UNITED STATES ARMY IN WORLD WAR II 

The War Department 

GLOBAL LOGISTICS 

AND STRATEGY 

1943-1945 

by 

Robert W. Coakley 

and 

Richard M. Leighton 

IU~'~ 

CENTER OF MILITARY HISTORY 

UNTTED STATES ARMY 

WASHINGTON, D.C., 1989 





Foreword

This volume examines how and how well the United States Army

overcame the tyranny of logistics in the major operations of World War II

against Germany and Japan. As in the companion work to which it is a

sequel, the authors stress the interrelationship and interdependency between

strategic aims and logistical means. By spring 1943 the United States and its

allies had achieved clear superiority over the Axis Powers both in manpower

and in war production. How to bring the weight of this superiority to bear

across oceans and invasion beaches was the problem, and, as this work

reveals, transport and assault shipping came very near to being the principal

factor in its solution.

Much more was involved than the deployment and support of American

troops. The Army had also to support Allied forces, including those of the

Soviet Union, in huge measure, and it had to provide minimum sustenance to civilian populations in order to maintain stability behind the fighting fronts. Writing from the point of view of the high command in Washington, the authors trace the intricacies of balancing resources in a massive

two-front war, and in the process provide a unique account of the Army's

logistical support of the war against Japan.

Both military and civilian students of war should find this volume a

worthy source of information and guidance, as they have already found its

predecessor of similar title, Global Logistics and Strategy, 1940-1943. Its

appearance also marks completion of the War Department subseries of the

UNITED STATES ARMY IN WORLD WAR II.

Washington, D.C. 15 June 1967

HAL C. PATTISON

Brigadier General, USA

Chief of Military History

vii
The Authors

Robert W. Coakley received the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in

History from the University of Virginia. He has taught at that university,

and at Tulane University, the University of Arkansas, American University,

the University of Maryland, and Fairmont State College, West Virginia.

After serving as a noncommissioned officer in the field artillery in World

War II, he became a member of the Historical Division of ETOUSA and

USFET. Except for a brief period when he served as historian of the Defense

Supply Agency, Dr. Coakley has been with the Office of the Chief of Military History since 1948. In 1965 he was appointed Chief of the Current

History Branch, OCMH.

Richard M. Leighton, who received the degree of Doctor of Philosophy

in History from Cornell University, has taught at Brooklyn College, the

University of Cincinnati, and The George Washington University. Commissioned in the Quartermaster Corps during World War II, he served as a

historical officer in the Control Division, Headquarters, Army Service

Forces, writing various studies of the organization and administration of that

command. In 1948 Dr. Leighton joined the Office of the Chief of Military

History where he was engaged in the preparation of this volume and its

predecessor (published in 1955) and other historical projects. Since 1959

he has been a member of the faculty of the Industrial College of the Armed

Forces.

viii
Preface

This volume, like its predecessor, Global Logistics and Strategy, 1940-

1943, treats the logistical problems of the U.S. Army in World War II from

the point of view of the high command and staffs in Washington. Its attention is focused on the myriad problems connected with the division of resources among nations and theaters of war in a global conflict, on the delicate

relationship between logistics and strategy, and on the logistical organization and processes involved in the formulation and execution of strategy

during the last two years of World War II. This broad approach results in

the same omissions that characterized the first volume—the book does not

cover detailed logistical operations at lower levels, it does not treat internal

logistics in overseas theaters except as necessary to establish the context for

decisions at the center, and it is primarily concerned with ground force

logistics. The omitted areas, we believe, have now been almost fully covered

in other volumes in the UNITED STATES ARMY IN WORLD WAR II

Series, in the seven volumes of the Army Air Forces in World War II, and

in various publications sponsored by the Office of Naval History. We have

drawn heavily on these volumes in preparing our own and owe a large debt

to them.

Chronologically, the book picks up where Global Logistics and Strategy,

1940-1943 left off, just before the TRIDENT Conference in May 1943, with

only a moderate amount of overlap. It ends with the surrender of Japan.

With a manuscript already too bulky, it was impossible to extend it to treat

the various logistical issues involved in repatriation, occupation, and disposal of surplus in the aftermath of war.

In this second volume, we have adopted a topical approach to a greater

degree than in the first. Supply organization and procedures, and lend-lease

and civilian relief, have been treated in sections separate from the main

narratives covering the relationship of logistics and strategy. These narratives also move for the most part in separate compartments in covering the

two main spheres of the war, that against Germany and that against Japan,

though we hope we have succeeded in showing the essential interconnection.

This arrangement seemed most logical to us, since after long consideration

we could arrive at no satisfactory and meaningful pattern for weaving all

these diverse elements into one single chronological narrative.

We cannot deny that this organization also owes something to the difix
ferent conditions of collaboration that existed in the final stages of the preparation of this second volume. It has been long in fruition. We began work

on it many more years ago than we now like to contemplate, and much of

the basic draft was completed in April 1959 at the time that Dr. Leighton

left the Office of the Chief of Military History for the Industrial College

of the Armed Forces. Since that time the main burden of completing the

volume has fallen on Dr. Coakley, though he too has been able to devote

only a fraction of his time to it and was also absent from the Office of the

Chief of Military History for fourteen months in 1962-63 while serving

as historian of the Defense Supply Agency.

Physical separation of the authors has prevented the same kind of dayto-day consultation in the preparation of the final draft that characterized

the first volume. It is still, however, a work of collaboration and we have

freely exchanged criticism and suggestions, editing, and substantive data

to the extent that circumstances permitted. Though Coakley performed

most of the work of condensation, revision, and rearrangement in preparing

the final draft, the portions of the book treating Anglo-American strategic

planning, merchant ship construction and allocation, and the vital landing

craft problem—that is, Chapters I-III and VII-XV—are in substance and

in their final writing the work of Leighton. The sections dealing with supply

organization and procedures (Chapters IV-VI), the war with Japan (Chapters XVI-XXII), the logistical problems of the last stages of the war (Chapters XXIII-XXV), lend-lease and civilian supply (Chapters XXVI-XXXI),

and the concluding chapter (XXXII), as well as the tables in the appendix

were all written by Coakley. Since he was responsible for the final chapter

organization, Coakley also shoulders the responsibility for whatever defects

may have arisen from his efforts to meld the work of his coauthor with

his own.

The volume has benefited greatly from the assistance of a large number

of persons over the long years it has been in preparation. During the early

years, Dr. Kent Roberts Greenfield, then Chief Historian of the Army,

patiently encouraged our labors. Since his retirement in 1958, his successor,

Dr. Stetson Conn, has persevered in pushing the volume to publication in

the face of discouraging delays. During the preparation of basic drafts, two

research assistants, Dr. Mae Link and Mr. Charles Owens aided in gathering

materials for, respectively, the chapters on the invasion of Sicily and the

war in the Pacific. Our editor, Mrs. Frances R. Burdette, and copy editor,

Mrs. Stephanie B. Demma, have assisted greatly in the attempt to make

this a readable book, in standardizing our footnotes, abbreviations, and

other terminology, and in preparing a glossary of the mass of alphabetese

without which some parts of the text and certainly the footnotes would be

incomprehensible to the lay reader. Our index is the painstaking work of

Mrs. Muriel Southwick. Miss Ruth Phillips selected our photographs, and

our maps were prepared by Mr. H. C. Brewer, Jr., working under the supervision of Mr. Elliot Dunay. Personnel of various federal records centers

x
have been of immeasurable assistance in helping us to sift through the

voluminous masses of logistical records. The specific contributions of our

colleagues in the Office of the Chief of Military History, past and present,

during the long years this book was in preparation have been shown in the

footnotes and bibliographical note. In particular, we owe much to Dr.

Maurice Matloff's special competence in the field of strategic planning,

though his tenacity, in argument has not prevented us from drawing independent conclusions that differ in some respects from his own. Many others

have given generously of their time in reading and criticizing large sections

of the manuscript; we would like especially to thank Maj. Gen. Patrick H.

Tansey (Ret.), Dr. Theodore Ropp, Col. Leo J. Meyer (Ret.), the late

Dr. John Miller, jr., Dr. Harold F. Underhill, Col. Louis G. Mendez, Jr.,

and Col. Paul P. Hinkley, and again Dr. Matloff and Dr. Conn, for the

care with which they read the manuscript and the helpful suggestions they

made. Errors of fact and interpretation, however, remain the responsibility

of the authors.

Washington, D.C.

15 June 1967

ROBERT W. COAKLEY

RICHARD M. LEIGHTON

xi

Contents

Part One: Backdrop

Chapter Page

I. LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY, SPRING 1943 .... . 3

The Aftermath of Casablanca .......... . 6

Assault Shipping: Tool of Amphibious Strategy ... . 10

Divergent Strategies. ............. . 2 5

II. HUSKY AND BOLERO ............. . 31

Contrivance, Ingenuity, and a Favorable June Moon. . . 32

The Final Assault Plan ............ . 39

The Final Movements ............. . 41

The Administrative Achievement. ........ . 44

Effects of Husky on Bolero ............ . 48

Cargo Shipping and the Preshipment Plan ..... . 51

III. TRIDENT .................. . 5 7

The American Program for Europe. ....... . 58

The British Program: Mediterranean Now,

Roundup Maybe .............. . 6 3

How Large an Assault? ............ . 66

The Trident Decisions on Europe ........ . 70

The Other War ............... . 76

The "Not Unmanageable" Cargo Shipping Deficit ... 81

Part Two: Organization and Method

IV. LOGISTICAL ORGANIZATION ......... . 89

Civil-Military Relations ............ . 89

Logistics in the Joint Committee System ...... . 91

G-4, ASF, and the OPD Logistics Group. ..... . 100

Plans and Operations, ASF. .......... . 104

V. ARMY REQUIREMENTS, 1943-44 ......... . 109

The Requirements Process ........... . 109

The Realities of Production—1943 ........ . 115

xiii
Chapter Page

McCoy Board and Richards Committee ...... . 119

The 1 February 1944 Army Supply Program. .... . 124

Theater Requirements and the Supply Control System. . 127

VI. THE MECHANICS OF WHOLESALE DISTRIBUTION . 135

The Distribution Process ............ . 135

Supply Priorities ............... . 13 8

Equipping Outbound Troops and the Shipment of

Troop Equipment ............. . 14 3

Evolution of the Overseas Supply System. ..... . 146

Levels of Supply. .............. . 156

Requisitioning and Shipment Procedures. ..... . 160

Special Operational Supplies .......... . 166

Part Three: The Mediterranean in the Global War

(June-December 1943)

VII. OUTLINE OVERLORD AND THE INVASION OF ITALY 173

The Italian Debacle. ............. . 173

Revolt Against Overlord. ........... . 178

The Overlord Plan .............. . 181

Resources for a Pincers Strategy ......... . 186

Assault Shipping and the Invasion of Italy ..... . 189

Bolero in the Balance ............. . 193

VIII. FIRST QUEBEC . . . . ............ . 198

"Overriding Priority" and the Conditions of Overlord. . 198

Assault Shipping for Two Wars ......... . 205

T h e Shipping Budgets. ............ . 21 3

IX. BOG-DOWN IN THE MEDITERRANEAN ..... . 222

Build-up i n Italy. .............. . 22 3

Setback i n th e Aegean ............. . 22 6

LST's and the Crisis in Western Strategy. ..... . 229

The Mediterranean Lock-up .......... . 236

The Progress of Bolero ............ . 240

X. SHIPS, LANDING CRAFT, AND STRATEGY .... . 246

Shipbuilding: A Record-breaking Year ...... . 246

Twenty-One Million Tons for 1944. ....... . 247

Combat Loaders fo r th e Pacific. ......... . 25 2

More Landing Craft: The "Percentage Game". ... . 259

Lobbying for Overlord. ............ . 262

xiv
Chapter Page

XI. THE CAIRO-TEHRAN CONFERENCE ....... . 271

Perfidious Albion and Inscrutable Ivan. ...... . 272

Bush-League Strategy in the Mediterranean. .... . 277

Rhodes Versus Buccaneer ........... . 280

Enter Anvil, Compromise on Overlord. ...... . 284

Second Cairo: Scratch Buccaneer. ........ . 290

Acceleration in the Pacific ........... . 294

XII. INVENTORY AND AFTERMATH ........ . 297

Shipping: The Deficits Vanish. ......... . 297

Assault Shipping: The New American Program. ... . 306

Postscript: The Tribulations of Shingle ...... . 310

Part Four: Final Assault on Europe

XIII. OVERLORD AND ANVIL ............ . 321

The Move to Strengthen Overlord ........ . 321

The Battle of Statistics. ............ . 324

The Debate Moves to London. ......... . 330

Anvil Postponed ............... . 33 8

Anvil Revived. ............... . 34 6

XIV. THE OVERLORD-ANVIL BUILD-UP ....... . 351

The Logistical Outlook ............ . 351

The Final Build-up for Overlord. ........ . 353

The Uncertainties of Anvil ........... . 355

Atlantic Shipping on the Eve of Overlord ..... . 365

XV. THE AFTERMATH OF OVERLORD ....... . 369

New Logistical Problems. ........... . 369

Follow-up ................. . 37 1

Anvil Versus Italy .............. . 374

Dragoon and Its Aftermath. .......... . 381

Portents of a New Shipping Crisis ........ . 385

Part Five: The War Against Japan, 1943-44

XVI. PACIFIC STRATEGY AND ITS MATERIAL BASES . . 391

The Question of Priority. ........... . 391

A Strategy of Opportunism ........... . 395

Formosa Versus Luzon. ............ . 406

XVII. JOINT LOGISTICS IN PACIFIC OPERATIONS:

THE CONTINENTAL SYSTEM. ......... . 417

The Nature of Pacific Logistics. ......... . 417

xv
Chapter Page

The Problem of Joint Logistics. ......... . 421

Joint Planning and Procurement. ........ . 424

The Basic Logistical Plan ........... . 427

The West Coast Establishment. ......... . 428

The Joint Priority List. ............ . 431

XVIII. JOINT LOGISTICS IN THE PACIFIC THEATERS . . 435

Joint Logistics in SWPA. ........... . 435

Informal Co-operation in the South Pacific ..... . 441

The Central Pacific System ........... . 444

XIX. SHIPPING IN THE PACIFIC WAR ........ . 455

The Crisis of Fall 1943. ............ . 456

Shipping Congestion in SWPA. ......... . 460

The Cargo Shipping Shortage of Mid-1944 ..... . 462

The Deficits Become Unmanageable. ....... . 468

XX. SUPPLYING THE ARMY IN PACIFIC THEATERS . . 471

Procedural Problems ............. . 47 1

Improving the System. ............ . 477

New Methods of Shipment ........... . 480

Engineer Supplies and Special Project Material. ... . 482

Water Transportation Equipment ........ . 487

Landing Craft in SWPA. ........... . 490

Service Troops. ............... . 49 4

XXI. CHINA, BURMA, AND INDIA .......... . 500

The Trident Decisions and Their Aftermath .... . 502

Quadrant: A Logistical Charter for the CBI .... . 506

The ASF Follow-up on Quadrant ........ . 509

New Air Projects. .............. . 513

Sextant: The Plans Disrupted ......... . 515

Matterhorn ................. . 51 9

The End of the Assam Bottleneck. ........ . 522

The Problem of Air Transport. ......... . 524

Airlift, PAC-AID, and the East China Crisis .... . 525

Part Six: Shift to a One-Front War

XXII. STRESSES AND STRAINS OF A TWO-FRONT WAR . 533

Second Quebec ............... . 534

Early Plans for Redeployment. ......... . 539

Strains on Manpower and Production. ...... . 546

The Fall Shipping Crisis. ........... . 551

xvi
Chapter Page

The President Decides. ............ . 555

Effects of the Crisis. ............. . 560

XXIII. THE PACIFIC IN TRANSITION . ........ . 563

The Problem of Bases and Roll-up. ....... . 565

The Service Troop Shortage in POA ........ . 570

Cargo and Assault Shipping. .......... . 573

The New Redeployment Plan. ......... . 577

The Pacific Command Question ......... . 579

The Final Plan for Redeployment ........ . 584

The Place of Philippine Base Development. .... . 591

XXIV. LOGISTICS OF A ONE-FRONT WAR ....... . 594

Procedures, Policies, and Problems in Army

Redeployment ............... . 59 4

The Army-Navy Shipping and Supply Conference. . . . 599

Efforts to Resolve the Shipping Issue ....... . 604

Outlines of a New Pacific Logistical System. .... . 607

The Execution of Redeployment ......... . 610

Arrangements for Logistical Support of Olympic

an d Coronet. ............... . 61 5

The Success of the Roll-up ........... . 619

The Last Year in the CBI ............ . 620

Part Seven: Foreign Aid

XXV. LEND-LEASE AND THE COMMON POOL ..... . 627

The Common Pool .............. . 628

Changes in Lend-Lease Administration and Procedures,

1943-45 ................. . 63 2

British Requirements and Assignments, 1943-44 ... . 637

Retransfers, Diversions, and Lend-Lease to Independent

Nations ................. . 64 4

Problems and Procedures in India and Southeast Asia. . 652

XXVI. THE END OF THE COMMON POOL ....... . 656

The JCS "Corollary Principle" ......... . 656

The President Intervenes. ........... . 661

XXVII. AID TO THE USSR IN THE LATER WAR YEARS . . 671

Formulation of the Third Protocol. ....... . 672

The Swelling Flow of Aid to the USSR ...... . 676

The War Department and the Protocols ...... . 681

The Deane-Spalding Mission .......... . 685

xvii
Chapter Page

Milepost: Supply for the USSR's War Against Japan . . 687

The Soviet Aid Program After V-E Day ...... . 694

XXVIII. MILITARY SUPPLY TO LIBERATED AND

LATIN AMERICAN NATIONS ......... . 700

The North African Rearmament Program ..... . 700

The Metropolitan and Liberated Manpower Programs. . 709

Epilogue to French Rearmament. ........ . 715

Italian Military Forces. ............ . 716

Military Aid in Eastern Europe ......... . 720

Military Aid to Latin America. ......... . 721

XXIX. LEND-LEASE TO CHINA, 1943-45 ......... . 725

The Stilwell Program. ............ . 726

The 33-Division Program. ........... . 730

The Final Phase. .............. . 733

XXX. THE ARMY AND CIVILIAN SUPPLY—I ...... . 737

The North African Prelude. .......... . 739

Military Assumption of Responsibility. ...... . 743

Combined Arrangements ............ . 74 7

The Problem of Rehabilitation Supplies. ..... . 752

The First Phase in Sicily and Italy ........ . 755

XXXI. THE ARMY AND CIVILIAN SUPPLY—II ..... . 763

The Combined Plan ............. . 763

Operational Procedures ............ . 77 1

The Food Crisis in Italy. ........... . 773

Northwest Europe and the National Import Programs . . 779

Termination of Military Responsibility ...... . 786

Civilian Supply in the Pacific. ......... . 789

Part Eight: Conclusion

XXXII. LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY IN WORLD WAR II . . 795

The Lead Time Factor ............ . 796

Grand Design or Pool ............. . 797

Conflicting Pulls ............... . 79 9

The Adjustment of Means and Ends. ....... . 801

Landing Craft and Strategy. .......... . 805

Factors in the War Against Japan. ........ . 809

Logistical Adjustments. ............ . 81 1

The Climactic Phase ............. . 813

The One-Front War ............. . 815

International Supply ............. . 816

xviii
Appendixes

Page

A. SHIPPING TERMINOLOGY AND PLANNING DATA:

1943-45 ...................... . 82 1

1. Weight, Space, and Distance Measurements ........ . 821

2. Conversion Factors—Short Tons to Measurement Tons. ... . 822

3. Initial Cargo Shipping Requirements for Selected Units: 1945 . . 823

4. Initial Supply Requirements by Theater ......... . 824

5. Maintenance Requirements, European and Pacific Areas,

World War II .................. . 825

B. LANDING CRAFT ................. . 826

1. Principal Types of Allied Landing Craft, Ships, and Vehicles

Used in Operations: 1943-45. ............ . 826

2. U.S. Production of Major Types of Landing Ships and Craft:

1940-45 .................... . 82 9

C. ARMY PROCUREMENT ............... . 830

1. Estimated Value of War Department Procurement Deliveries:

January 1942-December 1945 ............ . 830

2. Deliveries of Selected Items of Munitions to the Army:

1942-45 .................... . 83 2

D. OVERSEAS DEPLOYMENT AND SUPPORT ....... . 834

1. Army Personnel Movement Overseas by Theater of Destination:

December 1941-August 1945. ............ . 834

2. Army Cargo Shipped Overseas by Theater of Destination:

December 1941-August 1945. ............ . 835

3. Army Deployment—Continental and Overseas: July 1943-

September 1945 ................. . 83 6

4. Deployment of U.S. Army Divisions Overseas by Theater:

July 1943-August 1945. .............. . 837

5. Troop and Cargo Flow to the United Kingdom for Overlord:

January 1943-July 1944 .............. . 838

E. THE DIVISION AND AIR GROUP SLICE ........ . 839

1. Divisional Force Analysis of Actual Army Strength on 30 June 1945 839

2. Division Slices for Theaters .............. . 840

3. Air Group Slices for Theaters ............. . 841

F. MERCHANT SHIPPING ............... . 842

1. United Nations Merchant Shipping Dry Cargo Gains, Losses,

and Construction: 1941-45 ............. . 842

2. Growth of U.S.-Controlled Tanker Fleet: December 1941-October

1945 ..................... . 84 3

3. Ships in Army Service ................ . 844

xix
Page

G. LEND-LEASE .................... . 845

1. Value of War Department Lend-Lease Transfers: 1941-49 . . . 845

2. Value of War Department Lend-Lease Shipments to the United

Kingdom, USSR, and Others by Six-Month Periods: 1941-49 . . 846

3. Number of Vessels and Cargo Tonnage Shipped From the

United States to the USSR: 1 July 1943-31 August 1945 ... 847

H. CIVILIAN SUPPLY ................. . 849

1. U.S. Shipments of Civilian Supplies: 1 July 1943-30 September 1945 849

2. Civilian Supply Shipments to Areas of Combined Responsibility:

July 1943-September 1945 ............. . 850

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE AND GUIDE TO FOOTNOTES ... 851

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS ............... . 858

GLOSSARY OF CODE NAMES .............. . 866

INDEX ....................... . 87 1

Tables

No.

1. Proposed Distribution of U.S. Landing Craft: September 1942 ... 21

2. Proposed Allocation of U.S. Landing Craft to United Kingdom:

September 1942 .................. . 2 1

3. Requests Versus Allocations of U.S. Landing Craft to British:

January-April 1943 ................. . 2 2

4. Estimated Assault Shipping Requirements for HUSKY (at

Casablanca Conference) ............... . 34

5. Assault Shipping for HUSKY .............. . 41

6. Troop Build-up Convoys for HUSKY: April-June 1943 .... . 42

7. Requirements and Availabilities of Major Types of Assault

Shipping for ROUNDHAMMER (TRIDENT) ......... . 72

8. Allocation by Month of Major Types of U.S. Landing Craft

(TRIDENT): July 1943-June 1944 ............ . 75

9. Planned U.S. Build-up for ROUNDHAMMER (TRIDENT) ..... . 77

10. The U.S. Shipping Budget: Spring 1943 .......... . 85

11. Summary of Ground Army Strength, Victory Program Troop Basis:

22 November 1943 ................. . 125

12. Comparison of Elements of Distribution for Classes II and IV

Supplies, Army Supply Program ............ . 126

xx
No. Page

13. Authorized Levels of Overseas Supply: January 1944 ..... . 158

14. QUADRANT Landing Craft (Major Types Only) Allocations From

U.S. Production: September 1943-March 1944 ....... . 212

15. Planned Deployment (Major Types) of U.S. Assault Shipping

a t QUADRANT ................... . 21 3

16. Planned U.S. and British Contributions of Assault Shipping for

OVERLORD—TRIDENT and QUADRANT Conferences ...... . 214

17. U.S. Cargo Shipping Budget—QUADRANT Conference ..... . 216

18. U.S. Shipping for British Programs—QUADRANT and TRIDENT

Budgets ..................... . 21 7

19. Planned U.S. Troop Movements (QUADRANT Conference):

August 1943-June 1944. ............... . 220

20. LST's in the Mediterranean: September-December 1943 .... . 235

21. Shipbuilding for 1944—Evolution of the Program in 1943 ... . 258

22. Requirements Versus Allocations, Assault Shipping for OVERLORD:

30 September 1943 ................. . 264

23. Admiral King's Bonus for OVERLORD: 5 November 1943 .... . 269

24. Planned U.S. Troop Movements (SEXTANT Conference):

January-September 1944 ............... . 29 9

25. British Shipping Budget—SEXTANT Conference ....... . 304

26. U.S. Cargo Shipping Budget—SEXTANT Conference ...... . 305

27. Planned Deployment of LST's for SHINGLE and ANVIL: January 1944. 317

28. Washington Planners' Estimates on Availability of Assault

Shipping for OVERLORD and ANVIL: 6 February 1944 ..... . 329

29. Distribution of Selected Types of Assault Shipping: 1 June 1944 . . 349

30. Operational Shipping Requirements for OVERLORD ...... . 356

31. Planned Deployment of U.S. Divisions Assuming Germany Not

Defeated: 11 June 1944 ............... . 371

32. Pacific Shipping Requirements and Availabilities: MayDecember 1944 .................. . 46 6

33. Distribution of Hump Tonnage Carried Into China: JanuaryDecember 1944 .................. . 52 8

34. Schedule of Redeployment Troop Movements ........ . 586

Charts

No. Page

1. The JCS Organization on 1 April 1945 .......... . 99

2. Organization of the Army Service Forces: 15 August 1944 .... . 107

3. Original 1943 Procurement Plans and Actual Accomplishments . . 120

4. Overseas Requisitions for Noncontrolled Items ....... . 150

5. Overseas Requisitions for Controlled and Materiel Status Items . . 151

xxi
Maps

No. Page

1. U.S. Supply Lines in Sicilian Invasion ........... . 41

2. American Transoceanic Supply, 1943-45 .......... . 139

3. The Mediterranean (1943) ............... . 174

4. Possible Routes of Advance in Planning War Against Japan (1943) . 397

5. The Pacific Areas, 15 June 1944 ............. . 409

6. China-Burma-India Line of Communications, July 1945 .... . 523

7. Planned Sources of Civilian Supply—Plan A ........ . 766

Illustrations

Page

Attack Troop Transport (APA) .............. . 1 2

Cargo Ship, Attack (AKA) ................ . 1 3

Attack Troop Transport, Modified (XAP) .......... . 1 2

High-speed Attack Transport (APD) ............ . 1 4

Landing Ship, Tank (LST) ................ . 1 4

Landing Ship, Medium (LSM) ............... . 1 3

Landing Ship, Dock (LSD) ................ . 1 2

Landing Craft, Infantry (Large) (LCI(L)) ........... . 1 5

Landing Craft, Tank (LCT) ................ . 1 3

Landing Craft, Mechanized (LCM) ............. . 1 5

Landing Craft, Vehicle and Personnel (LCVP) ......... . 16

2-1/2-Ton Amphibious Truck (DUKW) ............ . 15

Landing Vehicle, Tracked, Amphibious Tractor (LVT) ...... . 14

Lt. Gen. Brehon B. Somervell ............... . 45

Lt. Gen. Joseph T. McNarney ............... . 103

Maj. Gen. LeRoy Lutes ................. . 10 4

Maj. Gen. Lucius D. Clay ................. . 105

Troops and Supplies, Oakland, California ........... . 145

Lt. Gen. Sir Frederick Morgan ............... . 183

An LCT Being Lifted From Its "Piggy-back" Berth on an LST,

Oran, Algeria .................... . 19 1

The Ruined Port of Naples. General Dwight D. Eisenhower and

Lt. Gen. Mark W. Clark ................ . 225

General Sir Henry Maitland Wilson .............. . 226

Liberty Ship an d Victory Ship ............... . 24 9

Josef Stalin, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Winston Churchill ...... . 286

Ships Under Construction at Los Angeles ........... . 301

xxii
Page

General Sir Bernard L. Montgomery ............. . 323

Bailey Bridge Sections and Other Engineer Supplies, Ashchurch,

England ...................... . 35 4

Deck-loaded Tanks ................... . 35 8

L t. Gen. Jacob L. Devers ................. . 36 4

Scuttled Liberty Ships Form Breakwaters at OMAHA Beach ..... . 373

General Douglas MacArthur and Admiral Chester W. Nimitz ... . 398

Floating Dry Dock With Ship Under Repair .......... . 422

Liberty Ship Unloading at Oro Bay, New Guinea ........ . 463

Sheepfoot Roller and Maintenance Grader, New Guinea ..... . 484

LVT's Operating Over Reefs in the Central Pacific ....... . 490

Landing Craft Assembly Plant, Milne Ba y ........... . 49 2

L t. Gen. Joseph W. Stilwell ................ . 50 1

Maj. Gen. Claire L. Chennault and Generalissimo Chiank Kai-shek . . 503

Ferry Pushing Truck-loaded Barges Across the Brahmaputra River

Assam, India ..................... . 50 5

Coolies Pulling Sampans Loaded With Supplies, Wu River. .... . 529

Port Congestion a t Manila. ................ . 57 1

The Undergrowth Encroaches on Abandoned Quonset Huts,

Tinian Island. .................... . 62 0

The Big Three and Their Advisers at the Potsdam Conference ... . 669

Liberty Ship in Port of Khorramshahr, Iran .......... . 677

French Patriots With Guns Parachuted in by Allies ....... . 712

Lend-Lease "Trade Goods" in a Department Store Window,

Casablanca ..................... . 73 8

Herbert Lehman .................... . 74 0

Italians Await Food at an Allied Soup Kitchen ........ . 756

Frenchmen Receiving Their Bread Ration .......... . 780

The illustration on page 490 originally appeared in Yank. All other illustrations are from the files of the Department of Defense or the National Archives.

xxiii

PART ONE

BACKDROP

CHAPTER I

Logistics and Strategy

Spring 1943

The three-year period from June 1940,

when American rearmament began in

earnest, to the spring of 1943 was, in the

logistical sphere, essentially one of preparation for the mass application of American military power in the last two years

of World War II. This period, treated

in the authors' earlier volume,1 saw the

development of the American war production base and the emergence of the

logistical machinery with which the successes of the later war years were to be

won. By the spring of 1943 American factories and shipyards had completed the

long process of tooling and conversion,

and were approaching peak rates of mass

production. Both the general limits of

American productive capacity and the

general direction of the production effort were plainly visible.

During this preparatory period, it had

proved impossible to foresee with any

exactness the shape of future Allied strategy. Therefore, because of the long lead

time required for the design, production,

and distribution of weapons, logistical

planning had to be shaped along general

lines rather than in terms of any specific

strategy. The aim, perforce, had to be to

create a fund, or pool, of multipurpose

ingredients—finished munitions, supplies, ships, organized and equipped manpower—along with the capacity to replenish or enlarge it. From the pool, it

was hoped, specific needs could be met

as they arose. To create a pool of troops

and supplies took time. And even as it

grew it had to be repeatedly drained of

trained units and of matériel for the

support of operations overseas.

The year 1942 was one of emergencies

and ad hoc decisions. Although both

Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson and

Chief of Staff General George C. Marshall ardently wished to keep other commitments to a minimum and concentrate

resources for an early invasion of the

Continent of Europe, the march of events

defeated their purpose. First, defensive

positions in the Pacific had to be manned

and supplied, and British and Russian

Allies provided with matériel under

lend-lease. Then, the whole strategic concept of concentration for invasion was

abandoned for the time being when President Franklin D. Roosevelt forced upon

the War Department the decision to invade North Africa late that same year.

As a concomitant, more resources were

committed to the Pacific to support

limited offensives there, and to the Middle East to support British operations

1

 Richard M. Leighton and Robert W. Coakley,

Global Logistics and Strategy, 1940-1943, UNITED

STATES ARMY IN WORLD WAR II (Washington,

1955).
4 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

and establish a secure supply line to the

USSR through the Persian Gulf.

This "scatterization" of American resources to various parts of the globe undermined the Army's best efforts to plan

its operations and requirements at long

range, and to provide an orderly system

for training, equipping, and deploying

its forces overseas. Since, by decision of

the Combined Chiefs of Staff (CCS),

theaters of operations had first call on

supplies and equipment, there was a

chronic shortage of matériel for the

growing pool of troops in training, who

as late as spring of 1943 still had only

half, or less, of their full allowances of

equipment.

At the same time, uncertainties created

by a shortage of shipping played their

part in unsettling strategy. During 1942

capacity to deliver fighting power overseas set the primary limitation on every

proposed Anglo-American strategic move.

In the Atlantic German submarines continued until late in the year to send Allied ships to the bottom faster than shipyards could build new ones; thereafter

the balance began to shift, but the drain

on shipping and the consequent uncertainties continued. Surface and air protection had to be provided on the sealanes, and the system of convoys and circuitous routing developed in the Atlantic

to counter the submarine menace constituted a bottleneck for overseas deployment as restrictive as the shortage of shipping itself. In the Pacific, though the

submarine threat was inconsequential,

the length of supply lines and the lack

of facilities at the end of them imposed

even greater limitations upon the size of

military forces that could be supported.

The high logistical cost involved in bringing large forces to bear against Japan

provided one of the most crushing arguments against the oft-considered proposal

to shift the main American effort from

Europe to the Pacific.

Still, the uncertainties and improvisations of the year following Pearl Harbor

should not be allowed to obscure the real

achievements of this preparatory period.

By the end of 1942 resources sufficient

to launch great offensives were in sight.

The pool of trained manpower was growing rapidly and there was every reason

to believe that the long equipment famine would soon end. If the shipping prospects were not yet bright, at least American shipyards were reaching peak rates

of production. In the autumn of 1942

long-range goals for mobilization of manpower and matériel had been cut back

to realistic limits, providing a more balanced and certain, if less generous, basis

for planning. In Europe the enemy threat

to the Allies' most important base, the

United Kingdom, had all but disappeared, and the Russians by dint of their

hard-won victory at Stalingrad had established as a reasonable certainty that the

Axis would not be able to turn its full

power against the western Allies. In the

United Kingdom preliminary steps were

under way to begin the build-up of air

forces for a strategic bombing offensive

against German-occupied Europe. The

build-up of invasion forces for the drive

across the Channel lagged far behind

earlier expectations, but only because for

the present it had been sacrificed to the

capture and development of bases in the

Mediterranean and Pacific. In all the

overseas bases supply reserves were rapidly being built up and supply pipelines

filled. Many of the wasteful practices of

early 1942 had been eliminated, and the

procedures for moving troops and ma-
LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY, SPRING 1943 5

tériel overseas were becoming more orderly and efficient.

To Allied strategic planners at the beginning of 1943 the future looked bright.

The United States, with a powerful military machine already in being and mobilization in full swing, possessed not

only the potential but also the assured

capacity, bolstered by detailed plans and

programs, to immensely expand its military power in the year to come. If the

limits of the expansion were clearly visible, particularly in terms of manpower,

they still offered no cause for great uneasiness. The United States and its allies

soon would have the sinews to support

an offensive and victorious strategy.

Forging that strategy in the year to

come would very largely be a matter of

deciding how resources already in being

or planned for—thus far without the

guidance of a long-range strategic blueprint—could be most effectively and

quickly applied to the defeat of Germany, Italy, and Japan. The main outlines of the U.S. military machine, both

in size and composition, had been irrevocably determined, but within those outlines there was considerable room for

maneuver. The exact number and types

of Army divisions to be created, for

example, or the precise amounts of Army

equipment of various kinds to be produced, were susceptible to some adjustment within the broad limits of available

manpower and productive capacity. Shipbuilding and aircraft programs could be

modified to absorb changes in types and

models. But the long lead time required

both for production of equipment and

for training men ruled out, for the most

part, program adjustments dictated by

the needs of particular military operations, which required a far shorter planning lead time. This basic fact had been

underlined when the North African

operation, decided upon only three and

a half months before it was launched in

November 1942, had to be mounted with

landing craft designed and produced for

operations in the Pacific and the English

Channel.

The limitations thus imposed on the

military machine were flexible enough

to give the strategic planners a wide

range of choice in the areas and timing

of operations. The pool of trained men,

munitions, aircraft, and ships was to

prove sufficiently abundant to meet most

demands placed upon it. Strategists

would be able to plan and carry out

offensives on many fronts against enemies

who did not have the strength to defend

themselves at all points. Yet limitations

were implicit in the very character and

distribution of this abundance and in the

rate at which particular critical items

became available in the general pool.

Merchant shipping, for example, would

never become so abundant as to permit

redeployment of either troops or supplies

from one theater to another at will; or,

for that matter, to permit movement of

troops to any active theater as rapidly as

they could be trained. Nor for a long

time to come would equipment be so

plentiful as to permit prestockage in

overseas theaters while meeting the minimum needs of troops in training and

claimants under lend-lease. Again, because of limitations on American manpower, overwhelming air power could

be created only by placing a perilously

low ceiling on the number of ground

divisions, with ominous implications for

the time when the U.S. Army would

finally come to grips with the Wehrmacht and the troops of Japan on their
6 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

own soil. The immense U.S. battle fleets

that came into being in 1943—the magnified products of pre-Pearl Harbor

"two-ocean" planning—were destined by

their nature and capabilities to provide

their own argument for accelerating the

primarily seaborne war against Japan.

Finally, failure to make provision in

1941 and 1942 for a large and versatile

fleet of amphibious shipping would,

until late 1944, constitute the most persistent and restrictive single limitation

on a war in which all the principal

avenues of advance lay over water.

The Aftermath of Casablanca

At the Casablanca Conference in January 1943 the British and American

leaders tried to mark out the main

directions of the effort of the western

Allies in the period of relative plenty

ahead. Under the general principle of

imposing "unconditional surrender" on

Germany and Japan, announced by

President Roosevelt at Casablanca, the

Allied leaders reaffirmed the decision

made at the conference in Washington

in December 1941 (ARCADIA) that Germany was to be defeated before Japan,

together with the corollary principle that

"unremitting pressure" should be maintained against Japan. Other than the

continuing antisubmarine campaign,

which was assigned a "first charge" priority, the only specific operations approved for the European theater at

Casablanca were completion of the campaign in North Africa, the invasion of

Sicily (HUSKY), and immediate initiation of a bombing offensive against Germany from the British Isles. The assembling of an Allied invasion force in

Great Britain, a key objective of U.S.

strategy, was to proceed as rapidly as

possible, but was to be subject to several

prior claims—operations in the Mediterranean, the Pacific, and the Far East, as

well as an enlarged program of aid to

the Soviet Union. In consonance with

the strategy of unremitting pressure on

Japan, the United States also secured

from its allies a tentative commitment

to attempt the reconquest of Burma

late in 1943 in combination with offensive operations by U.S. forces in the

Pacific aimed at reducing Rabaul, ejecting the Japanese from Attu and Kiska

in the Aleutian Islands, and opening a

new drive across the Central Pacific.

In these ambitious programs the Allies

were reaching, as events proved, too far

and too fast. Abundance was in prospect,

but not yet in hand; and plans were still

at the mercy of contingencies. Particularly rash were the assumptions as to

availability of merchant shipping. The

Casablanca Conference was held during

a lull in the war at sea while most of

the U-boats were refitting or waiting the

abatement of winter weather, and the

decisions of the conference reflected the

short-lived optimism inspired by this circumstance. Ship sinkings had diminished

during December and January after record losses in November, only to multiply

again in February 1943. The U-boats

now hunted in packs, concentrating in

the north Atlantic on the mid-ocean gap

that lay beyond the reach of existing

shore-based aircraft. By March more than

a hundred U-boats were again constantly

at sea, and in that month ship sinkings

reached an appalling total of over a million dead-weight tons, just short of the

November 1942 record.

Under the impact of shipping losses

and military reverses in North Africa
LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY, SPRING 1943 7

the Casablanca program was soon in the

process of dissolution. In mid-February

Field Marshal Erwin Rommel took the

offensive in Tunisia and held the initiative well into March, disrupting and

delaying Allied preparations for a spring

offensive. During February, March, and

April U.S. troops and supplies had to

be poured into the theater at an accelerated pace to meet the immediate emergency, while mounting requirements for

the impending Sicilian operation presaged a still greater influx in the weeks

to come. The already lagging build-up

in the British Isles received the brunt of

these unforeseen drains, and dwindled

to almost nothing.

Meanwhile, at the Pacific Military

Conference held in Washington during

March, theater representatives assessed

the cost of continuing the advance toward Rabaul so high that hopes of reaching that objective before the end of 1943

had to be abandoned despite substantial increases in planned deployment of

both ground and air forces to the South

and Southwest Pacific. The Navy's plans

for a parallel advance through the Central Pacific were still undefined. Symptomatic of the general lull in the Pacific

war was the fact that the major project

under way in spring 1943 was the final

assembly of forces for the reoccupation

of Attu, essentially a mop-up operation

at the far northern edge of the theater.

At Japan's back door in southeast Asia,

prospects of launching a major offensive

in Burma (ANAKIM) in accordance with

the Casablanca plan were also receding.

In March the British campaign on the

Arakan coast bogged down short of its

objective at Akyab, and the British decided to cancel the Chindwin Valley offensive, to which it was to have been a prelude. By the beginning of April it was

plain that Prime Minister Winston S.

Churchill and the British Chiefs of Staff

wished to write off ANAKIM, at least for

1943. President Roosevelt, attracted by

Maj. Gen. Claire L. Chennault's promises to produce greater results at smaller

cost through the use of air power in

China, seemed to be leaning in the same

direction. The U.S. civilian shipping

authorities were reluctant to commit

more merchant tonnage to so distant a

theater, thus leaving the U.S. Joint

Chiefs of Staff (JCS) and their theater

commander, Lt. Gen. Joseph W. Stilwell, as the only convinced defenders

of ANAKIM.

In the midst of the general deterioration, the British Chiefs on 12 March

1943 submitted new estimates of the

amount of additional American merchant shipping that would be needed to

carry out their share of approved operations in the Mediterranean and Burma

and to arrest an alarming decline in their

domestic imports. This British démarche,

insofar as import requirements were concerned, was backed by a commitment

President Roosevelt had made to Churchill the preceding November. Its implications had been grossly underestimated

by the American staff at Casablanca,

where it was only briefly alluded to, and

awareness of them dawned on the staff

only slowly in the weeks that followed.

So massive were the tonnages now requested that, as the alarmed staffs hastily

assessed the cost, meeting the British

requirements could very well reduce

planned American deployment in 1943

by almost half. Since this in turn could

virtually suspend active operations until

the latter part of the year, the military

staffs took a strong stand against meet-
8 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

ing the British requirements for domestic imports. In the crisis President

Roosevelt, acting on the advice of Harry

Hopkins and Lewis Douglas, Deputy

War Shipping Administrator, decided

otherwise.2 On 29 March, without consulting the Joint Chiefs of Staff, he assured Anthony Eden, Great Britain's

Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs,

that British import requirements would

be met. The question of operational

needs had still to be threshed out between the military staffs and the civilian

shipping authorities.3

Thus, at the end of March 1943 the

Allied military program for 1943 seemed

on the brink of disaster. Reflecting a

widespread sense of accumulating misfortunes, the Joint Strategic Survey Committee (JSSC) late that month gloomily

concluded: "the overall strategic situation, or more exactly the capability of

the Allies to control that situation," had

badly deteriorated, mainly because the

planners at Casablanca had "overestimated prospective resources, particularly

shipping, and underestimated the demands on them."4

 Because of the shortage in shipping, the committee thought,

the planned invasion of Sicily would

have to be reconsidered, possibly even

canceled, and no further ventures could

be undertaken in the Mediterranean.

The main effort in Europe in 1943

would go into the bomber offensive

against Germany, if necessary at the

expense of preparations for a crossChannel invasion.

This gloomy outlook brightened perceptibly in April when the war against

the submarines took a decided turn for

the better. Following the recommendations of the Atlantic Convoy Conference, in April U.S. Army Air Forces

(AAF) B-24's began to cover the exposed segment of the convoy route northeast of Newfoundland, and increased

numbers of Royal Air Force Liberator

bombers plus two U.S. Navy escort carriers joined the Battle of the Atlantic.

The results were spectacular. Even with

111 U-boats continuously at sea, shipping losses in April dwindled to less than

half those in March. In May they

dropped below the December level,

while the U-boats suffered heavy attrition. Meanwhile, the production of new

merchant ships in U.S. yards was setting

new records.5

Even before the effect of these developments could be reflected in shipping

schedules, it had begun to appear that

2

 Lewis W. Douglas was a deputy administrator

(there were two other deputies) for the War Shipping Administration, and in effect the head of that

organization, under Rear Adm. Emory S. Land,

Chairman of the Maritime Commission and War

Shipping Administrator. 3

 The British import crisis is covered in detail in

Richard M. Leighton, "U.S. Merchant Shipping and

the British Import Crisis," in Kent Roberts Greenfield, ed., Command Decisions (Washington, 1960),

pp. 199-223. See also Leighton and Coakley, Global

Logistics 1940-43, chs. XXV-XXVII. 4

 JSSC 11, memo by JSSC for JCS, 22 Mar 43, title:

Survey of Present Situation, ABC 382 (9-24-41)

Sec 4.

