coming up next, archaeologist joseph describes world war i naval confrontations between the u boats and vessels off virginia and the north carolina coast. his talk is about 55 minutes.e >> thank you very much. i am glad to be here in o my bah yard.robert i'm glad to say one thing with robert shaw's hadn'tation. >> those of you who never tried to identify a set of human my remains, this is important work. my primary job is for the uss monitor and when we recovered in 2002, we found the remains of two u.s. sailors and over the course of years, we workedwa closely with them in hawaii to identify the remains. a full dna analysis and facial l

reconstructions of the louisiane states university and we knew that 1 6 sailors were lost. out of 16 people who they could have been.we k we knew where they were wi associated with and still couldn't identify the remains. it's incredible important work r you are doing. you'r very impressive. >> i'm going to talk about a e lesser known battlefield that is right here on u.s. waters.are many people are unaware that there two world wars that came t to the coastat of the united states through the battle of the atlantic. a background on why we did thisk kind of work. i worked with part of the administration and our program o is similar to the national parki service and wece have 14 sites from around the country and u.s. territorial waters. for the most part, they have

special places and focus on natural or ecosystem based base preservation. they have the florida keys eves. national sanctuary and the marine national monument where we recently found mitt way aircraft. there two sites. the thunder bay sanctuary in thp lakero huron who protect about 0 to 300 associated with great lakes shipping and the ussre monitor where i work. on the majority have some ship hese wrecks that remain in them. they have a maritime heritage i program that looks at resourcesm that are focused on ecological

resources or outside of are sanctuary boundaries that are significant and maybe under co consideration for conclusion. to give you a background on why we do this group, we look at the things and the ark lolg contingent started to look into battlefield along and landscape-based archaeology. when we think about world war i and world war ii, they are considered to be foreign wars and very significant weste involvement. of places like these sorts of places. we have world war ii, pearl harbor, but that's not part of the continental united states. we don't have sites associated with this. that's not true for the ocean wars of the atlantic.08 we started looking into the wi

resources associated with germa u boat activity in the second th world war of which there was a greater amount of resources. almost 90al vessels that were sunk. we have been19 focusing on this from the landscape-based approach and it was interestingt to look at.period the time period that we are in t gives us a better opportunity ts look at the things. when you look at the landscape on land, it was easier to get your head around it where you are looking at trenches and operations of cover and fire.ch when you look at the sea battlef it's more difficult because it's flat and expansive with the ocean. now with the survey technology f and advanced geographic information systems, we can start to maketo sense of them because they took place over a

much more vast geographical space. particularly when you look at the u boats involvement, this a takeslw the naval engagement fro a flat plane to a 3d landscape c where you are exacting with thea typography. they operate withinus the wate column.ns, it comes from the air fields e u onshore andal the actual atmospheric becomes important too. now they reconstruct and model these and understand them in a way we haven't before. that took place in u.s. waters in 1918. our interest in this as we said, we don't have the sites to

remember the significance of thi world war i and world war ii. that's in york town and little d big horn. they said these are where important things happen to change the course of history. we think the battle can be that' or i will talk on just the set of resources and activities in t the norto h carolina waters.f just to put it in context, i will give you a basic background on the world war i u boat campaign. it's important to t note in wor war i, this was the first major

role5j) they were one of the fid submarines that were used with no success. that's off of charleston, south carolina. the reason that the confederacy developed submarine technology s was because there was clearly apparent that they couldn't holi it up anything against the unios navy. that became part of the response to those blockades. #al wor that's not so for world war i.

again much like world war ii. >> there was a campaign in the a u.s. waters. to i want to talk a little bit hy about why they are doing this t and the surface fleet and the war on commerce. the idea is when the german navy developed u boats and they had l the complete that had no comparison. they had a classic style naval n conflict that they would stand a

chance against the british. they began to develop u boats with the initial idea that they would tipth the scales a little, bit and could sneak out and sink the british capital ships and the battle ships. there were successful in doing s this. nev it was not enough to tip the scales to balance the power to have a real surface engagement. this is predominantly the way ur boats were operating at this e. time. they were not as efficient as t they were later into world war ii.they w they were quite slow under water and weren't really operating in the tactics like they did in eya later years. they kind of had to sit and wait and set up a u boat trap.

