Posted on 05/15/2010 9:36:15 PM PDT by ErnstStavroBlofeld
My high school physics & chemistry teacher was an American sub commander in WWI and WWII. After WWII he helped refit German Type XXI U-Boats for service in the American navy. He really loved those type XXIs, saying they were real submarines, at last.
Those Type XXIs serve our fleet until the nukes put to sea.
I think that an order went out via radio requiring the U-boats that were at sea at war’s end to put-in at the nearest allied port. Some dropped anchor in US ports. Most of the remaining U-boats were based in Norway, so the ‘nearest’ allied port would have been in Britain — Scotland to be exact.
While the operation may have been classified it isn’t really so surprising. Something similar was done with the German High Seas Fleet after the signing of the Armistice that ended WW1.
In regards to the paranoia, my parents lived in northern California from the late 1930’s until 1959. During the war, they were required to use blackout curtains and covered headlights.
My mom was a telephone operator. She worked odd hours. One night she was driving home late at night. A Japaenese submarine surfaced and shelled the coastal highway that she traveled. No shells landed anywhere near her. It really scared my dad when he heard about it. The attack did not have any military value except to tie up forces for defense that could have been used for offense. Similar motive as the Doolittle raid on on Tokyo.
I was vacationing the the Inside Passage of Alaska a decade ago and they pointed out where a POW camp was located on a peninsula in that area. There were no real barriers, I understand. Instead, they were surrounded by steep evergreen forests. Any one who tried to escape would give up and return when they found they definitely had no feasible exit.
You really need to get the documentary : Hitlers Last U-Boat.
The Germans had designs of launching V-2s from U-Boats but had technical problems. The biggest problem was the storage of the LOX(Liquid Oxygen) because of its volatility. So they decided that they would use a rocket launcher of six rocket racks mounted on a carriage similar to one used on a anti tank gun. This was to be used to bombard New York City U-511 was commissioned to do the job.
One night they left their front door open to bring in groceries, and the light from their fireplace was visible to the spotter on the other side of the bay, near Oakland, 20 miles away.
The spotter called the Millbrae spotter, who went to my grandmother's house and gave her a good tongue-lashing!
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