Nazis vs New York - Axis Operations to Attack 'The Big Apple'

It was called Pon schug or drumbeat in English, the German operation to extend the ubot war to the very shores of the United States when Hitler declared war on the United States on December 11, 1941, following Japan's

attack

on the port from PO on the 7th, the Germans. He decided it was time to extend the ubot war to the west, where defenses were poorly prepared and patchy and hunting opportunities were numerous since the outbreak of war in September 1939. The German uots had been trying to subdue Britain by famine sinking merchant ships, bringing the nation to bed. food, raw materials, weapons and many other essential items from the United States and Canada and from certain South American countries, particularly Argentina, if Hitler could cut off Britain's transatlantic trade, the nation's resistance to him would collapse, initial successes had began to fade as the Royal Navy rapidly developed anti-submarine forces and better convoy protection in the eastern half of the Atlantic, but

attack

ing Allied supply ships at or near Source along the eastern coasts of The US and Canada, where defenses were weak, could still break Britain's resolve, so Operation Drum was formulated and put into action, it would also demonstrate to the Americans Hitler's long range ability to send OTS directly to the shores of the United States beginning in January 1942 The German ubot men would experience what they called the second happy moment, the first being the slaughter of merchant ships. at the beginning of the war in Europe, as long-range UOTs prowled the eastern coasts of North America, sinking a staggering 609 ships totaling just over 3 million tons for the final loss of only 22 uots due to the parity status of US defenses.

He became very bold and in one famous case went close to shore, in fact, as far as New York Harbor to torpedo and sink ships within sight of the Manhattan skyscrapers. This is the story of how a German ubot came to touch America's largest city in A bold and skillful display of seamanship for the first phase of the drumbeat. The head of the Ubots service. Admiral Carl Duritz could only spare five long-range submarines, since his forces were already fully committed in the eastern and mid-Atlantic in the anti-c convoy. Among the five ships that left Europe on December 23, 1941 for America was the type 9B u123, one of the largest ubot types. 194 examples would be completed during the war.

The 9B was 251 feet or 762 m in length and displaced 1,051 tons. a range of 14,000 M or 22,000 km and a crew of 48, perfect for American

operations

, armed with six torpedo tubes, four in the bow and two in the stern, the u123 was loaded with 22 torpedoes and also had a 10, 5 CM for surface actions. as 20 and 37 mm Flack guns for anti-aircraft defence, in command was an officer who would become a Ubot legend Capan Lutant Reinhard Hardigan had been in action since September 1939, previously serving as a watch officer aboard U124 and then as captain of u47 off the Scottish coast, where he had successfully sunk a Norwegian cargo ship u123, he had already carried out several war patrols before Hardigan took control in May 1941, patrolling off West Africa, Hardigan had sunk a cargo ship neutral Portuguese and in October 1941 torpedoed and damaged the British auxiliary cruiser HMS Urania during His Patrol to America Hardigan was ordered to take U123 close to the coast and penetrate the area around New York City, where they should be a large number of Allied merchant ships due to secrecy, Ceks Marina did not have updated maps of the area Hardigan had to rely on.

His nautical charts and a pocket Atlas ignored American defenses. Hardigan was also not a Wellman and was still suffering from the effects of a 1936 plane crash, having originally started out as a naval aviator before transferring to the ubot branch, he had a shortened leg and chronic stomach bleeding which required a special diet, but Hardigan He was determined to put U123 into action once again on 12 January 1942. Hardigan had his ship 125 miles southeast of Cape Sable, Nova Scotia, when he attacked the Halt and Company steamship SS Cyclops. an old ship that had remarkably survived two torpedo attacks in World War I Hardigan launched a G7A torpedo to starboard, the crew began to abandon ship and 29 minutes later Hardigan fired again, this time sinking the Cyclops 46 passengers and an army gunner manning the ship the defensive guns were killed the rest of the crew was saved hardigan approached new

york

the operation officially began on january 13, 1942 with the five uots beginning attacks along the american coast driving in the Surface U123 headed toward New York City Hardigan was delighted to discover that the Monto Point Lighthouse at the tip of Long Island was still operational on January 13, providing an excellent navigation beacon via powerful optics at the top of the command tower bridge.

