First, note that the Navigation Control is the little 3-horizontal-lined device in the upper left corner, labelled "Nav Menu". Click it whenever you want to change pages. The selection buttons in the Nav Menu are red if they have been recently updated, such as new photos, or green if no recent changes have been made. Some of the buttons are blue if they are not yet "valid". These are details which presently contain old information from the 2022 RAYunion that will be updated as we develop new information for the 2025 RAYunion.
This site is intended to support RAYunions in the future.

Stay tuned to the USS RAY Facebook group and watch your e‑mails (and here) for more information as it becomes available.

^NEW!UPDATED 04/04/2025.^NEW!
The registration form for the 2025 RAYunion is HERE.
The RAYunion is scheduled for October 9-13, 2025 at the Crowne Plaza Hotel in North Charleston. Please make your hotel reservations as soon as possible. Keep in mind that the room rate includes two breakfast buffets each day.
Hotel Registration LINK.
Registration cutoff is 9/23/2025, this is based on the deadline given to us by the hotel. When completing the registration form, please let us know on the form if you have food allergies or any special needs. If attending the banquet (which will include a Memorial Ceremony), please select a meal from the choices list and include payment with your registration payment.
We are planning a golf outing on Sunday. Once we determine interest in the outing and number of participants we will provide the costs based on the course selected. Please note your interest where indicated on the registration form.
We had an underwhelming response to the event polling and there was not a clear choice. The committee has decided that we would research and provide information for each of the events we previously discussed, and let you decide what you would like to do and when. We will get pricing, durations and opening and closing times and provide this at the hotel. We are working on coordinating transportation to the different sites.
The hospitality room will have raffle items such as we had in Mobile. Donations of items for the raffle will be accepted and helpful. Greg Howson (Chew) will be helping up coordinate the raffle and feel free to contact him with questions (gchowson@yahoo.com). Proceeds help to defray the costs of the next RAYunion, providing seed money for that event.
For those interested, there are numerous campgrounds available in the North Charleston area, in close proximity to the hotel.
As we grow closer to the event, we will send out more details as we get them. Feel free to share with shipmates. We have done our best to include as many shipmates as possible in our emails based on the information we have. There are 602 names in our spreadsheet of crew members, of these there are 404 we have email addresses for and 219 that we have phone numbers for. Feel free to expand our information.

If anyone has copies NEM, MUC, NUC, etc. awards, please forward them to
webmaster@rayunion.net,
even if all they say is
"For completion of a mission of extreme significance to the United States"
or
"For doing the stuff you did when you didn't go where you were doing the stuff you didn't do (even though you really did.)"
See the few we have HERE.

A link to a YouTube video displaying maps of the USS RAY WAR PATROLS in World War II at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-6jISqxO4oA has been added to the RAYunion Links tab.

The USS Ray (SSN-653) was commissioned April 12, 1967, and decommissioned March 16, 1993. The first USS Ray (SS‑271) was commissioned July 27, 1943, and decommissioned February 12, 1947. It was recommissioned as a radar picket submarine on August 13, 1952 and decommissioned September 30, 1958. Welcome to all who manned RAY or helped RAY be the best. A special welcome to the families who stood by us.