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Episode 1: FDR and the Friendly Torpedo That Almost Killed Him · Most Fascinating Stories

• 0:03
  [Rebecca] Welcome to Most Fascinating Stories, where we uncover the real, documented, and lesser-known tales behind history's most prominent figures.
• 0:11
  [Rebecca] I'm your host, Rebecca.
• 0:12
  [Rebecca] Today we step into the stormy autumn of 1943 with President Franklin Delana Roosevelt.
• 0:18
  [Rebecca] We remember FDR for his fireside chats, the New Deal, and steering the Allied powers through World War II.
• 0:24
  [Rebecca] But history often turns on absurd, razor-thin margins.
• 0:29
  [Rebecca] In November of 1943, 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.
• 0:42
  [Rebecca] And now, here is George with the story.
• 1:05
  [George] She was an 88,000 horsepower fortress of steel, carrying nine 16-inch guns and armor plates over a foot thick.
• 1:12
  [George] Aboard was a passenger whose presence was the most closely guarded secret of the war, President Franklin D.
• 1:19
  [George] Roosevelt.
• 1:20
  [George] Accompanied by Army Chief of Staff George C.
• 1:23
  [George] 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.
• 1:36
  [George] 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 post-war partition of Europe.
• 1:44
  [George] 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.
• 1:54
  [George] Among these escorts was a fresh Fletcher-class destroyer, Hull No.
• 1:58
  [George] 579, the USS William D.
• 2:01
  [George] Porter, commanded by Lieutenant Commander Wilfred Walter.
• 2:05
  [George] To her crew of mostly green recruits, the Porter was their ticket to glory.
• 2:10
  [George] But from the moment she pulled out of Norfolk, the ship seemed cursed with astonishing misfortune.
• 2:15
  [George] 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.
• 2:27
  [George] Captain Walter had delivered a stern dressing down to his young crew, hoping that humiliating mishap would be their last.
• 2:34
  [George] It was only the prelude.
• 2:36
  [George] Twenty-four hours into the voyage, the convoy ran into ferocious North Atlantic seas.
• 2:42
  [George] The wind whipped up towering whitecaps, and the destroyers rolled violently in the heavy ocean swells.
• 2:48
  [George] Suddenly, a massive underwater explosion shook the entire ocean.
• 2:52
  [George] A thunderous shockwave hammered against the hull of the Iowa.
• 2:56
  [George] Aboard the battleship, sirens wailed into the storm, General Quarters.
• 3:01
  [George] Gun crews sprinted to their battle stations.
• 3:04
  [George] Lookout binoculars swept the gray horizons.
• 3:07
  [George] The Iowa's massive turbines surged to life, healing the ship into violent zigzag maneuvers.
• 3:13
  [George] German U-boats were presumed to be attacking the president's flagship.
• 3:17
  [George] Depth charge crews stood ready on all destroyers, scanning the foaming waves for periscopes.
• 3:23
  [George] But there were no German submarines in sight.
• 3:26
  [George] Minutes later, a shamefaced signal flashed across the water from the William D.
• 3:31
  [George] Porter.
• 3:32
  [George] An improperly secured depth charge had rolled off her stern rack during a heavy wave roll and detonated upon reaching its pressure depth.
• 3:40
  [George] Admiral Ernest King was apoplectic.
• 3:42
  [George] To broadcast an accidental depth charge explosion in the middle of the Atlantic was like lighting a flare for every Nazi submarine within a hundred miles.
• 3:51
  [George] Captain Walter was reprimanded by a blinker light, and the men of the porter hung their heads in disgrace.
• 3:58
  [George] They desperately needed an opportunity to prove their competence.
• 4:02
  [George] The opportunity seemed to arrive on Sunday, November 14.
• 4:06
  [George] The convoy was cruising east of Bermuda, and the weather had cleared into brilliant sunshine and calm blue seas.
• 4:13
  [George] President Roosevelt, wearing his trademark fedora and clutching a long cigarette holder between his teeth, was brought onto the Iowa's Teakwood deck in his wheelchair.
