QUOTE : A fleet of oil tankers carried oil from the Gulf Coast around Florida and up the Eastern Seaboard to supply Eastern cities and for transshipment to England and Europe. With the German declaration of war in alliance with Japan on 11 December 1941, Germany sent a small submarine force under Admiral and U-boat Commander Karl Dönitz to attack the vulnerable tankers. Dönitz had asked for twelve submarines. Hitler, giving priority at that time to Mediterranean support of his campaign in North Africa, awarded the admiral only five. Dönitz chose the best crews, and in the six weeks between 11 January and 28 February 1942, his U-boats working the American East Coast attacked no fewer than seventy-four tankers, sinking forty-six of them and damaging sixteen more.55 The submarines escaped unscathed. “Our U-boats are operating close inshore along the coast of the United States of America,” Dönitz reported, “so that bathers and sometimes entire coastal cities are witness to the drama of war, whose visual climaxes are constituted by the red glorioles of blazing tankers.