Ehavent at diesel, a book store in brentwood, california, where they talk about the sixday war betweensel and its arar between israel and its neighbors. Military historian recalls the german u boat offensive in 1942. The captains command result out in the destruction of four ships in the Chesapeake Bay on under15, 1942. This discussion us half an hour. Im very pleased to be back here. Because the subjects of world war ii and the navy have always been one that ive been fascinated by, and in the book, the burning shore, ive taken a slugly different tact from by earlier work, turning the tide, and that earlier book, i focused on the oceanwide campaign in the spring of 1943 where the allies, after years of struggle, finally won the battle of the atlantic through pure grit and the barest edge in technology. This is a massive struggle and, therefore, the history of it tends to span thousands of miles. In the burning shore i was aible to take a slightly different look because in every big war you still have encounters on a small human level and thats what i focus on in this particular back. I have been able to get the accounts a very dearth uboat commander named horsting at thens, and his adversary, 23yearold Army Second Lieutenant named harry cain. Before i talk about some of the details of the book id like to review what i consider to be the most amazing revelation from the battle of the atlantic and for me from all of world war ii that emerged in recent years and somehow has been overlooked. Its confirmation proof of a naval disaster unprecedented in this countrys history. So id like to go back to pearl harbor. This was this was supposed to work in december of 1941, the japanese stunned the they say no war plan survives no First Contact with the enemy, and apparently applies to commuter slide projectors. Your Technical Assistance would be marvelously welcomed. Want to advance it to the first slide. As you all know, on december 7, 1941, a task force of japanese aircraft carriers surprised and destroyed most of the u. S. Page fleet in the harbor. A bolt from the blue assault that stunned military and political leaders from pearl harbor to washington. Over the past 72 years, naval historians researchers and journalists, have searched diligently to find what they call the smoking gun of the conspiracy for pearl harbor, which was that essentially roosevelt and his military commanders somehow knew the japanese were heading to attack peril pearl harbor and yet yes to do nothing, keep the local military in the dark so the blow would fall and then the nation would arise in wrath to defeat the empire of japan. This is what the smoking gun document would look like. This is essentially a communications that was sent from the commander in chief of the u. S. Fleet, admiral stark. To all pacific units in hawaii, including admiral husband kim until the Pacific Fleet and his subordinates in the sea front tiers frontiers, and in this document, we have the following text. Two days before pearl harbor. Says 5 december. Imperial Japanese Navy estimate. Information received indicates this is a code for the fact that intelligence has produced this information that large concentration of Surface Forces is at this location in the northwest pacific, bearing course 135 300 miles south southeast of adynamic, alaska, with the projected course track placing them within 250 hours of pearl harbor by 0600 on 7 december theme evaluation was the Japanese Naval task force was in route to attack the Pacific Fleet in hawaii. Now, anyone who has read about pearl harbor remembers the controversy of the bolt from the blue. The admiral was summarily relieved of command. The navy and army in washington rushed out new leaders. Admiral nimitz in particular, and they started to essentially direct the fleet back up from the drag the treat from the mud and carry the fight the enemy. You can imagine what it would have been like had this document come to light that 48 hours before the attack on pearl harbor, there was explicit detailed intelligence on the enemys intention and movement, predicting within a day or two that the attack was going to happen. Im glad to say that i made this up. This is a complete fabrication, but what i based it on is something that is quite real. And if i can get this thing to work. I guess [inaudible conversations] i need to go to the next slide. Got that one. [inaudible conversations] this is the message that i based my pearl harbor message on. This message did exist and was found in the National Archives 15 years ago. And it, like the pearl harbor forgery i made, this was from admiral stark to the Atlantic Fleet commander, and all the Atlantic Fleet subordinates and dated january 12, 1942, and it was a submarine estimate, information received, large concentration of uboats preceding to already arrive on station off newfoundland and northeast united states, and here it actually itemizes the u boats and their clusters and latitudes and longitudes. This was 36 hours