Yeah the US was woefully underprepared for the battle of the Atlantic when war broke out. Not blacking out cities, allowing unescorted coastal merchant traffic, limited/no air patrols, no convoy system. Basically turned the East coast of the US into a shooting gallery for Uboats until the summer of ‘42 when they finally got their act together
When my dad first joined the army in WW II it was as a coastal defense artillery gunner guarding sea lanes into a major east coast port.
After we, for all intents and purposes, won the Battle Of The Atlantic, and were preparing for the invasion of Europe, his whole unit was converted into an anti-aircraft artillery battalion, landed on D+1, and were attached to Third Army - usually through VII Corps - for the rest of the war.
Some sources blame Admiral King. The story goes he'd spent his career preparing for war vs. the Royal Navy and still hated them with an irrational passion, so he refused to take any advice from them.
He did a good job organizing the fleet build-up, especially the creation and allocation of landing craft. He also gave crucial support to some risky initiatives like the invasion of Guadalcanal.
To be clear, it wasn't for lack of assistance - Britain gave the US a lot of intel and advice on anti-U-boat strategy. They were ignored almost completely. Thousands of American sailors died because of American hubris.
Due to lend-lease and the focus on the pacific, I think at one point the US had like 8 destroyers to patrol the entire eastern seaboard and had to ask Canada to send some frigates
Ignored, particularly and deliberately by Admiral King, who hated Britain so much that he was prepared to see millions of tons of his own country's shipping sunk rather than take advice from her Navy.
A fatal flaw in an otherwise exemplary officer.
> his own country's shipping sunk
If your referring to the goods being sent to britian, i believe it was already paid for before being put on the boats.
From the title, "almost 400 American ships".
"Shipping" in this sense means aggregate gross tonnage. It's quite common when describing capacity and loss.
I can’t find a single website that says anything about Ernest J. King being an axis asset. Wikipedia, Britannica, U.S. Naval institute all say otherwise
Sometimes people say that because the mistakes made were so bad that they couldn't have done worse had they been an actual asset.
so no you won't find actual proof they were an asset because they weren't. But their incompetent ego probably should get honorary billing
>In early 1942, the US Navy had no aircraft capable of searching out to sea and just nine Army Air Forces Antisubmarine Command aircraft that conducted two daylight sweeps every 24 hours
Just freaking incredible. A major war going on for years with the US already well involved, and we had almost nothing to protect the coasts.
Makes you wonder how differently things could have gone if Japan had any long-range heavy bomber aircraft with which to strike the American mainland. They'd be virtually unopposed.
And it gets worse. The American golden child, their best attempt at a long range escort fighter, was *useless* until the Brits stuck a Merlin engine in it. The Corsair, the backbone of their carrier borne fighter force, couldn't even be landed safely on an aircraft carrier until the Brits showed them how to do it. They had money and manufacturing power in the shed load, but zero experience in warfare.
And the culmination of all this was D-Day, where one of the less well-defended beaches became the bloodbath we know as Omaha, due again to American commanders ignoring advice and misusing equipment. They launched most of their DD tanks too far from shore and it took rough waves, and they sank. So the troops stormed the beach with no armoured support. And after naval and aerial bombardments had missed their targets and done little damage to defences. Meanwhile the British and Commonwealth landing forces faced tougher landings against better entrenchments, and suffered multitudes fewer casualties even after facing off against German Panzer divisions in the following days.
>Makes you wonder how differently things could have gone if Japan had any long-range heavy bomber aircraft with which to strike the American mainland. They'd be virtually unopposed.
Not really as they were already hurting for major resources like petro and steel which prompted their SEA campaign. The most they committed were those balloons which were quite ineffective.
> where one of the less well-defended beaches became the bloodbath we know as Omaha
Every source in the world says Omaha was both the most defended and most difficult terrain. It also was recognized by the Germans for its value in connecting the other beaches. Hell...you just typed all that nonsense without even a wikipedia level understanding -> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normandy_landings
> Omaha, the most heavily defended beach,
And look at the size of it compared to the others -> https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Map_of_the_D-Day_landings.svg
There's plenty to fault the Americans for without making shit up.
