USS Sterlet (SS-392), a Balao-class submarine, was the only ship of the United States Navy to be named for the sterlet, a small sturgeon found in the Caspian Sea and its rivers, whose meat is considered delicious and whose eggs are one of the world's great delicacies, caviar. Her keel was laid down on 14 July 1943 at the Portsmouth Navy Yard. She was launched on 27 October 1943 in the first triple launching in the history of submarine construction. Sterlet and Pomfret were christened in the building basin and Piranha was christened and launched from the building ways. Sterlet was sponsored by Mrs. Charles A. Plumley. She was commissioned on 4 March 1944. Following fitting-out and shakedown training, Sterlet departed Key West, Florida, on 1 May to join the Pacific Fleet. The submarine reached Pearl Harbor on 13 June, and she immediately plunged into another round of training exercises to prepare for her first war patrol. First war patrol On 4 July 1944, she put to sea to prey on Japanese shipping. The patrol lasted 53 days; and Sterlet spent 34 of them in her assigned patrol area, the Bonin Islands. On 8 August 1944, she torpedoed and sank the minesweeper Tama Maru No. 6. By the time she put into Midway Island for refit on 26 August, the submarine was a battle-proven veteran, claiming to have sunk four enemy ships. She even brought in a prisoner — a survivor from a Japanese convoy destroyed by American aircraft carrier planes three weeks earlier. Second war patrol The submarine remained at Midway for just over three weeks; then headed for its patrol area in the Nansei Shoto on 18 September. After sinking a small Japanese fishing boat on 9 October, Sterlet rescued six downed airmen off Okinawa. On 18 October, she made an unsuccessful attempt to close and attack one of six destroyers escorting three cruisers. Two days later, she fired a spread of three torpedoes at a Japanese cargo ship, but all three missed. She made a third fruitless approach on 25 October and unleashed four torpedoes on small convoy. Results: four misses. Not to be denied, Sterlet made another approach on the convoy. This time, four of the six torpedoes she launched scored. Three hit a large gasoline tanker, and the fourth plowed into a freighter. The tanker, Jinei Maru, is known definitely to have gone down. Sterlet