USS Tirante (SS-420)  USS "Tirante" (SS-420), a "Tench"-class submarine, was the second ship of the United States Navy to be named for the tirante, a silvery, elongated "cutlass fish" found in waters off Cuba. Her keel was laid down on 28 April 1944 by the Portsmouth Navy Yard of Kittery, Maine. She was launched on 9 August 1944 sponsored by Mrs. Ruth Maynard Sieglaff, wife of Commander William B. Sieglaff (prospective commander of PCU Tench), and commissioned on 6 November 1944 with Lieutenant Commander George L. Street III in command. Following shakedown training in Long Island Sound, and the waters off Panama and Oahu, "Tirante" departed Pearl Harbor for Japan on 3 March 1945. The submarine patrolled the approaches to Nagasaki. There she sank the 703-ton tanker "Fuji Maru" on 25 March and followed with the sinking of the 1218-ton freighter "Nase Maru" three days later. After the latter attack, Japanese escorts kept "Tirante" down for seven hours, before she slipped away unscathed. On 31 March, "Tirante" shelled and sank a 70-ton lugger with five-inch (127 mm)and 40-millimeter gunfire and,on 1 April,missed an LST-type vessel with a spread of three torpedoes. The submarine soon shifted to waters off the south coast of Korea, near the Strait of Tsushima. At twilight on 6 April, she battle-surfaced and captured a small Japanese fishing vessel and took its three crewmen prisoner before sinking it. The following day, "Tirante" torpedoed a 2800-ton cargo freighter loaded with a deck cargo of oil drums. The submarine surfaced and directed a nearby Korean fishing craft to pick up two survivors. Although observers on the submarine reported witnessing the Maru's sinking, post-war examination of Japanese records failed to confirm it. American naval intelligence had broken the Japanese codes and was able to anticipate their movements. One intercepted message told of an important convoy steaming toward the "Tirante"'s area. In response to this information, the submarine laid an ambush on 9 April. Picking out two targets, she launched three torpedoes at each. One spread missed, but the other struck the 5500-ton transport "Nikkō Maru", carrying homeward-bound Japanese soldiers and sailors from Shanghai.