WORLD WAR TWO: He terrorized the N.C. coast in World War II. The last U-boat captain has died at 105. I’m pretty sure it was a different U-boat that did it, but at age two, my mother saw a ship sunk just a couple of miles off the coast of Florida. She still remembers it. But then, it was pretty easy:

Hardegen, in a 1991 Observer interview from Germany, said his U-123 tuned in Charlotte’s WBT radio as it sat on the ocean bottom during the day and surfaced at night to hunt passing ships that were silhouetted by the glow from coastal towns.

Hardegen, then 78, said he was astonished that he met almost no opposition from a U.S. military that was unprepared for the U-boat invasion of the East Coast.

“I was very surprised,” he said. “There was no defense on the coast of the United States. … No blackouts, no dimming, nothing.”

We were poorly prepared.