The Sterlet was assigned to the Bonin Island chain, located south of Japan's Honshu Island, in order to attack enemy vessels along its sea lanes. The boat spent 34 days on station and reportedly sank four enemy ships by both torpedo and deck gun attacks and suffered slight damage from intense enemy ASW attacks.
On 05 August, a Japanese sailor was spotted in a raft and taken aboard as a prisoner. The sailor's convoy had fallen victim to an attack by American carrier-based planes.

Second Patrol (September 1944) "Burt's Brooms"
CO: Cmdr. Orme Robbins
From: Midway
Patrol Area: Empire
Length: 64 days
SORG: 3-1/3 vessels for 21,900 tons
JANAC: 1-1/3 vessels for 13,833 tons

Assigned to the Nansei Shoto Islands, the Sterlet sank a small freighter on 09 October then proceeded on to Okinawa to take part in life guarding duty and rescued six U.S. airmen. During the remainder of the patrol, the boat conducted several torpedo attacks and sank two large tankers and a large freighter. A small freighter and fishing vessel were also sunk by gunfire.

Third Patrol (January 1945) "Mac's Mops"
CO: Cmdr. Hugh Lewis
From: Pearl Harbor
Patrol Area: Empire
Length: 66 days
SORG: 2 vessels for 15,000 tons
JANAC: 1 vessel for 1,148 tons

A change in the boat's wardroom brought Hugh Lewis aboard as the new CO and the Sterlet returned to the area of Honshu on its next patrol. The Sterlet and four other fleet submarines acted as a recon screen for the 5th Fleet on its way to attack Tokyo as well as performed lifeguard duty. During the remainder of the patrol, the sub claimed a large tanker and freighter for a total of 15,000 tons.

Fourth Patrol (April 1945)
CO: Cmdr. Hugh Lewis
From: Midway
Patrol Area: Polar Circuit
Length: 42 days
SORG: 1 vessel for 4,000 tons
JANAC: 2 vessels for 4,155 tons

This patrol found the Sterlet in the cold waters of the Sea of Okhotsk and Kurile Islands area with four other submarines. An attack on a convoy netted a medium freighter and damaging another but the Sterlet was unable to close and finish off the vessel because of fierce counter-attacks by escorting vessels.

May 29, 1945 – Attack on Japanese Convoy during 4th War Patrol

Our Fourth Patrol

We departed Midway on April 29, 1945, the day before Adolph Hitler killed himself in his bunker in Berlin. We marveled that this meant that all three of the protagonists, Roosevelt, Mussolini, and now Hitler, had died in the same month! The war in Europe was clearly winding down and a week later it would be all over on V-E Day, May 8, 1945. Things were also looking better in the “big” war (ours), because in the previous two months we had completed the capture of Iwo Jima and then landed on Okinawa. There would be some extremely bitter fighting there for nearly three months, but Okinawa would be declared secure in the last part of June, and the Philippines would become liberated on the last day of this month. Meanwhile, we had guessed right – we were headed for the most northern waters anywhere, the Sea of Okhotsk, west of the Kurile Islands. This sea is bounded on the south by the large Japanese island of Hokkaido, on the west by the joint Russian-Japanese island of Hokkaido, on the west by the joint Russian-Japanese Sakhalin Island, and on the north by snow and ice. Its only entrance is through a narrow pass at Paramushiro.

The area we were heading or had been named the “Polar circuit” for intelligence purposes, and with good cause. The weather was very cold with fog and frequent snow storms. We made our first radar landfall on it a week after leaving Midway, dove and approached the entrance submerged. At eight o’clock that night we surfaced in a snow storm and started our transit of the narrow pass. By ten we made it through, aided perhaps by the swirling snow, which reduced the visibility for the enemy a well as or us. We were in the open waters of the famous Okhotsk Sea, where hunting the enemy was supposed to be better but complicated by the presence of many Russian ships, so all contacts had to be positively identified before attacking. Identification turned out to be the biggest problem; the first six contacts we made were all finally identified as Russian, but only after long tracking and careful approaches. The thick fog and generally poor visibility made it necessary to approach very close to any potential target before we could know whether we would be shooting or retreating.

