american history tv visited the macarthur memorial in norfolk, virginia, which was hosting a symposium marking the world war i centennial. coming up next, maritime archaeologist joseph hoight describes confrontations between american u-boats and vessels off the virginia and north carolina coasts. his talk is about 55 minutes. >> thank you very much. i'm glad to be here in my backyard. i just want to say one thing before i start with mr. robert shaw's presentation. for those of you that have never tried to identify a set of human remains, this is incredibly difficult work and very important stuff. my primary job is for the "uss monitor" when we recovered the turret in 2002, we found the remains of two u.s. sailors inside the turret and over the course of about ten years, we worked really closely with the

joint pacific account and command of hawaii to try and identify those remains. full dna analysis. we did facial reconstruction through louisiana state university. we knew there were 16 sailors lost so we knew generally out of a pool of 16 people who they could have been. we knew who they were associated with and we still couldn't identify these remains. it is just really incredible, important work that you're doing. so very impressive. i'm going to talk about the much lesser known battlefield, some of the battlefields that are right here in u.s. waters. many people are unaware that there are two world wars that came to the coast of the united states through the battle in the atlantic. just a quick bit of background on who i am and why we do this kind of work. i work for the office of national marine sanctuaries. part of the national oceanic and atmospheric association. it is similar in ethos to the national park service.

we have 14 sites around the country in u.s. territorial waters. for the most wart these sites protect special places in the world's oceans focused predominantly on natural or ecosystem-based preservation. the florida keys national marine sanctuary that protects the system of coral reeves. the hawaiian islands, hump back whales, the marine flashl mnati monument in the northwest hawaiian islands where we recently found some midway aircraft. two sites, the thunder bay is in lake huron. that protects 200 to 300 wrecks that are associated with great lakes shipping. and the "uss monitor" where i work. we have these two sites that focus predominant will i on marine archaeology. however, these sites have shipwrecks that remain within them. we have the maritime heritage

program which looks at resources that are either within sites that predominantly focus on ecological resources or sites that may be outside of sanctuary boundaries that are historically significant that may be under consideration for inclusion. so really to give you a background on why we do this kind of work, we look at these things and the archaeology contingent in my program is starting to look into battlefield archaeology and landscape based archaeology. when we think about world war i, world war ii, these are often considered to be foreign wars. u.s. had very significant involvement in these wars but when we think of sites associated with those we think of places like the western front, we think of places like e iwo jima.

we don't have very many sites that are associated with this, but that's not true for the ocean wars of the battle of the atlantic. we started in 2008 looking into the resources associated with german u boat activity during the second world war of which there was a greater amount of resores. just in north carolina alone, almost 90 vessels were sunk in the first six months of 1942. we've focused on this from this landscape based approach. it was interesting to look at this u-boat war and the time period we're in now gives us a much better opportunity to look at these things because when you look at a landscape on land, it's much easier to get your head around it where you look at things like trenches and operations of cover and fire. and when you look at a sea battle, it is much more difficult because you still see sort of this flat expanse of the ocean. but now with marine survey technology, with advancements in

geographic information systems, we're able to model these things in a way that can really start to make sense of them because they took place over a much more vast geographical space. and particularly when you look at u-boat's involvement, this takes the naval engagement from what was always a sort of flat plane to really a 3-d landscape where now you're interacting with the bottom topography because the u-boats operate within the water column in this 3-d swpace and aerial surface support comes from stations, airfields on shore. the actual atmospheric column becomes important, too. now that we can digitally reconstruct and model these in a way we haven't before. we started looking predominantly at world war ii and have done that now for almost seven years. in the process of that we've started to look now towards the first battle of the atlantic which took place in u.s. waters

in 1918. really our interest in this, as i said, is we don't have these sites to remember the significance of these both world war i and world war ii which argue gably have shaped the wor more than any other incident in history. but we protect places like little big horn, york town, and we set those places aside and say these are where important things happen that changed the course of history. we think that the battles of the atlantic in u.s. waters can be that for the first and second world war and they really haven't had sort of the popular attention that i think they ought to. i'm going to talk predominantly on just the set of resource and activities that are in north carolina waters but just to kind of put it in context if you are not familiar with, i'll give you a quick basic background on the world war i u-boat campaign.

