laststandonzombieisland

Some 85 years ago this week. Somewhere in the U-boat-filled North Atlantic.

Convoy to Iceland, September 1941: the New Orleans-class heavy cruiser USS Tuscaloosa (CA 37) hoists in a Curtiss SOC scout-observation plane after a patrol. View looks aft on the cruiser’s starboard side, with midships’ 5″/25 guns in the foreground. Another SOC is resting on the starboard catapult.

Tuscaloosa at the time was part of RADM William R. Munroe’s TF 15 during Operation Indigo III, the passage of 5,000 men of the U.S. Army 10th Infantry Regiment, 5th Engineers, 46th Field Artillery Battalion, and various service units to Iceland. There, the Joes would replace the men of the First Marine Brigade (Provisional), which had started arriving the previous July.

While the U.S. was not “officially” in the war, by relieving the British in Iceland, which had been there since May 1940 after Denmark and Norway had been occupied by the Germans.

The 9,950-ton Tuscaloosa, a “peace” cruiser that had been constructed during the period that the U.S. was handcuffed by the London and Washington Naval Treaties, had entered service in 1934.

The Indigo force included the battleship USS Idaho, heavy cruisers Tuscaloosa and Vincennes, and destroyers Winslow, Anderson, Mustin, O’Brien, Sampson, Benson, Hilary P. Jones, and Niblack, escorting the transports Heywood, William P. Biddle, Harry L. Lee, and Republic, leaving the New York Port of Embarkation on the morning of 5 September– the same day the new broke of U-652 trading torpedoes for depth charges with the destroyer USS Greer off Newfoundland.

Purposely avoiding Halifax-to-Scotland convoy routes, they nonetheless had a scare, with sonarmen monitoring numerous underwater contacts.

Then FDR threw down the gauntlet in his fireside chat.

As noted by the CMH:

On the evening of 11 September, they were ploughing through the North Atlantic somewhere south of Greenland when the voice of President Roosevelt came over the radio announcing an attack on the USS Greer--he called it piracy–and declaring that German or Italian vessels of war would henceforth “at their own peril” enter waters essential to the defense of the United States.

With TF 15 arriving at Hvalfjörður near Reykjavík on 16 September 1941, Tuscaloosa would soon be made ready for war as much as possible.

Her earliest “dapple” slotch camo scheme was soon applied and, while she later carried the more purposeful Measures 33/ Design 13d, 31a/13d, and 12 later during the war, that first freestyle paint job was perhaps the most fetching.

Tuscaloosa would earn seven battle stars for her WWII service.