Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of maps
- List of tables
- Preface
- List of abbreviations and codewords
- Introduction
- 1 “Not what it could or should be”: Britain's shipping situation
- 2 “Beyond our power without your help”: Britain's Battle of the Atlantic
- 3 “But westward, look, the land is bright”: American shipping assistance from neutrality to belligerency, March 1941–November 1942
- 4 Roosevelt's promise: “your requirements will be met”
- 5 The Casablanca Conference and its aftermath: a “most curious misunderstanding”
- 6 Reaping the whirlwind: the perils of impending victory
- Postscript and conclusions
- Appendices
- Tables
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
1 - “Not what it could or should be”: Britain's shipping situation
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 06 July 2010
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of maps
- List of tables
- Preface
- List of abbreviations and codewords
- Introduction
- 1 “Not what it could or should be”: Britain's shipping situation
- 2 “Beyond our power without your help”: Britain's Battle of the Atlantic
- 3 “But westward, look, the land is bright”: American shipping assistance from neutrality to belligerency, March 1941–November 1942
- 4 Roosevelt's promise: “your requirements will be met”
- 5 The Casablanca Conference and its aftermath: a “most curious misunderstanding”
- 6 Reaping the whirlwind: the perils of impending victory
- Postscript and conclusions
- Appendices
- Tables
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
… we emphasise the importance of the early completion of the scheme for the diversion of trade to the Western Ports, which we may have to apply at the outset … our ability to carry on the war is absolutely dependent on the eventual maintenance of supplies through the West Coast ports.
Britain's Chiefs of Staff, January 1939 and May 1940The task of examining Britain's effort to maintain strategic dominance despite logistical dependence upon Franklin Roosevelt and the United States begins with an assessment of Britain's shipping situation. As Britain's Chiefs of Staff (COS) acknowledged in the memoranda quoted above, British hopes for continued resistance and eventual victory in the Second World War would depend upon an ample flow of imported supplies, particularly those routed through the West Coast ports. Britain simply had to import vital foodstuffs and raw materials. For example, two-thirds of its food, 90 percent of its bauxite, and 95 percent of its petroleum had to come from overseas suppliers. Britain had to maintain sufficient merchant shipping capacity to move those supplies. Only thereby could this island state's oceanic commerce sustain war production.
Britain would veer perilously near failure in the endeavor to maintain enough merchant shipping capacity to sustain imports, escaping only through logistical dependence upon America. What factors affected Britain's ability to provide enough merchant shipping capacity? Enemy action posed the most obvious threat to wartime supply.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Conflict over ConvoysAnglo-American Logistics Diplomacy in the Second World War, pp. 5 - 27Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1996