Newfoundlanders initially viewed World War II as a foreign conflict and believed that the violence in Europe could not spread to these shores. That complacency was shaken on March 3, 1942, when U-587 fired torpedoes at St. John's during the first German attack on North American soil. In the months that followed, U-boats destroyed ships at Lance Cove and Wabana on Bell Island. And in a fatal surface attack on the Newfoundland ferry Caribou, German submarines sent it to the bottom of the Atlantic with the loss of 137 lives. Battlefront Newfoundland records and preserves the provocative history of Newfoundland and its people during these dramatic years of WWII.








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