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By Captain Edward L. Beach, U.S. Navy (Retired)
I
Operation Drumbeat: The Dramatic True Story of Germany’s First U-Boat Attacks Along the American Coast in World War II
Editor’s Note: We asked Captain Beach to review Operation Drumbeat (by Michael Gannon. New York. Harper and Row, 1990). A few days later he informed us that the book was far more important than could be conveyed in a short review. He made a convincing case that he should i do more, and has written an article about a little-known | phase of the U.S. war with Germany, along with an assessment of its application to the U.S. Navy today.
In January 1942, as contemporary historians tell it, German U-boats appeared in great numbers along our East Coast. Historian Samuel Eliot Morison said, “According to [Allied] estimates, there was a daily average of 19 U-Boats ... in January 1942 . . .28 in Feb- ruary-April, 35 in May, and 40 in June.” In return, we I Were supposed to have sunk 28 U-boats in the first three nionths and damaged more—as epitomized by a late-
| January combat report: “Sighted Sub, Sank Same. Later
/ proved to be fabricated by a public-affairs officer, this message became a major embarrassment to the U.S.
I Navy—but at the time, it ranked with Oliver Hazard Per, ry’s immortal “We have met the enemy and they are
| ours.” _
Admiral Morison put little stock in either the exaggerated sub-sinking claims or the “Sank Same allair. Nev- | ertheless, the facts—once they were revealed proved more embarrassing than either of these two fictions. In those first few months, the Germans could provide only
UPI BETTMANN INSET/8TALUNQ-VERLAG. GERMANY
five U-boats for the first foray into U.S. coastal waters (23 December 1941-9 February 1942). Despite their puny number they attained terrible success, sinking ships from Maine to Florida, blackening the East Coast with flowing bunker oil, strewing it with debris, and lining our shallow continental shelf with the sunken wrecks of tankers and cargo ships.
This was Operation Drumbeat (Paukenschlag), so named by Admiral Karl Doenitz—“The Lion,” as he was called by his U-boat crews. In the process, the Germans lost no submarines at all. All the Drumbeat boats returned safely to harbor with garlands of small flags, one for each of the many ships they had sunk.
England’s antisubmarine warfare (ASW) defenses had greatly improved since the debacle of 1939 and 1940, and U-boat losses, in the European theater and in the Atlantic east of Newfoundland, had been mounting steadily. On the U.S. seaboard the disparity between U-boat professionals and inadequate or nonexistent ASW defenders was overwhelmingly to the Germans’ advantage; even more so than it had been against England, which began the war with memory of the World War I experience. Once the wracking crossing of the Atlantic was behind them, the U-boats had free rein against undefended ships. The cost to the United States and its allies in lives, ships, and urgently needed war supplies was horrendous—far greater than the cost of Pearl Harbor. And it was all borne in great secrecy.
Canada’s maritime defenses were more alert than ours; not at all bad from the German point of view. Canada had profited from the Royal Navy’s experience, but from Maine to the Caribbean Sea, Germany’s veterans of the Battle of the Atlantic operated against a totally inept defense. Unescorted targets came by in steady, doomed pro-
cession, and the U-boats attained success beyond their— and Doenitz’s—highest expectations. Their greatest problem was the long and terrible voyage across the North Atlantic in winter, in boats designed for the more moderate conditions nearer Europe. But this was no deterrent when they thought of the rich rewards awaiting them on the U.S. East Coast.
For weeks before these five submarines arrived off our coast, British naval intelligence had urgently informed U.S. naval authorities that they were on the way. Britain continued to report the approximate positions of the U-boats as they crossed the Atlantic, even identifying some by number and skipper. The U.S. Eastern Sea Frontier Commander, Rear Admiral Adolphus Andrews, charged specifically with defense of the seaboard, belatedly began to maintain a plot of German submarines as they moved across the Atlantic. The weakness of the forces he had available to meet them concerned him (also belatedly), so he requested of Commander-in-Chief Admiral Ernest J. King, the newly created “Comlnch,” assignment of additional ships with antisubmarine capability. According to the record, King’s response was to detail 25 destroyers to Andrews’s superior, Admiral Royal E. In- gersoll, the Atlantic Fleet Commander, whose job was to convoy across the Atlantic. Apparently Sea Frontier Commander Andrews did not question the wisdom of Atlantic Fleet Commander Ingersoll in shortstopping forces allocated for ASW. Nor did King check to see whether these newly assigned ships were really being employed in the most useful way.
