German U-Boats Sink Ships Off Texas Coast

Buried in the back pages of a Houston newspaper in July 1942 was a matter-of-fact account of the sinking on the sixth of the month of a cargo ship “somewhere in the Gulf of Mexico.”

German U-boats were unquestionably on the prowl off the coast of Texas, but there was no reason to get folks all riled up about it!

Following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, seashore inhabitants of the Lone Star State had a bad case of the jitters for the first time since the Civil War. The United States was at war exactly a month, when Galveston staged a blackout and ordered total darkness for the duration in a three-block strip along the beach.

The island was a beehive of activity in early 1942 as the military worked frantically to strengthen its defenses. Galveston Army Air Field was established by the Air Corps, while the Army stationed 2,500 troops at Fort Crockett, Fort San Jacinto, and Fort Travis on Bolivar Point.

Those bastions bristled with 10-and 12-inch guns as well as antiaircraft batteries. But the enemy never came, and the only casualties were the windows of nearby homes shattered by the concussion from the test firing of the artillery.

Out in the Gulf, however, it was a different story as German submarines or U-boats stalked the busy shipping lines. At 11 o