While FDR openly talked neutrality between 1939 and 1941, he secretly instructed U.S. naval forces to harass German ships and submarines in the North Atlantic. This small column appeared at the end of the war and implies as much:
"Philadelphia Coast Guardsmen yesterday observed the surrender of Germany by recalling that their branch of service fired the first American shot in the war against Germany, capturing the first enemy ship and taking the first Nazi prisoner... It was in September, 1941, that the Coast Guard cutter Northland captured the Norwegian freighter Busko, loaded with equipment for a German weather station to be established in Greenland."
This image depicts the Nazi-trained radio operator posted to Busko as he
becomes a prisoner. The cutter Northland is pictured above
Click here to read about the first American shots fired in World War I.
Click here to read about the first Japanese prisoner of war.
