Diplomacy

THU 5 OCT 1939
Hawaiian Detachment is formed and sent to its new operating base, Pearl Harbor, T.H.; carrier Enterprise (CV-6) (flagship), two heavy cruiser divisions, two destroyer squadrons and a light cruiser flagship, a destroyer tender and a proportionate number of small auxiliaries make up the force.

Navy Department informs U.S. passenger liner Iroquois of word received late the previous day concerning the plot to sink the ship as she nears the east coast. "As a purely precautionary measure," President Roosevelt announces this day, "a Coast Guard vessel and several navy ships from the [neutrality] patrol will meet the Iroquois at sea and will accompany her to an American port" (see 8 and 11 October).

British Admiralty and French Ministry of Marine form eight "hunting groups" in the Atlantic and Indian Oceans to counter the threat posed by German armored ship Admiral Graf Spee. That same day, the object of that attention, Admiral Graf Spee, captures British freighter Newton Beech in the South Atlantic at 09°35'S, 06°30'W.

U.S. freighter Exeter is detained by French authorities at Marseilles, France (see 6 October); freighter City of Joliet, detained by the French since 14 September, is released.

Secretary of State Cordell Hull requests Chargé d'Affaires ad interim in Germany Alexander C. Kirk, to ascertain why German authorities have detained Swedish motorship Korsholm (at Swinemünde), Estonian steamship Minna (at Kiel), and Norwegian steamship Brott (at Sivinemünde). All of the neutral merchantmen carry cargoes of wood pulp or wood pulp products consigned to various American firms. These are the first instances of cargoes bound for the United States held up for investigation by German authorities. While no U.S. ships are detained, cargoes bound for American concerns in neutral (Finnish, Estonian, Latvian, and Norwegian) merchant ships come under scrutiny by the Germans (see 10 October and 8 and 27 December).