Roy Exum
On April 27, 1944, Navy Commander Eugene B. Fluckey took command of the submarine USS Barb in the Pacific. In the space of one year and four missions, his cunning and daring resulted in the most tonnage of enemy warships sunk in all of World War II, this according to Japanese records. Because he could hardly stick around and count, the true figure is unknown but the USS Barb undoubtedly sank more than 17 confirmed kills, which included a Japanese carrier, a cruiser and a frigate.
I would have never known about ‘Lucky’ Fluckey, a nickname he earned as a midshipman at the Naval Academy in the mid-30s (and one you must never try to say fast), had I not come across an obscure mention of a submarine that once demolished a train in my morning reading a few days back.
That doesn’t add up, it can’t be done … but my curiosity snagged me. It can be done if you are somebody akin to ‘Lucky’ Fluckey.
Following his fourth mission on the USS Barb, Cmdr. Fluckey was summoned to Washington and awarded the Medal of Honor for “bravery, conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity.” Under normal conditions, a Medal winner is removed from action, but ‘Lucky’ Fluckey had coaxed a promise of a fifth mission “if he was successful” from Admiral Chester Lockwood. Are you kidding, he about took out the whole Japanese Navy on his fourth patrol.
The Medal and a Presidential Commission for the men on the Barb came when Fluckey was unable to get close enough to a Japanese ship and, suddenly, the ship disappeared. Fluckey studied maps and aerial phots and discovered a hidden harbor, its mouth carefully staged by a fleet of Chinese Junks to be invisible. Fluckey figured he could use the Junks to his advantage.
He also knew the channel would be heavily-netted, thick underwater cables spread that could foil a submarine. So in early-morning darkness, Fluckey sailed the sub ON TOP OF THE WATER into the Japanese hideaway, firing four forward torpedoes at over 30 Japanese warships and then skillfully spinning the 312-foot boat so four aft torpedoes could also be launched as well. The eight ‘fish’ hit all six major targets.
Sure enough, the scrambling but slow Junks perfectly, albeit temporarily, blocked a Japanese reprisal, allowing the Barb to get a head-start in the ensuing chase. Fluckey had plotted a hard right-rudder escape through a rocky area until the seas were deep enough to dive, which was precisely when the Barb was spotted by Japanese aircraft as she slipped under the sea. The skipper then ordered the boat’s diesel-driven electric engines to 150-percent capacity and set a speed record returning to Midway. En route, the ship happened across a Japanese freighter and – what the heck -- bagged it too.
So with the crew he adored, Admiral Lockwood kept his promise and ‘Lucky’ Fluckey was soon on his final “graduation voyage” when one of the greatest stories in American history began to unfold.
His sub was in hiding at Patience Bay, off the coast of Karafuto, Japan, with just five days of patrol left before being ordered to return to Midway Island. About 4 o’clock one morning, Fluckey was absent-mindedly studying some maps of the Japanese coastline. By cross-referencing several maps, he suddenly discovered the rail line that supplied both the enemy ships and coastal fortifications along miles of the enemy’s shore.
How much fun would it be to bag a train, he grinned at his officers during that morning’s mess. Fluckey was known for his easy philosophy: “We don’t have problems, only solutions” so, eagerly, the ship’s six officers began to pull off one last grand caper. They plotted to blow up the supply line. Fluckey was obviously a well-known gambler, but never at the expense of his men. How could they detonate one of the sub’s 55-pound scuttling charges without risking somebody’s life?
The 54 men who sailed with Fluckey on the boat Barb all figured a team from the boat could get near the tracks but how could they properly detonate the bomb and give the raiders enough time to get back on the boat, much less for the sub to escape? One of his seamen stepped forward and ventured, “Same way as cracking walnuts!”
The sub was cruising deep, trying to avoid a Japanese plane circling overhead, when the skipper asked young Billy Hatfield to explain. “When we were kids we used to crack walnuts on the train track all the time. You put the nuts under the rails, midway between the cross-ties, and, as the train passed, the rails would bend just enough to crack the nuts.”
“Let the train blow itself up!” Billy beamed. “We hook in a micro-switch where us kids would crack walnuts … when the rails sag it will complete the circuit and – KaBOOM!” Fluckey thought it was brilliant – so much so he allowed Billy to be part of the only land invasion of Japan by the United States during World War II.
Well, everybody on the boat wanted in on the clandestine attack, including Skipper Fluckey, and even a Japanese POW who swore he wouldn’t run. Fluckey’s staff forbade it, reminding him his duty was to skipper the boat in case an emergency arose, so he acquiesced. The skipper decreed the team must include at least one member from each department on the ship… no married men … and you have to have been a Boy Scout. What? “A Scout knows how to handle himself in the woods and what to do in a medical emergency,” was the reply.
