The Galloping Ghost (23 page)

Of the three Loopers, the
Barb
patrolled closest to the shoreline, following the twenty-fathom curve. Loughlin gave Fluckey the inward position because of the distinctive silhouette of the older
Barb
's conning tower. From the distance, it easily could be mistaken for a Chinese fishing junk, which were numerous along the coast. Perhaps the sub could blend in.

Shortly after noon on 8 January the
Barb
was the first to report smoke from a southbound convoy of large ships beginning the daylight run across the 111-mile-wide Formosa Strait to the safety of the Japanese naval base of Takao on the southern tip of the island. The largest of the ships, the 9,256-ton
Anyo Maru
, was loaded with troops, kamikaze pilots, and military supplies destined for the Philippines. Aft of the
Anyo
were smaller freighters and tankers containing horses, vehicles, weapons, ammunition, aviation fuel, and more than a thousand combat soldiers.

With the Loopers in pursuit, Fluckey made an end-around while plotting the convoy's zig pattern and speed from radar bearings and observations from the bridge. Once ahead of the approaching ships, Fluckey waited for either of the other two subs to make contact. Confirmation came within half an hour from
Picuda
. The
Barb
dived and moved in on the starboard flank. Echo ranging and periscope sightings detected at least eight heavily laden freighters and tankers escorted by at least eight destroyers. Fluckey decided to attack the largest of the vessels, the
Anyo Maru
, with three bow torpedoes at 2,700 yards, then target a smaller cargo carrier before swinging around to launch stern torpedoes at another freighter. The attack, the skipper reasoned, would create enough havoc on the inboard edge of the convoy to turn the ships seaward into the path of the wolf pack.

Within the span of sixty-five seconds six torpedoes streaked away from the bow of the
Barb
. The boat turned to the third target just as two of the torpedoes exploded. Then a third, so violent it staggered the submarine, shattering light bulbs and loosening insulation on the compartment overheads. Fluckey was so intent on witnessing the destruction of the 6,892-ton munitions ship
Shinyo Maru
through the periscope that he hardly noticed. “The expressions on the faces of the fire control party snapped me out of my fixation and the full force of the explosion dawned upon me,” Fluckey noted in his patrol log. “The boat had been forced sideways and down, personnel had grabbed the nearest support to keep from being thrown off their feet, cases of canned goods had burst open in the forward torpedo room.”

“Now that's what I call a solid hit!” chortled the captain to no one in particular. He heard a muttered reply, “Golly, I'd hate to be around when he hears a loud explosion.”

Amid breaking-up noises and the sound of high-speed screws, the
Barb
went deep, then made its way back to periscope depth. Fluckey took a peek. He could see the bow of a large freighter jutting up out of the ocean at a thirty-degree angle, its stern mired in the mud at thirty fathoms. Another ship was on fire. Smoke hung over the convoy. Amazingly the escorts had gone to the far side of the convoy without dropping depth charges. There, the
Queenfish
and
Picuda
initiated their attacks, sinking a few more ships over the next two hours as the sun set.

A moonless night prevailed as the
Barb,
its torpedo tubes fully reloaded, surfaced behind the remaining convoy. Fluckey decided on a radical new method of attack, one he termed “continuous attack”—come up from aft of the convoy on the surface at flank speed to overrun the ships and torpedo them, hoping to be mistaken for one of the enemy's escorts. “We did not have enough time going wide around the convoy to attack from in front before they reached the safety of their minefield pass [off Formosa],” the skipper later noted.

In the darkness the
Barb
joined the escort destroyers weaving back and forth aft of the starboard column, then turned in slightly and angled three torpedoes at each of two ships in the near starboard column. Both sank while the convoy maintained its course and speed. Rounding the destroyer ahead, the submarine turned in toward a tanker and fired three more torpedoes. The target blew up with such force that the pressure wave pulled shirttails of those in the conning tower over their heads. On the bridge, Fluckey stood transfixed. “The target resembled a gigantic phosphorus bomb,” he noted. “The volcanic spectacle was awe inspiring. Shrapnel flew all around us, splashing on the water in a splattering pattern as far as 4,000 yards ahead of us. Topside we alternately ducked and gawked. The horizon was lighted as bright as day.”

