Why Was the U.S. So Unprepared for This U-Boat Attack?
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- čas přidán 4. 08. 2016
- After three weeks at sea, German submarine U-123 sails by the coast of New York and immediately finds a potential target: the large British oil tanker, Coimbra. The ease of the attack raises questions about why the U.S. wasn't more prepared.
From: HELL BELOW: Hitler's Revenge
bit.ly/2aYQoUi - Zábava
Imagine climbing out of a war machine to admire the biggest city of your enemy. Must be a really strange moment
Imagine being a housewife looking out the window facing the harbor crying obout how much you miss your husband and 3 sons but felling safe to be away from the war, and then BOOM a huge explosion lights up the night sky and the realization dawns apon you that you are never safe from war
@@suqmacoknbals4929 american hadnt entered the war so who would have been crying, americans always the same attitude its all about you!!
@@odoggow8157 Actually, America was at war with Germany when that attack occurred
@Matthew Thomas Now why you say that? Act like Republicans haven't done the same
@Matthew Thomas Wow, read a history book.
Atlantic City was told to turn off their lights by the government and they refused. The Uboats would surface in broad daylight just offshore and pump shells into the hull of the ship they were attacking from their deck cannon because torpedoes are expensive. And the people on the beach could stand there and watch it all.
Unbelievable. Atlantic City just couldn't do without the money.
Once you had air conditioning, you didn't have to find places to go during the summer to stay cool. But in WW2, it was the place to be.
I beg to differ 525Lines. My understanding is that there was a disinformation campaign in place to try and cover up the fact the government was doing nothing to stop the under sea boats.
Not only were they doing everything they could, they brought the British in to teach them how to fight subs. The book Don't You Know There's a War On goes over this.
there was that gap the Germans called 'the second happy time' in German. It's understandable to have them do that but they should have had destroyers covering the ports and been trained before we got dragged in especially with Roosevelt beating the drums of war. After all USA pledged to protect all shipping on our side of the Atlantic before japan struck. They dropped the ball by not having us ready when we where already in a undeclared war with Germany.
My Grandfather told me stories of Germans coming ashore at night to visit Ocean View Amusement Park in Virginia . No one even thought anything of it. That meant there was a German sub that close to shore. The implications today would be frightening.
Sorry lad you Grandfather was telling a tall tale.
Then there is u-869 which was also operating in the same area, which now rests off the NJ coast at 240 feet in depth.
Sunk after the end of the second happy time no doubt.
Lol losers
i thought the number was 420 and it was a joke
What happened to her? got sunk by torpedo or depth charger or sea mines or air raid bomb or deck gun firing?
Ha thats what they get
You know, it's quite amazing thinking about the fact that Nazi Germany got closer to the shores of mainland US than Imperial Japan ever managed to.
A japanese cruiser sub did infact launch a catapult seaplane equipped with incendiary bombs intended to start a forest fire.
In another instance anoter cruiser submarine shelled and american Port destroying fuel tanks and other stuff
This is wrong. Japanese submarine I-17 attacked Ellwood oil field which is on the west coast of main land United States.
The Japanese invade island in Alaska
It's amazing that you didn't bother to fact check before posting
@@hamzamahmood9565 he must be a democrat
My Mother was a young single woman who lived in Panama City, Florida during the 2nd World War. She told me once that she and her girl friends watched one night as a ship was torpedoed ’within sight of land’... Yes this did happen!
Wowwwww 😎
Admiral King who didn't want to take any advice from the Royal Navy was mostly responsible for this.
Geoff Dearth Yep, the Canadian Navy has to come down and help leaving the St. Lawrence weakly defended. A fact Americans seem to be unaware of.
The Yanks moved nearly all their forces to the Pacific.
Geoff Dearth yes. Just as much as the moron still believed his precious battleships were the fighting force. He ignored the Strikes made in Italy by Carrier Aircraft. If he had not lost all the Battleships at Pearl Harbor then he would have never deployed his Carriers.
Terry Whelan And nearly LOST the whole damn thing Dec 7, 1941. When the Japanese finished bombing the shit out of us The Navy’s Battleships were twisted burning wrecks. Only the Carriers Were not there. That was their primary targets.
