Tag FDR

FDR: Humanity and Humor

Julia C. Tobey 1 Comment

Garner FDR laugh(John Nance Garner and President Franklin D. Roosevelt meet on the presidential train in Uvalde, Texas in September 1942.)

According to John McCrea, FDR’s naval aide, President Roosevelt was typically light-hearted and full of good cheer. He liked people and went out of his way to show his interest in them. He loved to banter and joke with his associates and enjoyed a good laugh over a joke or an amusing story. For FDR, humor was means to alleviate stress and fatigue, bond with others, and repair tattered relationships. The story behind this picture is a case in point.

John Nance Garner was FDR’s vice president during his first two terms. Their relationship soured when Garner strongly disapproved of FDR’s quest for a third presidential term in 1940. After finishing his term as vice president, an alienated Garner retired from Washington, D.C. to his hometown in Uvalde, Texas. In mid-September 1942, FDR embarked on a two-week tour of U.S. war production plants and troop training facilities, making a large loop around the country by train. Upon learning that his train would pass through Uvalde, FDR invited Garner to visit him on the train, and despite the rift in their relationship, Garner accepted.

McCrea was standing outside the president’s car after Garner was escorted in to see the president. Soon peals of laughter were emanating from the president’s sitting area, and McCrea concluded that the two men were evidently having a good time. After a half-hour visit, Garner walked to his car escorted by Ross McIntire, the president’s physician, Steve Early, the president’s press secretary, and McCrea.

Garner remarked how he appreciated the opportunity to see the president again. Turning, he placed his hand on McIntire’s shoulder and said, “Ross, a great man is in your hands. Take good care of him, because this country needs him badly.” McCrea was impressed with the earnestness of Garner’s charge. Afterwards the president told McCrea, “It was fine to see John Garner again. He is a great, great American and a great friend.” FDR’s humanity and humor were the lubricants that brought reconciliation between these estranged associates who clearly shared great respect for one another.

 

Source:

Captain McCrea’s War, Chs. 12, 13.

Ego, Entitlement, and Failed Public Service

Julia C. Tobey Leave a comment

Joseph_and_Rose_Kennedy_1940

(Rose and Joseph P. Kennedy, U.S. Ambassador to the Court of St. James’s, 1940)

            Ambassador Joseph P. Kennedy’s shocking remarks before the Navy’s General Board in the fall of 1940 (see part 1 of this blog) raise a host of questions. What kind of man was Kennedy? Why did he have such a low opinion of the British and the competence of their government? Why did President Franklin D. Roosevelt appoint him as British ambassador and why didn’t FDR fire him? And how was it that such a man as Kennedy could have raised an admired son like John F. Kennedy, our 35th president. In this second part of my blog on Kennedy, I will attempt to shed some light on these questions based on his personal history, character, and public service.

An Irish Catholic born in 1888 into a political family in East Boston, MA, Joseph P. Kennedy was street-smart, supremely self-confident, hard-working, attractive, and a Democrat. As an Irish Catholic in Protestant Brahmin Boston, he was an outsider. Although he graduated from Harvard in 1912, the degree did not magically open doors for him, and he had to make his own path.

From his twenties onward, Kennedy was highly successful in business, and at a young age he amassed a substantial fortune in a variety of ventures, including banking, securities trading, the entertainment industry, real estate, and shipping. Kennedy’s success was entirely self-made. However, his business reputation was less than spotless, mostly because of shady securities trading practices. He engaged in market manipulation and trading on insider information at a time when those methods were not illegal. Although rumored to have bootlegged liquor during Prohibition, there is no support for such claims. Kennedy did legally import liquor after Prohibition’s end.

Kennedy married Rose Fitzgerald in 1914. The couple had 9 children, but Kennedy spent little time at home. He traveled extensively on business, and frequently vacationed separate from the family. He was always in the company of attractive women, and he had a notorious affair with actress Gloria Swanson. Despite his failings as a husband, he maintained a strong interest in his children.

In the presidential elections of 1932 and 1936, Kennedy supported Franklin D. Roosevelt. In recognition of Kennedy’s services in 1932, President Roosevelt awarded him two jobs in his first administration, 1st Chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, newly formed to regulate the securities markets, and subsequently 1st Chairman of the Maritime Commission, an agency charged with stimulating U.S. merchant shipbuilding. Kennedy served briefly and successfully in both posts, although, as a man of large ego, he thought he should have been awarded a cabinet post.

