The Army Air Forces in World War II, Vol. 1 (archived PDF)

T H E B A T T L E O F T H E A T L A N T I C
rines had concentrated on the waters adjacent to the British Isles.
Then, when British countermeasures made those areas too dangerous,
they had moved out into the convoy lanes. As air antisubmarine patrol
became more effective (in the summer of I 94 I , nearly one-third of
the damaging attacks against submarines were credited to aircraft)
the U-boats had moved still farther afield, extending their activity
westward to 49" and as far south as Africa. By November, submarine
activity off Newfoundland had brought from Adm. Harold R. Stark,
Chief of Naval Operations, a request that the number of Army planes
stationed a t the Newfoundland Airport be increased to the full extent
permitted by available facilities.2 And from Newfoundland it was
but a relatively short distance to the coastal frontiers of the United
States itself.
Indeed, the only surprising thing about the appearance of the
enemy in U.S. coastal waters was that it took the U-boats nearly a
month to become active there after our entry into the war. Adm.
Karl Doenitz, who more than any one else in the German High Com-
mand was in a position to know the submarine situation, has since
explained this delay by the fact that the Japanese attack on Pearl
Harbor came as a surprise to Germany's political and military leaders.
Hitherto, U-boat commanders had been restrained for political rea-
sons from operating in American waters; and when the declaration of
war removed those restraints, no submarines were immediately avail-
able for operations in the American coastal area. In December it
proved possible to send out only six equipped for this p u ~ p o s e . ~
When they came, however, the U-boats struck with deadly effect.
Beginning on 3 1 December, both Army and Navy sources began to
report the presence of enemy submarines in American waters. O n 7
January, COMINCH (Commander in Chief, U.S. Navy) reported
that a fleet of U-boats was believed to be proceeding southward from
the Newfoundland coast for an objective as yet unknown. T h e objec-
tive became quite apparent when, on I I January, the enemy sank the
SS Cyclops off Nova Scotia and torpedoed the tanker Norness three
days later off Long Island. These sinkings head the tragically long list
of similar losses in the coastal waters which served to bring home to
the American public the grim realities of total war. The situation rap-
idly grew desperate. During the seventy-six days following the sink-
ing of the Norness, fifty-nine ships, amounting to a total of over
350,000 gross tons, went down in the Eastern Sea Frontier. Nor did
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