Attacks on North America during World War II by the Axis Powers were rare, mainly due to the continent's geographical separation from the central theaters of conflict in Europe and Asia. This article includes attacks on continental territory (extending 200 miles [370 km] into the ocean) which is today under the sovereignty of the United States and Canada but excludes military action involving the Danish territory of Greenland and the Caribbean.

Japanese assaults
The United States mainland was first shelled by the Axis on February 23, 1942 when the Japanese submarine I-17 attacked the Ellwood oil production facilities at Goleta, near Santa Barbara, California. Although only a catwalk and pumphouse were damaged, I-17 captain Nishino Kozo radioed Tokyo that he had left Santa Barbara in flames. No casualties were reported and the total cost of the damage was estimated at approximately $500.

Ellwood shelling
On June 3, 1942 the Aleutian Islands, running southwest from mainland Alaska, were invaded by Japanese forces as a diversion to deflect attention from the main Japanese attack on Midway Atoll. Having broken the Japanese military codes, however, the U.S. knew it was a diversion and did not expend large amounts of effort defending the islands. Although most of the civilian population had been moved to camps on the Alaska Panhandle, some Americans were captured and taken to Japan as prisoners of war.
In what became known as the Battle of the Aleutian Islands, American forces engaged the Japanese on Attu Island and regained control by the end of May 1943, after taking significant casualties in difficult terrain hundreds died [3]. A large invasion force, mainly US, but including some Canadian troops, assaulted Kiska Island on August 7, 1943, but the Japanese had already withdrawn, undetected, ten days earlier.
Although Alaska was US Territory and not yet a state (statehood was not granted until 1959) it was part of the North American Continent. This battle also marks the only time since the War of 1812 that US territory in North America has been occupied by a foreign power.
In response to the United States' success at the Battle of Midway, the invasion alert for San Francisco was canceled on June 8.

Battle of the Aleutian Islands
On June 20, 1942, the Japanese submarine I-26 under command of commander Yokota Minoru

Estevan Point Lighthouse
In what became the only attack on a mainland American military installation during World War II, the Japanese submarine I-25 under commander Tagami Meiji surfaced near the mouth of the Columbia River, Oregon on the night of June 21-June 22, 1942, and fired shells toward Fort Stevens. The only damage recorded was to a baseball field's backstop. American aircraft on training flights spotted the submarine, which was subsequently attacked by a U.S. bomber, but the submarine managed to escape.

Attacks on Oregon
The Lookout Air Raid occurred on September 9, 1942, the first aerial bombing of mainland America by a foreign power occurred when an attempt to start a forest fire was made by a Japanese Yokosuka E14Y1 seaplane dropping 170 lb (80 kg) incendiary bombs over Mount Emily, near Brookings, Oregon. The seaplane, piloted by Nobuo Fujita, had been launched from the Japanese submarine aircraft carrier I-25. No significant damage was reported following the attack, nor after a repeat attempt September 29.

The Oregon Lookout Air Raid
Between November 1944 and April 1945, Japan launched over 9,000 fire balloons toward the American mainland. Carried by the recently-discovered Pacific jet stream, they were to sail over the Pacific Ocean and land in North America, where the Japanese hoped they would start forest fires and wreak devastation. About three hundred were reported as reaching North America, but little damage was caused. Six people – five children and a woman, Elsie Mitchell – became the only deaths due to enemy action to occur on mainland America during World War II when one of the children tried to recover a balloon from a tree near Bly, Oregon and it exploded. Another landed in Omaha, Nebraska with little effect.[4] Recently released R.C.M.P. and Canadian military reports indicate that fire balloons got as far inland as the rural area near Ituna, Saskatchewan.

