Second happy time
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The second happy time was a phase in the Second Battle of the Atlantic during which Axis submarines attacked merchant shipping along the east coast of North America. It lasted from January 1942 to about August of that year. German submariners named it the happy time or the golden time as defence measures were weak and disorganised, and the U-boats were able to inflict massive damage with little risk. During the second happy time, Axis submarines sank 609 ships totaling 3.1 million tons for the loss of only 22 U-boats. This was roughly one quarter of all shipping sunk by U-boats during the entire Second World War, and constituted by far the most serious defeat ever suffered by the US Navy.
Contents |
[edit] Background
When Hitler declared war against the United States on December 11, 1941, that country was in a fortunate position. Where the other combatants had already lost thousands of trained sailors and airmen, and were experiencing shortages of ships and aircraft, the USA was at full strength. America had had the opportunity to learn about modern naval warfare by observing the conflicts in the North Sea and the Mediterranean, and through a close relationship with the United Kingdom. The US Navy had already gained significant experience countering U-boats in the Atlantic, particularly from April 1941 when President Roosevelt extended the 'Pan-American Security Zone' east almost as far as Iceland. The United States had massive manufacturing capacity, including certainly the largest and possibly the most advanced electronics industry in the world. Finally, the USA had a favourable geographical position from a defensive point of view: the port of New York, for example, was 3000 miles to the west of the U-boat bases in Brittany.
U-boat commander Dönitz, however, saw the entry of the US into the war as a golden opportunity to strike heavy blows in the tonnage war. The German Navy no longer had its surface tankers in the North Atlantic to refuel submarines (these had been sunk by Allied forces after Ultra intelligence revealed their locations) and the standard Type VII U-boat had insufficient range to patrol off the coast of North America, so the only weapons Dönitz had on hand were the larger Type IX boats. These, however, were less maneuverable and slower to submerge, making them much more vulnerable than the Type VIIs, and few in number.
[edit] Opening moves
Immediately after war was declared with the United States, Dönitz began to implement operation Paukenschlag ("drumbeat"), requesting that 12 Type IX U-boats be made available for it. The Naval Staff in Berlin, however, insisted on retaining 6 of the precious Type IX boats for the Mediterranean theatre (where they could achieve little) and one of the remaining 6 encountered mechanical troubles. This left just 5 long-range submarines for the opening moves of the campaign.
Loaded with the maximum possible amounts of fuel, food and ammunition, the first of the five Type IXs left Lorient on 18 December 1941, the others following over the next few days. Each carried sealed orders to be opened after passing 20°W, and directing them to different parts of the North American coast. No charts or sailing directions were available: Kapitanleutnant Reinhard Hardegen of U-123, for example, was provided with two tourist guides to New York, one of which contained a fold-out map of the harbour.
Each U-boat made routine signals on exiting the Bay of Biscay, which were picked up by the British Y service and plotted in Rodger Winn's London Submarine Tracking Room, which was then able to follow the progress of the Type IXs across the Atlantic, and cable an early warning to the Royal Canadian Navy. Working on the slimmest of evidence, Winn correctly deduced the target area and passed a detailed warning to Admiral Ernest King in the USA of a "heavy concentration of U-boats off the North American seaboard", including the five boats already on station and further groups already in transit, 21 U-boats in all. Rear-Admiral Frank Leighton of the US Combined Operations and Intelligence Center then informed the responsible area commanders, but little or nothing was done.
The primary target area was the "North Atlantic Coastal Frontier", commanded by Rear-Admiral Adolphus Andrews and covering the area from Maine to North Carolina. Andrews had practically no modern forces to work with: on the water he commanded seven Coast Guard cutters, four converted yachts, three 1919-vintage patrol boats, two gunboats dating to 1905, and four wooden submarine chasers. About 100 aircraft were available, but these were short-range models only suitable for training. As a consequence of the traditionally antagonistic relationship between the US Navy and the Army Air Forces, all larger aircraft remained under Air Force control, and in any case the Air Force was neither trained nor equipped for anti-submarine work.
[edit] The American Response
The lessons of the First World War submarine campaign were plain, and British experience in the first two years of World War II confirmed them: ships sailing in convoy—with or without escort— were far safer than ships sailing alone. Obvious standard routings should be avoided wherever possible; navigational markers, lighthouses, and other aids to the enemy should be removed, and a strict blackout enforced. None of this was attempted. Coastal shipping continued to sail along marked routes and burn normal steaming lights. On 12 January 1942 Admiral Andrews was warned that three or four U-boats were about to commence operations against coastal shipping, but refused to institute a convoy system on the grounds that this would only provide the U-boats with more targets.
Despite the urgent need for action, little was done to try to stop the sinkings. The USN was desperately short of anti-submarine vessels, partly because of President Roosevelt's 1941 decision to loan fifty obsolete World War I-era destroyers to Britain in exchange for foreign bases, partly because the massive new naval construction programme had prioritised other types, and partly because the destroyers that remained were assigned to trans-Atlantic convoy escort and not under Andrews' command. No less than 25 Atlantic Convoy Escort Command Destroyers were on the US east coast at the time of the first attacks, including seven at anchor in New York Harbour. Yet when U-123 sank the 9,500 ton Norwegian tanker Norness within sight of Long Island in the early hours of the 14th of January none were dispatched to investigate, allowing the U-123 to sink the 6,700 ton British tanker Coimbra off Sandy Hook on the following night before proceeding south towards New Jersey. By this time there were 13 destroyers idle in New York Harbour, yet still none were employed to deal with the immediate threat, and over the following nights U-123 was presented with a succession of easy targets, most of them burning navigation lamps.
