The Galloping Ghost (22 page)

Later in the day, as the skipper relaxed in his cabin, Chief Pharmacist's Mate Donnelly interrupted. Lanier, the executive officer (XO), had suffered a heart attack. Fluckey couldn't believe it; the XO was only in his mid-twenties. As Donnelly explained it, Lanier had been taking star sights on the bridge when he felt tightness in his chest, shortness of breath, and pain in his neck and shoulder. Donnelly accurately diagnosed a case of angina pectoris and treated him with nitroglycerin tablets. Fluckey contemplated returning at once to Saipan. But Donnelly assured the captain that his XO
was resting comfortably and if the symptoms lessened, there would be no need to return. There was plenty of nitroglycerin aboard to handle the situation. He recommended Lanier stay in his bunk for the time being and remain in the officers' quarters at all times. By all means, he must avoid climbing ladders and through hatches, and no battle stations.

Fluckey asked Max Duncan to assume Lanier's duties. Later the captain discussed the situation with his exec, who came to tears. Fluckey bucked him up, saying that he and the other officers would come to him for advice during the rest of the patrol. Besides, he said, the boat only had seven torpedoes left; any action would be limited.

The following afternoon the distant rumble of numerous explosions in the direction of the
Queenfish
's patrol sector indicated a convoy had been encountered. At dusk a report radioed from Loughlin's boat revealed the
Queenfish
had put two torpedoes into one of two carriers, sinking it. The rest had fled in the
Barb
's direction. Three hours later the sub made radar contact while racing forward on the surface and knifing through gigantic waves. Columns of spray lofted high into the air made Fluckey fearful the boat might be sighted. He slowed to standard speed, lowering the spray but causing it to drench the bridge watch instead.

Three, possibly four, destroyers guarding a carrier soon appeared. With the convoy's zig pattern mapped out, Fluckey decided to attack the carrier with five bow tubes. At thirty-seven minutes to midnight the skipper gave the order at a range of 2,580 yards. The first torpedo hit the stern but the others missed when the carrier
Jinyo
zigged to avoid. The ship slowed to twelve knots as the destroyers threw up a defensive screen of depth charges to keep the
Barb
away.

Fluckey got off a report to all other subs in the two wolf packs and began an end-around for another attack. But before he could get in position, the carrier suddenly accelerated to nineteen knots. The
Barb
attempted to close, notching up to more than twenty knots. The sub gained slowly but could not make up the distance before morning light. After a three-hour pursuit Captain Fluckey called off the chase.

As it turned out, the
Jinyo
was doomed anyway. Two days later—17 November—Lt. Cdr. Gordon Underwood in the
Spadefish
intercepted the wounded carrier and sank it.

With only two torpedoes left, both in the stern tubes, the
Barb
patrolled off Noma Misaki, the southern cape of Kyushu. About noon lookouts spotted two small ships skirting the coast. Fluckey moved in close to the beach for a stern shot, aiming one torpedo at each ship. Both missed.

Out of torpedoes, the submarine departed its patrol sector and set a course across the Pacific to Midway and the end of a nine thousand-mile, thirty-six-day war patrol in which the boat sank a light cruiser and two freighters and damaged an aircraft carrier. At Midway a refit and turnaround would send the
Barb
to the coast of China, where Eugene Fluckey and his submarine would make history.

Midway Island was a welcome relief from the high tension of the
Barb
's tenth war patrol. As usual officers and crew had lost weight despite a plentiful, rich diet. The skipper, who weighed 180 pounds leaving Majuro, arrived on Midway at 160. Losing weight was a manifestation of the ardor of the patrols. The Navy worried about that. Psychologists had long concluded that four war patrols was enough for any skipper. And though there was a period of rest and relaxation between patrols, the skippers needed a much longer break, preferably back home. Admiral Lockwood and the high command in Hawaii had already decided that Fluckey could make just one more run, his fourth in command.

