When I first added my page on the Honolulan to the site in December of , there were not any books I could find written specifically about No. Nor were there any tribute websites created by families.
At the time, however, this was not an easy task if you did not live in the U. I had moved on to other topics with my research, but I made a promise to myself to order the No. In the intervening years there were still no new books written about No. Hopefully this information will prove useful to future researchers and historians. Often based in very remote locations, operating under extremely difficult circumstances with too much to do, too little to do it with, and with little confirmation that all their hard work was making any difference.
Man and machine were pushed to their limits. The records indicate No. The squadron would spend the remainder of the war there. Note that the date the squadron moved to West Africa was a little over 3 months before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor that would draw America officially into the war.
The squadron was sent there as a response to increased German U-Boat activity and successes in the area. In the latter half of the U-Boats had claimed only 10 vessels in this region. There was only one loss in January of , none in February, but starting in March of the situation took a drastic turn for the worse, and the allies lost 68 vessels in only five months. The Lehigh was significant as she was American flagged and therefore still a neutral at this point, one of six neutral American merchant vessels that would be lost prior to our entry in the war.
In fact, four of the six in addition to Lehigh were the Robin Moor , Astral , and Sagadahoc were lost somewhere off the west coast of the African continent. The closest friendly forces in the summer of were a Lockheed Hudson Squadron, No. All of which were based near Freetown, Sierra Leone, miles to the south, as the crow flies.
