“Alerted to the hour-long bombardment, nearby residents swarmed the bluffs of Nauset Beach to view the craters created by the errant German gunnery.”

By J.B. Rivard

THE U.S. ENTERED the First World War on April 6, 1917, but the American Expeditionary Force (AEF) did not begin operations in France until July. A year later—although it is now mostly forgotten—the U.S. state of Massachusetts came under attack by Germany.

The message received at the Chatham Naval Air Station the morning of July 21, 1918 was crisp: “Submarine sighted. Tug and three barges being fired on, and one is sinking three miles off Coast Guard Station 40.” 

Station 40 was on Nauset Beach, 70 miles southeast of Boston.

It took Navy Ensign Eric Lingard some minutes to gather a crew to man Chatham’s flying boat. The Curtiss HS1L, a three-seat, pusher aircraft was powered by a 360-horsepower Liberty motor mounted high between widely spaced wings. A single Mark IV bomb hung from an underwing rack.   

Once copilot Ed Shields, also a Navy Ensign, was seated beside Lingard with motor running, only a bombardier was needed to respond to the incursion. Chief Special Mechanic Edward Howard waded out, climbed into the round cockpit in the prow of the flying boat, and Lingard prepared for takeoff.

The Liberty motor’s position above the heads of the pilots meant its takeoff roar was deafening. But the biplane’s progress across the water was less impressive. The aviators caught some spray as the seaplane’s hull plowed through the chop. The unbalanced load of a 260-lb bomb on one side caused difficulty for pilot Lingard in keeping the wings level. He was well aware that capture of a wave by the overloaded wing could lead to a spiral crack-up and a dunking.   

After a long takeoff run, the Liberty-driven two-blade propeller finally lifted the nearly three-ton aeroplane from the water. Upon gaining a few hundred feet of altitude, and flying north-by-northwest, the aviators soon had a first view of the unfolding drama off Nauset Beach.

It turned out the initial alert had misstated the number of barges being towed by the steam tugboat Perth Amboy—there were four rather than three. And sitting motionless seaward of the tug was a surfaced German submarine, its big deck guns blazing away. It was the 213-foot-long U-156, the largest of the Kaiser’s U-boat fleet. With shells bursting around it, the tug struggled to escape, its three-masted cargo barges strung out behind like baubles on a necklace. 

But the German commander, Kapitӓn Richard Feldt, had not surfaced for a soiree, he was directing the crews firing the two 15-centimeter (5.9-in) caliber guns on U-156’s deck. With thundering regularity, orange flame belched from the guns. And with nearly equal regularity, the shells exploded, producing giant geysers of seawater or exhuming tons of sand from nearby Nauset Beach. A few shells scored direct hits—one of the barges was sinking, and holes appeared in the tall funnel of the 120-foot Perth Amboy.

As the HS1L flying boat closed on the scene, a shell from the U-boat tore into the tug’s pilothouse. The aviators initially saw a flash followed by a scene of twisted wreckage once the smoke cleared.

Although the flying boat had not year reached the recommended safe bombing altitude of 1,000 feet, Lingard shouted toward Chief Howard in the bombardier’s cockpit that he planned to bomb the U-boat.

At just 800 feet, Lingard aligned the aeroplane on the U-boat. Howard gauged the distance to the target and tripped the bomb release. The weapon remained fixed to its rack. The aviators cursed in disbelief as the flying boat passed over the gawking gunners on the deck of U-156. 

Lingard banked and began a wide turn out to sea beyond the submarine. Upon completing a circle, he retarded the throttle and again descended. He shouted to Howard to prepare for a second bomb run. Estimating the target’s distance, Howard triggered the release, but the bomb still failed to fall away.

On the U-boat’s conning tower, Kapitӓn Feldt observed the maneuvers of the seaplane and realized it was armed. He commanded crews of the two smaller guns on the deck to down the low-flying biplane.

Chief Howard, frustrated by the failures of the bomb release mechanism, turned toward the two pilots, crawled from his seat and in a very risky move, crept rearward along the top of the fuselage. As Lingard again circled back toward the target, Howard reached the juncture of the fuselage with the lower wing, where he grasped the struts and edged outward toward the bomb rack. The Lingard and Shields watched fearfully as Howard, his flying suit flapping wildly, reached for the release mechanism.

