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Message
re: Does anyone remember the old sunken German U boat(s) at chandeleur islands
Posted on 6/30/23 at 10:20 pm to TutHillTiger
Posted on 6/30/23 at 10:20 pm to TutHillTiger
quote:
Yeah that is old rumors, that shrimp boats etc would see them. In the first six months or saw of the war we basically were a turkey shoot for them and didn’t do anything to stop them, it’s was a complete ducking bloodbath. They would sink ships until they completely ran out of tornadoes and ammo. We did nothing. no conveys no air patrols nothing. So they could have pulled into a dock in the night in New Orleans and resupplied and and nothing would happen. There was a fresh water well there at one time. I absolutely do remember that, it was a few feet under water most of the time in the 80s but still bubbled. There are bunch of specials on this. Nothing happened until there were 10,000 of people at a fair or something in Fort Lauderdale and a uboat sunk tanker about a mile or two off the beach and it’s came between the burning tanker and the beach so everyone saw it and photographed it and then people went nuts
Nah
1
Posted on 6/30/23 at 10:21 pm to thejudge
The story from Biloxi was always that someone in the New Orleans German community was helping them. Hell they could have pulled up outside shIp or Cat Island at night and been easily resupplied and not seen by anyone except a few fishermen or shrimpers. I never heard about them firing upon or threatening shrimp boats or anything back then, I think they just ignored them. I doubt many of them even had radios in 42-43. Even if they called in a uboat nothing would’ve happened
Posted on 6/30/23 at 10:25 pm to TutHillTiger
Here is a summary of first year of the war called Slaughter in the Gulf: The forgotten U boat activity in the gulf or something.
The sun was at its mid-day peak as the American freighter Alcoa Puritan, loaded with 9,700 tons of bauxite ore, plodded its way northward in the Gulf of Mexico on its way to Mobile, Alabama. For master Yngvar Krantz, his 47-man crew and seven passengers, the five-day journey up from Port of Spain, Trinidad, thus far had been uneventful.
It was 11:13 a.m. on Wednesday, May 6, 1942. Krantz and his shipmates did not know it, but their journey was about to come to an abrupt and disastrous end. Nine nautical miles to the north, lookouts on a German U-boat had sighted the freighter’s masts peeking up over the southern horizon.
Informed of the fast-approaching target, Korvettenkapitän (Commander) Harro Schacht, 34, instantly ordered a crash dive and the 251-foot-long U-507 quickly slipped beneath the placid Gulf waters. His 53-man crew manned their battle stations as the 1,032-ton submersible closed in on its prey.
When Alcoa Puritan was less than a half-mile away, Schacht fired a single G7a torpedo at the ship. Expelled by compressed air from one of the boat’s four forward tubes, the 23-foot-long torpedo with its 617-pound hexanite warhead raced out on what seemed a collision course.
It missed.
The Alcoa Puritan
An incorrect input of the target’s speed entered into the U-boat’s electro-mechanical fire control computer threw the torpedo off-course by about 15 feet.
Lookouts on the Alcoa Puritan saw the foaming wake of Schacht’s torpedo as it raced past. Krantz ordered the ship to full speed. As the 6,759-ton merchantman turned hard to put the U-boat in its wake while racing for the Mississippi River mouth just fifteen miles away, his radio operator flashed an emergency message: “SOS SSS. Alcoa Puritan, U-boat on the surface position 28:40N 088:22W at 1700 hours GMT [Greenwich Mean Time].” The freighter began moving faster through the water, but its reprieve would not last long.
On the U-boat, Schacht turned to Plan B. He ordered U-507 to the surface, and at 12 noon, his gunners opened fire with the boat’s 105-mm main deck gun. Although by now Alcoa Puritan was a mile off and making its maximum speed of 16.5 knots, or just under 19 mph, the surfaced U-boat could make 20 knots, and it began closing in. Schacht’s gunners pumped 50 rounds of high explosive shells into the merchantman, disabling its steering gear and causing other serious damage.
On Alcoa Puritan, Krantz called it quits, and ordered everyone to abandon ship in a lifeboat and two life rafts. Although several crewmen had sustained minor shrapnel injuries from the shelling, all 54 souls on board survived. For the seven passengers aboard, it was déjà vu. They were all survivors of the Esso tanker T.C. McCobb, which had been sunk by an Italian submarine off the coast of French Guiana five weeks earlier, and who had just endured seven days in a lifeboat before being rescued.