Hardigan and his officers could see many towns and settlements on the coast completely illuminated, including the headlights of the cars. He could be discerned moving along the coastal roads. All this light provided a perfect backdrop to illuminate the ships at sea that were to be attacked by the UOTs at a point about 60 miles from Monto Point Hardigan. Came Upon the Nores, a Panama-registered tanker, on 14 January at 0834 hours, Hardigan launched a torpedo at the tanker, a second hit the ship at 0853, killing it. Some 39 survivors were picked up by American warships and a fishing boat later, on the afternoon of January 14, Hardigan was close enough to New York to see. the glow of Manhattan's skyscrapers in the distance, he said later.

I can't describe the feeling in words, but it was incredibly beautiful and great. I would have given away a kingdom for this moment if I had one, we were the first to be here and for the first time. Once in this war, a German soldier looked at the coast of the US. A photographer aboard U123 tried to get very good night shots of Manhattan and also film, but it proved difficult as the lighting conditions were far from perfect ; in fact, propaganda films were later shown in Germany. Images that were faked with carefully lit models were used for this momentous event, but the effect was very close to what Hardigan and his crew could actually see.

Incredibly, Hardigan had visited New York City in 1933 as a naval cadet and had risen to the top of the Empire. State Building was now viewing these same buildings from across the Sea. Hardigan briefly considered entering New York Harbor to attack the anchored ships, but decided against it due to the lack of accurate maps of it. His submarine could easily have been cornered and attacked in the shallow waters of the harbor Reluctantly turning away from the bright lights of Manhattan u123 moved away on the surface Again without being threatened by American retaliation the next day u123 again attacked a 0941 on 15 January Hardigan attacked the unescorted British steam tanker Coimbra 27 Mil off the Hamptons Off Long Island, the torpedo caused a massive explosion as exploding oil tanks clearly visible on land.

The tanker sank in shallow water in just 5 minutes. Hardan converted to Boulder and then torpedoed the cargo ship San Jose just 1000 meters from the Coast Guard base in Atlantic City New Jersey on the night of 19 January u123 was off Cape Hatress and would sing three more ships before returning to the Lauron base in France in a second war he patrolled to Florida Hardigan successfully sank several more ships, earning him the knight's cross and oak leaves. for these two

operations

and also earned him a congratulatory dinner with Adolf Hitler during which Hardigan littered his notebook by berating Hitler for not forming a proper Naval Aviation Branch like the one the Allies had as a result of the first attacks of Operation Drum.

When the US Navy instituted convoys in US waters, the US Army ordered that coastal lights be placed or protected to prevent Ubot commanders from using them to profile merchant ships to assist in their attacks. Time Square was given a blackout, meaning the famous advertising neon went out after a series of training and shore personnel appointments. Hardigan ended up as a shore commander in 1945 in charge of a battalion of sailors who fought as soldiers during the final battles after the war Hardigan was a politician for more than 30 years Reinhard Hardigan died in June 2018 he was 105 years old So Germany had successfully carried out a robot campaign off the east coast of the United States, but there was no was able to attack the continent;

In fact, the only time Germany had attacked American soil was at the end of World War I, when a German submarine bombed the small town of Orleans in Massachusetts. Hitler was desperate to see New York in flames to inflict material damage on the city. main city of the United States as it was doing with London, but since the Luft Faffer did not have any aircraft with the range to reach New York and return, one possibility was to refuel the bombers. of the way across the Atlantic at the Portuguese base General Salazar had allowed the German OTS to refuel there the German aircraft manufacturers hle yunas and mmid all aircraft designed for the mission for the US all bombers very great distances involved were enormous a round trip of over 7,000 However, the designs were based on the assumption of using the Aors as a refueling point, reducing the round trip to approximately 6,400 MI from France.

