Final Orders!

This is coolbert:

Final orders - - Eternal Patrol.

"Rear Adm. Eugene Fluckey: 1913 - 2007
WW II submarine commander launched daring attacks on Japan"

"July 3, 2007"

"Retired Rear Adm. Eugene Fluckey, a renowned World War II submarine commander whose daring attacks on Japanese ships earned him a Medal of Honor, has died. He was 93."

Gene Fluckey has passed on.

War hero, submarine skipper [U.S.S. Barb], outstanding human being. Prior to his passing, was the MOST HIGHLY DECORATED LIVING AMERICAN VETERAN!! Won four Navy Crosses and the Medal of Honor during the Second World War [WW2].

[and, after retiring, "ran an orphanage with his second wife, Margaret, in Portugal for a number of years."

Is perhaps the archetype of the successful submarine commander. Using measured audacity to accomplish his combat mission, and do so with panache'.

"credited with the most tonnage sunk by a U.S. skipper during World War II: 17 ships including a carrier, cruiser, and frigate."

His obituary in the Chicago Tribune today does not do him full justice.

"He revolutionized submarine warfare"

"He was the first submarine skipper in history to employ a submarine to launch guided missiles at an enemy target"

[this was actually a rocket attack, NOT guided missiles.]

Sent a party of saboteurs from his submarine ashore ONTO Japanese soil. Raiders that were successful in derailing a Japanese military train.

[this was the ONLY time American military personnel, prior to the surrender of Japan, actually set foot on the Japanese home islands during the war.]

"Fluckey sent a landing party ashore to set demolition charges on a coastal railway line, which destroyed a 16-car train. This was the sole landing by U.S. military forces on the Japanese home islands during World War II."

Helped to pluck Australian and British prisoners of war [POW's] from the ocean after their Japanese "Hell Ship" was sunk by an American submarine [not the Barb]. POW's who had survived the torment of the Burma Railway and had been left for dead by the brutal and callous Jap.

Gene Fluckey. A combat commander of the highest order. One of the greatest of THE GREATEST GENERATION!!

coolbert.