S.F. News Call Bulletin, Dec. 27, 1963...
The Polaris submarine Wood row Wilson was to join the United States Navy today at commissioning ceremonies at Mare Island Naval Shipyard.
Rear Adm. Elmer E. Yeomans, commandant of the Twelfth Naval District, was to preside at the commissioning and Chief Justice Earl Warren was to deliver the principal address.
As the commissioning party entered the Vallejo shipyard, it drove past a group of pickets of the Committee for Non-Violent Action - West, which was handing out leaflets protesting that Polaris submarines are "another finger on the nuclear trigger."
It was the fourth time the committee has paraded in protest at Mare Island.
The Wilson, eighth nuclear powered undersea craft built at Mare Island is the third to be fitted with Polaris firing tubes - 16 of them - and it is also equipped with four conventional torpedo tubes.
The vessel was launched last Feb. 22 with Miss Eleanor Sayre, granddaughter of the late President Wilson, presiding at the christening.
It was Mare Island's 502nd launching.
Another of the Lafayette class subs, the Wilson is 425 feet long with a beam of 33 feet and 7,500 displacement tons surfaced and 8,200 tons submerged.
She has two crews of 13 officers and 124 enlisted men who alternate on tours of duty.
The "blue" crew is commanded by Comdr. C. N. Mitchell and the "gold" crew by Comdr. Walter N. Dietzen. They were classmates at the Naval Academy, from which they graduated in the class of June 1944.
Both served in the Pacific until the defeat of the Japanese. Mitchell participated in the campaign at Palau, Leyte Gulf, Iwo Jima and Okinawa, and Dietzen on two successful patrols on the submarine Tirante.