North Carolina & Nicaragua in World War II

In 1942, there was a battle 30 miles off the coast of North Carolina. A German U-boat sunk a Nicaraguan ship (the Bluefields) officially on its way from New York to Havana though the news article says it was going to Key West with cargo to help with the war. It was then bombed by a U.S. Navy aircraft and sunk. Now both the U-boat and the Bluefields have been found. It's remarkable to be reminded how close the war came to the continental United States, not to mention my own state.

Incidentally, Nicaragua had already declared war on Germany after the bombing of Pearl Harbor in December 1941. Anastasio Somoza García was no dummy and knew he needed to stay on the good side of FDR. He was receiving arms and getting rich in the process. Further, as Lars Schoultz points out in Beneath the United States, he was rewarded by allowing his son Anastasio Somoza Debayle to enroll at West Point, where he graduated in 1946 (p. 313).