The Burning Shore
I remember seeing an American oil tanker burning offshore, early in 'The War.' That's what my generation calls World War II.
My Dad and I were on the boardwalk in Coney Island in Brooklyn, New York City. It was just around sunset in the summer of 1942. I can still see it. I remember that I was licking a vanilla ice cream cone. My Mother and I spent the summers at my Aunt's house in Sea Gate, a gated community at the western tip of Coney Island, a popular summer resort in the Borough of Brooklyn, which is at the western tip of Long Island in the mid-Atlantic state of New York. My Dad would come on the weekends. He and I would often walk on the boardwalk and feel the cool evening breezes. I really loved the ice cream cones...;-)
I remember that seeing the burning oil tanker was frightening. And I could see how worried my Father was. He explained to me what it was that we were seeing.
"The Burning Shore" by Ed Offley, describes a similar but earlier event in January 1942.
The U.S. Navy did not deploy its idle destroyers in the Atlantic for anti-submarine warfare for many months.
I recently found out that the problem was Admiral King being focused only on the Pacific Navy. He was in a complete state of denial about the much more serious threat in the Atlantic.
Since so many Americans could see what was happening all along our Eastern coast, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt finally ordered the Atlantic Navy to take action.
=======================================================
Here is an excerpt from the book:
"The German submarine glided through the icy water past New York City, its captain noting the glowing skyscrapers of Manhattan and then Coney Island’s brilliantly-lit Ferris wheel. Soon his lookouts spotted a large oil tanker, steaming ahead without an escort. Maneuvering into position, the captain easily acquired his target, framed by the city’s lights, and fired a torpedo into the vessel, sending a fireball into the sky worthy of America’s most dazzling city.
It was January 1942, the beginning of one of America’s most important, and underappreciated, campaigns to defend the homeland. Peak operations would continue – below, on and above the seas from Florida to New England – through the summer, influencing the fate of World War II and interring ships and sailors from several countries in watery graves off what are now some of America’s most popular beaches and harbors."
This is the gripping story told in Ed Offley’s newest book, The Burning Shore: How Hitler’s U-Boats Brought World War II to America (Basic Books, 2014).
While the circumstances of this battle are unique, the oft competing roles played by bureaucratic infighting, intelligence collection, combat leadership, and blind luck will be familiar to students of America’s most recent conflicts.
The German submarine, or “U-boat,” threat of early 1942 certainly came as no surprise to America’s political and military leadership. Indeed, the U.S. Navy and German subs had joined battle months earlier, even before the war was declared, when President Roosevelt ordered the Navy to protect allied shipping.
When official hostilities began, top brass recognized the “imminent probability of submarine attack” along the East Coast, thanks in large part to British intelligence. Yet the admirals failed to respond effectively. Part of the problem was logistical – there were not enough warships and patrol aircraft to go around, and right after Pearl Harbor the West Coast and Pacific Theater seemed a more urgent place to deploy them. However, even those assets available were not focused effectively and the admirals failed to adopt countermeasures already proven by Britain while defending its coasts.
There was infighting between the Navy and U.S. Army Air Forces, which flew antisubmarine aircraft along the coast. As in other conflicts, it took the U.S. military too long to rectify its mistakes, but once the right strategies were implemented the enemy paid dearly. Offley provides stinging insights on the missteps of headquarters on both sides and the contrasting ingenuity of individual airmen and sailors.
Colorful and sometimes unforgettable anecdotes are sprinkled throughout, such as the claustrophobic escape of Germans from a flooding submarine on ocean’s bottom; U.S. aviators tossing their own life preservers to enemy sailors swimming for their lives, and a staff officer accidentally setting his pants afire during a meeting with an officious admiral.
The awful price of the war also emerges in statistics provided by Offley. As the Army Air Forces ramped up for worldwide operations during the first half of 1942, four aviators a day died in stateside training, in some months exceeding the toll of overseas combat. On the enemy side, 75 percent of German U-boat crewmen involved in the Battle of the Atlantic’s North American campaign perished at sea."
