Sailfish began as Squalus, a Sargo-class submarine, SS-192. Portsmouth Navy Yard laid her down on 18 October 1937, launched her on 14 September 1938, and the Navy commissioned her on 1 March 1939. Oliver F. Naquin had her. On 23 May 1939, off the New Hampshire coast, the main induction failed during a dive and the after part of the boat flooded. She went to the bottom. Twenty-six men were lost there. The rest were brought up. Charles B. Momsen led the divers.
She was raised and towed into Portsmouth on 13 September 1939, and decommissioned on 15 November. On 9 February 1940 she was renamed Sailfish. She was recommissioned on 15 May 1940, with Lieutenant Commander Morton C. Mumma in command. Robert E. M. Ward relieved the captain then aboard on 21 October 1943. The patrol report of her tenth war patrol is his first in command.
That patrol put her south of Japan in a typhoon. On 4 December 1943 she sank the escort carrier Chuyo. Twenty-one American prisoners from Sculpin were aboard the carrier. One of them survived. The Naval Submarine League's note on the patrol says Ward received the Navy Cross for it. The boat's own record includes a Presidential Unit Citation.
She came back to the Atlantic in 1945 for training duty. She was decommissioned on 27 October 1945 and sold for scrap in June 1948.