At the National Medal of Honor Museum, Fluckey’s Medal of Honor and a flag from USS Barb offer tangible connections to his service. The artifacts show what Barb accomplished; Fluckey’s reflections help explain how.

“Luck Is Where You Find It”

Before Eugene Fluckey took command of USS Barb, he asked Admiral Charles Lockwood for something more valuable than a promising patrol area: the freedom to search it differently.

During Barb’s previous war patrol, the submarine had spent much of each day submerged, waiting for enemy shipping to pass within reach. That approach reduced the danger of detection, but it also sharply limited how much of the Pacific the boat could search. Fluckey proposed something more aggressive: operate on the surface when conditions allowed, travel faster, see farther, and actively hunt across a much larger area. The strategy increased the possibility of being spotted, bombed, or forced below—but it also increased the possibility of finding the enemy.

“Luck is where you find it,” Fluckey told Lockwood. “But to find it, you have to look for it.”

As he later explained in Thunder Below!: The USS Barb Revolutionizes Submarine Warfare in World War II, Fluckey wanted commanders to receive an operating area and the best available intelligence, then be trusted to use both. Results would determine whether the approach—and the commander—deserved another patrol.

That philosophy helps explain the name that followed him through the war: “Lucky Fluckey.” The rhyming nickname dated to his years at the U.S. Naval Academy, although Fluckey reportedly disliked what it implied. His successes were not accidents. What others called luck, he understood as the result of searching farther, studying intelligence, preparing a crew, and accepting calculated risk.

Born in Washington, D.C., in 1913, Fluckey graduated from the Naval Academy in 1935 and served aboard a battleship, a destroyer, and two submarines before joining Barb. He assumed command on April 27, 1944. His five patrols as commanding officer earned him the Medal of Honor and four Navy Crosses—one major valor award for each—and gave Barb one of the most celebrated records of the Pacific submarine campaign.

Yet that record was not built by waiting for favorable conditions. Fluckey’s “luck” depended on movement, intelligence, preparation, and a crew ready to respond when a narrow opportunity appeared.

“We Don’t Drive Men Aboard the Barb.”

Fluckey’s tactics required more than a fast and responsive submarine. They required sailors who could think, decide, and act under pressure. The crew even had a name for themselves: the “Barbarians.”

One exchange in Thunder Below! captures how deliberately he developed that crew. When Fluckey selected Paul “Swish” Saunders to become chief of the boat—the senior enlisted leader—Swish initially refused. The men aboard were his friends, and he worried that disciplining them would change that dynamic.

Fluckey saw the position differently. He did not want someone the sailors obeyed only because they had to. He wanted a leader they trusted, respected, and wanted to follow.

“We don’t drive men on board the Barb,” he told Swish. “We lead them.”

Swish raised another concern: What would happen if he made a mistake?

“On goofing—so you goof,” Fluckey replied. “Don’t hide it or cover up. Do your best to correct your mistakes and don’t be afraid to ask for help from anyone from top to bottom.”

Although Swish would initially be the most junior chief aboard, becoming chief of the boat would make him the crew’s senior enlisted member. Formal rank mattered, but it would not be the only measure of his authority.

“In submarines, we hang our rates on the gangway when we come aboard,” he explained. “It’s what you can do that counts with me.”

Swish accepted.

The exchange reveals the kind of command culture he needed. A submarine crew lived and worked in confined quarters, often operating far from immediate help. Each sailor’s knowledge affected everyone’s survival. Fluckey identified potential, gave people meaningful responsibility, and made candor part of competence. He was building a crew that would not simply obey an unconventional order, but be capable of devising one.

That distinction would soon matter. Ahead were 14 Allied prisoners clinging to wreckage, a guarded harbor with an hour-long escape to deep water, and a railway no submarine had been built to attack.

“Put Four Cases of Beer in the Cooler.”

Before certain attacks, Fluckey issued an order that had nothing to do with torpedoes, targeting, or speed.

“Put four cases of beer in the cooler.”

The order anticipated success before the crew had anything to celebrate. Cooling the beer expressed confidence that Barb would accomplish its objective—and that its sailors would return to share in the success.

The ritual began early in Fluckey’s command. Before departing on one patrol, Fluckey arranged for the submarine base welfare officer to lend him 24 cases of beer for the months ahead. There was one immediate problem: the fully loaded submarine had nowhere to put it.

Fluckey instructed his men to fill the officers’ shower and place the remainder in the torpedo-room bilges. Losing the shower, Fluckey joked, would give the officers added incentive to find and sink ships.

The beer soon became part of Barb’s battle rhythm. After a successful operation, he ordered the crew to “splice the mainbrace,” an old naval expression for issuing sailors a celebratory drink. Beer was distributed, and Barb’s cooks usually produced cakes depicting the crew’s latest exploits.

When an operation came up empty, the crew could recognize the tactical reasons and still embrace a more satisfying explanation: someone had forgotten to cool the beer.

The superstition was playful, but the ritual served a serious purpose. Every attack depended upon lookouts, plotters, torpedomen, engineers, cooks, and other sailors performing their responsibilities together. The beer and cakes recognized the same truth: whatever Barb accomplished belonged to the boat.

Fluckey’s optimism did not deny the risks ahead. It reminded the crew what waited on the other side of them.

“Fear Must Be Controlled”

After a series of attacks aboard Barb, Fluckey overheard a sailor wondering what it would take to make his captain afraid.