Escorts near the target had disappeared, consumed in the explosion. Fluckey could see only one ship left and a few scattered destroyers as the craggy cliffs of Formosa drew near. Chasing the remaining ship could bring the boat within range of shore batteries or mines. Still, at the urging of one of his officers, Fluckey decided to try. But the
Queenfish
got there first, sinking the target. Simultaneously artillery on Formosa opened up, lobbing shells that exploded on impact seven thousand yards from the
Barb,
too far away to have any effect. With the entire convoy eliminated, the Loopers turned back toward China.

The next day all three subs assumed lifeguard duty in the East China Sea as two waves of American bombers attacked northern Formosa. With no reports of downed aircraft, the wolf pack resumed its patrol of the Chinese coast. The
Barb
moseyed northward on the twenty-fathom curve. Meanwhile, the
Queenfish
came upon a tanker with two escorts. Loughlin launched eight torpedoes in three onslaughts. But they all missed. Out of torpedoes, the commander headed for Midway. Cdr. Ty Shepard in
Picuda
assumed tactical command of the remaining wolf pack.

The
Barb
continued operating close to the coast, with the
Picuda
patrolling well offshore. The ever-inquisitive Fluckey, now sporting a red beard, investigated mysterious discolorations of the ocean along the twenty-fathom curve. The boat dived into one, which proved to be a freshwater spring boiling vertically from the mouth of a tremendous underground river. For more than a week, the
Barb
cruised up and down the coast, looking for targets without success while avoiding “blind zones” established by China Air. American pilots were authorized to bomb any vessel, friend or foe, in these zones off-limits to all Navy submarines. On 18 January the
Barb
was cruising near one of the zones when a night flier caught it on the surface, strafing it and dropping four bombs over the submerging conning tower. The bombs lifted the stern. It was a close call but no damage was incurred.

Barb
lookouts became familiar with the movements of the vast fleet of Chinese junks using nets to fish coastal waters. Fluckey decided to experiment. If the sub maneuvered in among the fishing boats manned by Chinese who had no love of Japan, would they sound the alarm?
Barb
eased in. The gamble succeeded. No planes appeared, convincing Fluckey there were no Japanese spies aboard the boats.

In the late afternoon of 20 January the
Barb
received multiple reports of a southbound convoy about to pass through Fluckey's patrol sector. For two hours lookouts maintained a careful surveillance but saw no sign of the enemy. The captain was baffled. The ships had to be using an unknown route. That evening the skipper called a meeting of his officers around the wardroom table, where they laid out topographical maps of the coast. The captain ran his finger along the mile-wide Haitan Straits leading south toward Fuzhou and shrouded from view by numerous rocky islands. Cartographers noted that the strait was too shallow—only six feet—for major ships to navigate. But had the Japanese dredged the passage? The
Barb
radioed China Air for an answer.

Throughout the next day, the
Barb
and
Picuda
made a fruitless search for ships in the Formosa Straits. At dusk, the
Barb
returned to the coast, where the captain received a reply from China Air. Yes, large ships, including
at least one battleship, had used the Haitan Straits—the passage had been dredged. That clinched it.

The next day the
Barb
ventured ten miles inside the twenty-fathom curve, where it mingled with dozens of junks in order to get a clear view of the coast fifteen miles farther. If a convoy steamed through the straits, the
Barb
would see the smoke. At noon the boat trolled at one-third speed near the coastline. Fluckey joined the lookouts above the bridge against the shears. About two hours later smoke revealed at least six large ships moving in a single column south at ten knots through the straits. Fluckey calculated from the convoy's speed that the
Barb
could intercept the ships after dark on the southern egress of the channel at Sandu Inlet opposite Fuzhou. Fluckey set a course for the intercept point by heading out to sea while rounding coastal islands to the south to Sandu Inlet. It would take about five hours. “With a hundred miles to go, let's start galloping,” ordered the captain.