first of all, it's important to note that in world war i, this is the first major role that u-boats are submarines in general took in any major conflict. of course, the turtle was one of the first submarines used during the revolutionary war with no success. the first successful use of a submarine was the "css emily" off the coast of charleston, south carolina during the civil war. it is interesting to note that the reason the confederacy developed submarine technology was because there was clearly apparent that they couldn't hold up anything against the union navy. they started looking into these cheaper ways that they could break blockades. submarines, as well as submarine mines became part of the confederate response to those

blockades. however, there were never really major players in the overall war effort. that's not so for world war i but it's a similar impetus for developing submarines on the part of the german navy. again, much like world war ii, the u-boat initiative and campaign look place really from the beginning all the way through the end of the war. predominantly this was fought around the british isles and mediterranean. same case in world war ii but there was a significant campaign in u.s. waters. i want to talk a little bit about kind of why they're doing this, the british service fleet and the war on commerce. the idea here initially when the german navy was developing u-boats was, again, they were very convinced, and rightly so, that the german high seas fleet really had no comparison to the royal navy. they knew very well that if they were to go into sort of what

would be considered a classic naval conflict, the germans wouldn't stand a chance against the british. so they began to develop u-boats with the initial idea that the u-boats would be able to sort of tip the scales a little bit. they could sneak out, sink some of the british capital ships, the big battle ships. they were somewhat successful in doing this but it was never really enough to tip the scales to balance the power to where they could have a real surface engagement. but this is predom flainant by because of the way u-boats were operating in this time. they weren't quite as efficient as they became later into world war ii. they were quite slow underwater and they weren't really operating in concerted is wolfpack tactics like they did in later years. they really kind of had to sit and wait and set up sort of a

u-boat trap and you'd have surface vessels that would sort of try to lure the british navy in an area where there were u-boats operating and they could sink them like torpedotorpedos. it was pretty inefficient. as the war moved on, getting into 1915, it started to shift into a commerce war. this has been a tactic that's part of every major conflict in world history, to cut off the enemy supply chain. this is tick lparticularly effe against wbritain which is an island nation. most of the resources they have comes from the sea. food, war materials, oil that's fueling the war effort. the british nation really depending heavily on maritime commerce. the idea here was that, well, the royal navy was blockading many german harbors. the u-boats could be used to get out past the blockade and go far afield and sink vessels that

were merchant ships that were carrying those supplies. and this was very, very effective. however, it was somewhat ineffective in that -- at least early on -- it was a somewhat gentlemanly way of fighting with a submarine. submarines predominantly are a very good offensive weapon but a very terrible defensive weapon so their success lies in their stealth, in their ability to have these kinds of surprise attacks. whether they first started this war on commerce, there was a lot of concern over it being sort of poking the beast of a lot of neutral nations. when they declared the areas around the british isle were a war zone and they'd sink vessels that weren't necessarily involved in the conflict but were simply carrying merchant cargo to places like the united states, south america, other places that weren't involved.

so they wanted to try and mitigate the losses that they had in that. they observed these things called prize rules which the u-boat firing the proverbial shot across the bow, they would board the vessel, search the papers, look at the manifest, put everybody in a lifeboat, give them a map, some food, tell them where to go to get to shore, then put bombs throughout the ship and then sink it. there was very little loss of life typically and was considered to be more foma form. however, that kind of negated the effect of a u-boat. they'd then have to paddle over to a rubber vessel, could potentially be overpowered with small arms. so it really wasn't that effective. much as it was in the second world war, as the war progressed, they began to relax those prize rules where they'd just slam a torpedo into the side of the ship and let it go or place submarine mines

throughout strategic ports or things. so we see that happening. by the time the u.s. enters the war the prize rules have largely been relaxed. that's sort of what's generally going on. the basic german naval tactic here is to try and cut off the shipping and also the use of the royal navy service fleet. during this time the united states having this isolationist perspective of getting into the war is kind ever on the fence of everything. the germans sort of a good will mission in the vessel called "the deutscheland." this was the first ever merchant submarine. it was designed as a way for the germans to break the blockade so it would run out under stealth, get away from the royal navy surface vessels, and be able to carry out some commerce. this was more of a token measure. these weren't able to carry quite enough cargo to clearly be

effective in large-scale commerce. but it was a way of saying to other neutral nations, hey, we're still able to operate, as well as a way to say to the german public that we're still getting some supplies through, we've got these things going on. "the deutschland" came to the u.s. in the summer of 1916. it was kind of greeted to a lot of fanfare. these guys were sort of considered celebrities, this brand-new submarine technology, they sailed from the chesapeake pay up to baltimore where they were docked for a number of weeks. this campaign went on trying to sort of win the hearts and minds of america saying, look, you should engage in commerce with germany. actually it went over quite well until about november of 1916 when another merchant submarine, the u53 came on another good

