‘An opium smoker's dream’: the 4000-bomber plan and Anglo-American aircraft supply diplomacy at the Atlantic conference, 1941

Abstract

This article explores British aircraft supply diplomacy conducted around the Atlantic conference held off Newfoundland in August 1941. By mid-1941, the British sought to reorient the US aircraft production programme involved in the Lend-Lease supply towards the production of the heavy bombers required for their strategic bombing offensive against Germany. This demanded that the British overcome the growing resistance of the US Army Air Force (USAAF) to the outcomes of Anglo-American supply diplomacy agreed at the highest level, a resistance aggravated by the British relegation of the early variants of American heavy bombers away from strategic bombing operations. The ultimate failure of British diplomacy, and their response to this failure, represents a challenge to the received wisdom of the British dependence upon American aircraft supply in particular and Lend-Lease supply in the wider sense.