The plan was for the
Picuda
to remain offshore in case the convoy got past the
Barb
, which arrived right on time and moved in tight to the coast. Fluckey positioned the boat between two deserted islands on the inland side of the shipping channel. The sub sat on the surface in just thirty feet of water at a dead halt in darkness, a heavy overcast hiding the moon. The captain hoped the
Barb
would be mistaken for a large rock as the convoy passed. The plan was to torpedo the ships as they went by, then dash past them to safety.

In steely silence the sub sat in the darkness. The captain remained on the bridge with the lookouts, breathless, straining to make out objects that might be ships. Down below radar operator John Lehman maintained a vigil for anything approaching from any direction. Crewmen elsewhere stood ready at battle stations, gripped by a sense of excitement mixed with foreboding, knowing there was no place to hide once the shooting started. Two hours passed. Still no convoy. Either the ships had taken refuge in an unknown harbor or somehow escaped. Fluckey grew impatient. Waste of time sitting still, he thought. “Notify
Picuda
,” he said to Lt. James Webster, his new executive officer. “No joy at this posit. Let's gallop!”

The surge of the diesels powered the boat out of its hiding place the way it came in. Webster wondered what was next. “Captain, when we reach the twenty-fathom curve, where's the galloping ghost of the China coast going to gallop tonight?”

Fluckey had decided not to go out as far as the twenty-fathom curve. Rather, he wanted to backtrack to the shipping channel and follow it north.
Somewhere close by, there had to be a secret harbor between the
Barb
's position and Seven Stars Islands eighty miles to the north, where the convoy had been spotted the previous day.

The captain went below and convened a meeting of his officers around the wardroom table. Webster spread out the map. Fluckey, using dividers set for ten-mile increments, stepped off a potential course for the
Barb
along the inland passage. Lt. Max Duncan, the TDC operator, pronounced the route reasonably unobstructed, aside from rocky promontories here and there. The captain reasoned that it was unlikely the Japanese would mine any areas used by the fishing fleet. The
Barb
could assume their routes would be safe to follow. When asked how the sub would detect a ship anchored off the beach, the skipper had someone retrieve a piece of clear plexiglass the size of the radar scope and trace the known coastline, shoals, and islands onto the plastic. It was then placed over the radar scope. Lehman, the radar operator, was to report any contacts that didn't correspond to the overlay. At that point the sub would investigate.

The skipper fully expected to sneak in undetected on the surface to attack a sleeping convoy of six or seven ships. The
Barb
would launch eight torpedoes—four forward and four aft—in one tremendous salvo, leaving just four torpedoes aboard, all in the after torpedo room. “Believe me,” Fluckey told the officers, “he won't know what hit him. When he finds out, we'll be gone.”

To the captain, the
Barb
would make an unprecedented attack, matched in its daring only by the Nazi submarine U-47, which in 1939 negotiated a narrow channel that guarded a British harbor in Scapa Flow to surprise and sink the anchored English battleship
Royal Oak
.

Fluckey radioed Captain Shepard in
Picuda,
inviting him to join the action. But he declined, thinking it was foolhardy and telling Fluckey to “drop dead!” The skipper was undeterred. Executive Officer Webster suggested handing out life jackets for the approach—just in case. The skipper thought it might frighten the men. He'd rather have them concentrate on the tasks ahead. He decided to address them over the intercom, to prepare them for what was to come. “Shipmates, we've got this convoy bottled up along the coast. We're going to find them and knock the socks off of them,” he said. “This surprise will be
Barb
's greatest night, a night to remember. If you have any questions, I'm coming through the boat now.”

He started in the forward torpedo room, where he directed crewmen to reposition their torpedoes in the top four tubes so the fish could run at six-foot depths to prevent them from running aground. As the skipper
passed aft, crewmen and officers were tense. Conversation was muted. The men simply signaled a “V” for victory with their fingers or thumbs up to the captain as he went by. The control room—the nerve center of the boat—was a morgue. “It was very businesslike—and had to be,” said Dave Teeters, the electronics officer who was running the tracking party.