@Stinger4186 I don't think he was inept but without a doubt he was stubborn. He believed in an old doctrine and did not want to change. He ended up having to.
100%.
I actually love how in your documentary all the Germans don't have an accent and speak perfect German!
A nice , large, J U I C Y, tanker
Aye yo that kinda was funny
I read that for ordering torpedo launch they used the command Los instead of Feuer beacause the latter could be misunderstood as a warning call for actual fire.
The British Royal Navy use "shoot" for the same reason.
Germany was definitely a force to be reckoned with
the u.s. was very lax when the war started. but quickly learned to defend the coast lines . if the german U-boats would have kept pressure on britian for six more weeks , it would have been over for the brits.
No...not at all
The British actually had ships to spare by this point. They sent Anti-sub trawlers to the US to defend the east coast because the US Navy were so slow at adopting the convoy system. HMS Bedfordshire was one of them. It was sunk by a U-Boat near Ocracoke. All the crew were killed. The bodies of the crew are in a British cemetery there and the local community still maintain it as a mark of respect for the British sailors who lost their lives defending US soil.
Foreign patrols off our US coast aren't uncommon. I was aboard a US Frigate tracking a foreign sub off the coast of NY in the 80's. We regularly patrol off foreign coasts. Not sure why American's think it's not happening to us.
We do and they paid for it
crazy to think an attacking ship could get that close to the city. never think about that when you’re there
One thing was that the American admiral in charge refused to enforce a convoy system!
They didn't teach us THAT in school.
They didn't answer the question in the title.
This attack occurred off the south shore of Long Island. Not super close to Manhattan.
Good Job
Dr. Eric Grove reminds me of my teacher in the 6th grade.
When did this take place?
I know the answer; it was a surprise even for the germans that they could reach that far. After start of the war they progressively discovered that there was a remarkable fuelsaving element when they cruised on constant, no too high speed above water line, again without interuptions, allowing approach of new york and still be some weeks operational. A glimps of it you can find out with your car driving cruise control at 50 miles per hr but water friction coefficient is even more. So one could say it was even a surprise for the germans. If only Donitz would have send 12-20 u-boats instead of 5(6) a killing blow to new york would have been issued. In Kiel Germany one can visit the same type VII of "operation paukenschlag" which did this job and its an eye-opener to enter this u-boat.
I live near a artilery base in Delaware known as fort miles it's retired and sometimes they do reenactment of World War Two and have all ww2 guns apparently in 42 there was a i boat capture
I been there before and I paid a few thousand for them to actually fire the heavy artillery gun. Knocked my ear out
iBoat made by Apple
FDR had to summon Admiral King to the White House to explain to him that America was at war. Once he realized that Admiral King did a good job.
Many people still do not know that during the first three months of 1942, German U-boats sank more than 100 ships off the east coast of North America, (such as New York Harbor) in the Gulf of Mexico, and in the Caribbean Sea. Some of those ship losses were within site of land.
Actually 233 US and allied ships were sank by UBoats in the US east coast and Gulf of Mexico in WW2. About 5,000 sailors were killed, more than the Japanese bombing at Pearl Harbor.
@@robertonavarro7713I think we paid them back fairly
The music that plays in the background, is there a soundtrack from which I can listen?
😢😢😢😢😢😮
You would think that whoever made this video would get the basics correct. A British ship would not be steaming with it's lights showing, only neutral ships did this, to make it obvious that they were, in fact, neutral.
0:58 A N I C E L A R G E *J U I C E Y* W A N K E R
Love it when 123 sunk that tanker.
There is a Uboat in the St. Lawrence as well.. Or at least the mouth of one..
Very dangerous scene
I was in New York 4 days ago but I’m now depressed and jet lagged
oh so ppl got killed and u make it all about u, fuking morons in this world i swear
Guess they did get to see New York afterall
It's more of an impact if you really want to see ALL the photos taken of the US East coast from U-boats.
In Wikipedia, I just stumbled into a book author's reference for some info on U-boats and a photo.
I checked it out.
