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Author: Gary Gentile
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781883056261
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 0
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Book Description
This is the sordid chronicle of the U-boat war against merchant shipping along the American eastern seaboard in World War Two. Between January 14, 1942 and May 5, 1945, the Nazi war machine sank 120 vessels and caused the deaths of more than 2,400 men, women, and children, in an area from Maine to Florida that was designated as the Eastern Sea Frontier. For more than three years, German U-boats torpedoed ships, shelled survivors, and laid mines in harbor approaches. Today, the valiant tribulations of the men of the merchant marine are largely forgotten. Yet these unsung heroes suffered a greater percentage of fatalities than any of the armed services except for the Marine corps. The present volume vividly captures the dramatic saga of a time when passengers and crew were cast adrift at sea: some to suffer the privations of cold or heat, thirst and hunger; others to die from exposure or dehydration; and some whose fates were never ascertained. These trenchant stories of survival are ripe with endurance, heroism, and uncommon valor. Tales of bitter agony are told through the actual testimony of the people who lived to sail another sea, to deliver another cargo, to fight another day, in their unflagging effort to halt the progress of German aggression. Against all odds, the tankers and freighters that comprised the lifeblood of ocean-going commerce proceeded knowingly into a battle that was not theirs to fight - but a battle that they fought nevertheless. Also told is the demise of a dozen U-boats that failed to complete their missions of destruction.
Author: Gary Gentile
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781883056261
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 0
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Book Description
This is the sordid chronicle of the U-boat war against merchant shipping along the American eastern seaboard in World War Two. Between January 14, 1942 and May 5, 1945, the Nazi war machine sank 120 vessels and caused the deaths of more than 2,400 men, women, and children, in an area from Maine to Florida that was designated as the Eastern Sea Frontier. For more than three years, German U-boats torpedoed ships, shelled survivors, and laid mines in harbor approaches. Today, the valiant tribulations of the men of the merchant marine are largely forgotten. Yet these unsung heroes suffered a greater percentage of fatalities than any of the armed services except for the Marine corps. The present volume vividly captures the dramatic saga of a time when passengers and crew were cast adrift at sea: some to suffer the privations of cold or heat, thirst and hunger; others to die from exposure or dehydration; and some whose fates were never ascertained. These trenchant stories of survival are ripe with endurance, heroism, and uncommon valor. Tales of bitter agony are told through the actual testimony of the people who lived to sail another sea, to deliver another cargo, to fight another day, in their unflagging effort to halt the progress of German aggression. Against all odds, the tankers and freighters that comprised the lifeblood of ocean-going commerce proceeded knowingly into a battle that was not theirs to fight - but a battle that they fought nevertheless. Also told is the demise of a dozen U-boats that failed to complete their missions of destruction.
Author: Gary Gentile
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781883056407
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 381
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Book Description
When the Fuhrer sent U-boats to America waters in World War Two, he was repeating a strategy that the Kaiser had tried a generation earlier. Long neglected in the annals of military history is the first attempt to employ a fleet of undersea warships to help achieve world domination. While the Kaiser's surface navy was as ineffective against his enemies as the Fuhrer's surface navy, his use of German submarines, or U-boats, afforded a tactical advantage that was unprecedented in naval warfare. The Kaiser's unterseeboote took a great toll on the world's merchant vessels. The volume in hand is the first of its kind to compare Allied action reports with the deck logs and war diaries of German submarine commanders. These bipolar sources permit a true and accurate assessment of U-boat efficacy, while dispelling erroneous notions about the impact of submarine warfare against staunch American defenders. U-boats torpedoed and shelled harmless fishing vessels, plodding windjammers, and unarmed steamships. They laid mines off U.S. harbor approaches. They left sailors stranded hundreds of miles from shore without adequate food and water. They killed men and women indiscriminately. They took prisoners of war. One U-boat lobbed shells onto a beach on Cape Cod, Massachusetts. This was the first time since the War of 1812 that a foreign country attacked the American mainland. This is the trenchant story of U-boat aggression and American defiance in the Great War of atrocities, when people perished at sea or suffered incredible privation in their struggle to survive.
