American theater (World War II)
American Theater | |||||||
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Part of World War II | |||||||
A United States Coast Guardsman on sentry duty in Alaska during World War II | |||||||
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Belligerents | |||||||
Allies: Mexico (from 1942) Cuba (from 1941) Dominican Republic (from 1941) Haiti (from 1941) Peru (from 1945) Ecuador (from 1945) Bolivia (from 1943) Paraguay (from 1945) Panama (from 1941) Colombia (from 1943) Venezuela (from 1945) Nicaragua (from 1941) Costa Rica (from 1941) El Salvador (from 1941) Honduras (from 1941) Guatemala (from 1941) Chile (from 1943) Argentina (from 1945) Uruguay (from 1945) |
Axis: Germany Japan Italy Vichy France |
The American Theater[1] was a theater of operations during World War II including all continental American territory, and extending 200 miles (320 km) into the ocean.
Owing to North and South America's geographical separation from the central theaters of conflict (in
German operations
South America
See also Latin America during World War II
Battle of the River Plate
The first naval battle during the war was fought on December 13, 1939, off the Atlantic coast of
Submarine warfare
U-boat operations in the region (centered in the
By late 1943, the decreasing number of Allied shipping losses in South Atlantic coincided with the increasing elimination of Axis submarines operating there.[13] From then, the battle in the region was lost for Germans, even with the most of remaining submarines in the region receiving official order of withdrawal only in August of the following year, and with (Baron Jedburgh) the last Allied merchant ship sunk by a U-boat (U-532) there, on 10 March 1945.[14]
United States
Duquesne Spy Ring
Even before the war, a large Nazi spy ring was found operating in the United States. As of 2023, the Duquesne Spy Ring is still the largest espionage case in United States history that ended in convictions. The 33 German agents who formed the Duquesne spy ring were placed in key jobs in the United States to get information that could be used in the event of war and to carry out acts of sabotage. One man opened a restaurant and used his position to get information from his customers; another worked at an airline so he could report Allied ships crossing the
Operation Pastorius
After declaring war on the United States following the
On June 12, 1942, the
On June 17, Kerling's team landed from
Because the German agents were captured in civilian clothes (though they had landed in uniforms), they were tried by a
Operation Magpie
In 1944 another attempt at infiltration was made, codenamed Operation Elster ("Magpie"). Elster involved Erich Gimpel and German-American defector William Colepaugh. Their mission's objective was to gather intelligence on a variety of military subjects and transmit it back to Germany by a radio to be constructed by Gimpel. They sailed from Kiel on U-1230 and landed at Hancock Point, Maine, on November 29, 1944. Both then made their way to New York, but the operation soon collapsed. Colepaugh lost his nerve and turned himself in to the FBI on December 26, confessing the whole plan and naming Gimpel. Gimpel was then arrested four days later in New York. Both men were sentenced to death, but eventually their sentences were commuted. Gimpel spent 10 years in prison, while Colepaugh was released in 1960 and operated a business in King of Prussia, Pennsylvania, before he retired to Florida.
Nazi landings in Canada
St. Martins, New Brunswick
One month earlier than the Dasch operation (on May 14, 1942), a solitary Abwehr agent, Marius A. Langbein, was landed by a U-boat (
New Carlisle, Quebec
In November 1942, U-518 sank two iron ore freighters and damaged another off Bell Island in Conception Bay, Newfoundland, en route to the Gaspé Peninsula where, despite an attack by a Royal Canadian Air Force aircraft, it successfully landed a spy, Werner von Janowski, four miles (6.5 km) from New Carlisle, Quebec, at around 5am on November 9, 1942.[23]
Von Janowski showed up at the New Carlisle Hotel at 06:30 and checked in under the alias of William Brenton. The son of the hotel owner, Earle Annett Jr., grew suspicious of him, because of inconsistencies with the German spy's story. He used an out-of-circulation Canadian note when paying his bill to the owner's son and when he left to wait at the train station the suspicious son of the hotelier followed him. There Annett grew more suspicious and he alerted a
Von Janowski spent the next year as a double agent, codenamed WATCHDOG by the Allies and Bobbi by the Abwehr, sending false messages to Germany under the joint control of the
German landings in Newfoundland
Weather Station Kurt, Martin Bay
Accurate weather reporting was important to the sea war and on September 18, 1943, U-537 sailed from Kiel, via Bergen, Norway, with a meteorological team led by Professor Kurt Sommermeyer. They landed at Martin Bay, a remote location near the northern tip of Labrador on October 22, 1943, and successfully set up an automatic weather station ("Weather Station Kurt" or "Wetter-Funkgerät Land-26"), despite the constant risk of Allied air patrols.[28] The station was powered by batteries that were expected to last about three months.[29] At the beginning of July 1944, U-867 left Bergen to replace the equipment, but was sunk en route.[28] The weather station remained at the site until it was recovered in the 1980s and placed in the Canadian War Museum.