• 4:23
  [George] He loved the sea, as a former assistant secretary of the Navy, Roosevelt was in his element.
• 4:29
  [George] To entertain the commander-in-chief, the Iowa's captain arranged an anti-aircraft gunnery demonstration.
• 4:35
  [George] Crewmen released large silver weather balloons high into the cloudless sky.
• 4:40
  [George] Moments later, the Iowa's 5-inch, 40mm, and 20mm guns opened up in a roaring symphony of fire, shredding the silver balloons into ribbons.
• 4:50
  [George] FDR smiled broadly, puffing his cigarette and applauding the gunnery.
• 4:55
  [George] Across 6,000 yards of open water, Captain Walter of the William D.
• 5:00
  [George] Porter watched the demonstration.
• 5:02
  [George] Here was his chance to redeem his ship in the eyes of the President and the High Command.
• 5:07
  [George] Walter ordered his crew to conduct a simulated torpedo drill, using the distant, colossal silhouette of the Iowa as their mock target.
• 5:16
  [George] On the Porter's deck, the torpedo mount was manned by Torpedoman 3rd class Lawton Dawson.
• 5:22
  [George] In a live fire combat situation, the Mark 15 torpedoes carried 1,800 pounds of high explosives.
• 5:29
  [George] For a dry drill, Navy regulations strictly mandated that the small explosive primer charges used to expel the torpedoes from their tubes must be removed.
• 5:38
  [George] Dawson removed the primers from tubes 1 and 3.
• 5:42
  [George] But on tube number 2, in the excitement and noise of the exercise, he made a catastrophic oversight.
• 5:48
  [George] He left the primer in place.
• 5:50
  [George] On the bridge, Captain Walter shouted the standard drill command, Mount 2, stand by.
• 5:56
  [George] Fire 2.
• 5:57
  [George] Instead of a hollow metallic click, a terrifying whoosh echoed across the deck.
• 6:03
  [George] An exhaust plume of white compressed gas billowed into the air.
• 6:07
  [George] Before the horrified eyes of the crew, a two-ton, fully armed, live torpedo splashed into the Atlantic, its propeller screaming to life at 45 knots, churning a deadly white frothy wake heading straight for the Iowa.
• 6:20
  [George] Utter chaos engulfed the bridge of the William D.
• 6:24
  [George] Porter.
• 6:24
  [George] Captain Walter stared in disbelief, turning pale as chalk.
• 6:29
  [George] A live torpedo was speeding directly toward the President of the United States.
• 6:33
  [George] They had less than two minutes before impact.
• 6:36
  [George] Strict radio silence was in effect to conceal the mission from Axis listening stations.
• 6:42
  [George] Desperate to warn the Iowa without breaking radio protocols, Walter ordered his signalman to flash an urgent warning with the Aldi's lamp.
• 6:50
  [George] The signalman, shaking with adrenaline, aimed the lamp at the Iowa's towering bridge and began frantically clacking the shutter.
• 6:58
  [George] Torpedo in water, steer right, he intended to say.
• 7:02
  [George] Instead, in his blinding panic, the signalman transposed letters.
• 7:06
  [George] What the Iowa's lookouts read was: Porter is backing up full speed.
• 7:11
  [George] Aboard the Iowa, the bridge crew blinked in irritation.
• 7:14
  [George] They flashed back, Porter, clarify message.
• 7:18
  [George] Seeing that visual signals were failing, Captain Walter threw naval regulations out the window.
• 7:24
  [George] He grabbed the TBS radio microphone, broke radio silence, and screamed over the fleet's open frequency.
• 7:31
  [George] Lion, lion, come right.
• 7:33
  [George] Hard right, lion, look right, torpedo in the water.
• 7:37
  [George] Inside his stateroom, President Roosevelt felt the violent lurch of the deck.
• 7:42
  [George] Secret Service agent Mike Riley rushed into the room, shouting that a torpedo was inbound.
• 7:48
  [George] Most leaders would have ducked for cover inside the Conning Tower.
