(MARI)TIME WARP! 1945: WWII The War Offshore Recounted

ENEMY SUBMARINES BROUGHT WAR TO MONMOUTH-OCEAN DOORSTEP
BATTLE OF MONMOUTH TOLL EXCEEDED OFFSHORE

May 7th, 1945 - Asbury Park Press

Located strategically in one of the hubs of democracy's arsenal, the North Jersey coast became at once a huge fortress and battleground for World War II.

Geography was on the side of Monmouth and Ocean counties insofar as combat was concerned. In the great conflict which has been won, the towns and countryside did not ring to the clash of arms. The battle of Monmouth this time was waged offshore. There, the toll was fierce.

It was the submarine that brought the war to New Jersey's doorstep. AT least four merchantmen lost battles to the undersea raiders and sank beneath the waves off Shore beaches. One American naval vessel and a coast guard ship were also lost in northern New Jersey coastal waters, victims of yet unexplained disasters. Three naval blimp crashes at the Shore were also due to wartime errands.

In all, it would be conservative to say that 200 fighting men lost their lives here. That's more than four times the Continental army's death toll in the Battle of Monmouth.

War Always in Mind
When not roused by the conflict in the waters nearby, Shore residents had other constant reminders that we were at war.

The Shore's two great forts, the sub-posts, that ever-growing naval air station at Lakehurst and the new Earle naval depot, with all their thousands of armed personnel, created a military pattern that gave this section great importance.

Added to these installations, was the creation in the heart of Asbury Park of a United States navy receiving barracks. The city's two largest beachfront hotels became first a "ship" of the Royal navy, christened H.M.S. Asbury [2025 editor's trivia: British actor Sir Alec Guinness, famous for many roles but not least of which Star Wars' Obi-Wan Kenobi, was stationed there at that time] and housing thousands of Allied sailors who were here for rest or to await assignment to new, repaired or refueled ships.

H.M.S. Asbury hauled down the Union Jack after a year and a half and the receiving barracks became a pre-midshipmen's school for the United States navy's V-12 enrollees. Thousands of American bluejackets, many of them veterans of some of the big naval engagements of the war, came here for midshipmen training.

Khaki and navy blue were as much in evidence as civilian garb on the streets and in the business places of Shore towns and cities. It was like living on one great garrison.

Submarine Menace Offshore
It was during the gloomy first six months after Pearl Harbor that all the Shore was alerted by the constant submarine menace. Four times, U-boats sneaked up within firing distance of the coastline to attack and sink merchant ships plying in nearby waters. Frozen, oil-soaked bodies, along with the litter of broken ships, drifted to the beaches of Monmouth and Ocean counties.

A vengeful team of United States surface and air craft swooped over the same waters and drove the U-boat away in the months of mid-1942. They never came back. One submarine that sneaked too close to New York harbor defenses probably lies at the bottom of the sea off Sandy Hook today. There may be other destroyed undersea raiders in Atlantic graves nearby. The clap and rumble of more than one depth bomb from an American craft set windows rattling in local homes before the U-boat was driven away.

The familiar blimp from Lakehurst, with its deceptive lazy flight, was drafted in the anti-submarine campaign. Blimp maneuvers brought three tragic crashes that took a total of 30 lives during the war.

The other major military losses in this area were the explosion which wrecked the destroyer Turner off Sandy Hook Jan. 3, 1944, and the blast which disintegrated a coast guard craft off Manasquan inlet in 1942. The full story of these catastrophes has never been told. Many men were lost in both. It is believed that loose mines, either our own or those sowed by U-boats, were responsible for the explosions.

The first torpedo attack here occurred early in the morning of Feb. 27, 1942. The tank R.P. Resor, of Standard Oil company of New Jersey registry, was northbound up the coast off Belmar when the missile struck. An orange blossom of flame went up from the fuel-laden ship and she was swept by flames from stem to stern. Two of a crew of 38 were rescued. Thousands maintained a night-long vigil on the shores of Belmar, watching the glowing ship stand out on the horizon. For two days or more, the smoking hull drifted off here.

The war had been delivered to the Shore by Hitler. Mounds of sticky tar that piled up on bathing strands were evidence.

Less than two weeks later, the Hun moved in closer to the beach. His explosive charge sent another tanker to the bottom, this time the Gulf Oil company's Gulftrade. The comparatively few aboard who survived were still near the wrecked ship, three and one-half miles from Barnegat light, when coast guard cutters picked them up. The toll was 19.

A Chilean freighter went down in the same area in that same week. She was the Tolten, a New York-bound ship with a crew of 27. One man escaped with his life.

Citizens of the Shore were submarine-conscious now. Every stick floating offshore was a periscope. Every loud noise at night was an exploding torpedo.

One other merchantman is known to have been torpedoed in local waters. She was a United Nations or neutral vessel still unidentified by naval officials. A torpedo caught her about 18 miles due east of Asbury Park.

Blimps were coming to the fore as weapons of war when the first big catastrophe in their branch of service occurred. Two of the non-rigid craft were maneuvering off Manasquan inlet on an experimental mission the night of June 8, 1942, when they collided and fell into the sea. Five scientists and seven navy men were lost. One navy man was saved.

There was another blimp collision Oct. 16, 1943. This time, two of the Lakehurst ships were sailing in the fog off Island Beach when they came together and one fell into the water, carrying eight officers and men to their deaths.

On May 16, 1944, a training blimp struck the top of the main hangar at Lakehurst, crippling itself and plunging 258 feet to a concrete runway. Ten men aboard died.

The navy has announced at various times the losses of other blimps, including one shot down by a U-boat in the summer of 1943. Though it has never been told officially that these other war victims were based at Lakehurst, it would be reasonable to assume that their crews were trained there before chains of blimp bases were created along both coasts.

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