Did a German U-Boat ever sail into the Chesapeake? What about into the Delaware Bay? Ok, how about the Atlantic Seaboard within US waters?
I ask because there IS (at least) one U-Boat sunk in the Chesapeake, but it’s history is so mixed up. As I understand it, it was NOT sunk there during wartime; it was captured overseas, brought to Greenwhich, CT, and later sunk in the Chesapeake by the US Navy. The sub to which I refer was a Black Panther, if that means much to SD History Buffs. (Did this capture mean the “Black Panther” sub design, allegedly stealth, failed?)
What’s the SD on this? Was it simply a real fear it could happen, or did it?
Your first two questions I don’t know,offhand,but the third,you betcha.No doubt you’ll get a more detailed answer here shortly,but you can likely find all the detail you want at http://uboat.net
The rubber coated Black Panthers were a good idea that came too late,the “Happy Time”
ending due to Allied development of Asdic (sonar).
Just spec on my part,I doubt a sub would attempt such ingress.There was a case of spies landing by a u-boat offshore Long Island,Operation Pastorius.
In that sense,the fears were well founded.
Here is information on operation Paukenschlag (Drumbeat) where the Kriegsmarine sent U-boats to the US coast, mostly between Newfoundland and Long Island.
No mention of any side trips up the Chesapeake or Delaware bays. Lack of abundant fuel might have been an issue, assuming there was any desire in the first place (get the low-hanging fruit first).
in 1942 the Secret Service was concerned about a possible attack in the Chesapeake that, Camp David (then Shangri-La) was made into a presidential retreat. Roosevelt used to hang out on the presidential yacht USS Potomac to escape the heat in DC - the climatic kind of heat. The summers in DC are the nasty kind of hot and humid.
The U-1105 is a underwater preserve operated by the Maryland Historical Trust. Site is open to visitors if you follow the rules which are quite lengthy. The location was transcribed wrong (Maryland Historical Trust), and - WAG - the US Navy research on the sub may have been classified.
There was also a sub probably sunk at the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay - [ul]
[/ul] wiki article. there was also activity during WWI - Tin Pots and Pirate Ships
(knew about the sub in the chesapeake. The rest is morning doing the laundry google searches.)
In June 1942, four German spies disembarked from U-584 on Long Island, New York, and another four disembarked from U-202 near Jacksonville, Florida. U-1229 was sunk off the coast of Maine in 1944. Later that year, U-1230 landed at Hancock Point in the Gulf of Maine and dropped off another two spies, William Colepaugh and Erich Gimpel.
There were many U-boat attacks along the Outer Banks. On Ocracoke Island there is still a small cemetery which is now English soil, above which flies the Union Jack and no US flag. There are four British sailors buried there, who died in a U-boat attack and washed up on the beach. This little plot of land was made a part of England so that the sailors could be buried in England. The War made it impractical to return them to Britain.
I’ve personally dove at the wreck of U-853 German U-boat off Block Island. The stern is in 90’ of water and the bow is at about 130’. With my rig we get about 7 minutes to explore the wreck which has been plundered over the years. I have never gone in it, but I have a good photo of the Prop and Sail. I like diving at that wreck because it is decent visibility down there on a sunny day.
I’m not sure that an attempt at entrance past the Hampton Roads would have been a worthwhile risk - with Norfolk being such huge military, as well as commercial port it would have been a target rich environment, but after the loss of the Royal Oak, I can’t imagine that there was anything but fanatic ASW patrols to prevent just that sort of attack.
The attack at Scapa Flow succeeded only because the RN was a bit lackadasial about security. FTM, the first torpedo shot missed the battleship, and hit and severed the Royal Oak’s anchor chain. And still no one in Scapa Flow understood that they were under attack.
And, from the standpoint of targeting merchant vessels, waiting outside Hampton Roads would have left almost as great a target selection, but with a lot more freedom for post attack maneuvers to avoid destruction from vengeful ASW assets.
I have always heard that it was not uncommon to find German cigarette wrappers and such washing up on the beaches. I know the high school kids in Florida did night shore watch and took it very seriously; whether there was real danger or not, they certainly thought there was.
Growing up, I heard many stories about a U-Boat that got stuck in the Ohio river, near the Greenup Dam, and apparently never left. I never put much stock in the stories, but I guess you never know. I do know that the coal and iron factories in that part of Ohio were targets for possible German attacks, so maybe the U-Boat story is true.
I’ve read somewhere that the Germans briefly tried sending U-Boats into the Gulf of Mexico, but that would be a really long-ass trip. In any case, the stories indicate that the boats were chased off by the Civil Air Patrol (“Those damned red and yellow airplanes”) backed by US Army Air Force bombers. (A Piper Cub can’t do much to harm a U-Boat, but a B-24 can do all sorts of unkind things once it knows where to look)
I think that the “Happy Time” ended for a variety of reasons.
We finally started a blackout on the East Coast. At the beginning of our involvement in the war, CNO Adm. King didn’t think one was necessary! :smack: U-boats didn’t have to have a moon to get the silhouette of their targets.
ASDIC/Sonar helped a lot. So did the arrival of a large number of escort ships, making it harder for subs to attack unescorted convoys.
Breaking the Enigma code helped. The results were used to attack the “milch cows” (supply subs) and so disrupt U-boat operations.
Long-range patrol planes helped, particularly the PB2Y Privateer (B-24 naval patrol variant). U-boats couldn’t risk surfacing during the day, which then forced them to recharge batteries at night, cutting into their nighttime attack time.
Escort carriers helped in a similar fashion. Air defense took daylight away from the U-boats, forcing them to use the night both for recharging and attacking. Nighttime attacks were much harder.
The Germans scurried to overcome these problems with the schnorkel, rubber coatings, high-performance battery systems, and non-traditional submerged propulsion. They ran out of time; it takes lots of time to get operations-ready technology going.
And thank goodness. The Nazis were working on a way to launch V-2 rockets at the US when the war ended. Type XXI U-boats would have towed submerged launcher units to the US coast; these would then fire V2s at major cities. They didn’t have it working before the war ended. See http://www.uboataces.com/articles-rocket-uboat.shtml
I think you’re mixing the PB2Y Mariner with the PB4Y Privateer. The Mariner was used primarily as a transport, due to its relatively limited range (a mere 1,000 miles), but the Privateer (the B-24 variant you mentioned) had a range of nearly 2500 miles.
My grandmother worked in a hotel on Miami Beach during WW2, and she told of watching a ship burn and sink just off the beach, from a U-boat torpedo. She had a scrap-book with pictures from The Miami Herald and a newspaper article describing the attack.
I was going to add this. The U-boats did a lot of damage in a pretty short time. I even remember a kids’ book about it, Taffy of Torpedo Junction, about a little girl growing up on the Outer Banks, helping the washed-ashore survivors of sunken Allied ships. German U-boats also preyed on merchant shipping off the U.S. coast in WWI.
