Talk:Neutrality Patrol

message: My Grandpa was a U.S. Marine Non Com who served on the USS Philadelphia (CL-41) before the War. He said that while officially they were on "Neutrality Patrol" they were in the English Channel shooting down Luftwaffe bombers. This would have made a certain sense since the Philadelphia's 5x3 six inch primary and 4x2 five inch secondary armaments could all super-elevate, and made her an excellent anti-aircraft platform.
It's already been mentioned that U.S. forces on Neutrality Patrol didn't shy away from engagement of German submarine forces in the Atlantic.  And I don't know, I suppose maybe they had standing orders only to make the Channel run with american merchant ships.  (Although it would be real easy to cheat there.  Do you make sure that they're all-American convoys?  And if not, would that mean that as long as there's at least one american merchant ship that's making the channel run the Philadelphia could protect a whole convoy.  For that matter, if the Philadelphia just happened to be steaming through the channel alongside a civilian convoy, wouldn't they be reasonably expected to defend themselves if attacked?)
As I understood it this was a False Flag operation that has yet to be declassified.  (Of course all this is under the assumption that if they were flying the Stars & Stripes we would have heard something of this already.  I suppose it is possible the Philadelphia was flying the Stars & Stripes -or maybe no flag at all!-, and the surviving German air crews failed to either note the flag or identify the Philadelphia; and that since then we have not seen fit to inform them of their oversight.)
Issues here would be that potentially we fired the first shots in the war against Germany, before war was declared.  (Actually I think the official story may be that we did anyways.  Germany declared war against us after Pearl Harbor, so if we fired shots in anger first after that it was still a war they started.)  One might point out these bombers being on an attack run may not necessarily be considered a provocation to return fire.  (Like hey maybe that dive bomber was diving on you because he wanted to get a closer look at you really quickly.)  After that bombs dropped would have simply been a response to our aggression.
There's also the martial legal issue.  According to the laws of naval warfare flying a false flag is perfectly legal, on the condition that you not attack someone under such false pretenses.  (The intention of the law is of course to allow weaker vessels to pass other vessels unmolested.  Though you can switch colors at the very last minute before an attack.)  I'm assuming the Philadelphia was flying and continued to fly the Union Jack while it was under attack by German aircraft.
This might not necessarily be considered a violation of the laws of war on this.  One could argue that law doesn't apply to aircraft.  (Though why wouldn't it?)  But more than that given the intent of the law, if German air-crews engaged a ship they believed to belong to their enemy, then what's the harm?  It's not like it was a surprise attack under false pretenses.  (Well it was since German intelligence should have indicated the British had no Light Cruisers capable of super-elevating their primary armament, meaning what they would have thought was easy meat and what would be a blow to british naval strength would have turned out to have been anything but.)  As long as it was understood to be a hostile act between hostile forces, the Germans should have been prepared to take or give lives.
Is there any way we can corroborate this whole story? 76.111.80.228 (talk) 16:14, 18 September 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Neutrality Patrol Missions Against the Luftwaffe