Stalin's War on Japan: The Red Army's Manchurian Strategic Offensive Operation, 1945

By Charles Stephenson

This WWII military study examines the critical yet overlooked Soviet offensive on Japan’s puppet state and its influence on winning the Pacific War.

Did Japan surrender in 1945 because the Americans dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki? Or because of the crushing defeat inflicted by the Soviet Union in Manchukuo, the Japanese puppet state in north-east China?

In Stalin’s War on Japan, Charles Stephenson describes the Soviet offensive from the top-level decision-making and early planning stages to its decisive outcome on the ground. He also considers to what extent Japan’s capitulation is attributable to the atomic bomb or the stunningly successful entry of the Soviet Union into the conflict.

Stephenson combines a vividly detailed narrative of the invasion itself with an absorbing account of the political and diplomatic process that gave rise to the offensive—with particular focus on the Yalta conference. There, Stalin allowed the Americans to persuade him to join the war in the east; a conflict he was determined on entering anyway. Stalin’s War on Japan sheds new light on the last act of the Second World War.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Jun 9, 2021
• ISBN: 9781526785954

Charles Stephenson

Charles Stephenson is an established author on naval and siege warfare and the history of fortifications, with the following books in print: The Fortifications of Malta 1530-1945, Zeppelins: German Airships 1900-40, The Channel Islands 1941-45: Hitler's Impregnable Fortress, The Admirals Secret Weapon: Lord Dundonald and the Origins of Chemical Warfare and Germanys Asia-Pacific Empire: Colonialism and Naval Policy, 1885-1914. He was Consultant Editor and a contributor to Castles: A History of Fortified Structures: Ancient, Medieval & Modern. He is also the creator of the three books that (thus far) constitute the Samson Plews Collection.

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Stalin’s War on Japan

Stalin’s War on Japan

The Red Army’s Manchurian Strategic Offensive Operation, 1945

Charles Stephenson

First published in Great Britain in 2021 by

PEN & SWORD MILITARY

An imprint of Pen & Sword Books Ltd

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Copyright © Charles Stephenson, 2021

ISBN 978-1-52678-594-7

eISBN 978-1-52678-595-4

Mobi ISBN 978-1-52678-596-1

The right of Charles Stephenson to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

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Dedication

For George Carbery

19 December 1932–4 August 2020

‘Everyone must leave something behind when he dies, my grandfather said. […] Something your hand touched some way so your soul has somewhere to go when you die, and when people look at that tree or that flower you planted, you’re there.

[Ray Bradbury]

Contents

Introduction

1. ‘How many divisions has the Pope?’

2. Manchukuo: an Army with a State

3. The Soviet (Deep) Battle Plan

4. ‘… at the crossroads of destiny’

5. The Trans-Baikal Front: the ‘iron stream’

6. The First Far Eastern Front: Suvorov’s Tactics

7. The Second Far Eastern Front: River Wars

8. ‘The war situation has developed not necessarily to Japan’s advantage’

9. The Second Stage: Dissolution of an Army, its State, and an Empire

10. Unpinched: Finishing off ‘the fascist Beast of the East’

11. ‘The heart of China is in Communist hands’

Notes

Bibliography

Introduction

On the 8th [August 1945], following in the steps of the ‘Fascist jackal,’ Mussolini, in 1940, Stalin, scenting ‘easy meat,’ declared war on Japan, and the next day the Russians crossed the Manchurian border.¹

The massive attack launched by the Soviet Union’s Red Army on the Japanese puppet state of Manchukuo, which commenced a little after midnight local time on 9 August 1945, took most of the world, and particularly the Japanese, by surprise. It was intended to. Prior knowledge of the Manchurian Strategic Offensive Operation was greatly restricted, and known only within the very highest government and military levels of the three senior members of the United Nations: the USSR, the US and the UK.² That Soviet intervention in the war with Japan had been sought, by the US in particular, and agreed upon in principle during the 1943 Tehran Conference, was also a closely kept secret. That the decision had been confirmed, with Stalin’s specific postwar goals accepted and agreed, at Yalta in February 1945 likewise. The lack of knowledge that Stalin’s war on Japan was undertaken as a matter of high policy, and in agreement with his then allies, led many to consider it merely opportunistic; J.F.C. Fuller, cited above, is an example, albeit perhaps an extreme if eminently quotable one.

