CHAPTER I German Submarines in American Waters
In the last six months of the first World War Germany sent six submarines to America at intervals starting in April, to lay mines along our shipping lanes, attack merchantmen, drive the fishing fleet ashore, try to force this country to call back part of its European fleet for home defense--and in any case to give America, geographically aloof from the war, a taste of what war was like.
These activities were overshadowed at the time by graver events, or hidden by military secrecy. Few people even today know that ships were sunk and men killed by German U-boats within sight of our coast.[1]
It was in no sense an all-out effort. Only a handful of submarines were used. The attack was launched late in the war, in fact one of the six didn't even reach American waters, was called back by news of the Armistice. Submarines of that day had a cruising range of some three months, could spend only three weeks in our coastal waters, used the rest of the time getting over and back.
But in those few weeks these six submarines destroyed exactly 100 ships, of all sizes, types and registry, killed 435 people. Most of the ships were peaceful unarmed merchantmen, coastwise ships from the West Indies and South America, tankers from Galveston, fishing ships heading back from the Grand Banks, supply ships carrying guns and war materials to England, a few stragglers from convoys.
The subs' biggest catch was the USS San Diego, a cruiser, sunk by mine off Fire Island, just outside New York harbor, July 19, 1918, with 1,180 officers and men aboard. Only six lives, fortunately, were lost. The battleship Minnesota, escorted by a destroyer, struck a mine off Fenwick shoals light ship, early in the morning of September 29, but made temporary repairs and limped back into Philadelphia Navy Yard 18 hours later. A fragment of the mine was found imbedded in her frame work.
[Illustration: Reproduced from U.S. Navy map showing track of submarines operating in American waters during last few months of first World War.]
Mines were laid at strategic points. One field, with its mines 500 to 1,000 yards apart was laid off Cape Hatteras, one at the mouth of Chesapeake Bay, one across Delaware Bay, two in between these key inlets, another off Barnegat, and the last off Fire Island. Some of the mines drifted ashore, others were found and destroyed--the last ones not till the following January. But mines accounted for six of the ships lost.