will mission. shortly after it left newport, rhode island began sinking ships just outside of territorial waters. kind of ruined its good will with the country. beginning in april 1917, the u.s. is involved in the war and shortly thereafter, the u-boat threat starts to come to the u.s. i'm just going to talk a little bit -- there's more going on along the east coast than i'm going to mention. i'm just going to focus on the north carolina area and the particular u-boats that operated in this region. a couple of the vessels that we know are lost in that area that we kind of hoped to find and study as we move forward with some of our research projects in the field. there were three german u-boats that ended up operating in north carolina. the u151, the 140 and 117. this -- this graph here kind gives you an idea. this is the destruction of

vessels all up and down the coast. north carolina, massachusetts, new jersey. the difference here is that often massachusetts got in major harbors. north carolina doesn't have that. what we found if our research in looking at this landscape, north carolina has some geographical features that lend itself well to u-boat operations. i'll talk a little bit about that more but this is really a u-boat hotspot for a number of reasons. you see that north carolina merges as one of the largest concentrations of losses in both tonnage and in number of vessels. this is just a quick map. i want to mention, my colleague developed a lot of these gis maps to recreate some of these sites. these are the vessels that are just lost off of north carolina. there's ten vessels just in a

little over three months were lost off the coast here. i mentioned that north carolina is a very good area for u-boats to hunt. you've got historically north carolina has terrible ports. there's very few ports in north carolina that are navigable for large vessels. so the closest naval installation that you have is up here in norfolk. you're down here along this area where it is difficult for military vessels to access. you'll notice here the continental shelf. this is these different shades of blue are depicting the water depth. the continental shelf runs quite close to cape hatteras here. because it sticks out in this area, the ships would run up and down the gulfstream would have to come past this point. this gives you a really good concentration of merchant ships particularly as this is sort of

where they would hang a right to head towards british or gulfstreams were kind of like a moving walkway in an airport. give them a few extra knots of speed. u-boats would kind of hang out right here in this area because it was a steady thoroughfare for shipping. they also had being a tess to de access to deep water to hide. it was a very attractive area to operate and they were usually far away from military installations and because all of the aircraft fields in north carolina are located on the inside of the sound here, there are these barrier islands, the coverage of aircraft was more limited here than really anywhere else. . these are the vessels sunk just off north carolina during world war i. i'll talk specifically just about a few of them. notice back here that these sites that are kind of further offshore in this darker blue

area, these are harder for archaeologists to access. you drop off this continental shelf and you're in several thousand feet of water. it is a much more difficult air yar for area for us to work.rea for us to work. the site i'll focus on are in the shallower areas that we expect to be easier to locate and once located, easier to actually do some work on. tease are the u-boats that operated in north carolina waters. the 151, 140 and 117. just give you a quick background on each of these patrols. this is the u-151. this was one of the more successful u-boats that operated in the u.s. waters. that was built -- converted -- the 151 is the class type that

the "deutschland" was. it was originally a merchant vessel, then converted to a military vessel. that's why it only has two torpedo tubes. it could carry 18 torpedos, 213 feet long with a range of 25,000 nautical miles. this is really impressive. there was a bit of a dip in u-boat technology in interwar period between world war i and world war ii. this was an impressive range for a vessel even in the world war ii era. so they were really quite -- they had quite a lot of range. most of the vessels that were operating in world war ii were more of a craft never intended for oceanic voyages. this is an impressive vessel. only a crush depth of 160 feet so that's not very deep. but this vessel here was on its war patrol to the u.s. they were filing daily position

reports in their war diaries and radioing them back that we were able to sort of reconstruct from the positions given throughout the atlantic, war it was at any given point that we have a record for. this is really interesting because it allows us to kind of recreate its path through the area. this is just the area off of north carolina, the delmarva peninsula here. as you can see, these are the vessels that were sunk. it was quite successful. i think it was the most successful of any of the vessels that were lost -- or that were operating in this area. i'll focus more specifically on one of the vessels that we think has potential to be discovered, the harpathian. this thing was kind of just cleaning up here. there was no convoy system in place yet in this area so it really kind of operated uncontested. again, this column here, you can

see that the vast majority of these were using bombs. so this is where they would actually flag down the vessel and go aboard, put people ashore, and then detonate. however, some of them were not as lucky. you can see the ones where there were torpedo attacks or under shell fire. typically had a much higher loss of life. they generally tried to avoid that when possible. the u-140. this was a u-cruiser that was 300 feet long. it was almost 100 feet longer than most of the u-boats that were operating in world war ii. although these vessels were all slightly different in type and they weren't quite as standardized. shorter range but still plenty of range to get across the ocean and do some damage along the coast here. it had four torpedo tubes in the bow and two in the stern.