before admiral carl unleashed operation drum beet against the allies, which led to a slaughter of allied shipping long the east coast for a few months. This message was in advance based on solid intelligence, particularly the british codesbreaking of leslie clark, which was able to pinpoint theyre locations and their intended movements. Why is this message so deadfully well, its because historians pretty well agree that pearl harbor was a disaster, but the loss of allied shipping along the u. S. East coast in the First Six Months of 1942 was an order of magnitude greater in terms of its negative impact on the allied war effort. During that time, the german uabouts, never more than six to eight at a time operating off the coast, were able to sink over 500 merchant ships, killing thousands of invaluable civilian crewmen and depriving the allied war effort of hundreds of thousands of tons of vital war cargo. The thing that i found particularly fascinating is, i continue my research into operation drumbeat, was that the Atlantic Fleet on the date his message came out, had more than 90 combat destroyers and treasury class coast guard cutters operating in the atlantic, most of them were pretty hardened and experienced from the two years of neutrality patrols in 1940 and 1941 under the order of president roosevelt. A particularly damning detail was that on the date this message arrived in the to every command along thelet thick coast there were 15 frontline Atlantic Fleet destroyers tied up in staten island, new york, awaiting final orders to take an allied troop convoy from new york to northern ireland. This was a decision that had been made by roosevelt and churchill themselves personally at the arcadia conference in washington, which was going on at the time this message came down. Now, i try not to be too secondguessing when i read about things and put information together in a chronology. But it seems elemental that knowing that at least 15 uboats were either arriving on station off the east coast, or were a week or so behind, i should think the admirals in charm of the Atlantic Fleet might have said, maybe wed better hold off sending this convoy to ireland and maybe we better put the 15 tee destroyers out in a patrol screen along the shipping lanes. But no order was ever given. The convoy sailed on scheduled. Surrounded by the ring of steel, and the slaughter of american and allied merchant sailors began. Its one of the most baffling, just i dont know excisions ive ever encountered in my years of researching naval history. The other baffling thing was nobody was ever held accountable for this incredible lapse in judgment. It was shoved and buriyed under reames of reports on other wartime events. Anyway, the burning shore takes part in what was a year of catastrophe for the allied war effort, but it was also a year where both sides were scrambling to learn the fight the war they had been sent into. For u701 the boat had been commissioned the previous summer and had spent months in training in the baltic sea as all of the uboats did and left on patrol on december 27, 1941. In those days, the course trek meant they had to traverse between norway and scotland, over the top of the United Kingdom and then to the atlantic, and for horst and his crew it was not a baptism of fire but a baptism of water because they went interest a series of unrelenting hurricanes that are typical of the north atlantic in winter. Took them three weeks to get to newfoundland. They were able to sink one ship, turn around and get back home safely. For the u. S. Army air force, 1942 was a year of disaster. In the sense that they were growing exponentially by the month. New units were being organized and credited. And harry cain found himself on the west coast with a patrol squadron that had ancient bombers that didnt work well, principalling against the japanese enemy that everyone knew wasnt coming back, and his year started in a year of frustration. The say most of the daytime events of war are boring and you get to the committing ones every now and then. The two of them found themselves coming together by pure chance in july of 1942. The pacific had been in turmoil over the battle of midway in may of that year, but once the american victory in the pacific was pretty well confirmed, the navy and the Army Air Forces relaxed their alert status, and as a result harry cains squad drop insuring sacramento, california, at the time, what redeployed to a Marine Corps Air station in North Carolina that was still under construction. Cherry point Naval Air Station Marine Corps Air station, and there they were ordered to start coastal patrols against the uboats. Meanwhile, u701 had carried out a very frustrating patrol up near iceland in march and april of 1942, nature whim. Adolph hitler had visions and whims and sent a third of the uboat force into essentially empty seas looking for an invasion force that only hitler believed was coming. But they returned to port in france, and degen