A Naval Memo of Grand Strategic Importance

On 12 November 1940, Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Harold K. “Betty” Stark, undertook to lay out U.S. options in the event of war against Germany, Japan, or both. In a way that is nearly unimaginable today, he wrote it himself, at home, without any staff support or involvement. It took him eighteen hours, working straight through, to complete his analysis. He reviewed several possible scenarios and plans, lettering them from “A” through “D,” and ultimately recommended Plan “D.” At that time, the U.S. Navy’s phonetic alphabet for “D” was “dog”: hence it became known as the “Plan Dog Memorandum.”