740.00111A Ports/33: Telegram
The Ambassador in the United Kingdom (Winant) to the Secretary of State
[Received April 3—3:26 p.m.]
1306. For the President and the Secretary. My 1301, April 3, 5 p.m.,4 last sentence of Former Naval Person’s5 message. To carry out the Prime Minister’s suggestion Foreign Office has telegraphed Halifax6 asking him to approach Department at Washington with a view to obtaining assurances that no objection will be raised to merchant ships equipped for purposes of defense with fighting aircraft entering or leaving our ports. The Admiralty Attachés great importance to the carrying of a fighter aircraft on merchant ships as means of defense against aerial attack at sea. It is the view of the Foreign Office that these aircraft do not differ in principle from the guns which are already fitted on the majority of their merchant ships. [Page 386] Such defensive aircraft being merely accessories of the merchant ships are not, in their opinion, within the rules ordinarily applicable to the entry of belligerent aircraft into neutral ports. Although Foreign Office anticipates no real difficulty from us in view of the extent to which our Lease-Lend Bill7 recognizes the President’s right to permit even their warships to be repaired in our ports, they hope that it might be possible for our Government in some public way to accept their legal case in a manner which would enable them to use our acceptance of it in Latin American countries where they are likely to encounter much greater difficulties. I hope that you will be able to give sympathetic consideration to their case. At Mr. Cohen’s8 suggestion Foreign Office officials explained fully both the legal and practical situation to Assistant Solicitor General Fahy before he sailed and consultation with him should facilitate your consideration of the case.
- Not printed; last sentence states: “Meanwhile though our losses are increasingly serious I hope we shall lessen the air menace when in a month or six weeks time we have a good number of Hurricane fighters flying off merchant ships patrolling or escorting in the danger zone.”↩
- Code name for Winston Churchill, British Prime Minister.↩
- Viscount Halifax, British Ambassador in the United States.↩
- Approved March 11, 1941; 55 Stat. 31.↩
- Benjamin V. Cohen, Legal Adviser to the Ambassador in the United Kingdom.↩