by Carl P. LaVO
The Barb set off at flank speed back across the Okhotsk to the Kamchatka Peninsula at the top of the Kuriles.
Fluckey had achieved his quota of five major ships sunk. With four torpedoes left, he went after more as the Barb patrolled southward along the Kuriles over the next few weeks.
From a distance of thirty miles off Paramushiru, the Barb observed airplanes practicing dogfights in the crisp arctic air against a backdrop of three-thousand-foot volcanoes belching smoke and fire. Numerous Russian ships passed. The sub dived under scores of sampans, too small to attack. At one point it got caught in a fishing net and had to surface to free itself. Nearer to the Japanese main island, the Barb dodged many aircraft by diving and quickly popping back to the surface.
Attempts to contact the overdue Golet continued to fail. Fluckey feared that it, like the Herring, had been lost. Later reports indicated Lieutenant Commander Clark’s boat had arrived in the lower Kuriles on 14 April, when an antisubmarine patrol discovered it, delivering a death blow off the east coast of Hokaido. All eighty-two men aboard perished.
The Barb exited the Okhotsk Sea on 29 June and set a course for Midway. All those aboard celebrated the Independence Day holiday—4 July—twice, on both sides of the international dateline. In a single war patrol, they had coalesced to make the Barb one of the war’s most formidable submarines. The captain’s lightning-like ability to analyze any situation and execute a determined plan of action, while methodically plotting an escape route, had impressed the crew. Said McNitt, “During attacks, he had an uncanny ability to keep the tactical picture clearly in his head, focus on the battle plan, and change it at the last minute as the situation changed.”
The Barb arrived at Midway on the boat’s second 4 July. The submarine’s 51-day patrol included 33 days spent crisscrossing 8,700 miles of the Okhotsk Sea. The men had bonded with Kito during the time and hated to see him go. They filled a seabag with cigarettes, extra clothes, and comic books for him to take along. He, in turn, told them he hoped one day to become an American citizen, that going back to Japan would be a death sentence for revealing so much to the submariners. When Marines came aboard to take charge of the prisoner, they began roughing him up. “These were Marines that had not been to war yet and they thought they’d be tough with this Jap, you know, and knock him around,” explained McNitt. “The crew got between the Marines and Kito and shook his hand. Every one of them shook his hand when he left, and these Marines couldn’t understand this. This guy was an enemy. The Marines hustled him off the ship, and away he went. But he’d been very helpful to us.”
Aftermath of bombing of IBERLANT headquarters in Portugal in 1971. Courtesy Fluckey family
Exterior of IBERLANT headquarters showing how windows had been blown out by bombs planted by terrorists. Courtesy Fluckey family
Isaac Newtown Fluckey and wife Louella with their children (clockwise from lower left) Eugene, Jim, Lucille, and Ken in 1918. Courtesy Fluckey family
Eugene B. Fluckey after graduation from the Naval Academy as an ensign assigned to the battleship Nevada. Courtesy Fluckey family
Portrait of Marjorie Fluckey following marriage to Ensign Fluckey on 6 June 1937. Courtesy Fluckey family
Lieutenant Fluckey served in S-42 operating out of the Canal Zone in Panama in 1938–40. Naval Historical Center, NH42155
The Bonita (from the right) and Bass of the V-class submarines moored in San Francisco in the early 1930s. Lieutenant Fluckey honed his seamanship and engineering expertise in the Bonita leading up to World War II. U.S. Naval Institute Photo Archive
Portrait of Marjorie Fluckey and daughter Barbara during World War II. Courtesy Fluckey family
SS-220 coming in off patrol to Midway during World War II. Courtesy Fluckey family
Japanese prisoner “Kito” with (from left) Lt. Everett “Tuck” Weaver, Lt. Cdr. Gene Fluckey, and Lt. John R. Post at end of the Barb’s eighth war patrol in the Okhotsk Sea. Courtesy Fluckey family
The submarine roars along at flank speed in the Pacific as lookouts keep a steady watch for targets and danger. Courtesy Don Miller
USS Barb Executive Officer Bob McNitt (left) and Skipper Gene Fluckey flank Kitojima “Kito” Sanji, a Japanese prisoner of war rescued from a sinking enemy ship. Sanji later provided crucial intelligence to the success of the submarine’s eighth war patrol north of Japan. Courtesy Bob McNitt
Barb crewmen line up for rescue duty on storm-tossed South China Sea in 1944. Courtesy Fluckey family
Lt. Cdr. Eugene Fluckey (center, front) and Barb crewmen celebrate rescue of Australian and British prisoners on arrival in Saipan. William E. Donnelly, the Barb’s chief pharmacist’s mate, has his arms wrapped around the shoulders of two of the Aussies rescued adrift for six days on the South China Sea. Courtesy Fluckey family
Sea bird that kept foiling attack on enemy target during Barb’s ninth war patrol sits atop periscope. Courtesy Fluckey family
Vice Adm. Charles A. Lockwood Jr. presents Navy Cross to a proud Cdr. Eugene B. Fluckey aboard the Barb on 6 December 1944. U.S. Navy photo
The entire crew of the Barb poses with the sub’s battle flag after completion of the boat’s twelfth war patrol at Midway. Commander Fluckey is in the middle at top of the flag. The submarine sank more enemy tonnage than any other submarine under a single skipper in the Pacific war. Courtesy Fluckey family
Added McNitt, “I think he may have saved the ship.”
