Originally Posted by Zilch

I just finished a cool book called The Battle of the Atlantic. It did appear in some cases that a lot of what you are talking about, with the officially-neutral USN destroyers escorting UK convoys was done purposefully by FDR to kind of goad the Kriegsmarine into attacking to allow us to enter the war. This is very "conspiracy theory" way of looking at it, but it's well-known that FDR wanted very badly to enter the war to help the UK out, but the public at the time was in favor of remaining neutral. Reading between the lines, the public would have needed justification to enter the war, as was the case with WWI and the Lusitania. This may have been an effort to arrange this.

We've seen similar things before and since. Anyone remember the Cold War interceptions of bombers by NATO and the USSR? There are plenty of photos of an F-14 or F-106 flying formation with an intruding Tu-95. I'm sure there are a few of a Mig-23 trailing a B-52 on the other side. Opponents taunt one another all the time, to varying degrees. Occasionally, an impulsive shot gets fired and history changes. Lexington/Concord is a good example of this, I think.