Closing with the shore, the Germans tuned into the six-hundred-meter wave-band and were amazed at the information being given out by the costal defense stations of a nation at war. Rescue work was in progress as a result of the recent blow and ships at sea were freely announcing their positions. The air patrol was releasing not only the route of its planes but also the time schedule. To make things even easier for the U-boats the glow of brightly lighted cities showed far off shore. Each German commander waited impatiently for a signal. This was to be the code word Paukenschlag (bang of the kettle-drum) which would be flashed by Admiral Karl Doenitz to open the ravage against American merchant shipping.
Doenitz, then forty-nine years of age and a former submarine officer, was in complete control of all U-Boat operations. After the fall of France he had moved his headquarters to the villa at Kernevel overlooking the Bay of Biscay near the concrete sub pens of Lorient.
Here in the big operations room Doenitz and his staff had worked at top speed for a month to organize Operation Paukenschlag. The Pearl Harbor attack had come as a surprise to the Germans, so it was necessary to recall U-boats from the Mediterranean, South Atlantic, aand Arctic. Details of assigning stations, making refueling arrangements and correlating intelligence were done in record time. The morale of the staff and seagoing personnel had never been higher as the neutrality restriction was lifted. Doenitz expected to show the world a splurge of sinkings that would never be forgotten.
So far in the war German U-boats had sunk 1,017 ships totalling almost five million tons. Only sixty-six subs had been lost and these were being more than replaced by the twenty new boats delivered each month. In March the effectiveness of the underseas fleet would be greatly enhanced by the addition of the first "milch cows," the one-thousand-ton tanker submarines. It would no longer be necessary for U-boats to return homeward for fuel and torpedoes; they could remain indefinitely off United States seaports.
On the eve of the American campaign Doenitz had lost a few of his aces. Gunther Prien who made the spectacular raid into Sapa Flow was buried under the Medeterranean along with Karl Endrass who had earned the Oak Leaves to the Iron Cross. But there were many experienced commanders, men like Hardegen, Gengelbach, Reschke, and Guggenberger, who sank Britain's new seventy-plane carrier Ark Royal. Many of the submariners were former merchant marine officers whose knowledge of commercial shipping was invaluable in hunting and recognizing cargo prey.
While waiting for the chance to attack American ships, the German submarine command had been receiving regular reports from agents. Some of these were sailors who drifted up to an Eighty-sixth Street restaurant with information which was transmitted via short-wave radio by German American Bund members. In New Orleans, the German consul, an ardent yachtsman, forwarded charts of the passes out of the Mississippi to which were added special markings. It did not matter that in January ten seamen found guilty as Nazi spies were given long sentences by a New York court. There were others to carry on the work.
The U-boats poised for attack that winter were known as Type VII C. These 770-ton boats were 220-feet over all, twice the length of the wooden Sub Chasers of World War I that were sent out to challenge them; their surface speed was seventeen knots and submerged they could make eight knots. These speeds enabled the subs to catch all but a few American ships of that day; even under water they moved faster than the average convoy.
Between 1940 and 1945 the German yards built 659 of the VII C's which carried a crew of forty-four officers and men on voyages that ranged up to eighty-five hundred miles. Before the end of the war they were equipped with "schnorkels," radar, anti-surface raider-defenses and complicated plotting tables for automatic aiming. At the beginning they were comparatively simple and depended mostly on the skill of personnel.
The early killers were pierced with four bow torpedo tubes and one stern tube. Each carried either twelve or fourteen of the one-ton missiles, and mounted one 20-mm. anti-aircraft cannon and Twin Flak on deck. These were the sea wolves whose commanders received the flash--Paukenschlag--on the twelfth of January with commence attack set for the following day.
Admiral Doenitz, a restless man, paced the gleaming floors of his villa, eyes lifting continually to the big wall charts of the world. Gold-headed pins marked the U-boat kills; soon he expected to see clusters of them between Newfoundland and Florida Straits. In a sense Doenitz was on trial, for Hitler and his closest advisors were as land-minded as the policy-makers of World War I. After a quarter of a century the judgment of Admiral Alfred von Tirpitz of the German high command was again true: "They do not understand the sea." But the Fuehrer would understand figures on destroyed tonnage.
