In mariners' terms, it's an area that's long been known as the "Graveyard of the Atlantic." In World War II terms, the waters off the Outer Banks of North Carolina gained the additional nickname of "Torpedo Junction," as predatory U-boats sunk or damaged hundreds of ships there during the dark early days following American's entry in the global conflict. Now, another piece of Torpedo Junction's archaeological puzzle has fallen into place: The wreck of a U.S. Navy vessel destroyed in a firefight with a U-boat in 1942 has been discovered off Cape Hatteras.
The remains of the 102-foot, 170-ton patrol craft YP-389 have been resting undisturbed in 300 feet of water about 20 miles out from Hatteras Inlet since 19 June 1942, when she had her fatal encounter with U-701. The sinking of YP-389 came during the most audaciously successful voyage of the German submarine as she ravaged mid-Atlantic shipping before meeting her own demise in July 1942.
As many as five Sailors are thought to be interred within YP-389, which was discovered during the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's summer 2009 Battle of the Atlantic Expedition. Spearheaded by the Monitor National Marine Sanctuary, headquartered at Newport News, Virginia, the multiagency, multinational expedition marked the second phase of an ongoing project to locate, identify, and research shipwrecks lost during World War II's Atlantic coastal conflict.
Armed with data from a 1973 search for the USS Monitor, the expedition team zeroed in on the YP-389 shipwreck in August 2009. Aswarm with marine life, she rests upright on her keel, her hull plating mostly shedded, her skeletal structure largely intact. "The site is extremely well preserved," said Monitor National Marine Sanctuary archaeologist Joseph Hoyt, the principal investigator of the YP-389 wreck. "It appears that little impact other than natural degradation has occurred." The fact that most of the outer plates have fallen away "is great for researchers because you can literally peer through the hull," Hoyt added. "Features inside of the wreck that would otherwise be obscured are easily visible. The downside to this is that there is more marine growth on components which would otherwise be internal and out of exposure to sunlight."
Mapping and filming the wreck site with high-resolution cameras, multibeam sonar, and a remotely operated vehicle (ROV) off the NOAA ship Nancy Foster, researchers were able to confirm the discovery and make an official announcement in September.
"Though this loss occurred many years ago, for the Navy, we offer our sincere condolences to the families of those who gave their lives in this action," said retired Rear Admiral Jay A. DeLoach, director of the Naval History & Heritage Command, at the time of the announcement. "The U.S. Navy considers the YP-389 discovery a gravesite, and by law it is to be left undisturbed." NOAA expedition leader David W. Alberg underscored the admiral's admonishment: "Consistent with U.S. and international policy . . . the YP-389 wreck and other sites in the area are considered war graves and are protected by U.S. and international laws, including the Sunken Military Craft Act, which prohibits removal of artifacts and any alteration or disruption of the wreck site."
For researchers, the wreck discovery offers further opportunity to interpret and understand an important chapter in naval history. But beyond the normal data-gathering benefits that accrue from a historic shipwreck, this one in particular-due to the characteristics of the vessel and the circumstances of her sinking-offers poignant insight into a perilous moment in the war. "The wreck of the YP-389 personifies the nature of the Battle of the Atlantic on the East Coast of the U.S.," said Hoyt. "Though the Battle of the Atlantic took place over the duration of the war, the most significant period was the first six months" following Germany's 11 December 1941 declaration of war on the United States. "During that time there was a rush to meet the needs for sea power in the Eastern Sea Frontier. Many vessels were converted to perform a service for which they were never intended. Such is the case with the YP-389."
In her original incarnation, she was the trawler Cohasset, built in 1941 by the Bethlehem Shipbuilding Company of Quincy, Massachusetts. Desperate for coastal patrol craft, the Navy acquired the vessel in February 1942, first designating her as Coastal Minesweeper AMc-202, and then reclassifying her as District Patrol Craft YP-389 in May. The Navy fitted her out with a bow-mounted 3-inch deck gun, two .30-caliber machine guns, and four depth charges. In June 1942, YP-389 was busying herself patrolling the offshore antisubmarine minefield perimeter, keeping friendly vessels out of the danger zone.
