The Galloping Ghost (21 page)

In the end, a bare minimum were transferred.

By the morning of 27 October 1944 the
Barb
was ready to go. Minor repairs had been made, twenty-four Mark 18 torpedoes had been hoisted aboard, and a requisite supply of beer was in storage. The sub's battle flag, with its angry “One-eyed Hoiman” caricature of a mackerel-like fish throwing firecrackers, fluttered from the conning tower as the sub's powerful diesels came alive in a haze of bluish smoke. Slipping the mooring lines, the boat
fell in behind the
Queenfish
and just ahead of the
Picuda
(SS-382) in a single-file procession from the harbor. Destination: Japan. Loughlin in the
Queenfish
commanded the newly formed wolf pack, dubbed “Loughlin's Loopers” by ComSubPac. The mission was to sail from Majuro to the western coast of Kyushu, the southernmost of Japan's home islands. The wolf pack was to link up with another three-boat group known as “Underwood's Urchins”—the
Spadefish
(SS-411),
Sunfish
(SS-282), and
Peto
(SS-266). All six subs were to stifle convoy activity in and out of the industrial cities of Sasebo and Nagasaki on Kyushu. The sister cities were separated from the East China Sea by the Koshiki Strait running north and south between Kyushu and Goto Island to the west.

On 7 November the
Barb
arrived off the southern entrance to the strait. The five other boats patrolled farther west in the sea. The following afternoon, while the
Barb
trolled south below the strait along the Kyushu coast, Fluckey decided to stay in plain view as a ruse. His hope was that the presence of the sub would be reported and cause the Japanese to shift convoy departures and arrivals to the northern entrance to the strait. After dark the
Barb
sped up the coast, rounded Goto Island to the west, and took position at the northern end of the channel. The boat arrived undetected. On the night of 10 November a darkened lighthouse suddenly blinked to life. At the same time radar contact was made with a large ship approaching from the north without escorts. The 10,500-ton
Gokoku Maru
had been rerouted because of the earlier sightings of the
Barb
in the south. A destroyer sent to protect the ship was overdue. The
Gokoku,
which had been converted from a freighter into a light cruiser, slowed to twelve knots and began zigzagging as it neared the strait. The
Barb,
rapidly closing, submerged and fired three forward torpedoes from 2,500 yards. Two hit, ravaging the target's amidships and bringing it to a complete halt with a thirty-degree list. As the
Barb
surfaced, the cruiser moved away at two knots in a desperate attempt to run aground. Antiaircraft guns blinked fire in all directions as seamen dived off the side and lifeboats dangled from the sinking ship. The
Barb
moved in. Fluckey sent the lookouts below, leaving only him and Tuck Weaver on the bridge. The captain realized the cruiser's big guns couldn't be lowered enough to bring the submarine within their sites. Just 970 yards from the target, the boat launched another torpedo from a forward tube. It broached, veered off course, and disappeared. Another, fired a minute later, also lurched off course, passing harmlessly down the side. Weaver jokingly suggested Fluckey try another tactic—put the nose of the sub up against the ship and roll it over.

Rethinking his options, the skipper decided on a submerged attack to steady the torpedo. As the diving alarm sounded, the skipper and Weaver went below. Neal Sever, a second-class signalman, lowered the hatch cover and prepared to set the watertight seal with a handwheel as the boat descended. Unbeknownst to anyone, however, Lt. (j.g.) Dave Teeters, the boat's electronics officer, was still up in the periscope shears. He had gone to the bridge earlier to watch the sinking. This was his third patrol in the
Barb
and he had never seen battle action before. With nothing else to do, he had slipped topside past the skipper and Tuck without notice. In the darkness and the commotion, he was enjoying the spectacle when the
Barb
began venting compressed air to dive. He looked down on an empty bridge with the deck hatch closing over the red glow from lights inside the conning tower. As the sea swirled up over the deck and rose against the conning tower, Teeters dropped down and hit the intercom button.

“Hey!” he yelled. “Let me in!”

Sever pushed the hatch back open and with a grin looked up at the officer. “Do you want to come in too, Mr. Teeters?” Water splashed down behind the lieutenant as he bounded down the ladder in a single motion while Sever closed and dogged the hatch.

