Office of the Historian

Roosevelt Papers: Telegram

Prime Minister Churchill to President Roosevelt1

secret
London, 4 March 1944.

602. Prime Minister to President Roosevelt. Personal and most secret.

My immediately preceding telegram. The Admiralty state that one third of the Italian ships in our possession would amount to:

  • 1.7 battleships
  • 2 6 inch cruisers
  • 0.7 5.3 inch cruisers
  • 3.3 destroyers
  • 7.7 torpedo boats
  • 6.7 corvettes
  • 7.3 submarines

Whereas what the Russians ask for and what the British agreed to was:

  • 1 battleship
  • 1 cruiser
  • 8 destroyers
  • 4 submarines
  • 40,000 tons of merchant shipping.

  1. Sent by the United States Military Attaché, London, via Army channels.↩