The question followed Fluckey to his bunk. As he reviewed the attacks and considered where the crew could improve, he also examined his own response to danger. A submarine commander, he reasoned, should understand his boat and its capabilities better than anyone else. From the periscope or bridge, he could observe the enemy, weigh the available information, and draw upon years of study and training.

“Fear is a natural characteristic of all living creatures, necessary for self-preservation,” wrote Fluckey. “To win, however, fear must be controlled, enabling expertise to determine when to fight and when to run away, to be able to fight another day.”

Fearlessness was not the objective; fear was a necessary warning signal. Expertise determined what to do with it.

Fluckey imagined that his mind held a limited “bucket of fear.” Much of his was already occupied by concern for his wife and young child, far beyond his reach. At sea, the dangers were immediate, but they were also dangers he could study and confront. 

That distinction helps explain how Fluckey could push Barb and her “Barbarians” beyond the conventional boundaries of submarine warfare. Boldness required examining danger closely enough to weigh the objective against the likelihood of bringing his crew home.

Those calculations would take Barb into Namkwan Harbor. What happened there would earn Fluckey the last thing he wanted: the Medal of Honor.

“It Should Be Reserved for Dead Men.”

During Barb’s 11th patrol, Fluckey located approximately 30 Japanese ships gathered in Namkwan Harbor along the coast of China. Reaching them required navigating shallow, mined, and poorly charted water. Escaping would require Barb to remain on the surface for more than an hour before reaching water deep enough to submerge.

Fluckey believed darkness, surprise, and confusion gave his crew a reasonable chance. Early on January 23, 1945, Barb entered the harbor in water only five fathoms—30 feet—deep. From approximately 3,000 yards, she fired six bow torpedoes, turned, and launched four more from her stern.

Eight torpedoes struck six targets. The explosion of an ammunition ship added to the confusion as Barb began her exposed run toward deep water. Traveling at more than 21 knots—roughly 24 mph—she reached it one hour and 19 minutes after firing the first torpedo. The submarine escaped without damage or injury.

For the patrol—including the attack on Namkwan Harbor—Fluckey was selected to receive the Medal of Honor. The news stunned and troubled him. Fluckey understood the Medal’s emphasis on acting without regard for one’s personal safety. But he saw an important difference between a Marine who sacrificed his own life to save others and a captain whose decisions placed an entire crew and submarine at risk.

“It made what I thought was a very intelligent operation sound foolhardy,” he wrote in his book. “I wouldn’t have taken the Barb into Namkwan if I had thought we didn’t have at least a 50-50 chance of coming out alive.”

Fluckey tried to refuse the Medal, proposing a Navy Cross instead. His superiors rejected the exchange. Admiral Richard Edwards told him the Navy needed “live smart heroes” to inspire its sailors. He also assured Fluckey that those who understood the operation considered its strategy and tactics sound. The Medal honored Barb and her crew as well as their commander.

That was an argument Fluckey could accept.

“Well, for the Barb, yes, sir.”

“What Mischief We Could Conjure Up”

Near the end of Barb’s 12th and final war patrol, Fluckey returned to the question that had shaped his command: What else could a submarine accomplish?

“Yawning the morning away, I laid out a chart on the wardroom table to see what mischief we could conjure up,” he wrote. His attention kept returning to a railway along the western shore of Patience Bay. “How could we harass the enemy here?”

The tracks ran through Karafuto, the Japanese-administered southern portion of Sakhalin Island. Torpedoes could not reach them, so the crew spent three days watching the railway, studying the train schedule, and developing a plan to send sailors ashore.

Paul “Swish” Saunders and Billy Hatfield, who had worked on a railroad, adapted a 55-pound scuttling charge into a “land torpedo.” Hatfield designed a pressure switch that would detonate beneath the weight of a passing locomotive. Eight sailors were selected for the mission based on the skills they could contribute.

On the night of July 22–23, 1945, the men paddled ashore in two rubber boats, crossed difficult terrain, and reached the railway. After hiding as one train passed only feet away, they planted the charge.

Another train approached as the landing party paddled back toward Barb. Its locomotive triggered the charge, destroying the engine and derailing the cars behind it. All eight men returned safely.

“We Don’t Have Problems, Just Solutions”

The train attack was among Barb’s final wartime operations. The submarine returned to Midway on August 2, 1945, less than two weeks before Japan announced its surrender.

In the epilogue of Thunder Below!, Fluckey considered what had made him proudest during his five patrols as Barb’s commanding officer.

“My answer is simply this. No one who has ever served under my command was awarded the Purple Heart Medal for being wounded or killed, and all of us brought our Barb back safe and sound, ready, eager, and willing to fight again.”

Fluckey appreciated praise from admirals and historians, but recognition had never been the crew’s objective. He resisted efforts to rank Barb against submarines whose crews had faced different missions, dangers, and losses: “The Barb was never in competition with anyone but herself.”

Fluckey remained in the Navy after the war, rising to rear admiral during 37 years of service. His assignments included commanding the Pacific submarine force and serving as director of naval intelligence. After retiring in 1972, he and his wife spent years helping operate an orphanage in Portugal.

At Barb’s 1986 reunion, former crewmates gathered to share what they had done with their lives. Decades after their patrols, they still returned to the friendships and philosophy formed aboard the boat: “We don’t have problems, just solutions.”

Fluckey traced that outlook to the trust shared aboard Barb.

“Then it dawned on me that the men in the Barb who gave her life had taught me the most valuable philosophy for my life. Regardless of all the dangers they accepted at my command, and without all the knowledge that was available to me, a reciprocal trust glowed. I find it applies totally for success in life, love, marriage, and business.

Simply put, ‘I believe in you.’”