Episode Details

In November 1943, President Franklin D. Roosevelt embarked on a top-secret transatlantic voyage aboard the battleship USS Iowa to meet Churchill and Stalin in Tehran. During live combat exercises, an escort destroyer accidentally launched an armed torpedo directly at the President's ship. Hosted by Rebecca, with story narration by George. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ CHAPTERS: • 00:00 - Intro • 00:47 - Act I: The Cursed Escort • 02:36 - Act II: Depth Charges in the Storm • 04:01 - Act III: Balloons and Blue Skies • 05:16 - Act IV: Fire Two: The Runaway Torpedo • 06:33 - Act V: Wheel Me to the Railing • 08:42 - Act VI: Under Arrest in Bermuda and the Pardon • 10:38 - Conclusion ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ HISTORICAL SOURCES & REFERENCES: • Primary / Archival Record: Deck Logs of USS Iowa (BB-61) & USS William D. Porter (DD-579), 12–14 Nov 1943; Records of the Bureau of Naval Personnel, National Archives RG 24. • Authoritative Biography / History: James MacGregor Burns, *Roosevelt: The Soldier of Freedom 1940–1945* (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1970). • Specialized Academic / Institutional Reference: Naval History and Heritage Command, *USS William D. Porter (DD-579) Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships*. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ FULL TRANSCRIPT: [Rebecca - Host] Welcome to Most Fascinating Stories, where we uncover the real, documented, and lesser-known tales behind history's most prominent figures. I'm your host, Rebecca. Today, we step into the stormy autumn of nineteen forty-three with President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. We remember FDR for his fireside chats, the New Deal, and steering the Allied powers through World War Two. But history often turns on absurd, razor-thin margins. In November of nineteen forty-three, on a voyage shrouded in total wartime secrecy, an American warship accidentally fired a live, fully armed torpedo directly at the battleship carrying the Commander-in-Chief. And now, here is George with the story. [George - Storyteller] ACT I: THE CURSED ESCORT In the second week of November nineteen forty-three, a thick, cold fog blanketed the waters off Hampton Roads, Virginia. Sliding quietly out into the Atlantic under the cloak of night was the mightiest warship in the United States Navy: the newly commissioned battleship USS Iowa. She was an eighty-eight-thousand-horsepower fortress of steel, carrying nine sixteen-inch guns and armor plates over a foot thick. Aboard was a passenger whose presence was the most closely guarded secret of the war: President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Accompanied by Army Chief of Staff George C. Marshall, Admiral Ernest King, and his closest diplomatic advisers, Roosevelt was embarking on Operation Sextant, crossing the Atlantic to meet Winston Churchill in Cairo and Joseph Stalin in Tehran. It was to be the first face-to-face summit of the Big Three leaders, a meeting that would decide the timing of D-Day and the postwar partition of Europe. For security against German U-boat wolfpacks that infested the Atlantic sea lanes, the Iowa was surrounded by a protective screen of cruisers and destroyers. Among these escorts was a fresh Fletcher-class destroyer: hull number five-seven-nine, the USS William D. Porter, commanded by Lieutenant Commander Wilfred Walter. To her crew of mostly green recruits, the Porter was their ticket to glory. But from the moment she pulled out of Norfolk, the ship seemed cursed with astonishing misfortune. While maneuvering away from the dock, the Porter's stern anchor had hooked onto the railing of a neighboring sister destroyer, ripping away stanchions, railings, and a lifeboat before freeing herself. Captain Walter had delivered a stern dressing-down to his young crew, hoping that humiliating mishap would be their last. It was only the prelude. [George - Storyteller] ACT II: DEPTH CHARGES IN THE STORM Twenty-four hours into the voyage, the convoy ran into ferocious North Atlantic seas. The wind whipped up tow