The Galloping Ghost

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The Galloping Ghost Page 18

by Carl P. LaVO


  Later the couple went to see Gene’s ailing father to show him the medal; he had never seen one before. Afterward the Fluckeys took Barbara out of school, obtained enough gas coupons from the Annapolis ration board to get across country, packed some belongings and their cocker spaniel Miss Nibs, and headed west in the family’s five-year-old Plymouth sedan, which they planned to sell after arrival. The family would return by train. They passed through Yellowstone National Park on the way to Mare Island, arriving at the end of March. Max Duncan and his wife, Trilby, arrived by car from their home in North Carolina as did Phyllis and Dave Teeters from Oregon. The couples and their families settled into Quonset huts at the base while the overhaul continued. Weekends were spent enjoying San Francisco, particularly Fisherman’s Wharf and the Top of the Mark Hopkins Hotel. The Fluckeys received an invitation to a Sunday night dinner party hosted by a fifty-six-year-old San Francisco physician.

  Dr. Margaret Chung, born in the United States of Chinese ancestry, had established the first medical clinics in the city, where she was known as “the angel of Chinatown” in the 1920s. After Japan’s invasion of China in the 1930s and the attack on Pearl Harbor, “Mom” Chung became famous by drawing national attention to the exploits of the Flying Tigers, three hundred American volunteers who flew for the Dutch from bases in Southeast Asia. Piloting P-40 fighter planes with sharks’ teeth painted on their fuselages, the squadron took on the vaunted Japanese air force in the skies over Burma and China in the summer of 1942. As the war progressed, the flamboyant physician created a circle of “adopted” war heroes. They included “fair haired Bastards” (her moniker for aviators, soldiers, and sailors; she said she couldn’t call them sons because she was not married), “Golden Dolphins” (for submariners), and “Kiwis” (her name for those in the performing arts, politicians, and business leaders who supported the war effort). The club included Pacific Fleet Adm. Chester W. Nimitz, Adm. William F. Halsey Jr., commander of the Third Fleet, and actor and future president Ronald Reagan.

  The physician’s large townhouse on Masonic Street became a gathering place for as many as a hundred guests at a time. Attendance was by invitation only, with the rule being that senior military and famous people wash the dishes. One submarine officer recalled his visit early in the war: “Lily Pons was singing, Admiral Nimitz was dishing out the chow, and Harold Stassen [former Minnesota governor and future presidential candidate] was among his assistants.”

  Word had gotten back to the doctor that Fluckey had earned the Medal of Honor and was at Mare Island. So she issued an invitation for him to join the Golden Dolphins. Fluckey insisted that Max Duncan go with him. “The parties were always on Sunday night and Mom Chung’s walk-in refrigerator and liquor cabinet were well stocked by merchants, celebrities, and wealthy friends,” recalled Duncan. “I was privileged to be made a Golden Dolphin. My wife, Trilby, and I went to Mom’s with Marjorie and Gene at least twice, maybe three times. Mom made me Golden Dolphin 106 and gave me a ring with the number on it.”

  At that first gathering the Fluckeys and the Duncans enjoyed kibitzing with Lily Pons, Hollywood maestro Andre Kostalanetz, and Broadway and film star Helen Hayes. During the evening the conductor taught Fluckey how to drink a Nickolayev cocktail. The irrepressible skipper engaged Pons in a discussion of the finer points of her stagecraft.

  Across the bay the Barb had entered the final stages of its overhaul. Among the refinements were installation of radar in one of the boat’s two periscopes for more precise range finding during submerged attacks and anchoring a more powerful 5-inch gun aft of the conning tower. The 4-inch forward gun was removed. An after gun was more practical, as Fluckey learned while being chased from Nam Kwan Harbor. Officers and crew spent the last few days of the overhaul outside the Golden Gate practicing with the deck gun and making test dives. The boat also tied up to a pier in San Francisco for a day of degaussing—removing magnetic properties to make the sub less vulnerable to floating mines.

  Fluckey, having made an incredible ten war patrols, graded the overhaul average. The Barb had always been exceptionally clean and sound, a tribute to its veteran petty officers who had completed war patrols in Barb and other boats. Saunders, the chief gunners mate, had made eleven war patrols. Gordon Wade, the chief electricians mate, had made ten, and the two chief motor mates—Franklin Williams and Thomas Noll—had five and seven respectively. Lieutenant Teeters, having been aboard for four runs, keened to the boat’s tidiness. “It’s the reason I went into submarines,” he recalled. “I don’t like dust.”

