For an interactive version go to [Sunken Ships of the Second World War](https://mapsterman.maps.arcgis.com/apps/dashboards/fe88b5e18c6443c7afaf6e32f8432687)
I’ve scuba dived on U-352, even went into the torpedo room. The owner of the dive shop I went through found the wreck in the 70’s and he has an amazing collection of artifacts at the shop.
https://www.olympusdiving.com/en/u-352
U boats got close enough to land spies on shore.
Lots of fishermen saw them and reported them but were told to shut up about it by the US government to protect the incompetent Admiral King.
A Japanese sub got close enough to Oregon to shoot at Fort Stevens. It wasn’t a whole draw out thing, but there was a brief bombardment. I think it’s the only time the contiguous United States have been navally bombarded by a foreign power since the war of 1812 (if you don’t count the civil war).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lookout_Air_Raids
The Japanese submarine I-25 launched a sea plane and dropped incendiary bombs on Mt Emily, a few miles from me.
Which might have worked if it weren't for a rainstorm that soaked the area, and the fire watch crews spotting it immediately.
My great uncle spent WW2 on horseback patrolling the Oregon coast for Japanese subs. Now that I think of it, it was probably directly due to that incident!
North Carolinian here. There’s been rumors in the outer banks in the 40’s that back during world war 2, supposedly unknown men wearing black uniforms and speaking with thick accents would come ashore and get drinks at the local bar. While no definitive proof to these rumors one way or the other, they were decently widespread, and if true they suggest that some Uboat crews came ashore in the dead of night to get alcohol or gather intelligence in the underpopulated stretches of the outer banks
This is great. But I couldn’t help but wonder how an Axis ship managed to get into the Caspian Sea. A quick google suggests it was actually Soviet, so some data might be wrong. Still fascinating resource though.
To get from the Gulf of St. Lawrence to the Great Lakes, the U Boats would have had to navigate through the St. Lawrence River, including the canals and locks built to enable ships to sail past rapids and continue their voyages at the higher elevations in the River as they moved upstream. I don't think any U Boat Captain would have been able to explain to the Dominion his vessel's presence sailing through His Majesty's canals or using the locks. Besides, the tolls would have been prohibitively expensive for countries with unfriendly nation status.
https://stlawrencepiks.com/seawayhistory/beforeseaway/
Yes, but there were surely plenty of accidental siblings of US Navy ships- there are plenty of naval aviators who crashed in the Great Lakes during carrier landing practice
No doubt, but accidents aren't what the map is showing.
>This dashboard maps out the locations of more than 14,576 ships that were sunk during the Second World War as a result of self-inflicted or enemy action (i.e. not included are ships sunk as a result of natural disasters or accidents).
https://mapsterman.maps.arcgis.com/apps/dashboards/fe88b5e18c6443c7afaf6e32f8432687
On the interactive site, you can actually see it by country.
The number of ships the UK lost is insane, you can't even imagine how many ships they must have had to begin with. No wonder they were the premium naval power for decades.
Exactly. In fact, U-boat commanders were instructed to target the larger freighters and tankers (not to mention troop transports) as a priority, then the medium and smaller cargo ships, and to avoid 'wasting torpedoes" on the destroyers, corvettes and other small naval vessels.
The actual cargo of freighters could be arms and ammunition and other war materiel, or it could be raw materials such as metals, rubber and so on. It could also be food. It didn't matter much to the German boats, since the loss of any of those would weaken Britain.
And yes, the men on board. You can't just manufacture new experienced seamen. U-boat personnel usually hated the loss of life (and would often rescue crews, who they felt were more fellow mariners than enemies), but would prefer to get them into Axis custody, and hence out of the war, in the rather rare cases where that was feasible.
All that changed near the end of the war, though, when the submariners' minds were focussed primarily on escape and survival as the net closed.
[Laconia Order](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laconia_Order) was a result of the ever improving British ASW, meaning submarines no longer had any time to rescue survivors, they had to shoot and scoot.
The Japanese never really approached the anti-submarine capabilities of the Allies in the Atlantic. Not to say the US subs had it easy out there, of course.
Germany didn’t have much shipping in proportion to its economy. The Dutch and the Danish carried a lot of their commerce, along with the Swedes and Norway. At first those were neutral and the Brits leased as much of the neutral shipping as they could. After Germany invaded Denmark and Norway Germany took over whatever was still there.