5

 (1) Wesley F. Craven and James L. Cate, eds.,

"The Army Air Forces in World War II," vol. II:

Europe: TORCH to POINTBLANK, August 1942

to December 1943 (Chicago: University of Chicago

Press, 1949) (hereafter cited as Craven and Cate,

AAF II) , pp. 384-95. (2) Samuel Eliot Morison,

"History of United States Naval Operations in World

War II," vol. I, The Battle of the Atlantic: September 1939-May 1943 (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1947) , ch. XIV and app. I. (3) Frederick C.

Lane and others, Ships for Victory: A History of

Shipbuilding Under the U.S. Maritime Commission

in World War II (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press,

1951) (hereafter cited as Lane, Ships for Victory), p.

203.
LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY, SPRING 1943 9

the gloomy predictions by the military

staffs of the impact of British shipping

demands had been exaggerated. Civilian

shipping authorities had always contended that statements of military requirements were inflated, that they reflected

both wasteful scheduling and loading

practices and excessive margins of safety.

The President's decision of 29 March

had been taken on Douglas' assurance

that the actual needs of military operations for the next few months, with the

exception of the Burma operation, could

in fact be met, even though the full

number of cargo ship sailings demanded

could not be provided. Under orders

from the President to meet British military needs as far as practicable, the shipping authorities were able to work out

schedules of cargo shipments (including

those to Burma) that, for April and May

at least, did not fall far short of stated

requirements. The volume of outbound

troop movements showed little indication of being undermined by diversion

of cargo shipping to nonmilitary programs and support of British forces.

Movements to England picked up; those

to the Mediterranean climbed to record

heights; and deployments to the Pacific

proceeded more or less as planned, including the large task force to Alaska for

the landings on Attu. Encouraging manifestations of the improved situation were

also emerging in Tunisia, where the

long-prepared Allied offensive had finally

gotten under way. By mid-April Axis

forces had been driven back into a tight

perimeter less than 50 miles deep in the

northeastern tip of the country. On the

19th the Germans began to evacuate

troops by air to Sicily, and by the end of

the first week of May their debacle was

complete.

Each of these signal victories—over the

Afrika Korps and over the U-boatscarried its own portents for the future.

The Allied victory in North Africa

broke the German hold on Britain's historic lifeline through the Mediterranean,

and in May 1943 the first through cargo

convoy from Gibraltar since early in the

war arrived at Suez. Only one further

step—the conquest of Sicily—had to be

taken before troop and cargo shipping

would be able to move freely through

the Mediterranean to destinations in the

Red Sea, Persian Gulf, and Indian Ocean

area, a route 8,000 miles shorter than

the long trip around Africa. This

achievement promised immense savings

in shipping. To break the Axis hold on

North Africa had required a tremendous

investment in men, supplies, and shipping, which forced a postponement of

large-scale preparations for a cross-Channel invasion. On the other hand, the

investment had produced a handsome

return—a new base of operations against

German-dominated Europe. The Allies

had now to weigh the relative advantages

of a further advance in the Mediterranean against the risk that progressive commitment of resources in this region might

retard the build-up in the British Isles

and cause further postponement of the

cross-Channel invasion.

As far as the shipping problem was

concerned, however, the victory over enemy submarines was the more significant

achievement. Combined with the outpouring of new tonnage from American

shipyards, it presaged the end of the

long stranglehold of shipping on the

scale of overseas operations. To be sure,

both cargo and troop shipping would

remain critical, and their allocation and

use would continue to be the prime con-
10 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

sideration in planning every operation.

In the Pacific, because of the length of

supply lines and the fact that even within

theaters almost all transportation had

to be by water, the shipping shortage

would continue to be of greater consequence than in the Atlantic. Yet even

in that area, once general objectives had

been tailored more closely to the availability of resources, shipping was soon

to become a less stringent limitation on

strategy than the service troops and facilities needed to discharge and handle

cargoes.

On the eve of the TRIDENT Conference

held in Washington in May 1943, the

prospects of establishing a realistic blueprint of a strategy for ultimate victory

over the Axis that would make use of the

mushrooming resources of the Allied

production machine and the growing

pool of trained manpower were far

brighter than they had been at Casablanca a few months earlier. Yet if the

limitations in shipping and other resources that had resulted in dissolution

of much of the Casablanca program were

receding, a new and significant factor

was emerging that was to weigh heavily

in determining the strategic blueprint.

In the Pacific and in Europe the initial

stage of every major advance required

that troops land on hostile shores, and

in Southeast Asia amphibious assaults

were regarded as an indispensable adjunct to land and air offensives to drive

the Japanese from Burma and Malaya.

The basic tools of amphibious warfare

were the specialized vessels needed to

bring an assault force into position off

a hostile shore, put the troops ashore

fully equipped and ready for action, and

supply them over the beaches until ports

could be secured. The availability of assault shipping (as these vessels will collectively be called) was to be the most

critical limitation on strategy during the

year to come.

Assault Shipping: Tool of

Amphibious Strategy

The tools of amphibious warfare had

had no place in the Victory Program of

1941 or in any other prewar plan for

industrial mobilization. Production officials as well as military leaders had failed

to foresee the need for a massive arsenal

of amphibious equipment. The impetus

for production of assault shipping consequently grew out of specific needs to

fulfill specific operational requirements

that the planners began to foresee only

dimly in 1942.

The three major categories of U.S.

assault shipping used in World War II

were combat loaders, landing ships and

craft, and landing vehicles. Combat loaders were ocean-going transports and cargo vessels, armed and specially equipped

to accommodate entire combat units

with their essential weapons, vehicles, and

other gear so loaded that men and equipment could all be discharged in fighting

trim on a hostile beach. They carried

on davits the small craft by which troops,

equipment, and supplies were discharged

over the beaches in ship-to-shore operations. The most common American types

were attack troop transports (APA's);

attack cargo auxiliaries (AKA's); modified attack troop transports (XAP's);

old destroyers used as high-speed attack

transports (APD's); and, on occasion,

merchant cargo ships converted for special uses in amphibious operations.

Landing ships and craft included a wide

range of vessels: ocean-going types such
LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY, SPRING 1943 11

as the landing ship, tank (LST), landing ship, medium (LSM), landing ship,

dock (LSD), and the misnamed landing

craft, infantry, large (LCI (L)); beaching craft such as the landing craft,

tank (LCT), landing craft, mechanized

(LCM) and the landing craft, vehicle

and personnel (LCVP), and even rubber landing boats—all with the common

capability of beaching without injury.

Landing vehicles were amphibians; they

could "swim" ashore and, without stopping, propel themselves over land on

wheels or endless tracks. The two most

widely used types in World War II

were the 2-1/2 ton amphibious truck

(DUKW) and the amphibious tractor,

or landing vehicle tracked (LVT).6

Procurement of amphibious equipment of all types except the DUKW and

other wheeled amphibians had been

made a Navy responsibility by the end

of 1942. By agreements with the Army

in February and March 1943, the Navy

also took over responsibility for training

all amphibious crews and manning all

landing ships and craft except those entrusted to the Army engineer special

brigades in the Southwest Pacific area.7

In spring of 1943 the Allies had not

yet embarked upon the period of what

might be called offensive amphibious

strategy. Only three notable amphibious

assaults had been undertaken during

1942—the landings in the Solomon Islands, at Dieppe in northwestern France,

and in North Africa; the first and third

of these had been successful, the second

a disastrous failure. All three operations

had been on a modest scale, and in none

had the availability of assault shipping

been a critically limiting factor. Nevertheless, the landings on Guadalcanal and

in North Africa involved such hasty improvisations as the rapid conversion of

old merchant ships and destroyers to perform the tasks of combat loaders, and of

old oilers, originally built to sail on the

shallow waters of Lake Maracaibo, Venezuela, to substitute for LST's. Neither

operation might have been successful

against determined and well-organized

opposition on the beaches similar to that

encountered at Dieppe. The great amphibious assaults of the war still lay

ahead, and the doctrines and weapons

of amphibious warfare were new and

still for the most part untested.

The Navy's primary interest, in 1942,

was in amphibious equipment for shipto-shore operations, and involved for the

most part combat loaders and their accompanying small craft. The initial program for combat loaders developed by

the Navy, and apparently agreed to by

the Army, provided for enough vessels

for a 3-division lift, to be obtained mainly through conversion of existing hulls of

standard merchant vessels. The requirement was raised in August 1942 to a

4-division lift and as computed by the

Navy at the end of the year amounted

to a total of 56 APA's and 20 AKA's—an

amount calculated to provide equal increments for operations and training in

both the Atlantic and the Pacific areas.

6

 (1) For detailed characteristics of U.S. landing

ships and craft in World War II, see Navy Department, ONI 226, Allied Landing Craft and Ships, 7

Apr 1944, and Supplement 1, 1945; also Appendix

B-1, p. 828, below. (2) The best general work on

the subject is Jeter A. Isley and Philip A. Crowl,

The U.S. Marines and Amphibious War (Princeton,

N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1951). 7

 (1) Leighton and Coakley, Global Logistics,

1940-1943, pp. 408-09. (2) Chester Wardlow, The

Transportation Corps: Movements, Training, and

Supply, UNITED STATES ARMY IN WORLD

WAR II (Washington, 1956), p. 463.




16 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

As of late December 1942 Admiral

Ernest J. King, Commander in Chief,

United States Fleet, and Chief of Naval

Operations, reported that 28 APA's and

14 AKA's were available to meet this

requirement, while two new APA's were

being built and 25 additional APA's and

6 AKA's were undergoing conversion.

These vessels, he thought, would be sufficient to meet all needs then anticipated, and, indeed, the conversion program

was accorded no high priority. King proposed, however, and the JCS and the

Maritime Commission approved in February 1943, a modest new building program to keep the fleet of combat loaders

at full strength and to gradually modernize it by replacing losses with specially designed and constructed ships

that would be smaller and better adapted to combat than the converted standard hulls. The modest new program

aimed at producing 32 new small APA's

and 32 new small AKA's by the end of

1944, again not on a high priority.

On 1 April 1943, deployment tables

compiled by the Navy showed only 27

assault transports and 13 attack cargo

ships actually available, plus 14 converted destroyer transports in the Pacific

and 8 old converted merchant ships in

the Atlantic, survivors of the North African landings. Though the numbers of

the combat loaders in the Pacific—16

APA's, 5 AKA's, and the 14 APD's—outweighed the strength in the Atlantic

area, the Navy's deployment plans still

contemplated a relatively equal division

between the two major theaters of war

by the end of 1943. The American complement in the Atlantic and Mediterranean—11 APA's, 8 AKA's, and 8 XAP's

—was supplemented by a British force

of about 18 combat loaders that bore the

designation, in British amphibious terminology, of landing ship, infantry

(LSI).

The American combat loaders were

either permanently assigned to the Navy

or placed under the control of the Joint

Chiefs, who assigned them as needed either to ferry Army troops or to perform

tactical missions for the Navy. The War

Shipping Administration (WSA) at first

objected strenuously to the assignment

of such a sizable pool of shipping to
LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY, SPRING 1943 17

permanent military employment but by

the end of 1942 had conceded the case.8

Originally, the program for production of landing craft was also a modest

one of low priority, concentrated almost

entirely on small and medium-sized

boats and lighters for Navy ship-to-shore

operations. The decision in April 1942

to invade northwestern Europe across

the English Channel in the spring of

1943 (ROUNDUP), or, under emergency

conditions, in 1942 (SLEDGEHAMMER),

gave the program a strong new impetus

and an entirely different turn. The crossChannel invasion was conceived primarily as a shore-to-shore operation, and the

British succeeded in convincing their

American allies that great quantities of

large vehicular and personnel landing

craft would be necessary to negotiate

the difficult Channel waters. It was also

mutually agreed that almost all of them

would have to be produced by the American shipbuilding industry. The result

was a crash landing craft production program in the United States, with schedules and objectives drawn up almost

exclusively in terms of ROUNDUP and

SLEDGEHAMMER. The new program got

under way slowly, and meager output

in the spring and summer was a potent

consideration in the final abandonment

in July of plans for SLEDGEHAMMER. Results were not impressive, even in the

small boat category, until August. The

first large personnel carrier (LCI (L))

was not produced until September and

the first LST did not come off the ways

until October, too late to take part in

the North African landings. The real

surge in production came in November

1942 and continued through February

1943, dropping off markedly thereafter.

In the twelve months from May 1942

through April 1943, 8,719 landing craft

totaling 512,333 light displacement tons

were produced, almost three-fifths of

them in the November-February period.

They included 214 LST's, 302 LCI (L)'s,

470 LCT's, 2,052 LCM's, 3,250 landing

craft, personnel (LCP), 690 landing

craft, vehicle (LCV), 1,799 LCVP's, and

998 LVT's.9

The abortive planning for a crossChannel operation in 1942 or 1943 thus

left as one of its legacies a large pool of

landing craft either in being or in production. The crash program compensated, at least partially, for earlier failure

to plan for adequate quantities of amphibious equipment in the general munitions and shipping pool. Yet its effects

were clearly disruptive of other naval

building programs and created within

the Navy an aversion to any further

8

 (1) JCS 90, 27 Aug 42, memo by COMINCH,

title: Acquisition of Merchant Vessels for Navy Use.

(2) JCS 151/9, 31 Dec 42, memo by COMINCH,

title: Modification of 1943 Shipbldg Program. (3)

Ltr, Adm William D. Leahy to Rear Adm Emory S.

Land, 25 Feb 43, and other corresp, ABC 570 (2-14-

42) Sec 4. (4) JCS 249, 27 Mar 43, title: Strategic

Deployment of U.S. Forces for 1943, app. A. (5)

Col. A. T. Mason, Special Monograph on Amphibious Warfare, ch. II, pp. 88-91, History of the Joint

Chiefs of Staff in World War II, sec. II-D, Part III,

MS, JCS Historical Sec. (6) Leighton and Coakley,

Global Logistics, 1940-43, pp, 397, 615-23.

9

 (1) Civilian Production Administration, Landing

Craft and the War Production Board, prepared

by George E. Mowry (War Production Board, Special Study No. 11) (rev. ed., Washington, 1946) (hereafter cited as Mowry, Landing Craft and the War

Production Board), pp. 6, 21, 23, 72. (2) Civilian

Production Administration, Industrial Mobilization

for War: I, Program and Administration (Washington, 1947) (hereafter cited as CPA, Industrial Mobilization for War), pp. 535, 609. These two studies,

as well as other standard works, perpetuate the

legend that the 1942-43 landing craft program

originated in the decision to invade North Africa.

(3) Leighton and Coakley, Global Logistics, 1940-43,

pp. 376-82.
18 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

emergency programs of the kind. As a

1943 ROUNDUP, the original reason for

the program, receded into the limbo of

improbability, in mid-September 1942

Admiral King launched a move in the

JCS to cut back construction of the

larger landing craft. The JCS agreed to

the extent of eliminating 100 LST's and

48 LCI (L)'s, reducing the total LST

program from 490 to 390 and the

LCI (L) program from 350 to 302. Other

reductions were not practicable because

construction was already so far advanced

in most categories that speedy completion offered the best promise of clearing

the ways for escort vessels and the other

types the Navy wanted most.10

The Navy was far from asserting that

no more landing craft were needed. The

cuts were made only in the larger types

that interfered directly with other naval

building; simultaneously, with an eye to

future ship-to-shore operations, Navy

officials were planning a considerable

expansion of the small boat program. In

any case, even before landing craft production reached its peak, the program

began to lose its official urgency. Late in

1942 it was dropped from the President's

Number One Group of war production

programs, and toward the end of March

1943 it fell to fourth place on the Navy's

Shipbuilding Precedence List. By the

end of April 1943 most of the individual crash programs had substantially

achieved their targets or were severely

cut back.11

The tapering off of the landing craft

program was a source of considerable

relief to Navy officials. The spectacular

output of craft during the winter of

1942-43 had been achieved by the strenuous methods of a crash program. Behind the impressive production figures

lay the inevitable costs of haste and

waste, trial and error, and diversion of

effort and resources from other programs. From the Navy's point of view,

it had been forced to execute the landing craft program at the worst possible

time—while straining to rebuild American sea power in the Pacific and at the

same time fighting the submarine menace in the Atlantic. In its use of steel

and other materials the program had

threatened to interfere to some degree

with almost every category of war production, but most particularly with the

building of other combatant vessels that

were dearer to most admirals' and, in

the case of escort vessels, many generals'

hearts. A Navy spokesman commented

bitterly in April 1943 that the high

rate of landing craft construction had

been achieved "only by cutting across

every single combatant shipbuilding

program and giving the amphibious

program overriding priority in every

navy yard and every major civilian shipbuilding company. The derangement

suffered from this overriding amphibious program will not be corrected for

about six months."12

With the submarine menace assuming

terrifying proportions in February and

March 1943, Army and Navy officials

alike were eager to terminate this competition between amphibious craft and

other naval construction. That the current U-boat offensive would prove to be

the dying gasp of German sea power

10

 (1) Min 33d mtg JCS, 15 Sep 43; 25th mtg JCS.

29 Sep 42. (2) CCS 105/2, 27 Sep 42, rpt by CPS, title:

Transportation of Ldg Cft and Recommended New

Allocations. 11

 Mowry, Landing Craft and the War Production

Board, p. 72.

12

 JPS 152/1, 3 Apr 43, title: Production of Ldg

Cft, ABC 561/1 (19 Mar 43), Sec 1A.
LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY, SPRING 1943 19

could not then be foreseen, and Navy

leaders were anxious to accelerate construction of escort vessels as much as

possible. However, the escort building

program was not given the overriding

priority that many thought it needed,

largely because such action seemed likely

to "do more harm to other essential

programs than it would do good to the

escort vessel program."13 Even so, escorts

remained first on the Navy's Shipbuilding Precedence List through the early part

of 1943, when only a few categories of

landing craft stood as high as third. Late

in March escorts were placed second,

while landing craft fell to fourth place

and lower. Output of escorts rose steadily through the first half of 1943.14

Landing craft schedules, by contrast,

were cut back. Navy plans early in 1943

provided for production of 15 LST's per

month, beginning in April 1943, until

the reduced program total of 390 units

was completed in March 1944. Thereafter production would be only 3 or 4

per month to replace losses. With the

LCI (L) program for 302 units completed in April 1943, the Navy consented to place orders for a monthly

output of 16 up to a total of 192 additional craft. New construction of LCT-

(5)'s was also scheduled at 10 per month

beginning in July. These low planned

output levels contrasted with peak

monthly production figures in the earlier program of 61 LST's, 70 LCI (L)'s,

and 156 LCT (5)'s. Only for small craft

were rates of production to stay high.15

The American landing craft pool and

program were supplemented by a much

smaller British contribution. The British had pioneered in the development

of various types of landing ships and

craft, including the LST, but their production facilities were inadequate for a

program of the size needed for the crossChannel invasion. After producing about

half a dozen of a fast, long-range model

LST (the LST (1)), the British agreed

that the building of LST's henceforth

would be restricted mainly to a newer

model, the LST (2), more suitable for

mass production. Production of this

craft, along with that of most other types

needed for a cross-Channel invasion,

would be concentrated in American

shipyards. The British proceeded, however, with construction of their own

models of LCT's and various types of

small and support craft, using facilities

that could be spared from their regular

naval and merchant shipbuilding programs. The whole effort was incapable

of much expansion and depended on

American production of engines for

many types. The British, always more

impressed than the Americans with the

difficulties of landing on a well-defended

hostile coast, placed more emphasis on

incorporating armor and gunfire support

in their amphibious equipment. Their

principal small landing boat, for instance, the landing craft, assault (LCA),

equivalent to the American LCVP, was

much more heavily armored and

13

 (1) Ltr, CPRB to CCS, 28 Jan 43, Incl to CCS

137/3, title: Construction Program of Escort Vessels. (2) CCS 137, 28 Dec 42, same title. 14

 (1) Civilian Production Administration, Official

Munitions Production of the United States by

Months, July 1, 1940-August 31, 1945, Special Release, May 1, 1947 (hereafter cited as CPA, Official

Munitions Production). (2) Mowry, Landing Craft

and the War Production Board, app. D.

15

 (1) Memo, Rear Adm Charles M. Cooke, Jr., for

Dir Reqmts SOS, 13 Feb 43, folder 18 Shpg File,

vol. III, Case 28, ASF Plng Div. (2) JPS 152/1,

3 Apr 43, title: Production of Ldg Cft, ABC 561/1

(19 Mar 43) Sec 1A. (3) For characteristics of the

LCT(5) see Appendix B-1, below.
20 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

mounted more guns. They also had several types of armored support vessels of

larger size, such as the landing craft,

support (medium) (LCS (M)), and the

landing craft, gun (large) (LCG (L))—

all of which mounted machine guns and

mortars. The U.S. Navy, in contrast, perhaps because of its early orientation

toward ship-to-shore operations in the

Pacific, placed its major reliance for supporting fires "primarily on Naval gunfire, delivered from positions offshore

by combatant ships."16

Since the original American landing

craft program was drawn up in terms

of the SLEDGEHAMMER-ROUNDUP strategy,

tentative allocations set in mid-1942 assigned most of the craft for use in a crossChannel invasion, including 200 American-produced LST's, 300 LCI (L)'s, and

340 LCT (5)'s. These allocations had

not stipulated assignments of landing

craft by country, but the agreement on

U.S. production for use by both countries

led the British to believe that they would

receive generous allocations under lendlease or other arrangements. With the

demise of the initial invasion strategy,

the Americans decided otherwise, proposing in September 1942 a complete

revision of allocation schedules to provide greater quantities for the Pacific,

the Mediterranean, and the Navy's Amphibious Force in the Atlantic at the

expense of further accumulations in the

British Isles. Allocations to the British

were to be restricted, as far as the larger

craft were concerned, mostly to those

proposed for operation by British crews

in the original ROUNDUP planning.

(Tables 1 and 2)

Around these proposals a running controversy developed in the combined planning staffs, continuing through the Casablanca Conference. The British argued

stubbornly for larger allocations and for

resumption of the original program for

assembling landing craft in the British

Isles for a cross-Channel operation as

soon as the immediate needs for the

Pacific and Mediterranean had been met.

They also proposed a pool of U.S. and

U.K. amphibious resources in the Atlantic and standardization of replacement, maintenance, and training allowances by the two countries. The Americans, on the other hand, obviously fearing the accumulation of a large body of

assault shipping in the European area

at the expense of the Pacific theaters and

the possibility of British control of whatever pool might be created, resisted these

proposals. They finally took their stand

on the ground that allocations should be

made for specific operations as they were

approved by the CCS, and that the problem of overhead allowances could be

more expeditiously handled by arrangements between the naval staffs of the two

countries, also as specific needs arose.17

16

 (1) Memo, Adm Cooke for Brig Gen Albert C.

Wedemeyer, 24 Apr 43, sub: Support Guns and

Antiaircraft Artillery on Ldg Cft, ABC 561 (31 Aug

43), Sec 1B. (2) Gordon A. Harrison, Cross-Channel

Attack, UNITED STATES ARMY IN WORLD

WAR II (Washington, 1951), pp. 60-61. (3) ONI 226,

Allied Landing Craft and Ships, 7 April 44.

17

 The controversy may be followed in: (1)CCS

105/1, 18 Sep 42; CCS 105/2, 27 Sep 42; and CCS

105/3, 4 Nov 42; all titled: Transportation of Ldg

Cft and Recommended New Allocations, ABC 561

(2-19-42) Sec 2. (2) Min, 42d mtg CCS, 2 Oct 42;

4oth mtg, 18 Sep 42; 47th mtg, 6 Nov 42. (3) Min,

32d mtg CPS, 11 Sep 42; 38th mtg, 26 Nov 42. (4)

CPS 42/3, 1 Nov 42, rpt by British JPS, title: Ldg

Cft Reqmts and Allocations; CPS 42/5, 24 Nov 42,

rpt by subcom, title: Transportation of Ldg Cft.

(5) Min, 33d mtg JCS, 15 Sep 42; 35th mtg, 29 Sep

42; 40th mtg, 3 Nov 42. (6) OPD Notes on JCS 35th

mtg, 29 Sep 42, ABC 561 (2-19-42) Sec 2.
LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY, SPRING 1943 21

TABLE 1—PROPOSED DISTRIBUTION OF U.S. LANDING CRAFT

SEPTEMBER 1942

a

 All totals except for LCP/LCV represent scheduled production through February 1943; the LCP/LCV total is of listed allocations. b

 This figure reflects a proposed cut of 56 in the current program, 8 more than the number finally canceled. c

 Production not yet scheduled; total scheduled production through February 1943 at this time was 4,836.

Source: CCS 105/2, 27 Sep 42, title: Transportation of Ldg Cft.

TABLE 2—PROPOSED ALLOCATION OF U.S. LANDING CRAFT TO UNITED KINGDOM

SEPTEMBER 1942

a

 Includes craft already delivered to the United Kingdom, as indicated in parenthesis. All would presumably have to be manned by British crews, since original plans to send U.S. boat crews to the United Kingdom had been suspended. b

 No British crews were in prospect for these craft.

Source: CCS 105/2, 27 Sep 42, title: Transportation of Ldg Cft.

In the negotiations at the Casablanca

Conference, the JCS stuck to this principle. The invasion of Sicily was the only

specific amphibious operation in Europe

agreed to at Casablanca, and provision

of adequate lift for that undertaking absorbed most of the planners' attention,

although the Americans also agreed to

underwrite the assault shipping requirements for the amphibious operation in

Burma. British requests for allocations,

representing sizable reductions in their

earlier requests but geared to a prospect

of large-scale operations late in the year,

were deferred and no final decision was

rendered until early April 1943. These

final decisions drastically scaled down

the British requests for the larger craft,

LST's and LCI (L)'s, while meeting in

full requests for LCT's and smaller craft.

As opposed to the request for 150 LST's

by the end of August, the Americans

promised 84. (Table 3) Meanwhile, in

making their own allocations between

the Atlantic and the Pacific for 1943, the

Americans assigned the greater proportion to the Pacific—117 of 201 LST's expected to be available by 1 August 1943,
GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

TABLE 3—REQUESTS VERSUS ALLOCATIONS OF U.S. LANDING CRAFT TO BRITISH

JANUARY-APRIL 1943

a

 In a strict sense, the term allocation was used to mean the allotment of future production; assignment referred to allotments of finished

items. Relatively few of the craft here indicated as allocated before the Casablanca Conference had been actually assigned by then, and

fewer still had been delivered to the British. b

 At Casablanca the allocation of LSD's was left indefinite, though 7 of the 15 scheduled for production were earmarked for the British.

In January it was expected that the first LSD to be produced, scheduled for May 1943, would be assigned to the British. Memo, Col Ray

T. Maddocks for ACofS OPD, 24 Jan 43, sub: Availability of Ldg Cft for a Certain Opn, Exec 3, Item la, Case 6. c

 Decided upon after the Casablanca Conference. 230 of the LCVP's were to be delivered to the United Kingdom by 1 August.

Source: (1) Paper by Br COS, Reqmts of U.S. Built Ldg Cft for Opns in 1943, 13 Jan 43, ASF Plng Div folder Landing Craft. (2) Table

atchd to min, 67th CCS mtg, 22 Jan 43. (3) CCS 105/4, rpt of CPS, 9 Apr 43, title: Transportation of Ldg Cft, ABC 561 (2-19-42) Sec 2.

96 of 150 LCI (L)'s, and 180 of 281

LCT's. The British had to content themselves with the verbal assurances of Rear

Adm. Charles M. Cooke, Jr. (Assistant

Chief of Staff to Commander in Chief

U.S. Fleet), that the needs of any possible cross-Channel assault would be

met.18

Allocations made at Casablanca and

afterward were obviously motivated both

by the determination of the Navy to

cut back production of larger landing

craft, and by the American suspicion

that British proposals for long-range allocations for a cross-Channel invasion

represented an attempt to amass landing

craft in the British Isles for an operation

that, at best, could only be executed in

the distant future—and at the expense of

operations elsewhere, particularly in the

Pacific. The allocations, together with

the cutback in production, left the amphibious resources in prospect for any

such operation dangerously low, as the

planners were to learn by bitter experience in the ensuing year. Nevertheless,

neither Army nor Navy officials were

willing to reappraise production schedules in the spring of 1943. When in

March the British asked that the United

States re-examine the possibility of increasing production of LST's and LCT's

to ensure adequate provision for a crossChannel invasion in 1944, the request

aroused suspicion that the British were

merely trying to use the shortage of landing craft as a pretext to avoid launching

an invasion at all. The Americans countered by proposing that the British take

stock of their own resources in barges

and other miscellaneous craft to be used

in the follow-up. Reflecting the prevailing aversion to a new accelerated pro18

 Leighton and Coakley, Global Logistics, 1940-

43, pp. 682-86.
LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY, SPRING 1943 23

gram, a Navy spokesman wrote: "In my

opinion, anything approaching a repetition of the previous program would be

disastrous from a standpoint of all other

Naval construction."19

At no time, then, between the decision in July 1942 to invade North Africa

and the TRIDENT Conference in May

1943, the period when the future program for production of assault shipping

was being determined, did U.S. planners

squarely face the problem of working

out a schedule of requirements and allocations on the basis of a long-term strategy. To them it seemed impossible to do

so until the questions of whether and

when a cross-Channel invasion would

take place had been settled with the

British. Yet this was not the only factor

at work — uncertainties introduced by

rapid advances in amphibious technology and doctrine also contributed. New

items of amphibious equipment emerging from the production lines were for

the most part untested; their exact capabilities, capacities, and limitations remained undefined. It was extremely difficult for the logistical staffs, as late as

spring of 1943, to perform in the field

of amphibious operations the most basic

exercise of the logistician's craft: to compute with precision the requirements of

a given operation under given conditions. The varieties of and the uses for

amphibious equipment made it almost

literally impossible to make a preliminary calculation even in general terms

of requirements of a future course of

action sketched only in broad strokes.

In May a planning committee, wrestling

with the problem, felt impelled to write

into an otherwise heavily statistical report this admonition:

A detailed tactical plan with the details

of logistical support is the basic factor in

any study on the determination of landing

craft for a given operation. One of the

principal reasons that there are various types

in existence is the fact that certain types are

more efficient under given circumstances.

But it does not follow that one type can be

substituted for another simply because there

are a variety of types available. A substitution must never be made unless

two factors are known: hydrographic conditions and intended use. There is always a

best method of lifting a combat team and

support elements, though many combinations may be possible. The decision must

be based on the tactical scheme of maneuver

and detailed information on hydrographic

conditions.20

Tactical schemes of maneuver that

would permit detailed specifications of

requirements were lacking in spring

1943 for anything beyond immediate operations. Without them the planners

could only speculate, and all too frequently disagree. The problem was as

acute in relation to the peculiarly American sphere in the Pacific as it was to

Anglo-American planning for the assault

on Fortress Europe. The prospective

needs for the Pacific war were but dimly

foreseen in spring 1943, and allocations

made to the Pacific at that time seem to

have been based on an appraisal of general rather than of specific needs. The

role of the combat loader as a vessel

especially adapted to transporting troops

over the long distances involved in Pacific island warfare, and the consequent

need for many more of them in the Pacific, was hardly recognized—the combat

loader program was kept small with a

19

 Harrison, Cross-Channel Attack, p. 63.

20

 JCS 311, 15 May 43, rpt by JWPC, title: Mobility

and Utilization of Amphibious Assault Craft.
24 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

low priority. Almost entirely unforeseen

was the successful use of the amphibian

tractor (LVT) in crossing coral reefs

at Tarawa and in later Pacific operations. Requirements for both the LVT

and the amphibian truck (DUKW)

were seriously underestimated.

Because of these unknowns, and because the Americans wanted to preserve

their freedom of action in production

planning and in the Pacific war generally, the JCS did not, either at Casablanca or in the weeks following, present

to the British any justification for their

Pacific allocations in terms of specific

scheduled operations. As these Pacific

allocations had been developed to begin

with in the context of a ROUNDUPcentered strategy, they understandably

aroused British suspicions that the Americans were sending the bulk of their amphibious equipment to the Pacific for

operations that had been jointly agreed

should be secondary to the war against

Germany. Yet the U.S. Navy was not

ready to discuss allocations in these

broader terms, and in the weeks after

Casablanca succeeded in placing landing

craft allocation, as well as production,

almost entirely in naval channels. In

connection with the final allocations for

1943, the JCS secured the agreement of

their British colleagues that in the future allocations would be handled by

agreement between the naval staffs of

the two countries and not by the Combined Staff Planners, who had previously been wrestling with them, or by the

machinery of the Munitions Assignments Board, which handled the allocation and assignment of other items. A

protest by Army Service Forces representatives against this procedure was met

by providing that allocations decided

upon by the naval staffs should then be

processed formally through the Munitions Assignment Committee (Navy)

and the Munitions Assignments Board.

This procedure left the Navy still in

effective control.21

In one brief spurt of industrial effort,

then, the United States in 1942 and early

1943 had created a fund of landing craft

that hopefully would be enough — in

combination with the products of a

much smaller continuing program and

the modest combat loader program—to

carry out whatever amphibious operations might be decided on during the

next two years. During the winter of

1942-43 and into the spring of 1943,

for reasons that seemed compelling at

the time, the JCS postponed really fundamental decisions on the future production and use of assault shipping. Strategic plans were unsettled, and even the

Casablanca Conference failed to produce

firm agreements on sequence or timing,

and in some cases even choice, of specific

operations in 1943-44. Amphibious

technology and doctrine were changing

so rapidly and so fundamentally that

the planners could only grope blindly

for the fixed premises on which any detailed staff planning must be based. Mutual distrust between British and American staffs further complicated the issues.

Finally, U.S. Navy officials had an almost obsessive aversion to large increases

in the landing craft production program.

These circumstances were to complicate

immensely strategic-logistical planning

21

 (1) CPS 42/8, 5 Apr 43, title: Transportation of

Ldg Cft. (2) CCS 105/4, 9 Apr 43, same title. (3)

Min, 80th mtg CCS, 16 Apr 43. (4) On the assignments machinery, see Leighton and Coakley, Global

Logistics, 1940-43, pp. 270-94; and below, Chapter

XXV.
LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY, SPRING 1943 25

for the great amphibious operations of

1943 and 1944.

Divergent Strategies

The British and American positions

on allocation of scarce assault shipping

reflected a long-enduring divergence in

strategic outlook. In spring of 1943 these

differences, reduced to their simplest

terms, centered in the division of effort

and resources, worldwide between the

two spheres (or hemispheres) of the global war and, in Europe, between the

Mediterranean front and preparations

for a cross-Channel assault. The Americans wanted to place more emphasis on

the war against Japan and to allocate

a larger proportion of Allied resources

to it; in Europe they insisted that preparations for a cross-Channel invasion

should go full speed ahead at the expense of further operations in the Mediterranean once the conquest of Sicily

was accomplished. The British, interpreting the primacy of the war against

Germany more literally, seemed willing

to postpone major offensives against

Japan until after Germany's defeat. In

Europe they were determined to make

the main effort in 1943 in the Mediterranean, profiting from the momentum

of the expected victory in Sicily.

If this much can be stated positively

with regard to national strategies for

1943, the British position on an invasion

across the English Channel in 1944 cannot be determined with the same degree

of certitude. The theory that the British

actually espoused what many American

writers have described as a "peripheral"

strategy—that is, one southward oriented

in which the Mediterranean campaign

would be continued into 1944 as the

main effort in Europe and a cross-Channel operation would be carried out, if

at all, only as a coup de grâce after Germany had been drained of her strength

—is one that has been developed and

sustained largely in American memoirs

and other accounts published during and

since the war. It reflects also the strong

convictions of many, perhaps most,

American military strategists and officials

at the time, including so distinguished

a figure as Secretary of War Stimson.

British publications on the war, while

not supporting this view, have not conclusively refuted it, either—in part, at

least, because British strategists and their

interpreters, starting from the premise

that the Mediterranean had a legitimate

and useful role to play in the European

war, have candidly argued the case for

Mediterranean operations on its merits,

thus providing ammunition for those

predisposed to believe that any defense

of a Mediterranean strategy must ipso

facto betray a Mediterranean orientation of European strategy. It is also

worth noting that British official historians, with access to the records, have not

(unlike their American counterparts)

revealed in their published accounts the

processes of debate and compromise

through which agreed British positions

were arrived at. Since American historians do not have access to British staff

records, they cannot know what British

positions on strategy actually were or

whether they were, in fact, something

other than what responsible British

spokesmen represented them to be.22

22

 For a "revisionist" interpretation of British

European strategy, see Richard M. Leighton, "OVERLORD Revisited: An Interpretation of American Strategy in the European War 1942-1944," American

Historical Review, LXVIII, 4 (1963), 919-937.
26 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

British representations, at least, were

clear enough. As put to the Americans

in the spring of 1943, the official British

position stressed the importance of retaining the initiative and moving ahead

in the Mediterranean during 1943 in

order to sap German strength in preparation for a cross-Channel invasion by

then irrevocably deferred to 1944.

Among the British leaders and staffs

there was, of course, considerable divergence of opinion as to how much could

be accomplished in the Mediterranean

and when the invasion of France should

be launched. It is reasonable to assume

that many hoped, and some expected,

that vigorous prosecution of the Mediterranean campaign through 1943, the

effects of blockade and bombardment,

and the drain of the war in the Soviet

Union would bring about a German

collapse, or would open up a southern

avenue of advance less costly than a

frontal assault from the northwest. Entertaining these hopes and expectations,

the British were unmistakably reluctant

as yet to set a firm target date for the

cross-Channel invasion. They believed,

however, that in the meantime preparations for a 1944 invasion should go forward with full vigor and in a priority

second only to the urgent needs of current operations in the Mediterranean.

British strategy, in short, was candidly

opportunistic both as to time and as to

place, in contrast to the rigid American

insistence—as British leaders saw it—on

immediate and overriding emphasis on

preparations for a definitely scheduled,

large-scale cross-Channel invasion in

spring of 1944.

The candid opportunism of the British, together with their emphasis on the

difficulties and risks of any cross-Channel operation, nurtured American doubts

of any professed British willingness to

undertake the invasion even in 1944.

Between January and May 1943, these

doubts powerfully affected American

attitudes toward further accumulation

of resources in Great Britain that might

never be used or, as had happened the

preceding summer, might be diverted

to operations in the Mediterranean. At

Casablanca the U.S. military leaders had

not, in fact, seriously opposed the proposed invasion of Sicily, and at the same

time they had made good their insistence

on stepping up the scale and tempo of

the Pacific war. But approval of the Sicilian campaign completed the derailment

of the ROUNDUP strategy that the North

African campaign had begun, and the

Casablanca strategic program looked to

the American staff like a British-inspired

program. Not surprisingly, therefore, the

Americans leaned strongly toward allotting more resources to and expending

greater effort in the Pacific, particularly

in the light of indications in spring of

1943 that the Japanese were rapidly consolidating their gains and might make

their defenses impregnable unless the

Allies moved promptly to breach them.

Anglo-American differences on the

war in the Pacific were more fundamental than those over strategy in Europe.

The British were apprehensive of Admiral King's insistence at Casablanca on

a larger commitment of resources to the

war against Japan, and their agreement

to an offensive in Burma in 1943 was

reluctant and conditional. They did not

share American fears about growing Japanese strength, and believed that effective prosecution of the war in Europe

demanded that the war against Japan be

conducted on a strictly defensive strategy
LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY, SPRING 1943 27

and with limited commitment of resources.23

In approaching these major issues,

particularly that of a Pacific strategy,

the British were at a serious disadvantage. The relative abundance of resources in prospect was largely American

abundance. The British war effort was

already approaching its peak in early

1943, and was incapable of much expansion. The American economy was just

beginning to show its full potential. The

British, by virtue of their earlier entry

into the war, their greater experience,

and their participation in the arrangements for handling lend-lease, had won

for themselves a place in the planning

of the American production effort and

the disposition of its products. In a number of cases they had turned over to

U.S. industry the task of filling most of

their needs for certain vitally essential

items—for instance, landing craft and

tanks—while assuming they would continue to participate in shaping American

production and allocation plans. In return the British could and did offer

bases, troopships, various supplies and

services and, above all, military forces

larger and better equipped than they

could otherwise have been, for use in

the common cause.

Yet the very nature of these arrangements weakened the British position in

combined councils. As American strength

grew, Americans began to chafe under

the real or fancied influence of the British in shaping strategy, production plans,

and allocation of matériel. An important

step was taken in the fall of 1942 when

the Americans announced their intention of excluding the British from participation in the formulation of plans

for U.S. industrial production.24 British

members kept their places on the Munitions Assignments Board, which was

responsible for the country-by-country

allocation of American munitions, but

their voice in these allocations was restricted in a number of ways. One method

of restriction was the growing tendency

of the Americans to make allocations on

a national service level, excluding the

British from participation in the detailed

calculations of requirements and availability. A second way was through the

principle introduced in late 1942 and

effectively used in the landing craft controversy—that allocations of matériel

should be made only for specific operations approved by the CCS. This gave

the U.S. Chiefs an effective lever of control over the pursuit of any independent

British strategic design even in theaters

over which the British Chiefs exercised

strategic responsibility.25

The British suffered the greatest disadvantage in matters concerning the war

in the Pacific. Strategic responsibility for

Pacific areas was assigned to the U.S.

Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the Pacific war,

by and large, was sustained by U.S. resources. The contributions of Australia

and New Zealand were appreciable, but

these dominions naturally tended to

share American rather than British views

on the war against Japan. The British

had no "Pacific" of their own. Even in

theaters formally within their strategic

jurisdiction—the Middle East, India, and

southeast Asia—they depended heavily

on American resources.

23

 Arthur Bryant, The Turn of the Tide (New

York: Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1957), pp. 492-93.

24

 Leighton and Coakley, Global Logistics, 1940-43,

pp. 277-82. 25

 (1) Ibid., p. 285. (2) See below, ch. XXV.
28 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

The only real influence the British

could exert on the scale of American

effort in the Pacific was in developing

general formulas for worldwide distribution of resources, a function reserved to

the CCS and the heads of state. Disagreement at those levels tended to focus

on the wording of formally agreed statements of policy and principle, and did

not involve the kind of detailed analysis

of operational requirements that attended deliberations on strategy in Europe and southeast Asia. Lacking an

effective bargaining lever, the British

usually approached discussions of the

Pacific gingerly and by indirection. Their

strong feeling in spring of 1943 that

American allocations to the Pacific of

critical resources needed for the war in

Europe jeopardized what they regarded

as the essential strategy for an early defeat of Germany, did, in fact, generate

one of the very few really sharp, though

still generalized, debates of the war period on the question of the relative scale

of American support for the two major

sectors of the global war.26 By contrast,

this underlying difference came to focus

both sharply and frequently in discussions of operations in southeast Asia

where the British exercised primary

strategic responsibility. They considered

the American scheme for an early invasion of Burma as not logistically feasible

and of a piece with the demand for a

premature invasion of northwestern

Europe.

The issue of global strategy was joined

in April 1943 when the Joint Chiefs

attempted to pin the British down to a

formula that would ensure a more generous allotment of Allied resources to

the war against Japan and prevent their

dissipation into the Mediterranean. In a

statement submitted to the British

Chiefs, ostensibly designed to "clarify"

the Casablanca decisions on the conduct

of the war in 1943, the JCS proposed

that operations in the Pacific and the

Far East be on a scale sufficient not

merely to "maintain" (the word used

at Casablanca) but also to "extend" unremitting pressure against Japan. With

the formula, the JCS submitted a suggested list of priorities to govern the

allotment of resources for operations in

Europe and in the Far East—significantly

omitting the Pacific theaters, and thus

serving notice of an intention to keep

their prerogatives unfettered in those

areas. First, second, and third priority

were given to operations in Tunisia,

Sicily, and the Combined Bomber Offensive, respectively; fourth priority went

to the invasion of Burma and fifth to

the build-up for a cross-Channel invasion

(BOLERO).27

The British protested that the statement was a revision, not a clarification,

of the Casablanca decisions. They

charged that the new formula—"maintain and extend unremitting pressure"

—was tantamount to giving "pride of

place" to the Pacific war, and that the

effect of relegating BOLERO to the lowest

priority, together with the new definition of the scale of effort against Japan,

might be to starve the build-up in the

British Isles and so make a cross-Channel

operation in 1944 impossible. The British levelled their strongest protest, however, at the implied exclusion of all

further action in the Mediterranean

26

 Bryant, Turn of the Tide, pp. 491-500.

27

 CCS 199, 19 Apr 43, title: Survey of Present

Strategic Situation (Clarification of Casablanca Decisions).
LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY, SPRING 1943 29

after HUSKY, reminding the Americans

of the Casablanca agreement that efforts

would be made to eliminate Italy and to

create a situation favorable to Turkey's

intervention.28 Full debate on these

issues was postponed until the TRIDENT

Conference in May 1943.

