World War II Day by Day

Washington, D.C. • September 11, 1941

Eight months before Japan’s December 7, 1941, attack on U.S. assets at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, Nazi Germany’s navy began mounting a series of U‑boat attacks on cargo ships crossing the North Atlantic from North America to Great Britain, a nation at war with Germany since Septem­ber 3, 1939. The first skir­mish that emerged in the undeclared naval war between the U.S. and Germany took place on April 10–11, 1941. The U.S. destroyer Niblack, on con­voy duty in the North Atlantic, rescued all 63 crew­members of the twice-torpe­doed Dutch freighter Saleier. The war­ship made sound con­tact with an “under­sea object,” which it depth-charged 3 times to no effect. The Niblack is reputed to be the first U.S. Navy war­ship to engage a German warship since World War I.

The first American cargo ship sunk by a U‑boat was the 5,000‑ton freighter Robin Moor, whose star­board and port sides dis­played “USA” in large letters indicating the vessel’s neutral status. The U‑69’s skipper claimed the merchant­man was carrying German contra­band. He ordered the crew and passen­gers (46 in all) into life­boats and with a single tor­pedo and a deck gun sank the vessel far from Sierra Leone’s coast on May 21, 1941. One set of life­boats was adrift at sea for 13 days, the other for 19 days before being rescued. U.S. Presi­dent Franklin D. Roose­velt told Con­gress on June 20 that Robin Moor’s sinking was a “ruthless” act by an “outlaw nation.”

Things turned ugly on August 18, 1941, when U‑38 sent 2 tor­pedoes into the SS Long­taker, a 1,700‑ton Pana­manian-regis­tered, U.S.-owned freighter bound for Ice­land’s capital and port Reyk­ja­vik with a load of timber and food­stuffs. Just 3 out of 24 crew­men sur­vived the encounter. Nastier still: 18 days later, on Septem­ber 4, U‑652 became the first German war­ship to engage a U.S. Navy war­ship, the destroyer USS Greer, in the undeclared war. Nine­teen depth charges loosed by Greer never avenged U‑652’s two failed attempts to send the U.S. destroyer to the ocean bottom. Presi­dent Roose­velt took to the air­waves on Septem­ber 11, 1941, in his 18th “fire­side chat” with the nation. He labeled the attack on Greer an act of piracy, then added emphat­ically: “When you see a rattle­snake poised to strike, you do not wait until he has struck before you crush him. These Nazi sub­marines and [surface] raiders are the rattle­snakes of the Atlantic.” The threat became known as his “Shoot on Sight Speech.” It covered not only Amer­i­can-flagged ves­sels but ves­sels of any flag “engaged in commerce in our defensive waters.”

Just over a month later a pack of U‑boats managed to torpedo 6 out of 50 mer­chant­men being escorted eastward across the North Atlantic by U.S. and Cana­dian war­ships. On Octo­ber 17, 1941, U.S. destroyer Kearny (see photo essay below), which had been sum­moned to assist the belea­guered con­voy, was attacked by U‑568 north­west of Ice­land and damaged. Twenty-two sailors were wounded and 11 killed, the first U.S. sea­men to die under their own flag in the European Theater since World War I.

Roosevelt’s response was prophetic: “We have wished to avoid shooting. But the shooting has started. And his­tory has recorded who fired the first shot. In the long run, how­ever, all that will matter is who fires the last shot.” Still, FDR kept his pis­tol holstered, even on Octo­ber 31, 1941, the day U‑552 sank the first U.S. Navy ves­sel, USS Reuben James (see photo essay below), west of Ice­land with a loss of 100 crew­men. Germany called Reuben James fair game because the U.S. destroyer was escorting enemy (British) mer­chant ships. That’s where things stood between the two powers until the morning of Decem­ber 7, 1941. With­out tech­ni­cally being forced or even obli­gated by the Tripar­tite mili­tary treaty between Germany, Italy, and Japan, Hitler declared war on the United States 4 days after Pearl Harbor as a ges­ture of soli­darity with Japan, a coun­try on the other side of the world. The Decem­ber 11 declara­tion was, Hitler told his for­eign minis­ter, Joachim von Ribbentrop, the “politically correct” thing to do.

