Battle of the Caribbean
Part of Battle of the Atlantic
The Antilles, Caribbean Sea and the Gulf of Mexico.
Date 3 September 1939 to 7 May 1945 Location Antilles, Caribbean Sea, Gulf of Mexico Result Allied Victory
Belligerents
Royal Navy United States Navy  Royal Canadian Navy  Cuba  Netherlands	Kriegsmarine Marina Militare
Commanders and leaders
Sir Percy Noble Sir Max K. Horton Ernest J. King	Erich Raeder Karl Dönitz

The Battle of the Caribbean was fought during World War II, from 1939 until 1945. German U-boats and Italian submarines attempted to disrupt the Allied supply of oil and other material. They sank shipping in the Caribbean Sea and Gulf of Mexico. They also attacked coastal targets in the Antilles. Improved Allied anti-submarine warfare eventually drove the Axis submarines out of the Caribbean region, resulting in an Allied victory.

Axis operations

Attack on Aruba

German and Italian submarines under Commander Werner Hartenstein launched a coordinated strike against the Standard Oil refinery on Dutch-owned Aruba and Allied oil tankers in the area on February 16, 1942. Four tankers were sunk and others were damaged. A Venezuelan gunboat, General Urbaneta, assisted in rescuing the crews of several torpedoed vessels. An American A-10 Havoc light bomber skirmished with one of the German U-boats but was unsuccessful in defeating it. ^[1][2]

Other Operations

A German submarine shelled the island of Mona, some 40 miles from Puerto Rico, on March 3rd, 1942. No damage or casualties resulted.^[3]

An oil refinery on Curaçao was shelled on April 19th, 1942 by U-130 under Captain Ernst Kals. The small engagement ended in a German failure. Kals ordered the bombing of several petroleum storage tanks but after only five shots, a Dutch shore battery responded which forced him to abort. Later a German U-boat attacked a merchantship off Curacao and was engaged by Dutch anti-aircraft and naval gun batteries but again the submarine escaped harm.^[4]

Attacks on Allied Shipping

On March 18th, 1942, U-124 attacked and sank the 5,939 ton American tanker Papoose. The attack occurred eighteen miles off Cape Lookout, due southwest of Mona, an island about forty miles west of Puerto Rico. U-124 fired one torpedo and it struck amidship, leaving the American tanker in a dead stop. Fifteen minutes later, the U-boat had maneuvered to the starboard of Papoose and fired another torpedo. By this time the crew had lowered lifeboats and escaped in two of them. U-124 fifnished off Papoose and then within an hour later, attacked and sank the fully laden tanker W.E. Hutton. At least two men were killed on Papoose.

On September 11th, 1942 German U-Boat U-514, under Kapitänleutnant Hans-Jürgen Auffermann, torpedoed the Canadian steam merchant SS Cornwallis off the coastline of Bridgetown. The ship sank in shallow waters, but was raised and towed to Trinidad in December 1942 and later towed to Mobile, arriving on January 24th, 1943. The ship was repaired and returned to service in August 1943, but was torpedoed a second time, this time by U-1230 on December 3rd 1944 in the Gulf of Maine, and sank.^[5][6][7]

German U-boats sank two Mexican tankers, the Potrero del Llano on May 14th, 1942 by Reinhard Suhren's U-564 off Florida, and Faja de Oro on May 21st 1942 by Hermann Rasch's U-106 off Key West. This prompted Mexico to declare war on Germany on June 1st, 1942.

Sunken U-boats

U-94 was sunk on August 28th, 1942 in the Caribbean while she was preparing to attack an allied convoy. The German boat was sighted by a United States Navy PBY Catalina of patrol squadron VP-92. The aircraft attacked with depth charges and crippled U-94, she surfaced and was subsequently rammed and fired upon by a Royal Canadian Navy corvette, HMCS Oakville. Nineteen of forty-five crewmembers aboard U-94 were killed in the action, twenty-six men survived the attack including the commander. Oakville rescued the German submariners.