Korvettenkapitan Harro Schacht and his crew in U-507 sank seven ships in eight days. And this was just the beginning of their assault on American shipping in US waters. U-507 and U-506 were now steering a course that would put them in the path of the freighter Heredia, bound for New Orleans from South America. Traveling onboard as passengers was a family of four, Ray and Ida Downs and their two young children, Lucille and Ray Jr. Few Americans realize how closely U-boats prowled the US Coast in World War II. The Downs family and those aboard the ill-fated ships sailing in the Gulf of Mexico in the spring of 1942 learned all too well how close to home they were. Michael Tougias is the author and co-author ofseveral true survival-at-sea books, including The Finest Hours, made into a major motion picture by Disney and released in 2016. So Close To Home is co-authored with journalist Alison 0 'Leary. Photos from the book and a video interview with Heredia sinking survivor Ray Downs Jr. can be found online at www.michaeltougias.com.
U-507 (in background) assists in the rescue ofsurvivors from RMS Laconia, which had been attacked and sunk by U-156 offthe coast of West Africa on 13 September 1942. The Laconia was carrying more than 2,700 persons on board, most of them Italian POWs, but also British and Polish service men, and a handful of women and children passengers. Schacht and Wiirdemann directed their U-boats to the scene to take on as many people as they could fit. When they later got word from headquarters to cast adrift all the British and Polish survivors, Schacht and Wiirdemann did not comply. Schacht and his crew would perish fou r months later when a US Navy PBY Catalina dropped depth charges on U-507 in the South Atlantic on 14 January 1943. U-501 sank with all hands 330 miles off the coast ofBrazil.
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