U-boat War off the U. S. Coast, 1942-45, Volume 1 - Paul Branch

U-boat War off the U. S. Coast, 1942-45, Volume 1 (eBook)

Riding the High Tide, December 1941 to May 1942

Paul Branch (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2023 | 1. Auflage
724 Seiten
Bookbaby (Verlag)
978-1-6678-9844-5 (ISBN)

In January 1942, one month after the United States entered World War II, German U-boat submarines began a spree of destruction against American and Allied shipping off the coast of the United States, beginning first with the East Coast and later extending to the Gulf Coast. This volume chronicles the height of the German U-boat offensive along the U.S. East Coast through May 1942 and the struggling efforts of the U.S. Navy to gain control of a situation for which it is largely unprepared. The lack of suitable warships and aircraft to combat the menace allows the U-boats to enjoy a runaway success for four months, resulting in heavy losses of ships, crews, and cargoes that pose a threat to the U.S. and British war efforts. The gradual increase in surface and air forces finally begins to curb U-boat success and allow the inauguration of coastal convoys to protect shipping.

The U-boat War off the U.S. Coast, 1942-45 is a narrative history of the naval operations and warfare fought off the East and Gulf Coasts of the United States in World War II. German U-boat submarines arrived off the U.S. coast in January 1942 in an offensive aimed at destroying the merchant shipping of the United States and other Allied nations and were to continue their efforts to do so during the remainder of the war. During the first four months of their offensive, the U-boats achieved great success, destroying Allied shipping in American waters at an alarming rate. At the same time, the U.S. Navy struggled in its efforts to stop the carnage and defeat the U-boat assault. Eventually, with the acquisition of increased numbers of aircraft and warships, the inauguration of coastal convoys, and new antisubmarine weapons and technologies, the U-boat menace was finally brought under control. Until now, the Battle of the Atlantic as it was fought in American waters has received only limited coverage despite the very intense fighting and naval operations that characterized it. The U-boat War provides a comprehensive detailed account from the perspective of individual merchant and naval ships and U-boats to chronicle their operations in American waters during three years of war, highlighting the links that bind them together using source materials and original documents from both sides. This first volume of the two-volume set details the high-water mark of the U-boat offensive off the U.S. East Coast during the period of January to May 1942.

PREFACE

Having grown up on the coast of North Carolina, I have always had a fascination for shipwrecks. From the earliest colonial days on up to modern times, dozens of them litter the ocean floor in what has led the state’s coastline to be dubbed the “Graveyard of the Atlantic.” Each one of these shipwrecks has a story. What was happening when it was lost? How did it end up this way? Who were the people aboard, and what happened to them?

Many of these ships were lost during World War II, and gradually my interest came to center on these, not just off the North Carolina coast (which had more than its fair share of World War II sinkings) but also on the whole U.S. East and Gulf Coasts. Most were lost at the hands of German submarines, or “U-boats,” just offshore, and the U-boats were also part of the story of each lost ship. Similar questions could be asked about these U-boats. Where did they come from? Were they always lurking somewhere offshore just out of sight during the war waiting for a victim to come along? What specific U-boats did this, and who were the crewmen inside?

As for the U-boat crews, the popular image that has come down to us is that they all surely would have been cold-blooded Nazis fanatics, grinning with glee as they torpedo a helpless ship and laughing maniacally as they then machine-gun helpless survivors and passengers in the lifeboats. At least, this is the image that our propaganda films and modern Hollywood would have us believe. Such thinking helps to perpetuate several myths and falsehoods about the U-boat war.

In reality, however, nothing could be further from the truth, and I must take the opportunity here to hammer this point home for the benefit of the narrative that follows. Although war is a harsh, ugly business, and the naval struggle of the Allies against the Axis in the “Battle of the Atlantic” was no exception, the horrors and atrocities carried out by certain German forces such as the Waffen-SS on land did not extend to the war at sea as so many myths would have us believe. During the entire war, with the hundreds of patrols made by U-boats against Allied shipping, there was only one instance where a U-boat intentionally killed the survivors of a sunken ship. The U-852, commanded by Kapitänleutnant Heinz Eck, sank the Greek steamer Peleus off Freetown on March 13, 1944, and then machine gunned the ship’s wreckage and survivors in an effort to conceal the sinking. Eck was subsequently tried and executed as a war criminal.

This is not to say that innocent people did not die in U-boat attacks against Allied shipping, which obviously they did. As will be seen in these pages, there were times when manned lifeboats inadvertently ended up in the line of fire from a shell or torpedo, with disastrous results for the occupants. However, the lifeboats were not specifically targeted for destruction by the U-boat in these cases. It is one thing when crewmen die as collateral damage as the result of a military attack but quite another to intentionally fire on helpless victims for the sole purpose of killing them. And this, with the one exception noted above, did not happen during the U-boat war. It should be noted that the subject of killing survivors was actually advocated by German Führer Adolf Hitler at a meeting in Berlin in September 1942, but Konteradmiral Karl Dönitz, commanding the U-boat arm, refused to have his U-boatmen engage in such a practice. Hitler backed down, and there the matter ended.

