The Second Happy Time - German U-boats Rampage Only Miles off the US Coast
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 4 ต.ค. 2024
- It was the "Second Happy Time" or more ominously the "American Shooting Season"...
At the beginning of 1942 during World War II, the German Navy ushered in a new phase of the Battle of the Atlantic with Operation Paukenschlag, or “Drumbeat.” Axis naval forces were given free rein to harass and destroy all Allied vessels, military or otherwise, along the East Coast of the United States. German U-boats did the heaviest lifting, ravaging mostly merchant ships early in the campaign.
During this operation, the Axis powers sank a total of 3.1 million tons of Allied hardware, or 609 ships, while only losing 22 U-boats. Historians criticized the Allied response to the attacks, with Historian Michael Gannon describing it as "America's Second Pearl Harbor"...
Yet, many reports at the time failed to mention this German attack due to U.S. efforts at the time to hide the truth from the public to prevent widespread panic...
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My mother grew up in Marblehead Mass and said a German U-boat washed up on the beach one night. The town came out to see it the next day and the Navy came and took it. The flash from battles at sea were a nightly occurrence and at 83 she still remembers the feeling that "Hitler is just over the horizon."
my dad told me when he was very young, he was on a ferry to nantucket and a torpedo went right under them. it was a wooden ferry, with a flat bottom and lightly loaded so it had very little draft and not much of a magnetic signature other than the engines.
right after they could see a yellow light plane dropping some sort of bombs on what they all hoped was the U-boat. the civil air patrol never really got that much recognition.
My father was stationed near Wilmington, NC. My mother said she could see smoke from torpedoed ships in the daytime, fire at night, and debris and oil washed-up on the beaches. God bless and protect the sailors of our Merchant Marine.
My wife's great uncle served in the US Merchant Marine service from 1942-45. He was wounded by being burned in a oil fire on a oil tanker on his third cross Atlantic convoy. The tanker was sunk and he and only 9 other's survied. Throught his service he was sunk two more times and survived.
After his service, he moved to the central part of the state and didn't even (He was born and raised in Long Beach Ca) like going to the beach with his kids...
Suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Poor bugger probably had nightmares every night about being attacked and sunk and hearing the cries for help from his doomed shipmates. May he Rest In Peace now.
I laughed when Grand Admiral Karl Dönitz was referred to as "Carl Doughnuts" by the closed captions.
Lol
Kwazzi I think I'll name my next dog that.
Theodore Olson you definitely should. Sounds like the name for a Pug though.
But why does Carl have doughnuts 😳
I turned on captions just to see this
Worth it
Blame Admiral King and his anglophobia , wouldn't listen to a navy that had been fighting the U boat threat for 3 years
King also forgot the lessons learned in WW1 about the need for convoys.
Just goes to show how one person in a key position can have such a large impact on events-good and bad
@@weirdshibainu
Yep.
Fortunately for the US, the Japanese were just as bad.
A younger, more aggressive Admiral at Pearl harbor would have launched another attack on Dec.7th, and destroyed the oil supply tanks and drydocks.
Some studies have said this would have delayed the US counter offence by nearly a year.
@@charlesharper2357 Yes. And that was part of the initial game plan to target oil and dry docks. So it wouldn't have been out of perspective.
Fighting and winning. If it had been 1940, the skepticism might have been warranted considering the toll the u-boats were taking on British shipping, while the Royal Navy struggled with the new u-boat tactics. By late 1941, improvements in tactics and technology had cut shipping losses in half, while the Germans were losing u-boats at a faster rate.
A well-made documentary, with great narration throughout.
Happy time just proves the old adage that every dog has its day and that dog surely did. Later the rug was pulled from under their feet and during the latter stages of 1944, U-boats couldn't even surface for fear of attack. 790 U-boats were lost in total out of about 900 made. The Silent Service of the Kriegsmarine-unterseebootwaffen suffered the most losses of any waffen the Germans had. 30,000 men going down with their boats! It was a severe war, a cold war, a deadly war and the only war that scared Churchill half to death,🌼
eh he talks too fast, too rushed. I slowed it to 75%, it's much more natural and digestible.
They also did the most damage, if they'd had twice as many in the beginning, Churchill would have been on his knees.
Chek your numbers, they include all causes, combat losses are smaller.
Germany startede the war with about 30 combat uboats, and ended it with nearly 300.
@Outdoors Bushman No shortage of Nazi sympathizers in the US before, during and after WWII.
