Attacks on North America in World War Two

Attacks on North America in World War Two

Attacks on North America during World War II by the Axis Powers were rare, mainly due to the continent's geographical separation from the central theaters of conflict in Europe and Asia. This article includes attacks on continental territory (extending 200 miles [370 km] into the ocean) which is today under the sovereignty of the United States and Canada but excludes military action involving the Danish territory of Greenland and the Caribbean.

Japanese assaults
Although not an attack on North America, the December 7, 1941 Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor which drew the United States into World War II was the precursor to a number of Japanese assaults on the North American mainland. At the time, Hawaii was not a state; the Territory of Hawaii did not become a state until 1959.

Ellwood shelling
The United States mainland was first shelled by the Axis on February 23, 1942 when the Japanese submarine I-17 attacked the Ellwood oil production facilities at Goleta, near Santa Barbara, California. Although only a catwalk and pumphouse were damaged, I-17 captain Nishino Kozo radioed Tokyo that he had left Santa Barbara in flames. No casualties were reported and the total cost of the damage was estimated at approximately $500.

The extremities of World War Two, how the it's forces reached every continent, with action from Greenland, the South Pacific, and interior Africa, to the Caribbean

Battle of the Aleutian Islands
On June 3, 1942 the Aleutian Islands, running southwest from mainland Alaska, were invaded by Japanese forces as a diversion to deflect attention from the main Japanese attack on Midway Atoll. Having broken the Japanese military codes, however, the U.S. knew it was a diversion and did not expend large amounts of effort defending the islands. Although most of the civilian population had been moved to camps on the Alaska Panhandle, some Americans were captured and taken to Japan as prisoners of war.

In what became known as the Battle of the Aleutian Islands, American forces engaged the Japanese on Attu Island and regained control by the end of May 1943, after taking significant casualties in difficult terrain. A large invasion force, mainly US, but including some Canadian troops, assaulted Kiska Island on August 7, 1943, but the Japanese had already withdrawn, undetected, ten days earlier.

Although Alaska was not yet a state (statehood was not granted until 1959) it was part of the continent. This battle also marks the only time since the War of 1812 that US territory in North America has been occupied by a foreign power.

In response to the United States' success at the Battle of Midway, the invasion alert for San Francisco was canceled on June 8.

Nobuo Fujita standing by his Yokosuka E14Y "Glen" seaplane.
Estevan Point Lighthouse
On June 20, 1942, a Japanese submarine I-26 under command of commander Yokota Minoru fired 25-30 rounds of 5.5" shells at the Estevan Point lighthouse on Vancouver Island, British Columbia, but failed to hit its target. This marked the first enemy shelling of Canadian soil since the War of 1812. Though no casualties were reported, the subsequent decision to turn off the lights of outer stations was disastrous for shipping activity. This attack is sometimes claimed to be only a fake operated by Canadian and American forces to give Canadian Prime Minister Mackenzie King a push in the conscription crisis, which, as he feared, could have split the nation.

Attacks on Oregon
In what became the only attack on a mainland American military installation during World War II, a Japanese submarine I-25 under commander Tagami Meiji surfaced near the mouth of the Columbia River, Oregon on the night of June 21-June 22, 1942, and fired shells toward Fort Stevens. The only damage recorded was to a baseball field's backstop. American aircraft on training flights spotted the submarine, which was subsequently attacked by a U.S. bomber, but the submarine managed to escape.

The Oregon Lookout Air Raid
The Lookout Air Raid occurred on September 9, 1942, the first aerial bombing of mainland America by a foreign power occurred when an attempt to start a forest fire was made by a Japanese Yokosuka E14Y1 seaplane dropping 170 lb (80 kg) incendiary bombs over Mount Emily, near Brookings, Oregon. The seaplane, piloted by Nobuo Fujita, had been launched from the Japanese submarine aircraft carrier I-25. No significant damage was reported following the attack, nor after a repeat attempt September 29.

Fire balloons
Between November 1944 and April 1945, Japan launched over 9,000 fire balloons toward the American mainland. Carried by the recently-discovered Pacific jet stream, they were to sail over the Pacific Ocean and land in North America, where the Japanese hoped they would start forest fires and wreak devastation. About three hundred were reported as reaching North America, but little damage was caused. Six people – five children and a woman, Elsie Mitchell – became the only deaths due to enemy action to occur on mainland America during World War II when one of the children tried to recover a balloon from a tree near Bly, Oregon and it exploded. Another landed in Omaha, Nebraska with little effect. Recently released R.C.M.P. and Canadian military reports indicate that fire balloons got as far inland as the rural area near Ituna, Saskatchewan.

