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27.
In order to void duplication, we recommend that the Admiralty, War Office and Air Ministry should inform their own Commanders in the Far East direct of the points already covered. At the same time, we suggest that the American Government should be invited to inform their own representa- tives on the same lines.
28. We recommend that our representatives at the conversations should be authorised to impart full information to the Americans and Dutch as regards recognition signals and communications, entry into defended ports, minefields, local defences, fuelling facilities, docking, repair facilities, operation of aircraft, etc.
Command.
29.
We consider that a unified strategical naval command in the Pacific and Far Bast, including the waters around the Netherlands East Indies and Malaya, and also Australasia, is desirable. We suggest, therefore, that our own (including the Dominions) and the Dutch naval forces operating in the Far East and the Pacific should be placed under the American naval command, with the exception of purely local defence forces which would remain under the local British and Dutch commanders, This would, of course, require the approval of the Australian and New Zealand Governments. The Indian Ocean- would remain a British Command, under the Commander-in-Chief, East Indies, and we suggest that the Americans and Dutch should be invited to place any of their naval forces operating to the westward of the Dutch Islands under British command. The detailed definition of the proposed respective naval commands should be considered by the Admiralty, and our representatives at the conversations informed.
30. No question of the command of Allied land forces is likely to arise with the Americans or the Dutch. Air Units operating from Allied territory other than their own should, we suggest, come under the operational control of the Air Command in which they are operating.
31
We consider that arrangements should be made for the immediate exchange of liaison officers between ourselves, the Americans and the Dutch in the Far East as soon as war breaks out, assuming that the Americans and Dutch intervene. Details of this should be settled during the conversations.
II.
CONVERSATIONS IN LONDON OR WASHINGTON,
32. As we have pointed out in paragraph 2 above, parallel conversations to those taking place in the Far East will be necessary on a higher plane in Great Britain or the United States to discuss the broader implications of the effect of American participation in the war against Germany and Italy on the war in the Far East.
33. These conversations will probably range over the general problem of world strategy, covering the war. as a whole. We refer to them in this Paper only in so far as they will affect the particular issue of American strategy, in the Far East.
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