Caribbean+Involvement+-WWII


 * __//Caribbean Involvement - WWII//__**

There seemed a big danger in the beginning of 1942 because German U-boats (submarines) were destroying the weak cargo ships of America. Right after Germany's declaration of war, the U-boats attacked at all the vulnerable shipping lanes of the western Atlantic, and then widened their assaults to the Gulf of Mexico and then downward toward the Caribbean islands. (3) The picture to the left shows a map of where the Germans attacked.
 * __General Information__**

The importance of the Caribbean became known during the war. Over 50 percent of the supplies sent to Europe and Africa from the United states were sent from shipping ports in the Gulf of Mexico. A year after the attack of Pearl Harbor, the United States Caribbean Defense Command received a total of 119,000 personnel, and most of them were put in Panama to protect itself from attacks from the Japanese.
 * __Why the Caribbean was so useful__**

(4) The picture to the top right shows troops readying themselves to fight in the Caribbean.

Even though the expected Japanese attack did not come to the canal, Germans took the opportunity to inflict tons of damage on the ships that sent supplies to Caribbean in 1942. German submarines even went inside the island's small harbors to torpedo the anchor which was smart because, hence the small, the small harbors gave little room for the Caribbean Navy to defend itself. By the end of the year, U-boats in the Caribbean sunk 336 ships, where half of them were oil tankers, with a total of 1.5 millions tons in weight.
 * __What the Germans did to the Caribbean__**



(4) The picture to the left shows the Caribbean Navy being sent out to fight the Germans because the German U-boats kept attacking the small harbor. Resources 1. [|http://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/AMH/AMH/AMH-20.html] 2. [|http://lcweb2.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/r?frd/cstdy:@field(DOCID+cx0234]) 3. [|http://www.tkelley.com/curacao/images/caribbean.gif] 4. [|?[http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/USMC/USMC-C-Opening/img/USMC-C-Opening-27.gif&imgrefurl=http://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/USMC/USMC-C-Opening/&h=300&w=520&sz=128&hl=en&start=3&tbnid=OyZ9oC320Lm4yM:&tbnh=76&tbnw=131&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dcaribbean%2Bworld%2Bwar%2Btwo%26svnum%3D10%26hl%3Den%26sa%3DN|]