During refitting, new surface radar was installed, as well as a new 20 mm gun; thus equipped, Growler sailed from Hawaii for her new patrol area in the Solomon Islands across the key Truk-Rabaul shipping lanes.

Maneuvering inside the escorts, Growler launched two torpedoes and saw them hit; then, as her war diary reports, she was in the unfortunate predicament of being about 400 yards (370 m) from the destroyer and had to dive without being able to continue the attack.

Unable to avoid the collision, Gilmore ordered left full rudder and all ahead flank, and rammed the enemy amidships at 17 knots (31 km/h), bending Growler's bow 18 feet to the port side.

[10] Growler’s fifth, sixth, and seventh patrols, out of Brisbane to the Bismarck-Solomons area, were relatively uneventful; heavy enemy air cover and a lack of targets resulted in her coming home empty-handed from all but the fifth, on which she sank the passenger/cargo ship Miyadono Maru.

During that patrol, an Allied aircraft she identified as a United States Army Air Forces B-26 Marauder bomber attacked her on 27 June 1943, reporting her as a Japanese submarine.

[11] Growler's seventh patrol was marred by trouble with the storage battery and generators, and on 27 October 1943, only 11 days out of Brisbane, she was ordered to Pearl Harbor (arriving 7 November) and from there to the Navy Yard at Hunter's Point, California, for an extensive overhaul and refitting.

Returning to the Pacific, on 21 February 1944, Growler departed Pearl Harbor, and after refueling at Midway Island, headed for her patrol area.

Rendezvousing with Bang (SS-385) and Seahorse (SS-304) to form a wolfpack, she continued the patrol closing several targets but achieving firing position only once, when she sank the cargo vessel Katori Maru.

Her tenth patrol, out of Pearl Harbor on 11 August, found her in a new wolf pack, nicknamed "Ben's Busters" after Growler’s skipper, Commander T.B.

Aided greatly by reconnaissance and guidance from friendly aircraft, the wolf pack closed a convoy for night surface action 31 August; their torpedoes plunged the Japanese into chaos, with their own ships shooting at each other in the dark, but no sinkings were reported.

Meantime Growler’s other torpedoes and those of Sealion and Pampanito were hitting the convoy, and when Ben's Busters returned to Fremantle submarine base, Western Australia on 26 September, they were credited with a total of six enemy ships.

After the attack was underway, Hake and Hardhead heard what sounded like a torpedo explosion and then a series of depth charges on Growler’s side of the convoy, and then nothing.

A fictionalized and resequenced version of the ramming attack by Growler on her fourth patrol features prominently in the John Wayne movie Operation Pacific.