this one was built as a military vessel initially and so it had more armament. this is a reconstruction of its war patrol here. you can see across the atlantic, had more attacks on its way over. so we won't focus on those as much as we will on the ones here off the coast. but again, not quite as successful as the u-151 but still quite successful in sinking and damaging vessels. the u-117. this was a mine laying u-boat. they were very -- this was very success f successful in part of the chesapeake bay. these mining missions they would undertake were really more of a nuisance operation than an operation where they really believed that they would have any significant success. but as soon as a port was mined or there was perception the ports could be mined, it would change and complicate the

tactics all up and down the coast. so it was successful in that, that just generating that notion of a threat of mines would cost considerable more on the part of the u.s. to try and negotiate that threat. again, this is a big one. 290, almost 300 feet long. you can see the difference here. the 14 knots on the surface, 7 knots submerged. this gap would close a little bit as you get into world war ii so these weren't quite as able to operate kwund water as much as they were later on. they'd generally hide under water, stationary, and wait for ships to come across their path and sort of launch this sneak attack, rather than operating and maneuvering under water. this is the reconstruction of its operation here on the coast.

it sunk "the merlot." that's one of the more interesting stories that we'll talk about. it's still yet to be found but we're hoping to identify that. this gives you just a quick idea of the comparative successes of the three u-boats that operated here. the amount of tonnage that was lost, the different types of technology that was used to actually sink the vessels. shellfire, bombs and torpedos. this gives you a good cross section of the u-boat tactics that were happening in the area. so the first merchant ship that we'll talk about that was sunk, "the harpathian" it was a british ship, 380 feet, operating just south of the virginia line. when it started receiving some shellfire, then was torpedoed. just to give you an idea of the difference in some of these tactics, when "the harpathian"

was torpedoed, the crew abandoned ship. there was no loss of life but one of the surgeons on-board was injured pretty severely. he was actually taken on board the u-boat that attacked it, they patched him up, they gave him a bunch of tobacco and some beef jerky and things like this and pointed him to shore and said, head that way and you'll be all right. and they finished off "the harpathian" to put it on bottom. again, there was no loss of life here and it was a fairly cordial way to sink someone's ship. again, this one here is a little farther north on hatteras. the continental shelf sticks out a little bit further in this area so we believe this wreck should be in something like 130 to 200 feet of water. it's still a manageable area.

this ship was sunk by the u-140. this was a pretty spectacular event. it was the only -- it was the only loss the u.s. coast guard had during world one 1. it was sailing south from new york folk, coming around cape hatteras around diamond shoals when it started getting shelled by the 140 which is an alarming thing to have happen to a merchant vessel so it began a zigzagging pla noofr th ingin g were taught to avoid being hit by a torpedo. in essence, it is like not being hit by a sniper. in doing this they came across an area called diamond shoals. though the shells weren't doing that much damage, the bottom of the ocean did. so it slammed into the shoals and ran aground and was stuck hard aground and still being shelled. now during the process of this, the diamond shoals life ship --

this was a purpose-built light ship built in 1899, was anchored over diamond shoals for the specific pumps of warning ships that you can run aground there. it was sitting there, crew of five folks on board. they had this huge mushroom anchor. between firing up the blows and removing that mushroom anchor it generally took them about five hours to get under way. so it's not very efficient, as very much considered a stationary vessel. they usually didn't move at all, and was relieved by crew from another vessel. they were close enough to the merrick that they were able to see the merrick being shelled. and harassed by this u-boat and they beautyfully started radioing in this activity and the position to try and call for some assistance, and unfortunately, the 140 also had a radio, and were able to hear this.

