PT-37 was a 77-foot Elco motor torpedo boat, built at the Elco works of Electric Boat in Bayonne. She was laid down on 12 April 1941, launched on 25 June, and placed in service on 18 July. For a few months that spring her paperwork called her PTC-17, a motor boat submarine chaser, and in March she was PT-37 again. She started in Motor Torpedo Boat Squadron 1 and moved to Squadron 2 on 13 August 1941. In the summer of 1942 she went to the Solomons with the Tulagi boats.
Leonard A. Nikoloric had her in October. On the night after 6 November she was with two other boats south of Savo when destroyers found them. He got one torpedo away. A shell burst close aboard and knocked the men on deck off their feet. Quartermaster John D. Legg, still holding the cockpit rail, pushed the throttles open and put the wheel over. He kept her zigzagging until Nikoloric could take her back. She was not sunk.
Lester H. Gamble had her by 7 December. That night she waited near Savo with the striking group. She fired two torpedoes at the leading ship. Nobody on board saw them hit. On the night of 11–12 December she was out again, with Henry S. Taylor in PT-40. Gamble, Taylor, and Williams E. Kreiner each claimed a torpedo hit. The ship that sank was Teruzuki, Rear Admiral Tanaka's flagship, stopped by two torpedoes in the stern. The fire reached her depth charges. Nine men were killed. Which boat put the torpedoes into her is still argued, and the hit is not pinned to PT-37.
John H. Clagett had her on a black night late in January 1943 and fired three torpedoes with nothing seen at the end of the run. On 1 February, James J. Kelly took her out with the boats sent against the destroyers evacuating Guadalcanal. Off Cape Esperance she fired four torpedoes and turned away. A shell hit her gasoline tanks. She burned. Kelly was lost with her. One man was picked up, Motor Machinist's Mate Eldon O. Jenter, wounded and burned. Later accounts name the destroyer Kawakaze for that shell. The same night the destroyer Makigumo was lost while maneuvering to avoid torpedo boats, and a captured paper says she struck a mine. That sinking is not this boat's.