The winning design for the American bomber was the Yuna ju 390. Two prototypes of this huge long-range aircraft were built. The first code name. The V1 made its maiden flight on October 20, 1943. 26 aircraft were ordered but never built. The second V2 prototype was a little longer. The V1 was personally shown to Hitler on 26 November 1943. It made many test flights until November 1944, when it was stripped of it. parts in April 1945 it was apparently destroyed to prevent capture by the US Army. The V2 began test flights in September 1944 it was equipped with an air-to-surface radar and 5 20 mm cannons the ju 390 had six BMW engines with a crew of 10 its wingspan was over 165 feet, as we will see shortly, the Ju 390 also had the fuel capacity and endurance to reach New York and hit back at the plan.

In 1943, the Portuguese Salazar decided to allow the Allies to refuel aircraft and, in effect, base his aircraft. In the AORS but with a larger fuel load and a much smaller bomb load, the Yuna's Ju 390 still had the legs to make a round trip to New York from the French Atlantic coast. Let's just examine some of the plane's statistics to see if that's really the case. It was feasible that about 53,000 of fuel would be needed to provide takeoff power and then cruise at 12,000 feet for the 32 hours a round trip to New York would take. This was sufficient to allow a return flight with a payload of 10,000 kg.

It has been calculated that cruising at 232 knots, a Yuna 390 could theoretically fly 7,400 nautical miles, so the intriguing question remains: Did the Luft buffer attempt to fly to New York and back? The answer is unclear and highly controversial. The first such claim emerged in November 1955 in a story that a pair of Yuna 390s had made an extraordinary transatlantic flight to New York, including a stay over the city for 1 hour. Another intelligence report states that a Ju 390 had been delivered to a Luft Faffer unit near Bordeaux in January 1944 and had made a 32-hour round trip flight. up to 12 miles north of New York City, other intelligence reports based on PW interrogations made the same claims, including the claim that a plane crew had photographed Long Island.

These claims were made by experienced Luft pilots, although they provided no evidence and provided no photographs they had supposedly taken Albert Shar Hitler's architect and armaments minister claimed that the Yunas 390s made a top secret trip to Japan before the end of war, which was entirely possible; We will probably never know the truth about the American bomber in the fall of France keeping the Germans away from the Atlantic coast, meaning that any proposed American bomber mission to New York was cancelled; Ultimately, it remains one of the great objectives of the Second WarWorld. What is known is that attacking New York City was a minor obsession for the Axis powers during World War II.

The huge city seemed to attract nefarious access plans to it like moths to a flame ever since the United States entered the war on the Allied side in December 1941. Germany and Japan had devised plans to bomb its coastal cities and New York in particular, but unsuccessfully. The Atlantic and Pacific oceans constitute formidable physical barriers to preventing such attacks, as the technology of the time was too limited to have any real effect on the continental US. German uots sank tens of thousands of tons of Allied ships off the east coast of the US in 1942, but the uots could not physically attack mainland cities, the best that ubot captains could do in the early days was to use the bright lights of New York City to help profile merchant ships at night, the Japanese took a different approach and managed to bombard some American installations on the West Coast, using the deck guns of their submarines, some Japanese submarines were able to carry small seaplanes and two small bombing raids were carried out over Oregon on 19 1942 using incendiary bombs in an effort to set fire to the massive forests.

Both attempts later failed. The Japanese tried again with hydrogen-filled paper balloons transported across the Pacific from Japan on the jet stream to automatically drop incendiary and antipersonnel bombs throughout the western US and Canada. This campaign also failed to produce the desired results, meanwhile the Germans conceived The American Bomber Project to produce a huge class of heavy bombers capable of crossing the Atlantic and dropping a modest payload of high explosive bombs on the city of New York. The American bomber project was not carried out, but perhaps the plan with the greatest chance of success was not carried out.