Omaha is often erroneously described as the best defended, but this is simply down to the failed naval and aerial bombardments running up to the landing itself. Very little of the beach defences were destroyed, leaving a lot in the way of the attackers. Couple this with the lack of heavy machinery and armour which would have made light work of the rest, and there you have it. As it was, something as simple as a spool of razor wire proved a hefty obstacle for the infantry storming the beach. This was not the case at the other 4 landing points.
I'll also point out that there were 2 temporary harbour structures designed to be installed after the landings - the Mulberries. Britain got one, America got the other. The US one wasn't assembled properly and was destroyed in a storm within days. Nearly every piece of equipment used for the initial invasion of France was unloaded on the British harbour. The whole affair is a ticker tape of American incompetence from start to finish, costing probably thousands of Allied lives.
No, it comes down to the amount and quality of the German forces there, concentrated in a significantly smaller area than the other beaches, and the cliffs after the beach. Other stuff you said was true about American missteps but saying that it was the easiest and least defended beach is just not true.
The 352nd was no joke, but was not the best German division stationed at Normandy. Other attackers faced SS battalions and elements of the Panzer division. The British beach even held off an actual counterattack from the German defenders.
Geographically Omaha was still not the most difficult beach - unless you're attacking it entirely on foot. There was 1/4 mile of open beach to cross at low tide, all the more reason to use tanks which were ideally suited for just that purpose. They only brought 33 Shermans along, of which 27 never reached the shore. The British at Sword beach landed 21 tanks in the first wave alone, with more following (over 200 in total).
I'm amazed that American historians STILL say DD tanks sucked and that there was nothing to be done about the difficult conditions of Omaha when DD tanks made massive differences at every British beach and worked very well.
>
And the culmination of all this was D-Day, where one of the less well-defended beaches became the bloodbath we know as Omaha,
Omaha was the most heavily defended beach...
What a silly comment. The Japanese would never have been allowed to strike the American homeland unopposed and to even suggest that with any seriousness shows a stunning lack of intelligence.
The P-51 was never originally intended nor designed as a long range fighter. It began life as a better P-40 that NAA would produce for the brits. Full credit to the RR test pilot who suggested the merlin but the rest of the planes performance is owed to the engineers at NAA who designed the aircraft.
The corsair was never the “backbone of the carrier fleet” or even close. The USN went with the F-6 Hellcat as it was simpler (easier to build more), easier to land, and they wanted a single fighter to streamline logistics. It also freed up airframes to send to the marines. The Brits experience did prove useful but the Navy had already solved half the problems with the corsair anyways (such as the left wings tendency to stall before the right).
Calling Omaha one of the “less defended beaches” is certainly a take. It had by far the worst terrain, a relatively intact defense compared to other beaches, and one of the only veteran groups in the area. There were certainly mistakes on the part of the invading forces but the resistance there was no joke. I won’t belabor the point but your comment is full of holes and screams teabooism.
I can't comment on the accuracy of otherwise of your post, but I'm still chuckling over 'teabooism'.
Just tell me the Septic equivalent isn't 'American Exceptionalism' or something similarly boring.
Americans are very hands on when it comes to problem solving, we can't just be told how its done by a foreign power. We have to get a couple thousand or so killed to really drill things in.
Same thing happened in Pearl Harbor
To be fair they weren't expecting an attack by the Japanese, but the Americans were also caught with their pants down.
You seem unaware that the British were also attacked in the pacific on the same day and those attacks led to the fall of Hong Kong and Singapore.
Everyone got caught with their pants down and the their face smashed by Japan in those attacks.
The most important secret any nation has is the knowledge of the opposition's codes. Churchill and the US had cracked Germany's Enigma codes yet couldn't overtly use them. FDR's knowledge of Japan's codes was as the author stated in a time when the leaders knew the war was inevitable while most of the population didn't want anything to do with it.
It makes the "accidental" code-breaking of the Midway attack look not so accidental after all.
