Read The Air-Raid Warden Was a Spy: And Other Tales From Home-Front America in World War II for Free Online Page B
Authors: William B. Breuer
Churchill’s liaison officer to the U.S. War Department. Accustomed to many months of wartime austerity in Great Britain, Dill was flabbergasted by the prosperous lifestyle of Americans and by the belief in official Washington that the Japanese and Germans could be quickly polished off without undue disruption of normal conditions on the home front.
“This country is the most highly organized for peace that you can imagine,” Dill wrote to Field Marshal Alan Brooke, chief of the Imperial General Staff in London. “At present this country has not—repeat not—the slightest conception of what war means, and their armed forces are more unready for war than it is possible to imagine.”
Closing his gloomy analysis, Dill declared: “The whole organization belongs to the days of George Washington.” 19
Lieutenant Reinhardt Hardegen took his U-boat into New York harbor early in 1942. Eventually his crew sank twenty-three Allied ships, most of them along the eastern seaboard of the United States. (National Archives)
Nazi U-Boat in New York Harbor
B LOND, AUDACIOUS KRIEGSMARINE (German Navy) Lieutenant Reinhardt Hardegen was steering his U-boat in the blackness toward New York harbor. It was January 13, 1942, the first day of Operation Paukenschlag (Drumbeat), a plan conceived and launched by Grossadmiral Karl Doenitz, chief of the submarine service. His goal was to blockade America’s Atlantic ports and cut her crucial shipping lanes to the British Isles.
Doenitz had selected Reinhardt Hardegen and eleven other bold U-boat skippers to stalk America’s eastern seaboard, directing Paukenschlag from the submarine base in Lorient, France. As reports flowed in from harbor spies in New York, Boston, Norfolk, and other eastern ports, the U-boat chief, like a chess master adroitly moving pawns, shifted his underwater wolves into position to intercept departing ships.
Now, at midnight, Lieutenant Hardegen’s U-123 surfaced off the port of New York. He and his crewman were astonished by the dazzling sight before them. Even though the United States had been at war for more than a month, Manhattan was aglow with thousands of lights that twinkled through the night like fireflies.
“It’s unbelievable!” Hardegen exclaimed to Second Officer Horst von Schroeter. To dramatize how close the U-123 was to America’s largest city, Hardegen quipped in a radio signal to Lorient: “I can see couples dancing on the roof garden atop the Astor Hotel in Times Square.”
With daylight approaching, the U-123 nestled silently on the ocean bottom of Wimble Shoal, a few miles south of New York City. Throughout the day, Hardegen’s radio man reported sounds of ships overhead. “Gott!” the skip
The Salesman’s Luck Runs Out 27
per exploded. “Can you imagine what we could do with twelve U-boats in here [New York harbor]?” 20
A Journalist Prowls the Normandie
E DMOND SCOTT, A REPORTER for a New York City newspaper, PM, was assigned to a curious investigation. He was to masquerade as a longshoreman and look into repeated reports that the waterfront was wide open to sabotage. It was mid-January 1942.
Dressed in work clothes, Scott got a job with a crew hired to lug furniture aboard the French ocean liner Normandie at Pier 88 on the Hudson River. Taken over by the U.S. Navy and rechristened the Lafayette, the huge vessel was being converted into a badly needed transport, and some fifteen hundred civilian workers were swarming about on her.
Scott was appalled by the almost total lack of security for this highly valuable ship. A private firm had been hired to guard the vessel, and anyone who had fifty dollars for a union initiation fee could become a stevedore and board the Normandie.
Alone and unchallenged, the disguised Scott prowled all over the ship, and he was struck by how simple it would be to set fire to the vessel. A pocketful of incendiary pencils, he visualized, could be used with devastating impact.
Eight hours after
“This country is the most highly organized for peace that you can imagine,” Dill wrote to Field Marshal Alan Brooke, chief of the Imperial General Staff in London. “At present this country has not—repeat not—the slightest conception of what war means, and their armed forces are more unready for war than it is possible to imagine.”
Closing his gloomy analysis, Dill declared: “The whole organization belongs to the days of George Washington.” 19
Lieutenant Reinhardt Hardegen took his U-boat into New York harbor early in 1942. Eventually his crew sank twenty-three Allied ships, most of them along the eastern seaboard of the United States. (National Archives)
Nazi U-Boat in New York Harbor
B LOND, AUDACIOUS KRIEGSMARINE (German Navy) Lieutenant Reinhardt Hardegen was steering his U-boat in the blackness toward New York harbor. It was January 13, 1942, the first day of Operation Paukenschlag (Drumbeat), a plan conceived and launched by Grossadmiral Karl Doenitz, chief of the submarine service. His goal was to blockade America’s Atlantic ports and cut her crucial shipping lanes to the British Isles.
Doenitz had selected Reinhardt Hardegen and eleven other bold U-boat skippers to stalk America’s eastern seaboard, directing Paukenschlag from the submarine base in Lorient, France. As reports flowed in from harbor spies in New York, Boston, Norfolk, and other eastern ports, the U-boat chief, like a chess master adroitly moving pawns, shifted his underwater wolves into position to intercept departing ships.
Now, at midnight, Lieutenant Hardegen’s U-123 surfaced off the port of New York. He and his crewman were astonished by the dazzling sight before them. Even though the United States had been at war for more than a month, Manhattan was aglow with thousands of lights that twinkled through the night like fireflies.
“It’s unbelievable!” Hardegen exclaimed to Second Officer Horst von Schroeter. To dramatize how close the U-123 was to America’s largest city, Hardegen quipped in a radio signal to Lorient: “I can see couples dancing on the roof garden atop the Astor Hotel in Times Square.”
With daylight approaching, the U-123 nestled silently on the ocean bottom of Wimble Shoal, a few miles south of New York City. Throughout the day, Hardegen’s radio man reported sounds of ships overhead. “Gott!” the skip
The Salesman’s Luck Runs Out 27
per exploded. “Can you imagine what we could do with twelve U-boats in here [New York harbor]?” 20
A Journalist Prowls the Normandie
E DMOND SCOTT, A REPORTER for a New York City newspaper, PM, was assigned to a curious investigation. He was to masquerade as a longshoreman and look into repeated reports that the waterfront was wide open to sabotage. It was mid-January 1942.
Dressed in work clothes, Scott got a job with a crew hired to lug furniture aboard the French ocean liner Normandie at Pier 88 on the Hudson River. Taken over by the U.S. Navy and rechristened the Lafayette, the huge vessel was being converted into a badly needed transport, and some fifteen hundred civilian workers were swarming about on her.
Scott was appalled by the almost total lack of security for this highly valuable ship. A private firm had been hired to guard the vessel, and anyone who had fifty dollars for a union initiation fee could become a stevedore and board the Normandie.
Alone and unchallenged, the disguised Scott prowled all over the ship, and he was struck by how simple it would be to set fire to the vessel. A pocketful of incendiary pencils, he visualized, could be used with devastating impact.
Eight hours after
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