Meanwhile, the exchange served to

emphasize a fact already evident in the

course of the landing craft controversy:

the existence of a certain anomaly in

the American and British positions with

respect to preparation in 1943 for a crossChannel operation in 1944. The Americans, supposed champions of the operation, were reluctant to commit themselves

definitely to a large-scale build-up; while

the British, supposedly hostile or lukewarm toward it, pressed the Americans

for a commitment. One need not seek

far for an explanation—it can be found

in the twin pressures on American resources created by British plans for further advances in the Mediterranean and

demands generated within the U.S. staffs

to speed up the Pacific war. The requirements for the Sicily operation absorbed

all resources the Americans felt could be

committed to the war in Europe without

unduly depriving the Pacific.29

Meanwhile, new indications of farreaching British aims in the Mediterranean and of a lukewarm attitude toward a cross-Channel invasion were

emerging. Early in April Prime Minister

Churchill, in an exuberant message to

President Roosevelt, confided his hopes

that the conquest of Sicily would open

up manifold opportunities for profitable

action throughout the Mediterranean.

In March Lt. Gen. Sir Frederick Morgan had been appointed Chief of Staff

to the Supreme Allied Commander

(Designate) (COSSAC), charged with

planning a cross-Channel operation, and

he had begun forming a combined staff

for the purpose. Late in April the British proposed that the CCS directive to

General Morgan be revised. The revision would have suspended all planning

for cross-Channel operations in 1943

other than that for feeler raids, and

would have left the main operation without a target date except a vague "in

1944." The JCS in reply insisted that

the emergency return to the Continent

be retained on the agenda, and only

reluctantly agreed to abandon a preliminary bridgehead operation. On the question of timing, they grudgingly accepted

a compromise phrase: "in 1944 as early

as possible."30

These developments nourished the

suspicion among the American staffs

that the real aim of the British in pressing for acceleration of the invasion buildup in the United Kingdom was to provide a pool of resources that could be

used to support operations in the Mediterranean, while the cross-Channel invasion for which it was ostensibly intended

would be postponed to the Greek kalends. This suspicion strengthened the

argument, of which Admiral King was

the most forthright exponent, that these

28

 (1) CCS 199/1, 23 Apr 43, title: Survey of Present Strategic Situation. (2) Min, 81st mtg CCS, 23

Apr 43. 29

 See below, ch. II.

30

 (1) CCS 169/S/D, 23 April 43, title: Organization of Comd, Control, Plng and Trng for CrossChannel Opns, (2) Msg, Prime Minister to President,

circa 6 Apr 43, OPD 381 Security, II. (3) Harrison,

Cross-Channel Attack, pp. 48-49. (4) L. M. Guyer,

Section III: The War Against Germany and Its Satellites, ch. VIII, Part A, pp. 147-53, Part B, pp. 109-208,

in History of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in World War

II, MS, JCS Historical Sec (hereafter cited as Guyer,

The War Against Germany, History JCS).
30 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

resources might better be sent to the

Pacific. On the other hand, the continued

reluctance to commit resources definitely

to Europe raised questions in British

minds as to American willingness to

strive wholeheartedly for the common

cause in that theater on any but American terms; it also provided justification

to the British for their own unwillingness at this stage to accept a fixed date

and a fixed scale for an invasion that

might prove to be either unnecessary or

infeasible—or something in between—

when the time came. The American

staffs, while not unanimously or unreservedly enthusiastic about expanding

the war against Japan, were united in

rejecting a strategy of pure containment

in that war while the issue was being

decided in Europe. Such a strategy

would not only be unacceptable to the

American public, but would offer no

useful employment for the growing

American battle fleets. The determination of the Americans to prosecute the

global war vigorously on both fronts,

with a major part of the total effort and

resources devoted to the Pacific, by early

1943 had become a fixed and fundamental tenet of U.S. strategy and, in new

guises and under new circumstances,

would help to perpetuate the constraints

that logistics had imposed on strategy

during 1942.
CHAPTER II

HUSKY and BOLERO

Throughout the months of late winter and spring 1943, beneath the eddies

of new strategy in the making, the administrative staffs were carrying toward

fruition the major operational decision

of the Casablanca Conference—the invasion of Sicily. Preparations went forward

under the shadow of the recent unhappy

experience in mounting the invasion of

North Africa (TORCH) which, to Washington staff officers, had become a symbol of confusion, haste, and wasteful

improvisation. The new undertaking

posed many of the same problems, and

in some respects the task appeared even

more difficult. The base ports to which

troops and material must be shipped

were scattered along an immense stretch

of the North African littoral. Facilities

for reception, storage, and distribution

in the theater were primitive compared

to those in the United Kingdom, the

base for most of the TORCH forces. All

this had to be taken into account in

stateside preparations: certain types of

training must be given in the United

States that the theater was not equipped

to undertake; ships must be loaded so

that specified cargo could be discharged

at specified ports; and, for all the things

that must be done with limited means

in the theater, ample time must be allowed. Moreover, preparations for HUSKY, both in the United States and in the

theater, must be subordinated to the

build-up for the final offensive in Tunisia, which in its turn must be wound

up in early May if HUSKY were to be

mounted in June or July.

One, at least, of the problems that had

almost wrecked TORCH—the pressure to

meet an almost impossible deadline—

was not now present. The staffs had

had a little more than three months to

plan and mount TORCH. For HUSKY they

could count on almost five months, or,

if the operation were launched in July,

even six. As in TORCH, decisions were

made and unmade, and the concept and

general plan of the operation underwent

a major revision only two months before D-day. The target date was not finally settled until April. Lacking firm

objectives and detailed requirements,

the logisticians often had to proceed on

the basis of their own uninformed assumptions. Even so, at the beginning

of February they knew the major objectives and the approximate size of the

forces involved. And, as it happened, the

prolonged uncertainty over D-day and

eleventh-hour changes in tactical plans

did not alter the pattern of administrative arrangements that had taken form

early in the planning.

Meanwhile, the absorption of administrative staffs in preparations for HUSKY,

the drain of additional resources to the

Mediterranean that it entailed, and the

continuing uncertainty over strategy in
32 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

the war in Europe, made resumption of

the build-up in the British Isles impossible. The build-up for the Combined

Bomber Offensive (SICKLE) lagged badly; that for an early invasion of the Continent (BOLERO) came to an almost complete halt. The only really heartening

developments in the first four months

of 1943 were the fading of the cargo

shipping shortage in April and the appearance of a plan for reviving the 1942

scheme for preshipment of equipment

to the British Isles for the invasion force

that would be required in 1944.

Contrivance, Ingenuity, and a

Favorable June Moon

The invasion of Sicily, as initially

planned, was to be a two-pronged operation, with five British divisions landing

along the eastern and southeastern coasts

of Sicily, three U.S. divisions along the

northern and southern coasts at the western end of the island. Including followup forces in both sectors, up to ten divisions with their supporting armor and

services were to land during the first

week, spaced around some two-thirds of

Sicily's total circumference of about 500

miles. The plan for the widely dispersed

landings was dictated by the supposed

necessity of securing at the outset all the

island's main ports and airfields (except

Messina, in the northeastern corner, too

far from Allied air and naval bases), in

order to neutralize enemy air power operating from Italian bases and to ensure

a rapid build-up and subsequent support of forces adequate to overpower

the defenders.1 As finally executed, the

operations would be radically different

in concept but not in the size of the

force employed. Arrangements for support from the United States, meanwhile,

because of their timing, had to be made

largely in terms of the initial plan.

The timing of HUSKY had been the

subject of a spirited debate at Casablanca, culminating in a decision by

the combined staffs to set the operation

for 25 July, when the moon would give

light for an assault from the sea shortly

before dawn. This period of the "favorable" moon in July (as then defined)

received the grudging sanction of the

President and the Prime Minister, but

with the stipulation that strenuous efforts must be made by "contrivance and

ingenuity" to advance the date to the

same period in June.2

Achievement of a June date seemed

to depend on two factors: the time required to wind up the campaign in

Tunisia, thus freeing forces, material,

and launching ports, and the time needed to mount the operation. For the most

part, the Allied planning staffs in the

theater arbitrarily assumed that Tunisian operations would end by late April

or early May, an assumption in which

they persisted even through the dark

days of February and early March. They

decided, therefore, that one of the best

ways to accelerate the timetable and

meet the prescription of a June date

would be to bring into the Mediterranean before D-day a larger proportion of

the assault forces than had been contemplated at Casablanca. These forces could

1

 (1) Lt. Col. Albert N. Garland and Howard McGaw Smyth, Sicily and the Surrender of Italy,

UNITED STATES ARMY IN WORLD WAR II

(Washington, 1965), ch. III. (2) CCS 161, 20 Jan 43,

memo by Br JPS, title: Opn HUSKY. (3) Richard M.

Leighton, "Planning for Sicily," U.S. Naval Institute

Proceedings (May, 1962), pp. 90-101. 2

 Leighton and Coakley, Global Logistics, 1940-43,

p. 673.
HUSKY AND BOLERO 33

be trained and equipped in the United

States or United Kingdom while the

fighting was still going on in Tunisia.

Thus, early in February, Lt. Gen.

Dwight D. Eisenhower, commanding

Allied forces in North Africa, informed

the CCS that he would need an extra

division from the United States over

and above the 45th Infantry and the

82d Airborne Divisions, the two already

counted on. He also wanted the extra

division and the 45th to have three weeks

of mountain training, as well as their

amphibious training, before sailing for

the theater.3

It soon appeared that the primary

obstacle to a June launching date would

be the time required to carry out the

necessary training, and to move these

reinforcements with their accompanying

supplies and the requisite assault shipping from the United States to the theater. Matters were further complicated

by existing limitations on the size and

frequency of convoys, the shortage of

both cargo and personnel shipping, and

a concomitant increase in requirements

for troops and supplies to conclude the

Tunisia Campaign.

The 45th Division presented no particular problem. It was scheduled to sail

late in its own amphibious transport,

and could probably work in the mountain training and still arrive in the theater in time to participate in final rehearsals for a June D-day. But training and

shipping of the additional division within the time specified raised seemingly

insurmountable problems. The 36th Infantry Division, which had already received some amphibious training, was

chosen for the task, but to give it mountain training appeared to be out of the

question. For lack of escorts, no more

fast troop convoys were scheduled after

UGF-8 in late April except for the one

carrying the combat-loaded 45th.4 Since

the 82d Airborne Division was scheduled

to move in UGF-8, the 36th could only

be fitted in, if at all, in UGF-7, sailing

a month earlier. Working feverishly, the

staffs developing convoy schedules managed to build up UGF-7 and UGF-8 to

some 40,000 troop spaces each, and tentatively scheduled UGF-9 (with a potential capacity of 45,000) to sail about 17

May. UGF-9 was to accommodate the

82d Airborne in case the 36th displaced

it from UGF-8.5

While the planners were still wrestling

with the convoy problem, the first real

crisis arose over the movement schedules for assault shipping. Estimates of

assault shipping requirements for HUSKY

had been made at Casablanca. (Table 4)

The Navy objected at first to providing

the combat loaders (most of them to be

used to carry the reinforced 45th Infantry Division from the United States to

North Africa and then onto the assault

area) believing it would require diversions from the Pacific, but the necessary

vessels were found in the Atlantic and

3

 Msg 8885, Eisenhower to Marshall (eyes only),

4 Feb 43, OPD Exec 3, Item 1-b.

4

 Convoys to the Mediterranean from the United

States were designated UG convoys, with the added

letter "F" to identify "fast" or troop convoys, or

"S" to identify "slow" convoys composed of cargo

ships. They were then numbered in sequence. Thus

UGF-8 designated a fast troop convoy, UGS-8 a

slow convoy composed of freighters. A similar system for identifying convoys from the United Kingdom to the Mediterranean used the designations

KMF and KMS. 5

 (1) Msg 2231, Marshall to Eisenhower (eyes only),

4 Feb 43, with related corresp, OPD Exec 3, Items

1-b and 12. (2) Memo, Maj Gen Thomas T. Handy

for COMINCH, 18 Feb 43, folder 18 Shpg File, V, 5,

Plng Div ASF. (3) Diary of a Certain Plan, 18, 20,

21 Feb 43 entries, Plng Div ASF.
34 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

TABLE 4—ESTIMATED ASSAULT SHIPPING REQUIREMENTS FOR HUSKY

(AT CASABLANCA CONFERENCE)

a

 Equivalent to U.S. APA's.

Source: CCS 161, 20 Jan 43, memo by Br JPS, title: Operation HUSKY.

assigned to HUSKY. The allotment included 8 old XAP's that had survived

TORCH, 9 APA's, and 6 AKA's; also,

68 LST's, 90 LCI (L)'s, and 100 LCT's

were assigned to mount the American

portion of the operation—all together

somewhat more than the U.S. quota in

the original plan.

The critical problem, as far as a June

date was concerned, was not the supply

of craft but the timing of their movement. The Navy's movement schedules,

announced in early February, provided

that only 16 LST's would reach the theater by early April; the rest of the landing

craft would not arrive until late April

or early May.6 Determined to avoid the

expedients and improvisations that had

marked the North African landings,

Eisenhower told the CCS on 11 February

that this belated movement would make

it impossible to launch HUSKY in June.

Amphibious training required six weeks;

redeployment, loading, and final rehearsals another four. Moreover, ships and

craft arriving in the theater always

needed repair and refitting. The launching date, Eisenhower asserted, could be

no earlier than mid-July, and he stubbornly maintained this position in the

face of vehement protests from Churchill

and suggestions that training and rehearsals be telescoped.7

General Marshall supported Eisenhower: "A landing against organized and

highly trained opposition," he argued,

"is probably the most difficult undertaking which military forces are called

on to face."8 He thought the risks of

skimping on training and rehearsals

would far outweigh any possible gains

to be expected from launching the attack

in June. Admiral William D. Leahy,

personal Chief of Staff to the President,

and Admiral King felt that a June date

was at least worth shooting for. Under

pressure from Roosevelt, prompted by

a personal appeal from Churchill, the

6

 (1) Memo, COMINCH for CofS, USA, 5 Feb 43,

sub: APA, XAP and Ldg Cft for HUSKY, OPD Exec

3, Item 1-a, Case 7. (2) Other corresp on these arrangements in OPD Exec 3, Items 1-a and 12. (3)

LST's and LCI(L)'s moved to the theater under their

own power. Each LST carried an LCT piggy-back;

other LCT's were shipped as deck loads; some were

already in the theater.

7

 (1) Msg NAF 144 (No. 325), Eisenhower to CCS,

11 Feb 43. (2) Msg 1400, Eisenhower to Marshall, 17

Feb 43. Both in OPD Exec 3, Item 1-b. (3) Winston

S. Churchill, The Hinge of Fate (Boston: Houghton

Mifflin Company, 1950), pp. 723-27. (4) CCS 177/1,

16 Feb 43, title: Date for Commencing Agreed Opns. 8

 Memo, CofS USA for JCS, 17 Feb 43, sub: Date

for Proposed Operation, OPD Exec 3, Item 1-b.
HUSKY AND BOLERO 35

CCS on 19 February notified Eisenhower

that a final decision would be postponed

until 10 April, but that he must in the

meantime work "with greatest vigor" to

achieve a target date during the favorable

moon period in June.9

Eisenhower responded with what

amounted to an ultimatum of his own:

If HUSKY were to be launched in June,

he asserted, all his current and prospective force requirements, other than the

combat-loaded 45th Division, must somehow be crowded into the two troop

convoys, UGF-7 and UGF-8, then scheduled for March and April, respectively.

The list included the 36th Infantry and

82d Airborne Divisions, supporting arms

and services, line of communications

troops, additional Navy and Army Air

Forces personnel, replacements for the

current fighting in Tunisia, and more

replacements for the coming battles in

both Tunisia and Sicily—something like

120,000 men in all.10

Even though the total number of

troops was 38,000 more than the two

fast convoys, expanded to maximum safe

capacity, could carry, there was no disposition in Washington either to deny

Eisenhower the troops he requested or

to abandon hopes for a June D-day. In

the atmosphere of urgency created by

the German break-through at Kasserine

Pass, the CCS wrestled with the problem

for some two weeks. The only real solution appeared to be to move the 38,000

troops in fast transports sailing without

escorts, an expedient that Admiral King

was prepared to sanction, but with some

misgivings. To provide the transports

would require sacrifice of troop movements to other theaters. Only one fast

U.S. transport of the six not already

scheduled on the North African run was

uncommitted. Troop movements to the

Pacific were behind schedule and Admiral King adamantly refused to divert the

two transports engaged in that service.

President Roosevelt would almost certainly frown on any diversion of transports from the movement of service

troops to the Persian Gulf for development of the supply line to the USSR.

On the other hand, the British were

willing to make available some of their

large transports engaged in ferrying U.S.

and Canadian troops across the Atlantic,

in return for American help in moving

British troops to the Middle East and

American acquiescence to shifting the

Queen Mary back to the Atlantic from

her current assignment on the run

around the Cape of Good Hope to India.

Tentative arrangements were worked

out along these lines, placing most of

the burden of moving Eisenhower's additional 38,000 troops on three British

transports (Andes, Empress of Scotland,

and Pasteur); U.S. vessels released after

arrival of UGF-7 would move about

10,000 British troops as far as Capetown

on the Middle East run, thus sacrificing

a good part of the tardy UGF-9, which

was to have been made up of returning

UGF-7 transports.11

9

 (1) Msg FAN 98 (No. 2574), CCS to Eisenhower,

19 Feb 43. (2) Msg 857, Eisenhower to Marshall, 14

Feb 43. Both in OPD Exec 3, Item 1-b. (3) Min,

72d mtg CCS, 19 Feb 43. 10

 Msg 2387, Algiers to AGWAR, 22 Feb 43, OPD

Exec 3, Item 13.

11

 (1) CCS 182, 25 Feb 43, memo by CofS USA, title:

Increase in Size of UG Convoys. (2) CCS 182/1, 26

Feb 43, comments by COMINCH, same title. (3) Min,

73d mtg CCS, 26 Feb 43. (4) Msg 2927, Marshall to

Eisenhower, 26 Feb 43, OPD Exec 3, Item 12. (5)

Diary of a Certain Plan, 27 Feb 43, Plng Div ASF.

(6) Memo, Maj Gen Charles P. Gross for Lt Gen

Brehon B. Somervell, 27 Feb 43, sub: Increase in

Troop Lift to N Africa, OPD Exec 8, Book 7. (7) The

Mariposa was later substituted for the Pasteur.
36 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

Under these arrangements, the cost in

reduced or abandoned troop movements

to other theaters could either be distributed fairly equally between deployment

programs to India and the British Isles,

or be charged wholly to the latter.

Neither option held much attraction for

the U.S. Joint Chiefs, who, even though

committed to HUSKY, considered vigorous prosecution of the war in ChinaBurma-India and northwest Europe

more important than any action in the

Mediterranean. Of the alternatives, however, they were inevitably impelled toward the second by the President's

avowed interest in accelerating the buildup of U.S. air power in China and their

anxiety to avoid giving the British any

excuse to slacken their own effort in

Burma. The CCS had to decide, then,

whether a gain of four weeks or less in

the movement of 38,000 troops to North

Africa would warrant further delay in

the already lagging BOLERO-SICKLE buildup. Lt. Gen. Henry H. Arnold, Commanding General, Army Air Forces, and

his Chief of Air Staff, Maj. Gen. George

E. Stratemeyer, argued heatedly against a

cut in BOLERO, pointing out the consequent delays in mounting the Combined

Bomber Offensive. The members of the

Joint Strategic Survey Committee (JSSC),

who had opposed HUSKY from the beginning, urged that the operation should

be definitely and finally postponed until

July. In the end the Combined Chiefs

overruled them, partly as a result of a

British agreement to accept a delay in

the movement of Canadian ground

troops to England so as to provide shipping for some of the needed AAF personnel. This proviso was written into a

CCS decision of 5 March, along with

directions to use U.S. shipping to move

10,000 British troops on the first leg of

their transfer from England to India,

and to send two British transports,

Aquitania and Mauretania, with U.S.

troops to the same theater. The general

feeling among the Combined Chiefs

seemed to be that the sacrifices to BOLEROSICKLE involved in an accelerated buildup could be accepted if HUSKY could

somehow be launched in June.12

Yet, by 5 March a June date was

probably already impossible. Movement

schedules had undergone various practical modifications at the working levels

during the course of the CCS discussion,

and by the time the decision was handed

down they provided for the bulk of the

movement to be spaced over the last

half of April and the first half of May,

a period extending a full three weeks

past the sailing date of UGF-8, supposedly the last regular troop convoy for

HUSKY. Whether these arrangements

would meet the timetable for a June

assault was very doubtful; the Chiefs of

Staff, however, appear not to have been

apprised of any apprehensions, and the

implications of the working schedule

may well not have been fully appreciated

at that level.13

Meanwhile, the arrangements taking

shape for supporting cargo shipments

also seemed difficult to reconcile with a

June target date. And by mid-March the

mounting cargo shipping crisis, precipitated by the German U-boat campaign

in the Atlantic and British demands for

their import program, overshadowed all

12

 (1) CCS 182/2, 3 Mar 43, title: Increase in Size

of UG Convoys. (2) Min, 74th mtg CCS (Suppl),

5 Mar 43, with apps. A, B. (3) Msg 3340, Marshall

to Eisenhower, 5 Mar 43, OPD Exec 3, Item 12. 13

 (1) Memo, Gross for Somervell, 27 Feb 43, sub:

Increase in Troop Lift for N Africa, OPD Exec 8,

Book 7. (2) CCS 182/2, 3 Mar 43.
HUSKY AND BOLERO 37

other questions and threatened the execution of HUSKY on any date.

The escalation of the demand for supplies in North Africa had already forced

the Navy to insert an additional slow

UGS convoy into the regular 25-day cycle

in both February and March. Eisenhower's request on 22 February for accelerated troop movements generated a requirement for 38 more cargo ships to be

crammed into the HUSKY schedule—presumably during the same period as the

troop movements. At Admiral King's

behest and following earlier precedents,

it was decided to send the 38 ships as a

separate convoy, UGS—71⁄2, instead of

enlarging the regular slow convoys.

Then, early in March, at the theater's

request, the Navy extended the whole

schedule into May by adding another

convoy, UGS-81⁄2, to sail in the middle

of that month. The cargo build-up

schedule now comprised four slow convoys, UGS-7 (29 March) through UGS81⁄2 (13 May), running at 15-day intervals with about 145 ships distributed

more or less equally among them.14

The theater's motive in extending

shipments on into May appears to have

been a desire to avoid congestion in its

own ports and line of communications.

Though the aggregate capacity of North

African ports—Casablanca, Oran, Algiers,

and smaller ports in the vicinity of each

of them—was ample, inland clearance

facilities from Casablanca and Oran eastward were still poor. The theater wanted

as many shipments as possible to come

to the eastern ports—Algiers, Philippeville, Bougie, and Bône—whence HUSKY

would be mounted, but the capacity of

those ports was limited, and shipments

to them added 1,400 nautical miles to

the round trip. Whether the theater

could absorb shipments any faster, whatever the implications for a June date,

was a serious question.15

Finding ships seemed a matter of far

greater moment during March than the

limits on port capacity. With the

rumblings of the British demand for

shipping in the background, on 5 March

the War Shipping Administration somewhat apprehensively promised to furnish

149 vessels against Eisenhower's requirement for 145. Eisenhower immediately

demanded 30 more cargo ships to sail in

UGS-8 and UGS-81⁄2. Without them,

he warned, he would have to reduce

maintenance allowances and cased gasoline to dangerously low levels, eliminate

all shipments of backlogged equipment

for units already in the theater, and cut

equipment of units still to come. The

total requirement for the four build-up

convoys now stood at about 175 ships.

Eisenhower's new demand arrived just

as the long-simmering March cargo shipping crisis came to a boil. With the

larger issue of military versus war economy requirements about to be joined in

Washington and the fate of HUSKY itself

in doubt, meeting the demand seemed

not only impossible but unimportant.

14

 (1) CCS 182, 25 Feb 43. (2) CCS 182/1, 26 Feb 43.

(3) Msg 2927, Marshall to Eisenhower, 26 Feb 43.

(4) Msg 3328, 3 Mar 43. (3) and (4) in OPD Exec 3,

Item 12. (5) Msg 3641, Algiers to AGWAR, 1 Mar

43, OPD Exec 3, Item 13. (6) Diary of a Certain Plan,

27 Feb, 2 Mar 43. (7) Memo, Gross for Somervell, 5

Mar 43, sub: UGS Convoys. (6) and (7) in Planning

Div ASF. (8) Min, Conf, Douglas with Gross, 1 Mar

43, Folder Army Reqmts, WSA Douglas File. (9)

Leighton and Coakley, Global Logistics, 1940-43,

p. 472.

15

 (1) Msgs, J. E. Slater to Douglas, 12 and 24 Mar,

to Apr 43, with related papers in WSA Douglas File,

N Africa. (2) Memo, Col G. C. Stewart, CofT,

NATOUSA, for DComdr, NATOUSA, 14 Mar 43,

sub: Allocation of Convoys . . . , folder Shpg, III,

Tab 45, Plng Div ASF.
38 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

For the present, the theater was told, it

would have to get along with no more

than 149 ships. Meanwhile, in its general

reappraisal of strategy at the time, the

U.S. Joint Strategic Survey Committee

recommended, among other things, that

the attack on Sicily be delayed, modified,

or even canceled.16

While the broader issue was being

fought out on the higher levels, the dayto-day struggle to find ships for all the

convoys continued. Meeting the North

African theater's growing appetite for

shipping would depend, as Lewis Douglas told Maj. Gen. Charles P. Gross,

Army Chief of Transportation, at the

beginning of March, partly on whether

ships came back at the same rate as they

went over. During March, for various

reasons—and apart from the toll levied

by enemy submarines—they seemed not

to be doing so. For lack of drydocks and

other facilities, they were being held for

weeks or months in the theater awaiting

repairs. Many ships, arriving in North

Africa with heavy bottom cargo instead

of ballast, had to call at several ports

after their cargoes had been discharged

to pick up phosphates, iron ore, manganese, or whatever else they could find

for return ballast. Ships loaded with coal

as bottom cargo could unload it only at

Oran and a few other places. The frequent use of incoming UGS ships, after

discharge, to transship cargoes to eastern

ports sometimes delayed their return by

as much as six weeks. All figures indicated that the turnaround time to the

eastern ports was longer than the additional distance warranted. Accordingly,

schedules were revised to provide for

only 15 cargo ships for the eastern ports

in each of the four convoys and for

landing at least half of the 1.5 million

measurement tons of cargo destined for

the HUSKY build-up at Casablanca, Oran,

and their satellites, even though it would

eventually have to be transshipped to

eastern Algeria and Tunisia.17

By this and other expedients, from the

middle of March onward ends and

means drew closer together, and the

shipping crisis gradually dissolved. By

the 29th, Douglas was able to assure

Roosevelt unequivocally that both British import requirements and essential

military needs could be met, even though

the Army might not get the full number

of ships it wanted. On the basis of this

assurance, the President ordered WSA

to make available to the British the shipping requested.18

 As Douglas had

warned, for a while the situation was

"very, very tight." UGS-7 sailed on 1

April, a little late, with only 34 cargo

ships instead of the 45 planned (3 were

lost in crossing), and the departure of

UGS-71⁄2, on the 14th with only 36 ships

left a requirement of 79 for UGS-8 and

UGS-81⁄2, if the mid-March goal of 149

ships was to be met. By mid-April, as

the submarine menace waned, it was

reasonably clear that the necessary cargo

shipping could be made available to

meet the theater's full demands, if the

convoys would accommodate the ships,

16

 (1) See above, ch. I, and Leighton and Coakley,

Global Logistics, 1940-43, pp. 690-702. (2) Msg 3339,

Marshall to Eisenhower, 5 Mar 43, OPD Exec 3, Item

12. (3) Msg 6164, Algiers to AGWAR, 12 Mar 43.

(4) Msg 7715, 19 Mar 43. Last two in OPD Exec 3,

Item 13.

17

 (1) Msg NAWS 89, Slater to Douglas, 10 Apr 43,

with related corresp, WSA Douglas File, N Africa.

(2) ASF Monthly Progress Rpt, sec. 3, Transportation,

30 Apr 43. (3) Msg 3466, Marshall to Eisenhower,

7 Mar 43, OPD Exec 3, Item 12. 18

 See above, ch. I, and Leighton and Coakley,

Global Logistics, 1940-43, pp. 698-700, for full treatment.
HUSKY AND BOLERO 39

though the schedule could hardly be

geared to a June D-day for HUSKY.19

Meanwhile, the problem of HUSKY'S

launching date had been resolved in an

unexpected manner. About the middle

of March the theater planning staffs

came around to the view that a "favorable" moon phase would be governed

mainly by the character of the supporting airborne assault, not the seaborne

landing. The airborne assault would require moonlight at the time of the drop

and for about four hours thereafter in

order to develop the attack. The seaborne assault, on the other hand, should

be made in darkness about two hours

before dawn. Favorable conditions for

the airdrop would occur, in June and

July, about the 10th rather than the

25th of the month. So early a date in

June being already impossible, resistance to a July date forthwith evaporated.

As Churchill observed with pleased surprise, it meant a delay of only a fortnight, not a month. On 13 April, after

lengthy correspondence and discussion,

the CCS finally approved an early July

launching date for HUSKY—an empty

gesture since the relentless, impersonal

course of administration had long since

taken the decision out of their hands.20

The Final Assault Plan

The original HUSKY plan had undergone other alterations. From the start,

theater planning staffs had worried over

the risks of attacking with such widely

dispersed forces an enemy holding the

advantage of interior lines. In midMarch General Sir Harold R. L. G.

Alexander, Eisenhower's British deputy

in command of Allied ground forces,

decided that the British landings on

Sicily's east coast must be strengthened

by one more full division to insure early

capture of Syracuse and Augusta. To

avoid having to sideslip the whole lineup

along the southeastern coast, he asked

for additional assault lift to mount the

extra division, which was available in

the Middle East. Almost simultaneously,

Eisenhower's American commanders decided that they would need another

armored command for their sector together with assault shipping to mount it.

The full demand in assault lift for both

British and American forces seemed to

amount to almost two more reinforced

divisions—about a 25 percent increase

over that already allotted.21

The British were all for giving Eisenhower his additional lift provided the

Americans could supply it. In Washington, councils were divided, and there

were doubts whether the additional lift

was really needed. The requirements

were scaled down markedly in the course

of a lengthy exchange with the theater.

By the end of March the Washington

staffs could finally discern from the

cables that the equivalent of one combat

team lift asked for would be saved in

19

 Diary of a Certain Plan, 26 Mar, 24 Apr 43,

Plng Div ASF. 20

 (1) Garland and Smyth, Sicily and the Surrender

of Italy, ch. III. (2) Churchill, Hinge of Fate, p. 940.

(3) Msg 94, CCS to Eisenhower, 13 Apr 43, cited in

Guyer, The War Against Germany, ch. VIII, Part B,

p. 174, History JCS.

21

 (1) Msg NAF 182, Eisenhower to CCS, 20 Mar 43.

(2) Garland and Smyth, Sicily and the Surrender of

Italy, ch. III. (3) Field Marshal the Viscount Alexander of Tunis, Despatch, 9 October 1946, published

as "The Conquest of Sicily from 10th July 1943 to

17th August 1943," in the Supplement to the London

Gazette of Thursday, February 12, 1948 (cited hereafter as Alexander Despatch), pp. 1-2. (4) Msg 7645,

Algiers to AGWAR, 19 Mar 43; Msg 6683, 15 Mar 43;

both in OPD Exec 3, Item 13.
40 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

the total lift by a corresponding shrinkage in other formations. By slashing

allowances for training and in-transit

losses, by increasing the rated capacities

of combat loaders, LST's, and LCT's,

and by adding 10 LST's to the allotment, they were able, at least on paper,

virtually to wipe out the vehicle lift

deficit and to reduce the personnel lift

deficit to approximately one regimental

combat team. To absorb the latter deficit, the Navy agreed to set up a special

convoy of 3 APA's, 3 XAP's, and 2 AKA's

to sail about 10 May.22

Washington informed General Eisenhower of these decisions in mid-April,

adding that if any more assault shipping

were needed the British would have to

provide it. As it happened, the British

had already decided to do just thatmaking available for HUSKY, at the expense of training and planned amphibious raids on the Atlantic and Channel

coasts, almost their entire reserve of unallotted assault shipping. It included 5

small attack transports (LSI (S)'s), 8

LST's, 49 LCI (L)'s, 6 small support

craft (LCS (S)'s), and up to 48 Britishbuilt LCT's.23

 (Table 5)

These final allotments of assault shipping fixed the aggregate strength of the

Sicily landings. Still, the uneasiness of

the commanders in the theater over the

planned dispersion of the landings increased as a result of mounting indications that the defending forces in Sicily

would probably include substantial German ground combat formations. When

General Sir Bernard L. Montgomery,

British Eighth Army commander, studied the plan he described it as a "dog's

breakfast," a gamble resting solely on

the rash assumptions that opposition in

the critical sectors would be light and

that the enemy would not reinforce.24

In the end, despite objections from both

the air and naval commanders, Montgomery had his way, and on 2 May 1943

Eisenhower scrapped the plan for a twopronged attack in favor of more concentrated landings on the southeastern

and eastern coasts of Sicily. The CCS

approved the new plan on 12 May.25

In its final form the HUSKY plan provided for landings along some 150 miles

of the eastern and southeastern coast

lines, with the U.S. Seventh Army assigned the western sector and the British Eighth Army the eastern sector. The

general scheme was to crush resistance

in the eastern end of the island and to

advance rapidly on Messina, isolating

enemy forces in the west and preventing

their evacuation. Eight divisions, infantry and armored, were to assault abreast,

supported by predawn airdrops in approximately divisional strength. Elements of the U.S. assault forces, equivalent to one division, were to be held

back in floating reserve, and each army

was to maintain a one-division reserve

in Africa. In length of front and number of assault divisions simultaneously

22

 (1) Corresp and cables in OPD Exec 3, Items 10-

13. (2) ABC 381 HUSKY (1943) Sec 2. (3) OCT HB

Wylie File BIGOT I. (4) Folder, Current Opns, Plng

Div ASF. 23

 (1) Msg, Brigadier H. Redman to Brig Gen John

R. Deane, 14 Apr 43, with related corresp, OPD 560,

Security I, Case 28. (2) Bryant, Turn of the Tide,

p. 486. (3) Msg 031647, COMINCH to COMNAVNAW, 12 Apr 43, with related papers, OPD Exec 3,

Item 11.

24

 (1) Quoted in Bryant, Turn of the Tide, pp.

543-44. (2) Msgs, NAF 182 and NAF 201, Eisenhower

to CCS, 20 Mar and 7 Apr 43, OPD Exec 3, Item 13. 25

 (1) Garland and Smyth, Sicily and the Surrender

of Italy, ch. III. (2) Msg FAN 121, CCS to Eisenhower, 12 May 43, OPD Exec 3, Item 8.
HUSKY AND BOLERO 41

TABLE 5—ASSAULT SHIPPING FOR HUSKY

a

 APA's and 8 small converted transports (XAP's). One of the XAP's that sailed in the 10 May contingent (see p. 00 above) was used as

a headquarters ship, and presumably is included under that heading in the table. The table also includes one more APA than are mentioned

in the arrangements discussed on page 40. b

 Only 16 were large LSI(L)'s. Most British attack transports were converted passenger liners of various sizes. c

 Some of the attack troop transports carried cargo. d

 Seventh Army History lists only 74 actually used. e

 British types. f

 Both American and British types.

Source: CCS 244/1, 25 May 43, Implementation of Assumed Basic Undertakings . . . , app. A to Annex V.

engaged, HUSKY was to be the largest

amphibious operation of the war.26

The plan involved considerable logistical risk. Syracuse and Augusta in the

British sector would be the only ports

of even moderate capacity through

which supplies could be brought in the

early stages. The whole U.S. contingent

would have to be supplied over the

beaches for an indeterminate period.

(Map 1) The judgment of the logistical staffs that they could be so supplied rested mostly on the promising but

still little-known capabilities of the

American-designed and built DUKW's,

of which more than a thousand were to

be allotted to the operation, some arriving on the very eve of the assault.27

The Final Movements

The changed plan affected very little

(in fact at that late date, could not

affect significantly) the administrative

arrangements in the United States for

support of HUSKY. Setting D-day for

July solved most of the problems of

troop and landing craft deployment and

of cargo shipping around which discussion had revolved in February and early

March. Nevertheless, requirements tended to mount in almost every category

right up to the day of the invasion.

For instance, troop movement schedules had to be fleshed out to meet new

demands from the theater, particularly

for service troops. By the end of April

about 12,000 troops had been added

to the schedule through mid-May, and

more than 140,000 actually sailed during this period. The feat was accomplished by crowding about 7,000 troops

into slow freighters and LST's, by inflating UGF-8 to the bursting point,

26

 Garland and Smyth, Sicily and the Surrender of

Italy, ch. III. 27

 (1) Corresp in OPD Exec 3, Items 6, 7, 8, and 9.

(2) Diary of a Certain Plan, entries for May, June

1943, Plng Div ASF. (3) H. H. Dunham, U.S. Army

Transportation and the Conquest of Sicily, 1943, TC

Historical Monograph 13 (hereafter cited as Dunham, Transportation and Sicily), pp. 77-78, MS,

OCMH.

42 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

TABLE 6—TROOP BUILD-UP CONVOYS FOR HUSKY: APRIL-JUNE 1943

by squeezing still more troops into the

special convoy of combat loaders that

sailed on 10 May, and by using the fast

unescorted transports to their full capacity. The U.S. 36th Infantry Division

sailed for the theater in UGF-7 early

in April, somewhat less schooled in

mountain operations than General Eisenhower desired; the 82d Airborne

sailed near the end of the month in

UGF-8. On 8 June the combat-loaded

45th and attached units sailed as scheduled in UGF-9. Another troop convoy

and added unescorted sailings in June

brought the grand total of HUSKY troop

deployment from the United States by

the end of the month to about 186,000,

and the strength of U.S. forces in the

Mediterranean to 520,000—120,000 more

than contemplated five months earlier

at Casablanca.28 (Table 6)

Cargo shipping schedules underwent

the same sort of escalation. By the end

of March the theater, alert to hints that

more ships might be available, boosted

its requirements. It restored earlier cuts

28

 (1) Strength of the Army Report, STM-30, 1

Jan 48. (2) Corresp, OPD Exec 3, Items 10, 11, 13.
HUSKY AND BOLERO 43

TABLE 6—TROOP BUILD-UP CONVOYS FOR HUSKY: APRIL-JUNE 1943 (Continued)

Source: Charts, Convoys to North Africa, Stat Sec, OSD, NYPOE.

and added heavy demands for more

aviation gasoline—demands so large, in

fact, that the Army-Navy Petroleum

Board said they were "out of all reason."29

 By the end of April the allotment of cargo ships and tankers to

UGS-71⁄2 had grown well beyond the

Navy's prescribed limit of 60 vessels. To

reduce it to anything like manageable

size, 10 freighters and 3 tankers had to

be shifted to UGS-9, scheduled to sail

at the end of May. When UGS-81⁄2 actually sailed on 14 May, it consisted of

57 cargo ships, 9 tankers, and 11 LST's

—the only convoy to exceed the Navy's

60-vessel limitation—and, with the 44

freighters that had sailed in UGS-8 on

28 April, brought the total number of

cargo ships in the four build-up convoys

to 168. As a result of setting the HUSKY

target date in July, the build-up included UGS-9, which reached the the29

 Diary of a Certain Plan, 26 Mar 43, Plng Div

ASF.
44 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

ater on 20 June, two days before the

arrival of UGF-9 bringing the combatloaded 45th Division. With the 47 cargo

ships of UGS-9, plus 7 more sent in fast

UGF convoys, the HUSKY build-up absorbed a total of 215 sailings, carrying

well over 2 million measurement tons

of cargo exclusive of bulk gasoline. Most

of the theater's requests were filled, even

the bulk of gasoline requirements originally labeled "out of all reason." The

more than ample supply support for

HUSKY was one evidence of the fading

cargo shipping shortage, which in March

had seemed an insuperable barrier to

all overseas operations in 1943.

The movement of American landing

craft to the theater got slightly ahead

of schedule at the beginning only to fall

behind later, the last of the LST's trickling in through May and early June,

but they all arrived in time for a July

operation. Contrary to Washington estimates, the assault shipping allotments

proved something less than generous

for landings on the scale of HUSKY. The

estimates had taken personnel strength

as the principal yardstick for requirements, but vehicle capacity proved to

be the limiting factor. They had failed

to make adequate provision for the large

displacement of ordinary vehicles that

resulted from loading as many as 400

tanks on LST's. As a result, 32 Liberty

ships had to be especially fitted to bring

vehicles, drivers, and cargo ashore in

the immediate follow-up. Yet, despite

all expedients to increase vehicle lift,

vehicle allotments had to be pared down

in a manner reminiscent of the cuts

made in the North African landings.

One of the prices that had to be paid

for the cuts, and for the subsequent

delay in capturing ports in the American sector, was that LST's were to be

tied down in logistical ferrying operations long after the initial assaults.30

The Administrative Achievement

Despite the difficulties, support for

HUSKY from the United States was adequate by any standards and, in some

respects, very probably excessive. The

smoothness with which movements were

executed, once convoy schedules had

jelled, was in marked contrast to the

confusion that had characterized the

mounting of TORCH. It gave evidence

of a new maturity in the administrative

echelons, particularly in Lt. Gen. Brehon B. Somervell's Army Service Forces

(ASF), which carried the main burden

of execution.

Until convoy schedules did begin to

crystallize early in March, however, the

staffs had to relive some of the confusion

of TORCH. The Operations Division

(OPD) was reluctant to inform either

the Army Service Forces or the Army

Ground Forces (AGF) of high-level decisions or to provide much other information needed for intelligent logistical

planning. ASF had therefore to proceed

during February on the basis of its own

best guesses, largely independent of

guidance from above, in anticipating

special requirements for HUSKY and in

assembling supplies and equipment at

U.S. east coast depots. Somervell's hopes

30

 (1) Papers, OPD Exec 3, Items 8, 11, 13. (2) Diary

of a Certain Plan, entries for April, May 1943, Plng

Div ASF. (3) Joseph Bykofsky and Harold Larson,

The Transportation Corps: Operations Overseas,

UNITED STATES ARMY IN WORLD WAR II

(Washington, 1957), p. 193. (4) Samuel Eliot Morison,

"History of United States Naval Operations in World

War II," vol. IX, Sicily—Salerno—Anzio, January

1943—June 1944 (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1954), 30-32.
HUSKY AND BOLERO 45

GENERAL SOMERVELL

that it might be possible to ship some

equipment in bulk ahead of troops were,

for the most part, disappointed.

The confused state of high-level planning itself, as well as ASF's lack of

knowledge of it, was reflected in the

March movements. Throughout February it remained uncertain whether the

36th Division would sail in UGF-7 (at

the end of March) or later. The uncertainty disrupted the whole process of

setting up troops for that convoy and

for UGF-8, and of cargo for the UGS

convoys. Under "normal" procedures—

which thus far had only rarely been followed—the supply and transportation

staffs were supposed to receive firm

troop lists two months before convoy

sailing dates. Since the sailing date for

the 36th was not determined until the

5 March decisions of the CCS were

handed down, nothing like two months

remained for preparations. Considerable confusion resulted. At the end of

February the division was awaiting orders, its training suspended, one combat

team in western Virginia, having completed a brief stint of mountain training, the remainder, which was to have

followed it, still at Camp Edwards, Massachusetts. Once the CCS decision was

known, orders were issued immediately

for the division to sail from New York

on 2 April in UGF-7. Most of its units

were to stage through Camp Edwards,

the combat team in Virginia through

Camp Kilmer or Fort Dix. The impact of all the backing and filling was

evident, however, when UGF-7 sailed

on schedule but with only 30,000 troops

instead of the 40,000 planned for.31

With convoy schedules firm, the atmosphere of preparations changed almost overnight. Early in March, almost

two months before UGF-8 was due to

sail with the 82d Airborne, ASF had a

complete (though of course still tentative), troop list for all the HUSKY buildup convoys, including the combat-loaded

45th Division. At about the same time

the slow cargo convoy schedules began

to shape up. The staffs immediately

began developing their own schedules

for movement of units to staging areas

31

 (1) Task Force Chronology, Feb-Mar 43, Plng

Div ASF. (2) Diary of a Certain Plan, entries of

13 Feb-5 Mar 43, Plng Div ASF. (3) Memo, OPD for

CsTechSvcs, 2 Mar 43, sub: Reserves of Amphibious

Supplies and Equipment, OPD 475 (Equip of

Troops), Sec 1, Case 21. (4) Memo, Gen Somervell

for Maj Gen LeRoy Lutes, 22 Feb 43, folder, Opns

SOS 1942-43, Hq ASF. (5) Robert R. Palmer, Bell I.

