From January to July 1942, more than seventy-five ships sank to North Carolina's "Graveyard of the Atlantic" off the coast of the Outer Banks. A Standard oil tanker sank just sixty miles from Cape Hatteras. German U-boats sank ships in some of the most harrowing sea fighting close to America's shore. Germany's Operation Drumbeat, led by Admiral Karl Donitz, brought fear to the local communities. The U-85 was the first U-boat sunk by American surface forces, and local divers later discovered a rare Enigma machine aboard. Author Jim Bunch traces the destructive history of world war on the shores of the Outer Banks.
Jim Bunch is the leading authority on the U-85, the first German U-boat sunk by a United States warship in World War II. He is the author of Diving the U-85 and U-85: A Shadow in the Sea, a Diver's Reflections. He earned degrees in marine biology (BS) and oceanography (MS) and worked as an oceanographer for the federal government for many years. As a former dive business owner and a NAUI scuba instructor for eighteen years, he equipped and certified hundreds of divers interested in visiting North Carolina's shipwrecks. In 1994, he received the Scuba Schools International Pro 5000 award for making five thousand or more logged open water dives. Bunch is a Road Scholar speaker with the North Carolina Humanities Council, a past chairman of NOAA's Monitor Marine Sanctuary Advisory Council and serves on the board of Friends of the Graveyard of the Atlantic Museum.