In the White House at 2130 on 29 December 1940, an audience of 20 sits expectantly on wobbly, gilt wooden chairs before a desk drilled with holes for the wires of seven microphones. On the desk are two sharpened pencils, a blank notepad, two glasses of water, and an open pack of Camels. Among the invited guests are matinee idol Clark Gable with his wife, blonde Carole Lombard. She wears a “simple black afternoon dress” and a funnel-shaped black hat and veil. Cordell Hull, the 69-year-old Secretary of State, fingers his pince-nez ribbon. Print and broadcast reporters smoke casually. And in the first row, dressed in a gray-blue evening gown, Sara Roosevelt awaits her son, Franklin D. Roosevelt, the 32nd President of the United States.
All over the country, unnecessary activity comes to a halt as millions of families gather around their bulky, polished-wood Philco, RCA, and Emerson radio consoles. Five minutes before the broadcast, attired in a dark blue serge suit and black bow tie, the President glides into the oval Diplomatic Reception Room on the rubber tires of a small wheelchair, amiably greets guests, and clears his throat. Ready to deliver one of the most important speeches in his political career and in the lives of 132 million fellow citizens, FDR begins his 16th fireside chat, entitled “On National Security.”
“Never before . . . has our American civilization been in such danger as now,” he says in the familiar rolling resonance. “By an agreement signed in Berlin, three powerful nations, two in Europe and one in Asia, joined themselves together . . . that if the United States of America interfered with or blocked the expansion program of these three nations—a program aimed at world control—they would unite in ultimate action against the United States.”
“And why,” he asks like a schoolteacher, “does the European war concern the United States?” He answers his own rhetorical question with the following grim prospect:
If Great Britain goes down, all of us in the Americas would be living at the point of a gun. There are those who say that the Axis powers have no desire to attack the Western Hemisphere. That is the same sort of wishful thinking which has destroyed the powers of resistance of so many conquered peoples . . . the vast resources and wealth of this American Hemisphere constitute the most tempting loot in all of the round world.
Wiping his broad forehead with a handkerchief, the fire crackling in the white marble fireplace in front to his right, Roosevelt finishes the 37-minute talk with a ringing plea to arm faster, to build more airplanes and ships. “We must be the great arsenal of democracy.” FDR’s call to arms has unwaveringly committed the United States to save Britain from defeat, no matter the cost and regardless of the risk.
‘The Threshold for War Has Been Set’
Thus, on 1 February 1941, the Atlantic Squadron, the U.S. Navy’s Atlantic neutrality patrol, received a new name: the Atlantic Fleet. And hence, it was soon to have a new offensive mission. Appointed by the President to head the fleet was 63-year-old 1901 U.S. Naval Academy graduate Admiral Ernest J. King. The hard-driven, hot- tempered admiral, an avowed Anglophobe, was staunchly opposed to the “Germany first” policy, a November 1940 executive decision making Germany the principal opposition. Blends of rumor and fact clung to the salty Commander-in-Chief Atlantic Fleet like wet snow to a windshield. He was profane, arrogant, humorless—no one remembers his ever smiling—and reputedly a serial womanizer and known hard drinker. His own daughter said: “He is the most even-tempered man in the Navy; he’s always in a rage.” In liberty bars from East Main Street in Norfolk to drafty cabins in barren Newfoundland, fleet sailors spun legends that increased with each shot thrown back. With as much awe as hyperbole, they avowed the admiral did not think he was God, but God thought he was Admiral King. “He shaves with a blowtorch,” said an admiring President.
On learning of his appointment, King characteristically had the last word about himself: “When they get into trouble they send for the sons of bitches.” FDR had picked a sailor’s sailor—and the U.S. military’s premier strategist— to wage the coming undeclared war on the high seas.
On 11 March, Congress passed Lend-Lease, ending the fiction of U.S. neutrality in the war. Military and economic aid streamed to Britain and other nations fighting the Axis. But the British war effort at sea was in crisis. In April, pushing ever westward from five new, impregnable bunker bases in France, their numbers rising monthly, U-boats sank 195 Allied freighters carrying 700,000 tons of crucial war materiel. The Allied sighting of even one German surface raider in the North Atlantic would enormously alter convoy routing, time in transit, and escort requirements.