Paukenschlag opened one day early and for Doenitz the smashing start was dramatically apt. In 1914 his first kill as a commander had been a British ship--the Cyclops. That was also the name of the ten-thousand-ton freighter blasted without warning on January twelfth south of Halifax. To their death in the frigid waters off Cape Sable went ninety-four men. The same day a Pan American tanker was sunk in the north and the Latvian Ciltvaira went under within sight of Cape Hatteras a week later.
Radio broadcasts were interrupted through the nxt two days and newspaper extras carried banners to announce the arrival of the U-boats. A big British freighter and a Norwegian tanker were sunk off Long Island. American seamen ready to sail, or coming on the coast, knew what they could expect.
The first American victim was to be the Esso tanker Allan Jackson, bound toward New York from Cartagena, just passing Diamond Shoals off Cape Hatteras at one thirty on the dark morning of January eighteenth. Deep in the water with a 72,870-barrel cargo of Columbian crude oil, the ship was pounding out ten knots over a flat sea. The bridge watch sighted ahead, on lookout for Winter Quarter Lightship.
Captain Felix W. Kretchmer lay on his settee fully dressed with an injured arm propped on a pillow. He heard three bells strike in the wheelhouse and his tired eyes closed as the rhythmic throb of the engines lulled him. He was praying for luck when he dozed off. Then he was hurled from his bank across the inner bulkhead.
Shocked awake, the skipper had just gained his feet when a tremendous explosion sounded close below; this time he was catapulted through a doorway into the bathroom. Two torpedoes had ripped into the Allan Jackson.
Before he could rise a second time, Captain Kretchmer saw a gust of solid flame sweep his cabin. He was trapped. From out on deck came the hiss of spreading fire and the grind of twisting metal. The deck canted sharply; the skipper grasped a shower stanchion. He could feel the ship sagging and unconsciously moved his feet on the hot deck. Paint began to peel as the flame tongues from the cabin licked toward him. An agonizing, shrill scream from the porthole behind him. Instinctively he headed that way. Hampered by his bad arm he fought desperately to get through the port and finally fell out on deck.
A raging oil fire lit the sea around the foundering ship for three hundred yards. Ladders, decks, the metal boats and even heavy davits had crumbled. Purple water sloshed over the fishplates on the lower bridge deck. Above the noise of the holocaust shrieks pierced the night as men became living torches. No one aboard had ever imagined such a hell.
Still master of his ship, Captain Kretchmer clawed toward the bridge. The vessel's papers--a radio message--distress flares--call the engine room: thoughts raced through the skipper's mind. His hands had just gripped the ladder rail when they were wrenched loose. In the next instant water rose up to his armpits and at first he was surprised at its warmth: the ship was in the Gulf Stream. The water swirled and a great sucking noise drowned out the roar of the inferno; under the sea went the skipper.
With a mighty lung-straining effort Captain Kretchmer struggled to the surface clear of the burning water. By some miracle his hand touched a small length of board. As he clung to it, a large piece of debris bumped him. He did not shout for help because the first object he sighted was the hull of a large U-boat, metal sides glistening in the flicker of the fire. The skipper, a brave man, kept faith through seven hours and fought off unconsciousness until a destroyer picked him up in the morning.
The first torpedo to strike the Allan Jackson had been spotted just after one thirty from the bridge by twenty-five-year-old Melvin A. Rand, Second Mate. He saw the creaming phosphorescent wake 125 feet off and shouted, "Hard left!" to the man at the wheel. Before the ship responded to her helm, she was ripped open amidships. Mr. Rand was knocked off his feet, then lifted on a deck grating and tossed overside. With him went Third Mate Boris A. Vornosoff. They shouted up to the junior officer, Francis M. Bacon who leaped. The three men lashed themselves to planking and tried to lift their arms and legs clear of the water when sharks were attracted to the scene. Drifting off they saw pain-maddened men writhing blindly on deck, their bodies enveloped in flame. Before daylight Mr. Bacon died and drifted off still lashed to his spar.
Back aft, where the crew berths in a tanker, Boatswain Rolf Clausen and his men had been playing cards in the messroom when they felt the forward part of the Jackson jerk from the two explosions. By the time they reached the deck, No. 4 lifeboat was afire. Eight men quickly launched the starboard boat; the injured Chief Engineer was lowered into it. No sooner were they water-borne than flames licked at them. They struggled to get clear of the side and were saved from cremation by the discharge of a condenser pump. But the force of the stream pushed them astern into the backwash of the propeller which was still turning over. Oars dug into the oily water, back bent. By great good luck they ratched clear. Fifteen minutes later they picked up Stephen Verbonich, the Radio Operator. In the morning they were picked up by the destroyer which found the two mates and the captain. Cruising in the area, the naval vessel also fished the bodies of four dead from tangles of blackened wreckage. One of these was young Carl Webb, a wiper, after whom a ship would be named two years later.