Kennedy provided more significant support to FDR in 1936. He was valuable to the president because of his influence with Irish Catholic voters, not a natural constituency for FDR. On re-election to a second term, FDR felt obligated to give Kennedy a significant administration position. Kennedy wanted to be Secretary of the Treasury, a job held by a close friend of FDR. Alternatively, he wanted to be Ambassador to the United Kingdom, the most prestigious of U.S. diplomatic posts. Although FDR offered him Secretary of Commerce, a cabinet position that would have utilized his business expertise, Kennedy insisted on the ambassadorship, which he felt would bring prestige to his family. Roosevelt ultimately agreed.

Kennedy had the fortune to sustain the financial obligations of the ambassadorship, but he had no foreign policy or diplomatic experience. Indeed, he was known to be remarkably undiplomatic, typically blunt, and outspoken. Used to being in charge and throwing his weight around, Kennedy had little experience at being part of a team subordinate to the secretary of state and the president.

Kennedy arrived in Britain in February 1938, just as Hitler was threatening to invade Austria. Kennedy was an ardent isolationist, who believed that the U.S. should stay out of European disputes and wars so that American business could regain its footing after the Depression. Within two weeks of his arrival, Kennedy told the British the U.S. would not provide material or other support to them should they enter any conflicts; he tried to influence British internal politics by voicing support for the appeasement policies of Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain over the opposition views of Winston Churchill; and he directly challenged the position of his boss, Secretary of State Cordell Hull, on U.S.-British relations. In relatively short order, Kennedy lost the confidence of Secretary Hull and President Roosevelt through intemperate, independent action. In his eagerness to avoid war, he even explored, without State Department authorization, the possibility of negotiations with persons close to Hitler. Increasingly, Hull and Roosevelt sidelined him by working around him and withholding information from him.

The British view of Kennedy was scarcely more positive than that of his superiors in Washington. Kennedy was welcomed in the social whirl of London and among those British who favored the appeasement of Hitler. However, Kennedy was convinced that the German war machine was invincible, and once war broke out, he became a defeatist. His attitude to towards the British soured, most likely because of his fear that the U.K. would draw the U.S. into war and that his children would be drafted to fight. He thought the British were too inept to avoid war. He impugned British motives in opposing Hitler, indicating their only concern was the survival of empire, not the preservation of democracy. He offended the British by his opposition to U.S. military and economic aid to them. During the blitz, he was scorned for decamping to the countryside while the British government and other ambassadors remained in London. British MP Josiah Wedgwood said of Kennedy:

We have a rich man, untrained in diplomacy, unlearned in history and politics, who is a great publicity seeker and who apparently is ambitious to be the first Catholic president of the U.S.

Kennedy returned to the United States in October 1940. No doubt concerned about Kennedy’s power to damage his bid for an unprecedented third term that November, FDR maintained cordial relations with Kennedy, even though FDR did not trust him or want him to continue as ambassador. In December, after FDR’s reelection, Kennedy resigned. Kennedy had essentially been frozen out of the responsibilities of ambassador because of his outspoken independence. His defeatism and dislike of the British had damaged his reputation, and because he could not be trusted to carry out someone else’s policy, he had destroyed any prospects for future public service.

Reading about Kennedy and his ambassadorship, I was repeatedly struck by parallels to Donald J. Trump and his presidency. MP Josiah Wedgwood’s description of Kennedy (quoted above) leaped off the page as equally descriptive of Trump. Both Kennedy and Trump grew up as outsiders, Kennedy as Irish in Brahmin Boston and Trump as a boy from Queens. In order to succeed, both were willing to engage in less-than-ethical business practices. At the time they sought public office, both were buoyed by wealth, felt entitled to power, and were motivated by outsized ego and ambition. Each wanted a prestigious job for which he was ill-prepared and temperamentally unsuited. Both were used to being in charge, and the independence that may have served each man in business did not play well in government. But while FDR was able maneuver Kennedy out of office, there is unfortunately no simple remedy for the destructive impact of Trump’s grand ambition to be president.