2:19 Kolonel Klink! My grandfather was a merchant mariner and he was sunk twice by German u-boats. The second time he was the only survivor.
Werner Klemperer! (You beat me to it!)
You beat me to it, too! I think I figured out what that shot is from. See above comment. I posted before I scrolled down. Glad I did. Good catch, Susan!
Practice makes perfect....hummm whomed a thunk ?
@@ZnenTitan He beat me to it also.
0-2 is not a good kd
Disappointed no mention of the Civil Air Patrol flying Piper Cub size aircraft off the Atlantic and Gulf coasts. They would report u boat positions to be attacked by air and naval assets. They even had two confirmed kills dropping small bombs on them. They played a large part in ending the "happy times". After the war a German admiral was asked why the u boats ceased operating off US coasts. He replied "Those damn little yellow airplanes were always overhead"!
Evidently not worth a nod if they even had any impact during this period...
Those are some badass pilots.
BS to the quote.
@@stevek8829 This is taken directly from Air&Space magazine March 2008. I'm sorry I omitted the red part of the quote. My mistake. "In World War II, spotters in CAP aircraft painted red and yellow sighted 173 German submarines prowling America's coastal waters. In Flying Minute Men, a history of the CAP, Robert Neprud tells of a German naval officer who was asked after the war why Hitler eventually withdrew his U-boats from U.S. shores. "Because of those damned little red-and-yellow planes," scowled the officer." Apology accepted. Also this from another source. I hope these are good enough for you. "The sinking was perhaps the crowning achievement for CAP’s Coastal Patrol, which continued to operate for about 18 months (from 5 March 1942 to 31 August 1943) before being officially retired. During this time, the Coastal Patrol reported 173 U-boats and attacked 57 of them with 83 ordnance pieces, resulting in two confirmed kills. Overall, the Coastal Patrol flew 86,865 missions, logging over 244,600 hours. Coastal Patrol aircraft reported 91 ships in distress and played a key role in rescuing 363 survivors of U-boat attacks. 17 floating mines were reported and 5,684 convoy missions were flown for the Navy.
The footnote on that paragraph goes to this .pdf article, which describes the first kill on page 9. This ‘dot-gov’ site contains the same information. A link on the page quotes a book where it says that a Col. Earle visited a U-Boat commander and asked him, ‘[W]hat do you consider to be the most outstanding factor of your defeat off the Atlantic coast of America?’ The reply: ‘It was because of those damned little red and yellow planes!’
Bullchips...I dare you to provide a credible link.
I did a google search on this...there is no credible evidence that a Piper Cub was ever involved in a sinking.
Operation Drumbeat was forced to move off the east coast by only one group of combatants as reported by German Kriegsmarine staff.
The one month old Civil Air patrol (to the objections of the military) took on the task of patrolling the shipping lanes. The presence of aircraft on the horizon or anywhere a Sub crew could see them forced the subs to submerge. This prevented the subs from running the Diesel engines and prevented battery charging, which was needed for the electric motors to run submerged. Several German submariners were captured on shore and had been in the big cities like New York and Philadelphia buying food, cigarettes and news papers. 26 Civil Air Patrol crew members were lost. In Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, there is a memorial stone to four of those men. they were civilian combatants many flying their own planes and were eventually armed with Bombs after a Sub "Got away" and yet they received no or only meager compensation from the federal government for there efforts.
I love every documentary that these guy uploads, he’s a real teacher of the Second World War, keep up the great job
Yes they are the best. My fav
I think he does a better job than most actual professors.
JD’s brother from Scrubs??
I wonder if this is the kind of stuff that the navy teaches in war college?
Needs to spend a few bucks and hire a professional narrator. This clown is ruining all the videos.
Though too late, one answer the US Navy had for the German submarines was the Submarine Chaser. These were 110' wooden hulled diesel powered ships with limited armorment. They were built to a standard design by yacht builders from the Great Lakes to the Gulf Coast. My dad served on the USS SC-770 picking it up at Seabrook TX from the builder and then riding it to the Med where he was involved in the landings at Anzio. Due to their wooden hull and shallow draft they escorted landing craft to the beaches. Later the 770 was fitted with captured German mine sweeping gear as a design experiment by the Navy and they successfully used the gear laying the way for the conversion of some of the SC"s to sweeper duty. Her war diaries and logs can be read on the National Archieve website.
