Sometimes you find yourself in a real live shooting war, declared or no

USS Reuben James in the Panama Canal in happier times, 19-N-10982. National Archives Identifier 496085338 Some 85 years ago this week, just after 0530 on 31 October 1941, the “Red Devil” boat, German Type VIIC submarine U-552, Kptlt. Erich Topp, commanding, was less than a week out of St. Nazaire, France, on her sixth war patrol. By that point in the war, Topp, 27, had already sunk 18 enemy ships. He had just joined five other boats of Wolfpack Stosstrupp, combing the North Atlantic for convoys. And he found one off Iceland. Stumbling across slow-moving (8-knot) Allied Convoy HX-156, with 43 ships, Topp fired two torpedoes that punched into the port side of an enemy destroyer. As noted in the Official War History of the humble Wickes-class “four piper” USS Reuben James (DD-245): A lookout on the escort commander’s ship, USS Tarbell (DD 142), reported that there had been a large flash followed by a deep explosion on the port quarter of the convoy in the direction of Reuben James.…