US NAVY
Destroyers
Aaron Ward (DD‑132), Buchanan (DD‑131), Crowninshield
(DD‑134), Hale (DD‑133), Abel P. Upshur (DD‑193),
Welborn C. Wood (DD‑195), Herndon (DD‑198) and Welles
(DD‑257) arrive at Halifax, Nova Scotia, along with destroyer Russell
(DD‑414), with Commander Destroyers, Atlantic Fleet (Captain
Ferdinand L. Reichmuth) embarked, and destroyer tender Denebola (AD‑12).
"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 non‑existent 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 XPB2Y‑2. The Secretary is visiting the fleet as it carries out
operations in Hawaiian waters (see 9 September).
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