Hell and High Water

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

The trawler went down. Some might argue that sinking sampans and trawlers is hardly a challenge, or even a very good use of a well-armed American submarine. But to Fluckey, a bet was a bet, and the trawler was his fifteenth and final kill.

Fluckey used every trick in the book, including ramming trawlers (left) and torpedoing tankers (center) and freighters like the Koto Maru (right).

So ended Eugene Fluckey’s combat career.

He would go on to become an aide to Adm. Chester W. Nimitz after the war, and later, as a rear admiral, was named director of naval intelligence. He finally retired from the service in 1972.

But he always fondly recalled the ship and crew that brought him such acclaim early in his navy service, and his parting from the Barb reminds us that even the Galloping Ghost had human dimensions: “I didn’t have the courage to have a formal relieving aboard ship with the crew at quarters,” he wrote his wife at the time. “I would have blubbered.”

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Tags: Historical Figures, Naval Battles, World War II

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