The Galloping Ghost by Carl P. LaVO Page B

diesel engines and electric motors failed frequently. And the vessels were heavy forward, making navigation on the surface and maneuverability submerged difficult. With its new fleet-type boats coming along, the Navy decided to decommission the V-class in 1937. But when a national state of emergency was declared by President Roosevelt in the spring of 1941 as conditions deteriorated in both Europe and the Far East, every sub was needed. Thus, the V-boats were recommissioned.
    Originally the Navy intended, by terms of a secret agreement with England, to send the Bonita, Bass, and Barracuda plus twenty-two S-boats to Europe to operate under British command against German U-boats.Navy Capt. Ralph Christie was selected to command the squadron. In order to train the crews, he began sending the boats on patrols to Navy bases in Bermuda, the Virgin Islands, and Guantanamo Bay. The performance of the Vs appalled Christie, who changed his mind and sent them back to Panama to help guard the canal.
    In the summer of 1941 there was good reason for the Navy to worry about security in the Canal Zone. The Japanese had developed enormous Jensen -class cruiser submarines that could easily cross the Pacific. These I-subs were 373 feet long, could make 23 knots on the surface, carried 114 officers and crew, and had a range of more than 16,000 miles without refueling. Each carried a sealed hangar aft or forward of the bridge that housed as many as four catapult-launched planes or a midget submarine. It seemed to the Navy that the I-subs had been built with one purpose in mind—to attack American naval bases and especially to bomb the Panama Canal and stop the flow of war materiel once hostilities broke out. Another concern was the presence of German U-boats in the Caribbean. An alliance between Germany and Japan could imperil both ends of the canal.
    Initially Fluckey was surprised to learn of his Bonita assignment. After serving so much time in S-42 in Panama, he had hoped for command of one of the old O- or R-boats operating out of New London. Instead, his orders were to become engineering and diving officer in the Bonita , which he joined in Bermuda on 11 June 1941 as a (j.g.) lieutenant.
    Captain Christie considered the sub the worst of the V-boats. Even Fluckey had to concede he was right after reporting aboard. “I was shocked,” he recalled on reading the old ship’s orders: “This submarine goes totally out of control if she has over a 2 degree down angle. Diving time is five minutes 45 seconds.” In sub school, instructors drilled into the young officers the necessity of getting submerged in about sixty seconds. Any boat on the surface longer than 60 seconds risked being spotted by a plane and being sunk. To Fluckey, the risk was unacceptable. “As we prepared for my first dive aboard Bonita, ” he recalled sardonically, “I told the skipper that when war comes, we will be sunk by a plane whose pilot is still in the ready room when we start to dive.”
    Just as startling as the diving characteristics was the average age of submariners aboard. Fluckey, twenty-six, looked at his chief petty officers and saw men in their sixties. Because of all the problems in the Bonita, the Navy had recruited volunteers from the original crew that put the sub into commission in 1925. “The average age of my chiefs was sixty-two,” said a chagrined Fluckey, who would in the coming months retire his chief electrician at age sixty-five.
    Fluckey approached the Bonita like he did everything in life—with boundless curiosity as to how things worked and innovativeness in devising ways to solve problems. He didn’t take “no” for an answer. Just as he had conquered his eyesight problem at the academy when doctors said it was impossible, he applied himself to solving the ills of the boat. He knew how important it was for the big submarine to dive quickly. So he soon came up with a unique solution: