[1] The ship launching was sponsored by Mrs. Howard S. Rue, Jr., formerly Jacqueline Bond Jones, daughter of Lieutenant Commander Roy Kehlor Jones, commanding officer of the submarine, USS S-4 (SS-109) which tragically sunk following an accidental collision with the USCG Paulding off Provincetown, Massachusetts on 17 December 1927, resulting with a loss of all 40 men aboard the submarine.

In an impressive operational training mission in August 1948, the Kittwake participated in a rescue and salvage exercise with the submarine USS Sea Owl, during which the sub lay inert on the bottom of Panama Bay with simulated casualties.

[1][5] The Kittiwake (along with the USS Pawcatuck) supplied power for the helpless battleship and its divers used high pressure hoses to flush away muddy sand which had fouled the battlewagon's propellers, while Navy tanker ships lightened the Missouri's load of fuel by pumping their own tanks to capacity, then going to the piers to unload them, and returning to the Missouri to repeat the process.

[5] On 14 December 1953, she hit the headlines again with her rescue of 55 sailors from the waters of Hampton Roads after a 50-foot motor launch from the USS Pittsburg had capsized in heavy seas.

Prior to assuming command, Hibbs attended the Armed Forces Staff College in Norfolk and the Deep Sea Divers School in Washington DC.

Departing Charleston, South Carolina, 16 April, Kittiwake arrived at St. Nazaire, France, 3 May with two Landing Craft Utility (LCU's) in tow.

Through 1964 and 1965, Kittiwake continued her role in maintaining the readiness of individual submarines, which were to carry out their defense and deterrence missions effectively.

She escorted them as they left the United States East Coast shipyards for sea trials, standing ready to come to their rescue should difficulties arise.

Following torpedo recovery and training off the coast of Spain, she sailed for Holy Loch, Scotland 30 June 1965, to give support to Submarine Squadron 14 there.

At this point, the Kittiwake's master diver, Dean Hawes, who usually supervised all diving operations, requested and was granted permission to go down and make his own personal evaluation.

[8] While there, diver Dean Hawes read a magazine account about the Navy's most baffling mystery -- the disappearance of the merchant ship USS Cyclops in 1918, enroute to Baltimore from Barbados with a load of manganese ore and 309 passengers and crew, and vanished without a trace -- that caused his memory to flash back to that dive.

All the divers who had been on her deck submitted their individual impressions to a Navy artist and the composite rendering which resulted, James said, "looked remarkably like Cyclops."

To ensure ease in locating the wreck, the Navy directed another submarine with highly sophisticated sonar to accompany the Kittiwake.

Noting the backward motion, they ordered an increase in the motor drive speed to correct it and get Kittiwake moving forward.

In January 1986, as the Kittiwake started as a routine training assignment in the Gulf of Mexico, it encountered three diversions on its return trip to Norfolk.

Then, early in February, as the Kittiwake headed for her homeport, the ship was assigned to Cape Canaveral to assist in the space shuttle Challenger recovery efforts.

[19] Finally, as the ship rounded Cape Hatteras, North Carolina, it was called on a third time to help a 39-foot sailboat that had lost its mast and was foundering in waters known as the graveyard of the Atlantic.

[20] On 5 December 1989, the USS Kittiwake provided surface support during a Navy Trident missile test in the Atlantic Ocean.

The Kittiwake, along with the USS Grasp, a rugged steel-hulled rescue and salvage ship, sandwiched the 190-foot Greenpeace vessel between the two Navy vessels, leaving a 3-foot-long gash in the hull of the MV Greenpeace that crew members stuffed with mattresses to keep the water out, hosed down occupants of the Greenpeace vessel with cold sea water to discourage them from interfering, and disabled the engines by shooting seawater down the smoke stack of the ship into the engine room, making her dead in the water in rough seas, and thereby ending the morning-long cat-and-mouse game nearly 40 miles east of Cape Canaveral.

Her title was transferred in November 2008 for an undisclosed amount to the government of the Cayman Islands for the purpose of using Kittiwake to form a new artificial reef.