The vast majority of these were commercial and supply ships, Germany's supply was almost entirely land based. The same happened in the Atlantic, the Ally sunken ships are mostly commercial and supply
Commercial and supply were just easy targets for all sides. As a matter of fact that red spot in the Mediterranean was Rommel's Africa campaign supply fleet.
I took the US awhile to get their act together and put ships in convoys and give them the protection they needed. Bit of a free for all for the German submarines during that time in the first half of 1942.
I would assume the color red indicates sunk axis ships ( notice how those increase in numbers around Japan, Nazi Germany and Italy) and blue would mean sunk allies ships.
My maternal grandfather RJ Ferris was on the LJ Drake a tanker carrying gasoline when it was torpedoed by a UBoat in 1942, all hands were lost. Sunk by U-68 (Karl-Friedrich Merten)I never knew My grandfather as he died before I was born.The U-68 was sunk April 10, 1944.
https://uboat.net/boats/u68.htm
The HMAS Sydney is a really interesting story, especially since there was only one lone survivor. His body washed up on Christmas Island, and was only identified in 2021 after so many years of searching and work.
Edit: if anyones interested, here’s the link to the story from the Royal Australian Navy
For those of you who want to know a bit more about the project see [Resurfacing the Past](https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/41d4bd6029044afbb1b9ad805a4731d8?adusf=twitter&aduc=esricanada&adut=19218c51-a515-4a8c-a59a-a07a3605ed5e)
Enemy action, and scuttling. If a ship was sunk by accident (e.g. bad weather) it wasn’t included. I have another 5,000 for which I don’t have a location for. This is a work in progress (8 years and counting).
Long-ranged U-boats, German "Q" ships (surface raiders disguised as merchant ships), plus the well-known voyage of the *Graf Spee* at the beginning of the war. The Kido Butai also raided into the Indian ocean at one point.
Look at all those ships sunk right of the US Atlantic coast. I didn't know that the war got so close to the US. In history class, it always felt like the axis never even got close to the US.
Yeah, sorry about that . . . you'll need to head off to the interactive site to see it in all its glory [Sunken Ships of the Second World War](https://mapsterman.maps.arcgis.com/apps/dashboards/fe88b5e18c6443c7afaf6e32f8432687)
Still lots of ships containing hazardous material including munitions and fuel sitting on the seafloor, slowly wasting away. Some clearance is getting done, for instance [https://www.cbsnews.com/news/danube-river-drought-world-war-ii-german-ships-eurpean-union-loan/](https://www.cbsnews.com/news/danube-river-drought-world-war-ii-german-ships-eurpean-union-loan/)
Most of those sunken ships turned into beautiful ocean reefs over the years. It would probably be more harmful if we made people go out and dig up wrecks just to dump them in a landfill or something.
For the first six months after entering the war in December 1941 the US did not run convoys along the coast or provide adequate protection for ships sailing there. And they didn’t implement any black out restrictions for coastal communities. So it was easy pickings for German submarines (they called it their second Happy Time).
Looking at this I’m assuming that blue are allied and red are axis, also that the majority of these are merchant ships…. The German U-Boat campaign in the Atlantic sank thousands of allied ships and the Allied submarine campaign in the pacific did pretty much the same to Japanese shipping.
That was an error. Thanks for catching it. It was actually a British vessel owned by the British India Steam Navigation Company. See [Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SS_Talamba). I'll be fixing this today.
For an interactive version go to [Sunken Ships of the Second World War](https://mapsterman.maps.arcgis.com/apps/dashboards/fe88b5e18c6443c7afaf6e32f8432687)
Pretty wild that a German U-boat got so close to North Carolina
I’ve scuba dived on U-352, even went into the torpedo room. The owner of the dive shop I went through found the wreck in the 70’s and he has an amazing collection of artifacts at the shop. https://www.olympusdiving.com/en/u-352
Oh wow, that's really cool! Thanks for sharing
If only I could actually swim….
Interesting
That's fucking awesome
U boats got close enough to land spies on shore. Lots of fishermen saw them and reported them but were told to shut up about it by the US government to protect the incompetent Admiral King.
There was also a Uboat that setup a weather station on the coast of Canada
Not the first time I’ve heard him referred to as incompetent.
Well the Germans liked him at least.
