At 0840 on the morning of 4 September USS Greer, a World War I twelve-hundred-ton flush-deck “four-piper” destroyer that the U.S. Navy had kept, was steaming independently toward Iceland at 17.5 knots with mail, freight, and military passengers when she received blinker signals from a British bomber. The plane reported that a U-boat lay submerged directly athwart her course about ten miles ahead. Greer’s officers sounded general quarters, rang up 20 knots, and took a zigzag course to the spot, where, after slowing, the destroyer’s sound crew made contact and held it fast. Standing rules of engagement called for U.S. ships in such situations, where there was no U.S. or Icelandic-flag shipping to defend, to do no more than “trail and report.” When this became clear to the bomber pilot who had remained overhead, he dropped his depth charges in a random pattern and headed back to base. Below the surface in U-652, Kptlt. Georg-Werner Fraatz had reason to believe that the exploding charges came from the ship above him with which he was maintaining his own sound contact. Accordingly, he came to periscope depth and, after identifying the destroyer as belonging to the same class that had been traded to Britain and concluding that OKM’s subsidiary orders permitted him to defend himself in these circumstances, launched two torpedoes, ten minutes apart, at his pursuer. Both missed. Greer then responded with a pattern of eight depth charges, which, except for minor damage to U-652, also missed their mark. Greer subsequently broke off the chase ten hours after the first contact, and Kptlt. Fraatz repaired to less dangerous waters where, six days later, he took out two British merchantmen.
The exchange-of-fire “incident” had finally happened. Through miscalculation both Hitler’s cunning caution and Washington’s false neutrality had vaporized. From that date it can be stated that open naval war existed between the United States and Germany. An outraged President Roosevelt issued orders to “eliminate” the U-boat involved, which was hardly possible. To a news conference he described the attack on Greer as unprovoked, which he would learn later was not exactly true. In a “fireside chat” to the nation by radio on 11 September he spoke of the U-boats as “rattlesnakes of the Atlantic” and, though he did not use the phrase as such, indicated that henceforth U.S. warships would “shoot on sight” (as the press put it) all German and Italian vessels that endangered waters vital to American defense.
Ina Navy Day address sixteen days later Roosevelt himself used the “shoot on sight” phrase to describe U.S. intentions. Conventional histories that treat of the subject maintain that this was the first operation order directing U.S. ships and aircraft to fire on German or Italian naval forces.39 In fact FDR was merely articulating in public operation orders that Admiral King, with his tacit approval, had issued secretly months earlier. Documents found in King’s command papers disclose that U.S. “neutrality” had been more of a pretense than was earlier believed and that, in fact, as long as six months prior to Pearl Harbor, U.S. Navy escorts in the Atlantic were under orders to initiate belligerent actions should enemy forces be sighted or sound-detected. Beginning in July, King issued a series of operation plans that contained such language as: “Destroy hostile forces which threaten shipping of U.S. and Iceland flag”; “my interpretation of threat to U.S. or Iceland flag shipping, whether escorted or not, is that threat exists when potentially hostile vessels are actually within sight or sound contact of such shipping or its escort [emphasis added].”40
The orders would obviously impact first on the perimeter forces, including the twenty-seven destroyers (DDs) of the Support Force, Atlantic Fleet. This force, which was also designated Northwest Escort Force and Task Force Four, was under the command of Rear Admiral Arthur LeR. Bristol, Jr., who was never in any doubt about the quality of his U-boat foes: “There is no doubt that they are a determined, bold and well-trained enemy with super-excellent material to work with.”41 On 19 July King issued Operation Order No. 6-41, which, given in the context of the base in Iceland, directed U.S. naval forces to attack any U-boats or other German or Italian warships found within one hundred miles of an American-escorted convoy to or from that island. “Shoot on sight” was formally adopted as U.S. policy at the Atlantic Conference of Roosevelt and Churchill at Argentia on 9-12 August. On 1 September the policy was implemented, effective 15 September, by U.S. Navy Operation Order No. 7-41 (Secret Serial 00164)42
