By day, thick black smoke could be seen belching into the sky as the ship burned and sank, while at night, the glow from the flames could be seen from along the coast. Many of the ships were attacked within a few miles of the beach, he said.
From January of 1942 until August of that year, German torpedoes sunk a dozen or more shifts off the coast of New Jersey, with many more attacked off North Carolina, Virginia and the Gulf of Mexico, according to Joseph Bilby, a New Jersey military historian and author. Once the United States entered the war, it became open season for U-boat captains on ships off the East Coast. 8, 1941, German submarines, or unterseeboote, ranged the North Atlantic, seeking to cut off trade and starve the defiant British. The tanker “Dixie Arrow”, was torpedoed off Cape Hatteras, North Carolina, by U-71 on 26 March 1942. Even as thousands volunteer to fight in Europe, Africa and the Pacific, war has come to our shores. It’s the opening days of America’s involvement in a war that has already spread around the world, with dire, implacable enemies to the east and the west. You know it’s an American ship, probably an oil tanker from how long that fire has been burning out on the open ocean.
The shock and horror of the attack on Pearl Harbor remains fresh and raw as you look out toward a distant orange glow on the horizon. It’s night, and a cold, steady breeze off the Atlantic numbs your nose. Imagine yourself on a beach in Sea Isle City in the winter of 1942.