Sea Fox was laid down on 2 November 1943 at the Portsmouth Navy Yard in Kittery, Maine; launched on 28 March 1944, sponsored by Mrs. Robert N. Robertson, widow of Lieutenant Robert N. Robertson, who survived the sinking of USS Squalus only to be lost during the war as executive officer of USS Argonaut.

En route to Saipan to top off with fuel, the submarines and their PC escort picked up survivors of a downed Liberator.

On 28 December, the submarines departed the Marianas for the Ryukyus; and, on 1 January 1945, Sea Fox reached her patrol area.

Sea Fox located no survivors but found bales of sheet rubber covering the area where the ship had gone down.

Efforts to transfer the wounded man to a homeward-bound submarine were thwarted by rough seas, and the patient remained aboard for the duration of the patrol.

In mid-April, Sea Fox was off the northwest coast of Formosa where she encountered a shift in Japanese antisubmarine warfare (ASW) tactics.

The war ended with the completion of refit, and Sea Fox headed toward Pearl Harbor for a two-week visit prior to getting underway for postwar duty with Submarine Squadron 5 (SubRon 5) in the Philippines.

Six months later, the Korean War broke out; and Sea Fox's training exercises—mine planting, torpedo approaches, gunnery, and ASW—increased.

A six-month tour in the western Pacific followed during which she supported the United Nations' effort in Korea by providing services to the ASW training group and by patrolling in the northern Sea of Japan.

Decommissioned on 15 October 1952 at Mare Island Naval Shipyard, Sea Fox completed conversion the following spring and was recommissioned on 5 June 1953.

In August, she returned to Pearl Harbor and resumed operations—training exercises, special operations, and western Pacific deployments—as a unit of SubDiv 71.

Reassigned to SubDiv 33 at San Diego on 1 July 1955, she became flagship of the division on 1 August and commenced local operations off the southern California coast.