What this work seeks to do is advance a narrative on the political background and context to the operation, which constituted the final campaign of the Second World, or Great Patriotic, War, and examine its conduct and legacy. This it does in some detail, but it is not a military treatise and does not attempt to offer blow-by-blow accounts of every battle, nor comprehensive lists of each and every unit engaged. There are excellent studies in English that do that, authored by David M. Glantz, and those who seek such detail need look no further.³

I would also add that this is not meant to be an academic work. There are no theoretical frameworks within which the tale is constructed, nor any new or startling conclusions. It does, however, attempt the destruction of a few myths attached to the Red Army. Though targeted at the general reader rather than the professional historian, I have been careful to correctly attribute all sources used.

A word about rendering place-names into English; a text dealing with Russians fighting Japanese in China and Korea has to somehow negotiate transliterary minefields. What was known by one name to the Japanese was likely called something else by the Russians, and vice versa. Equally, there might well have been an entirely different name in Chinese or Korean. This, in turn, is further complicated by the fact that the system for romanising the Chinese language changed in the 1950s. Then the old Wade-Giles system was superseded by the current Hanyu Pinyin method under which, to take an obvious example, the Chinese capital formerly rendered as ‘Peking’ became ‘Beijing’. Additional difficulties revolve around the fact that whilst the major cities, towns and geographical features have endured whatever they may have been called, many villages and the like have not. So whilst an attempt has been made to offer renditions which register on Google Maps, this has not always been possible. In every case I have tried to stick with what seems to be the most sensible version, although mentioning some of the other possibilities, and I trust that this will meet with general approval. All translations are, in any event, mine.

I owe grateful thanks to Sarah Cook, who carried out an expert job in copyediting this work and thus greatly improved it. And finally, it gives me immense pleasure to thank a couple of stalwarts who have, as always, greatly helped in putting together this work: Charles Blackwood and Michael Perratt. Charles once again drew the excellent maps, the difficulties of so doing being made apparent in the preceding paragraph, and reconstructed, from multiple and contradictory sources, a representation of a heavy-artillery bunker. Michael applied the acid test to a volume of this sort: is it intelligible and accessible to the interested lay reader? Happily, he thought so. Needless to say, however, any errors found within are mine and mine alone.

Chapter 1

‘How many divisions has the Pope?’

They were discussing the Pope. ‘Let’s make him our ally,’ proposed Churchill. All right, smiled Stalin […] ‘How many divisions has the Pope? If he tells us … let him become our ally.’¹

In deciding to enter the war against Japan, the Soviet government took into account, first of all, that imperialist Japan in the Second World War was an ally of fascist Germany and provided the latter with constant assistance in its war against the USSR […] thus the war against imperialist Japan was a logical continuation of the Great Patriotic War for the Soviet Union.²

When the ‘Big Three’ - Winston Churchill, Franklin Roosevelt and Joseph Stalin - met at Yalta for the Argonaut Conference from 4 to 11 February 1945, the defeat of Nazi Germany was plainly imminent. American, British, Canadian and French armies were advancing on Germany’s western border and had defeated the Ardennes counteroffensive (‘The Battle of the Bulge’). Situated along the Rhine, from north to south, were the 21st Army Group (Canadian First Army and British Second Army), the 12th Army Group (US First Army, US Third Army, US Ninth Army, and US Fifteenth Army) and the 6th Army Group (US Seventh Army and French First Army). Along with their integrated Tactical Air Forces, they were poised before the supposedly impregnable West Wall (‘Siegfried Line’) ready to invade Germany itself. In Eastern Europe several massive Red Army Fronts (more or less equivalent to reinforced Anglo-American army groups) were only around 130km from Vienna, 190km from Prague and some 70km from Berlin. Though there was still some fearsome fighting to come, for Hitler, who on 16 January had moved into his bunker, from which he was fated never to emerge, the end was most definitely nigh.