The crew of the USS Barb had to impatiently wait three days for the weather to yield an overcast night. The third day Fluckey saw plumes of cirrus clouds and white statrus capping the mountains, he called it: “Tonight’s a go.” As night clouds diminished visibility, Fluckey ordered his helmsmen to bring the 312-foot sub (think as long as a football field) within 950 yards of the shoreline. Two small inflatables were lowered over the side. Holding four men each, the sailors were on shore within 25 minutes.
They stumbled through waist high grass and found a four-foot drainage ditch. Soon they were on the tracks. Three men were set as guards while a fourth went to climb a nearby water tower. Actually it was a lookout tower and inside a Japanese guard was sleeping soundly. Alerted, the work crew prepared the bombsite much more quietly.
Suddenly an express train was bearing down on the saboteurs. All eight dove in the bushes and, with nerves rattled, came back out to bury the powerful explosives and the batteries that would charge the circuit. Hatfield stepped to install the microcircuit and the others disobeyed the only order – rather than retreat for safety, each stood within inches to make sure “the walnut” was set just right.
At 1:30 a.m. on July 23, 1945, Commander Fluckey sighed with relief when he saw a flashlight signal from the beach -- his men were on the way back to the boat. While they were gone, Fluckey had moved the 1,500-ton sub to an unbelievable 600 yards from the enemy beach. It was crazy -- there was less than six feet of water between the keel and the ocean floor – but that was how much Fluckey adored his men.
Suddenly the boat’s machine gunner called from high on the bridge, “Cap’n! Another train on the tracks!” With that Lucky Fluckey threw caution to the wind and bellowed over the bullhorn, “Paddle like the devil!” but it was of no consequence.
The darkness was almost immediately shattered with the flash and immense power of the huge explosion, pieces of the locomotive’s boiler hurled over 200 feet into the air. As each train car began to accordion into the next, there were more explosions and soon all eight grinning saboteurs were hauled topside.
As Lucky Fluckey stood with his proud sailors, he ordered escape at a quiet two knots, knowing it would be some time before the sub had the depth to dive. And then the Captain of the Boat keyed the intercom from the bridge. “Attention! All hands below deck not absolutely needed to maneuver the ship have permission to come topside!”
Hatches popped the length of the USS Barb and the joyous crew of about 50 sailors and one Japanese POW laughed and cheered, watching the last of the explosions and fire showers from the demolished train.
Lucky Fluckey stood with them, knowing his was the only submarine to ever bag a train, and that his boys were the only Americans to complete a successful land raid on the Japanese homeland. A “graduation cruise,” indeed. The ship earned a Navy Unit Commendation for the caper.
It was even better than being awarded the Medal of Honor, if you could ever imagine such a thing.
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An Italian submarine, the boat Enrique Tazzolli, was sold for scrap in 1979 for $100,000. The submarine had been given free-and-clear to the Italians by the United States in 1953. Once upon a time the same boat was the USS Barb. It sank more Japanese ships than any other in World War II, its skipper earned the Medal of Honor and there was even one night when its mates killed a train.
There is a strong belief there were more shells, bombs and depth charges fired at Barb during World War II than any other Navy vessel – this too from Japanese sources -- yet not one member of Lucky Fluckey’s crew was ever awarded a Purple Heart.
When Fluckey learned the Barb had been sold by the Italians, he and his crew tried desperately but in vain to buy the boat and bring it home as a museum.
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When Gene Fluckey retired from the Navy in 1972 as a Rear Admiral, not only did he wear the Medal of Honor but an unprecedented FOUR Navy Crosses as well, a little-known record of honors unmatched by any American in history. He wrote a best-selling book in 1992,”Thunder Below,” and used all the proceeds to provide free reunions to those who had served with him on the Barb and their wives. His first wife died after 38 years of marriage and Fluckey remarried, his second wife and the skipper known as ‘Lucky’ spending most of their remaining years running an orphanage in Portugal.
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The big reason you have never heard this story? Just four days after the USS Barb returned to the sub pens at Midway Island, her 12th patrol concluded, the B-29 bomber Enola Gay dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima on August 6, 1945. Four days after that, another atomic bomb was dropped on Nagasaki and, on Aug. 15, 1945, the Japanese agreed to an unconditional surrender.
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Man oh man, what a movie could be made about the USS Barb and the men who sailed her.
royexum@aol.com