USS Batfish (SS-310)

The first USS Batfish (SS/AGSS-310) is a Balao-class submarine, known primarily for sinking three Imperial Japanese Navy submarines, Ro-55, Ro-112, and Ro-113, in a 76-hour period, in February 1945. USS Batfish is the first vessel of the United States Navy to be named for the batfish, a type of anglerfish that crawls about on the sea floor.

Batfish served during World War II. Her war operations spanned a period from 11 December 1943 to 26 August 1945, during which she completed seven war patrols. She is credited with having sunk nine Japanese ships totaling 10,658 tons while operating east of Japan and in the Philippine Sea, Luzon Strait, and South China Sea. Batfish received the Presidential Unit Citation for her sixth war patrol during which she sank three Japanese submarines in the South China Sea in four days.

Following the end of World War II, she was decommissioned on April 6, 1946 and laid up as a training vessel in the Pacific Reserve Fleet. She received a reactivation overhaul in January 1952 before she was recommissioned on March 7, 1952 and assigned to Submarine Division 122 in the United States Atlantic Fleet taking part in training operations in the Caribbean and along the East Coast of the United States.. She was decommissioned for the final time on August 4, 1958 and assigned to the Charleston Group of the Atlantic Reserve Fleet. In the Summer of 1959, she was assigned as a United States Naval Reserve training vessel at New Orleans, Louisiana where she was redesignated as an "auxiliary research submarine" (AGSS-310). She continued to serve at New Orleans until she was laid up in the Atlantic Reserve Fleet and her name was struck from the Naval Vessel Registry on November, 1 1969. Following a brief time in the reserve fleet she was donated to the Oklahoma Maritime Advisory Board and moved to Muskogee, Oklahoma and opened in 1973 as a museum ship.