The Burning Shore
I remember seeing an American oil tanker burning offshore, early in 'The War.' That's what my generation calls World War II.
My Dad and I were on the boardwalk in Coney Island in Brooklyn, New York City. It was just around sunset in the summer of 1942. I can still see it. I remember that I was licking a vanilla ice cream cone. My Mother and I spent the summers at my Aunt's house in Sea Gate, a gated community at the western tip of Coney Island, a popular summer resort in the Borough of Brooklyn, which is at the western tip of Long Island in the mid-Atlantic state of New York. My Dad would come on the weekends. He and I would often walk on the boardwalk and feel the cool evening breezes. I really loved the ice cream cones...;-)
I remember that seeing the burning oil tanker was frightening. And I could see how worried my Father was. He explained to me what it was that we were seeing.
"The Burning Shore" by Ed Offley, describes a similar but earlier event in January 1942.
The U.S. Navy did not deploy its idle destroyers in the Atlantic for anti-submarine warfare for many months.
I recently found out that the problem was Admiral King being focused only on the Pacific Navy. He was in a complete state of denial about the much more serious threat in the Atlantic.
Since so many Americans could see what was happening all along our Eastern coast, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt finally ordered the Atlantic Navy to take action.
=======================================================
Here is an excerpt from the book:
"The German submarine glided through the icy water past New York City, its captain noting the glowing skyscrapers of Manhattan and then Coney Island’s brilliantly-lit Ferris wheel. Soon his lookouts spotted a large oil tanker, steaming ahead without an escort. Maneuvering into position, the captain easily acquired his target, framed by the city’s lights, and fired a torpedo into the vessel, sending a fireball into the sky worthy of America’s most dazzling city.
It was January 1942, the beginning of one of America’s most important, and underappreciated, campaigns to defend the homeland. Peak operations would continue – below, on and above the seas from Florida to New England – through the summer, influencing the fate of World War II and interring ships and sailors from several countries in watery graves off what are now some of America’s most popular beaches and harbors."
This is the gripping story told in Ed Offley’s newest book, The Burning Shore: How Hitler’s U-Boats Brought World War II to America (Basic Books, 2014).
While the circumstances of this battle are unique, the oft competing roles played by bureaucratic infighting, intelligence collection, combat leadership, and blind luck will be familiar to students of America’s most recent conflicts.
The German submarine, or “U-boat,” threat of early 1942 certainly came as no surprise to America’s political and military leadership. Indeed, the U.S. Navy and German subs had joined battle months earlier, even before the war was declared, when President Roosevelt ordered the Navy to protect allied shipping.
When official hostilities began, top brass recognized the “imminent probability of submarine attack” along the East Coast, thanks in large part to British intelligence. Yet the admirals failed to respond effectively. Part of the problem was logistical – there were not enough warships and patrol aircraft to go around, and right after Pearl Harbor the West Coast and Pacific Theater seemed a more urgent place to deploy them. However, even those assets available were not focused effectively and the admirals failed to adopt countermeasures already proven by Britain while defending its coasts.
There was infighting between the Navy and U.S. Army Air Forces, which flew antisubmarine aircraft along the coast. As in other conflicts, it took the U.S. military too long to rectify its mistakes, but once the right strategies were implemented the enemy paid dearly. Offley provides stinging insights on the missteps of headquarters on both sides and the contrasting ingenuity of individual airmen and sailors.
Colorful and sometimes unforgettable anecdotes are sprinkled throughout, such as the claustrophobic escape of Germans from a flooding submarine on ocean’s bottom; U.S. aviators tossing their own life preservers to enemy sailors swimming for their lives, and a staff officer accidentally setting his pants afire during a meeting with an officious admiral.
The awful price of the war also emerges in statistics provided by Offley. As the Army Air Forces ramped up for worldwide operations during the first half of 1942, four aviators a day died in stateside training, in some months exceeding the toll of overseas combat. On the enemy side, 75 percent of German U-boat crewmen involved in the Battle of the Atlantic’s North American campaign perished at sea."