U-Boat
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
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
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
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
“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
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
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
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
Throughout World War II the Allies enjoyed a certain advantage over the Axis that was purely the product of geography. Read more
U-Boat
Two men were seated on either side of a paper-strewn table inside an office of MI5, the British intelligence service, in the Royal Victoria Patriotic School at Clapham, London, shortly after the fall of France in the spring of 1940. Read more
U-Boat
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 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
Freighter Ehrenfels’ siren shrieked through the muggy night across the harbor. As the captain pulled down hard on the alarm cord, the alarm howled out over the steaming darkness, screaming that British raiders were in the harbor, alerting Ehrenfels’ crew and calling for help from ashore. Read more
U-Boat
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
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