Wiley, and William R. Keast, The Procurement and

Training of Ground Combat Troops, UNITED

STATES ARMY IN WORLD WAR II (Washington, 1948), p. 580. (6) Capt. T. P. Govan, Training

in Mountain and Winter Warfare, AGF Study No.

23, p. 9, MS, OCMH. (7; Charts, Convoys to N Africa,

Stat Sec, Overseas Supply Div, NYPOE.
46 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

and ports and filling equipment shortages. ASF promptly produced a detailed

forecast matching prospective cargo space

set up with its own estimate of the

theater's cargo requirements; this forecast became the basis of the transatlantic

debate in March and April over the

theater's shipping needs.32

New York port officers remembered the

movement of which UGF-8 was a part

as one of the biggest and most smoothly

executed operations of their wartime experience. For days troop trains rolled

endlessly into staging areas and through

New York City to shipside in carefully

planned sequence and on time. Units

were up to strength, equipment was in

order. Within 24 hours upwards of

80,000 troops filed aboard ship in New

York harbor, and early on the morning

of 29 April 19 transports carrying almost 60,000 troops headed for the rendezvous point to pick up their escorts

for the trip to North Africa.33

Mounting the 45th Division task force

posed special problems because, unlike

the other forces sent from the United

States for HUSKY, it sailed in combat

loaders directly (except for a short layover for rehearsals at Oran) to the

assault. For this very reason, however,

the preparation of the force did not become seriously entangled in the problems of convoy scheduling from which

most of the administrative confusion of

February stemmed. Its movement, in any

case, took place so late that most arrangements could await crystallization

of convoy schedules early in March.

The long delay in formation of the

final tactical plan did not disrupt preparations for movement of the 45th as

much as might have been expected. Theoretically, the plan should have governed the detailed composition of the

assault forces, their material requirements, the manner of their assault loading, and the time of their departure.

By early April, however, assault shipping allotments had already set strict

limits to the size and to some extent the

tactical composition and employment of

all the assault forces insofar as they were

dictated by the technical characteristics

of the vessels. The various elements of

the 45th Division task force had already been earmarked, and the 8 April

listing of theater requirements merely

confirmed them; their sailing date was

also fixed within narrow limits. Later in

April, when Eisenhower requested some

comparatively minor changes, he was informed that the arrangements could be

changed only if the sailing date of the

convoy were postponed or the force were

conventionally loaded. When the entire

tactical conception of the assault was revised a few days later, the new plan

merely changed the tactical objectives of

the 45th Division force without altering

its composition or the time of its sailing.34

The preparation and movement of the

45th Division task force provided the

first major test for procedures standardized early in 1943. These procedures

represented a distillation of much hard32

 (1) Task Force Chronology, 6 and 13 Mar 43.

(2) Diary of a Certain Plan, entries for 1 and 2 Mar

43. Both in Planning Div ASF. 33

 (1) Interview, Leo J. Meyer, former Troop Movement Officer, NYPOE, with authors, 30 Jul 57.

(2) W. Forrest Dawson, ed. and comp., Saga of the

All American (Atlanta, Ga.: Albert Love Enterprises,

1946), prepared under auspices of 82d Abn Div

Assoc., Inc.

34

 (1) Msg 150, Marshall for Eisenhower, 26 Apr

43, OPD Exec 3, Item 10. (2) Msg 2641, Algiers to

AGWAR, 8 Apr 43, Exec 3, Item 11.
HUSKY AND BOLERO 47

won administrative experience, gained

particularly in mounting TORCH'S Western Task Force. Responsibilities were

carefully delineated and more decentralized than for TORCH. Army Ground

Forces was responsible for training and

readying the force for movement (Western Task Force had been controlled directly by the War Department), with

the U.S. Second Army and Amphibious

Force, Atlantic Fleet, carrying out most

of the training; Army Service Forces

handled supply and transportation, and,

through the port of embarkation

(Hampton Roads, Virginia), controlled

the movement process from the time

the force moved into the staging area.35

The Troop Movements Section of OPD

acted as control center for the movement; the chief of Movements Branch,

ASF, assisted by one officer on the port

staff and one from the task force staff,

closely supervised and followed through

on each step of the process. The force

was first concentrated early in May at

Camp Pickett, Virginia, within easy

reach of Hampton Roads, and there continued its training until shortly before

the sailing date, when it moved into

Camp Patrick Henry, the new staging

area just outside the port. All this was

a vast improvement over the TORCH experience, when the Western Task Force

had flowed into the port area from locations up and down the eastern seaboard.

A new set of procedures, Preparation

for Overseas Movement (POM), inaugurated in February 1943, governed

HUSKY troop movements. Troop commanders down to the small-unit level

received a printed pamphlet of detailed

instructions as long as three months in

advance of the sailing date. The 45th's

movement orders came out on 21 April,

and had been preceded a week earlier

by a basic directive issued by OPD containing a firm list of units of the force

and special requirements for equipment

and supplies, fixing levels of supply to

accompany the force (21 days, and 7

units of fire), and assigning responsibilities. The date for concentration at

Camp Pickett was set as on or about 10

May. Unlike the orders for Western

Task Force, in which units had been

broken down and rearranged by transport loads and subtask groups, the 45th

Division movement orders were of the

"normal" type, issued for the force as

a whole under a single shipment code.

By this method movement orders could

be sent out six weeks before the sailing

date (as against three weeks for Western

Task Force), and well before loading

plans began to take form. Detailed assignments to ships were made after the

force reached the staging area. Also "normal" was the procedure of issuing orders

for shipment of bulk supplies at the

same time as the troop movement orders,

thus giving the technical services ample

time to ship them to port.36

To staff officers who had lived through

the chaos of loading the TORCH forces,

the loading of the 45th Division was a

summer idyll. Planning began in midApril and, though temporarily unhinged

35

 Palmer, Wiley, and Keast, The Procurement

and Training of Ground Combat Troops, pp. 567,

580.

36

 (1) Copies of basic directive and movement orders are in History of Mobilization Division, ASF,

prepared by Mobilization Div, ASF, vol. 4, sec. 2,

MS, OCMH. (2) Maj. W. R. Wheeler, The Road to

Victory, A History of Hampton Roads Port of Embarkation in World War II, 2 vols. (Newport News,

Va., 1946), I, 85. (3) Dunham, Transportation and

Sicily, pp. 51-55. (4) Leighton and Coakley, Global

Logistics, 1940-43, pp. 441-42, 646-48.
48 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

by the change in the tactical plan early

in May, proceeded without serious delay

or interruption. Markings on freight

shipments to the port were relatively

simple — all bulk supplies and equipment, for example, were shipped under

two codes, one for Newport News, the

other for Norfolk — and freight movements into the port area were carefully

controlled.

Inevitable last-minute shipments to

the port, some of which had to be flown

in to meet the deadline, did complicate

loading. The division posted a staff officer at the port to reroute them by truck

to the staging area in order to have them

checked off the final shortage lists—a procedure that would not have been feasible had distances been greater. Loading

plans for individual vessels, drawn up

by the transport quartermasters, came in

too late for the port staff to have bulk

supplies on hand to fill unused space in

deep tanks and lower holds, with the result that the ships had to sail lightly

loaded. Loading itself proceeded smoothly in two installments. One group of

vessels was loaded from 25 May to 29

May; the other was loaded from 31 May

to 4 June, and included the five AKA's

of the assault convoy and the eight Liberty's that were to sail with UGS-10

a few days later. The 21,000 troops of

the task force embarked in a single day,

and in the early morning of 8 June the

transports set sail. It was the last combat-loaded convoy to leave the United

States from the Atlantic coast during

World War II.37

Effects of Husky on Bolero

The concentrated effort, British as well

as American, that went into insuring the

success of HUSKY produced the desired

results. Sicily was overrun in a spectacularly successful 39-day campaign in July

and August. In the meantime, the commitments of troops, supplies, naval escort, and assault, personnel, and cargo

shipping—all well above the scales agreed

at Casablanca—levied heavy costs on the

already reduced build-up in the British

Isles, delaying the Combined Bomber

Offensive and dashing any lingering

hopes that Allied forces might seize even

a small bridgehead in France in 1943.

Events seemed to have conspired to force

upon BOLERO-SICKLE all the sacrifices entailed in either shipping shortages or increased demands from theaters where

active operations were in progress. The

British, convinced that great opportunities were opening up in the Mediterranean, supported demands for Sicily

without a murmer. The U.S. Joint

Chiefs, much more sceptical about this

operation, nevertheless felt compelled

to yield to the requests of an American

commander. In doing so, they still sought

to keep the build-up in Pacific and Far

Eastern areas on schedule, thus leaving

BOLERO-SICKLE as the only deployment

program from which to draw additional

resources for the Mediterranean.

HUSKY absorbed very nearly all the

assault shipping then available in the

Atlantic. The final British contribution

almost wiped out the reserve of landing

37

 (1) Dunham, Transportation and Sicily, pp. 53,

56-58. (2) Wheeler, Road to Victory, I, 86-88. (3) Maj.

M. C. Nicholl, SOP for Future Combat Loaded

Movements, copy in Log File, OCMH. (4) Memo,

ACofT for Dir NTS, 11 Jun 43, OCT 563.5 Afr 1943.

(5) Memo, Lutes for Somervell, 5 Jun 43, sub: Weekly

Summary Major Current Operations, Lutes File.

(6) Chart, Convoys to N Africa, Strategy Sec, Overseas Supply Div, NYPOE. (7) Diary of a Certain Plan,

entries during Apr 43, Plng Div ASF.
HUSKY AND BOLERO 49

ships and craft in the United Kingdom

that was being held for training and

Channel raids. Although the U.S. Navy

retained a small reserve of large landing

craft against the possibility of other

European operations, it committed to

HUSKY about all that could be made

ready in the theater in time for the

operation in addition to its entire fleet

of combat loaders in the Atlantic area.38

This absorption of assault shipping in

HUSKY, more than anything else, administered the deathblow to any hopes for

even a small-scale landing in France in

1943.

Moreover, the already lagging buildup in Great Britain received almost the

whole impact of the augmented HUSKY

personnel movement and the increased

shipments of troops for the Tunisian

campaign. The BOLERO deployment goal

of 80,000 troops in the first quarter of

1943, agreed on at Casablanca, became

unrealizable when General Eisenhower's

demands in February and March for

additional forces pre-empted available

troop transports and, even more, the escort vessels needed to convoy them. Only

18,000 troops sailed for England during

the first three months of 1943, almost

all aboard British transports. The continuing drain of U.S. forces from England to North Africa, meanwhile, by the

end of February reduced the American

establishment there to less than 105,000

men—its nadir, as events proved.39

In the uncertain atmosphere of February and March, deployment estimates

for the rest of 1943 had to be made without a solid foundation in either a strategic plan for the invasion of western

Europe or a realistic appraisal of the

shipping situation. General Somervell's

estimate at Casablanca that 1,118,000

U.S. troops could be supported in the

British Isles by the end of 1943 rested on

the expectation that, although cargo

shipping would be tight until about midyear, declining losses and mounting construction thereafter, together with savings

in turnaround resulting from the hopedfor opening of the Mediterranean, would

probably make enough tonnage available

in the Atlantic to support any deployment to England for which troop transports and escorts could be found. Somervell's proposed program, which the CCS

adopted at Casablanca as a basis for

logistical planning, consequently scheduled almost three-fourths of the entire

U.S.-to-U.K. troop movement in the last

half of the year when cargo shipping was

expected to be relatively plentiful.40

Back in Washington after the conference, Army strategic planners began to

have second thoughts. Somervell's program allowed for only 172,000 AAF

troops, a figure air planners declared

completely inadequate for the full-scale

bombing offensive against Germany ordered at Casablanca. It also seemed imperative to amass a balanced force of six

American ground divisions in the United

Kingdom by midsummer to take advantage of any sudden deterioration of Ger38

 Early in May the Navy expected to have 26

LST's, 12 LCI(L)'s, and 39 LCT's in the Atlantic

over and above vessels assigned the Mediterranean.

See JCS 291/1, 8 May 43, title: Invasion of European

Continent from U.K. in 1943-44, app. A, Tabs I, II,

III, IV. 39

 (1) Roland G. Ruppenthal, Logistical Support

of the Armies I (hereafter cited as Ruppenthal,

Logistical Support I), UNITED STATES ARMY IN

WORLD WAR II (Washington, 1953), p. 118.

(2) Leighton and Coakley, Global Logistics, 1940-43,

pp. 486-87. 40

 CCS 172, 22 Jan 43, note by Gen Somervell, title:

Shpg Capabilities for BOLERO Build-up.
50 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

man strength. Working toward these

objectives, and virtually ignoring the indicated limitations on shipping, Army

planners late in February 1943 produced

a new deployment program that envisaged movement of more than 300,000

troops to Great Britain in the second

quarter of the year and almost as many

in the third quarter. At the end of 1943

the schedule tapered off rapidly to a

terminal strength of 989,000 men, almost

130,000 short of the Casablanca goal,

partly in recognition of the first-quarter

deployment lag, but also reflecting increased commitments to the Pacific.

More than one-half of the total forces

scheduled to be sent to England in 1943

were to be AAF troops.41

Somervell, who had lowered his sights

since Casablanca, bluntly characterized

the OPD program as unrealistic. If the

expanded and accelerated air force buildup was to be carried out, he told OPD

early in March, no large movement of

ground troops to England would be

possible before midyear, and the total

build-up would fall well short of 900,000.

Even that could be accomplished, he

stated, only by heavy cuts in the volume

of American shipping committed to the

British Import Program. His estimate

for the second quarter of 1943 was that

available cargo shipping, supplemented

by diversions from the British program,

would support the movement of 123,000

American troops to the British Isles in

April, May, and June, as opposed to a

Casablanca estimate of 169,000, and the

300,000 estimate of the OPD program.42

Even Somervell's lowered estimates

disappeared into the mists with the 5

March CCS decision to divert British

transports from BOLERO-SICKLE to meet

Eisenhower's demand for 38,000 additional troops for HUSKY. Actually, the

shipping arrangements agreed upon were

intricate, and the impact on BOLERO

was heavier in diversion of naval escorts

than in loss of troop-carrying capacity

as such. With British and American vessels remaining on the North Atlantic

run, it might have been possible to move

about 109,000 U.S. troops to the United

Kingdom in April, May, and June had

escorts been available for the slow vessels—lacking escorts, the movement fell

short. Only 3,300 troops left the United

States for England in April; in May

transports with a capacity of about 15,000

were shifted to the Pacific where they

could be used without escort. By various

expedients, shipments to England were

stepped up in the last part of May and

a total second-quarter movement of about

77,000 was realized. This was still well

under half of the Casablanca goal and,

with the strategic bombing offensive

holding top priority, ground forces in

England increased by only 3,600 during

the period.43

It was perhaps symptomatic of the

disparity between American hopes for

BOLERO and the actual disposition of

41

 Memo, ACofS OPD, for Com, 23 Feb 43, sub:

Deployment of U.S. Army Forces in 1943, with attached com rpt, ABC 320.2 (3-14-43) Sec 1. 42

 (1) Memo, Somervell for ACofS OPD, 3 Mar 43,

sub: Scheme of Deployment for U.S. Army Forces in

1943, folder ACofS OPD 1942-44, Hq ASF. (2) Leighton and Coakley, (Global Logistics, 1940-43, pp. 677,

687-90. 43

 (1) CCS 182/2 , 3 Mar 43. (2) Min, 74th mtg

CCS (Suppl), 5 Mar 43. (3) Msg 106, Marshall to

Eisenhower, 15 Apr 43. (4) Msg 6597, 23 Apr 43. (3)

and (4) in OPD Exec 3, Item 10. (5) Msg 5967, Algiers

to AGWAR, 21 Apr 43, OPD Exec 3, Item 11.

(6) Memo, Brig Gen Robert H. Wylie, ACofT, for

OPD, 3 Mar 43, sub: Lift for U.K. During Mar and

Apr, OCT HB, folder Plng Div Studies. (7) Leighton

and Coakley, Global Logistics, 1940-43, app. E. (8)

Ruppenthal, Logistical Support, I, 129.
HUSKY AND BOLERO 51

American resources that, pending a

more thorough study of shipping capabilities, the JCS approved the OPD deployment program despite its obvious

lack of realism. The program was to remain the official statement of American

deployment objectives, though a dead

letter as far as actual deployment planning was concerned, until some time

after the TRIDENT Conference in May.44

Cargo Shipping and the

Preshipment Plan

The impact of the enlarged HUSKY

supply program upon cargo movements

to the United Kingdom is much harder

to assess. It can hardly be doubted that

without it the build-up of American

material in England would have been

resumed on a far greater scale in spring

1943. On the other hand, from April

onward the shipping authorities were

able to provide more space for cargo

than the Army could fill. The conclusion seems warranted that HUSKY'S impact on BOLERO cargo movements, at

least after April 1943, could be measured

more accurately in terms of dislocations

and diversion of supplies than in any

real shortage of cargo space for transatlantic movements.

The ASF staff could not foresee these

developments in February and March

1943. They did, however, begin to explore the possibility of expanding the flow

of material to the United Kingdom, regardless of the dwindling flow of troops.

The scheme for "preshipment" of equipment and supplies had been an integral

part of the original BOLERO plan of 1942.

Though the experiment had not been

a notable success at that time, the conditions under which it was undertaken

hardly permitted a fair trial.45 Convinced of the essential soundness of the

idea, the ASF staff sought to revive the

plan.

The most compelling argument for

preshipment was the advisability of shipping as much cargo as possible across the

Atlantic during the spring and summer,

when port operations in the United

Kingdom would be least affected by

darkness and enemy air activity. In the

winter the capacity of both ports and the

inland transportation system in the British Isles could be expected to shrink;

while later, as D-day approached, movements of troops, vehicles, and freight

into the ports, preparatory to the Channel crossing would impose drastic limits

on incoming traffic. Presuming that the

ultimate goal was to amass the largest

possible force in the British Isles, it

seemed imperative to start at once to

move across the Atlantic the mountains

of material that would be needed to

house, service, equip, and support it.

The heaviest troop flow (the official

deployment program notwithstanding)

seemed likely to occur late in 1943 and

early in 1944. A large cargo movement

before that time would therefore necessarily involve advance shipment of much

of the equipment and supplies that

normally accompanied or followed

troops, as well as construction equipment

and materials needed for reception and

storage facilities and for troop housing.

The European Theater of Operations

(ETOUSA) was already advocating preshipment, less because of concern over 44

 (1) JCS 249 (Rev), 12 May 43, title: Strategic

Deployment of U.S. Forces for 1943. (2) Leighton

and Coakley, Global Logistics, 1940-43, pp. 702-05.

45

 See Leighton and Coakley, Global Logistics,

1940-43, pp. 368-76.
52 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

the long-range problems of the build-up

than because of a desire to receive individual and organizational equipment

well in advance of the troops who would

use it. As were other theaters in early

1943, ETOUSA was having its troubles

in marrying up troops and equipment

under the existing system whereby troops

on fast transports normally arrived at

their destinations far ahead of the slow

freighters carrying their equipment.

Preshipment in this sense aimed at more

efficient administration of the process of

equipping and training the individual

soldier and troop unit after arrival overseas, rather than at large-scale stockpiling

of material in the theater, the goal of the

ASF staff. Yet the two concepts tended

to merge in practice and the term preshipment was usually applied to both.46

While on an overseas tour following

the Casablanca Conference, General

Somervell collected a sheaf of complaints

in several theaters about equipment arriving late, and on his return to Washington he pressed OPD for a policy decision

on the European theater's requests. Early

in March OPD ruled against a change in

established troop movement procedures

because of the continuing shortages of

many categories of equipment, the uncertain outlook for shipping, and the

lack of firm troop movement schedules

for the next few months. The difficulties

argued for themselves. There was no

assurance that enough material could

be found for a really large stockpiling

program in Great Britain over and above

the needs of other theaters and of the

still-expanding forces in training in the

United States. Production had increased

mightily since the summer of 1942, but

so had the scale of both overseas operations and zone of interior (ZI) training.

Whether the depot system in England

had matured sufficiently to handle a

massive build-up posed another serious

question. Theater officials stressed their

need for more service troops, and the

prospects were not bright for sending

any appreciable number in the foreseeable future.47

An even more basic objection was the

uncertainty that still beclouded the strategy of the European war. Without a

reasonable assurance that a major crossChannel invasion would be carried out

in 1944, OPD officers did not want to

sanction the stockpiling of material in

England that might eventually have to

be reloaded and shipped to another

theater. Moreover, the shipping crisis in

mid-March seemed to render the whole

question academic. The American staffs

hastily calculated that if all requested

support was given to the British, no cargo

shipping at all would be available to

support troop movements to England in

the second quarter, and only enough for

an estimated 39,000 troops in the third

quarter.48

Despite the gathering gloom, the ASF

continued to prepare for an early re- 46

 (1) History of the Planning Division, Army

Service Forces (2 vols. Text and 10 vols. Documentary

Supplement) prepared by Planning Div, Office Dir

Plans and Opns, ASF (hereafter cited as History

Planning Div ASF), Text, I, 97-98, MS, OCMH.

(2) Ruppenthal, Logistical Support I, 133. (3) Bykofsky and Larson, The Transportation Corps: Operations Overseas, pp. 98-99. (4) On preshipment generally, see below, Chapter VI.

47

 (1) Memo, Gen Lutes for Maj Gen Wilhelm D.

Styer, 5 Mar 43, Notes on Lutes File, OCMH. (2)

Msg R-6661, OPD to CG ETO, 14 Mar 43, folder

U.K. Security, 1 Jan 43 to 15 Apr 43, Plng Div ASF.

(3) Bykofsky and Larson, The Transportation Corps:

Operations Overseas, p. 99. 48

 See Leighton and Coakley, Global Logistics,

1940-43, pp. 690-702.
HUSKY AND BOLERO 53

sumption of large-scale cargo shipments

to Britain, and on 16 March OPD,

though still hoping for an increase in

troop lift during the summer to permit

a balanced flow of troops and cargo,

reversed its earlier position by agreeing

reluctantly and cautiously to ship equipment in advance of troops if necessary.

Thus encouraged, ASF directed the technical services to begin procurement and

stockpiling of certain categories of material for a force of about 900,000, and

began to press OPD for a firm troop

basis on which supply requirements

could be calculated in detail. Meanwhile,

on 10 March General Somervell submitted to the War Shipping Administration

cargo shipping requirements for 42 sailings on Army account to the United

Kingdom in April and slightly more in

each of the two succeeding months. This

was almost three times the volume of

shipments planned in March.49

WSA was therefore well aware of both

the BOLERO requirements and the increased schedules for HUSKY when Lewis

Douglas assured the President on 29

March that enough cargo shipping would

be available to meet the actual, though

perhaps not the stated, military shipping

requirements in April. Obviously, Douglas suspected that the stated military rerequirements, allegedly threatened by

the British demands, concealed so many

allowances to cover errors, contingencies,

and waste that they could be drastically

reduced without danger to vital objectives. Part of what Douglas had in mind

with regard to the build-up in the United Kingdom had become apparent earlier in the month when he had proposed

to General Gross, Chief of Transportation, that military and commercial cargoes be pooled and efficiently distributed

among ships sailing to Britain on WSA,

British, and U.S. Army account. Douglas

held that millions of cubic feet of space

were being wasted each month in commercial sailings in the North Atlantic

for want of suitable measurement cargo,

while at the same time ships allocated

to the Army on the BOLERO run had insufficient weight cargo to bring them

down to their Plimsoll lines. He contended that each commercial loading

could be "full" as well as "down," while

Army BOLERO shipments could be loaded "down" as well as "full"—that is, using full weight and cubic capacity in

both cases.50

General Gross enthusiastically approved, and the British proved more

than willing for U.S. Army cargo to be

pooled with British imports, provided

the distribution of incoming cargoes did

not overtax the capacity of ports and inland transportation. Meanwhile, in keeping with his views, Douglas' immediate

response to Somervell's request for 42

BOLERO-SICKLE ships in April was to offer, as an advance, the equivalent of

about 82,000 measurement tons of space

in commercial sailings for March while

he looked into the April requirement.51

49

 (1) Chronology in Memo, Col. Richard D. Meyer

for Gen Wylie, ACofT, 9 Apr 43, folder Cargo, OCT

HB Wylie File. (2) Memo, Lutes for Dir Distr SOS,

6 Mar 13; (3) Memo for Dir Pls Div, SOS, 16 Mar 43.

(2) and (3) in Notes on Lutes File, OCMH. (4) Memo,

Somervell for Douglas, 10 Mar 43, folder Army

Reqmts 1 Jan 43, WSA Douglas File.

50

 (1) Douglas Diary, Notes on Conf with Gen

Gross, 1 Mar 43. (2) Memo, Douglas, 9 Mar 43. Both

in folder Army Reqmts 1 Jan 43, WSA Douglas File. 51

 (1) Ltr, Gross to Douglas, 11 Mar 43, with related

material in OCT 563.5 England Jan-Apr 43.

(2) Memo, Douglas for Somervell, 11 Mar 43. (3)

Msg, Harriman to Douglas, 27 Mar 43. Last two in

folder Army Reqmts 1 Jan 43, WSA Douglas File.
54 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

Whatever complications and headaches these arrangements involved for

theater receiving agencies, they promised to provide a considerably greater

amount of cargo space for BOLERO shipments, probably as much as a million

measurement tons during the rest of

1943. Of the 42 sailings Somervell had

requested for April, Douglas hoped to

find the equivalent of 10 this way.52

While he was trying to line up the other

32 ships, the requirement itself began

to shrink as WSA apparently had expected. It soon became evident that the

Army had little cargo to offer in March

to fill commercial space, and shipments

in that month actually totaled only 115,-

000 measurement tons, not much more

than in February. At the end of the

month, when Douglas informed the

President that military requirements for

April could be met, the BOLERO requirement was set officially at 18 ships plus

100,000 tons of measurement cargo to

be loaded on commercial sailings, a total

of approximately 280,000 tons.53

The ASF failed to provide enough

cargo to meet even this reduced goal.

The cargo theoretically available simply did not materialize at New York and

Boston, or came too late to be loaded

aboard ship by the end of April. The

reasons were many and varied. OPD was

not yet firmly enough committed to the

preshipment principle to allow organizational equipment to be preshipped

unless units had been definitely scheduled for the ETO; early in the month

it ruled that equipment could be taken

from units for preshipment no earlier

than 30 days before their scheduled sailing dates. Several troop units scheduled

for April sailings to the United Kingdom received unsatisfactory status reports; their departure was consequently

delayed and their organizational equipment could not be shipped. The North

African Theater was still a powerful attraction for both units and material.

Some units were diverted from Great

Britain to North Africa, taking their

equipment with them. The increase in

the UGS-8 convoy confused both ship

allocations and the assembly of troop

equipment. Of Somervell's original 42

ships only 8 sailed before the end of

April on Army account, 4 of them carryovers from March; some 45,300 measurement tons of cargo were turned over to

WSA for commercial loading. Official

statistics generously estimated total Army

cargo shipments to the United Kingdom

in April as 135,000 measurement tons—

less than half of even the reduced target

set at the beginning of the month.54 The

whole experience became an embarrassment to ASF officials vis-à-vis WSA in

52

 These requirements for sailings were normally

expressed in terms of "notional" vessels possessing

a theoretical capacity of 10,000 measurement tons,

or approximately the equivalent of a Liberty ship. 53

 (1) Memo, Keating for Douglas, 13 May 43,

folder Army Reqmts 1 Jan 43, WSA Douglas File.

(2) Ltr, Gross to Douglas, 30 Mar 43, OCT 563.5 England Jan-Apr 43. (3) Gross requested that WSA furnish 3,000 tons of steel or other "close stowing

cargo" to fill each of the 18 Army ships.

54

 (1) Memo, Maj V. C. Short, TC Liaison Officer,

for W. J. Darcy, Mgr, A and N Dept, WSA, 7 June

43, sub: The U. K. Schedule Month by Month, OCT

565.2 England Jun 43. (2) Control Division ASF,

Statistical Review, World War II (Washington, 1946),

p. 131. (3) Memo, Col John M. Franklin, Chief,

Water Div TC, for Gen Wylie, 9 Apr 43, sub: Cargo

Sit for U.K. (4) Memo, Col Norman H. Vissering

for Chief, Water Div OCofT, 15 Apr 43, sub: Cargo

for U.K., OCT 563.5 England Jan-Apr 43. (5)

Diary, Theater Br, Plng Div ASF, 3, 6, 13 Apr 43.

(6) Memo, Col Carter B. Magruder for Gen Lutes,

24 Apr 43, sub: Cargo Reqmts, folder 18 Shpg File,

III, Case 50, ASF Plng Div.
HUSKY AND BOLERO 55

view of their earlier reactions to the

British request for shipping.55

The fiasco of the April shipments also

demonstrated the need for a clearer policy on preshipment. In vindication of

Douglas' judgment, the cargo shipping

situation was improving rapidly and by

mid-April even ASF officials were ready

to admit that the promised volume of

assistance to the British Import Program

would still leave a surplus of cargo space

available for movements to the United

Kingdom. On 17 April Maj. Gen. LeRoy

Lutes, chief of ASF's Operations Directorate, calculated that a total of 3.2 million measurement tons would be available for BOLERO cargo over the next four

months, an excess of 800,000 tons over

that required for even the 300,000 troops

supposed to move to England during

that period under the existing unrealistic OPD deployment schedule.56

Preshipment seemed the only means

by which the space estimated could be

filled, since actual troop movements

promised to be much less than 300,000.

But finding the cargoes promised to be

no easy task. The Army's cupboard in

spring 1943, although not bare, was still

not bulging. Critical supplies and equipment were distributed under a priorities

system that allowed 50 percent (for divisional) and 20 percent (for non-divisional) forces in training, and 100 percent for all troops moving or preparing

to move overseas. For items over and

above authorized allowances the system

rated theaters in descending scale of

importance; in this scale, BOLERO-SICKLE

did not rate high. The Air Forces buildup (SICKLE) was subordinate to operations in the Mediterranean, and bracketed with current operations in the Pacific;

the BOLERO program ranked even below

preparations for the Burma operation.

Preshipment had to compete with troops

in training for supplies and equipment,

and Army Ground Forces constantly

complained that training allowances

were inadequate.57

On 16 April, with the prospects of

BOLERO cargo in May so poor that a responsible Transportation Corps official

wanted to limit the request to WSA to

ten sailings for that month, General

Lutes personally sought a decision from

Brig. Gen. John E. Hull, Chief of OPD's

Theater Group. He learned that OPD

had decided to steer a middle course.

Only a few days earlier OPD had, over

the remonstrances of other General Staff

divisions, turned down a plea from Lt.

Gen. Lesley J. McNair, commanding

general of Army Ground Forces, for an

increase in established training allowances. But it was not ready to authorize

large-scale stockpiling in the United

Kingdom at the expense of McNair's

needs for training. In response to Lutes'

representations, Hull authorized advance shipments of all general purpose

vehicles, Class IV supplies and equipment, and 45 days' combat maintenance

against the entire 1943 ETOUSA troop

basis; also, shipment of all organizational equipment of units definitely scheduled to sail for the ETO 30 days in

advance of their sailing date. Hull insisted, however, that advance shipments

must not involve either taking equipment from troops in training or result

55

 Douglas' Min of Conf, 7 Mar 43, folder CCS

Reqmts and Availables 1943, WSA Conway File. 56

 Memo, Lutes for Dir Stock Control Div, ASF,

17 Apr 43, sub: Cargo Shipmts to U.K., in History

of Preshipment, prepared by Distribution Div, ASF,

Annex 3, MS, OCMH. 57

 On the priorities system, see below, Chapter VI.
56 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

in preventing them from receiving their

authorized percentage allowances at successive stages. And the "troop basis"

against which shipments were to be projected was purely a stopgap, based on

the existing outdated joint deployment

plan.58

It was thus a much watered-down preshipment policy that took form in the

spring of 1943. Nevertheless, ASF was

able to issue its first preshipment directive on 17 April and to expedite cargo

for May shipment considerably. By the

end of April it appeared that some 460,-

000 tons might be available and the

Transportation Corps, cautiously this

time, asked WSA for 34 BOLERO ships

on Army account for May in addition to

cargo space on commercial sailings.59

Any long-range planning under this

makeshift directive and troop basis

proved impossible. OPD promised a

more definite troop basis in response to

General Lutes' urging, but, considering

the strategic uncertainties of the period

before the TRIDENT Conference, the time

could hardly have been less propitious

for making the predictions that this involved. On 21 April ASF officials working up preshipment plans on the basis

of the existing JCS projection of 900,000

men in England by the end of the year

were abruptly told by OPD that the target would have to be lowered to 650,000

"in view of certain overall developments."60

 A week later, an ASF staff

paper noted "it is currently understood

that there is to be a major change in the

entire strategic plan. . . the idea of crossChannel operations is to be abandoned,

and the ground forces in the U.K. are

to be reduced ... to approximately one

reinforced corps. . . "61These developments, reflecting the current doubts

Army strategic planners were themselves

feeling about BOLERO, threatened to

undermine the whole basis of the preshipment program. ASF was permitted

to proceed with arrangements for May

shipments but the reduction in target

troop strength, if carried out, would obviously require modification of plans for

shipments beginning in June. Thus,

despite the dissolution of the cargo shipping crisis, BOLERO continued in a state

of limbo pending resolution of the strategic uncertainties surrounding it.

58

 (1) MFR with Memo, Lutes for Stock Control

Div ASF, 17 Apr 43. (2) Memo, OPD for G-4, 14 Apr

43, sub: Equipment for AGF, with related papers

in OPD 475 Equip of Troops, Case 25. 59

 (1) Ibid. (2). (2) Memo, Vissering for Chief,

Water Div TC, 15 Apr 43. (3) Memo, Vissering for

CofT, 29 Apr 43, sub: Daily Rpt of U.K. Cargo for

May. (2) and (3) in OCT 563.5 England Jan-Apr 43.

60

 Diary, Theater Br, 21 Apr 43, Plng Div ASF. 61

 Paper, Summary, BOLERO, 27 Apr 43, folder

Current Opns, Item 3-a, Plng Div ASF.
CHAPTER III

TRIDENT

With victory in Tunisia all but complete and preparations for the Sicilian

invasion moving into the final stages,

the leaders of the Western alliance met

again in Washington, 12-25 May 1943,

for their third great wartime conference,

TRIDENT. The occasion seemed auspicious. As Churchill declared in his opening remarks, the Allies for the first time

could sense "the authority and prestige

of victory," and feel that now it was

possible, as it had not been at Casablanca, "to grasp the fruits of our success."1

To do so required resolution of the

differences in outlook between British

and Americans and agreement on a longrange strategy for the global war on

which to base allocations of resources

and firm logistical plans. Yet the sense

of common purpose was overlaid by a

deepening mutual distrust. The U.S.

Chiefs of Staff came to TRIDENT convinced that if the course of action urged

by the British were adopted, Allied resources would be frittered away in an

indecisive area of Europe while Japanese

power grew unchecked on the other side

of the world. The divergence between

U.S. and British strategy, according to

a committee analysis endorsed by the

JCS on the eve of the conference, was

between a "global" strategy and an essentially parochial one. The Americans

were striving to end both wars — the

whole war—as quickly as possible. British strategy, in disturbing contrast, was

represented as being narrowly European

in its orientation and, within that framework, dangerously addicted to politically motivated "periphery-pecking" enterprises in the Mediterranean, while postponing indefinitely the decisive test of

strength in northwestern Europe. As for

the war against Japan, the committee

warned:

Much can happen between now and the

defeat of Germany to blunt the British

willingness to undertake an "all-out" war

against Japan. The British have consistently

indicated a surprising lack of concern about

the Far East. They may be counted upon

to perform the letter of their commitments

in this connection, but they are traditionally

expert at meeting the letter while avoiding

the spirit of commitments. . . .2

American distrust was reciprocated.

About to leave for the conference, Field

Marshal Sir Alan Brooke, Chief of the

Imperial General Staff, noted in his

diary, "Casablanca has taught me too

much. Agreement after agreement may

1

 Min, 1st White House Mtg, TRIDENT, 12 May 43.

2

 (1) JCS 283, rpt by JSSC, 3 May 43, title: Current

British Policy and Strategy in Relation to That of

the U.S.; approved by JCS at 78th mtg JCS, 8 May

43. (2) See also Min, 83d mtg CCS, 13 May 43,

Annex A, Global Strategy of the War, Views of U.S.

Chiefs of Staff. (3) Fleet Admiral William D. Leahy,

I Was There (New York: Whittlesey House, 1950),

pp. 157-58.
58 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

be secured on paper, but, if [the Americans'] hearts are not in it, they soon

drift away."3 To Brooke, the anxiety in

Washington over reports of growing

Japanese power, the increasing flow of

American shipping and material to the

Pacific while the build-up in Great Britain dwindled to a trickle, American reactions to the recent British import and

shipping crisis, and the recent squabble

over priorities between the European

and the Pacific war, all formed an ominous pattern. "We are just about back

where we were before Casablanca," he

had written on 15 April. "Their hearts

are really in the Pacific and we are trying to run two wars at once, which is

quite impossible with our limited resources of shipping. All we can hope for

is to go all out to defeat Italy, and thus

produce the greatest dispersal of German

forces and make the going easier for the

Russians."4 Brooke saw two somewhat

conflicting drives in American strategic

thinking, personified in General Marshall and Admiral King, respectively—

one, an obsession with a cross-Channel

invasion that could not be mounted before 1944 at the earliest, the other, an

emotional commitment to the war in the

Pacific heightened by an exaggerated notion of Japanese strength. The first blinded the Americans to opportunities for

fruitful, possibly decisive, action in the

Mediterranean during 1943; the second

undermined their adherence to the

agreed "Germany first" strategy. Unlike

the ebullient Churchill, Brooke went to

the meetings at Washington in a pessimistic mood, anticipating "hours of argument and hard work trying to convince them that Germany must be defeated first . [and that] unless our

united efforts are directed to defeat Germany and hold Japan, the war may go

on indefinitely."5

The American Program for Europe

On 8 May the U.S. Joint Chiefs of

Staff determined on the line of action

they proposed to advocate for the European war at the forthcoming meetings,

and cleared it with the President.6 Its

central feature was a large-scale invasion

of northwestern France in spring of 1944

(ROUNDUP) preceded by a systematic

bombing offensive, mounting in intensity, against Germany and German-occupied Europe from bases in the United

Kingdom. As in the original BOLEROROUNDUP plan, the build-up of forces

in the United Kingdom for the main

invasion was to be scheduled so as to

permit an emergency Channel crossing

(SLEDGEHAMMER) at any earlier date to

exploit or hasten a German collapse.

The target date for ROUNDUP, subject

to revision, was to be 1 April 1944,

roughly coinciding with the middle or

end of the final phase of the strategic

bombing offensive against German communications and industrial centers under a plan submitted to the JCS at the

end of April 1943 by Maj. Gen. Ira C.

3

 Diary entry for 4 May 43, p. 496, quoted from

The Turn of the Tide by Arthur Bryant, copyright

1957 by Arthur Bryant. This and later quotes from

this book are reprinted by permission of Doubleday

& Company, Inc. 4

 Ibid., diary entry for 15 Apr 43, p. 493.

5

 (1) Ibid., diary entry for 10 May 43, p. 500. (2) For

Churchill's views of the conference see Hinge of Fate.

Book Two, Chapter 20. 6

 Admiral Leahy's memoirs are the only available

evidence of a JCS meeting with the President on the

eve of TRIDENT. See Leahy, I Was There, p. 157, and

Maurice Matloff, Strategic Planning for Coalition

Warfare, 1943-1944, UNITED STATES ARMY IN

WORLD WAR II (Washington, 1959) (hereafter

cited as Strategic Planning, 1943-44), p. 125, note 57.
TRIDENT 59

Eaker, commanding general of the U.S.

Eighth Air Force in England.7

In approving this program, the JCS

had rather cavalierly brushed aside logistical calculations by the Army staff that

raised serious doubts as to the feasibility

of an invasion in spring 1944 cast in the

heroic image of the original ROUNDUP

plan. That the JCS had such an image

in mind is clear enough from their use

of the old code name and from the

terms in which they discussed it. But

two factors combined to rob the image

of substance. First, owing to the general

uncertainty of the outlook for shipping

in March and April 1943, and, in particular the concentration of British and

American troopships on the North Africa routes and of escorts on the convoys

to North Africa and northern USSR, it

appeared that the movement of U.S.

troops to the United Kingdom would

depend mainly on unescorted British

troopships, primarily the Queens, until

late in the summer. In consequence, the

Army staff in April and early May could

foresee a build-up of American forces in

the United Kingdom to only 850,000 or

900,000 men by the end of 1943 and

only 1,150,000 by 1 April 1944—in each

case about 200,000 fewer than envisaged

at Casablanca.8

The second factor in the new equation was the impact of recent plans for

an augmented influx of air force and

service elements. With the AAF buildup under General Eaker's plan expected

to reach 380,000 men by April 1944 in

a total of 1,150,000, and additional service troops needed for the whole U.S.

establishment in the United Kingdom,

OPD planners concluded that the maximum U.S. ground force that could be

assembled by D-day would be 20 divisions, including the 29th Infantry Division already there and the 5th Infantry

Division to be moved from Iceland. This

was only one more division than the

number figured on at Casablanca for

the end of 1943. Moreover, divisions

arriving after the first of the year would

probably not be operational by 1 April.

All these calculations caused some of the

OPD planners to conclude late in April

1943, that the total forces available by

spring 1944 would not be enough for a

decisive cross-Channel invasion, and that

a major invasion could not be undertaken until 1945.9

7

 (1) JCS 286/1, 8 May 43, memo, Adm Leahy for

President, title: Recommended Line of Action at

Coming Conference. (2) Min, 78th mtg JCS, 8 May

43; 79th mtg (Suppl), 10 May 43; 80th mtg, 12 May

43. (3) JCS 290, 7 May 43; JCS 250/1, 8 May 43,

titles: Conduct of War 1943-44. (4) Guyer, The War

Against Germany, ch. VIII, Part A, p. 163, History

JCS. (5) Craven and Cate, AAF II, ch. XI. 8

 For arrangements to use British transports see:

(1) Corresp, folders Alloc Gen and BMSM Misc,

WSA Douglas File; (2) folder BIGOT I, OCT HB

Wylie File; and (3) Memo, Col Marcus B. Stokes for

Gen Somervell, 9 May 43, folder Agenda, Hq ASF.

For deployment estimates see (4) Plng Div OCT

Table, 24 May 43, OPD Exec 6, SYMBOL, TRIDENT

(Rev) vol. I (1 May 43), Tab C, Troop and Troop

Shpg; (5) JMT 13/2 (Rev), 7 May 43, title: Shpg

Necessary for Troop and Cargo Lift for 1943; (6)

JPS 160/1, 8 May 43, same title; (7) JCS 266 (Rev),

11 May 43, same title; (8) JCS 249 (Rev), 12 May 43,

title: Strategic Deployment of U.S. Forces for 1943;

(9) Memo, Gross for Somervell, 10 Apr 43, sub: Army

Cargo Reqmts for 1943, folder 18 Shpg File, Plng

Div ASF. 9

 (1) SS 54/1, 8 Apr 43, and SS 54/2, 12 Apr 43,

sub: U.N. Courses of Action, folder Preps for U.S.-

Br. Stf Conf, Plng Div ASF. (2) SS 79, 28 Apr 43,

sub: Global Estimate of Situation, Tab D, Strat

SYMBOL, TRIDENT (Rev), vol. I (1 May 43), OPD

Exec 6. (3) Memo, OPD for CofS, 6 May 43, sub:

Transfer of Troops N Africa to U.K., ABC 337

TRIDENT, Sec, C. (4) JMT 13/2 (Rev) 7 May 43,

title: Shpg Necessary for Troop and Cargo Lift

1943. (5) Memo, Wedemeyer for Marshall, 17 May

43, sub: U.K. Build-up 1943-44, with Tabs, Exec 8,

Book 9, Case 72. (6) See Leighton and Coakley,

Global Logistics, 1940-43, pp. 687-90.
60 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

Rejecting this evidence, the Joint War

Plans Committee (JWPC) concluded

early in May that a decisive invasion

could be launched by April 1944. This

was the view that the JCS adopted on

8 May, having already (on the 4th) given the go-ahead to the Eaker bombing

plan with its spring 1944 culmination

date. The position papers taken to TRIDENT forecast a total of 20 U.S. and 16

British and Canadian divisions in the

United Kingdom by 1 April 1944, assuming full consummation of British

plans for transforming defensive into

offensive formations. Only about 14 of

the 20 U.S. divisions were expected to

be operational, although in the position

papers this was not made explicit. The

remainder would be fed into the crossChannel movement in subsequent weeks

as they completed their equipment,

training, and rehearsals. If adequate port

capacity could be developed in Great

Britain and on the Continent, forces

on the far shore could be built up to

54 divisions by the end of 1944 and to

100 divisions within a year.

The Washington staffs had vigorously

debated the question whether some of

the invasion forces should be brought

from the Mediterranean, and if so, how

many. The question had, of course, a

crucial bearing on what was to be done

in that theater after the conquest of Sicily. Distances from Mediterranean and

U.S. ports to the United Kingdom were

approximately the same; savings in shipping therefore were not a consideration.

