The Galloping Ghost

by Carl P. LaVO

  With renewed urgency, the men hollowed out room for the bomb and the batteries and carefully covered them with stones. The most critical step was attaching the switch. Fluckey wanted all but Hatfield to move away in case the bomb went off. But all five stood over him to make sure the switch was wired correctly. The work completed, they made for the boats in a noisy retreat. It was up to Sever and Walker to wade out with the loaded boats to launch them against the cresting waves and climb in. “You can appreciate our efforts in getting those erratic rubber boats out beyond the surf,” said Sever. “By the time we got the boat out to where the paddlers could hold it, Lieutenant Walker and I were waist-deep or more in water. With foul weather gear soaked, we really struggled to pull ourselves aboard.”

  The saboteurs were halfway back to the Barb when a northbound express train appeared trailing wispy white smoke. On the bridge of the Barb, Fluckey saw it too and broke the silence with a megaphone: “Paddle like the devil! We’re leaving!”

  Seconds later the bomb went off under the locomotive, rupturing its boilers. The explosion threw wreckage two hundred feet into the air. Cars piled into one another and lurched off the tracks in a mass of twisted, rolling metal.

  The saboteurs scrambled aboard the Barb, which turned and disappeared into the bay.

  Back at sea the crew celebrated what they considered the high point of Fluckey’s graduation patrol. But the skipper was not about to rest. Over the next few days, he directed a fiery wave of destruction. North of the smoldering train wreck, the sub launched thirty missiles at the city of Shiritori and its factories, starting two large fires, including one in the Oji paper factory, the largest in Japan. The inferno spread three miles through the industrial area. The sub launched its last missile salvo at the town of Kashiho, forty miles south. Offshore, the Barb sank four sampans in separate gun actions, boarded one, and took a prisoner. Next were canneries in the coastal city of Chiri in the upper reaches of Patience Bay, obliterated with twenty rounds of 5-inch shells. The Japanese were convinced an invasion by Halsey’s fleet was imminent and scrambled reinforcements to northern Japan.

  Returning to the lower Kuriles, the sub attacked a sampan shipyard and lumber mill at Shibetoro on the island of Kunashiri. Bombardment with 40mm and 20mm gunfire destroyed thirty-five sampans. The sub kept firefighters away with bursts of gunfire.

  During the action, Commander Fluckey watched with dismay the pitiful sight of an older man, stripped to his waist. The owner of the lumber mill carried a bucket in each hand. Duncan saw him and ordered a cease-fire. Everyone watched as the solitary figure followed a path to the shoreline, shook his fists at the submarine, then stooped to fill the buckets. He turned and lugged the water slowly uphill. When he saw his mill engulfed in flames, he dropped the buckets and turned to face the submariners. Distraught, he threw up his arms, all hope lost. Defeated, he walked away and disappeared into a forest. Fluckey could feel his pain, muttering to himself, “War is such hell.”

  In its last act, the sub attacked a trawler, took two prisoners, and set the vessel on fire. When it would not sink, the submarine put its nose against the hull and rolled it over. Fluckey then turned for home. It was 27 July 1945. Gene Fluckey’s war with Japan was over.

  The submarine arrived at Midway on 2 August to a triumphant reception. It was the completion of yet another amazing voyage. Submariners throughout the Pacific had gotten a hint of that in ComSubPac’s nightly news broadcast a week earlier. In a roll call of boats at sea, most of which reported little or no action, Gene’s boat stood out. COMSUBPAC BREEZY NIGHTLY NEWS X BARBAROUS BARB REPORTS SINKING ONE LARGE AND ONE SMALL FREIGHTER AND THREE LUGGERS ONE TRAWLER FOUR SAMPANS IN ADDITION TO ONE ISLAND SMASHING BOMBARDMENT AND TWO ROCKET MASSAGES GIVEN IN EXCHANGE FOR BOMBS AND DEPTH CHARGES RECEIVED X DUTCH SUBMARINE O-ONE NINE REPORTS ITSELF AGROUND ON LADD REEF WITH COD SPEEDING TO AID X.

