×
Home Intro People Events Equipment Places Maps Books Photos Videos Other Reference FAQ About
     

World War II Database

Neutrality Patrol file photo [26610]

United States Neutrality Patrol

5 Sep 1939 - 11 Dec 1941

Contributor:

ww2dbaseThe first week of September 1939 saw Germany's invasion of Poland that was quickly followed by Britain and France's declaration of war with Germany. It appeared the conflict would widen across Europe in a very similar manner to the opening stages of the First World War. Once again, Britain, France, and their allies would undoubtedly depend on the United States for materiel support which could only get to them by crossing the Atlantic. As they had in World War I, Germany would surely try to stop those shipments, probably by U-boat and surface raider attacks. All indications were that the Atlantic would again be a significant battleground. This scenario would certainly jeopardize the neutrality of the United States, and President Franklin Roosevelt directed the Navy to take quick steps to minimize the threat.

ww2dbaseThe United States established Neutrality Zones that included the whole Gulf of Mexico, the entire Caribbean Sea, and extended 200 to 300 miles into the Atlantic from North American and South American shores. Then almost in the same breath, the United States declared its intention to patrol well beyond the boundaries of these Neutrality Zones in order to properly monitor the approach of any belligerent shipping. And that is what they did. Aviation squadrons were mobilized and repositioned. Battleship, cruiser, and destroyer screens were established and plans were made to recommission older destroyers for these patrols.

ww2dbaseThe Neutrality Patrols were just one component of Roosevelt's overall intention to support Britain as much as he possibly could while still maintaining (or at least claiming) America's global neutrality. The other components of this effort included the Destroyers for Bases Agreement, an early form of Lend-Lease, and robust "trading" with Britain. The "trade" with Britain meant many ships crossing the Atlantic while the ocean was actively prowled by German submarines. It fell to the Navy's Neutrality Patrol to safeguard these American business interests on the high seas and so by the spring of 1941, a practice was developing that was beginning to look a lot like armed convoy escorts. To go along with that, by 1941 the Atlantic Neutrality Zone was extended eastward to include 75% of the ocean's width and southward nearly to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. In many of Roosevelt's memoranda and many of the Navy's orders, the zone was referred to as "the western hemisphere."

ww2dbaseIn May 1941, the German battleship Bismarck engaged British Royal Navy warships HMS Hood and HMS Prince of Wales in the Denmark Strait and then disappeared. Surface ships of United States Navy Task Force 2 and American long range patrol aircraft then began a special effort to locate and shadow the Bismarck. In a way, it was fortunate for the United States that the reports from these sweeps all reported in the negative since to provide Britain with information of an actual sighting during what was arguably a running battle on the far side of the Atlantic would have been hard to explain away as neutral shipping observations. What's more, the ships of Task Force 2 (Wasp, Quincy, Livermore, and Kearny) were given secret orders that, if Bismarck were to be sighted, they were to engage and sink her. During the critical air search, an American plane did not spot Bismarck but a US Navy pilot did. Ensign Leonard B. Smith flying as pilot/advisor in a PBY Catalina of the British Coastal Command was first to spot the German battleship. Two other American "advisors" flying British PBYs helped track Bismarck the rest of that day. This sighting allowed British capital ships to converge on the Bismarck before she could reach the French coast.

ww2dbaseIt was only a matter of time before US destroyers escorting convoys through combat zones found themselves in the thick of the shooting war. By the fall of 1941, US escorts from Newfoundland to Iceland were fully implemented and US Navy ships were dropping depth charges on sound contacts on a fairly routine basis, but usually with unknown results. On 4 Sep 1941, USS Greer and U-652 engaged one another without causing any harm to the other in what would become a highly politicized encounter. One week later, based on the Greer-incident, President Roosevelt issued a declaration that Axis ships entering the neutrality zone did so at their own peril and he ordered the US Navy to attack any vessel threatening ships under American escort. This became known as Roosevelt's "shoot-on-sight" order. On 17 Oct 1941, a U-Boat wolfpack attacked a convoy escorted by Canadian corvettes southwest of Iceland and US destroyers came to their assistance. The U-568 fired a torpedo that struck USS Kearny amidships, killing 11 men and injuring 22. Kearny remained afloat and was able to make it to Reykjavík, Iceland under her own power. Then on 31 Oct 1941, U-552 torpedoed and sank the destroyer USS Reuben James, making Reuben James the first United States ship sunk by hostile actions in the European theater in World War II. 116 officers and men were killed. In both the Kearny and Reuben James cases, the American ships dropped depth charges before the Germans fired their torpedoes. In the Greer-incident, the question of who fired first was disputed by both sides and the truth of it has been lost in the ensuing politics.

