Neutrality Patrol

[2][failed verification] Upon declaration of war, the United Kingdom, France, and Germany attempted to restrict their adversaries' ability to import raw materials and manufactured goods.

The United Kingdom and France controlled extensive overseas territories in 1939, while Germany had lost its colonial empire as war reparations in 1919.

U-boats were most numerous and active in European coastal areas, while a few German cruisers, battleships, and merchant raiders intercepted Allied shipping on ocean trade routes.

During World War I, outnumbered German warships had shifted patrol areas away from the United Kingdom into the Atlantic to disperse opposing Allied naval forces.

After refueling at Newport, Rhode Island on 7 October 1916, U-53 sank five Allied merchant ships the following day in international waters off the coast of the United States.

[1] The concept of a naval Neutrality Patrol within that zone was presented to a Conference of Foreign Ministers of the American Republics convened in Panama on 25 September.

After considerable debate, the conference agreed the Declaration of Panama on 2 October 1939, to extend the neutrality zone southwesterly parallel to the northeastern coast of South America approximately 300 miles (480 km) offshore.

While the Germans, operating out of European bases, could take little advantage of information on shipping in the Americas, the Royal Navy had far greater access to the Atlantic and could send vessels from the UK, Canada or its overseas possessions to intercept.

Efforts to document Support Force operations after the war were discouraged to avoid damaging world opinion as to the integrity of United States' neutrality.

[citation needed] The German freighter Konsul Horn left Aruba on January 7, 1940, posing as a Soviet ship to avoid identification by the Neutrality Patrol.