Prime Minister Winston Churchill and President Franklin D. Roosevelt appreciated the importance of intelligence in safeguarding Allied commerce to defeat the Axis powers. They fostered close personal ties and encouraged subordinate leaders to follow their example. As a result, the Anglo-American Allies shared information derived from newly developed technologies like RADAR and High Frequency Radio Direction Finding (HF/DF or "huff duff"). RADAR provided a means of detecting vessels and aircraft above the surface, while HF/DF was used to locate the sources of enemy radio transmissions. Such information was generally known within the Allied command as "special intelligence." Working together, British and American trackers exploited special intelligence to locate Axis forces with extreme precision. Anglo-American intelligence leaders were also afforded the highest latitude when handling and discussing sensitive intelligence information with one another. Trusted to use their best judgment when dealing with their counterparts, Allied intelligence leaders began sharing codebreaking and cryptanalytic secrets, known as "very special intelligence" and classified under cover-names like "ULTRA" and "MAGIC". Anglo-American Cooperation
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Sir Alfred Denniston and British Army Colonel John Tiltman in London,
U.S. Navy photograph in the collections of The Mariners' Museum
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Conclusion of the Axis Tripartite Pact,
courtesy of Carl Boyd
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Pearl Harbor Attack,
U.S. Navy photograph in the collections of The Mariners' Museum
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Allied Tanker Burning off Norfolk, Virginia,
U.S. Navy photograph in the collections of The Mariners' Museum
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The Allies succeeded in developing an unprecedented sense of cooperation on both strategic and tactical levels between 1939 and 1945. Anglo-American personnel collaborated to develop an intelligence advantage over the Axis powers of Imperial Japan, Fascist Italy, and National Socialist Germany, ensuring decisive Allied victory by 1945. Ultimately developing into a war-winning sense of trust and cooperation, the close Anglo-American relationship was tempered by the tactical defeats of the first years of the war. Largely caught off-guard by the Japanese offensives in the Pacific in December 1941, British and American naval leaders were unprepared to fight a global war on multiple fronts. American naval forces were particularly unequipped and unorganized for a simultaneous fight in both Pacific and Atlantic. As a result, Axis submarines exploited Allied weaknesses to sink more than 623 vessels along the eastern sea frontier of the United States between January and August 1942. Known by the Germans as Operation Paukenschlag (or "Drumbeat"), the U-boat offensive in American waters in the spring and summer of 1942 was the longest sustained period of success in the German submarine campaign against Allied shipping.
Axis naval forces inflicted heavy damage against Allied commerce during the war, causing Anglo-American leaders to develop a stronger alliance. The Drumbeat crisis of 1942 influenced the Allies to establish a more unified strategy aimed at safeguarding merchant shipping and defeating Axis naval forces, particularly in the Atlantic. To achieve these overall objectives, it was essential to develop greater cohesion and efficiency within the Anglo-American command. Moreover, solving German naval codes and ciphers was vital to safeguarding Allied shipping.
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