on december the 18th 1941 shortly after nazi germany's declaration of war against the
united states admiral karl donitz head of the german u-boat arm launched operation drumbeat a
coordinated submarine assault on the american east coast the united states supplied britain
with nearly 90 of its oil steel food and other raw materials and donets hoped that
by directly attacking the source of these goods he could strike the decisive blow against the
british empire the first wave of five heavy type 9 u-boats loaded to the gun whales the
gunnels with fuel torpedoes and provisions took nearly a month to cross the atlantic
as they approached their stations off the eastern seaboard apprehension grew among their crews who
assumed that the americans drawing on a year and a half of british experience would have
implemented strict defensive measures like ship convoys anti-submarine patrols and blackouts of
coastal cities but when they finally surfaced what they found shocked them there was barely a navy
or coast guard vessel in sight and at night the lights of cities like new york and miami blazed as
during peacetime silhouetting ships plying the coast like ducks in a shooting gallery as captain
peter eric cremer of the u333 later wrote against the footlight glare of a carefree new world were
passing the silhouettes of ships recognizable in every detail and shape as the outlines in
a sales catalog here they were formally presented to us on a plate please help yourselves thus began
what became known as the second happy time when the u-boats were free to attack american coastal
shipping with near impunity over only one month in early 1942 the five u-boats of the first wave
sunk an astonishing 23 ships totaling 151 505 tons before simply running out of the torpedoes
and having to return home emboldened by this success admiral donetsk launched a second and
third wave of german u-boats into the caribbean and the gulf of mexico targeting tankers near
the major oil ports of galveston houston and new orleans and freighters carrying aluminium ore
from aruba and british guiana in february 1942 a pack of u-boats even surfaced off aruba to shell
an oil refinery with their deck guns in 1942 alone u-boats sank 263 ships in the caribbean and 56 in
the gulf of mexico exceeding even the total sunk in the north atlantic the u-boat's traditional
hunting ground many of these attacks took place so close to shore that tourists on the boardwalks
could watch the eerie spectacle of oil tankers bursting into flames and sinking before their eyes
in one instance citizens of long island unaware of what was happening called the local police
to report a fire meanwhile the u.s navy and coast guard scrambled to confront the mounting disaster
though forewarned by british intelligence of the first wave's arrival admiral ernest
j king commander-in-chief of the united states fleet had stubbornly refused to implement
the time-tested convoy system believing that ships were safer sailing on their own not that
he had the ships to implement such a system into war naval construction had prioritized
battleships and aircraft carriers over convoy escorts and anti-submarine vessels leaving the
navy to counter the u-boat menace with only seven coast guard cutters four converted
yachts two 40-year-old gunboats and seven world war one era submarine chases even the simplest
of defensive measures black out of all coastal cities proved difficult as the mayors of those
cities refused on the grounds that it would hurt tourism against such thin and disorganized
offenses the u-boat attacks carried on unabated then in march of 1942 alfred stanford commodore
of the cruising club of america proposed a unique solution stanford offered to the navy's eastern
sea frontier command of the use of 30 auxiliary sailing yachts complete with skippers and crews
to act as a stop-gap anti-submarine patrol fleet although by april this offer had grown to 70
yachts and 100 smaller vessels the navy initially refused it was not until may 4th when the u-boat
situation had grown truly desperate that admiral king finally relented and authorized the coast
guard reserve to form the coastal picket patrol the united states first civilian naval militia
since the war of 1812. the picket patrol allowed any man otherwise ineligible for naval servers
due to age or health to serve for a limited tour of 30 days the fleet which at its height
numbered some 8 000 men and 3000 small vessels was divided into five task groups based along
the eastern seaboard each vessel assigned a 15 nautical mile square to patrol attracting all
kinds of misfits and adventurers from weekend pleasure boaters to rum runners and boy scouts
the picket patrol soon became known as the corsair fleet and the hooligan navy and among their ranks
was none other than legendary author and paragon of manliness ernest hemingway hemingway was no
stranger to war and adventure believing that the purest truth in literature could only come
from personal experience and from an early age hemingway had set out to live the most authentic
and dangerous life possible during the first world war he served as an ambulance driver
on the italian front where he was wounded by shrapnel and received an italian medal for bravery
he later served as a war correspondent during the spanish civil war took up bull fighting as a hobby
and went on numerous big game safaris in africa in every case his experiences provided valuable
grist for his literary mill directly inspiring such celebrated works as a farewell to arms for
whom the bell tolls death in the afternoon and the snows of kilimanjaro in the late
