USS S-37, a 1062-ton S-1 class submarine built at San Francisco, California, was commissioned in July 1923. While in harbor at San Pedro on 10 October 1923 she suffered an internal explosion that killed three of her crewmen and injured others. The submarine rejoined the active fleet by the end of the year and in early 1924 took part in Fleet Problems along the Central American coast and in the Caribbean. She crossed the Pacific to the Philippines later in 1924 and remained in the Far East for the next seventeen years. During the peacetime decades of the '20s and '30s, S-37 and her sisters regularly operated along the coast of China, in the Philippines and in the Netherlands East Indies.

After the Pacific War began on 8 December 1941, S-37 patrolled in Philippine waters until early January 1942, when she was sent south to help with the defense of the East Indies. On 8 February she attacked a Japanese convoy in the Makassar Strait, torpedoing and sinking the destroyer Natsushiro. Though troubled with leaking oil tanks and the other mechanical problems typical of old submarines, she continued to patrol as the Japanese onslaught steadily advanced. At the end of February she assisted survivors of the Battle of the Java Sea.

Moving to Australia in March, S-37 began operations out of Brisbane. Her fifth war patrol, into the Bismarcks and New Britain area in June and July 1942, produced another successful attack, in which the cargo ship Tenzan Maru was sunk on 8 July. During the next several months, she made further patrols in support of the ongoing Guadalcanal Campaign. After a brief stay at Noumea, New Caledonia, in October 1942, S-37 left the south Pacific. She spent 1943 and 1944 on anti-submarine warfare training duty out of San Diego, California. Decommissioned in early February 1945, USS S-37 was sunk as a target off the California coast on the 20th of that month.