With a distance of 5000 miles one way from Lorient to the Gulf of Mexico, the round trip was equivalent to traveling almost halfway around the world. U.S. During a five-month period in the late spring and summer of 1942, the German U-boat Force mounted a deadly offensive in the Gulf of Mexico as part of its worldwide campaign to destroy Allied merchant shipping. Ships Sunk or Damaged on Eastcoast of U.S, and Gulf of Mexico During World War II U-boats off Gulf shores: A short history of the German U-boat invasion in the Gulf of Mexico ," and lectures on the subject once a year at the Coastal Branch Library. It was discovered decades later. The Germans called it "Operation Drumbeat" or the "Second … Over half were tankers. Improved Allied anti-submarine warfare eventually drove the Axis submarines out of the Caribbean region. CAPE SAN BLAS —It was just after midnight on Monday, June 29, 1942 and a beautiful summer night in the Gulf of Mexico as the British oil tanker Empire Mica sailed east for Key West and the Florida Straits, where it would proceed up the U.S. East Coast to New York and join a convoy headed for the British Isles. But in May 1942, enemy submarines sank 41 ships, totaling almost 220,000 gross tons. Unknown to many, in the early days of U.S. involvement in World War II, German U-boats clouded Gulf waters with an ominous presence. The
The ships were the first tankers to be sunk by U Boats in the Gulf of Mexico, and part of a total of 100 that were lost to German submarines in the Caribbean and the Gulf of Mexico. The U Boats were based in Lorient, France, where the Germans set up a base after the conquest of that country.

The U-boat sailed on only two war patrols and sank four ships totalling 7,593 gross register tons (GRT). She was sunk on 30 July 1942 in Gulf of Mexico. They sank shipping in the Caribbean Sea and the Gulf of Mexico and attacked coastal targets in the Antilles. In the summer of 1942, more ships were sunk by U-boats in the Gulf than in the Atlantic or the Pacific. The U-166, which sits nearly a mile below the Gulf of Mexico, just off the Texas coast, was sunk by Allied forces during WWII. In less than seven months, U-boat attacks would destroy 22 percent of the tanker fleet and sink 233 ships in the Atlantic Ocean and the Gulf of Mexico. UBOATS IN THE GULF OF MEXICO Not every day has been a day in paradise along the Texas coast. Indeed, in addition to marauding merchant shipping in the North Atlantic, Nazi naval commanders dispatched 22 U-boats to the Gulf of Mexico, including the Texas coastline. U-boat is an anglicised version of the German word U-Boot, a shortening of Unterseeboot, literally "undersea boat.” Nolan C. Callaway, son of Orange Beach charter fishing Captain Herman H. Callaway, said his father found remnants of the ship in the Gulf while fishing in 1942. The video showed the U-boat that once was used for war now rests peacefully at the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico. Surveys explore U-boat wreckage in Gulf of Mexico July 24, 2014 In this undated photo made available by the Ocean Exploration Trust shows the SS Robert E Lee in the Gulf of Mexico. It was a dangerous time to be on an oil tanker in the Gulf. At the onset of World War II, the German high command wasted no time in sending U-boats to harass shipping along the Atlantic Coast and in the Gulf of Mexico. The U-boats killed 5,000 seamen and passengers, more than twice the number of people who perished at Pearl Harbor. In the early months of the War only five ships were sunk in the Gulf waters. On May 5, 1942, the German submarine U-507 sank two tankers, the Munger T. Ball and the Cudahy, in the Gulf of Mexico west of the Florida Everglades. Over 20 U-boats sank more than 70 ships in the Gulf of Mexico between 1942 and 1943. That May, German U-boats sank two Mexican oil tankers in the Gulf of Mexico. German U-boats and Italian submarines attempted to disrupt the Allied supply of oil and other material. It is now home to colorful marine life.