Some of the Army staff urged, however,

that forces in the Mediterranean area

should be reduced to the bare minimum

necessary to maintain the status quo,

arguing that this would permit sending

many battle-seasoned veterans to Britain

for the cross-Channel invasion. They

also feared that large forces left in the

southern theater would constitute a

temptation to further undertakings in

the area that inevitably would pull in

additional troops and resources. Others

pointed out, conversely, that a major

transfer of forces from the Mediterranean to the United Kingdom would not

add to the total Allied strength in Europe and might dangerously weaken the

southern European front at a critical

time, besides which the forces concerned

would be out of action for a considerable time while in transit and refitting

in Great Britain. The upshot of the debate was a simple statement in the JCS

position paper of 8 May to the effect

that a transfer of six battle-tested divisions from the Mediterranean would be

good insurance for the cross-Channel assault, even though it would not add to

the total number of divisions.10

In the Army staff, opinions as to what

should be done with ground forces remaining in the Mediterranean after Sicily ranged from the safe and easy, but

not very profitable, alternative of occupying Sardinia and Corsica, to a scheme

advanced by one unnamed heretic for

a mainland landing in force near Genoa.

Some favored landings on the "heel" of

Italy or, if Turkish help were forthcoming, an attack on Crete and the Dodecanese. The old but persistent bogey of

an Axis attempt to cut the Allied lifeline at Gibraltar deterred even the bitterest opponents of further action in the

Mediterranean from advocating a wholesale withdrawal. Estimates of forces required just to stand fast after the conquest of Sicily ran as high as 14 divi10

 (1) SS 54/1, 8 Apr 43, and SS 54/2, 12 Apr 43.

(2) JCS 291/1, 8 May 43.
TRIDENT 61

sions. On an assumption (based on what

proved to be underestimates of British

strength) that only 25 Allied divisions

in all would be in the theater, these calculations held out little hope for heavy

withdrawals to the United Kingdom—or,

for that matter, for further offensives in

the Mediterranean. Somervell's staff, figuring on moving out six divisions, could

think of no more profitable employment for the remaining five divisions

than to occupy Sardinia and Corsica, or

perhaps to seize a foothold in the Dodecanese.11

The JCS made no effort, in fact, to

spell out a post-HUSKY program for the

Mediterranean, beyond a reference to

"limited offensive operations" aimed presumably at Sardinia and Corsica, and use

of air power to destroy Italian war potential. They did stipulate conditions:

after Sicily nothing must be undertaken

that might interfere with the build-up

for SLEDGEHAMMER and ROUNDUP; no

American ground or naval forces should

be committed "east of Sicily"; forces in

the theater must not be reinforced; and

an unspecified number of troops should

be withdrawn for use in the cross-Channel operation. They stressed their antipathy to an invasion of the Italian mainland, but left the door open to discussion.12

Indeed, in their whole strategy for

Europe the JCS, no less than the British

Chiefs, were evidently adjusting to the

consequences of TORCH and, though perhaps not consciously, were sloughing off

the heritage of BOLERO-ROUNDUP. The

new ROUNDUP, despite its name, was

clearly something less—though in its context more—than the original conception

of a one-front, one-shot, all-or-nothing

effort to crush an undiminished German Army in the West. Unlike the

original, the ROUNDUP of 1944 would

have to share honors with a subsidiary

front in the Mediterranean and with a

U.K.-based strategic bombing offensive

of a power, intensity, and duration hardly foreseeable in spring of 1942—depending on both together for the attritional

and diversionary preparation necessary

to ensure its own success. Most obviously, the new ROUNDUP with 30, or even

36, divisions was not the 48-division

ROUNDUP originally projected for 1943.

The U.S. Chiefs left their preconference briefing of the President on 8 May

apparently under the impression that

they now had his full support. Even

more strongly than in their formal position papers they had stressed the importance they attached to limiting American liability in the Mediterranean after

the conquest of Sicily. They had suggested that at the forthcoming conference U.S. representatives should be prepared to discuss very modest operations

in the Western Mediterranean only

(e.g. Sardinia) as bargaining counters

to win a definite British commitment

to a 1944 ROUNDUP and as alternatives

to more risky Mediterranean ventures.

Such limited operations should be portrayed as "of an emergency nature," defensible only to the degree that they

11

 (1) SS 54/1, 8 Apr 43. (2) OPD Paper, 12 May 43,

sub: Heretical Thoughts on One Phase of 1943

Strategy, OPD Exec 8, Book 9, Item 60. (3) SS 79,

29 Apr 43. (4) Memo, Somervell for Marshall, 14

May 43, sub: Study of Opns for Italy and Turkey,

folder Agenda, Hq ASF. (5) Memo, ACofS OPD for

CofS, 6 May 43, sub: Transfer of Troops N Africa

to U.K., ABC 337 TRIDENT, Sec C. (6) JCS 293,

7 May 43, title: Limited Opns in Mediterranean

1943-44. (7) Guyer, The War Against Germany, ch.

VIII, Part B, pp. 290-322, History JCS. 12

 (1) CCS 219, 14 May 43, memo by U.S. CsofS,

title: Conduct of the War 1943-44. (2) JCS 286/1,

8 May 43.
62 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

might support Russia. The President

was warned to be wary of such British

conference tactics as attempting to avoid

discussion of ROUNDUP by restricting the

agenda to strategy for 1943, and denying

or glossing over the intimate relation

between the war against Japan and the

war in Europe. Against such tactics and

any other unacceptable proposals—specifically, for operations "east of Sicily," or

heavy commitments in the Mediterranean generally, or for abandonment of

ANAKIM — the JCS urged a single response: the United States would then

feel obliged to intensify its pressure and

expand its commitments in the Pacific.13

In reality Roosevelt was far from going along with this strong line in its

entirety. He accepted readily enough

the idea of pressing for an invasion in

1944 (which there is no reason to believe he had ever abandoned), but he

was not prepared to jeopardize relations

with the British by taking the hard line

on Mediterranean strategy that the military were pressing upon him. "No closed

minds," he scribbled at the top of his

copy of the JCS recommendations, and

his other marginal notations indicated a

positive interest in the eastern Mediterranean that would have shattered the

optimism with which the JCS were then

contemplating the approaching confrontation.14

The JCS and the British received a

clear intimation of Roosevelt's position

during his opening remarks at the first

plenary meeting of the conference at

the White House on 12 May. He began

by stressing two cherished features of

British Mediterranean strategy—the attritional effect of the North African campaign on German power, and the prospects of Turkish intervention leading to

possible "combined operations toward

the Adrianople line, thus threatening

Bulgaria, and inducing that country to

withdraw from the war."15 He then proceeded to the cardinal point on which

he and the JCS agreed, aversion to "putting large armies in Italy," but softened

this, in turn, by suggesting as an alternative, not the attack on Sardinia favored by the JCS, but an occupation of

the southern part of the peninsula.

Following these conciliatory remarks,

Roosevelt firmly stated the American desire for a definite decision on a crossChannel invasion in spring of 1944 and

for an immediate resumption of the

13

 (1) Memo, Leahy for President, 8 May 43, sub:

Recommended Line of Action at Coming Conference, Franklin D. Roosevelt Library, Hyde Park,

N.Y. Also published as JCS 286/1, 8 May 43.

(2) Admiral Leahy's memoirs state rather ambiguously that at this meeting the President agreed to

press for a cross-Channel invasion "at the earliest

practicable date" with preparations to launch it "by

spring of 1944." Leahy, I Was There, p. 157.

(3) Matloff, Strategic Planning, 1943-44, pp. 124-25. 14

 Memo cited in note (1) above. Other notations

included: "Turkey . . . Taking the weight off Russia"; question marks opposite two statements concerning U.S. non-involvement in the eastern

Mediterranean; and a sceptical or derogatory "This

is conversation" opposite a long paragraph about

Russian suspicions of British designs on the Dardanelles and about British ability to dominate the

Straits from bases in the Dodecanese. The admonitions to invoke the turn-to-the Pacific threat (five of

them in the five-page memo) were largely ignored,

except for a heavy question mark opposite one and

a "topsy turvy" opposite another. The assertion that

U.S. public opinion would be impatient of eastern

Mediterranean involvement, in the light of the

Japanese threat in the Pacific, elicited a cryptic

"Spinach." 15

 (1) Min, 1st White House Mtg, CCS, TRIDENT,

12 May 43. (2) For the characterization of Roosevelt's agreement at this time to press for a 1944

cross-Channel invasion as "one of the most farreaching decisions of the war" see Matloff, Strategic

Planning, 1943-44, p. 125.
TRIDENT 63

build-up for it. Then, in characteristically offhand fashion, he added that if either SLEDGEHAMMER or ROUNDUP were

to be executed at that time, the conference should reach a decision to undertake one or the other.16

 By thus bringing into the open at the beginning of

the conference what the JCS had studiously excluded from their position

papers in defiance of staff calculations,

the real uncertainty surrounding the

feasibility of mounting a cross-Channel

operation on the scale of the original

ROUNDUP by spring of 1944, Roosevelt

neatly undercut the position with which

the Joint Chiefs had hoped to confront

the British. Once again, as at Casablanca,

it was apparent that the Americans did

not speak with a single voice. While

the records show no detectable reaction

to the President's remarks on the part of

the U.S. Chiefs of Staff, the latter were

well aware as the conference proceeded

that he would not tolerate a rigid and

doctrinaire approach to British proposals on Mediterranean strategy. As for

northwestern Europe, it was significant

that, as the staffs got down to the knotty

questions of what could and what could

not be done, the problem was discussed

in terms of the vivid dichotomy—SLEDGEHAMMER versus ROUNDUP—i n which

Roosevelt had couched it.17

The British Program: Mediterranean

Now, Roundup Maybe

The central theme of the British program for Europe was, in fact, the necessity of maintaining undiminished momentum in the Mediterranean following

the conquest of Sicily. "The mere capture of Huskyland," Churchill had declared early in April, "will be a paltry

and unworthy result for the campaign

of 1943." In the wide spectrum of opportunities he foresaw opening up with the

capture of Sicily, his first and major objective was the elimination of Italy.

This, he was sure, "would cause a chill

of loneliness over the German people,

and might be the beginning of their

doom."18

The British thought Italy could probably be knocked out by air and naval

action followed by landings on the "toe"

and "heel" of the peninsula, the task

to be completed by November at the

latest. With Italy out of the war, 7 Italian divisions in France and Corsica and

32 in the Balkans would have to be replaced by German units on something

like a one-for-two ratio, and the overextended Luftwaffe would somehow

have to make up for the loss of 1,400

Italian aircraft. Loss or neutralization

of the Italian Fleet would release powerful British naval units for service

against Japan. Turkey would become

amenable to persuasion, and might

even come over to the Allied camp.

With German forces spread thin, it

would be easy to seize a bridgehead on

16

 (1) Min, 1st White House Mtg CCS, TRIDENT, 12

May 43. (2) For discussion of this episode see Kent

Roberts Greenfield, American Strategy in World War

II: A Reconsideration (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins

Press, 1963), pp. 63-64. 17

 (1) See, for example, Brooke's assertion that

without an aggressive Mediterranean campaign in

1943, "at best only a SLEDGEHAMMER could be undertaken" in spring of 1944, Min, 85th mtg CCS, 15

May 43. (2) OPD notes on JCS mtg, 17 May 43, OPD

Exec 5, folder 1, Item 10.

18

 (1) Msg, Prime Minister to Lt Gen Sir Hastings

L. Ismay, quoted in Churchill, The Hinge of Fate,

Appendix A, Book Two, p. 943. (2) Ibid., Book Two,

p. 791. (3) Min, 1st White House Mtg, TRIDENT,

12 May 43. (4) Msg, Prime Minister to President,

circa 6 Apr 43, OPD 381 Security II.
64 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

the Adriatic coast, say, at Durazzo, throw

a few divisions into the Balkans to "activate" the guerrillas, and occupy the Dodecanese. Nothing else the Allies could

possibly do in 1943, the British declared,

would so effectively help the Russians

on the Eastern Front, and it would be

unthinkable to leave large forces in the

Mediterranean idle for seven or eight

months while Germany perhaps won

the war on the plains of Russia.

In the meantime the build-up of

forces in the United Kingdom and the

strategic bombing offensive against Germany would be proceeding apace, looking toward a cross-Channel invasion "as

soon as German resistance is weakened

to the required extent"—a condition the

British were confident of meeting by

spring or summer of 1944. They

summed up their program:

Our final conclusion is that the Mediterranean offers us opportunities for action in

the coming autumn and winter, which may

be decisive, and at the least will do far

more to prepare the way for a successful

cross-Channel operation in 1944 than we

should achieve by attempting to transfer

back to the United Kingdom any of the

forces now in the Mediterranean theater.

If we take these opportunities, we shall have

every chance of breaking the Axis and of

bringing the war with Germany to a suc- cessful conclusion in 1944.19

By mutual agreement neither side attempted during the first few days of debate to present detailed estimates of

requirements or capabilities. The discussion was confined to generalities in order,

as the British Chiefs put it, to "clear

our minds on the strategical issues, and

decide, on merits, on the course of action

at which we should aim."20 Thus reduced to stark outline, the opposing emphases of the two positions—the British

upon the Mediterranean in 1943, the

American upon northwestern Europe in

1944—stood out in bold relief. The inevitable clash occurred almost at the outset. Following General Brooke's exposition of the British position at the first

CCS meeting on 13 May, General Marshall took the floor with an abrupt "now

we get to the heart of the problem."

Military operations, he asserted, always

cost more than originally expected; once

undertaken, they had to be backed to

the limit, regardless of cost. To invade

Italy would create another vacuum in

the Mediterranean, with the inevitable

result that "in 1943 and almost all 1944

we should be committed, except for the

air attack on Germany, to a Mediterranean policy," besides prolonging the

war in Europe and jeopardizing the

American position in the Pacific. Brooke

replied that the Western Allies would

be unable in any event to mount a serious effort on the Continent until 1945

or 1946; any force that could reach the

Continent in 1944 would not be able

to even hold its own unless the German

armies were fully committed elsewhere.

Did this mean, demanded Marshall, that

the British "regarded Mediterranean operations as the key to a successful termination of the European war?" Did the

British really believe, he probed, that

the Russians would be satisfied with an

attack on Italy at the cost of postponing

ROUNDUP? Obviously nettled, Brooke retorted:

What Russia wished us to achieve was

a withdrawal of German forces. He believed

19

 (1) CCS 224, 14 May 43, memo by Br COS,

title: Opns in European Theater Between HUSKY

and ROUNDUP. (2) Min, 83d mtg CCS, 13 May 43,

Annex B. 20

 Min, 83d mtg CCS, 13 May 43, Annex B.
TRIDENT 65

that only by attacking in the Mediterranean

could we achieve immediate results and that

this was more valuable than building up for

a 1944 ROUNDUP which might not even then

be possible.21

When the U.S. Chiefs of Staff reviewed

their notes it seemed evident to them

that Brooke had let the cat out of the

bag. The British, Admiral King declared,

obviously wanted to "drift toward an

incidental ROUNDUP" that would be undertaken only when Germany was at the

point of collapse, and if they were not

pinned down, would continue to "fiddle

fuddle" and "limp along" as before.

None of his colleagues challenged his

conclusion that if the British could not

be forced into an unequivocal commitment to carry out the cross-Channel invasion in spring of 1944, "we ought to

divert our forces to the Pacific."22

The air did not begin to clear until

the planning staffs got down to an examination of requirements and resources. On 17 May the British planners,

after consulting their American opposites, gave the CCS an evaluation of the

requirements of their Mediterranean

program and its impact on BOLERO.

They brought out a point previously

obscure, that no ground reinforcements

in the Mediterranean were anticipated,

and their estimate of forces available

after HUSKY came as a jolt to the Americans—38 Allied divisions, 25 of them

British-controlled instead of the 13 assumed by the American staffs. The principal cost to BOLERO of post-HUSKY Mediterranean operations would be the diversion of 90 cargo vessels from the Atlantic,

which would reduce a potential 20-division build-up in Great Britain to 141⁄2

divisions. All but two of these, however,

would be ready to move across the

Channel on 1 April; whereas, if Mediterranean operations were suspended,

only 16 of the 20 U.S. divisions in the

British Isles at that time would be operational, owing to the limited capacity of

British ports and the U.S. administrative

establishment to handle incoming forces.

In short, the British staff contended

that the difference between the alternatives of halting or continuing Mediterranean operations, as far as the impact

on the U.K. build-up was concerned,

boiled down to only 31⁄2 divisions. Even

this gap could be narrowed, they said,

by bringing one or two of their own divisions back from the Mediterranean early

in 1944, though they saw no point in

doing so since the size of the cross-Channel assault forces seemed to be limited

by availability of landing craft.

With the British estimating their

home forces (including Canadians yet

to arrive) at only 14 divisions rather

than 16, the total Allied invasion army

on 1 April 1944 would add up to roughly 27 or 28 divisions. Limitations of continental port capacity would hold down

to 25 the number of divisions that could

be put ashore by D plus 125—hardly

enough to oppose an estimated 35 German divisions in France and the Low

Countries, besides the additional forces

that could be rushed from other sectors

over Western Europe's excellent rail net.

Hence the necessity, as the British saw

it, of an aggressive campaign in the

Mediterranean to disperse and pin down

enemy forces and prevent Germany from

reinforcing northwestern France. If the

Mediterranean program were carried

out, the British were confident that "a

21

 As in Min, 83d mtg CCS, 13 May 43.

22 Min, 81st mtg JCS, 14 May 43.
66 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

successful invasion should be possible

with the forces outlined above in the

spring or summer of 1944."23

Analyzing the British plan, the American staffs quickly noted the contrast

between the pessimism of estimates and

calculations relating to the cross-Channel

operation and the optimism of those relating to the Mediterranean. Reception

capacity in the United Kingdom and the

rate of build-up on the Continent

seemed to have been rated low; the

number, strength, and mobility of enemy forces in France and the Low Countries had been rated high. By contrast,

for the Mediterranean cargo shipping

requirements, escort limitations, and relief and occupation costs had been rated

low or ignored altogether. The British

seemed to expect that "the landing of

a few . . . soldiers" in southern Italy

would cause the immediate collapse of

the Fascist government while the Germans looked idly on from north of the

Alps. All was to be done, apparently,

"in our spare time this summer." "The

wish," General Marshall delicately suggested, "might have been father to the

thought."24

Staff reactions were reflected in a rebuttal prepared by the U.S. joint planners attacking as "unsound strategically

and logistically" the concept, which they

read into British arguments, of attempting to defeat the Axis by an invasion of

southern Europe rather than by a "decisive" invasion from the northwest. The

planners restated the American case for

a spring 1944 ROUNDUP, and particularly

challenged the low British estimates of

possible rates of build-up on the Continent. They were forced to recognize,

however, that the American position, as

presented early in the conference, had

glossed over the time required to prepare U.S. divisions arriving in Great

Britain for the move across the Channel.

This contributed to a dawning realization by the Americans that on the question of capabilities for building up a

cross-Channel invasion force in the United Kingdom, the two positions actually

were not far apart. Something like a

break-through occurred on 19 May

when, in separate meetings, Admiral

Leahy and Admiral King referred to

the projected invasion—Leahy alluding

to the British concept, King to the

American—as an expanded "SLEDGEHAMMER."25

How Large an Assault?

The rapid decay of the ROUNDUP concept in the first week of the TRIDENT

Conference owed even more to the necessity, reluctantly accepted by both sides,

of taking a realistic view of the future

23

 CCS 234, 17 May 43, memo, U.K. JPS, title:

Defeat of Axis Powers in Europe (Elimination of

Italy First). 24

 (1) Min, 87th mtg CCS, 18 May 43. (2) Memo,

Cols Smith and Belts for Gen Wedemeyer, 18 May

43, ABC 331 (9-25-41) Sec 7. (3) Memos, Somervell

for CofS, 17 and 19 May 43. (4) Draft JWPC Paper,

18 May 43. (3) and (4) in ABC 337 TRIDENT, Sec A.

(5) Memo, Maj Gen Walter B. Smith for Gen Wedemeyer, 21 May 43, sub: Comments on Defeat of Axis

Powers in Europe, OPD Exec 8, Book 9, Case 85.

(6) Memo, Somervell for Marshall, 14 May 43. (7)

Memo, Gross for Somervell, 17 May 43. (6) and (7) in

folder Agenda, Hq ASF. (8) On civilian supply see

below, Chapters XXX and XXXI.

25

 (1) Min, 88th mtg CCS; 85th mtg JCS, 19 May

43. Admiral Leahy, in the former meeting used the

phrase "magnified SLEDGEHAMMER"; Admiral King

in the latter meeting referred to a "glorified SLEDGEHAMMER." (2) CCS 235, memo by U.S. JPS, 18 May

43, title: Defeat of Axis Powers in Europe (Concentration of Largest Possible Force in U.K.).
TRIDENT 67

availability of assault shipping. Since

August 1942 British thinking with respect to the cross-Channel assault had

been colored by memories of the Dieppe

disaster. From that experience the British Combined Commanders' staff had

drawn the lesson that any assault on the

Channel coast must be both powerful

and concentrated in order to break

through the crust of coastal defenses,

secure a substantial beachhead, and permit deployment of invading forces. A

natural product of this line of thinking

was SKYSCRAPER, an invasion model under study early in March, which envisaged simultaneous landings near Caen

and on the east coast of the Cotentin

Peninsula with subsequent exploitation

toward Cherbourg and the ports to the

northeast. It was a formidable conception: 10 assault divisions simultaneously

afloat and landed in the first two days,

comprising 227,000 troops and 33,000

tanks and vehicles. This assemblage

would pose lift requirements for 60 combat loaders, 437 LST's, 538 LCI (L)'s,

and over 3,000 LCT's and smaller craft.

Such figures (for the larger types of assault vessels, at any rate) were generally

recognized as fanciful and the British

Chiefs of Staff presently scrapped the

plan. When General Morgan and his

assistants began work in April on crossChannel plans, it was under the more

or less explicit assumption that they must

avoid their predecessors' cardinal error

of aiming too high above the probable

limitations of available resources.26

In Washington the approach was different. When preparing the estimates

submitted to the JCS on 8 May, which

purported to demonstrate the feasibility

of a major cross-Channel operation, the

Joint War Plans Committee had reached

all the way back to the original ROUNDUP

plan of April 1942 for its landing craft

requirements. This plan belonged to an

earlier era in the development of amphibious doctrine. Its assault force, like

that of SKYSCRAPER, comprised ten divisions but was far weaker in armor and

vehicles, and its lift requirements were

correspondingly lower—for example, less

than half the LST's and less than onefifth the LCT's.27

 Contrary to all recent

experience, moreover, the ROUNDUP estimates allowed for losses of only 10 percent of craft in training during the

build-up period, and took no account

of the space requirements inherent in

assault loading as opposed to theoretical

rated capacities of vessels. The staff assumed, finally, that no further amphibious operations, and therefore no further

losses, would occur in the Mediterranean.

The JWPC concluded that the only

serious shortages would be encountered

in two of the larger types of vessel, LST's

and LCI (L)'s. These shortages could be

filled, the committee thought, by modest production increases that would not

threaten other naval building programs

—and since the increases would provide

more of both types from 1944 production for the Pacific, it should be possible

to borrow 35 LST's and 76 LCI (L)'s

26

 (1) Harmon, Cross-Channel Attack, pp. 55-59.

(2) Memo, G-3 for Exec, Plng Sec, War Office, 9 Mar

43, SHAEF SGS 560, vol. I (RG 910).

27

 The difference in doctrine reflected here is more

striking in that ROUNDUP provided for an initial

assault on a 6-division front, whereas SKYSCRAPER

was on a 4-division front; initial assault echelons

had heavier complements of armor than the followup elements.
68 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

from Pacific allotments in 1943 for use

in ROUNDUP.28

The proposals for diversions from the

Pacific evoked immediate protests from

Admirals King and Cooke, and the Joint

Chiefs promptly deleted them. Deciding

further that it would be unwise "to enter

into argument" with the British over

allocations, they detached the entire portion of the report dealing with landing

craft and assigned it the status of "a

Planners' paper." For purposes of discussion at TRIDENT, the JCS took its

stand on the simple assertion that landing craft requirements could be met on

the scale of the old ROUNDUP plan,

though at the expense of some operations in other theaters. They recommended only such increases in production as might be managed "without undue interference" with other essential

programs.29

The Navy had, in fact, already decided to increase production. Monthly

schedules of LST's were to be raised

from 15 to 20 through 1943, then leveled

off at 12 per month beginning in January 1944 instead of in April as previously planned. For LCI (L)'s the new

program increased monthly construction

from 16 to 20 beginning in October

1943. An improved tank lighter, the

LCT (6), was to go into production in

August with a planned rate of output

of 20 per month from November on;

it would supersede the LCT (5), for

which the current schedules of 10 per

month would be allowed to run their

course.30

By such modest increases in 1943 the

Navy evidently hoped to meet ROUNDUP

requirements as stated by the Joint Planners without resorting to the proposed

diversions from the Pacific. Under the

allocations subsequently made at TRIDENT most of the increases in output of

LST's, LCI (L)'s, and LCT's for the rest

of 1943 would be assigned to ROUNDUP,

but from January 1944 on all production

was expected to go to the Pacific along

with the bulk of the total 1943 production. One ASF officer, noting on 15 May

the preponderance of new 1943 tonnage

assigned to the Pacific, drily commented

that "Navy plans do not propose to distribute this equipment where the major

operations are indicated."31 Adjustments

made later in the conference did little

to rectify the imbalance.

At TRIDENT the size of the cross-Channel assault quickly became a subject of

contention between the British and

American staffs, although both agreed

on the desirability of a large assault.

Perhaps because General Morgan's staff

had not had time to produce a smaller

model in line with his recent instructions, the British brought to the conference a plan not noticeably smaller than

the discarded SKYSCRAPER—four divisions

in the initial assault, three in the immediate follow-up, and three more in surviving craft, with a total lift requirement

of some 8,500 ships and craft of all types.

28

 (1) JCS 291/1, 8 May 43. (2) Memo, Col Arthur

G. Trudeau for Gen Somervell, 15 May 43, sub:

Ldg Cft for Proposed Opns, folder CsofS Jt and

Comb 1942-44, Hq ASF. (3) JCS 311, 15 May 43, rpt

by JWPC, title: Mobility and Utilization of Amphibious Assault Craft. 29

 (1) CCS 215, 13 May 43. (2) Min, 80th mtg JCS,

12 May 43.

30

 (1) CCS 244/1, 25 May 43, Annex V and app. B.

(2) For previous production schedules see above,

Chapter I. 31

 (1) Memo, Trudeau for Somervell, 15 May 43,

sub: Ldg Cft for Proposed Opns. (2) Compare CCS

244/1, 25 May 43, app. B, with Tables I-VII in

JCS 291/1, 8 May 43.
TRIDENT 69

"The number of craft required to cross

the Channel," the British planners contended, "is higher than in other parts

of the world on account of the need for

a quicker rate of build-up and of the

higher degree of resistance expected."32

To the U.S. Chiefs of Staff-though

they, too, wanted a strong assault—this

approach seemed added proof of the insincerity of British professions of loyalty

to a cross-Channel strategy and an indication of their intention, as Admiral

King put it, to "wreck ROUNDUP on the

matter of landing craft."33 The U.S.

Staff estimated that, assuming no Mediterranean operations after HUSKY, a total

of 4,657 craft of all types would be available for ROUNDUP. This number, they

now admitted in a partial retreat from

their first optimistic estimate, might "not

meet fully the maximum vehicle requirements of a large-scale ROUNDUP"—all the

more reason, they thought, for not risking the certain losses further Mediterranean operations would entail, leaving

an "entirely inadequate provision" for

the cross-Channel invasion.34 American

staff criticism focused, in fact, on what

seemed the fantastically optimistic British estimates of probable losses of amphibious shipping to be expected in

their Mediterranean program. Assuming

that Italy would collapse after the loss

of Sicily and that if German resistance

did materialize it could be bypassed, the

British expected losses of only 10 percent in personnel lift and 6 percent in

vehicle lift. American staff calculations,

by contrast, assuming two major operations following HUSKY with 30 percent

losses in each, indicated that of the lift

then in the Mediterranean only about

half would remain at the end of 1943.

In any case the Americans doubted that

the British timetable of Mediterranean

operations could be completed in time

to transfer surviving vessels back to England for ROUNDUP in spring of 1944.35

After some discussion the British and

U.S. staffs were able to agree on loss

rates, for planning purposes, of 20 percent for ships and 50 percent for craft

in each major Mediterranean operation undertaken—a major concession to

American conservatism. The British also

substantially reduced their estimates of

requirements for the cross-Channel attack, mainly in the small types of craft.36

But these reductions still left a wide gap

between estimated requirements and estimated assets in the three critical types

—LST's, LCI(L)'s, and LCT's—even on

the premise, which the British would not

accept, that no further operations would

be undertaken in the Mediterranean

after HUSKY. The original choices remained fundamentally unaltered: either

more assault shipping must be found, or

the requirement must be reduced—by

curtailing the scope of the operation,

postponing it, or abandoning it altogether. Admirals King and Cooke, convinced that the British had no intention 32

 (1) CCS 234, 17 May 43. (2) The COSSAC staff

was already working on a 5-division assault plan.

See Papers, 1944 Hypothesis, 15 May 43, and Planning for Operations in 1943-44, 20 May 43, in SHAEF

SGS 560, vol. I. 33 (1) Min, 85th mtg JCS, 19 May 43. (2) See also

min, 83d and 84th mtgs JCS, 17, 18 May 43; 87th mtg

CCS; and 74th mtg JPS, 18 May 1943. 34

 CCS 235, 18 May 43.

35

 (1) Ibid. (2) CCS 234, 17 May 43. (3) Draft JWPC

Paper, 18 May 43, title: Critical Analysis of British

Plan. (4) Memo, Somervell for CofS, 19 May 43,

sub: CCS 234. Items 3 and 4 in ABC 337 TRIDENT.

(5) Min, 74th mtg JPS, 18 May 43. 36

 Min, 84th mtg JCS, 18 May 43; 85th mtg, 19

May 43.
70 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

of carrying out the operation anyway,

did not hesitate to advocate the last

course. "If the British will not do

ROUNDUP," King repeatedly demanded,

"why hoard toward BOLERO [sic] at all?"37

The Trident Decisions on Europe

In the midst of all the heated talk, a

compromise was taking shape. By 17

May the Joint Chiefs were facing up to

the clear indications that neither the

forces nor (barring massive increases in

production) the assault lift for a ROUNDUP-type operation could be amassed in

the United Kingdom by spring 1944

under any scheme of deployment or under any limitation upon Mediterranean

strategy. In the Army staff there was still

some sentiment that, in the words of one

OPD officer, "whatever landing craft

[are] required to assure success must be

obtained even at the cost of merchant

shipping or escort craft." General Somervell urged this view on the Chief of

Staff, but it found no adherents on higher levels. On the 17th the JCS agreed

with General Marshall that a full-scale

spring 1944 ROUNDUP was "a logistic impossibility."38

Plans for the air assault on Germany

played no small part in this drift of

thinking. Earlier General Marshall had

admitted that it would have been suicidal to land 25 divisions on the Channel

coast in 1942, but the great difference

between 1942 and 1944 would be the

interim "battering and bleeding" of Germany by Allied air power, which he ventured to hope might be worth 50 or 60

ground divisions. Under a protecting

air umbrella a comparatively small assault force could seize a bridgehead and

follow-up forces could "flood in behind."

The British Chiefs also supported the

bombing offensive, and the CCS on 18

May approved the Eaker plan, with its

scheduled fourth phase designed to lead

immediately into a cross-Channel assault.39

 Discussion of a medium-sized

cross-Channel assault — something more

than SLEDGEHAMMER and less than

ROUNDUP — became explicit, and from

this "split-the-difference" approach

emerged, on 19 May, Operation ROUNDHAMMER (as Admiral King aptly named

it). The conception was destined within

a few weeks to take form on the planning boards in London under a more

pretentious title, OVERLORD, and, after

subsequent modifications, eventually to

materialize on the beaches of Normandy

in June 1944.40

Evidently the British had been moving in the same direction. In a closed

meeting on 19 May, Brooke recorded,

the Combined Chiefs of Staff "at last

formed a bridge across which we could

meet." Ostensibly, the compromise consisted of a British commitment to carry

out ROUNDHAMMER on a definite target

date and an American agreement to undertake "such operations in exploitation

of HUSKY as are best calculated to elim37

 (1) Min, 81st mtg JCS, 14 May 43; 82d mtg, 15

May 43; 83d mtg, 17 May 43; 84th mtg, 18 May 43;

85th mtg, 19 May 43. (2) Min, 74th mtg JPS, 18

May 43. (3) CCS 235, 18 May 43. (4) Agreed loss

rates are in CPS 71, Subcom rpt, 20 May 43, title:

Availability of Ldg Cft for Operation ROUNDHAMMER, ABC 561.1 (19 May 43) Sec 1A. 38

 (1) Min, 83d mtg JCS, 17 May 43. (2) OPD

Notes on CPS 58th mtg, 19 May 43, ABC 337

TRIDENT, Sec C. (3) Memo, Somervell for CofS, 19

May 43, sub: CCS 234.

39

 (1) Min, JCS mtgs: 81st, 14 May 43; 82d, 15

May 43. (2) Min, CCS mtgs: 85th, 15 May 43; 87th,

18 May 43. 40

 Min, 85th mtg JCS, 19 May 43.
TRIDENT 71

inate Italy from the war and to contain

the maximum German forces." The U.S.

part of the agreement was regarded by

everyone as a major concession, Brooke

noting it as a "triumph" in the light of

what he believed to be the American

desire "to close down all operations in

the Mediterranean after capture of Sicily."41

The U.S. Chiefs had reached their

decision after three days of sometimes

bitter debate among themselves and under what Marshall mysteriously referred

to as "terrific" pressure from an unnamed source—possibly the President—

to reach agreement with the British.

The concession was, moreover, strictly

qualified. The Americans stipulated that

any operations undertaken in the Mediterranean must depend solely on resources already available in the theater,

and they insisted on withdrawing for

use in ROUNDHAMMER some of the air

forces used in HUSKY and, after 1 November, four U.S. and three British divisions. They further stipulated that each

specific operation in the Mediterranean

must be approved in advance by the

CCS, who would review the whole situation again in July or early August.

Meanwhile, General Eisenhower would

submit his recommendations on postHUSKY operations as soon as the progress

of the campaign in Sicily gave some indication of the quality of the resistance

that might be encountered in Italy.42

The British nevertheless succeeded in

writing into the TRIDENT "resources"

paper, as a basis for assigning assault

shipping, the three landings on the Italian mainland they had proposed: one

near Reggio across the Strait of Messina;

another on the east side of the toe in the

Crotone area; and a third, a sizable effort, near Taranto on the north shore

of the gulf of that name. If undertaken,

Eisenhower would have at his disposal

for these operations all the assault shipping that survived the Sicily landings,

except for small amounts to be withdrawn for assaults on the port of Akyab

in Burma and on Ramree Island off the

Burma coast and, possibly, for a forced

occupation of the Azores late in the summer. The arrangements were also subject to Admiral King's reservation that

final disposition of the American combat

loaders in the Mediterranean would be

made later.43 (Table 7)

The extent of the British concessions

is less clear. Marshall's staff had no

doubts, considering the agreement as

"the first real indication" that the British had "definitely accepted" the idea

of a decisive cross-Channel invasion—on

the assumption, of course, that their real

intention in presenting an invasion plan

at the conference had been simply to

have it rejected. Brooke himself, although apparently pleased, noted only

that the bridge built on the 19th was

41

 (1) Bryant, Turn of the Tide, p. 509. (2) CCS

237/1, 19 May 43, title: Draft Resolutions by CCS.

(3) Min, 98th mtg CCS, 19 May 43. 42

 (1) CCS 242/6, 25 May 43, title: Final Rpt to

President and Prime Minister. (2) CCS 237/1, 23

May 43. (3) CCS 250/1, 25 May 43, title: Implementation of Decision Reached at TRIDENT Conf. (4)

Min, 5th White House Mtg, 24 May 43. (5) Progress

toward the U.S. concession can be traced in the

JCS meetings of 17, 18, and 19 May, and in OPD

Notes on 83d mtg JCS, 17 May, and 88th mtg CCS,

19 May 43, Exec 5, Item 10, folder 1. (6) General

Marshall's remark is in Min, 83d mtg JCS, 17 May 43. 43 (1) CCS 223, memo CofS AFHQ, 14 May 43,

title: Opns After HUSKY. (2) Min, 74th mtg JPS, 18

May 43. (3) Memo, Churchill for Field Marshal Jan

Christian Smuts, 16 Jul 43, quoted in Churchill,

Closing the Ring, pp. 35-37. (4) CCS 250/1, 25 May

43. (5) CCS 244/1, 25 May 43, app. A to Annex V.

TRIDENT 73

"not altogether a satisfactory one."44

The record of the conference discussions

seems to indicate that the retreat of the

British from the concept of a ROUNDUPtype invasion in 1944 paralleled that of

the Americans and was made easier by

strong hopes, of which Brooke made no

secret, that aggressive action in the Mediterranean might after all make the invasion unnecessary. But none of the available evidence suggests the slightest reluctance on their part to proceed energetically with the invasion build-up, to

allot forces for the operation, or even to

set a target date, so long as the Allies

pressed forward in the Mediterranean.

The decision on the target date (1

May 1944) was a compromise, but a

casual one. It was arrived at by splitting the difference between 1 April, the

Americans' preference, and 1 June, the

date suggested by Brooke to coincide

roughly with the opening of the campaign season in Russia. Although at the

beginning of the conference the Americans had insisted on an early and firm

target date and later were to make much

of its sanctity, their final acceptance of

1 May was rather offhand; at the time,

Admiral King merely remarked that a

later date might be equally acceptable

and that target dates seldom were met

anyway.45 The British quite evidently

attached little importance to it. Brooke's

overriding idea, noted privately at the

time, was that "success can only be secured by pressing operations in the

Mediterranean to force a dispersal of

German forces, help Russia, and thus

eventually produce a situation where

cross-Channel operations are possible."

Having secured a qualified American

agreement to push on in the Mediterranean, he was willing to work in the

meantime toward a Channel crossing on

1 May 1944 on a scale sufficient, as the

agreed directive to COSSAC stated, "to

secure a lodgment on the Continent

from which further offensive operations

can be carried out."46 ROUNDHAMMER

was no SKYSCRAPER nor even a ROUNDUP,

but neither was it a SLEDGEHAMMER—

and it was more consonant than any of

them with the strategic outlook in May

1943. The TRIDENT estimates of the number

of ships and craft likely to survive landings in Italy helped to determine the

planned scale of the ROUNDHAMMER assault. British concessions on loss factors

for planning had pushed the estimates

of probable attrition in the Mediterranean sky-high. They now ranged from

40 to 80 percent cumulatively, "far beyond supportable losses," as Somervell

observed, "in either men or matériel in

any other part of our operations."47 To

the total number of survivors from operations in the Mediterranean, in Burma,

and in the Azores (all of which were to

be brought back to the British Isles by

spring of 1944) the Americans undertook to add 62 LST's, 58 LCI(L)'s, and

105 LCT's from new production in the

interim. New LCT's, LCA's, and other

44

 (1) Bryant, Turn of the Tide, diary entry for

19 May, p. 509. (2) OPD Paper, SS 106, title: Analysis

of TRIDENT and ANFA Confs, no date, ABC 381 SS

Papers 96-126/3 (7 Jan 43), See also Matloff, Strategic

Planning, 1943-44, p. 133. 45

 (1) Min, 88th mtg CCS, 19 May 43. Compare

King's remarks in 83d mtg CCS, 13 May, and 85th

mtg CCS, 15 May 43. (2) Harrison, Cross-Channel

Attack, pp. 69-70.

46

 (1) CCS 250/1, 25 May 43, Incl B. (2) Quotes

from Bryant, Turn of the Tide, p. 513. 47

 Memo, Somervell for Smith, 19 May 43, OPD

560 Security, II, Case 53.
74 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

more specialized craft would also be

forthcoming from British production.

The final tally for ROUNDHAMMER,

after deducting 10 percent of ships and

15 percent of craft for unserviceability

on D-day, added up (in major types)

to 6 APA's, 13 LSI(L's), 143 LST's, 88

LCI (L)'s, and 555 LCT's. (See Table

7.) The prospective armada represented

a fairly evenly divided coalition effort—

from the United States would come almost all the landings ships; from Great

Britain most of the regular combat loaders and nearly all of the more specialized

types of support craft and converted assault ships. Each country would provide

its own types of LCT's, LCM's, and

small infantry assault craft.48 (Table 8)

These estimates of available lift constituted the agreed upon "requirements"

for the ROUNDHAMMER assault. The calculated lift added up to an estimated five

divisions, three of them at assault scales,

and these constituted henceforth the approved dimensions within which the

planners had to work. In effect, the suit

was cut to fit the cloth. The whole assault

lift calculation was highly theoretical.

The staffs had simply translated the total

number of each type of vessel into the

numbers of men and vehicles (including

everything from jeeps to medium tanks)

that its rated capacity indicated it could

carry, added the totals together, and divided the sum by the average number

of men and vehicles that current doctrine allowed for a division in an amphibious operation. They had not considered the inevitable shrinkage of capacity to be expected when vessels were

grouped into subtask forces and teams

and loaded with several types of units

and equipment. Nor, since the site of the

operation still was not fixed, had they

considered the length of the Channel

turnaround. ROUNDHAMMER requirements, accordingly, were set at five assault divisions—three in the initial assault and two in the immediate followup—with two more to follow in surviving

ships and craft and an additional two

airborne. General Morgan was given

these specifications and directed to develop a plan.49

A total of 29 divisions (17 British and

Canadian, 12 American) was expected

to be assembled and ready in the United

Kingdom on D-day, including the 7 to

be transferred from the Mediterranean.

As many as 61⁄2 more from the United

States might be on hand, but would not

be fully equipped and ready to go.50

The build-up to these force levels was

calculated and recalculated, and calculations were still going on as the conference ended. British shipping was heavily

relied on for the movement of U.S.

forces, especially the Queen Elizabeth

and the Queen Mary, which would run

on a lengthened 4-week cycle and carry

up to 15,000 troops per crossing. With

these and other transports, there seemed

a fair prospect that British shipping

alone would move about 366,000 American troops across the Atlantic by May

1944. During 1943 the emphasis would

be on building up air forces for the strategic bombing offensive and service

troops to staff existing installations, construct new depots, and increase port intake capacity. Ground combat strength,

48

 CCS 244/1, 25 May 43, app. A to Annex V.

49

 The calculations are shown in CPS 71, 20 May

43. The directive to COSSAC is Incl B to CCS 250/1,

25 May 43. 50

 (1) CCS 244/1, 25 May 43, Annex II, Annex VII.

(2) One French division was regarded as a possibility.

76 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

in consequence, would reach only 8 divisions by the end of 1943, in a total force

of 763,000. The target strength for 1 May

1944 was 1,300,000 men—393,000 air and

907,000 ground forces.51 (Table 9)

Backing up the troop movements were

259 scheduled cargo sailings in the third

quarter of 1943, 280 in the fourth quarter, 420 in the first quarter of 1944, and

400 in the second quarter 1944. In addition, 12 shiploads of military cargo on

BOLERO account were to be lifted monthly on vessels carrying British import supplies. Although the volume of scheduled

troop and supply movements was heavier

in the four months preceding D-day than

earlier, the schedule clearly contemplated a substantial advance movement of

supplies in the summer of 1943, since

the troop build-up would not begin in

earnest until August. It was not enough,

even so, to satisfy the British, who were

worried over the impact of the heavy

winter and spring movements on their

crowded ports and indicated that 150

ships per month was the maximum that

could be accepted on BOLERO account.

The TRIDENT decisions thus gave the

ASF a green light for the BOLERO preshipment program, and before the conference ended a new program had already taken shape.52

The Other War

The debate on strategy in the European war dominated the TRIDENT meetings. There was no thoroughgoing discussion of the war against Japan, and

consideration of actual operations was

confined almost entirely to those in

southeast Asia. The broader issues of

whether—and, if so, to what extent—the

war against Japan should be subordinated to the war in Europe, in terms of

allocation of resources, was not debated

at length. The final decision, which in

the event proved more enduring than

those on the European war, was reached

with little fanfare.

