PAST PROGRAM | Virtual Programs
December 7, 1941 is a date that is indelible in American history, but 24 years earlier, that date also marked an important moment: the arrival of Battle Division 9 to Scapa Flow, the first American battleships to join the British Grand Fleet, which included the Brooklyn Navy Yard-built USS New York and USS Florida. We will discuss the special role of the US Navy in the naval war, in which battleships actually played a very small part. Places like the Brooklyn Navy Yard were instead tasked with building submarine chasers and painting “dazzle” camouflage schemes to counter German U-boats, and American manufacturing was mobilized to produce more than 50,000 mines for the North Sea Mine Barrage to close off passage to the Atlantic from Germany.
- William S. Sims, The Victory at Sea (Archive.org)
- Intrepid Museum Pearl Harbor Tribute
- U-boats in World War I
- Naval History and Heritage Command interactive map of U-boat attacks on US ships in World War I
- WATCH: Veterans Day in Prospect Park