On 4 April, Chief of Naval Operations (CNO) Admiral H. R. Stark wrote to the President: “The situation is obviously critical in the Atlantic. In my opinion it is hopeless except as we take strong measures to save it.” Three days later, major elements of the Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor and San Diego were ordered to new Atlantic home- ports. Their hull numbers painted over and the ships darkened at night, in April, May, and June, 25% of the Pacific Fleet transited the Panama Canal. The carrier Yorktown (CV-5) joined Battleship Division 3’s New Mexico (BB-40), Mississippi (BB-41), and Idaho (BB-42). Cruiser Division 8’s light cruisers Brooklyn (CL-40), Philadelphia (CL-41), Savannah (CL-42), and Nashville (CL-43), along with two destroyer squadrons, also steamed from blue to steel-gray waters.
A few staff officers at the office of the CNO (OpNav) in Washington and at Pearl Harbor fleet headquarters grumbled that dividing the Navy’s fighting ships at a time of growing Far East tensions could embolden Japan. But the 27 March 1941 ABC-1 Staff Agreement, a use-of-forces understanding between Britain and the United States, recommended otherwise. Echoing conclusions reached by President Roosevelt and his service chiefs in November 1940, the staff affirmed the most dangerous threat to be from Germany, and its defeat was to come first.
Implementing FDR’s promise to give British Prime Minister Winston Churchill “all aid short of war,” on 18 April Admiral King issued Operation Plan 3-41. The warships of any belligerent—except for powers having West Indian possessions—coming within 25 miles of a vastly expanded Western Hemisphere were to be considered trespassers and dealt with as pirates. “Entrance into the Western Hemisphere by naval ships or aircraft of belligerents ... is to be viewed as possibly actuated by an unfriendly interest toward shipping or territory in the Western Hemisphere.”
In this daring redrawing or “bending” of the Western Hemisphere’s accepted lines of demarcation, the meridians covered enormous ocean areas. They extended west to the International Date Line beyond Iceland, including Greenland, the Azores, the Gulf of St. Lawrence, and all of the Caribbean Sea and Gulf of Mexico. The West Indian powers allowed access to their possessions. The already defeated France and the vestiges of its fleet and British and Dutch warships continued to enjoy unimpeded passage to their holdings, or to U.S. ports or shipyards for replenishment or repair. By warning that Axis incursions into Allied waters represented an act of war, OpPlan 3-41 placed the Atlantic Fleet directly in the path of opportunistic German and Italian surface raiders and U-boats.
Admiral King’s fleet was to implement much more than a standard defensive doctrine. He underlined the operative words in OpPlan 3-41: “If any such naval vessels or aircraft are encountered within twenty-five miles of Western Hemisphere territory, except the Azores, warn them to move twenty-five miles from such territory and, in case of failure to heed such warning, attack them.”
The threshold for war had been set. Needing only targets to come within U.S. Navy gun sights, the U.S. entry into World War II could begin as much by intention in the Atlantic as by surprise eight months later in the Pacific. As confirmed by declassified operational orders, throughout 1941 the U.S. Navy set the bar ever lower for all-out war at sea with Germany.
'Dollars Will Not Buy Yesterday'
On 21 May in the South Atlantic, the German submarine U-69 sank the U.S. freighter Robin Moor. Bound from New York to Capetown with general cargo, 8 passengers, and a crew of 35, the little tramp steamer had neither contraband nor intentions to stop in a war zone. But with no loss of life, her sinking lacked sufficient provocation to be the casus belli.
Nearly a week later, on 27 May, the same day the Royal Navy sank the feared German super-battleship Bismarck, the President declared an “unlimited national emergency.” The Bismarck's one and only failed foray toward the North Atlantic shipping lanes heralded a new wave of surface raider and U-boat attacks.
The battleship’s breakout attempt shuddered deep into Admiral King’s compact but cluttered domain on the third deck at Main Navy (Navy Department headquarters on Constitution Avenue in Washington, DC). The U.S. Navy had no modern capital ships capable of surviving salvoes from the eight 15-inch guns of the Tirpitz, the Bismarck’s 30-knot near-sister.
At a time when battleships were the final authorities in the exercise of sea power, the 21-knot, 18-year-old West Virginia (BB-48), a ponderous product of Warren Harding’s administration, had the dubious distinction of being the newest U.S. dreadnought. On the eve of war, most of the Navy’s battleships first sailed little more than a decade after the Wright Brothers first flew at Kitty Hawk. And only a few barely achieved 21 knots. The first of the 35,000-ton new battleships, North Carolina (BB-55) and Washington (BB-56), had yet to finish shakedown trials. The “Two- Ocean Navy” was at least two years in the future.