Ashore that morning, still suffering from extreme shock, the survivors gave newspaper men the "eyewitness" accounts. These were a preview of what lay ahead for unarmed merchant ships, a sample of the experience through which any man might expect to pass if he sailed these hazardous waters. Twenty-two men lost their lives in the torpedoing and burning of the Allan Jackson.
The Germans struck again off Hatteras in the pre-dawn darkness of the following day and sent two torpedoes into the thirty-year-old Savannah Line freighter City of Atlanta. Ancient plates buckled; the sea poured in so fast that the vessel heeled over on her beam ends before she lost way. The starboard lifeboat hung useless, swaying inboard. Eighteen men who scrambled into the port boat were dumped as it capsized in the falls. Forty-four men were killed. Only three survivors were picked up at daybreak by a Seatrain Texas ship.
The City of Atlanta had scarcely settled when a U-boat slipped up astern of the tanker Malay and boldly opened fire with its deck gun. Brave men stood by in the engine room when Captain John Dodge called down that he was going to run. The tanker was bound from Philadelphia toward Port Arthur in ballast; a shot into her gas filled hods would blow her to pieces.
The sixty-nine-year-old skipper bounded in and out of the wheel house yelling course changes to the quartermaster. Men ducked for shelter as the U-Boat raked the decks from two hundred yards astern. Fires started and were put out; the after house and funnel were riddled; cordite fumes choked the men who huddled in the passageways , ready at any instant to leap overboard.
The stern chase continued for two hours and the Malay was driven close inshore where the U-boat turned away. Captain Dodge carefully felt his way off soundings, then shaped a course for Old Point Comfort and radioed the Navy. The danger seemed averted when the Malay was suddenly hit amidships by a torpedo.
Unnerved men lowered a boat while the tanker was still plowing through the water and made the mistake of releasing the forward falls; two were thrown overboard as the boat was whipped around. The Malay limped into port.
U-boats sank the Frances Salman and the Norvana in the next two days along with Allied vessels so that the toll in two weeks off the Atlantic Coast was twenty ships sunk, two hundred merchant sailors dead. In addition there had been a dozen collisions and several groundings when ships and some navigational aids blacked out. The press, sea unions and steamship companies demanded action from Washington. Why don't we put guns on our merchant ships? Where is the Navy?
Months would pass before the U-boats were seriously challenged. To the Germans Operation Paukenschlag was less demanding, and far more sport, than training exercises in the Baltic. The bright lights of Boston, New York, Atlantic City and Miami Beach were friendly reminders of Berlin. They also served to make excellent silhouettes of ships that were so carefully blacked-out. Night-club, restaurant and theater owners insisted on flashing their neon invitations: in war relaxation was necessary to keep up morale.
To make things even easier for themselves, the U-boat commanders resort to guile. In the darkness of January twenty-fourth, off the Virginia Capes, a U-boat sank a big foreign tanker and from its glow picked up the outline of the ore carrier Venore. The submarine raced ahead for an hour then stopped to wait in the path of the oncoming American vessel.
This is the lightship. You are standing in danger.
The bridge watch of the Venore snapped to the attention as the blinker message was read. Captain Fritz Duurloo rubbed his chin and scowled.Direct your course to pass close to me, came the followup from the U-boat whose commander peered into the darkness. He watched the bulk of the ship begin to swing and gave the order to fire One and Two.
Deafening explosions thundered around the Venore. Ears ringing, wits dulled by fear, the crew tried to launch boats before the ship lost way. when survivors were rescued next morning twenty men were missing.
As the month of January neared an end two more American ships were bagged. On the twenty-sixth the Francis E. Powell was cut in two off Delaware Breakwater with a loss of four lives. Four days later a U-boat surfaced in the path of the Rochester a few hours out of New York. One of the lifeboats ran afoul of the submarine and men fended off, then rowed with all their might in fear of being machine-gunned. Tough young Germans jeered at them and opened fire point-blank at the ship.
Whenever possible U-boat commanders gave their crews a chance to blow off steam by firing the deck guns. There were many stories during the war of boat crews being machine-gunned, but there is no substantiated record of Americans being so slaughtered by the Germans. It was the Japs who were definitely proved to have committed the atrocity . . .