SOS SSS. Alcoa Puritan, U-boat on the surface position 28:40N 088:22W at 1700 hours GMT [Greenwich Mean Time].”
Radio Operator Aboard Alcoa Puritan
SHARE: FACEBOOK TWITTER
Ninety minutes after sighting the Alcoa Puritan, U-507 fired a single G7e electric torpedo at the now-stationary target, ripping a gaping hole in its side amidships. Three minutes later, the freighter and its precious cargo vanished beneath the surface...
Before resuming his patrol in the Gulf of Mexico, the U-boat’s commander, Schacht, committed an act of kindness toward the Alcoa Puritan survivors. Maneuvering his U-boat through the debris field toward Krantz’s lifeboat, Schacht ordered his crewmen to pass cigarettes, bread and drinking water to the Americans, calling out — in clear English — “Sorry we can’t help you, hope you get ashore!” He then headed U-507 on a “deceptive” course of 090 degrees, waiting until the survivors were out of sight before turning to the east-southeast. Several hours later, a patrol plane spotted the freighter’s debris and survivors, and the Coast Guard cutter Boutwell picked them out of the sea.
The sinking of Alcoa Puritan and – seven hours later – the sinking of the 3,099-ton Honduran steam merchant Ontario, were not the first ships that U-507 had sunk on its second war patrol. On April 30, while steaming toward the entrance to the Gulf, U-507 destroyed by gunfire the 2,881-ton American oil tanker Federal just north of the Cuban port of Gibara. And four days later, Schacht and his crew sank three more American ships – the freighter Norlindo and tankers Munger T. Ball and Joseph M. Cudahy.
But it was the two attacks on May 6 that finally compelled American naval officials to break wartime censorship and publicly acknowledge what they long privately dreaded: The U-boat war had finally reached the Gulf of Mexico.
During a five-month period in the late spring and summer of 1942, the German U-boat Force mounted a deadly offensive in the Gulf of Mexico as part of its worldwide campaign to destroy Allied merchant shipping. U-boats hunted with scant opposition from Key West to the Yucatan Strait, and from Florida’s Big Bend to the mouth of the Houston Ship Channel.
The operations in the Gulf were part of a wider “southern” strategy. At the same time, there were U-boat deployments to the Caribbean, in the North Atlantic east of the Lesser Antilles, and along the northeast coast of South America. While patrols in the Caribbean proper began in February 1942, the appearance of U-boats in the Gulf in early May 1942 marked a major shift in German naval strategy. A month after Pearl Harbor, Admiral Karl Dönitz, had unleashed a fierce assault on shipping along the East Coast. During the six-month offensive, his U-boats sank 225 merchant vessels totaling more than 1.25 million gross registered tons (GRT) along the Atlantic littoral. More than 4,600 merchant sailors, naval personnel and civilians perished, while Germany lost just eight U-boats and 332 crewmen.
As the East Coast defenses finally began to strengthen toward the end of April, Admiral Dönitz decided that it was now time to take his war against shipping into the Gulf of Mexico. In a conference with German dictator Adolf Hitler in early May, the U-boat Force commander-in-chief reiterated the simple strategy he had opted since the outbreak of war: “Submarine warfare is war against enemy merchant shipping,” Dönitz said. “Therefore, we must sink ships wherever the greatest number of them can be sunk at lowest cost to us, i.e. where we lose the least number of submarines.” Of particular interest to him was the heavy traffic in oil tankers transiting the Gulf laden with petroleum stocks from Texas refineries.
“Every tanker we sink not only means one tanker less for carrying oil, but also represents a direct setback to America’s shipbuilding program,” Dönitz told the Führer. “Therefore, it seems to me that the destruction of these American oil supply vessels is of greatest importance to us.”
Maybe this German U boat captain is the OT poster’s Grandfather. I’d do that would be really cool
Uboats in the gulf
The sun was at its mid-day peak as the American freighter Alcoa Puritan, loaded with 9,700 tons of bauxite ore, plodded its way northward in the Gulf of Mexico on its way to Mobile, Alabama. For master Yngvar Krantz, his 47-man crew and seven passengers, the five-day journey up from Port of Spain, Trinidad, thus far had been uneventful.
It was 11:13 a.m. on Wednesday, May 6, 1942. Krantz and his shipmates did not know it, but their journey was about to come to an abrupt and disastrous end. Nine nautical miles to the north, lookouts on a German U-boat had sighted the freighter’s masts peeking up over the southern horizon.
