Newspapers on Intrepid Transcript

Richard Johnson: I have a newspaper here that’s called the Ketcher.

Narrator: The crew of Intrepid kept informed by reading the ship’s newspaper. During its time in service, Intrepid had three different papers—Intrepid, Ketcher, and Achiever. They covered everything from sports to poetry.

Robert Lillie: Anything that was, I guess, newsworthy and noteworthy from the Intrepid. That was in the newsletter. Ports we went into, cartoons. Bob Maier, who was in public relations, would interview the guys, “Hey, what did you do over there?” You know, stuff like that. And we’d print that stuff up.

Narrator: Each issue of the paper was written and printed right on the ship.

Richard Johnson, yeoman second class, was one of the enlisted men who wrote for Ketcher in 1956.

Johnson: One of the articles I wrote, where we won the CNO Award, and since I was in Operations, I got all the information, so I was able to more or less print it.

And it says, “Intrepid has been awarded the Chief of Naval Operations Safety Award for AIRLANT attack carriers, in recognition of her achievement in aviation safety and accident prevention.”

The Intrepid didn’t have any losses at all, which is phenomenal.

Narrator: Bob Lillie, lithographer third class, worked in the print shop that printed the papers.

Lillie: We’d set up type for the headline, and use their copy again, setting it up, would take a picture of it, negative of it, and put it together, and that’s how it worked, yeah. And you take this plate and put it on the press. And it rolls around; you put ink on it, and boom, you print the job.

Narrator: Each crew of Intrepid left a unique stamp on the paper. For example, during the early 1970s, Achiever tackled the important social issues of the day, including discrimination and the need for equal opportunity in the Navy.

There’s no better way to get to know Intrepid’s crew than by reading the papers. After all, this paper was for them.