in may of 1942 was given orders to carry out one of the most Daring Missions any uboats did in the war. He was sent to france, one of the five uboat bases in occupied french territory, and they loaded his five torpedo tubes with antiship mines, three per torpedo tube. And he was ordered to cross the atlantic, come right up to the mouth of Chesapeake Bay, and lay a mine field across the channel. I was lucky in my research over the years to actually in the 1980s, to correspond with commander degen, and he freely admitted that in their proceeding west to mine the channel they all came to the conclusion that the admiral had lost his mind. His only order were, go into the channel and submerge and hide there and then raise your periscope to count the sheps. What degen and his Quarter Master learn if they went into the bay and submerged in the channel and were hide thering the top of the uboat would be below the surface of the water. So they used the coast guards Navigation System against them. Assuming you know the land form of virginia beach, the coast is essentially almost due northsouth. They came straight in on the evening, under a night of a new moon, and they just took bearings on the two lighthouses at cape henry and cape charles, and when they were lined up perfectly, ordered a righthand side turn and it sent them right up the channel, and six month after the war had begun they were still astounded to see people leaving house lights on, streetlights on, cars driving with lights. He said his lookouts were watching people through their bedroom windows and he was afraid they would run aground. But they did it. Right up to where they were supposed to be and in 15, 30 second intervals drop the mines into the mud with 60hour timers set and then they got the hell out of there. And from there they went down to Cape Hatteras and conducted a regular uboat patrol,er to to speed ed torpedoing. And harry cain and his people, had a youll visualize it from amelia earhart, can and they were flying out of cher where cherry point. The u. S. Air force doesnt have a clue how to locate and attack these uboats, each one had three depth charms charges but the air force pilots thought the best way to find u boat wases to fly over the ocean at 150 feet, which would be very exciting but i dont think youre going to see very far, and on the fateful day, hari cain hairy cane and they got 25 miles off the coast, now souther towards charleston, and harry said he saw a cloud layer at a thousand feet, and he thought to himself, i can hide in that. And so up they went. Against all doctrine. And theyre flying along in the clouds, kind of popping down every now and then, and they saw this thing way off in the distance, this thin little line in the water. What happened in the summer of that year, was u boats operating off Cape Hatteras had an advantage and a huge liability. The advantage was the depth of the water drops off relatively in a relatively short distance from shore so they could go out there and hide during the day and then pop up and come in shore at night in shallow water, with minimal chance of being detected. Unfortunately in the summer of 1942, the water temperature off Cape Hatteras is in the 70s and sometimes 80 degrees, which doesnt sound bad but when youre counting on cold ocean water to cool off the heat in a uboat, that degree of heat men the inside of the boat was 120 and 130 goings temperature. 24 7. So, horstdegen broke doctrine because his crew was becoming incapacitated, and every day at 2 00 he would sneak up to the surface, poke around with his sky periscope, and if there wasnt anyone in sight he would come up, pop the hatch on his diesel engines and suck fresh air back into the boat. Thats what he was doing around the time hard harry cain was coming back from his parole itch dont want to give all the details away because no one will buy the book. But after month of boredom and a fatigue and wearness and frustration, the lives of harry cain and horst degen became very exciting at that moment in time. So its an interesting story. I first heard about this story when i was just starting out as a journalist in the mid70s, and i was able by good fortune to locate both the american pilot and the germ afternoon german uboth commander, both who survived the war, and through correspondence and personal interviews was able to get stories firsthand, and because of fate and the quirks and whimsy of publishing, had to wait a couple of years before it was time to write the book, but i think the effort for me was worth it. And before i stop and answer any questions id like to credit two people here who made this book possible. One is me researcher, candace clifford, who hat helped me in has helped me in the last three books and you ever want somebody to dig into the military archives and fine what you need, she is the person. The other person i would like to thanks my wife, karen, who is hi first editor, my first line of editing. My editor in new york says she is