ww2dbaseThe Neutrality Patrols continued through 1941 but were rendered moot by Germany's declaration of war on the United States on 11 Dec 1941. As part of Germany's justification for declaring war, they made specific mention of the Greer, Kearny, and Reuben James incidents, describing them as flagrant violations of any supposed neutrality.

ww2dbaseThe Neutrality Patrols were controversial at the time and remain controversial still. Roosevelt's own Secretary of War, Henry Stimson, believed the patrols were belligerent acts and he advocated Roosevelt to openly say so. Between one another, Stimson and Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox agreed that the President's reasoning in justifying the Neutrality Patrol was "tortured." Immediately following the end of the war, historians were denied access to US records relating to the Neutrality Patrols because, it was felt, they would damage America's position in what was by then a Cold War world. Years later, in 1999, faculty at the University of Virginia School of Law made a legal analysis of President's Roosevelt's "Role in Coaxing the U.S. into WWII" as part of an online case study of international law.

ww2dbaseSources:
Brian F. Hussey Jr.; "The Neutrality Patrol"; US Naval Academy, 13 May 1991
William E. Scarborough; "US Neutrality Patrol, Parts I & II"; Naval Aviation News, 1990
Peter Sharp; "The Departure from Isolationism"; University of Virginia, 1999
Jerome O'Connor; "FDR's Undeclared War"; Naval History magazine (U.S. Naval Institute), 1 Feb 2004
Sixtant: World War II in the South Atlantic
Wikipedia

Last Major Update: Oct 2016

United States Neutrality Patrol Interactive Map

Photographs

Neutrality Patrol political cartoon by Leslie Gilbert Illingworth that appeared in the Daily Mail (UK) in Mar 1941.PBY-5 Catalina patrol plane of Patrol Squadron VP-5 at Norfolk, Virginia, United States, Mar 1941. Note the National Insignia on the nose which at this time were only put on the sides of planes in the Neutrality Patrols
See all 7 photographs of United States Neutrality Patrol

Maps

Map showing the final boundaries of the United States Atlantic Neutrality Zone that became effective 27 May 1941.

United States Neutrality Patrol Timeline

5 Sep 1939 President Franklin Roosevelt issued two Neutrality Proclamations. Roosevelt also ordered the Navy to perform a neutrality patrol to track any belligerent naval force approaching the US's Atlantic coast or the West Indies.
6 Sep 1939 US Navy's Neutrality Patrol for Atlantic Ocean was formed under Rear Admiral A. W. Johnson, Commander Atlantic Squadron.
8 Sep 1939 US President Franklin Roosevelt declared a limited state of emergency. One of his orders of the day was to increase the US Marine Corps enlisted strength to be increased from 18,325 to 25,000, partially to be achieved by authorizing the recall of officers and men from the Marine Corps retired lists.
14 Sep 1939 Aircraft carrier USS Ranger and battleships USS New York and Texas are designated as a striking force held in reserve at Hampton Roads, Virginia in support of destroyers and Coast Guard cutters on Neutrality Patrols in the Atlantic.
17 May 1940 US President Franklin Roosevelt announced the plans for recommissioning 35 additional flush deck destroyers to meet the requirements of fleet expansion and the Neutrality Patrol.
22 Jul 1940 Captain Walden Ainsworth was appointed Commander, Destroyer Squadron Two operating as part of the Atlantic Neutrality Patrols.
9 May 1941 Task Group 1, comprised of aircraft carrier USS Ranger, heavy cruiser USS Vincennes, and destroyers USS Sampson and Eberle, sailed from Bermuda on a 4,675-mile Neutrality Patrol in the Atlantic.
23 May 1941 USS Ranger, USS Vincennes, and their task group returned to Bermuda and conclude their two-week Neutrality Patrol.
29 May 1941 US Navy extended its boundaries of Neutrality Patrol to North and South Atlantic. On the same day, a joint US Army-US Navy plan was drafted to occupy the Portuguese Azores islands with 14,000 Marines and 14,000 troops; the proposed commanding officer was US Marine Corps Major General Holland M. Smith.
29 May 1941 Task Group 3, comprised of aircraft carrier USS Ranger, heavy cruiser USS Tuscaloosa, and destroyers USS McDougal and Eberle, sailed from Bermuda on a 4,355-mile Neutrality Patrol in the Atlantic.
8 Jun 1941 USS Ranger, USS Tuscaloosa, and their task group returned to Bermuda and conclude their ten-day Neutrality Patrol.
28 Aug 1941 Cruiser USS Nashville, prototype escort carrier USS Long Island, and destroyers Livermore and Kearny departed Bermuda as part of the United States Neutrality Patrols in the Atlantic and was also the first American use of an escort carrier in an anti-submarine role.
4 Sep 1941 American destroyer Greer pursued German submarine U-652 for 2 hours 190 miles southwest of Iceland; the two ships attacked each other but no damage was inflicted on either side. The torpedoes fired at USS Greer represented the first German attack on a US warship.
16 Sep 1941 5 PBM Mariner aircraft and 1 PBY Catalina aircraft received radar to help these American aircraft conduct their neutrality patrols.
17 Sep 1941 British eastbound trans-Atlantic convoys were escorted by the United States Navy for the first time.
17 Oct 1941 American destroyer USS Kearny, escorting Allied convoy SC-48, was damaged by a torpedo from German submarine U-568 off Iceland, killing 11. On the same day, U-432 and U-558 each sank three freighters in this convoy.
31 Oct 1941 German submarine U-552 attacked Allied convoy HX-156 725 miles west of Iceland at 0834 hours, sinking American destroyer USS Reuben James (100 killed, 45 survived); USS Reuben James was the first American warship lost in the Atlantic Ocean in WW2.
6 Nov 1941 Captain Theodore E. Chandler commanding cruiser USS Omaha seized German blockade runner Odenwald in the South Atlantic on her way to Germany from Japan with 3,857 metric tons of raw rubber.
10 Nov 1941 USS Ranger served as flagship of a convoy escort group that departed Halifax, Nova Scotia bound for Great Britain.
8 Dec 1941 USS Ranger completed her final Atlantic Neutrality Patrol when she arrived at Norfolk, Virginia.