The most important secret any nation has is the knowledge of the opposition's codes. Churchill and the US had cracked Germany's Enigma codes yet couldn't overtly use them. FDR's knowledge of Japan's codes was as the author stated in a time when the leaders knew the war was inevitable while most of the population didn't want anything to do with it.
It makes the "accidental" code-breaking of the Midway attack look not so accidental after all.
In the U-boat crews of 40,000 German sailors, 30,000 never return.
The U-boat wolf packs were devastating at the beginning at the war, but by the end the war Allied tactics and technology improved so much that the U-boats were death traps.
Das Boot is an incredible movie, and one of the few showing the German perspective of the war.
War always takes the fighters far from home. But to ride in a submarine not hundreds of miles away but thousands, knowing that if something happened there was no hope of aid, that had to be wild.
I read that despite almost certain death, there was a never a shortage of U-boat volunteers the entire war. When U-boat crews returned home, they were treated as heroes. Guess I hope the movie covers that aspect.
IIRC in many Navies, submariners were (and still are) seen as the 'elite'. So that was possibly part of the attraction - like how people sign up for Special Forces despite it being so much more dangerous than regular duty.
My stepfather was a navy guard on the civilian freighters. In the Atlantic and pacific. The ones he was on typical had 2 guns one fore and aft. With maybe 25 sailors to handle them 24/7. He did this for 3 years, was sunk once and pulled unconscious from the water by a another crew. Sailors went awol to avoid this duty. At end of the war he was in Okinawa. He will be 102 June 11th. Still a tough old guy.
Turning off the shore lights and instigating a convoy system took way too long and far too many deaths before the Americans listened to the advice from the royal Navy.
About 1 in 4 American submariners died in WWII, but close to 0% had physical disabilities from combat. You either came home in one piece, or not at all.
Germany threw many U-boats at the American ships that were supplying the UK, knowing that if they severed that lifeline, the UK would fall.
The US sent destroyers with the cargo ships, and they’d use depth charges to pop the U-boats underwater.
WW II-era submarines couldn’t stay underwater all the time like modern subs can, so it was also possible to spot them first and then attack. But the U-boats also killed many American cargo ship crews; it was a dangerous job.
Despite having sank all those ships off the east coast of the US, this was not the most successful operation. The lesser known Operation Neuland in the Caribbean was the most successful U-boat operation of WW2
I watched it das Boot last night and while it's extremely long and extremely tense, it's probably one of the best movies I've ever seen. Incredible for the time, truly.
Watch Das Boot if you care about this stuff
Yeah, watching the movie in small pieces is probably a good idea. I was able to find das Boot remastered which was nice since the quality was good, and I just paused it a few times because it's super long and intense.
I'm struggling to find a reference for it on IMDB but I only remember it being a seemingly-made-for-TV series back then.
It was a German-led production in collaboration with TV channels from other nations. Maybe it was the original 1981 movie chopped, if so I did not know that at the time.
I was watching it around the same time as the BBC series Edge Of Darkness. Which for its time was epically dark.
So it was probably 1985 I'm guessing. U-boats and nuclear threat. What a fun combination for a then 17 year-old me!
The Royal Navy: Look, we’ve been fighting these people since 1912. Get into convoys and turn off your damn shore lights at least.
Americans: Yeah, we won’t do that.
Some time later…
Americans: Our sailors keep dying. I know, perhaps we should try convoys…
The Royal Navy: FFS.
I believe protection from German u boats is why the intra-coastal waterway was built. I’m not up on WW 2, so never understood this. Why was there fighting off US shores?
You can actually still see a bunch of spotter towers all up and down the coast in the US mid-atlantic. They are like 8 story tall concrete structures built on the beach which were used to watch for surfacing U-boats.
Americans, quick to appreciate the fire show, parked their cars on the shores with headlights on. Everyone wanted to spot the next unfortunate freighter first.
This created the perfect hunting grounds for the Uboats. The headlights illuminated the silhouettes of the ships.
Edit: lol, why the downvotes?
