Cablegram Winch 7 [QUEBEC], 18 September 1944, 2.15 p.m.
TOP SECRET AND PERSONAL IMMEDIATE
Your JOHCU No. 83. [1]
I will certainly receive General Lavarack [2] and put him in touch with the British Chiefs of Staff.
2. The only difficulty here has been to persuade the Americans to give us the space and facilities to deploy in the Pacific. Some of them wanted to keep it all to themselves. However I have offered a British Fleet capable of fighting an action single-handed against the whole Japanese Fleet, to share in the main operations, and this has been accepted. We have also requested and obtained a proportionate share for the British long range Air Force in the process of bombing Japan to bits.
The military operations are of a much more complicated character and I will have to inform you later about them. In the first instance, of course we must clean up Burma by taking Rangoon and cutting the Japanese communications. Thereafter we advance eastward across the Bay of Bengal engaging the maximum Japanese army and air at the earliest moment. There is no question of disturbing MacArthur’s Command in any way. On the contrary we shall be able to supply from our Main Fleet a satisfactory naval component to guard his left flank.
3. None of these dispositions will prevent our placing in the Indian Ocean a second substantial fleet capable of dealing with any detachment the Japanese may make.
4. This Conference has been a blaze of friendship and unity and can you wonder at it in view of the unparalleled victories being gained by our armies in every quarter of the globe? The above is most secret and for your own personal information. Heartiest good wishes.
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1 See Document 279.
2 Head of the Australian Military Mission in the United States.
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