The first Pollack was laid down 1 October 1935 by the Portsmouth Navy Yard, in Kittery, Maine; launched 15 September 1936; sponsored by Miss Anne Carter Lauman; and commissioned 15 January 1937.
She reached her new base at San Diego, California, 19 December and spent the next 11 months in a rigorous schedule of maneuvers along the western seaboard with Submarine Division 13, Scouting Force.
Except for periods of overhaul at Mare Island Navy Yard, she remained in Hawaiian waters until the outbreak of World War II.
Pollack got underway from Pearl Harbor on 18 February to intercept enemy cargo ships carrying war material to Nagasaki by way of the Formosa Channel.
Off Jaluit Atoll the next afternoon, she torpedoed and sank the 5,350-ton converted light cruiser Bangkok Maru, which was carrying 1,200 Japanese troops intending to reinforce the garrison at Tarawa.
Pollack got underway from Pearl Harbor on 28 February 1944 and battled heavy seas as she entered the assigned area of her ninth war patrol off Nanpō Islands 18 March.
Two days later she made a night surface attack and watched two torpedo hits blow the 1,327-ton patrol boat Hakuyo Maru to pieces.
She scored torpedo hits which sank the 1,270-ton Japanese destroyer Asanagi but was held down by a fierce counter-attack while the remaining ships of the convoy escaped.
On 27 August, a United States Army Air Forces B-24 Liberator bomber strafed her with machine-gun fire in the Pacific Ocean off Yap in the Caroline Islands in the vicinity of 09°47′30″N 138°38′18″E / 9.79167°N 138.63833°E / 9.79167; 138.63833, but Pollack suffered no damage or casuatties.
She then steamed by way of Mios Woendi, Schouten Islands, to Pearl Harbor where she arrived on 18 November for training operations off Oahu with units of the Pacific Fleet destroyer force.
She was underway from Oahu 25 January 1945, in company with USS Permit to the East Coast of the United States, reaching the Sub Base at New London, Connecticut, 24 February.
Her name was stricken from the Naval Vessel Register on 29 October 1946 and she was sold for scrapping on 2 February 1947 to Ship-Shape, Inc. of Philadelphia.