The Origins of the Grand Alliance: Anglo-American Military Collaboration from the Panay Incident to Pearl Harbor

This “uncommonly astute study” examines the early development of the US-UK military alliance that would eventually lead to victory in WWII (Paul Miles, author of FDR’s Admiral).

On December 12, 1937, Japanese aircraft sank the American gunboat Panay outside Nanjing, China. Although the Japanese apologized, President Roosevelt set Captain Royal Ingersoll to London to begin conversations with the British admiralty about Japanese aggression in the Far East. While few Americans remember the Panay Incident, it was the start of what would become the “Special Relationship” between the United States and Great Britain.

In The Origins of the Grand Alliance, William T. Johnsen provides the first comprehensive analysis of Anglo-American military collaboration before the Second World War. He sets the stage by examining Anglo-French and Anglo-American coalition military planning from 1900 through World War I and the interwar years. Johnsen also considers the formulation of policy and grand strategy, operational planning, and the creation of the command structure and channels of communication. He addresses vitally important logistical and materiel issues, particularly the difficulties of war production.

Drawn from extensive sources and private papers held in the United Kingdom, Canada, and the United States, Johnsen’s exhaustively researched study casts new light on the twentieth century’s most significant alliance.