The Galloping Ghost

by Carl P. LaVO

  In the South African port of Durban, South Africa’s “Lady in White” serenaded Solant Amity II on its arrival. Throughout World War II, as troopships embarked from Durban to support the British, soprano Perla Sidle Gibson would appear on the North Pier with a megaphone to sing patriotic and farewell tunes that the sailors could hear as they passed. She never wavered from a vow to see off every single troop carrier. Now, as Solant Amity II prepared to depart, she stood dressed in her symbolic white dress on North Pier to give Rear Admiral Fluckey a ceremonial kiss before he climbed aboard his flagship. “She was warbling ‘God Bless America’ as she had done on our arrival,” wrote Gene in a letter home. “Thousands lined the decks all the way out to the end of the jetty and I counted 39 persons who waded out on the mud flats, fully clothed, waving goodbye to us and singing with the band, ‘Auld Lang Syne.’ What a parting! It’s enough to make Admirals weep.”

  In French-speaking Madagascar the rear admiral attended a ceremony in which live game was fed to sacred crocodiles, supposedly descended from humans. He also visited Catholic and Protestant churches and a mosque, where he joined five hundred barefooted Muslims. He took off his shoes and stood in his socks on the dirt floor. The iman gave a twenty-minute speech. “It made it necessary for me to respond with a ten-minute impromptu speech in French; they were so thrilled by my French speech that the Iman requested my permission to say a prayer in my behalf, and 500 voices droned away for me and cleansed me of all my sins past, present, and future; then when I thanked them for this soul stirring prayer they became so happy they chanted a prayer for all my ships; late that evening I washed my dirty socks which I fear will never come clean.”

  In Madagascar Fluckey stood before the press, which threw him a curve. “If you have an Amity visit to a colored Republic such as this, don’t you think you should have one to your own colored people in Alabama who are being beaten?” asked one reporter, referring to civil rights demonstrations in the United States. The admiral answered with grace and humility. As he recalled, “I think they were a bit surprised when I admitted we weren’t perfect, that great progress had been made, that we have a great American dream of equality which we believe can be achieved, that 95 percent of our schools are integrated, and that we have over two hundred thousand Negroes in our colleges and universities.”

  The task force moved on to the Seychelles, a British dependency of ninety largely uninhabited islands scattered across the western Indian Ocean north of Madagascar. Solant Amity II anchored at Port Victoria on Mahe Island, which Fluckey termed “a nice sleepy port set in the Garden of Eden.” The republic was governed by Sir John and Lady Thorp, who hosted a state banquet in their Victorian mansion. “Pancahs swinging back and forth over the table provided the equivalent of air conditioning,” Fluckey later noted. “A pancah is a heavy drapery about ten feet wide and four feet in depth attached to a yardarm rigged athwart the table and well above it. Through a system of rigging, the three pancahs spaced over the table are joined by a single rope that runs out through a hole in the wall, over a pulley, and down into a section of the kitchen, where a servant sits tugging on the rope to set the pancahs swinging back and forth. The resultant breeze is delightful.”

  The following morning Lady Thorp taught the rear admiral how to surfboard at the couple’s beach residence, then had him join her in snorkeling over nearby reefs. “It’s the most beautiful skin-diving in all the world—a myriad of unbelievably-colored fish that make all aquariums appear drab,” he wrote Marjorie. He described a return visit at daybreak. “At that time the fish are so dormant one can bring his finger tips within an inch of the fish, attempting to caress them before they lazily move away. As the sun bursts over the low mountains the underwater world breathtakingly changes from subdued light grey hues to a kaleidoscope of sparkling, animated, crisscrossing rainbows.”

  From Port Victoria the task force steamed to French-speaking Reunion Island, then to Zanzibar for refugee relief, and on to Mombassa and Aden, before returning to Cape town in South Africa. It was there that Fluckey received orders to fly across Africa to Liberia to be the U.S. naval representative for the 114th Independence Day Celebrations. The Navy had diverted the USS Valcour to Monrovia to be Fluckey’s flagship during his stay.

  Among the many events he attended was an all-night ball. “Did I get integrated!” reported Fluckey in a letter home.

