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Copy No 4 of 7 contes
FEASIBILITY #TULY ON THE EVACUATION OF HONG KONO
DIDO(ER)(67)56
A. The quote in the first sentence of paragraph 1 comes from the Commonwealth Secretary's opening statement at the meeting on 24th July. It would perhapa be more fitting, and certainly more in accordance with the title of the paper, if we were to use the following quote from his summing-up at that meeting:
8.
"To give ...... a broad indication of the physical
problems of evacuation".
In 34 "DIGIT” should be described as a plan and not an operation.
C. Some mention should be made in the priorities of the evacuation of dependants. I suggest that it should be shown that dependants would be evneunted with (1) and (11); in the case of (111), (iv) / and (v) it would be a matter of women and children first.
D.
Amend the second line of paragraph 6 to read "RAF Air Support Command".
E. sith reference to the last sentence of paragraph 6, the capacity at Kai Tak would not be the only, or even the major, limiting factor. There would also be questions of weather, damage or civil disturbance at the airport, and the difficulty of persuading civilian air crew to venture into a dangerous situation. P. we should mention, towards the end of paragraph 8, the implicɛtions of the situation described on the security forcen. The police would probably be completely over-stretched;
the aray would be fully committed on the frontier and helping the police in the streets; it seems very doubtful that either could give any help in protecting evacuees in transit areas, embarkation points and on the way from one to the other.
A short passage on the forces could go in about here and could run something like this t-
Les 37
I.
The only circumstance in which the evacuation of our troops might be contemplated, as within the limits of situation outlined in this paper, other than as part of a negotiated and much larger evacuation and following that of
dependents and others who must take precedence,7 would be in the hypothetical event of a fighting withdrawal on the style of Dunkirk when all else had been over-run. This such a possibility appears highly unrealistic and it would not be practicable to plan for this, though it would be necessary for ships to be available".
The heading over paragraph 10 should read "Plan DIGIT“.✓
The last sentence of paragraph 11 only tells half the story, as there would be shortcomings in addition to the lack og detailed preparation on the ground. Even if a good plan could be written, it is doubtful if it could be successfully implemented, owing, for 2 example, to the impossibility of diverting the security forces from
their attempts to control chaos to protecting and controlling the flow of evacuees.
J.
It follows, therefore, that paragraph 12a should say that any plan prepared could only be very limited in its effectiveness.
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