Gato was the name ship of her class, a fleet submarine built by Electric Boat at Groton. She was laid down on 5 October 1940, launched on 21 August 1941, and commissioned on 31 December 1941, the week the war began. Lieutenant Commander William G. Myers had her. The name is the catshark. She was the first Navy ship to carry it.
She trained at New London and went west in February 1942. On 23 March, off San Francisco, she was making a trim dive when the Navy blimp TC-13 took her for a Japanese submarine and dropped four depth charges. The first two fell within fifty yards of the periscope. The next two went off as she passed 120 feet. The damage was real. No one was killed. It was the only time in the war a Navy blimp depth-charged a Navy submarine.
Her first patrol was in the Marshalls. On 3 May she attacked a converted carrier and was driven off by four destroyers. She did not sink it. On 24 May she was ordered onto the western approaches to Midway, one of the twelve boats on that line, and she took station about 280 miles west of the atoll. On 4 June she was told to close the enemy to the northwest and ran on the surface to do it. She did not get there. On 5 June two destroyers found her. One put a searchlight on her as she tried to work out to the beam, and she went down. She never got a shot at the carriers. On the way home she found a floating mine and could not destroy it. The battle that the class is named beside was a battle she watched from too far off.
Myers left her in October 1942. Lieutenant Commander Robert J. Foley had her for the patrols that counted. On the fourth, off New Georgia, the Navy credits her with three ships: the transport Kenkon Maru on 21 January 1943, the cargo ship Nichiun Maru on 29 January, and the cargo ship Suruga Maru on 15 February. On the fifth she went to Toep, on Bougainville, and put an Australian party ashore. She took off 27 children, nine mothers, and three nuns, and on 31 March transferred them to the submarine chaser SC-531 off Ramos. In May she landed more commandos at Toep and took more people out. The Presidential Unit Citation is for the fourth patrol through the eighth.
The eighth, in February and March 1944, is credited with a trawler off Truk, the transport Daigen Maru No. 3, the cargo ship Okinoyama Maru No. 3, and two more trawlers taken with the deck gun. After that the work changed. She lay on lifeguard station off Truk in June 1944 and did not pick anyone up. On 15 July, off Chichi Jima, she took two aviators out of the water. Between 27 and 30 April 1945, on the Okinawa lifeguard line, she went into the shallows off Cape Toi, on Kyushu, and took ten Army fliers off the beach. On 14 February 1945 she is credited with a coast-defense ship, and on 21 February with the cargo ship Tairiku Maru.
On 15 August 1945 she was off the east coast of Honshu, making an approach on a sea truck, when the cease-fire came in. She did not fire. On 31 August she entered Tokyo Bay. She was there on 2 September when the surrender was signed on Missouri. She left the next day, went back through Pearl Harbor and the Panama Canal, and was decommissioned at the New York Navy Yard on 16 March 1946. She spent the years after that as a reserve training boat, first at New York and then at Baltimore. She was struck on 1 March 1960 and sold on 25 July 1960 to Northern Metals in Philadelphia, to be broken up. Thirteen battle stars.