USS S-35 (SS-140) - Service History

Service History

Engaged in trials as improved engines were developed for her class, S-35 was ordered to New London, Connecticut, in September, for alterations by the prime contractor, the Electric Boat Company. Decommissioned and delivered to that company on 25 October, she was accepted and recommissioned on 7 May 1923. Exercises along the East Coast and in the Caribbean Sea followed and, in early August, she arrived at San Diego, California, her home port until 1925. Then transferred to the Asiatic Fleet, she departed from San Francisco, California, in mid-April and arrived at the Submarine Base, Cavite, Philippine Islands, on 12 July.

S-35 operated in Philippine waters, conducting patrols and participating in type, division, and fleet exercises until the spring of 1926. Then she sailed, with her division, for the China coast. Through the summer and into the fall, she conducted similar operations out of Tsingtao; and, in November she returned to the Philippines where, after overhaul, she resumed local operations.

She maintained a similar schedule of winter operations in the Philippines and summer deployments in Chinese waters through 1931. On 2 May 1932, she moved east, instead of north, and at the end of the month, arrived at Pearl Harbor where she joined the Pacific Fleet and commenced a schedule of exercises, overhauls, and fleet problems which took her into the 1940s.

In 1934, she won the Marjorie Sterrett Battleship Fund Award for the highest merit in battle torpedo practice of submarines.

In April 1941, she was transferred to San Diego, California, and, for the remaining months of peace, she provided services for the West Coast Sound School.

After the attack on Pearl Harbor, S-35 added defensive patrol work to her duties; and, in January 1942, she moved north to Mare Island for limited modernization and overhaul. In late March, she continued northward and, in early April, arrived at the newly established submarine base at Dutch Harbor.