spent the remainder of the day evading the attacks of the escorts. That night, she allowed a hospital ship to pass unmolested. She attacked a small freighter with four torpedoes on 29 October, but had to surface and sink it with her deck gun. On 31 October, she made a night surface attack on a tanker previously damaged by and apparently sank it with a spread of six torpedoes. Sterlet then joined Trigger in escorting the damaged into Saipan. From there, Sterlet put to sea on 10 November with six other submarines in a coordinated attack group. On the night of 15 November, she, Trigger, and engaged in a gun duel with an enemy sub chaser. Sterlet completely depleted her supply of five-inch (127 mm) shells in the battle and was forced to sink the enemy craft with torpedoes early the following morning. On 30 November, the submarine returned to the Submarine Base at Pearl Harbor. Third war patrol Following almost two months in Hawaii, Sterlet embarked on her third war patrol on 25 January 1945. Her assigned area was off Honshū, Japan, particularly the area off Tokyo Bay, where she stood lifeguard duty for Fifth Fleet pilots attacking Tokyo. She made reconnaissance sweeps of the Japanese Fleet and patrolled with a "wolfpack" that also included , , , and . During this cruise, she made two torpedo attacks, one each on 1 March and 5 March, and claimed two sinkings, a freighter and a tanker. (Japanese sources list Imperial Japanese Army transport ship Tateyama Maru as being sunk by a torpedo strike from the Sterlet on 1 March). She ended the war patrol at Midway on 4 April. Fourth War Patrol Sterlet’s fourth war patrol lasted from 29 April to 10 June and took her north of Japan to the Sea of Okhotsk and the vicinity of the Kuril Islands. On this cruise, her proximity to Soviet territory and the port of Vladivostok complicated her mission. Though Soviet ships were advised to remain out of the war zone around Japan, Sterlet had to be extremely vigilant in her identification of potential targets lest she send some of the United States's allies in the European war to a wet, chilly grave. Lack of certainty in identification forced the submarine to pass up several inviting targets. To further cloud the issue, Japanese ships probably attempted to disguise themselves as Soviets on