Second Happy Time
1939 1940 1941 1942 1943 1944 1945 The Second Happy Time (German: Zweite glückliche Zeit; officially Operation Paukenschlag ("Operation Drumbeat"), and also known among German submarine commanders as the "American Shooting Season"[1]) was a phase in the Battle of the Atlantic during which Axis submarines attacked merchant shipping and Allied naval vessels along the east coast of North America.
Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini declared war on the United States on 11 December 1941, and as a result their navies could begin the Second Happy Time.
Historian Michael Gannon called it "America's Second Pearl Harbor" and placed the blame for the nation's failure to respond quickly to the attacks on the inaction of Admiral Ernest J.
Where the other combatants on the Allied side had already lost thousands of trained sailors and airmen, and were experiencing shortages of ships and aircraft, the US was at full strength (save for its recent losses at Pearl Harbor).
The US had the opportunity to learn about modern naval warfare by observing the conflicts in the North Sea and the Mediterranean, and through a close relationship with the United Kingdom.
The USN had already gained significant experience in countering U-boats in the Atlantic, particularly from April 1941 when President Franklin D. Roosevelt extended the "Pan-American Security Zone" east almost as far as Iceland.
The United States had massive manufacturing capacity and a favorable geographical position from a defensive point of view: the port of New York, for example, was 3,000 miles to the west of the U-boat bases in Brittany.
The American response in early 1942 was hampered by poor organization and doctrine, and a lack of anti-submarine warfare (ASW) aircraft, ships, and personnel.
The USN entered the war without the equivalent of the British Black Swan-class sloop or the River-class frigate despite previous involvement in the Atlantic (see USS Reuben James.)
The British recommended that merchant ships should avoid obvious standard routings wherever possible; navigational markers, lighthouses, and other aids to the enemy should be removed, and a strict coastal blackout be enforced.
Andrews had practically no modern forces to work with: on the water he commanded seven Coast Guard cutters, four converted yachts, three 1919-vintage patrol boats, two gunboats dating back to 1905, and four wooden submarine chasers.
[3]: p182 Immediately after war was declared on the United States, Dönitz began to implement Operation Paukenschlag (often translated as "drumbeat" or "drumroll",[12] and literally as "timpani beat").
[13] Loaded with the maximum possible amounts of fuel, food and ammunition, the first of the five Type IXs left Lorient in France on 18 December 1941, the others following over the next few days.
No charts or sailing directions were available: Kapitänleutnant Reinhard Hardegen of U-123, for example, was provided with two tourist guides to New York, one of which contained a fold-out map of the harbor.
[3]: p137 Each U-boat made routine signals on exiting the Bay of Biscay, which were picked up by the British Y service and plotted in Rodger Winn's London Submarine Tracking Room, which were then able to follow the progress of the Type IXs across the Atlantic, and cable an early warning to the RCN.
By this time there were 13 destroyers idle in New York Harbor, yet none were employed to deal with the immediate threat, and over the following nights U-123 was presented with a succession of easy targets, most of them burning navigation lamps.
Their first victory upon arriving in the coastal region of North America was the Canadian freighter Cyclops, sunk on 12 January off Nova Scotia.
[17] The boats cruised along the coast, safely submerged through the day, and surfacing at night to pick off merchant vessels outlined against the lights of the cities.
When the first wave of U-boats returned to port through the early part of February, Dönitz wrote that each commander "had such an abundance of opportunities for attack that he could not by any means utilize them all: there were times when there were up to ten ships in sight, sailing with all lights burning on peacetime courses."
This required extraordinary measures: cramming every conceivable space with provisions, some even filling the fresh water tanks with diesel oil, and crossing the Atlantic at very low speed on a single engine to conserve fuel.
[citation needed] By April, Allied forces along the US east coast included 80 small patrol ships in the USN Eastern Sea Frontier, 160 US aircraft, 24 RN ASW trawlers, and one British Coastal Command squadron.
On 28 April, the RCN started ad hoc convoys to bring Canadian and Canadian-charted tankers trapped in the US and the Caribbean back to Halifax.
On 1 May, the Government of Canada insisted that Canadian tankers be escorted, leading the RCN to organize formal convoys to the Caribbean through US coastal waters.
The RCN struggled to meet its commitments even with 90% of its escort fleet being operational, as opposed to being used for training or being refitted;[25] the negative effects of this over-extension would be felt well into 1943.