The JCS came to the conference with

a rationale of the "defeat Germany first"

concept that was hardly compatible with

the British understanding of it. In their

own councils the JCS had agreed, repeatedly and explicitly, that if the British should insist on a predominantly

Mediterranean approach in Europe, the

United States must shift its main effort

to the Pacific. The threat was not made

explicit in the position papers presented

to the British. These papers set forth the

recently developed American theory of

the interrelated character of the "global"

war, and repeated the argument, briefly

debated in April, that it was essential to

"maintain and extend" the pressure in

the Pacific war while the war in Europe

was still in progress in order to defeat

Japan in the shortest possible time. Since

that time a significant new proviso had

been added to the effect that, should conditions develop making it possible to

end the war as a whole more quickly

by mounting a major offensive against

Japan before the European Axis was

defeated, "the concept of defeating Germany first may be reversed."53

 As a

51 corollary, in a discussion of the "main- (1) CCS 246, memo, by Br COS, 23 May 43, title:

Movement of Queens. (2) Min, 93d mtg CCS, 22 May

43. (3) CCS 244/1, 25 May 43. (4) Min, 94th mtg CCS,

23 May 43, and Annex A. 52

 (1) See below, ch. VII. (2) CCS 244/1, 25 May

43, Annex VII.

53

 (1) CCS 219, 14 May 43, memo by U.S. Chiefs of

Staff, title: Conduct of the War in 1943-44. (2) CCS

220, 14 May 43, memo by U.S. Chiefs of Staff, title:

Strategic Plan for the Defeat of Japan.

78 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

tain and extend" formula in a CCS meeting on 17 May Admiral Leahy declared

that "if an unfavorable situation arose

in the Pacific, all would realize that,

whatever agreements were in existence,

the United States would have to divert

forces to meet this eventuality."54

The U.S. Chiefs seemed to be taking

the position that the extremes of either

success or adversity in the Pacific might

dictate a reversal of the "Europe first"

strategy. Yet they did not think that

position inconsistent with their continuing belief that in all probability the war

could be won "most speedily by first

defeating Germany, and thereafter by

completing the defeat of Japan."55 There

is no indication that they had any plans

for a really large-scale shift to the Pacific in the foreseeable future, and no recent staff studies had explored the logistical implications. The Chiefs must have

been aware, indeed, that the President

would not support such a move. It seems

more likely that the real aim of the JCS

was to reserve the right to make a major

shift to the Pacific if developments

should require it—or if the British

should insist on a program of operations

in the Mediterranean that the Americans

could not accept.

Meanwhile, the U.S. Chiefs were determined, as they had served notice four

months earlier at Casablanca, to step up

the scale and tempo of the Pacific war.

The "maintain and extend" formula,

written into a CCS conference paper and

approved by the heads of state, would

lend to this purpose the sanctity of formally ratified coalition grand strategy,

even though the British would have little or no share in its implementation.

To be sure, implementation still lay

largely in the future. The more realistic

examination of resources that had taken

place since Casablanca had led the U.S.

planning staffs to scale down plans for

operations against Japan in 1943 so that

current plans actually were somewhat

more modest than the Casablanca proposals. But the American position paper

contained a broad hint of what was to

come:

U.S. naval forces [in the Pacific] will be

increased to the maximum consistent with

the minimum requirements in the Atlantic.

With due regard to the requirements of

the main effort against the European Axis,

air and ground forces will be provided so

as to facilitate joint action and make optimum use of the increasing strength of U.S.

Naval forces.56

Deployment to the Pacific of naval forces

that could not be profitably employed

in the Atlantic would, of course, create

its own rationale for new offensive operations. Naval forces, in turn, would draw

in their wake additional air and ground

forces, merchant shipping, and, of course,

amphibious shipping, which already was

moving to the theater in growing volume. As General Marshall had so often

argued with reference to the Mediterranean, offensives, once they were

launched, always generated demands for

more resources and led to further offensives.

The British did not make this obvious point in the discussions at TRIDENT

concerning the Pacific war. They did

strenuously object, however, as they had

in April, to the insertion of the phrase

"and extend" into the Casablanca formula. Brooke argued that "shipping

54

 Min, 86th mtg CCS, 17 May 43. 55

 Min, 83d mtg CCS, 13 May 43, Annex A. 56

 CCS 219, 14 May 43.
TRIDENT 79

alone prohibited an equal effort in the

Pacific Theater," and that the Allies

lacked the strength to defeat Germany

and Japan simultaneously. After an exchange of views on 17 May the general

issue was shelved temporarily in order

to permit discussion of the more concrete aspects of the war against Japan.57

At the beginning of the conference

the Americans had not yet agreed among

themselves on the specific outlines of a

strategy for the defeat of Japan. They

presented both a long-range plan and

one for specific operations to be undertaken in 1943-44; but the latter was

sketchy, and neither had a definite timetable. The long-range plan called for

operations converging on the China coast

from the Pacific, overland through

China, and by sea from India through

the Strait of Malacca and the South

China Sea. From bases in China, the

Allies would first attempt to crush Japan

by air bombardment; ultimately, if necessary, they would invade the home

islands.

The short-range prospectus for 1943-

44 provided for simultaneous advances

in the Pacific along two main axes. The

first was the familiar one already marked

out in the South and Southwest Pacific;

the second was the route through the

Central Pacific laid down long before

in the prewar plan ORANGE. Advances

along the former line in 1943-44 were

to extend only to the capture of the

Solomon Islands, the Bismarck Archipelago, and New Guinea, and in the

Central Pacific only as far as the Marshalls and Carolines, thus stopping far

short of the Philippines and the China

coast. These advances were to be combined with stepped-up air operations in

China, a north Burma operation to open

the Ledo Road to China, ejection of the

Japanese from the Aleutian Islands, and

intensified air and sea attacks on enemy

lines of communication. A sketchy estimate of requirements indicated that

about seven more Army divisions would

be needed in the Pacific, considerably

more aircraft both there and in China,

and an indeterminate amount of cargo

shipping besides the resources available

from a rapidly growing fleet. Most significantly, though the Americans stated

that the major restriction on Pacific operations would be "availability of trained

amphibious divisions and amphibious

craft," they made no attempt to enumerate how many of the latter would be

needed.58

The British, as Brooke laconically

noted, "accepted what was put forward"59

 in the American plan for 1943-

44 Pacific operations, and agreed that

the general plan for the defeat of Japan

should be the basis for further study and

report by the Combined Planners at the

next conference. Over mild British protests, Admiral King and General Marshall served notice that any surplus of

American aircraft in Europe would be

sent to the Southwest Pacific.60

The real debate developed over strategy in Burma and China. It was not a

purely Anglo-American debate, for both

Stilwell and Chennault were on hand to

support their opposing views. The President, although officially supporting the

JCS position that a land campaign in

57

 Min, 86th mtg CCS, 17 May 43.

58

 (1)CCS 239/1, 23 May 43, title: Opns in Pacific

and Far East in 1943-44. (2) CCS 220, 19 May 43,

title: Strategic Plan for Defeat of Japan. 59

 Quoted in Bryant, Turn of the Tide, p. 510. 60

 Min, 95th mtg CCS, 24 May 43.
80 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

Burma would be needed to open communications with China, barely disguised

his preference for Chennault's strategy

of staking everything on an air offensive.

Knowing this, the JCS had in fact come

prepared to agree to a modified version

of ANAKIM that involved a north Burma

operation to clear the trace for the Ledo

Road without the full-scale offensive

earlier considered necessary to open the

supply route north from Rangoon to the

old Burma Road.61 Before the conference ended Roosevelt had granted Chennault's Fourteenth Air Force so decisive

a claim on tonnage airlifted over the

Hump as to leave little capacity for

ground equipment for the Chinese forces

in Yunnan on whom Stilwell was counting heavily to carry out even a limited

ANAKIM.

The British also threw their weight

into the balance in favor of Chennault.

They set forth at length their objections

to executing ANAKIM in the 1943-44 dry

season, stressing its cost, the immense

logistical problems, and the difficulties

of jungle fighting. They pointed out

that, even if successful, the operation

would not permit overland supply movements into China before mid-1945 or

later. The British wanted, instead, to

concentrate immediately on expanding

the air route to China and carrying out

limited offensives in north Burma and

against Ramree Island and Akyab. As a

grand alternative, finally, Churchill expounded the advantages of naval and amphibious attacks against Sumatra, Java,

or Malaya.

These last-named schemes evidently

reflected diversionary tactics, for they

were not vigorously pressed. President

Roosevelt's views, on the other hand,

clearly pointed the way to a compromise

on operations in Burma. He insisted that

an enlarged air effort in China and

preparations for a limited ground campaign in north Burma were not mutually exclusive, and the CCS obediently

wrote both into their scheme of operations for the China, Burma, India theater (CBI) in 1943. First priorities were

assigned to expansion of the Hump airlift from its current capacity of less than

4,000 tons to 10,000 tons monthly, and

to development of air facilities in Assam

with a view to intensifying air operations

against the Japanese from both Burma

and China and to increasing the flow of

airborne supplies into China. "Vigorous

and aggressive land and air operations

into Burma via Ledo and Imphal" were

also to be undertaken in step with an

advance by Chinese forces from Yunnan,

and the British were charged with the

Akyab and Ramree Island amphibious landings. Meanwhile administrative

preparations for major land and amphibious operations on the scale of ANAKIM were to continue, but without a

target date.62

In effect, a campaign to reconquer

all of Burma and to reopen the old

Burma Road was indefinitely deferred.

A limited operation to retake northern

Burma and open a new road to China

stayed on the books but only as a second61

 (1) JCS 297, 10 May 43, title: Opns in Burma

1943-44. (2) Charles F. Romanus and Riley Sunderland, Stilwell's Mission to China, UNITED STATES

ARMY IN WORLD WAR II (Washington, 1953),

pp. 320-28. (3) See below, ch. XXI.

62

 (1) Min, 91st mtg CCS, 21 May 43. (2) Romanus

and Sunderland, Stilwell's Mission to China, pp.

328-33. (3) For the background of the decisions concerning CBI made at TRIDENT see Global Logistics,

1943-43 , pages 542-47. (4 ) An d se e below, ch . XXI.
TRIDENT 81

ary commitment. And, despite the President's optimism, it soon became apparent that the resources committed to CBI

were grossly inadequate to support simultaneous major offensives in the air and

on the ground.

Whatever the result may have owed to

differences within their own ranks, the

American military regarded the southeast Asia program decided upon as essentially a British one. "The British," noted Admiral Cooke after the Burma decisions had been made, ". . . have written

the ticket, in substance, for everything

to date. ... In the Pacific we will be

carrying out the operations with American forces, and I urge that we write the

ticket and accept absolutely no reservations from the British."63

 The British,

in fact, did accept the American "ticket"

for the Pacific as written, and this exchange smoothed the path for the agreement reached near the end of the conference on the "maintain and extend"

proviso that had been shelved a week

earlier. By 24 May only Admiral King,

on the American side, still held to that

proviso in its original form. After a short

debate the impasse was finally broken

by adding a phrase suggested by the

British naval chief, Admiral of the Fleet

Sir Dudley Pound: ". . . the effect of

any such extension on the overall objective to be given consideration by the

Combined Chiefs of Staff before action

is taken." The Americans also quietly

dropped the issue of a major shift to the

Pacific under hypothetical conditions

with a final warning, voiced by Admiral

Leahy, that "public opinion in the United States would not permit the acceptance of major reverses in the Pacific."64

The amended "maintain and extend"

formula, as both King and Brooke perceived, placed no real curb on American

prosecution of the Pacific war, which was

in fact soon to rise to a level of intensity not markedly lower than that of the

war in Europe. How soon and how high

were questions that could not be answered in concrete terms in May 1943,

most of all because plans for the great

Central Pacific offensive were still in the

formative stage. It was this offensive, in

which the growing power of the U.S.

Navy would be mainly concentrated, that

Admiral King evidently had in mind

when he rejected any reductions in existing allocations of landing craft to the

Pacific.65

The "Not Unmanageable" Cargo

Shipping Deficit

One of the last items of business at

TRIDENT, and an innovation in coalition

strategic-logistics, was the combined cargo shipping budget. The impetus to this

undertaking in global logistical account63

 Memo, Cooke for King, 21 May 43, sub: JCS

304, Opns in Pacific and Far East, 1943-44, ABC

337 TRIDENT, Sec E, Case 23.

64

 (1) Min, 95th mtg CCS, 24 May 43. (2) Bryant,

Turn of the Tide, pp. 515-16. (3) Fleet Admiral

Ernest J. King and Walter M. Whitehall, Fleet

Admiral King (New York: W. W. Norton & Co.,

1952). p. 441, (4) CCS 244/1, 25 May 43. 65

 (1) See, for example, the planned allocation of

60 LST's to the Pacific between August and November 1943 in Table 8. (2) Shortly after TRIDENT, in a

revised plan for 1943 deployment of combat loaders,

the Navy assigned 47 assault transports to the Pacific

as against only 19 to the Atlantic; at the time of

TRIDENT, the planned division between the two

areas had been roughly equal (31 to 27). See JCS

249 (Rev), 12 May 43; and JPS 193/1, 15 Jul 43, title:

Strategic Deployment of U.S. Forces to 1 Jul 44;

the last is a planning paper based on the TRIDENT

decisions.
82 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

ing came from the civilian shipping administrators, American and British alike,

who felt that the bankruptcy of strategic

planning following Casablanca had been

in large part a result of the failure of the

strategists to face up to the visible facts

and prospects of the shipping situation.

It was no accident, then, that at TRIDENT

the U.S. Deputy War Shipping Administrator, Lewis Douglas, was in attendance along with his British opposite,

Lord Frederick Leathers of the British

Ministry of War Transport (BMWT).

Both men were convinced that "it was

important not to leave . . . without having related fully the shipping availability

to the strategic programme."66

Because of differences in the composition and employment of the two merchant fleets, it had been agreed that the

shipping representatives of each nation

would bring to the conference a purely

national balance sheet, projected to the

end of 1943, matching their own requirements against their own assets. At the

conference, after requirements had been

adjusted to take into account decisions

reached on strategy, they would try to

apply one country's surpluses against the

other's deficits, explore possibilities for

further pooling on specific routes and

for specific programs and, finally, arrive

at an over-all estimate of the relation

between means and ends.

The British budget, submitted to the

American shipping authorities just before the conference began, showed a total

deficit of 155 sailings for the last half of

1943, for 95 sailings on military account

to the Mediterranean and Indian Ocean

areas, and 60 for the United Kingdom

import service after allowing for American aid already promised. No requirements had been budgeted for ANAKIM

(possibly 120 sailings), for post-HUSKY

operations in the Mediterranean, or for

cargo transfers from the Mediterranean

to the British Isles, apparently on the

assumption that if such requirements

materialized they would have to be absorbed in the American budget.67

 That

budget, which had been consolidated by

WSA from separate estimates submitted

by the military services and other claimants, showed a deficit of 181 sailings.68

WSA officials did not consider the

total deficit—336 sailings—as unduly for66

 (1) C. B. A. Behrens, "History of the Second

World War, United Kingdom Civil Series," Merchant

Shipping and the Demands of War (London: Her

Majesty's Stationery Office, 1955), pp. 366, 337-38.

(2) Leighton and Coakley, Global Logistics, 1940-43,

chs. XXV, XXVI.

67

 (1) Ibid. (1), pp. 368, 382. (2) WSA Notes on

Statements of Dry Cargo Shipping Position, May 10,

1943, Tables I, II, III. Table I is especially pertinent.

Folder CCS Reqmts and Availables 1943, WSA

Conway File (hereafter cited as WSA Notes). (3) The

term "sailings" used by the United States as the

unit of measure in computing its shipping budget

meant one round voyage by a theoretically averagesized ("notional") ship. The British budget was

computed in terms of dead-weight tons of shipping

continuously employed. The British deficit of 155

sailings was the estimated equivalent in U.S. terms

of about 800,000 dead-weight tons of U.K. shipping

continuously employed. The different methods of

measurement were used because the U.S. unit could

not be applied to a great part of British shipping,

12 percent of which, for example, was permanently

assigned to the "cross trades"—circuitous and varied

rounds among ports in areas other than the British

Isles; moreover, voyages between U.K. ports and

distant areas such as the Indian Ocean involved

complex routings among many intermediate ports.

U.S. shipping, on the other hand, was used on relatively short, direct runs between a home port and

a single overseas port or area. See Behrens, Merchant

Shipping, p. 379. 68

 (1) WSA Notes, Tables I, II, III. (2) Table,

U.S. Cargo Shipping Requirements 1943, prepared

by Plng Div OCT, ABC 570 (2-14-42) Sec 4. (3) Table,

Cargo Sailings Required by Army, folder 10a Shpg

File SoPac, ASF Plng Div.
TRIDENT 83

midable.69 Since most of it fell in the

third quarter of 1943 (109 sailings for

the British, 105 for the Americans) any

savings that could be made in distant

voyages during that quarter would automatically reduce the fourth quarter deficit as well. WSA hoped in fact to pick

up some U.S, savings on the Red Sea

route after the opening of the Mediterranean, and even to persuade the military to decelerate the British build-up

in India on the strength of a postponement of major operations there. There

was room for more pooling of U.S. Army

cargo and British import cargo on the

North Atlantic run and for more efficient use of freighter deck space; and

the Western Hemisphere trades, though

already attenuated, might absorb a small

further cut. By all these means, combined with rigid economies all down the

line, WSA hoped to reduce the entire

deficit by about two-thirds and to wipe

out the United Kingdom import deficit

altogether.70 Even as it stood, the deficit

represented less than 5 percent of total

requirements projected for a longer period than shipping officials ordinarily were

willing to make firm commitments. On

the eve of TRIDENT Lewis Douglas and

Sir Arthur Salter, the British merchant

shipping representative in Washington,

prepared a joint statement:

All estimates of available shipping and

requirements covering a long period extending into the future are necessarily

imprecise and subject to all the changing

fortunes of war. Shipping availabilities

fluctuate with the progress of submarine

warfare, routing, loss of shipping in assault

operations, and a variety of additional factors. Military requirements vary with developments in the theaters of war and modified strategic plans. The present estimates

of requirements and shipping availabilities

must therefore be constantly reviewed in the

light of changing conditions.

The deficits, they concluded, were "within the margin of error inherent in a

forward projection," and, with careful

economies, might "well prove to be manageable."71

Somervell and Gross, who had drawn

up the U.S. Army requirements that

formed the bulk of the American budget, took a different view. Still irked by

the President's decision at the end of

March to support British shipping needs

at whatever cost to American military

operations, they tried to have British

import requirements assigned the role

of residual legatee rather than listing

them along with other requirements, and

urged that the combined deficit be

charged against the import program.

Douglas and Hopkins overruled them

in a preconference session, but they renewed their effort on 22 May when

the combined budget came up for conference consideration.

The debate that ensued had a dreamlike quality. By this time the deficit had

been swollen by the addition of new

military requirements — for post-HUSKY

operations in the Mediterranean, for the

Azores occupation, for continued support of British forces in India, for Medi69

 Behrens, Merchant Shipping, pp. 369, 383, erroneously gives the American deficit alone as 336 sailings. This error invalidates much of her discussion

of the shipping problem at TRIDENT. 70

 (1) WSA Notes, Tab, Assumptions Underlying

WSA Estimates, 6 May 43; and marginal pencil comment on Table IV; Tab, Memorandum, 9 May 43;

and Table, 8 May 43. (2) Min, Conf, Douglas with

Hopkins, Somervell, Gross, and Rear Adm William

W. Smith, 7 May 43. Both in folder CCS Reqmts and

Avlbles 1943, WSA Conway File. 71

 WSA Notes.
84 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

terranean-to-U.K. transfers, and for prisoner-of-war movements. Before the debate could get well under way, the British unexpectedly offered to write off

their own deficit if the Americans would

write off theirs. Behind this proposal

apparently was a conviction, shared by

Douglas and his colleagues, that U.S.

military demands were inflated beyond

reason and that the American deficit "existed on paper but not in fact."72

 As for

the British deficit, import needs seemed

likely to be absorbed in the growing volume of transatlantic movements, while

sailings to India had lost some urgency

with the postponement of ANAKIM. Nevertheless, a stormy debate ensued, in

which the American military representatives attempted to secure a further deflation of the British budget. The climax

was reached in the small hours of Sunday morning, 23 May, when Somervell,

for reasons not explained, insisted that

the budget be projected to cover the first

nine months of 1944. This calculation,

so conjectural as to be hardly worth discussing, entailed additional hours of labor and produced astronomical new

paper deficits. Meanwhile, in piecemeal

concessions the Americans had reduced

their original 1943 deficit, despite interim additions, from 181 to 135 sailings,

and Somervell made a final bid to persuade the British to pick up half of this

rock-bottom debit. The British categorically refused, and Somervell finally conceded that "it might be managed." At

6:30 a.m. the meeting broke up "with

everyone," Douglas recorded, "well satisfied."73

A few hours later Somervell with evident pride presented the final document

to the Joint Chiefs, and that afternoon

Lord Leathers presented it to the CCS.

He indicated that the small residual

1943 deficit, less than 4 percent of total

requirements, would probably prove

"not unmanageable." The deficits for

1944 were simply ignored. With this verdict the CCS were content. Admiral King

later told Douglas, with unwonted joviality, that the budget was "the first statement of shipping that he had ever understood."74

 (Table 10)

Behind all this facile manipulation

of paper requirements and assets was a

slowly dawning awareness that the Allies

had won a smashing victory in the war

at sea. This was not apparent at the

beginning of the conference. As at Casablanca, the war against the U-boats was

made a first charge against Allied resources, and there was talk of land operations against the Bay of Biscay submarine bases. The decision to acquire

new air bases in the Azores, with or without the consent of Portugal, reflected the

general assumption that the U-boat

threat would continue to be a major

limitation on Allied strategy.75 But as

72

 (1) Behrens, Merchant Shipping, p. 370. (2) Conf,

Douglas, Hopkins, and others, 7 May 43. (3) Conf,

Douglas, Vice Adm Frederick J. Horne, Adm Smith,

and others, 22 May 43. (2) and (3) in folder Alloc

Genl, LWD Diary, WSA Douglas File. (4) See also

related corresp, same folder.

73

 (1) Min, Conf, 22 May 43. (2) Behrens, Merchant

Shipping, p. 371. 74

 (1) Douglas Notes on JCS and CCS Mtgs, 23

May 43, folder Alloc General, WSA Douglas File.

(2) CCS 244/1, 25 May 43, Annex VII, Part III,

Appendix: Memo by Douglas and Leathers, 23 May

43. (3) For Behrens' verdict on the budget see Merchant Shipping, pp. 373-74. 75

 (1) CCS 242/6, 25 May 43. (2) Min, 81st mtg,

JCS, 14 May 43. (3) Col E. A. Peterson, Section III,

The War against Germany and Its Satellites, ch.

VIII, Part D, pp. 483-86, in History of the Joint

Chiefs of Staff in World War II, MS, JCS Historical

Sec.
TRIDENT 85

TABLE 10—THE U.S. SHIPPING BUDGET: SPRING 1943

(IN SAILINGS)

a

 Figures in parentheses show additions to or subtractions from budget as initially submitted. b

 This represents a consolidation of several categories of requirements, involving maintenance of the war-making capacity of the Western

Hemisphere and support and maintenance of U.S. Army and Navy forces other than those in the British Isles, Mediterranean, China-BurmaIndia, and Pacific (1944). c

 Original Army requirements included 60 sailings in last half 1943, covering most of the British deficit in this category. d

 For cargo movements from Mediterranean to the United Kingdom, and 25 shipments in first quarter of 1944 to the Indian Ocean. e

 1943 requirements included in category described in b above.

Source: (1) WSA Notes on Statements of Dry Cargo Shipping Position, 10 May 43. (2) CCS 244/1, 25 May 43, title: Implementation of

Assumed Basic Undertakings . . . , Annex VII, Part I.

the conference wore on, and daily reports indicated a rising toll of submarine

sinkings, the outlook grew steadily

brighter. By 24 May Churchill could declare that the Allied victory in the current antisubmarine offensive was a "new

fact" in the total equation. The kill for

May amounted, in fact, to 40 U-boats

in the Atlantic alone, a blow to the German submarine arm that proved very

nearly mortal.76

By the time the shipping budget came

up for consideration, it could be determined that actual ship losses since the

beginning of the year had been 32 per76

 (1) Min, White House Mtgs, 19, 21, 24 May 43.

(2) Winston S. Churchill, Closing the Ring (Boston:

Houghton Mifflin Co., 1951), p. 10.
86 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

cent less than expected in February. The

conferees were sufficiently encouraged to

add 70 Atlantic sailings arbitrarily to

prospective assets during 1943. If the

trend continued, it could be expected

that losses during the second half of the

year might be reduced by almost a million dead-weight tons, representing a

gain over earlier expectations of about

half that amount of shipping in service,

on the average, during that period. This

was the equivalent of something over a

hundred sailings on the North Atlantic

route where losses were heaviest—a sufficient basis, perhaps, for the conclusion

that the deficit might safely be regarded

as "not unmanageable."77

From TRIDENT emerged the broad patterns of global strategy under which the

Allies were to use the vast war-making

resources becoming available. In Europe

they involved a Mediterranean campaign

and a bombing offensive against Germany leading up to a medium-scale crossChannel invasion in spring 1944. For the

war against Japan, they combined a more

intensive campaign in the Pacific with

a less ambitious effort in southeast Asia

and China than had originally been visualized by the American staffs. Logistical considerations, as well as British

arguments, had forced the American

staffs to scale down their conceptions

of ROUNDUP and ANAKIM. In recompense

they had secured British agreement

to "extending" unremitting pressure

against Japan in the Pacific and a seemingly clear prohibition against further

allotment of forces to the Mediterranean in the interests of insuring the medium-scale cross-Channel operation in

1944.

In its broader aspects the new global

strategy was to prove far more realistic

in relation to available resources than

had the strategy developed at Casablanca.

No new shipping crisis would arise of

proportions formidable enough to shake

the basic conclusion that shipping deficits would be "not unmanageable." Assault shipping estimates, on the other

hand, were to prove far less realistic and

their adjustment to the actual needs of

ROUNDHAMMER was to be the principal

strategic-logistical problem of the year

to come. TRIDENT plans, moreover,

lacked specific schemes of maneuver and,

in their indefinite prescriptions for continuing operations in the Mediterranean

and the Pacific and the degree of uncertainty about the feasibility of operations

in Burma, left much room for misunderstanding and arguments between

British and American staffs. Two more

grand conferences would take place, and

almost continuous strategic-logistical debate, before the patterns determined at

TRIDENT would harden sufficiently for

firm logistical plans to be based upon

them.

77 (1) Calculations are based on figures in CCS

174, rpt by CMTC, 4 Feb 43, title: Loss Rate for

1943; and in CCS 174/1, 2 Jul 43, same title. (2) Behrens, Merchant Shipping, pp. 293, 373 note 1.
PART TWO

ORGANIZATION AND METHOD

CHAPTER IV

Logistical Organization

By the time of the TRIDENT Conference in May 1943, both the U.S. and

the combined machinery for making and

executing strategic decisions had taken

relatively final form. Changes made in

the last two years of the war were mostly

matters of detail, of refinements and adjustments to an intricate operating machine, and grew out of efforts to promote

smoother functioning of the most extensive and complex part of the apparatus,

that part concerned with planning, direction, and control of the logistical

effort.

Civil-Military Relations

The American logistical effort, in its

larger aspects, was civilian as well as

military, and involved the nation's entire economy. In its direction and control both civilian and military organizations played their part. For the

management of the war economy, President Roosevelt in 1942 created a multiplicity of special civilian agencies, most

of them engaged in co-ordinating rather

than operating functions. Of these agencies the War Production Board (WPB)

was pre-eminent — in theory, if not always in fact, the arbiter of all industrial

war production. Of no less importance

for military logistics was the War Shipping Administration (WSA), which was

charged with the allocation, control, and

use of American merchant shipping

within the limits of "strategic military

requirements" as determined by other,

presumably military, authority. Other

agencies—the War Food Administration,

Office of Defense Transportation, Office

of Price Administration, Petroleum Administrator for War, Solid Fuels Administrator for War, and the War Manpower Commission, to name the most important—all exercised varying degrees of

authority in their respective fields. Representatives of certain of the civilian

agencies formed, with their British counterparts, the four civilian combined

boards (Combined Production and Resources Board, (CPRB), Combined Raw

Materials Board, Combined Shipping

Adjustment Board (CSAB), and Combined Food Board) that served as media

for co-ordinating the British and American economic effort.1

Within the military sphere, most strategic-logistic planning and determination of strategic requirements fell to the

Joint Chiefs of Staff and its various committees. The Army-Navy Munitions

Board (ANMB), theoretically at least

representative of the undersecretaries of

War and Navy, served as the military

link with WPB at the joint level and

1

 For treatment of the civilian wartime agencies,

see Bureau of the Budget, The United States at War:

Development and Administration of the War Program of the Federal Government (Washington, 1946).
90 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

administered the complicated system of

production priorities for military programs. The vast logistical operating functions — detailed calculation of requirements, planning and scheduling of military production, and storage and distribution of end products—fell to the

War and Navy Departments acting

through their own separate agencies.

Many of the organizational growing

pains and the adjustment problems in

1942 involved the relationship between

civilian and military authority. If, in

theory, the logistical process could be

divided into civilian and military segments, the one concerned with essentially commercial processes in production and distribution and the other with

direct support of military operations, in

practice the lines of authority overlapped

at every turn. If military leaders respected the tradition of civilian control as

much as did members of Congress and

civilian heads of wartime agencies, they

still considered it necessary that they

share control and direction of the nation's economic effort because of its direct bearing on the success or failure of

military operations. By mid-1943 most

relative areas of responsibility had been

satisfactorily defined, but some hazy sectors remained. By arrangements worked

out in 1942 the military services had generally firm control of all operations that

directly affected logistical support of the

armed forces from production lines to

overseas depots. WPB, for instance, did

not become an operating ministry of

supply, but left the actual purchasing,

contracting, and inspection of military

supplies to the Army and the Navy. Similarly, WSA, albeit with greater reluctance, left the actual loading and shipment of military supplies in the hands

of the military services. The civilian

agencies entered the picture in allocating between the military services and

other claimants the necessary facilities,

raw materials, and transportation. By

an intricate network of liaison and committee arrangements, the military departments and the JCS participated in

the processes of allocation, but by no

means did they control them. Essentially

processes of negotiation, of give and take,

the relationships between civilian and

military agencies were not precisely defined. When the Joint Chiefs had determined what they conceived to be strategic requirements for ships, raw materials, or plant capacity, they were reluctant to accept as final the decisions of

civilian agencies that denied these claims

because of competing civilian demands.

The JCS could hardly help but consider

civilian needs less essential than military.

When disagreements of this kind over

allocations arose—as they did in the feasibility dispute of fall 1942, and in the

cargo shipping crisis of spring 1943—

only the President could, and did, exercise the power of final decision.2

The governmental structure for directing the war effort, as it existed in

mid-1943, has been described by one

critic as "an amorphous, unwieldy, and

baffling agglomeration of agencies, largely improvised as the developing situation

seemed to dictate."3 Yet it endured in

all its fundamentals until the end of the

war. The one major change that did take

place was not in the structure itself but

2

 See Leighton and Coakley, Global Logistics,

1940-43, pp. 211-19, 602-11, 690-702. 3

 Herman Miles Somers, Presidential Agency:

OWMR, The Office of War Mobilization and Reconversion (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press,

1950) (hereafter cited as Presidential Agency,

OWMR), p. 41.
LOGISTICAL ORGANIZATION 91

in the nature of the supervision over it.

Recognizing the dual need for a greater

degree of cohesiveness among the civilian war agencies and for a more positive

measure of civilian control over military production programs, President

Roosevelt on 27 May 1943 created the

Office of War Mobilization (OWM)

with former Supreme Court Justice

James F. Byrnes as its director. OWM

was granted sweeping powers to develop

programs and establish policies for the

maximum use of the nation's natural

and industrial resources for military and

civilian needs, and to unify the activities

of all federal agencies and departments

engaged in or concerned with production, procurement, distribution, or transportation of military or civilian supplies. Byrnes became something like a

chief of staff to the President with authority over the entire domestic front.

Only the determination of military strategy and the conduct of international

political relations were excluded from

his purview.

In exercising these powers, Byrnes

sought neither to disturb the existing

structure nor to assume operating functions for OWM. The creation of OWM

nonetheless had reverberations throughout wartime Washington: It established

a definite point below the Presidential

level at which civilian control over the

multifarious economic activities of the

military services could be exercised. Also,

OWM served as a pointed reminder of

Roosevelt's intention to maintain firm

civilian control. Byrnes acted quickly to

assert his general review authority in the

economic sphere. He requested each military service and the Maritime Commission to appoint a procurement review

board to undertake a thorough evaluation of existing procurement programs.

Shortly afterward, the President declined

to issue a written charter for the JCS,

and in doing so sharply reminded the

military chiefs that they should establish more orderly control of the logistics

function within the JCS structure. Thus

the impulse behind the creation of the

Office of War Mobilization opened a

new chapter in the continuing search for

economy and system, for from it evolved

a revamped JCS committee structure for

handling logistical matters and major

adjustments in the Army's requirements

program.4

Logistics in the Joint Committee

System

By the end of May 1943 there probably was no staff officer in Washington

who was not convinced that logistical

considerations were very important factors in the formulation of strategy. Nonetheless, a basic disagreement remained

within the War Department between the

logisticians of Army Service Forces and

the strategic planners of Operations Division as to how and by whom the integration of strategic and logistical planning

should be carried out. The planners

felt that the strategy and the logistics in

any given operation must be treated as a

whole and that only they (the planners)

were in a position to do so, although

they recognized the need to draw on the

logistical experts in various fields for desired estimates, data, and advice as required. The logisticians claimed a place

on the highest planning staffs for their

experts, insisting that only in this way

could adequate and accurate informa4

 (1) Ibid., pp. 45-75. (2) On the War Department

Procurement Review Board see below, Chapter V.
92 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

tion on logistical problems be brought

to bear at every stage of strategic planning and timely preparations be made

for actual execution of those plans when

the JCS or the CCS approved them.

In the reorganization of the JCS committee structure completed in May 1943,

the ASF retained or secured a place on

all the committees concerned primarily

with logistics but failed to get representation on the Joint Staff Planners (JPS),

which continued to be the principal

group on which the Joint Chiefs relied

for final staff work on strategic problems.5

 In the reorganized committee

structure, four main committees concerned themselves entirely with logistical matters—the Joint Military Transportation Committee (JMTC), the

Army-Navy Petroleum Board (ANPB),

the U.S. Representatives, Munitions Assignments Board (U.S. Reps, MAB),

and the Joint Administrative Committee

(JAdC).

The ANPB and JMTC antedated the

May 1943 reorganization by more than

a year, but at this time they first received

formal charters setting forth their precise functions. Both agencies were highly specialized committees dealing with

two of the most vital resources for the

Allied war effort — petroleum, oil, and

lubricants (POL), and shipping. They

had certain broad operational functions

as well as planning responsibilities. By

its charter, JMTC was responsible for

advising the JCS on shipping and all

matters relating to overseas transportation (including the merchant shipbuilding program), for co-ordination of Army

and Navy shipping requirements and

their presentation to the War Shipping

Administration, for apportionment of

shipping allotted by WSA to meet Army

and Navy requirements in accordance

with priorities set by the JCS, for recommending adjustments in case of shipping

shortages, and for general co-ordination

of ship operations with WSA and with

other United Nations (U.N.) shipping

authorities. Similarly, the ANPB was

charged with consolidation of Army and

Navy requirements for petroleum products, with detailed co-ordination of the

procurement, distribution, and use of

products allotted to meet these requirements, and with liaison and co-ordination with the Petroleum Administrator

for War.

By contrast, the assigned functions of

the U.S. Representatives, MAB, were exceedingly broad, patterned after those

the Combined Munitions Assignments

Board (MAB) was supposed to perform

for the Combined Chiefs of Staff. They

were to maintain full information of the

entire munitions resources and requirements of the United States and recommend to the JCS measures necessary "to

keep planned requirements programs in

line with strategic policy, changing operational conditions . . . and the re

of production."6 They would also, when 5

 See (1) Leighton and Coakley, Global Logistics,

1940-43, pp. 649-55; (2) Ray S. Cline, Washington

Command Post: The Operations Division, UNITED

STATES ARMY IN WORLD WAR II (Washington, 1951), pp. 257-61; (3) John D. Millett, The

Organization and Role of the Army Service Forces,

UNITED STATES ARMY IN WORLD WAR II

(Washington, 1954) (hereafter cited as Role of the

ASF), pp. 111-23.

6

 (1) Charter of U.S. Reps, MAB, is JCS 202/20/D.

(2) Charter of the JMTC is JCS 202/16/D. (3) Charter of the ANPB is JCS 202/21/D. All dated 11 May

43. (4) For the fullest description of the May 1943

reorganization of the JCS committees, see Vernon

E. Davis, Section I: Organizational Development,

3 vols., II, 590-684, in History of the Joint Chiefs of

Staff in World War II, MS, JCS Historical Sec.
LOGISTICAL ORGANIZATION 93

directed by the JCS, recommend allocations of material between the Army and

Navy and serve as U.S. members on

the Combined Munitions Assignments

Board in making assignments to other

United Nations. In actual fact, the U.S.

Representatives, MAB, did not effectively exercise such broad powers, but for

the most part, like the MAB itself, were

confined to the assignments function.

They provided no real link between strategic and logistical planning, as their

requirements function may have indicated, except insofar as they translated

strategic decisions into assignments of

munitions to service and national claimants.

It was, rather, an entirely new organization, the Joint Administrative Committee, that bore closest resemblance to

what General Somervell wanted—a genuine logistics committee concerned with

assuring proper consideration of logistics in strategic planning at the highest

levels. However, the impetus for creation

of this committee did not come from the

logisticians so much as it did from the

Joint Staff Planners, who were anxious

to rid themselves of the burden of considering numerous miscellaneous matters

outside the realm of pure war planning.

Only after a strong protest from General

Somervell did the ASF get a place on

this committee, replacing a proposed

OPD member. The duties of the JAdC

were simply stated as "handling matters

which do not come under the jurisdiction of one of the other agencies of the

Joint Chiefs of Staff organization."7 The

committee was not given any jurisdiction over the Joint Military Transportation Committee, the Army-Navy Petroleum Board, or the U.S. Representatives,

MAB. Moreover, although the terms of

its charter implied a relationship of

equality with the Joint Staff Planners,

in practice the planners continued to

act as the filter through which all important plans and problems went to the

JCS for decision.

The arrangements for integrating logistics with strategy proved the weakest

part of the May 1943 reorganization.

Although U.S. staff work at TRIDENT was

generally smoother than at Casablanca,

the members of the Joint War Plans

Committee complained in a postmortem

of the difficulty of "obtaining in a reasonably short time, data on availability

and allocations" relying on ad hoc subcommittees formed of War and Navy

Department experts. They suggested an

addition to the joint planning structure

of "a joint logistics group charged with

maintaining a central file of up to date

statistics on availability and allocation

of forces and equipment."8 The joint

planners demurred, apparently fearful

of the creation of a separate logistics

committee on an equal plane with themselves. Meanwhile, the Joint Administrative Committee had begun to function

and was taking unto itself some of the

functions a logistical committee might

be expected to perform, but it had no

subordinate working committee, such as

the Joint Staff Planners had in the

JWPC, to do the necessary detailed studies in support of its operations. In July

the JWPC proposed the obvious solution: that the JAdC be specifically

charged with those matters pertaining

to mobilization, deployment, troop bases,

7

 JAdC Charter is JCS 202/10/D, 5 May 43.

8

 JPS 191, rpt by JWPC, 26 May 43, title: Joint

War Plng Agencies. Quoted in Davis, Organizational

Development, II, 718-20, History JCS.
94 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

training, equipment, and transportation

that fell within the purview of the JCS

and that a Joint Logistics Plans Committee be formed under the JAdC.9

In the end it was not the JWPC's

insistent voice but a White House communication that produced a solution not

unlike the one the planners' working

group proposed. On 17 July, when specifically rejecting a JCS proposal that

he approve a written charter for them,

the President said:

I believe that we have recently made important forward strides in joint as well as

combined strategic planning ... it is my

opinion that more attention should now be

given to organizing for the same kind of

joint effort in dealing with questions of

supply. Joint logistics planning should parallel joint strategic planning. Likewise, the

joint military supply program should receive

continuous review in order to attain a more

perfect balance among the various pro- grams. The supply program of each service

should be carefully scrutinized as to its

relationship to the programs of the other

services to the end that there shall be one

unified and balanced supply program consistent with up-to-date strategic concepts.10

As General Marshall noted when the

matter was discussed in a JCS meeting

three days later, it was evident that "the

President's letter had been prompted by

the effort of Justice Byrnes to have all

agencies connected with the war effort

correlated."11 Marshall came to the

meeting with a reply to the President's

letter drafted by General Somervell, the

tenor of which was that all that needed

to be done had already been done. Somervell's draft described the several military programs as in "an excellent state

of balance," and represented the Joint

Administrative Committee as exactly the

sort of organization the President wanted.12

 While OPD officers registered some

strong private objections—they were not

so sure the state of balance was so excellent and they stoutly denied that the

JAdC had ever been charged with the

broad functions described—the JCS accepted Somervell's draft as modified to

indicate that even before the creation

of the administrative committee the JCS

had been effectively functioning in this

area. The reply to the President stated

categorically that the Joint Administrative Committee was charged with the

integration of logistical with strategic

planning, and that it was responsible for

welding Army and Navy procurement

plans into an over-all plan and for readjusting "military programs so that they

will be feasible from a production viewpoint"13—obviously, what General Somervell thought a joint logistics committee

should be rather than what the Joint

Administrative Committee actually was.

OPD officers prepared a memorandum

for General Marshall showing that each

of the functions claimed for the Joint

Administrative Committee had in fact

been assigned to the U.S. Representatives, MAB, by their charter. The memorandum was never sent, for the OPD

officers soon recognized that the letter

to the President had forced the issue,

making mandatory a new charter for the

JAdC that would give it at least some

of the powers it was represented as having. The charters of other committees

9

 Ibid., II, 720-25. 10

 Ltr, President to Leahy, Incl to JCS 415, 17 Jul

43, title: Joint Effort Regarding Supply. 11

 Min, 97th mtg JCS, 20 Jul 43, Item 1.

12

 Memo, Somervell for CofS USA, 19 Jul 43, and

Incl, CsofS Jt and Comb 1942-44, Hq ASF. 13

 Memo, JCS for President, 20 Jul 43, sub: Logistics Planning, Incl, JCS 415/1, 21 Jul 43, title: Joint

Effort Regarding Supply.
LOGISTICAL ORGANIZATION 95

would then, of course, have to be modified accordingly.14

The members of the administrative

committee themselves were quick to

grasp the initiative. By 8 August 1943

they were ready with a new charter

changing the name of the committee to

the Joint Logistics Committee (JLC)

and broadening and enlarging its functions to the point where it would stand

on a plane of equality with the Joint

Staff Planners. The Joint Logistics Committee was to act in co-ordination with

the planners in preparation of joint war

plans "so as to insure the logistic feasibility of such plans"; prepare basic

logistical plans to implement war plans;

advise the JCS in respect to logistical implications of prepared U.S. commitments

relating to combined operations, balance

among military production programs,

and adequacy of supply and priority ratings; furnish logistic information and

guidance to the JCS and other governmental agencies as required; and make

up the U.S. membership of the

Combined Administrative Committee

(CAdC). Its membership, they said,

should consist of three general officers

from the Army and three flag officers

from the Navy; two of the Army members should come from the ASF and one

from the AAF. A Joint Logistics Plans

Committee (JLPC) should be formed

to serve as a working committee for the

JLC.15

The proposed Joint Logistics Committee charter marked General Somervell's final bid for equal status of logistical experts with strategic planners in

the Joint Staff hierarchy. Very quickly

OPD opposition asserted itself. Expressing old fears that "logistical decisions

could unduly affect . . . strategy," 

officers turned to the task of whittling

down both the pretensions of the new

committee and the role of ASF on it.

They agreed to the creation of a Joint

Logistics Committee, but they felt it

should be definitely subordinate to the

JPS planners. They saw no need for the

working subcommittee, and insisted

that the existing system of consulting

experts as required better served the

needs of the planners. Moreover, they

would eliminate one ASF member and

substitute an OPD officer. On 9 August

1943 the JCS agreed to defer action on

the matter until after the QUADRANT

Conference scheduled to begin at Quebec on 14 August, and to refer the proposed charter to the Joint Strategic Survey Committee and the Joint Staff

Planners for concurrent study and recommendation. In the meantime, a special logistical team composed of Army

and Navy experts was set up to serve the

planners at QUADRANT, an arrangement

which, at least to the Army planners in

OPD, seemed eminently satisfactory and

worthy of perpetuation.16

By the time the separate reports of

the joint planners and the Joint Strategic Survey Committee had been recon- 14

 (1) OPD Notes on JCS 97th Mtg, 20 Jul 43, ABC

334.8 JAdC (5 May 43), Sec I-A. (2) Min, 97th mtg

JCS, 20 Jul 43, Item 1. (3) Draft Memo, ACofS OPD

for CofS, 23 Jul 43, sub: Balanced Supply Program

Consistent with Current Strategic Concept, and

related papers in ABC 334.8 JAdC (5 May 43) Sec

I-A.