German or Japanese but Italian, it was conceived by an extraordinary Special Forces officer who commanded one of the most respected and feared units in World War II. Prince Yunio Boresi was a naval officer and staunch fascist supporter of Bonito Molinis, a member of a prominent noble but non-royal family: he had become a submarine commander in 1933 and served in the Second Italo-Abyssinian War and the Spanish Civil War when Italy entered the war in June 1940. Bazi was in command of a submarine that was modified to carry a new invention that revolutionized submarine warfare, the miali or Pig, the first man's torpedo, the captain of The Craft He sat in the forward position, operated the controls and made the cruising range 15 miles at cruising speed. of two knots Bazi commanded several successful raids in the Mediterranean using Frogman and Mii.

The most famous was a raid on the British anchorage at Alexandria in Egypt on 18 December 1941. Three torpedoes severely damaged two anchored Royal Navy battleships, HMS Valiant and HMS Valiant. Queen Elizabeth Bazi took command of the submarine commando unit called the Deima Flotilla Masas, the 10th flotilla of assault vehicles recognized as the best in the world, so it is not surprising that Bazi, nicknamed the Black Prince, decided to extend operations from the Mediterranean to the United States. she understood that a successful operation against New York Harbor would have a negative effect on American morale, bringing the war directly to American soil.

Boraz's plan was simple: he would insert a Fort Hamilton Special Forces Unit with which, with a new type of submarine and a Frogman Commando force, he would sail up the Hudson River and blow up a series of merchant ships docked along the coast. along West Street in New York before retreating to safety Due to the enormous distances involved, a large offshore mother submarine would transport the strike equipment across the Atlantic. Bazi knew that he could not use human torpedoes in such a raid. She needed ships capable of longer duration missions capable of protecting crews from the weather but still small and stealthy.

He sought such a system. Fortunately, those vehicles already existed and were stored in Laspia. At Italy's main naval base, the CA was a type of submarine designed by the Caponi aircraft company. Two prototypes of small Twan submarines with ballast tanks and torpedo tubes were built in the 1930s and were thoroughly tested by the Royal Italian Navy in 1938. The type ca demonstrated excellent vehicles and further improvements were made. More tests were carried out in Venice, this time in salt water. The submarines could travel on the surface at 7 knots and run at 5 knots submerged. The two 20-ton submarines were stored at Laspia until Bor found them two years later.

Gazi's unit, but both needed a complete renovation after so long in storage. Boraz also ordered some modifications. The torpedo tubes were removed and replaced with eight 100 kg explosive charges that could be attached to enemy ships by Frogman. The diesel engine was also removed, only the electric one from the submarine. Engine was needed, the conning tower and periscope were also removed, the second crew member was changed from engine mechanic to frogman. The new ca ship had a range of 70 M, underwater speed increased to 6 knots and, unfortunately, could dive to 47 m during later tests. ca1 the first prototype sank in lake iio due to mechanical problems, there was now only one ship available for the ca2 mission, but Bazi went ahead and took care of the next problem: a large mother submarine to transport ca2 to New York the submarines already assigned to The Boraz flotilla was too small to transport Ca2 across the Atlantic, he decided to ask the German Navy for help, but Admiral Dernitz, commanding the ubot forces, had no ships to spare.

This was a blow as the available Italian submarines based in France were not numerous in Bordeaux. The Italian Navy maintained a small fleet along with the German Uots. Prince Bazi approached the base commander for help and was assigned the Marcone Leonardo D Vinci class submarine commanded by an experienced captain. On 1 July 1942, the Leonardo D Vinci had returned to Bordeaux after a successful The Atlantic Patrol had its 20,000 tons of enemy shipping, the submarine was sent to the local shipyard for modification for the next mission, the cannon was removed. the deck of the forum and its base and a special cradle was created for sea trials of the CA2 which began on September 9. 1942 practicing the release and recovery of ca2, the process was repeated on September 15 and Boresi knew the mission was ready, but would not launch it until December, as the operation required minimal daylight and plenty of night to allow Frogman time to mine ships in New York and evacuate Bazi also needed time to build an intelligence picture of what was in the port and its defenses; in fact, information gathering caused the raid to be postponed until December 1943.

