By Donna Beth Weilenman
Staff Reporter

A submarine tender used to salvage usable materials from World War II Japanese vessels before they were sunk is leaving the Maritime Administration’s Reserve Fleet at Suisun Bay on Tuesday to be broken apart in Texas, Kim Riddle, acting director of the Office of Public Affairs, said.

The USS Nereus, named for one of the Greek manifestations of “The Old Man of the Sea,” is expected to be pulled away from its moorings at about 11 a.m. and will be scrubbed of marine growth and loose exterior paint in the dry docks of Allied Defense Recycling (California Dry Dock Solutions) at Mare Island.

Ironically, the ship was built at the Mare Island Naval Shipyard beginning Oct. 12, 1943, and was launched Feb. 12, 1945, Riddle said. It carried 72 officers and 1,470 enlisted servicemen.

After its preparation at Mare Island, the ship will be towed to ESCO Marine Inc., Brownsville, Texas, Riddle said.

The tender is the 36th non-retention ship to be pulled out of Suisun Bay since 2009, when President Barack Obama and MARAD announced the obsolete ships would be removed from the fleet.

This puts MARAD well ahead of its disposal schedule, Riddle said. MARAD was supposed to have at least 28 of those ships out of the bay by Sept. 30, she said.

The Nereus, designated AS-17, was the fifth and last Fulton-class submarine tender ordered by the U.S. Navy, Riddle said.

It is nearly 530 feet long, with a beam more than 73 feet wide. It could travel at more than 15 knots.

It was sent to Japan early in 1946, where its crew stripped 39 Japanese submarines of any usable material and equipment. Then it towed the subs out to sea and sank them with deck guns under the program Operation Roads End.

It returned to California loaded with torpedoes. Then it traveled to the Aleutian Islands as part of Operation Blue Nose.

The Nereus eventually passed through the Bering Strait to cross the Arctic Circle. During Operation Blue Nose, crews of the Nereus and other vessels examined the shapes of ice packs.

In 1948, after its return to California for an overhaul in Vallejo, the Nereus primarily was engaged in submarine repair and services in San Diego, Riddle said.

It also was the camera ship during the sinking of the cruiser Salt Lake City 130 miles off the West Coast.

“In 1955, the ship participated in the first test firing of submarine-launched Regulus missiles,” Riddle said. Then it began servicing subs that were armed with Polaris ballistic missiles.

In 1960, it was the first West Coast tender to service a nuclear submarine, the Halibut.

The ship traveled to Pearl Harbor in Hawaii, to Acapulco, Mexico, and to other West Coast ports.

In 1967, the Nereus became the flagship for the commanders of the Submarine Flotilla 1, and the Submarine Squadron 5.

That same year, the ship received an extensive overhaul and received updated equipment to speed its operations, after which it returned to duty in the Pacific.

The ship can be seen in the movie “Ice Station Zebra,” an unidentified former crew member said on a website devoted to the ship. He wrote that the sub tender is in the background in a scene in which the USS Tigerfish’s commanding officer, portrayed by Rock Hudson, rides out to a Scottish pier. Some of the men seen wearing dress blues on the Nereus were part of the ship’s crew.

The Nereus was decommissioned and moved to the Reserve Fleet in Suisun Bay in 1971.