For My Parents, Who Believed
Naval Institute Press
291 Wood Road
Annapolis, MD 21402
© 1975 by the United States Naval Institute
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
First Naval Institute Press paperback edition published in 2016.
ISBN: 978-1-68247-183-8 (eBook)
Library of Congress Catalogue Card No. 74-31739
Unless otherwise indicated by a credit line, all photographs are official U.S. Navy.
(Permanence of Paper).
24 23 22 21 20 19 18 17 16 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
First printing
An ill-favoured thing, sir, but mine own.
Shakespeare, As You Like It
Before you judge this or that officer harshly . . . imagine yourself on the bridge of a little ship, in pitch black night, with the wind howling and spray drenching you continually, and in close proximity to a hundred other ships that you can feel but not see. Then imagine an emergency of some sort—a collision, a submarine attack, an engine breakdown—and decide whether you could make a quick and correct decision!
John W. Schmidt, U. S. Navy
Oh, they’ve got no time for glory in the Infantry ....
Frank Loesser, The Ballad of Rodger Young
Contents
PREFACE
PROLOGUE
The President Defines the Problem
PART I: EARLY DAYS IN THE ATLANTIC
1. Bending the Pencil
2. A Destroyer for Sadie Hawkins Day
3. A Mirror to War: Fleet Problem XX
4. Germany: Ships and Strategy
PART II: THE NEUTRALITY PATROL
5. The Long, Bad Days Ahead
6. A Blue Flag at Ivigtut
7. Ceremonies Appropriate to a Neutral Nation
8. The German Response
9. A Passage to India
10. Plan Dog: Admiral Stark and the “Germany First” Decision
11. A Memento of a Ghostly Chase
PART III: THE ATLANTIC FLEET
12. Gentlemen from the Pacific
13. An Order with No Teeth
14. The Germans: Reckoning with Mahan
15. Bread and Butter for Ernie King
16. When the “Nazis” Invaded the New World
17. The First Shot: the Niblack Incident
18. A Certain Cold Place
19. A Goodly Company
20. New Man on an Old Ship: The Greer Incident
21. Buck Fever
PART IV: WAR
22. Admiral Bristol Runs the Milk
23. Sailors off the Kearny
24. “Old Sal” at the Windy Corner
25. “Did You Have a Friend on the Good Reuben James?
26. The Halifax Express
27. Turpentine and Red Roses: Sun-Tanned Atlantic Sailors
28. Air Raid Pearl Harbor
PART V: THE LAST CONVOYS
29. The Winter War
30. “Skipper, She Was Close Enough to Throw Spuds At!”
31. Saying Good-Bye to It All
32. A Cold, Black Shore
33. Phoenix
ABBREVIATIONS
NOTES
BIBLIOGRAPHY
INDEX
General
U.S. Naval Personnel
U.S. Ships
CURIOSITY IS THE BEST PROD OF RESEARCH, and this book has its origins in curiosity. As student and historian, I have long had an interest in strategic studies and the study of battle; and when reading the history of World War II, I sometimes came upon brief, cryptic, tantalizing references to American combat operations at sea months before the Japanese attack at Pearl Harbor. For the U.S. Navy was at war in the Atlantic long before 7 December 1941: the first American warship to sustain damage and loss of life in battle in World War II was the destroyer USS Kearny, torpedoed in the North Atlantic more than seven weeks before Pearl Harbor; the first American warship sunk in combat in World War II was the destroyer USS Reuben James, torpedoed in the North Atlantic more than five weeks before Pearl Harbor. Surely such combat reflected wider operations, and suggested an undeclared naval war in the Atlantic. What were those operations? What exactly was the U.S. Navy’s role in the Battle of the Atlantic prior to American entry into the war? To what extent was the Navy escorting Allied convoys? Were there many contacts and battles with German U-boats? Were there many casualties? Were there morale problems, as there often are in limited, undeclared wars? What were the problems, hardships, and lessons of early naval operations in the Atlantic? Numerous tactical questions suggested themselves.