  On 16 May the wives saw the Barb off for its return to Hawaii. Afterward they packed their belongings and began the long journey home. Gene had asked Trilby Duncan to drive his family since the Duncans lived not far from Annapolis and she had planned to make the road trip on her own. She asked Phyllis Teeters to come along to help with the driving. The women drove a southern route, passing through Yosemite, Las Vegas, the Grand Canyon, the Petrified Forest, the Painted Desert, and New Orleans. Along the way Marjorie suffered a diabetic seizure at a hotel; fortunately Trilby noticed in time. A glass of orange juice reversed the effects.

  Arriving at Pearl Harbor on 24 May, Commander Fluckey prepared for a variety of unique sub operations that had been rolling around in his mind since the seventh war patrol. Back then he wanted to use a rubber boat to smuggle saboteurs ashore in Formosa to blow up a railroad bridge, a plan turned down by the skipper. Likewise, he conceived using the sub as “a perfect platform” to launch missiles at land targets. Tuck Weaver thought it was an interesting concept but Captain Waterman rejected it as farfetched; he thought the sub’s 4-inch gun was far more accurate than missiles. On the eighth patrol, Fluckey had been bothered by the inability of the Barb to destroy the strategic cable station in the Kuriles with the 4-inch gun. A rocket attack might have succeeded. “The torpedo has fulfilled its purpose. Its day, in this war, is passing,” Fluckey wrote at the time. “Those of us, not specially equipped for the last good area [of sub operations], must stagnate and slowly slip into oblivion, or look to a new main battery—rockets. The rocket is not a toy. Its possibilities are tremendous, strategically and tactically, but not beyond comprehension.”

  ComSubPac gunnery officer Cdr. Harry Hull, who shared Fluckey’s enthusiasm, pursued the skipper’s request for a hundred spin-stabilized rockets tipped with nearly ten pounds of explosives, all of which would be stacked in the forward torpedo room at the expense of a few torpedoes. A mobile pipe rack launcher was bolted to the forward gun mount. The launcher could be raised to a forty-five-degree angle and pointed dead ahead to fire simultaneously a dozen of the four-foot-long MK10 missiles to their maximum range of about five thousand yards. Such a rocket salvo would far surpass the impact of the boat’s 5-inch gun in Fluckey’s estimation.

  The skipper also brought aboard a new class of acoustical homing torpedoes—four Mark 27s and three larger Mark 28s for use on heavy targets. The Mark 27s were light enough to “swim” from a torpedo tube on their own without the normal boost of compressed air.

  As June rolled around, news of the attack on Nam Kwan Harbor finally broke. The Honolulu Star-Bulletin reported in a screaming two-deck, page 1 headline, “U.S. Sub Barb Sneaks Into Enemy Harbor, Has Field Day.” The Los Angeles Times led with “U.S. Sub Blows Up NIP Convoy,” and papers back East declared, “Incredible . . . But True” and “Jap Sea Convoy Destroyed by Lone U.S. Submarine.” The Navy, in disclosing Fluckey’s Medal of Honor and the Barb’s Presidential Unit Citation, termed the attack on Nam Kwan Harbor “virtually a suicide mission—a naval epic.” The United Press International crowed, “It is the sort of thriller with which boys series books about war are filled but which sound too incredible really to have happened,” adding, “From the bridge of the surfaced ship Commander Fluckey could see Japanese ships erupting in the night like a nest of volcanoes.”

  There was no time for the skipper or his crew to bask in the limelight. The Barb was ready to go. All that was needed were th
e promised rockets. When they didn’t show up as scheduled, Fluckey refused to leave without them. Finally a boat pulled alongside the sub and off-loaded the seventy-five-pound rocket launcher and seventy-two missiles. No others were available.

