U.S. Gulf coast U-boat war.

I just saw the movie Home Front about U boat attacks in the Gulf of mexico. I was wondering about the Shrimp boat owners the Government worried were trading with the enemy. I don't understand. Shimp boat owners simply went to sea and U boats poped up and offerd to trade supplies? I understand the profit motive and that many people in LA USA were French but.... How would they even have cause to be in a position to communicate with a U boat in the first place?

U-Boat...shrimp boat...the offer you cannot refuse...think about it.

Disel submarines spent most of their time on the surface. Any such rendezvous would presumably have taken place at night. It was perfectly feasible, given a 'Fifth Column' in the U.S.

Interesting. Why don't you go to the experts on the forum of www.uboat.net and ask your question there. I will follow the discussion with great interest.

Theo Horsten

Dear Snipe,

The shrimp boat is out fishing in the middle of the gulf and out of the dark this U-boat creeps up on you an spotlights your boat. The spotlight also shows you see an MG -34 / 88mm gun pointed in the general direction of your shrimp boat. Now are you going to say no trade to the Captain of the U-boat, if he wants to trade for some fresh shrimp and anything else?

yours truly,

Just because the government worried that they would trade with the enemy doesn't mean that they were.

U-boats travelled on surface, at night. I can understand how a submarine captain might be interested in fresh food, and how he might even be honest enough to 'trade' for it (as opposed to 'requisitioning' it at gunpoint).

Seafood in a submarine is not necessarily a good idea, though. It's smelly and difficult to wash away with limited water, both factors being fairly serious drawbacks for submariners.

Additionally, there's the risk (from the German point of view) that the shrimp boat owner would simply sail home and tell the Coast Guard about that submarine which he saw at that time and on that particular location.

> I understand the profit motive and that many people in LA USA were

The profit motive would be 'you can either give me your cargo or swim back to shore'.

As far as I can tell, Louisiana had been American for 140 years at the time, so if those people were 'French', then Nimitz was a German admiral, and so were quite a few U.S. commanders (defeat in the Huertgen forest explained at last !). Irishmen today are still British, Poles are either German or Russian, and so on.

In other words, your characterisations are off.

By the way, why should 'French' Americans be more enclined to trade with Germans than, say, 'Spanish' or 'German' ones ?

<< I understand the profit motive and that many >people in LA USA were

>>

Current conventional wisom holds that The French are anti American and that it's heiretity. Not saying I agree but I was nodding to that when i posted.

That's a shakedown and I'd decline to trade. Offer the U boat whatever he wanted and state I won't oppse them helping them selves. Then i would have went to port and reported it.

This is a very common legend across the Gulf coast of Louisiana. It is a sort of WWII homefront urban legend. See-
http://www.crt.state.la.us/crt/tourism/lawwii/ courier_articles/gulf_s...

The version I always heard from my cousins in Lafourche Parish (setting for the movie, Homefront) substituted 'Evangeline Maid' bread wrappers for the Cambell's soup can labels floating ashore from U-Boat wrecks.

BGC Lafayette, LA