In early September, Northland’s men heard that a party of “Norwegian” seal hunters at King Oscar’s Fjord on the remote, ice-clogged northeast coast had set up a radio weather station. But the cutter could not pick up signals from the clandestine transmitter.
There were at least three German stations along the coast, manned by Norwegians working for the Abwehr’s Arctic Bureau, headed by the famous German meteorologist-explorer, Dr. Paul Burckhardt. When Burckhardt tried to reinforce his enclaves, the British sent the ostensibly Norwegian gunboat Fridtjof Nansen to intercept the “hunters and trappers” and eliminate the stations. The British captured the German craft off Ella Island and destroyed the stations at Eskimonaes, Ella Island, and Torgilsbu. High-handedly, they also confiscated stores of gasoline and oil from natives and took several Greenlanders into custody. The State Department protested, but the President undercut Secretary of State Hull by telling Lord Lothian, the British ambassador, that the British strike was in the common interest.
Since winter icing conditions would force the American ships to leave, the Greenlanders wanted to have an American military detachment present. Instead, a 3-inch gun, 8 machine guns, and 50 rifles were provided. However, the Greenlanders proved unable to operate the cannon, so 14 of the Campbell’s men shed their uniforms and stayed behind to protect the mine from random shelling by U-boats.
In December, the Northland was the last cutter to leave Iceland. The Coast Guardsmen would be back in the spring.11
With the defeat of France, the President had to decide whether to supply material assistance to Great Britain or husband the nation’s small stock of weaponry for defense of the hemisphere; immediately, he chose the first course. He was also contemplating a shift of more warships from the Pacific to the Atlantic. But future strategy depended upon a correct estimate of Britain’s chances of survival.
In June, service planners prepared a paper, “The Basis for Immediate Decisions concerning the National Defense.” The staff officers stated that while “it appears reasonable to assume that the British Empire will exist in the Fall and Winter of 1940,—it appears to be doubtful that Great Britain itself will continue to be an actual combatant”; even should the Germans fail in an attempt to invade England, their bombing raids would destroy much of the British industrial potential for waging war. The entry of the United States into the conflict would not substantially influence events, for the American Army would not be capable of offensive action beyond the hemisphere for some time; and intervention in Europe might tempt Japan to strike in the Pacific. The planners, therefore, recommended a strategy of hemispheric defense, with material aid to Britain as long as her resistance seemed to bar the Axis from crossing the Atlantic.12
Therefore, the Army advocated that a revised Rainbow IV plan should become the basis of American strategy. Rainbow IV stressed hemispheric defense, that is, defense of the Hawaii-Alaska-Panama triangle and the South Atlantic approaches to the United States. General George C. Marshall, Army Chief of Staff, said, “Are we not forced into a question of reframing our national policy, that is, purely defensive action in the Pacific, with a main effort on the Atlantic side?”13 But to Army planners and to Marshall himself this meant defense of the Atlantic approaches to the hemisphere, not an offensive in the Atlantic.
Since the outbreak of war, the British had made information relating to their combat experience known to the Americans; in mid-June, a committee was established under Sir Sydney Bailey to facilitate the exchange of information. While some British officers felt that the arrangement was too one-sided and resisted American requests to place observers aboard British ships, the Bailey Committee, the Admiralty, and Prime Minister Winston Churchill realized that a policy of frankness would help in obtaining American material assistance. Churchill and the Bailey Committee recommended that informal staff conversations be held between American and British planning officers, and the Committee set to work to establish general plans for Anglo-American naval cooperation in the event of American entry into the war. The Bailey Committee planners soon decided that the American Navy’s role was to deter the Japanese fleet in the Pacific and, in the Atlantic, to provide destroyers for the escort of convoys and task forces of heavy ships to defend the sea lanes against German surface raiders. Meanwhile, President Roosevelt was similarly inclined toward mutual naval planning and cooperation. Both he and Admiral Stark recalled bitterly that President Woodrow Wilson had strictly forbidden such meetings in 1917, with the result that when America entered the war, months were wasted because there were no detailed plans for joint naval operations.
Yet coherent formulation of American strategy depended upon a correct estimate of Britain’s moot chances of survival. Hence, the President decided to send several service representatives to London to secure reliable information. The delegation was to be headed by the Assistant CNO, Rear Admiral Robert L. Ghormley, a reserved, urbane, intelligent Virginian; Ghormley was cool and able, and his long experience as a staff officer, while causing him to lack combative drive and fire, seemed to fit him well for such a mission. He was to go to England as Special Naval Observer along with an Army and Air Corps representative.
In late July, Franklin Roosevelt met with Ghormley to brief him on his mission. Roosevelt said that he needed reliable information as a basis for planning future American defense strategy. He believed that there were three future possibilities. First, that of a German invasion of Britain, followed by a British defeat and an armistice, which might mean that the Royal Navy would be lost to the Germans. This would lead to direct or indirect German intervention in Latin America and permit the Japanese to expand in the Pacific. Secondly, there was the chance that Britain would be badly weakened by air attack or invasion, but would still be able to wage a defensive war, perhaps from the dominions. Finally, there was the chance that Britain could be successfully defended and used as an advanced base to support sufficient land and air power to make a return to the continent ultimately feasible with the help of massive material aid from the United States. Ghormley sensed that Mr. Roosevelt “was not convinced that the United States would be forced to intervene as a belligerent in the war. . . .” The President concluded by reminding Ghormley that his mission was to be presented to the British as “personal and unofficial,” implying no binding commitments on the part of the United States.14
Admiral Ghormley and his two companions traveled incognito in the SS Britannic, savoring the feeling of being embarked on a secret mission of state until they were disillusioned by hearing the news of their departure routinely announced on a radio news program. The no-longer-clandestine envoys arrived in Liverpool on 15 August.
In London, Ghormley, like the naval attaché, Captain Alan Kirk, found the British determined and optimistic; morale was high, and there was an unspoken sense that America would enter the war sooner or later. The British and Americans agreed to a full exchange of information, including almost all technical secrets. Ghormley’s mission became permanent, and the attaché’s staff increased sixfold. Technical meetings were held on antisubmarine warfare, gunnery, naval aviation, intelligence, mine warfare, communications, tactics, liaison, and engineering.15 As a surfeited Stark wrote Ghormley, “Get in on any and all staff conversations you can—go as far as you like in discussions—with the full understanding you are expressing only your own views on what best to do—‘if and when’—but such must not be understood to commit your government in any manner or to any degree whatsoever.”
The Anglo-American discussions remained on the purely technical level because the Americans as yet had no long-range strategic plans to discuss with the British; in Washington, planning had not evolved beyond three generalizations: defense of the hemisphere, discreet containment of Japan, and material aid to Britain.16
The fall of France thoroughly frightened the nation, for it had hoped to remain out of the war and yet safe from the Nazi frenzy by relying on the British Navy, the French Army, and American industry. Now, one of the pillars of American security had been toppled and another seemed fated soon to fall. In July, Congress passed without major opposition the 70 percent Naval Expansion Act, which provided for 257 additional ships. The