The sub resumed its descent, and at periscope depth Lieutenant Commander Lander, the boat's PCO, fired a third torpedo at Fluckey's direction into the side of the ship from 1,400 yards. The
Gokoku
finally rolled over and sank.

The submarine surfaced and sped away as the belated destroyer arrived. At dawn Japanese aircraft and more destroyers swarmed the area, plastering the ocean with more than three hundred bombs and depth charges intended for the submarine—all for naught.

Throughout the next day the
Barb
remained submerged, the crew resting until orders arrived from Loughlin for the two wolf packs to join up for lifeguard duty during a B-29 bombing strike on Kyushu from a new base deep inside China. The six subs repositioned themselves before dawn on 11 November at forty-mile intervals along the flight path of the bombers over the East China Sea. Dozens of enemy aircraft crisscrossed the sky above the clouds on the lookout for American aircraft while oblivious to the submarines below. An hour before noon the silver bodies of the high-flying bombers appeared in the sky en route to Kyushu. The pilots exchanged recognition signals with the
Barb
as they thrummed past. For the submariners it was a particularly thrilling moment. Said watch officer Lt. Richard Gibson, “What a beautiful sight! It's good to see something American besides a submarine so close to Japan.”

The raid was so intense that the thump of explosions was audible in the ocean beneath the boat. After a few hours the B-29s passed over on the return to China. One crashed, however, 170 miles to the southwest, close enough for the
Barb
to speed to the scene.

As Fluckey got under way, a coded message arrived from the
Queenfish
. Loughlin had attacked a large convoy, had damaged one ship, and had taken a terrific beating from depth charges from a pair of frigates working in tandem. Since the convoy was roughly in the same direction as the downed B-29, Fluckey set an intercept course. Two hours later an enemy plane dropped out of the clouds in an attack dive. The
Barb
got under in one minute, diving to two hundred feet—just thirty feet from the bottom—as a bomb exploded. The sub moved off unscathed, though the detonation sent a knife flying in the galley, slicing the forearm of the ship's baker while pots of boiling water toppled over, scalding his hand. When the boat surfaced in the later afternoon, wind velocity approached forty knots from the west, throwing up towering waves. Fluckey knew the impending action would be exceedingly difficult—and risky. Sea depth of only two hundred feet—two-thirds the length of the boat—would give the submarine little room for evasive maneuvers. Five hours later, in total darkness, radar revealed the approaching convoy. It took another hour for the boat to complete an end-around in force 6 seas. With no moon and a tumultuous ocean, the boat moved in unseen. Visual contact was established at midnight with a formation of ten ships in three columns with four destroyers patrolling the edges. With Captain Fluckey, PCO Lander, and the lookouts lashed to the bridge to keep from being washed overboard, the
Barb
skidded down mountainous seas in a path of foam two hundred yards wide to the head of the convoy. The plan of attack was to fire all six bow torpedo tubes and four stern tubes as the sub moved into the middle of the formation. Erratic ship movements in the heaving seas forced the fire control party in the conning tower to constantly readjust targeting data. With a destroyer edging up alongside the convoy on a collision course with the sub, Fluckey could wait no longer. In a three-minute span, six torpedoes exited the boat, two each for three ships. Multiple hits on the targets resulted in chaos, the destroyers wheeling about to find the yet unseen intruder. The
Barb
crossed ahead of one of the warships at a range of eight hundred yards to fire two stern torpedoes at a large freighter beyond. Another hit, this time sinking the 4,823-ton
Naruo Maru
.

Fluckey looked around for another target but couldn't find one as the ships fell out of formation and zigzagged in “utter confusion,” as he described it. At Lander's suggestions, the
Barb
pulled away to reload the torpedo tubes, await the convoy reforming, and then go in for a second attack.
It was a difficult rearm. Corkscrew motions and severe battering by cresting fifteen-foot waves made footing very difficult for crewmen using hoists and their own strength to maneuver eight 3,154-pound torpedoes off their storage skids and into the firing tubes.

