WOTB #66 "Is that a Yellow Submarine?"
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(virtual)
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Take a walk on World's Most Famous Beach. This is number 66 in the series and it is a virtual cache. No actual cache or container is at the posted coords, but you will find an interesting piece of history.
Adolf Hitler declared war on the United States just four days after the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. Eager to prove to the United States that it was vulnerable, despite its distance from Europe, Hitler ordered a sabotage operation to be mounted against targets inside the United States. During World War II German submarines sank 24 ships in Florida. Coastal residents could sometimes see the flames of burning ships that had fallen prey to the German U-boats. Ormond By The Sea’s Coastal Watch Tower, erected in 1942, was one of more than 15,000 civilian observation posts – and is one of the few that still stands. The tower was staffed by civilian volunteer "spotters" who were part of the Ground Observation Corps, the Army Air Force Aircraft Warning Service, the Civil Air Patrol and the Coast Guard Auxiliary. Armed with only binoculars and a telephone, they monitored the skies for air traffic and the seas for German U-boats. These lookout posts were abandoned in May 1944, when it became apparent that Germany was no longer a threat. One German sabotage team that managed to evade detection came onto our shore about 30 miles north of the Ormond watch tower. The team consisted of Edward Kerling, Herbert Haupt, Herman Neubauer and Werner Thiel. They were supplied with four waterproof wooden crates, each about twice the size of a shoebox. Three of the four were filled with dynamite, some pieces disguised as lumps of coal. The fourth box carried fuses, timing devices, wire, incendiary pen and pencil sets and sulfuric acid. The team left the German submarine base at Lorient, France, aboard U-584 on the evening of May 26, 1942. On Thursday, June 18, Edward Kerling and his team landed without incident on Ponte Vedra Beach, 25 miles southeast of Jacksonville. They buried their crates, walked to Route 1 and caught the Greyhound bus for Jacksonville. Within hours, all four were on trains–Kerling and Thiel bound for Cincinnati, Haupt and Neubauer for Chicago with plans to meet other Germans and plot to sabotage train stations, power plants and aluminum production facilities. The FBI captured all four before they could cause any damage, and on August 8, the German agents were executed at the District Jail in Washington, D.C. To be eligible to claim this cache you must visit the tower, and take a picture of yourself and the tower with the ocean in the background so we can see if there are any suspicious vessels approaching. Then E-mail the the picture. Virtual Reward - 2017/2018 Virtual Reward - 2017/2018 This Virtual Cache is part of a limited release of Virtuals created between August 24, 2017 and August 24, 2018. Only 4,000 cache owners were given the opportunity to hide a Virtual Cache. Learn more about Virtual Rewards on the Geocaching Blog.
Additional Hints
(Decrypt)
uggcf://jjj.trbpnpuvat.pbz/oybt/2017/08/iveghny-erjneqf/