  Never having danced with an African before, my destiny as the only Caucasian at the President’s table was obvious. Kindly they offered to get me a good-looking African partner, but being a bit dubious even of Caucasian blind dates, I assured them that I preferred to dance with their lovely wives. Having thrown the gauntlet down, I quickly looked around the table for the best looking target for my first experience, and settled on the Attorney General’s wife. They were all beautifully gowned and she was most attractive. Yet when I nervously held her in my arms, I could feel my scalp starting to perspire from the crown of my head down. She remarked that it was very warm and perhaps it would be cooler if we danced around the edge of the floor. After a while it was like putting your feet in hot water, once in it’s nice and comfortable and the perspiration stopped. I must say these Africans have a built-in rhythm.

  The next dance was a ‘High Life’—this is very popular on the East Coast of Africa. It’s sort of a cross between a shuffle, rock and roll, the mamba and the bunny hop. This time I reached higher and asked the Vice President’s wife to dance. Unbeknownst to me she is known as being a good strong dancer. She whisked me around the floor like a graceful camel with me doing something akin to a hula while I swear she was doing an Egyptian belly dance. I just couldn’t do the forward and backward grinds and keep in time with the music. All I could think of was “if they would just take a movie and send it back to Admiral Burke, he’d recall me from Africa post-haste.” . . . During the night I danced with all their wives, all of whom were charming, delightful people. Consequently my thinking and philosophy have changed considerably. Having had my eyes opened, I am led to believe that Americans, on the whole, are the biggest racial snobs in the entire world.

  Generally events were well organized and went off without incident. But occasionally a problem developed, sometimes with humorous consequences.

  In the former French colony of Dahomey, the admiral hosted a dinner aboard Spiegel Grove for the nation’s first president, Herbert Maga. An enormous man, he came alongside the ship in the admiral’s barge and, in heaving seas, almost lost his balance twice and nearly toppled into the sea. Two seaman were able to get a firm hold and finally heave him up a ladder to the ship’s deck. As he was piped aboard, another big roller caused him to lose his balance and knock over the officer of the deck and several seamen like bowling pins. Recovering his dignity, Maga went below, where Fluckey apologized.

  During Solant Amity II’s visit to Gambia, the rear admiral described in a letter to Admiral and Mrs. Nimitz a sporting event he had attended.

  You would have enjoyed the Native Wrestling Matches they put on in my honor. . . . There was a fire at opposite ends of the wrestling ground (no mats) and a couple of witch doctors had been brewing herbs, crocodile heads, etc. all afternoon. This they then bottled. The wrestlers put on strings of amulets around their chests, arms and necks, took a good slug out of the bottles and squared off. Now the witch-doctors, bottles in hand, sprinkled their boys (acting as seconds), put hexes on their opponents, erased the hexes on their own lads, sneaked around and stole their opponents’ footprints and rushed over to the fire to burn them. The wrestling started. After the first fall the loser quickly ran over to the sidelines to change his amulets (the last ones hadn’t worked) and the gals rushed out to give the winner small bits of money with many huzzahs.

  In both Togo and Dahomey Fluckey’s plan to offer visitors helicopter rides created pandemonium. William B. Hussey, Foreign Service officer in Togo, recalled the scene. “In both countries the helicopter rides were a disaster, with the operation getting quite out of hand with
crowds surging aboard, the overload finally being dispatched only to have new faces and hands pushing, grasping at any part of the helicopter. In Togo I also remember people crawling from timber to timber underneath the long pier trying to avoid the lone lines waiting their turn to board the running boats for ship visits.”

  Despite the logistic problems, Solant Amity II’s visit was quite a success, which was noted in a letter to Fluckey from Hussey. “You know how valuable the overall effect of the visit in Togo was for the entertainment provided, the endless number of repairs effected [by Navy mechanics] from locomotives to equipment of every sort. Then there were the athletic contests in many sports. From President [Sylvanus Epiphanio] Olympio down to the fellows in the street, the visit was highly appreciated and thoroughly enjoyed.” Indeed, Fluckey drew great satisfaction from what had been accomplished. Marine helicopters had taken 3,358 visitors aloft. Eleven Navy and Marine musical ensembles had entertained an estimated 230,000 citizens. Helicopter displays, amphibious exhibitions, drill team performances, and soccer, basketball, baseball, volleyball, softball, and tennis matches between Amity crewmen and local citizens drew nearly 300,000 spectators along the way. Another 112,000 guests visited the ships—VIPs in the morning and the general public in the afternoon. There were also parachute jumps and judo wrestling exhibitions by the Marines.

