USS Pike, a 1310-ton Porpoise class submarine built by the Portsmouth Navy Yard, was commissioned in December 1935. After operating in the Atlantic for somewhat more than a year, she went to the Pacific in February 1937 and took part in maneuvers in the Hawaiian area during that year and the next. Beginning in late 1939 Pike was stationed in the Philippines. She cruised to China in 1940 and, after the outbreak of war with Japan in December 1941, conducted her first war patrol off Hong Kong. Her second patrol took her to the waters off Celebes and her third, from a base in Australia, was made off Timor as part of the unsuccessful defense of the Netherlands East Indies in February and March 1942.

Pike was transferred from Australia to Pearl Harbor in April 1942 and had picket duty off Midway during the great battle there in early June. Following a West Coast overhaul, she made three more war patrols between December 1942 and mid-1943, enduring two serious depth charge attacks by Japanese anti-submarine forces and sinking one enemy passenger-cargo ship. The now elderly Pike was retired from active combat service after September 1943 and spent the rest of World War II training submarine crews in the Long Island Sound area. Decommissioned in mid-November 1945, she was given a new mission in September 1946 as a stationary Naval Reserve training vessel at Baltimore, Maryland. USS Pike was stricken from the Navy list in February 1956 and sold for scrapping in January 1957.