Ship carrying FDR is sunk by friendly fire en route to Tehran Conference in 1943

acgoldis

Hi! Someone just posted this doozy on one of the other threads and it immediately made me think of a WI.

In WW2 FDR had the navy he was being escorted to the Tehran Conference with practice a drill. One of the ships actually fired a live torpedo at the ship FDR was on instead of a dummy. Luckily they missed.
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Well, what would have happened had the torpedo hit, resulting in FDR's death? It's not like he can run around trying to escape in a wheelchair. Either he's caught in the explosion or the ship sinks with all hands.

Things to consider:

1. The Tehran conference is postponed until later in the war, if at all.
2. Henry Wallace was FDR's running mate in 1940. Truman doesn't show up until 1944.
3. This was the conference which supposedly had everyone agree on attempting D-Day. If D-Day gets pushed back too far simply because the various Allied powers get the go-ahead later the war could have been drastically different. For all we know, we could have Russians running all over western Europe (though without a western front the Germans would have been able to reinforce the east more easily)
 
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subway dreaming

The likelihood of Iowa going down from a single torpedo is just this side of nonexistent. That said, FDR did have himself wheeled to the side of the ship to watch the proceedings, so he might have been killed in the blast even if Iowa was only moderately damaged.

Another question: what would the American public be told? Remember that the whole mission was of the utmost secrecy (which is why Porter waited so long to break radio silence).
 

unknownchild

given american torpeods i doubt anything would have hapened unless they got even more unlucky although a freak acident of perhaps the ship heeling over to turn sharpish and fdr hitting his head?
 
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