U boats came in canada, they even dropped spies in québec and left a meteo station in labrador. For those interested it is called the battle of st-lawrence.
I seem to recall a Nazi sub found in or close to the Great Lakes.
There are several locations in central Oregon where Russian and German POWs were kept,
in the middle of nothing. Some of the old timers recall talking to the men...most were let
loose and disappeared...the stories the prisoners told had wild tales of tactics of the war.
Why the camps existed, what happened to the men?
I will not repeat the dates and names or what this has to do with submarines until I know
for sure...thought the quick way to find out is to throw it into the air.
Here's a link to the Wikipedia article on the Battle of the St. Lawrence, including the names of the RCN ships and German U-Boats involved: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_St._Lawrence
They also surrendered in Canada sometimes...my father was aboard the HMCS Victoriaville when U-190 was escorted to Newfoundland.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMCS_Victoriaville_(K684)
@@828enigma6 No way could that have happened, it would have to go into The St Lawrence lock system .
I grew up in Amherst, Virginia and a lady from our church told me a story about 1985 that she had grown up near Duck, North Carolina and she and her father had been digging cockles on the beach one night and an inflatable boat with "at least a half dozen" German sailors silently glided up to the beach, they jumped out and apparently had a car waiting. The local kids used the boat as a rowboat. My grandmothers brother Erich Weudermann was the commander of U-506, he didn't make it to America but apparently had a heart, and was a good guy all the same.
Sound like some treason was being done on that beach
@@tonyballerxxxx oh sure, Germany has always had a population here that are down with the cause...
Freddy Marcel-Marcum the cause of nazism?
@@freddymarcel-marcum6831 indeed, 5%-15%
@@Chungus581 that's complicated, I'd say look at the rise of the Antifa BLM NFAC crowd, that's what drives it.
There are one or two U-Boats on permanent patrol in the Gulf of Mexico.
Several tankers were sunk off the Carolina coast, still within sight of land.
You should do a video of the US Navy Mk18 torpedo disaster, we went to war with a weapon system that had a 50% failure rate!
It was the Mark 14 torpedo. Drachinifel has a good video on it, its about 30 minutes long.
Are? Permanent??? Holy Crap they're still out there! :-)
Thought that was mark 14, but knowing shit politics,,,,,smh
@@SamSchott1 That's what I thought too. Like the Japanese soldier who hid in the jungle and refused to surrender for 30 years.
Thanks for covering some of this US Fiasco with East Coast defense!
My best friends dad and mom were on the coast Norfolk,(his dad was in the Army, fighting already), and he said that as a young teenager, they saw the fires of the ships at night, all up and down as far as they could see.... My mom's family in Florida, said this was happening as well.
He brother, my uncle was a Crew Chief in the Army Air Corps, flying Sub patrols in the Pacific, from Alaska to our leased air bases along Chile and Peru/Tierra del Fuego.
YES, we had Fields that far north and south.....
He was pulled, sent to Florida and trained aircrews for the east coast, finally...... He said he was there for about five months and flew out from the Caribbean/Panama/Venezuela all the way to Greenland, training Army, Navy, and Coast Guard aircrews. After that he was back in the Pacific, bombing and depth charging, Japanese Subs and ships.
He told me that, jokingly, that the only places they didn't see enemy subs on patrols, east or west coast, was on dry land.......
This history needs to be dug out and studied, but this also crosses Cold War Era secrecy, so much of the information may still be Defense Intelligence.
By the way, here on the interweb, there is a German historical site that has a series of photos taken from the conning tower of a U-boat, "IN" NY harbor, the east river (way up the Hudson), Brooklyn, at night, but they're very clear and beautiful focused photographs. They were discovered in a box of info/papers from the War, that haven't been processed yet. They put them up about six years ago..
Great information and history! I'm sorry I talked Soo much!🙄😏👍
12:37 -- The biggest factor for why the United States outright refused to follow England's lead in moving merchant ships in convoys with destroyer escorts, etc... wasn't just because U.S. Admiral King was concentrating on Japan... it was because Admiral King was an egomaniac who absolutely *HATED* the British. He despised them to the point that, if the British had initially recommended the U.S. send their ships by sailing them across the ocean, King would have demanded the ships figure out how to fly instead (and he would have insisted that not a single ship could go until they figured out how). He didn't give a single fuck about whatever the British had learned up to this point, he (King) was giving the orders now and, as far as he was concerned, doing the exact opposite of whatever the British were doing was the best course of action.
