USS Plunger 1330-ton Perch class submarine built at the Portsmouth Navy Yard, Kittery, Maine, was commissioned in November 1936. During the spring of 1937 she made a shakedown cruise through the Panama Canal to visit Ecuador and later in that year relocated to the U.S. West Coast, where she was based at San Diego, California. During the next four years she made cruises to Alaska, Panama and Hawaii, and had her base shifted to Pearl Harbor at the end of November 1941, about a week before the Japanese attack there opened the Pacific War.

In mid-December 1941 Plunger began her first war patrol, operating off the Japanese home islands. She sank one cargo ship there and another two during her second combat cruise, which started with supporting participation in the Battle of Midway in early June 1942 and then took her to the waters off China. The submarine's next two patrols, in October-December, were made in the Solomon Islands, where she helped interdict Japanese forces during the ongoing fight for Guadalanal. Patrol numbers five and six, into the central Pacific, cost the enemy three more ships, one in March and two in May 1943. During June-September Plunger made two penetrations of the Sea of Japan, sinking four merchantmen in an area that offered both good hunting and great risks for U.S. submarines.

Plunger operated in the Marshall Islands in November 1943, providing aircraft lifeguard services as Pacific Fleet carriers struck there in support of the Gilbert Islands invasion. She rescued one downed pilot, but suffered six men wounded when she was strafed by a Japanese plane. Returning to Japanese home waters for her tenth war patrol, Plunger sank two ships, then got another when she joined the much-newer submarine Snook (SS-279) in attacking a convoy bound from Japan to the Marianas. She operated in the Bonins in May and June 1944, providing cover for the invasion of the Marianas further to the south, and made a final patrol, her twelfth, into the central Pacific during the summer.

Following an overhaul, in February 1945 the now-aging Plunger was sent to New London, Connecticut, for training duty. She was decommissioned in mid-November, three months after the Japanese decided to surrender. However, she continued to provide important service for another decade as a non-operational Naval Reserve training submarine at Brooklyn, New York, and Jacksonville, Florida. USS Plunger was stricken from the Naval Vessel Register in July 1956 and sold for scrapping in April 1957.