When the United States entered the Second World War the country was woefully unprepared for
the U-boat menace. The government had neither ships nor strategy, and was desperately trying
to develop both, even as they were trying to hide from the public the extent of the damage
that the German U-boats were doing to shipping in US waters. The U-boats had such a run that
the period from January of 1942 to about August of that year was referred to by U-boat commanders as,
The Happy Time. And it is in that context that a small, outdated, recently refitted
US coast guard vessel, with a recently promoted commander, found itself in a life-or-death duel
with a German U-boat twice its size. And it is a fight that deserves to be remembered.
On December 8th, the day after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor,
the United States officially declared war on the Empire of Japan. Three days later,
on December 11th, Japan's allies, Germany and Italy, declared war on the United
States. The US Senate voted to declare war on Germany and Italy just a few hours later,
and the US had fully entered the Second World War. But in many ways the US was not prepared
for that war. While most every American remembers Pearl Harbor, the date which will live in infamy,
far fewer recall the period from January to August of 1942 that some historians have called,
the second Pearl Harbor. When Axis submarines sank more than 600 ships, in the face of a
disorganized American defense. Thousands of lives, mostly of civilian merchant mariners, were lost.
Calling it a second Pearl Harbor is actually an understatement. It is not that Germany was heavily
prepared, they had relatively few long-range U-boats, and they were themselves, surprised
by the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and the US entry into the war, and so had not pre-positioned
their boats. But they were much quicker to act in the face of a slow and confused American response.
Admiral Karl Dönitz, commander of the German submarine fleet, gained approval for a U-boat
operation in US coastal waters, titled Operation Drumbeat, on December 12th, the day after the war
was declared. The gravity of the Allied shipping losses are partially compounded by the fact that
in an effort to preserve national morale, and to seize the enemies of their success,
the US actively suppressed reporting of the losses. Losses were under-reported,
while claims of U-boat losses were exaggerated. In fact, in the first four months of 1942,
only one U-boat was sunk by an American ship in US waters. The U-85 sunk with all hands lost,
by the Destroyer USS Roper. Americans hardly realized at the time that we were at war,
more or less taking substantial losses. Britain had been fighting the U-boats since
1940 and had learned many lessons. But the US was excruciatingly slow at taking British
advice. American ships continued using normal shipping lanes. Despite the British experience,
the US refused to move to a convoy system, and the mistaken argument that that would
increase targets. US officials were afraid to issue blackout orders to coastal cities,
not wanting to affect tourism, or alarm the population. When British intelligence was
able to provide a detailed warning to the US of the U-boats heading to the United States,
the Navy warned area commanders, but did almost nothing else to prepare or respond.
German U-boats operated off the East Coast with virtual impunity. So unafraid of the Americans
that they were hunting in waters usually considered to be too shallow for submarine
operations, because they limited the ability to avoid anti-submarine depth charges. U-boat
captains referred to this period as, The American Shooting Season. One of their favorite places to
hunt was on the Outer Banks of North Carolina which earned the nickname, Torpedo Alley. By the
end of the war, the wrecks of some 400 ships littered the ocean bottom in Torpedo Alley.
It was there in Torpedo Alley, on May 7th of 1942, that the newly refitted Thetis-class
US Coast Guard patrol boat Icarus, encountered the type 7 C submarine U-352. The Thetis class
patrol boats were designed in 1930 to combat the practice of running liquor into the United
States during the era of prohibition, which was commonly called rum running. In all,
18 of the vessels would be built between 1930 and 1934. They were fast and efficient,
built to run down the smugglers. The steel hulled boats took their names from Greek mythology,
Icarus was the seventh to be built, built by the Bath Iron Works in Bath Maine, and launched in
March of 1932. When the Germans launched Operation Drumbeat, the major US naval assets were committed
to the North Atlantic. Naval assets were spread thin, and the US was desperately short of
specialized anti-submarine vessels. They were even operating converted yachts, and nearly 40-year old
gunboats. The Thetis class vessels, despite their small size, were refitted with depth charge racks,
and pressed into anti-submarine duty. Powered by two 670 horsepower engines, a Thetis class patrol
vessel had a length of 165 feet, a draft of seven feet six inches, and a displacement of 332 tons.