said well, we don't want that happening, so they started -- the mirek was still hard aground so they started steaming over towards the diamond shoals lightship and began shelling that. now these guys having about a five-hour process to get under way decided it would be better just to drop the little lifeboats and head for shore. so they abandoned ship, and this was actually sunk by surface gunfire from the u-boat. after that sunk, the 140 returned to the merrick and sunk that, as well. so that brings us to the mirlow, the last vessel lost off north carolina. we're unclear again where this is. this was a british tanker. i have it here saying it was sunk by a torpedo. there was speculation whether it was sunk by a torpedo or sunk by a mine. we know that mines were laid in

this area by the 117. and some of the war diaries are confusing as to what vessel it hit with torpedoes versus where it laid mines. it's possible it struck a mine. i would suggest it's more likely that it struck a mine than was torpedoed. particularly given the crummyness of the torpedoes of the era. often just bounced off your ship. this story is of particular significance and interest to the u.s. coast guard. so this was -- it struck a mine just about 10 miles off of wimble shoals and was carrying fuel. there were thousands of gallons of fuel oil immediately spilled into the ocean and burst into flames. there were 52 crewmen aboard and they began immediately to abandon ship. one of the lifeboats turned over into the fire while the others were able to kind of cobble and get into the lifeboats. now, meanwhile, ashore, there's the life saving station, which is on the outer banks, that's

crewed by men round the clock. the captain of that life-saving station, captain midgette, they can see this burning off the coast and they get into their surf boats and head out to try and do, lend whatever help they can. when they get to the scene, there's so much fire and smoke burning in the area they really can't see much of anything at all. but they can sort of hear some calls for help. and there was an area that was totally engulfed with flames. they describe it as literally walls of flames. there was sort of an kind of an alcove of -- that was created by this circle of flames, with just one tiny little opening corridor that they could paddle their lifeboat through. and these guys paddled in, and their clothes were catching on fire as they were paddling in to rescue these guys. the boat in the sent irof this alcove was overturned with guys coming up, shouting and jumping up back underneath the boat to, you know, almost certain that no

one was hearing them. they pull six of these guys out of that area. and sent them back to shore. they then went around the flames and found another lifeboat where the men had all their clothes had been catching on fire. so they stripped them. they were totally naked beating at things with their clothes. and again they were able to rescue those men as well. this is really this harrowing story of rescue. and the crew of the life-saving station was awarded the gold life-saving medal which for the u.s. coast guard is the equivalent of the medal of honor. the highest honor that they bestow. it's a really important heritage for the u.s. coast guard in conjunction with the diamond shoals lightship, which is a coast guard asset, or would have been a coast guard asset. so what we've done as i said, we were trying to look at these areas as part of this interconnected landscape, so we've started to do some modeling. we've done a lot more of this for world war ii, starting to get into it for the world war i.

this is showing area that would reasonably have had air cover e coverage, where the enemy mine field was placed by the 117. the different shoals, and geographical restrictions of things with the continental shelf so we started to try to remodel this area to understand it better. looking at these different features in the landscape like the proximity to onshore life-saving stations. where things are. so you can see this is the minefield area. where the 117 set his mines. we believe that the mirlo was in this area adjacent to the station here. which makes it strange that no one knows exactly where these sites are. given that they're so close to the shore. so that's where we are now with our research, and what we're planning on doing, beginning this summer, is looking at where these things are so we started to try and figure out exactly where we think these things may

be. the harpathian, again, i said this looks -- there was a survey that was done in 1944 by a coast guard cutter called the gentian that was really trying to locate the remains of world war ii vessels. and it came across a vessel in this area that had claimed as the harpathian but based upon all the other vessels of the gentian survey they didn't know where they were. but there's some possibility that this could be a search area to look in, and locate it. so what we would do is go out there, probably with side-scan sonar or underwater vehicle called an auv, which is an autonomous vehicle that you can put underwater that would run a sonar survey to try and idea the remains of those sites. and then we would go with divers to try and identify and put specific site identification on the wreck site. the mirak, we believe is -- will

present us with a pretty good opportunity to locate this wreck. chiefly because of its association with the diamond shoals light ship. and we know the diamond shoals light was -- it was a stationary asset that was charted, and as a result of that, is the only vessel that we actually know its location currently. this is an image that we collected a couple of seasons ago. this little blush here, which doesn't really tell you very much, is the wreck itself, of the lightship, light vessel 71. there is, you can't see it from the glare where i'm standing. there's another blip on the bottom, that was that massive mushroom anchor that they weren't able to pull up. we know where this site is. and we know that the merak had run aground, and was subsequently sunk within visual sight of that. which would have been not much more than 13 miles, probably

less. and we know its general direction from the reports of the crew on the light vessel. so, we think that it's pretty realistic that we could develop a survey that will allow us to try and find the remains of that site. again these are difficult things to do in the oceans. lots of variables that have to be managed. but, given that we have those positions from the light vessel and all these other after-action reports and things that are published by the navy we can kind of narrow down the area that we think is likely and run out there the sonar and sort of mow the lawn and see if we can turn anything up. typically we use side-scan sonar for a magnetometer which is somewhat similar to a metal detector but it's a toad system that deflects fluctuations in the ambien magnetic field of the earth. so again the mirlo is another one that we really would like to find.

