FEATURE U-Boats Off The Liberty Coast

Submariners onboard German Navy U-Boat 123 exercise their surface gun. (Tolle 1942)

NAZI’S SUBMARINES ATTACKED

SHIPPING ALONG THE LIBERTY COAST

By Scott A. Grant

Kapitanleutnant Reinhard Hardegen was already famous when he piloted his submarine, the U-123, towards Florida in late March and early April of 1942. This was his second mission into US waters. In January, he had started the tonnage war off the east coast of the United States by sinking three ships off the coast of Long Island in four days. Later, he would sink four more in a single night off Virginia. Hardegen sank nine ships on that first mission.

Operation Drumbeat was the Nazi plan to destroy US shipping off our Eastern Coast. It was devastatingly effective. During the first seven months of 1942, the Germans sank 245 allied ships, killing more than 3000 merchant mariners and US Navy personnel. That is more than one ship per day. The Nazi Submariners called it “the Second Happy Time.” The first Happy Time was in 1940, when Nazi U-boats sank British merchant ships with impunity.

New York Tourist. Hardegen and the U-123 had been very successful during that first mission, but that was not what made them famous. Hardegen was famous back in Germany as the man who had seen New York. Armed only with a tourist map, the German commander had piloted his boat into the outskirts of New York harbor. They had taken a photograph of the city and its glowing lights from the bridge of their boat. Back in Germany, articles in newspapers and magazines lauded the daring submariner’s feat.

Headed To The Liberty Coast. Now, Hardegen was headed to the US for a second time. He and his crew were eager. They were headed to Florida. Along the way, they encountered the USS Atik. The Atik was a Q-Ship, a converted merchant vessel armed with four 4-inch guns and eight machine guns. The Atik had begun life as the SS Carolyn. She had been converted to a Q-Ship and armed. Q-Ships were designed to look like a helpless merchant vessel. They would attract the attention of a submarine and then fight back. Her guns were hidden behind panels that were designed to be dropped and she was loaded with pulp wood. Pulpwood may not have been the best choice.

The U-123 launched a torpedo and struck the Atik on the port side, under the bridge. Fires broke out in her hold and the ship listed slightly. Hardegen piloted his boat around the damaged ship’s stern. The Atik sent a distress signal and lowered a lifeboat, but she was not finished. She pulled parallel to the U-123, dropped her concealment and began to fire her 4-inch guns. Those shells missed, but the Atik was able to rake the decks of the sub with their .50-caliber machine guns. Hardegen cursed himself for falling into the trap like a “callow beginner.” The sub gained speed and pulled away from Atik and out of danger. Only one German had died in the hail of gunfire. “We had been incredibly lucky,” Hardegen noted in his log.

The Germans then submerged and put a second torpedo into the Atik’s machine spaces. They then stood off and watched as the Q-ship slowly caught fire and began to sink by the bow. Then there was a terrific explosion, presumably by the pulpwood catching fire, and the USS Atik went down with all 141 hands. Presumably the pulpwood in her hold had caught fire. The Germans lost one man; a midshipman named Holzer. Hardegen then proceeded toward Florida. On the night of April 8th, the U-123 sank two oil tankers off the coast of Brunswick, Georgia, in less than 45 minutes. The ships were the SS Esso Baton Rouge and the SS Oklahoma. Both tankers would be floated, hauled in for repairs and put back into service, and both would later be sunk by different German submarines. The night of those sinkings, a man named Ollie took out a yacht owned by Candler and rescued 51 mariners from the sea.

Banana Float. The next night, April 9th, the U-123 was off St Mary’s and sank a refrigerated banana boat owned by the United Fruit Company named the SS Esparta. Normally, such a small vessel would not have gotten the German’s’ attention, but her refrigeration made her a target. She went down resulting in 19 deaths.

For weeks, bananas washed ashore in Jacksonville beach. So many bananas that the Associated Press ran an article about the floating fruit in newspapers across the nation. The story warned people to wash their bananas before eating them. Phil May, a local high schooler recalled eating two of the bananas and said they “tasted oily.” Which begs the question, Why did you eat the second one?

Night at the Beach. Later that night, the Germans cruised up and down off the coast of Jacksonville Beach, hoping to encounter a target to sink. They marveled at all the people and lights. They watched the Ferris Wheel and roller coaster. No targets presented themselves and so they put down on the sandy bottom three miles off the coast of Ponte Vedra to hide during the day. No one knew that she was there.

Much later that day, the boat made an underwater advance on St. Augustine tracking the radio signal from WFOY. WFOY was the first radio station in St. Augustine and owned by a couple that also owned the Fountain Of Youth, hence the call letters. The Germans surfaced around 6 pm and admired the sights of America’s Oldest City like so many other tourists. As darkness fell, the sub began to cruise up and down hoping for a target to materialize. They stood out to sea at a distance of about ten miles and used the St. Augustine lighthouse as a landmark.

U-Boat 123 skipper Kapitanleutnant (Captain-Lieutenant) Reinhard Hardegen visited The Liberty Coast in the early 90’s and lived to be 105. (Released) A telegram to General Albert H. Blanding suggesting the lights on a Jacksonville Beach park aided the enemy submarine in destroying the SS Gulfamerica.(Phil May)

Shortly after darkness had fallen, the German lookouts spotted a large ship headed