  Now, in Midway harbor, all eyes were on the submarine and its massive battle flag streaming from the periscope shears. Six feet high and as many wide, it was covered with more than sixty colorful swatches made by crewmen to commemorate each Japanese ship sunk and damaged, the missile strikes on Japan, the sabotage of the sixteen-car train, the numerous gun attacks, and the rescue of Allied prisoners of war in the South China Sea. The sub’s guy wires from bow to stern also were decorated with fifty red ball pennants indicating the number of vessels of all types sunk or destroyed ashore in the boat’s just concluded patrol.

  The captain, smiling broadly from the bridge, could bask in the great satisfaction that, despite an estimated four hundred shells, bombs, and depth charges lobbed over the Barb in its five patrols under his command, the boat had endured every punch and returned to safety time and again without a single casualty. In a final accounting, the Navy credited the skipper with sinking twenty-five ships—second only to Richard O’Kane and his Tang (SS-306). The Barb also had the distinction of participating in the sole landing by American military forces on the Japanese homeland and the first ever ballistic missile attack by a submarine. Fluckey, his officers, and his crew had earned an astonishing 6 Navy Crosses, 23 Silver Stars, 23 Bronze Stars, a Navy Unit Commendation for the 12th patrol, the Presidential Unit Citation for the 8th, 9th, 10th, and 11th patrols, and the Medal of Honor for the 11th. The Barb had emerged under Fluckey’s innovative leadership as one of the great submarines in an undersea offensive that had much to do with winning the Pacific war. American submersibles, just 2 percent of the Fleet, sank approximately 55 percent of all Japanese naval and merchant marine shipping. Of the 288 Navy submarines that fought in the war, 52 were lost—a rate of almost one out of every five. Out of an operating force of 16,000 men who made war patrols, 3,131 crewmen and 374 officers perished. The casualty rate of 22 percent was the highest of any branch of the American military.

  In his official report of the Barb’s twelfth war patrol, Captain Fluckey paid tribute to his men:

  How difficult it is to close this chapter of the Barb. What wordy praise can one give such men as these. Men who, without the information available to the CO follow unhesitatingly when in the vicinity of minefield so long as there is the possibility of targets. Men who offer half a year’s pay for the opportunity to land on Jap land, to blow up a Jap train with a self-trained demolition team. Men who flinch not with the fathometer ticking off 2 fathoms beneath the keel. Men who shout that the destroyer is running away after we’ve thrown every punch we possess and are getting our ears flattened back. Men who will fight to the last bullet and then want to start throwing the empty shell cases.

  On 9 August 1945 an atomic bomb exploded over Nagasaki. The following morning, the Presidential Unit Citation was presented to the entire crew assembled in uniform at Midway. “The ceremony was held on the Barb and the Beautiful ‘B’ was lovely,” wrote Gene to his wife.

  The crew was in whites and our battle flag waved itself so proudly in the breeze. The dock was filled with formations of men sent by every submarine and tender present. The commodore gave a short speech summing up the prowess of our results and you could just feel the thrill that went through the crowd when he boomed out our total devastation upon the Japanese—destruction in sunk and damaged ships amounting to one quarter of a million tons. Oh honey! Then he had me step forward and read off the citation. Upon its completion he handed it to me, the band played ‘The Star Spangled Banner’ and our Presidential Unit Citation flag was run up on one of the periscopes. My chest nearly burst.

  Officers and crew celebrated through the afternoon and into the night. At midnight news arrived that the Japanese had surrendered. Within minutes enlisted men were awakened and there was dancing in the streets until dawn.

  Admiral Nimitz, commander in chief of all forces in the Central and North Pacific, was in Guam when the surrender was announced. He greeted the news with little more than a serene smile as officers around him leaped joyously. For four years vilification of the Japanese as subhuman fanatics had fanned ruthless combat throughout the Pacific. Now Nimitz
, a great admirer of famed Japanese Admiral Togo, whose fleet destroyed the Russian Navy in the Battle of Tushima in 1905, wanted the racial slurs to stop. In a congratulatory announcement to be broadcast to the Fleet, Admiral Nimitz reminded naval officers that “the use of insulting epithets in connection with the Japanese as a race or individuals does not now become the officers of the United States Navy.”

