U-Boat

Heroes of the Red Duster: The British Royal Merchant Navy

By Michael D. Hull

None of the Allied services engaged in World War II was in action longer or suffered a higher percentage of casualties than the British Merchant Navy. Read more

U-Boat

Nazi U-Boats: Rattlesnakes of the Deep

By Herb Kugel

America was not at war, but American sailors were dying when American-owned ships were torpedoed by German submarines. Read more

U-Boat

German U-Boats on American Shores: Operation Pastorius & Beyond

by David Alan Johnson

The U-boat landings of German spies off the coast of Long Island during Operation Pastorius were not the only instances of U-boats putting German agents ashore on the Atlantic coast of the United States. Read more

U-Boat

FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover and the Nazi Saboteur

By David Alan Johnson

It was just about midnight on June 12, 1942, and the Abwehr (Nazi Germany’s intelligence agency) hoped that Dasch and his three men, along with another four-man group to be put ashore on the coast of Florida, would be able to destroy factories of the Aluminium Company of America (ALCOA) located in the United States. Read more

U-Boat

World’s First Smart Weapon: the ‘Bat’

By Alan Alpers

On May 27, 1945, U.S. Naval Reserve Lieutenant Leo Kennedy was patrolling from his station at Yonton Field in Okinawa. Read more

U-Boat

Reginald Earnshaw: The Youngest British Casualty

By Michael E. Haskew

Duty in the British Merchant Navy was hazardous during World War II. Braving the stormy Atlantic, the expanse of the Pacific, and the daily rigors of life aboard ship were challenging enough during peacetime; however, during the dark days of the war a determined enemy, bent on bringing the island nation and its far-flung empire to their knees, unleashed a vicious campaign against Britain’s merchant lifeline. Read more

U-Boat

Hemingway Goes Sub Chasing

By Robert E. Cray, Jr.

“We are going to have Christ’s own bitter time to win it, if, when, and ever,” commented Ernest Hemingway to his friend and editor, Charles Scribner, at the start of World War II. Read more

U-Boat

Operation Pedestal: The Rescue of Malta

By Michael D. Hull

Located 58 miles south of Sicily in the Mediterranean Sea, the rocky, 122-square-mile island of Malta was the hinge upon which all Allied operations in the Middle East turned during the first half of World War II. Read more

U-Boat

The St. Nazaire Raid

By Flint Whitlock

Britain badly needed a victory. As if to underline Britain’s difficult fortunes, on May 21, 1941, the German battleship Bismarck and heavy cruiser Prinz Eugen dealt the island kingdom a serious blow by sinking the battlecruiser HMS Hood and severely damaging the new battleship HMS Prince of Wales during a furious engagement in the Denmark Strait.  Read more

U-Boat

Sitzkrieg on the Western Front

By Michael Hull

Within hours of the entry of Great Britain and France into World War II on September 3, 1939, the British liner SS Athenia was sunk by a German U-boat off the northwestern coast of Ireland, with the loss of 112 dead, including 28 American citizens. Read more

U-Boat

To Watch the Weather

By Marty Morgan

Throughout World War II the Allies enjoyed a certain advantage over the Axis that was purely the product of geography. Read more

U-Boat

Axis Leaders: Paul von Hindenburg

by Blaine Taylor

At 3 am, on August 23, 1914, a solitary figure stood on a darkened railway platform at Hanover, Germany, awaiting a special train’s arrival from Berlin. Read more

U-Boat

The Fairey Swordfish Torpedo Plane a.k.a. Stringbag

By Glenn Barnett

The spring of 1941, particularly the month of May, was a troubled time for Great Britain. The German battleship Bismarck had sunk the huge British battlecruiser Hood in just six minutes and was making a getaway to the coast of German-occupied France. Read more

U-Boat

The Nazi Aircraft Carrier Program: Erich Raeder vs. Hermann Göring

by Blaine Taylor

On June 6, 1944, as the massive Allied naval armada made its way from ports in England across the English Channel to launch the projected D-day invasion at Normandy, a German fleet sortie swept down from its home ports on the North Sea and from occupied Norway. Read more

U-Boat

Hamilton Fish III and the “Harlem Hell Fighters”

By Blaine Taylor

In July 1918, 30-year-old U.S. Army Captain Hamilton Fish, Jr., was in war-torn France with the 15th New York National Guard Regiment—also known as the (U.S.) Read more

U-Boat

World War II: A Campaign Against Oil? A Look at Ploesti

by Sam McGowan

World War II was the first fully mechanized war in history, and oil, both crude and synthetic, was a major factor in military planning. Read more

U-Boat

Creating the OSS: FDR’s Network of Personal Spies

By Peter Kross

One of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s longtime interests was the hidden world of espionage. In the months before the United States entered World War II, the commander-in-chief was dabbling in the covert world of intelligence-gathering, using a number of trusted personal friends as his own private eyes and ears around the globe. Read more

U-Boat

The Sinking of Scharnhorst

By Robert Barr Smith

She was a beautiful ship, long and sleek and very fast. She was christened Scharnhorst,named for Prussian General Gerhard Scharnhorst,one of the revered founders of the Prussian Army. Read more

U-Boat

Trade of 50 American Destroyers for British Bases in World War II

By William H. Langenberg

In early September 1940, the world was in turmoil. The battle of Britain was nearing its climax, and elsewhere global tensions ran high. Read more

U-Boat

Sculpin and Squalus: Fated Sister Subs During The Pacific War

By Eric Niderost

On September 14, 1938, fleet submarine USS Squalus (SS-192) was launched at the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard in Kittery, Maine. Read more