Of course, U-202 will be remembered most for Operation PASTORUS when she dropped four agents at Amagansett, Long Island, New York in an attempt to disrupt American aluminum and aircraft production. Here is how the New York TIMES remembered the story recently. Please keep in mind that this story is loaded with hoopla and hype as it was a follow-on right after the 911 tragedy in that city.

Sixty years ago, a gang of four terrorists fresh from sabotage school spent a week in New York, readying themselves to wreak havoc on the transportation system, blow up stores and cripple factories. They rode the subways, bought suits and ate at the Automat.

The men, Nazi spies, were caught but not through the efforts of any sharp-eyed civilian or cunning G-man, even through the authorities were on their trail within hours of their arrival.

The four saboteurs dropped off by a U-Boat in the fog off Amagansett on Long Island after midnight on June 13 1942, carrying crates of explosives and $80,000 in cash, certainly knew how to assimilate. As soon as they hit the beach, the leader of the mission, Georg Dasch, shed his German navy uniform and put on a shirt and tie, a red sweater, trousers and a brown fedora.

His timing was good. A few seconds later, a Coast Guardsman wandered up. Mr. Dasch who, like the other saboteurs, had lived in the United States for years before returning to Germany and spoke good English, convinced him that they were fishermen who had set off from Southampton, six miles west, and had run aground. But when the Coast Guardsman invited the men to wait for daylight in his office, Dasch balked, threatened him and gave him $260 to get lost.

The Guardsman left but returned with reinforcements, who found no German sailors but a pack of German cigarettes and after a little digging, the cache of explosives. The chase was on.

The saboteurs meanwhile, hiked to the Amagansett train station and, hiding behind the morning paper like so many commuters, rode west in silence on the 6:57 to Jamaica, Queens. In Jamaica, the man paired off. Dasch, a thin-faced 39 year old former waiter and Ernst Burger, a former storm trooper, embarked on a two stage shopping trip to keep their transformation to model citizens from appearing too “rags to riches”. They bought decent clothes at one of the shops that lined Jamaica Avenue, changed into them, then bought even nicer clothes at another store.

The other men, Heinrich Heinck and Richard Quirin, who had worked together as machinists at a Volkswagen factory in Germany, did likewise. They bought outfits, got a shoe shine, caught the subway into Midtown and went shopping again at Macy’s. The men did not just look like New Yorkers, they sounded like them. In 1940 – nearly half of the heads of households in New York City were immigrants. In 1940, more than 10% of those immigrants were German.

After checking into the Governor Clinton Hotel across the street from Pennsylvania Station, Dasch and Burger met with the other two men at the Horn & Hardart Automat on Eighth Avenue and enjoyed a meal there.

Three blocks east on 5th Avenue, half a million New Yorkers were marching in a day long war parade. Two miles south, in the basement of the Federal Court Building down town, FBI technicians were analyzing the explosives found on the beach while in the Automat, Dasch ordered two kinds of salad. He later wrote that his weakness, especially in the summertime, was coconut pie and a glass of milk. In the evening, after dinner, the two men strolled along 5th Avenue which was still crowded in the wake of the parade, and they paused at Rockefeller Center.

The saboteurs, trained in everything from how to drive a train and blow up tracks to American song lyrics to invisible inks, were not scheduled to strike until after July 4 when Dasch was to meet in Cincinnati with the leader of another group which had landed (from U-584) in Florida.

The next day, Sunday, they met at Grant’s Tomb. Quirin and Heinck arrived early & mingled with the other sightseers as they waited impatiently. Dasch and Burger were late. The four men argued over plans as they walked toward Columbia University.

On Monday, Quirin, who thought Dasch and Burger to be reckless, moved himself and Heinck from a Midtown hotel to a rooming house in a brownstone on west 72nd Street near Broadway. Quirin was looking for security, and his instincts were exactly right. Thousands of New Yorkers lived on just such a street in just such a brownstone. Having procured a comfortingly anonymous address, the two men spent the rest of Monday shopping. Somehow spending money seemed to be a safe and easy way to pass the time.

By now however, Dasch had decided to betray the mission and had enlisted Burger’s aid. On Monday night, perhaps to take his mind off more pressing matters, Dasch went to a coffee house where waiters hung out and he played pinochle all night with a man named Fritz, winning $250.

Wednesday, Dasch left for Washington to tell his story to the FBI. Burger took Quirin and Heinck to Rogers Peet Men’s store on 5th Avenue and ordered suits. The next three nights, they sampled the city’s night life, listening to jazz at the Swing Club on West 52nd Street and visiting a brothel on the East Side.

On Saturday, Quirin and Heinck went to the newsreel theater in Grand Central to catch up on current events, then they met Burger at Rogers Peet and picked up their suits. The men discussed plans for the next day – should they go to the Jersey Shore or to the amusement park at Palisades Park?

They never made the trip. On his way home to the rooming house, Quirin was arrested coming out of a tailor shop. Heinck stopped at a drugstore down the street and was picked up as he left. Burger was arrested in his hotel room. Two other saboteurs from the Florida team were arrested in New York the next Tuesday and the last two in Chicago by week’s end. The wheels of justice spun into high gear.

Attorney General Francis Biddle wanted the men tried in secret, in part to preserve the impression both in America and in Germany, that the FBI director J. Edgar Hoover and his men were master spy catchers. He and Hoover wanted the world to believe that the FBI had advance intelligence information and had probably penetrated a sabotage school and were waiting on the beach for them.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt ordered the men to be tried in front of a closed military tribunal. That was appealed to the Supreme Court which upheld it. On 8 August six of the agents, except for Dasch & Burger, were executed. Those two went to prison and then deported to Germany in 1948.

Remember, we said this report was filled with hoopla & hype…..

What we’ve learned at Sharkhunters through intense research, was that Dasch was a staunch communist who was strong armed into this operation and that it was doomed from the start. It was not even an Abwehr operation and the night before departure from France, the men got drunk in their hotel, were partying with prostitutes and running around the halls shouting in English to the point the local police were called, thinking was that Americans had somehow invaded that hotel. The entire mission should have been scrubbed at that point, but it went forward with predictable results.

We believe that Burger has since passed away but as of 2000 we were under the impression that Dasch was still alive in Germany and we are told, a retired stockbroker.

U-202: Profile and History