It is believed that Boresi may have been so delayed because he was waiting. the completion of two new CA class ships CA 3 and 4, but disaster struck on 23 May 1943 when the Leonardo da Vinci leaving Bordeaux training was detected and sunk by the Royal Navy destroyer HMS Active and the frigate HMS NES Barton even greater Calamity. It happened to Bazi on September 8, 1943, when Italy signed an armistice with the Allies. Bazi fled north and with most of his unit continued fighting for the fascists until May 19, 1945 before fleeing to Spain, where he died in 1974. Bordeaux was evacuated by the Germans. in 1944 after D-Day and the Battle of Normandy, but the ca2 was abandoned, it was discovered in 1945 in a railway carriage in the French city intact, then it was scrapped, could the baz operation have probably worked if Leonardo D Vinci would have managed to evade the Royal?

US Navy and Navy anti-submarine patrols to approach New York the technology worked well ca2 was a very capable machine and its crew very well trained professionals certainly a series of merchant ships that suddenly exploded at the docks of New York would have sent shockwaves through the United States and Bazi would have won his propaganda victory, but the delays push the operation beyond the Italian surrender and we will never know what havoc the black prince could have wreaked on New York City. January 1945. The US Eastern Maritime Board is conducting a UOT hunt. but this is no ordinary hunt, the Americans have credible information that the UB ships approaching their coast are not ordinary German submarines, but rather these ships are rockets about to launch V1 flying bombs into New York City.

The Americans will use everything at their disposal to stop him. This diabolical German plan to mount rockets on unmanned aerial vehicles was not an afterthought of the war, but experiments had been carried out to try to perfect submarine launching weapons since 1941. Punda, on the Baltic island of Yadam , was where Germany developed its rockets and missiles in The first half of the war, in the summer of 1942, the first rocket launch from the deck of a ubot occurred, when the AIS vget 41 rocket launcher was welded to the deck of the submarine type 9C U 511, loaded with 6 30 cm rockets, the ubot successfully carried out firing tests. on the surface, then performed a series of underwater launches to a depth of 12 M or 40 ft, the rockets work well and were not hampered by being submerged, but although such tests demonstrated that a ubot could launch such weapons on the surface or Submerged, the weapons themselves were effectively little more than silly mortar bombs, the Ubot having no way of controlling the rockets as they lacked a proper guidance system.

The mortar system was intended to protect the Ubot from the Hunters' anti-submarine forces, but was too inexact to be of much practical use in The further development of the underwater mortar was neglected while Punda worked to perfect the first of the new V-weapons. Hitler's revenge. The flying bomb V1. The V1 was one of the first cruise missiles powered by a single pulse jet engine. Generator Guided by a simple autopilot that regulated altitude and air speed, the V1 carried a 1,000 kg explosive warhead. An odometer driven by a small propeller at the tip determined when the missile had reached the target area and when the preset counter reached zero.

The V1 1 automatically. was placed in a steep drop to hit the target used to bomb London these cheap weapons landed accurately within a circle initially 20 M or 32 km in diameter corresponding to the whole of London later improved to 7 m or 11 km 9,521 v1 were launched in England with around 25% hitting targets, the rest fell to flat gun bombing balloons, fighter interception or mechanical failure, killing 6,184 people and wounding three times as many and destroying or damaging a million buildings with the perfected V1. The notion of mounting v1 on uots was suggested in July 1943 as an attractive idea, with a range of 148 Mi or 238 km.

It would provide a transfer capable ubo capable of attacking a target with low precision from the horizon because it was on a ubo and could be sent against any city. Around the world and at the forefront of many minds was the idea of ​​bombing cities along the east coast of the US. New York City was the most obvious target. Several V1s could be stored in a disassembled state aboard a submarine as reloads to launch a V1 on a ramp and a cat catapult was needed. Initial development work was started to design a system that could be placed on one of Germany's existing Yubo designs, but at the same time German scientists were already thinking about something much larger than the V1 so that the new one would have been created.

