“We don’t have problems, just solutions.”

In addition to receiving the Medal of Honor, the nation’s highest award for valor, he was awarded four Navy Crosses, his service’s second-highest decoration. The Joint Army-Navy Assessment Committee, which provided final, official tallies for World War II submarine attacks, credited him with destroying 95,360 tons of Japanese shipping, the highest total for an American submarine commander. According to Admiral Fluckey’s own findings, based on his 10 years of postwar research, the Barb sank about 145,000 tons under his command during five extended periods at sea. He was credited by military authorities with sinking 16 Japanese ships and taking part with two other skippers in a 17th sinking, the fourth-highest total among World War II submarine commanders from the United States. By his own accounting, he sank 28 ships and took part in a 29th sinking. In September 1944, the Barb sank the 20,000-ton Japanese aircraft carrier Unyo and an 11,000-ton Japanese tanker in the same torpedo salvo…. Telling of the Barb’s attacks on Japanese shipping early in 1945, Clay Blair Jr. wrote in the book “Silent Victory: The U.S. Submarine War Against Japan” that when Commander Fluckey took his submarine back to Pearl Harbor, “he was greeted with a red carpet.” “His endorsements were ecstatic. One stated, ‘The Barb is one of the finest fighting submarines this war has ever known.’ ” He was awarded the Medal of Honor for the Barb’s attacks on Japanese ships from December 1944 to February 1945 in waters off the eastern coast of occupied China and was cited specifically for the events in the predawn hours of Jan. 23, 1945. The Barb, riding above the surface in shallow, uncharted, mined and rock-obstructed waters, sneaked into a harbor some 250 miles south of Shanghai and scored direct hits on 6 of the more than 30 Japanese ships there. A large ammunition ship was blown up in the attack, according to the citation…. In the summer of 1945, the Barb became the first American submarine armed with rockets, and it used them to strike a Japanese air station and several factories. On July 23, 1945, the Barb embarked on a sabotage mission. With the submarine standing 950 yards offshore, eight volunteers, aboard a pair of rubber boats, paddled onto Japanese soil on the southern half of Sakhalin Island under cover of night and planted explosive charges on railroad tracks 400 yards inland. Commander Fluckey had considered giving the crewmen a terse Hollywood-style sendoff, but as he told The New York Times afterward, all he could think of was: “Boys, if you get stuck, head for Siberia, 130 miles north. Following the mountain ranges. Good luck.” The crewmen did not get stuck, and as they paddled back to the Barb, a 16-car train came by, triggering the explosives. The wreckage flew 200 feet in the air.