For the five Type IX boats in the first wave of Operation Drumbeat, it was a bonanza. They cruised along the coast, safely submerged through the days, and surfacing at night to pick off merchant vessels outlined against the lights of the cities.
- Reinhard Hardegen in U-123 sank seven ships totalling 46,744 tons before he ran out of torpedoes and returned to base,
- Ernst Kals in U-130 sank six ships and 36,988 tons,
- Richard Zapp in U-66 sank five ships of 33,456 tons, and
- Heinrich Bleichrodt in U-109 sank four ships of 27,651 tons.
- Ulrich Folkers on his first patrol in U-125 sank only a single 6,666 ton vessel, for which he was criticised by Dönitz (though he would later win the Knight's Cross.)
When the first wave U-boats returned to port in early February, Dönitz wrote that the commander "had such an abundance of opportunities for attack that he could not by any means utilise them all: there were times when there were up to ten ships in sight, sailing with all lights burning on peacetime courses".
A significant failure in US pre-war planning was lack of any ships suitable for convoy escort work. Escort vessels travel at relatively slow speeds, carry a large number of depth-charges, must be highly maneouvreable and must stay on station for long periods. Fleet destroyers are equipped for high speed and offensive action and not the ideal design for this type of work. There was no equivalent of the British Black Swan class sloops or the River class frigate in the U.S. inventory when the war started.
By this time, the second wave of Type IX U-boats had arrived in American waters, and the third wave had reached its patrol area off the oil ports of the Caribbean. With such easy pickings available and all Type IX U-boats already committed, Dönitz began sending shorter-range Type VII U-boats to the US East Coast as well. This required extraordinary measures: cramming every conceivable space with provisions, filling the fresh water tanks with diesel oil, and crossing the Atlantic at very low speed on a single engine to conserve fuel.
In the United States there was still no concerted response to the attacks. Overall responsibility rested with Admiral King, but King was preoccupied with the Japanese onslaught in the Pacific. Admiral Andrews' North Atlantic Coastal Frontier was expanded to take in South Carolina and renamed the Eastern Sea Frontier, but most of the ships and aircraft needed remained under the command of Admiral Royal E. Ingersoll, Commander-in-Chief, Atlantic Fleet, who was often at sea and unavailable to make decisions. Rodger Wynn's detailed weekly U-boat situation reports from the Submarine Tracking Room in London were available but ignored.
Popular alarm at the sinkings was dealt with by a combination of secrecy and misleading propaganda. The Navy confidently announced that many of the U-boats would "never enjoy the return portion of their voyage" but that, unfortunately, details of the sunken U-boats could not be made public lest the information aid the enemy. All citizens who had witnessed the sinking of a U-boat were asked to help keep the secrets safe.
The first sinking of a U-boat by a US Navy destroyer off the coast of the US did not occur until April 14, 1942, when the USS Roper sank the U-85. It has come to light in recent years that the famous "Loose Lips Sink Ships" propaganda campaign in the US that started in 1942 was not so much designed to deny German agents knowledge of vessels' sailing times (there were no such agents anyway) but rather to keep American civilian morale high by reducing communication about how much shipping was being sunk during Operation Drumbeat.
[edit] Counter Measures Get Under Way
The decision to implement convoys and blackout coastal towns to make ships more difficult to see came slowly. The situation began to change in April when Andrews implemented a limited convoy system in which ships traveled only during daylight hours. Full convoys were in operation by mid-May, resulting in an immediate reduction of Allied shipping losses off the East Coast as Dönitz withdrew the U-boats to seek easier pickings elswhere. The convoy system was later extended to the Gulf of Mexico with similar dramatic effects, thus proving that King's initial rejection of the convoy system was wrong.
In March, 50 Royal Navy anti-submarine trawlers and 10 corvettes were transferred from the UK for the defence of the US East Coast. The British also transferred 53 Squadron, RAF Coastal Command to Quonset Point, Rhode Island to protect New York harbour during July 1942. This squadron moved to Trinidad in August, with a U.S. squadron, to protect the critical sea lanes from the Venezuelan oil fields and then back to Norfolk, Virginia until the end of 1942. Royal Navy ships took over escort duties in the Caribbean and on the Aruba - New York tanker run.
The Kriegsmarine, while enormously effective during this period, did not go without losses. Sinkings of German U-boats at the hands of United States forces during this time included:
- U-85: sunk 14 Apr by US destroyer Roper off Cape Hatteras, first sinking in US waters
- U-352: sunk 9 May by US Coast Guard cutter Icarus off Cape Hatteras
- U-157: sunk 13 June by US Coast Guard cutter Thetis off Havana, Cuba
- U-158: sunk 30 June by a US Mariner aircraft (USN VP-74) west of the Bermudas
- U-701: sunk 7 July by Lockheed Hudson aircraft off Cape Hatteras
- U-153: sunk 13 July by US destroyer Lansdowne off Colón, Panama
- U-576: sunk 15 July by two US Kingfisher aircraft and ramming by the US motor vessel Unicoi off Cape Hatteras
- U-166: sunk 30 July by US PC-566 in the Gulf of Mexico, the only U-boat sunk in the Gulf of Mexico during World War II
[edit] See also
[edit] External links
[edit] References
- The War At Sea Vol II S W Roskill - HMSO
- The Second World War Volume IV W S Churchill - Cassel and Co
- The World War II Data Book John Ellis - BCA
- Operation Drumbeat Micheal Gannon - Harper and Row
- Merchant Shipping and the Demands of War C B A Behrens - HMSO
- The History of the Second World War E Baurer
- A History of US Naval Operations in WW2 Vol I S E Morrison - US Navy