Japanese invasion plans
Kinoaki Matsuot, a high-ranking officer of the Black Dragon Society, wrote the book The Three Power Alliance And The United States-Japanese War, which is purported to detail the Japanese war plans for the simultaneous invasions of the Panama Canal Zone, Alaska, California and Washington. See also: Axis plans for invasion of the United States during WWII

German assaults
When the United States entered World War II, Adolf Hitler ordered German saboteurs to wreak havoc on the country. The responsibility for carrying this out was given to German Intelligence (Abwehr). In June, 1942, eight agents were recruited and divided into two teams: the first, commanded by George John Dasch, with Ernest Burger, Heinrich Heinck and Richard Quirin. The second, under the command of Edward Kerling, with Hermann Neubauer, Werner Thiel and Herbert Haupt. The operation was titled Operation Pastorius.

On June 12, 1942, U-Boat U-202 landed Dasch's team with explosives and plans at East Hampton, Long Island, New York. Their mission was to destroy power plants at Niagara Falls and three Aluminum Company of America (ALCOA) factories in Illinois, Tennessee and New York. However the team was observed following landing by a Coast Guardsman who immediately raised the alarm. After being captured Dasch and Burger gave a full confession to the FBI and obtained more lenient treatment.

Kerling's team landed from U-584 at Ponte Vedra Beach (25 miles [40 km] south-east of Jacksonville, Florida), on June 17. They were tasked with laying mines in four areas; the Pennsylvania Railroad in Newark NJ., canal sluices in both St. Louis and Cincinnati, and New York City's water supply pipes. The team made their way to Cincinnati, Ohio and split up, with two going to Chicago, Illinois and the others to New York. However, the Dasch confession led to the arrest of all of the men by July 10.

All eight were tried and convicted by Military Commission. President Roosevelt approved the sentences. The constitutionality of the military commissions was upheld by the Supreme Court in Ex parte Quirin and six of the eight men were electrocuted to death on August 8. Dasch and Burger, were given thirty-year prison sentences. Both were released in 1948 and deported to Germany.

In 1944 there was another attempt at infiltration codename Operation Elster ("Magpie"). Elster involved Erich Gimpel and German American defector William Colepaugh. Their mission objective was to gather intelligence on the Manhattan Project and attempt sabotage if possible. The pair sailed from Kiel on U-1230 and landed at Hancock Point, Maine on November 30, 1944. Both made their way to New York, but the operation degenerated into total failure. Colepaugh turned himself in to the FBI on December 26, confessing the whole plan to the FBI; Gimpel was arrested four days later in New York. Both men were sentenced to death but eventually had their sentences commuted. Gimpel spent 10 years in prison and was deported to Brazil ; Colepaugh was released in 1960 and operated a business in King of Prussia, Pennsylvania before retiring to Florida.

Canada
At about the same time as the Dasch operation (on April 25), a solitary Abwehr agent (Marius A Langbein) was landed by U-boat (possibly U-217) near St. Martins, New Brunswick, Canada. His mission was to observe and report shipping movements at Halifax, Nova Scotia (a busy departure port for North Atlantic convoys). Langbein changed his mind, however, and moved to Ottawa where he lived off his Abwehr funds, before surrendering to the Canadian authorities in December 1944.

In November, the U-518 sank two freighters and damaged another in Conception Bay, Newfoundland, en route to the Gaspé where, despite an attack by a Royal Canadian Air Force aircraft, it successfully landed a spy at Point de New Carlisle, Quebec.

Newfoundland
Accurate weather reporting was important to the sea war and on 18 September 1943, U-537 sailed from Kiel, via Bergen (Norway), with a meteorological team lead by Professor Kurt Sommermeyer. They landed at Martin Bay, northern Labrador on 22 October 1943 and successfully set up an automatic weather station ("Weather Station Kurt" or "Wetter-Funkgerät Land-26"), despite the constant risk of Allied air patrols; this only worked for a short time, however. At the beginning of July 1944, U-867 left Bergen to replace the failed equipment, but was sunk en route. The weather station was recovered in the 1980s and is now at the Canadian War Museum.

U-Boat operations United States
The Atlantic Ocean was a major strategic battle zone (Second Battle of the Atlantic) and when Germany declared war on the US, the East Coast offered easy pickings for German U-Boats (referred to as the Second happy time). After a highly successful foray by five Type IX long-range U-boats, the offensive was maximised by the use of short-range Type VII U-boats, with increased fuel stores, replenished from supply U-boats or "Milchkuh". In February to May, 1942, 348 ships were sunk, for the loss of 2 U-boats during April and May. U.S. naval commanders were reluctant to introduce the convoy system that had protected trans-Atlantic shipping and, without coastal blackouts, shipping was silhouetted against the bright lights of American towns and cities.

