Local historian revisits WWII submarine warfare

No new higher education commissioner until 2011
October 20, 2010
Inez Tyler
October 22, 2010
No new higher education commissioner until 2011
October 20, 2010
Inez Tyler
October 22, 2010

During World War II, the United States sank a multitude of German U-Boats in the Atlantic Ocean. The Germans’ quest to keep oil from being shipped to England was costing their navy its submarines, so they shifted their attack and relocated their vessels to the Gulf of Mexico, where their objective remained the same – hunt shipping vessels.


German U-Boats had success in the under publicized battlefield, not far from south Louisiana ports or the Mississippi River. Only one submarine was lost, and lost it was.

The whereabouts and circumstances surrounding the sinking of DKM U-166 were mistaken for 59 years. An amphibious Coast Guard aircraft received credit for sinking the U-Boat roughly 100 miles south of Houma, but the perceived history was flawed.


C.J. Christ was a stakeholder in the discovery of U-166. He began searching for the vessel as a scuba diver in 1967 – about 34 years before its true location was learned and his reaction was documented on the History Channel’s “Deep Sea Detectives.”


“I was at a nautical navigation school one of the guys said, ‘Hey, Chris, aren’t you a scuba diver?’ I said yes, and he said, ‘Well, there’s a German submarine in 60 feet of water just off our coast. Why don’t we go dive on it?’ I said, ‘Oh, man, what a trip! Let’s do it!'”

They didn’t find the submarine, but they kept looking. Over the years, Christ and his team would receive new information, and their expedition would depart from different ports across the Gulf Coast – Galveston, Lake Charles, Cocodrie, Grand Isle and Dauphin Island off the Mississippi Coast to name a few.


Regardless of where they were shipped out, Christ and his team weren’t looking in the right area because of the erroneous historical hypothesis that a plane sank the sub.


Two days before the Coast Guard airplane encountered what was ultimately deemed a different German submarine, U-166 sank the S.S. Robert E. Lee approximately 45 miles from the Mississippi River’s Southwest Pass. PC-566, a patrol craft that was escorting the passenger freighter, retaliated by dropping 10 depth charges near the U-Boat.

PC-566 lost sonar detection of U-166, but it was determined that the U-Boat fled and was later destroyed by the one depth charge released by the Coast Guard’s plane.


This was proven incorrect when BP and Shell International hired C&C Technologies Surveying Services to survey part of the Mississippi Canyon Area in the Gulf in 2001, and that’s when U-166’s location was confirmed, 140 miles east of where it was originally believed to be sunk.


Indeed, PC-566 did sink U-166. History was changed.

The story behind the discovery of U-166, 5,000 feet beneath the surface, is but one aspect in Christ’s research and documentation of submarine warfare in the Gulf. It became his hobby and afforded him the opportunity to meet one of wartime Germany’s highest-ranking officers.

Christ sat down with the fourth and final president of the German Reich, Karl Doenitz, three times before the WWII admiral died in 1980 to discuss the Gulf of Mexico battlefield. Christ’s eyes lit up when he described the meetings.

“If you’re very, very interested, let’s say, in the Vatican, and the pope says he’ll escort you through the Vatican, that’s about what it was like,” he said.

Doenitz served as Commander of the Submarines during WWII after rising through the ranks during peacetime. When Hitler committed suicide, he appointed Doenitz as the nation’s presidential successor.

Christ is also a member of the German Navy Veterans’ Association.

“In 1979, I won a door prize at a convention, and the door prize at the convention was free passage anywhere in the world on TWA Airlines. My barber and I were very interested in German U-Boats, and that was my first trip to Germany.

“I had a letter of introduction to hand to Admiral Doenitz, and it just happened that the weekend I was in Hamburg, they were having their international convention, and they gave me a seat at the front desk with the Admiral. That’s more or less what got me started. They offered me a [GNVA] membership and I’ve been a member ever since.”

Saturday, Christ made a presentation as part of the American Legion Third District’s fall conference at the Quality Hotel in Houma. He relayed the stories he learned from his research, including ship logs – from both sides, Germany and the U.S. – in a lively fashion, keeping the Legionnaires in attendance interested throughout.

Today, he volunteers at the Regional Military Museum on Barrow Street, but he travels around the Gulf Coast and educates the uniformed on the warfare in the Gulf. He estimates that he’s written 220 articles and given 30 to 40 lectures.

He wrote the only book on the subject, titled World War II in the Gulf of Mexico, which can be purchased for $30 at Bent Pages, Southdown Plantation or A’Bear’s Café.

C.J. Christ gives a presentation of submarine warfare in the Gulf of Mexico during World War II as part of the fall conference for American Legion District 3 at the Quality Hotel in Houma. ERIC BESSON