Gato-Class Submarines in action

The United States Navy was early to adopt submarine technology. The several experimental boats built for the Navy by John Holland in the last years of the nineteenth century are considered by many to have been the first practical submersibles. But whatever lead the U.S. Navy enjoyed over the rest of the world in those early days had long since slipped away by the end of World War I. By 1919, the United States was building submarines that were smaller, slower, less well aimed, and shorter-ranged than the submarines that other combatants had deployed during the war.
As embarrassing as that situation was, it was even more of a concern given the changed strategic situation that emerged after the Great War. The United States was no longer a marginal player on the world stage, and, as a 'great power,' had to be prepared for the possibility that the peace brokered at Versailles would not last very long. There were really only two or, at the most, three nations the U.S. might conceivably face in any future war, and one of those, Great Britain, was a firm ally. Bolshevik Russia was scary, but not a military threat. That left Japan.