The author grew up in NYC, and recognized "unknown" photos in the German Navy Archives of his fair NYC, the Hudson river, and etc.,at night and some broad daylight photos. He wrote on his website that the archivist showed him multiple archive shelves for US East/Gulf coast from the war, some identified, and most not. Not U-boat "tours" were logged, but there a list of a few U-boats that were sent out to the US on these missions to specific areas. All the other U-boats were operating as Wolf packs or as a flotilla of individual strike boats.
The photo that you was was a fake. It was allegedly taken by U 123 through the periscope. He acknowledged after the war that he never went past the Verrazzano Narrows, and there is no line of signt to lower Manhattan or the West Side of N.Y. from his location. The daylite photo you are referrencing was taken from the Staten Island Ferry. Part of the handrail is plainly visible.
0:56 why is he so amazing😂
A nice, large, juicy tanker
which year did this take place?
Alexander early 1942
The blame for the success of DRUMBEAT lies soley at the feet of Adm E King and his obstinate aversion to learn anything from the hard lessons the Brisish had gleaned in the struggle against the U boat threat.
We can also blame the government for not taking any action to stop it for a vary long time.
@@AdolphusOfBlood u were not born have no clue so what rite do u or any of us have to blame anyone?????
@@odoggow8157 That's an interesting attempt to make an argument.
Where is the rest
We Brits tried to warn you to have blackouts on the shoreline
Eventually we did then came to help our English brothers
Juicy tanker mmmmhhhhh so delicious.
And I still don't know why...
Imagine if a uboat went so off course they made it up the saint lawrence, through the great lakes and ended up chilling by Chicago 😳
Ocean ships couldn't sail through to the great lakes until the 1950s when the St Lawrence Seaway opened. Too many rapids on the St Lawrence river. However, there rests in Chicago, now, the U-505 in museum.
JUICY TANKER
thats the result of too much complacent, disregard the danger, and isolation of the incoming war...
You have some of those in Washington. Europe falls, Pacific is next, like in 1941.
I thought they were gonnna shoot the deck cannon at the NYC skyline
It took nearly a minute for the torpedo to hit? Did they travel very slowly?
How fast U-Boat torpedoes travelled depended on the distance to target the torpedoes were set/ranged at. For a target distance of 3 miles or less they travelled at about 50 mph, for a target distance of 5 miles they travelled at about 45 mph, and for a maximum target distance of 7.5 miles, they travelled at about 34 mph. The further they had to travel to the target the slower they had to go to make sure their tiny water/steam fuel supply lasted till they reached the target.
U boat boys and men looking fashionably scrubbed and very metro
How did they know how much a ship weighed they were about to sink it?
There were a number of methods: 1) cargo ships/tankers had identifiable structural features & proportions for a given gross tonnage. This was taught during a commanders' training. 2) a ship identification book carried on all U-boats contained profile views and registered names of all ships matching a given profile, along with the function & gross weight.
Blueprints from manufacture spy’s and captured plans
Merchant navy, civilian registry.
Lloyds of London shipping registry
Matthew Kent who said the sub knew how much it weighed? As far as I know we won the war & are the ones telling this story. So why would you assume we're depending on their knowledge, on that night, to describe an allied ship sunk in our waters?
You can thank the Isolationists, many of their grandchildren still on the Houses. You ignored war, war didn’t ignore you.
US wasn't prepared for the Germans in New York. US wasn't prepared for the Japanese in Hawaii.
But in the end, they all got their butts handed back to them!
That's because although the US was very lacking in readiness, knowledge, skill and experience when WW2 came to them. To their credit, they learned extremely quickly. Of all the nations in WW2 the US learned the quickest.
The US barely had the supply and money for its military, it was in the middle of the Great Depression at the time the second world war, it had to call out to the civilians to donate scrap metal for all their weapons and tanks when we finally did get involved; I remember reading about how a family donated a bunch of saved pennies to buy a Tank for the Allies.
We still won tho that shows our perseverance idk about today though
I was about 4 years old at a War Bond Drive, and gave a check to Chance Vouight to purchase a Corsair that was named "The Spirit of Bridgeport." Still have the photo.
