Why This Submarine Captain Was Actually Insane

Eugene B. Fluckey transformed USS Barb into one of the most feared American submarines of World War II by taking risks few commanders would even consider. Ignoring concerns that submarine skippers became dangerously reckless after too many combat patrols, Fluckey repeatedly pushed Barb into waters where submarines were never supposed to operate, including a daring surface attack against roughly 30 Japanese ships inside a shallow Chinese harbor where diving to safety was impossible. But his most extraordinary exploits came during his fifth patrol, when Barb became one of the first American submarines equipped with experimental rockets and used them to bombard targets on the Japanese homeland. Fluckey then went even further, sending an eight-man team ashore on Japanese-controlled Sakhalin Island to secretly plant explosives beneath a coastal railroad. As the men desperately paddled back toward the submarine, an approaching train triggered the charges, destroying it in a spectacular explosion and completing a mission no other American submarine crew would replicate. By the end of the war, Fluckey and Barb were credited in the script with destroying 25 enemy vessels and nearly 180,000 tons of shipping, while remarkably bringing every sailor under his command through combat without a fatality. This is the incredible story of the “Galloping Ghost of the China Coast,” the commander who turned a submarine into a torpedo attacker, rocket platform, and launch point for one of the strangest commando raids of the Pacific War. - As images and footage of actual events are not always available, Dark Docs sometimes utilizes similar historical images and footage for dramatic effect. I do my best to keep it as visually accurate as possible. All content on Dark Docs is researched, produced, and presented in historical context for educational purposes. We are history enthusiasts and are not always experts in some areas, so please don't hesitate to reach out to us with corrections, additional information, or new ideas. -