USS S-47, a 1126-ton S-42 class submarine, was built at Quincy, Massachusetts. The last of the more than fifty "S-Boats" of the World War I era, she was commissioned in September 1925 and operated out of Coco Solo, Panama Canal Zone from early 1926. In mid-1927, S-47 moved to San Diego, California, her base until 1936, when she returned to the Panama area for the rest of the 1930s and into the next decade.

In mid-1941, S-47 was sent north for service off the East Coast, ranging from Argentia, Newfoundland to Bermuda. After the United States formally entered World War II in December 1941, the submarine went back to Panama, but in March 1942 she crossed the Pacific to begin combat operations out of Brisbane, Australia. During the next eight months, S-47 had three war patrols into the New Britain and Solomon Islands areas, making some attacks, attempting more and generally suffering the mechanical and electrical difficulties that troubled all the U.S. Navy's older submarines in those tropical waters.

S-47 returned to Panama late in 1942 and, after training operations and shipyard work, was assigned to the North Pacific theater, where she made two war patrols between October 1943 and the beginning of 1944. Sent back to the South Pacific, she was mainly employed in anti-submarine training, but conducted a final war patrol in June and July 1944 in support of the Allied offensive across the northern shore of New Guinea.

Returning to the U.S. West Coast in April 1945, S-47 served out of San Diego until the end of the Pacific War five months later. She was decommissioned in October 1945 and sold for scrapping in 1946.