Did you enjoy this article or find this article helpful? If so, please consider supporting us on Patreon. Even $1 per month will go a long way! Thank you.

Share this article with your friends:

 Facebook
 Reddit
 Twitter

Stay updated with WW2DB:

 RSS Feeds




Visitor Submitted Comments

1. Norman Kolina says:
23 Sep 2017 07:22:08 PM

My dad was an/a SBD Doubtless gunner deployed in neutrality patrol duty. Some areas Cuba 1940, and monitoring French naval forces after the 1940 defeat.
Would like info on uss long island, and also for Wasp during the above times ie: F2F crew rosters.
Thank You.
2. Derrick says:
19 Jun 2019 05:02:55 PM

The Neutrality Patrols was a brilliant strategy by Roosevelt to encourage Hitler to make the first war move. Roosevelt knew the American people with their huge German and Italian migrant communities could not fire the first shot. Such a move would potentially tear American society apart along ethnic lines. Fortunately for America and the world Japan came to the rescue on this matter and Hitler, who was obviously very angry over the Neutrality Patrols, followed suit. Without those patrols Hitler would probably never had made that call.
3. Anonymous says:
13 Jul 2021 01:40:42 AM

Japan didn't "come to the rescue". The threw a wench in the works. If Hitler had not been such an idiot and declare war on the U.S. there would have been no way for Roosevelt to twist the attack on Pearl Harbor back on Germany and he would have been forced to ignore Germany and go all-out against Japan. Roosevelt and Churchill profited greatly on the stupidity of their enemy.

All visitor submitted comments are opinions of those making the submissions and do not reflect views of WW2DB.

Posting Your Comments on this Topic

Your Name
Your Email
 Your email will not be published
Comment Type
Your Comments
 

Notes:

1. We hope that visitor conversations at WW2DB will be constructive and thought-provoking. Please refrain from using strong language. HTML tags are not allowed. Your IP address will be tracked even if you remain anonymous. WW2DB site administrators reserve the right to moderate, censor, and/or remove any comment. All comment submissions will become the property of WW2DB.

2. For inquiries about military records for members of the World War II armed forces, please see our FAQ.

Change View
Desktop View

Search WW2DB
More on United States Neutrality Patrol
Participants:
» Ainsworth, Walden
» Chandler, Theodore
» Roosevelt, Franklin
» Stark, Harold

Location:
» Atlantic Ocean

Ship Participants:
» Long Island
» Memphis
» Nashville
» Quincy (New Orleans-class)
» Ranger
» Reuben James
» Spencer
» St. Louis
» Texas
» Wasp (Wasp-class)

Related Books:
» Lucky's Life
» The Mathews Men: Seven Brothers and the War Against Hitler's U-boats

United States Neutrality Patrol Photo Gallery
Neutrality Patrol political cartoon by Leslie Gilbert Illingworth that appeared in the Daily Mail (UK) in Mar 1941.PBY-5 Catalina patrol plane of Patrol Squadron VP-5 at Norfolk, Virginia, United States, Mar 1941. Note the National Insignia on the nose which at this time were only put on the sides of planes in the Neutrality Patrols
See all 7 photographs of United States Neutrality Patrol


Famous WW2 Quote
"Since peace is now beyond hope, we can but fight to the end."

Chiang Kaishek, 31 Jul 1937


Support Us

Please consider supporting us on Patreon. Even $1 a month will go a long way. Thank you!

Or, please support us by purchasing some WW2DB merchandise at TeeSpring, Thank you!