Fluckey, meanwhile, was hopeful for a quick turnaround so the Barb could head back into action. That would have to wait for a refit at Pearl Harbor four days later. There Admiral Lockwood wanted to talk to Fluckey. So did the president of the United States.
Lost (Ninth Patrol)
The phone jangled insistently in Gene Fluckey’s room at the Royal Hawaiian. It was 0900. The captain, his officers, and the Barb’s enlisted men had been ensconced at the four-story luxury hotel on Waikiki Beach for only the second day in two weeks of much deserved R&R, courtesy of the Navy. Now someone was on the line sounding awfully curt.
“Get down in front of the hotel in ten minutes,” demanded the unidentified male caller. “President Roosevelt wants to meet you.”
Fluckey wasn’t falling for the prank. “You’ve been drinking!” he interjected.
“Captain, this is Admiral Lockwood. Be there!”
It was no joke. The president was on his way to meet the skipper. The Barb’s record of five ships and two trawlers sunk in the Okhotsk Sea had generated quite a buzz. More fantastic were details revealed in the Barb’s war patrol report being circulated among sub captains: whirlpools hundreds of yards wide that the ship dived through . . . volcanoes spewing ash and fire . . . icebergs and white seals drifting by . . . running battles amid ice floes . . . dense fog that appeared and disappeared in an instant . . . incredible mirages of enemy ships far over the horizon . . . Japanese pilots practicing dogfight maneuvers overhead . . . dramatic attacks . . . a near ramming . . . aerial bombardments . . . a prisoner taken . . .
It seemed the stuff of fiction. Yet every detail was vouched for by crew members. “Gene had a skill in writing patrol reports that gave a vivid picture of what had happened without exaggeration. He didn’t need to exaggerate, as the events were always bigger than life,” said McNitt, the Barb’s executive officer. Lockwood was so enthralled after reading the report that he sent the narrative to Admiral Nimitz, who passed it along to Franklin D. Roosevelt for overnight reading. The president had arrived in Honolulu for a strategy meeting with Nimitz and Army Gen. Douglas MacArthur. After reading the Barb report, Roosevelt insisted on meeting the skipper the next morning. So precisely at 0910 Fluckey joined Lockwood in front of the Royal Hawaiian as the president’s limousine rolled to a stop. Lockwood went to the right back door and opened it, helping the polio-afflicted president put his legs out so he could face the skipper, who greeted the commander in chief warmly. Roosevelt introduced Fluckey to Admiral Nimitz, sitting in the middle, and General MacArthur on the far sid
e. Nimitz shook Fluckey’s hand while MacArthur gave him a wave. Looking into the face of the Army’s Pacific commander, Fluckey flashed back to Washington in 1932, when he watched as a much younger MacArthur ordered “fix bayonets!” and drove World War I veterans out of the District of Columbia and across a bridge into Virginia. The protesters, 15,000 strong, had bivouacked in the so-called Bonus City to demand bonuses Congress had promised eight years earlier but never paid.