15

 JCS 450, 8 Aug 43, rpt by JAdC, title: Adjustments in JAdC.

16

 (1) Quote from OPD Notes on JCS 102d Mtg,

9 Aug 43, and Tabs A-C. (2) OPD Notes on JPS

95th Mtg, 18 Aug 43. Both in ABC 334.8 JAdC

5 May 43, Sec I-A. (3) Memo, Brig Gen Walter A.

Wood, Jr., for Gen Somervell, 9 Aug 43, sub:

Action Taken at Special Mtg JCS Mon 9 Aug,

CsofS Jt and Comb 1942-44, Hq ASF.
96 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

ciled, the Army planners had been persuaded to abandon their opposition to a

JLC working committee. But they did

gain their main point—that the Joint

Staff Planners should continue to be

responsible for the integration of logistics with strategy and that in this respect

the logistics committee should "advise"

the planners and not "act in co-ordination" with them. In facing the knotty

problem of relationship between the

Joint Logistics Committee and the specialized committees (JMTC, ANPB, and

U.S. Reps, MAB) the joint report circumscribed the jurisdiction of the JLC

by exempting from its surveillance matters "specifically assigned to other J.C.S.

agencies, namely military overseas transportation, petroleum and munitions assignments." Although the JPS clearly

perceived a conflict between the functions already assigned the U.S. Representatives, MAB, and those to be assigned the Joint Logistics Committee,

the joint report circumvented the issue

by suggesting that there was no real

problem.17

This jettisoning of Somervellian concepts was almost entirely the work of

the Army planners. The Navy took little part, and when the joint report was

presented to the JCS on 14 September

1943, Admirals King and Cooke, Vice

Chief of Naval Operations Admiral

Frederick J. Horne, and Rear Adm.

Oscar C. Badger, Assistant Chief of Naval Operations for Logistic Plans, all

insisted that the new logistics committee

should be accorded a higher place in

relation to the specialized committees.

The JCS thereupon instructed the Joint

Strategic Survey Committee to revise the

JLC charter so as to "establish the Joint

Logistics Committee as the principal

agency to which the Joint Chiefs of

Staff should look for logistical advice,"

and to modify the charters of the other

committees accordingly. This accomplished, JCS approved the Joint Logistics Committee charter on 13 October

1943.18

If in the final version the Army planners had to accept a somewhat higher

place for the Joint Logistics Committee

than they had postulated, and had to

give way on the issue of a working committee, they were still able to preserve

the essential point of JPS supremacy in

the formulation of strategy and the final

integration of logistics with it. The approved charter assigned as primary functions of the JLC:

Advise the Joint Staff Planners in the

consideration and preparation of joint war

plans as to the logistic aspects of such

plans in order that the Joint Staff Planners

may insure the integration of logistics with

strategy in the preparation of joint war

plans.

Prepare logistic plans for implementing

the war plans prepared by the Joint Staff

Planners.

Advise the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the

Joint Staff Planners concerning the logistics implications of proposed U.S. commitments relating to joint and combined

operations.19

Relationships of the Joint Logistics

Committee to the Joint Military Trans17

 (1) JCS 450/3, 14 Sep 43, title: Adjustments

in JAdC, is the joint report of JSSC and JPS.

(2) JCS 450/1, 9 Sep 43, is the separate report of

JSSC. (3) JCS 450/2, 11 Sep 43, is the separate

report of JPS.

18

 (1) Quotation from Min, 114th mtg JCS, 14

Sep 43, Item 4. (2) JCS 450/4, 8 Oct 43, title: Adjustments in JAdC. (3) Min, 118th mtg JCS, 12

Oct 43, Item 2. 19

 JCS 202/29/0, 13 Oct 43, title: Charter JLC.
LOGISTICAL ORGANIZATION 97

portation Committee, Army-Navy Petroleum Board, and U.S. Representatives,

MAB, were not really spelled out in detail. Revisions were made in the ANPB

and JMTC charters to provide that certain of their planning functions would

be carried out "in accordance with overall logistical plans" as developed by

the JLC, but their "administrative

functions" were left intact and they

maintained their independence of the

logistics committee in their own specialized fields until the end of the war.

The charter of the U.S. Representatives,

MAB, on the other hand, was extensively revised. The over-all surveillance

of requirements and production programs, a function long allowed to atrophy, was dropped and the committee

reconstituted under a new name, the

Joint Munitions Allocation Committee

(JMAC), responsible for allocation of

finished munitions between the Army

and Navy and for concerting American

policy on matters to be brought before

the Combined Munitions Assignments

Board.20

When the function of advising the

JCS on the alignment of requirements

programs with changing strategy, operational conditions, and the realities of

production was removed from the U.S.

Representatives, MAB, it was not assigned to the Joint Logistics Committee.

Instead, at the direct request of Justice

Byrnes, the JCS on 21 September created the Joint Production Survey Committee (JPSC) to function in that area,

quite independent of JLC control. The

committee was composed of two general

officers from the Army (one of them

from the AAF), and two flag officers

from the Navy; an OWM representative,

Fred Searls, attended each meeting

though he was not formally a member.

The committee was primarily conceived

as a link between the JCS and Byrnes'

office. The Joint Production Survey

Committee was the logistical counterpart of the Joint Strategic Survey Committee, and was composed of "elder

statesmen," though of not quite so exalted rank as those on the JSSC. Army

Service Forces was not represented on

the committee at all, so that the JSSC

did not have the link the JLC had with

the main War Department operating

agency in the field of production.21

The membership of the Joint Logistics Committee had been set at three general officers from the Army and three

flag officers from the Navy; as OPD

asked, its Logistics Group was accorded

a place; the ASF was assigned only one

member; the third membership went to

the AAF. The charter for the working

committee, the Joint Logistics Plans

Committee (JLPC), as approved on 10

November 1943, set the permanent membership at six, three from the Army and

three from the Navy, with the Army

members being drawn from precisely

the same sources as those of the parent

committee. The permanent members

were to be simply a control group to

direct, co-ordinate, and supervise the

endeavors of a host of associate members

20

 (1) The revised charter of the JMTC is JCS

202/27/D, 13 Oct 43; that of the ANPB, JCS

202/28/D, 13 Oct 43; and that of the JMAC is

JCS 450/8/D, 10 Nov 43. (2) Davis, Organizational

Development, II, 747-57, History JCS. (3) On the

JMAC see below, Chapter XXV.

21

 (1) JCS 202/26/D, 21 Sep 43, title: Charter

JPSC. (2) Somers, Presidential Agency, OWMR, pp.

122-23. (3) Davis, Organizational Development, II,

757-61, History JCS.
98 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

who were to be logistics experts with

various specialties drawn from the War

and Navy Departments. So constituted,

the JLPC was to prepare plans, studies,

and estimates as directed by the JLC or

upon its own initiative, and work in

close liaison with the Joint War Plans

Committee "to the end that resulting

logistics plans will properly implement

war plans."22

The arrangement of associate members in effect systemized the older method of calling on ad hoc committees of

experts from the War and Navy Departments. Associate members were not appointed permanently but were assigned

JLPC work in addition to their other

duties. By the end of the first month of

operations, the Joint Logistics Plans

Committee had 150 associate members

and the number rose slowly but steadily

every month thereafter, reflecting the

ever-increasing volume and complexity

of joint logistical planning. The regular

members of the JLPC complained in

March 1944 that the whole system was

relatively inefficient. Associate members,

burdened with regular duties within

their departments, could not always be

counted on for JLPC work, and the

effects were particularly serious when

important studies had to be completed

on short deadlines. The following month

the JCS made some concessions: the

number of permanent associates was increased to twenty, eleven to come from

the Army and nine from the Navy; of

the eleven Army members, OPD and

ASF furnished three each, AAF furnished four members, and G-4 of the

War Department General Staff supplied

one.23

Establishment of the JLC and its

working subcommittee and of the JPSC

completed the World War II structure

of Joint Staff planning committees.

(Chart 1) That they came into being

so late in the war indicates a belated

acceptance of the need for systemization

of logistical planning at the JCS level

and for a body of logistical experts to

serve as permanent members of the joint

committees, not simply to be on call

from their parent offices. Though the

logistics committees provided a structure

paralleling the strategic planning committees, they did not gain for the logisticians equal place with the planners in

the formulation of strategy. The Joint

Staff Planners retained the final word

when it came to making the tentative

estimates of resources and requirements

requisite to strategic planning, and surrendered to the logistics committees only

calculations of the more detailed sort

that were necessary for drawing up final

balance sheets or that actually governed

the movements of troops and materials

after over-all objectives had been decided upon. This was a lasting source of

dissatisfaction to the ASF members of

the JLC and JLPC, who continued to

complain of not having enough knowledge of strategic plans to permit joint

logistical plans to be intelligently formulated. On the other hand, the strategic

planners also had occasion to complain

that in their estimates the logisticians

tried to influence strategy — indeed, at

times to formulate their own strategy

22

 (1) JCS 450/7/0, 10 Nov 43, title: Charter

JLPC. (2) Cline, Washington Command Post, pp.

264-65.

23

 (1) JCS 810, 8 Apr 44, rpt by JLC, title: Membership JLPC. (2) Cline, Washington Command

Post, pp. 264-66.

100 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

on the basis of what they conceived to

be the governing logistical factors.24

G-4, ASF, and the OPD Logistics

Group

The joint committees dealing with

logistics were focal points at which Army

and Navy plans and estimates could be

brought together, revised, and related

to the broader issues of strategy, and

where basic allocations of military resources could be worked out. The work

of the committees was, nevertheless,

largely of a planning, co-ordinating, and

advisory nature. The work on which

plans and estimates were based, as well

as that involved in the enormous task

of translating broad logistical plans into

the myriad actions required to carry

them out, rested with the staff and operating agencies of the War and Navy Departments. In the War Department

structure the reorganization of March

1942 had left two real powers in the

field of ground force logistics — Army

Service Forces and Operations Division.

While G-1, G-3, and G-4 of the War

Department General Staff were entrusted with responsibility for formulating

Army-wide policies in the fields of personnel, unit organization, and supply

respectively, in point of fact these functions were exercised mainly by either

ASF or OPD, or, for air matters, by the

AAF. In the basic Army Regulations

setting forth General Staff functions, the

Supply Division (G-4) was charged with

preparation of "broad basic supply plans

. . . required by mobilization, training,

and strategic plans" to guide the actions

of AAF, ASF, and AGF, with collaboration with OPD in determining supply

priorities and supply levels, and with

preparation of "broad policies and directives . necessary to co-ordinate among

the major commands" the principal areas

of logistical activity.25 But, by the sheer

magnitude of its operation, its greater

size and the superior effectiveness of its

staff, and the driving personality of its

commanding general, ASF completely

overshadowed G-4. General Somervell

continued to function as the principal

adviser of the Chief of Staff on supply

matters after he ceased to be G-4 and

became Commanding General, Army

Service Forces. With eight or a dozen

officers assigned it G-4 found it impossible to exercise even policy supervision

over logistical activities. Insofar as the

power to determine general policy outside the technical sphere was concerned,

OPD exercised control with its general

responsibility for overseas operations.

ASF generally determined detailed Army

requirements, prescribed policies and

procedures to be followed in production

and distribution, served as the operating

agency for supply, transportation, and

general housekeeping in the zone of

interior, and maintained liaison with the

principal civilian agencies involved in

the war effort. OPD provided the bases

on which requirements were calculated,

determined overseas troop bases and supply levels, set priorities on scarce items,

and insisted on exercising the principal

role in strategic-logistical planning. To

the extent that ASF activities were concerned with support of overseas theaters,

they were subject to active and effective

supervision by OPD, while G-4 supervision over other aspects of ASF opera24

 Compare Cline, Washington Command Post,

pp. 266-68, and Millett, Role of the ASF, pp. 122-23.

25

 AR 10-15, 13 Jul 42, General Staff, Organization

and General Duties.
LOGISTICAL ORGANIZATION 101

tions was quite nominal. Clashes between ASF and OPD in the areas of

planning for and support of overseas

operations, where the functions of the

two agencies overlapped, were not infrequent.

All sections of OPD dabbled in logistical matters at times; however, the OPD

agency primarily concerned was the Logistics Group, headed by Brig. Gen. Patrick H. Tansey, "a small but very influential staff for studying all matters of

logistics, supply and equipment as such,

as distinguished from such matters in

any specific theater."26 Theater Group,

OPD, with its individual sections for

each of the overseas theaters, also dealt

continuously and directly with logistical

problems in each separate theater.

During 1943 there was a general move

in the direction of reassertion of the prerogatives of the General Staff at the expense of the ASF. It resulted in a moderate bolstering of the position of G-4,

though it never went so far as to supplant General Somervell as the principal

adviser to General Marshall on supply

matters or to shift from either OPD or

ASF to G-4 the right of membership

on the more important joint committees

concerned with logistics.

General Somervell opened the question of staff organization for logistics

anew in the spring of 1943 with a blunt

and overt proposal that the functions

and personnel of G-1, G-4, and the

Logistics Group, OPD, be absorbed into

the ASF and AAF as appropriate. "In

matters of supply and administration,"

wrote Somervell, "it is highly impracticable, if not impossible, to separate

policy and operations. The enforcement

of policy inevitably tends to become the

actual operation of that policy with all

the extra administrative detail and personnel required for an additional agency to do the work of another."27

 As far

as G-1 and G-4 were concerned, Somervell was doing little more than requesting formal ratification of a situation that

already existed. The abolition of OPD's

Logistics Group was something else

again, but the ASF commander insisted

that it simply duplicated work his own

staff was doing.

Somervell's proposal found no adherents anywhere in the War Department,

and General Marshall took no formal

action on it. The over-all result was,

rather, to provoke a reaction in favor

of bolstering the General Staff at the

expense of the ASF. Somervell's proposal called attention to the atrophy of

all General Staff sections save OPD, and

the need to do something about it if

G-1, G-3, and G-4 were not to wither

away entirely. During the summer and

well into the fall of 1943 debate continued within the General Staff as to

the proper distribution of functions,

centering around proposals that the OPD

Logistics Group be transferred not, as

Somervell suggested, to ASF, but to G-4-

The ultimate decisions, rendered by Lt.

Gen. Joseph T. McNarney, Deputy

Chief of Staff, in effect reaffirmed OPD's

position as the element within the General Staff having primary interest in overseas operations, and emphasized the

necessity for G-4 to exercise effective

policy supervision over more or less rou26

 (1) Cline, Washington Command Post, pp.

270-71. (2) Leighton and Coakley, Global Logistics,

1940-43, pp. 223-27.

27

 (1) Memo, Somervell for CofS, 3 Apr 43, sub:

Suggested Changes in Organization of the War Department, File CofS, Hq ASF. (2) Millett, Role of the

ASF, pp. 138-42.
102 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

tine supply operations in the zone of

interior. McNarney's directive of 5 August 1943 stated:

The Operations Division . . . will scrutinize the requirements of the several theaters, will balance the requirements against the

means available, and will determine the

priority and time when they are to be made

available. The Operations Division will

then inform the theater commander and

the Assistant Chiefs of Staff, G-1, G-3 and

G-4 what units, individuals and materials

are to be furnished and when they will be

made available. . . .

28

Within OPD, it was generally agreed

that all functions not essential to the

direction of operations in overseas theaters should be performed by other sections of the General Staff. The great

difficulty was that almost every activity

in the zone of interior affected overseas

operations. The functions of providing

the means and of directing their employment were so closely related that OPD

found it impossible to operate without

maintaining its own sort of G-4, and all

proposals to transfer the functions of the

Logistics Group to G-4 fell by the wayside.

General McNarney did, in October

1943, transfer certain specific functions

relating to procurement and munitions

assignments from OPD to G-4. Responsibility for preparation of the Victory

Program Troop Basis, used for computation of the Army Supply Program and

for determining policies for planning

and execution of procurement, were

turned over to G-4, as was the task of

representing the War Department on

the joint and combined bodies concerned with munitions assignments—the

Joint Munitions Allocations Committee,

the Munitions Assignments Board, and

their respective ground subcommittees.29

These specific functional shifts were

made at a time when Army supply policies and procedures were under the intensive scrutiny of the War Department

Procurement Review Board (McCoy

Board), appointed at the instigation of

Justice Byrnes, and of its successor, the

Richards Committee, which was set up

to review reserve levels of supply.30 The

Richards Committee found "some confusion" among officers assigned to OPD,

G-4, and ASF as to their respective responsibilities, and recommended that the

basic Army Regulations be clarified to

delineate the responsibilities more clearly.31

 The tenor of many of its other

recommendations was that G-4 should

have additional powers of supervision

over ASF and AAF and exercise them

more effectively. An ad hoc committee

composed of representatives of interested agencies went so far as to draft a new

regulation definitely vesting in G-4 most

of the policy, planning, and supervisory

functions being exercised by ASF. The

ASF member of the committee dissented

vigorously, calling the proposal "so extreme that it would necessarily de-vital28

 (1) Memo, McNarney for ACsofS, G-1, G-2,

G-3, G-4, G-5, 5 Aug 43, sub: Movements to Theaters, ABC 334.8 JAdC (5 May 43), Sec I-A. (2) Cline,

Washington Command Post, pp. 270-84, treats these

issues in detail.

29

 Cline, Washington Command Post, pp. 278-84. 30

 The complete reports of these investigating

agencies, comments of War Department staff and

major commands on their recommendations, and

the final directive are in: Levels of Supply and Supply Procedure, 1 January 1944, with 7 appendixes

in two volumes (hereafter cited as Levels of Supply),

copy in Log File, OCMH. For a detailed discussion

of the McCoy Board and the Richards Committee,

see below, Chapter V, pages 119-24. 31

 Levels of Supply, app. F, Rpt of WD Special

Com for Re-Study of Reserves (Richards Com),

Recmn 3, I, 75.
LOGISTICAL ORGANIZATION 103

GENERAL MCNARNEY

ize many of the activities and functions

currently being executed by the Army

Service Forces and would require a reorganization within the War Department."32

No such major reorganization took

place. General McNarney had directed

that AR 10-15 be clarified to show division of supply responsibilities more clearly, but the end result was only an extremely minor change published in September 1944.33

 Nevertheless, under the

basic AR 10-15, interpreted broadly,

G-4 already had considerable power,

and on 1 January 1944 General McNarney assigned the Supply Division major

responsibility for seeing that the Richards Committee recommendations were

carried out. G-4 was, among other

things, to conduct a review of existing

supply regulations, supervise the formulation of the Army Supply Program,

undertake the accurate determination of

replacement factors, and establish policy

for and supervise a further wide variety

of ASF and AAF activities.34

With the assignment of these responsibilities, the Supply Division received a

modest increase in personnel—from 12

to 45 officers. The net results in terms

of any major shift in power relationships within the War Department were

not earthshaking. Maj. Gen. Russell L.

Maxwell, who assumed office as G-4 in

September 1943, aggressively sought to

exercise his right to supervise supply activities of ASF and AAF and to determine broad supply policies and procedures. In a nominal sense he succeeded,

but actual power relationships and methods of doing business changed very little;

indeed, they could hardly have been

changed very much at that point in the

war without the major reorganization

and the consequent dislocations of which

ASF warned. The admonitions of General Somervell about the difficulty of

separating supply policy and operations

had considerable validity. As long as

G-4 could communicate with the technical services and other ZI supply agencies only through ASF headquarters, the

general staff agency was at a decided disadvantage. G-4 was able to assert its right

to review policies and procedures developed by the ASF staff and publish these

32

 Memo, Col Henry R. Westphalinger, Hq ASF,

for Maj Gen Russell L. Maxwell, Chmn, Ad Hoc

Com, sub: Minority Rpt Covering Recmns of Ad

Hoc Com . . ., Levels of Supply, app. G. 33

 AR 10-15, Change 1, 11 Sep 44. 34

 (1) Memo, McNarney, DCofS, for CG's AAF,

AGF, ASF, and ACsofS G-1, G-3, G-4, and OPD,

1 Jan 44, sub: Changes in Supply Levels and Supply

Procedures (hereafter cited as McNarney Directive

1 Jan 44), Levels of Supply, app. A. (2) See below.

Chapters V and VI, for greater detail.
104 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

GENERAL LUTES

policies and procedures as War Department, not ASF, directives; it did not,

however, actually initiate many of these

policies and procedures. The historian

of OPD organization concludes that the

transfer of functions to G-4 in 1943

marked "the beginning of a gradual rise

in the volume of staff business done by

G-4"; the ASF historian remarks that

"thereafter the influence of G-4 was

greater, or at least ASF found it expedient to keep G-4 fully informed about

what it was doing."35

Not the least of G-4's handicaps was

that for the most part it continued to

be divorced from the area of correlation

of logistics and strategy — the area in

which OPD shared dominance with ASF.

The key point was membership on the

joint logistics committees in a period

when those JCS agencies were maturing

and exercising greater influence. General Maxwell protested in May 1945:

The Assistant Chief of Staff, G-4, under

existing conditions is unable to perform his

prescribed logistical functions effectually.

He is not a member, nor has he any representation on any committee on the Joint

Staff level dealing with logistics except the

Joint Munitions Allocation Committee and

its subcommittees.... As a result at times

he fails to get adequate or timely informa- tion and is not able to assist these committees as he should nor is he able to present

to them the War Department viewpoint.36

In May 1943 a G-4 officer had complained bitterly of the middle position

occupied by the Supply Division "between General Somervell as the Army

representative in joint and international

supply deals and General Somervell as

Commanding General of the Army Service Forces, a theoretical subordinate."37

The situation General Maxwell objected to near the end of the war still bore

a distinct resemblance to the earlier

"middle position" and persisted as an

anomaly in the War Department structure despite the movement toward reassertion of General Staff prerogatives in

1943 and 1944.

Plans and Operations, ASF

Organization for logistics at the War

Department level, then, continued to

be an area in which indistinct and overlapping boundaries divided the work of

four different agencies — ASF, OPD,

35

 (1) Cline, Washington Command Post, p. 284.

(2) Millett, Role of the ASF, p. 144. (3) History of

Supply Division, G-4, WDGS, MS, OCMH.

36

 Memo, Gen Maxwell for DCofS, 3 May 45, sub:

Membership of G-4 on Joint Staff Committees Which

Deal with Logistics, ABC 334.8 JAdC (5 May 43). 37

 Memo, Lt Col James McCormack, Jr., for Brig

Gen Raymond G. Moses, G-4, 16 Apr 43, sub: Reorganization of the WD, G-4 020. See Leighton and

Coakley, Global Logistics, 1940-43, p. 224.
LOGISTICAL ORGANIZATION 105

GENERAL CLAY

G-4, and AAF. The unchallenged supremacy that ASF retained in ground

force supply operations in the zone of

interior made that agency the most important part of the Army concerned with

logistics, and the ASF headquarters staff

dwarfed in numerical strength that of

any other agency in wartime Washington. The fundamental organization of

the ASF remained relatively stable after

May 1943, but largely because General

Somervell's attempts to carry out a farreaching reorganization along functional

lines cutting across the traditional divisions among the technical services failed

of acceptance.38

The May 1943 reorganization of ASF

headquarters replaced the traditional

staff divisions under assistant chiefs of

staff with six staff directorates—Operations, Materiel, Personnel, Military

Training, Fiscal, and Administration. In

terms of logistical planning and support

of military operations, the two most important directorates were Materiel under

Maj. Gen. Lucius D. Clay and Operations under General Lutes. Clay's jurisdiction included requirements, production, and international aid; Lutes had

jurisdiction over all matters pertaining

to overseas troop and supply movements. Except for requirements, which

had always been a general staff function,

Clay's domain covered principally those

matters that had fallen into the province

of the Under Secretary of War before

the March 1942 reorganization; Lutes

inherited the more essential parts of the

work of the Supply Division of the General Staff. Also, as the ASF staff became increasingly involved in logistical

planning as well as in operations, Lutes

formed a planning staff that soon became

the dominant planning agency in the

ASF. In July 1943 he suggested to Somervell that the Director of Operations

should occupy the same place on the

ASF staff that OPD did on the War Department General Staff, and he should,

Lutes noted, "be charged with the strategic employment of the supplies in consonance with the approved strategic

plans, and charged with all ASF matters

affecting overseas operations."39

The last important reorganization of

the ASF staff, in the autumn of 1943,

carried out this concept in very considerable degree. At that time General

Lutes was designated Director of Plans

and Operations and his office made part

of the Office of the Commanding Gen38

 On these proposals see Millett, Role of the ASF,

p. 144.

39

 (1) Memo, Lutes for Somervell, 27 Jul 43, Misc

Notes, Lutes File. (2) Millett, Role of the ASF, pp.

345-46. (3) Leighton and Coakley, Global Logistics,

1940-43, pp. 227-33.
106 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

eral, ASF, its mission to "coordinate and

supervise planning and certain operational activities of the Army Service

Forces."40 Specifically, his responsibilities included providing the links between ASF and both the joint and combined committees and the War Department General Staff and of acting as

principal co-ordinator for supply operations of the ports and the technical services in support of overseas theaters. Two

divisions remained as direct parts of

Lutes' office, the Planning Division and

the Mobilization Division. Planning

Division was charged with the central

task of co-ordination and supervision of

"all overseas responsibilities of the Commanding General, ASF"; Mobilization

Division was to handle ASF responsibilities with relation to overseas troop

movements, service troop bases, and the

Troop List for Operations and Supply.41

At the same time, three of the staff divisions that had been part of the Directorate of Operations — Stock Control,

Storage, and Maintenance— were formed

into a new Directorate of Supply under

Brig. Gen. Frank A. Heileman.

General Lutes' expanded powers reflected recognition of the ever-increasing

work of ASF in the support of overseas

operations, and in his new position he

would have general surveillance over requirements and production planning,

functions of General Clay's Directorate

of Materiel, as well as over ASF distribution activities. General Clay, however,

apparently was not disposed to relinquish much of his control, and the Director of Plans and Operations did not

gain effective control of requirements

until the staff reorganization of mid1944. In March 1944 the Army Supply

Control System was established, supplanting the Army Supply Program as a

method of stating production requirements. In essence the new system geared

production demands to actual consumption experience, and so required a union

of production and distribution planning and control. Consequently, in June

1944 the Requirements Division of the

Director of Materiel's office and the

Stock Control Division of the Directorate of Supply were merged into a Requirements and Stock Control Division

directly under the Director of Plans and

Operations.42 (Chart 2)

The Planning Division of General

Lutes' office, under whatever denomination, from late 1942 was the focal point

within the ASF for the correlation of

logistics and strategy and for the evolution of policies and procedures for overseas supply. The Strategic Logistics

Branch provided ASF membership for

the Joint Logistics Committee and the

Joint Logistics Plans Committee, main- tained liaison with other JCS committees

and with OPD, studied the implications

of joint and combined plans, and conducted a certain amount of long-range

logistical planning on its own. The Theater Branch was charged with co-ordinating, securing War Department approval

when required, and issuing the necessary directives to fulfill ASF troop and

supply requirements for overseas theaters. The branch was divided into sec40

 History Planning Div ASF, Text, I, 24. 41

 (1) Ltr, Gen Lutes to Brig Gen Edmond H.

Leavey, 1 Mar 44, sub: Functions and Responsibilities

of Dir P&O ASF, Gen Pac Day file, Feb 44, Plng Div

ASF. (2) ASF Cir 118, 12 Nov 43. (3) History Planning

Div ASF, Text, I, 24-26. (4) On the Troop List for

Operations and Supply see below, Chapter VI.

42

 (1) ASF Cir 67, 15 Mar 44. (2) ASF Cir 175, 10

Jun 44. (3) Millett, Role of the ASF, p. 346. (4) On

supply control see below, Chapter V.

108 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

tions corresponding to the active theaters

in a close parallel to OPD's Theater

Group, and each section sought to serve

the interests of its own theater by shepherding its requests through the War

Department machinery and co-ordinating shipping requirements with the

Chief of Transportation. Zone of Interior Branch was charged with co-ordination of ASF programs for supplies,

troops, and transportation, with the determination of long-range requirements

for ASF troop units, and with processing theater long-range operational

supply requirements. As General Lutes

politely wrote theater Service of Supply

(SOS) commanders in mid-1944, "The

Planning Division . . . is therefore the

Army Service Forces staff agency with

which overseas Services of Supply Commanders and staffs are most concerned."43

As the focal point of ASF activity in

logistic planning and support of overseas theaters, General Lutes' office was

also the center of jurisdictional clashes

with OPD, whose officers regarded much

of the long-range logistical planning embodied in the strategic logistics studies

as essentially strategic planning in disguise. Lutes in turn continually fought

against the proclivity of OPD officers to

communicate directly with chiefs of technical services on supply matters without

going through Plans and Operations,

ASF. In theory, Plans and Operations,

ASF, simply took up where OPD, General Staff, left off, planning for the execution of and actually carrying out supply actions required by decisions of the

CCS, JCS, and OPD. In practice, it was

very hard to keep out of the business of

anticipating these decisions and trying

to influence them in terms of logistical

problems involved. Indeed, Planning

Division, ASF, freely admitted that it

entered this field, and justified the practice on the ground that actual strategic

decisions usually came too late to allow

timely logistical preparations. This byproduct of the exclusion of the supply

experts from the highest councils of the

joint planners endured until the very

end of the war.44

43 (1) Ltr, Lutes to Leavey, 1 Mar 44. (2) History

Planning Div ASF, Text, I, 63-68. (3) General Orders

14, 12 March 1943, changed the name of Services of

Supply (SOS) to Army Service Forces (ASF). Thereafter the Washington command used the new designation; theaters continued to use the old name until

a rear area was officially designated a communications

zone.

44

 (1) Cline, Washington Command Post, pp. 267-

68. (2) Millett, Role of the ASF, p. 123. (3) Memo,

Lutes for Dir Plng Div, 30 Aug 44, sub: Relations

Between OPD and Chiefs of Services. (4) Memo,

Lutes for ACofS OPD, 10 Oct 44. (5) Memo, Lutes

for CofT, 25 Oct 44, sub: 772d MP Bn. (3), (4), and

(5) in Lutes Diary.
CHAPTER V

Army Requirements, 1943-44

War Department logistical agencies

exercised primary responsibility in the

calculation of requirements for, and the

procurement and distribution of, supplies and equipment for Army forces.

This responsibility had to be exercised

within the framework of determination

by higher authority of the Army's share

of the productive capacity of the country. The calculation of military requirements in World War II, in its broadest

sense, involved questions of balance

among various programs of the Army

and Navy, and between those programs

and others sponsored by civilian agencies

that were equally essential for the conduct of the war or for meeting the needs

of the civilian economy. The narrower,

more specific military requirements for

which the War Department had responsibility, particularly those needed to

equip and sustain the ground army, are

the province of this chapter.

The Requirements Process

The calculation of requirements is in

many ways the most important and difficult step in the logistical process. On

the adequacy of the requirements program success or failure on the battlefield may depend, for unless timely orders are placed in advance matériel of

the right kinds and in the right quantities cannot be supplied when needed.

The controlling factor is the industrial

lead time necessary for production of all

save the simplest commercial items. Because of industrial lead time, requirements calculations during World War

II had to be based on strategic projections as to the nature and location of

the battlefields made some six months

to three years in advance.

Strategic projections were not sufficiently precise in 1942 to permit requirements to be calculated in terms of a specific strategy. During that year Army

requirements took shape in terms of the

over-all troop basis and of the aggregate

numbers expected to be deployed overseas, without regard to their theater of

deployment. Both the Victory Program

Troop Basis and the Army Supply Program (ASP) aimed at creating a balanced pool of variegated military resources out of which the specific ingredients for a campaign or a series of campaigns in any theater could be drawn.

If the troop basis, and hence the supply

program, were initially tied to a "Europe first" strategy, the relationship was

general and indirect, not specific and

direct. In the period immediately after

Pearl Harbor, the emphasis was put on

getting production programs under way

and on setting goals that were more challenging than realistic. There followed a

period when the challenging programs

had to be readjusted to the limits of pro-
110 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

duction realities, a process that reached

its climax in the feasibility dispute of

the fall of 1942. In that crisis the WPB

ruled that proposed war production programs for 1943 were beyond the limits

of American productive capacity, and

the JCS consequently scaled them downward, with the Army requirements for

ground force equipment receiving the

brunt of the reduction. In the reduction,

the question of a specific strategy was of

less import than that of over-all balance

of air, ground, and naval power and of

merchant shipping in the pool.1

Coincident with the resolution of the

feasibility dispute, a new system of allocation of raw materials was adopted by

the War Production Board that further

emphasized the necessity for close calculation of military requirements. The

Controlled Materials Plan, first promulgated in November 1942 and put into

effect in two major steps in April and

July 1943, provided that each procurement agency should calculate its requirements for three basic raw materials —

steel, copper, and aluminum—and present them to WPB quarterly. WPB

would then make the necessary allocations, apportioning any shortfalls among

the various agencies, and leaving to these

agencies the actual distribution of critical materials among their contractors.

This system proved to be far more effective than the previous method of allocating critical materials by means of priority ratings.2

With this system the calculation of

Army requirements became both a more

exact and a more exacting exercise in

1943. Not only did estimates for military

end items have to be carefully reviewed

and balanced, but all such items had to

be translated into their equivalents in

raw materials and production facilities.

At the same time, as the pattern of

future strategy and operations emerged,

the requirements program had also to

be adjusted to that pattern. The problem was no longer one of initial calculation of requirements to fit a specific

strategy, but one of adjusting requirements (initially calculated in terms of

creation of a general pool of military

power) to meet specific needs as they

developed. Thus the calculation of requirements in the later years of the war

did become more closely allied to strategy as the Army completed its capital

equipment program and moved on to

a phase in which replacement, consumption, and special operational needs were

the principal requirements. It cannot be

said, however, that the specific goal of

calculating "strategic requirements" was

ever reached.

Since early 1942 the official compilation of requirements for the U.S. Army

(except for aircraft and parts) and of

Army-procured material for the Navy

and lend-lease had been the Army Supply Program (ASP). With the 1 February 1943 edition the form of the program and the basic procedures for its

formulation and semiannual revision

had taken relatively final shape.3 Sec1

 On the feasibility dispute, see Leighton and

Coakley, Global Logistics, 1940-43, pp. 602-11. 2

 R. Elberton Smith, The Army and Economic

Mobilization, UNITED STATES ARMY IN

WORLD WAR II (Washington, 1959), pp. 566-96.

3

 (1) See especially Smith, The Army and Economic Mobilization, pp. 140-212, for an extremely

lucid account of the methodology of Army requirements determination. (2) Leighton and Coakley,

Global Logistics, 1940-43, pp. 295-303, 632-35. (3)

The following is based primarily on: Control Division, ASF, The Determination of Army Supply

Requirements, prepared in 1945 by Lt. Col. Simon
ARMY REQUIREMENTS, 1943-44 111

tion I of the 1 February ASP showed requirements for ground equipment; Section II set forth those for equipment and

supplies peculiar to the AAF; Section

III contained the required production

of lend-lease items not standard to the

U.S. Army; Section IV set forth the

construction program. Aircraft requirements were not carried in the ASP; they

were handled separately by a joint ArmyNavy agency, the Aircraft Resources

Control Office at Dayton, Ohio, which

scheduled aircraft production and dealt

directly with WPB and with industry.

Requirements in the 1 February edition

were projected for 1943 and 1944; the

1 August 1943 edition carried 1945 requirements for the first time.

Section I contained the great bulk of

ground army requirements. The task of

their detailed calculation fell to the seven technical services, each of which handled the items within its jurisdiction

under the supervision and direction of

Requirements Division, ASF, a part of

General Clay's Directorate of Materiel.

The chief basis for calculation was the

Victory Program Troop Basis, prepared

by the OPD Logistics Group. It projected estimates of all types of units for

approximately two years in the future,

showing applicable tables of organization and equipment. It was a long-range

forecast issued solely for use in requirements calculations and did not necessarily reflect the short-range schedules

prepared by G-3 that the War Department actually followed in activating

units. In 1943 it contained no data on

troop deployment by theater, existing

or projected.

Calculating detailed requirements for

the thousands of individual items that

made up the ASP was an almost unbelievably complex undertaking and involved hundreds of individuals in the

technical services and ASF headquarters.

In dealing with these calculations, a basic

distinction must be made between equipment items that could be used over and

over again until they wore out, such as

rifles, tanks, planes, artillery pieces, and

clothing (Class II and IV supplies), and

expendables that could be used only

once, such as food (Class I), POL (Class

III), and ammunition (Class V). The

factors used to compute requirements

for the two categories were necessarily

different, though requirements for both

had to be based generally on the Victory Program Troop Basis and on the

anticipated rate of overseas deployment.

Initial issue, maintenance or replacement,4

 and a distribution allowance

were the basic factors for calculating

equipment requirements. Initial issue

was the quantity required to equip individuals and troop units in the first instance; replacement, the quantity necessary to replace initial issue worn out,

lost, destroyed, or damaged beyond repair; the distribution allowance was the

quantity required to keep the transportation pipeline full at all times so the

M. Frank, QMC, of Reqmts and Stock Control Div

ASF, 5 vols. (vol. 1, text; vols. 2-5, appendixes and

documents) (hereafter cited as Frank, Army Supply

Requirements, with document number if pertinent)

I, 52ff., Monograph OCMH; and on TM 38-220,

25 Jan 44, Preparation and Administration of the

Army Supply Program.

4

 The use of the term "maintenance" to designate

quantities needed to replace initial issue worn out,

lost, destroyed or damaged beyond repair, and of

"maintenance factor" to describe the percentage of

initial issue needed for this purpose, was common

in 1942 and 1943. In November 1943, the term "replacement" was adopted in lieu of "maintenance,"

and thereafter "maintenance" referred only to the

care and repair of equipment.
112 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

soldier at the front could receive his

equipment when and where he needed

it. Certain factors that would appear to

be properly a part of the distribution

allowance (notably the provisions for

shipping losses and for overseas theater

reserve levels) in early editions of the

ASP were calculated separately.5

At least in theory initial issue requirements were the simplest to compute.

They were determined by multiplying

the dozens of separate tables of equipment for different types of troop units

by the number of those units in the Victory Program Troop Basis, and by multiplying individual allowances by the

number of soldiers entitled to receive

them. To the products had to be added

special operational supplies in excess of

individual and unit allowances and a

strategic reserve to take care of contingencies. The strategic reserve in the 1

February 1943 Army Supply Program

consisted of equipment for 1.5 million

enlisted men in units not expected to

be activated, about 20 percent more than

the then anticipated 7.5 million-enlistedman army. This strategic reserve was

about equally divided between undetermined lend-lease needs and the needs of

U.S. forces. Requirements for operational

supplies were based on estimates of the

areas of future operations and what they

would entail.

Replacement requirements were determined by the use of replacement factors, flat percentages of initial issue that

were supposed to indicate average

monthly losses of each type of equipment from all causes. Separate factors

were calculated for theaters of operation

and for the zone of interior (the latter

including certain inactive areas outside

the United States such as Panama and

the West Indies). During 1943 no differentiation was made among the active

theaters—a weighted average was used

for all of them. For example, the ZI

monthly replacement factor for service

shoes during 1942 was set at 10 percent

and the theater of operations factor at

25 percent, which meant that the yearly

ZI replacement requirement would be

120 pairs of shoes for every 100 pairs of

initial issue, the theater of operations replacement requirement 300 pairs for

every 100 of initial issue.6 Calculation of

total replacement requirements, then,

depended on a determination of how

many men on the average would be in

active overseas theaters during the year

and how many in the zone of interior or

inactive areas. It was further complicated

by the fact that the method used was to

determine the number of months of each

type replacement required for the entire

troop basis.7

The distribution allowance, in the allinclusive sense, consisted of the quantities necessary to fill ZI depots and theater supply levels, to provide for filling

the segments of the pipeline from factory to overseas port, and a special 2

percent allowance for shipping losses.

A distribution factor at first was calculated as a flat percentage of initial issue

5 and replacement requirements for each

 TM 38-220, 25 Jan 44, lists initial issue, replacement, and distribution as the only factors; however,

some ASF spokesmen later listed the strategic reserve

as an additional separate element. See, for instance,

address by Col. Lee A. Denson, Director, Reqmts

Div ASF, at ASF Hq School, 15 Apr 44, File Speeches,

Reqmts Div ASF.

6

 Smith, The Army and Economic Mobilization,

Table, p. 190. 7

 For an explanation of this method see Ibid.,

pp. 182-84, and Leighton and Coakley, Global Logistics, 1940-43, p. 299.
ARMY REQUIREMENTS, 1943-44 113

item with added allowances for items

subject to size tariffs. This method was

used by all the technical services except

Quartermaster Corps in calculating distribution requirements for the 1 February 1943 ASP. The Quartermaster Corps

system, the carry-over method, tied in

calculation of distribution requirements

with actual calculation of stocks, existing and required, at different points in

the pipeline. Later in the year the other

services adopted the Quartermaster

method. There was a marked tendency,

in fact, for the distribution allowance to

be merged with the replacement requirement. In the 1 February 1943 ASP, for

instance, the amounts required to establish the shipping loss allowance and a

41⁄2-month overseas reserve level were

both included with replacement under

the general designation "maintenance."

In the 1 August 1943 edition the distribution allowance was expressed entirely in terms of months of ZI and theater replacement although the various

factors in distribution continued to be

calculated separately.

Requirements for expendable supplies

could not, of course, be determined in

terms of either initial issue or replacement, although there was a similar distribution requirement for keeping the

pipeline full. Expendable supplies were

therefore estimated in terms of average

rate of consumption, expressed in "days

of supply." For ammunition the day of

supply referred to the number of rounds

per gun per day; for subsistence it was

the amount consumed by one man in

one day; for POL it was the normal daily

consumption of each type of vehicle or

other piece of equipment using liquid

fuel. Determination of requirements,

then, involved multiplication of the

basic day of supply by the number of

men or units to be supplied and multiplying the result by the number of days

of supply required. The total days of

supply necessary to provide for consumption by all units in the troop basis, to

build up reserves in the pipeline, and to

provide for a plethora of special circumstances, made up the total requirement

for expendables. Of all expendables, ammunition requirements were the most

difficult to predict because of variations

in expenditure rates for different areas

and different weapons and in the intensity of combat. However, 1942 and 1943

computations avoided these complications by the use of weighted averages for

all theaters similar to those used for

replacement factors.

After calculating total requirements

for a given year, total stocks on hand

were deducted to arrive at required production. The "on-hand" figures in early

1943, however, were largely hypothetical, based as they were on production

figures for the previous year minus estimated wastage. In March 1943 ASF ordered an inventory of stocks on hand

in depots, posts, camps, and stations,

which was to be the basis for calculating

on-hand quantities for the 1 August revision of the ASP. Requirements were

then to be based on the assumption

that all troops were equipped and all

overseas levels filled except to the extent

that requisitions were in hand at depots

for shortages. This represented a first

attempt to base requirements strictly on

anticipated future issues, the premise behind the stock control system to be

placed into effect in 1944. Unfortunately, the first inventories were not entirely

satisfactory, and only three services —

Quartermaster, Chemical Warfare, and
114 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

Transportation—could rely on them for

computing requirements. The others,

for the most part, fell back on over-all

inventory figures usually determined on

the basis of theoretical, not actual, rates

of consumption.8

Once determined, required production was scheduled over the period for

which requirements were computed, synchronized as closely as possible with

troop activation and overseas movement

schedules. When total required production for any year exceeded anticipated

production capacity, the deficit was deferred for production the next year. In

this connection the difference between

"critical" and "essential" items must be

noted. Critical items were those requiring a long lead time for production, and

were for the most part in short supply

during 1942 and 1943; essential items

were those obtainable on much shorter

notice and, even in the earlier period,

generally available in adequate quantities. The basic plan for equipping units

provided that units in training should

receive only 50 percent of their allowance of critical items. Thus both the 1

February and 1 August 1943 ASP's provided for production of only 50 percent

of critical items for those units in training not expected to go overseas until

1944. For 1944 and 1945 full authorized

allowances of critical items were provided for all units.9

The calculation of Army requirements

in early 1943 was thus more comparable

to a mass volley than to carefully aimed

fire. Apart from initial issue figures,

which were as reliable as the troop basis

and the tables of organization and equipment they were derived from, the computations behind the ASP figures were

weighted averages determined more or

less arbitrarily. No really reliable data

existed as yet on which either replacement factors or ammunition days of supply could be based, and most of the data

used were derived from World War I

experience. There was no provision for

different conditions in different theaters,

either in replacement and consumption

factors or in the methods by which reserve levels were computed. Overseas

troop bases in each theater were assumed

to be simply cross sections of the over-all

Victory Program Troop Basis, for requirements were established without regard to variations in type troop requirements between the ZI and overseas theaters or in variations between overseas

theaters themselves. Specific theater requirements entered into the calculation

of the Army Supply Program only in the

cases of special operational supplies,

which were calculated by the chiefs of

services from strategic projections furnished them by Plans and Operations,

ASF. In the 1 February revision no provision had yet been made for calculating

special project requirements on the basis

of information from theater commanders.

