The Burning Shore

January 13, 2014
In the first half of 1942, Nazi U-boats ravaged the coastal traffic of a still-unprepared United States as submarines like U-701 and its captain Horst Degen strove to sever the transatlantic lifeline keeping Britain in the war. American antisubmarine doctrine and technology were “a backwater function,” while American air crews like Lt. Harry Kane’s and the men of his obsolescent Lockheed Hudson were civilians in uniform—amateurs fighting professionals. Offley (Scorpion Down), a specialist in underwater operations, evokes the environment of U-boats that were themselves obsolescent—small, cramped, and operating at the limits of their effective range. Only the best commanders brought their boats back from repeated patrols. In three patrols U-701 sank four ships, damaged four more, and laid a minefield that was “an unparalleled success.” On July 7, 1942, Kane and Degen met off Cape Hatteras, NC. Degen was elite, but met his match in Kane: Hudson 9-29-322 became the first Army Air Forces plane to sink a U-Boat in American waters. Offley exemplifies the action as part of an American learning curve that led Degen to congratulate Kane on his attack when they later met in an American hospital—and after four decades they renewed contact, located U-701, and marked the site.

February 1, 2014
An authoritative work on the awful, early effectiveness of German U-boats in disrupting shipping traffic off the east coast of the United States. Having written previously on the Battle of the Atlantic (Turning the Tide, 2011, etc.), military reporter Offley focuses on a short, early period of World War II--in particular, one lethally effective U-boat that caused massive devastation along the rich hunting ground of the North Carolina coast. During the course of the first six months of 1942--a period the Germans blithely referred to as der Gluckliche Zeit, or halcyon days--a cluster of German U-boats marauded along the U.S. Atlantic shore, strangling the shipping lifeline to Britain, sinking scores of Allied merchant vessels, totaling more than 1 million tons of cargo, especially oil, and killing thousands of seamen. As part of a major expansion of his U-boat force, Vice Admiral Karl Donitz, using the newly refurbished bunker at Saint-Nazaire and other occupied French ports as launch pads, resolved to sever Atlantic maritime trading routes, which fed British fighting power. The Germans drew on their experience from World War I while taking advantage of American inexperience and ill-preparedness in the first days after the confusion of Pearl Harbor. Lt. Cmdr. Horst Degen's U-701 made three patrols during this period, the last encompassing a mine-laying operation in the Chesapeake Bay and numerous sinkings of oil tankers near Cape Hatteras, before U-701 was hit fatally by Lt. Harry Kane's aircraft depth chargers on July 7. Offley brings up the other factors that came into play for the U.S. Navy, such as the breaking of the Enigma code, interservice rivalry, taking advice from the more seasoned British, and garnering the necessary higher-level support for a convoy escort system and more effective patrol bombers. A knowledgeable overview and exciting re-creation of the final U-701 attack and defeat.

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