Just after midnight on July 23rd 1945, Commander Eugene Fluckey took his submarine to within just
600 yards of the Japanese coast. After more than a year of remarkable success in command of the USS
Barb, Fluckey and his crew had one last operation to carry out before they ended their last patrol+.
They were going to invade Japan, and become the first submarine to sink a train.
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Lieutenant Commander Eugene Fluckey took command of the USS Barb in April 1944 at the conclusion of
the boats seventh war patrol. He was 30 years old, leading a crew with an average age of just 23.
Up until that point, Barb had only sunk one enemy ship during its previous patrols-
a number that Fluckey was keen to improve on.
Deploying in May 1944 to the Sea of Okhotsk with two other submarines, within weeks the
merchant ships Koto Maru and Madras Maru had been sunk, tripling the boats tally at a stroke.
By the end of this eighth patrol, the USS Barb had claimed five ships- the
joint most for any captain on their first patrol in command.
According to postwar figures Barb claimed five more Japanese ships through the rest of 1944,
including the 20,000 ton escort aircraft carrier Unyo. These successes earnt the boat a growing
reputation in the silent service and its captain a promotion to commander in November.
But the events that would catapult the Barb to widespread acclaim and make Fluckey the single
most successful US submarine captain of the war were yet to come, beginning in January 1945.
- By late January the Barb was
weeks into its eleventh war patrol, off the eastern coast of china. There had been decent
success so far, with three ships sunk on January 8th, but for a number of days there had been very
little contact with the Japanese. Multiple convoy contacts had been reported to Barb only for the
ships to vanish or not appear where expected. It turned out that with heavy fighting in the
Phillippines and the increasing dominance of US air coverage, many Japanese convoys were sticking
very close to the coast, spending each night in protected anchorages that would be difficult
for submarines to attack due to the shallow depth. Unwilling to be deterred by this, by January 22nd,
Barb was mingling with hundreds of Chinese fishing junks north of the Tae[Taishan] islands,
using them as cover to get closer and closer to the coast in search of targets.
By that evening, Barb had located not one but two convoys bottled up in an anchorage
at Namkwan harbor. Slipping by the patrolling escorts, in water that was barely 20 feet deep,
Commnder Fluckey took Barb in for a daring surface attack.
As his boat surged towards 27 merchant ships, Fluckey proclaimed over the ships intercom: “We’ve
got the biggest target of the war in front of us… I figure the odds are 10 to 1 in our favour.”
Over the course of just a few minutes eight torpedoes were fired. There were a series
of large explosions as several found their marks. Barb did not hang around to watch the
fireworks though, charging at flank speed for its escape eastward away from two very angry escort
ships, 6000 yards behind them. Ten minutes later the range was down to just 3600 yards
as the lead frigate reeled in its prey. Fluckey ordered the Barbs engines be overloaded to 150%
power in a desperate attempt to get clear. His boat surged through the water,
setting a new speed record for submarines of 23 and a half knots.
It still wasn’t quite enough, and the range continued to fall, to just 2700 yards by 4.36.
But then, just as the engines started to dangerously overheat, out of the gloom appeared
dozens of Chinese fishing junks, oblivious to the battle going on. Barb steered through the mass of
civilian ships, ducking and weaving to find a safe path through. The pursing Japanese ships, unable
to distinguish between the radar silhouettes of the submarine and junks, inadvertently
opened fire on the Chinese fishermen. The Americans were able to slip away to safety.
Barbs crew estimated they had sunk three ships and damaged at least four others, and their
report caused a sensation. It brought the total number of ships sunk on this patrol to eight,
and lead to a message from Vice Admiral Charles Lockwood, commander of pacific submarines,
that hailed “probably the best conducted patrol of the war”. On Barb’s return to the
US for refit, Commander Fluckey was awarded the medal of honor for the raid on Namkwan.
But his, and the USS Barb’s, remarkable war service did not end there. In fact, it got more
remarkable. -
By July 1945 Barb was at sea once again, back in her old hunting grounds in the Sea of Okhotsk.
