Wilmington, N.C. in the War-- Part 2: U-boat Attack at Kure Beach

Other parts of Wilmington's role in the war can be found at The Wilmington Railroad Museum and the Cape Fear Museum of History and Science.

Wilbur D. Jones was a U.S. Navy captain who came back home in 1977 and he has a two-hour tour that he gives to showcase Wilmington's World War II sites.  He was seven when Pearl Harbor was bombed.  His father and mother were active volunteers during the war.

The first stop ion his tour is Robert Strange Park, the site of a German POW camp where about 550 members of Rommel's Afrika Korps were imprisoned.

Then they go to Fort Fisher, an old Civil War fort that saw use as as an anti-aircraft training site.  The famous Bazooka guns were tested here.

Then, it is on to U-boats at Kure Beach.  A cottage on Atlantic Avenue is believed to be the site of the only German attack on the U.S. eastern seaboard.  On a night in July 1943, a U-boat surfaced off Kure Beach in view of a couple sitting out on the cottage's front porch and fired several shells from its deck gun at the Ethyl-Dow chemical plant, 1/2 mile away where an aviation component fuel was manufactured.

The shots missed, but a few days later a German submarine was sunk about 20 miles offshore.

The final stop is at the Hannah Block Historic USO.

--GreGen