Posted on 07/27/2019 9:36:12 AM PDT by bgill
While the US was officially neutral, Germany couldn’t openly attack the ships leaving East Coast ports with these supplies. That changed in December 1941, when Germany and Japan declared war on the United States. One month later, the U-boats arrived on the East Coast and started targeting ships right off Ocracoke.
“On the North Carolina coast, you have its Diamond Shoals, sandbars that ships want to avoid,” said Dr Frank Blazich, lead curator of military history for the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History. “Ships would be hugging the coast and then shooting out to avoid the shoals, which made for a perfect chokepoint. The U-boats could hide and just have a field day, firing away.”
And fire away they did. In January 1942 alone, U-boats sank 35 Allied ships off the East Coast. To put that in perspective, an average ship leaving the US carried enough supplies to feed England for more than a day, according to Dr Schwarzer. When you add up just those 35 ships lost in January 1942, it would have been more than enough to feed England for a month.
(Excerpt) Read more at bbc.com ...
While on the west coast Japanese subs were shelling areas on the west coast.
Today, a small patch of land on Ocracoke Island where four English sailors are buried is permanently leased to Britain (Credit: Brian Carlton)
The answer was the building of the Intracostal Waterway.
Thanks
There is a book written by Michael Gammon entitled “Operation Drumbeat” which details Germany’s U-Boat attacks on the East Coast shipping at the start of WW II. The US Navy was totally unprepared for the U-Boat attacks.
A great read!
While on the west coast Japanese subs were shelling areas on the west coast.
Very interesting.
*ping*
“HORRYWOOD !”
“HORRYWOOD !”
You can read about it here:
The IJN wanted to attack the US mainland like Doolittle attacked Japan. But they had to give it up when Yamamoto found ‘Doolittle’ was unpronounceable in Japanese.
If the Germans utilized the U-Boat more strategically,the war very well may have turned out quite different. That goes for their under utilization of their air power.
My stepson, who lived in Japan for a while, took a picture at his gym. “Keep Rockers Clean”.
So was the German navy. Germans never had enough u-boats. The battleship Bismark weighted 41,000 long tons. A type VIIC U-boat weighted 759 long tons. 54 U-boats could have been built instead of the Bismarck.
Shouldn’t it have been, “Keep rockers crean’?
The Bismarck, the Tirpitz, they were almost obsolete before their construction was complete. Doenitz lobbied hard, unsuccessfully, for more U-boats. Thank God.
Adm. King refused to listen to the British advice to run convoys instead of one ship at a time. His argument was lack of escort vessels, but he hated the British and wouldn't listen to them. Lotta people died because of that.
Thank you for that bit of extra history.
As a kid reading about WWII, I couldn’t figure out why the convoy system didn’t get utilized until later.
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