Posted on 10/28/2014 6:00:24 AM PDT by artichokegrower
A team of researchers led by NOAA’s Office of National Marine Sanctuaries have discovered two significant shipwrecks from World War II’s legendary “Battle of the Atlantic” just off Cape Hatteras, North Carolina.
The German U-boat 576 and the freighter it sank, named Bluefields, were found just a few hundred yards apart from each other approximately 30 miles off the coast of North Carolina, according to NOAA.
(Excerpt) Read more at gcaptain.com ...
‘Operation Drumbeat’ is a good account of the early days of German submarine warfare off the east coast. It only took a handful of German subs to wreak havoc. At one point all oil shipments were stopped due to u-boats sinking so many tankers.
Right!!
That was indeed close to home!
Today, with 24 self-guided 24,000 yd torpedoes in a sub, one sub could sink 20 ships at 100,000 tons each ... in one mission.
And in WWII, only a few very, very good submarine skippers would sink 100,000 tons in the entire war.
Unless I missed it, there was no mention of how deep the wrecks were. I, and a thousand other divers, would be interested.
The Germans found such easy pickings during the early part of the war off the eastern coast of the US they called it “The Happy Time’’.
Bump
In some parts of the North Carolina coast, you can still see the concrete foundations of the towers erected for surveillance of the coastal waters for German U-boats.
I was born and raised on Daytona Beach, and very young during the war. Every once in a while the beach was closed to civilians due to bodies, etc. being washed up. Shore Patrol with dogs patroled at night to keep spies and saboteurs from coming ashore. Slow-moving blimps cruised up and down the coastline looking for submarines. The was a tall watchtower every couple of miles on top of the dunes. Civilians couldn’t have cameras on the beach. Civilian cars were searched before crossing the bridge to the mainland. Us kids loved it!
Early in the war on the Outer Banks of North Carolina, there was some degree of foraging/pillaging and at least one saboteur. Germans were coming ashore at night, to the extent that residents were using blackout curtains.
German submarine U-576 was a Type VIIC U-boat of Nazi Germany’s Kriegsmarine during World War II. She carried out five patrols, sinking four ships of 15,450 GRT and damaging two more of 19,457 GRT. She was sunk in July 1942 by depth charges from two US aircraft and gunfire from a merchant ship, near the East Coast of the United States. The wreck was discovered in August 2014.
wiki
That is an understatement. And lets hope that if and when it happens again, and it will, that we will have the same resolve and determination as those who fought during WWII.
sidebar — The postwar analysis of tonnage sunk cut the Pacific figures in half, and the leading submarine caption had a mere 93K tons after that. But the submariners sank most of the tonnage in WWII Pacific. They also had by far the highest percentage rate of attrition.
http://ahoy.tk-jk.net/macslog/TopTenUSNavySubmarineCapt.html
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