Navy orders took a more concrete form on 5 November, in circumstances that, had occasion provided their being acted upon, might well have precipitated a German declaration of war. Acting on intelligence that German pocket battleship Admiral Scheer (or possibly battleship Tirpitz) was expected to sortie from its base in Norway, King deployed a battle fleet out of Iceland to prevent by force Scheer’s breakout into the Atlantic convoy lanes. Designated Task Force One and consisting of battleships Mississippi and Idaho, cruisers Tuscaloosa and Wichita, with three destroyers, the squadron took up attack positions athwart the Denmark Strait (between Iceland and Greenland). As it happened, machinery damage kept Scheer in port. Had the German raider entered the Atlantic as planned, it is not likely that she would have survived an encounter with the American fleet, and Hitler would have had no option but to declare war on the United States. According to German naval historian Jürgen Rohwer, the loss of fifty men in a U-boat could be kept quiet; the loss of a capital ship with one thousand hands could not. Pride, face, and anger would have forced the Führer’s hand and moved his declaration forward from December to November, well ahead of Pearl Harbor.43
Whether the president personally had wanted such an incident as Greer/U-652 to occur so that the United States might throw itself more fully into the conflict on Britain’s side has long been conjectured and debated. If that was indeed his wish he could gain assurance from the Gallup Poll of 2 October which showed that 62 percent of the citizenry supported the “shoot on sight” stance. In Berlin the Nazi press railed against Roosevelt the “callous liar.” The Foreign Ministry condemned this latest charade of die amerikanische Short-of-War Politik. Admirals Raeder and Dönitz went to Hitler on 17 September. Dönitz proposed that if the United States was to be drawn into the war he wished to have ample warning so as to be able to station his forces off the American coast before war was officially declared. Hitler was not interested in such contingency plans, however, and, as though to say war with the United States was not contemplated, simply repeated his directive that all incidents with American ships were to be avoided.
A favorite tactic of Dönitz’s, originally suggested in 1917 by Kommodore Hermann Bauer, flag officer for U-Boats of the German High Seas Fleet in World War I, first tested in Atlantic exercises in Spring, 1939, and many times since proven successful in actual combat, was to mass U-boats in a patrol line across the known or suspected path of a transatlantic convoy. The Rudeltaktik, or wolf-pack technique, as the British called it, required both a high degree of coordination among the available boats and effective wireless (radio) communications. The first boat to sight a convoy signaled its position, course, and speed to BdU, Dönitz’s operations center at Kernével, then continued to shadow the convoy and report any changes. BdU radioed the information to all nearby boats and directed them into position for a concentrated night attack on the surface. In Dönitz’s system U-boats did almost all their fighting at night on the surface, in the manner of oceangoing torpedo boats, diving only to evade enemy ships and planes or bad weather. Submerged attacks by periscope were the exception rather than the rule: Electric motor power under water could provide speeds no higher than six to seven knots, hardly enough for the maneuvering required to obtain and maintain attack positions on moving convoys. Another advantage was that British underwater detection gear (ASDIC, later called sonar) was useless for picking up nonsubmerged targets.
Learning of these surface tactics usually comes as a surprise to Americans who are more familiar, through books and motion pictures, with the periscope operations of U.S. Navy submarines in the Pacific; though, in fact, most U.S. submarine attacks on Japanese convoys from 1942 forward similarly took place o
n the surface at night. U.S. popular misconceptions of U-boat tactics in World War II were well demonstrated in the 1943 Warner Brothers film, Action in the North Atlantic (starring Raymond Massey and Humphrey Bogart), which depicted wolf packs attacking Allied convoys from underwater. The same film portrayed U-boat crews operating in spit-and-polish uniforms (!). On the surface German U-boats could take advantage of the darkness, of their low silhouettes with decks awash—this was particularly true of the Type VIIC, workhorse of the convoy battles—and of their high speed (seventeen to eighteen knots) under diesel engine power: On the surface U-boats could outrun the Flower-class corvette, one of the most numerous British armed escort type. With all boats in place the wolf packs pounced suddenly and swiftly. The resulting torpedo onslaught coming from many directions invariably broke up a convoy’s disciplined columns and spread confusion among the escorts.