U-boat operations
Atlantic Ocean
The Atlantic Ocean was a major strategic battle zone (the "
The cumulative effect of this campaign was severe; a quarter of all wartime sinkings – 3.1 million tons. There were several reasons for this. The
U.S. East Coast
Several ships were torpedoed within sight of East Coast cities such as New York and Boston. The only documented World War II sinking of a U-boat close to New England shores occurred on May 5, 1945, when the German submarine U-853 torpedoed and sank the collier Black Point off Newport, Rhode Island. When Black Point was hit, the U.S. Navy immediately chased down the sub and began dropping depth charges. In recent years, U-853 has become a popular dive site. Its intact hull, with open hatches, is located in 130 feet (40 m) of water off Block Island, Rhode Island.[32] A wreck discovered in 1991 off the New Jersey coast was concluded in 1997 to be that of U-869. Previously, U-869 had been thought to have been sunk off Rabat, Morocco.[33]
U.S. Gulf of Mexico
Once convoys and air cover were introduced in the Atlantic, sinking numbers were reduced and the U-boats shifted to attack shipping in the Gulf of Mexico. During 1942 and 1943, more than 20 U-boats operated in the Gulf of Mexico. They attacked tankers transporting oil from ports in Texas and Louisiana, successfully sinking 56 vessels. By the end of 1943, the U-boat attacks diminished as the merchant ships began to travel in armed convoys.[34]
In one instance, the tanker Virginia was torpedoed in the mouth of the Mississippi River by the German submarine U-507 on May 12, 1942, killing 26 crewmen. There were 14 survivors. Again, when defensive measures were introduced, ship sinkings decreased.
Canada
From the start of the war in 1939 until VE Day, several of Canada's Atlantic coast ports became important to the resupply effort for the United Kingdom and later for the Allied land offensive on the Western Front. Halifax and
Although not crippling to the Canadian war effort, given the country's rail network to the east coast ports, but possibly more destructive to the morale of the Canadian public, was the Battle of the St. Lawrence, when U-boats began to venture upriver and attack domestic coastal shipping along Canada's east coast in the St. Lawrence River and Gulf of St. Lawrence from early 1942 through to the end of the shipping season in late 1944. From a German perspective this area contained most of the military assets in North America that could realistically be targeted for attack, and therefore the St. Lawrence was the only zone that saw consistent warfare—albeit on a limited scale—in North America during World War II. Residents along the Gaspé coast and the St. Lawrence River and Gulf of St. Lawrence were startled at the sight of maritime warfare off their shores, with ships on fire and explosions rattling their communities, while bodies and debris floated ashore. The number of military losses is not known, although loose estimates can be made based on the number of surface units and submarines sunk.
Newfoundland
Five significant attacks on Newfoundland took place in 1942. On 3 March 1942,
Caribbean
A German submarine shelled the American Standard Oil refinery at the San Nicolas harbour and the "Arend"/"Eagle" Maatschappij (from the Dutch/British Shell Co.) near the Oranjestad harbour situated on the Island of Aruba (a Dutch colony) and some ships that were near the entrance to Lake Maracaibo on February 16, 1942. Three tankers, including the Venezuelan Monagas, were sunk. A Venezuelan gunboat, General Urdaneta, assisted in rescuing the crews.[36][37]
A German submarine shelled the island of
Central America
Before 1941, the Central American nations had various diplomatic ties with Nazi Germany and the Empire of Japan. After the attack on Pearl Harbor, they declared war on the Axis nations. The Central American nations joined the Allied side, broke diplomatic relations with the Axis nations, and initiated persecutions of German and Italian immigrants.