1920s hemingway moved to key west florida and gravitated towards yet another manly hobby
big game fishing never one to do things by half-measures in 1934 hemingway ordered a
custom fishing boat from wheeler shipbuilding in brooklyn which he named pillar this was a
reference to both the bullfighting shrine our lady of the pillar in zaragoza spain and hemingway's
second wife pauline farfer who used it as a code name in letters while hemingway was still married
to his first wife hadley richardson hemingway would also give the name to the female rebel
leader in his 1940 novel for whom the bell tolls measuring 38 feet long pillar was fitted with
a live well for storing fish a lowered transom with a roller for hauling fish aboard a flying
bridge and twin 70 horsepower engines giving her a top speed of 16 knots and a range of 500 miles
she was among the first purpose-built big game sport fishing boats anywhere in the world a board
pillar hemingway made numerous fishing voyages around key west bermini and the marquesas these
were raucous rum fueled affairs that very often showcased hemingway's legendary pugnaciousness
on one occasion hemingway offered a prize of 200 to any bahamian who could go three rounds with
him in a boxing ring while in another he punched out wealthy newspaper publisher joe knapp in a
dockside brawl according to hemingway biographer jeffrey mars on these voyages pillar became a kind
of floating whorehouse and rum factory as well as a fishing boat despite all this hemingway became
pioneer in big game fishing and was instrumental in establishing the sport in north america
among his innovations was a new technique for landing tuna the traditional method was to keep
the fish on the line for as long as possible in order to tire it out however this tended to
attract sharks which left the fish half-eaten or apple cored by the time it was landed hemingway's
technique was to reel the fishing quickly before the sharks could get to it and in this manner he
became the first person to land a tuner in pristine condition some of hemingway's other
innovations however were less than successful on one occasion while attempting to finish
off a shark he had reeled in hemingway ended up shooting himself through both legs with his pistol
on another while his friend henry stratto was reeling in a 1000 pound marlin hemingway attempted
to fend off the circling sharks with a thompson submachine gun the effect of this was merely
to fill the water with blood and attract even more sharks which ate away nearly half the fish
before it was landed such occupational hiccups aside however hemingway absolutely dominated
the sport winning every fishing tournament in the key west havana bamibi triangle in 1935
and landing a record seven marlin in a single day in 1938. he wrote numerous articles on big
game fishing for american magazines founded the bahamas marlin and fishing club and even hosted
ichthyologist henry fowler for the philadelphia academy of natural sciences on an expedition to
classify marlin species fowler would later name a species of scorpion fish after hemingway all these
experiences would form the basis for hemingway's 1951 pulitzer and nobel prize winning novel
the old man in the sea in 1939 hemingway and his third wife martha gelhorn whom he had met
while they were correspondents in spain moved into a 15-acre property called finca vegeta outside of
havana cuba when nazi germany declared war on the united states on december 11 1941 hemingway was
eager to join the war eff and offered his services to the american ambassador in havana spruel braden
at the time it was suspected that cubans loyal to the fascist regime of spanish dictator francisco
franco might provide assistance to the german agents and u-boats operating in the caribbean thus
with the ambassador's blessing hemingway pulled together a team of friends and acquaintances
into an ad hoc counterintelligence unit he dubbed the crook factory with the mission of rooting out
this fifth column but while braden was impressed with hemingway's work declaring he built up an
excellent organization and he did an a1 job martin gelhorn who was by this time falling out of love
with hemingway dismissed the crook factory as little more than a drinking club in any case the
group's work which mostly consisted of observing suspected collaborators and writing lengthy
reports soon began to boar hemingway and he longed for a more active heroic means of contributing to
the war effort with the formation of the hooligan navy in may 1942 he finally got his chance
hemingway once again approached ambassador braden and requested radio equipment heavy machine
guns and depth charges to turn his fishing boat pillar into an armed submarine chaser hemingway
was inspired by the q-ships of the first world war merchant vessels with hidden guns used to
ambush u-boats attacking on the surface the fact that u-boats were known to surface beside small
fishing boats and confiscate their catches added a veneer of plausibility to the scheme and braden
agreed to hemingway's request providing him with 32 thousand dollars in high frequency direction
finding or huffed up radio equipment and a u.s marine sergeant don saxon to operate it pillar's
wooden structure proved too fragile to mount heavy machine guns so hemingway had to make do with his
thompson submachine gun a handful of rifles and pistols and a box of hand grenades some sources
claim hemingway also got his hands on a bazooka as for just how he planned to take out a u-boat with
this tiny arsenal hemingway was somewhat vague though it appears his basic strategy was to wait
