Mission
Their mission was to stage sabotage attacks on American economic targets: hydroelectric plants at Niagara Falls; the Aluminum Company of America's plants in Illinois, Tennessee, and New York; locks on the Ohio River near Louisville, Kentucky; the Horseshoe Curve, a crucial railroad pass near Altoona, Pennsylvania, as well as the Pennsylvania Railroad's repair shops at Altoona; a cryolite plant in Philadelphia; Hell Gate Bridge in New York; and Pennsylvania Station in Newark, New Jersey. They were given a quick course in sabotage techniques, given nearly $175,000 in American money and put aboard two U-boats to land on the east coast of the U.S.
Before the mission launched, it was in danger of being compromised, as George Dasch, head of the team, left sensitive documents behind on a train, and one of the agents when drunk announced to patrons of a Paris bar that he was a secret agent.
On 12 June 1942, the first submarine to arrive in the U.S., U-202 (Innsbruck), landed at Amagansett, New York, which is about 115 miles east of New York City, on Long Island, at what today is Atlantic Avenue beach. It was carrying Dasch and three other saboteurs (Burger, Quirin, and Henck). The team came ashore wearing military uniforms so that if they were captured they would be classified as prisoners of war rather than spies. They also brought ashore, and buried enough explosives, primers, and incendiaries to support an expected two-year campaign in the sabotage of American defense-related production.
When Dasch was discovered amidst the dunes by unarmed Coast Guardsman John C. Cullen, Dasch seized Cullen by the collar, threatened him, and stuffed $260 into Cullen's hand. Cullen reported the encounter to his superiors after returning to his station. By the time an armed Coast Guard patrol returned to the site, the Germans, weary from their trans-Atlantic trip, had taken a train into New York City.
The other four-member German team headed by Kerling landed without incident at Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida, south of Jacksonville on 16 June 1942. They came on U-584, another submarine. This group started their mission by boarding trains to Chicago, Illinois and Cincinnati, Ohio.
Read more about this topic: Operation Pastorius
Famous quotes containing the word mission:
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—Ellen Henrietta Swallow Richards (1842–1911)
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“Perhaps the mission of those who love mankind is to make people laugh at the truth, to make truth laugh, because the only truth lies in learning to free ourselves from insane passion for the truth.”
—Umberto Eco (b. 1932)