Corpus Christi History by Murphy Givens
Corpus Christi History is published Wednesdays. Murphy Givens also sits on the Caller-Times editorial board and can be contacted at givensm@caller.com
Wednesday, September 29, 1999
Torpedo Junction in World War II
I received an e-mail question from William Brashear, in Carrollton, Texas, who wanted to know about a spy who, he said, radioed information about ships coming and going to U-boats in the Gulf during World War II.
Brashear lived here during the war and, as he remembers it, the spy sold tamales from a cart across from the bascule bridge. "He could see all the ships entering and leaving the turning basin. I saw him there so often I considered him part of the scenery. Soon after going into service, I received news from home that he was a German spy who radioed information to U-boats about ship movements.''
It's an interesting story, but I can find nothing to verify it. Is it a wartime myth or did it happen?
I had another U-boat question from David Holzschuh of Corpus Christi who said he had heard stories of a U-boat that ran aground in Matagorda Bay. He has been looking for some sign of the submerged U-boat for five years. He was excited two weeks ago when he flew over a dark shape in the water off Matagorda Island, but he has visited the site since and says whatever it is in the water is not a sub, but seems to be made of concrete - another mystery.
Far as I can tell, no U-boats were sunk in this area of the Texas coast although there was plenty of action in what the Navy called the Gulf Sea Frontier. Winston Churchill coined the term "Battle of the Atlantic,'' but there was most definitely a Battle of the Gulf as well. In the summer of 1942, there were more ships sunk by U-boat attacks in the Gulf than in the Atlantic.
The first Unterseeboot arrived in the Gulf on Feb. 19, 1942. U-128 signaled its presence by sinking a tanker, the Dan Massachusetts, off the Florida coast. In the next two months, 16 ships were sunk, including two Mexican tankers (Potrero de Llano and Fraja de Oro) which led to Mexico's declaration of war against Germany.
According to Samuel Eliot Morison in "The Two-Ocean War,'' German admiral Karl Donitz diverted U-boats to the Gulf after coastal convoys were organized in the Atlantic. (My machine will not give me an umlaut for Donitz's name; you can create your own, though, by cutting out two periods and pasting them over the o.)
So U-boats began to prowl the Gulf sea lanes, traveling at night on the surface and running submerged during the day. Their favorite hunting grounds were the shipping lanes off the Louisiana coast, between Ships Shoal and the Mississippi River passes, which became known as Torpedo Junction.
There was the so-called "Happy Time'' in May and June of 1942 when U-boat attacks in the Gulf claimed the highest total of ship losses for any other two-month period for the entire war. The subs sank 41 ships or 219,867 gross tons. Fifty-five percent of this represented tanker tonnage. Back then, Texas supplied half the country's oil.
The strategy on both sides was different in the Gulf than in the Atlantic. Convoys with destroyer escorts were organized to protect the tankers in the Atlantic; the stalking U-boats began to mass in "wolf packs'' to shadow the convoys, looking for weak spots. The Navy didn't organize convoys in the Gulf and U-boats did not operate in wolf packs. No more than three U-boats operated in the Gulf at any one time.
During the U-boats' "Happy Time,'' on May 10, 1942, the American tanker Aurora was hit by two torpedoes in the Gulf. The ship was in ballast and did not sink. She made it into Port Aransas with a gaping hole in her side. In another attack, on June 16, the San Blas, a Panamanian cargo ship, was hit by two torpedoes and went down immediately. Fourteen survivors of the 44-member crew were picked up 13 days later by a Navy patrol plane flying out of Corpus Christi NAS.
The day after the San Blas was sunk, Norwegian tanker Moira was torpedoed below Port Isabel. The torpedo struck amidships on the port side and passed through the vessel and blew a 50-foot hole on the starboard side. The U-boat surfaced and fired round after round of 4-inch shells into the Moira until she sank.
Other ships sunk of the Texas coast by U-boats included the Gunderson and Cadmus, Norwegian cargo ships; Mexican tanker Tuxpan; the American tanker Raleigh Warner, with no trace ever found of survivors; British tanker Empire Mica; a U.S. Army transport, Henry Gibbons. The last known U-boat sinking in the Gulf was the American oil tanker Touchet loaded with 120,000 barrels of oil. That was on Dec. 3, 1943.
The Gulf Sea Frontier under Admiral "Reggie'' Kauffman became too hot for the U-boats to operate, with an increased concentration of surface forces and air cover. There was another factor. One of the untold stories of the war is how shrimpers on the Louisiana and Mexican coasts reported the positions of the U-boats when they surfaced. The shrimpers also picked up survivors and saved many lives, especially during that gruesomely named "Happy Time'' in the summer of 1942.
(Sources: Caller-Times archives from August, 1945; "The Two-Ocean War'' by Samuel Eliot Morison; "The Second World War'' by John Keegan; "Strategy, Security and Spies: Mexico and the U.S. as Allies in World War II'' by Maria Emilia Paz.
