Office of the Historian

350. Memorandum of a Conversation, Department of State, Washington, May 16, 1956, 4:34 p.m.1

Washington, May 16, 1956, 4:34 p.m.

SUBJECT

  • US–UK Contingent Military Planning for the Middle East

PARTICIPANTS

  • The Secretary
  • Mr. Gordon Gray
  • Admiral Radford
  • Mr. MacArthur

In the course of a call on the Secretary about other matters,2 Admiral Radford said the US military had just about completed its discussions with the British on contingent military planning in the Middle East. There would be one more meeting which would wind up the talks, and then the job would be pretty well completed.

Admiral Radford said the US and UK military were in pretty complete agreement on all points except that of combined command. The UK wanted to plan for a combined command, but the US was opposed to a combined command except possibly in the case of a special operation where it might be desirable. For example, if there had to be a landing in the Suez Canal area, the US would have to furnish most of the ships, with the UK furnishing ground forces, and in this circumstance the US would wish to have a combined command under a US Flag Officer.3

Admiral Radford said the French were not aware that the talks had been taking place, and it was not proposed to inform them. [Page 643] Should General Valluy raise this question again (he did raise the possibility of tripartite military talks a few weeks ago), it might be necessary to tell him something or go through some motions with him. We would, however, wait to let him raise it and hope that he wouldn’t.

  1. Source: Department of State, S/S–NEA Files: Lot 61 D 417, Omega #4. Top Secret; Omega; Eyes Only.↩
  2. Supra.↩
  3. According to Rear Admiral Hedding’s memorandum for the record, June 7, Lieutenant General Sir John Whiteley, Chairman of the British Joint Services Mission at Washington, called Admiral Radford on June 7 to discuss the status of the U.S.–U.K. contingency planning in the event of an Arab-Israeli war. He particularly wished to consider the problem of command structure. Admiral Radford responded that the Joint Chiefs of Staff intended to designate the Commander in Chief, U.S. Naval Forces, Eastern Atlantic and Mediterranean, as their operational commander, and that he would receive orders to coordinate planning and operations with an appropriate British counterpart. Lieutenant Whiteley advised that the U.K. senior airman on Cyprus would be the British representative.

    Whiteley then advocated placing all naval forces under one command, but Admiral Radford resisted, concluding with the statement that “he felt that coordination of operations between commanders rather than the establishment of a combined command structure would be the most practical solution, and further it would be better from a political point of view, in that if questioned, it could be announced that the U.S. and U.K. forces were conducting coordinated rather than combined operations.” (Memorandum for the record by Hedding; Radford Papers, Memos for the Record)

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