The date selected by Doenitz for the five submarines to begin sinking ships—for maximum impact he directed the early arrivals to lie doggo until all were on station—was 13 January 1942. Operation Drumbeat began on schedule.
Up and down our East Coast, three or four unalert steamers per night plunged to the seabed with their bottoms ripped out. Many of them were laden tankers that caught fire, shooting flames high into the black sky. Merchant seamen, trapped or burned in their sinking ships or chilled by hypothermia in the pitiless winter sea, died by the hundreds. By contrast, the U-boats lay on the bottom all day, sleeping comfortably on our continental shelf, and surfaced after nightfall. Operating like motor torpedo boats, they wreaked mayhem upon our shipping.
Their depredations had no opposition. From Boston to Miami, prominently off New York and New Jersey, brightly lighted U.S. coastal cities provided a luminous backdrop against which the night-cruising U-boats, low to the water, had no difficulty outlining their much bigger targets. The ships traveled close to shore, in shallow water where they hoped the submarines would be less numerous, but this seemed not to bother the U-boats. It only made it easier for people on land to see the blazing tankers, sometimes only a mile or so away, and they began to congregate in horrified groups to watch.
Reacting to the reports of success he was getting, in February the delighted Admiral Doenitz scraped the bottom of his U-boat barrel and managed to increase the number of submarines patrolling our eastern seaboard to ten. But out of necessity four of the five new submarines were short-ranged 700-tonners, and in spite of rigid fuel economy (the eager U-boat crews filled water tanks with fuel and crossed the ocean using only one of their two engines), these smaller boats could stay on station only a week. By mid-February all of the first ten U-boats were back in the armored U-boat pens of their French base at Lorient, and for a short time none were operating off our East Coast.
For the second foray, which began in early March, Doenitz could field only six of the better-suited 1,100-ton U-boats; some were the same that had participated in the first stage. During the entire six months of the Drumbeat period, only one of the boats sent to U.S. waters was lost, and then not until the night of 13 April. Alerted by radio direction-finding and intelligence, to which everyone was now paying much attention, and aided by newly installed radar, the old destroyer Roper (DD-147) flushed the U-85 on the surface off North Carolina and sank her with instant and accurate gunfire. But during those same disastrous six months, 397 merchant ships carrying some 400,000 tons of cargo desperately needed by the United States and its allies were wasted on the ocean bottom from Florida to Maine, or washed up on oil-soaked beaches. German tor-
Pedoes worked; their submariners were innovative and i daring. They went from success to success, and they called it a “happy time.”
As an aside, it is instructive to compare their results with those achieved by U.S. submariners in the Pacific theater during the same period. U.S. torpedoes in the main ! did not work; innovation and daring were stifled. The U.S. submariners achieved only deep frustration and contusion; instead of daring, we displayed extreme caution- some of our older skippers even exhibited something like cowardice or nervous breakdowns (and no wonder, with nothing ever going right). With five times as many modern submarines in our Asiatic Fleet as Doenitz was able to field for Drumbeat, our results were zero. We went from failure to failure.
Only one ship of Japan’s Philippine invasion force was sunk. Had we had only the five Drumbeat submarines in place of the 49 subs our ill-fated Asiatic Fleet actually ha (25 of them modern fleet boats), the invasion would at least have been delayed, with its appalling consequences lessened. Possibly (though at some point such speculation is no longer useful), the Philippines might not have been captured, and thousands of young Americans might not have had to give up their futures to rectify that disaster.
U.S. submariners could not fight effectively until their weapons worked. After that was achieved (which took two years; Doenitz solved the identical problems in six weeks), U.S. submariners were every bit as good as the Germans.
Back in the Atlantic, the first successful attack on a U-boat by any U.S. force took place on 1 March 1942 off Newfoundland, in an area that had been lrequented by German submarines since early in the war (they had been intercepting British convoys from Halifax). Ensign William Tepuni, flying from Argentia, laid his depth charges directly alongside the U-656 as she was diving. The U-656 Was not, however, a Drumbeat boat. The first of these was sunk by the Roper, as related, but not until mid-April, after more than half of the ships laid on the bottom during Drumbeat had already been destroyed.
