As the battleship USS Iowa BB-61 and a group of escorting destroyers were approaching Bermuda on November 14, 1943 a torpedo was fired at the great ship, it was seen in time and Iowa turned to evade it. As the torpedo crossed the wake of the battleship it exploded, it failed to hit it's target and no damage was done, such was the the risk of crossing the U-boat infested north Atlantic in 1943.

A torpedo that missed it's target hardly seems newsworthy, and usually it is not, but when one learns that on board Iowa were Admirals Ernest King and William Leahy as well as Generals George C. Marshall and Henry Arnold, Secretary of State Cordell Hull and President Franklin D. Roosevelt, the scale of the event is much more elevated.

One can only imagine what the consequences might have been if the torpedo had hit the ship, of course one torpedo would have caused damage, but it is not very likely that the Iowa would have sunk, and even if it had the first people taken off would have been those mentioned above. Still it may have delayed the Tehran Conference which is where the party was heading. Had Hitler have known of the high value of the target surely he would have sent the whole U-boat arm to attack.

However it was not a U-boat that fired the torpedo, rather it was one of the escorting destroyers, USS William D. Porter DD-579. Apparently after some aerial target practice for the gunners on Iowa, Porter's commander had ordered a torpedo practice, using Iowa as the target. One of the torpedoes still had the primer and when the order fire 3 was given, it did.

As soon as the event was over the guns on Iowa were trained on the destroyer as it was thought that this had perhaps been an assassination attempt. The whole ship was arrested and taken to Bermuda for trial. When all was said and done, one man was given 14 years hard labor for leaving the primer in the torpedo, however he served no time at the request of President Roosevelt himself.