JIM was an attorney, a Doctor of Law actually and spent many years researching this part of World War II. He sent this information to us quite some years ago and we were waiting for a little extra space in our KTB Magazine, which is never easy. We have just learned that JIM is fighting an aggressive cancer which will probably take JIM from us quite soon. We’ve decided to begin his piece here so he may enjoy seeing it in print. Thanks, JIM.

During the early months of World War II, North Carolina outer banks residents were the most susceptible of any along the Atlantic seaboard to rumors and misinformation.

The isolated villages at Hatteras and Ocracoke on these barrier islands were without means of receiving current news of the war. Picture yourself living under those conditions and waking up at night with the windows rattling from concussions of ships being torpedoed and looking out on the horizon of the ocean to see as many as five ships at one time burning.

Most outer banks residents earned their living by fishing, and many were without formal education and as far as they were concerned, invasion was imminent and their lives were severely threatened. Rumors ran amok and you could not blame them. These people were witnessing the war firsthand much more graphically than the west coast Americans, who the country seemed to think were at great risk. For many, a mail boat several times a week, was all the news they received except what they heard on the radio. As we know, the U.S. Government in the early part of the war particularly, highly censored all radio broadcasts after the Germans were initially able to pick up the names of ships being sunk and weather information from local radio stations along the coast. During the first few months of 1942, over sixty ships were sunk off the North Carolina outer banks between Cape Lookout and the Virginia border.

Now it is quite a contrast to compare the news coverage that we saw in the Persian Gulf War. We were able to sit by our television and watch the actual initial bombing of Baghdad and hear the commentators, generals, admirals, the President and even Saddam Hussein give the status of the war. Conversely, these outer banks residents were completely in the dark in World War II.

When I vacationed at Atlantic Beach or Morehead City, North Carolina in early WW II, I remember hearing rumors of German spies being caught with theater tickets from the Morehead City Theater in their pockets. These were never proven true and in fact, the FBI, between January 1942 and May 1943, investigated over 500 reports along our coasts of such spies signaling to submarines etc. but each one was a false alarm.

EDITOR NOTE - such rumors persisted all over America. There were crazy stories of U-boat officer’s bodies being washed ashore at New York or New Jersey and they were wearing tuxedoes, & had tickets to Broadway theaters in their pockets. There were stories of German U-boaters coming ashore in rubber rafts to buy food at local stores. A fellow who used to publish a small military history magazine wrote an article about the USN ship his father served aboard capturing a German U-boat in the Gulf of Mexico and it had bread from a local bakery in the galley. A dive shop owner in Florida told us that thousands of U-Bootfahrer were taught to speak American English, then they were each given a few hundred thousand counterfeit American dollars and loaded aboard three hundred U-boats headed for America. The men came ashore to destroy the American economy and the U-boats were all scuttled in shallow water off the Florida coast. Each rumor was crazier than the other and they were all just that - war stories without any foundation in fact at all.

The only spies put ashore by submarine were at Long Island (NY) and Ponte Vedra Beach (FL). These were caught because of one spy who turned state’s evidence. There were also two landed in Maine in November 1944.

I recall houses on the coast having to have blackout curtains at night and cars had to have their headlights painted so only a small amount of light would be emitted.

During those early months of 1942, most of the sinkings along the coast occurred by submarines on the surface at night. They were much faster on the surface, seventeen to eighteen knots rather than seven knots submerged, and they would usually fire one torpedo because there were so many targets and they were saving as many as possible. This usually allowed the crew to disembark, then the U-boat would simply stand off and sink the ship with its deck gun.

Conversely, American submarines in the Pacific had a standard procedure of firing three initially. Obviously, if all three were accurate and the ship was not too large, there was not much left of the ship of the crew.

EXPERIENCE OF THE COASTAL RESIDENTS

On Harker’s Island, a small island between Beaufort and Cape Lookout, Paul Tyndall (former member of the North Carolina House of Representatives) remembers well the early months of World War II. He was the principal of the local school at Harker’s Island. The residents of the island at that time consisted of many families who had moved over from a whaling village at Cape Lookout after the hurricane of 1899. The island was isolated with no telephones and at that time, a bridge connecting the island with the mainland had not been completed.