that was inefficient as the wape moved on getting in early 1915, it started the shift into this commerce war. this was a tactic that has been a part of every major conflict y in world history. to cutoff the enemy supply chain. this was effective against britain. at this time the vast majority t of everyai resource they had cos from the sea.come it's food and more materials and oil that is fueling the war effort. the u boats could be used to get out and go far up the field and sink vessels that were and this was very effective.

however it was ineffective in t that the offensive weapon and a terrible defensive weapon.ha they have the surprise attacks. when they first started the war on commerce, there was a lot of concern over it being sort of poking the beast of a lot of neutral nations and of course there is what happened with the lusitania, they declared that the areas were war zones and ned sink vessels that were not thatw involved in the conflict, but were carrying merchant cargos in the united states and south america and other places that t were not involved.

they would go on the vessel and search the papers and look at the manifests.p, they tell them where to go to get the shore. they put the bombs throughout to the ship and sink it. that was considered to be more formal. that kind of negated the effect of the u boat. they would have to paddle over with the small rubber boat. re it wasn't that effective. it was a war that progressed and they began to relax the rules tr where they would slam the do in torpedo and let it go or we see that happening and by the time they enter the war, it has beend

relaxed. that's sort of what is generally going on. the basic german tactic here isd to try to cutoff the shipping sp andpi also will be a is you sanu to theri royal navy surface flei during this time, having the perspective ofpect getting into war is on the fence. the germans were on a good will merchant was designed as a way for the germans to break the blockate and run out and get ace away from the oil surface vessels and carry out commerce. that's not enough to be be effective at large scale commerce. but it was a wayal of saying to

oth others that we are getting supplies through. supplie we have these things going on. they came to the u.s. in the hl" summer of 1916 and it was 1916. greeted to a lot of fanfare.lebe they were considered and sailed into the chesapeake bay for the weeks. this campaign went on to win the heards and minds of america. they engage with germany and that went over well until ther november when another merchant t submarine came on there after they began sinking ships.

that's good with the country.ol #vhere shortly thereaf after, the u boo starts to come to the u.s. we will talk a little bit along the east coast and focus on the north carolina area. the particular u boats that operated in this region. a couple of the vessels that we know are lost this that area d that we hope to find and study as we move forward with our research projects in the field. there were three german u boats operating in the area.gives this graph gives you an idea.f this was the destruction of s vessels all up and down the coast.

they have boy far the highests percentage. themass difference is they got r harshors. what we we found in our resear and looking at the landscape, north carolina has geographical features that lend itselfwe wel to u boat operations.t i will talk more about that, but it's really a u boat hot spot for a number of reasons. it's in tonnage and number of vessels. i wanted to mention my colleague developed a lot of these to n recreate them. #o they are just in a little over e three months that are lost off the coast here.

you will see here that i nor mentioned that north carolina ia a good area for u boats to hunt. you have historically north carolina has terrible ports. few are navigatable. up here in norfolk, you are down here where it's difficult for vessels to access. you will notice here that the tt different shats are running.ter the shelf runs close here and because it sticks out in the eae area, the ships that would run up and down in the gulfstream would have to cometo past this point. this gives you a good concentration because this is a where they would headache a right to head towards the british in the gulfstream. extr

that's a few knots of speed. the u boats would hang out in this area. becaus there was a steady thoroughfare for shipping and they also had access to deep water to hide. this shelf was close enough that it was very, very attractive from the top and pretty far away from military installations.ge f the coverage of aircraft was more limited than anywhere else. these are the vessels that were sunk off north carolina in worli war i. i will talk back here that theso sites that are further offshore with the darker blue area are very difficult for r archaeologists to access because if you drop off the shelf in

several thousand feet of water, it's much more difficult for them to work. it requires something like remotely operated vehicles or . submercibles and jacks the cost. and complexity. >> this is one of the more successful u boats. this was converted.