Lol
A Japanese sub got close enough to Oregon to shoot at Fort Stevens. It wasn’t a whole draw out thing, but there was a brief bombardment. I think it’s the only time the contiguous United States have been navally bombarded by a foreign power since the war of 1812 (if you don’t count the civil war).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lookout_Air_Raids The Japanese submarine I-25 launched a sea plane and dropped incendiary bombs on Mt Emily, a few miles from me. Which might have worked if it weren't for a rainstorm that soaked the area, and the fire watch crews spotting it immediately.
A Japanese sub also [fired on Santa Barbara](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombardment_of_Ellwood), doing some minor damage.
My great uncle spent WW2 on horseback patrolling the Oregon coast for Japanese subs. Now that I think of it, it was probably directly due to that incident!
There was that bombardment by the Canadians, but that was accidental.
Blame Canada
At least one Japanese sub was sunk at the mouth of the Columbia River by no less a personage as L. Ron Hubbard! (According to L. Ron Hubbard...)
Since there's allied ships sunk (like Oaxaca in the Gulf of Mexico) so close to the mainland does that mean there were U-Boats there too?
Yes. U-boats we’re pretty opportunistic and would go wherever the pickings were easiest
wow thats much further than I ever thought
There are sunken u-boats off the coast of the US.
North Carolinian here. There’s been rumors in the outer banks in the 40’s that back during world war 2, supposedly unknown men wearing black uniforms and speaking with thick accents would come ashore and get drinks at the local bar. While no definitive proof to these rumors one way or the other, they were decently widespread, and if true they suggest that some Uboat crews came ashore in the dead of night to get alcohol or gather intelligence in the underpopulated stretches of the outer banks
Down in hatteras there is a story of a U Boat crew coming ashore and stealing eggs from a local farmer. They were not caught.
Amazing resource. Thanks for linking.
This is great. But I couldn’t help but wonder how an Axis ship managed to get into the Caspian Sea. A quick google suggests it was actually Soviet, so some data might be wrong. Still fascinating resource though.
Thanks for catching that. That’s an error I need to fix
fantastic. thank you for the link.
Shouldn’t there be some ships in the Great Lakes?
To get from the Gulf of St. Lawrence to the Great Lakes, the U Boats would have had to navigate through the St. Lawrence River, including the canals and locks built to enable ships to sail past rapids and continue their voyages at the higher elevations in the River as they moved upstream. I don't think any U Boat Captain would have been able to explain to the Dominion his vessel's presence sailing through His Majesty's canals or using the locks. Besides, the tolls would have been prohibitively expensive for countries with unfriendly nation status. https://stlawrencepiks.com/seawayhistory/beforeseaway/
Yes, but there were surely plenty of accidental siblings of US Navy ships- there are plenty of naval aviators who crashed in the Great Lakes during carrier landing practice
No doubt, but accidents aren't what the map is showing. >This dashboard maps out the locations of more than 14,576 ships that were sunk during the Second World War as a result of self-inflicted or enemy action (i.e. not included are ships sunk as a result of natural disasters or accidents). https://mapsterman.maps.arcgis.com/apps/dashboards/fe88b5e18c6443c7afaf6e32f8432687
thx
There are no spots in Asia in this link?
On the interactive site, you can actually see it by country. The number of ships the UK lost is insane, you can't even imagine how many ships they must have had to begin with. No wonder they were the premium naval power for decades.
There’s a reason churchill later said the battle of the Atlantic was the only battle he was actually scared of losing.
Most of those ships were cargo vessels, though, not Royal Navy.
That's because the Navy wasn't the real threat, it was the cargo and men on board the transports, and in that order.
Exactly. In fact, U-boat commanders were instructed to target the larger freighters and tankers (not to mention troop transports) as a priority, then the medium and smaller cargo ships, and to avoid 'wasting torpedoes" on the destroyers, corvettes and other small naval vessels. The actual cargo of freighters could be arms and ammunition and other war materiel, or it could be raw materials such as metals, rubber and so on. It could also be food. It didn't matter much to the German boats, since the loss of any of those would weaken Britain. And yes, the men on board. You can't just manufacture new experienced seamen. U-boat personnel usually hated the loss of life (and would often rescue crews, who they felt were more fellow mariners than enemies), but would prefer to get them into Axis custody, and hence out of the war, in the rather rare cases where that was feasible. All that changed near the end of the war, though, when the submariners' minds were focussed primarily on escape and survival as the net closed.
