"A Destroyer Escort, a U-boat, and the ‘Argentia Eight’" Topic

"In April 1945, Nazi Germany was in its death throes, with Soviet troops battling for Berlin and U.S. and British forces driving deep into the country's heartland. The Battle of the Atlantic was virtually over; the Kriegmarine's bases on the French coast either had been captured or were besieged, their surviving U-boats long gone to bases farther north.

Nevertheless, the U.S. Navy was concerned that U-boats posed a serious new threat—to New York City and other major East Coast cities. Allied intelligence had revealed sketchy information about a German plan to dispatch U-boats armed with V-1 flying bombs to waters off the United States, from whence the vengeance weapons could terrorize America's continental civilian population for the first time in World War II.

U.S. planning to counter such an operation began in late 1944 and was completed in early January 1945. The plan, codenamed Teardrop, became operational in March, after nine long-range Type IX U-boats equipped with snorkels departed bases in occupied Norway. Seven of the boats, which would be organized into Gruppe Seewolf, had orders to operate off the northeastern United States; the other two set out for Canadian waters. To counter the threat posed by the supposedly V-1 armed boats of Seewolf, the U.S. Atlantic Fleet dispatched two large surface barrier forces into the Atlantic to find and sink the vessels. Two CVEs and 20 DEs formed the First Barrier Force, while farther west, two escort carriers and 22 destroyer escorts made up the Second Barrier Force…"

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