An hour later the
Barb
regained attack position and submerged ahead of the convoy. Spindrift reduced visibility through the periscope. Deep troughs between waves also made it difficult for the skipper to keep the targets in view until a freighter loomed only four hundred yards distant. As the
Barb
crossed its bow, Fluckey walked the periscope back and forth in order to view the entire ship, from bow to stern. Noticing a lagging second ship overlapping the target, the captain relayed targeting data in a continuing stream to the fire control party. The assistant approach officer called out bearings as fast as he could. The distance to the lead target narrowed. “She must be a lot closer,” muttered the torpedo data computer (TDC) operator. “A whole lot closer,” thought the skipper, who had overhead him. “But we control the situation. Gyros are racing toward zero. We can't miss.”

Fluckey, still at the periscope, bellowed, “Fire 8!”

“Fire 7!”

“Fire 10!”

In the span of a few breaths, the first torpedo exploded against the hull of the freighter and “right in my face,” noted the captain. In the after torpedo room, the crew thought it was a depth charge. Fluckey ordered silent running. The boat fell quiet as crewmen shut down all equipment that might reveal their location. Parts of the doomed 5,396-ton
Gyokuyo Maru
rattled off the
Barb
's superstructure as the submarine slid past on low motor propulsion to escape. At 185 feet the sub was unable to maintain depth and was at a slight up angle. The worry was that its twin propellers might strike the ocean floor at two hundred feet, damaging them. The captain had two choices: rev up the motors to control the depth, or blow the ballast tanks to lift the sub slightly. Either way, the noise would be noticed by destroyers overhead.

Fluckey chose a quick blow, leveling the boat at 190 feet. On cue the warships charged for the kill. “Screws of one escort could be heard through the hull above us,” Fluckey noted in the ship's log. “A hush descended on all hands. . . . Escort has shifted to short scale pinging. . . . Commenced evasive turns. . . . The escorts have us sandwiched. . . . Pings are ringing off our sides.”

The splash of the first depth charge was audible. It exploded at 150 feet. Close. A minute later, another splash and another explosion—this time at the same level as the boat. Very close. Several more splashes. The sub hung
near the bottom. Would this be the coup de grace? Everyone braced, staring at the overhead. This time the bombs landed in the mud on the ocean bottom without detonating. The fuses were set too deep.

The
Barb
floated motionless. So did the destroyers, pinging to relocate the sub. More splashes could be heard. Three bombs went off close.

Then all was quiet. An hour passed.

The destroyers had returned to the convoy. The
Barb
surfaced just before dawn. Fluckey briefly considered making another foray but decided to leave the follow-up attack to the Urchins.

When the search for the downed bomber crew proved to be futile, Fluckey set a course for Quelpart, a large island off the southern tip of Korea. Fluckey thought overcast conditions would be ideal for a little gun action.

Like most American submariners, those in the
Barb
were motivated by a desire for unconditional surrender and complete victory over the enemy. The sneak attack on Pearl Harbor and stories of atrocities against Allied prisoners inflamed them. In a letter earlier to his wife, Fluckey wrote of what the war had done to him. “So now I'm a veteran of the greatest game there is. And what a pleasure it is to eliminate Japs. Funny thing, I seem to be the most bloodthirsty one of the bunch and I never could steel my heart enough to kill a rabbit—but these slant eyes aren't man nor beast, so it's a different matter. Does make life out here seem kind of cheap though. So cheap I could stick a pistol in a Jap's ear and pull the trigger without a qualm.”

The commander of the
Barb
would have no mercy as he came upon two Japanese schooners on the morning of 14 November. Sailors on the two vessels saw the sub coming. One schooner turned as if to ram, an action Fluckey termed “real courage.” In doing so, the two vessels separated, giving the gunners on the sub the opportunity to fire port and starboard broadsides. “I knew the crew would enjoy this, so we easily slipped in between them,” noted the captain, who observed dummy wooden guns mounted aft of the two schooners. Forty rounds of 40mm gunfire and 4-inch shelling dispatched both vessels. A half hour later the submarine encountered a third schooner and sank it as well. No regrets.