Author: K. A. Nelson
Publisher: Brookline Books
ISBN: 195504130X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 454
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Book Description
The shocking story of Nazi Germany’s naval assault in American waters, told through the eyes of seafarers who experienced it off the Jersey Shore. It is January 1942. Six weeks after the United States entered World War II, Imperial Japan is annihilating American forces across the Far East while the Nazis stand triumphant over much of Europe. Adolf Hitler’s forces are about to commence an assault along the East Coast of the United States, but this “Atlantic Pearl Harbor” would prove far more devastating than Japan’s attack on Hawaii. The wolves are closing in, and few Americans realize their beaches and coastal cities are about to witness the worst naval defeat in American history. The Western Hemisphere holds the key to victory for the beleaguered Allies, but only if the vast economic and military resources of North and South America can be carried across the Atlantic by Allied merchant ships. These civilian-manned cargo vessels are the backbone of the American war economy and the lifeline enabling Britain and the Soviet Union to survive—but Hitler’s favorite admiral also knows this, and he has set in motion a plan of unprecedented boldness. Germany’s dreaded submarines, or “U-boats,” are going to the United States. The fiery months that followed would pit American servicemen against German U-boat sailors in a desperate struggle that stained East Coast waters with oil and blood. In the crosshairs of this deadly cat-and-mouse game was a stalwart contingent of civilian mariners who crewed the tankers and freighters supplying the war against the Axis Powers. Thousands of them would perish as hundreds of merchant ships were sunk. Every American coastal state became a battlefront in 1942, and the events that transpired off New Jersey illustrate the perils and brutality of this forgotten campaign. The seafloor along the Garden State is today strewn with shipwrecks that bear witness to the innumerable ways to die faced by friend and foe alike only miles from the boardwalk. Though these seafarers’ lives were forfeit, the battle they fought would decide the fates of millions.
Author: Eric Wiberg
Publisher: Fonthill Media
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 436
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Book Description
Starting weeks after Hitler declared war on the United States in mid-December 1941 and lasting until the war with Germany was all but over, 73 German U-Boats sustainably attacked New England waters, from Montauk New York to the tip of Nova Scotia at Cape Sable. Fifteen percent of these boats were sunk by Allied counter-attacks, five surrendered in the region, and three were sunk off New England--Block Island, Massachusetts Bay, and off Nantucket. These have proven appealing to divers, with a result that at least three German naval officers or ratings are buried in New England, one having killed himself in the Boston jail cell. There were 34 Allied merchant or naval ships sunk by these subs, one of them, the 'Eagle', was not admitted to have been sunk by the Germans until decades later. Over 1,100 men were thrown in the water and 545 of them made it ashore in New England ports; 428 were killed. Importantly, saboteurs were landed three places: Long Island, Frenchman's Bay Maine and New Brunswick Canada, and Boston was mined. Very little was known about this.
Author: Ed Offley
Publisher: Hachette UK
ISBN: 0465080693
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 320
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Book Description
On June 15, 1942, as thousands of vacationers lounged in the sun at Virginia Beach, two massive fireballs erupted just offshore from a convoy of oil tankers steaming into Chesapeake Bay. While men, women, and children gaped from the shore, two damaged oil tankers fell out of line and began to sink. Then a small escort warship blew apart in a violent explosion. Navy warships and aircraft peppered the water with depth charges, but to no avail. Within the next twenty-four hours, a fourth ship lay at the bottom of the channel -- all victims of twenty-nine-year-old Kapitäeutnant Horst Degen and his crew aboard the German U-boat U-701. In The Burning Shore, acclaimed military reporter Ed Offley presents a thrilling account of the bloody U-boat offensive along America's east coast during the first half of 1942, using the story of Degen's three war patrols as a lens through which to view this forgotten chapter of World War II. For six months, German U-boats prowled the waters off the eastern seaboard, sinking merchant ships with impunity, and threatening to sever the lifeline of supplies flowing from America to Great Britain. Degen's successful infiltration of the Chesapeake Bay in mid-June drove home the U-boats' success, and his spectacular attack terrified the American public as never before. But Degen's cruise was interrupted less than a month later, when U.S. Army Air Forces Lieutenant Harry J. Kane and his aircrew spotted the silhouette of U-701 offshore. The ensuing clash signaled a critical turning point in the Battle of the Atlantic -- and set the stage for an unlikely friendship between two of the episode's survivors. A gripping tale of heroism and sacrifice, The Burning Shore leads readers into a little-known theater of World War II, where Hitler's U-boats came close to winning the Battle of the Atlantic before American sailors and airmen could finally drive them away.
