In WWII The Germans Knew Newfoundland’s Weaknesses
Jack Fitzgerald’s Treasury of Newfoundland Stories, Volume III: Classic Spy Tales and Epic Sea Adventures, coming this December from Breakwater Books.
The complacency that existed in St. John’s during the early years of WWII was shaken on March 3, 1942, when U-boat 587 fired torpedoes at St. John’s harbour in the first German attack on North American soil.
Newsweek Magazine, on July 13, 1942, reported that information reaching Berlin from St. John’s led to the sinking of several ships in the North Atlantic.
However, by that time, German U-boats had already carried out the attack on St. John’s, which was followed six months later with the sinking of ships at Lance Cove and Wabana, both on Bell Island. In the case of the November 1942 attack on Wabana, U-boat Command in Germany was previously aware of a weakness in Bell Island defences and relayed this information to U-boats in Conception Bay.
German intelligence was also aware of the defences protecting St. John’s harbour as well as the regularly scheduled air surveillance of the city.
Several sealing vessels were entering St. John’s harbour when the torpedo attack was launched, and the sealers heard the explosions. Research shows that on March 3, there were actually three torpedoes fired at St. John’s by U-boat 587 under the command of Captain Ulrich Borcherdt. The U-boat was patrolling near St. John’s after participating in an attack on a convoy off the Newfoundland coast. Three days after the attack on St. John’s, U-587 sank the 900-ton Greenland escort Hans Egeda off St. Pierre-miquelon.
Newfoundlanders in the early days of WWII viewed the conflict as a foreign war and felt confident they were secure from enemy attack. However, the German strategy to bring the war to the North American coast, code named Drumbeat, got underway in early January 1942 when the first of a series of waves of German U-boats entered Newfoundland and
Canadian coastal waters. U-587 was part of the fourth wave sent here in March.
The importance of the colony’s strategic position was not fully appreciated in Newfoundland but was immediately recognized in other capitols of the world. Washington, Ottawa, London, and even Berlin assessed its importance and from the start, included Newfoundland and its coastal waters in its individual military strategies. Washington and Ottawa viewed Newfoundland as the battle line between North America and Europe in the event England fell and hostilities spread to this continent. England, dependent on its imports from North America for its survival, recognized the importance of Newfoundland’s coastal waters at first, and as
the war progressed, developed an appreciation for the strategic importance of the port of St. John’s.
Berlin, early in the war, began implementing military policies aimed at preventing the supply of Britain’s needs from North America by blocking its ports and sinking its merchant vessels. Operation St. John’s was a specific military mission of the Germans aimed at St. John’s and part of the larger Operation Drumbeat, which also included the St. Lawrence, Halifax, and American ports.
The Fuehrer’s Strategy
At a conference with his naval commanders in Berlin on December 12, 1941, Adolph Hitler decided to launch a major U-boat offensive against ports in America. While the
main target of this operation was the United States, Newfoundland and Canadian coastal waters became targets as well. Upon Hitler’s instructions, his U-boats were ordered to penetrate the northern end of the coastal route between Newfoundland and New York near the homeward bound ports of convoys.
British mapping of U-boat activity between December 7, 1941, and July 31, 1942, shows U-boat activity along Newfoundland’s coast from the Grand Banks to St. John’s, then north to Conception Bay and Notre Dame Bay. U-boat activity increased and expanded in the following six months with high concentrations in the Strait of Bell Isle area, which earned the name Torpedo Junction.