If today's historiography was a more balanced affair it would admit to far more individuals with bigger egos than patriotic fervour too.
"Very serious depredations were committed by the U-boats off the East coast of America until the convoy system was put into proper order by the exertions of Admiral King." Churchill below 1469
api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/commons/1943/feb/11/war-situation
The First Happy Time "From July 1940 to the end of October (four months), 282 Allied ships were sunk off the north-west approaches to Ireland for a loss of 1,489,795 tons of merchant shipping." link below
Britain instituted convoys after Britain declared war on Germany on 3 September 1939.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Happy_Time
Rest In Peace merchant marine sailors.
I didn't know that Colonel Klink was a U-boat commander...
thought the same thing
02:19 Saw that, but couldn't find any reference to him in that role...
@@gregdrew874 See my post above. Also at 9:34. It's from "The Silent Service U-47 in Scapa Flow" It's on YT. I thought his 1st officer was Russell Johnson(the professor from Gilligan's Island) but it's Kurt Krueger.
Werner Klemperer. He had an amazing life.
He must have been pretty busy, running back and forth between Stalag 13 and the east coast of the US! 😉
My Grandfather was Tug Captain in WW2 and push oil barrages to ships out to ships in the Gulf of Mexico , He told me,you could see Ships burning in the Gulf !
US covered up 90% of the ships sunk around the coast. Some you could see from land they made up stories.
Where was his tug based out of?
@@bottomtext1241 New Orleans
Bottom Tex
@@keithwarner1147 Botum Tecks
Love these videos, so nice to see something other than politics all the time.
Edit: Jesus Christ people I know war is politics but this shit happened 80 years ago. Get a god damn grip.
This is the politic of that time...
Kevin Barlow no Americans strictly only bombed during the day to make sure to hit military target. Germans bombed civilian cities and ships.
@@shawnlee2017 I understand that. We where on the right side of history. I was referring to the state department not publicizing the attacks much like they hide the effectiveness of the Japanese balloon bombing. The government did not inform the public of such attacks so the enemy did not know of it's effectiveness.
I'm sick of all the politics, BLM complaining, Antifa destroying stuff.
@@828enigma6 the brave men who served on the Allied side must be turning in their graves watching Marxist march openly in America today.
Best video you produced yet
my grandpa was in the Navy and served on Liberty Ships. never knew what he was up against till now
History was my 1# subject in High school. Im 34 an still learn more every day. Thank you DARK DOCS💖💖💖💖💖💖👍👍👍👍
YOUR show really is one of the best sites for history , Ther are only a few in this top category !!
Mark Felton is really good aswell
Just finished watching " Das Boot" on Hulu. I had high expectations after the movie of the same name. The series was much better than I expected. Worth a view.
Iron Coffins ! Das Boot !
I still can’t believe we are getting these amazing quality videos for free. Amazing.
I am from Honduras. On our caribbean front yard we have the Bay Islands. People there speak english so, during ww2 some were recruited to work on the Liberty ships. One of them told me he worked as a wireless operator
"tee-tee-tee- tee tee tee" he described it. He said he was sunk three times. On one of those days he was sunk two times. He described how the germans machine gunned survivors in the water.
My mother was about 9 years old during this time and recalled not being able to go into the water at Atlantic City New Jersey due to the oil slicks created by these attacks.
This one I never heard of by school history. My great grandmother told me my whole life. She I think was woman's MP or SP in Norfolk during WW2 she always told me they found a dead Japanese sailor washed up to shore line during war there. You hear them you think Pacific she retired out navy so she must know something. Tough lady use bounce for grandpa's dance hall/ selling moonshine by the shot hall before war.