Public indignation increased as the U-boat blitz continued unchecked. The Navy established a system of defense based on the 1929 Coastal Frontier Forces and placed in command the best of its antisubmarine officers, Admiral Adolphus Andrews. The new Eastern Sea Frontier, responsible for the safety of merchant ships sailing between Canada and Florida, had only the most antiquated equipment with which to fight a fleet of submarines then estimated at thirty. Ten World War I subchasers joined three sea going yachts. The surface units were supported by four blimps and six Army bombers. This force did not even sight, let alone engage, the enemy.
Available naval vessels in the opening months of the war had been ordered to transatlantic convoy duty. Guns and armed guards went to ships bound for England and Russia. All aircraft were being directed to higher priority theaters. The Royal Air Force refused to release a number of American-built bombers that were about to be flown to Britain on Lend Lease. Merchant seamen were as expendable as the soldiers fighting against hopeless odds on Corregidor: no other group of the Nation's citizens were left in any such peril.
Hitler reminded the world of this when he came on the air as the month of February opened. He ranted the threat that the U-boats were only just beginning and that American ships and seamen would soon feel the full might of his submarine blitz. He attempted to frighten sailors off the sea with the warning that any so foolish as to sail stood scant chance of ever returning.
The Fuehrer's threatening prophecy was almost immediately carried out in a sinking that brought as much suffering and human tragedy as any disaster of World War II.
The Standard Oil Company of New Jersey tanker, W. L. Steed, launched in 1918, was logging no better than eight knots of February second as she drew abeam of the Delaware Capes. The ship was low in the water, carrying sixty-five thousand barrels of oil, and seas that broke over the forecastlehead swirled above the well deck to cover the catwalk. A strong northwest wind brought a driving snowstorm; men who had been burned by the Caribbean sun two days before were now bundled up and shivered as they looked out at the white manes of angry seas that broke under the blizzard.
The nerves of all hands were on edge. A submarine had been sighted two days before and had been seen at intervals up until sunset February first. At seven that night a suspicious light showed astern and the master was called. Captain Harold G. McAvenia, a veteran of World War I changed course. When the danger seemed passed, the ship was brought about to buck the gale again. All boats were swung out; most of the men drank coffee through the night, huddled in the messroom wearing life jackets.
Eight bells struck for midnight and the Third MAte made the last Rough Log entry for the first. The watch was relieved by Sydney Wayland, Second MAte, who later gave an account of the events from twelve forty-five A.M. onward. Here are the extracts from that officer's report:
Without warning of any kind the ship was suddenly struck by a torpedo on her starboard side,
forward of the bridge, at her No. 3 tank, setting the oil afire.
At that time the vessel was proceeding generally in a northeasterly direction, about 80 miles off
the Delaware Capes. The sea was bad, with a strong northeasterly wind. It was snowing hard,
making the visibility two miles at best.
The next thing I heard was the engine being stopped by the captain in the pilot house and the
general alarm sounded. The master ordered me to get the two amidships boats ready for lowering.
Second Mate Wayland carried out his orders and took No. 2 boat which he successfully launched into the heavy sea with fourteen men. His report told that all boats cleared, leaving no one aboard, but that he never again sighted any of them. From his boat the men were able to see two big U-boats which shelled the Steed until she blew up. His account continued:
Weather conditions were fierce, with the snowstorm and dangerous northwest seas running.
Everyone in the boat was suffering from cold, due mostly to lack of clothes.
The men in lifeboat #2 died one after another until 5 February, when Chief Mate Einar A.
Nilsson and myself were the only ones alive.
On the morning of 6 February, Nilsson showed signs of weakness and extreme fatigue. At about 9:30 A.M. I sighted a steamer coming close to us and made every effort, waving and hailing, to get her attention, as she seemed to go past, but finally she hove around, headed for us, and picked us up.
This was the British freighter Hartlepool which continued on her voyage and landed the two officers at Halifax on February ninth. They were sent to the hospital and Mr. Wayland concluded his statement:
Mr. Nilsson died the following day. I left the hospital on 28 February, after recovering from the
pains and suffering experienced.