As they evaluated an impressive list of German raider successes, anxiety rising like a springtime river, OpNav strategists readied for the next Axis sortie. The previous fall, the pocket battleship Admiral Scheer sank 17 merchantmen in a five-month cruise extending deep into the South Atlantic and Indian Ocean. In December 1940, the heavy cruiser Admiral Hipper slipped unobserved through the Denmark Strait into the North Atlantic. On Christmas Day, encountering three British cruisers and two aircraft carriers escorting a 20-ship troop convoy, the Admiral Hipper damaged HMS Berwick and three transports before withdrawing untouched to Brest for engine repairs.
In a further taunt to the British Home Fleet, the Admiral Hipper struck again a few weeks later. In early February in the North Atlantic, she trapped an unescorted convoy, sinking or damaging ten merchant ships before returning unscathed to Brest. Then, cruising together in February and March 1941, the battle cruisers Scharnhorst and Gneisenau disrupted an entire convoy cycle by sinking 16 ships. Pursuing from Brest and Wilhelmshaven, or from Baltic ports and Norwegian fjords, the Tirpitz, Gneisenau, Prinz Eugen, Admiral Scheer, Koln, and Nürnberg could out- race, or so OpNav believed, any Allied adversary they were not able to outgun. A further test for Admiral King’s planners, and representing an entirely different strategic threat if true, were persistent reports of one or two German aircraft carriers nearing completion.
With the severing of the essential convoy system linking North America with embattled Britain, the officially noncombatant U.S. Navy confronted a bleak assessment of its capabilities. In 1941, the mightiest fleet the world had yet to see navigated only design offices and shipyards. The Bureau of Ships overflowed with plans for new types of auxiliary ships, submarines, destroyers, cruisers, aircraft carriers, and battleships. Construction quickened on faster ships with new main propulsion systems and greatly improved range. Laboratories were testing new guns and improved gunpowder, mines, torpedoes, radar and sonar. But the battle-line to be could not change the melancholy fact that on 1 September 1939, the day World War II began, the Atlantic Squadron had no fleet auxiliaries, and the entire U.S. Navy had in commission only two ammunition ships and two troop transports. After appraising his slender assets with the nascent Navy of the future, Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Stark said it concisely: “Dollars will not buy yesterday.”
As the United States rearmed and the Navy rebuilt, in mid-1941 the Atlantic Fleet went on a war footing. Ships’ flammables were removed, ammunition lockers topped-off, and the fleet received full wartime crew complements. Reserves were summoned. One of them, the President’s middle son, Ensign Franklin D. Roosevelt Jr., was billeted to the destroyer Mayrant (DD-402). Three aircraft carriers now patrolled the Atlantic. The Naval Academy graduated its 1941 class in January instead of June. Thousands of recruits swarmed boot camps in Newport, Norfolk, Great Lakes, and San Diego. Only a month after the Bismarck’s sinking, the U-203, seeking a favorable bow angle, chased a zigzagging and unaware battleship Texas (BB-35) for 140 miles between Newfoundland and Greenland. A furious Adolf Hitler ordered Admiral Erich Raeder to rein in U-boat commandant Karl Donitz and his impatient young captains. War seemed inevitable; it would come, however, on Hitler’s and not Roosevelt’s timetable. But as the standoff escalated, how could U-boat skippers continue to discern, even with silhouette identification, which ships belonged to whose navy?
‘Eliminate the Threat of Attack’
By early summer, German and U.S. naval forces were poised like title contenders jabbing in the middle rounds. In each corner, basing their moves on the other’s assumed intentions, the fighters received cautious orders. Test, irritate, provoke, thrust here and there, even deliver a few uppercuts if opportunity presents. Above all, learn quickly. But no knockout punch—at least not yet.
In early July, six months after the President’s “arsenal of democracy” speech, it was time to ratchet up the standoff at sea. FDR wrote to Admiral Stark:
It is necessary under the conditions of modern warfare to recognize that the words “threat of attack” may extend reasonably long distances away from a convoyed ship or ships. It thus seems clear that the very presence of a German submarine or raider on or near the line of communications constitutes “threat of attack.” Therefore, the presence of any German submarine or raider should be dealt with by action looking to the elimination of such “threat of attack” on the lines of communication, or close to it.
The President’s syntax may have been muddy, but not his intent. The Atlantic Fleet converted from defensive to offensive operations.
On 1 September, in Operation Plan 7-41, Admiral King set down in upper case his interpretation of the President’s letter to Admiral Stark. Stamped SECRET, the analysis went to ten Navy task forces and four patrols—Northern, Gulf, Caribbean, and Panama.
MY INTERPRETATION OF THREAT TO UNITED STATES OR ICELAND FLAG SHIPPING WHETHER ESCORTED OR NOT, IS THAT THREAT EXISTS WHEN:
1) POTENTIALLY HOSTILE VESSELS ARE ACTUALLY WITHIN SIGHT OR SOUND CONTACT OF SUCH SHIPPING OR ITS ESCORT.
