USS Rasher (SS/SSR/AGSS/IXSS-269), a , was a ship of the United States Navy named for the rasher, or vermilion rockfish, a fish found along the California coast. Construction and commissioning Rasher, a fleet submarine, was laid down on 4 May 1942 by Manitowoc Shipbuilding Company at Manitowoc, Wisconsin; launched 20 December 1942, sponsored by Mrs. G. C. Weaver; and commissioned 8 June 1943, Commander E. S. Hutchinson in command. Admiral Charles A. Lockwood had earlier relieved Hutchinson of command of the submarine for lacking aggressiveness. Service history Following builder's trials in Lake Michigan, Rasher was decommissioned and towed down the Mississippi on a floating drydock. After recommissioning and fitting out in New Orleans, the new submarine trained in the Bay of Panama, departed Balboa 8 August 1943, and arrived at Brisbane, Australia, on 11 September. First war patrol, September – November 1943 On her first war patrol, 24 September through 24 November 1943, Rasher operated in the Makassar Strait–Celebes Sea area, and sank the passenger-cargo ship Kogane Maru in a submerged attack at dawn on 9 October. Four days later, off Ambon Harbor, she spotted a convoy of four merchantmen escorted by two destroyers and a "Pete" seaplane. She fired two salvoes of three torpedoes each, then crash dived to avoid the destroyers and bombs from the scout plane. Freighter Kenkoku Maru broke up and sank, while the escorts struck back in a vigorous but vain counterattack. On the afternoon of 31 October, while patrolling the shipping lanes off the Borneo coast, Rasher commenced trailing tanker Koryo Maru, but because of a patrolling float plane, was unable to attack until night. Rasher then surfaced, attacked and sent the tanker to the bottom after a thunderous explosion of exploding torpedoes and gasoline. The submarine's next victim was tanker Tango Maru which lost her stern to a spread of three torpedoes on the afternoon of 8 November. Rasher escaped the escorts by diving deep and silently slipping away. A midnight attack on a second convoy in the Makassar Strait off Mangkalihat Peninsula resulted in a hit on a tanker, but vigorous countermeasures by enemy destroyers prevented any assessment of damage. Rasher escaped the enemy surface craft and, her torpedoes expended, headed home. During her transit, an Allied patrol bomber mistakenly attacked her in the Indian Ocean north-northeast of Exmouth Gulf in Western Australia at on 20 November 1943, dropping a depth charge