The coin of the realm in WW II was called "materiel", favoring the less ambiguous variant derived from the French of the word "material". It was materiel, authorized in the U.S. Lend/Lease programs of WWII, when it arrived at U.S, seaports and was loaded into and onto freighters, which were then formed, ship behind ship in six, eight or ten columns, in convoys stretched across the sea. Steam locomotives and fighter aircraft were lashed to the main decks of many freighters. On arrival at an overseas port, these were just one or two maintenance steps away from service or combat. The U.S. literally drowned its adversaries in materiel. Getting it there was a major effort and will be discussed in important episodes in this story.

The machinery at the heart of this story was called materiel when it was on its way, much of it on railroad flat cars, to the shipbuilding yards of the US. After shaping, assembly and welding, this materiel became ship's machinery. A warship was then launched and commissioned. Next for the ship and its machinery came an underway "shake down" cruise. Those reservists, draftees and the relatively small cadre of regulars who were aboard for the launch, the commissioning (the commissioning "detail"), and the shakedown could all claim to be called "plank owners".

From the time the keel was laid until addition of the ship's armament after commissioning, the ship's personnel complement expanded daily toward full war strength. This small flood of nameless men from 'anytown USA' became ship's crew. Before their names became known, their identities emerged first as deck seamen, or below decks engineers and firemen, or radiomen, signalmen and quartermasters, or sonar men or shipfitters, or members of the ordnance gang who had main deck, above deck and below deck stations. The construction of a ship from base metal is a remarkable creation. The evolution of a crew, the bringing together of the right ratings in several disciplines, is an even greater transformation. The whole is greater than the sum of its parts. For the Edison of WW II, it was all done before E-mail.

Air and Sea

Air and sea define continuums, joined at the water's edge by the elements, nature's condition. The elements extend no a priori favors; they have no friend or foe. A new ship has just one formally defined shakedown cruise. The elements conduct repeated shakedowns of the men and their machinery.

A Reluctant Nation

The human condition is beset with conflict. Thirty minutes of late 20th century news briefs might convince the just-arrived alien that conflict is the only human condition. After World War I, much of the world went to sleep with the League of Nations, convinced (or wanting to believe) that the killing fields, both on land and at sea in WW I, could never happen again. A strong vein of isolationism held sway in the heartland of the US. The country has been re- made periodically from waves of immigrants. The sympathies of those who come are at first rooted in their forbears; these sympathies did not naturally align to present a single counter force to isolationists in the decades following WW I. My personal feeling after WW II was that no one could get me angry enough to go to war again. I must admit that a number of persons, forces or events have tempered that feeling since WW II. And so it was on August 12, 1941, 25 years after the US entry into World War I, and by a margin of just one vote, the US House of Representatives extended a hastily revived draft.

Considering the scale of the conflict which came to be known as World War II, the US was even less prepared than it had been for World War I. The War in the Atlantic in 1939, which US leaders wrapped up in the term, Neutrality Patrol, began as a sequel to the earlier war, with the first year of the second great War almost a repeat of the one 25 years before. England and Germany took up where they left off. A re-armed Germany had developed new capacities for active prosecution of war. Japan sided with the Allies in WW I but between the wars its military had convinced its industrious, unquestioning citizens that Japan's expansion objectives were valid and that these demanded different alliances. After its foray into China, Japan concentrated its WW II efforts on the defeat of Britain and the US.

Wartime Leaders

Politically, most of the nations of the world , including the US, had learned little from World War I. A few US individuals who had experienced service in WW I were a small exception. Those who were called upon to serve again in WW II brought valuable experience forward. This was especially true in shipping and shipping protection in the Atlantic. Two men who led the war effort in their respective nations deserve special note in this respect. Both came from naval backgrounds. The two were US President Franklin D. Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill. The US draft and this residual leadership experience from World War I were critical factors in Germany's eventual defeat.

The Protagonists in Focus

'Your men and your machinery' against 'their men and their machinery'? Not always. Sometimes it is your men and machinery against the air and sea. This author was a participant, but this is a first-hand account only of the men and machinery he sailed with and fought with. The enemy is known only through the actions they forced and the losses they inflicted. No first hand account of the enemy will be found here. That, too, is pretty much the case with the elements brewed by the air and sea. Meteorologists often provided early warning, but when weather arrived, the ferocity of the elements at the air and sea boundary always presented a new challenge. When the ship's inclinometer showed a roll of 58 degrees, a young watch officer became transfixed by the reading on that instrument. A more experienced skipper, for his part, kept a stop watch in his hand. The key was that the time duration of the roll was more important than the angle of heel. A roll too slow was the danger signal that she might really go over.

