From 1939 to 1945 the U-Boats of the Third Reich menaced the North Atlantic by stealth and firepower. The US Merchant Marine were repeatedly attacked with thousands of lives lost and the British Navy helplessly watched ship after ship sent to the bottom of the ocean. By early 1943 the US Navy arrived with the ultimate countermeasure, the B-24 Liberator equipped with the latest technology, sonar (acronym for SOund, NAvigation and Ranging) and depth charges. The U-Boats were decimated and the tide of war changed.
This is Memorial Day in the USA, my Father enlisted in the US Navy on December 8, 1942 along with the rest of his football team at James Monroe High School in the Bronx. Over one hundred thousand young men from New York City died in WWII.
My Father first went to Radio School in Memphis then he and his crew flew a B-24 to Brazil, over to Morocco then to Devon in Cornwall. The 479th Anti Submarine Group out of Dunkeswell airfield played a decisive role in ending the exploits of the U-Boats. My Father never talked much about the war; because many friends of his never came home. One day about ten years ago there was a story in the New York Times, turns out that one third of the US stockpile of uranium in 1945 came from the Third Reich. As my Father was reading the story he began to shake and repeat “that’s our boat, that’s our boat”. That uranium was recovered from U234, my Father's B-24 was credited with the first ever surrender of a U-Boat in May 1945. He radioed a Destroyer the location of the U-Boat, it took fifty years to discover its amazing cargo