As previously noted, Admiral Harold “Betty” Stark, Chief of Naval Operations, wrote the “Plan Dog” memo on November 12, 1940, advocating a joint US-UK naval strategy against Germany in the Atlantic. The president invited the British to come to Washington for joint staff conversations on December 2, 1940.1 But before that—on November 28—Stark, as Chief of Naval Operations, issued an order to ensure practical preparedness for Anglo-American cooperation: he asked the New York Navy Yard to manufacture twenty sets of Royal Navy signal flags, for use by US warships needing to communicate with their British counterparts.2
The US navy and the British navy used different sets of signal flags, so for an American destroyer, say, to communicate with its British counterpart would require the use of a common language.3 Stark decided therefore that US ships should be issued with sets of British flags and pennants, and extra fabric to repair them. In February 1941, after the staff conferences, Stark increased the order from twenty to one hundred, fifty to be stored in New York and fifty in Norfolk, for issue to ships on the Atlantic squadron.4 By April they were available for distribution; on May 6, the USS Greer received its set from the supply ship USS Prairie.5
The president had long since articulated a vision of hemispheric defense, which would involve de facto assistance to Britain. On February 27, 1941—in, as it happens, a speech to the Oscars—he reminded listeners of this hemispheric policy and made explicit the implicit link to a broader defense:
the defense of all the democracies of all the Americas . . . involves the future of democracy wherever it is imperiled by force or terror.6
In March, Lend Lease passed Congress; on April 25, the administration declared the “patrol” being conducted by US Navy ships looking for aggressor activity would be extended, though Roosevelt said the United States was still not, per se, conducting convoys. But:
Q Mr. President, if this patrol should encounter some apparently aggressive ships headed toward the western hemisphere, what would it do about it?
THE PRESIDENT: Let me know. (loud laughter)
Or, perhaps, use its new signal flags to communicate the presence of a German vessel to the Royal Navy. Three weeks after the Greer received its set of British signal flags, the president declared an unlimited national emergency, in which the naval patrol would play a vital part.
These ships and planes warn of the presence of attacking raiders, on the sea, under the sea, and above the sea. The danger from these raiders is, of course, greatly lessened if their location is definitely known. . . . Our patrols are helping now to insure delivery of the needed supplies to Britain. All additional measures necessary to deliver the goods will be taken.7
Footnotes
Stetson Conn and Byron Fairchild, The Western Hemisphere: The Framework of Hemispheric Defense, vol. 12, part 1, United States Army in World War II (Washington, D.C.: Office of the Chief of Military History, 1960), 92.↩︎
Chief of Naval Operations to Bureau of Ships, February 17, 1941, RG 19, box 66, fldr JJ5-(7), National Archives and Records Administration.↩︎
United States Navy, The Bluejackets’ Manual (Annapolis: United States Naval Institute, 1940), https://archive.org/details/bluejacketsmanua00mcle/page/n5/mode/2up; Signal Card (London: Admiralty, 1937), https://archive.org/details/b.-r.-232-signal-card-1937/mode/2up.↩︎
Chief of Naval Operations to Bureau of Ships, February 17, 1941.↩︎
Supply Officer, USS Prairie, “Invoice,” May 6, 41AD, RG 19, box 135, fldr DD145(vol. 1), National Archives and Records Administration; Commandant, Norfolk Navy Yard to Bureau of Ships, April 1, 1941, RG 19, box 66, fldr JJ5-(7), National Archives and Records Administration.↩︎
Franklin D. Roosevelt, “Address to Annual Awards Dinner of Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences--February 27, 1941,” in Public Papers and Addresses of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, 1941 Volume, vol. 10, 13 vols. (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1950), 40--42.↩︎
Franklin D. Roosevelt, “Radio Address Announcing the Proclamation of an Unlimited National Emergency---May 27, 1941,” in Public Papers and Addresses of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, 1941 Volume, vol. 10, 13 vols. (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1950), 187--194.↩︎