Pacific Fleet Service
Assigned to Submarine Squadron 3 on 10 July 1959 Medregal departed Norfolk 25 July and steamed to Pearl Harbor, arriving 24 August. She served in Hawaiian waters until sailing 9 January 1960 to the Far East, arriving Yokosuka on 26 January. During the next five months she conducted training and evaluation exercises with units of the Seventh Fleet, and ranged the western Pacific from Japan to the Philippines.
Returning to Pearl Harbor 1 July, Medregal resumed type and squadron operations between Hawaii and the West Coast. Between September 1961 and March 1962 she made a second deployment with the Seventh Fleet. In October she steamed to the West Coast for ASW and Reserve training out of Puget Sound. She returned to Pearl Harbor in mid-December and for the next two years she maintained her pattern of operations between the Hawaiian Islands and the West Coast.
Medregal departed Pearl Harbor for WestPac in mid-April 1965. Steaming first to Australia, she visited Brisbane, Sydney, and Melbourne, and participated in the commemoration of the Battle of the Coral Sea. Thence, in May she sailed to the Philippines for operations out of Subic Bay. On July 13, 1965 she was in a collision with a freighter while submerged in the South China Sea. Returned to Subic Bay for repairs. Extensive damage was done to the sail, all periscopes and snorkel system were completely inoperative. After patched up in Subic Bay, returned to Pearl Harbor for a short while then to Mare Island, Vellejo, Calif. for major repairs. Arrived back in Pearl Harbor late December 1965.
Back in Pearl Harbor late in 1965, Medregal operated their until departure for Japan 2 July 1966. After reaching Yokosuka on 15 July, she joined Seventh Fleet aircraft carriers and destroyers for ASW operations in the western Pacific, and readiness and alert maneuvers with ships of the Republic of China Navy (based in Taiwan). During the rest of the year she continued to support peacekeeping operations in the troubled Far East.
In January 1967, Medregal returned to her home port in Hawaii where she resumed her type training and squadron exercises with SubRon 1. She continued duty out of Pearl Harbor until 1 May when she was assigned to SubRon 3 out of San Diego, California. On 1 May 1967, Medregal was reclassified with hull classification symbol AGSS-480.
On 6 February 1969 Medregal sank the USS Redfish (SS-395) as a target off the coast of California. Redfish was a combat veteran of World War II.
On 24 June 1969 Medregal departed San Diego for her final WestPac cruise. Stops included Hawaii, Guam, Viet Nam(twice), Subic Bay/Manila (Philippines), Chinhae (South Korea), Yokosuka/Kobe (Japan), Kaohsiung (Taiwan) and Hong Kong. Medregal arrived back in San Diego on 24 December 1969. She continued home port operations there until August 1970.
Medregal was decommissioned and struck from the Naval Vessel Register on 1 August 1970 and sold for scrapping 13 June 1972.
Read more about this topic: USS Medregal (SS-480)
Famous quotes containing the words pacific, fleet and/or service:
“Really, there is no infidelity, nowadays, so great as that which prays, and keeps the Sabbath, and rebuilds the churches. The sealer of the South Pacific preaches a truer doctrine.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“A city on th’ inconstant billows dancing;
For so appears this fleet majestical.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“Night City was like a deranged experiment in Social Darwinism, designed by a bored researcher who kept one thumb permanently on the fast-forward button. Stop hustling and you sank without a trace, but move a little too swiftly and you’d break the fragile surface tension of the black market; either way, you were gone ... though heart or lungs or kidneys might survive in the service of some stranger with New Yen for the clinic tanks.”
—William Gibson (b. 1948)