V2 missile. The world's first long-range guided ballistic missile, the V2, cost 5 to 10 times the manufacturing cost of a V1, but had a much greater operational range of 200 M or 300.20 km could be launched by mobile units in Instead of in fixed locations vulnerable to air attack and impossible to detect or shoot down as it plummeted toward its target and at a staggering speed of 1,790 mph or 2,880 km per hour, these fearsome weapons bombed London and southeast England between September 1944 and March 1945 with over 3,000 V2s, killing some 9,000 people, injuring tens of thousands and causing enormous property damage with the war situation deteriorating for Germany in late 1944, the use of the V2 against the United States, specifically New York City, became a German concern again, but unlike the V1, the V2 was a much greater technical challenge; for one thing, its size alone meant that no existing tube waslarge enough to carry even one test stand Project 12 began development of an underwater cargo container that could accommodate 1 V2 and be towed across the ocean to the US coast by one of the new electric boats Many years ahead of its time, it was anticipated that a single Type 21 could tow up to three of these V2 submerged containers, each displacing around 500 tonnes, as well as one V2, each container also contained a reserve of diesel fuel to supply the Type 21 during its long journey, as well as all the complicated fuels and chemicals needed to launch a V2 reaching the firing position, the ballast tanks in the container would be flooded, carrying the container to a vertical position, the guidance system would be set up and then the missile would be launched remotely from the mother ubot, however the technical difficulties in trying to adapt the V2 for C launch were immense.

The V2 engine required a two-component fuel which required careful and lengthy monitoring before launching the missile could not be transported completely full of fuel as the tanks would collapse if fueled. In the horizontal position, the entire process of installing fuel and launching a V2 on the ground was quite long and laborious, requiring a large number of vehicles and technicians; However, Germany went ahead with the construction of the first submarine containers each 30 m long. Orders were placed for three containers at a time. Intin shipyard in December 1944 and an additional order at another shipyard at Elbing in Germany, it appears that at least one container was completed and testing began in the winter and spring of 1945, but the Germans never perfected the equipment before it was finished the war, although the Germans never managed to perfect the V2 armed uots.

Allied intelligence had information that such a program was underway and this is understandable, considering that the Germans had been monitoring the V1 and V2 in London and southeast England, and feared that the project was actually more advanced than the information that the V1 arm. The uots that would be sent to attack New York City came from German spy Oscar Mantel, who was captured by the US Navy when the ubot transporting him to Maine was sunk in September 1944. Mantel told the FBI that V1 armed submarines were being prepared for an aerial reconnaissance mission. from ubot bases in Norway revealed several strange mounts on ubot decks, perhaps launch pads for v1.

Closer analysis revealed that they were actually ramps for loading torpedoes, but a few weeks later other reports of armed V1 uots emerged, one across neutral Sweden, although believed by the British admiralty. that the Germans could launch v1 from their large type 9 units due to the strategic situation. Would the Germans waste time and resources on such small-scale attacks on the United States? In November 1944 Canada in Florida was ordered to begin intensive antio patrols up to 250 miles or 400 km from New York City, then more confirmation came that further reinforced in American mines the reality of the threat facing the nation.

In December 1944, William Kpw and Eric Gimpel were subsequently captured in New York City as Manto. The two agents reported that the rocket weapons would arrive next on December 10. New York City Mayor Fieldo LaGuardia made the threat public, creating widespread media interest. story 6 days later, the massive German offensive came through the Arden Forest of Belgium and Luxembourg through the weak American defenses and an enemy that was supposed to be almost defeated was repulsing the Americans and advancing once again westward, the US Navy took up the ubot threat. very seriously and prepared what came to be called operation teardrop by assembling US Navy hunter-killer groups and US AAF aircraft to destroy any uot that approached the US coast.