this one has been perplexing to people for a number of years. there's a site that is in this area that is locally called a green buoy wreck that many people have speculated would be the remains of the mirlo. however, we believe it could be actually the remains of a world war ii ship called the san devileno. it has some diesel engines on board. and the mirlo would have had boilers. again that's when the expert -- everybody is an expert that ever dives on a ship wreck. so we're hoping to find the mirlo. this would be a great story for the u.s. coast guard, and that their heritage. we just signed a memorandum of agreement with the u.s. coast guard to manage the wreck of the diamond shoals lightship. so we will be going out this summer to do a survey of this site. and try and learn as much as we can of the vessel.

aside from having been sunk as a result of world war ii enemy action, which by the way the u-115, when it came in to u.s. territoryial waters, was the first invasion of the united states since the war of 1812. so we think this has great significance. to our national heritage. and we will be looking at this vessel. it's significant from that point but just from a maritime history and heritage standpoint the vessel itself was built in 1899. was a really unique vessel type that was a composite construction. that was built in bath, england. and there was a purpose-built lightship a very early example of this unique vessel type. so it's a very rare, very rare shipwreck to be able to explore. we have some other areas in this site that look reasonably intact. what i mean by composite built was iron framed but had a wooden hull. obviously the wood and the sea water degrades quite quickly, so

you would have basically just the sort of skeletal remains. that would be my only skeleton picture if i had it of the diamond shoals lights. so this are our future efforts. we're hoping to get back out there, and begin to characterize these more completely as we've done with some of the wrecks associated with world war ii. we just completed, as i said, a multiyear study on world war ii shipwrecks and located the remains recently of the u-576, which is a german-type seven cu-boat that still has 45 sailors left inside, and with the conclusion of that we're moving on to these world war i sites to hopefully celebrate those, get people to understand that we do have world war i battlefield here in america. and it can be visited if you just slap on some dive gear and take a look.

[ applause ] >> questions? >> have you had any progress in the gulf of mexico or do you anticipate any? >> we have worked-we worked really closely with the bureau of ocean and energy management, they've got an archaeological contingent, and they have done -- we've done some work in the gulf of mexico related to world war ii. we haven't done anything with world war i. but there was a discovery of the robert e. lee, and the u-166 about ten years ago in deep water, so the u-boats in world war ii were all over the gulf of mexico. but not so much in world war i. >> i am a proud descendant of a victim of one of those submarine

attacks in world war ii. my uncle's ship was sunk off the coast of new jersey as it was coming into new york city in march of 1942. but i want to ask you a question about a bigger ship. i had students tell me that they've gone diving to see the wreck of the big german battleship that billy mitchell used to prove his ideas about air power. do you think something about that? have you explored that? or is that a goal? >> yeah, so the ospreyland and a number of other vessels, even some u.s. vessels, the "uss new jersey" and the "uss virginia," a couple of -- actually the 117. which was one of these vessels, was taken as a prize after the war. a lot of these vessels were used in military testing and bombing. brigadier general billy mitchell was the individual that proved to the u.s. navy that you could

sink battleships using aircraft. and a lot of that -- a lot of those test demonstrations were done off the coast here of virginia, and some more limited in north carolina. and they were quite successful in proving that aircraft and air power was a naval asset. so the ospreyland is a shipwreck that people do dive off of virginia's quite deep. i think there's only been a handful of people that have dove it. the new jersey and virginia are in about 250 to 300 feet of water. so they're tricky dives. but you know, there's a whole another layer when we're looking at this area, we kind of looked at it from this battlefield archaeology and we're looking at it from this broader idea of this maritime cultural landscape. we're looking at other facets other than just world war i and world war ii and we've started to look at this sort of these noncombat military losses, which

are the billy mitchell fleets, as well. so it's very interesting. and i would say that the -- the merchant marine connection to a lot of the work that we are doing, particularly for the world war ii stuff is really sort of the main impetus for the reason that we're doing it, because of the merchant marine story is very sort of underplayed in the significance. they weren't given veteran status or recognition for years and years. and so what we really wanted to do in celebrating this history of america's involvement in these wars off the coast was to promote the contribution of the merchant marine, and we had -- there's one ship wreck called the dixie aero that was lost off cape hatteras in about 90 feet of water that we've done some work on, some survey, and the captain of that boat was killed. his name was jan johanson. and we've tracked down his daughter, who was 3 years old at the time that he was killed. she's now in her 80s.