A final word about Kennedy and his role as a father. While Kennedy was rarely at the family home, he played an active role in his children’s upbringing. He followed their progress in school, was in touch with their teachers, and urged them to develop their skills and interests so that they could do something useful with their lives. He regularly wrote them warm letters of encouragement and used his many contacts to open doors to enriching and educational experiences for them. Thus, it is not surprising that Jack Kennedy developed into a balanced, well-grounded adult. And when Jack started to run for public office, Joe recognized that his controversial reputation might damage Jack’s chances so he remained strictly in the background. He provided financing and advice behind the scenes, but stayed out of the public eye.

 

Sources:

Nasaw, David, The Patriarch, The Remarkable Life and Turbulent Times of Joseph P. Kennedy, New York: The Penguin Press, 2012.

“Joseph P. Kennedy Sr.,” Wikipedia, last accessed 8.23.17, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_P._Kennedy_Sr.

 

This Ship Was Named for a Joke

Julia C. Tobey 2 Comments

USS_Shangri-La_(CV-38)_underway_in_the_pacific,_1946

(USS Shangri-La CV-38), an Essex-class aircraft carrier in August 1946)

This U.S. aircraft carrier is the USS Shangri-La, built during World War II and commissioned on 15 September 1944. Most aircraft carriers are named after battles or earlier U.S. Navy ships. Why was this one named after a fictitious place in a novel, the book Lost Horizon by James Hilton? The answer lies in President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s sense of humor and the daring “Doolittle Raid” on Tokyo on 18 April 1944.

The early months of U.S. involvement in the Pacific war were marked by Japanese advances and Allied defeats. To shake Japan’s sense of invincibility and boost U.S. morale at home, the Navy developed a plan to bomb Tokyo and other targets in the Japanese homeland by launching bombers from an aircraft carrier. This project was no mean feat. The bombers—U.S. Army B-25B Mitchell medium bombers—were land-based planes that had to be significantly modified to carry out the mission. Most particularly, they had to be fitted with larger fuel capacity for their long range deployment. The crews of the planes, all volunteers, were specially trained to take off on a short runway. The planes were too big to land on an aircraft carrier so after delivering their payload, they were supposed to fly to Allied fields in China to land.

On 18 April, sixteen bombers, led by Lieutenant Colonel James Doolittle of the U.S. Army Air Corps, took off from the aircraft carrier USS Hornet. They dropped their bombs over Japan, doing little physical damage but delivering a psychic blow to the Japanese and a lift to the American public. Then the planes flew on to China and the Soviet Union. Because the planes had had to launch further east of Japan than initially planned, they didn’t have enough fuel to reach their target air fields, and most of their crews had to crash land or bail out. Despite all, most of the plane crews survived the war.

President Roosevelt was at Hyde Park on the day of the raid. John McCrea, his naval aide, called him from Washington the following day to deliver his morning briefing. In Captain McCrea’s War, McCrea described their conversations about the raid:

“The most important item of the morning’s report, Mr. President, is that U.S. planes made an air attack on Tokyo.”

“Really?” said the president with a laugh. Of course, he was privy to the whole operation, and the raid was no surprise to him. “And where, John, do you suppose those planes came from?”

“That, Mr. President, is what the Japanese want to know. According to our intelligence sources, that question is on the lips of everyone in Tokyo.” I moved on to the other items of my report.

About one o’clock that afternoon, the president called me. “I think I can answer the Japanese who are asking where the air raid came from. Ask Ernie King if he doesn’t think it would be a good idea to say the raid came from Shangri-La. If we do, when this story reaches Japan, every Japanese will be busy looking at his or her equivalent of the Rand-McNally Atlas trying to find Shangri-La.”

I called Admiral King and told him what the president had said. Admiral King laughed softly and said he thought rather well of the idea. Soon a press release was issued stating that it was “rumored” that the attack planes were from their base in Shangri-La.

The name of the carrier USS Shangri-La derives from FDR’s little joke on the Japanese people. When the carrier was launched on 24 February 1944, the ship was christened by Mrs. James H. Doolittle, wife of the leader of the Doolittle Raid.

 

Sources

McCrea, Vice Adm. John L. Captain McCrea’s War: etc. New York: Skyhorse Publishing, 2016. Pp. 89-90.

 “Doolittle Raid,” Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doolittle_Raid, last accessed 4.19.2017.

“USS Shangri-La (CV-38),” Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doolittle_Raid, last accessed 4.19.2017.

