"THE FINAL WAR PATROL"
Blowing up an enemy train hardly seems like an assignment for a
submarine crew. But sailors aboard the USS BARB were accustomed to
offbeat tasks and this week's episode of "The Silent Service,"
actually reveals how they engaged in "torpedoing" a train.
At the end of her 12th war patrol the BARB, which had a record of
15 sinkings, had launched all of her torpedoes and fired all her
ammunition. All that remained were three 55-pound scuttling charges.
Commander Eugene B. Fluckey, the skipper, decided to use one of these
in a last nose-thumbing at the enemy.
A beach party was organized and ordered to plant the explosives
beneath the tracks of a coastwise railroad. Mission accomplished, the
"Pirates of the China Sea," retired to their rubber boats to
watch the demolition of the on-coming train. Fluckey was awarded
the Congressional Medal of Honor.