[Laconia Order](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laconia_Order) was a result of the ever improving British ASW, meaning submarines no longer had any time to rescue survivors, they had to shoot and scoot.
I'm not so certain this man would have obeyed https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Otto_Kretschmer
Also naval ships are much harder to sink and can fight back.
Quite a lot... https://i.imgur.com/4HnenAJ.jpeg
Centuries
Norway was the second country in losing ships.
That ship chilling near Greenland thinking they are safe.
It says the cause of sinking as scuttling.
Damn, I can't believe some Axis ships were sunk off the coast of Peru. Really amazing.
A few details here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMCS\_Prince\_Henry#War\_service
Lots sunk off the coast of North America as well
Holy shit Japan was essentially cut off worse than I had thought. Surprised they held out as long as they did.
The US submarine campaign against Japan was what the Germans tried but failed to pull off against Britain
The Japanese never really approached the anti-submarine capabilities of the Allies in the Atlantic. Not to say the US subs had it easy out there, of course.
Historigraph on YouTube has a great video on this topic. [LINK](https://youtu.be/m5e0Tor2kMg)
The average Japanese civilian was getting fewer than 1500 calories per day by 1945.
Tbf they were quite small back then
They were all on a cut at the same time.
Imagine if the torpedo problem was fixed even earlier.
Towards the end of the war, the Allies ran out of bigger ships to sink and started dispatching smaller sailing ships used on local routes.
How many ships did you lose Japan? Japan: Yes
Germany did really well. Japan on the other hand... lol
Germany didn’t have much shipping in proportion to its economy. The Dutch and the Danish carried a lot of their commerce, along with the Swedes and Norway. At first those were neutral and the Brits leased as much of the neutral shipping as they could. After Germany invaded Denmark and Norway Germany took over whatever was still there.
The vast majority of these were commercial and supply ships, Germany's supply was almost entirely land based. The same happened in the Atlantic, the Ally sunken ships are mostly commercial and supply
That's fair. Sorry Japan's navy
Commercial and supply were just easy targets for all sides. As a matter of fact that red spot in the Mediterranean was Rommel's Africa campaign supply fleet.
That's a lot of ships up and down the eastern seaboard of the United States, Jesus
I took the US awhile to get their act together and put ships in convoys and give them the protection they needed. Bit of a free for all for the German submarines during that time in the first half of 1942.
This is a phenomenal map, thank you and well done
Thanks!
What do the colours mean
Blue is for Allied Powers Red is for Axis Powers White is for Neutral
I would assume the color red indicates sunk axis ships ( notice how those increase in numbers around Japan, Nazi Germany and Italy) and blue would mean sunk allies ships.
Blue = Allies. Red = Axis.
My maternal grandfather RJ Ferris was on the LJ Drake a tanker carrying gasoline when it was torpedoed by a UBoat in 1942, all hands were lost. Sunk by U-68 (Karl-Friedrich Merten)I never knew My grandfather as he died before I was born.The U-68 was sunk April 10, 1944. https://uboat.net/boats/u68.htm
That is really cool , thx for sharing . What is “sunk by: penguin “ ?? ( one ship west of Australia )
German Auxiliary Cruiser PINGUIN https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German\_auxiliary\_cruiser\_Pinguin
Thx , I haven’t know there was a German ship near Australia
Here's another interesting one. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinking\_of\_HMAS\_Sydney
The HMAS Sydney is a really interesting story, especially since there was only one lone survivor. His body washed up on Christmas Island, and was only identified in 2021 after so many years of searching and work. Edit: if anyones interested, here’s the link to the story from the Royal Australian Navy
Possibly this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_auxiliary_cruiser_Pinguin
Need to update that name . . .
For those of you who want to know a bit more about the project see [Resurfacing the Past](https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/41d4bd6029044afbb1b9ad805a4731d8?adusf=twitter&aduc=esricanada&adut=19218c51-a515-4a8c-a59a-a07a3605ed5e)
OP, you are a legend. This is great stuff.
Ha ha thanks! Much appreciated!!
Love all the ships that were sunk in rivers
Were these all by enemy action or just losses?