Roosevelt and Fluckey chatted briefly. The president was intrigued that the Barb had spent only a single day submerged during its fifty-two-day patrol. Fluckey explained his strategy. Waiting in ambush for something to float by in daylight while submerged with three feet of periscope exposed was too limiting. By his estimate, only thirteen square miles of ocean could be scanned. A surface search, on the other hand, allowed the boat to raise the periscope to fifty feet, enabling a view of 206 square miles. “You see more ships and sink more ships,” said the captain with a grin.
“Battle reports like yours let me sleep, confident that peace is inevitable,” the president replied. Turning to Admiral Nimitz, he added, “Chester, I want you to personally see that I am sent a copy of Barb’s patrol reports whenever Captain Fluckey returns from patrol.” The five men then exchanged salutes before Roosevelt, MacArthur, and Nimitz drove off.
Roosevelt had been so impressed by Fluckey’s enthusiasm and the results of his first war patrol that the next day he asked Lockwood if he’d have the skipper rev up the Barb’s engines and cruise past a landing at Pearl Harbor. The president would be waiting to film the boat from his wheel-chair; he loved making home movies and wanted to take back a memento of the Barb.
How do you turn down the president?
At Lockwood’s direction, Fluckey assembled his crew and cast off. The Barb puttered by the landing as Roosevelt filmed the scene. He wasn’t happy. The sub was going too slow. Its battle flag and pennants hung limply. Could Fluckey do it again, but this time faster?
The admiral ordered the skipper to take the Barb back out and come back in, this time with a head of steam. This angered the captain since there was a great risk of crashing into a ship moored at the landing. Any damage to the Barb certainly would put a crimp on the upcoming war patrol. Lockwood didn’t want to hear it. “Don’t worry about it. I’ll be responsible.”
Fluckey, furious, took the conn as the sub backed out into the channel for another run. As Roosevelt gave the signal by dropping his hand, the skipper bellowed, “All ahead full!” The Barb surged forward, its flags and pennants fluttering wildly to the president’s satisfaction. But Lockwood feared the sub was coming in too fast. The admiral cringed. Just when it seemed a crash was inevitable, Fluckey shouted, “All back emergency! Left full rudder!” A whirl of foam erupted as the boat reversed thrust and shuddered violently to a stop, the bow ten yards short of the ship ahead. Roosevelt clapped approval as crewmen secured mooring lines from the Barb. Captain Fluckey crossed the bow to greet the president, pushing by Lockwood, who fumed, “Don’t you ever do that to me again.” Fluckey snipped back, “Admiral, then don’t ask me to endanger my ship again.”
Later, at Lockwood’s office, the two shrugged off the incident. The admiral lavished praise on young Fluckey, noting that only five boat captains—Slade Cutter, Walter Griffith, Richard O’Kane, Charles Kirkpatrick, and Thomas Klakring—had equaled his record of five ships sunk on a single patrol. He asked if the skipper wanted to lead the Barb back to the Okhotsk. Fluckey demurred, preferring an assignment south of Japan on enemy convoy lanes. “Okay,” replied the admiral. “Get ready for wolf packing in the South China Sea. It’s hot as a firecracker.”
“Great!” said the skipper. “Can’t wait to get started.”
It took another week for a relief crew to repair minor problems aboard the Barb. Meanwhile, Fluckey and his men relaxed in Waikiki. The order of the day was swimming and surfboarding, or hanging out at the Outrigger Canoe Club, the beachfront nightclub near the Royal Hawaiian. The hotel, leased by the Navy for aviators and submariners, was cordoned off by barbed wire and shore patrol guards. Inside, drinking, partying, and gambling were inevitable. “There was no night in my room I didn’t hear dice banging on the floorboards up and down the hall there,” said McNitt. “And every once in a while somebody would fall out a window and land in the bushes down below. So it was kind of a crazy place as it was. But it was necessary. You had to get your mind off the war.” Indeed, the mortality rate among submariners had risen to the highest of any branch of the service. The Barb crew understood that all too well, having been the only sub in its wolf pack to return from the Okhotsk Sea.