  The rear admiral came away with a sobering view of Africa’s new nations.

  Contrary to our concept of democracy, one is startled to run into a situation like Zanzibar—a perfectly legal, honest election was held, but the losing party, which was the majority party, became incensed at being outsmarted and wouldn’t accept the election results. So, many reverted to savagery, broke out their machetes—and started hacking. Some sixty-three people were killed and over 250 maimed—babies, girls, old ladies, men, it didn’t matter—had ears or limbs hacked off. Frequently your faith is shaken in the present course of events. In many suburbs of nation capitals the drums are beating all night long. You watch tribal dancing with the earth truly shaking under the pounding feet. . . . In pushing democracy we push the decay of the tribal system which means the decay of a built-in social security system. We must have something solid, ready to provide social security or Communism may offer a better answer.

  Solant Amity II left Africa at the end of August, sailing for Brazil and Trinidad before returning to Norfolk on 8 September. There, Admiral Fluckey caught up with events he had missed, especially the marriage of his daughter Barbara to dentist Charles Bove in July. During the long separation, Marjorie kept up a heavy correspondence, often expressing great loneliness that deepened after Barbara’s marriage. The forced separation couldn’t have come at a worse time. Before Gene departed, she had fought her way back from cancer after an initial misdiagnosis. Chemotherapy treatments had taken her to death’s door before she rebounded just in time to say good-bye to her husband. “Right now I have as much use for this man’s navy as an old shoe,” she wrote while her husband was away. “Better than five months’ separation at this stage is too much for me and frankly I’d be ready to call it quits if this is what the future holds . . . life as an Admiral isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. Darling, I know this letter seems to be, for the most part, nothing but grumbles. But loving you so much, this being apart seems to be making me a chronic complainer. I’m trying to be happy but without you life holds very little to make me so.”

  By the end of July there was speculation on the wives’ grapevine in Norfolk that Gene’s new orders would be to Washington, a thought that gave Marjorie pause. “I’ve never seen such a lot of old and tired people as these Pentagon sailors,” she wrote Gene. “From the lowest to the highest they all looked as if they had aged ten years. It certainly is a rat race of the first water.”

  Boomers

  It didn’t take long for Eugene Fluckey to make history as an admiral—and it wasn’t in a submarine.

  Rather than being assigned to the Pentagon as his wife feared, the admiral became president of the Navy Board of Inspection and Survey from November 1961 to March of 1964. As such he was responsible for evaluating each new weapons system and making a recommendation to the secretary of the navy to either accept or reject it. The board put each advance through a thorough and rigorous trial, a practice that dated to 1868, when Congress established the group to ensure Navy ships were properly equipped to defend the nation.

  When Fluckey was appointed, the Polaris ballistic missile system was coming to fruition. The Navy also was pushing boundaries with a supersonic nuclear attack bomber, the largest combat aircraft ever launched from an aircraft carrier. The A3J Vigilante came off the drawing board in 1955 and entered the service in June 1961, intended to replace Navy’s A-3 Skywarrior. The Vigilante was extremely advanced electronically. Its pioneering digital computer could run all its systems, including multimode radar that could map topographical features below and ahead of the plane, inertial navigation, closed-circuit television under its nose, and a computerized attack system that incorporated one of the first heads-up displays for the two-man crew. The plane could fly very high and at great speed. In 1963 it would set a new world altitude record of 91,450 feet. Despite all its advantages, maintenance problems, balky bomb jettison equipment, and high landing speed on aircraft carriers made it a challenge for the most experienced pilots. It also was susceptible to a new breed of Soviet ground-to-air missiles.

