At a meeting in AN/M James' office on Thursday, March 22, with General Whitten the question of air command of the Newfoundland area was discussed. It will be recalled that the title, the United States Northeast Command, was agreed to some months ago by the Canadian Government on the understanding that the Com­mand was administrative rather than operational. The situation, however, is chang­ing radically in view of the speeding up of defence arrangements in the North Atlantic area. While the Newfoundland area is primarily a staging area between the United States and Europe, the area has become more of a target area and will require substantial defences, especially for various staging fields.

2. General Whitten now operates directly under the Joint Chiefs of Staff, that is, he has his own command, and his instructions require him to defend U.S. instat_la­tions under his command. His chain of command for this purpose is directly back to Washington.

3. The area constitutes the outer defences of Central Canada as well as of the Northeastern United States. For the air defence of Canada it is essential that the command should be direct through Eastern Air Command (Montreal) rather than through New York or Washington and back to Montreal.

4. It was pointed out in the discussion that while NAORPG had become the North Atlantic Command, and the European Planning Groups have now become SCAPE, no such change has taken place with respect to CUSRPG. It was suggested that even if no command structure of the whole Canada-U.S. region were feasible, a Northeast Air Command might be separately established by agreement between Canada and the United States Air Commander for defence of the Newfoundland area, this authority, in so far as relations with Canadian personnel or civilians is concerned, to be exercised by a Canadian officer on his staff. It was also suggested that a fighter squadron or squadrons of the RCAF might be put under his command, especially if Torbay were developed as proposed (see note on Torbay of March 22).⁷¹

5. This proposal, although still in rather a shadowy form, strikes me as sensible. Clearly, we cannot afford to duplicate forces in the Newfoundland area; on the other hand, we cannot afford to leave responsibility for the defence of the area to the United States by default.

6. It is probable that the question of command will be raised at the next meeting of the Permanent Joint Board on Defence.⁷²

R.A. M[ACKAY]

⁷¹ Voir le document 714./See Document 714.

⁷² Note marginale :/Marginal note: Mr MacKay thanks - this will need watching A.D.P.H[eeney]