USS Tench (SS/AGSS-417), the lead ship of her class of submarine, was the only ship of the United States Navy to be named for the tench. Her keel was laid down on 1 April 1944 at the Portsmouth Navy Yard. She was launched on 7 July 1944, sponsored by Claudia Alta Johnson, the wife of Rep. Lyndon Baines Johnson, and commissioned on 6 October 1944 with Commander William B. "Barney" Sieglaff in command. First War Patrol After completing trials and shakedown out of New London, Connecticut, Tench departed that port on 20 December for duty in the Pacific. Following brief pauses for training at Key West, Florida, and in the Panama Canal Zone, she reached Pearl Harbor during the latter part of January 1945. An additional training period followed her arrival in Oahu, but only a brief one. On 7 February, she stood out of Pearl Harbor, bound for her first war patrol. After a stop at Saipan for fuel, Tench returned to sea in a four submarine wolf pack with , (like Tench, also the lead ship of a submarine class), and . They left Saipan on 27 February and headed for their assigned patrol area which began in the region of the East China Sea southwest of Kyūshū and extended north into the Yellow Sea. On the night of 6 March and 7 March, Tench passed through the Colnett Strait south of Yakushima and into the East China Sea. The four submarines rotated patrol, weather-reporting, photographic-reconnaissance, and lifeguard duties. On 18 March, Tench received orders to take up lifeguard station off the western coast of Kyūshū during Fifth Fleet carrier air raids on Nagasaki. Just before the noon watch came on duty, the submarine got word of a dye marker sighting (presumably evidence of a downed American aviator) sighted by friendly aircraft in a bay on the coast of Kyūshū near the town of Akune. Under the protective cover of F6F Hellcat fighters, Tench threaded her way cautiously into the shallow waters of the bay. Just after she discovered the "sighting" had been the result of a reflection of a shoal spot, she received a severe fright. Caught in waters too shallow for her to dive, she proceeded almost helplessly on the surface while a large flight of aircraft approached her from astern. Fortunately the planes proved to be additional Fifth Fleet bombers returning from Nagasaki. Tench stood