Another account of the sinking was given by Able Seaman Ralph Mazzucco who was in No. 3 boat with Joaquin Brea, the Boatswain, and Able Seamen Raymond Burkholder and Louis Hartz and Ordinary Seaman Arthur Chandler. As they were swept around the stern of the sinking Steed, they had the first sighting of one of Doenitz's newest U-boats:
Just then a large submarine, estimated at about 2,000 tons, painted a light gray, with guns forward
and abaft her conning tower, appeared on the port side. Men immediately manned the guns; the
forward one appeared to be a 4-inch and the after one a trifle smaller. They started shelling the ship.
The seamen watched the German lob shells into their ship with astonishing accuracy despite the heavy seas that clawed at the gunners. They then tried to make contact with the other boats but were swept by a walloping cross breaker that carried away all but three of their oars together with the tiller, rudder, sails, and boat hooks. Soaked by icy water they bailed frantically to empty the boat. The report from No. 3 continued:
After struggling a couple hours we had the boat bailed out and then went under the canvas boat
cover for protection from the heavy spray and strong wind. SOme of us kept joking and talking
through the night to keep up our morale. Finally Chandler lay down in a life preserver and fell
asleep. The next morning I tried to wake him and realized that he was dead. We carried him to the
forward end of the boat.
The same morning Burkholder became delirious. Shortly after noon he died and was carried
forward.
It was so bitterly cold that we decided to start a fire. The lamp in the boat being broken, we
poured oil from it on some wood we had chopped up and placed it in the water bucket. The fore
burned steadily and helped to dry our wet clothes and thaw us out to some extent. Perhaps it saved
our lives. By cutting up the thwarts, stern sheets, forward sheets, bottom board, and one of the oars,
we managed to keep the fire going the rest of the day and during the night until we were picked up
by a Canadian auxiliary cruiser, HMCS Alcantara.
Brea, Hartz and Mazzucco were taken to Halifax and although badly frozen they all recovered.
A final report on the disaster reached Standard Oil from Cape Town, South Africa, following the arrival there of the British vessel Raby Castle. She had picked up a boat on February twelfth some four hundred miles to seaward of the position at which the Steed was torpedoed. There were four men in that boat but only Elmer E. Maihiot, Jr., was alive. He had been Second Assistant Engieer and died three days after being rescued.
Only four men survived the ordeal while thirty-four perished. To the list of the dead could be added other frightening statistics to show the course of war projected through the loss of a single vessel.
The cargo of the W. L. Steed, broken down into a retailing unit, amounted to more than one quarter of a million gallons of oil or one million quarts: close to five hundred thousand dollars. On her wartime voyages the ship had carried forty-five times that value of crude oil. Had she continued unmolested through the war, this single vessel would have delivered six million barrels.
While the open boats of the Steed battled winter seas, the U-boats upped their sinking average to two ships a day. Many were attacked so close to the shore that Florida and New Jersey residents came down to the beaches to watch the carnage. Travelers in commercial aircraft were witnesses to daylight attacks in the Atlantic and Gulf. Timothy Morgan, a retired watchman of Sarasota, Florida, never forgot the strange experience of seeing a tanker burst into flames five thousand feet below. "The boat looked like a toy," he recalled years later. "We circled while the pilot called the shore to get help and we came down low enough to see the submarine dashing off. I never saw so much black smoke. Then tiny white boats--four of them--crawled away from the burning boat like little bugs."
Frantic calls to the Navy by passenger airliners and spectators brought only belated help; Eastern Sea Frontier in late February was still without adequate equipment. The onshore wind carried the menacing boom and crack of gunfire and drove in a pall of oil smoke. White beaches became covered with petroleum scum and littered with dead fish, sodden life jackets and smashed boats, rafts and decking. Small boys searched the shore and among the things they found were parts of human bodies. This was the unprotected coastline of America in the months of January, February and March of 1942.
Into the seaports came exhausted, unnerved men, oil-smeared and half naked. Many wore dirty bandages over horrible burns. All showed the strain of a wretched experience. But old men with a lifetime of sea service, together with teenage boys on their first trips, showed a common defiance. "Give us guns," they continued to demand. Their answer to the stock reporter's question was, "Hell yes, I'm shipping out again." There was no braggartism and a few asked for more than a drink or a cigarette. In ordinary times many of them might be drifters, troublemakers, drunks and brawlers; under stress at sea they showed great courage and later a fierce pride. Without their ship, their clothing or any possessions, they proclaimed the dignity of man.
