Operation Drumbeat: The Dramatic True Story of Germany's First U-Boat Attacks Along the American Coast in World War II

GANNON , MICHAEL Views (15)

New York: Harper & Row. Very Good in Very Good dust jacket. 1990. First Edition. Hard Cover. . xviii,490 pages, 8 plates, text map, diagram, map endpapers, cloth, dj, very good. From the publisher: 'At ten o'clock on the night of January 14, 1942, a U-Boat, running on the surface, approached the opening to Now York Harbor's Lower Bay. Although the United States and Germany had been at for more than a month, New York's skyline was not blacked out On the contrary, it was so brilliantly lit that the crewmen on U- 123s conning tower, eager for their first glimpse of the 's largest city, could only gape in astonishment at the sight Nor was there any U.S. response to their presence-even though U-123 had sunk ships on its way over from France, one the night before off Long Island; oven though twenty-five US. destroyers were in position to defend the coast and its shipping; and even though British cryptanalysts, having broken the German naval cipher, had tracked this U-boat and four others to American shores and had provided their day-by-day positions and courses to US. Navy headquarters in Washington. was the code name of this first German assault against the United States in World War II. Author Michael Gannon focuses on U-123, the most successful U-boat in the assault force, and on her commander, Reinhard Hardegen, who sank nineteen ships on two American patrols and twice received Germany's highest decoration, the Knit's Cross. Gannon's history includes the other Drumbeat U-boats, two of which operated in Canadian waters. The book tells many astonishing U-boat stories and gives detailed accounts of U-boat equipment and performance, descriptions of the desperate ordeals of merchant seamen set adrift from sunken ships, and a thoroughly documented presentment of the incredible failure of US. Navy commanders to meet the German attack, with assignment of blame for what the author calls an "Atlantic Pearl Harbor:"' ; 490 pages .

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