During the course of the war, several merchant ships were sunk in the Caribbean by German submarines, for example the Tela, a Honduran cargo ship sunk by a U-504 submarine in 1942.[38] This led the country to carry out constant air patrols over the coasts under fear of the approach of more German submarines or the general fear of an attack by Germany. Other Central American cargo ships sunk by U-boats are the Olancho, the Comayagua, and the Bluefields, of Honduran and Nicaraguan origins. Central American volunteers in the United States Army participated in both the European and Asia Pacific theater.
Japanese operations
Aleutian Islands Campaign
Before
On June 6, two days after the bombing of Dutch Harbor, 500 Japanese marines landed on
A year after Japan's occupation of Kiska and Attu, U.S. troops invaded Attu on May 11, 1943 and successfully retook the island after three weeks of fighting, killing 2,351 Japanese combatants and taking only 28 as prisoners of war at the cost of 549 lives. Three months later on August 15, U.S. and Canadian forces landed on Kiska expecting the same resistance like Attu; they later found the entire island empty, as most of the Japanese forces secretly evacuated weeks before the landing. In spite of enemy absence on the island, over 313 Allied casualties were sustained nonetheless through car accidents, booby traps, landmines, and friendly fire, in which 28 Americans and four Canadians were killed in the exchange of fire between the two forces.
Submarine operations
Several ships were torpedoed within sight of
Bombardment of Ellwood
The
Bombardment of Estevan Point Lighthouse
More than five Japanese submarines operated in
Bombardment of Fort Stevens
In what became the second attack on a continental American military installation during World War II, the Japanese submarine I-25, under the command of Tagami Akiji,[44] surfaced near the mouth of the Columbia River in Oregon on the night of June 21 and June 22, 1942, and fired shells toward Fort Stevens. The only damage officially recorded was to a baseball field's backstop. Probably the most significant damage was a shell that damaged some large phone cables. The Fort Stevens gunners were refused permission to return fire for fear of revealing the guns' location and/or range limitations to the sub. American aircraft on training flights spotted the submarine, which was subsequently attacked by a U.S. bomber, but escaped.
Lookout Air Raids
The Lookout Air Raids occurred on September 9, 1942. The second location to be subject to
The seaplane, piloted by Nobuo Fujita, had been launched from the Japanese submarine aircraft carrier I-25. No significant damage was officially reported following the attack, nor after a repeat attempt on September 29.
Fire balloon attacks
Between November 1944 and April 1945, the Japanese Navy launched over 9,000 fire balloons toward North America. Carried by the recently discovered Pacific jet stream, they were to sail over the Pacific Ocean and land in North America, where the Japanese hoped they would start forest fires and cause other damage. About three hundred were reported as reaching North America, but little damage was caused.
Near
A fire balloon is also considered to be a possible cause of the third fire in the Tillamook Burn in Oregon. One member of the 555th Parachute Infantry Battalion died while responding to a fire in the Umpqua National Forest near Roseburg, Oregon, on August 6, 1945; other casualties of the 555th were two fractures and 20 other injuries.
