The United States was completely unprepared for the U-boat war that was about to descend on it. While the Neutrality Patrol had ensured safe passage of merchant ships bound for England under US Navy protection, she did not have enough escorts for her own waters. Also, the U-boats operated far from the coast of the United States. Her inland merchant fleet saw no need to adopt the measures the British suggested. Convoys, coastal blackouts, watch stations, and other precautions were ignored.
The result was a slaughter. The U-boat commanders called it Operation Drumbeat — Paukenschlag — and very little was available to stop them. Yachtsmen used to plying the calm summer waters of the coast were sent far out into the Atlantic in winter, facing a greater threat from the weather than of combat.
For three critical months, the United States did not sink a single U-boat operating off the United States or the Mediterranean. On March 1, 1942, a US Navy PBO Ventura sank U-656 off Newfoundland.
US Navy Admiral Ernest J. King, who obsessed about the war in the Pacific, did not recognize the importance of convoys until it was too late. A blackout of coastal cities was not ordered, allowing U-boats to use the city skylines to illuminate the outlines of ships. Residents of beachfront towns would watch the burning ships offshore at night and discover dead sailors washed up on the beach the next day.
The Coast Guard, now part of the Navy, stepped up patrols and the building of antisubmarine escorts. The Navy pressed blimps into service to supplement long-range aircraft. But the US Army Air Corps and the US Navy argued, like RAF Coastal Command and RAF Bomber Command before them, about allocating lone-range aircraft to strategic missions or for antisubmarine patrols.
The destruction was greater than that at Pearl Harbor, and despite the secrecy of the losses, the American people began to accept that they would have to fight Germany as well. The war right offshore could not be hidden completely form the public.
The war in Europe was secured in the mind of the American public with a propaganda series called Why We Fight. In it, Hollywood director Frank Capra outlined the rise of Nazism and the reasons why England and France went to war. Powerful in its simplicity, Capra used footage from Nazi propaganda films to great effect. Roosevelt ordered the series, originally made for the Armed Forces, to be shown in movie theatres across the United States. By the end of 1942, the was no question that the United States’ war with Nazi Germany was necessary.
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