On the night of 15 October such a patrol line, or “rake,” of U-boats was arrayed at fifteen-mile intervals across the route of slow convoy SC 48, which, with forty-nine loaded merchant ships in eleven columns protected by only four corvettes and a destroyer, was moving east at seven knots about four hundred miles south of Iceland. On an agreed signal the wolf pack struck from ambush and sank four freighters. The escort commander appealed for help to Reykjavik. The U.S. Chief of Naval Operations Staff ordered Destroyer Escort Unit 4.1.4. to disperse Westbound Convoy ON 24, which it was accompanying, and to proceed at once to the assistance of SC 48. After making twenty-three-twenty-five knots on course 009 in heavy seas, the escort unit intercepted the stricken convoy and took up stations: destroyers Kearny, port flank; Plunkett (flagship), center ahead; Livermore, starboard bow; and Decatur, starboard flank. The fifth destroyer of the unit, the now-famous Greer, arrived late on station because of low fuel and heavy seas. A British and a Free French warship also answered the summons. The following night, 16-17 October, brought worse havoc, however, as the wolf pack stood on the surface in a bow-attack position outside the protective screen and fan-launched torpedoes into the long lines of ships, hitting and sinking six.
In the melee one of the Iceland-based destroyers, the barely year-old USS Kearny, was discovered by U-568 as a nearly motionless silhouette against the light of a fiercely burning freighter. Kptlt. Joachim Preuss decided that she was British, as he subsequently signaled Dönitz, and, even though the prohibition against attacking destroyers still stood, he put a torpedo into Kearny’s starboard side. The stricken but tough new Benson-class destroyer was able to make the fleet anchorage of Hvalfjordhur at Iceland under her own steam, escorted by Greer, but the casualty list was high: eleven seamen dead, twenty-four wounded. For the first time American blood joined the Atlantic war. Two other incidents followed hard on the heels of Kearny. A German bomber sank the U.S. freighter Steel Seafarer 220 miles south of Suez on 5 September, with no loss of life. And on 19 October the U.S. freighter Lehigh, steaming in ballast off West Africa with its name, “USA,” and two large American flags painted on each side of the hull, was sunk in daylight by U-/26 (Kptlt. Ernst Bauer). All thirty-nine crewmen were rescued. Reactions in Washington and Berlin were predictable.
That the U.S. Navy was now totally involved in the Battle of the Atlantic became clear in the last two days of October. On the thirtieth, while part of Westbound Convoy ON 28, the armed eight-thousand-ton fleet oiler USS Salinas took two torpedoes from V-J06 (Kptlt. Hermann Rasch). Quick and effective damage control prevented the ship from sinking, and Navy gunners on Number Four gun took the submerging U-boat under fire, though without known effect. Nearby destroyers drove the Germans off with depth charges. M-106 signaled Dönitz that he had sunk the tanker.44 Salinas would make port successfully, in Saint Johns, Newfoundland. Not so, however, USS Reuben James. At daybreak on the thirty-first this venerable “four-piper” was on escort duty with fast convoy HX 156 in the MOMP area about six hundred miles west of Ireland. Stationed some two thousand yards on the flank of the forty-four-ship formation, Reuben James was in process of turning to track a suspicious bearing on her direction finder when the warhead of a torpedo from U-552 (Kptlt. Erich Topp) blew open the port side near Number 1 stack. A second, more violent explosion followed directly, probably from ignition of the forward magazine, and produced such energy that the hull lifted from the water and the entire forward section blew off aft of the Number 3 Stack. The stern section remained afloat for about five minutes, then descended noisily beneath the surface. As it did so several on-board depth charges exploded killing a number of survivors who were clinging to rafts, life jackets, and balsa floats in the black oil and icy brine. Two nearby destroyers found alive only 45 of the ship’s company of 160. They looked, rescuers said, like “black shiny seals.” No officers survived. Reuben James was the first vessel of the U.S. Navy to be lost in World War II. Said U.S. Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Harold R. Stark: “Whether the country knows it or not we are at war.”45 Though the bereaved families mourned the loss of more than a hundred bluejackets, the nation at large, noting that no draftees were on the casualty list and that death at sea was a risk taken by every career Navy man, showed more interest in the forthcoming Army-Navy football game. As playwright and White House familiar Robert E. Sherwood put it, “There was a sort of tacit understanding among Americans that nobody was to get excited if ships were sunk by U-boats because that’s what got us into the war the other time.”46 One voice perhaps more sensitive to the human losses was that of balladeer Woody Guthrie, who sang:
Tell me what were their names?
