The Burning Shore (32 page)

•  Pastorius—U-boat operation in which U-202 and U-548 landed eight saboteurs ashore at Amagansett, Long Island, and Ponte Vedra, Florida, in June 1942. All were captured, and six were executed after trial by a US military commission.

•  Paukenschlag (Drumbeat)—U-boat offensive against the US East Coast, January 1942.

Ocean meeting point—specified location where a convoy rendezvoused with its assigned escort group; also known by specific area: WESTOMP for Western OMP, EASTOMP for Eastern OMP, HOMP for Halifax OMP, and ICOMP for Iceland OMP.

OIC—Operational Intelligence Centre; British Admiralty unit responsible for tracking U-boat operations from a wide variety of sources, primarily decrypted communications intercepts.

ONI—Office of Naval Intelligence (US Navy)

Organisation Todt—A Third Reich civil and military engineering group founded by Nazi leader Fritz Todt, who became the Reich minister for armaments and munitions in 1940. The group constructed the modern German autobahn system and, later, a series of massive U-boat bunkers in Germany, France, and Norway.

Pastorius—See
Military operations, German
.

Paukenschlag (Drumbeat)—See
Military operations, German
.

Periscope—Extendable, tube-like optical device containing an arrangement of prisms, mirrors, and lenses that enabled a U-boat to view the surface of the sea or the sky from a submerged position.

Pressure hull—Cylindrical steel hull containing personnel and essential operating systems designed to withstand many atmospheres of water pressure when a U-boat is submerged.

Q-ship—A decoy merchant ship full of flotation cargo and carrying concealed cannons to lure a U-boat into close range for attack.

Radar—“Radio Direction and Ranging,” also RDF; a detection system that uses electromagnetic waves to identify the range, altitude, direction, and/or speed of both moving and fixed objects such as aircraft and ships.

Schnelladekanone
—“Fast-firing cannon”; the 88-mm main deck gun on a Type VIIC U-boat or the 105-mm deck gun on a Type IX U-boat.

Snorkel—Breathing apparatus installed on U-boats late in World War II to enable them to use their diesel engines while running submerged.

Special Intelligence—Code for intercepted and decrypted German military communications; also called Ultra.

Tonnage war—Admiral Karl Dönitz’s strategy to sink Allied merchant ships at a rate faster than new construction could offset the losses; also known by the French phrase
guerre de course
.

Torpedoes, German

•  G7a—21-inch-diameter torpedo with compressed-air propulsion motor; carried a six-hundred-pound warhead with a maximum range of 7.5 nautical miles.

•  G7e—21-inch torpedo with electric propulsion from lead batteries; carried a six-hundred-pound warhead with a maximum range of 1.6 nautical miles.

Treaties and other agreements

•  Atlantic Charter—Declaration of US and British war objectives following the Atlantic Conference of August 1941 between President Franklin D. Roosevelt and British prime minister Winston Churchill at Placentia Bay, Newfoundland. This laid the foundation for the United Nations.

•  Lend-Lease Act—Approved by Congress in March 1941, this program initially enabled the United States to send military aid to Great Britain while still remaining officially neutral; later expanded to forty-four Allied nations, with the Soviet Union receiving the second-largest share. A total of $50 billion worth of equipment was distributed during the war.

Uboot-Zieloptik
—Surface-target aiming binoculars with luminous reticules attached to a bridge post that automatically fed target line-of-sight bearing and range to a calculator inside the U-boat conning tower; in turn, this fed attack course headings into the gyroscopes of the torpedoes; contracted to UZO.

Unrestricted submarine warfare—A form of naval warfare in which submarines are allowed by their senior commanders to attack civilian merchant ships without warning.

Vorhaltrechner
—U-boat electromechanical deflection calculator in the conning tower that fed attack headings into the gyrocompass steering mechanism in each torpedo, determining its course upon firing (see
Uboot-Zieloptik
).

Western Approaches Command—Royal Navy Headquarters established in Liverpool in November 1941; responsible for defense of transatlantic convoys.

Wolf pack—
Gruppe
; formation of deployed U-boats directed from BdU Headquarters to hunt for a specific Allied convoy or to patrol a specific area of the ocean.

Zentrale
—U-boat control room; located at the center of the boat beneath the conning tower.

APPENDIX

EQUIVALENT WORLD WAR II NAVAL OFFICER RANKS

+ English translation: Grand Admiral

* English translation: Junior Captain

# English translation: Senior Lieutenant

Sources:
U-boat.net
; Showell, Jak Mallmann,
Hitler’s Navy: A Reference Guide to the Kriegsmarine, 1935–1945
, Seaworth Publishing, London, 2009.

NOTES

INTRODUCTION: THE BATTLE OFFSHORE

1
.  North Carolina geography and marine environment elements from John Roach, “Shoring Up N. Carolina Islands: A Losing Battle?”
National Geographic News
, November 10, 2003.

