later took part in the Gulf War, was also sold for 1 cent to the same company. The vessel, which was decommissioned in 2007, will be towed from its mooring at the Philadelphia Navy Yard.

The newspaper reported that the company’s contract with the Naval Sea Systems Command prohibits allowing visitors to tread the decks one last time. But some arrival event or later ceremony is being contemplated, company officials said.