Operation Champion (ii)

'Champion' (ii) was the designation for the Allied decisions reached at the 'Trident' conference, which was the third held in Washington (12/27 May 1943).

These decisions were, most notably, to concentrate on the prosecution of the war against Germany as the first priority while containing Japan, to obtain bases in the Azores islands group as a means of combating the U-boat threat in the Atlantic Ocean, to build up the bomber campaign against Germany from the UK, to undertake as soon as practical a cross-Channel invasion of north-western France, to increase pressure on Italy and eliminate her from the war, to undertake the bombing of the Romanian oilfields at Ploieşti in order to deprive Germany of her most important remaining oil resources, to concentrate Allied efforts in Burma on the development of the air and land links with China and to capture of Akyab and Ramree islands off the north-west coast, in the Pacific to pursue a two-pronged advance against the Japanese from New Guinea and through the Central Pacific by means of the capture of the rest of New Guinea, the Solomon islands group and Bismarck islands group, and also of the Marshall islands group and Caroline islands group while intensifying the pace of air operations in and from China, and to aid the USSR in any and all ways which could be devised and implemented.