Second Happy Time
The Second Happy Time was a phase in the Battle of the Atlantic during which Axis submarines attacked merchant shipping and Allied naval vessels along the east coast of North America. The First Happy Time was in 1940–41 in the North Atlantic and North Sea. Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini declared war on the United States on 11 December 1941, and as a result their navies could begin the Second Happy Time.
The Second Happy Time lasted from January 1942 to about August of that year and involved several German naval operations, including Operation Neuland. German submariners named it the "Happy Time" or the "Golden Time", as defense measures were weak and disorganized, and the U-boats were able to inflict massive damage with little risk. During this period, Axis submarines sank 609 ships totaling, against a loss of only 22 U-boats. This led to the loss of thousands of lives, mainly those of merchant mariners. Although fewer than the losses during the 1917 campaign of the First World War, those of this period equaled roughly one quarter of all ships sunk by U-boats during the entire Second World War.
Historian Michael Gannon called it "America's Second Pearl Harbor" and placed the blame for the nation's failure to respond quickly to the attacks on the inaction of Admiral Ernest J. King, commander-in-chief of the United States Navy. As King also refused British offers to provide the US navy with their own ships, the belated institution of a convoy system was in large part due to a severe shortage of suitable escort vessels, without which convoys were seen as actually more vulnerable than lone ships.
Background
German intentions
Upon Germany's declaration of war on the United States on 11 December 1941 just after the attack on Pearl Harbor, the US was, on paper at least, in a fortunate position. Where the other combatants on the Allied side had already lost thousands of trained sailors and airmen, and were experiencing shortages of ships and aircraft, the US was at full strength. The US had the opportunity to learn about modern naval warfare by observing the conflicts in the North Sea and the Mediterranean, and through a close relationship with the United Kingdom. The USN had already gained significant experience in countering U-boats in the Atlantic, particularly from April 1941 when President Franklin D. Roosevelt extended the "Pan-American Security Zone" east almost as far as Iceland. The United States had massive manufacturing capacity and a favorable geographical position from a defensive point of view: the port of New York, for example, was to the west of the U-boat bases in Brittany.U-boat commander Karl Dönitz saw the entry of the US into the war as a golden opportunity to strike heavy blows in the tonnage war and Hitler ordered an assault on America on 12 December 1941. The standard Type VII submarine had insufficient range to patrol off the coast of North America ; the only suitable weapons he had on hand were the larger Type IX. These were less maneuverable and slower to submerge, making them much more vulnerable than the Type VIIs. They were also fewer in number.
American deficiencies
The American response in early 1942 was hampered by poor organization and doctrine, and a lack of anti-submarine warfare aircraft, ships, and personnel.The USN entered the war without the equivalent of the British sloop or the despite previous involvement in the Atlantic The massive new naval construction program prioritized other types of ships. Fleet destroyers did not have the qualities for ASW; the ideal ASW escort had relatively low speed; carried a large number of depth charges; was highly maneuverable; and had long endurance. The 50 World War I-era destroyers transferred to Britain in the 1941 Destroyers for Bases Agreement would have been poor ASW escorts, even had they been retained, due to poor maneuverability.
The USN had some destroyers available on the east coast at the time of the first attacks. It had previously recalled at least 25 Atlantic Convoy Escort Command Destroyers, including seven at anchor in New York Harbor. It initially refused to use them as escorts even as losses mounted. When the first destroyers were finally released, their employment was hampered by poor doctrine. They were assigned to offensive patrols rather than escorting convoys due to public and political pressure. As late as March, USN escort doctrine was aggressive with an emphasis on destroying attackers, rather than stopping losses. The option of pressing small civilian ships into service as rudimentary convoy escorts in early 1942 was not exercised.
Even if escorts had been available, the USN was unprepared to perform "Naval Control of Shipping", the control and tracking of shipping, although it had already received the reference material from Canada. Without escorts, the US could not take advantage of the existing Allied NCS. For shipping in the western Atlantic north of the equator, NCS was handled by the Royal Canadian Navy since the start of the war; the RCN only passed the responsibility to the USN in July 1942.
