The USS MARS AFS-1 final assignment was as a target ship for military operations in the waters off Hawaii. She took quite a pounding before finally giving up. Mars was sunk on 15 July 2006 at 1622 hours in 2,750 fathoms of water, 54 miles from land. Our ship's bell is now located in Mars, PA.
The 2008 Pittsburgh, PA Reunion registration form and booklet are ready for download and printing. Give the booklet time to download it will take sometime depending on your internet connection. Remember the deadline for this Reunion is August first. The reunion dates are September 10th - 14th, 2008 Please bring your printed booklet and schedule to Pittsburgh.
When making your hotel reservations please call the local Radisson Hotel phone number: 412-922-8400 and ask for reservations to get the Mars Reunion special rate for the 10th through the 14th.
Our Ship's Store page has items that you may ordered please visit this page to see what is available. You may print out an order form fill it out remember to place a return address label on the form in the appropriate space provided, mail it along with your check to the address on the form.
Ken Dively is our new Ship's Store Manager. Knowing of his skills and back ground we are anticipating new things to come.
We have now located over 1202 former crew members. To keep this number growing we need your help. If you are visiting this site for the first time and you are a former crew member and you have not made contact with us, please click on this link to go to our feedback page form .
Feed back forms are being filled out and submitted on an average of three a week. This makes us very happy when we hear from you.
I talked on the phone yesterday with Chaplain Snyder. We had a very nice conversation he hopes to attend the Pittsburgh reunion and he has another ship's reunion the very next weekend in Baltimore MD. He said he is looking forward to golfing today.
Had a problem with the ship's store PDF file not opening up in that format. I have been working on getting it to work for two days now. Nothing worked and I was unable to correct that file. I just ended up deleting it and going back to my original Word Documents and recreating that file. I am happy to report that the new file is uploaded to this site and the link is working.
Received an email from Linda Raykowski today. John Passed away from Cancer on Tuesday June 24th. He was buried today in North Carolina. She asked that we remember him come September during our reunion.
Well that is all for now more to come later.
Updated: 27June 2008
Web-Master:
Art Sweetland
web-master@ussmars.com