Blackout
I'm going to meet Ono Yoko
British tanker running with its own lights on.
Brilliant
US Maritime regulations at the time insisted that it ran with its lights on while sailing through US waters. The US, mostly due to anti-British h@ting Fleet Admiral Ernest J King, was unbelievably unprepared and incompetent when the Battle of The Atlantic arrived at their shores in January 1942. Despite Britain warning the U-Boats were coming and advising the US on appropriate measures. Admiral King refused to listen or take action. The entire coastline, all of its cities, towns and villages remained fully lit up, all lighthouses and navigation buoys remained lit, and all ships were fully lit up.
Losses became so bad that by May 1942, Canada literally forced Admiral King and the US into adopting the convoy system, having their waters protected by the Royal Canadian Navy and accepting extensive education on how to counter the U-Boats from the British Royal Navy. Largely because Canada had lost too much of its oil supplies from the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean from U-Boat attacks due to the King's and the US's unbelievable incompetence and couldn't tolerate any further losses and US incompetence.
Once, Canada had forced Admiral King and the US into accepting training on U-Boat defence and attack from the Royal Navy. To their credit, the US and US Navy did then learn very quickly and soon became an extremely effective ally in the Battle of The Atlantic.
*U* didn't see it coming!
I thought this was gonna be about the Luistiana. What pretty much sparked the US joining WW1 in 1915 (I think)
Ramon Guzman pearl harbour also
so u dont bother to read the thumbnails u click on, well thats real smart that is.
Bruh the Germans don’t even look German🤣 but nonetheless this channel has really good cinematic videos!!
And it was at that moment, they realized they could never win.
Until december 6, 1941 the
USA wasn't at war with germany.
So this could be one reason for
the carelessness.
i always thought they said........."torpedos lusse"
charlotte quillen same
What happened to the wreak of the ship
Let this be a lesson to us all that we do not repeat history. Thus whether it be Russia, China, or any other enemy, we must not let down our guard and allow them to attack.
Ask those in the Houses. If Europe goes down, next is the Pacific. Like in 1941.
Poor work with getting the actors look realistic.
It was set up to be more of an example. Probably didn’t have the time or budget for detailing.
I have fished on the wreck of that ship
its wrong u boat VIIXMC couldn't REACH AMERICA IT WAS IXB
they used milcows dumbass
He's right. Type 9 under sea boats where first to reach the states but later with the help of the type 14 under sea boats type 7 under sea boats could strike the unprotected harbors on the eastern seaboard.
The_Gaming_Syndrom It was U-123, a type IX. All u boats in operation drumbeat were.
By sinking a ship their telling everyone they are there.
To their own shore. Came the world war....
The Americans were advised by RN staff to use the convoy system, to instigate air patrols from the many airbase along the coast, and to switch coastal lights off, all these suggestions gained through experience were rejected out of hand and switching the lights off would be bad for business! So the slaughter went on until these measures were adopted.
Remember the moment when the United States was attacking Japan's cheeks then
Ha you said we were attacking those cheeks thats funny bro
Why no date this happened?
U-123 sank the Coimbra on 15 January 1942.
More than half of those German submariners who gazed upon the NY skyline never saw the end of the war. Their bodies are at the bottom of the Atlantic.
Good that's what they get for creeping in our bays
The story that they gazed upon the NY Skyline is BS. They would have to go past the Verrazzano Narrows, and the U-123 commander that took the photo said after the war that he never did.
Is this the closest they got?
Yer. U123 got as close as just past Coney Island, just short of entering New York's Upper Bay, and so could clearly see Manhattern's skyscrapers about 6-7 miles away from its position.
Her Captain Reinhard Hardegen considered actually sailing her into the Upper Bay and New York Harbour to attack multiple ships at anchor. But ultimately decided against it as he had no charts of the bay and so felt it was too risky. Captain Reinhard Hardegen survived the war and lived to 105.
I thought they were gonna fire a torpedo
At new york!
If they had better charts, they would.
When *The German Reich* researches *V-Class*
800 yards is virtually Point Blank Range for a German type 7 U-boat
U 123 was a Type IX.