Fire balloons
Kinoaki Matsuot, a high-ranking officer of the Black Dragon Society, wrote the book The Three Power Alliance And The United States-Japanese War, which is purported to detail the Japanese war plans for the simultaneous invasions of the Panama Canal Zone, Alaska, California and Washington. See also: Axis plans for invasion of the United States during WWII

Japanese invasion plans

German assaults

German landings
Even before the war, a large Nazi spy ring was found operating in the United States. The Duquesne Spy Ring is still the largest espionage case in United States history that ended in convictions. The 33 German agents that formed the Duquesne spy ring were placed in key jobs in the United States to get information that could be used in the event of war and to carry out acts of sabotage: one person opened a restaurant and used his position to get information from his customers; another person worked on an airline so that he could report allied ships that were crossing the Atlantic Ocean; others in the ring worked as delivery people so that they could deliver secret messages alongside normal messages. The ring was lead by Captain Fritz Joubert Duquesne, a colorful South African Boer who spied for Germany in both World Wars and is best known as "The man who killed Kitchener" after he was awarded the Iron Cross for his key role in the sabotage and sinking of HMS Hampshire in 1916.
In 1944 there was another attempt at infiltration codename Operation Elster ("Magpie"). Elster involved Erich Gimpel and German American defector William Colepaugh. Their mission objective was to gather intelligence on the Manhattan Project and attempt sabotage if possible. The pair sailed from Kiel on U-1230 and landed at Hancock Point, Maine on November 30, 1944. Both made their way to New York, but the operation degenerated into total failure. Colepaugh turned himself in to the FBI on December 26, confessing the whole plan to the FBI; Gimpel was arrested four days later in New York. Both men were sentenced to death but eventually had their sentences commuted. Gimpel spent 10 years in prison; Colepaugh was released in 1960 and operated a business in King of Prussia, Pennsylvania before retiring to Florida.

United States
At about the same time as the Dasch operation (on April 25), a solitary Abwehr agent (Marius A Langbein) was landed by U-boat (possibly U-217) near St. Martins, New Brunswick, Canada. His mission was to observe and report shipping movements at Halifax, Nova Scotia (a busy departure port for North Atlantic convoys). Langbein changed his mind, however, and moved to Ottawa where he lived off his Abwehr funds, before surrendering to the Canadian authorities in December 1944.
In November, the U-518 sank two freighters and damaged another in Conception Bay, Newfoundland, en route to the Gaspé where, despite an attack by a Royal Canadian Air Force aircraft, it successfully landed a spy, Werner von Janowski, at New Carlisle, Quebec on November 9th, 1942. He was soon apprehended after a suspicious resident of New Carlisle alerted authorities to a stranger using obsolete currency at a bar in a local hotel. The R.C.M.P. arrested Janowski on a train headed for Montreal, after which he spent some time as a double agent, sending false messages to the Abwehr in Germany, while gathering valuable intelligence for the Allies.

Canada
Accurate weather reporting was important to the sea war and on 18 September 1943, U-537 sailed from Kiel, via Bergen (Norway), with a meteorological team lead by Professor Kurt Sommermeyer. They landed at Martin Bay, northern Labrador on 22 October 1943 and successfully set up an automatic weather station ("Weather Station Kurt" or "Wetter-Funkgerät Land-26"), despite the constant risk of Allied air patrols; this only worked for a short time, however. At the beginning of July 1944, U-867 left Bergen to replace the failed equipment, but was sunk en route. The weather station was recovered in the 1980s and is now at the Canadian War Museum.

