Killing Shore

It is January 1942. Six weeks after the United States entered World War II, Imperial Japan is annihilating American forces in the Far East while the Nazis stand triumphant over much of Europe. Adolf Hitler’s forces are about to commence an assault along the coast of the United States, but this “Atlantic Pearl Harbor” would prove far more devastating than Japan’s attack on Hawaii. The wolves are closing in, and few Americans realize their beaches and coastal cities are about to witness the worst naval defeat in American history.

For the beleaguered Allies, the key to victory lies in the vast economic and military resources of the Western Hemisphere, but only if Allied merchant ships can bring it across the Atlantic. These civilian-manned vessels are the backbone of the American war economy and the lifeline enabling Britain and the Soviet Union to survive—but Hitler’s favorite admiral also knows this, and he has set in motion a plan of unprecedented boldness. Germany’s dreaded submarines, or “U-boats,” are going to the United States.

The fiery months that followed would pit German U-boat sailors against American servicemen in a desperate battle that stained East Coast waters with oil and blood. Thousands perished as hundreds of ships were sunk. Plying the seas amid this deadly cat-and-mouse game was a stalwart contingent of civilian mariners who crewed the tankers and freighters supplying the war against the Axis powers.

Numerous US coastal states became battlefronts in 1942, and the events that transpired off New Jersey illustrate the brutality and devastation of this pivotal but forgotten campaign. Today, the seafloor along the Garden State is strewn with shipwrecks attesting to the innumerable ways to die faced by friend and foe alike only miles from the boardwalk. Though these seafarers’ lives were forfeit, the battle they fought would decide the fate of millions.