👍👍👍
Hard to believe they also managed to destroy a Mexican tanker in the coast of Miami, Florida. Also getting much deeper, reaching to Houston, Texas.
Aaron ODST170 when were they In the waters off of Galveston?
M. S. L. At the beginning of 1942
I read than 56 US and allied ships were sank by UBoats along the Gulf of Mexico. Hard to believe also that UBoats ventured far into Australian waters and sank 2 US Liberty ships, the SS Walker and SS Silvester, in the South Indian Ocean.
And that tells you something we managed to defeat a foe like that but if WW2 happened today I don't know if we would because of how much diversity and different America is
It wasn't really our fault for lend-lease transferred most of US anti-sub, DD's and all their American crews to the limeys. If you would have sunk them in the GIUK gap, this wouldn't have happened, would it? Besides that, the US transferred ALL of our M-1's to you too. They currently reside in the sands of Dunkirk. Thank-you very much.
Just imagine the captain and all the sub workers took selfie pics before destroying the ship
they camped
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Really? The smithsonian using click bait title? Pathetic
4 comments :3
5 :3
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Simples they never listened to the British about a blackout at night
15 Jan 1942 the date of the attack.....26 March 1942 date Admiral King became Chief of Naval Operations....seems like a lot of you are blaming the wrong man
Admiral King was Commander in Chief of US Navy's entire Atlantic Fleet from Feburay 1941 until his undeserved promotion to Chief Of Naval Operations in March 1942. The right man is indeed being blamed. King was solely responsible for America's woeful lack of defences along its Atlantic coast and for the totally avoidable and grievous losses of so many American and International merchant sailors in US Atlantic Waters between January and June 1942.
King was a st@pid, ignorant, pompous, hubristic, anit-British j@rk. Who put his own hubris and anti-British sentiments above the lives of American, Canadian, British and other international merchant sailors.
The British had cracked the German Navy communication codes and were intercepting and decoding every single German Navy communication. They gave King plenty of advanced warning that the U-Boats were sailing to America and intending to target shipping in American waters. And Gave King loads of quality advice and instruction regarding blacking out the coastline and all navigation lights and adopting convoy defence and naval escort. King willfully ignored all of it and did absolutely nothing. Even after merchant shipping losses in US waters had become obviously extreme.
It was not until very soon after May 1st 1942, when Canada's government insisted upon the US Governement that the Royal Canadian Navy escort all Candian Merchant ships through US waters. That the US Governement then forced King to follow both Britain's and also Canada's now absolutely implored instructions to adopt the convoy defence system and to allow the British Royal Navy to rapidly teach the US Atlantic Fleet how to do anti-submarine escort.
And history repeats itself on September 11 2001,,,no US fighter aircraft armed to shoot down hijacked airliners.
Not the same thing at all. We weren't at war and they were civilian planes. Also we scrambled fighters to intercept the 4th plane
Are you referring to the 2 F-16's from Selfridge ANG?,,,those were unarmed. Not at war? Then maybe every new agency that calls it a "War on terrorism", should change it to "A physical altercation between extreme Muslims vs infidels".
@@jeffpittel6926 It wasn't a declared yet at the time and wasn't anywhere close to a world war scale. Also fighters were prepared to ram jets into planes horizontal stabilizer to bring it down
@@nczioox1116 In addition to that a civilian airliner had never before been used as a weapon, nobody knew what was going on, the first F15s scrambled from Otis ANGB at 8:43am, 3 minutes before AA11 hit the trade center
The U Boat was unlike anything the world had seen. And they never expected it.
Shame the Germans didn't manage to perfect the amerika bomber
How was the US unprepared.? Sorry we were busy liberating Europe
The US had not yet even begun to set off to liberate Europe at this point. German U-Boat U123 got within 8 miles of Manhattern's skyscrapers on the night of January 14th 1942, just 38 days after Pearl Harbour had been attacked by Japan. The US was indeed woefully unprepared for WW2 when it finally came knocking on their coastline and was also extremely green, with a great lack of knowledge, skill and experience.