Mr. Molotov is Photographed at the White House

Julia C. Tobey 2 Comments

John McCrea was personally involved in arranging for the photograph of President Roosevelt and Vyacheslav Molotov, the minister of foreign affairs of the Soviet Union, in the president’s office. McCrea vividly described how he managed to find a photographer to take the picture and still preserve the secrecy of Molotov’s visit.

Molotov visited the United States in June 1942. He came to meet with President Roosevelt to discuss Lend-Lease aid and the opening a second front in the war. The visit was top secret, and Molotov traveled incognito under the name of Mr. Brown. On his last morning in Washington, Molotov went to the White House to say his goodbyes to the president. From here McCrea takes up the story.

 

[Mr. Molotov] was accompanied by his bodyguards, a tough-looking three or four, who were carrying sidearms, much to the distress of the Secret Service chaps on duty. Mr. Molotov presented this group to the President.

Shortly before Mr. Molotov’s arrival at the White House, the President called me on the telephone, and here is about the way it went. “Mr. Brown will be in my second floor study in half an hour. I want a picture made of this event. Get a photographer from the pressroom whom you can trust. Bring him upstairs and have him stand by to photograph our meeting on signal.”

“I recognize the secrecy connected with this occasion, Mr. President. I know no photographers in the pressroom, let alone one who could be trusted. And this being Saturday morning, there may not be any photographers in the pressroom anyway. But rest assured, Mr. President, I will have a photographer here when you give me the signal.”

I immediately rang up Captain Leland Lovette, the head of the Navy public relations office. I told him I wanted a photographer at the White House at once. Lovette replied that he only had one photographer on duty, and at that moment, he was in the outer office of the Secretary of the Navy, standing by to photograph the Secretary awarding a Navy Cross to someone who had distinguished himself during the Pearl Harbor raid.

“Leland,” said I, “grab that guy, get him and his equipment in a taxi, and send him to the northwest gate of the White House. Do this at once. I will meet him there and give him his instructions. This is an urgent assignment, and under no circumstances are you to question the photographer as to its nature. Do you understand?” Leland replied that he did.

I met the photographer at the Pennsylvania Avenue northwest gate. We walked up the gravel drive to the White House. As we came through the front door, the chief usher, Howell Crim, said that the President wished to see me at once. On the way up to the second floor, I briefed the photographer. “After the photographs are taken, you are to return to your laboratory, develop your film, make no prints, and bring the film to my office on the second floor of the Navy Department, front corridor. You are not to volunteer any information as to the nature of this assignment, nor answer any questions about it. Captain Lovette, your chief, has been similarly instructed by me in this matter.”

The photographer and I went directly to the President’s study. The President introduced me to “Mr. Brown.” The pictures were quickly taken. I sent the photographer back to the Navy Department in my Navy-chauffeured Pontiac and returned to the President’s study. Shortly afterwards, I took off with the official party for the Anacostia Naval Air Station where a Russian plane was ready to fly Mr. Molotov and his associates back to Russia.

The photograph was released by Steve Early, the president’s press secretary, after Molotov had arrived back in the Soviet Union

Women’s Work

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(Women working at Allis-Chalmers, Milwaukee, WI)

From September 17th through October 1st, 1942, Captain John McCrea accompanied President Franklin Roosevelt on an inspection tour of U.S. war materiel manufacturing companies, military hospitals, and military training facilities. The president circled the country by train, traveling west through the northern states, south along the Pacific coast, and east through the south. On September 19th, the president’s train stopped in Milwaukee, WI for a tour of an Allis-Chalmers plant, which manufactured a variety of war materiel, including steam turbines for ships, submarine motors, generators, and electrical switch gears. Here the president’s car stops to observe a number of women at work. The president is in the back seat, partially obscured by the window. Applauding next to him is the governor of Wisconsin, Julius Heil.

What Is A Naval Aide?

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(Captain John McCrea escorting President Roosevelt in the summer of 1942. Note the aiguillettes on McCrea’s right shoulder, indicating a presidential naval aide)

On 16 January 1942 Captain John L. McCrea reported to President Roosevelt as his naval aide. Despite the honor of working for the president of the United States, McCrea was not enthusiastic about this assignment. He knew the job involved many ceremonial duties, and at least during peacetime, was none too challenging. McCrea had hoped for a ship command. He wanted to fight the war.

