NEWPORT NEWS, Va. (AP) - The Monitor National Marine Sanctuary has announced a proposal to extend federal safeguards protecting the North Carolina wreck of the historic Civil War ironclad to the largest concentration of World War II shipwrecks in the United States.
Based on nearly a decade of research and a series of offshore expeditions that began in 2008, the proposal is designed to shield about 80 American, British, Russian, German and other nations’ vessels destroyed off Cape Hatteras during the Battle of the Atlantic, said David Alberg, superintendent of the Newport News-based sanctuary.
But the exact size and configuration the current one-mile-diameter refuge might take as a result will not be determined until after a series of public hearings on four different plans for protecting the WWII wrecks.
“Aside from Pearl Harbor, this is the only place in U.S. waters where the war came home to the United States and where we have an actual World War II battlefield,” Alberg said.
“The Monitor will always be our primary focus, but the Battle of the Atlantic is an important part of our heritage, too, and it’s just as important to honor those who died there in World War II as the Civil War sailors.”
Beginning soon after the United States entered World War II in December 1941, the offshore waters extending from Cape Henry in Virginia Beach to Cape Fear in North Carolina’s Outer Banks became a killing ground for the German submarine fleet, Alberg said.
Merchant marine sailors suffered the most in the deadly attacks, with about 1,200 dying during a battle that often ranged well within sight of shore for more than six months.
“People could see the ships being attacked and sunk off Virginia Beach,” said USS Monitor Foundation head John V. Quarstein, describing Hampton Roads’ crucial role in the struggle to control what became known as “Torpedo Alley.”
“We lived that battle - we fought that battle - and every branch of the service here was involved in striving to find a way to defeat the German U-boats.”
In addition to Navy and Coast Guard ships operating from Hampton Roads, the American combatants included bombers and sub-hunter planes from Langley Air Field as well as submarine defenses at Fort Monroe.
When the Norfolk-based destroyer USS Roper sank the German submarine U-85 off Cape Hatteras early on the morning of April 14, 1942, the bodies of 29 German sailors were taken to Hampton National Cemetery for burial. It was the first German ship destroyed by U.S. forces.
Less than a month afterward, the USCG cutter Icarus destroyed U-235 off Cape Lookout, then picked up the survivors who became the first Germans captured by U.S. forces during the war.
“You had to win the Battle of the Atlantic before you could win the war in Europe,” Quarstein said.
“Without those waters secured, how else could our entire North Africa invasion fleet have sailed out from Hampton Roads?”
Modeled on the recent expansion of Thunder Bay National Marine Sanctuary on Lake Huron, the proposal would provide additional significant federal safeguards to warships - which already fall under the Sunken Military Craft Act - as well as the first federal protection for the sunken merchant vessels, Alberg said.
But in addition to a scenario that would create a single large area of protection centered off Cape Hatteras, the proposal is asking for public input on three other options, including two different configurations of isolated wrecks as well as a system of three protected areas encompassing multiple sites.
Whatever its ultimate configuration, the sanctuary’s goal is not just to protect the wrecks but also to promote their historic importance through education and the encouragement of heritage tourism, said research coordinator Tane Casserley, who recently returned to the Monitor office after helping usher in the expansion at Thunder Bay.
“It’s not our aim to be the folks with the badge and the gun,” Casserley said, describing a program that used education and access to build widespread public support on Lake Huron.
“We want people to dive on these wrecks. We want people to fish on them. They are phenomenal archaeological and natural resources. But we also want to make sure they understand how important this heritage is. That’s the key to their preservation.”
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Information from: Daily Press, https://www.dailypress.com/
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