The waterfront bars and restaurants frequented by sailors were plastered with warnings:
A SLIP OF THE LIP
MAY SINK A SHIP
DON'T BLAB--THE ENEMY IS LISTENING
Nazi informers were everywhere and U-boats were being fed information that let them make the best use of their torpedoes. The Germans chided men in lifeboats for being a few minutes late or early at their rendezvous; officers were astonished to hear U-boat commanders tell them their destination and the cargo they had been carrying.
From the decks of the big gray submarines motion pictures were now being taken of the burning ships under shell fire as crews scrambled into the boats. Machine guns were trained on the survivors to bring out a realistic look of fear while the cameras ground. Later, audiences in Berlin would have no doubt about victory over so spiritless and ragged an enemy.
Navy communiques were handed out to the newspapers:
Enemy submarine activity continued last week off the East Coast of North America from Cape
Hatteras to Newfoundland and southward to the Florida Straits . . .
Strong counter measures are being taken by units of the Navy's East Coastal Command.
In Paul's Bar and the Dutchman's on Eleventh Avenue, New York and in all the bars between there and the Ship's Light on Charles Street, New Orleans, seaman shrugged when they read a Navy release that claimed twenty submarines had been sunk off the coast. Zero was the true count in February. Out in San Pedro a sailor had his AB ticket, lifeboat certificate, identification and social security numbers tattoed on his legs. Men shipping out went "schooner-rigged," taking only bare necessities and checking valuables at the union halls or Seamen's Church Institute. Good-byes to wives and families took on the aspect of finality.
At the height or the sinkings, when some sort of coastal patrol was so badly needed, Captain Arthur O. Brady, USNR, privately voiced a suggestion that had occurred to many who were old enough to remember Prohibition. "Where are the rum runners these days?" he asked, half humorously. "Those fellows knew every inch of water from Florida up to the Bay of Fundy."
Veterans of the Jersey Coast, Long Island and Florida beaches, where they smuggled booze in the 'twenties, had operated fast, armed boats. But in the spring of 1942 those of them not in prison were playing the black market or cargo filching along the waterfronts.
Through the month of February the public becomes familiar with the pattern of U-boat attack. Most survivors told of surprise and shock; the tanker disasters brought explosions and burning. Men could not remain on the scorching decks but usually the only place to jump was into a sheet of flame. Here was the paradox of icy water overlaid with searing fire.
To the U-boats the merchant ships were like game to be bagged in a hunt. Each commander was out to get a tonnage-destruction figure great enough to earn him the Oak Leaves to the Iron Cross. Here is an extract from the log of U-504 as it swept the waters of Florida commencing on February twenty-first:
Reached operational area. Fired double salvo at tanker steering south in ballast. Hit fore and aft.
Ship sank by stern. Next evening chased a merchant ship but lost her in a rain squall. Half an hour
later sank a four-masted ship in night attack. Ship turned turtle. Steered south for Jupiter. Attacked
large tanker. Tremendous explosion and ship at once burst into flames. She was carrying 12,000
tons petrol. Picked up destroyer noises. In the bright moonlight sighted enemy and dived. Was
attacked with depth-charges and pursued for three hours, but although enemy passed overhead
several times he did not attack again, and finally cleared off. A little later made submerged daylight
attack on a 7,000-ton petrol tanker which blew up. Serious damage sustained on deck from heavy
seas which impeded action. Set course for home at slow speed. Sank a ship making for Bombay
carrying deck-cargo of motor cars. Ship blown to bits. . . .
This cold account described what by that time was a commonplace slaughtering in the ocean jungle off the sandy coast of Florida. From the Merchant Marine Naval Reserve list of wartime sinkings it is possible to write the obituary of the ships that fell victims to U-504.
The first ship caught was the tanker Republic, five of whose crew were killed by the explosion. The four-masted ship was a Cuban vessel, and the tanker reported to have burst into flames north of Jupiter was the Cities Service Empire. All her liveboats on the starboard side were smashed; twenty-three of the crew huddled on one raft, and seven men were burned to death.
The merchant ship that escaped in the rain squall on February twenty-second was the Green Island. Her SOS was picked up by America's first Pacific-bound convoy out of New York. One of the escorting destroyers raced ahead but was rammed by the Green Island which mistook her for a sub in the fading light. A second destroyer made the depth-charge attack on U-504.
The petrol-tanker caught just before the sinking of the Bombay-bound vessel was Brazilian. At the time of her torpedoing Sumner Welles was in Rio de Janeiro addressing delegates to a Pan American defense conference.