2
.  Allied merchant sinkings within one hundred nautical miles of Cape Hatteras compiled from “Ships Hit by U-boats in WWII,”
Uboat.net
,
www.uboat.net/allies/merchants
, and “U-boat Fates,”
Uboat.net
,
www.uboat.net/fates
.

3
.  US aerial defenses weak and disorganized from Eastern Sea Frontier War Diary (hereafter “ESF War Diary”) for February 1942, ch. 3.

4
.  Aircraft types operating from MCAS Cherry Point cited in various unit histories; aerial patrol pattern described in Harry J. Kane, “Oral History Interview, Harry J. Kane,” East Carolina University Manuscript Collection, Oral History Interview No. 71, September 29, 1978 (hereafter “Kane Oral Interview”); MCAS Cherry Point described in “History of U.S. Marine Corps Air Station Cherry Point, North Carolina—1941–1945,” compiled by Florence K. Jacobs, 1st Lt. USMCWR, Air Station Historical Officer, undated.

5
.  The scene aboard U-701 is constructed from descriptions of underwater conditions off North Carolina by former Kapitänleutnant Horst Degen in his unpublished 1965 memoir
U-701: Glory and Tragedy
(unpublished manuscript, November 1965); underwater VLF communications receiving capability comes from former radioman second class Martin Beisheim, interviews, March and April 2009.

6
.  Details of the third war patrol of U-701 from “U-701,”
Uboat.net
,
www.uboat.net/boats/u701.htm
, and Degen,
Glory and Tragedy
.

7
.  Patrol flight description from Kane Oral Interview.

CHAPTER 1: PREPARING TO FIGHT

1
.  Kane description of his aviation cadet training from Kane Oral Interview;
Tamiami Champion
daily direct schedule from New York to Lakeland in mid-1941 from “
The Tamiami Champion
(West Coast),” Streamliner Schedules,
www.streamlinerschedules.com/concourse/track2/championwc194106.html
.

2
.  FDR “your boys” statement and military growth figures from “Text of President Roosevelt’s Addresses in Boston and Hartford,”
New York Times
, October 31, 1940; army growth from Geoffrey Perrett,
There’s a War to Be Won: The U.S. Army in World War II
(New York: Random House, 1991), 26–27.

3
.  Military draft details from Norman Polmar and Thomas B. Allen,
World War II: America at War
(New York: Random House, 1991), 724; Kane comments on the draft from Kane Oral Interview.

4
.  Harry Kane’s early life from Marguerite Kane Jameson interview, July 8, 2011; description of army flight training from Kane Oral Interview.

5
.  Degen comments on Hitler Youth from an intercepted conversation between Degen and Sorber of U-210 in an American POW camp on August 16, 1942, on file with the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), Record Group 38 (hereafter “ONI Eavesdropping Report”).

6
.  Degen family background courtesy of Dr. Günther Degen; testing for Naval Academy recounted by Reinhard Hardegen, an academy classmate of Degen’s, in Michael Gannon,
Operation Drumbeat
(New York: Harper & Row, 1990), 18–19.

7
.  Description of
Karlsruhe
cruise from transcript of ONI recording of conversation between Degen and Oberleutnant zur See Heinz Sorber, a POW from U-210, August 15, 1942, NARA, Modern Military Branch, Adelphi, MD, Record Group (RG) 38; additional details of
Karlsruhe
port visits from articles in the
Seattle Times, San Diego Union
, and
Boston Globe
during March through May 1934.

8
.  Details on U-552 from “U-552,”
Uboat.net
,
www.uboat.net/boats/u552.htm
.

9
.  Of thirty-four U-boats that transferred from Germany to Lorient and Saint-Nazaire between July 1940 and March 1941, five were subsequently transferred back to Germany to serve as training boats, and another five—U-31, U-32, U-47, U-99, and U-100—were lost in combat.

10
.  The U-boat expansion plan from January 1941 reflected a prolonged struggle between the admirals and other German military branches for priorities in steel, other vital materials, skilled shipyard workers, and funds to build the U-boat Force. See Günter Hessler,
The U-boat War in the Atlantic: 1939–1945
(London: H. M. Stationery Office, 1989), 1:106–108.

11
.  Kane’s flight school experiences derived from Kane Oral Interview and Thomas H. Greer, “Individual Training of Flying Personnel,” in
The Army Air Forces in World War II
, vol. 6:
Men and Planes
, ed. Wesley F. Craven and James L. Cate (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1955),
http://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/AAF/VI/AAF-VI-17.html
.

12
.  BT-13 Valiant specifications from “Vultee BT-13A Valiant,” Combat Air Museum (Forbes Field, Kansas),
www.combatairmuseum.org/aircraft/vultee.html
.

13
.  Barksdale Field history from Barksdale Air Force Base website at Wikipedia,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barksdale_Air_Force_Base#Origins
; twin-engine aircraft procurement during 1940–1941 from “Army Air Forces Statistical Digest (World War II),” US Air Force, June 1947 (hereafter “USAAF Statistical Digest”).