THE MORNING AFTER THIS UNPRECEDENTED ASSAULT upon the fleet, devastating news was distributed to every ship and station via an “ALNAV”—a message to the entire navy—from Secretary Forrestal in Washington. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt was dead. He had succumbed to a massive cerebral hemorrhage in Warm Springs, Georgia. On the battleship Tennessee, still recovering from the kamikaze hit she had taken the previous day, the ship’s loudspeakers announced: “Attention! Attention, all hands! President Roosevelt is dead. Repeat, our Supreme Commander, President Roosevelt, is dead.”
