America's U-boats by Chris Dubbs

Author:Chris Dubbs [Dubbs, Chris]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: HIS027150 History / Military / Naval, HIS027090 History / Military / World War I
ISBN: 9780803269477
Publisher: University of Nebraska Press
Published: 2014-08-20T00:00:00+00:00

21. This crowd of visitors, curious about U-117 when it stopped at Norfolk VA in May 1919, was typical of the enthusiastic reception all of the surrendered U-boats received when they visited coastal cities to sell bonds during Victory Loan campaign. Original photo from the author’s collection

The U-boats took up the challenge, fanning out along the East Coast to promote sales. While UC-97 remained at New York for that city’s continuing Victory Loan celebrations, UB-148 began its schedule in Hoboken and Jersey City. U-117 headed for Philadelphia and Washington DC, while UB-88 struck out on its long exhibition cruise of the Gulf Coast, the Mississippi River, and the West Coast. UB-88 would have only one scheduled stop during the bond campaign, at Savannah.

Under repair at the Brooklyn Navy Yard, U-111 had missed the ceremony at the battery. Now it set out for New England, first to Portland and Portsmouth, then to Boston. No area of the country had as extensive a connection to submarines in general and U-boats in particular as New England. The pre-war visits of the German submarines Deutschland and U-53 to New London and Newport awakened America to the long-range capabilities of German submarines and their lethality. The New England coast had been hit especially hard by U-boat attacks in 1918. The navy’s first submarine base opened in New London during the war, and the two shipbuilding yards that constructed U.S. submarines were also located in New England.

On May 1, when U-111 sailed up Boston’s Charles River to the Boston Basin, loaded with exuberant Victory Loan officials, interest in the visitor could not have been higher. At 240 feet in length and eight hundred tons displacement, it was larger than America’s wartime submarines, but similar in displacement to the latest S-class submarines being developed. Two 2,400 horsepower diesel engines could power U-111 to nineteen knots on the surface, while electric motors pushed it to ten knots while submerged. Naval officers said the U-boat was built more along the lines of a destroyer than a submarine. The two guns mounted on its deck bore out that comparison.

Mistaken newspaper reports that U-111 was one of the U-boats that terrorized the New England coast in 1918 swelled the crowd of onlookers lining the route from Boston’s harbor to the basin. Those who wanted to make a closer inspection would have to purchase a bond to do so. Within a couple hours of U-111 mooring, campaign officials in the area sold out of bonds and had to call for more.

Still, bond sales in Boston and the New England district lagged. To reach their quota by the May 10 deadline, New England citizens would have to subscribe to the loan at a rate of $25 million a day. Boston had erected a huge public board to show the progress of the Victory Ship. By now the ship should have been passing through the Panama Canal, but slow bond sales had it cruising at a leisurely pace along the Baja Peninsula.

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