Members of the crew of the USS Nebraska will return to this year's AppleJack. They are pictured in last year's parade.

Approval for Nebraska City’s AppleJack festival has apparently reached the ocean depths and the crew of the USS Nebraska.

After visiting the fall festival for the first time last year and pondering plans for 2008, the crew informed Mayor Jo Dee Adelung they will make Nebraska City an annual destination.

The nuclear submarine’s blue crew has made regular visits to Nebraskaland Days in North Platte and now the gold crew is circling the dates Sept. 19 and 20.

“It’s huge,” said Mayor Adelung. “They told me that because of the amazing reception the crew got here at AppleJack that they would like it to become the tradition of the gold crew.”

Adelung had enlisted the help of Allen Beerman, former Nebraska secretary of state, and the Big Red Sub Club to encourage the crew’s first visit.

“I can’t think of a better place for the U.S.S. Nebraska crew to be than in Nebraska City,” she said.

This year, the mayor and her husband, Perry Adelung, had just returned from the Pacific Ocean near Washington state, where they toured the submarine and even got to go on top of the surfaced boat, when the decision was made for the crew to return to Nebraska City.

The mayor said the Chief of the Boat Robert Butterton was talking about the AppleJack parade, where the crew was grand marshal. “It seems they don’t get to do things like that very often. Having everyone standing and waiving and cheering, it still brings goose bumps. It was just absolutely incredible,” she said.

The crew’s itinerary this year has not been finalized, but they are invited to visit a Nebraska City school on Friday, judge the AppleJack recipe contest and catch the parade on Saturday.

“The point of the visit from the Navy’s perspective, and certainly from the Big Red Sub Club’s perspective, is so the citizens of Nebraska have the most opportunities to meet with them. Nebraska City will try to get them out to meet as many people as possible,” Adelung said.

“They want the opportunity to tell the citizens of Nebraska how wonderful it is that we take such pride in our namesake of the boat,” she said.

The ballistic missile submarine U.S.S. Nebraska (SSBN 739) was first launched in 1992. It has a crew of 122.

It is the second U.S. Navy vessel to be named after the state of Nebraska. The first was a 14,000-ton battleship that was in service from 1907 to 1923 and provided training and escort duty during World War I.