Ron Deets, RM3(SS)

DOB: 7/3/1929
Service Dates: 1948-1952
Boats Served On:
USS Remora (SS-487)

Entering the Navy & My Tour Aboard The USS Remora

In 1948 I volunteered for the submarine navy and was wisked away in a pullman car dragged, with 100 other railroad cars, by a coal burning locomotive from Great Lakes Training Center Boot Camp to Sub School at New London, Conneticut twelve weeks later. My next train ride took me to San Francisco and Submarine Sonar School for six weeks. The next move found me on the submarine tender USS Sperry to await assignment to a submarine in her squadron. After two weeks on the Sperry, where I learned how to chip paint, I was transferred to the USS Remora SS 487. Once on board I qualified in three months and was then sent to radio school in San Diego. The course lasted twelve weeks and I came back to the boat as an RM. The remainder of my four year enlistment was spent onboard the Remora. We cruised the Pacific, Japan, Alaska, and during the Korean war, Russian waters. My duties, as a radio man, included copying FOX and publishing the eight page news report for the officers and crew. The original and eight onion skin pages required tough pounding on the typewriter keys and even to this day my computer key board suffers from my heavy handed typing. All these things are just memories now and I am now making a shadow box to display my dolphins and some news clipping about the Remora. Remember how quickly the coffee urn emptied and remember how many skivies needed washing after a steep dive angle when we did a test dive after leaving the yard? The Remora was a Guppy ll when I was aboard her. She was converted after my tour of duty to a Guppy lll so the Guppy lll pictures on the web are a little different from the boat when I served on her.

Fleas - 1950

We left Japan with the Notaki Bone china that some of the married johns bought while there. The china was packed in straw and fleas. The whole boat had to be fumigated when we returned to the states. More later, Ron RM3