Operation Drumbeat is profoundly rewarding, even though it tells of enemy successes and U.S. lailures. It i gives us more of a human story than a technical report, but it is rewarding for the historian, as well. There are 37 pages of notes, nearly 100 entries for some chapters, and the publishers have thoughtfully identified in the top margin of each page of notes, the pages of the text to which I they refer. This in itself is unusual enough to be noted.
Professor Gannon knows his subject, and his lack of pro- | fessional naval background does not keep him from
/ achieving a successful combination of drama and histoiy.
The historian’s mission is normally to eschew all emo- I tion and record only the facts. This is partly because of the inherent inability to find sources for emotional or conver- | sational material, rare in official documents. Lacking per-
| sonal letters, or, nowadays, oral history tapes, the strict
I historian can generally only guess at feelings, conversa
tions, or orders orally given. If he hypothesizes or attempts to reproduce any of these, he risks the accusation that they are his own ideas, not those of the characters
involved. Professor Gannon, a thorough historian, has handled this well. Although he has at times put words in the mouths of his characters, he has at the same time carefully ensured that we always know the precise nature of what we are reading.
The book is a valuable contribution to knowledge of the war. One of Gannon’s principal contentions is that the debacle along the East Coast during the first six months of combat was worse than Pearl Harbor, and it was no surprise attack. U.S. naval authorities had full advance knowledge of the oncoming German U-boats and yet they did nothing, or next to nothing. Steps to dim the lights of our seacoast cities were not taken for months after the danger these lights created was recognized. Available ASW craft, at that time principally destroyers of various types, were used for stormy transatlantic convoy escort even though it was known that the U-boats had been diverted away from the Atlantic sea-lanes to the U.S. coast. The convoying destroyers made few contacts with U-boats in the North Atlantic during this period, principally because there were practically no U-boats there. There were only a few converted yachts and small craft—no real ships and not even civilian air patrol—covering the coast of the United States where the heavy losses were taking place.
False reports of success against U-boats were constantly published and, on the grounds that reports of the damage they were actually inflicting might help the enemy war effort (but more to conceal them from our own citizens), the coast-watching public was directed not to report the tragedies witnessed every night. Even persons in the know loyally suppressed the facts to avoid embarrassing those responsible for U.S. naval performance.
Gannon lays the blame on Admiral King, and devotes nearly half of his nine-page afterword to accusing not only Admiral King but also numerous senior officers, whom he names, of dereliction of duty. He makes much of the 25 destroyers, which he names, that were available for ASW patrols along the coast but, according to him, were held uselessly in port awaiting convey assignments that were not necessary.
This is not quite fair. There was at the time an argument as to which was the better: the convoy system or general area patrolling. Unfortunately, left out of that debate was consideration of actual enemy locations. Not one of those destroyers admits to swinging around a hook in port while less fortunate merchant ships were being sunk just outside. They were operating at full press already under the most urgent of directives, and except for possibly one or two days during convoy assembly periods, they were at sea and on guard. It was heavy duty for all of them, with much continuous time rolling their guts out in the dirty North Atlantic weather.
They did not find many U-boats—but neither were they shirking or taking things easy. The real unanswered question is why they were not sent where the major action was.
Perhaps it is true that Admiral King must bear the major part of the blame, since he was in charge. Admiral Kim- mel, after all, was in charge at Pearl Harbor and was never given a chance to defend himself afterward. Indeed, King seems not to have taken things very seriously until mid-
June, when a note arrived from General George Marshall: “The losses [inflicted] by submarines off our Atlantic seaboard and in the Caribbean now threaten our entire war effort.” But behind the dire facts there was another reason for our failure at this critical time that is clearly described in the book.
The number of items one person’s brain can handle is finite. Similarly, there is a limit to the number of persons or organizations one can keep under intimate and personal control: somewhere around eight. The accepted solution has been to delegate responsibility so that no one, no matter how eager for the burden, can overly dilute the finite span of comprehensive supervision. Delegation leads, of course, to bureaucracy. Never, however, has the reverse of the delegation principle been examined: how much institutional minutia can exist before it begins to swamp the organization or person theoretically served.
