Harbor raids - A true story?

[nematode]

Originally Posted by Rockin Robbins

Not only did it happen, but it happened in the most spectacular fashion with USS Barb (Fluckey) sneaking through miles of narrow, sampan and mine-infested waters, less than 100' and most of the time less than 50' deep, to enter Namkwan Harbor on 23 January, 1945.

Thanks for that info RR. What I show for Fluckey on 23-Jan-1945 is Taikyo Maru a 5244GRT freighter sunk at 27-04N, 120-07E which is 5000 yards off the coast of China in the East China Sea, from a group of 30 anchored ships spaced 500 yards apart in 3 columns, making for a mass of shipping some 1500 yards deep and some 5000 yards long.

Please correct my data if it's wrong. If my data is accurate, I'm sorry, but that's an attack on an open water anchorage, and not a harbor. That conclusion does not take away from the valor of Fluckey's actions. It's merely a result from an honest attempt at learning a truth about history.

Originally Posted by Rockin Robbins

For this attack, he became the only living sub commander to be awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor. When you make blanket statements about US Sub conduct in WWII, it is almost obligatory to make an exception for Capt Eugene Fluckey! Otherwise you risk being in error most of the time.

Perhaps you mean Fluckey was the first living sub skipper MoH recipient. O'Kane, Street, and Ramage were also alive at the time they were awarded the MoH.

[Rockin Robbins]

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.

[Rockin Robbins]

Upon further review, the officials have decided that Fluckey's raid, while conducted in water 60' or less in depth, in uncharted waters with rocks all poised to rip the bottom out of the sub, and with three frigates guarding several (Fluckey says 24) anchored ships, and with extensive fleets of junks and sampans making the run quite exciting, this in no way conforms to the Mediterranean definition of a harbor. Granted, Fluckey had to run six or seven miles just to get to the 10 fathom curve, then an additional ten to get to the 20 fathom curve where he could dive, and he was pursued by at least one of the frigates during that egress, this is quite a different position than that found in the Mediterranean or Atlantic theater.

I don't know which is really more difficult, this one with miles of shallow uncharted, rock infested water, or a precisely known but scientifically defended harbor. Obviously both were penetrated successfully by submarines, proving that the submarine was equal to whatever challenges existed in either theater of war.



Fluckey's account in "Thunder Below" in the chapter on Barb's 11th war patrol (!) is one of the most exiting accounts by either Americans or Germans in WWII, and surely comes close to Prein's conquest of Scapa Flow, minus the glamor targets and guns from capital ships waiting to vaporize the little U-Boat. Fluckey's battle was much more evenly matched, in spite of his handicap from all the shallow water and sampans. It is also safe to say that the moral effect of Prein's attack on the British was far in excess of the effect of Fluckey's attack on the Japanese.