"Most Americans do not know that during the winter of 1941-1942, soon after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Germany sent five submarines to attack the East Coast of the United States. The attack, code named Operation Drumbeat by the Germans, lasted more than six months, killed more than 6,000 sailors and sank more than 300 ships. It was an Allied disaster, one that most Americans know little about to this day. It was the first major attack on our homeland and the first serious threat to our homeland security in the 20th century.

This is an important story that needs telling. We are telling it inside our Fort Miles museum through the prism of two German U boats that took part in the attack, U 853 and U 858.

If most Americans don’t know about the German submarine attack on the East Coast in 1942, fewer Americans know that the German navy launched its final attack (code named Operation Seawolf) on our East Coast in the closing days of WWII. A few months before Hitler was to take his life and the war ended May 8, 1945, the German navy sent six boats from bases in Norway to attack our coast and, the Germans hoped, to repeat the successes of Operation Drumbeat. U 853 and U 858 were part of that attack. While U 853 sank one of the last ships destroyed in WWII, the collier Black Point, near the entrance to Long Island Sound, it was attacked May 5-6, 1945, by four American hunter-killers and became the last U boat destroyed in U.S. waters. On May 14, 1945, its sister boat U 858, surrendered at Fort Miles."

U-858 was the first enemy ship to surrender in US waters since the War of 1812. The boat was found at sea and towed to Cape May NJ, the crew were taken to Fort Miles at Cape Henlopen DE and processed as POWs. The original films show the men wearing a patchwork variety of uniforms, some not even German (apparently they also wore British uniforms recovered from the beaches after Dunkirk) They had a slovenly and unkempt appearance from months spent at sea. Many of these German POWs never went back to Germany and settled in lower Delaware, finding menial jobs as cooks, farmers and mechanics. In fact their descendants are still living here.

U-858 was towed elsewhere and used as a target for torpedo tests, and partially destroyed, it was finally sunk to the ocean floor where it remains to this day.

The Captain of U-858 was still alive in the 2000's.