At dockside a Navy band, military brass, and a large entourage hailed the
Barb
's arrival. It was a poignant moment for the captain, his officers, and his men, who believed that in the span of eight days they had sent five enemy freighters to the ocean bottom, damaged a large carrier, and crippled two cargo ships. The boat in three patrols had taken a toll on the enemy like no other Pacific submarine—fourteen ships sunk and four damaged. Fluckey's success was remarkable by any measure. Still, those who met him for the first time were taken aback that this smiling, six-foot redhead could be the Silent Service's ultimate warrior. As one put it, “He looks like the stub-toed boy of the magazine covers, the one with the homemade fishing pole and can of worms and the eighteen-inch trout.” Some in the Navy speculated that the
Barb
's ability to sink ships was simple luck, that “Lucky Fluckey” had been in the right place at the right time. The skipper, however, knew success had little to do with luck. What gave the
Barb
its edge was ingenuity, the quality of its personnel, careful planning, tenacity, and avoiding undue risks. Above all the boat did the unexpected. The captain followed the “Law of Contraries,” as he put it when grilled by sub captains. He said his daughter, Barbara, taught it to him in a letter. From Annapolis, she wrote that she prayed for rain when she wanted a sunny day for a picnic because “you see, Daddy,
that's the law of contraries—pray for what you don't want and you'll get what you really want.” The
Barb
employed the Law of Contraries by never doing what the Japanese expected, thereby retaining the element of surprise.

For the boat's upcoming patrol, Fluckey would have to do without two key officers. Lanier, his executive officer, had caught the first flight to Oahu for a complete physical and follow-up care at Aiea Hospital, where Donnelly's diagnosis of a heart attack was confirmed. Also shipping out was Tuck Weaver, the dependable battle stations officer of the deck. In every surface engagement, he and the captain had manned the bridge, directing the battle action. Weaver, a veteran of four war patrols in the
Barb
and five in the S-30, had received orders to new submarine construction in Manitowoc, Wisconsin.

One week into the
Barb
's layover, Captain Fluckey boarded a cargo plane for Hawaii for a turnaround visit to ComSubPac. The only other passenger aboard was Weaver. Both men sat on a wooden bench reminiscing during the six-hour flight. Fluckey regretted losing Weaver, his “right arm” as he had put it in a toast at a farewell party on Midway. Tuck, he said, was a “rare gem,” among the greatest officers he had known for his dry wit to relieve tension at dire moments and his fearlessness in combat. He was also, as Fluckey reminded everyone, the only shipmate that had experienced a sub sinking, a reference to those harrowing hours aboard S-30 when a deep ocean shelf in the Pacific saved the boat from sinking to crush depth after being depth-charged.

After the two men parted on Oahu, Fluckey went to the hospital to check on Lanier, then visited ComSubPac headquarters, where he learned that Laughlin's Loopers—the
Barb,
the
Queenfish,
and the
Picuda
—would be deployed to the Formosa Straits and South China Sea in December. The Navy expected the Japanese to rush reinforcements through the strait to the Philippines to blunt an American invasion of Luzon and Mindanao, now that Leyte had fallen. The mission of the Loopers was to bottle up the strait.

While at headquarters Fluckey met in private with Lockwood, who marveled at the
Barb
's tenth war patrol. The admiral expected a solid eleventh, after which he wanted the commander to join his staff. He feared the
Barb
would be lost if Fluckey made a fifth run. The skipper begged him to change his mind, that he hoped to try all kinds of new tactics and deserved a follow-up “graduation” patrol unfettered by wolf pack duty. Lockwood agreed to consider it, but only after reviewing the results of the upcoming patrol and if Fluckey submitted to a complete physical.

Three years into the war Lockwood was directing an undersea offensive honed to deadly perfection. Despite the loss in the previous two months of
the
Darter
(SS-227),
Shark II
(SS-314),
Seawolf
(SS-197),
Tang
(SS-306),
Escolar
(SS-294),
Albacore
(SS-218),
Growler
(SS-215), and
Scamp
(SS-277), there were still 140 boats on patrol—from north of Australia to the coast of Japan. The submarines were drawing an ever-tighter noose, denying Tokyo critically needed fuel and materiel to keep the war going. Furthermore, Japan was unable to build ships fast enough to replace those lost. It seemed Tokyo could not continue too much longer. Yet the Nippon government—especially the army—would not surrender. The war went on.

After his conference with the admiral, Fluckey flew back to Midway, where the relief crew worked to prepare the
Barb
for its eleventh war patrol. “A strange place,” Fluckey noted of the two-and-a-half-square-mile Midway atoll in a letter home after he returned from Pearl Harbor. “Not a female in sight. White coral sand everyplace that forces you to wear sunglasses if you're outdoors long, ironwood trees and the birds. Thousands of them and darn near one for every square yard.”