Operationally, the USN's ASW effort was fragmented. In theory, Admiral King was responsible for coordinating all ASW activities, including the development of doctrine. In practice, King's many other responsibilities prevented him from doing an adequate job. Therefore, the three Atlantic operational commands – the Atlantic Fleet, the Eastern Sea Frontier, and the Gulf Sea Frontier – were left to develop their own ASW tactics individually. The issue was not resolved until May 1943 with the formation of the United States Tenth Fleet.
British experience in the first two years of World War II, which included the massive losses incurred to their shipping during the First Happy Time confirmed that ships sailing in convoy – with or without escort – were far safer than ships sailing alone. The British recommended that merchant ships should avoid obvious standard routings wherever possible; navigational markers, lighthouses, and other aids to the enemy should be removed, and a strict coastal blackout be enforced. In addition, any available air and sea forces should perform daylight patrols to restrict the U-boats' flexibility. For several months, none of the recommendations were followed. Coastal shipping continued to sail along marked routes and burn normal navigation lights. Boardwalk communities ashore were only 'requested' to 'consider' turning their illuminations off on 18 December 1941, but not in the cities; they did not want to offend the tourism, recreation and business sectors.
The primary target area was the Eastern Sea Frontier, commanded by Rear-Admiral Adolphus Andrews and covering the area from Maine to North Carolina. Andrews had practically no modern forces to work with: on the water he commanded seven Coast Guard cutters, four converted yachts, three 1919-vintage patrol boats, two gunboats dating back to 1905, and four wooden submarine chasers. About 100 aircraft were available, but these were short-range models only suitable for training. As a consequence of the traditionally antagonistic relationship between the USN and the Army Air Forces, all larger aircraft remained under USAAF control, and in any case the USAAF was neither trained nor equipped for ASW.
Campaign
Opening moves
Immediately after war was declared on the United States, Dönitz began to implement Operation Paukenschlag. Only six of the twenty operational Type IX boats were available, and one of those six encountered mechanical trouble. This left just five long-range submarines for the opening moves of the campaign.Loaded with the maximum possible amounts of fuel, food and ammunition, the first of the five Type IXs left Lorient in France on 18 December 1941, the others following over the next few days. Each carried sealed orders to be opened after passing 20°W, which directed them to different parts of the North American coast. No charts or sailing directions were available: Kapitänleutnant Reinhard Hardegen of, for example, was provided with two tourist guides to New York, one of which contained a fold-out map of the harbor.
Each U-boat made routine signals on exiting the Bay of Biscay, which were picked up by the British Y service and plotted in Rodger Winn's London Submarine Tracking Room, which were then able to follow the progress of the Type IXs across the Atlantic, and cable an early warning to the RCN. Working on the slimmest of evidence, Winn correctly deduced the target area and passed a detailed warning to Admiral King, of a "heavy concentration of U-boats off the North American seaboard", including the five boats already on station and further groups that were in transit, 21 U-boats in all. Rear-Admiral Edwin T. Layton of the US Combined Operations and Intelligence Center then informed the responsible area commanders, but little or nothing else was done.
On 12 January 1942, Admiral Andrews was warned that "three or four U-boats" were about to commence operations against coastal shipping, but he refused to institute a convoy system on the grounds that this would only provide the U-boats with more targets.
When sank the 9,500-ton Norwegian tanker Norness within sight of Long Island in the early hours of 14 January, no warships were dispatched to investigate, allowing the U-123 to sink the 6,700-ton British tanker Coimbra off Sandy Hook on the following night before proceeding south towards New Jersey. By this time there were 13 destroyers idle in New York Harbor, yet none were employed to deal with the immediate threat, and over the following nights U-123 was presented with a succession of easy targets, most of them burning navigation lamps. At times, U-123 was operating in coastal waters that were so shallow that they barely allowed it to conceal itself, let alone evade a depth charge attack.