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Career
Awarded:
Laid down:	8 February 1944
Launched:	15 December 1944
Commissioned:	4 April 1949
Fate:	sold to Italy
Stricken:	5 December 1977
General Characteristics
Displacement:	1570 tons surfaced, 2428 tons submerged
Length:	311 feet 8 inches
Beam:	27 feet 3 inches
Draft:	15 feet 3 inches
Speed:	20 knots surfaced, 9 knots submerged
Complement:	76 officers and men
Armament:	one five-inch gun, two 20mm cannon, ten 21-inch torpedo tubes

USS Pickerel (SS-524), a Tench-class submarine, was the second ship of the United States Navy to be named for a young or small pike. The contract to build her was awarded to the Boston Naval Shipyard and her keel was laid down on 8 February 1944. She was launched without a christening ceremony on 15 December 1944. After being towed to the Portsmouth Navy Shipyard in New Hampshire for completion, she was simultaneously christened and commissioned on 4 April 1949 sponsored by Mrs. John R. Moore and commanded by Lieutenant Commander Paul R. Schratz.

After sea trials, Pickerel departed New London, Connecticut, on 10 August, and headed for Hawaii via East and Gulf coast ports, and the Panama Canal and arrived Pearl Harbor on 28 September where she joined SubDiv 11.

From 16 March to 5 April 1950, Pickerel completed a 5200-mile voyage from Hong Kong to Pearl Harbor in 21 days while completely submerged, probably the longest distance ever traveled by a submerged diesel-electric submarine. During her first deployment in the Western Pacific in 1950, Pickerel spent four months in the Korean War zone, one of the first submarines to enter the Korean Conflict.

Returning to Pearl Harbor in the spring of 1951, Pickerel operated in the Hawaiian area undergoing tests of maximum capabilities, and conducting intensive training until she returned to the Far East in July 1953.

Upon returning to Hawaii early in 1954, Pickerel resumed service for our aircraft and surface anti-submarine forces there and, but for overhaul, continued this important duty until returning to the Western Pacific in June 1955. She returned to Hawaii 1 December.

Pickerel alternated North Pacific with WestPac duty through 1963 with the exception of a conversion period during 1962 for GUPPY III modernization.

Pickerel operated out of Pearl Harbor during 1964 until 28 December, when she departed enroute Yokosuka to begin a WestPac tour as a unit of the Seventh Fleet. In the years that followed, she continued this pattern of alternating services in Hawaii with deployments in the Far East. In the fall of 1966, her duties in WestPac were broadened to include operations in the Vietnam combat zone on Yankee Station.

After a year in Hawaiian waters, Pickerel headed west once more on 16 January 1968. She visited various ports of the Orient before returning to Yankee Station on 8 May. Following service in the Combat Zone, she reached Pearl Harbor via Japan on 8 July. Her home port was changed to San Diego, California, on 1 August and she headed for the West Coast 22 August.

Pickerel was transferred to Italy on 18 August 1972 and stricken from the Naval Vessel Register on 5 December 1977.

Pickerel and Volador (SS-490) were transferred and commissioned into the Italian Navy at the same time. Some civilian sources disagree as which of them became Primo Longobordo (S-501) and which became Gianfranco Gazzana Priaroggia (S-502). The United States Department of the Navy's Naval Historical Center maintains that Pickerel became Primo Longobordo and Volador became Gianfranco Gazzana Priaroggia. Primo Longobardo was stricken on either 31 January 1980 or 31 May 1981.

See USS Pickerel for other ships of the same name.

References

This article includes information collected from the Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships.