The spirit of the Barb will live on, though. and kept it as a museum submarine," War History Online noted in a 2022 article. Fluckey remarked that he wished he'd known about her scrapping, as he and his crew would have bought the vessel, returned it to the U.S. Decommissioned in 1954, the sub was loaned to Italy and rechristened the Enrico Tazzoli. Naval History and Heritage Command photo)Īll in all, the Barb was awarded four Presidential Unit Citations, a Navy Unit Commendation and eight battle stars during the course of World War II. The raid is represented by the train symbol in the middle bottom of the battle flag. The 8 members of the USS Barb’s demolition squad, including chief gunner’s mate Paul Saunders (left) and electrician’s mate 3rd class Billy Hatfield (2nd from left), pose with the submarine’s battle flag at Pearl Harbor in August 1945 after the crew wrecked a train with a bomb in Japan. Not long after Fluckey’s comment, the bomb went off. "Paddle like the devil," Fluckey yelled through a megaphone. After that near miss, Hatfield connected the bomb to the detonator as quickly as he could, then the men raced back to their boats. They were interrupted when a train charged down the track, forcing the men to drop quickly to the ground to avoid being seen as the locomotive passed. Two men guarded the boats, three others were deployed as sentries, and Saunders, Hatfield and Walker began hollowing out stone underneath the tracks to create space for the explosives.Īs they worked feverishly, their internal clocks ticked away. Bill Walker, the sub's engineering officer, led their respective boats. National Archives photo)īefore two rubber boats carrying the eight submariners departed the Barb - located less than a thousand yards off the Japanese coast - in the early morning hours of July 23, 1945, Fluckey told the ad hoc demolition team members that they had roughly three hours to complete their task before the Barb would leave, with or without them, to avoid the risk of detection. The USS Barb submarine is shown in San Francisco Bay near the Mare Island Navy Yard, California, May 3, 1945. He suggested the Barb could do something similar, connecting a micro switch to the rails that would be activated by the train itself. He recalled how, as a boy, he used to place nuts between railroad ties, so when a train passed and the rails sagged, the resultant pressure would crack the shells. Hatfield, a former railroad worker, solved the problem. There was one sticking point, though: How could the submariners detonate it without risking injury or death to themselves? Saunders and Hatfield created a 55-pound bomb, which Saunders referred to as a "land torpedo.” They used a scuttling charge, wired it to three dry-cell batteries and placed the makeshift explosive into an empty pickle can. He also preferred team members to be single out of the men ultimately chosen, only third-class electrician's mate Bill Hatfield was married. To fill the slots for the two four-man teams required for the mission, Fluckey insisted on physically fit service members who possessed good communication skills and survival instincts (in the event they were left behind and were forced to fend for themselves). Intrigued, Fluckey gave his go-ahead with some conditions. Saunders sat in front of a topographic map that included rail lines and began to strategize, eventually devising a plan to send a group of the Barb’s submariners onshore to plant explosives on the tracks. The comment caught the attention of Paul Golden "Swish" Saunders, the Barb’s chief of the boat. Naval History and Heritage Command photo) USS Barb commanding officer Eugene Fluckey stands by the submarine after receiving the Navy Cross on Dec.
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