Editorial Note
The Second Washington Conference was hastily convened in order to deal with the urgent strategic questions which had arisen since the First Washington Conference of December 1941–January 1942. Scant documentation has been found on the preparations for the Conference. Prime Minister Churchill and his small party made the trip to Washington by flying-boat, leaving Scotland late on the evening of June 17 and arriving in Washington in the early evening of the following day. Accompanying the Prime Minister were General Brooke, Major General Ismay, Brigadier Stewart, Sir Charles Wilson, Commander Thompson, and John Martin. The first meetings between President Roosevelt and Prime Minister Churchill took place not in Washington but at the President’s home in Hyde Park, New York, where the Prime Minister was flown on the morning of June 19. The President and the Prime Minister returned by train to Washington on the morning of June 21 to join in the Washington phase of the Conference. Brief accounts of the arrival of the British party in Washington for the opening of the Conference are given in Churchill, Hinge of Fate, pp. 374–377, Alanbrooke, pp. 322–323, and Gerald Pawle, The War and Colonel Warden: Based on the Recollections of Commander C. R. Thompson, Personal Assistant to the Prime Minister 1940–1945 (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1963), p. 167.