This was far from the case with respect to the other member of the Axis. Though the Imperial Japanese Navy had ceased to be a factor in the war’s outcome, and the American unrestricted submarine campaign had imposed a virtual blockade on Japan itself, the Japanese Army was considered a formidable military force. Roosevelt wanted Soviet assistance in defeating it. At a bilateral meeting on 8 February 1945, with Averell Harriman, the US Ambassador to the Soviet Union, and Vyacheslav Molotov, the People’s Commissar for Foreign Affairs (Soviet foreign minister), in attendance, Roosevelt discussed the matter with Stalin.³

East Asia and Japan. The shaded portions show Japanese (or Japanese-controlled) territory. (© Charles Blackwood )

The President said that with the fall of Manila⁴ the war in the Pacific was entering into a new phase and that we hoped to establish bases on the Bonins and on the islands near Formosa. He said the time had come to make plans for additional bombing of Japan. He hoped that it would not be necessary actually to invade the Japanese islands and would do so only if absolutely necessary. The Japanese had 4,000,000 men in their army and he hoped by intensive bombing to be able to destroy Japan and its army and thus save American lives.⁵

He was, of course, acting on the advice of the joint chiefs of staff, who had sent him a pre-conference memorandum on the matter outlining the ‘basic principles in working toward USSR entry into the war against Japan’. First among these was ‘Russia’s entry at as early a date as possible consistent with her ability to engage in offensive operations is necessary to provide maximum assistance to our Pacific operations.’⁶

Stalin, who ‘held most of the military cards at Yalta’ and knew it, was naturally enough receptive to Roosevelt’s blandishments:⁷ he had publicly denounced Japan as an ‘aggressor nation’ on 6 November 1944.⁸ Indeed, he had agreed in principle to join the war against Japan, following Allied victory over Germany, as far back as the Tehran Conference in 1943.⁹ The exact details concerning this deal were not finalised, however. Now, at Yalta, they would be and the ‘Agreement Regarding Entry of the Soviet Union into the War Against Japan’ was formalised and signed on 11 February 1945. It gave Stalin all he asked for; in return, the Soviet Union would enter the war against Japan ‘two or three months after Germany has surrendered and the war in Europe has terminated’.¹⁰

Article 1 stipulated that ‘The status quo in Outer-Mongolia (The Mongolian People’s Republic) shall be preserved.’ This reinforced the existing situation whereby the ‘People’s Republic’ was a Soviet satellite state, and had been since 1924.¹¹ Given that the territory had been Chinese until 1911, this recognition at least provided diplomatic protection against future claims from the former ruler.

The rest of the agreement dealt largely with territory either occupied by, or under the rule of, Japan. In the main it sought to revoke the 1905 Treaty of Portsmouth, brokered by an earlier Roosevelt (Theodore), which formally ended the 1904–05 Russo-Japanese War.¹² This was explicit: Article 2 began by stating that ‘The former rights of Russia violated by the treacherous attack of Japan in 1904 shall be restored.’¹³

The ‘right’ that involved the largest territorial transfer related to ‘the southern part of Sakhalin [Karafuto] as well as all the islands adjacent to it’. These were to be ‘returned to the Soviet Union’. Arguably lesser ‘rights’ concerned the ‘commercial port of Dairen [Dalny, Dalniy, Dalian]’ and ‘the lease of Port Arthur [Lushun, Lushunkou]’. These were located on China’s Liaodong (Liaotung) Peninsula, leases to which Russia had extorted with the signing of the ‘Convention for the Lease of the Liaotung Peninsula’ in 1898, and had subsequently lost.¹⁴ Article 5 of the Treaty of Portsmouth had transferred and assigned these leases to Japan, and now Stalin wanted them reassigned. There was an olive branch inasmuch as Dairen was to be ‘internationalized’ with the ‘pre-eminent interests of the Soviet Union … being safeguarded’. As for Port Arthur, the lease was to be merely ‘restored’.¹⁵

The railways in the area, the Chinese-Eastern Railroad and the South- Manchurian Railroad, were to be ‘jointly operated by the establishment of a joint Soviet-Chinese Company, it being understood that the pre-eminent interests of the Soviet Union shall be safeguarded’. China was, though, to ‘retain full sovereignty in Manchuria’.