Tell me what were their names?
Did you have a friend
On the good Reuben James?47
The following two months brought an unexpected lull in the Atlantic war. During November U-boats sank only fifteen ships, by far the lowest monthly total of the year. December’s total was identical, but it included two U.S. merchantmen, Astral and Sagadahoc.48 At Kernével a pained Admiral Dönitz entered his reasons for this decline in the BdU war diary: Over his strenuous objections Naval High Command had pulled increasing numbers of his boats out of the Atlantic battle line and placed them instead either in or just off the Mediterranean to attack British supply transports during the British winter offensive against General Erwin Rommel’s Afrika Korps. What was worse, during November-December a precious eight boats were sunk off Portugal and the Strait of Gibraltar and another three in the Mediterranean. OKM had assigned a few other boats to weather missions. Dönitz could understand the emergency in North Africa. By 7 December the British offensive “Crusader,” directed toward Tripoli, had Rommel reeling in his first retreat of the desert campaign. British support shipping had to be slowed (as it would be, starting at the turn of the year). Dönitz acknowledged that U-boats were required in the Mediterranean for political and strategic reasons, but by December the diversions to weather stations had thoroughly frustrated him.
“The decisive point of view, in my opinion,” he recorded, “isthat the U-boat is the only weapon with which we can conduct naval warfare against England on the offensive. If one considers the battle against Britain as decisive for the outcome of the war, then the U-boats must be given no tasks that divert them from the main theaters of this battle. The war in the Atlantic has been suspended for weeks now—the first objective must be to resume it with new forces as soon and as thoroughly as possible.”49 Lacking an air arm, BdU needed as many boats in the water as possible in order to discover the location of convoys. And then it needed as many torpedoes on location as possible if it was to have any chance at all to win the “tonnage war”—that is, to sink more ships than the enemy could build. Dönitz calculated that Germany would have to inflict a monthly loss of 700,000 GRT if England was to be brought to her knees. (Britain estimated that a 600,000-ton monthly loss would be enough to do her in. She relied on the Atlantic “bridge of ships” for much of her food, many of her finished weapons, most of her raw materials, and all of her oil.) If 1941 was any barometer of advance toward that goal, Dönitz had reason for conc
ern: In May the harvest was 421,440 GRT claimed (367,498 actual); in June 441,173 claimed (328,219 actual); in July 227,699 claimed (105,320 actual); in August 168,734 claimed (83,427 actual); in September 399,775 claimed (207,638 actual); in October 601,569 claimed (370,345 actual); and in November 85,811 claimed (68,549 actual).50 It was a tonnage contest that Germany was fated to lose, but at two critical junctures—the forthcoming massacre of shipping off the U.S. East Coast and the climactic battles between an enlarged Ubootwaffe and North Atlantic convoys in the spring of 1943—it was to be a near thing.
As for Adolf Hitler, the final provocation for which he had to summon forbearance was the U.S. war plan, Rainbow 5, or Navy War Plan 46, leaked by isolationist Senator Burton K. Wheeler of Montana to the like-minded Chicago Tribune, which gave it front-page play on 4 December beneath the largest headline typeface in Tribune history: FDR’S WAR PLANS! This plan had been drawn up by U.S. Army and Navy strategists as a joint contingency understanding based on a strategic concept first put forward by Admiral Stark in a “Plan Dog” memorandum of November 1940. British military leaders had accepted the plan in the following March under what was called ABC-I Staff Agreement. The most notable revelations in the war plan, several times revised as to particulars, were that: (1) the Atlantic and European battle areas were the decisive theaters; (2) Japan and the Pacific theater should be held in check as second priority; (3) Britain and Russia alone could not defeat Germany; and (4) a massive invasion of the European continent in 1943 (in fact, it was 1944) by U.S. and British troops would be required for victory. The fundamental soundness of Rainbow 5 would be borne out in time.
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