Announcements

SPRING LECTURE WITH PAT GARBER

Join the Goochland County Historical Society at 2:00 p.m. on Saturday, March 30, 2024 at the Goochland Branch of the Pamunkey Regional Library to hear local author Pat Garber give a presentation about Operation Drumroll: World War II on the Outer Banks of North Carolina.

In December of 1941, after the attack on Pear Harbor, Adolph Hitler declared war on the United States. Soon thereafter, German Submarine Admiral Karl Doenitz put into action a plan to close off the shipping of good along the east coast, a plan he called “Paukenschlag”, translated as “Drumroll”. German submarines, known more often as “U-boats” were sent to blow up freight ships traveling along the coast of North Carolina. The United States government, in an effort to prevent panic, kept the attacks secret from most Americans. The residents who lived on Ocracoke Island, southernmost of the Outer Banks, were very much aware, however, of the war that had landed on their shores and of the highly classified Naval base that was commissioned there in October of 1942 to protect their coast, which came to be known as Torpedo Alley.

The slide presentation will depict, often in the words of the people who were there, what happened in those dark days.

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