Best Defense

Thomas E. Ricks' daily take on national security.

Did the Americans nastily hide landing craft from the Brits during World War II?

That’s the allegation made by Lt. Gen. Sir Ian Jacob, who was the chief military aide to Churchill in the British Ministry of Defence during the war.

Screen Shot 2015-12-09 at 10.14.03 AM
Screen Shot 2015-12-09 at 10.14.03 AM

That’s the allegation made by Lt. Gen. Sir Ian Jacob, who was the chief military aide to Churchill in the British Ministry of Defence during the war.

That’s the allegation made by Lt. Gen. Sir Ian Jacob, who was the chief military aide to Churchill in the British Ministry of Defence during the war.

In an oral history on file at the Historical Archives of the European Union, Jacob states that, “We discovered after the war that there were surpluses, large surpluses, of landing craft, simply in the Pacific.”

This doesn’t make sense to me. One of the chief reasons for holding back on landings in France was the lack of landing craft. The British were dragging their feet on this, while the Americans were pushing forward. So why would the Americans let landing craft sit idle? He suggests that it was an American way of restraining British operations in the Mediterranean. “There was a frightful shortage of landing craft. And they kept on ordering us to send their landing craft back from the Mediterranean out to SEAC or back to England.”

Of course, war doesn’t always make sense, so it is possible that Jacob is correct in his assertion. He blames the leaders of the U.S. Navy for hiding the craft, and FDR for letting them get away with it.

Image credit: George Rodger/Life magazine/Google Books/Wikipedia Commons

Thomas E. Ricks covered the U.S. military from 1991 to 2008 for the Wall Street Journal and then the Washington Post. He can be reached at ricksblogcomment@gmail.com. Twitter: @tomricks1

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