  In 1962 the challenge for the Board of Inspection was not so much overcoming the technical hurdles as much as finding an adequate role for the plane. It seemed clear that Polaris missiles would satisfy strategic bombing requirements for the Navy. Being a hands-on officer who liked to experience weaponry and tactics up close, Fluckey decided to take a ride on one of the new bombers. Arriving at the Naval Weapons Evaluation Facility in Kirtland, New Mexico, he boarded the swept wing jet with Lt. Cmdr. Samuel R. Chessman, the pilot and project officer for the Vigilante test series. The plane lifted off and quickly surpassed Mach 2 as it streaked over the Southwest deserts to Fluckey’s great delight. Back on the ground, Capt. David G. Adams Jr., commander of the Kirtland facility, presented the rear admiral with a “Mach 2” pin for being, as he put it, the first submarine officer to fly at twice the speed of sound.

  Ultimately the Board of Inspection and Survey recommended the Polaris system replace the Skywarrior, leaving the Vigilante with no mission. The jets eventually would be deployed on reconnaissance missions during the Vietnam War. Eighteen were lost in combat, more than any other Navy aircraft.

  Gene Fluckey’s exploits in World War II were never very far from his mind as he studied new weapons systems aboard nuclear submarines. He often thought about his old diesel boat. By 1963 new attack nuclear submarines that dwarfed the Barb were coming down the ways in American shipyards. The Navy had decided to name them after famous boats that had fought in the Pacific War. One was SSN-596. The Navy arranged a reunion of the old Barb crew for the launch of the new Barb at the Ingalls Shipbuilding Corporation yard in Pascagoula, Mississippi, on 12 February 1963.

  A crowd of more than eight hundred spectators, including thirty-five Barb veterans, gathered at the shipyard to witness the launch of the nation’s twenty-ninth atomic submarine—its eighteenth nuclear attack sub—on a pleasant sixty-degree afternoon. Mrs. Fluckey, the ship’s sponsor, sent a ceremonial bottle of champagne smashing against the hull, where it exploded in a cascade of bubbly froth that flew skyward above her husband and sister, standing behind her. The big vessel lurched backward, gaining speed as it slid down the ways into the Pascagoula River to the strains of “Anchors Aweigh” by a Navy band. Six months later Fluckey returned to Pascagoula for the Barb’s initial sea trials. The boat, fitted with the most advanced underwater detection equipment in the world and extremely quiet machinery, met every requirement and deployed to the western Pacific.

  Following his stint on the Board of Inspection, Gene Fluckey served for three months on special assignment for the secretary of the navy before assuming
command of the Navy’s Pacific submarine fleet in June 1964, fulfilling a personal dream. After the world war, there were only two flag-rank billets in submarines—commander submarines Atlantic and commander submarines Pacific. Fluckey now had one of them. In a transfer of command aboard the flagship USS Plunger (SSN-595) at the submarine base in Pearl Harbor, Fluckey relieved Rear Adm. Bernard A. “Chick” Clarey, who moved up to vice admiral and deputy commander in chief of the U.S. Pacific Fleet.

  The Fluckeys relocated to Oahu, where they entered a whirl of social activity. Marjorie, who enjoyed that aspect of the Navy, accented her husband well, knew where to draw the line in social drinking for both of them, loved to converse with people, had many friends, and expressed a good sense of humor. “She was the perfect Navy wife,” said her daughter years later. “She knew the ins and outs of required protocol. She was a successful hostess, she attended what she had to—and that cheerfully. She could talk with ambassadors knowledgeably although she had to quit school at fourteen. She read the Time-Life history series, always had a novel in hand, and was absolutely up on current events. In fact, my recollection of her would be that of always having a book in hand.”

  Gene was in and out of Hawaii overseeing operations of more than ninety submarines, including the new Barb, and ten thousand officers and enlisted men in three flotillas based in San Diego, Pearl Harbor, and Yokosuka, Japan. Several of the boats were armed with deck-launched Regulus missiles that Fluckey had worked with during testing in the 1950s. They were being phased out during Fluckey’s watch because the Polaris and Fleet ballistic missile submarines were on the way. The first of these mammoth boats, the USS Daniel Boone (SSBN-629), had arrived in Pearl Harbor shortly after Gene took command.