Ten Months After Construction Started
About ten months after the construction on the Grayback started, the vessel was launched on January 31st, 1941. This was done by the wife of Rear Admiral Wilson Brown. It became a part of the U.S. Navy on June 30th, about five months before the country entered the Second World War. All was well at first. After it was commissioned, the vessel went on a shakedown cruise on Long Island Sound at the helm of Lieutenant Willard A. Saunders. It was a chance to try out its systems and make the crew get used to the vessel. The sub was clearly up to standard and finally did a patrol of the Caribbean and the Chesapeake Bay in September 1941. All of a sudden, Pearl Harbor shocked the entire nation.
Ten Months After Construction Started
Getting Even More Maintenance
It underwent more maintenance at Portsmouth Naval Shipyard off the Maine coast. In February 1942, the sub went to Pearl Harbor now that the United States joined the war. It was about to get deadly serious for the sub and its crew. On February 15th, it set off for its first wartime patrol by sailing into the Pacific waters and cruising along the coasts of Guam. Japan had just attacked the island in December 1941. The Grayback traveled near the Saipan coast as well. The Pacific island was under Japanese occupation as well. The patrol took three weeks and saw the vessel playing cat-and-mouse with a Japanese sub for four days. Even though it managed to get away unscathed, it failed to reach a position to fire back.
Getting Even More Maintenance