ship as a prime target. Batfish fired three torpedoes from her bow tubes that missed their mark when the Japanese maneuvered to avoid them. This convoy also made good its escape. On 2 July 1944, as Batfish departed her patrol area bound for Midway Atoll, a lookout sighted two Japanese ships, a small trawler traveling with an converted yacht serving as an escort. Batfish closed in for a surface attack, and her guns filled the trawler with holes but failed to trigger an explosion. The escort moved at high speed to ram Batfish, which backed at emergency speed and narrowly avoided a collision. Full of holes from Batfish′s raking gunfire, the converted yacht was engulfed in flames and quickly sank. Batfish suffered one casualty, the pharmacist's mate, who was hit by a bullet in the knee while at his post on deck in the surface gun action that ended in the destruction of what proved to be the guard boats Kamoi Maru and No. 5 Isuzugawa Maru. Batfish returned to Midway Atoll, where she underwent a 16-day refit alongside Proteus. Her crew then trained in firing the new electric Mark 18 torpedo. Fourth war patrol Batfish departed Midway Atoll on 1 August 1944 for her fourth war patrol, which took her to waters surrounding the Palau Islands. Her assigned area offered up no worthy targets, but a report of a Japanese destroyer grounded to the north of the Palaus sent her to Velasco Reef to investigate. There, she found two Japanese ships — minelayer and a transport — aground on the reef and the Japanese destroyer on the beach across the atoll where had run aground on 18 August 1944. A Japanese floatplane, two tugs, two patrol boats, and a minesweeper that Batfish identified as a second destroyer were in attendance. Batfish selected the transport as her first target, but poor visibility, rain, and rough seas intervened. On 23 August 1944, while making an approach to locate the transport again in a rain squall, Batfish found the minesweeper, which her crew still believed to be a destroyer, in her sights instead. She fired three torpedoes from her bow tubes that hit the warship and blew her apart at . Japanese records later identified the ship as . On 26 August 1944, Batfish damaged Samidare beyond repair with two torpedo hits at and later witnessed the Japanese completing the destruction of