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Porpoise sliding down the ways at the Portsmouth Navy Yard, June 20, 1935. The lines attached to her sides were connected to large drag chains which slowed her slide once she hit the water, preventing her momentum from carrying her all the way across the river to the other side. Her two port side bow torpedo tube outer doors are visible here; they are normally out of view under water when she is afloat.

National Archives photo via historylink101.com

A good port side view of Porpoise. The location is unknown for sure, but suspected to be the Piscataqua River near Kittery, ME. The date is probably the fall of 1935, shortly after her commissioning. She does not yet have a deck gun installed in the photo.

National Archives Photo

Porpoise a little later in her career, circa 1937. Location is somewhere in the Pacific Ocean. She has now been fitted with a 3"/50 caliber Mk 6 gun aft of the conning tower fairwater.

National Archives Photo

Porpoise in San Pablo Bay near the Mare Island Navy Yard, CA., October 13, 1942, after her first wartime overhaul. She has received modifications similar to Pike, An SD air search radar on the forward end of the conning tower fairwater, SJ surface search radar near the periscope shears, the aft end of the fairwater has been cut down with a 20 mm gun mounted there, and a 3"/50 caliber Mk 17 gun installed on the aft deck. She also has had two additional superstructure mounted torpedo tubes fitted near the bow. She was one of four of this class so modified.

Photo NH 6367-42 courtesy of the Naval History & Heritage Command.

Porpoise seen here off Philadelphia after her last major wartime overhaul, July 20, 1944. The forward end of the conning tower fairwater has been cut down, and the deck gun has been moved to the forward mount. Like Pike, Porpoise had been retired from active war patrols in the fall of 1943 and had been operating out of New London as a training boat for new submarine crews.

USN photo # 1464-44, courtesy of NARA.

John Frankhauser was a torpedoman who spent the whole of WW II aboard Porpoise. He made her war patrols and when it was decided she was too old for combat she was sent to New London as a training submarine.

John was raised in Northern Washington State and remained in the state until his death. He was a member of the SubVets of WW II and later Seattle Base Submarine Veterans Inc.

Photo from the book: US Submarines in World War II, An Illustrated History

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