It is human nature to try to improve on things; the Navy bureaucracy, created slowly and falteringly long ago to solve obvious problems, was steadily improved, increased, vested with more functions, more required reports—and more of a paper blizzard. But all the well- intentioned people, dedicated though they were, failed to see how their very effort made things worse. It is a common fault of all bureaucracy. Every well-meant enhancement, every logical addition to accountability systems, nearly all “progress,” further erodes ability to do the principal job. In the naval bureaucracy, every senior was someone who had to be satisfied; every piece of paper had to be handled. This situation existed not only in antisubmarine work, but throughout the organization.
The United States was well into the war before things were sorted out, the essentials brought forward and the non-essentials relegated to the back burners. Then, at last, action authority was put where it was most needed and the principle of initiative was restored. (Today it is sadly evident that since 1945 the bureaucratic creep has returned; as with any unrecognized condition, this was most likely inevitable, but it need not remain so. The situation must be faced forthrightly.)
Admiral King could not get on with the most important part of the war in 1942 because he was niggled away by the daily need to deal with the huge Navy bureaucracy surrounding him. He was irascible by nature, and this must have made him more so. Theories about Machiavellian plots aside, a malfunctioning bureaucracy in Washington denied Admiral Husband E. Kimmel at Pearl Harbor the information he should have received before the war began; and it was this bureaucracy, through its tangled web of interlocking authority and responsibility, that made location of true guilt impossible. Probably no one was entirely to blame. Everyone feared the all-powerful, ferocious Admiral King; so Kimmel was made to carry the guilt in order that the rest of the Navy and the government could get on with the war.
It was because of bureaucracy that the continuous reports about weapon malfunctions sent in by our forces in the war zones produced no action. Not only submarine torpedoes failed to perform; other weapons failed also. In a different venue, the bureaucracy caused Commander Joe
Rochefort, responsible for the stunning U.S. victory at Midway (by providing Admiral Chester Nimitz with the critical intelligence information), to be cashiered from his post for bypassing his superiors in Washington. Because of the bureaucracy involved, no one thought to search for the missing cruiser Indianapolis (CA-35) until she was more than four days overdue—and then it was the unfortunate skipper who was court-martialed, not those who had really failed in their duty. These were never ferreted out.
Professor Gannon’s thoroughly researched and frightening book forcefully illuminates one of the worst episodes of mismanagement in U.S. history. The book leads one to think in ever-widening circles, seeking reassurance that this great lesson of World War II has been well hoisted on board.
Killing the man in charge when disaster occurs, or destroying him some other way, may assuage tempers and protect others, but it does little to prevent recurrence of the problem. Instead of spending our energies during peacetime floundering through our minutia-studded bureaucracy, more than ever, in the nuclear-armed, computer- controlled society that we have become, we must recognize the need to streamline ourselves.
This was one of Admiral Rickover’s principal thrusts, but the contrary is still overwhelming. As we learn new lessons from the Persian Gulf situation, Professor Gannon’s book should be studied by everyone in authority. The Secretary of the Navy should set up a task force with enough power to come to grips with this most deep-seated of problems, and then see to it that the resulting recommendations are effectively carried out. Not only will a great deal of money be saved, the Navy will be improved in a true sense, and both it and the nation will welcome hard evidence that first things are at last being put first.
Captain Beach is a writer on naval subjects; his books include Run Silent, Run Deep; Dust on the Sea; Cold Is the Sea; Around the World Submerged; Keepers of the Sea; and The United States Navy, 200 Years. He is a much-decorated combat veteran.
For those who would like to pursue the subject further, the following are recommended by both the author of Operation Drumbeat and the author of this article:
The Battle of the Atlantic, September 1939-May 1943, Samuel Eliot Morison, Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 1964.
U-Boat Commander: A Periscope View of the Battle of the Atlantic, Peter Cremer, Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 1982.
The Atlantic Campaign: World War IT s Great Struggle at Sea, Dan van der Dat, New York: Harper and Row, 1988.
The U-Boat Wars, 1916-1945, John Terraine, New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1989.
Torpedo Junction: U-Boat War off America’s East Coast, 1942, Homer H. Hickam, Jr., Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 1989.
Bloody Winter, John M. Waters, Jr., Princeton, N.J.: Van Nostrand, 1967 (rev. Naval Institute Press, 1984).