• 7:51
  [George] But Roosevelt's eyes lit up with intense curiosity.
• 7:55
  [George] Wheel me to the railing, Mike, Roosevelt insisted.
• 7:58
  [George] I want to see it.
• 8:00
  [George] Riley wheeled the president out onto the deck to the starboard railing.
• 8:04
  [George] With his fedora firmly on his head, Franklin Roosevelt watched the foaming silver track of the torpedo race across the Atlantic directly toward his ship.
• 8:13
  [George] At the very last moment, the Iowa's sharp evasive turn paid off.
• 8:18
  [George] The torpedo sliced through the water, missing the stern by roughly twelve hundred yards, detonating in the churning wake.
• 8:25
  [George] A magnificent geyser of white foam and saltwater erupted hundreds of feet into the sky.
• 8:30
  [George] The concussion shook the deck of the Iowa, spraying fine ocean mist onto Roosevelt's face.
• 8:36
  [George] The president let out a low chuckle, removed his cigarette holder, and turned to his aides with a grin.
• 8:43
  [George] Aboard the Iowa's bridge, however, nobody was smiling.
• 8:46
  [George] Admiral King and Captain McCrea were utterly convinced they had just survived an assassination plot.
• 8:52
  [George] Suspicion immediately fell upon the William D.
• 8:55
  [George] Porter.
• 8:56
  [George] The Iowa swiveled all nine of her massive 16-inch turrets, guns capable of firing 2700-pound armor-piercing shells twenty miles, and locked them squarely onto the diminutive destroyer.
• 9:08
  [George] The Porter was ordered to stand down, surrender its logs, and report directly to naval authorities in Bermuda under armed escort.
• 9:17
  [George] Upon arriving in Bermuda, Marines boarded the William D.
• 9:20
  [George] Porter and placed the entire crew, officers, sailors and cooks alike, under military arrest.
• 9:26
  [George] It was the only time in United States naval history that an entire ship's company was arrested en masse.
• 9:33
  [George] Interrogations were fierce.
• 9:35
  [George] Naval intelligence combed through every crewman's background, searching for German saboteurs.
• 9:41
  [George] Finally, Lawton Dawson, weeping in remorse, confessed that he had inadvertently left the primer in tube number two, and in his panic, had thrown the spent primer casing overboard to hide his mistake.
• 9:53
  [George] Dawson was court-martialed and sentenced to 14 years of hard labor.
• 9:57
  [George] But when the verdict reached the Oval Office, President Roosevelt intervened personally.
• 10:03
  [George] Writing to the Secretary of the Navy, FDR stated that no harm had been done, that it was clearly an accident born of training frenzy, and asked that Dawson be pardoned and restored to duty.
• 10:15
  [George] The Navy complied, but they never quite forgave the Porter.
• 10:19
  [George] The destroyer was exiled to the frozen, fog-choked outpost of the Aleutian Islands.
• 10:24
  [George] For the remainder of the war, whenever the William D.
• 10:27
  [George] Porter pulled into a naval anchorage, other American ships would hail her over the radio with the same sardonic joke: Don't shoot, boys, we're Republicans.
• 10:39
  [Rebecca] The saga of the William D.
• 10:40
  [Rebecca] Porter remains one of the most astonishing near misses in modern history.
• 10:45
  [Rebecca] Had that torpedo struck the Iowa's magazine, the course of World War II, the timing of the cross-channel invasion, the atomic bomb program, and the entire architecture of the post-war world would have been radically altered in a single blinding flash.
• 11:01
  [Rebecca] Roosevelt's unflappable calm at the railing, asking to be wheeled closer to watch the weapon approach, captures the indomitable spirit of a leader who refused to let fear dictate his life.
• 11:12
  [Rebecca] Thank you for listening to most fascinating stories.
• 11:15
  [Rebecca] I'm Rebecca.
• 11:16
  [Rebecca] Join us next time as we unearth another forgotten chapter from the pages of history.
• 11:21
  [Rebecca] Until then, stay curious.