What exactly is a presidential naval aide? The simple answer is a naval officer assigned to the president who does whatever the president wants him to do. The job is authorized by navy regulations, but it is undefined. By tradition the naval aide serves as a liaison between the Navy Department and the president, but beyond that there are few parameters.
One constant for all presidential naval aides is a feature of their uniforms. Naval aides wear ornamental braided cords, known as aiguillettes, looped over one shoulder. Aides to high ranking naval officers and certain civilians wear aiguillettes on the left shoulder. By contrast, aides to the U.S. president wear aiguillettes on the right shoulder and thus can easily be picked out in photographs.

The man who knew the most about the job of presidential naval aide was Rear Admiral Wilson Brown, who had three tours as naval aide and served four presidents. Two tours were during peacetime. The first was working for Calvin Coolidge and Herbert Hoover in the ‘20s, and the second was working for FDR in in the mid-30s. Brown’s third tour was during WW2, when he worked for FDR a second time upon relieving John McCrea.

Brown’s peacetime duties were the sort for which McCrea had little enthusiasm. For Coolidge, Brown commanded the presidential yacht and stood on formal receiving lines to introduce visitors to the president. Anticipating Hoover’s presidency and knowing that Hoover was a fisherman, Brown scoped out good fishing grounds in Chesapeake Bay accessible to the president’s yacht. However, Hoover decided the yacht was an extravagance so Brown presided over its decommissioning and helped to develop a presidential trout fishing camp in the mountains of Virginia. During his second tour at the White House, Brown played the same role at FDR’s receptions and state dinners as he had for Coolidge and Hoover. FDR was an enthusiastic sailor, and Brown commanded FDR’s presidential yacht and went on many fishing trips with the president.

When McCrea arrived at the White House about a month after U.S. entry into the war, his activities were vastly different than those of a peacetime naval aide. He immediately launched into setting up the White House Map Room, the communications hub and repository for war information from all branches of the military and for FDR’s dispatch correspondence with Churchill, Stalin, and Chiang Kai-shek. Coordination with the Navy Department, keeping the president current on war developments, maintaining security, handling the press, and dealing with countless dignitaries visiting the White House all assumed vital importance, and McCrea found himself in the center of the action. He personally briefed the president at least twice a day–in his bedroom in the morning and in the afternoon, often in his doctor’s office–and at additional times, as necessary. Because the secret service discouraged FDR’s use of the presidential yacht because of the danger U-boat attack, McCrea was assigned to set up and administer Shangri-La, now known as Camp David. Highly compatible, FDR and McCrea worked closely together on many matters, and McCrea undertook to alleviate as many pressures on the president as he could.

When Admiral Brown returned to the White House as McCrea’s relief, he confirmed that “the office of Naval Aide in war was a very different, and much more interesting job, than during peace.” He inherited the responsibility of administering the Map Room, and attended all FDR’s wartime conferences with Churchill subsequent to the Casablanca Conference. Brown especially enjoyed morning presidential briefings, but they were more formal than in McCrea’s day. Brown and Admiral William D. Leahy, the president’s chief of staff, briefed the president together, and they did so in FDR’s office.

Sources

“Aiguillete, United States,” Wikipedia,
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aiguillette#United_States, (last accessed 1.30.2017).

Wilson Brown, “Aide to Four Presidents,” American Heritage 6, No. 2 (February 1955), http://www.americanheritage.com/content/aide-four-presidents?page=show (last accessed 1.30.2017).

Vice Adm. John L. McCrea, Captain McCrea’s War, (New York; Skyhorse Publishing, 2016).

January 30 – FDR’s Birthday

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20042-fdr-birthday-1943

(Returning from the Casablanca Conference during a flight from Trinidad to Miami, President Roosevelt celebrates his 61st birthday. Seated (L to R): Guy Spaman, secret service; Admiral William D. Leahy, FDR’s chief of staff; Lt. Cone, captain of the plane; and FDR. Standing (L to R): Charles Fredericks, secret service, Capt. John L. McCrea, presidential naval aide; Elmer Hipsley, secret service; Lt. George Fox, naval medical corps; Rear Admiral Ross T. McIntire, surgeon general of the navy)

On January 30, 1943 on the return trip from the Casablanca Conference, President Roosevelt celebrated his 61st birthday in an unusual venue, aboard a Pan Am Clipper flying from Trinidad to Miami. The event was organized on the initiative of John McCrea during the journey to Casablanca. There were champagne toasts, a birthday cake, and the president received a gift, a book of prints showing scenes of Trinidad, where the presidential party had had overnight layovers on the way to and from North Africa. It was the first time—and possibly the last—that a president of the United States had celebrated his birthday in the skies.