u boats, there was a bit of a n dip in u boat technology. this was an impressive range for a vessel even in the world war ii era.st of th they were quite that's the moral craft that was intended for the voyages. this was pretty impressive. you will sit here at the depth of 160 feet. that's not very deep. w this vessel was on the war patrol to the u.s. and they were filing daily position reports in their war diaries and radioing a them back that we were able to c

sort of reconstruct from the ght positions given throughout the t atlantic, where it was at any ea given point that we had a recort for. this was interesting because it allows us to recreate the path through the areas. this was just the area off of nh north carolina in the peninsula here. these are the vessel that is ite sunk. it's quite successful. i think the mostas successful o th oe vessels that were operati in the area. m i will focus more specifically on the vessel that we think has potential to be discovered. you can see this was really kini of cleaning up here.there there was no convoy system in place in this area. it really kind of operated uncontested. you can see that the vast majority of these were using bombs. this was wherey it would actualy flag down the vessel and go

aboard to put people ashore ande detonate. some of them were not asthem lu. you can see the ones where there were torpedo attacks and under shell fire.lly ha they hadd a much higher loss ol life. they tried to avoid that. this is a monster u boat.uiser a u cruiser that is 300 feet lo long and 100 feet longer than n any offered in world war ii. the vessels were slightly different vessels. and they were not as standardized.az shorter range, but still plenty to get across the ocean and do e damage along the coast here.it it had four torpedo tubes and to a stern.this o this was built as a military i vessel initially and had more armament. as the reconstruction of the wao

patrol here you can see had more attacks on the way over. so weth focus on those as much we will on the ones here off th coast. again, not quite as successful,q but still quite successful in sinking and damagingagin vessel. b 117 was a u boat that was very -- this was very successful in the part of the chesapeake ss bay. the tmining, these mining missions that they would undertake are more of a nuisance operation than an operation where they believed they would y have significant success, but as soon as a port was mined, there was a perception that it could be mined. and c it would change and complicate the tactics of ports all up ands down the coast.th it was successful in that generating that notion of a threat of the mines would cost

considerably more on the part oo thef u.s. to try to negotiate that threat. again, this is a big one.300 290, almost 300 feet long. you can see the difference here. the 14 knots on the surface, seven knots submerged. this would close a little bit. thesewa werer note quite as ab operate and under water as much as they were later on. they were generally hiding under water and stationary and wait for ships to pass to come acrosr their path and sort of watch thk sneak attack rather than operating under water. this is the reconstruction of op the vesselerat operation here o@ coast.that's it sunk that we will talk about and that's one of the more interesting stories. it's yet to be found, but they t

were hoping toha identify that.t this gives you the idea of the comparative successes of the oas three u boats that operated here.the amou the amount of time that was lost and the different types of technology that was used to sin the vessels and the bombs and torpedos. that giv gives you a different section that was happening in g thein area. the first merchant ship we were talking about was a british ship that was 380 feet long and operating up here south of the virginia line when it started ei receiving shell fire and was torpedoed. just to give you an idea of the difference in these tactics, the -- when it was torpedoed, the crew abandoned ship and there was no loss of and one of the surgeons on board was injured pretty severely.

he was taken on board the u boam that attacked it with a bunch of tobacco and beef jerky and things like this. shore they pointed him to shore and said head that way and you will be all right.hed off they finished off and put it on the bottom. again, there was no loss of anda fairlynd cordial way to sink someone's ship. l again, this one here is further north the continental shelf sticks out and we believe this wreck shoul0 be 130 to 200 feet of water. it's a manageable area. you can't talk about it without the light ship.p was this was sunk by the u 140. this was a pretty spectacular se event. the only loss the coast guard u.

had during world war i. they were sailing south from norfolk around cape hatteras. when when it started getting ing shelved bee the 140 which is ant alarming thing to have happen. it began as zigzagged and they n were taught to a do to avoid th possibility of being hit by a torpedo basically it's the idea of gingm running from a sniper.o. the process of doing this, it t came across an area called diamond schoells. doing the shells were not doing that much damage, the bottom of the ocean did. aground it ran aground and was stuck ao hard aground and shill being shelved. during theel process of this, t diamond light ship which this rs was a purpose built ship built in 1899 anchored for the

specific purpose of warning ships that you can run aground i here. that was sittingng there and haa crew of five folks aboard. they had this huge and had this huge mushroom anchor. between firing up the blows and removing that mushroom anchor iu generally took them about five e hours to get under way. v so it's not very efficient, as very much considered a sidere stationary vessel.ly they usually didn't move at all, and was relieved by crew from w another vessel. they were close enough to the merrick that they were able to see the merrick being shelled.e and harassed by this u-boat ande they beautyfully started rassed radioing in this activity and the position to try and call foy some assistance, and unfortunately, the 140 also had a radio, and were able to hear this.y, the said well, we don't want that ee happening, so they started -- the mirek was still hard agrouns so they started steaming over towards the diamond shoals rd lightship and began shelling se

