From The Times (London):

Rear-Admiral Eugene Fluckey
US submarine captain and wartime scourge of Japanese shipping
One of America’s most astute submarine tacticians of the Second World War, Eugene Fluckey sank a greater tonnage of shipping as captain of USS Barb than any other submarine skipper in the US Navy.

His most spectacular feat was the sinking, on September 17, 1944, of the 21,000-ton Japanese aircraft carrier Unyo and an 11,000-ton tanker with one torpedo salvo. This was achieved in a bold surface attack by night on a Japanese tanker convoy in the straits between Taiwan and Luzon.

Approaching by radar, Lieutenant-Commander Fluckey lined up the escort carrier with an overlap on a large tanker and fired a bow salvo of six torpedoes. Both vessels were hit and subsequently sank.

Fluckey ended the war credited with a total of 95,360 tons of shipping sunk, a figure he always disputed as being too low. Ten years of research after the war led him to the conviction that his “score” had been nearer 145,000 tons. (Britain’s highest scoring submarine ace was Lieutenant-Commander M. D. Wanklyn, of Upholder, who was credited with 133,940 tons of enemy shipping in the Mediterranean.)

A career naval officer, Eugene Ben-ett Fluckey graduated from the Naval Academy at Annapolis in 1935 and after service in the battleship Nevada and the destroyer McCormick volunteered for submarines in 1938. After five war patrols in the Bonita, he was given command of Barb in April 1944.

Fluckey was bold, innovative and unorthodox. He took his submarine into the shallow seas off the Chinese coast and wreaked havoc among Japanese convoys at anchor, firing salvoes from bow and stern torpedo tubes and then retreating at speed through uncharted, mined and rock-obstructed waters.

On one occasion he made innovative use of rockets, launched from Barb in a strike at a Japanese air base and some factories. While operating daringly among the Japanese home islands he sent a landing party ashore to set demolition charges under a coastal railway line. They blew up the line and derailed a freight train as well.

Fluckey received the Navy Cross four times and the Medal of Honour. Barbreceived a Presidential Unit Citation and a Navy Unit Commendation for her performance. But the record that Fluckey was proudest of was that, in spite of the danger of many of their operations, none of his crew received a Purple Heart (for wounds) in 12 war patrols. It was a remarkable record.

After the war, Fluckey commanded a submarine flotilla, an amphibious group and was commander Submarine Force Pacific Fleet in 1964-66. He retired as a rear-admiral in 1972.