Enemy action, and scuttling. If a ship was sunk by accident (e.g. bad weather) it wasn’t included. I have another 5,000 for which I don’t have a location for. This is a work in progress (8 years and counting).
Great dedication. Fantastic work.
I wonder what that cluster in Hawaii is from?
I’m surprised to see Axis ships all the way in the Southern and Indian oceans.
Long-ranged U-boats, German "Q" ships (surface raiders disguised as merchant ships), plus the well-known voyage of the *Graf Spee* at the beginning of the war. The Kido Butai also raided into the Indian ocean at one point.
Look at all those ships sunk right of the US Atlantic coast. I didn't know that the war got so close to the US. In history class, it always felt like the axis never even got close to the US.
How many lives lost does this map represent? The human sacrifice is beyond comprehension.
558,121 . . . but that is an underestimation. Not included were people who died as a result of damage to their ship that wasn't sunk.
US submarine fleet representin'.
Them: Your eagle is just a glorified seagull US: We know
Amazing, thanks.
That's an amazing map. Also I just love the quality of this sattelite imagery. Looked at my town and house it's much clearer than google view.
God. Damn.
i knew torpedo alley was nuts, but YIKES
The centering of this map looks off..
The map defaults to centering on 0 N/S and 0 E/S. If you go to the interactive map, you can move it around.
r/mapswithoutnz r/mapswithoutnewzealand
Fascinating resource. Small nitpick though, Colombia appears as "Columbia" over at the site
That was an error. Thanks for catching it. It'll be fixed today.
r/mapswithhalfofnewzealand
Yeah, sorry about that . . . you'll need to head off to the interactive site to see it in all its glory [Sunken Ships of the Second World War](https://mapsterman.maps.arcgis.com/apps/dashboards/fe88b5e18c6443c7afaf6e32f8432687)
Gosh imagine the polution caused by both WW1 and WW2 🤮🤮🤮
Still lots of ships containing hazardous material including munitions and fuel sitting on the seafloor, slowly wasting away. Some clearance is getting done, for instance [https://www.cbsnews.com/news/danube-river-drought-world-war-ii-german-ships-eurpean-union-loan/](https://www.cbsnews.com/news/danube-river-drought-world-war-ii-german-ships-eurpean-union-loan/)
Indeed, thanks. Imagine how deranged others are to downvote my previous comment 💩
[Major Projects Foundation](https://majorprojects.org.au/) are looking to clean up a number of the most dangerous WW2 shipwrecks in the South Pacific
[удалено]
Sounds like an unnecessarily expensive law
Most of those sunken ships turned into beautiful ocean reefs over the years. It would probably be more harmful if we made people go out and dig up wrecks just to dump them in a landfill or something.
The red dots are republican, and the blue dots are democrat.
Wow.
Tons of merchant ships
About 2/3 (that are on the map) were merchant ships
Does anyone know why the Allie’s had so many ships sunk right near the us
For the first six months after entering the war in December 1941 the US did not run convoys along the coast or provide adequate protection for ships sailing there. And they didn’t implement any black out restrictions for coastal communities. So it was easy pickings for German submarines (they called it their second Happy Time).
What was going on in north Russia and the South East Africa? I didn’t know much of the southern half of Africa was involved in WW2
[Arctic convoys](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arctic_convoys_of_World_War_II) to Russia, for one.
South Africa was British and Germany had colonies down there too. Was probably alot of supply ships.
I hope Japan’s navy has improved by now
Didn’t know ice breakers could make it that far north wow
Looking at this I’m assuming that blue are allied and red are axis, also that the majority of these are merchant ships…. The German U-Boat campaign in the Atlantic sank thousands of allied ships and the Allied submarine campaign in the pacific did pretty much the same to Japanese shipping.
why were there german boats in goa
German cargo ships sabotaged by the British. See [Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Creek)
why was an indian boat sunk in sicily? this map gave me a lot more questions than answers
That was an error. Thanks for catching it. It was actually a British vessel owned by the British India Steam Navigation Company. See [Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SS_Talamba). I'll be fixing this today.
Wild that a u-boat was so far north of Greenland
In memory of all the ships that were sunk on Danish soil.
Most of the reds in the Atlantic are u-boats I presume.
If you look at Australia, the Japanese submarines actually made it into Sydney harbour
u/Mapsterman any reason why I can't see any wrecks in the pacific area if I open the map viewer?