I'm searching for information on a possible uboat action.

Back around 1969 - 1972 I rember reading a description of a German submarine attacking a oil facility at a South American port. The artical was quite detailed, describing how a Kriegsmarine officer was authorized to execute a test project. A submarine was equipped a with a second deck gun of 10 or 10.5cm caliber and extra amunition for attacking shore installations. The target selected was a oil loading facility on the Venzuelian coast, which was suitable for a submarine to approach. ie. no narrow channels, broad shoals, and water deep enough neaby for a sub. to escape into.

On the first shot the supplementary deck gun suffered in inbore explosion. The attack was continued with the smaller standard deck gun. The attack was judged a failure and the idea of further attacks on shore installations dropped.

Later I saw a much less detailed remark on this same attack in a pop history book published in the mid 1970s.

Can anyone confirm, or offer contray evidence this attack actually occured, or point me to suitable sources for researching it?

There's a book called Operation Drumbeat. In it is described u-boat operations off the coast of Florida or Alabama (?) where civilians were able to see burning oil tankers clearly at night. Does this sound like what you are describing?

I've had to dredge this one up from the depths of memory, followed by a bit of 'googling', but I'm fairly certain that the attack in question was the one by three U-Boats on Aruba on the 16th February, 1942 in which two tankers were sunk and the Lago Oil Refinery was shelled. The U-Boat with the 'exploding gun' was the U-156 which, I believe, was later sunk by Allied air attack......

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"Stand by to pull me out of the seat if I get hit" - Guy Gibson

The Aruba attack, thats it. Someone over on the Feldgrau site came up with the same answer. I was looking for events that inflamed the post Pearl Harbor hysteria about enemy attack on the US. Things like the sabatours landing on Long Island, and the Japanese submarines shelling the West Coat seem to have been enough to keep folks attention.

I forgotten about that book. It was a good read. The book was in indictment of the pulbic's unwillingness to accept that war required blackout conditions on the coasts and the Navy's unwillingness to listen to the British who had been fighting the U-boats for two years. Six months later, the lesson was well learned.

I think the specific event you mentioned was at Jacksonville, FL, on the Atlantic Coast.

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Best Regards,
JW