COURTING A RELUCTANT ALLY - National Intelligence University

U.S. DNI, RADM Anderson, as the Navy’s lead representative for the technicalexchanges. 228 Demonstrating the distrust and technical chauvinism characteristicof many in the U.S. Navy at this time, the Navy’s internal assessment wasthat Tizard’s Mission was most likely a ploy on the part of the British to gainaccess to U.S. industry and Rear Admiral H. G. Bowen, the Director of theNavy Research Lab (NRL), believed the Navy would get little from theexchange, given American technological superiority. 229 The Navy’s assessmentwould be proved wrong.Tizard left the UK on 14 August 1940 and, while his team was heavily slantedtoward experts in radar, his group was given permission to provide the Americanswith information on 21 different technologies, to include anti-aircraft guns, armorplating, self-sealing fuel tanks, and gyroscopic gunsights—all of which had beentested in the field of battle. Tizard’s mission was classified as Top Secret, sinceany word of the exchange would likely inflame U.S. isolationists. 230The Tizard Mission began on 29 August 1940. The first meetings concernedasdic, sonar, and anti-submarine warfare. While reticent at first, by the afternoonof the first day the U.S. team had warmed to their British visitors andwere quite excited about exploring the possibility of combining the two countries’research efforts on sonar and asdic, as both sides had taken different, butcomplementary, approaches to the submarine detection problem. That sameday, the British also described advances they had made in radar, which completelyimpressed the Americans. 231 However, U.S. distrust of the British was228 Department of State, “The Acting Secretary of State to the British Ambassador (Lothian),” 29July 1940, FRUS 1940 vol. 3, 79; Leutze, “Technology and Bargaining,” 57; Zimmerman, 76-77.Amazingly, as David Zimmerman relates in his comprehensive study of the Tizard Mission, TopSecret Exchange, Churchill almost scuttled the Tizard Mission before the U.S. was able to officiallyaccept it. Demonstrating all of the British attitudes that inhibited cooperation between the two countriesin the period before the U.S. entered the war, Churchill on 17 July 1940 wrote to his Chiefs ofStaff liaison, GEN Ismay, querying why his advisors were so quick to toss away Britain’s precioussecrets to the U.S. when the U.S. was so loath to give anything back. He also noted the superiorityof British technology to anything America possessed and demonstrated substantial resentment thatthe U.S. was still far away from entering the war. Churchill also expressed grave reservations overU.S. security, commenting that anything they gave the Americans would soon find its way to Germany.Churchill’s correspondence to Ismay stands in marked contrast to his more famous letters toRoosevelt, in which he displays, for obvious reasons, none of the distrust and resentment of Americathat is evident from this incident. Progress on Roosevelt’s destroyers-for-bases deal allowedChurchill to overcome his pique and give final approval to the mission. For additional informationsee Zimmerman, 82.229Zimmerman, 46-47.230 Zimmerman, 94-95, 98231 Zimmerman, 102-105.65