Yesterday I visited the Washington Navy Yard Museum. It is down along the Potomac off the beaten path near the new baseball stadium. I had the entire museum to myself - a fascinating collecting of navy articles and history.
The most interesting to me was the story about the carnage in the Atlantic in 1942. 432 Merchant Marine ships were sunk by 12 German Submarines. Only 2 subs were destroyed during this one-sided segment of the war.
American ships were carrying troops and supplies to Europe to be used against Hitler and his Nazis. They had virtually no defense against the underwater prowlers. Sonar and radar were not yet developed.
My grandfather - Roy Everhart - was killed off sailing from Puerto Rico to Cuba on the USS Norlandia. A torpedo pierced the engine room where he was stationed. The sub was less than 300 feet away. After his ship was sunk and the survivors were in lifeboats - the German sub surfaced - gave the lucky ones brandy - and pointed them toward the Dominican Republic - just 12 miles away.
On the map I am pointing to the exact location where Everhart and the Norlandia went down. In March - Lulu and I visited that spot on a cruise ship sailing form Haiti to Jamaica. Note all the explosions along the coast of Florida - even near New Orleans and Tallahassee.
During this Jan-June 1942 Disaster - German subs often sunk ships coming out of American ports - terrorizing civilians on shore. Ernest Hemingway writes about this in "Islands in the Stream." This was just months after PEarl Harbor.
Much of the information we have about this era was gleaned from meticulous records kept by German submarine captains. Germans kept records of virtually every bullet fired - that can be searched on the Internet.