  Fluckey received orders to relinquish command and report to the sub base at Pearl Harbor. The new skipper, Lt. Cdr. Cornelius Patrick Callahan, acceded to the captain’s request to forgo the traditional transfer of command. “I didn’t have the courage to have a formal relieving aboard ship with the crew at quarters—I would have blubbered,” Gene wrote his wife. Instead, he assembled the sub’s officers in the tavern at the Gooneyville Lodge. Everyone stood at attention as first Fluckey, then Callahan, read orders, formally transferring command.

  With a plane standing by to fly him to Pearl Harbor, Fluckey made his way to the submarine pier one last time. The Barb was preparing to shove off for Guam, where it would be stationed as a precaution. The skipper lifted the last line mooring his boat and tossed it to deck hands, crewmen with whom he had shared so much—a life-and-death journey none would forget. Gene wished them well. On the bridge was the new executive officer, Max Duncan, returning a steady, poignant salute. Tears clouded the former captain’s eyes as the boat made its way through the shipping channel and out into the Pacific. Sitting on a mooring bollard in his khaki uniform, Fluckey steadied his gaze, following the submarine until it disappeared from view over the horizon.

  PART THREE

  At my age, thirty-four, don’t you think I’m too old a submariner to be baking potatoes in the woods?

  —CAPT. EUGENE FLUCKEY to Boy Scout officials, who begged him to become an Eagle Scout, Groton, Connecticut, 1947

  Nimitz

  The flight to Hawaii was rougher than expected. The heater was out of order and there were no blankets aboard. Gene Fluckey resorted to pacing in the belly of the transport to stay warm and contemplate his future as the plane droned on high above the Pacific. At Pearl Harbor a media frenzy awaited him. Newspaper reporters scurried for interviews, now that the story of the Barb’s last two war patrols had been released. Time magazine scored a one-on-one interview, and NBC radio went live with the skipper. The Navy encouraged him to go with the flow. “Public relations here wants me to sell submarines,” he wrote of the hubbub in a letter to Marjorie, whom he addressed as “Mrs. Dogfish.” As he had hoped, his new orders were to report to the sub base at Groton, where he was to put into commission the USS Dogfish (SS-350), one of the first postwar submarines and thought to be the most advanced in the world.

  At least, that’s what the Navy thought. But with the surrender of Japan and Germany, the realization was setting in that both wartime enemies had undersea boats that surpassed American technology in many ways. The first look inside astounded Admiral Lockwood. Nazi subs could attain better surface and submerged speed than their American counterparts. They had better sonar, optics, diesel engines, and batteries. They could dive deeper and faster. Japanese torpedoes were far superior and vastly more reliable than anything produced by the Navy. Axis nations also had subs with snorkels, breathing pipes enabling them to operate submerged on diesel engines.

  The Navy set to work to adapt many of the refinements, including streamlining the hulls of fleet boats and installing tall, sleek conning towers with snorkels. The Navy called these air-breathing vessels “GUPpies”—an acronym for Greater Underwater Propulsion. The Dogfish, being built at the Electric Boat Company, eventually was to be one of them.

  With his family relocating from Annapolis to New London in the fall of 1945, Fluckey arrived in September to participate in the launch of his boat. Before he could take command, however, he received orders in November to join the staff of Secretary of the Navy James Forrestal, the man who had presented him with the Medal of Honor. At President Truman’s behest, Forrestal was trying to unify the armed forces. Though the war had been prosecuted successfully by an independent Navy and Army, there had been bureaucratic wrangling throughout the conflict because of differences in organizational structure and national strategy. How to mold the two branches into one unified command was daunting. Furthermore, it came at a time when Truman was intent on drastic cuts to the defense budget. The president embraced a deep conviction that excessive military spending could be ruinous to the country. Knowing what was coming put the Army and Navy in competition for shrinking federal dollars.

  Forrestal, facing congressional hearings on what could be done to bring the branches together, decided to bring along Medal of Honor winners. He tapped Fluckey to represent the Silent Service. Realizing the Navy wouldn’t resist all change, the secretary was hopeful a little tweaking could bring consensus. But he hadn’t anticipated the impact of James Doolittle. The Army brigadier general had earned the Medal of Honor for leading a squadron of bombers on a successful one-way bombing mission over Tokyo from the aircraft carrier USS Hornet in 1942. Of the sixteen B-25 twin-engine bombers, four crash-landed in China and one landed in Vladivostok, Russia, where the crew was imprisoned for more than a year. The others either ran out of fuel or were hit by enemy fire, forcing the pilots to parachute from their crippled bombers. Of the eighty men who participated in the mission, three died during the raid and four were critically injured. Eight others were captured by the Japanese. Of them, three were executed and one starved to death. Doolittle, who landed in China, went on to command Army squadrons in Europe before moving back to the Pacific to direct B-29 strikes against Japan toward the end of the war.

