Battle of the North Atlantic
The North Atlantic Run
The Battle of the Atlantic had been raging for over two years before the U.S. joined the war and Coast Guard operations in the North Atlantic began well before the U.S. entered the war. Cutters performed convoy escort duty side-by-side with British and Canadian ships. Once the U.S. entered the war, the cutters became fully …
The Med Run
Malta’s geographical position, halfway between the strategic British bases at Gibraltar and Alexandia, close to the Sicilian Channel between Sicily and Tunis and on the sea route between Italy and its possessions in Libya, made it a vital base for control of the Mediterranean sea routes. For Britain this was the short route, via the …
The Russian Convoys
After Germany invaded Russia, the U.K. and later the U.S. began providing materials to that country by convoy. The Arctic Convoys travelled from the U.K. and the U.S. to Archangel and Murmansk in northern Russia. These convoys faced the harshest weather conditions of the war. There were 78 convoys between August 1941 and May 1945 …
Coastal Convoys
As soon as the U.S. declared war, Germany sent u-boats to harass shipping along the U.S. east coast. The first German u-boats began operating there in January 1942. East coast shipping included not only ships that routinely plied the coastal trade, but also those bound to and from trans-Atlantic convoy runs. The convoys usually assembled …
Search and Rescue
A traditional peacetime mission that became even more important during the war was search and rescue, especially off the war torn East Coast. Thousands of u-boat survivors owe their lives to the work of Coast Guard stations along the coast. On 23 January 1942, motor lifeboats from Stations Hatteras Inlet and Ocracoke saved two men …
The Hooligan Navy
In the early days of the war, the Navy was in desperate need of vessels to patrol the coastal waters to look for subs and rescue survivors from attacks. Alfred Stanford, of the Cruising Club of America, tried to convince the Navy that civilians could help them and offered several sailing yachts to the effort. …