In fact, as will be seen, the opposite is true. U-boatmen demonstrated their humanity numerous times while in the midst of a dreadful war. U-boats generally gave merchant crewmen time to get off a damaged ship before finishing it off. There were many times where U-boats afterward offered assistance to survivors, giving course and distance to land, medical treatment, and even sharing some of their own meager supplies of food and water with them. Frequently, U-boat officers offered apologies to survivors for sinking their ship. In one instance, a U-boat officer engaged survivors in a friendly discussion of the merits of German beer versus American beer. Such instances were reflective of the unspoken code of honor among seafaring men and the regard for the traditions of the sea even among men of opposing countries in a world war. It can be stated as fact that Germany conducted as “clean” a submarine war as could be done under the circumstances, perhaps even cleaner in some regards than the submarine war conducted by the United States against Japan in the Pacific.

Another myth is the commonplace tendency to label anything to do with the German military in World War II as being “Nazi,” for instance, the “Nazi Army,” a “Nazi tank,” or a “Nazi U-boat.” However, the term ‘Nazi’ actually refers to the political regime of German Führer Adolf Hitler and his National Socialist German Workers Party. Were all Germans Nazis? No. Were all German soldiers, airmen, and sailors Nazis? No, not any more than all American military men and women were members of the Democratic Party of American President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Did all members of the German armed forces subscribe to and espouse the venomous racial and political ideologies of the Nazi Party? No. Were the members of the German armed forces fighting for their country? Yes.

It is impossible to know the degree to which Nazi ideologies were accepted by members of the German military, but whether to accept, reject, or ignore political agendas are decisions of each individual. The German Navy, or Kriegsmarine, which included the U-boat arm, was certainly the least political of the German armed services. It enjoyed considerable autonomy and freedom from micromanagement by party officials. The traditional navy salute was retained throughout most of the war, rather than the outstretched arm of the “Hitler salute.” No “political officers” or party commissars were attached to U-boat crews to share command and ensure party loyalty and control as they were in the Soviet Navy. Regardless of their personal thoughts and agendas that had little place in the cramped confines of a submarine, the majority of U-boatmen were part of a highly trained professional military organization fighting in support of their country.

Thus, after removing some of the stereotypes and myths, we are left with the story of a well conducted naval campaign against Allied shipping in the home waters of the United States. What follows is a chronicle of the U-boat war against the United States that began only a few weeks after the United States entered the war in December 1941. Initially, it was an all-out U-boat campaign that took full advantage of the U.S. Navy’s inexperience and unpreparedness for war to inflict as much damage to Allied shipping as possible over the course of eight long months. Afterward, as the focus of the war shifted to other fronts, the fighting continued as an unrelenting campaign of containment to tie up as many Allied resources as possible right up to the very last moments of the war.

Focus of this book. There are already numerous books available that deal with the goals and grand strategies of the Battle of the Atlantic from the perspective of the admirals, generals, and political leaders. While this study will touch on some of these, its major approach is directed more at the perspective of the individual ships, U-boats, and the men on the decks. Again, each ship and U-boat had its own story. My purpose in writing this book is to tell those stories and the interactions and links that bind them together in a fair and unbiased manner, combining the historical record from both sides. Because the U-boats provide the links to the stories of the various ships, the narrative is told from the perspective of individual U-boat patrols. Necessarily, the focus will shift back and forth between U-boat and ship as the events played out. During the height of the U-boat crisis in 1942, many U-boats were operating off the coast at the same time. I have therefore chosen to group them together by month according to the format followed by the Eastern Sea Frontier War Diary since many of the U-boats arrived in somewhat distinct monthly waves.

In the narrative, translated entries from a U-boat’s war diary (Kriegstagebuch, or KTB) are sometimes included. The KTB was an official firsthand running account of all actions and events that happened throughout the U-boat’s patrol, similar to a ship’s logbook. Most are written in a very concise, clinical military style. Where KTB excerpts have been included in the text, certain liberties have sometimes been taken with punctuation in the translations to improve readability.

Scope of this book. In choosing the limits of this study, I had to make certain cutoff points in order to concentrate only on the U-boat war off the U.S. coast. To keep the study manageable, it was necessary to limit its scope to keep from straying too far eastward into the mid-Atlantic, or too far northward into Canadian waters, or too far southward into the Caribbean. Accordingly, the southern boundary of the Gulf Sea Frontier was chosen as the southern limit. This boundary extended from the north coast of Belize along the 18° 05' parallel to a point southeast of Grand Cayman Island at 80° 27' W., embracing the northwest corner of the Caribbean. From this point the limit was extended...

Erscheint lt. Verlag	15.7.2023
Sprache	englisch
Themenwelt	Geschichte ► Allgemeine Geschichte ► 1918 bis 1945
ISBN-10	1-6678-9844-2 / 1667898442
ISBN-13	978-1-6678-9844-5 / 9781667898445

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