  On the afternoon of 8 June the submarine cast off without fanfare. But lookouts had raised a makeshift flag to the pinnacle of the periscope shears. Emblazoned on the cloth were the words “Fluckey’s 8th Fleet.” As the black, unmarked submarine proceeded through the Pearl Harbor channel, battleships, carriers, and other subs sent a steady stream of blinker-signals and flag messages encouraging “Good hunting!” and “Good luck!” Commander Fluckey couldn’t believe all the sailors waving and taking photos as the submarine motored past. Then another message arrived, this from Admiral Halsey: “GOOD LUCK BARB AND FLUCKEY X GOOD HUNTING AND GIVE THEM HELL X HALSEY.” The skipper realized something was up, finally noticing what was written on the flag overhead. Completely embarrassed, he ordered it lowered and handed over but took no punitive action.

  The skipper set a course that passed through Midway in a return trip to northern Japan and the Okhotsk Sea, where he soon would demonstrate the awesome future of submarine warfare.

  Graduation (Twelfth Patrol)

  With the war winding down, Commander Fluckey knew the pressure was on. In a letter to his wife, he sized up the task ahead:

  Shipping is very thin all over, yet everyone [in the undersea navy] seems to keep an eye on the Barb. That’s why I asked for this on my own hook. If I’m proven wrong and we have a dry run, it will be my own doing and I can take the snickers. On the other hand, if my crystal ball pans out and the other boys dry up, I’m in like Flynn, again. After a hullabaloo at the barn I succeeded in getting some special experimental equipment installed which I believe will renovate submarine warfare. You’ll enjoy hearing about this, and probably will get it via the grapevine before we return. . . . I intend to throw everything we have at the Japs till they rue the day the Barb was born—if not regret they ever started this war.

  As the sub passed through the lower Kuriles into the Okhotsk, an “eyes only” message arrived from Admiral Lockwood directing Fluckey to make his presence known, to “raise a rumpus.” Three wolf packs of nine submarines in the Sea of Japan were due to transit La Perouse Strait into the Okhotsk en route to Guam over the next few days. By drawing away air and surface patrols from the twenty-five-mile-wide passage, the Barb would enable the subs to slip through undetected.

  Raise a rumpus? No problem. Fluckey would use all his bells and whistles—three kinds of torpedoes, more than seventy missiles, a larger deck gun, and saboteurs. He would create such havoc the Japanese would think the whole rim of the Okhotsk was under siege.

  On the morning of 21 June the Barb attacked and sank two small, well-armed ships in the lower Kuriles northeast of Hokkaido. The sub continued down the coast, daring the Japanese by staying on the surface close to land in the daylight. The boat bore steadily toward the mining and lumber city of Shari on the northern coast of Hokkaido. Two hours after midnight on 22 June the Barb crept into the harbor as the city of twenty thousand slumbered. At Fluckey’s order, “Swish” Saunders and his gunners scrambled out onto the forward deck, where they unstrapped the missile launcher, raised it to a forty-five-degree angle, loaded the pipes with a dozen missiles, and connected an electrical cord to a firing switch in the conning tower. The men then went aft alongside the conning tower. The captain, on the bridge, flipped his polarized goggles to their darkest setting and barked the order, “Rockets away!”

  An explosion of blue-white flame lit the deck. The missiles lifted off in less than five seconds and disappeared into the night sky. It was the first ballistic missile strike by an American submarine in the history of warfare.

  “Right rudder! All ahead two-thirds!” yelled the captain.

  The Barb heeled about and made for the open sea. Thirty seconds passed until multiple impacts lit the city. Chunks of buildings flew into the air as the sub began a high-speed, twenty-hour run across the Okhotsk to the eastern side of Sakhalin Island north of La Perouse Strait. Fluckey was pretty sure the attack on Shari would divert Japanese ships guarding the strait, enabling the wolf pack to scoot through. Confirmation arrived in an ULTRA from ComSubPac: three Japanese destroyers had departed La Perouse to sweep the north coast of Hokkaido in search of a reported wolf pack off Shari.

  As the Barb entered Patience Bay (Taraika Wan) on the eastern side of Sakhalin, the sub made radar contact with a diesel trawler. Its seven-man crew saw the sub coming and tried to escape. But a burst of 40mm gunfire and 5-inch shells brought the ship to a dead halt, on fire and sinking. Enemy crewmen looked like they wanted to be saved. Fluckey decided one might be useful; he couldn’t spare enough men to guard additional prisoners. A wounded sailor swam for the sub and was pulled aboard. The Barb abandoned the rest to the frigid Okhotsk. But two hours later the boat returned. “We wanted to give the survivors some food and water as well as direction to land if they had found a raft or something to get up on,” said Max Duncan, officer of the deck. There were no survivors.

