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USS Cuttlefish, a 1130-ton Cachalot class submarine built at Groton, Connecticut, was commissioned in June 1934. Following initial service in the Atlantic area, she went to the Pacific in June 1935 and operated along the West Coast and in Hawaiian waters until late June 1937. Based at Groton, Connecticut, Cuttlefish spent more than a year on experimental and training duties at the Naval Submarine School. From October 1938 to March 1939 she performed similar functions at Coco Solo, Panama Canal Zone. The submarine operated out of Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, after June 1939, participating in combat readiness exercises and making cruises to Samoa and the U.S. Pacific coast.
When the Pacific war began in December 1941 Cuttlefish was completing an overhaul at the Mare Island Navy Yard, California. Following her return to Pearl Harbor, she began her first war patrol in January 1942. This took her into the north central Pacific, where she gathered information on Japanese-held islands. Her second war patrol, into the Marianas in May 1942, included three encounters with enemy forces that subjected her to depth charge and bombing attacks. While returning to Pearl Harbor in early June, Cuttlefish was assigned picket duty well to the west of Midway Atoll. In the early stages of what became the Battle of Midway, she detected and reported part of the Japanese fleet advancing to attack that U.S. forward base.
Cuttlefish's third war patrol, off Japan in July-September 1942, included several attacks on enemy shipping but apparantly generated no sinkings. Like most U.S. submarines of her generation, she suffered from chronic mechanical problems and, at the end of that cruise, was ordered to the Atlantic for training service. She spent the rest of World War II assigned to the Groton Submarine School, helping to prepare submarine officers and men for combat. USS Cuttlefish was decommissioned in October 1945 and sold for scrapping in February 1947.