that. now these guys having about a five-hour process to get under a way decided it would be better y just to drop the little and lifeboats and head for shore. so they abandoned ship, and this was actually sunk by surface guf 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 f is.ere thi this was a british tanker. i have it here saying it was 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 l hit with torpedoes versus wheref it laid mines. i it's possible it struck a mine.a 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.u so this was -- it struck a mine2 just about 10 miles off of wimble shoals and was carrying fuel. o there were thousands of gallons of fuel oil immediately spilled into the ocean and burst into ce flames. there were 52 crewmen aboard an 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'sm the life saving station, which l is on the outer banks, that's oc crewed by men round the clock.-g the captain of that life-saving station, captain midgette, they can see this burning off the ca coast and they get into their

surf boats and head out to try and do, lend whatever help theyu can. when they get to the scene, there's so much fire and smoke o burning in the area they really can't see much of anything at all.he but they can sort of hear some calls for help.but th and there was an area that was e totally engulfed with flames. they describe it as literally walls of flames. there was sort of an kind of and alcove of -- that was created bl this circle of flames, with juso one tiny little opening corridor that they could paddle their lifeboat through. and these guys paddled in, and y their clothes were catching on fire as they were paddling in to rescue these guys. the boat in the center of this alcove was overturned with guysi coming up, shouting and jumpingg up back underneath the boat to, you know, almost certain that no one was hearing them. a they pull six of these guys out of that area. and sent them back to shore.the. they then went around the flames and found another lifeboat wher the men had all their clothes

had been catching on fire. so they stripped them. catc they were totally naked beating at things with their clothes.ngh and again they were able to rescue those men as well. we this is really this harrowing story of rescue. and the crew of the life-savingr station was awarded the gold ew life-saving medal which for the u.s. coast guard is the u. equivalent of the medal of s. honor. the highest honor that they bestow.he dia it's a really important heritage for the u.s. coast guard in hae conjunction with the diamond shoals lightship, which is a coast guard asset, or would have been a coast guard asset. look so what we've done as i said, we were trying to look at these areas as part of this ting t interconnected landscape, so we've started to do some modeling. auld 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 would7 reasonably have had air nd coverage, where the enemy mine field was placed by the 117. the different shoals, and geographical restrictions of nd things with the continental e shelf so we started to try to remodel this area to understande it better.so looking at these different the features in the landscape like e the proximity to onshore life-saving stations. where things are. so you can see this is the the minefield area.wh where the 117 set his mines. no we believe that the mirlo was i this area adjacent to the station here. so clos which makes it strange that no one knows exactly where these sites are.t's wher 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 tad this summer, is looking at whera these things are so we started to try and figure out exactly io where we think these things mayn be. g the harpathian, again, i said is

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. ha and it came across a vessel in t 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.is go 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 i called an auv, which is an autonomous vehicle that you cann put underwater that would run at sonar survey to try and idea thf remains of those sites.would g and then we would go with divers to try and identify and put specific site identification on the wreck site.k, the merak, we believe is -- will present us with a pretty good opportunity to locate this

wreck. chiefly because of its association with the diamond onh shoals light ship. and we know the diamond shoals light was -- it was a stationarc asset that was charted, and as a result of that, is the only vessel that we actually know itu location currently. we this is an image that we collected a couple of seasons ago.do this little blush here, which e doesn't really tell you very much, is the wreck itself, of the lightship, light vessel 71. there is, you can't see it froms the glare where i'm standing. there's another blip on the bottom, that was that massive se mushroom anchor that they that w weren't able to pull up. we know where this site is. anow 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 oth less. and we know its general direction from the reports of the crew on the light vessel.ty

so, we think that it's pretty realistic that we could develop a survey that will allow us to r try and find the remains of that site. again these are difficult thingg to do in the oceans.iv all lots of variables that have to e be managed. but, given that we have those nr positions from the light vessele and all these other after-actio reports and things that are published by the navy we can soh kind of narrow down the area that we think is likely and runf out there the sonar and sort of mow the lawn and see if we can turn anything up.s 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.ma a 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 g 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 worldt war ii ship called the san delphino.d it has some diesel engines on tu board. and the mirlo would have had boilers. s 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 this would be a great story for the u.s. coast guard, and that their heritage.learn 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 wef can of the vessel.at 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. territorial waters, was the d wl first invasion of the united states since the war of 1812.cao so we think this has great significance.and 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 v 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 areas intact. what i mean by composite built . was iron framed but had a wooded hull.e wood a obviously the wood and the sea r 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 f diamond shoals lights. so this are our future efforts.

