June 2018 marks the start of the 100th anniversary of World War I off the North Carolina coast. World War I had come home to North Carolina. East Coast in May 1918, it was the first foreign enemy naval vessel to invade U.S. By the end of the war in 1918, three German U-boats, U -151, U -140, and U -117, had sunk a total of 10 vessels off North Carolina alone. These German submarines, or U-boats, sunk scores of ships with the loss of hundreds of lives, but many Americans did not believe the U-boats possessed the range to reach the United States eastern seaboard. The people of North Carolina felt they had little to fear from Germany's new Unterseeboot (undersea boat) fleet that was prowling the North Atlantic. During the war's early years, the battles happened far from American shores and there seemed to be no direct danger to the United States. When World War I began in 1914, neither the United States Navy nor American coastal shipping vessels were directly affected.
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