2) POTENTIALLY HOSTILE SURFACE RAIDERS APPROACH WITHIN 100 MILES OF SUCH SHIPPING, ALONG THE SEA LANES BETWEEN NORTH AMERICA AND ICELAND.
3) POTENTIALLY HOSTILE SURFACE RAIDERS OR SUBMARINES EITHER APPROACH WITHIN 100 MILES OF SUCH SHIPPING TRAVERSING ROUTES DEFINED IN PARAGRAPH 3 (W) (5) BELOW, OR ENTER THE PROCLAIMED NEUTRALITY ZONE.
4) ANY POTENTIALLY HOSTILE FORCES APPROACH TO WITHIN FIFTY MILES OF ICELAND.
The OpPlan has an unconditional order to U.S. Navy ships encountering Axis vessels: “DESTROY HOSTILE FORCES THAT THREATEN SHIPPING NAMED IN (B) [2] AND (C) [3] ABOVE.”
Four days later came the “incident” long sought by the President and the Navy. Two hundred miles southwest of Reykjavik, the old four-piper destroyer Greer (DD-145) barely escaped a torpedo fired from the U-552, and then attacked the submarine unsuccessfully with depth charges. The next day on radio a determined President spoke directly to Nazi Germany: “You shall go no further. ... If German or Italian vessels of war enter the waters . . . necessary for American defense, they do so at their own peril.” The New York Daily News said it with a bold headline: “Shoot, FDR Tells Navy.”
‘Whether the Country Knows It or Not, We Are at War’
On 10 September, Admiral King ordered the Atlantic Fleet to escort convoys all the way from Halifax, Nova Scotia, to Britain. The Navy had the entire North Atlantic for its expanded offensive operations. Anticipating the combat to come, Admiral Stark wrote to the President: “Whatever we do I am anxious that our first real shooting contact with the enemy be successful. Particularly would I like to get Tirpitz if opportunity comes our way. Early victory would breed confidence and be a wonderful stimulant.”
On 22 September, further lowering the dynamic flashpoint set in his 1 September OpPlan 7-41, Admiral King’s revised OpPlan 7B-41 had blunt orders for the Atlantic Fleet:
Meeting with a German or Italian Vessel The vessel may not be stopped and boarded. If there is conclusive evidence that she is a combatant naval vessel, either merchant type raider or a regular naval vessel, she shall be destroyed. Operate as under war conditions, including complete darkening of ships when at sea East of longitude 60 degrees West.
The steady move to unrestricted war at sea barely affected the legal and political obstructions confronting FDR at home. By limiting both his actions and obligations as Commander-in-Chief, the Neutrality Act’s draconian requirements annoyed Roosevelt even more than the Hearst newspapers and The Chicago Tribune’s anti-administration editorials. Ever the deft politician, FDR carefully weighed public support as measured by the new polling techniques of George Gallup and Elmo Roper. The polls revealed wide variations in public opinion. Some said that up to 80% wanted no U.S. involvement in the European war. Others supported intervention or favored increased aid to Britain. Roosevelt never wavered. To prevent or at least delay a British collapse while the United States frantically rearmed, the Neutrality Act had to be circumvented. To keep the 3,000-mile sea highway open, the U.S. Navy needed to enlarge even more its still secret but thus far unreciprocated war in the North Atlantic. It would not be unanswered for long.
On 15 October, the new $5 million destroyer Kearny (DD-432) took two torpedoes from the U-56, limping into port in Iceland with 11 dead, the first U.S. casualties of the war. “Whether the country knows it or not,” Admiral Stark said, “we are at war.” The country was beginning to know it; Gallup registered 65% approval for U.S. intervention.
Two weeks later in mid-ocean, Rear Admiral H. K. Hewitt’s Task Group 14.3 met nine rusty and tired British troopships in Convoy WS12X. Carrying 20,000 seasick British troops, the convoy had orders for the Middle East via Halifax. Evading the Neutrality Act, an 18-ship U.S. Navy task force with six troop transports, had orders to take the troops from Halifax to the Persian Gulf. But after 7 December, their orders changed. For more than 7,000 Tommies on the three remaining U.S. troop ships, it was a one-way trip to Singapore in its last, dying days. (See the author’s “Secret Mission to Singapore,” U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings, July 2002, pp. 70-74)
All neutrality uncertainties vanished with the mission to protect Convoy WS12X. On 23 October, Admiral Hewitt’s Operation Plan 14-3-A was dropped by scout plane to the carrier Yorktown, battleship New Mexico, light cruisers Philadelphia and Savannah, and the eight destroyers in Destroyer Squadron Two. Underscoring the operative words, his orders almost leapt from the page.