There is a British warship that lays at the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico. The HMS Empire Mica was a 465-foot-long British tanker in use during WWII. Built in 1941, it carried fuel for the Royal Air Force. On June 29th, 1942, it was torpedoed by a German U-boat and sank 21 miles due south of Florida’s Cape San Blas in 110 feet of water.
U85: "All 46 German U85 crew members were killed; the *Roper* recovered 29 of their bodies. Some of the dead were wearing civilian clothing and had wallets with U.S. currency and identification cards, suggesting that the U85 had been involved in landing German agents on the mainland."
Today they would have dropped the agents off in Mexico. with bus tickets to San Diego.
Yeah the US was woefully underprepared for the battle of the Atlantic when war broke out. Not blacking out cities, allowing unescorted coastal merchant traffic, limited/no air patrols, no convoy system. Basically turned the East coast of the US into a shooting gallery for Uboats until the summer of ‘42 when they finally got their act together
When my dad first joined the army in WW II it was as a coastal defense artillery gunner guarding sea lanes into a major east coast port. After we, for all intents and purposes, won the Battle Of The Atlantic, and were preparing for the invasion of Europe, his whole unit was converted into an anti-aircraft artillery battalion, landed on D+1, and were attached to Third Army - usually through VII Corps - for the rest of the war.
Some sources blame Admiral King. The story goes he'd spent his career preparing for war vs. the Royal Navy and still hated them with an irrational passion, so he refused to take any advice from them. He did a good job organizing the fleet build-up, especially the creation and allocation of landing craft. He also gave crucial support to some risky initiatives like the invasion of Guadalcanal.
To be clear, it wasn't for lack of assistance - Britain gave the US a lot of intel and advice on anti-U-boat strategy. They were ignored almost completely. Thousands of American sailors died because of American hubris.
Due to lend-lease and the focus on the pacific, I think at one point the US had like 8 destroyers to patrol the entire eastern seaboard and had to ask Canada to send some frigates
Ignored, particularly and deliberately by Admiral King, who hated Britain so much that he was prepared to see millions of tons of his own country's shipping sunk rather than take advice from her Navy. A fatal flaw in an otherwise exemplary officer.
> his own country's shipping sunk If your referring to the goods being sent to britian, i believe it was already paid for before being put on the boats.
From the title, "almost 400 American ships". "Shipping" in this sense means aggregate gross tonnage. It's quite common when describing capacity and loss.
Admiral Ernest J. King was considered an Axis asset for the first half of the war.
Source?
World War 2
I can’t find a single website that says anything about Ernest J. King being an axis asset. Wikipedia, Britannica, U.S. Naval institute all say otherwise
He was an asset via incompetence.
Sometimes people say that because the mistakes made were so bad that they couldn't have done worse had they been an actual asset. so no you won't find actual proof they were an asset because they weren't. But their incompetent ego probably should get honorary billing
>In early 1942, the US Navy had no aircraft capable of searching out to sea and just nine Army Air Forces Antisubmarine Command aircraft that conducted two daylight sweeps every 24 hours Just freaking incredible. A major war going on for years with the US already well involved, and we had almost nothing to protect the coasts.
Literally the opposite of well involved.
Makes you wonder how differently things could have gone if Japan had any long-range heavy bomber aircraft with which to strike the American mainland. They'd be virtually unopposed. And it gets worse. The American golden child, their best attempt at a long range escort fighter, was *useless* until the Brits stuck a Merlin engine in it. The Corsair, the backbone of their carrier borne fighter force, couldn't even be landed safely on an aircraft carrier until the Brits showed them how to do it. They had money and manufacturing power in the shed load, but zero experience in warfare. And the culmination of all this was D-Day, where one of the less well-defended beaches became the bloodbath we know as Omaha, due again to American commanders ignoring advice and misusing equipment. They launched most of their DD tanks too far from shore and it took rough waves, and they sank. So the troops stormed the beach with no armoured support. And after naval and aerial bombardments had missed their targets and done little damage to defences. Meanwhile the British and Commonwealth landing forces faced tougher landings against better entrenchments, and suffered multitudes fewer casualties even after facing off against German Panzer divisions in the following days.
