American Airpower Comes of Age

AMERICAN AIRPOWER COMES OF AGE
both Roosevelt and Churchill in telegrams sent on 10 September. On Hopkins’
recommendation, the president responded with a brief cable to Mikolajczyk
the next day from Quebec: “We are taking every possible step” to provide
assistance and acknowledging the “urgent importance of this matter.”
Given the delay in receiving permission from the Russians to use the shuttle-bombing
bases, the AAF Eighth Air Force was not able to provide relief
until a single mission of 107 B-17s was flown a week later on 18 September.
Results were not encouraging, with only somewhere between 130 and 298
containers of the 1,284 dropped reaching the Polish insurgents (who were
forced to surrender on 2 October). See the details in FRUS, Quebec, 1944,
204–5, 396–407.
52. With Brooke in the chair at this and subsequent sessions, the bulk
of the discussions centered on the ground war in the European theater. An
account is in FRUS, Quebec, 1944, 300–6.
53. Arnold’s holding of the discussion “in abeyance” until tomorrow
referred to the afternoon meeting since there is no record of this topic being
considered at the earlier 12-1 P.M. session. At the 2:30 meeting, following a
brief consideration of coordination with the Russians in the field and establishing
zones of occupation in postwar Germany, the bulk of the discussion
dealt with control of the strategic air forces in Europe. It is clear from the
exchange between Arnold and Portal that Hap opposed at the time any
reversion of control from the supreme commander of the 4,482 AAF heavies,
each with two crews, then in the theater. After the meeting, Arnold talked
with Spaatz via trans-Atlantic telephone, a transcript of which is in AP. See
the discussion in the introduction to this chapter.
54. The museum is located in the National Park on a bluff 300 feet above
the St. Lawrence River, part of the upper town of modern Quebec City, site
of British general Wolfe’s famous victory over the French general Montcalm
in September 1759. Capt Thomas C. Sheffield was Arnold’s aide and Miss
Dahlman a civilian secretary normally assigned to Arnold’s office in Washington.
55. Princess Alice, Countess of Athlone, wife of the Earl of Athlone, governor
general of Canada; Adm of the Fleet Sir Andrew B. Cunningham, Royal
Navy, First Sea Lord. The record of the dinner attendees printed in FRUS,
Quebec, 1944, 311, does not list any major general but does include Field
Marshal Sir John Dill, whose name was omitted by Arnold in his diary.
56. Although Mackenzie King recorded from his perspective that
Churchill was pleased that the “conversation . . . flowed freely and pleasantly
during the evening between the American and British chiefs,” the
British prime minister was probably not impressed with Arnold’s questioning
the availability of airfields to support RAF Pacific operations. Diary of
William Lyon MacKenzie King, Public Archives of Canada, 12 September
1944. As Churchill wrote in Triumph and Tragedy, 147: “What I feared most
at this stage of the war was that the United States would say in after-years,
‘We came to your help in Europe and you left us alone to finish off Japan.’
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