The Blackout failures and the Happy Time, US East Coast, 1942
When the United States entered the Second World War the cities and towns along the east coast of the United States resisted the imposition of a blackout. Their reasons ranged from the difficulty of workers commuting in the total darkness to the damage suffered by the tourism industry, already hurt by travel priorities and rationing. The result was that ships operating along the American coastline were clearly silhouetted by the glow emitted by American towns, making them ripe targets for the German U-boats prowling off the coast. The German U-boat fleet sank so many ships along the coast that they referred to early 1942 as The Second Happy Time (the first Happy Time had been against the British).
The US Government was forced to impose blackout restrictions along the coast, though many cities continued to resist. Propaganda posters and radio broadcasts appealed to American patriotism, and eventually most of the cities and towns complied, though the blackouts were never as stringently enforced in the United States as they were in Great Britain, and on the ships themselves. One reason was American security from air attack. The waters off Cape Hatteras saw so many ships sunk there, over 400, that it became known as Torpedo Alley. Over 5,000 American civilians and merchant mariners lost their lives in U-boat attacks along the Outer Banks alone.