US Marine Corps - The Black Vault

Service in the Naval Aeronautical Organization 111
recommendations to the Secretary of the Navy in a weighty 104-page document.
The General Board recommended to the Secretary of the Navy for
adoption the following statement of policy as Navy Department policy, and
its forwarding to the Secretary of State.
The Department is opposed, as unsafe and inadvisable, to reduction by
example, or by any method which does not consider all elements of national
armament.
The Navy Department believes that the first and most important problem
in the movement toward limitation and reduction of armaments is to effect
general agreement in 1932 which will bring nations into a worldwide system
of limitation of armaments stabilized at the lowest level obtainable without
undue friction or misunderstanding.”’
Commander Turner was directed in March 1931 to
report to the Senior Member present, General Board, Navy Department, for
temporary duty in connection with preparation for the next disarmament
conference at Geneva in 193.2.g8
For nine months, Commander Turner carried water on both shoulders
by serving in the Planning Division of the Bureau of Aeronautics and with
the General Board. At night he was studying and learning the positions taken
or advanced by all the participating nations in the disarmament discussion.
During the day he was trying to devise plans for a shrinking purse to cover
expanding naval air operations.
On 27 November 1931 he was detached from all duty in the Bureau of
Aeronautics and in due time proceeded to Geneva, Switzerland, where he
remained until 22 July 1932. Admiral Turner’s most significant remembrance
of this conference was that the British had recommended and argued long
and hard for the abolition of aircraft carriers from the navies of the signatory
powers. The records of the conference indicate that this proposal was ad-
vanced by the British on 29 February 1932.
1932
Commander Turner’s efforts, and those of his seniors, were fruitless. The
conference was soon lost in a maze of conflicting proposals, each nation
seeking to improve its own relative status by suggesting the reduction or
abolition of those weapons essential to potential opponents and the retention
of those considered necessary to its own national defense.ge
And perhaps more succinctly, it can be said that the confer~--
WGeneral Board, letter 438–2–Serial 1521–C-CM
WBUNAV, letter, NAV–3–N–6312–10“
* Encyclopedia Bri~annir~ ‘‘