I'm from Cape Hatteras, North Carolina where the Diamond Shoals AKA Graveyard of the Atlantic is. Born and raised and family has been there since the first Europeans washed up on shipwrecks. It wasn't mentioned in this video but alot of ships were sunk within miles of shore in the beginnings of the war. My grandparents and other Old Timers I've talked to remember vividly the ships exploded rattling school windows the black smoke and fires burning almost every night from a new ship sunk by the Uboats and the blackouts mandated even though there was no electricity on the island at that time they still were ordered to darken their houses windows and no light sources at all in order to keep the merchant ships from being backlit for easy targets and also to not aid the Uboats in navigation. Both sides of my grandfather's were in the US lifesaving service which was formed into the US Coast guard in the 30s and were put on nightly beach patrols to where there was always a beach patrol within sight of every inch of beach just out of fear of whether the Germans would intentionally come ashore or wash up wounded once we finally started sinking Uboats wgich multiple ones were sunk within miles of Cape Hatteras. For anyone interested research the Graveyard of the Atlantic off Cape Hatteras NC and see all the merchant vessels and Uboats sunk during the war I think anyone who isnt aware would be very surprised just how many were and its practically unknown among the American public even to this day
My Father told me stories of how he would watch as the ships burned off of Lake Worth Florida at night. He told me how the oil slicks would come into the Lake Worth Inlet and cause oyster and fish kills. Amazing the government ignored all of this.
Torpedo alley
Used to hate history but these videos are fascinating
At the same time the Canadian and British navies were escorting convoys just off shore in the same area from the Caribbean to Halifax with no losses
We couldn’t get them across the Atlantic with no losses, though. See SC-42 out of Sydney, NS I think
I always learn many new things watching these well done docs.
Coincidentally, I have been re-reading a very good book on this subject, "Torpedo Junction." Highly recommend it.
Another great installment of Dank Docs!
Thank you for pronouncing the "Caribbean" correctly. Great video. Amazing research, as usual
Excellent episode. Thank you for sharing.
Admiral King, the head of the navy, hated the British, and ignored all the advice from them, especially in regards to using convoys. It took the president to finally overrule King and start to use convoys. It only took 6 months and cost over 600 ships.
While King was no fan of the British, he did not refuse to use convoys. Important convoys and troop convoys to England were convoyed. Coastal convoys were generally unprotected because we had no escorts or aircraft to cover them...bottom line we were caught unprepared to fight a 2 ocean war in 1941. It was not until more aircraft and escorts were available that coastal convoys were established.
I love coming to the comments and reading others storys its great
Am I the only one noticing his pronounciation of German is quite nice for an American?
Nice video though. I love your history clips.
Lol yeah, Americans almost ways struggle with pronouncing everything, they always get even British words horrendously wrong but this dude obviously bothers to do his research.
He also don't try and sugar coat everything to do with the USA like most Americans do and will say it how it was and says when Americans fucked up.
@@stevefox3763 there are no British words, idiot.
@@wdavis6814 True. He probably meant pronunciation, idioms, slang and place names.
I had a friend who grew up on Cape Cod. When he was young, he heard stories from his friends' parents that when they were young during WWII they'd be out on the beach at Provincetown (the tip of Cape Cod) and some sailors who "talked funny" came ashore and played soccer with them. Later after the U-boats were destroyed in that area Wonder Bread bags and other familiar packaging would wash ashore so apparently they were actually buying groceries in P-Town.
At 2:18 that's Werner Klemperer! I'm guessing from the TV series The Silent Service episode "U-47 at Scapa Flow." Cool!
Thought I recognised the face. HOGAAAAAN!!!
Thanks Dark Docs ....your narration is spot on for this subject!...good job!
"Sandy Hook, CT" is in the middle of the state. The video must have meant Sandy Hook, NJ which is at the mouth of NY Harbor.
I was going to say the same.
"Episode of the Lost U-Boat!"
Man these videos are great. Awesome flow, research, info, and voice over. Great music and brilliant imagery. We must cherish this history, so as to learn from our past.
The 😢😢
Rick: “Carl! Bring me the doughnuts!”
This guy makes the best damn videos. Awesome narration and content.
Thank Admiral King for this.
"Very serious depredations were committed by the U-boats off the East coast of America until the convoy system was put into proper order by the exertions of Admiral King." Churchill below 1469
api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/commons/1943/feb/11/war-situation
Nick Danger is that supposed to verify my statement, or an attempt at a disagreement?
King was an Anglophobe.
@@redram5150 Six weeks after King took command, Secretary of the Navy Henry Knox sent him an approving letter. Knox wrote, “I am not surprised at all, but I am gratified, to know that the Commander-in-Chief of the Atlantic Fleet recognizes the existence of an emergency and is taking the proper measures to meet it.” link below
On 5 September 1939 FDR ordered the Navy to patrol the US Neutrality Zone. By May 1941 the Zone had been pushed east to Iceland, 3/4 the distance from the USA to Britain, and to the edge of the air cover limit at Sierra Leone Africa.