  Now, before Congress, Doolittle demanded independence for the Air Force. “It all ended in a big mess,” explained Fluckey. “Jimmy Doolittle made some very bitter remarks about the B-29ers will be turning over in their graves if they didn’t get a separate Air Force—what do you think the B-29ers were fighting the war for? Period. Forrestal’s reply to this was to turn and tell the four of us that it was going to be a mud-slinging fest, this unification business, and he was not going to have any bright junior officers mixed up in this type of politics, so we were all excused and would receive orders the next day.”

  The next morning seven sets of orders arrived—Fluckey’s choice. None appealed to him. Then a new one arrived, canceling the previous seven. Fluckey was to embark on a thirty-day promotional speaking tour for the Navy during the Christmas holidays—without his wife. The commander was beside himself. Just home from the war, just reunited with his family, and now to be separated once again during a holiday period he hadn’t enjoyed in years—what a setback. He longed for a return to the Dogfish, now impossible since a new skipper had been named. Deep in gloom at the naval operations headquarters in Washington, he had no choice but to follow orders. Then a call came in from Admiral Nimitz’s office upstairs. He wanted to see the young officer.

  Twice during the war Nimitz had come into contact with the skipper of the Barb. The first was when he, General MacArthur, and President Roosevelt visited him at the Royal Hawaiian where the president had insisted on meeting him. The second meeting was near the end of the war, when Fluckey suggested the admiral deploy ten wolf packs to mine the coast of China, from the Yellow Sea to Amoy. Intrigued, the admiral studied the plan and agreed it was feasible. However, since Okinawa had fallen to American forces, there was no need for the mission.

  Now, in the admiral’s office, the two men—one of the war’s greatest submarine commanders and the man who had commanded five thousand ships and two million men at war’s end—stood face to face. Fluckey, thirty-two, was a good six inches taller than Nimitz, fifty-nine. Gene’s red hair, boyish complexion, and beaming smile were quite a contrast to the stoic, chiseled features of the slightly built white-haired admiral. Nimitz came to the point. He had just been named chief of naval operations and he needed a personal aide for the next two years. Would Commander Fluckey be interested? The offer was a godsend. Such a prestigious assignment wo
uld give him the inside track on future promotions in the Navy. But what did he know about being an aide? “I don’t know anything about this particular business but I’m sure I can learn,” he opined, adding, “Are there any special orders that you’d like to have, mistakes that your previous aides have made possibly?”

  Only one thing, replied the admiral. “I’m going to give you one order, and this is the last order I give you: never offend anyone.”

  Nimitz was a pioneer in the undersea fleet dating all the way back to 1907, when he served in the Plunger (A-1). He successively commanded the original Snapper, Narwal, and Skipjack until 1912 and was the first commanding officer of the submarine base at Pearl Harbor. It was through his efforts at age twenty-six that dangerous gasoline engines were replaced by diesels beginning with Skipjack. Like Fluckey, who had saved the life of a friend by swimming to his aid when he was a child, Nimitz was honored by the Treasury Department for saving the life of a naval fireman who couldn’t swim and was swept away from his ship by a strong tide. Nimitz, commanding officer of the E-1 submarine at the time, dove into the sea and swam to W. J. Walsh’s side, keeping him afloat until both were rescued.

  During World War I Nimitz was chief of staff to the commander of Atlantic submarines and eventually rose to command of the heavy cruiser USS Augusta and chief of the Bureau of Navigation. On Christmas Eve 1941—seventeen days after the attack on Pearl Harbor—Nimitz secretly flew to Hawaii to take over the Fleet to restore confidence. Fittingly, he was sworn in as commander-in-chief on the deck of the submarine Grayling (SS-209) on 31 December. He brought a very personal touch, insisting on greeting incoming ships as often as possible, not only to debrief the commanders, but, as he put it, “to size up the men”—to get a sense of their fighting caliber.