Torpedo Run

Book excerpt: The remarkable true story of Eugene Fluckey, the US Navy’s most innovative—and aggressive—submarine commander of World War II Over the course of five combat patrols during the Pacific War, Commander Fluckey reinvented submarine warfare, pioneering audacious strategies to hunt and sink Japanese warships and merchant vessels. At the helm of the USS Barb, he directed his boat to attack warship convoys—never mind the lop-sided odds—and to slip into heavily defended enemy harbors to launch torpedoes at unsuspecting targets. “Lucky” Fluckey’s submariners often attacked from the surface, brazenly sinking the enemy with the Barb’s deck guns. Once, he even sent sailors ashore on one Japanese island on a perilous mission to blow up a Japanese train. Fluckey and his crew sent an astounding seventeen enemy ships, including an aircraft carrier, to the bottom of the sea. In Torpedo Run, acclaimed naval historian Don Keith dives into the most thrilling and dangerous tales of Fluckey’s war, as he guides his gallant crew against the Japanese fleet. For his heroism and intrepidity, Fluckey earned four Navy Crosses and the Medal of Honor, and showed what a submarine—and he—was capable of.