Newfoundland

U-Boat operations
The Atlantic Ocean was a major strategic battle zone (Second Battle of the Atlantic) and when Germany declared war on the US, the East Coast offered easy pickings for German U-Boats (referred to as the Second happy time). After a highly successful foray by five Type IX long-range U-boats, the offensive was maximised by the use of short-range Type VII U-boats, with increased fuel stores, replenished from supply U-boats or "Milchkuh". In February to May, 1942, 348 ships were sunk, for the loss of 2 U-boats during April and May. U.S. naval commanders were reluctant to introduce the convoy system that had protected trans-Atlantic shipping and, without coastal blackouts, shipping was silhouetted against the bright lights of American towns and cities.
Several ships were torpedoed within sight of East Coast cities such as New York and Boston; indeed, some civilians sat on beaches and watched battles between U.S. and German ships.
Once convoys and air cover were introduced, sinking numbers were reduced and the U-boats shifted to attack shipping in the Gulf of Mexico, with 121 losses in June. In one instance, the tanker Virginia was torpedoed in the mouth of the Mississippi River by the German U-Boat U-507 on May 12, 1942, killing 26 crewmen. There were 14 survivors. Again, when defensive measures were introduced, ship sinkings decreased and U-boat sinkings increased.
The cumulative effect of this campaign was severe; a quarter of all wartime sinkings—3.1 million tons. There were several reasons for this. The naval commander, Admiral Ernest King, was averse to taking British recommendations to introduce convoys, U.S. Coast Guard and Navy patrols were predictable and could be avoided by U-boats, poor inter-service co-operation, and the U.S. Navy did not possess enough suitable escort vessels (British and Canadian warships were transferred to the U.S. east coast).

United States
From June 10, 1942 until December 1944, sinkings took place in the St. Lawrence River. Although this area was never a prime target for U-boats, it did offer easy pickings until late in the war, due to the state of the Canadian defences and their naval commitments elsewhere. The period is sometimes referred to as the Battle of the St. Lawrence.

Canada
Three significant attacks took place in 1942 when German U-boats attacked four allied ore carriers at Bell Island, Newfoundland. The carriers S.S. Saganaga and the S.S. Lord Strathcona were sunk by U-513 on September 5, 1942, while the S.S. Rosecastle and P.L.M 27 were sunk by U-518 on November 2 with the loss of 69 lives. However, one of the most dramatic incidents of the attack occurred after the sinkings when the submarine fired a torpedo that missed its target, the 3000 ton collier Anna T, and struck the loading pier. Bell Island thus became the only location in North America to be subject to direct attack by German forces in World War II. On October 14, 1942, the SS Caribou was torpedoed by the German U-boat U-69 and sunk in the Cabot Strait. Caribou was carrying 45 crew and 206 civilian and military passengers. 137 lost their lives, many of them Newfoundlanders.

Newfoundland
Although not an attack on Mexican territory, the sinking of the Mexican tanker Faja de Oro by the German U-boat, U-160, on May 21, 1942 off Key West, prompted the entry of Mexico into World War II.

Mexico

The Battle of Los Angeles
In May and June 1942, the San Francisco Bay Area underwent a series of alerts:

May 12: A twenty-five minute air-raid alert.
May 27: West Coast defences put on alert after Army codebreakers learned that the Japanese intended a series of hit-and-run attacks in reprisal for the Doolittle Raid.
May 31: The battleships USS Colorado and USS Maryland set sail from the Golden Gate to form a line of defense against any Japanese attack mounted on San Francisco. The San Francisco Bay Area on alert
On June 2, 1942 , a nine-minute air-raid alert, including at 9:22pm a radio silence order applied to all radio stations from Mexico to Canada. There was also a forty-five minute air-raid alert and radio silence order later in the year, on November 28.

Radio silences

See also

Dobbs, Michael. Saboteurs: The Nazi Raid on America ISBN 0-375-41470-3 (2004)
Gimpel, Erich. Agent 146: The True Story of a Nazi Spy in America ISBN 0-312-30797-7 (2003)
Griehl, Manfred. Luftwaffe over America: The Secret Plans to Bomb the United States in World War II ISBN 1-85367-608-X (2004)
Horn, Steve (2005). The Second Attack on Pearl Harbor: Operation K And Other Japanese Attempts to Bomb America in World War II. Naval Institute Press. ISBN 1-59114-388-8. 
Mikesh, Robert C. Japan's World War II Balloon Bomb Attacks on North America, Smithsonian Institution Press, (1973)
Kesich, Gregory D., 1944: When spies came to Maine[7], Portland Press Herald (2003)
Webber, Bert. Silent Siege: Japanese Attacks Against North America in World War II, Ye Galleon Press, Fairfield, Washington (1984). ISBN 0-87770-315-9 (hardcover). ISBN 0-87770-318-3 (paperbound).