Several ships were torpedoed within sight of East Coast cities such as New York and Boston; indeed, some civilians sat on beaches and watched battles between U.S. and German ships.

Once convoys and air cover were introduced, sinking numbers were reduced and the U-boats shifted to attack shipping in the Gulf of Mexico, with 121 losses in June. In one instance, the tanker Virginia was torpedoed in the mouth of the Mississippi River by the German U-Boat U-507 on May 12, 1942, killing 26 crewmen. There were 14 survivors. Again, when defensive measures were introduced, ship sinkings decreased and U-boat sinkings increased.

The cumulative effect of this campaign was severe; a quarter of all wartime sinkings—3.1 million tons. There were several reasons for this. The naval commander, Admiral Ernest King, was averse to taking British recommendations to introduce convoys, U.S. Coast Guard and Navy patrols were predictable and could be avoided by U-boats, poor inter-service co-operation, and the U.S. Navy did not possess enough suitable escort vessels (British and Canadian warships were transferred to the U.S. east coast).

Canada
From June 10, 1942 until December 1944, sinkings took place in the St. Lawrence River. Although this area was never a prime target for U-boats, it did offer easy pickings until late in the war, due to the state of the Canadian defences and their naval commitments elsewhere. The period is sometimes referred to as the Battle of the St. Lawrence.

Newfoundland
Three significant attacks took place in 1942 when German U-boats attacked four allied ore carriers at Bell Island, Newfoundland. The carriers S.S. Saganaga and the S.S. Lord Strathcona were sunk by U-513 on September 5, 1942, while the S.S. Rosecastle and P.L.M 27 were sunk by U-518 on November 2 with the loss of 69 lives. However, one of the most dramatic incidents of the attack occurred after the sinkings when the submarine fired a torpedo that missed its target, the 3000 ton collier Anna T, and struck the loading pier. Bell Island thus became the only location in North America to be subject to direct attack by German forces in World War II. On October 14, 1942, the SS Caribou was torpedoed by the German U-boat U-69 and sunk in the Cabot Strait. Caribou was carrying 45 crew and 206 civilian and military passengers. 137 lost their lives, many of them Newfoundlanders.

Mexico
Although not an attack on Mexican territory, the sinking of the Mexican tanker Faja de Oro by the German U-boat, U-160, on May 21, 1942 off Key West, prompted the entry of Mexico into World War II.

False alarms
In an incident now known as the West coast air raid or the The Battle of Los Angeles, the U.S. Army fired several thousand anti-aircraft shells into the air over Los Angeles, California during the night of February 24-25, 1942 at 2 stationary Unidentified Flying Objects, in which none of the targets were intercepted or damaged at all. The target was later "officially" determined to be a lost weather balloon, although this was doubted by most people, as weather balloons had long been scapegoats for diverting attention from suspicious events.

The San Francisco Bay Area on alert
In May and June 1942, the San Francisco Bay Area underwent a series of alerts:

May 12: A twenty-five minute air-raid alert.
May 27: West Coast defences put on alert after Army codebreakers learned that the Japanese intended a series of hit-and-run attacks in reprisal for the Doolittle Raid.
May 31: The battleships USS Colorado and USS Maryland set sail from the Golden Gate to form a line of defense against any Japanese attack mounted on San Francisco.

Radio silences
On June 2, 1942 , a nine-minute air-raid alert, including at 9:22pm a radio silence order applied to all radio stations from Mexico to Canada. There was also a forty-five minute air-raid alert and radio silence order later in the year, on November 28.

An Index with links to almost all our sites.

What were the 10 Worst regimes of the 20th century

A site on the El Nino Famines that killed 10s of millions in the 19th Century

How it could be argued the Nazis were inferior A Site mentioning what happened to Jews who lived outside Europe, under Nazi Occupation.

The extremities of World War Two, how the war reached every continent, & saw action from Greenland, too the South Pacific, interior Africa, & the Caribbean

The Versailles Treaty was not all that bad The Story of Anne Frank The story of the 2 major uprisings in Warsaw in World War Two

A site on the Belgian Congo, & how the king of that land killed 10s of millions of Congolese

A site on 1640s Britain Worst 18th Century regimes Why the French Revolution was good

What were the nicest regimes ever The Best regimes ever in terms of achievers

The extremities of World War Two, how the it's forces reached every continent, with action from Greenland, the South Pacific, and interior Africa, to the Caribbean

The baddness of the Nazis BEFORE world war two Worst 17th Century regimes ever What were the most evil regimes ever

3 Evil South American Dictators, & how evil they were Massacre of Berwick 1296 30,000 killed by grrr, the King