U.S. Merchant Marine and Navy on the Eve of War with Germany, 1941

Left: On September 11, 1941, the same day President Roose­velt threatened to shoot German “rattle­snakes” on sight, the Pana­ma­nian-flagged freighter Mon­tana (former Danish name, Paula) was sunk by U‑105. Owned by the U.S. Mari­time Com­mis­sion in Washing­ton, D.C., the ship was carrying lumber from North Caro­lina to Rey­kja­vik, Ice­land. Allied air­craft observed sur­vi­vors aban­doning ship in 2 life­boats, but the crew­men were never found. Nine days later the U.S.-Pana­ma­nian freighter Pink Star, carrying gene­ral cargo from New York to Liver­pool, England, was sunk by U‑552. Thir­teen out of the crew of 35 died. On Septem­ber 26 the U.S.-Pana­ma­nian oil tanker I.C. White was sunk by U‑66 while sailing from the Carib­bean island of Cura­çao to Cape Town, South Africa. Three men died in this attack. The above-mentioned freighters and tanker were registered in neutral Panama. On Octo­ber 9, Roose­velt began his success­ful efforts to modify the U.S. Neu­trality Acts to allow the arming of U.S. mer­chant ships. A Novem­ber 5, 1941, Gallup poll indi­cated that 81 per­cent of the Amer­i­can public sup­ported the Presi­dent’s move. On Decem­ber 2 the U.S. mer­chant ship SS Dunboyne received the first Naval Armed Guard detach­ment. Its mem­bers were among the 144,970 enlisted men and offi­cers who served in the U.S. Navy Armed Guard during World War II. U.S. Armed Guards­men served mostly on U.S. flag ships. A small num­ber were U.S.-owned ships but under foreign flag, and some were foreign owned and foreign flag.

Right: On September 17, 1941, five American destroyers began es­corting convoy HX150 from Hali­fax, Canada. This was the first time the U.S. Navy escorted an east­bound British trans­atlantic con­voy. This photo from late 1941 shows a con­voy es­corted by U.S. war­ships leaving New York’s Brooklyn harbor bound for Great Britain via Halifax.

Left: USS Kearny at Hval­fjordur naval base near Rey­kja­vik, Ice­land, 2 days after the destroyer had been struck by 1 of 3 tor­pe­does fired by U‑568 on Octo­ber 17, 1941. Sister escort destroyer USS Greer is port­side. The caver­nous tor­pedo hole and twisted, mis­shapen plating are visi­ble in the middle of Kearny’s star­board side below and aft of the bridge. The Kearny, assisting 4 other U.S. war­ships, came to the night­time rescue of beleaguered, slow-moving con­voy SC‑48 whose Cana­dian escorts were being mauled by a U‑boat wolf pack when it came under attack in bad weather. Two Amer­i­can ships in the convoy were sunk during the attack, causing dozens of casual­ties: the British-flagged Anglo-American Oil Co. tanker W.C. Teagle and the U.S.-Pana­ma­nian freighter Bold Venture sailing from Balti­more for Liver­pool, England, with a cargo of cotton, iron, steel, copper, and wood. Casu­al­ties among Kearny’s crew included 11 dead and 22 injured. In FDR’s Navy Day speech on Octo­ber 27, 1941, 6½ weeks before the coun­try was officially at war with Germany, the former Assis­tant Secre­tary of the Navy (1913–1920) and now 32nd U.S. presi­dent announced, “The shooting has started and we Americans have taken our battle stations.”

Right: USS Reuben James—a 4-funnel, post-World War I destroyer—was sunk on the night of Octo­ber 30/31, 1941, by U‑552 west of Ice­land as she and four other destroyers escorted HX156, an east­bound con­voy sailing from Argen­tia, New­found­land. A tor­pedo hit the for­ward sec­tion of Reuben James. When an ammu­nition maga­zine exploded it blew off the entire bow of “Ol’ Rube,” which sank imme­di­ately; the aft sec­tion sank 5 minutes later. Of the 144‑man crew, only 44 sur­vived. Trag­i­cally, many of the crew­members were killed by the escort destroyer’s own unse­cured depth charges, which armed them­selves in frigid ocean water and exploded as the men treaded water (ship’s life­boats were rendered unusable). Counting the con­flict in China, the Reuben James was the second U.S. Navy ship sunk by hos­tile action prior to the coun­try entering World War II. The river gun­boat USS Panay, serving in the U.S. Yangtze Patrol in China, was bombed, strafed, and sunk by Japa­nese air­craft on Decem­ber 12, 1937, with a loss of 4 dead and 43 sailors and 5 civilians wounded.

A Patriotic Call to Arms: American and Singer-Songwriter Woody Guthrie Performing His “Sinking of the Reuben James” to a Collage of Reuben James Photographs