Orange flame spouted from the guns on U-156, but Lingard, undeterred, completed his circle. He straightened and aligned on the U-boat once more. At the proper moment, with one hand gripping a strut, Howard reached and manually uncaged the bomb. The four-foot-long missile splashed into the sea near the submarine but did not explode. As the pilot strove to outdistance the U-boat’s gunfire the aviators uttered strings of expletives.  

Balancing athletically, Howard withdrew to the fuselage and reclaimed his station in the aircraft’s nose. Lingard boosted the motor’s throttle and gained altitude.

On the Perth Amboy below, the shell’s explosion in the pilothouse had resulted in injuries to several crewmen. The boat’s captain, James Tapley, fearing the result of a direct hit by the U-boat gunners, reluctantly issued the order to abandon ship. At the same time, a rescue crew from Coast Guard Station 40 rowed their boat frantically toward the tug, intent on aiding its crew.

It was now after 11 a.m. At Chatham Naval Air Station, five miles south of Nauset Beach, a biplane piloted by Philip Eaton touched down. Eaton, commander of the station, had received his pilot training in the Navy, but was now a Captain in the U.S. Coast Guard. He’d returned from an early-morning search for a lost dirigible. He pulled to a stop and was briefed on the U-boat attack and Lingard’s mission.

Less than 15 minutes later, Captain Eaton took off alone in a Curtiss R-9 float plane armed with a Mark IV bomb. Minutes later, Lingard, now circling at a safe altitude above the U-boat, spotted Eaton’s float plane approaching.

“[It was] the prettiest sight I ever hoped to see,” he’d later recall.

On the U-boat’s conning tower, Kapitӓn Feldt also saw Eaton’s plane. The aeroplane was flying low and seemed to be aimed directly at U-156. Feldt’s gunners fired at the incoming floatplane but failed to hit it. Eaton swooped to about 500 feet above the water and released his bomb. As he passed over the submarine, he saw the bomb land in the water beside the U-boat. He braced for an explosion, but saw only a splash. Again, a Mark IV bomb failed to detonate.

Angered by the weapon’s failure, Eaton circled out to sea, returned, and lined up on the U-156. Again the U-boat’s gunners fired at him, and again they missed. With no ordnance, he tossed the only weapons he had left down onto the enemy below: a wrench and a toolbox. It’s not recorded whether or not they found their mark.

Kapitӓn Feldt, at this moment the luckiest U-boat commander in all of the German Imperial Navy, decided against further risk. He ordered the crew into their hatches, halted the diesels, and instructed his helmsman to dive. As the last crewman battened the hatch in the conning tower, U-156 slipped beneath the surface of the Atlantic. The only attack on the United States of America during World War One was now concluded.

Although damaged, the tugboat Perth Amboy did not sink. Its injured crewmen were rowed ashore, where they were hospitalized. All survived their wounds.

Alerted to the hour-long bombardment, nearby residents swarmed the bluffs of Nauset Beach to view the craters created by the errant German gunnery. Within days, reporters arrived to interview survivors of the attack. Captain Tapley was quoted as saying, “I never saw a more glaring example of rotten marksmanship.”

In the follow-up, the Secretary of the Navy ordered the Ordnance Department to determine why the Mark IV bombs did not detonate. Ultimately, all Mark IV bombs in U.S. service were replaced with improved designs.

Indeed, the erratic gunning of the German U-boat’s crews, the failure of HS1L’s release system, and those aerial bombs that turned to duds may have something to do with this remaining a mostly forgotten incident of World War I.

J.B. Rivard is the author of the upcoming novel Dead Heat to Destiny: Three Lives and a Spy. A writer of historically accurate fiction and nonfiction, he served four years in the military and worked on the staff of a U.S. National Laboratory. A graduate of the University of Florida, he attended the Chicago Academy of Fine Arts, and is an award-winning artist and author. To learn more about J.B.’s life and work, visit www.illusionsofmagic.com