In November 1941 the US Navy began escorting British troop ships, see USS West Point. From December the Navy was trying to clear the ships on the bottom of Pearl Harbor. In April the Navy launched B25's to bomb Tokyo. In April and May fleet carrier USS Wasp launched Spitfires to Malta. In May the Navy lost one fleet carrier for one escort carrier, but handed Japan it's first major setback in the Battle of the Coral Sea. In June the Navy lost one fleet carrier for four IJN carriers at Midway.
warfarehistorynetwork.com/2016/11/23/undeclared-war-in-the-atlantic/
Nick Danger escorting military ships, yes, but merchant ships were ignored until much later, leaving them as fodder to the wolf packs. Note the date on your first attempt to prove me wrong is 1943. And the navy patrols, before war was declared by the US, were a paltry showing, thus creating the mid-Atlantic gap. Trying to save those in Pearl Harbor didn’t require relocating the entire Atlantic fleet, which King controlled. Same goes for the Mitchell raid. You’re really reaching, and forgetting that Germany declared war on us shortly after Pearl Harbor, preventing the Atlantic fleet from being diverted en masse.
None of this changes that merchant sailors was left on their own to die due to an active disdain to the British by King
The US shortage of destroyers you cite would have been due to Roosevelt having lent US destroyers to the UK as part of the Lend Lease Act prior to the US entry into WWII, NOT during WWI as stated in video. Woodrow Wilson was President during WWI.
Imagine if the Germans, instead of building Tirpitz or Bismark, made more submarines. The war might have beem more prolonged.
Edit: another cost-effective ship class used by Germany for raiding were cargo ships with hidden guns, which approached targets with false flags. One of which captured Automedeon which had documents stating that Britain will not send ships to defend her colonies. This was sent to Japan and helped in war plans.
Only until the Fat Man dropped on Germany.
They did stop building surface ships to divert steel to submarines in 1940. Tirpitz and Bismarck were supposed to be examples of six ships in their class. The German aircraft carrier Graf Zeppelin was also cancelled.
Submarines became almost obsolete after Turing and his team cracked Enigma.
It was later said that if they focused on the submarines instead of the surface fleet they could have made at least 100+ more u-boats than what they had.
Michael P The Germans built 1,162 U-boats - do you think 8% more would have made a difference?
A great documentary
Love these videos , so nice to see something other than politics all of the time.
I like to copy& paste common messages.
Amazing documentary. You’re better than most teachers.
Imagine if Hitler had listened to Doenitz and had given him the 300 U-Boats he requested by 9/1/1939. Could he have starved Britain out of the war by Pearl Harbor?
2 things would have taken Britain out of the war, if Doenitz had gotten his Uboats and if Hitler never took aim at Russia.
@@MidTennPews True. A 2 front war was lunacy
It would rather have depended on the British reaction. A major increase in U-Boat construction could only have been aimed in one direction, and the British, with vastly greater shipbuilding capacity, had the ability to mass produce convoy escorts.
My grandmother grew up on the mouth of the Mississippi River and she stated that she could remember U Boats coming up to the mouth of the river.
I was wondering if anyone had heard the tales of U-Boats coming up the Miss River quite a distance above New Orleans. Legend has it that early on in the war a sub (or subs) came up the river submerged at periscope depth on full moon night(s) and discharged English speaking sailors into rafts. The sailors waited until daybreak and went into a small town to buy food, alcohol and smokes. The guys stayed in cover near rivers edge and waited until night when then sub surfaced and picked them back up.
@@shannonwhitaker9630 incredible stories that have been lost to time.
There are tales of Germans going ashore for goods and services in several east coast locations and Texas coast as well. Maybe it never happened or did it ? We do know that atleast one Sub was sunk right near the mouth of the Mississippi however.
No allied ships have successfully escaped from U-boat 13!
@Definitely Maybe
Colonel Klink reference...Hogan's heroes.
Raise the periscope Sgt Shultz I seee nuthing nothing
This is something that was totally downplayed when I studied U.S. history as a kid. I can see how the government would want to downplay it for he panic factor, but also the humiliation of such a free rein of Uboats in our sovern waters.
It wasn't mentioned at all when I was in school.
Reporting to the public on Uboat activity off the east coast would've amounted to informing the Kriegsmarine of the progress and successes of their campaign.
Great use of old Werner Klemperer film footage/stock.
Well unfortunately he didn't made it in time to get his own footage of German uboats. Kekw
Old TV show, ''Silent Service.''