Author: Eric Wiberg
Publisher: Fonthill Media
ISBN:
Category : Transportation
Languages : en
Pages : 256
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Book Description
The untold story of 142 German and one Italian submarines, which patrolled the waters around BermudaThe Axis powers sank eighty Allied ships, one of them naval, for the loss of two submarines1,224 Allied sailors and passengers were landed in Bermuda during the warMore than steel on steel: this book tells of their survival voyages, rescue and reception For the first time, a book exposes an obscure theatre of the Second World War in great detail and comprehensively, not just in terms of geography, but also from the perspectives of both Allied and Axis participants. U-Boats off Bermuda provides details of specific U-Boat patrols and their commanders, as well as a general overview of the situation in the theatre of war around Bermuda. It is a detailed analysis of individual casualties, broken down by a) background of ship, b) background of U-Boat, c) attack method (surface and/or submersed), d) details of survivors and their plight at sea and e) their rescue, recuperation and repatriation. Detailed maps and illustrations provide a human face to what were often tragic attacks with fatal consequences. Did you know that half a dozen German submarines came close enough to the US Naval Operating Base in Bermuda to see Gibbs Hill? Or that hardy Canadians from a sunken trading schooner rowed and sailed their way to the remote island on their own? Allied pilots based in Bermuda sank two German U-Boats, rescued dozens in daring water landings and several crashed.
Author: Jan S. Breemer
Publisher: Government Printing Office
ISBN: 9781884733772
Category : Submarine warfare
Languages : en
Pages : 98
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Book Description
"In Defeating the U-boat: Inventing Antisubmarine Warfare, Newport Paper 36, Jan. S. Breemer tells the story of the British response to the German submarine threat. His account of Germany's 'asymmetric' challenge (to use the contemporary term) to Britain's naval mastery holds important lessons for the United States today, the U.S. Navy in particular. The Royal Navy's obstinate refusal to consider seriously the option of convoying merchant vessels, which turned out to be key to the solution of the U-boat problem, demonstrates the extent to which professional military cultures can thwart technical and operational innovation even in circumstances of existential threat. Although historical controversy continues to cloud this issue, ... Breemer ends his lively and informative study with some general reflections on military innovation and the requirements for fostering it. "--Foreword.
Author: Eric Wiberg
Publisher: ibooks
ISBN: 1899694625
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 451
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Book Description
“Eric Wiberg's ability, to unearth obscure historical facts, keeps me in a constant state of surprise. I commend his relentless determination to verify every detail, with local sources in Nassau's historical community, for corroboration of his findings.”—Capt. Paul C. Aranha, author, THE ISLAND AIRMAN . . . AND HIS BAHAMA ISLANDS HOME. “Eric Wiberg has made a significant contribution to the bibliography of World War II history.” —J. Revell Carr, Santa Fe, N.M. This his book tells one more key part of the big story and is one more piece in the giant puzzle of the history of World War II. Its value for historians cannot be underestimated. Throughout the stories of the attacks by German and Italian submarines on Allied shipping in the water around the Bahamas and the Turks and Caicos, several consistent themes emerge in Wiberg’s thorough accounts. Prime among them is the heroism of the merchant mariners who time and again put themselves in danger as they performed the critical task of moving supplies, military and civilian, which were vital to ultimate victory. We read of numerous instances of sailors having their ships shot out from under them and then continuously going back to sea and having additional ships torpedoed and sunk. We can also recognize what we know today as Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), which was seldom recognized 75 years ago.
Author: Michael J Tougias
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1681771713
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 352
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Book Description
On May 19, 1942, a U-boat in the Gulf of Mexico stalked its prey fifty miles from New Orleans. Captained by twenty nine-year-old Iron Cross and King's Cross recipient Erich Wurdemann, the submarine set its sights on the freighter Heredia with sixty-two souls on board. Most aboard were merchant seamen, but there were also a handful of civilians, including the Downs family: Ray and Ina, and their two children, eight-year-old Sonny and eleven-year-old Lucille. Fast asleep in their berths, the Downs family had no idea that two torpedoes were heading their way. When the ship exploded, chaos ensued—and each family member had to find their own path to survival. Including original, unpublished material from Commander Wurdemann’s war diary, the story provides balance and perspective by chronicling the daring mission of the U-boat—and its commander’s decision-making—in the Gulf of Mexico. An inspiring historical narrative, So Close to Home tells the story of the Downs family as they struggle against sharks, hypothermia, drowning, and dehydration in their effort to survive the aftermath of this deadly attack off the American coast.
Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Documents on microfilm
Languages : en
Pages : 286
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Book Description
