I was casting about for a topic for todays blog, and, in desperation, I started looking at “May 12th in History” type websites. Needless to say, a lot has gone on over the centuries. But one thing, in particular, made me blink.
On May 12, 1942, a Nazi U-boat sank an American cargo ship at the mouth of the Mississippi River.
Wait. What? There was a U-boat in the Gulf of MEXICO??? (Yes, folks, that’s its name. Don’t let anybody tell you any different. Not even Google.) They never taught me that in high school history class.
Naturally, I had to learn more. The U-boat was the U-507, and the vessel it sank was the SS Virginia. It was a merchant marine ship, and it was waiting to be boarded by a pilot who would guide it safely into New Orleans. At around 10 pm, the pilot had just pulled up beside the Virginia when the first torpedo was launched. It went straight under both vessels and exploded on a jetty. Unfortunately, the next two torpedoes hit home.
The ship was carrying 180,000 barrels of gasoline, so the impacts engulfed it in flames. There was no time to launch lifeboats. The crew had to jump into the water. The 14 who jumped in on the windward side and swam away (some while bravely helping others) survived and were rescued, but one later died in the hospital. The 27 who jumped in on the leeward side couldn’t be rescued. The gasoline had spread into the water and was on fire there as well.
This was by no means the only attack on the 48 states that we had during WWII. (I’m leaving out territories to simplify things, and because, other than the attack on Pearl Harbor, the other attacks probably did not feel like attacks on American soil to most Americans back then.) A short, and very likely incomplete list includes:
- The bombardment of the Ellwood Oil Field in California by a Japanese submarine.
- The bombardment of Fort Stevens, Oregon by a Japanese submarine.
- The dropping of incendiary bombs on Oregon by the Japanese in an attempt to start forest fires.
- The Japanese bombing of Bly, Oregon.
- The 8 Nazi saboteurs who were dropped off in Amagansett, New York and Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida with explosives intended for transport hubs, power plants and industrial facilities. (The mission was thwarted when one of them turned himself in and confessed everything.)
- Japanese fire balloons that landed in 15 US states.
But the attacks that hit me on a personal level were the 233 American ships that were sunk by German U-Boats along the East Coast and the Gulf of Mexico. 5,000 seamen and passengers were killed from January through August of 1942.
These coordinated attacks were called Operation Paukenschlag (Drumbeat), and they targeted fuel tankers and cargo ships. The US Navy lied to the American public about these attacks, because they didn’t want to cause a panic. They also didn’t want people to know that many of these vessels were not being protected by the military, because, despite President Roosevelt singing the praises of merchant marines in many of his speeches in a desperate attempt to replace those who were dying, he knew he only had so much Navy to spare, and, weighing his options, he decided that the merchant marines were expendable.
My grandfather, Otto Schon, was one such “expendable” merchant marine. (He was also living proof that immigrants add value to this country.) He died in the sinking of the Balladier by U-705 on August 15, 1942, in the frigid waters off the coast of Iceland. His body was never recovered. My mother was 17 at the time.
I’m just now learning that the Balladier was the only vessel the U-705 managed to sink. Somehow that makes it worse for me. I think my life would have been quite different if my grandfather had lived.
But, lest we forget, today is May 12th. So let’s look more closely at the Virginia and U-507.
The Virginia and its brave crew of merchant marines had been transporting gasoline, unescorted and unarmed, during most of its short life. It lasted only 14 months before its fateful encounter with U-507. The shipwreck then sat on the sea floor, increasingly covered with coral, for the next 60 years. Then the wreck was rediscovered. At that time it was pressed into service, in a sense, yet again.
It seems that the Gulf is prone to underwater mudslides which can damage oil pipelines and wells. Archeologists and Geologists can now study the movement of the Virginia, which sits on the edge of the continental shelf, to determine how changes in the weather, even small ones, reshape the sea floor. These scientists were quite surprised to discover that the Virginia, which weighs 10,000 tons, had moved 370 meters from 2004 to 2006.
In contrast to the Virginia, the U-507 was most definitely armed. It survived for 18 months, only 4 months more than the Virginia, before karma caught up to it. Only 10 of those months were in active military service, but during that time it managed to sink 19 ships and damage one.
The week prior to its attack on the Virginia was not a good one for the U-boat. On May 5th, a crewman broke his arm while handling a torpedo. Then, on May 9th, the Catalina, a US Navy boat, attacked it about 225 miles south of Pensacola, Florida. This means it was already in the Gulf, and we knew it. On May 10th, the Catalina attacked it yet again. This time it was 56 miles SSW of Pensacola, much, much closer to New Orleans.
U-507 was able to evade the Catalina for the next two days, long enough to kill 28 of the merchant marines on the Virginia. It damaged another merchant marine vessel, the Gulfprince, the following day, and sank a Honduran ship, the Ampala, three days later while still lurking in the Gulf. After that, it made its way to the coast of Brazil, where it managed to sink 10 more vessels from Brazil, Sweden and the UK, before the US Navy ship Catalina caught up with it again on January 13, 1943. An aircraft launched by that ship then dropped depth charges on the U-507, successfully destroying it. There were no survivors.
Americans like to think that our country is safe from foreign military invasion, but history proves otherwise. I’ve only focused on WWII here. Going beyond that period would call for a much longer post.
You may think that supporting Ukraine or NATO or the UN is a waste of money, but there may come a time when we need allies. You may think that the tiny bit of money that we spend to assist third world countries is a waste of time for us (despite the fact that it is hugely important to them), but someday we might need the world’s good opinion. And if we continue down this path of isolationism, alienating the allies we’ve had for decades, and letting down the friends who count on us, then, when we need them most, they may not be there.
If you think about it, the folly of man is scattered all over the sea floor. We could learn a lot from the wreckage we humans have caused. You just have to know where to look. But most of us either don’t know we should look or would rather not look. That ignorance is what will ultimately lead to our downfall.
Sources:
uboat.net is a fascinating resource. For this article, I focused on their pages about the Virginia, U-507, ships hit by U-507, the Balladier, Otto Julius Schon, and U-705.
U-Boat Attacks Of World War II: 6 months of secret terror in the Atlantic
5 Attacks on US Soil During World War II
Wikipedia: German submarine U-507
Wikipedia: Attacks on the United States (1900-1945)
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