Great stuff ! I remember reading a story of a possible u boat sinking by a coast guard boat off east coast.
The History Guy has a story about that. Sorry, I don't have the link or remember the title.
Some Bloke ha ! That’s where I probably heard about it ! History guy has a splendid channel as well.
"It is time initiate Operation Recipe Retrieve"
"Or how about Operation Stein Grabber?"
"I like Operation Brau Heist 2006"
00:16
I bet your frat brothers were torn when they asked you to leave, you flunked out 3 years ago...
@@mtmadigan82 Were you trying to be clever? Cut down on the sodium doorknob.
@@krisfrederick5001 lol another good one bro! Your a fucking stroke.
@@mtmadigan82 I don't understand what you're so angry about. I made a joke about a periscope scene from a movie involving the naming of an operation. Seriously. Go take a walk get some fresh air. Chill the f*ck out
I love ur channel I'm from South Africa keep it up
Why did you use photos of the Normandie? It caught fire at a dock in New York City and had no connection to WWII?
Very compelling.
Nobody here has finished the video yet
🤫🤫🤫🤫🤫
thanks for adding nothing of value to the commentary and taking space away from people who actually have something to say
Do you mean that it is strange that the video ends rather abruptly, and doesn't detail the end of the situation at all? If so I agree.
R. M. Go kick rocks buddy
dakohli no I mean that I made the comment when the vid was posted 6 mins ago and it’s a 15 min video
so good to watch with my hangover depressions, thanks
The lookout towers and coastal batteries are still there at the DE beaches.
Yeah they are. I was born on the eastern shore and grew up working in OC, MD. There are quite a few concrete watch towers still there. Pretty crazy.
ShootTheRadio used to vacation there all the time when growing up in Frederick. Wonderful place or at least it was in the 90s/early 00s
@@kathrynradonich3982 I used to work at a place called Fun City Arcade. I'm sure we walked past each other and didn't even know it. Haha.
Most war time events are largely unknown to the public until many years have past. It would be interesting to know how today's events came to be in the future. God bless!
Anyone who does even a little research can find a LOT of information about all aspects of history. I've been studying WW2 since 1990, and I've often found that the best information lies off the beaten path. Unfortunately, most WW2 vets are dead now, so the sooner a person can find one and jot down their memories the better.
5:45 into video: What is cross-Atlantic "stripping"?
But I loved the old stock movie footage with Werner Klemperer. "No one has ever escaped from Stalag 13!"
I am so stoked that at 2:18 you included a shot of the wonderful actor Werner Klemperer, who played Colonel Klink on Hogan's Heroes. LMFAO! He jumped right out at me like he was sending me to the Cooler.
We’re very very lucky that Hitler was not good at forecasting or 3 dimensional thinking because if he would have followed Admiral Dönitz’s advice before the war Britain and the USSR would have fallen as Lend/Lease and Britains life line would have been strangled.
Yeah, Hitler was just a Pre-Antifa Soy Warrior.
Keep them coming. Thanks
We fish some of the wrecks off the coast of NJ
Where about and in what areas? Are there any types of memorials or museums, etc. to visit? I would love to visit some more historic areas close to home.
@@slumbynature4557 they are out in the ocean nothing more than gps plots on the surface unless diving wrecks in your thing
The German war machine was so close to being invincible.
Yet so FAR.
Saw this for a sec and it looked like a possible current event
Was told a story when I was in Atlantic City of German U-Boats sitting at the end of the Million Dollar Pier so they could listen to the bands playing.
U boats were nothing short of brutal.
U-Boats were effective weapons of war.
My grandmother was one of the people who kept track of the U-Boats positions. The stories that women had..... Great vid👍
Woohoo something other than Politics 😂
And the V thing!
you seem new in this channel . i invite you to see @dark docs videos.
@@MineXplousion I have followed for a few months, just don't say much.
Everything, especially war is political.
Great videos
RCN was doing it all in the early years, Why no mention?
The RCN never gets credit for what it did. I have only seen a few videos from TH-cam Historians that actually go indepth about the RCN, RCAF, and Canadian Army. Mark Felton has the most videos about such deeds. Check them out, totally worth the watch!!
@@LNMarls Mark Felton and That History Guy are amazing to watch.
