In the Spring of 1940, Leo Kober, devoted reader of CLICK MAGAZINE and former crew member of one of the Kaiser's airships during the First World War, felt compelled to send his personal snap-shots of his zeppelin days to the editors of his fave mag with a few notations; and now we pass them along to you. This article is composed of a couple of paragraphs recalling the damages caused to American shipping as a result of the U-Boat menace on the East Coast of the United States during the First World War. Written at a time when the U.S. was once again having to deal with the same threat, this time by Admiral Karl Dönitz (1891 – 1980), the journalist wished that Henry J. James, the author of German Subs In Yankee Waters
be properly credited for having devised many of the more successful countermeasures. This news piece appeared in a Georgia newspaper during the closing weeks of American "neutrality". The first report of this French naval blunder involving a French torpedo boat sinking a French submarine came from Berlin, rather from Paris or London, where such events would never make it past the censors. This brief notice makes no mention as to the original source or who witnessed the accident. Information released from the British Admiralty concerning the number of British merchant and fishing vessels lost to German U-boat attacks during the first seven months of the war. The article names eight non-military ships sunk during March 1915. In addition, the Admiralty also stated the total number of British merchant and fishing vessels lost through German naval attacks from the start of the war through March 10, 1915.
Click here to read about the new rules for warfare that were written as a result of the First World War - none of them pertain to the use of poison gas or submarines.
Printed five years apart were these two articles that we've attached herein collectively recalling three different events by three different services within the American military, each claiming to have fired the opening salvo that served notice to Kaiser Bill and the boys that the U.S. of A. was open for business:
•The first article recalls the U.S. Merchant Marine freighter MONGOLIA that sank a German U-Boat on April 19, 1917 while cruising off the coast of England.
•The second article chuckles at the Army for insisting that the First Division fired the premiere shot on October 23, 1917 in the Luneville sector of the French front;
•following up with the absolute earliest date of American aggression being April 6, 1917 - the same day that Congress declared war - when Marine Corporal Michael Chockie fired his 1903 Springfield across the bow of the German merchant raider S.M.S COMORAN on the island of Guam.
Click here to read about FDR as Under-Secretary of the Navy.
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