“History has recorded who fired the first shot,” Roosevelt declared in reference to this incident in a Navy Day speech on October 27. In all fairness it would seem that in dropping depth charges the United States fired the first shot. According to the confidential German Navy records this was not the first such occasion. The official U.S. naval historian confirms that as early as April 10 the Niblack (see above, p. 880) attacked a U-boat with depth charges. (Samuel Eliot Morison, History of the United States Naval Operations in World War II, Vol. I, p. 57.)
