She sank ten Japanese vessels, totaling 46,212 tons, including the light cruiser Yubari and a submarine chaser.

She departed Balboa in the Panama Canal Zone on 22 February 1944 and set course for the South West Pacific Area.

She made her first enemy contact, three Japanese merchant ships, on 10 April 1944 but failed to gain a favorable attack position.

On 27 April 1944, with the help of signals intelligence, Bluegill sighted an Imperial Japanese Navy destroyer lying to off Sonsorol Island.

The two submarines departed Manus on 11 May, and Bluegill returned to her patrol area near Halmahera and Morotai in the Maluku Islands.

While she continued to maneuver for a favorable attack position on the convoy later that day, a Japanese plane forced her to crash-dive and dropped depth charges.

Bluegill embarked upon her second war patrol at the end of June 1944, stopped at Manus on 5 and 6 July, and then got underway for Davao Gulf off Mindanao in the Philippine Islands.

She attained a good firing position, but the escorts detected her and the cargo ship began radical evasive maneuvers.

While off Maculi Point on Mindanao on 7 August 1944, Bluegill spotted a Japanese cargo ship accompanied by two escorts, a decoy vessel, and three aircraft overhead.

On 13 August 1944, Bluegill caught sight of a Japanese cargo ship escorted by two torpedo boats, two submarine chasers, and a decoy vessel.

On 6 October 1944, she encountered an interisland steamer off Bondoc Point on southern Luzon in the Philippine Islands and riddled it with gunfire.

The steamer remained stubbornly afloat at the approach of darkness, so Bluegill was forced to expend a torpedo to sink it.

On 12 October 1944, Bluegill surfaced in the midst of three small Japanese cargo ships of a type known to the Americans as "sea trucks" off Tumao Point on northwestern Mindanao.

Before dawn on 18 October 1944, Bluegill contacted a Japanese 14-ship convoy while on the surface off Manila on Luzon but could not reach a favorable firing position.

On 20 October 1944, Bluegill expended her remaining torpedoes in an unsuccessful attack on two Japanese tankers escorted by a submarine chaser.

Repair of her battle damage kept Bluegill in port until she stood out of Fremantle on 19 December 1944 for her fourth war patrol.

Early on 19 March, she made an unsuccessful submerged torpedo attack on an auxiliary sailing vessel and the "sea truck" it was preparing to take in tow.

Following fruitless searches along the coast of Borneo, Bluegill arrived off Japanese-occupied French Indochina on 27 March 1945.

At around 10:20 on 28 March 1945, Bluegill heard a combination of sonar pings and depth-charge explosions to the south as Blackfin attacked the Japanese convoy HI-88J as it moved up the coast of French Indochina.

Two of them struck home, but Honan Maru managed to ground herself on the nearby shore to avoid sinking and permit salvage.

She sent a landing party of 12 men ashore, and they found the island to be uninhabited, discovering that the Japanese naval garrison had recently been evacuated.

Later in June 1945, Bluegill headed for San Francisco, California, where she arrived on 2 July 1945 and soon began an overhaul at the Bethlehem Steel Company shipyard.

For the remainder of her career, she divided her time between training duties along the U.S. West Coast and periodic cruises to the Far East.

Bluegill was decommissioned at San Diego on 28 June 1969, and her name was struck from the Navy Vessel Register the same day.

On 3 December 1970, she was scuttled and moored to the sea bed as a salvage trainer about 2 kilometers (1.1 nmi; 1.2 mi) off Lahaina, Maui, Hawaii, in 40 meters (131 ft) of water.