When I get home I'll scan and publish Fluckey's hand-drawn map of the approach and harbor. If it's an open harbor, it's after miles of shallow water with land all around and extensive minefields. It certainly fills the qualification of shallow water, restricted and guarded ingress and egress, minefields, etc. It sure isn't an open deep water anchorage. And he sunk a lot more than one ship there, whether he got official credit or not. One was an ammunition ship that blew shrapnel all over the harbor. Fluckey was a surface craft on this foray, but his way out was thoughtfully lighted by a destroyer, who set the sampan fleet on fire trying to hit Fluckey. You know, if you're part of a robbery in which someone is killed, you're guilty of murder. Then Fluckey should have been given credit for all the sampans destroyed by the destoyer.
Hey, can you find out of the train Fluckey sank landed in the water and whether he got any tonnage from that?:rotfl: I'm sure he tried on a technicality. Fluckey wasn't shy in trying to get credit for his crew.
You're right on the MOH. Typing quicker than the brain can control. lol
Still haven't received word on whether we agree that each side gets to pick a discard for the other. We pick Prein.
Gone!
Actually, though, Donitz would have just picked someone else for the job and they most likely would have pulled it off too. The key to both the Fluckey raid and Prein's was that they were so audacious that the enemy never dreamed they were possible, combined with a careful weighing of the risks involved, and once the risk was managable, not eliminated, they proceeded.