Ten days after the attack on Kearny, in a radio broadcast on Navy Day, FDR used this provocation to launch a rhetorical attack on Hitler and the Nazis. He reiterated that American goods would continue to be sent to help the Allies, and he reminded Americans of his order to the navy to ‘shoot on sight’. On 31 October the old destroyer USS Reuben James, escorting convoy HX156, was torpedoed and sunk by U 552: 115 sailors, including all her officers, were lost and only forty-four survived. In memory of those lost, folk singer Woody Guthrie composed his ballad, ‘The Sinking of the Reuben James’.
HMS TRINIDAD
A Fiji-class light cruiser displacing 10,450 tons, HMS Trinidad was laid down at Devonport in 1938, launched on 21 March 1940 and completed on 14 October 1941. She was armed with twelve 6in guns, eight 4in AA, two quadruple 2pdrs and two banks of triple 21in torpedo tubes. Her top speed was 32.25 knots.
On 23 March 1942 she sailed as part of the escort for convoy PQ13 bound for Murmansk, commanded by Captain Leslie Saunders, and flying the flag of Rear Admiral Bonham-Carter. At 0943 on the morning of 28 March, Trinidad’s radar picked up the approach of three large German destroyers, the Z 24, Z 25 and Z 26 which had sortied from their base in Norway to intercept the convoy. Trinidad turned to engage the enemy in poor visibility, and when Z 26 emerged from a snow squall the cruiser opened fire at the close range of under 4000yds (3660m), scoring several hits. She switched target to Z 24 which launched a spread of torpedoes, but Trinidad successfully avoided them all. She once more targeted the retreating Z 26, hitting her with several shells which knocked out the destroyer’s armament and set her on fire.
Trinidad now moved in to finish off her crippled opponent with a spread of three torpedoes from her port tubes. But two torpedoes failed to leave the iced-up tubes, and the third torpedo which did launch circled back on Trinidad and struck her on the port side below the bridge, blowing a hole 60ft by 20ft (18m × 6m) in the hull. The force of the explosion travelled across then ship and blew a second hole, 20ft by 10ft (6m × 3m), in the starboard side of the Marines’ mess deck. The forward boiler rooms were flooded, fuel oil caught fire, Trinidad temporarily lost power and for a while had to be taken in tow; thirty-two members of her crew were killed, including seventeen Marines in the transmitting station who were engulfed in a flood of oil. Captain Saunders is reported to have leant over the bridge wing as the torpedo raced towards Trinidad and said, ‘You know, that looks remarkably like one of ours!’
She limped into Murmansk on 30 March escorted by the destroyers Fury and Oribi. In April Trinidad was taken in hand at Murmansk for temporary repairs to allow her return home. The steel plates for the repairs were brought by the cruiser Edinburgh. On her return voyage, with her speed limited to 20 knots, she was caught by Luftwaffe aircraft on 14 May. While avoiding torpedoes, she was mortally damaged by four bombs dropped from a Ju-88, and was scuttled after her survivors had been taken off by escorts.
THE IOWA INCIDENT, 14 NOVEMBER 1943
A potentially catastrophic blue-on-blue was the launch of a live torpedo by the US Navy destroyer Willam D Porter aimed directly at the battleship USS Iowa, carrying US President Franklin D Roosevelt, Secretary of State Cordell Hull, and high-ranking military and naval personnel including Admiral King, Chief of Naval Operations. They were en route to meet Churchill at Cairo and then Stalin at the Teheran Conference.
Early on 14 November 1943 the Iowa and her destroyers were east of Bermuda, and it was decided to show the president how Iowa could defend herself against an air attack. Several weather balloons were launched to serve as targets, and more than a hundred AA guns opened fire. One of Iowa’s escorts was the new Fletcher-class destroyer USS William D Porter. In her brief career Porter had already begun to acquire a certain reputation for misadventure. Going astern from her moorings to begin the mission she had brushed the side of a sister-ship, carrying away the other’s boats and tackle. While en route to Bermuda the Porter had accidentally loosed a depth charge, causing general alarm. Now the jinxed ship was ready for the big one.
As her commander, Captain Walker, called his crew to action stations and gave the order to join in the firing at the aerial targets, her torpedo officer decided it would be a good opportunity to carry out a torpedo-firing exercise. Training the pentad mounts to port, he lined up the bulk of Iowa in his torpedo director sights. The battleship was just 6000yds away when he began to go through his ritual to space out the shots of a spread. He pressed the firing button on the bridge to simulate launching the torpedo from tube № 1. Calmly reciting the required phrase, ‘If I wasn’t a torpedo officer, I wouldn’t be here,’ he pressed the firing button for tube № 2. ‘If I wasn’t a torpedo officer, I wouldn’t be here,’ and he pressed the button for tube № 3. His ritual was interrupted by the unmistakable sound of a live torpedo being launched from the tube.
Up on the bridge Lieutenant Lewis turned to his captain and innocently asked if he had given the order to fire a torpedo. General panic broke out as the torpedo headed for the president’s ship. Porter’s signalman flashed out a warning by signal lamp, but inadvertently warned that the torpedo was heading in the opposite direction. He then sent a correction, but used the code sequence indicating that Porter herself was going full speed in reverse.
Finally, the captain authorised breaking radio silence and Porter’s radioman sent the message ‘Lion [the codename for Iowa], Lion, come right’. The Iowa’s radio operator was concerned at the breaking of radio silence and demanded the sender identify himself. Eventually, the message got through, and Iowa put on speed and turned to port, to comb the track of the fast-approaching torpedo. The increased wash of her propellers luckily caused the torpedo to explode harmlessly astern of her.
In the meantime, President Roosevelt, who had heard the announcement of an approaching torpedo, moved his wheelchair over to the bridge wing to observe what was happening. It is reported that his Secret Service bodyguard actually drew his pistol, ready to shoot at the warhead of the offending torpedo — shades of the French navy of the 1880s shooting at torpedoes with their repeater rifles.
When Iowa enquired who had launched the torpedo, Captain Walker weakly replied, ‘We did it.’ The Iowa accordingly trained her guns on the unfortunate Porter, which was suspected of being the instigator of an assassination attempt. The Porter was ordered to Bermuda, where the ship was surrounded by armed Marines while the official enquiry was conducted behind closed doors. This uncovered the fact that Lawton Dawson, the torpedo-man responsible for inserting the torpedo launching charges for action, and then removing them before a practice launch, had inadvertently left in place the charge for tube № 3. To try to cover up his mistake he had even thrown the fired case overboard, to no avail.