Casablanca Conference

Julia C. Tobey 1 Comment

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(President Roosevelt and Prime Minister Churchill addressing reporters at the joint press conference at the end of the Casablanca Conference)

On 24 January 1943, at the conclusion of the Casablanca Conference, President Roosevelt and Prime Minister Churchill held a joint press conference. Seated in chairs on a beautiful sunny day, with the correspondents spread out on the lawn before them, the two leaders discussed what had been accomplished during the conference. The president spoke first. Near the end of his remarks he stated:

“…I think we have all had it in our hearts and our heads before, but I don’t think that it has ever been put down on paper by the Prime Minister and myself, and that is the determination that peace can come to the world only by the total elimination of German and Japanese war power.

“Some of you Britishers know the old story—we had a General called U.S. Grant. His name was Ulysses Simpson Grant, but in my and the Prime Minister’s early days, he was called “Unconditional Surrender” Grant. The elimination of German, Japanese and Italian war power means the unconditional surrender by Germany, Italy, and Japan. That means a reasonable assurance of future world peace. It does not mean the destruction of the population of Germany, Italy, or Japan, but it does mean the destruction of the philosophies in those countries which are based on conquest and the subjugation of other people.

“While we have not had a meeting of all of the ‘United Nations,’ I think that there is no question—in fact we both have great confidence that the same purposes and objectives are in the minds of all of the other ‘United Nations’—Russia, China, and all the others.”

John McCrea attended the press conference in a position where he could clearly see the prime minister. When the president spoke the words “unconditional surrender,” the prime minister sharply turned his head in a manner that suggested to John that this announcement came as a surprise to Mr. Churchill. John learned later that the president and the prime minister had discussed, and were in complete agreement on, this point.

Presidential remarks (click here)

USS Iowa’s Big Guns

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(Iowa’s 16” guns at work during a drill in the Pacific.)

Another BIG feature of USS Iowa is the 16” guns. There are 9 of them, 3 in each of 3 turrets. Two of the turrets are forward of the bridge. The third is to the stern. When the guns were operational, they could fire a shell of approximately 2,700 lbs.–roughly the weight of a Mini Cooper car–a distance of 23 miles.

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(Captain John McCrea speaking under the guns of the aft turret.)

When I was 12 or 13, I had occasion to have lunch on board the USS Missouri, one of Iowa’s sister ships, as a guest of the ship’s commanding officer. After lunch I had a tour of the ship, including one of the 16” gun turrets. I was able to get my head and shoulders into a gun barrel. (They wouldn’t let me go in any further.)

The Trip To Casablanca

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[On board the president’s C-54 in North Africa. Seated, 1st row (L to R): FDR and Harry Hopkins. Seated, 2d row (L to R): Lt. George A. Fox and Rear Adm. Ross T. McIntire, FDR’s physiotherapist and physician, respectively; Guy Spaman (back turned), Secret Service; and Captain McCrea. Standing (L to R): unidentified man; Arthur Prettyman, FDR’s valet; Charles Fredericks, Secret Service; E.R. Hipsley, Secret Service; W.K. Deckard, Secret Service; and Captain Otis Bryan, pilot of the plane.]

In the evening of January 9, 1943, President Franklin Roosevelt and his party departed Washington by train for Casablanca, Morocco, for meetings with Winston Churchill and British military leaders about the next phase of the war. Among the president’s party were Harry Hopkins, presidential adviser, Admiral William D. Leahy, chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, and Captain John L. McCrea, the president’s naval aide. The president had placed McCrea in charge of all the travel arrangements for the trip to North Africa.

The itinerary from Washington to Casablanca was far from direct. The group was to travel to Miami, Florida by special train. There they would board two chartered Pan American Clippers and fly south to Trinidad and Belém, Brazil, and then east, across the South Atlantic Ocean, to Bathurst, Gambia on Africa’s west coast. From Bathurst, they would fly north in two army C-54 planes to Casablanca. The Clipper legs of the trip essentially followed the route used by U.S. Army Air Transport Command to fly war materiel from the United States to the African theater of the war. This route was chosen because it offered the relatively limited aircraft of the day the shortest passage across the Atlantic.