  The Barb resumed its coastal run north toward the city of Shikuka in Karafuto Province, the Japanese-held lower end of Sakhalin. Radar revealed a large number of pips on the city’s waterfront, perhaps the remainder of the once powerful Japanese fleet. Fluckey envisioned a second Nam Kwan since the anchorage lay twenty-two miles inside the twenty-fathom curve. The submarine closed to five fathoms where, to the crew’s great disappointment, there were no ships—just numerous smokestacks. The boat returned to the open sea.

  For the next two days the Barb journeyed north along the foggy upper half of Sakhalin, controlled by the Russians. Amid seals and ice floes the submarine sailed as far as the port of Urkt, where Fluckey thought the Soviets might be selling fuel oil to the enemy. No such activity or targets were encountered. But on the late afternoon of 26 June, during the return voyage, lookouts saw a southbound convoy dead ahead. When radar detected nothing, Fluckey realized it was an atmospheric anomaly. The skipper guessed the ships were about twenty-five miles over the horizon and initiated an end-around.

  It took hours to get ahead of the convoy—two medium freighters, a smaller transport, a modern sub-hunter destroyer, two frigates, and two patrol boats. As was his habit while tracking ships on the surface, Fluckey sat on the bridge with his feet propped up, very relaxed, doing the math in his head. “He would ask his exec on the scope, ‘What’s the range and bearing to that ship that was bearing zero three zero at 4,800 yards five minutes ago?’” explained Duncan. “And you’d have to keep up with him in your mind in order to do that. If you didn’t, he would ask me what the current distance to the target was. And I would say, ‘Oh, about 2,200 yards.’ And he would say, that’s pretty good. It’s 2,600 yards better than five minutes ago.”

  Night fell under a full moon, too risky for a surface attack. The captain submerged to periscope depth ahead of the convoy and waited. The setup seemed ideal until the convoy turned sharply west away from the sub into Patience Bay. The only chance was an “up the kilt” shot at the lagging destroyer using one of the boat’s new Mark 28 acoustic torpedoes. Fluckey had to act quickly.

  “Open outer door tube four! Range—mark! Final bearing—mark! Fire 4!”

  A blast of compressed air sent the torpedo on its way at thirty-two knots. It locked onto the sound of the ship’s propellers and curved toward the target. The Barb’s sonar operator counted down the approach. One minute, fifty-three seconds. One minute, twenty seconds. One minute. Forty-five seconds. Thirty-five.

  Silence. The torpedo’s motor quit short of the target.

  Frustrated, Fluckey brought the sub back to the surface for a new approach. He cleared the bridge of all but he and Duncan as the flash of gunfire lit the horizon. The whine of shells flying over warned the sub away. Fluckey set a zigzag course seaward, then headed farther down the coast. The convoy anchored overnight, and at sunup on the 27th resumed its southward tr
ek. The submerged Barb was waiting. Morning haze had burned off, however, giving the convoy’s aviators a perfect view of the sub’s black hull etched against the shallow sea bottom. As Fluckey raised the periscope, two bombs exploded. Close. Then two more, followed by the thump of depth charges—getting closer. The boat made for deeper water as the destroyer raced forward, its spotter plane circling. The warship’s side-throwing catapults hurled depth charges with abandon, clearing the ocean in a pattern never before faced by the Barb. Teeters plotted each detonation. Well above. One below. One astern. Another on the port side. The destroyer was off target, however. “Captain,” Teeters shouted. “Plot indicates she has lost Barb, probably attacking some poor seal or a whale heading north. We’re in the clear.”

  An hour later the submarine surfaced unseen. It was mid-morning and there was yet one more chance to do some damage before the convoy rounded the southern cape of Karafuto and disappeared through La Perouse Strait. Fluckey made another end-around, keeping the smoke of the convoy in view. The Barb arrived off the cape at dusk. There was no sign of ships. Again they had anchored somewhere up the coast. A sixty-mile search throughout the night was fruitless.

 

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