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Fleet Week 2008 festivities kick off today

amNY.com and wire reports

10:50 AM EDT, May 21, 2008

NEW YORK - The city's annual Fleet Week kicks off today with a parade of naval ships on the Hudon River from the Verrazano to the George Washington Bridge.

The festivities begin at 9:30 a.m. and last until noon. There will be five U.S. warships and three Canadian entries at the 21st annual parade today.

[Click HERE for a full calendar of Fleet Week events.]

And then another Fleet Week tradition: the flooding of midtown with the men (and some women) in white.

More than 3,000 sailors and Marines are set to disembark from the ships during the eight-day event that includes public tours and a variety of aerial and simulated combat technique demonstrations by Marine Corps units.

A decade ago, as many as a dozen ships from several nations took part in Fleet Week, but the size of the assemblage has diminished in recent years. The last time it included a full-size aircraft carrier was in 2005, when the USS John F. Kennedy made its final appearance before being retired.

New York City policy bars nuclear-powered craft from the harbor, effectively denying port calls by the Navy's newer fleet carriers.

The Canadians restore a cachet absent in 2007, when the USS

Winston S. Churchill, a destroyer named for Britain's World War II prime minister, provided the nearest thing to a foreign flavor.

The World War II aircraft carrier USS Intrepid, a museum ship that traditionally serves as host for Fleet Week, is still undergoing a two-year overhaul at Staten Island, where it takes up one entire side of a pier normally used for Fleet Week.