WORLD WAR II
This historical marker at Round Island Oceanside Park recalls how close German U-boats prowled the waters of the Treasure Coast during the early years of the war.
trained on Fort Pierce beaches.
Sometimes, they conducted mock raids of the air station. Their
task was to get from the beach to the captain’s office at the airbase
Bud Holman used to stop by the captain’s office every morning
for coffee, Bump Holman said. No one ever searched his car before
letting him pass through the gate. One morning, he was driving
through the McAnsh Park neighborhood just south of the airbase.
“He sees two of those Navy SEALs out there, all in camouflage
and guns and everything,” Bump said. “He waved them over
and said, ‘Hey, you want to catch the commanding officer?’ He
put them in his trunk and drove into the base and right into the
captain’s garage. He went in and sat down and was having coffee
with the captain. All of a sudden, these two guys walked in and
they had him!”
CLOSE TO HOME
German submarines prowled offshore during the early years of
the war, wreaking havoc on shipping in the Atlantic, the Caribbean
Longtime residents of the Treasure Coast have never forgotten
torpedo blasts from U-boats that sank freighters and shook the
ground for miles around. One blast off Jupiter Island in 1942 rattled
the chips in a poker game in a Stuart law office 15 miles away.
The war struck Vero Beach in the dark, early hours of May 6,
1942. A German submarine, U-333, torpedoed the U.S. oil tanker
48
without being detected.
and the Gulf of Mexico.
GREGORY ENNS
Java Arrow eight miles off the beach. The explosions rattled windows
in town. Coast Guard volunteers from Vero in Kit Johnson’s
33-foot fishing boat rescued 22 survivors, some wounded, and
took them into the Ft. Pierce Coast Guard Station. Before dawn a
few miles to the south the U-boat sank a Dutch freighter, Amazone,
and another huge tanker, Halsey. Giant plumes of smoke
were seen from Vero’s beach as the Halsey burned.
The U-boat commander Peter Cremer later stated, “Those
Americans did not know they were at war.” He had seen a coastline
with an array of lights, silhouetting the ships. Ten days after
City of Vero Beach 1919-2019 VeroBeach100.org
MARINERS MUSEUM, NEWPORT, VA.
The damaged tanker Java Arrow was torpedoed off Vero Beach in 1942 by a German
U-boat. Twenty-two survivors were rescued by Coast Guard volunteers.
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