One of the last unheralded heroic stories of World War II: the U-boat assault off the American coast against the men of the U.S. Merchant Marine who were supplying the European war, and one community's monumental contribution to that effort. One of the indelible images of World War II is of an explosion at sea-- a U-boat attack, a ship in flames, and an ocean full of men swimming for their lives. The Mathews Men tells the story of what it was like...

On January 25, 1917, HMS Laurentic struck two German mines off the coast of Ireland and sank. The ship was carrying 44 tons of gold bullion to the still-neutral United States via Canada in order to finance the war effort for Britain and its allies. Britain desperately needed that sunken treasure, but any salvage had to be secret since the British government dared not alert the Germans to the presence of the gold. Lieutenant Commander Guybon Damant...

"The first complete history of the U-boat war in its entirety, a story which began on the very first day of hostilities in 1939 and did not end until the final torpedo sinking on 7 May 1945. It details the Wehrmacht's disastrous decision to despatch Dönitz's U-boats to the Mediterranean; the actions of U-boats at the extremities of the Eastern Front, where, despite the legendary destruction of the PQ17 convoy, they failed to turn the tide of war;...

"HG-76 sailed from Gibraltar to Britain in December 1941 and was specially targeted by the Germans. A wolfpack of U-boats was sent against it, and the Luftwaffe was heavily committed too in a rare example of German inter-service cooperation. German intelligence agents in Gibraltar and Spain also knew every detail of HG-76 before it had even sailed, seemingly stacking the odds in favour of the Kriegsmarine. Despite this the convoy fought its way through....