Command Decisions: U.S. Merchant Shipping and the British Import Crisis. Chapter 8

摘要

The chapter describes U.S. merchant shipping and the British import crisis. In March 1943 the partnership of the United States and Great Britain faced one of its severest tests. Allied military fortunes in that month seemed at a low ebb--not in the same sense as a year earlier, when the war itself had seemed about to be lost, but as a result of an almost complete reversal of the bright expectations that had prevailed at the Casablanca Conference only a few weeks before. The reversal was a matter partly of military defeats and setbacks in the field, partly of a sudden upturn in merchant shipping losses, and partly of the revelation that the estimated shipping capabilities on which the Casablanca strategic decisions had rested had rested had been seriously overestimated. At this critical juncture, the British authorities demanded large additional tonnages of American shipping in support of their own war effort at home and overseas. The Joint Chiefs of Staff warned that the effect would be to cripple American operations overseas for the remainder of the year. The President decided, nevertheless, to grant the request.