Dan's Papers Feb. 15, 2008 by Dan's Papers

DAN'S PAPERS, February 15, 2008 Page 20 www.danshamptons.com

Amagansett

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with ships at sea. They were the wonder of the age and people, correctly, knew what they were all about. It therefore seemed no surprise to anybody that in 1940 the U. S. Navy would build this brick building on the beach and alongside it construct a series of 20-foot-tall aerials in a grid pattern. The Navy told anyone who asked that this was a Navy radio station monitoring the activities of the American naval ships at sea in the same way that the towers in Napeague were monitoring the ocean liners and freighters. People believed them. To get a full understanding of exactly what this station was involved with — and there were 30 naval officers at work in three shifts 24 hours a day every day there (the single men lived in a barracks they built on Bluff Road at the back of the beach) — you need to know the history of World War II. The attack on Pearl Harbor took place on December 7, 1941. However, more than two years earlier, on September 1, 1939, Hitler’s armies invaded Poland. And within days, Germany was officially in a state of war with France and England, because those countries had treaties requiring them to defend Poland. Here in America, conservatives urged President Roosevelt to stay out of this conflict. But Roosevelt knew that if the huge German armies prevailed over both France and England, this would pose a serious threat to the security and integrity of America. Publicly, he announced that we would not

Top: George Dasch, Bottom: Edward Kerling

go to war. But he also announced that we had a treaty with England and would embark on a program of sending them weapons and supplies across the Atlantic by boat. We would become the “arsenal of democracy,” he said in a speech. And so, in 1939, we began to turn out artillery guns and tanks and ammunition to send to the British on a lease basis. The Germans, however, were ready. They had by that time assembled a huge armada of submarines, which they called U-boats, and they declared that if anybody tried to send

arms and guns to England, their U-boats would sink them. And sink them they did. In 1939 and 1940, thousands and thousands of American freighters were torpedoed and sunk in the Atlantic Ocean by U-boats, causing a huge loss of American lives. The number of ships that got through to England was less than half of what we were sending. It was turning into a disaster, and something had to be done, and quickly. The U-boats, it was known, operated in groups known as wolfpacks. Under water, they communicated with one another by radio. Roosevelt, meeting with his cabinet, ordered that large American warships accompany the freighters and be equipped with depth charges capable of blowing up Uboats underwater. He also ordered that a communications system be set up to eavesdrop on the Germans and determine the location of the wolfpacks so the warships could find them and the freighters avoid them. With the knowledge of a wolfpack, a freighter could outrun an underwater U-boat. On a wall map, four seaside locations in the continental United States were selected for the building of secret communications outposts that working together as a group could determine the whereabouts of the U-boats in the Atlantic. They were soon built in Winter Harbor, Maine; Cheltenham, Maryland; Jupiter, Florida and Amagansett, New York. The naval officers at these outposts would listen to the German wolfpack communica(continued on page 39)

Hampton Jitney Winter Schedule Effective Thurs., Jan. 3 through Wed., Apr. 30, 2008

7 Days

Mon thru Fri

7 Days

W Sun Only

I 7 Days

Sun Only

7 Days

W 7 Days

W Sun Only

9:30

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Sat Only —

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Amagansett

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4:50

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East Hampton

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5:00

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Wainscott

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5:05

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