and she's just 80 now. and we brought her and her grandson out on the site. and did a wreath-laying ceremony. so that's really the reason that we're doing a lot of this stuff. >> in 1918 the "uss san diego," a heavy cruiser, was the largest u.s. naval vessel sunk by one of these u-cruisers in world war i off long island literally within view of the shoreline. is there any attempt to survey that wreck? >> yeah, that wreck actually, it's really only in about 140 feet of water. and so, we haven't done a full archaeological survey of that site. but it is a site that is very popular for recreational diving tourism in that area. people do dive it. our -- my research is focused pretty much on the north carolina region. just because of program atically that's where i operate. but the san diego is definitely

a very high profile site. probably the most significant vessel lost off the coast during world war i. >> there's been a great deal of additional speculation that the "lusitania" had munitions on it, and they were supposed to be doing some diving, and bringing about. do you know anything more about that? >> i'm not sure. i've heard this discussion. i haven't looked into it enough to know where i sat on it. but of course the "lusitania," there was a lot of backlash, as we all know, when the "lusitania" was sunk. the germans sort of started to backpedal and defend their position on having sunk it because of the significant loss of life. one of the claims they made was that it was carrying these munitions which has been a point of debate for some years now that there's a very deep site. people do dive it. but it's kind of a restricted site for operations, one because of its difficulty in getting to, and the other is there's some

quirks in the admiralty law on who owns wrecks and access to things. and there's an individual that filed admiralty claim for the u.s. on the "lusitania." so it's difficult to get out there and do research. sir? >> you spoke earlier about how this is one of the less publicized parts of both world war i and world war ii. what are the reasons you think that is? why is it not really in the public consciousness? >> that's a great question. so this is something that we've kind of grappled with because we think this is really significant because we are really depleted of physical sites to visit and experience. these massively important engagements. and why don't people realize that this is a thing. the reason for that is in world war i it was very, much smaller

scale. in world war ii it was pretty significant. very big problem on the east coast. speaking specifically for the united states. the reason that it's a little bit underknown, or very underknown, is there's a couple of things going on. one is, at the time, there was a concerted effort on the part of the government and the media to downplay it. not so much to cover it up, but they generally weren't promoting this notion that our merchant vessels were being sunk. in world war ii, it was -- in the first six months, you had almost a ship every other day on average sunk off of just off of north carolina alone. the fact that that wasn't something people were talking about is because they didn't want to induce panic, essentially. they dissident want people talking about the movement of movements of ships. this is where the notion of

loose lips sink ships come from. there was a general idea to just kind of, let's not talk about that too much. because it was so early in the war, and we were getting pretty badly betten in that. until the convoy system kind of came together to ameliorate that threat. it was pretty -- pretty hush-hush. to a degree. just from a perspective of morale. i should also say, the position that the u.s. had on german u-boats was much different. we believed that they were not technically capable of some things that they were. we find of thought that maybe our u-boats were the best u-boats or submarines. and weren't able to understand that the youboats were operating quite as far afield, and with quite as much -- they had much

higher depth capabilities or torpedoes were much better. these types of things. >> are there any plans to expand the monitor sanctuary to include the diamond shoals light ship? >> yeah, absolutely. so the -- we have the site of the "uss monitor" is just the one mile radius around that shipwreck itself. and as we look at all these other sites and we realize how important they are to the american history, and our involvement in these wars, we've started to look at what is there. towards that end this is the basis for the study, we're required if we're going to claim that an area is nationally significant, our responsibility is to though that scientifically. this is centered around doing a significant assessment, understanding what the resources are, what the level of preservation is, and then we can say, well these areas make sense

to be included for protection. these areas may not because they may not be as significant or they may be so heavily degraded that they're not warrant inclusion. but that is a process that we're exploring very, very in-depth. we have an advisory council to help us manage the site of the monitor that's made up of people in academia and the general public and they made a recommendation to us a couple of years ago to look in to this idea of expanding the boundaries to include some of these more historic wrecks in the same region. >> with one of the slides up on the screen it prompts two questions really, the first one is the second world war the german germans the operation drum beat concerted effort to go after u.s. shipping the question is part one would be is, is there a concerted effort to do the same thing, or was it more ad hoc with an effort for the germans to target u.s. shipping?