We had been in the area for three weeks, with numerous false contacts, when we made our first genuine contact with a legitimate target. This happened on May 29th just after we had turned back from our northernmost penetration of the war, right up against the polar cap. I remember the feeling, looking at it and realizing that only solid ice extended from our boat to the North Pole. Cruising on the surface, in sunlight for a change, one of our lookouts announced that he thought he could see a smudge of smoke on the horizon. No one else on the bridge could see it, but having no other prospects we headed toward it at flank speed. It was nearly an hour before anyone else could see the smoke, but finally there it was. We commenced a daylight end-around, and two and a half hours later we were on its track; 17,000 yards ahead of the convoy we dived toward a target now identified as two marus with three escorts. These were definitely Japanese, but when in good position only 1,000 yards away, the whole group zigged toward us and we were suddenly too close to shoot. Rather than take a chance on runs so short that the torpedo might not have a chance to arm, we held off, determined to get in position again. We waited an hour than surfaced and began another laborious end-around.

After nearly another four hours, we were once more in position ahead. It was now dark enough for us to make a night surface attack, so we headed in and commenced firing six torpedoes, three aimed at each freighter. We observed two hits in each ship, and the smaller one quickly sank. The slightly larger one was down by the stern and covered with smoke, but we turned and departed quickly, for the nearest escort was headed for us at full speed. He chased us on the surface for a full hour, firing a total of 58 rounds at us with his large deck gun and many more with what seemed to be a rapid-fire 40-mm. He also lobbed a couple of star shells at us, each with a cluster of ten stars. These illuminated the dark night, but fortunately he was a little short with each of them, so they served only to blind his gunners instead of silhouetting our ship as he had hoped.

Our speeds were so close that we were unable to open up much distance from him, and he was too near for us to dive because he would be on top of us before we could get to a safe depth. We fired four torpedoes from the stern tubes in a down-the-throat shot, but he could see them coming and was able to evade. Strangely, although we saw all of our shots miss him, we shortly heard two explosions that sounded like torpedo hits. We speculated that maybe we had gotten lucky and had hit one of the other two escorts. We could not substantiate this, however, and made no claim for this in our patrol report. Meanwhile, our pursuer’s maneuvers in evading our shots had allowed us to pull a little farther away from him which was somewhat comforting. He was still too close for us to dive, however, and we kept heading away at our very best speed. Then, he made a strange decision: he slowed and turned broadside to bring both his bow and stern guns to bear on us. He got off a mighty volley at us which fortunately missed and gave us time to race farther away from him so we could dive. This we did, and after making a radical course change to the right off the track and went deep. He was apparently unable to follow this maneuver, and we were free of him.

We agreed that this had been perhaps our closest scrape of the war, exceeding even the time when we sank so deep after the trim pump failed. We were at a loss to understand our pursuer’s strange maneuver at the end which permitted our escape, until we reached port and learned that COMSUBPAC’s Intelligence people confirmed that our final shots had hit one of the other escorts, and we had sunk the Kuretake, ODD 24, our only destroyer sunk during the war. That news made us realize that perhaps our pursuer had been called back to help the destroyer we had hit, and was just giving us one last, double-barreled shot as he left. Sinking a destroyer was of course cheering news, but we also learned that the sinking of the other freighter we had hit could not be confirmed, and we were only credited with damaging it. This was a disappointment, but we felt we had come out ahead with another man-of-war now to our credit. All of this because one lookout had detected a smudge of smoke on the horizon nearly an hour before anyone else could see it. It happened to be on my watch and I was very proud of our lookout.

- from “The Last Good War” by Lt. William R. Wright, officer on the U.S.S. Sterlet, (SS-392)
- painting, “Attack on Japanese Convoy During 4th War Patrol”
by I.R. Lloyd

Fifth Patrol (July 1945)
CO: Cmdr. Hugh Lewis
From: Midway
Patrol Area: Empire
Length: 48 days
SORG: 0 vessels
JANAC: 0 vessels