Soon after the war started, passes were required for citizens to go over on the outer banks to fish. Tyndall remembers seeing the many ducks and loons washed ashore covered in oil from tankers that were sunk off the coast. At night, he recalled that windows would occasionally be blown out from explosions of ships offshore

In this atmosphere, rumors got started early about German spies and the possibility of signals from shore being given to U-boats. At Tyndall’s school, there was a teacher of German descent who was immediately suspected of being a spy and even followed by well-intentioned natives who suspected him of foul play. When this teacher began to leave his home early in the morning to cross over to the mainland, the citizens immediately suspected he was rendezvousing with the enemy. As it turned out, he was only going to get milk for his children. However, by the end of the school year, he was forced to leave the island and seek employment elsewhere.

One day the principal noticed that many of the boys in school who usually came barefooted were wearing new Florsheim shoes. Investigation revealed that these had washed up on the outer banks from a merchant ship that was sunk by a U-boat. The fathers of these children, who were fishermen, had quickly commandeered these shoes and the children wore them proudly.

During the spring of 1942, Tyndall’s wife had to be transported to the Morehead City Hospital with a serious appendicitis and while she was a patient there, he visited the hospital daily and saw many burn victims being treated. These were seamen who had been rescued off the coast from burning tankers and he even assisted the nursing staff in caring for these patients as they were shorthanded and the hospital was overflowing at the time. The public was not made aware of this for fear of panic along the coast.

In fact, on 1 April 1942, the Navy, after nearly three months of bad news, announced that twenty-one Axis submarines had been sunk in the Atlantic. This was good news for the beleaguered coastal residents, but absolutely false. The Navy did not sink the first East Coast submarine until 14 April.

EDITOR NOTE - That was U-85, sunk by USS ROPER

On the sound near Salter Path, NC a small fishing village west of Atlantic Beach lived Mrs. Alice Hoffman, whose niece married Theodore Roosevelt, Jr. She had purchased approximately a nine mile portion of Bogue Banks in the early 1900’s. Her name, of German origin, spurred many rumors that she was aiding the enemy. One such rumor had Mrs. Hoffman refueling submarines from the dock of her home. Since the water was only a few feet deep in the sound, even I, who was six years old at the time, could figure out that this was impossible.

After the war, I visited Salter Path which at that time, was still accessible only by boat or dirt road, and talked to fishing families who were quick to tell of windows being blown out by exploding ships just off the coast, much debris and oil on the beach, and suspicious persons seen about during the spring of 1942.

Further up the coast at Ocracoke Island, Jack Willis, who was then in his late teens and later served in the Navy, remembers seeing as many as four or five ships burning off the coast at night.

Both he and long time native Thurston Gaskill, adamantly refute rumors among vacationers that native fishermen assisted German submarines off the coast. In fact, further investigation through the German Military Historical Research Office has proved their contentions correct. Captain Werner Rahn, a German historian, in an interview in September 1987, emphatically stated that he had read all the U-boat logs concerning the East Coast activity and there was absolutely no evidence of islanders selling supplies to any U-boats and he does not believe it happened either on the East Coast or in the Caribbean area later on.

Some, including U-123 captained by Reinhard Hardegen, moved further south off Florida and the Caribbean where the ‘turkey shoot’ continued unabated. In one incident, Hardegen showed compassion for Florida residents watching from shore when he brought his submarine around between a burning tanker and the beach so that shells from his deck gun would not fall ashore.

EDITOR NOTE - this was during the second Feindfahrt (war patrol) of REINHARD HARDEGEN (102-LIFE-1985) and U-123 in American waters. On 11 April 1942, he used his last torpedo on the brand new tanker GULFAMERICA. The hit stopped the ship, but she was not sinking so HARDEGEN decided to put her down with his deck gun. He saw cars parking along the beach to watch and he realized that any overshots would hit these civilians, so he put his submarine into the dangerous shallow waters between GULFAMERICA and the beach so any overshots would go harmlessly out to sea. He waited for the crew to get clear of the tanker, then he sank her with the 105mm deck gun.

Part 2 [KTB 163]