Carteret County, N.C., deserves ‘WW II heritage’ status

The Atlantic Ocean waters off Carteret County, N.C., near Cape Lookout and extending northeast toward Cape Hatteras, formed a hot spot of activity during World War II.

The first six months of 1942, especially, were “disastrous for an unprepared America,” wrote a curator at the North Carolina Maritime Museum in Beaufort.

The German U-boats found coastal North Carolina to be a prime and happy hunting ground in which to attack Allied Forces’ vessels traveling near shore along the Outer Banks in early 1942.

During a six-month period in 1942, German U-boats destroyed nearly 400 ships off the coast of North Carolina, mostly merchant marine vessels.

 

The territory was referred to as “Torpedo Alley” or “Torpedo Junction.”

 Clearly, World War II came within just a few miles of Carteret County.

Eventually, the tide turned in favor of the Allies, due in no small part to the contributions from people in Carteret County toward the war effort.

Hence, we state our case: Carteret County deserves to be designated as an “American World War II Heritage Community,” on par with Wilmington, N.C.

 

There are at least 17 good “war stories” that can be summarized into a formal resolution:

Whereas No. 1: Fort Macon, a Confederate garrison captured by the Union Army during the Civil War and later abandoned, was reactivated on Dec. 21, 1941.

 

World War II reenactors at Fort Macon (above) 

and an exhibit featuring World War II uniforms (below).

Retired Fort Macon State Park ranger Paul Branch said the soldiers sent to Fort Macon were members of the New York National Guard, fellows from the boroughs of New York City who “talked funny.”

It was winter as the men settled into the fort, and early on, a group of soldiers built a fire in the fireplace of one of the casements, Branch reported. 

“Someone found two old Civil War cannonballs, which had been recovered around the fort, and unthinkingly placed them in the fireplace to serve as andirons,” he added. “One of the cannonballs was a live shell, which exploded in the fire. By some miracle, no one was killed.”

Pvt. Henry Chait suffered injuries that required hospitalization.

“The entire incident was later mentioned in Ripley’s Believe It or Not newspaper as the ‘last shot of the Civil War,’ because all the Army soldiers injured by an old Confederate cannonball were ‘Yankees.’” 

Soon, Fort Macon was buzzing with military activity to monitor and deter the German U-boats. Soldiers patrolled the beach day and night.

Whereas No. 2: Also on Dec. 21, 1941, Virginia National Guard artillery units from Camp Pendleton at Virginia Beach arrived to shore up the defense of the Beaufort Inlet and began to extend artillery batteries westward on Bogue Banks toward Salter Path. Towers were built in the sand dunes and equipped with searchlights.

 

Carteret County storyteller Rodney Kemp (shown below) said a communication center was established at the end of the road in Salter Path. “Because of the nature of their communications via Morse code, the locals referred to them as ‘dit-dots’…people who came ‘from Off.’”

“That’s how dit-dots came to be a popular term in our local dialect,” Kemp explained.

Walt Zaenker, a Pine Knoll Shores historian, commented: “At the peak of the war, there were about 1,000 troops on the island and maybe twice that many stationed on the nearby mainland.

The Navy took over operation of the Morehead City Port. Camp Glenn near Morehead City was reactivated as an Army base, and a Navy section base was established adjacent to the camp.

“The Navy section base quickly became the most important reception and processing center on the North Carolina coast for the survivors of sunken or damaged merchant ships,” Zaenker said.

“Personnel aided in minesweeping and in maintaining a submarine net across the entrance to the ship channel in Beaufort Inlet,” he said.

More to come.