Cancelled Axis operations
Germany
In 1940, the
Hitler had ordered that biological warfare should be studied only for the purpose of defending against it. The head of the Science Division of the Wehrmacht, Erich Schumann, lobbied for Hitler to be persuaded otherwise: "America must be attacked simultaneously with various human and animal epidemic pathogens, as well as plant pests." The plans were never adopted because they were opposed by Hitler.[46]
Italy
An Italian naval commander,
Japan
Just after the attack on Pearl Harbor, a force of seven Japanese submarines patrolled the United States West Coast. The Wolfpack made plans to bombard targets in California on Christmas Eve or Christmas Day of 1941. However, the attack was postponed to December 27 in order to avoid attacking during the Christian festival and offending German and Italian allies. Eventually the plan was canceled altogether for fears of American reprisal. In 1946, an unexploded Japanese torpedo was found near the Golden Gate Bridge, and it has been interpreted as evidence of an attack, potentially targeting the bridge itself, in late December of 1941.[48]
The Japanese constructed a plan early in the Pacific War to attack the Panama Canal, a vital water passage in Panama, used during World War II primarily for the Allied supply effort. The Japanese attack was never launched because Japan suffered crippling naval losses at the beginning of conflict with the United States and United Kingdom (See: Aichi M6A).
The
During the final months of World War II, Japan had planned to use
Other alarms
False alarms
These false alarms have generally been attributed to military and civilian inexperience with war and poor radars of the era. Critics have theorized they were a deliberate attempt by the Army to frighten the public in order to stimulate interest in war preparations.[53]
Alerts following Pearl Harbor
On December 8, 1941, "rumors of an enemy carrier off the coast led to the closing of schools in
Battle of Los Angeles
The Battle of Los Angeles, also known as "The Great Los Angeles Air Raid", is the name given by contemporary sources to the imaginary enemy attack and subsequent anti-aircraft artillery barrage which took place in 1942 from February 24 and early on February 25 over
Minor alerts
1942
In May and June the San Francisco Bay Area underwent a series of alerts:
- May 12: A twenty-five-minute air-raid alert.
- May 27: West Coast defenses put on alert after Army codebreakers learned that the Japanese intended a series of hit-and-run attacks in reprisal for the Doolittle Raid.
- May 31: The battleships USS Colorado and USS Maryland set sail from the Golden Gate to form a line of defense against any Japanese attack mounted on San Francisco.
- June 2: A nine-minute air-raid alert, including at 9:22 pm a radio stationsfrom Mexico to Canada.
See also
- American Theater (1914–1918)
- Amerikabomber
- Battle of the Atlantic
- German submarine U-550 (discovered off Massachusetts)
- German submarine U-853 (destroyed off Rhode Island)
- German submarine U-869 (destroyed off New Jersey)
- Greenland in World War II
- List of Japanese spies, 1930–45
- Invasion of the United States
- Operation Pastorius
- Project Z
- List of theaters and campaigns of World War II
Notes
- ^ "United States Navy Battle Streamers: World War II American Theater 1941–1945". Archived from the original on 2015-01-09. Retrieved 2011-05-23.
- ^ O'Hara 2004, pp. 7–9
- ^ Carey 2004, p. 9-10.
- ^ a b Carey 2004.
- ^ Morison 1947, p. 376
- ^ Morison 1947, p. 386
- ^ Votaw, 1950, p. 10579ff, and 1951, p.93.
- ^ Maximiano & Neto 2011, p. 6
- ISBN 8585987138From p.153.
- ^ a b Helgason, Guðmundur. "Loss listings". German U-boats of WWII - uboat.net. Retrieved 4 July 2015.
- ^ Carey 2004, p. 119.
- ^ Barone 2013, Chapter 2
- ^ Carey 2004, p. 100.
- ^ Carruthers 2011, p. 190
- ^ Wood, Clement (1932), The Man Who Killed Kitchener: The Life of Fritz Joubert Duquesne, New York: William Faro, inc
- ^ "Duquesne Spy Ring".
- ^ (Including Canada, the Germans not distinguishing between the overseas enemy; see Beebe 1996)
- ^ Jonathan Wallace, Military Tribunals, spectacle.org, archived from the original on 12 November 2007, retrieved 2007-12-09
- ^ Agents delivered by U-boat, uboatwar.net, archived from the original on 2005-11-04, retrieved 2007-12-09 (from internet archive)
- ^ W. A. Swanberg (April 1970), "The spies who came in from the sea", American Heritage, vol. 21, no. 3, archived from the original on 2007-12-26, retrieved 2007-12-09
- ^ http://www.german-navy.de/kriegsmarine/articles/feature2.html Kriegsmarine article
- ^ The most thorough treatment to date is probably Dean Beeby, Cargo of Lies: The True Story of a Nazi Double Agent in Canada, University of Toronto Press, 1996, pp. 140–166 (Chapter 7)
- ^ See Michael Hadley (1985), U-Boats Against Canada, McGill Queens University Press, 1985, pp. 149–162; and Beebe 1996.
