Hi, I'm the History Guy. I have a
degree in history and I love history, and if you love history too,
this is the channel for you. In 1973, the Italian submarine Enrico Tazzoli
was sold for scrap for the bargain basement price of $100,000. And that just seems
an injustice, because that submarine, a Gato class submarine that had been given to
the Italian Navy by the United States in 1953, was an extraordinary submarine who had
seen some of the most extraordinary service of the Second World War. And so
the amazing record of the Enrico Tazzoli, otherwise known as the USS Barb, the only US
warship to invade the Japanese home islands, and the only known submarine and US service to
sink a… freight train, deserves to be remembered. The USS Barb, named after a species of fish called
the Barbos, was a Gato class diesel-electric submarine, built by the General Dynamics Electric
Boat Company of Groton Connecticut. It was laid down in June of 1941 and commissioned July of
1942. It was 311 feet nine inches long. Displaced 1525 long tons, when surfaced. It had a maximum
speed of 21 knots, a range of 11,000 miles. A crew of six officers and 54 enlisted, and was armed
with ten torpedo tubes, six forward and four aft. The record of the USS Barb cannot be separated
from the extraordinary man who commanded the submarine's last five war patrols of the war.
Eugene B. Fluckey, better known as Lucky Fluckey, was one of the most gifted submarine skippers
of the Second World War. He was a meticulous planner and a daring officer who had a bold and
innovative vision for how a combat submarine should be used. A 1935 graduate of the United
States Naval Academy, Fluckey had served aboard a Battleship and a Destroyer before completing
the Commanding Officer School at Submarine Base New London in Connecticut. In January of
1944 he was given command of the USS Barb. The Barbs record was nothing short of amazing,
among its kills were a Japanese aircraft carrier, a cruiser and a frigate. The Barb sank 29
enemy vessels just in the period from May of 1944 to August of 1945. According to Japanese
records, the USS Barb sank more tonnage of Japanese ships than any other US submarine
of the war. On January 8th 1945, the Barb set a record for the US submarine service,
sinking six enemy vessels in a single day. One of the most extraordinary submarine raids
of the war occurred on January 28th of 1945. Fluckey used a moonless night to sneak the USS
Barb into a shallow minefield protected harbor on the China coast that the Japanese had been
using to shield their merchant vessels from US submarines. He found thirty enemy vessels anchored
there. He fired eight torpedoes and sunk more tonnage of enemy ships in a single attack than
any other single US submarine attack of the war, and then he out dashed the pursuit through
the minefields and made it back to open sea. The daring attack earned Lucky Fluckey his second
nickname, The Galloping Ghost of the China Coast. The Navy commands faith in Fluckey showed
in that they allowed him a rare fifth war patrol commanding the USS Barb. For the
most part, in the United States Navy, a submarine commander was only allowed four
war patrols, after which the Navy decided that they would become either too cautious
or too reckless. For this fifth mission, Barb requested that the Navy install five 130
millimeter rocket tubes on the deck of the USS Barb, giving the Barb unprecedented shore
bombardment capability for a submarine. While rockets and missiles are commonly fired from
submarines today, the USS Barb was the first US Navy submarine to successfully employ rockets,
destroying several factories and towns along the coast of Japan. One of the bombard mission's
was so effective, that the Japanese reported that they thought that they had been bombarded
by at least six warships, and a submarine. It was on this fifth patrol that Fluckey
and the USS Barb went on perhaps their most famous raid. Anchored off the coast of
Japan, Fluckey watched through his periscope as Japanese troop and supply trains moved
along a railway along their coast. And so, on a moonlit night, the USS Barb
sent eight sailors, in a rubber raft, to go on shore and plant 55 pounds of explosives
under the tracks hooked to a detonator that would explode when the weight of the locomotive pushed
down on the rail. When the explosives went off, the locomotive flew two hundred feet in the air
and the entire train crashed down the hill into the ocean. The USS Barb is the only known US
submarine of the war, to sink a freight train. And the action was the only US land operation on
the Japanese home islands in the Second World War. The record the Fluckey and the Barb show on the
submarine's final battle flag of the war. Fluckey himself won the Medal of Honor and an astonishing
four Navy Crosses. In addition, the crew won two more Navy Crosses, twenty-three Silver Stars, 23
Bronze Stars, four Presidential Unit Citations, a Navy Unit Commendation, four Navy and Marine
Corps medals, 82 Letters of Commendation Ribbons and symbols representing 38 enemy vessels, and one
locomotive...shown here at the bottom, destroyed. The adventures of the USS Barb were so epic, that
the President himself, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, asked to be copied on all of Fluckeys Patrol
reports. Once while they were in Hawaii, FDR asked Fluckey to drive the Barb at dangerous speeds,
just so that the president could take a film of the Barb going with all of its banners flapping
in the breeze. But in the end, the success of Fluckey and USS Barb was not just the luck of
Lucky Fluckey, he was a meticulous planner he made very good use of the available intelligence
and his own skills of observation. He had a clear and compelling vision of using a submarine as a
fast torpedo boat that could submerge to escape, rather than the general doctrine of just lying
in wait to attack. To give you an idea of how carefully he planned and managed his crew,
when US torpedoes were having troubles with their detonators, he and his crew dismantled
the detonators on all of their torpedoes and rebuilt them using stronger springs. so that they
would be more likely to detonate. In the end, Commander Fluckey was successful because he was
good at what he did. And perhaps no statistics shows that more clearly than the fact that in five
war patrols in the US submarine service, one of the most dangerous surfaces of the war, not one of
Fluckey sailors was killed or seriously injured. Eugene B. Fluckey eventually rose to the
rank of Rear Admiral and served in among other roles, the role as the Chief of Naval
Intelligence. He retired from the Navy in 1972, and he passed away in 2007, at
the age of 93. Lucky Fluckey, The Galloping Ghost of the China
Coast. Gone, but not forgotten. I'm the History Guy and I hope you enjoyed this
edition of my series, five minutes of history, short snippets of forgotten history five to ten
minutes long. And if you did enjoy it, please go ahead and click that thumbs up button
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