The final article, Article 3, of the agreement stated that ‘The Kuril [Kurile] islands shall be handed over to the Soviet Union.’ Though the British and Americans raised no objections to this at the time, it later became hugely controversial. Stalin is recorded as pointing out that, in respect of the agreement, he only wanted to have returned to Russia ‘what the Japanese have taken from my country’, to which Roosevelt replied ‘That seems like a very reasonable suggestion from our ally. They only want to get back that which has been taken from them.’¹⁶ The controversy largely arose because the Kurils didn’t fall into that category, their ownership having been settled in the Treaties of Shimoda and Saint Petersburg in 1855 and 1875 respectively.¹⁷ The arguments are convoluted, however, and definitely outside the scope of this work.¹⁸

The final paragraphs of the document acknowledged that the Chinese government would have to be squared in relation to ‘Outer-Mongolia and the ports and railroads referred to above’ via the ‘concurrence of Generalissimo Chiang Kai-Shek’. This seemed to be taken for granted; Roosevelt would ‘take measures in order to obtain this concurrence on advice from Marshal Stalin’. This was no doubt a reflection of reality, given that Chiang’s regime was dependent on American support for its survival. The point was, though, reiterated: ‘the claims of the Soviet Union shall be unquestionably fulfilled after Japan has been defeated’. There was though, perhaps, a sweetener for China: ‘The Soviet Union expresses its readiness to conclude with the national government of China a pact of friendship and alliance between the USSR and China in order to render assistance to China with its armed forces for the purpose of liberating China from the Japanese yoke.’

China, though, was to learn nothing of these matters at the time. Fearing security leaks, Roosevelt kept the agreement from Chiang and his regime.¹⁹ Indeed, it was a closely guarded secret overall. Churchill, upon discovering that copies of the document were circulating, fired off a strongly worded memo to his Foreign Secretary, Anthony Eden: ‘I am shocked to see that there have been eight copies of this secret document.’ He wanted to know how many copies there were altogether and stated they should not be circulated at all unless ‘in a locked box’. Nobody, including the Dominions, should see it who was not already ‘cognisant of it’.²⁰

The reasoning behind this veil of secrecy was obvious. If the Japanese authorities got word of what was afoot then they would reinforce their already heavily fortified border regions with the Soviet Union. Moreover, they might launch an offensive with a view to blocking or damaging the vital Trans- Siberian Railway. Any such operation could have disastrous effects on the build-up for the planned offensive. Although of much lesser import in the practical sense, there was also a diplomatic problem: the Soviet-Japanese Neutrality Pact of 13 April 1941 was in force. Under the terms of this, both parties undertook ‘to maintain peaceful and friendly relations’ and each agreed to ‘mutually respect the territorial integrity and inviolability’ of the other. The treaty was valid for five years, after which it would automatically renew unless one of the ‘Contracting Parties denounces the Pact one year before the expiration of the term’.²¹

This ‘scrap of paper’ was, of course, only of utility for so long as both parties found it to be so. It would have no bearing when viewed through the prism of Soviet realpolitik, particularly given that there was only one perspective that mattered: that of Stalin, the ‘unchallengeable individual locus of state authority’.²² Despite being almost affectionately referred to as ‘Uncle Joe’²³ by Roosevelt and Churchill, that he was in reality a bloodthirsty tyrant who, according to one of his recent biographers, believed ‘the solution to every human problem was death’ is indisputable.²⁴ That he created a state- sponsored system of mass terror and mass murder in order to perpetuate his rule is equally so. Yet he was no mere thuggish despot. One who observed him at close quarters during the wartime conferences was Britain’s Field Marshal Sir Alan Brooke, Churchill’s primary military adviser.²⁵ Not a man easily impressed, particularly by politicians, Brooke noted in 1942 that ‘Stalin is a realist if ever there was one, facts only count with him, plans, hypotheses, future possibilities mean little to him, but he is ready to face facts even when unpleasant’.²⁶ As is well known, Stalin’s realism was often moral-free cynicism, as in his apocryphal question: ‘how many divisions has the Pope?’ Nevertheless he had other qualities too. As Brooke later recorded:

I rapidly grew to appreciate the fact that he had a military brain of the very highest calibre. Never once in any of his statements did he make any strategic error, nor did he ever fail to appreciate all the implications of a situation with a quick and unerring eye. In this respect he stood out when compared with his two colleagues [Churchill and Roosevelt].²⁷

That Stalin was driven by geopolitical interests and knew what he wanted beforehand, and then got it all, is evident. What he did not do, though, is spring these demands unexpectedly. He had, for example, told Roosevelt’s adviser Harry Hopkins in 1941 that Vladivostok, because of its position, was vulnerable; it ‘could be cut off by Japan at any time’.²⁸ He had reiterated this point to Ambassador Harriman on 14 December 1944, going on to argue that Southern Sakhalin and the Kuril Islands should be returned to the Soviet Union because of it: ‘The USSR is entitled to protection for its communications to this important port. All outlets to the Pacific Ocean are now held or blocked by the enemy.’²⁹ He also stated that he wished to secure the lease for the ports of Dairen and Port Arthur again, as well as obtain the lease for the Chinese Eastern Railway and the Southern Manchurian Railway. Finally, he wanted recognition of the status quo in Outer Mongolia.³⁰