we're hoping to get back out there, and begin to characterizn these more completely as we've e done with some of the wrecks associated with world war ii.cop we just completed, as i said, af multiyear study on world war iip shipwrecks and located the multy remains recently of the u-576, which is a german-type seven lyf 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 ype those, get people to understandt that we do have world war i battlefield here in america.i and it can be visited if you hof just slap on some dive gear ande take a look. [ applause ]

>> questions? >> have you had any progress in the gulf of mexico or do you ce anticipate any?of oce >> we have worked-we worked rcho 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 sa 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.t >> 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 abu

march of 1942. but i want to ask you a question about a bigger ship.jzc!ñ i had students tell me that they've gone diving to see the wreck of the big german r. battleship that billy mitchell used to prove his ideas about om air power.etthat do you think something about ors that? t have you explored that?vess or is that a goal? >> yeah, so the ospreyland and n 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 use in military testing and bombing. brigadier general billy mitchell was the individual that proved c to the u.s. navy that you could sink battleships using aircraftn 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 ai 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 wat. handful of people that have dove it. the new jersey and virginia arer in about 250 to 300 feet of water. so they're tricky dives.we're but you know, there's a whole another layer when we're lookin at this area, we kind of looked at it from this battlefield aces archaeology and we're looking an it from this broader idea of st 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 ok noncombat military losses, whicl

are the billy mitchell fleets, as well. main so it's very interesting.re and i would say that the -- the merchant marine connection to a lot of the work that we are of doing, particularly for the world war ii stuff is really sort of the main impetus for tht reason that we're doing it, because of the merchant marine story is very sort of nted 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 d 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 e of water that we've done some work on, some survey, and the captain of that boat was killed0 his name was jan johanson.ught and we've tracked down his daughter, who was 3 years old ag

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.di so that's really the reason thas we're doing a lot of this stuffv >> in 1918 the "uss san diego," a heavy cruiser, was the largeso 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?water. >> 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 divings tourism in that area.on the n people do dive it. our -- my research is focused pretty much on the north where carolina region. just because of programmaticalle that's where i operate.ry but the san diego is definitely a very high profile site. signif probably the most significant vessel lost off the coast during world war i.

>> there's been a great deal ofe additional speculation that the "lusitania" had munitions on itd and they were supposed to be an 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 enoughk to know where i sat on it.noe t but of course the "lusitania," there was a lot of backlash, as we all know, when the "lusitania" was sunk.d def the germans sort of started to backpedal and defend their hey position on having sunk it ca because of the significant lossn 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 th 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 a filed admiralty claim for the u.s. on the "lusitania." so it's difficult to get out te there and do research. sir? le >> you spoke earlier about how this is one of the less publicized parts of both world y war i and world war ii. that's what are the reasons you think that is? why is it not really in the f public consciousness? is re >> that's a great question. so this is something that we've kind of grappled with because we think this is really significan. because we are really depleted of physical sites to visit and experience. these massively important n engagements. and why don't people realize ws that this is a thing. the reason for that is in world war i it was very, much smallers scale. in world war ii it was pretty

significant. very big problem on the east ndn 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 r concerted effort on the part ofy the government and the media ton downplay it. not so much to cover it up, buto they generally weren't promotin this notion that our merchant vessels were being sunk. in world war ii, it was -- in the first six months, you had ft almost a ship every other day ot average sunk off of just off of north carolina alone. the fact that that wasn't something people were talking w about is because they didn't sh want to induce panic, s a essentially.kind they dissident want people of m. talking about the movement of movements of ships. early 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 n that too much.until because it was so early in thet war, and we were getting pretty badly beaten 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. some we believed that they were not technically capable of some things that they were. we find of thought that maybe s our u-boats were the best u-boats or submarines. and weren't able to understand that the u-boats were operating quite as far afield, and with quite as much -- they had much higher depth capabilities or torpedoes were much better.thes these types of things. >> are there any plans to expand the monitor sanctuary to include the diamond shoals light ship?d

