Covering a triangle passage between Hong Kong (China), Formosa (modern-day Taiwan) and Luzon (Philippines), the USS Piranha once again operated as part of a coordinated attack group, concentrating on merchant vessels in the area. She successfully engaged a lesser vessel on February 27th and missed out on a large convoy converging on Hong Kong on Match 5th (slowed in her interception by the large presence of civilian fishing boats (her crew actually had fabricated an IJN flag and maneuvered the fishing boats successfully only to have missed the convoy altogether by the time Piranha had passed through).
A Japanese presence on the small island of Prata in the South China Sea allowed Piranha to utilize her deck gun against several before leaving for Midway Island while evading roaming enemy aerial patrols. Piranha was out of action from April 21st to May 17th, eventually entering her next war patrol and undergoing the usual (patrol-recovery-bombardment) service - this time assisting air, land and naval forces at Marcus Island (Minami-Tori-Shima) from May 22nd to May 31st.
By this time, Allied gains were such that the USS Piranha and her kind were consistently operating closer to the Japanese mainland, continuing to target merchant ships and other vessels of opportunity though at the expense of operating far from home and within crowded shallow waters. She claimed a tanker, an oil trawler and a pair of other trawlers while being repeatedly chased and targeted by Japanese hunters. After suffering damage from a depth charge attack, the USS Piranha retreated to the safety of Pearl Harbor, arriving on July 10th, 1945 (the war in Europe had concluded in May through Allied gains and the suicide of Hitler, now leaving all of the Allied war effort to focus solely on the Pacific).
The USS Piranha was re-launched from Pearl Harbor on August 14th and took to her sixth war patrol. The war situation for the Empire of Japan had become exceedingly worse as her naval prowess was neutered while her air power extremely limited. Lack of viable armored fighting vehicles and adequate replacements only served to hurt Japanese war-making capacities. Furthermore, between August 6th and August 9th, the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki fell victim to the power of American atomic bombs which ultimately forced the surrender process (as many as 246,000 people were believed killed in the blasts, not taking into account effects of radiation exposure in the years following). While devastating to the Japanese, the bombs served to spare the lives of the soldiers that would have been required to take the fiercely-defended Japanese mainland in an projected all-out amphibious assault. If the Pacific Theater proved anything to the Allies it was that the Japanese would fight to the last and make life a living hell for the American soldier.
On August 15th, the end of the war against Japan was formally announced with an unconditional surrender. The USS Piranha was recalled to Pearl and made her way back to San Francisco on September 11th, 1945, formally completing her wartime service with the USN. She served in "Operation Magic Carpet", the returning of thousands of veterans stateside for a time. In all, the boat was honored with five Battle Stars for her combat service. She was decommissioned on May31st, 1946 and lay in reserve status. On November 6th, 1962, she was given the new classification of "AGSS-389" and served out the remainder of her days as such until she was officially struck from the Naval Register on March 1st, 1967. She joined many USN vessels in being unceremoniously scrapped, her hull be sold off on August 11th, 1970.
The USS Piranha (SS-389) is the only USN vessel to have been named after the Piranha, a ferocious omnivorous fresh water fish of South America.
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