Commander Fluckey was once again in command, having persuaded the navy to give him an unusual
5th patrol as skipper of the Barb. By this stage the dynamic of the submarine war had changed as
Japanese merchant shipping was largely confined to port as the air and sea net closed around the Home
Islands. Fluckey had adapted to this by arranging for a 5-inch rocket launcher to be fitted
to the bow of his submarine for use in shore bombardment. In the first couple of weeks of July,
Barb had bombarded several towns on Sakhalin island with rockets and its deck gun,
and sunk a handful of small Japanese trawlers.
By the middle of the month Fluckey’s eye was drawn to the train line that ran along the
coast of Patience bay, on the east coast of the island, wondering if it was possible to
put it out of action. Bombardment from offshore would not be accurate enough to be effective,
and Fluckey reasoned to do serious damage they would need to hit both a train and the tracks.
Paul ‘Swish’ Saunders hit on the idea of putting men ashore in rubber boats to plant explosives on
the track. Commander Fluckey was keen, but there was the issue of how to detonate the explosives-
it would be impossible to use a timer since the time a train would pass could not be predicted,
and a remote detonator would require someone to hang around on shore for far longer than was
safe. This problem was eventually solved by Engineman Third Class Billy Hatfield.
Hatfield had been an electrician pre-war and suggested setting up a trigger that would be
activated by the weight of the train causing the rails to sag and set off the explosives.
With a plan in place, Fluckey hand picked a team of eight crewmen to go ashore and set the charges,
led by Lieutenant Bill Walker. A few
days later, in the early hours of July 23rd Barb drew in close to the coast. The operation had been
delayed by a few days as the crew waited for an overcast night with little moonlight, but now the
boats were pushed off just after midnight for the journey to the shore. 25 minutes later the team
of eight reached the shore and set off inland to the railway, leaving two men to guard the boats.
It was pitch dark and quiet. The operation had been successfully timed between Japanese shore
patrols. As they started out towards the railway, they did not know it, but they were the first and
last US personnel to step foot on the Japanese home islands under arms during World War 2.
On arrival at their target, the team dug frantically to lay the charges under the track,
pausing only to throw themselves into cover when a Japanese train passed through
at 12.47. By 1.20 the charges were set, with the trigger lined up to be contacted when the
rails sagged by just under 3/8ths of an inch under the weight of the locomotive.
At 1.32 Barb was flashed a light signal to indicate the boats were on their way back.
Before they could make it the 600 yards back to the submarine,
a train appeared. Almost in slow motion, at 1.47 it ran into the explosives
and triggered a massive explosion. Wreckage was sent cascading 200 feet into the air and 17 train
cars piled on top of each other- the sound of screeching metal echoing out across the bay.
Two passenger cars were mixed in with the trains freight and 150 people were killed in the attack,
tragically including non-combatant women and children. The Barb, with her saboteur
team back on board, made a swift getaway as the Japanese authorities responded to the attack.
It was an extraordinary raid, and the crew of the Barb soon had a train sewn onto what was becoming
a very crowded Battle flag. -
The USS Barb arrived back at Midway island on August 2nd 1945 to complete Commander Fluckey’s
last war patrol- and indeed the boats as well, since the War would be at an end just a few weeks
later. Fluckey ended the war with 16 confirmed sinkings while Barb was under his command, with
many more claimed that the Joint-Army Navy Assessment Committee was unable to
fully verify- particularly in the raid on Namkwan harbor. Even so, this made him the most successful
Submarine skipper by tonnage sunk. But this wasn’t his proudest achievement- that was the fact that
not a single member of the Barb’s crew had had to be awarded the purple heart for being wounded
whilst under his command. Despite the bombings, strafings, depth chargings and one incident
where they physically rammed an enemy ship- the crew had all come through unscathed.
And so ended the remarkable war service of the USS Barb.
Thank you for watching and I’ll see you in the next video.