William Curtis Colepaugh (March 25, 1918 - March 16, 2005) was an American who, following his 1943 discharge from the US Naval Reserve ("for the good of the service", according to official reports), defected to Nazi Germany in 1944. While a crewman on a United States Merchant Marine ship that stopped off in Lisbon, Colepaugh defected at the German consulate. Colepaugh also attended Admiral Farragut Academy in Tom's River, New Jersey.
Colepaugh wa...
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William Curtis Colepaugh (March 25, 1918 - March 16, 2005) was an American who, following his 1943 discharge from the US Naval Reserve ("for the good of the service", according to official reports), defected to Nazi Germany in 1944. While a crewman on a United States Merchant Marine ship that stopped off in Lisbon, Colepaugh defected at the German consulate. Colepaugh also attended Admiral Farragut Academy in Tom's River, New Jersey.
Colepaugh was given extensive firearms and espionage training at a spy-school in German-occupied The Hague. With the German agent Erich Gimpel, he was transported back to the USA by the U-boat U-1230, landing at Hancock Point in the Gulf of Maine on 29 November 1944. Their mission was to gather technical information on the Allied war effort and transmit it back to Germany using a radio they were expected to build.
Together Colepaugh and Gimpel made their way to Boston and then by train to New York. Before long Colepaugh abandoned the mission, visiting an...
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