generous appropriations. Despite retrench- 

 ment after prohibition, the service was 

 three times its World War I size in 1940 

 and well equipped to handle events that 

 foreshadowed our entry into World 

 War II. 



When the war broke out in Europe 

 in September 1939, Coast Guard ships, 

 planes, and stations were ordered to carry 

 out extensive patrols to insure that mer- 

 chant ships in our waters did not violate 

 the neutrality proclaimed by President 

 Roosevelt. The next summer, the Coast 

 Guard began its port security operations 

 under the revived Espionage Act of 1917 

 and the newly enacted Dangerous Cargo 

 Act. In March 1941, the Coast Guard 

 took 28 Italian, 2 German, and 35 Danish 

 ships into protective custody and in- 

 terned their crews to prevent scuttling and 

 sabotage. Shortly afterward, ten 250-foot 

 cutters were turned over to Britain under 

 lend-lease. At the same time cutter patrols 

 were operating in Greenland, which was 

 in the United States' Western Hemisphere 

 defense zone. 



Submarine war again 



On November 1, 1941, the Coast 

 Guard was ordered to operate as part of 

 the Navy. The next month Pearl Harbor 

 was bombed and we were in the war. The 

 cutter Taney was in Pearl Harbor when 

 the bombs fell. 



As in World War I, a big part of the 

 Coast Guard's task was antisubmarine 

 warfare. Coast Guard cruising cutters and 

 escorts, as well as its sea frontier patrols 

 and pickets along the coast, helped win the 

 Battle of the Atlantic. These ships de- 

 stroyed 11 U-boats; Coast Guard aircraft 

 sank another. Besides, more than 4,000 

 survivors of torpedoings and other enemy 

 action were rescued from the Atlantic and 

 Mediterranean by Coast Guardsmen. 



The 165 -foot Icarus blasted a U-boat 

 to the surface not far off the Atlantic 

 Coast and took its crew prisoners. The 

 Campbell, after a night-long battle with a 

 submarine wolf pack, rammed and sank 

 one of them for sure, and probably scored 

 on the others with her depth charges. The 



The Coast Guard cutter Spznczr sinks a German submarine. 



"~~^ 



- -lis I 