Her deck gun was intended to be dual-purpose, able to fend off both enemy aircraft and surfaced U-boats. But with a broken firing pin the gun was useless, and no replacement part was available as YP-389 refueled in Morehead City, North Carolina, before her fateful embarkation. Her commander, Lieutenant R. J. Phillips, was on duty on the bridge at 0245 on 19 June when the starboard watch let out a shout.1 YP-389 had at last spotted a lurking vessel that already had sighted the patrol craft and been stalking her.
A Wild Crescendo of Fire
The Hamburg-built U-701 was the first of her type-VIIC-thus her "01" designation. Like the humble erstwhile trawler with which she would clash, the 500-ton U-boat had been built in 1941. Her first two war patrols, off Newfoundland and Iceland, had yielded some successes but had been burdened by mishaps.2 Her third patrol would be her most successful, as well as her last.
On 19 May 1942, a band played on the quay while patrol vessels and Messerschmitt fighters escorted U-701 away from Brest, France. After a deliberately slow, fuel-preserving Atlantic crossing and a close-shave crash dive to escape an American bomber, the submarine littered the approaches to the Chesapeake Capes with 15 delayed-action magnetic mines. Sixty hours later, on 15 June, the mines activated, severely debilitating a pair of American tankers and destroying a 500-ton British ASW trawler. On 17 June, another mine blew up and took out a 7,100-ton American freighter.3
The U-boat proceeded to the waters off Cape Hatteras. On the night of 19 June, U-701 surfaced and sighted YP-389. First Lieutenant Horst Degen observed the patrol craft for some time before opting to engage. The U-boat's 88-mm deck gun threw the first punch, opening up on the Navy patroller. YP-389's response was the staccato bark of machine-gun fire. U-701 quickly answered back, unleashing a wild crescendo of fire. "Apparently the gun crew, groping over-anxiously in the dark, seized every available shell in the ready-use lockers without discrimination," declassified U.S. Navy documents from 1942 reveal. "Thus, fire was an unorthodox mixture of SAP, HE and incendiary shell." When later interviewed, German crewmen acknowledged that they "considered this a wasteful and 'untidy' piece of work, and the captain gave the impression that he was ashamed of it."4
With her 3-inch gun out of commission, the patrol craft was seriously outweaponed by the enemy prowler. But for a long and desperate hour, the courageous Sailors of YP-389 managed to put up a fight, doing what they could with evasive action and machine gunnery while the U-boat continued to throw everything but one of her precious torpedoes into the onslaught. A German shell finally found the patrol craft's engine room and delivered the knockout blow. As YP-389 lurched and leaned, Lieutenant Phillips raced about making sure every man was wearing his lifejacket and the wounded were being helped to the rail. The crew abandoned ship when he gave the signal. He stayed on board long enough to see them all over the side and to crank open the throttle to full, sending the battered vessel careening off with the U-boat still in pursuit. The commander splashed in, hailed his men, and swam toward their shouts.5
They held on until dawn, when Coast Guard lifeboats out of Ocracoke located and rescued them. Eighteen men had survived; six had been lost. One of them later would be found washed up on shore. The other five were presumed to have gone to their graves with their ship. Ensign Ray P. Baker Jr., riddled with shrapnel as were so many of the survivors, nonetheless dictated a statement en route to the hospital in which he praised Lieutenant Phillips as a genuine hero. YP-389, however, had not been up to her assigned task, he added. She lacked the sound gear to hear a U-boat, a working gun to fight one, and the maneuverability to evade an enemy sub.6
YP-389 went down, and U-701 continued to roam and wreak havoc, damaging a 7,000-ton tanker and sinking a massive 14,000-tonner fully loaded with 136,000 barrels of oil. When all was said and done, Lieutenant Degen and his U-701 crew accounted for nine ships, 60,000 tons, sunk or damaged; it was the most successful war patrol of any type VII U-boat.7 But the cruise came to an end on 7 July 1942, as Lieutenant Harry Kane, 396th Medium Bombardment Squadron, U.S. Army Air Forces, made a surprise attack on U-701 while she was surfaced to suck in fresh air. Degen crash-dived her, but not fast enough. Kane swerved his Lockheed A-29 Hudson hard and dropped three 325-pound depth bombs, scoring three direct hits, one astern and two framing the conning tower. The record-setting patrol ended with the first-ever sub kill for the USAAF.8 After two days at sea, seven U-701 survivors, including Degen, were rescued, interrogated, and made POWs for the duration of the war.