The forces were ready on January 8, 1945, shortly after, the German armaments minister, Albert Shar, made a radio. broadcast in which he said that New York City could expect the v1 and V2 to fall on February 1, 1945, further fueling the US government's concerns. Then, in March 1945, intelligence American learned of the departure of nine UOTs from Norway bound for the North American coast on the 12th. In April 1945, the Ubot group was codenamed Grupa Zulf and its purpose was to attack shipping from New York south to divert anti-submarine forces away from British coastal waters, where a new Ubot coastal campaign was planned.

The Americans quickly concluded that the Grer Zolf were missile-armed OTS and Operation Tear brought into action a huge naval force that included two escort carriers and 20 destroyer escorts selected from Hampton Roads. 12 of the destroyers began searching a line 120 miles or 190 km long. Groupa Zulf found no targets as the convoys had been diverted from them, the ship's frequent radio communications with the ubot command in Germany allowing the Hunter forces to plot their movements with ease. The first to be attacked was the U235 bomb locked by the Hedgehog mortar aboard the Destroyer Escort USS Stanton on 15 April 1945, the German submarine escaped but was recovered by sonar and with the USS Frost Stanton destroyed it early in the April 16th.

The entire crew was lost. The USS Frost then found U88 by radar on the surface. Frost opened fire with Bower's 40 mm guns, forcing U 880 to dive in her company. with the USS Stanton, the destroyer escorts sank the submarine with the hedgehog at 4:00 a.m. on April 16, killing All Aboard. Curiously, both U235 and U880 exploded with great force, reinforcing American mines from the ships carrying V1 U805 flying bombs. She was captured by aircraft on the surface on 18 and 19 April, but was not attacked on 20 April, ironically Hitler's last birthday. U 805 launched torpedoes at an American fighter destroyer, but was lost on the night of the 21st.

U 805 escaped after a 2-hour depth charge by three destroyer escorts, but on the night of 21/22 April USS Carter detected Carter's U 518 Hedgehog and another Destroyer Escort U 518 exploded, there were no survivors. A deeper search by 14 destroyer escorts yielded more results upon realization. The unfolding disaster on the night of 22/23 April Ubot command disbanded the grouper zolf and ordered three of the remaining ships to station between New York City and Halifax in Nova Scotia to intercept convoys. He also ordered three more uots that have been operating independently of grer Zol to join the others. Alli's deciphering of these signals told the Americans that the V1 armed uots were preparing to launch against New York City, but as the ubot sailed toward their new positions, interceptions were made on April 23.

She dropped depth charges on U 881, but the ubot survived the next day. U 546 maneuvered to attempt to torpedo the escort carrier USS Core, but was detected by the destroyer Escort USS Frederick C Davis at 8:30 a.m. m. U 546 immediately fired a T5 acoustic torpedo at the American ship which sank her with the loss of 126 of her crew. U 546 was pursued relentlessly for 10 hours by eight destroyer escorts. The damage to the ubot surfaced. Her captain and 32 members of her crew were taken prisoner. These prisoners were harshly and brutally interrogated on land, even beaten. To obtain information about the German plans, but there was no information about the v1 and the mistreatment continued until the end of the war in Europe.

The fifth and last ubot to be destroyed was the depth charge U 881 which was destroyed on 5 May. 1945 the four surviving uots surrendered at sea on 7 may 1945 no v1 was discovered on board any of the ships the captains and certain members of the crews were subjected to harsh interrogations, it will be recalled that the british admiralty had believed that the Germans were capable of launching V1 missiles from unmanned aerial vehicles and after the war the US Navy did some practical experiments by firing the American copy of the V1, the KU V1 from the submarine USS cusk in 1946 It was a slow process that took about an hour to prepare and launch the rocket, but the US Navy showed that the German plan with some improvements could have worked and some v1s may have been launched in cities in the US Thanks for watching, subscribe and share, and also check out my Audi Channel War stories book with Mark Felton.

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