In 1949, the Americans offered to make atomic bombs in the US available for Britain to use if the British agreed to curtail their atomic bomb programme. That would have given Britain nuclear weapons much sooner than its own target date of late 1952. Only the bomb components required by war plans would be stored in the UK, the rest would be kept in the US and Canada. The offer was rejected by the British on the grounds that it was not "compatible with our status as a first-class power to depend on others for weapons of this supreme importance".