The Battle of the Atlantic and American Preparations for World War II in Northern Ireland, 1940-1941 (before Pearl Harbor)

On August 15, 1940, the Luftwaffe bombed the North and South of England and ‘Wild’ Bill Donovan was smuggled into the garden of 10 Downing Street. The previous month he had been to the UK, to President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s home at Hyde Park, and secretly back to London1. Winston Churchill later told Cecil King, Editor-in-Chief of the Daily Mirror, that August 15, 1940 was the day he knew the Allies would eventually prevail2. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Winston Churchill had been exchanging letters since September 2, 19393. Bill Donovan was Roosevelt’s private lawyer, a Republican and later head of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), forerunner of the CIA. Churchill told Donovan of that day’s (August 15, 1940) great successes of the RAF. During the following week Donovan was shown Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), Bletchley Park, the newest centimetric radar and the state of UK atomic research. This unprecedented access arranged by President Roosevelt with Winston S. Churchill followed a strictly confidential message from the President on May 17, 1940 in response to Churchill’s plea for help. The archived message was annotated in Churchill’s handwriting before he read it to the War Cabinet4.