- Coast Guard Activity during WWII
- Graveyard of the Atlantic,” resting intact at 115 feet deep, a popular dive site known for its marine life and history, discovered in 1975, according to Wikipedia.
Key Facts:
- Sinking: Sunk by the USCGC Icarus with depth charges.
- Location: About 26 miles south of Morehead City, NC, in the “Graveyard of the Atlantic”.
- Depth: Approximately 115 feet (35 meters).
- Condition: Largely intact, listing 45 degrees to starboard, an artificial reef.
- Discovery: Found in 1975 by George Purifoy.
- Significance: A popular, historic wreck for advanced divers, teeming with marine life like sharks, jacks, and eels, with some torpedoes still aboard.
- Diving, Advanced divers can explore the wreck, which has become an artificial reef
with abundant sea life.
- It’s a distinctive dive site, sometimes dived after the SS Aeolus wreck
- The U.S. Coast Guard, a division of the U.S. Navy, has seen combat in virtually every conflict fought by the United States since 1790. World War II saw the Coast Guard come to grips with the Empire of Japan as well as Nazi Germany. This included going into action against Adolf Hitler’s vaunted submarine fleet, nicknamed “hearses” by the Coast Guardsmen who fought them to the death on the open seas. During the war, the U.S. Navy credited Coast Guard forces with sinking or assisting in the sinking of thirteen of Hitler’s U-boats, although the number was probably only eleven. Coast Guardsmen also captured two Nazi surface vessels, and they can take pride in knowing that they were the only United States service to do so during World War II. Additionally, two German U-boats surrendered to Coast Guard-manned warships at the end of the war, including one, U-234, that was bound for Japan, transporting a cargo of uranium and the latest German rocket and jet technology.
- Although the Coast Guard is one of the nation’s armed forces, it entered the war with virtually no experience in anti-submarine warfare. Nevertheless, Coast Guardsmen learned their trade quickly and adapted to combat on the seas in an efficient and deadly manner. During the long campaign across the open waters of the North Atlantic, battling fierce storms as well as the highly trained and well-equipped German U-boat fleet, the famous Treasury Class and other cutters earned the respect of both allies and enemies. Later, Coast Guard-manned Navy warships joined the battle and continued escorting convoys and sailing in hunter-killer groups through the end of the war.
- Smaller cutters made history by fighting and sinking U-boats right off the coast of the United States. One of these cutters, the U.S.S. Icarus, C.G., sank the U-352 and
- In 1942, they saved the crewman who was still alive off the coast of North Carolina. The Icarus crew members are notable for being the first U.S. crew to capture German prisoners of war in World War II.
- The agents were almost apprehended by the US Coast Guard after their submarine ran aground, according to a report on a failed German sabotage mission to the US during World War II.
- German U-boat expeditions near the American coast. seemed to be trying to undermine the United States during the war. munitions factories, establish a network of sabotage in the United States, and disseminate anti-war propaganda. They also intended to carry out minor acts of terrorism, like setting up incendiary devices in luggage depots and Jewish-owned stores, as well as attacking railroads and canals.
- Operation “Paukenshlag” (Drumbeat), a covert plan that Germany started in the early stages of World War I, was centered on a massive submarine attack against the US east coast. German U-boats, “wolf packs,” were searching for easy prey along the coasts of North and South Carolina by the start of 1942. Regretfully, U.S. interests discovered it in the merchant-rich waters there, under the watchful eye of incredibly unprepared Navy patrol boats.
- German U-boats sank more than 80 ships off the coast of North Carolina between January and April of 1942. In this period, the U.S. foolishly neglected to darken offshore lighted buoys and lighthouses. German submarine commanders dubbed the exercise the “Atlantic Turkey Shoot” as a result of this oversight. The Coast Guard ship “Dione” guarded the 5th Naval District, which included the waters off Cape Lookout.
- A cutter designed to fight illicit alcohol runners during the Prohibition era. The German U-boats were too strong for the Dione.
- To counter the German U-boats’ hostile presence off the eastern coast, the U.S. Eventually, the British allies who had created effective convoy strategies and had previously cracked the German code heeded their warnings and accepted their offers of assistance. However, at first, the U.S. was unwilling to ask for help from Britain. The region off the coast of North Carolina was dubbed “Torpedo Junction” in the early months of 1942 as a result of this oversight, and the number of casualties and losses kept rising. A tanker once burned for three weeks in a row in Lookout Bight.
- By the end of 1942, at last, the Navy reacted. They used aircraft patrols of the coastlines, deployed anti-submarine vessels, and adopted British convoy tactics. The U-boats’ previously successful aggressions came to an end as a result of this proactive strategy, but not before hundreds of sailors joined those already interred in the Atlantic Graveyard
.- protecting the United States. Early in the war, protecting the eastern seaboard from German aggression was crucial. It made sense for the Coast Guard, a division of the Navy, to operate along the beaches. The Coast Guard established the U.S. Coast Guard, which has a long and illustrious history of beach patrols that dates back to the nineteenth-century Life-Saving Service. patrol on the beach.
- Beach patrols served three main purposes and were mainly security forces off the coasts of Virginia, North Carolina, and South Carolina.
- The objective is to identify and monitor enemy vessels in coastal waters and provide information about them to the relevant Army and Navy commands.
- • To report enemy landing attempts to help prevent landings.
- To stop people on land from communicating with the enemy at sea.
- IALSU policing restricted areas of the coast, the patrols served as a rescue agency. The patrol’s operation was more than justified by the rescue function alone.
- The beach patrol was permitted to use horses in September 1942. The patrol’s mounted component quickly grew to be its largest section. For instance, 3,222 horses were assigned to the Coast Guard a year after orders to use them were issued. They were all from the Army. The Coast Guard supplied the riders’ uniforms, and the Army Remount Service supplied all necessary riding equipment. A variety of people responded to a call for personnel., cowboys, former sheriffs, horse trainers, Army Reserve cavalrymen, jockeys, farm boys, rodeo riders, and stuntmen applied. Much of the mounted training took place at Elkins Park Training Station and Hilton Head, the sites of the dog training schools. Known as “beach pounders,” dogs trained at the Beach Patrol and Dog Training Center, Hilton Head, S.C., Coast Guard personnel trained horses and dogs so that they could assist them in the tedious work of patrolling the Southeastern coastline. On anti-saboteur patrols, dogs played a responsible part in guarding U.S. shores from attempts by enemy spies and saboteurs trying to land on American beaches.