The focus here will be on seamen and machinery. It will be largely a one-sided view. Timewise, any reflections on the precise identity of the "enemy" came most often during the extensive daily photo slide training ritual run by the Recognition Officer. In these daily sessions, a ship or plane pictured in the fraction of a second set for the shutter action on the projector, reached your consciousness first as "friend" or "foe" even before a specific national identity flashed into your mind. Except for these sessions and occasional broadcasts from the BBC, acute awareness of an "enemy" came in fast paced action episodes. There was no shouting from trench to trench as in land warfare. The Captain might try to get into the enemy's mind but everyone else fought based on the 'situation-at-hand'. Getting performance out of men and machinery was the task. Chance controlled the rest.

So in a sequence of episodes, this story will be about putting US men and their machinery, in this case a US destroyer, against challenges to their survival. The intentional threats came from Germany, Italy, and briefly, the Vichy French. The elements took a heavy toll, but differed from the others in that weather's respites could be accepted with less suspicion.

A Backgrounder on Time and Decision (sometimes, indecision)

Hitler began his rise to power in 1933. The abject failure of Neville Chamberlain's diplomacy is encapsulated for all time in the word "Munich". Even that word does not begin to express the loss of the opportunity France and Britain had presented to them for a "Triple Alliance" with Russia before Russia made its deal with Germany in 1939. Winston Churchill, who was not in the British government during the period, later capsuled his country's leadership in one sentence: "Britain's ruling class takes it weekend in the country while Hitler takes his countries in the weekends."

So that this narrative might move more directly to a series of destroyer episodes in 1942-44, I will employ some tabulations. The three tables which follow reflect the inconclusiveness of WW I, which ended with the Armistice of November 11, 1918 followed by the Treaty of Versailles. A latent instability between wars, and a man historians and diplomats would never evaluate, finally swept millions of men and women into the inferno of WW II. Indeed, Adolph Hitler was an early puzzle to the German people, although they could see earlier than the rest of the world that he was capable of complete ruthlessness in the pursuit of his objectives.

The first table, Prelude To War, covers the period 1935-1939, and ends with the beginning of armed hostilities, when Germany, led by Adolph Hitler, invaded Poland. Where specific dates are given in these tables, they are US dates.

Prelude To War

After all Polish military resistance ended, and Germany and Russia took their agreed-upon spoils, a period of nervous waiting ensued during which Hitler prepared his next moves. From his observations of the Chamberlain government of Britain in earlier diplomatic action, Hitler had concluded, incorrectly, that Britain would not act militarily when Germany invaded Poland.

Some revision of Germany's expansion plans had to be made when Britain and France declared war. The relatively ineffective military actions taken by Britain and France in an interregnum of nearly eight months gave Hitler and his generals time to make the necessary revisions.

The next table provides some key events in the period from the first actual hostilities of World War II in 1939 to the announcement of the Tripartite Pact in September 1940. The US, whose policies had been greatly influenced by isolationists in the Congress, was in its "waking up" phase.

Diplomacy Fails; Britain and France Go to War

Event Cycle 1: Europe/Africa	Event Cycle 2: Americas/Asia	Country Making Decision
Declaration of War on Germany		France, and Britain, which included Canada, Australia, South Africa and New Zealand: Sept. 3, 1939
	President Franklin Roosevelt declares Limited National Emergency under powers of Neutrality Act	United States: Sept. 8, 1939; Neutrality Patrol for 300 miles off its coasts agreed to by Congress of American Republics at Panama, Oct. 2.
	US Navy Department announces recommissioning of 40 of the 110 destroyers in mothballs from WW I.	United States: Sept. 14, 1939
On April 9, 1940, Germany moved against Norway; on May 10, the Wehrmacht was unleashed against the West. The Low Countries and France were quickly overrun. Evacuation of substantial British Army forces at Dunquerque marked major defeat. Air Battle of Britain to begin. Ship losses rise with success of wolfpack.		Germany: Spring and Summer, 1940. Hitler consolidates Western Europe with his central European power base. Northern flank secure. Italy enters war on the side of Germany. Ready to move into Africa.
Churchill in government France capitulates		Britain: May 10, 1940 France: June 25, 1940
British lease to US rights to bases in Bahamas, Jamaica, Antigua, St. Lucia, Trinidad and British Guiana.	After months of pleas by Churchill, Roosevelt agrees to swap 50 old destroyers for leases to bases.	United States: Sept. 2, 1940.
Tripartite Pact: If any one gets into war against the US, the other two would join.	Tripartite Pact: If any one gets into war against the US, the other two would join.	Japan: formally joins Germany and Italy: Sept. 27, 1940