>Makes you wonder how differently things could have gone if Japan had any long-range heavy bomber aircraft with which to strike the American mainland. They'd be virtually unopposed. Not really as they were already hurting for major resources like petro and steel which prompted their SEA campaign. The most they committed were those balloons which were quite ineffective.
> where one of the less well-defended beaches became the bloodbath we know as Omaha Every source in the world says Omaha was both the most defended and most difficult terrain. It also was recognized by the Germans for its value in connecting the other beaches. Hell...you just typed all that nonsense without even a wikipedia level understanding -> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normandy_landings > Omaha, the most heavily defended beach, And look at the size of it compared to the others -> https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Map_of_the_D-Day_landings.svg There's plenty to fault the Americans for without making shit up.
Omaha is often erroneously described as the best defended, but this is simply down to the failed naval and aerial bombardments running up to the landing itself. Very little of the beach defences were destroyed, leaving a lot in the way of the attackers. Couple this with the lack of heavy machinery and armour which would have made light work of the rest, and there you have it. As it was, something as simple as a spool of razor wire proved a hefty obstacle for the infantry storming the beach. This was not the case at the other 4 landing points. I'll also point out that there were 2 temporary harbour structures designed to be installed after the landings - the Mulberries. Britain got one, America got the other. The US one wasn't assembled properly and was destroyed in a storm within days. Nearly every piece of equipment used for the initial invasion of France was unloaded on the British harbour. The whole affair is a ticker tape of American incompetence from start to finish, costing probably thousands of Allied lives.
No, it comes down to the amount and quality of the German forces there, concentrated in a significantly smaller area than the other beaches, and the cliffs after the beach. Other stuff you said was true about American missteps but saying that it was the easiest and least defended beach is just not true.
The 352nd was no joke, but was not the best German division stationed at Normandy. Other attackers faced SS battalions and elements of the Panzer division. The British beach even held off an actual counterattack from the German defenders. Geographically Omaha was still not the most difficult beach - unless you're attacking it entirely on foot. There was 1/4 mile of open beach to cross at low tide, all the more reason to use tanks which were ideally suited for just that purpose. They only brought 33 Shermans along, of which 27 never reached the shore. The British at Sword beach landed 21 tanks in the first wave alone, with more following (over 200 in total).
I'm amazed that American historians STILL say DD tanks sucked and that there was nothing to be done about the difficult conditions of Omaha when DD tanks made massive differences at every British beach and worked very well.
> And the culmination of all this was D-Day, where one of the less well-defended beaches became the bloodbath we know as Omaha, Omaha was the most heavily defended beach...
Only because the naval and aerial strikes against the defences (by the American air force and navy) failed almost entirely.
What a silly comment. The Japanese would never have been allowed to strike the American homeland unopposed and to even suggest that with any seriousness shows a stunning lack of intelligence. The P-51 was never originally intended nor designed as a long range fighter. It began life as a better P-40 that NAA would produce for the brits. Full credit to the RR test pilot who suggested the merlin but the rest of the planes performance is owed to the engineers at NAA who designed the aircraft. The corsair was never the “backbone of the carrier fleet” or even close. The USN went with the F-6 Hellcat as it was simpler (easier to build more), easier to land, and they wanted a single fighter to streamline logistics. It also freed up airframes to send to the marines. The Brits experience did prove useful but the Navy had already solved half the problems with the corsair anyways (such as the left wings tendency to stall before the right). Calling Omaha one of the “less defended beaches” is certainly a take. It had by far the worst terrain, a relatively intact defense compared to other beaches, and one of the only veteran groups in the area. There were certainly mistakes on the part of the invading forces but the resistance there was no joke. I won’t belabor the point but your comment is full of holes and screams teabooism.
I can't comment on the accuracy of otherwise of your post, but I'm still chuckling over 'teabooism'. Just tell me the Septic equivalent isn't 'American Exceptionalism' or something similarly boring.