From January 1942 to May 1942 merchant shipping losses in US East Coast waters had been so horrific due to the US's shockingly poor defences. That on May 1st 1942. The Canadian Governement insisted upon the US that merchant ships supplying Canada be escorted through US waters by the Royal Canadian Navy and implored the US to accept the British Royal Navy's repeated offers to train the US Navy on how to do effective anti-submarine defence and attack.
Once the Royal Navy was finally allowed by the US to advise and train their US Navy. To their credit, the US Navy learned and improved extremely quickly and became an extremely effective and vital ally in Britain's and Canada's Battle in the Atlantic with Germany. The US Army Air Force and US Army were also extremely green and initially performed poorly when they first tasted combat against Germany in Europe and North Africa. But they also learned and vastly improved extremely quickly.
Why are the commanders in these documentaries always standing ontop of the boat while firing? Those guys should be dead and rightly so. You don't aim that way and even if you had to ascend this high up to fire they wouldn't be standing there and wasting time to dive after firing
this is a documentary u freek not footagle of the event
Because the documentary is showing things 100% accurately. In WW2 when Submarines were on the surface, there were always commanded from the Bridge at the top of the sail (tower). It was the 1940s. In order to effectively navigate and attack on the surface, the Captain had to be on the Bridge where he could see everything on the surface. Torpedo attacks on the surface were always aimed visually from the Bridge. Under surface attacks were always visually navigated using the periscope, and torpedoes were aimed visually using the periscope.
The crew took their sweet time on the surface in this case because they knew there was absolutely no danger to them. They were attacking a completely unarmed and defenceless tanker in completely undefended waters due to how incedibly unprepared and incompetent the US's coastal defences were between January and August 1942. Such that German U-Boat crews named the period "the second happy time" due to how easy their attacks were thanks to the US's extremely weak defences.
And that is where the saying loose lips sink ships comes from
The story about the photos of lower Manhattan and the photos themselves are fake. According to statements made by the sub's commander Reinhard Hardegen after the war. He never went past the Verrazzano Narrows. There is no line of sight from the area he was in to Lower Manhattan in one of the photos. the view is blocked by Brooklyn and the Brooklyn Heights. In another photo the view is from the New Jersey Hudson River waterfront to the west of Manhattan. There are also statements made by Joseph Goebbels how the photos were made in a movie studio. A bit of propaganda that lives after 83 years
fun fact. a uboat is also a u shaped turd that plugs a toilet. aka a floatin' mocha. cheers
Sorry your wrong had nothing to do with being unprepared it’s fact choose to ignore British advice some USA are good at not listening to advice had listened to advice about radar Pearl harbour couldn’t have been very different
🖤⚪❤👌🏻👌🏻
That ship that the Germans sank had a black captain, I think. So you can make a guess as to why or how easily that U-boat was able to sink it... I'm just saying you know...
jk..lighten up..you know like go from dark to lighter colors as in "lighten up" JK again here ;-D
Once again Smithsonian posts a video that doesn't answer the title's question
Nazi shits
i am sorry for what happened to you...i wish you and many of your fellow us-americans, to get a proper education and stop beeing ignorant stupid shits
Well ...first of all we must remembered that AMERICA was in normal peace time for a very long time then when the war was forced up on her it took again more time to lead it's forces in practice of war as given fit proper training build new ships put in practice new techniques & applied them later on successfully now as far as admiral King is concerned he was a completely capable naval officer he was a leader that in dew time he carried through all necessary & fundamental changes of what was in the organization suitable to serve the cause now when he introduced & applied all of the above he crushed the U boats & cleaned up the Atlantic the Germans never again came so closed to American coast the threat was so great that they came to the point to operated their u boats from the middle of the Atlantic Ocean because of the American U S N successful measures & that out because of pure fear yes the night lights of NEW YORK that illuminated the dark sky impressed the crew of the German u boat but at the same toque freeze them because for first time in their eyes understood the economic ability & power of the country & in that dark night in their mind drew clearly the message right away of the unbearable to bear that it was impossible to beat a power of this magnitude ...
Was not because of President Trump.