blowing the ship apart. All of her officers and over 100 of the crew went down with the ship. The destruction of the Reuben James facilitated a worsening of already rapidly deteriorating diplomatic relations between Nazi Germany and the still nominally neutral United States of America. President Franklin D. Roosevelt used the incident to shift public opinion toward a confrontational stance with the European Axis powers. Support for the Neutrality Acts of the 1930s gradually eroded. On 13 November 1941, amendments to the act allowed for the arming of US merchant ships, their operation in the war zone, and active assistance to the British Empire to increase the tonnage available to it. Hitler and the Nazi leadership wished to keep the US neutral and the order to minimise contact at sea remained in force, at least until Operation Barbarossa had destroyed the Soviet Union. Roosevelt did not publicly mention the destroyer was escorting a British convoy, was not flying the Ensign of the United States, and was in the process of dropping depth charges on another U-boat when it was engaged and sunk. On 11 December 1941, Hitler declared war on the United States. Dönitz ordered immediate offensive operations off the East Coast of the United States. Codenamed Operation Drumbeat (Unternehmen Paukenschlag), the U-boat fleet inflicted the largest naval defeat on the US Navy in history. Though few in number at the beginning—just five—the U-boats pressed home attacks close to the shore, from Newfoundland to the Gulf of Mexico. The American failure to initialise a blackout, ship captains' insistence on following peace-time procedures, and lack of effective naval defences contributed to high losses. In all, 397 ships were sunk during Drumbeat. The Germans termed this period, the "Second Happy Time". Topp crossed the Atlantic and joined Wolfpack Zieten. Oberleutnant zur See Albrecht Brandi joined Topp's crew as a commander in training on U-552s seventh war patrol. The patrol to the West Atlantic, Grand Banks of Newfoundland, and Nova Scotia started on 25 December in Saint-Nazaire. Topp sank three ships totaling before returning to Saint-Nazaire on 27 January 1942. Topp experienced mechanical problems with his torpedoes. On 15 January, he expended four on the small merchant ship Dayrose from a range of 800 metres before a fifth sank it. Topp signalled BdU about the incident. Topp experienced the same problems in the sinking of Frances Salman, five miles south of Cape