Since everybody and its brother can edit Wikipedia, I usually take it with a grain of salt.Alixanther wrote: Not even Wikipedia has the nerve to call "your destroyer" an American one. At that time it was firmly and irrevocably a British destroyer.
Anyway, at the time of the "incident", USS Kearny flew an American flag, was manned by American crewmen and was outside of any territorial waters.
Yes, she was for all practical purpose not fully neutral... but this does not in any way, shape or form make her a fully British warship.
See the difference of treatment with HMS Broadwater ... she was a former US warship (USS Mason) transfered in 1940. She sank during the same convoy, but it did not make an "incident".
The point is that, by attacking Kearny, the German Navy started killing Americans.
That was definitely not lost on Roosevelt
See how he told the tale to the American :
"We have wished to avoid shooting. But the shooting has started. And history has recorded who fired the first shot. In the long run, however, all that will matter is who fired the last shot.
America has been attacked. The U. S. S. Kearny is not just a Navy ship. She belongs to every man, woman, and child in this Nation."
Complete text can be found here :
http://www.usmm.org/fdr/kearny.html
The bottom line is that what counts here is not what the Germans intend, or the good faith or bad faith of Roosevelt, but the reaction the German actions will have in America.
And if the Roosevelt's administration want to interpret it as a direct aggression ... well, it's quite an uphill battle to contradict them when they have eleven men killed by a German torpedo to show for their "good faith".