868.248/135
Memorandum by the Chief of the Division of Near Eastern Affairs (Murray) to the Under Secretary of State (Welles)
Mr. Welles: I have just had a telephone call from General Slessor with further regard to the latest development in the matter of planes for Greece.
[Page 708]General Slessor tells me that he has just spoken by long-distance telephone with the Chief of the Air Force in London and has received authority to negotiate an agreement with the Greeks along the lines of that suggested this morning in Secretary Knox’s office.97 He was informed that on “operational grounds” the British preferred to have Tomahawks in the Near East and are willing to make thirty of them available out of British orders in the United States in return for the thirty Grumman planes.
General Slessor was, however, further instructed to ascertain whether there are immediately available here the necessary number of Tomahawk planes for shipment to Greece. If after inquiry of the British Air Commission in Washington General Slessor finds that at this particular moment thirty Tomahawks are not immediately available, he has been instructed to state that his Government would prefer to see the thirty Grumman planes go forward at once to Greece. In other words, the Greeks are apparently “in luck” no matter how this latest development turns out.
I mentioned to General Slessor that I had understood from Secretary Knox that there were “plenty” of Tomahawk planes for immediate delivery to Greece. He replied that what might actually have happened (he will know exactly as soon as he has consulted with the British Air Commission) is that the Tomahawks are so available that all of them may already have been shipped to Britain in considerable number, although he hopes it may be possible to catch thirty out of the total. If not, the Greeks might have to wait for further deliveries until some time the last part of April. He explained this by stating that there is a sort of “pause” in orders at this time and that the deliveries for the Army were to follow immediately after the present deliveries to the British.
General Slessor said he did not want to press too much on the question of shipping and did not wish to imply that the British could not ultimately provide the necessary shipping to take these planes to Greece but that nevertheless at the present time the British had sufficient shipping for only fifteen planes as far as he knew. It would therefore be very helpful if we could supply the necessary shipping for the rest of the Greek quota.
General Slessor is to let me know later in the afternoon what he finds out from the British Air Commission as to the immediate availability of thirty Tomahawk planes for Greece.
- See memorandum supra.↩