Second Happy Time

• 1. Introduction

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  The Second Happy Time opened with five Type IX submarines heading west from Lorient, France. Reinhard Hardegen of U-123 had no charts or sailing directions for the American coast. He had been given two tourist guides to New York City instead, one of which contained a fold-out map of the harbor. Between January and about August 1942, Axis submarines sank 609 ships off the North American coast. Only 22 U-boats were lost in return. German submariners called it the 'Happy Time' or the 'Golden Time.' Historian Michael Gannon later called it 'America's Second Pearl Harbor.' Those losses equaled roughly one quarter of all ships destroyed by U-boats during the entire Second World War. America entered the conflict with massive manufacturing capacity, deep ties to Britain, and advance warning of what was coming. How it still allowed its own coastline to become a hunting ground is the question at the heart of this story.

• 2. A Hollow Defense

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  Rear-Admiral Adolphus Andrews commanded the Eastern Sea Frontier, the waters stretching from Maine to North Carolina. On the water, his forces amounted to seven Coast Guard cutters, four converted yachts, and three patrol boats dating to 1919. He also commanded two gunboats built in 1905 and four wooden submarine chasers. He had roughly 100 aircraft, but all of them were short-range training models unsuitable for anti-submarine work. All larger aircraft remained under the United States Army Air Forces, which was neither trained nor equipped for that role.

  Admiral Ernest J. King, commander-in-chief of the Navy, bore theoretical responsibility for coordinating the entire anti-submarine effort. His many competing duties prevented him from doing that job adequately. The three Atlantic commands each developed their own tactics in isolation. King also rejected British offers to provide escort vessels, leaving the Navy without the ships needed to run convoys safely.

  Britain had spent two years learning how to fight U-boats. Their recommendations included removing navigational markers, enforcing coastal blackouts, and routing ships away from predictable corridors. For several months, none of these measures were adopted. Coastal shipping continued on its usual routes with navigation lights burning. Boardwalk communities were only 'requested' to 'consider' turning their illuminations off on the 18th of December 1941. The cities were not asked at all; officials did not want to disrupt tourism or commerce.

  On the 12th of January 1942, Admiral Andrews received a warning that three or four U-boats were about to begin operations against coastal shipping. He refused to institute a convoy system, reasoning that convoys would only give the submarines more targets.

• 3. Five Boats, Five Targets

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  On the 18th of December 1941, the first submarine set out for North American waters to begin Operation Paukenschlag, the German for 'drumbeat.' The others followed over the next several days. Each carried sealed orders to be opened only after crossing 20 degrees West longitude, directing each boat to a different stretch of the American coast. No navigational charts were available for those waters.

  Reinhard Hardegen of U-123 sank seven ships before running out of torpedoes and returning to port. Ernst Kals sank six ships. Robert-Richard Zapp accounted for five. Heinrich Bleichrodt sank four. Ulrich Folkers, on his first patrol, sank only one vessel, the West Ivis, and was criticized by Dönitz for the showing. He would later earn the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross.

  The Canadian freighter Cyclops was the first victim, sunk on the 12th of January off Nova Scotia. According to Robert Fisher, 26 more ships went down in the next nine days. The submarines spent their days submerged and surfaced at night to pick off merchant vessels outlined against the glow of coastal city lights. At times, U-123 operated in waters so shallow that the sea barely covered the hull.

  When the first wave returned to port in early February, Dönitz wrote a striking assessment. Each commander, Dönitz noted, 'had such an abundance of opportunities for attack that he could not by any means utilize them all.' There were times, he wrote, when up to ten ships were visible at once, sailing 'with all lights burning on peacetime courses.'

  Thirty-seven ships had been lost in January and February. The Royal Canadian Navy's early convoy measures cut that to just 11 across March and April. By then, the U-boats had already shifted their preference to American waters further south.

• 4. Oil and the Southern Waters

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  On the 21st of April 1942, the Type XIV submarine tender U-459 was stationed 600 miles north-west of Bermuda. Through the 6th of May, it refuelled 14 submarines at sea. That included shorter-range Type VII boats that could not otherwise reach the Gulf of Mexico or the Caribbean. The logistics allowed the German campaign to push well beyond its original patrol zone.

  In May 1942, submarines sank 115 ships in the Gulf and Caribbean regions. Of those, 101 were sailing without convoy protection. In June, the figure rose to 122 ships, with 108 sailing independently. The Gulf Sea Frontier, formed in early February, had barely the resources to mount any response.

  Seventy-three American tankers were lost in the first half of 1942. Twenty-two British tankers went down in March alone. Three of the four largest Canadian tankers were sunk between February and May. In March, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill urged the United States Navy to organize coastal convoys. The request had little effect. The following month, British tankers from the Caribbean bypassed the American coast entirely. They sailed east to Freetown in West Africa rather than risk the northern route. Between 16 and the 29th of April, the United States ordered its own coastal waters closed to commercial tanker traffic.

  Eastern Canada depended on oil shipped from the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean. Gasoline rationing began there on the 1st of April. On the 28th of April, the Royal Canadian Navy started improvised convoys to bring tankers stranded in the United States and the Caribbean back to Halifax. By the 1st of May, the Canadian government required all its tankers to sail under escort. From May to August, the RCN ran 14 convoys carrying 76 tankers and four million barrels of oil. Not one ship was lost. Those convoys were discontinued in August once the United States finally established its own comprehensive system.

• 5. The Convoy Answer

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  The first organized American coastal convoy sailed on the 14th of May 1942 from Hampton Roads, Virginia, bound for Key West, Florida. Convoys eventually extended north to Halifax. The United States also sought 15 to 20 additional corvettes from Britain and Canada. Both responded by reducing the size of their existing escort groups elsewhere in the Atlantic.

  By early July, most German submarines had retreated to the outer perimeter of the Caribbean. German strategic attention returned to the mid-Atlantic. The shift marked the effective end of the Second Happy Time's most destructive phase.

  Britain and Canada had strained their own resources to bring that result about. The Royal Canadian Navy had kept 90% of its escort fleet operational to meet its commitments. The Royal Navy, by comparison, managed only about two-thirds. The strain of that over-extension on the Royal Canadian Navy would be felt well into 1943.