This is good stuff man. I love your style
Most of the blame for the Second Happy Time is laid squarely at the feet of Admiral King. He was a well-known Anglophobe and ANY advice that the British provided, he did exactly the opposite! When he was advised to black out Eastern Seaboard cities, he refused. When advised to move ships by convoy, he refused that, also. When he was told of U-Boat movements and positions, they were totally ignored, because he HATED the British more than he feared the Germans!
And because the US Navy had NO Escort ships on the East Coast, MOST of the convoys that were eventually run were escorted by the Royal CANADIAN Navy (including my Uncle on the HMCS Arrowhead), NOT the US Navy.
As Churchill commented, The Atlantic War effort was 50% Royal Navy, 49% Royal Canadian Navy, and 1% US Navy. The US Navy were more of a HINDRANCE to the War effort than HELP!
Wow. Didn’t know they sink that many ships. 609 total. Wow.
Dang I was .5 seconds late.
Interesting story... nice video
14:10 "Near Sandy Hook Connecticut" Don't you mean Sandy Hook New Jersey?!
I was going to say, that would be one hell of a feat if they can sail past there... lol
Churchill "In all these circumstances it was inevitable that the joint American and British, losses in the past 15 months should exceed the limits for which we British ourselves, in the days when we were 1470 alone, had budgeted. However, when the vast expansion in the United States shipbuilding is added to the credit side, the position is very definitely improved."
Hansard WAR SITUATION HC Deb 11 February 1943 page
The tonnage totals seems arbitrary and useless info. The ship and human totals seem more relevant.
It's all about tonnage , you have it the wrong way around ships and men are irrelevant
Mathew Kelly
I don’t argue that humans or living things seem to be relatively worthless especially in war, I just can’t picture steel and iron losses make more sense or are any clearer.
Dark Docs, have you ever heard or done a video about the First American warship sunk by the Germans in peacetime before WWII? The commander of the German U-boat was called "Erik Topp". It was a dark night off the coast of New Jersey. Erik Topp mistaken the USS Georgia for a warship or some other ship that Germany was at war with prior to Pearl Harbor. The ship was struck with one torpedo and all hands were lost. Erik Topp when he found out that it was an American ship and he made a mistake. He felt very bad for the rest of his life. It was not honorable to kill innocent sailors, he said. Look into it.
Topp was alright, but Henke was the man. He's buried in America, shot to death while trying to escape. Wanted to fight instead of can peas in a factory.
Great narrative voice, well done
Great short doc
The First Happy Time It started in July 1940, almost immediately after the Fall of France, which brought the German U-boat fleet closer to the British shipping lanes in the Atlantic. From July 1940 to the end of October, 282 Allied ships were sunk off the north-west approaches to Ireland for a loss of 1,489,795 tons of merchant shipping.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Happy_Time
What a nightmare that so many people endured in the WWII.
Good channel! Bravo! You smoke corporate garbage entertainment any day of the week.
So much area to cover and nowhere near the resources to do it. It took several months but various strategies gradually began to end the second happy time.
Good video, King, along with his cohorts, failed his duty. On a side note, seeing Werner Klemperer, (Colonel Klink of Hogan's Heroes fame) in some scenes was classic. The shots are from "The Silent Service" a 1958 tv episode in which Klemperer played Gunther Prien, who navigated his sub into the Royal Navy's primary base at Scapa Flow & managed to sink the British battleship Royal Oak.
King would have had plenty of escorts if he had taken them from the North Atlantic convoys.
The King Visits British & Us Warships (1942)
th-cam.com/video/VxXTL1-8EdU/w-d-xo.html
The early phase of the Battle of the Atlantic during which German Navy U-boats enjoyed significant success against the British Royal Navy and its Allies was referred to by U-boat crews as "the Happy Time" ("Die Glückliche Zeit"),[1] and later the First Happy Time, after a second successful period was encountered.
It started in July 1940, almost immediately after the Fall of France, which brought the German U-boat fleet closer to the British shipping lanes in the Atlantic. From July 1940 to the end of October, 282 Allied ships were sunk off the north-west approaches to Ireland for a loss of 1,489,795 tons of merchant shipping.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Happy_Time
I really enjoy these videos
Super interesting 👍
My grandfather was a subhunter on the east coast ,i know the canopy on his plane malfunctioned and blew off at a high altitude and froze his eardrums .He had hearing aids was almost completely deaf .Ill have to find out more on him , i forget the plane he flew but i thought it was a torpedo dive bomber .He was a great guy ,funny i haven't thought of him in a while till i saw this video