These were, of course, what he asked for, and got, some three months later at Yalta. Given that he’d clearly raised the points well beforehand, it is then doubtful that Jukes’ comment that he ‘deceived his allies into cajoling him into a war that he was all along determined to enter when the time was ripe’ is fair.³¹ No cajolery was necessary. The Americans got what they wanted, and had been seeking for some time, as well. To reiterate, the defeat of Japan was not immediately foreseeable at Yalta, and an invasion of the Japanese home islands was envisaged as being necessary to achieve it. Indeed, ‘Olympic’, the preliminary assault on the southern island of Kyushu was slated for 1 December 1945, and ‘Coronet’, the subsequent landing on Honshu, was scheduled for 1 March 1946.³²

Knowing that these potential (and at that time far in the future) operations would be difficult and dangerous, in September 1943 the US joint chiefs of staff had highlighted the ‘great importance to the United States of Russia’s full participation in the war against Japan after the defeat of Germany’. This, they said, was ‘essential to the prompt and crushing defeat of Japan at far less cost to the United States and Great Britain’.³³ Three months later they restated this point in a paper dealing with operations to be undertaken against Japan in 1944: ‘every effort should be exerted to bring the USSR into the war against Japan at the earliest practicable date …’³⁴ The rationale for this involvement was made quite clear in a report of July 1944:

A Russian drive into Manchuria coincident with or prior to our invasion of Kyushu would prevent any appreciable movement of Japanese forces … and would necessitate retention of all Japanese forces on the Asiatic mainland. Such action … would facilitate our invasion of Kyushu and our ultimate invasion of the heart of Japan.³⁵

This view was shared by General MacArthur, the senior army field commander in the Pacific Theatre. A member of the War Department Operations Division discussed the matter with him and submitted his report on 13 February 1945. In terms of the invasion, it declared, MacArthur was ‘apprehensive as to the possibility of the movement of the bulk of the Manchurian army and other Japanese forces from China to the defense of the homeland. He emphatically stated that we must not invade Japan proper unless [the] Russian army is previously committed to action in Manchuria. He said this was essential …’³⁶ The accuracy of the rendition of MacArthur’s views is confirmed by a contemporaneous note made by Secretary of the Navy James Forrestal, who visited him at Manila on 28 February. This records that the general:

felt that we should secure the commitment of the Russians to active and vigorous prosecution of a campaign against the Japanese in Manchukuo of such proportions as to pin down a very large part of the Japanese army; that once this campaign was engaged we should then launch an attack on the home islands … our strength should be reserved for use in the Japanese mainland, on the plains of Tokyo, and that this could not be done without the assurance that the Japanese would be heavily engaged by the Russians in Manchuria.³⁷

Indeed, the Department of Defense later acknowledged that the terms agreed at Yalta were ‘essentially the same as those outlined by Marshal Stalin to Ambassador Harriman’.³⁸ Admiral Leahy, Roosevelt’s chief of staff and chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, explained it thus in his memoirs: ‘I personally … did not feel that Russian participation in the Japanese war was necessary. The Army did. Roosevelt sided with the Army.’³⁹

This point has perhaps been laboured somewhat, but if so it is in furtherance of refuting the oft-made claim that Roosevelt ‘failed’ at Yalta and was bamboozled by Stalin into giving away far too much. This might well have been the case as regards Eastern Europe, which is a completely different subject for argument, but it was not so as regards the Far East and the war against Japan. As has been shown, Stalin had made quite clear beforehand what he wanted. Roosevelt was happy enough to accede and, in return, he too got what he wanted.

There was, of course, another facet to the matter, one exemplified by the response to questions put by Acting Secretary of State Joseph C. Grew on 12 May. Grew had composed a memo to both the Secretary of War (Stimson) and the Secretary of the Navy (Forrestal) concerning the Russian entry into the war against Japan. He enquired, amongst other things, whether the entry of the Soviet Union into the Pacific War at the earliest possible moment was ‘of such vital interest to the United States as to preclude any attempt … to obtain Soviet agreement to certain desirable political objectives in the Far East prior to such entry?’ Also queried was whether or not ‘the Yalta decision’ be ‘reconsidered or carried into effect in whole or in part?’⁴⁰ Stimson’s reply was forthright:

Russian entry into the war against Japan will be decided by the Russians on their own military and political basis with little regard to any political action taken by the United States … while the USSR will seek and will accept any political inducement proffered by the United States … such political inducements will not in fact affect the Russian decision … Russian entry will have a profound military effect in that almost certainly it will materially shorten the war and thus save American lives.