until the submarine drew near rake the deck with rifles and machine guns and drop grenades down the
conning tower hatch hemingway even constructed a heavy coffin-like scuttling charge that
could be dropped down the hatch to sink the boat unsurprisingly this decidedly hair brain scheme
attracted considerable skepticism with the chief of naval intelligence for central america colonel
john w thomason declaring that no u-boat commander would be stupid enough to come back close
furthermore he argued even the speedy pillow could never keep up with a surfaced u-boat which was
capable of speeds up to 18 knots hemingway dismissed him out of hand as a doubting thomason
dubbing the venture operation friendless after one of his beloved cats hemingway spent the next 18
months making hundreds of patrols into the florida straits through which u-boats had to pass to enter
the gulf of mexico in addition to sergeant saxon he was accompanied on these voyages by a rotating
roster of local sailors friends and acquaintances including his two teenage sons patrick and gregory
operating from base camp on kayak on feeds hemingway applied the small islands and keys
between florida and cuba searching not only for u-boats but also caches of fuel food and
water left by local collaborators but month after month they found nothing a result that should have
surprised no one u-boats tended to stay submerged during the day only surfacing at night to recharge
their batteries and pilot lacked the sonar radar or navigational instruments required for night
hunting listening to radio chatter also proved futile as nobody aboard spoke german and the yubo
transmissions were all encrypted unsurprisingly while hemingway took his patrols very seriously
martha gelhorn dismissed the whole endeavor as a lark an excuse for hemingway to sail around fish
and get drunk with his friends while pretending to contribute to the war effort she also accused
hemingway of using the patrols to access normally rationed naval stalls of fuel and alcohol or
get out of a cuban drunk driving charge she may not have been entirely wrong for like hemingway's
earlier fashion cruisers his submarine patrols were thoroughly booze-soaked affairs sergeant
saxon reportedly drank 20 glasses of gin per day while hemingway described having to go a week
without gin as a major wartime hardship an attempt by hemingway to limit his cruise consumption to
just two drinks per day nearly resulted in mutiny forcing hemingway to back down yet on
at least two occasions hemingway and company came tantalizingly close to intercepting their quarry
in december 1942 they spotted a spanish freighter the mark de comias being trailed by what looked
like a u-boat hemingway radioed in the sighting to the cuban authorities who boarded and inspected
the freighter when it arrived in havana however nothing suspicious was found and no one aboard
admitted to seeing a submarine later hemingway's son gregory spotted a u-boat at a distance of a
thousand yards the pillar immediately gave chase but the u-boat dove and slipped away while at
first the cuban authorities dismissed the sighting later that day the same u-boat was captured by
a coast guard vessel while landing four agents near new orleans but by july 1943 the yubo war
in the caribbean was drawing to a close and pillow received a coded message ordering her home
while hemingway would take the boat on a few more short patrols his days as a submarine chaser were
effectively over restless and hungry for adventure hemingway left for europe as a war correspondent
landing in france in june 1944 shortly after d-day hemingway's contemporaries were divided as the
practicality of his u-boat patrols with captain mario rominez the only cuban to actually capture a
u-boat dismissing the authors a playboy who hunted submarines off the cuban coast as a whim however
his escapades were not entirely fruitless but they formed the bases of his novel islands in the steam
the novel which chronicles the life of thomas hudson an artist living in bermini who hunts
u-boats during the second world war was published posthumously following hemingway's suicide in
1961. meanwhile the 8 000 strong hooligan navy proved little more effective than hemingway with
few picket boats managing to spot let alone engage a u-boat on september 15 1943 the yacht eddy ii
spotted a u-boat at a range of 100 yards and attacked with machine guns the u-boat's captain
unsure of his attack as full armament proceeded to crash dive and slip away but most german captains
weren't so easily intimidated on one occasion the crew of a cabin crews patrolling off the
coast of florida were startled by the side of a yubo conning tower rising out of the sea right
beside them to their astonishment the submarine's captain proceeded to come out on deck and call
to them in perfect english get the hell out of here you guys do you want to get hurt now scram
the introduction of convoy's blackouts and fast purpose-built patrol vessels soon made the tiny
civilian boats redundant and on october 1 1943 the pika patrol was disbanded while they may not
have accomplished much in the grand scheme of things the hooligan navy was emblematic of the
communitarian fighting spirit that defined the second world war when anything and anyone that
could make him the slightest contribution to victory was eagerly pressed into service
for as hemingway himself declared at the outbreak of war we are going to have christ's own bitter
time to win it if when and ever so i really hope you found that video interesting if you did please
do hit that thumbs up button below don't forget to subscribe and as always thank you for watching