The Barb’s crew was among the youngest in the undersea fleet. The captain was only thirty, McNitt was twenty-eight, and most of the crewmen were twenty-two or under. During liberty, the skipper did what he could to be one of the guys yet retain control. When crewmen decided to have an afternoon party in a field near the hotel, the skipper thought a few females would liven up things. He visited the Navy laundry and got the manager to invite women who worked there. So many came forward that Fluckey needed a bus but couldn’t get one. What he did obtain was a flatbed truck. “As I remember,” said McNitt, “this truck came up with all these girls shrieking and singing and everything and hanging over the edge of the truck and jumped out, and the party was on. My job was to make sure we got everybody back all right, and it turned out fine.”
The captain was willing to bend the rules if it helped build morale. For instance, when one of his junior lieutenants insisted it was impossible to get a woman to the second floor of the hotel because of security, Fluckey bet it could be done. A nurse, engaged to an Army lieutenant stationed in the South Pacific, had gotten to know the submariners and agreed to participate. “So Gene and I engaged the shore patrol and the guy at the desk in conversation,” said McNitt. “While we asked them for directions to town, the rest of them got Martha Hendrickson up the backstairs and into the room. But we hadn’t been there more than a couple of minutes when there was a hammering on the door and the shore patrol was there.”
The skipper was more successful in procuring twenty-four cases of beer from a supply officer for the upcoming war patrol. Few Barb veterans liked the regulation Schenley “Black Death” whiskey. What they did like, especially the younger ones, was beer. Despite a rule against having it aboard a Navy sub, Fluckey was determined to reward his crew for successful attacks. “We loaded the cases of beer in a jeep over at the officers’ club [in Pearl Harbor], where we’d made arrangements to get them,” said Fluckey’s partner in crime, his exec. “We stowed them in the officers’ shower; filled it right up to the overhead.”
The Barb got under way for its ninth war patrol on 4 August 1944 in league with the USS Queenfish (SS-393) and the USS Tunny (SS-282). All three practiced coordinated mock attacks on an accompanying destroyer until the ship turned back two days out. Aboard the Barb was Capt. Edwin R. Swinburne, Lockwood’s flag secretary, who would serve as wolf pack commander. Realizing the potential for strenuous action, the admiral reasoned it would be unfair for Fluckey to again coordinate the boats. Swinburne, ten years older than Fluckey, had never made a war patrol, though he was a veteran of the service. Lockwood and Cdr. Richard Voge, architect of the undersea offensive, coined the term “Ed’s Eradicators” for the wolf pack. Lockwood posted Swinburne in the Barb because both of the other skippers—Charles Elliot Loughlin in the Queenfish and George Pierce in the Tunny—were new to their commands. Fluckey knew Swinburne was a stickler for rules and probably would put the kibosh on the beer stash. The skipper asked his officers to keep it a secret to give him time to think of something; it was too late to offload the beer.
En route to Midway cross-training continued. Every man had to know another man’s job in case of an emergency. The value of that showed itself during a practice dive.
“We were trying to see if we could increase our diving speed, and we were diving with almost a thirty-degree down angle,” explained McNit
t, noting the normal dive is ten degrees. “With the bow planes on full dive, the relay burned out, leaving the bow planes on full dive and no way to bring them back other than shifting to manual and cranking them up. There wasn’t time to do that.” The diving officer ordered “Blow main ballast!” as the boat rushed downward. A petty officer on the main ballast blow manifold needed to open the main ballast blow valve to rapidly force seawater out of the ballast tanks with compressed air to get the buoyancy needed to surface. However, the petty officer slipped on the steep deck and tumbled to the lower end of the compartment. The ship’s third-class baker reacted instinctively from his cross-training. “Russell Elliman jumped out of the galley, where he was watching this, realized what had happened, dove through the watertight door, grabbed the main ballast blow manifold handle as he went by, and blew main ballast,” continued McNitt. “It caught the boat at about 350 feet.”
It was a close call; the cook had saved the boat.
Fluckey and Swinburne meshed well. The commander was perfectly willing to leave operations of the Barb to the skipper. In fact, he studied Fluckey’s leadership traits, impressed by how he listened to any and all suggestions that anybody on the boat anted up. Said McNitt, “He was quick to make up his mind but if he saw a better way of doing it, he’d jump on it. He was cheerful, fun loving. Serious when it came to serious things on the boat but always looking for a way of putting a little bit of amusement or fun into the day.”