Informed of the fast-approaching target, Korvettenkapitän (Commander) Harro Schacht, 34, instantly ordered a crash dive and the 251-foot-long U-507 quickly slipped beneath the placid Gulf waters. His 53-man crew manned their battle stations as the 1,032-ton submersible closed in on its prey.
When Alcoa Puritan was less than a half-mile away, Schacht fired a single G7a torpedo at the ship. Expelled by compressed air from one of the boat’s four forward tubes, the 23-foot-long torpedo with its 617-pound hexanite warhead raced out on what seemed a collision course.
It missed.
The Alcoa Puritan
An incorrect input of the target’s speed entered into the U-boat’s electro-mechanical fire control computer threw the torpedo off-course by about 15 feet.
Lookouts on the Alcoa Puritan saw the foaming wake of Schacht’s torpedo as it raced past. Krantz ordered the ship to full speed. As the 6,759-ton merchantman turned hard to put the U-boat in its wake while racing for the Mississippi River mouth just fifteen miles away, his radio operator flashed an emergency message: “SOS SSS. Alcoa Puritan, U-boat on the surface position 28:40N 088:22W at 1700 hours GMT [Greenwich Mean Time].” The freighter began moving faster through the water, but its reprieve would not last long.
On the U-boat, Schacht turned to Plan B. He ordered U-507 to the surface, and at 12 noon, his gunners opened fire with the boat’s 105-mm main deck gun. Although by now Alcoa Puritan was a mile off and making its maximum speed of 16.5 knots, or just under 19 mph, the surfaced U-boat could make 20 knots, and it began closing in. Schacht’s gunners pumped 50 rounds of high explosive shells into the merchantman, disabling its steering gear and causing other serious damage.
On Alcoa Puritan, Krantz called it quits, and ordered everyone to abandon ship in a lifeboat and two life rafts. Although several crewmen had sustained minor shrapnel injuries from the shelling, all 54 souls on board survived. For the seven passengers aboard, it was déjà vu. They were all survivors of the Esso tanker T.C. McCobb, which had been sunk by an Italian submarine off the coast of French Guiana five weeks earlier, and who had just endured seven days in a lifeboat before being rescued.
SOS SSS. Alcoa Puritan, U-boat on the surface position 28:40N 088:22W at 1700 hours GMT [Greenwich Mean Time].”
Radio Operator Aboard Alcoa Puritan
SHARE: FACEBOOK TWITTER
Ninety minutes after sighting the Alcoa Puritan, U-507 fired a single G7e electric torpedo at the now-stationary target, ripping a gaping hole in its side amidships. Three minutes later, the freighter and its precious cargo vanished beneath the surface...
Before resuming his patrol in the Gulf of Mexico, the U-boat’s commander, Schacht, committed an act of kindness toward the Alcoa Puritan survivors. Maneuvering his U-boat through the debris field toward Krantz’s lifeboat, Schacht ordered his crewmen to pass cigarettes, bread and drinking water to the Americans, calling out — in clear English — “Sorry we can’t help you, hope you get ashore!” He then headed U-507 on a “deceptive” course of 090 degrees, waiting until the survivors were out of sight before turning to the east-southeast. Several hours later, a patrol plane spotted the freighter’s debris and survivors, and the Coast Guard cutter Boutwell picked them out of the sea.
The sinking of Alcoa Puritan and – seven hours later – the sinking of the 3,099-ton Honduran steam merchant Ontario, were not the first ships that U-507 had sunk on its second war patrol. On April 30, while steaming toward the entrance to the Gulf, U-507 destroyed by gunfire the 2,881-ton American oil tanker Federal just north of the Cuban port of Gibara. And four days later, Schacht and his crew sank three more American ships – the freighter Norlindo and tankers Munger T. Ball and Joseph M. Cudahy.
But it was the two attacks on May 6 that finally compelled American naval officials to break wartime censorship and publicly acknowledge what they long privately dreaded: The U-boat war had finally reached the Gulf of Mexico.
During a five-month period in the late spring and summer of 1942, the German U-boat Force mounted a deadly offensive in the Gulf of Mexico as part of its worldwide campaign to destroy Allied merchant shipping. U-boats hunted with scant opposition from Key West to the Yucatan Strait, and from Florida’s Big Bend to the mouth of the Houston Ship Channel.