Operation Paukenschlag reached a furious climax midway in March when the U-boats sank twenty ships in one week. The score for a little more than two months was 145 ships totaling eight hundred thousand tons and six hundred lives. The American Merchant Marine Institute attempted to impress the general public with comparative statistics: the average freighter carried an amount of cargo equal to four trains of seventy-five cars each! A standard tanker loaded enough gasoline on one voyage to supply the holder of an "A" ration book with gas for thirty-five thousand years! Admiral Doenitz sent more submarines to the American stations and was getting ready to commission the first tankers and supply boats. He promised the Fuehrer a total of two-hundred ships, one million tons, by April first.
On the last day of MArch the compilers of ship losses made another record entry: in slightly over twenty-four hours the U-boats sank six vessels: City of New York, Tiger, T. C. McCobb, Menominee, Barnegat, and Allegheny.
Thirteen days after the City of New York went under Robert "Pat" Peck, an ordinary seaman, came into a Delaware port and told how the big American South African Line motor ship was slugged one hundred miles off the coast as she bucked a head gale and waves that ran twenty feet from trough to crest. Only one of the ship's four boats cleared and in i were crowded twenty persons, including a three-year-old girl, her mother, and two other women.
Half the men died in the next ten days. The burials were hideous for there were no weights to sink the corpses which would just float away. the child, who had sobbed constantly since the abandoning, gave way to hysterics when her mother died. "Please don't throw my Mummy in the water. Please don't."
U-boats, lurking between the Down East coast and Florida Straits, had so increased in number that it was necessary for them to burn navigation lights to avoid collisions when they surfaced at night. They refueled or took on ammunition and supplies without fear; commanders even exchanged visits. In Southern waters the Germans stretched out on deck to acquire sun tans.
In Miami there were rumors that U-Boats were receiving regular milk deliveries from a local dairy. It was said that ticket stubs from a Flagler Street movie had been found in the pockets of submariners captured offshore. The FBI investigated five hundred reports of small boats refueling the enemy, all of them false alarms. J. Edgar Hoover's men did capture saboteurs near Ponte Verde, just south of Jacksonville, and twenty-seven aliens were rounded up in the lee of the Miami Naval Air Station at Opa-Locka. These German, Italian and Japanese aliens were operating with radios, cameras, and binoculars.
The United States Navy was being sharply criticized, even by its Commander-in-Chief who was then carrying on a confidential correspondence with Prime Minister Winston Churchill . . . Roosevelt wrote:
. . . My Navy has been definitely slack in preparing for this submarine war of our coast. As I need
not tell you, most naval officers have declined in the past to think in terms of any vessel of less than
two thousand tons. You learned the lesson two years ago. We still have to learn it. By 1 May I
expect to get a pretty good coastal patrol working from Newfoundland to Florida and through the
West Indies. I have begged, borrowed, and stolen every vessel of every description over eighty feet
long--and I have made this a separate command with the responsibility in Admiral Andrews.
"Roosevelt's Navy" was under attack by many amateurs, some of them politicians who had screamed against prewar appropriations. Enemies of the Administration pointed accusingly to the string of islands leased from Britain and longed for the fifty exchanged destroyers.
While pundits on the shore offered caustic and lubberly advice, the Eastern Sea Frontier battled delays, red tape, and selfishness. Luxury lighting at Miami and West Palm Beach did not go out until the end of the winter tourist season; sufficient ships for convoy escort were not delivered until April, and the first protected movement of merchant ships--from Hampton Roads to Key West--started in mid-May.
After hundreds of merchant seamen had died, most of them in night attacks, daylight coastal navigation was put in force. Ships sailing between Maine and Delaware Bay anchored overnight in Boston and New York. Because there was no such convenient stopping places south of Hatteras, artificial ports were constructed. These were pens built out of huge booms and submarine nets, spaced 125 miles apart. Freighters and tankers were herded in at sunset through mine fields; during the day they were escorted by 1918 destroyers released from Iceland convoy duty.
The "leap-frog" convoys at the start were far from effective and the U-Boat sinking average remained at better than two per day. But Admiral Doenitz did not like even the mildest opposition and in the spring directed his U-boats to the Caribbean and Gulf of Mexico. In these unprotected waters the Germans promptly established a new slaughter record.
The problem America faced, and needed to solve with the greatest speed, was one of how to replace merchant ships and crews . . .
--Felix Riesenberg Jr.
From: The United States Navy in World War II
Compiled and edited by S.E. Smith
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