This Sealion is SS-315, the second boat of the name, a Balao-class submarine built by Electric Boat at Groton. The first Sealion was lost at Cavite in December 1941. This one was laid down on 25 February 1943, launched on 31 October 1943, and commissioned on 8 March 1944. Eli Thomas Reich had her from that day. He had served in the first boat.
On 12 September 1944, on her second patrol, she sank the transport Rakuyo Maru. The Australian War Memorial records that she and other submarines then picked up Allied prisoners from that convoy. The boats had not known the prisoners were aboard.
On 21 November 1944 she met a force that included the battleship Kongo. The Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships says the formation split, and that Sealion tracked the slower group. At 0524 a great explosion lit the sky and Kongo was gone. She is the only American submarine that sank a Japanese battleship. The Naval Institute's account of Reich says the Navy Cross for that patrol was his third.
The same fighting-ship history gives her the Presidential Unit Citation for six war patrols. She was decommissioned on 2 February 1946, recommissioned on 2 November 1948 as a transport submarine, and decommissioned again on 20 February 1970.