and the second question is more collectly to the slide what happened to the three u-boats you talked about? did they all three survive the war and become prizes? what was the case there? >> the 151 was a prize, went to britain and was ultimately broken up. for scrap. the 117 is sunk off of virginia but it was a prize that was sunk as a target vessel. not sure off the top of my head what happened to the 140. but generally, if it hadn't been sunk during the war it could have been taken as a prize. >> your first question is question, that when the british -- when the -- during the interwar period there was heavy sanctions put on german navy for what they could do with their naval assets. there's a thing called the anglo german naval treaty that specified the amount of tonnage that they could build to specific vessel types.

so what they did was they sent all of their basically all of the germans submarine experts to place unless south america, in other countries, to develop submarine technology outside of germany. and then when the war came back on they brought them back in and began developing these technologies. but in the initial -- in world war i the initial focus was on sinking capital ships. but they realized the real success was in sinking merchant ships. so when world war ii began, the focus was immediately on predominantly on the sinking of merchant vessels. and they -- tactically they operated much differently, as well. they believed they would be able to sink, and negotiate the convoy system by these wolf pack tactics that didn't exist in world war i. this is where you'd have these u-boats that were sort of sent up as the sent ri patrols.

they would see a convoy coming in. they would radio in other u-boats in the area and then kind of follow along with the convoy and do damage that way. so it was definitely a converted effort. >> we have time for one or two more questions. >> is there an environmental reason for concern over the mercury in the submarines? would you say there's submarines out there, there are some, but is there a conservative effort or worry to remove the mercury? >> so there's one vessel in the british isles, and that one there is definitely concern over it. i believe they tried to cap that site. the sites in u.s. waters, particularly world war ii sites, they didn't really have mercury aboard. they would have had this bunker

sea type fuel. but that -- there has been some concern really in the '60s there was a big push and then recently in the last few years there's been a lot of concern over the really the merchant vessels, which the primary focus of these ships was to sink tankers. and the tankers were often carrying large storrs of kerosene, fuel oil, heating oil, all these different grades of oil. there was this general notion that there might be, you know, these hundreds of vessels that are sitting within distance of our shores that have been decaying for the last 70 years and may suddenly void these bits of oil into the sea water. this is generally based on site formation processes, and the degradation of those vessels. not really a big threat at this point. any other questions? thank you. [ applause ] you've been watching c-span's american history tv.

we want to hear from you. follow us on twitter@c-span history. connect with us on facebook at facebook.com/cspan history. or you can leave comments, too. and check out our upcoming programs at our website, c-span.org/history. here on c-span3 all this week we're featuring american history tv programming and we'd like to get your thoughts on our shows e-mail us at americanhistorytv@c-span.org to leave your comments and suggestions. we'd like to tell you about some of our other american history tv programs. join us every saturday at 4:00 p.m. eastern for a look at history bookshelf. watch as the country's best-known american history writers of the past decade talk about their books. that's history bookshelf every saturday at 4:00 p.m. eastern here on american history tv on c-span3.

here's a look at some of the programs you'll find christmas day on the c-span networks. holiday festivities start at 10:00 a.m. eastern on c-span with the lighting of the national christmas tree. followed by the white house christmas decorations with first lady michelle obama. and the lighting of the capitol christmas tree. just after 12:30 p.m. celebrity activists talk about their causes. then at 8:00, supreme court justice samuel alito and former florida governor jeb bush on the bill of rights, and the founding fathers. on c-span2 at 10:00 a.m. eastern, venture into the art of good writing with steve pinker. at 12:30 see the feminist side of a superhero as jill lepore searches the secret history of wonder woman. at 7:00 p.m., author pamela paul and others talk about their reading habits. and on american history tv on c-span3, at 8:00 a.m. eastern, the fall of the berlin wall with c-span footage of president george bush and bob dole with

speeches from presidents john kennedy and ronald reagan. at noon fashion experts on first ladies' fashion choices and how they represented the styles of the times in which they lived. and then at 10:00, former nbc news anchor tom brokaw on his more than 50 years of reporting on world events. that's this christmas day on the c-span networks. for our complete schedule go to c-span.org. american history tv visited the mcarthur memorial in norfolk, virginia, hosting a symposium marking the world war i centennial. coming up next in a previously recorded segment historian sean mcmeekin takes viewer calls on the state of europe just prior to the beginning of world war i. he talks about how the assassination of the austrian arch duke franz ferdinand led to what he calls a countdown to war. this program is about 25 minutes. >>