The operations in the Gulf were part of a wider “southern” strategy. At the same time, there were U-boat deployments to the Caribbean, in the North Atlantic east of the Lesser Antilles, and along the northeast coast of South America. While patrols in the Caribbean proper began in February 1942, the appearance of U-boats in the Gulf in early May 1942 marked a major shift in German naval strategy. A month after Pearl Harbor, Admiral Karl Dönitz, had unleashed a fierce assault on shipping along the East Coast. During the six-month offensive, his U-boats sank 225 merchant vessels totaling more than 1.25 million gross registered tons (GRT) along the Atlantic littoral. More than 4,600 merchant sailors, naval personnel and civilians perished, while Germany lost just eight U-boats and 332 crewmen.
As the East Coast defenses finally began to strengthen toward the end of April, Admiral Dönitz decided that it was now time to take his war against shipping into the Gulf of Mexico. In a conference with German dictator Adolf Hitler in early May, the U-boat Force commander-in-chief reiterated the simple strategy he had opted since the outbreak of war: “Submarine warfare is war against enemy merchant shipping,” Dönitz said. “Therefore, we must sink ships wherever the greatest number of them can be sunk at lowest cost to us, i.e. where we lose the least number of submarines.” Of particular interest to him was the heavy traffic in oil tankers transiting the Gulf laden with petroleum stocks from Texas refineries.
“Every tanker we sink not only means one tanker less for carrying oil, but also represents a direct setback to America’s shipbuilding program,” Dönitz told the Führer. “Therefore, it seems to me that the destruction of these American oil supply vessels is of greatest importance to us.”
Maybe this German U boat captain is the OT poster’s Grandfather. I’d do that would be really cool
Uboats in the gulf
This post was edited on 6/30/23 at 10:30 pm
Posted on 6/30/23 at 10:38 pm to TutHillTiger
How a St. Charles Mansion Became Part of a WWII Conspiracy
The first part of the plan actually went well for the Baron for several years. Transmitting from the cellar of the Elms, he radioed troop movements, commercial shipment destinations, and the routes for each to U-boats (Nazi submarines) hidden in the Gulf of Mexico. With this information, the U-boats could either follow and overtake the ships or pass the coordinates along to the German Navy, allowing them to map troop and commercial routes.
The first part of the plan actually went well for the Baron for several years. Transmitting from the cellar of the Elms, he radioed troop movements, commercial shipment destinations, and the routes for each to U-boats (Nazi submarines) hidden in the Gulf of Mexico. With this information, the U-boats could either follow and overtake the ships or pass the coordinates along to the German Navy, allowing them to map troop and commercial routes.
Posted on 6/30/23 at 10:51 pm to TutHillTiger
Supposedly Cajun shrimpers would rendevous with them and sell them diesel and fresh food for gold.
Posted on 6/30/23 at 11:08 pm to TutHillTiger
Had a friend who's dad was coast guard, he told me about it and who to call. Was the navigation department at the New Orleans group. Talked to a guy who had some CDs made up. He mailed me one. Lost it in a divorce. Edit..not the right link. I'll see if I can find it
This post was edited on 6/30/23 at 11:11 pm
Posted on 6/30/23 at 11:13 pm to TutHillTiger
According to several articles about it, there was only 1 u boat the u 166 sunk in the Gulf. If you ever get the chance to tour the U boat in Chicago, its well worth the effort.
Posted on 6/30/23 at 11:14 pm to ticklechain
It's called AWOIS. Automated wreck and obstruction system
Posted on 7/1/23 at 12:48 am to ticklechain
quote:LINK
Hitler’s U-Boats sank 609 allied ships in American-protected waters during WWII. More than 5,000 lives were lost and over 3 million tons of cargo never reached its destination, as Hitler attempted to disrupt the crucial flow of supplies from America to Britain. The allies managed to sink only ten of these U-boats in American-protected waters during the war and only one in the Gulf of Mexcio—U-Boat 166. However, the circumstances surrounding U-boat 166’s sinking resulted in decades of controversy.
Posted on 7/1/23 at 1:01 am to ticklechain
Thanks man. I am waiting on Kenny and Co to confirm. This thread is freaking great and you can learn more from this thread than you can from the history channel. The shrimpers in Biloxi were all Croatians back then so I don’t think they helped the Germans.
In a bizarre twist they were replaced by Vietnamese in the 70s. But the bizarre part is that I discovered few years why the Biloxi Vietnamese never got with all the other Viet communities. They were actually Viet Cong that had tricked the US government into thinking they were allies. So when you think about US government waste and shite think about this.
We actually bought boats and houses for mfers that were blowing up our GIs the year before. (I don’t know about every family in Biloxi but this was told to me by Vietnamese clients few years ago, so assuming must be some truth to it.
