Approaching Drumbeat Unheard

The US Navy abdicates its ASW role to the US Army in 1942

- Jim Burridge

In January 1942 Germany despatched five U-boats to attack shipping along the Atlantic coast of the United States in a deployment called ‘Operation Drumbeat.’ The US Navy was completely incapable of defending against the onslaught, lacking the ships, aircraft, and trained personnel.

The US Army Air Corps’ war against the U-boats can be divided into three elements. The first was countering the submarine threat to the East and Gulf coasts. The targets were ships on their way to East Coast ports to join transatlantic convoys to England. They carried food and raw materials (bauxite, lumber, concrete, oil, gasoline) and the cargoes were desperately needed to sustain the war effort against Germany. The first five submarines sank twenty-five ships, and by June 1942, 171 ships had been sunk off the East Coast. Patrick Beesly, a Royal Navy intelligence officer who liaised with the US Navy, wrote at the time that, ‘It is all the more galling because this holocaust could have been largely avoided if only the US Navy had been prepared to learn from the bitter experience of the British and the Canadians, gained in nearly two and a half years of war and freely imparted to them since 1940.’

On March 12 Prime Minister Churchill complained to President Roosevelt ‘I am most deeply concerned at the immense sinking of tankers west of the 40th meridian and in the Caribbean Sea. The situation is so serious that drastic action of some kind is necessary.’ March’s tally was forty-nine ships.