The top speed was 13 knots. It was armed with a single 76 millimeter main gun, two racks for
depth charges, and a World War One vintage Y-gun that allowed two depth charges to be thrown to the
sides. Icarus, with a crew of forty-five, was commanded by 52 year old Lieutenant Maurice D
Jester. Jester had enlisted in the US life-saving service in 1917, by 1935 he had risen to the rank
of chief boatswain. With the advent of war, he had been commissioned an officer and given command of
Icarus. He had seen over 25 years of service in the Coast Guard, but this was his first command.
The German Type 7 sea submarine was the workhorse of the U-boat fleet,
with 568 commissioned during the war. Launched in May of 1941, the U-352 was powered by two
supercharged six-cylinder diesel engines, it had a length of 220 feet, a draft of 15 feet,
and a displacement of 764 tons. The submarine had a maximum surface speed of 17.7 knots,
and an underwater speed of 7.4 knots. It could operate in depths up to 750 feet. It was armed
with an 8 point 8 centimeter main deck gun, and five torpedo tubes, four in the bow, and one in
the stern. It was larger, newer, faster and more heavily armed than the Icarus. The 45 person crew
of the U-352 was commanded by Captain Lieutenant Helmut Rathke, commanding his second patrol in
the U-352, and obsessed with the Knight's Cross for sinking 100,000 tons of shipping.
Rathke and the U-352 had arrived off the coast of North Carolina on May 2nd after a four week
crossing. Rathke was anxious to get his first kill. When his radio man told him that he heard
propeller noises, Rathke decided to attack. A dangerous move in broad daylight. Rathke
looked through the periscope and saw a mast, and so he fired two torpedoes at the as-yet
unidentified vessel. On the Icarus, the sound man had heard an unidentified noise on its outdated
sonar equipment. Jester had just come to the bridge when the little boat was rocked by an
explosion. Rathke's torpedoes had missed, but one had exploded nearby on the ocean bottom. Unfazed,
Jester called his crew to battle stations and charged the location of the sonar sound. When
Rathke heard the explosion he assumed that he'd gotten his first kill, but when he looked into
his periscope he was shocked to see an armed cutter charging in his direction. The Hunter
had become the hunted. Still, Rathke outgunned the Icarus. If he could only evade them long enough to
be able to surface and get his crew to the deck guns. Rathke decided to make a run to the spot
where his torpedo had exploded, knowing the debris it had kicked up would hide his propeller noise.
But Lieutenant Jester, the veteran, anticipated the move and kicked off five depth charges in a
diamond formation. The attack devastated U-352. The hits near the conning tower broke out all
the gauges, disabled the periscope. Hits in the rear knocked the engines off their mounts,
and a hit in the front blew off the deck gun. Rathke could no longer hope to win a
fight. His only hope now was to sit on the bottom, and hope that the Icarus thought
that they had escaped. But Jester didn't bite. Another round of depth charges forced Rathke
to give the order to surface the ship, and abandon ship. The fight was over in minutes.
At first when the U-352 surfaced, and the crew started coming out, Icarus thought that they were
trying to fight back, and machine-gunned the crew. Several were killed before Jester found out that
they were surrendering, and ordered a cease fire. 33 members of the crew of U-352 were rescued,
and taken to custody that day, including Captain Lieutenant Helmut Rathke. They were
the first German prisoners of war captured by Americans in the Second World War. That's right,
the first German POWs were not captured by the Army in North Africa, but by the Coast Guard in
North Carolina. For a skill in defeating the much larger vessel, Lieutenant Jester was awarded the
Navy Cross. Rathke and his crew would spend the rest of the war in a POW camp. The Happy Time
would go on for several more months, and quite a few vessels would still be sunk,
but eventually America rested back control of its shores. Better convoy tactics, more aircraft,
general blackout orders for coastal cities, made hunting in Torpedo Alley more dangerous for the
U-boats than for their prey. But for a while the U-boats ruled Torpedo Alley, and that is all the
more reason, while the day that the Icarus took on a giant and won, deserves to be remembered.
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