Description
It is January 1942. Nazi Germany is about to commence an assault along the US East Coast, but this “Atlantic Pearl Harbor” would prove far more devastating than Japan’s attack on Hawaii five weeks earlier. The wolves are closing in, and few Americans realize their beaches and boardwalks will soon witness the worst naval defeat in US history.
The United States is already grappling with its unpreparedness for war as the Japanese Empire annihilates US forces in the Far East and the Nazis stand triumphant over vast swaths of Europe. Britain’s survival, meanwhile, depends on cargoes delivered by civilian-manned merchant ships. America’s economic resources and latent military strength represent a light in the darkness—yet Hitler’s favorite admiral also knows this, and he has set in motion a plan of unprecedented boldness.
The ensuing fiery months saw German submarines, or “U-boats,” sink hundreds of ships from Maine to Texas. This gambit, which threatened to cripple the Allies, pitted Germans against Americans in a desperate struggle that stained East Coast waters with blood and oil. Plying the seas amid this deadly game of cat-and-mouse was a motley but stalwart contingent of civilian merchant mariners carrying the fuel, food, weapons, and raw materials the Allies needed to crush the Third Reich.
Several American states became battlefronts in 1942, but the events that transpired off the Jersey Shore illustrate the savagery and scope of a campaign waged across the Western Hemisphere. Even in the 21st century, shipwrecks still attest to the countless ways to die which friend and foe faced only miles from the Garden State’s most popular summer destinations. These seafarers’ lives were forfeit, but the battle they fought would decide the fate of millions.