In a bizarre twist they were replaced by Vietnamese in the 70s. But the bizarre part is that I discovered few years why the Biloxi Vietnamese never got with all the other Viet communities. They were actually Viet Cong that had tricked the US government into thinking they were allies. So when you think about US government waste and shite think about this.
We actually bought boats and houses for mfers that were blowing up our GIs the year before. (I don’t know about every family in Biloxi but this was told to me by Vietnamese clients few years ago, so assuming must be some truth to it.
Posted on 7/1/23 at 9:13 am to TutHillTiger
From June 10, 2001
Posted on 7/1/23 at 9:28 am to GreatLakesTiger24
quote:
Killed twenty men...
Meh. That's nothing. I own several propane businesses and one of my assistant manager's dad killed fifty men and got his shins blown off.
Posted on 7/1/23 at 10:12 am to TutHillTiger
No but I remember all the cars in the surf at fouchon
Posted on 7/1/23 at 11:06 am to TutHillTiger
Fascinating thread…I had no idea any of this happened.
Posted on 7/1/23 at 11:58 am to TutHillTiger
On the flip side, my uncle was on a freighter that was sunk by a U-boat not far from the mouth of the Mississippi. He spent several days in a life raft before being rescued.
Posted on 7/1/23 at 12:03 pm to Captain Lafitte
Sinking small sailboats and fishing boats.
The Germans were fricking assholes.
The Germans were fricking assholes.
Posted on 7/1/23 at 12:32 pm to G2160
Shadow Divers is a great book on an Atlantic U boat and it’s history and exploration.
This post was edited on 7/1/23 at 11:13 pm
Posted on 7/1/23 at 1:11 pm to LSUBoo
quote:
Plus that would leave them very exposed. Doesn't seem very likely unless it was an emergency situation.
All U-Boats would surface at night to charge their batteries. There are many, many accounts of U-Boat crews being so close to American shores that they could clearly see the lights onshore, and occasionally even hear the sounds of a nearby city.
America didn’t have any type of blackout restrictions and virtually no civil or coastal defense during the early months of the war.
Posted on 7/1/23 at 8:05 pm to Ghost of Colby
If I remember correctly during the 42 since we were so inept at hunting U-boats, basically not even trying, that’s when you wanted to be sunk by Uboats.
First of all, Germans considered Americans and Brits to be their natural allies, with Americans even more than the British. We had significant business relationships and a strong German-Anglo citizenry relationship. Hell Minnesota, Whiskey etc were basically Germanic states. Now one likes to hear it now but we were basically allies of Germany pre war. Hitler believed that but for the interference of the “Jewish controlled media” we would be part of a German-Ango alliance. They would have ditched Japan and Italy in a heartbeat for that to happen. His generals even begged him not to declare war on us after Pearl Harbor. Anyway, even after the war started they believed that eventually we would be with them in the end.
NeXT because we weren’t hunting them often the U boat captains would let the ship’s evacuate passengers etc at first before sinking the ship, give warning etc. Eventually those acts of kindness became too risky. In the end like 92% of all German Submariners were killed before the end of the war. They had the highest casualty rate of any service branch of any country in WW2. I think US Merchant Marines had our highest casualty rate
First of all, Germans considered Americans and Brits to be their natural allies, with Americans even more than the British. We had significant business relationships and a strong German-Anglo citizenry relationship. Hell Minnesota, Whiskey etc were basically Germanic states. Now one likes to hear it now but we were basically allies of Germany pre war. Hitler believed that but for the interference of the “Jewish controlled media” we would be part of a German-Ango alliance. They would have ditched Japan and Italy in a heartbeat for that to happen. His generals even begged him not to declare war on us after Pearl Harbor. Anyway, even after the war started they believed that eventually we would be with them in the end.
NeXT because we weren’t hunting them often the U boat captains would let the ship’s evacuate passengers etc at first before sinking the ship, give warning etc. Eventually those acts of kindness became too risky. In the end like 92% of all German Submariners were killed before the end of the war. They had the highest casualty rate of any service branch of any country in WW2. I think US Merchant Marines had our highest casualty rate
Posted on 7/1/23 at 9:05 pm to TutHillTiger
My Grandfather and a business associate named Heidleburg were in Grand Isle during the war with headlights on on the beach pulling crab nets out of the water at dusk.. They were detained because the authorities thought Heidleburg was using his headlights to signal UBoats off the coast. They let them go after questioning, but my GF said it never crossed his mind that being on the beach with a guy with a German last name might be a problem.
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