Friday, September 5, 2025

85 Years Ago, Friday, 6 September 1940

US NAVY

            Destroyers Aaron Ward (DD132), Buchanan (DD131), Crowninshield (DD134), Hale (DD133), Abel P. Upshur (DD193), Welborn C. Wood (DD195), Herndon (DD198) and Welles (DD257) arrive at Halifax, Nova Scotia, along with destroyer Russell (DD414), with Commander Destroyers, Atlantic Fleet (Captain Ferdinand L. Reichmuth) embarked, and destroyer tender Denebola (AD12). "By the long arm of coincidence" (as British Prime Minister Churchill puts it) the Royal Navy crews assigned to man the ships arrive simultaneously (see 9 September).

            The warm generosity with which the U.S. meets the British request for ships contrasts markedly with the cold response to the Uruguayan government's request to purchase three destroyers. U.S. Minister to Uruguay Edwin C. Wilson recounts (2 October) an interview with "a leading Uruguayan" who complains: "Having been exhorted to cooperate in continental defense, we want to build up our pitifully nonexistent Navy, and we ask you to let us have two or three old destroyers that have been lying useless in your ports since the last war. You handed over fifty of these destroyers to Great Britain, and we see pictures reproduced in the papers of quantities of these ships tied up in your ports, looking like so many toy vessels in a shop window. Yet, you tell us that you find it impossible to let us have even a single one of these." Secretary of State Hull confidentially informs Minister Wilson (13 September) that the Navy Department believes "that the strategic situation in the North Atlantic does not permit the disposal of any destroyers to Uruguay at the present time, the more so as this would inevitably lead to similar requests from other American republics for [the] purchase of destroyers." 

            Secretary of the Navy Knox and Commander Aircraft, Scouting Force arrive at Pearl Harbor, T.H., in XPB2Y2. The Secretary is visiting the fleet as it carries out operations in Hawaiian waters (see 9 September).

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