Military History: Gulf Sea Battlefront 1942
“A Look at Military History” is an ongoing feature on You Served, a military blog featured here on VA MortgageCenter.com
Gulf Sea Frontier was the name given the group responsible for the defense of the Florida coast, the Bahamas, the Gulf of Mexico, the Yucatan Channel, and most of Cuba. Organized in February of 1942, it consisted of a converted yacht, 2-165 foot coast guard cutters, 1- 125 foot cutter, 19 unarmed coast guard planes, 14 army observation planes armed with .30 caliber machine guns, and 2 bombers.
U-boat attacks first occurred in the Gulf Sea on February 19, 1942. The tanker Pan Massachusetts was sunk 40 miles SE of Cape Canaveral. Two more vessels were sunk on the 21st and another on the 22nd. And thus began the German blitz on the Gulf Sea.
The Allies laid a large field of mines between April 24 and May 2, 1942 surrounding the anchorage on the Gulf side of Key West. This provide good protection, however west bound shipping had to travel 18 hours south of Key West to enter the protection of the field. The mine field was so difficult to navigate that 4 Allied ships were sunk in its infancy.
Early in May 1942 the Axis became aware of Allied coastal convoy routes in the Gulf Sea.
Germans sowed mines hoping to catch ships entering or exiting harbors in the Gulf Sea. Most of these were discovered by the Allies and swept before they could do any damage. However, May proved a devastating month for the Allies with losses climbing to 41 ships that month. These losses occurred despite the fact that Allied forces in the Gulf Sea Frontier had been increased to include ten additional ships and a few additional army aircraft.
Due to the May/June German u-boat blitz on the Gulf Sea, the Allies were forced to declare the Gulf Sea and the Florida Straits a danger zone, requiring all merchant ships to be escorted in that area.
On May 13, 1942 a neutral Mexican tanker, well lit with her flag flying, was torpedoed and sunk by a German U-boat near Miami. There were only nine survivors. Mexico declared war on Germany shortly after this attack.
On June 3, 1942 Rear Admiral James Kauffman was appointed to the Gulf Sea Frontier and organized a killing machine of ships and planes. Between June 10 and June 13 Kauffman’s group successfully downed the two U-boats in the area, which had previously evaded the Allies, with an all out hunt and attack. . It was later decided that a better use of the killing machine would be for it to serve as escorts for convoys, rather than tying up such vast numbers of defense forces, leaving merchant ships unprotected.