>> yeah, absolutely.r so the -- we have the site of the "uss monitor" is just the - one mile radius around that shipwreck itself.8/e radi 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 claii that an area is nationally significant, our responsibility is to though that scientifically. this is centered around doing a significant assessment, d doi understanding what the resourceg are, what the level of preservation is, and then we can say, well these areas make sense to be included for protection.em these areas may not because thee may not be as significant or they may be so heavily degraded that they're not warrant but 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 peopl in academia and the general in public and they made a recommendation to us a couple of years ago to look in to this of idea of expanding the boundariei to include some of these more st historic wrecks in the same region. >> with one of the slides up onw the screen it prompts two questions really, the first one is the second world war the germans the operation drum beat concerted effort to go after gem u.s. shipping the question is part one would be is, is there o concerted effort to do the samen thing, or was it more ad hoc with an effort for the germans a to target u.s. shipping? and the second question is more correctly to the slide what et . happened to the three u-boats te you talked about? did they all three survive the p war and become prizes?

what was the case there? a >> the 151 was a prize, went to britain and was ultimately broken up. for scrap.sunk the 117 is sunk off of virginia but it was a prize that was sunh as a target vessel. not sure off the top of my head what happened to the 140..2ñ3 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 do british -- when the -- during the interwar period there was l heavy sanctions put on german f navy for what they could do wit 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. to so what they did was they sent y all of their basically all of k the germans submarine experts to place unless south america, in other countries, to develop wor submarine technology outside ofi 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, they focus was immediately on predominantly on the sinking of merchant vessels. and they -- tactically they idnt operated much differently, as e well.that wer they believed they would be ablo to sink, and negotiate the cono convoy system by these wolf pact tactics that didn't exist in world war i.oy and

this is where you'd have these u-boats that were sort of sent up as the sentry 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 >i convoy and do damage that way. so it was definitely a converted effort. >> we have time for one or two r more questions. >> is there an environmental reason for concern over the mercury in the submarines?vessel 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 thar site. the sites in u.s. waters, particularly world war ii sites, they didn't really have mercurya aboard.in the l they would have had this bunker

sea type fuel.really 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, atn which the primary focus of thesf ships was to sink tankers.l. and the tankers were often carrying large stores of hundr kerosene, fuel oil, heating oil, all these different grades of oil. there was this general notion that there might be, you know, d these hundreds of vessels that s 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.th [ applause ] you've been watching c-span's american history tv. we want to hear from you. follow us on twitter @c-spanhistory.om/csp connect with us on facebook at n

facebook.com/cspanhistory. or you can leave comments, too. and check out our upcoming we programs at our website, c-span.org/history. here on c-span3 all this c week we're featuring american -s history tv programming and we'do like to get your thoughts on our shows e-mail us at americanhistorytv@c-span.org to leave your comments and t suggestions. we'd like to tell you aboutu some of our other american history tv programs. join us every saturday at 4:00 p.m. eastern for a look at history bookshelf.ecade ta watch as the country's best-known american history writers of the past decade talk about their books.sa that's history bookshelf every n 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. c holiday festivities start at 10

10:00 a.m. eastern on c-span be with the lighting of the ecorat national christmas tree.io followed by the white house christmas decorations with first lady michelle obama. and the lighting of the capitols christmas tree. just after 12:30 p.m. celebrity activists talk about their rig causes. then at 8:00, supreme court justice samuel alito and former florida governor jeb bush on the bill of rights, and the foundine fathers. on c-span2 at 10:00 a.m. eastern, venture into the art of good writing with steve pinker.e at 12:30 see the feminist side of a superhero as jill lepore searches the secret history ofa wonder woman.3, at at 7:00 p.m., author pamela paul and others talk about their reading habits. be 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 ob george bush and bob dole with speeches from presidents john kennedy and ronald reagan.ow at noon fashion experts on firsy ladies' fashion choices and howt

they represented the styles of the times in which they lived. and then at 10:00, former nbc r news anchor tom brokaw on his more than 50 years of reportings on world events.tworks 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 n norfolk, virginia, hosting a symposium marking the world war i centennial.olk, v coming up next in a previously recorded segment historian sean mcmeekin takes viewer calls on the state of europe just prior r to the beginning of world war i he talks about how the assassination of the austrian as arch duke franz ferdinand led to what he calls a countdown to lla war. to this program is about 25 minutes. >> american history tv is live from the mcarthur memorial in ae norfolk, virginia, where the