A presentation of medals to Fluckey and his crew on the deck of the
Barb
on 6 December broke the relative monotony. Admiral Lockwood flew in for the occasion and personally pinned the Navy Cross on the captain's shirt for the sub's extraordinary eighth patrol in the Okhotsk Sea. The admiral also parceled out additional awards to the officers and men. He confided to the skipper that more honors were in the pipeline for the eighth, ninth, and tenth patrols—Silver and Bronze Stars, dozens of letters of commendation, and a prestigious Presidential Unit Citation.

On the midafternoon of 19 December 1944 the
Barb
began its eleventh war patrol, bearing west toward China. Nearing Guam, the boat's seventy-seven enlisted men and nine officers celebrated what they hoped would be their last wartime Christmas. The skipper whipped up a sampler of eggnog from an improvised recipe of powdered milk, eggs, medicinal rye whiskey, and nutmeg. The cook prepared seven gallons for the holiday. “In our own small way we're trying to make Christmas seem like something, even way out here in nowhere,” Fluckey wrote in a letter home to be mailed from Guam. “At times we all look awfully sad and moody and everyone seems to take turns snapping the others out of it. Really, Christmas Eve is the hardest to take. One of the men's mothers had sent me a phonograph record of his little sister singing a few songs for him and the rest of us. What a pleasant surprise it was for him when I put the record on. She had such a sweet voice. It was quite touching.”

The boat arrived at Guam on 27 December to top off fuel and make minor voyage repairs. There, the
Barb
rejoined Loughlin's Loopers and
continued west, the
Queenfish
and
Picuda
leading. Engine repairs while under way forced the
Barb
to lag behind.

Four days out from Guam the two forward submarines shelled a Japanese naval weather picket, leaving it holed and on fire. Commander Loughlin radioed the
Barb
to sink the vessel at Fluckey's discretion. Closing, the skipper noticed that two fires had been extinguished forward and aft and that no flooding was apparent. He assumed the ship's crew was hiding. With grapnels, the sub pulled alongside the hundred-ton ship and a well-armed boarding gang jumped aboard. For fifteen minutes they scoured the vessel, scooping up a sextant, charts, rifles, books, a compass, a barometer, and a radio transmitter. The submariners avoided searching the crew's quarters, where a gunfight might break out. The sub cast off and commenced shelling the ship. Nine sailors who scrambled on deck were killed by gunfire. Assuring the ship sank, the
Barb
resumed its run to the west.

Arriving at the northern reach of the Formosa Strait in the predawn of 7 January, the
Picuda
and
Barb
made contact with a convoy of seven ships sprinting east from Shanghai to the port city of Keelong on the northern tip of Formosa. Though rough seas, rain squalls, and haze foiled the
Barb
's attempt to attack, the
Picuda
heavily damaged a 10,500-ton tanker and sank a cargo ship. Afterward the wolf pack headed for the Chinese coast.

For several days all three subs patrolled the coast without success. It soon was clear the enemy had adopted new tactics. Enemy convoys—“mud-crawlers” to the submariners—now traveled only during daylight hours, when planes could protect them as they hugged the Chinese coast in shallow seas where they believed submarines wouldn't operate. At night they holed up in shallow bays or river mouths behind mine fields and roving patrol boats. These anchorages were established all along a six hundred-mile stretch of coastline—from northernmost Shanghai to Fuzhou in the south, where convoys had to run the submarine gauntlet across the Formosa Strait to reach bases on the island and points south in the Philippines. The coastal route was characterized by inland waterways, rocky outcrops, and islands too numerous to count. The East China Sea was so shallow along the coast that the twenty-fathom curve—that point where the ocean was deep enough for subs to dive to avoid detection—was at least twenty miles offshore. Each of the China anchorages was within a day's run of each other. Americans became aware of what the Japanese were up to thanks to intelligence supplied by the little-known U.S. Naval Group China. The outfit operated a secret network of coast watchers based at an abandoned Buddhist temple, a vacated oil company dock, and other sites along the
Chinese coast. Reports of convoy activity were relayed to China Air, a central command, which then relayed them to Navy forces and Army air bases in liberated areas deep inside China.