Batfish received the Presidential Unit Citation for her sixth war patrol during which she sank three Japanese submarines in the South China Sea in four days.

Originally to be named Acoupa, hull SS-310 was renamed Batfish on 24 September 1942 prior to its keel laying on 27 December 1942 at the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard in Kittery, Maine.

Following her commissioning, Batfish underwent an extensive shakedown and training period to instruct the crew in combat procedures for diving, attacking, evading, and damage control.

She left the Portsmouth Navy Yard in mid-September 1943, paused briefly at Newport, Rhode Island, to practice on the torpedo range, and then continued on to New London, Connecticut.

Merrill chose to dive rather than use the cover of the heavy seas to close the battleship on the surface, and Batfish′s slower submerged speed caused her to fall rapidly out of range of Yamato and her escorts.

Shortly after 12:00 on 19 January 1944, a convoy of four Japanese ships appeared on the horizon and, with nightfall, Batfish made a high-speed surface run to close for an attack.

Batfish rapidly eased backwards and upwards, but endured a tense eight hours punctuated by more than 50 depth charges before she could surface and survey her damage.

On 2 July 1944, as Batfish departed her patrol area bound for Midway Atoll, a lookout sighted two Japanese ships, a small trawler traveling with a converted yacht serving as an escort.

Batfish suffered one casualty, the pharmacist's mate, who was hit by a bullet in the knee while at his post on deck in the surface gun action that ended in the destruction of what proved to be the guard boats Kamoi Maru and No.

Her assigned area offered up no worthy targets, but a report of a Japanese destroyer grounded to the north of the Palaus sent her to Velasco Reef to investigate.

On 23 August 1944, while making an approach to locate the transport again in a rain squall, Batfish found the minesweeper, which her crew still believed to be a destroyer, in her sights instead.

Escorted by the Royal Australian Navy corvette HMAS Parkes, Batfish departed Fremantle on 8 October 1944 and proceeded with the submarine USS Guitarro (SS-363) to Exmouth Gulf on the coast of Western Australia for refueling.

On 11 October 1944, two hours after leaving Exmouth Gulf, a periscope jammed in the fully raised position and defied the crew's efforts to correct the problem.

She was assigned patrols in the Sulu Sea and the area between Mindanao and Negros Island and to the west of Luzon until 4 November 1944, when she received orders to perform lifeguard duties off Lingayen Gulf.

[10][11] After her engagement with the landing barge, Batfish made no contacts until 9 February 1945, when at 22:50 her SJ radar began tracking a blip moving at 12 knots (22 km/h; 14 mph) on a course of 310 degrees – i.e., away from Aparri and toward Formosa – at a range of 11,000 yards (10,000 m).

[12] Ro-115 never acknowledged Miwa's order and never arrived at Takao, and there is no evidence that she took part in the evacuation; the destroyer escort USS Ulvert M. Moore (DE-442) probably sank her southwest of Manila on 31 January 1945.

[9] On 10 February 1945, Batfish detected approaching aircraft which she identified as a flight of four American fighters accompanying a U.S. Navy PBY Catalina flying boat.

As she pulled alongside the submarine tender USS Apollo (AS-25) in Apra Harbor on 21 February 1945, U.S. Navy photographers greeted the successful "sub killer."

She entered the shipyard at the Bethlehem Steel Shipbuilding Company there, which began modifying Batfish to participate in Operation Barney, a projected foray into the Japanese minefields guarding the southern entrance to the Sea of Japan by a nine-submarine unit equipped with new mine detectors.

In the process of lifeguarding and avoiding mistaken attacks by Allied submarines and aircraft, Batfish became the target of two torpedoes, both of which crossed narrowly ahead.

Following completion of her pre-inactivation overhaul, she was decommissioned on 6 April 1946 and laid up as a training vessel in the Pacific Reserve Fleet,[21] berthed at Mare Island.

[21] During the summer of 1959, she was assigned as a United States Naval Reserve training vessel at New Orleans, Louisiana, and on 1 July 1960, she was redesignated as an "auxiliary research submarine" (AGSS-310).

On hand at the time at Naval Support Activity New Orleans was USS Piranha, which the Navy agreed to turn over to them if they could fulfill the donation requirements.

Wanting Piranha for his hometown, then-Oklahoma State Senator James Inhofe agreed to sponsor a bill accepting the submarine for Oklahoma.

The Muskogee City-County Trust Port Authority in the meantime donated 5 acres (2.0 ha) of prime waterfront real estate for the submarine's berth and a memorial park.

Since the Arkansas River Navigable Waterway system would not be open for at least a year, the procurement committee would have to incur interim docking charges in the meantime.

[21] In September 1970, the procurement committee inspected Batfish as a possible alternative to Piranha, both of which by then were in reserve at the Naval Inactive Ship Facility in Orange, Texas.

At the shipyard, Batfish was raised on steel lifting straps and cradled between two pairs of bare-decked barges so that the submarine's draft was shallow enough to make the second phase of the tow, 1,350-mile (2,170 km) upriver, possible.

Batfish arrived at the Will Brothers Port of Muskogee Terminal on 7 May 1972: this was her temporary home until a 120-foot (37 m) wide, 1⁄4-mile (0.40 km) long trench could be dug to Batfish′s permanent berthing site.

[21] Heavy spring rains flooded the Arkansas River on 12 March 1973, which caused Batfish to strain at her moorings, with fears that she would rip loose and damage the surrounding docks or collide with the new U.S. Route 62 bridge downriver and block the channel.