The task of this Group is to safeguard the convoy. The three general Courses of Action for accomplishing this Task are: (1) to destroy, (2) to repel, and (3) to cripple threatening raiders. The Group Commander desires and requires that his subordinate unit commanders and captains exercise to the fullest the initiative of the subordinate. In the absence of detailed instructions in a situation requiring immediate action, act promptly and energetically in the manner best to contribute to the accomplishment of the Group’s Task, coordinating with and supporting the other components of this Group. Whether “destroying,” “repelling,” or “crippling,” retain and exercise the “offensive spirit.” Be alert and beat the enemy “to the draw.”
In “Annex B to COMTASKGRP 14.3,” Admiral Hewitt anticipated battle scenarios if specific German capital ships were encountered. Named are the Koln, Prinz Eugen, Admiral Scheer, Scharnhorst, Gneisenau, Graf Zeppelin, and Tirpitz.
Tirpitz: CONVOY turns away and evades. Should the ocean escort be overcome and there be danger of attack by strong raiders, scatter upon signal of the senior commander in the vicinity. OCEAN ESCORT: With nearest four destroyers interpose between Convoy and Tirpitz- Avoid close action until Tirpitz is crippled by bombs, torpedoes or extreme range gunfire, or until Convoy is endangered by Tirpitz gunfire, whereupon close and inflict maximum damage.
The soon-to-be-legendary Yorktown also had a mission.
Carrier: Keep clear of Tirpitz. Aircraft attack with torpedoes and bombs to effect speed reduction and to assist in destruction. Should Zeppelin be in company, aircraft attack both carrier and battleship, selecting as the primary objective the one which presents the greater threat to convoy.
Low-visibility contacts merited Admiral Hewitt’s special regard:
[A]ttack immediately with all weapons, closing to point blank ranges, while Convoy and Carrier get clear. This would be a “Captain’s battle,” where the task of each Captain is to get maximum numbers of shells and torpedoes into the enemy as quickly as possible.
Epilogue
For the eager pre-war, pre-Pearl Harbor U.S. Navy, there was no history-changing “Captain’s battle,” or any fleet actions against Axis ships in the Atlantic before or during World War II. In 1939, Hitler began a sea war without a viable navy. Germany had only 3 “pocket” battleships, 8 cruisers, 17 destroyers, and 57 U-boats at the start, against a combined British and French fleet totaling 22 battleships, 83 cruisers, and scores of destroyers and submarines. The German “Z Plan”—the mostly blueprints and blue-sky proposal to build a massive, world-dominating navy by 1947— failed of its own impossibility. Far exceeding the combined naval forces of all nations, the U.S. “Two-Ocean Navy” would dominate the seas into the next century. Only the U-boat forces made it a real battle at sea.
As for the mysterious Zeppelin mentioned in Admiral Hewitt’s “Annex B” orders, the aircraft carrier Graf Zeppelin— one of two the Germans intended—never reached completion, although a galley and many fittings had been installed. Surviving the war at anchor, she was then towed to the Soviet Union to become a target for new weapons.
Conspiracy theorists may sense opportunity by linking the U.S. Navy’s aggressive prewar posture with the long-running revisionist intrigues connecting President Roosevelt with the Pearl Harbor attack.
In 1941, Britain hovered over the abyss of defeat. It required active U.S. Navy belligerence to prevent its surrender; FDR had no regrets. A major high-seas “incident” could be the tipping point for war, but FDR preferred provocation to active belligerence. The former Assistant Secretary of the Navy would never have sacrificed his beloved fleet on the high altar of war expedience in the Pacific. It was the Navy that may have been ahead of the President’s caution.
But would premature war with Germany have prevented the disaster at Pearl Harbor? Consider a fall 1941 Atlantic engagement between the 30-knot, 54,000-ton highly advanced Tirpitz and the Norfolk-based, 21-knot, 32,000-ton USS New Mexico, commissioned six months before the end of World War I. The unequal contest could have resulted in many U.S. casualties. Echoing the outcome of the 1898 USS Maine sinking, a declaration of war against Germany could have linked Japan with its Axis brethren, thereby precluding the Pearl Harbor attack.
But try as it did repeatedly, the U.S. Navy could neither manufacture a pretext not discover an opportunity to “eliminate the threat of attack” in the Atlantic, thus forestalling that date of infamy in the Pacific.