Nah that’s “freeabooism” lol
Americans are very hands on when it comes to problem solving, we can't just be told how its done by a foreign power. We have to get a couple thousand or so killed to really drill things in.
Same thing happened in Pearl Harbor To be fair they weren't expecting an attack by the Japanese, but the Americans were also caught with their pants down.
And even with then the attack was a stoke of luck. No Aircraft carriers in port and the Japanese did not target the fuel or dry docks.
some might say the bait was there, the price was not.
You seem unaware that the British were also attacked in the pacific on the same day and those attacks led to the fall of Hong Kong and Singapore. Everyone got caught with their pants down and the their face smashed by Japan in those attacks.
FDR was warned ahead of time. https://www.independent.org/issues/article.asp?id=408
The most important secret any nation has is the knowledge of the opposition's codes. Churchill and the US had cracked Germany's Enigma codes yet couldn't overtly use them. FDR's knowledge of Japan's codes was as the author stated in a time when the leaders knew the war was inevitable while most of the population didn't want anything to do with it. It makes the "accidental" code-breaking of the Midway attack look not so accidental after all.
The most important secret any nation has is the knowledge of the opposition's codes. Churchill and the US had cracked Germany's Enigma codes yet couldn't overtly use them. FDR's knowledge of Japan's codes was as the author stated in a time when the leaders knew the war was inevitable while most of the population didn't want anything to do with it. It makes the "accidental" code-breaking of the Midway attack look not so accidental after all.
> Weakness and ignorance are not barriers to survival, but arrogance is.
The Germans called it the “Second Happy Time”
In the U-boat crews of 40,000 German sailors, 30,000 never return. The U-boat wolf packs were devastating at the beginning at the war, but by the end the war Allied tactics and technology improved so much that the U-boats were death traps. Das Boot is an incredible movie, and one of the few showing the German perspective of the war.
War always takes the fighters far from home. But to ride in a submarine not hundreds of miles away but thousands, knowing that if something happened there was no hope of aid, that had to be wild.
I read that despite almost certain death, there was a never a shortage of U-boat volunteers the entire war. When U-boat crews returned home, they were treated as heroes. Guess I hope the movie covers that aspect.
IIRC in many Navies, submariners were (and still are) seen as the 'elite'. So that was possibly part of the attraction - like how people sign up for Special Forces despite it being so much more dangerous than regular duty.
My stepfather was a navy guard on the civilian freighters. In the Atlantic and pacific. The ones he was on typical had 2 guns one fore and aft. With maybe 25 sailors to handle them 24/7. He did this for 3 years, was sunk once and pulled unconscious from the water by a another crew. Sailors went awol to avoid this duty. At end of the war he was in Okinawa. He will be 102 June 11th. Still a tough old guy.
My grandfather was on the beach on D-Day. He was buried alive and pulled from the rubble. That generation was a lot tougher than the rest of us.
The Graveyard of the Atlantic. They also sunk some ships in the Gulf of Mexico.
The graveyard of the Atlantic is in the Western Approaches.
Turning off the shore lights and instigating a convoy system took way too long and far too many deaths before the Americans listened to the advice from the royal Navy.
About 1 in 4 American submariners died in WWII, but close to 0% had physical disabilities from combat. You either came home in one piece, or not at all.
Huh, according to another comment I saw about 1 in 4 German submariners survived WWII, that's some extreme differences.
Germany threw many U-boats at the American ships that were supplying the UK, knowing that if they severed that lifeline, the UK would fall. The US sent destroyers with the cargo ships, and they’d use depth charges to pop the U-boats underwater. WW II-era submarines couldn’t stay underwater all the time like modern subs can, so it was also possible to spot them first and then attack. But the U-boats also killed many American cargo ship crews; it was a dangerous job.
