Hell and High Water

By Sam Moses | World War II  | 2 comments  |  Print This Post  |  Email This Post

“Two hits main target! She’s settling to the bottom. Hit in the second line behind the main target!

“Hit large freighter, third line! She’s on fire!

“Hit first line! What a geyser! Another hit in the first line!

A large freighter. Good Lord! She’s belching out a huge cloud of smoke.

“Hit second line! My God, the whole side of the ship blew out toward us! She sank!

“Take cover! Far ship in third line hit and exploded! Munitions! Projectiles 6 to 12 inches are flying all over! Searchlights are sweeping! Let’s get out of here!”

Running from patrol boats, Fluckey ordered the engines’ governors tied down and put 150 percent overload on the power plants, cranking his sub to a world record 23.5 knots. “Captain, the bearings are getting hot,” said the engine room.

“Let them melt,” replied Lucky Fluckey.

Still, a pursuing frigate closed the distance to 2,700 yards. But the Barb pulled into a fleet of fishing junks that Fluckey had been counting on for cover. He maneuvered wildly between them; the frigate stopped chasing and opened fire on the junks, as its radar couldn’t tell the difference between a sub and a junk.

The Barb slowed to flank speed to cool down the bearings, then ran unscathed into the night.

“Now hear this. Well done to each and every one! Eight hits, no errors. Be proud of a night none of us will ever forget.”

At the time, it was believed that the Barb sank ninety thousand tons of Japanese shipping, more than any single submarine attack in the war. Japanese records of ships sunk or damaged in the harbor remain incomplete, but postwar Allied analysis could confirm only that amid the general damage it had inflicted, the Barb had permanently stricken the 5,224-ton freighter Taikyo Maru from the enemy’s maritime inventory.

More important, the Japanese believed the attack had been from the air and moved their air defenses to Namkwan, where they were wasted.

Fluckey leveraged that success into a fifth war patrol. Submarine captains were usually allowed only four—statistics showed that on the fifth patrol the captain was likely to become either overconfident or overcautious. But Fluckey convinced the admirals that he would be neither. He had unfinished business in the Sea of Okhotsk, as well as a few parting shots in mind.

Commander Fluckey wanted to mount a rocket launcher on the Barb and fire the rockets at factories. He also wanted to blow up a train. Furthermore, Fluckey bet another officer a quart of whiskey that on its twelfth patrol the Barb would sink fifteen vessels—trawlers, luggers, schooners, and sampans included. Not your usual goals for a submarine captain, but Fluckey had proven to be anything but usual.

With fewer Japanese convoys in the area to supply targets, the Barb’s main mission when it departed on June 8, 1945, was to “raise a rumpus,” recalled Admiral Lockwood. Three wolf packs were sent to hunt ships that planes and destroyers now guarded some distance away.

At 1:50 a.m. on June 22, the day after Okinawa fell, history was made when Fluckey gave the command, “Man battle stations rockets!” Twelve rockets whooshed out of the pipe-rack launcher, and thirty seconds later they hit their target 5,250 yards away as chunks of buildings flew into the night. The Barb took off at flank speed to raise more of a rumpus farther north.

At dawn on July 2, the Barb approached the port of Kaihyo To, inside Patience Bay at Shikuka. Peering through the mist with binoculars, the crew counted twenty-three barracks, warehouses, factories, shops, and mills. At eight hundred yards the Barb commenced firing. Fluckey called the assault “Little Iwo Jima.”

The barrage of bullets continued for thirty-three minutes. The 40mm antiaircraft cannon destroyed a pillbox, an observation post, three sampans, and an oil dump. The five-inch gun destroyed a radar and radio station, blasted buildings, and set fires that raged under an immense black cloud. “The island is out of commission,” he said. “No communications, no radar, no power, no buildings, no boats exist.”

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Tags: Historical Figures, Naval Battles, World War II

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