Sinking of Reuben James

31 October 1941, North Atlantic, west of Ireland

German success; the first American warship lost in the war

By the autumn of 1941 American destroyers, though the United States was not at war, were escorting British convoys across the western Atlantic, and U-boats had already torpedoed USS Kearny. Before dawn on 31 October Reuben James, an old four-stacker escorting convoy HX 156, moved between the convoy and a U-boat her escorts had picked up by radio direction-finding. Erich Topp in U-552 fired at what he took for a merchant ship. The torpedo set off her forward magazine, which blew off the whole bow, and she sank in minutes. 100 of her crew were killed; 44 were picked up. She was the first American warship lost to the Germans, five weeks before Pearl Harbor. Woody Guthrie's song asked "What were their names, tell me, what were their names?"