The following morning U-546, commanded by Lt. One of the force’s TBF Avenger torpedo bomber spotted U-881 around midnight on April 23, but failed to sink the vessel with its depth charges. By then, the slightly larger Second Barrier Force had deployed in a line abreast. These losses caused the German Navy to disperse the survivors of Seewolf on vectors towards New York and Hamilton, and divert three additional U-Boats to reinforce their attack. ![]() However, two days later around midnight, U-518 was detected by sonar and sunk after it was struck by Hedgehogs launched from the USS Neal Scott and Carter. Both submarines exploded catastrophically without leaving behind any survivors, reinforcing suspicions that they were carrying missiles.Īnother U-Boat was spotted by a B-24 patrol bomber on April 19, but managed to escape, and a fourth submarine managed to dodge pursuing destroyers. Though the U-Boat managed to submerge, it succumbed to a sustained depth charge attack shortly afterwards. Just a few hours later, U-880 too was intercepted on the surface by the Frost and raked by forty-millimeter antiaircraft guns at short range. Though it quickly submerged, the U-Boat was sunk under a sustained Hedgehog attack by the USS Stanton and USS Frost. On April 15, the submarine U-1235 was detected on radar shortly after midnight, about midway between the coasts of France and Newfoundland. Therefore, the German submarines typically surfaced at night to move at much higher speeds and recharge their batteries-but still did so at a risk. The diesel-powered Type IX submarines could travel underwater a maximum of only sixteen hours at roughly 4.5 miles per hour before their batteries ran dry. However, bad weather prevented the aircraft aboard the escort carriers from patrolling as actively as desired Navy a fairly good idea of where the U-Boats were approaching from. These were intercepted by Allied intelligence, giving the U.S. Meanwhile, the Kriegsmarine continuously micromanaged the approach vectors of its submarines via radio transmissions. A dozen DEs stood sentinel on the line, while the escort carriers and their escorts remained further back. By April 12, the First Barrier force had established a “barrier line” 105 miles from north to south to screen for approaching submarines. The Navy was convinced that these signs all heralded an attack by missile-launching U-Boats, and sprang into action, initiating Operation Teardrop and diverting merchant traffic away from the battle zone. ![]() coast the U-Boat of Captain Friedrich Steinhoff, who had earlier commanded U-511 in tests of rocket artillery that could be fired underwater. Another intercepted message diverted to the U.S. In March, the Allies intercepted a message from German Admiral Godt dispatching seven Type IX long-range submarines to “attack targets in American coastal zone” as part of an attack group awesomely codenamed Seewolf. Navy had a key advantage-the British had broken the German’s top-level code way back in 1941 and had been closely following the movements of German submarines since then, with the exception of a ten-month period in 1942 when the Kriegsmarine upgraded its encrypting machines. ![]() In Berlin, minister of war production Albert Speer promised that missiles would fall on New York by February. Two more spies, arrested in December 1944, gave similar accounts of a submarine-launched missile program. Supposedly, reconnaissance photos depicted what appeared to be launch rails on U-Boats penned in Norway. Edgar Hoover warned Washington on October 25, 1944, that Germany was planning a submarine-launched buzz bomb attack on the United States. After the FBI interrogated a German spy rescued from a destroyed U-Boat, J. Nonetheless, the possibility that the so-called “vengeance weapons” might be mounted on submarines and used to sow chaos along the eastern seaboard of the United States did not escape Allied commanders. However, the United States remained far out of reach. Both weapons killed thousands of civilians in London and Western European cities. ![]() The slightly longer-range V-2 could shoot up to fifty-five miles high in its ballistic trajectory before plunging unstoppably towards the ground. The V1 “Buzz Bomb” could fly more than 180 miles powered by a pulse jet before slamming into its target. Nazi Germany was the first nation to deploy cruise and ballistic missiles in combat.
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