Video: 'Churchill - Roosevelt Casablanca Conference Aka Churchill - Roosevelt Casablanca Meeting (1943)'

(Thursday, January 14, 1943, FDR’s plane landed at Medouina Airport, Casablanca, Morocco, at 6:20 p.m. Western European Summer Time; during the Casablanca Conference) — U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt arrived in Morocco tonight to join British Prime Minister Winston Churchill for a 10-day conference in Casablanca that would map the course the Allies would pursue in fighting World War II, including the “unconditional surrender” demand of their enemies.

In crossing the Atlantic in a Boeing 314 Flying Boat dubbed the Dixie Clipper, Roosevelt became the first president to travel on official business by airplane. FDR was persuaded to make the arduous 17,000-mile round trip by air because Nazi U-boats still remained on the prowl.

Video: '14th January 1943: Churchill and Roosevelt meet in Casablanca'

The secret presidential flight took more than four days to allow for refueling and rest stops. Although transferred to the U.S. Navy and designated C-143, the huge seaplane was piloted by a civilian Pan American Airways crew.

It departed by water off Miami, touched down in the Caribbean, and continued down the east coast of South America to Belém, Brazil, before arriving in Bathurst in British Gambia and then proceeding up the African coast to Casablanca.

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Their ten-day conference with Generals Charles de Gaulle and Henri Giraud of the Free French forces would be described by AP correspondent Wes Gallagher as “the most unprecedented and momentous meeting of the century” and one which “may decide the fate of the world for generations to come.”

The meetings, held at the Anfa Hotel, concluded on Jan. 24, 1943, and were not revealed until three days after the leaders had returned home.

USSR general secretary Joseph Stalin declined to attend, citing the ongoing Battle of Stalingrad as requiring his presence in the Soviet Union.

The conference produced a unified statement of purpose, the Casablanca Declaration. It announced to the world that the Allies would accept nothing less than the “unconditional surrender” of the Axis powers.

Roosevelt had borrowed the term from U.S. Army General Ulysses S. Grant (known as “Unconditional Surrender” Grant), who had communicated that stance to the Confederate States Army commander during the American Civil War