Book contents
- Nature at War
- Nature at War
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Tables and Charts
- Maps
- Contributors
- Preface
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- Part I New Weapons, New Spaces
- Part II Military Materials I (metals and energy)
- Part III Military Materials II (foods and plants)
- Part IV New Landscapes
- 8 A Watery Grave?
- 9 World War II and the Urban Environment
- Part V New Frontiers
- Part VI Conservation
- Index
8 - A Watery Grave?
World War II and the Environment on the American Gulf Coast
from Part IV - New Landscapes
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 25 March 2020
- Nature at War
- Nature at War
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Tables and Charts
- Maps
- Contributors
- Preface
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- Part I New Weapons, New Spaces
- Part II Military Materials I (metals and energy)
- Part III Military Materials II (foods and plants)
- Part IV New Landscapes
- 8 A Watery Grave?
- 9 World War II and the Urban Environment
- Part V New Frontiers
- Part VI Conservation
- Index
Summary
Just before midnight on July 30, 1942, German U-boat captain Hans-Günther Kuhlmann peered through the periscope of U-166 at a 5,000-ton steamship running north in the Gulf of Mexico toward the safety of the mouth of the Mississippi River. The SS Robert E. Lee, bearing a name from the last war to touch the Gulf’s shores, was on the final leg of a perilous voyage from Port of Spain, Trinidad, and had, along the way, rescued a number of survivors of ships sunk by U-boats.1 Kuhlmann and his boat were on their first trans-Atlantic patrol, hoping to avoid the substantial antisubmarine forces off the American eastern seaboard in favor of the lightly defended but lucrative petroleum-laden targets in the vast Gulf of Mexico. The U-boat had already sunk three smaller vessels, including a 2,300-ton ship off the coast of Cuba, but the current victim was the crew’s largest. It was also their last.
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- Chapter
- Information
- Nature at WarAmerican Environments and World War II, pp. 227 - 251Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2020