In 1989, after years of searching, wreck diver Uwe Lovas located the U-701 shipwreck 100 feet down about 10 miles out from Avon, North Carolina. Fearful of souvenir-scavenging site-destroyers, he managed to keep the location a secret, save from a circle of trusted diving companions, for 15 years.9
A Rare Geographical Boon
Now, both duelists from that fiery hour of 19 June 1942 have been found, lying on the ocean floor, bookends of a clash when the global war was being waged a mere few miles off America's shores. For the World War II historian, the underwater archaeologist, or anyone who is a combination of the two, the U-701 and YP-389 sites offer a rare geographical boon. "Both parties engaged in this conflict are represented materially on the 'battlefield' landscape and are in close proximity," observed Hoyt. "Nowhere else on the East Coast could a researcher in a single day visit the remains of both an Axis and an Allied vessel of war that had engaged one another. For example, you could dive on the YP-389 in the morning and dive on the U-701 in the afternoon."
Though the Battle of the Atlantic was one of the war's attenuated campaigns and ranged over a vast area from the Arctic to the Southern oceans, "There are few places which stand out as monuments to this event," Hoyt said. While the German war on Allied shipping left its archaeological remnants scattered on the seabeds around the British Isles, mainland Europe, Newfoundland, New England, the Gulf of Mexico, and the Mediterranean, many of the shipwrecks are at depths pushing the limits of diveability.
The coast of North Carolina is special in that it is a veritable underwater museum of World War II wreck sites. Their proliferation is both blessing and curse-a gold mine for research but unfortunately also a temptingly accessible hunting ground for looters. And in such a location, both hallowed and historically important, vigilance against unscrupulous divers must go hand-in-hand with continued explorations by the preservation-minded.
"In these warm, clear, and shallow waters rests a microcosm of shipwrecks exemplifying the Battle of the Atlantic on the U.S. Eastern Seaboard," said Hoyt. "Accessibility combined with a heavy concentration of sites and the representative cross-cut of vessels makes coastal North Carolina a truly unique place for the study and remembrance of these national resources."
1. "YP-389, ex-AMc-202," available at www.navsource.org/archives/11/03203.htm; Homer Hickham, Torpedo Junction: U-Boat War off America's East Coast, 1942 (Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 1996), pp. 261-263.
2. Clay Blair, Hitler's U-Boat War, Volume I: The Hunters, 1939-1942 (New York: Random House, 1996), pp. 452, 453, 472, 552; "U-701: Sunk July 7th, 1942," available at www.divehatteras.com/U-701.html.
3. Blair, Hitler's U-Boat War, p. 602; "U-701: Sunk July 7th, 1942."
4. Office of the Chief of Naval Operations, 17 September 1942, OP-16-Z, "Report of Interrogation of Survivors of U-701, Sunk by U.S. Army Attack Bomber on July 7, 1942," p. 12; available at www.uboatarchive.net/U-701INT.htm.
5. Hickham, Torpedo Junction, pp. 263-266; Thomas P. Ostrom, The United States Coast Guard in World War II: A History of Domestic and Overseas Actions (Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 2009), p. 103.
6. Hickham, Torpedo Junction, p. 266.
7. Blair, Hitler's U-Boat War, pp. 607-608.
8. Marc Milner, Battle of the Atlantic (Gloucestershire, UK: Tempus, 2003), p. 109; David Fairbank White, Bitter Ocean: The Battle of the Atlantic, 1939-1945 (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2006), pp. 242-243.
9. "U-701: Sunk July 7th, 1942."