- ^ Turbide, Sophie. "Werner Alfred Waldemar von Janowski: New Carlisle's Spy". Gaspesian Heritage WebMagazine. Retrieved 19 April 2020.
- ^ Essex, James W. 2004. Victory in the St. Lawrence: The Unknown U-Boat War. Erin, Ontario: Boston Mills Press
- ^ See Beebe 1996
- ^ Cecil Masterman, The Double Cross System, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1972, p. 121, 144
- ^ ISBN 978-0-7735-0801-9
- ^ Kissell, Joe (24 August 2018), Weather Station Kurt, itod.com
- ^ Leckie, Robert (1964), The Story of World War II, New York: Random House, p. 100
- ISBN 0-06-092088-2.
- ^ Michael Salvarezza; Christopher Weaver, On Final Attack, The Story of the U853, ecophotoexplorers.com, archived from the original on 1 December 2007, retrieved 2007-12-09
- ^ "Hitler's Lost Sub", Nova (Transcript), PBS, November 14, 2000, archived from the original on 24 December 2008, retrieved 2008-12-01.
- ^ a b Minerals Management Service, Gulf of Mexico Region, World War II Shipwrecks, U.S. Department of the Interior, archived from the original on 17 October 2008, retrieved 2008-11-02
- S2CID 199104273. Retrieved 14 May 2023.
- ^ "Shells at Aruba", Time, February 23, 1942, archived from the original on 10 December 2007, retrieved 2007-12-09
- OCLC 15696006
- ^ "Tela (Honduras Steam merchant) - Ships hit by German U-boats during WWII - uboat.net". uboat.net. Retrieved 2021-04-28.
- ^ The Shelling of Ellwood, The California State Military Museum, archived from the original on 5 January 2008, retrieved 2007-12-09
- World War II, September 2003
- ^ Sensuikan! — IJN Submarine I-26: Tabular Record of Movement, combinedfleet.com, retrieved 2007-12-09
- ^ Conn, Stetson; Engelman, Rose C.; Fairchild, Byron (2000) [1964], "The Continental Defense Commands After Pearl Harbor", Guarding the United States and its Outposts, United States Army Center of Military History, CMH Pub 4-2, archived from the original on 25 December 2007, retrieved 2007-12-09
- ^ Japanese Submarines on the West Coast of Canada, pinetreeline.org, archived from the original on 2008-07-08, retrieved 2007-12-09
- ^ Sensuikan! — IJN Submarine I-25: Tabular Record of Movement, combinedfleet.com, retrieved 2007-12-09
- Wired.com. Retrieved 4 October 2010.
- ^ Biologists Under Hitler Ute Deichmann, Thomas Dunlap Harvard University Press 1999, pages 279–282
- ^ Christiano D'Adamo. "Operations". Regia Marina Italiana.
- ^ Golden Gate Torpedo Attack - Japanese Assault on San Francisco 1941, archived from the original on 2021-11-14, retrieved 2021-09-17
- ISBN 978-1-59114-388-8
- ^ "Plague (Yersinia Pestis)". Weapons of Mass Destruction. GlobalSecurity.org.
- ^ Amy Stewart (April 25, 2011). "Where To Find The World's Most 'Wicked Bugs': Fleas". National Public Radio.
- ^ Russell Working (June 5, 2001). "The trial of Unit 731". The Japan Times.
- ^ a b c d e f g h "Japanese War Planes Over San Francisco - 1941". www.sfmuseum.net. Archived from the original on 2011-11-20. Retrieved 2010-09-08.