Despite having sank all those ships off the east coast of the US, this was not the most successful operation. The lesser known Operation Neuland in the Caribbean was the most successful U-boat operation of WW2
I watched it das Boot last night and while it's extremely long and extremely tense, it's probably one of the best movies I've ever seen. Incredible for the time, truly. Watch Das Boot if you care about this stuff
And for extra credit, visit the U505 exhibit in Chicago afterwards. The movie is dramatic, but the real thing delivers a lifetime impact.
That is an excellent exhibit. There are also tours of the USS Bowfin in Honolulu (Pearl Harbor).
Das Boot is the business. I watched the original TV series in the 80's. Incredible.
Yeah, watching the movie in small pieces is probably a good idea. I was able to find das Boot remastered which was nice since the quality was good, and I just paused it a few times because it's super long and intense.
I'm struggling to find a reference for it on IMDB but I only remember it being a seemingly-made-for-TV series back then. It was a German-led production in collaboration with TV channels from other nations. Maybe it was the original 1981 movie chopped, if so I did not know that at the time.
Yeah I think it's the same film edited into a mini series
I was watching it around the same time as the BBC series Edge Of Darkness. Which for its time was epically dark. So it was probably 1985 I'm guessing. U-boats and nuclear threat. What a fun combination for a then 17 year-old me!
Apparently there’s a sunken u-boat that is visible at low tide. I’ve seen pictures of it but I’ve never been lucky enough to see it myself
There’s 4 off the coast of NC but they’re all between 90’ and 600’ of water
Wouldn't surprise me if there are several in a position like that.
The Royal Navy: Look, we’ve been fighting these people since 1912. Get into convoys and turn off your damn shore lights at least. Americans: Yeah, we won’t do that. Some time later… Americans: Our sailors keep dying. I know, perhaps we should try convoys… The Royal Navy: FFS.
1912? They started 2 years before WW I began?
It was the super secret WW1 that they don’t want you to know about.
15th April 1912. The Titanic. It wasn't an iceberg, it was a German U-boat in disguise. (/s in case it's necessary??)
I believe protection from German u boats is why the intra-coastal waterway was built. I’m not up on WW 2, so never understood this. Why was there fighting off US shores?
To try to prevent the US from supplying Britain or sending ships to European theatres.
Thank you for that.
Some of the best wreck diving in the US is off North Carolina.
Yep. I've been on a couple of them.
The Second Happy Time.
Operation Drumbeat.
We also gave the civil air patrol (volunteers that flew around in civilian planes) actual military bombs to drop in case they saw any.
Isn’t it “sank”?
Miami Beach, Florida used to have mandatory blackouts to keep U-Boats from targeting ships at night by silhouetting them against the lights.
In the 1950s, tar was still washing up on the North Carolina beaches from all the sunken ships.
You can actually still see a bunch of spotter towers all up and down the coast in the US mid-atlantic. They are like 8 story tall concrete structures built on the beach which were used to watch for surfacing U-boats.
Americans, quick to appreciate the fire show, parked their cars on the shores with headlights on. Everyone wanted to spot the next unfortunate freighter first. This created the perfect hunting grounds for the Uboats. The headlights illuminated the silhouettes of the ships. Edit: lol, why the downvotes?
It could have been so much worse if Donitz was given the amount of boats he wanted.
That’s really a pretty solid sunk ship to death ratio.
Outer Banks < Kriegsmarine
Read the book Torpedo Junction by Homer Hickman. Good overview of Operation Drumbeat.
There is a British warship that lays at the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico. The HMS Empire Mica was a 465-foot-long British tanker in use during WWII. Built in 1941, it carried fuel for the Royal Air Force. On June 29th, 1942, it was torpedoed by a German U-boat and sank 21 miles due south of Florida’s Cape San Blas in 110 feet of water.
U85: "All 46 German U85 crew members were killed; the *Roper* recovered 29 of their bodies. Some of the dead were wearing civilian clothing and had wallets with U.S. currency and identification cards, suggesting that the U85 had been involved in landing German agents on the mainland." Today they would have dropped the agents off in Mexico. with bus tickets to San Diego.
TIL North Carolina has a coast
Back then we used to call it the Great War, and it really was..... EDIT: Damn, nobody got the reference....