The concessions to Russia on Far Eastern matters which were made at Yalta are generally matters which are within the military power of Russia to obtain regardless of US military action short of war … Russia is militarily capable of defeating the Japanese and occupying Karafuto, Manchuria, Korea and Northern China before it would be possible for the US military forces to occupy these areas.⁴¹ Only in the Kurils is the United States in a position to circumvent Russian initiative. If the United States were to occupy these islands to forestall Russian designs, it would be at the direct expense of the campaign to defeat Japan and would involve an unacceptable cost in American lives.⁴²

Put simply, Russia could do more or less what it liked and the United States was in a very weak position to prevent it. Should it make the attempt, then Stimson warned that the Russians were in a position to wait until Japan’s military power had been destroyed by American efforts. They could then ‘seize the objectives they desire at a cost to them relatively much less than would be occasioned by their entry into the war at an early date’.⁴³ Forrestal concurred with these views.⁴⁴ What this advice boiled down to was that the US would be wise to make a virtue of necessity, stay on good terms with the Soviet Union and encourage Stalin to enter the war sooner rather than later.

In fact, and in pursuit of this politico-strategic aim, practical measures had already been initiated. This involved the US Navy in what was termed Project Hula: the supply of some 150 ships to the Soviet Navy, and the training of around 12,000 Soviet Navy personnel in their maintenance and use, between April and September 1945.⁴⁵

The Soviet Union was a recipient of huge quantities of lend-lease equipment and goods from the US over the course of the war, all of which greatly boosted the Soviet war effort.⁴⁶ Over and above what might be termed the ‘normal’ transfer of materiel, Stalin requested in October 1944 that additional supplies and equipment be provided in order to build up a stockpile of reserves for future operations against Japan. A list of these extra requirements was submitted through the United States Military Mission, located in the US Embassy in Moscow and headed by Major General John R. Deane. Deane submitted this list to the joint chiefs of staff in Washington who, via the Joint Logistics Committee, approved it with the caveat that it must have no adverse effect on existing or anticipated operations in Europe or the Pacific. This logistics build-up was to be termed Operation Milestone.

However, even whilst the Logistics Committee was considering Milestone, a further list was submitted by the Soviet Navy on 5 December 1944 via Rear Admiral Clarence E. Olsen, the US Navy representative to the Moscow Military Mission. Pertaining to the naval sphere, this new set of requirements was in addition to naval materiel already specified. To avoid confusion, Olsen negotiated with his Soviet counterparts, reconciled the two lists and submitted them as one combined document to Washington on 20 December.⁴⁷

These requests were agreed, and Admiral Ernest J. King, who was both commander in chief (COMINCH) of the US Fleet and chief of naval operations (CNO),⁴⁸ discussed the matter with his opposite number on the Soviet side, Admiral of the Fleet Nikolai Kuznetsov (People’s Commissar for the Soviet Navy) at Yalta. The Russian was informed that the site for the transfer of the ships, and the training facility for the personnel who would man them, was to be the appropriately named Cold Bay, a remote location on the extreme south-west tip of the Alaskan Peninsula that enjoyed more than a metre of rain annually, endured persistent heavy fogs and, on average, saw sixteen cloudy days every month. With no civilian population to complicate security, what went on there could remain clandestine. The secret was in fact kept and Project Hula, ‘the largest and most ambitious transfer program of World War II’, was a great success.

All the warships transferred were minor, with nothing more potent than escort-type, anti-submarine vessels. These included twenty-eight patrol frigates (roughly equivalent to British River-Class corvettes) and thirty-two submarine chasers (used mostly by the Coast Guard in US service). A number of mine-warfare vessels also made the transition: twenty-four steel-hulled, ocean-going fleet minesweepers and thirty-one wood-hulled auxiliary motor minesweepers. Four floating workshops (informally known as repair barges) were also included. Most useful, in terms of the rationale behind the project, were