always pleased how clean my manuscript is when it comes in, and karen has stood in between me and the mail box so its a better effort. So, anyway, with that, if you have any questions ill be glad to answer them. Want to show your other pictures . I gave up on that 20 minutes ago, but, sure. Thats pearl harbor. Feel like jackie mason. You need new batteries. This is the memo should have been a sixinch column headline in the New York Times when it came out but they were preoccupied. The message i just showed, these were the locations of the u boat, each x is the latitude and longitude plot, and that looks like an impressive force of u boats coming down to sink the shipping, and nothing was done. This is lieutenant cain. He was native of brooklyn. He said he knew the war clouds were gathering in 1940 and he decided if anyone was going to keep him out of to the infantry it would be whatever he did so he volunteered to become an army air pilot and that was the aircraft he flew, the a29. From what i read in oral histories and my encounter with lieutenant king, this is a plane that was universally disliked by the air crews, but ironically it has a very, very good record overall in the war of sinking uboats. The first two uboats sunk by americans were sunk by u. S. Navy hudsons out of newfoundland. This is commander degen, 29 years old at the time. One of the fascinating pieces of evidence that candace was able too dig out for me was in writing a history of something that happened at that time 40 areas earlier, now almost 70, finding dialogue from people who have passed away is a bit of a challenge. But candace found that the office of Naval Intelligence and their army counterparts during world war ii had a wonderful technique for getting information. They could take a prisoner like degen and put him in a room with another uboat officers and encourage them to talk. What happened to you, where were you . And they had microphones in the walls and some poor army soldier with a head set typing away, and i was able to get some very good anecdotal accounts in his own words by commander degen while he was unknowingly being transcribedly army intelligence. This is the u boat. They called them the type 7c, german uboat of world war ii. They did unprecedented damage worldwide for such small vessel. This is the first victim of the mining campaign. The tanker robert tuttle. She was coming on shore in a convey on june 15, 1942, when she came across one of the mines and broke its keel. Amazingly, the ship is later salvaged and returned to service after a er of repairs. And this is the actual rescue. Its no secret that the u701 was ambushed and sunk by harry cains true and most of german sailors got out and unfortunately they were in the gulf stream and by the time they were found, only seven of the crewmen were still alive, including commander degen and this is the actual rescue. The navy deridgeable in the upping right found the men in the water and they sent the sea plane to pick them up. Here they are being brought ashore. This isthis is commander king. And one thing i found out, the second guy from the left is george bella my, a corporal and the bombardier, and they flew around to make sure they had sink because the commanders were good at throwing garbage and debris out of the torpedo toupees to make it look like they were sunk. But they saw these poor germans popping to the surface and cain did a very humane thing help ordered his own crew to take off their life jackets and through them to the germans below, and then why rescued horst degen. Unconscious, surgeon burn, he was wearing george bellamys live life jacket. And they were all repatriated in germany in 1946. Such a backlog, i guess you could call it. In 1942, only a handful of german p. O. W. S in the united states. These were only the second uboat. By 1945 there were torches thousands and german and italian soldiers detained in a whole network of p. O. W. Camps from here to the west coast. So took awhile to get everybody back home after the surrender. In 1982, after several years of correspondence, harry cain and horst degen met at his house in germany, and one are the more poignant things i came across when king was introduced to degen, he got out of his chair and saluted him and said, congratulations good, attack. And everyone was touched by that. 40 years later when harry cain and his wife knocked on horsts door, he held out his hand and said, thank you, harry, for saving my life. So perspectives changed over the years. As for u701, at the time i first wrote about it no one had found the uboat. One of those the navigation on the aircraft had not been very precise, never was, and when they finally found the crewmen, they had already floated over 100 miles further out to sea. Put it wasnt until 1988 or 1989 that a sport diver contacted degen and said is there anything that you snowstorm i want to find your uboat. Anything you remember from your last day on it that might help me pinpoint the location . And degen wrote back that he did remember that seconds before the airplane bombed them, this forward lookout called out the sighting of a sunken in merchant ship ten miles ahead of him. He said all i could see was the twomasts from the two masts from the ship and the rest was awash in the shallow water. And gegen remembered the course they were traveling. So he went out, raised money, and found two or three ships they thought matched the description of the uboat commander had given them, and so they got this sears roebuck, and they found the u701, and today its part of the and the noaa has this sank wear off Cape Hatteras where the iron chat went down, protected area, and they have encouraged sport divers to respect that these are historical artifacts, and in particular uboats are literally still the property of their governments, the German Government technically owns the boat, but even more important its the tomb for at least 500 sailors. So noaa goes down once every year and monitors this and other ships out there, and one of the things they said that makes them feel good about u701 is that the boat is completely full of sand now. If you see on the slide, just the ongoing currents have buried it and that will protect it from being plundered by greedy divers. Here you can see the main deck begun on the u701. So thats it. Any questions . Ed, were the american air crew awarded a decoration for sinking the uboat . Yes. All five crewmen received the distinguished flying cross. And one of the things made any laugh when harry cain and his crew went to meet commander degen they were met by the chicago newspaper publisher running the show and by humped cains hand and said im going to make sure you get the gave distinguished flying cross, and he said, thats great. And then got back to North Carolina and found out there wasnt any such thing. But he meant well, i guess. Yes, maam . On the uboat after it was sunk were explosives ever removed from that . No. I dont believe no, never been salvage. They were at the very end of their patrol and he only had one or two torpedoes onboard beside his desk level ammunition so theres probably a torpedo or two down there but im sure its pretty inert by now. Yes, sir . This story of the u701, is this post the operation drum beat . Obviously a lot more detailed than price drum beat. Lets just say Michael Gannon who i respect and i have to give him credit for the january 12th message him found it. He took a widespread look at the uboat 123, who did the first actual attacks along long island, i decided to look at it from the perspective of horst degen and after the u701 went down, another uboat. The defenses had gotten good enough to no longer make it worth their while to patrol there and they were shifted out into the north atlantic, which segways into the narrative for my book that the turning of the tide, which took part on the big convoy routes between newfoundland and the british isles. Is this book just on this or encompass i focused on u701, and i explained other events as well. Thank you so much. [applause] on behalf of admiral and all of us here at the navy memorial, id like to arent you with one of our coins and thank you for speaking with us here again. Thank you. [applause] i dont think we have the previous book. We have had a couple of administrations since. [inaudible] conversation [inaudible conversations] cspan2 providing live coverage of the u. S. Senate and every weekend, booktv, now for 15 years, the only Television Network devoted to nonfiction books and authors. Cspan2, created by the cable tv industry and brought to you as a Public Service by your local cable and satellite provider. Watch us in hd, like us on facebook, and follow us on twitter. Heres a look at upcoming book fairs and festivals happening around the country. The South Carolina book festival takes place on the 16th 16th through 18th at the columbia meant convention center. James clyburn will be in attendance to discuss his book. Sad, may 17th, the gathersberg book festival. May 29th through the 31st, book tv will be talking with authors and publishing executives at the publishing industrys annual trade show. Book expo america in new york system also be live from the chicago tribunes printers row lit fest, and then the fdr president ial library will hold the 11th annual roosevelt reading festival. 12 authors have recently published works that draw upon the archives. Let us know about book fairs and festivals in your area. Email us at booktv booktv cspan2. Org. Everyone is coming to the new york worlds fair. Theyre coming from the four corners of the earth. And from five corners idaho, from maine and greece and tokyo, rome, frisco, and troy, hamberg, aurora, illinois. 295 and the traveling teachers from kansas, miss abbott milesanhour todd, and the wilsons got here at last. Theres the symbol of the fair. The great unisphere. And this playfully demonstrates the law of averages. By chance, the families meet and join up for sightseeing