Photo courtesy of Bob Hefner
DAN'S PAPERS, February 15, 2008 Page 17 www.danshamptons.com
The American navy radio spying operation on Atlantic Beach. The brick radio room is on the beach. The navy barracks is in the foreground. Nazis landed 200 yards away. At 3 a.m. on June 13, both crews were hard at work, hoping the other wouldn’t notice them.
Amagansett, 1942 Nazi and American Spies Worked 200 Yards apart and Didn’t Know It By Dan Rattiner One of the most fascinating historical events ever to take place in the Hamptons was the landing of four Nazi spies in Amagansett during World War II. They came ashore in rubber boats from a German submarine on June 13, 1942 in the middle of the night, buried their gear, Nazi uniforms, weapons, money and the explosives they intended to use at a later date for sabotage. And they put on civilian clothes that would make people who might see them think they were surfcasters, walked to the Amagansett Railroad Station and took the morning train to New York City. They carried fishing poles. The landing at Amagansett and a similar one in Ponte Vedra, Florida two weeks later, were the only occasions in American history when uniformed soldiers of a country we were at war with successfully breached the defenses of mainland United States. That both groups, now in civilian clothes and never
having done any harm, were apprehended within a few weeks of the landing does not change that fact. Now it turns out that the landing of the soldiers at the spot where Atlantic Avenue dead ends at the beach (and where Atlantic Avenue Beach is today), came within 300 yards of disrupting a secret and war-altering Navy operation taking place in a small oceanfront brick house within sight of the spot
public for the first time. Hefner gave a talk about his find last Friday evening at the Clinton Academy Museum on Main Street in East Hampton. The place was packed with people, and was standing room only. Hefner not only had papers, but also photographs of this operation in Amagansett that he projected on a screen and spoke about with the help of a PowerPoint indicator. “In the course of things, I learned that one of the Navy men involved in this operation was Vito DeMai, who, after the war, came to settle here in Amagansett and lives in town today. I spoke to him about it last week. ‘I don’t know if I have permission to tell you anything about this,’ he said.” The brick building and the secret operation inside had begun in 1940, two years before. At that time, America was not at war and Pearl Harbor had not yet taken place. The local people knew there was something going on there. But they were completely mistaken about what it was. Twenty years earlier, in 1920, two huge 500-foot-tall steel towers were constructed in Napeague, halfway between Amagansett and Montauk, to use Morse code to communicate
The Radiomen just kept working, hoping nobody would bother them. It was a busy 35 hours down at Atlantic Avenue Beach.
Dan Rattiner is the founder of Dan’s Papers. His memoir, In the Hamptons: Fifty Years With Farmers, Fishermen, Artists, Billionaires and Celebrities will be published by Harmony Books this May.
where the Nazis came ashore. The existence of this operation, which dramatically altered the course of World War II, was not known until a few months ago, when local historian Bob Hefner was in Washington researching Life Saving Stations and Coast Guard operations and happened to come across some top secret papers from that era that were being declassified and made
(continued on page 20)