- ISBN 978-0-520-03410-5
- ISBN 978-0-8093-2201-5
- ^ California and the Second World War; The Battle of Los Angeles, The California State Military Museum, archived from the original on 18 December 2007, retrieved 2007-12-09
- ^ The Battle of Los Angeles, Virtual Museum of the City of San Francisco, archived from the original on 2007-09-28, retrieved 2007-12-09
Works cited
- Barone, João (2013). 1942: O Brasil e sua guerra quase desconhecida [1942: Brazil and its almost Forgotten War] (in Portuguese). Rio de Janeiro. ISBN 978-85-209-3394-7.)
{{cite book}}
: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link - Beebe, Dean (1996). Cargo of Lies: The True Story of a Nazi Double Agent in Canada. University of Toronto Press. ISBN 0-8020-0731-7.
- Carey, Alan C. (2004). Galloping Ghosts of the Brazilian Coast. Lincoln, NE USA: iUniverse, Inc. ISBN 978-0-595-31527-7.
- Carruthers, Bob (2011). The U-Boat War in the Atlantic: Volume III: 1944–1945. Coda Books. ISBN 978-1-78159-161-1.
- Maximiano, Cesar Campiani; Neto, Ricardo Bonalume (2011). Brazilian Expeditionary Force in World War II. ISBN 978-1-84908-483-3.
- Morison, Samuel Eliot. (1947). History of United States Naval Operations in World War II: The Battle of the Atlantic; September 1939 – May 1943. ISBN 978-0-252-06963-5. Retrieved 8 November 2017.
- O'Hara, Vincent (2004). The German fleet at war, 1939–1945. Naval Institute Press.
- Votaw, Homer C. (1950–51). The Brazilian Navy in World War II. US Government Printing Office; Congressional Record: Proceedings and Debates of US Congress, Volume 96, Part 8.Senate and Military Review, Volume XXX, Number X.
Further reading
- Dobbs, Michael. Saboteurs: The Nazi Raid on America ISBN 0-375-41470-3(2004)
- Duffy, J.P. Target: America: Hitler's Plan to Attack the United States, Praeger Publishers; PB: The Lyons Press )
- Gimpel, Erich. Agent 146: The True Story of a Nazi Spy in America ISBN 0-312-30797-7(2003)
- Griehl, Manfred. Luftwaffe over America: The Secret Plans to Bomb the United States in World War II ISBN 1-85367-608-X(2004)
- Hadley, Michael (1985). U-Boats Against Canada: German Submarines in Canadian Waters. McGill Queens University Press. ISBN 0-7735-0801-5.
- Horn, Steve (2005), The Second Attack on Pearl Harbor: Operation K And Other Japanese Attempts to Bomb America in World War II, Naval Institute Press, ISBN 1-59114-388-8
- Mikesh, Robert C. Japan's World War II Balloon Bomb Attacks on North America, Smithsonian Institution Press, (1973)
- Kesich, Gregory D. (April 13, 2003), "1944: When spies came to Maine", Portland Press Herald, archived from the original on 2007-09-22, retrieved 2007-12-09
- O'Donnell, Pierce, In Time of War: Hitler's Terrorist Attack on America (Operation Pastorius), The New Press, 2005 ISBN 978-1-56584-958-7
- ISBN 0-87770-318-3(paperbound).
External links
- History.army.mil: Defense of Americas Archived 2012-09-26 at the Wayback Machine — publication of the United States Army Center of Military History.
- History.army.mil: American Theater Army Responses Archived 2007-12-25 at the Wayback Machine
- Military.com: American Theater targets
- Port Orford Lifeboat station.org: Japanese submarine attacks on the West Coast
- History.navy.mil: German Sabotage operations
- Regiamarina.net: "Planned Italian attack on New York harbor"
- SFmuseum.org: The SF Bay Area at War
- German-navy.de: Details of the German secret agents that landed in North America
- Alaskainvasion.com: "Red White Black & Blue" – feature documentary about the World War II Battle of Attu in the Aleutians.
- Uboat.net: The Battle of the St. Lawrence
- Nazis vs New York - Axis Operations to Attack 'The Big Apple' by Mark Felton