If inexact and perhaps overgenerous

in its provision for future Army needs,

the Army Supply Program was as flexible as circumstances would permit. It

underwent a major revision every six

months, with monthly revisions for spe8

 Frank, Army Supply Requirements, I, 71-74. 9

 Items classified critical for procurement purposes

were not necessarily the same as items listed as controlled for distribution under the War Department

priority system. Similarly, items under control for

overseas distribution and carried in the Materiel

Status Report were not the same as critical or controlled items. (See below, Chapter VI.) Just why

these three different categories were maintained

separately is not entirely clear.
ARMY REQUIREMENTS, 1943-44 115

cific items. The aim of the ASF was to

keep the requirements program responsive to needs as reflected from the active

theaters and in line with production

capacities insofar as necessary adjustments did not unduly disrupt the production program. Besides the program

for better inventories on which to base

on-hand quantities, in mid-1943 ASF began a project to secure better data from

overseas theaters and ZI installations on

which to base replacement factors and

ammunition days of supply. At the same

time, the first step toward calculation of

operational supply requirements on the

basis of actual theater needs was taken

when theater commanders were asked on

1 June 1943 to submit as "keyed projects" their future requirements of that

kind.10 As troops actually moved out to

overseas theaters in large numbers, and

as the strategy under which the war

would be fought and the operational

conditions governing its conduct unfolded, the ASF sought in several other ways

to bring the massive requirements program into line. Nevertheless, it was a

slow process, for requirements once established and converted into production

schedules generated a certain rationale

of their own. The bulk of ground forces

were not to be committed to battle until

late in 1944, and in the meantime the

realities of production governed adjustments in the Army Supply Program as

much as did either real or prospective

theater needs.

The Realities of Production—1943

American industry in 1943 reached

its wartime peak in the mass production of munitions, exploiting the immense capacity built up through 1941

and 1942 to turn out weapons, equipment, and supplies of relatively easy

manufacture. In 1944 the emphasis shifted from sheer physical volume to greater selectivity, and most particularly toward production of heavy equipment

items neglected earlier. Thus the dollar

value of munitions produced in 1944

exceeded that of 1943, but for sheer

physical volume output in 1943 may

well have surpassed that of any other

year of the war. And, if ground munitions alone are considered (excluding

subsistence), even in adjusted dollar

value 1943 production slightly exceeded

that of 1944 and more than doubled that

of 1942.11

Significant as the 1943 production

achievement was, it had been foreseen

and counted on and must not be allowed

to obscure the fact that war production

failed to meet the goals set. At the beginning of 1943, even after the drastic

cuts imposed by WPB the preceding

November, the entire munitions program (excluding war construction) totaled $72.3 billion. Actual output for

1943 came to only $57.4 billion. About

half of the shortfall can be explained

by a general downward revision of unit

costs that affected the dollar value fig10

 (1) History Planning Div ASF, Text, II, 216. (2)

See below, pp. 49-51.

11

 Statistics: Procurement, 9 April 1952 draft,

prepared by Richard H. Crawford and Lindsley F.

Cook under the direction of Theodore E. Whiting

(hereafter cited as Crawford and Cook, Statistics:

Procurement), MS, OCMH, p. 15. (2) Conspicuous

exceptions to the above generalizations were aircraft,

subsistence, and artillery ammunition, for which

production was greater in 1944 than 1943. The peak

year for tank guns and howitzers was 1942. In terms

of adjusted dollar values, all of the technical services

except Ordnance and Medical procured more in

1944 than in 1943; if subsistence is excluded, Quartermaster procurement reached its peak in 1942.
116 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

ures, but this still leaves a gap of $7 or

$8 billion between initial goal and performance.12

Limitations on productive capacity

combined with voluntary reductions in

military requirements in producing the

gap. Often it was difficult to see which

came first—reduction because of lesser

need, or evidence that productive capacity would prove insufficient to fill the

original requirement. Over all, the reductions had a broad strategic basis for,

contrary to original Victory Program

estimates, the USSR continued to tie

down the great bulk of the German

Army and mass invasion of the European

Continent from the west was delayed.

In making the reductions, nevertheless,

they appeared far more closely related

to limitations on the national economy

than to any changes in strategic concepts.

The aircraft goal set in November

1942 during the feasibility crisis was

107,000 planes for 1943, including 80,-

000 combat aircraft. Many ground and

naval munitions programs were given

equal priority, however; and even before

the end of 1942 General Arnold privately warned his staff not to count on

more than 80,000 aircraft of all types,

a number still considered sufficient to

meet the Air Forces' mobilization objective of 273 combat groups by the end

of 1943. Although neither the Air Forces

nor the Joint Chiefs officially receded

from the 107,000-plane target figure for

1943, by midyear the War Production

Board had officially informed them that

the maximum expectation would be

only 95,000; actual production was 85,-

898. The 1944 goal was reduced from

150,000 to 120,000. Meanwhile, as much

because of delays in training and deployment of combat crews as because of

the production lag, the AAF deferred the

goal of 273 combat groups to mid-1944;

then in 1944 abandoned it altogether.13

Similarly, ground munitions goals

proved excessive both in terms of need

and of feasibility. The 1 February 1943

ASP requirements for ground equipment provided a total dollar value of

$24.3 billion in 1943 and $26.8 billion

in 1944, these figures themselves representing a sizable reduction from earlier

goals. Attainment of these reduced ASP

12

 (1) CPA, Industrial Mobilization for War, pp.

533, 540, 600. (2) The $57.4 billion figure, as well as

that of $32.5 billion for 1942, represents contemporary rather than adjusted dollar values. Dollar

values adjusted on the basis of 1945 prices are $52.4

billion for 1943, $30.5 billion for 1942. See Civilian

Production Administration, The Production Statement, United States War Program July 1, 1940-

August 31, 1945, Special Release, May 1, 1947 (hereafter cited as The Production Statement), pp. 2-3.

(3) The figures for the war production program include merchant shipping. Treasury-procured lendlease, and direct foreign purchases, as well as the

military supply programs. The $7-8 billion differential for the entire program is a rough estimate

based on the assumption that the decline in unit

costs across the board was approximately 10 percent. This assumption is in turn based on a comparison made by the ASF showing a decline in unit

costs of approximately 10 percent between the 1

February 1943 and the 1 August 1943 editions of

the ASP. The assumption, then, is that this 10 percent decline in unit costs would hold good in comparing dollar values of the whole war production

program as originally planned for 1943 with the

appraised value of 1943 production at the end of the

year. See ASF, Monthly Progress Report, 31 Jul 43,

sec. 6, Analysis, p. 50.

13

 (1)Wesley Frank Craven and James Lea Cate,

eds., "The Army Air Forces in World War II," VI,

Men and Planes (Chicago: The University of Chicago

Press, 1954) (hereafter cited as Craven and Cate,

AAF VI), 281-87, 358-59. (2) Leighton and Coakley,

Global Logistics, 1940-43, pp. 602-11. (3) CPA, Industrial Mobilization for War, p. 605. The reduction in

the number of groups was in part the result of the

enlargement of certain types of groups and the introduction of the very long range (VLR) B-29 bomber.
ARMY REQUIREMENTS, 1943-44 117

goals depended on a more or less steady

rise in output of most categories of

ground munitions until late in the year.

Actually, production spurted during

April, but dropped in May and June;

by the end of June ASF officials had

written off 5 to 8 percent of the most

critical segments of the ground munitions program as unlikely to materialize.14

The causes of production difficulties

in 1943 were complex and, except in

isolated cases, did not stem from inadequate productive capacity or from inadequate supply of basic materials. Failures in the infinitely complex processes

of synchronizing the flow of materials

and components and of insuring the

availability of skilled labor were substantially responsible. Then, too, although supplies of basic materials were

generally adequate, shortages of specific

shapes and forms of material and refined

products developed in the course of the

year that held back production of end

items. The inadequate supply of fabricated aluminum, for example, was a

major factor in some of the cutbacks in

aircraft production, although the supply

of aluminum ingots themselves well exceeded the demand. A shortage of carbon steel developed in the summer of

1943, largely because of the prolonged

strike in the coal mines. Because of a

shortage of copper, the production of

steel cartridge cases had been initiated,

which, in its turn, was slowed down by

chronic technical problems. Production

of Army-procured vessels was held up by

shortages of engines, deck equipment,

and electrical control equipment. Rapid

design changes made it impossible to

maintain schedules for Signal Corps

items such as radar and high frequency

radio sets.15

Whatever the complex causes, production shortfalls called for further realistic

adjustments in Army requirements to

conform to what seemed to be the practical limits of feasibility. In the meantime an even more serious question of

feasibility had to be faced: determination of the practicable limits of Army expansion, which, in turn, vitally affected

production goals. The JCS had had the

question of the ultimate troop basis for

the Army and Navy under consideration

since September 1942. Early estimates

by both services, totaling about 14 million men for 1944 and 17.5 million by

1945, were far beyond the approximately 11 million men the War Manpower

Commission thought would be available.

In the struggle to bring even the 1943

requirement within the 11-million limit,

the Navy took the position that the

Army's 8.2-million-man program (100

divisions) was too great, that it would

absorb men needed to man the new

ships being built under the naval construction program, and would provide

a much larger Army than could be transported overseas in shipping to be available by the end of 1944. The Army's

program also came under attack from

the War Manpower Commission and the

Congress.

Under these pressures, General McNarney appointed a special committee

headed by Col. Ray T. Maddocks of

OPD, an Army member of the Joint

Staff Planners, to study the whole question of reduction of the projected size

of the Army. The Maddocks Committee,

14

 ASF Monthly Progress Reports, 30 Jun 43, sec.

6, Analysis.

15

 ASF Monthly Progress Reports, 30 Jun, 31 Jul,

31 Aug 43, sec. 6, Analysis.
118 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

using the proposed deployment of Army

units drawn up in pursuance of TRIDENT

strategic objectives, concluded that an

Army of 88 divisions and 7.7 million

men by the end of 1943 would be adequate, and that the planned activation

of 12 additional divisions could be postponed until 1944. This recommendation was accepted and incorporated in a

new G-3 Troop Basis for 1943 issued on

1 July. The question of the troop basis

for 1944 was a matter of discussion in

JCS committees for sometime longer; the

issue was finally settled in November

when the 7.7-million figure was set as a

continuing ceiling on Army expansion

and the Navy's ceiling was set at 2.9 million. Within the 7.7-million ceiling, go

divisions became the accepted upper

limit of expansion of the ground combat army.16

By mid-1943, then, it was reasonably

clear that the ultimate limitation on the

American war effort would not be productive capacity but military manpower.

The reduction in the troop basis obviously opened the way for a corresponding reduction in material requirements

that would make production shortfalls

of little consequence except for individual critical items. Even so, in the 1

August 1943 revision of the Army Supply Program there was no meshing of

these factors of decreased manpower

availability and decreased production

feasibility. The revised Victory Program

Troop Basis, received by ASF from OPD

on 17 June 1943, did not reflect the reduction in 1943 goals set forth in the

G-3 Troop Basis to be issued less than

two weeks later, nor did it reflect the

general expectation that the Army

would reach the limit of its expansion

by the end of 1943. Instead, despite internal adjustments, it set forth precisely

the same manpower goals as those on

which the 1 February ASP had been calculated—7.5 million enlisted men (8.2-

million-man army) in 1943 and 9 million in 1944. And it should be remembered that the February edition had included requirements for an additional

1.5 million men in 1944 simply to provide a 20 percent strategic reserve for

which units were not expected to be

activated. The practical effect of not

considering the reduction in the Army's

goals from 8.2 million to 7.7 million officers and men in 1943 was to add another contingency reserve of about 500,-

000 men for 1943 that would be carried

over to provide an even greater one in

1944—a sizable cushion, since the total

program provided equipment for 116

divisions by the end of 1943 and 148

by the end of 1944 as opposed to the go

soon to be accepted as the practicable

top limit of Army expansion. Perhaps

because of this, the requirement for a

20 percent strategic reserve of food and

clothing, materials procurable on short

notice, was eliminated in the 1 August

ASP.17

The established policy in connection

with the 1 August revision of the ASP

was that no changes in required production for 1943 should be made except

where deemed "absolutely necessary" be16

 (1) Maj William P. Moody, Planning the Troop

Bases for All Services for 1944 and Beyond, sec. II C,

ch. VII, History of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in World

War II, MS, JCS Historical Sec. (2) Matloff, Strategic

Planning, 1943-44, pp. 179-84. (3) Kent Roberts

Greenfield, Robert R. Palmer, and Bell I. Wiley, The

Organization of Ground Combat Troops, UNITED

STATES ARMY IN WORLD WAR II (Washington, 1947), pp. 222-30. 17

 Frank, Army Supply Requirements, I, 65-71.
ARMY REQUIREMENTS, 1943-44 119

cause of the "cost, difficulty and delay

which result from changes in production schedules which have been agreed

upon, and which are now serving as the

bases for determining raw material allocations."18

 Despite this avowed policy

and the failure to adjust the Victory

Program Troop Basis, the August ASP

showed a considerable reduction in requirements from that of February. In

terms of dollar value of ground equipment it totaled 14.4 percent for 1943

procurement objectives and 17.9 percent

for 1944. Dollar value, however, was not

a true measure. A substantial interim

reduction in unit costs accounted for

perhaps 10 percent of the diminished

dollar values for each year, making the

effective reductions in 1943 procurement

objectives about 5 percent and of 1944

objectives about 8 percent. The most

striking reductions were in the medium

tank program in which 1943 objectives

were cut from 26,386 to 23,262 and

those for 1944 from 20,230 to 12,507.

Equally significant were increased provisions for heavy trucks and DUKW's,

reflecting requests from active theaters

and prospective needs for the European

invasion.19

The revised ASP, as officially explained, was "intended to represent a

program that is feasible of attainment,

and therefore reflects a number of cutbacks to approach a realistic volume of

production."20 Its feasibility, nevertheless, was evidently more theoretical than

real, for implementing procurement

plans drawn up in August cut more

than 3 percent off the reduced goals as

probably unattainable, and to realize

even these reduced expectations output

would have to be accelerated by 20 percent during the last four months of the

year—an increase more than twice as rapid as any yet accomplished in a fourmonth period of 1943. The expectation

did in fact prove too optimistic. Even

though interim revisions whittled down

the ASP by almost another billion dollars before the end of the year, performance fell short of reduced objectives

by almost 5 percent. Shortfalls in the

individual technical service programs

ranged from 4.2 percent in Ordnance to

7.7 percent in Quartermaster, with the

major deficits in combat vehicles, trucks,

tractors, small arms, artillery ammunition, bombs, airborne radar, ground radios, field wire, landing mat, subsistence,

equipage, general quartermaster supplies, drugs, and marine equipment. As

the accompanying chart shows, the total

1943 output of ground munitions was

far less than the goal set at the beginning

of the year.21 (Chart 3)

McCoy Board and Richards

Committee

Requirements, meanwhile, were being

revised downward. The greatest, though

18

 Ibid., doc. 83, Memo, Hq ASF for CsTechSvcs,

15 Jun 43, sub: Computation of Reqmts Sec I ASP,

1 Aug 43. 19

 (1) ASF Monthly Progress Reports, 31 Jul, 31

Aug 43, sec. 6, Analysis. (2) Selected items in ASF

Monthly Progress Reports, 30 Jun, 31 Jul, 31 Aug

43, sec. 1A, Procurement. 20

 ASF Monthly Progress Report, 31 Aug 43, sec. 6,

Analysis, p. 5.

21

 (1) ASF Monthly Progress Report, 31 Aug, 30

Nov, 31 Dec 43, sec. 6, Analysis. In the 31 December

MPR total dollar value of ASF-procured supplies for

1943 was shown as $23.2 billion as opposed to a current required production goal of $24.4 billion, or 95.2

percent. (2) More refined statistics used by Crawford

and Cook in Statistics: Procurement, show dollar

value of ASF procurement in 1943 as $20.3 billion (all

figures rounded to nearest million).
120 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

CHART 3—ORIGINAL 1943 PROCUREMENT PLANS AND ACTUAL ACCOMPLISHMENTS

Source: ASF MPR Sec 6 Analysis, 30 Nov 43 p. 3.

certainly not the only, impetus for revision came from the War Department's

Procurement Review Board, appointed

in mid-1943 at the behest of the Office

of War Mobilization and headed by Maj.

Gen. Frank R. McCoy. Instructed to review Army supply policies, procedures,

and programs in the light of approved

troop bases, projected operations scheduled by the JCS, and established lendlease policy, the board first set out to

study long-range strategic plans and to

review procurement operations to ascertain how closely they followed and supported strategic concepts. The board

members abandoned this approach when

they found that operations were planned

for no more than six months in advance, while procurement of many items

had necessarily to be on an eighteen

months basis. "Materials are ordered to

meet the planned mobilization pro-
ARMY REQUIREMENTS, 1943-44 121

gram," the board reported, "and for the

purpose of accumulating stockpiles to

meet possible and unstated demands. We

are, in effect, establishing a pool of supplies."22

In its sympathetic and constructive review, presented on 1 September 1943,

the board members recognized the immense complications of the military supply program and that "the one irredeemable error of a supply program is not

too much, but too little."23 They

found organization for supply "generally sound," and the military results

achieved "excellent," but also noted that

"in many phases of the program the

sights have been set too high and must

be critically re-examined with a view to

their reduction."24 In support of this

latter contention, the board aimed its

principal attack at overgenerous provision of reserves, inaccuracy in calculation of replacement and consumption

factors, failure to consider variations in

requirements of different theaters, lack

of proper inventory control in overseas

theaters, and failure to cancel requirements for obsolete programs or to liquidate investments in inactive theaters fast

enough. In regard to reserves, the board

pointed to the discrepancy between the

Victory Program Troop Basis and the

actual prospective rate of mobilization,

noting that in the ASP the "so-called

20% reserve may be, in effect, a reserve of far greater proportions."25

 It

suggested that a further vast accumulation of reserves would result from calculations based on inaccurate replacement

factors and days of supply and from the

too-generous calculation of distribution

allowances to fill theater levels and the

supply pipeline based on a more active

submarine threat than then existed.

The most important of the board's

thirteen recommendations proposed a

"restudy of reserves to reduce them to

realistic realignment with the actual situation and to give greater weight to

the reserve strength which exists in our

productive capacity."26 On 3 September

1943 General McNarney appointed a

special committee for this purpose, headed by Brig. Gen. George J. Richards,

War Department budget officer, and

made up of one representative each from

G-2, G-3, G-4, and OPD of the General Staff, and one representative from

each of the major ZI commands. The

Richards Committee was to submit

recommendations concerning the strategic reserve, theater reserves, stockpiles

in the United States, days of supply and

maintenance factors, and distribution

and shipping loss allowances.27

The Richards Committee took the

same line as had its predecessor. While

warning of the necessity for any errors

to be "on the side of over-supply," and

that supply reserves had been subjected

"neither to prodigious demands of large

successful offensives on several fronts nor

to the staggering losses of a major defeat," the committee still spelled out in

57 specific recommendations the means

to reduce what it considered overabundance in the Army Supply Program.28

22

 Levels of Supply, app. B, Rpt of WD Procurement Review Board (McCoy Board), I, 63-64. 23

 Ibid., p. 2. 24

 (1) Ibid., p. 65. (2) Levels of Supply, app. E, Ltr,

McCoy to Marshall, 31 Aug 43. 25

 Ibid., Levels of Supply, app. B, p. 47.

26

 Ibid., p. 67. 27

 Levels of Supply, app. E, Conference Held by

the Deputy Chief of Staff on 3 September 1943. 28

 Levels of Supply, app. F, Rpt of WD Special

Committee for the Re-study of Reserves (Richards

Committee), I, 5, 89.
122 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

The general import of the recommendations was a call for a general reduction

in reserve levels in view of the bright

outlook for the Allied cause at the end

of the year 1943. The Victory Program

Troop Basis, the committee said, should

be changed to conform to the practical

limits of Army expansion and the strategic reserve drastically cut. Moreover, the

troop basis should be revised to provide

"by theaters or areas, the proper types

and numbers of units needed for present and projected operations."29

Further, the committee called for calculation of replacement factors and ammunition days of supply for each individual theater rather than in terms of

over-all weighted averages. The ASP, on

that basis, should then be recalculated

in terms of variant needs of the individual theaters based on actual and prospective deployments to them. In calculating needs for each theater, authorized

theater levels should be reduced as a

result of the diminished submarine menace to quantities necessary for a 3O-day

operating level, for filling theater distribution pipelines, and for sufficient stock

to provide for convoy interval time for

Classes I and III, and for emergency replacement time for Classes II, IV, and V.

In calculating needs for the zone of interior, maximum stock levels should be

lowered from go to 45 days on hand and

on order at posts, camps, and stations,

and from 180 to 90 days in distribution

depots serving these installations. In

filler depots serving overseas theaters

60 days' stock should be provided of

items in the strategic reserve, over and

above the 30-day contingency reserve for

items not included therein.30 Except for

theater levels, the filler depot stocks,

and the contingency reserve, distribution factors should be eliminated in the

calculation of the ASP, the 2 percent

allowance for shipping losses should be

dropped and a substantial cut made in

pipeline allowances of subsistence.

The Richards Committee thus proposed not only a reduction in reserves

and elimination of in-transit allowances,

but a more careful calculation of the

Army Supply Program based on theater

deployments and needs rather than on

weighted averages. The committee also

indicated that the Supply Division of the

General Staff (G-4) should take a far

more active role in supervising preparation of the ASP. The report therefore

came as something of a blow to the ASF,

which, since March 1942, had been largely responsible for the formulation of the

ASP with little supervision by G-4. ASF

did not welcome many of the committee's

final recommendations. "The members

of the committee," ran a collective ASF

critique, "could not have been expected

to have a detailed and working knowledge of the many phases of the problem.

. . . Consequently, it is believed that

some of the recommendations are based

on incomplete data, misinterpretation

of data, theoretical rather than practical

considerations, etc., and that their adoption without more detailed study would

be highly detrimental to the war effort."31

 The Army Service Forces objected most strongly to the elimination

29

 Ibid., p. 76.

30

 Current ASF calculations provided for varying

levels for the different classes of supply, see Table 12,

ch. V, p. 126. 31

 Memo, Styer for DCofS, 4 Dec 43, sub: Rpt of

WD Special Com for Re-Study of Reserves, ASF Dir

Materiel File, Richards Com Rpt.
ARMY REQUIREMENTS, 1943-44 123

of in-transit allowances, but were skeptical of other points as well—the use of

the theater basis for calculating requirements, the establishment of uniform depot reserve levels in the United States

without regard to differences in types of

supply, the differentiation between strategic and contingency reserves, and the

assignment to G-4 of functions being

performed by its own staff. As one ASF

critic noted:

The use of so-called theater computations,

while having certain advantages, has many

serious disadvantages. The chief objection

to the theater computation is the inherent

lack of flexibility; i.e., provision of the bulk

of equipment in general purpose types is

preferable. Moreover, theater computations

require an accurate long-range projection

of troop deployments. Any changes made in

troop deployments will render surplus any

special equipment procured, and more serious, will cause a shortage of general purpose equipment. . . . Replacement of equipment is more nearly a function of time;

hence, with few exceptions, wastes generally

at the same rate in any theater.32

The ASF objections carried little

weight with a committee on which it

had only equal representation with the

other agencies involved. General McNarney assigned formal responsibility for

comment on each of the recommendations variously to G-4, OPD, G-3, ASF,

AAF, and to an ad hoc committee under

the chairmanship of General Maxwell,

G-4, and composed of representatives

of all the interested agencies. ASF dissents were generally referred to the ad

hoc committee, whence the original

recommendations emerged with only

minor modifications to meet ASF objections. On 1 January 1944 General McNarney issued a formal directive incorporating the fifty-seven recommendations as modified in the subsequent deliberations. The McNarney directive

codified the final results of the survey

begun by the McCoy Board, and established definite command or staff responsibility for carrying out each recommendation, with G-4 to carry the heaviest burden. As an ASF historian remarked, the

directive "echoes with mandates to

G-4."33

The McNarney directive, nonetheless,

did not mark a sharp break with the

past. It represented, rather, a culmination of trends toward greater logic, order,

and system in the calculation of Army

requirements, toward reduction of reserve levels, and toward calculations in

terms of theater needs, all of which had

been under way since 1942. It undoubtedly speeded up those trends and proved

the value of an independent outside

survey of the Army supply system. But

changes were gradual, and not all the

final recommendations were ever completely carried out, while others were,

in fact, being carried out at the time the

directive was issued. The shift of authority from ASF to G-4 for the formulation of the supply program proved to

be more nominal than real, and practical

adjustments made in a number of cases

met many of the ASF objections and restored a considerable measure of administrative control over supply levels

32

 (1) Ibid. (2) For detailed comments see pages

51-55 of Richards Com Rpt.

33

 (1) Frank, Army Supply Requirements, I, 89;

see also above, ch. IV. (2) Levels of Supply, app. G,

Comments . . . on Recommendations [of the] Richards Com. (3) Levels of Supply, app. A, Memo,

McNarney for CG's and Army CsofS, 1 Jan 44, sub:

Changes in Supply Procedures and Supply Levels

(hereafter cited as McNarney Directive, 1 Jan 44).
124 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

to that command.34 The proposed theater method for calculation of requirements, in particular, would not be

achieved for a long time.

The 1 February 1944 Army

Supply Program

The Richards Committee report had

its major impact on the formulation of

the 1 February 1944 edition of the Army

Supply Program. Computation of the

program was going on concurrently with

the deliberations of the committee and

the staff review, and every effort was

made to make the final product conform

to the recommendations contained in the

McNarney directive. The result was a

marked downward revision of Army requirements as stated in the 1 August

1943 edition, but the very heart of the

system proposed by the committee—the

calculation of requirements on a theater

basis—could not be effectively carried out.

The most significant factor affecting

the reduction of the ASP was the new

Victory Program Troop Basis drawn up

in OPD and approved by General McNarney on 22 November 1943. Although

it did not follow the Richards Committee recommendations in detail, the new

troop basis was in substantial accord with

the conclusions of that committee and

of the McCoy Board, for it finally

brought the basis for the supply program

into alignment with the approved troop

ceiling for the ground army. On the

supposition that the Army would reach

the limits of its expansion by the end

of 1943—the approved ceiling of 7.7 million officers and enlisted men—and remain at approximately that strength

through 1944 and 1945, the strategic

reserve for which supplies were to be

procured but units not activated was

reduced from 1,678,000 to 532,000 men.

The net total in terms of divisions and

balanced supporting units for which material would be procured came to 115

(105 active and 10 strategic reserve), as

opposed to the previous figure of 148.

The deepest cuts were made in armored

divisions (from 30 to 18) and antiaircraft battalions (from 550 to 257) , which

correspondingly affected requirements

for heavy equipment.35

The expected progressive deployment

of forces overseas during 1944 and 1945

is shown in Table 11.

The new Victory Program Troop Basis

did not show prospective troop deployments by theater because neither OPD

nor G-4 could provide timely estimates

consistent with it. Consequently, the use

of specific theater deployments as a basis

for requirements computation was deferred until the next regular revision

of the ASP later in the year. The basis

34

 (1) Since these developments are mainly related

to distribution rather than requirements calculations

they are treated in Chapter VI, below. (2) For a final

appraisal of the probable impact of McNarney's

directive on ASF operations see Memo, Clay for

Somervell, 9 Jan 44, sub: Analysis of "Changes in

Supply Procedure and Supply Levels," ASF Dir

Materiel file, Richards Com Rpt.

35

 (1) Frank, Army Supply Requirements, I, 90-96.

Document 94, volume III, is a detailed comparison of

troop units in the Victory Program Troop Basis of

15 June 43 and that of 22 November 43. See also,

Document 93, III, Memo. Hq ASF for CsTechSvcs, 27

Nov 43, sub: Computation Section 1 ASP, 1 Feb 44.

(2) The Richards Committee calculations provided

for procurement for 113 divisions in 1944 and for a

possible additional 11 in 1945. See Com Rpt, pp. 10-

22, and especially Table on page 22, in Levels of

Supply. (3) The tabulation is not, however, entirely

clear, and the ASF critique charged that the committee itself did not "fully understand" it. See Memo,

Styer for DCofS, 4 Dec 43.
ARMY REQUIREMENTS, 1943-44 125

TABLE 11—SUMMARY OF GROUND ARMY STRENGTH, VICTORY PROGRAM TROOP BASIS

22 NOVEMBER 1943

Source: Memo, Hq ASF for CsTechSvcs, 27 Nov 43, sub: Computation of Sec 1 ASP, 1 Feb 44, in Frank, Army Supply Requirements,

doc. 93.

for calculation of the 1 February edition

was still, for the most part, weighted

averages with some consideration given

to climatic factors. Keyed projects submitted by theater commanders were

used to adjust operational supply requirements, and the provision for the

distribution allowance was made to conform with the different theater supply levels prescribed by the Richards

Committee. In the absence of an authoritative troop deployment, however, this

had to be done by use of approximate

figures and conversion to a weighted

average for all theaters. ASF had already

drastically cut theater levels (partly by

providing for only half of the operating

level) and in-transit allowances, and had

eliminated the 2 percent shipping loss

factor; but in January 1944 a recomputation had to be made eliminating the

in-transit allowance entirely and providing for the newly prescribed theater

levels. (Table 12) There was a total reduction in the distribution allowance

for Class II and IV supplies from the

previous edition's 215 to 285 days of supply (varying with the technical service)

to an average standard allowance of 160

days for items included in the strategic

reserve, and 190 days for items not included therein. Most of the reduction

had actually been accomplished before

McNarney issued his directive. Pipeline

requirements for subsistence were reduced by approximately 14.5 percent.

Distribution allowances for other expendables (except POL for which levels

were determined by the Army-Navy

Petroleum Board) were computed in accordance with the newly prescribed theater levels.36

36

 (1) Frank, Army Supply Requirements, I, 90-97,

and doc. 97. (2) Memo, Clay for Somervell, 9 Jan 44.

(3) Excerpts, ASF Rpts on Implementation of McNarney Directive, Log File, OCMH. (4) On the

detailed problems of subsistence and POL requirements see Erna Risch, The Quartermaster Corps:

Organization, Supply, and Services I, (hereafter cited

as Risch, Quartermaster Corps I), UNITED STATES

ARMY IN WORLD WAR II (Washington, 1953),

231-42.
126 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

TABLE 12—COMPARISON OF ELEMENTS OF DISTRIBUTION FOR CLASSES II

AND IV SUPPLIES, ARMY SUPPLY PROGRAM

a

 Represents one-half average operating level because in-transit time included.

Source: Frank, Array Supply Requirements, doc. 95.

Replacement factors used in computing the 1 February 1944 ASP, though

still as a rule weighted averages for all

theaters and for the zone of interior, in

many cases were refined and based on

an evaluation of theater experience to

date. During the last six months of 1943

replacement factors for 769 items (of a

total 4,298) were revised, 713 of them

downward. Also, inventories used by the

technical services in determining onhand figures were considerably more accurate than those used in August 1943,

but they still left much to be desired.

A final refinement used reserve productive capacity in lieu of end items in some

categories — notably ammunition and

quartermaster and chemical warfare
ARMY REQUIREMENTS, 1943-44 127

items—as the McCoy Board had recommended.37

The resultant net reduction achieved

in Sections I, II, and III of the Army

Supply Program was from $27.2 billion

of required production for 1944 in the

1 August 1943 edition to $21.6 billion

as of 1 February 1944. Section I (ground

equipment) was reduced from $21.7 billion to $17.8 billion for 1944 and from

$19.6 billion to $15.8 billion for 1945,

or, roughly, a net total reduction of $8

billion for the two years. The major

portion of the reduction by far was in

ordnance equipment. ASF statisticians

figured that of the total reduction 84

percent could be attributed to net decreases in requirements and 16 percent

to reductions in unit costs. When the 1

February ASP was published, almost

one-half of the decrease in net requirements had already been reflected in procurement schedules.38

The adjustment of the Army Supply

Program to the realities of production

and to the progressive reduction in the

projected size of the ground army had

been achieved, more or less, and the requirements program relatively stabilized.

Most future problems would be those

of adjusting specific items of production

to needs reflected by theater experience

as the ground army became progressively committed on all fronts. By early 1944

capital issue requirements for an army of

7.7 million men were nearing completion. In the future the major proportion

of requirements would be for replacement and operational supplies needed

for the great worldwide offensives of

1944.39 Future requirements, too, were

apt to be both more specific and more

variable than those of the past that had

been calculated mainly in terms of the

over-all troop basis.

Theater Requirements and the

Supply Control System

The basic requirements and production problem, then, as the climactic year

of 1944 began, was to make the flow of

supplies from the factories responsive

to theater demands that were no longer

potential but actual, and at the same time

prevent the accumulation of surplus. The

Army supply system evolved in that direction. There were several important

aspects of this evolution. One was the

development of replacement and consumption factors by theaters or areas

of operation; a second, an increasing responsiveness to theater demands for special types of supplies, for changes in

tables of organization and equipment,

and for adjustments in the internal composition of the troop basis itself; a third,

the development of the Supply Control

System to replace the Army Supply Pro37

 (1) Frank, Army Supply Requirements, I, 97-98,

122. (2) Memo, Hq ASF for CsTechSvcs, 16 Sep 43,

sub: On-hand Figures for 1 Feb 44 Rev ASP, with

related papers, Reqmts Div ASF, On-Hand Data,

1 Feb 44 Rev of ASP. (3) Memo, Lt Col Paul I.

Bertram for Maj Silverstrand, 8 Jan 44, sub: Replacement Factor Data for Gen Moore, Reqmts Div ASF,

file Basis for Memo to Gen R. C. Moore. (4) ASF

Monthly Progress Report, 31 Jan 44, sec. 6, Analysis. 38

 (1) ASF Monthly Progress Report, 31 Jan 44, sec.

6, Analysis. (2) For a convenient table of dollar values

for the seven editions of ASP Section I see Smith,

The Army and Economic Mobilization, p. 152.

39

 (1) Memo, Clay for Div, Dirs, Office Dir Materiel

ASF, 28 Jan 44, Readj Div ASF file 400 ASP. (2) See

Smith, The Army and Economic Mobilization, chart,

p. 186, for proportion of initial issue and replacement requirements for each of the war years. The

1945 requirements were 100 percent replacement

items, except, of course, new matériel and equipment.
128 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

gram as a method of stating Army production requirements.

The use of the theater basis for the

determination of requirements depended on the development of a usable forecast of troop deployments by theaters.

As a result of the McNarney directive

this forecast became a primary responsibility of G-4. Working closely with

OPD, G-4 finally came up with such a

troop deployment on 20 May 1944—a

revision of the Victory Program Troop

Basis that was published under a new

name, "Troop Schedule for the Army

Supply Program." Based on the most

recent G-3 troop basis, it showed projected deployment for all theaters and

the zone of interior by calendar quarters

up to and including 31 December 1945.

Unfortunately, it was not entirely dependable, and often did not agree with

actual activations being made by the

major commands nor with other data

on troop deployments. Later, on 19

July 1944 a revised Troop Schedule was

distributed that was based on the War

Department Troop Deployment prepared by OPD. This revision was used

for the next regular edition of the ASP,

not actually completed until 1 October

1944. On 1 October, also, OPD published a new War Department Troop

Deployment that proved to be so satisfactory G-4 considered it necessary only

to add an annex, designated the Supply

Supplement, which set forth the necessary data for computing supply requirements. In this way the troop basis for

procurement of supplies was finally

brought into agreement with the troop

basis for deployment.40

Despite delays in developing an accurate and satisfactory deployment forecast, more and better information after

February 1944 permitted increased use

of the theater basis for calculating requirements. Better theater reports on

issues and expenditures clearly demonstrated marked differences in expenditure and wastage rates. On 10 June 1944

separate days of supply for categories of

ammunition were established for four

major areas—the European, Mediterranean, Asiatic, and Pacific. In July separate replacement factors were established

for the two broad areas of the war, Pacific and Atlantic, and with additional accumulation of data in December 1944 the

War Department finally could announce

separate replacement factors for each

of the six major overseas theaters and

for the zone of interior. With the accumulation of additional data for each category, replacement and consumption factors were progressively revised.41

To gear procurement of operational

supplies more closely to theater needs

took somewhat longer. Operational supplies were those in excess of authorized

allowances and needed for particular operations, mostly items for development of

lines of communication or to take care

of special combat exigencies created by

40

 (1) History of Supply Division, G-4, WD General Staff, Program Br, pp. 10-11, MS, OCMH. (2)

Frank, Army Supply Requirements, I, 142-44; and

docs. 123, 124. (3) Memo, Col H. M. Reedall, Dir

Reqmts and Stock Control Div, for Dir P&O, ASF,

15 Jul 44, sub: Progress Rpt on Revision of Troop

Schedule for ASP, Purchases Div ASF file ASP.

(4) The Troop List for Operations and Supply prepared in the Strength and Accounting Office, ODCofS,

continued to serve as the troop basis for distribution.

See below, ch. VI. 41

 For fuller development of the problem of determining replacement factors and ammunition days

of supply see Smith, The Army and Economic

Mobilization, pp. 182-93, 203-08; especially Table 23,

page 190, showing some particular replacement factors, and Table 25, page 207, showing ammunition

days of supply for selected weapons.
ARMY REQUIREMENTS, 1943-44 129

peculiar conditions of geography, climate, or terrain. They consisted primarily of Class II and IV items, particularly engineer construction supplies,

signal equipment for major installations,

and road, rail, and water transportation

equipment. They varied widely from

area to area depending on the individual

problems encountered; for instance, the

needs for rehabilitating ports and railroads in Europe were necessarily different from those for building new installations on primitive islands and

setting up water lines of communication

in the Pacific. Such diverse requirements, like those for assault shipping,

could only be calculated in terms of a

fairly precise forecast of the area, nature,

and scope of contemplated operations.

Since the items called for were usually

among the more complex ones, and required a long production lead time, forecasts had to be made one to two years

in advance. Operational supplies in

many ways were the real crux of the

problem of strategic requirements.

It was obviously impossible in 1942

to make the specific strategic forecasts

that would enable requirements for operational supplies to be computed with

any exactness. Methods used were, in

fact, quite haphazard. Chiefs of technical

services simply made their own estimates

of future needs the basis of procurement

planning, while overseas commands requisitioned supplies when and as the need

arose. As a more specific method became

clearly requisite, Plans and Operations

Division, ASF, tended to assume the major responsibility for furnishing the strategic grounds on which the technical

services would base their calculations;

theater commands, too, were more often

consulted in the formulation or adjustment of procurement programs. Late in

1942 the ASF staff prepared a series of

detailed assumptions as to operations in

the Mediterranean during 1943 on

which the Chief of Engineers prepared

estimates of special requirements for construction materials in that theater. These

estimates were forwarded to General Eisenhower's headquarters where, after

several delays, they were revised downward about 30 percent. Shortly thereafter the Chief Signal Officer pioneered

development of estimates of signal requirements for nearly all overseas theaters two years in advance, and they

were approved for procurement planning purposes by the Joint Communications Board of the JCS. Other extensive

estimates of requirements were made for

the development of the supply line

through Burma, one of the most elaborate operational projects of World War

II. Another very extensive and urgent

project, development of facilities in the

Persian Gulf, was met by several expedients without extensive new production.42

In June 1943 the first step toward systematized consultation of theater commanders was taken with the initiation

of the keyed projects system. Under this

system overseas commands were to submit their requirements for operational

supplies in the form of lists of projects,

each with a key number, with either specific bills of material or with requests

that the War Department compute such

bills. The system was officially recognized by War Department circular in

September 1943, and with significant

modifications remained in effect throughout the rest of the war. Early in 1944 it

42

 On the CBI and Persian Gulf see Leighton and

Coakley, Global Logistics, 1940-43, chs. XIX-XXI.
130 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

was reinforced when theaters were asked

to prepare one additional project to

provide for maintenance materials for

engineer projects already under operation, and also a quarterly estimate to be

used solely for procurement planning

purposes of Class IV engineer supplies

needed for special projects for three to

five quarters in advance.

The keyed projects system proved in

practice to be more a means for requisitioning operational supplies than for

procurement planning. Its usefulness for

the latter purpose was limited mainly

to adjustments of procurement requirements already calculated on other bases.

Procurement plans normally had to be

initiated long before projects were submitted, for theater commanders could

seldom anticipate operational supply demands a year or more in advance. During

most of 1943 requirements for operational supplies were first calculated for

the Army Supply Program mainly on

the basis of strategic estimates (quarterly operational summaries) furnished to

the technical services by Plans and Operations, ASF, and later adjusted to specific

keyed projects submitted by the theaters.

In mid-1944 the system was formally

changed to conform more closely to the

reality, and to check the tendency of

technical services to relax their own efforts to anticipate theater operational requirements in view of the assumed responsibility of theaters for these calculations.

Much of even the theory that theaterprepared projects would be the main

guide to procurement planning was

abandoned. For it was substituted the

concept that the War Department (Plans

Division, ASF, and the technical services) should initially prepare projects

and forward them to theaters for review

and amendment; the theaters, then,

should initiate only those projects that

fell outside the scope of War Department plans. This ASF-theater partnership in the formulation of operational

project requirements kept ASF active in

the field of strategic speculation, for procurement planning had to go ahead

whether or not a strategic plan had been

approved.43

However much the initial estimates

of operational supply requirements simply represented intelligent guesswork,

the procedures for adjustment did make

them much more responsive to actual

theater needs. Similarly, during the latter part of the war, the basic allowance

tables and the special lists of equipment

were brought into closer consonance

with theater requests. Moreover, the balance of units themselves was in constant

state of adjustment, and this was one

factor that made so difficult the development of a completely stable troop basis.

A very important case in point was the

move, early in 1944, to activate 66 additional heavy artillery battalions as a result of experience in the Italian campaign. This move brought in its train

a requirement for a great expansion of

43

 (1) The above account is based mainly on History Planning Division ASF, pp. 213-22. (2) The most

pertinent documents are: WD Cir 220, 20 Sep 43;

WD Memo W-700-44, 31 Jan 44; WD Cir 203, 23

May 44; Ltr, Hq ASF to Dirs Plans, Reqmts, and

Stock Control and Production Divs, 27 Oct 43, sub:

Staff Procedure for Handling Reqmts for Opnl Supplies; Ltr, Hq ASF to CsTechSvcs, 27 Oct 43, sub:

Procedure for Handling Reqmts for Special Opnl

Supplies, apps. 13-D and 13-E, History Plans Div;

and ASF Manual M415, 25 Aug 44, Special Operational Supplies. (3) See also below, Chapter VI, for

treatment of distribution aspects of operational supplies problem, and Chapter XX for their particular

application to Pacific theaters.
ARMY REQUIREMENTS, 1943-44 131

production of heavy guns, spare tubes,

and ammunition. In much the same way,

review of replacement factors based on

combat experience revealed the necessity of a higher replacement rate for

tanks and some other types of heavy

equipment; the ammunition day of supply for small arms proved to have been

heavily overestimated and that for practically all types of artillery to have been

underestimated. These revelations had

considerable impact on the Army Supply Program, and tended to reverse the

economy verdicts of the McCoy Board

and the Richards Committee. In nearly

every line requirements for heavy and

specialized equipment — heavy artillery,

heavy trucks, crawler tractors, DUKW's,

airborne radar, bombs, mines, grenades

and pyrotechnics, rail cars and locomotives, and heavy engineer construction

equipment — tended to climb during

1944. Despite the utmost efforts of the

War Department to achieve economy

by closing down production lines where

excesses existed, these special needs exerted a constant upward pressure on required production goals in the months

following publication of the 1 February

1944 ASP. By March, when the first complete schedules for the 1 February edition were issued, the dollar value of

required production had already risen

from $21.6 billion to $23.6 billion; by

30 June it had reached $24.8 billion.

As stated finally at the end of the year,

and influenced by production shortfalls

in certain lines, it had fallen only to

$24.25 billion. Goals for 1945 showed a

similar progressive rise.44

In terms more purely of system, the

major effort of the ASF to gear the production and flow of supplies more closely to actual demand came in the inauguration of supply control as a method

of calculating requirements. Stock control, a related but not so comprehensive

concept, had been practiced to a greater

or less degree from the day the ASF

started operations in 1942, but until

March 1944 its main importance was

in connection with distribution, as a

means of determining ZI replacement

factors and of on-hand quantities as of

specific dates for use in computation of

the ASP.45 The Supply Control System

inaugurated on 7 March 1944 had a

much broader purpose—to provide an

integrated method of determining requirements, carrying out distribution of

material, and disposing of surplus. The

heart of the system was stock control,

that is, the maintenance of detailed

stock records of inventory and issue by

ZI depots of each separate commodity

that entered the Army supply system.

Records of past issue were then to become the main basis for forecasting future demand; the forecast would be the

basis for adjusting inventory levels, disposing of surplus, and determining future requirements; requirements then

would be the basis of production scheduling. Detailed data was to be provided

monthly and revised either monthly or

quarterly, as opposed to the way the

Army Supply Program was computed,

44

 (1) This progression may be traced in ASF

Monthly Progress Reports for January-December

1944, sec. 6, Analysis. (2) See also Annual Report of

the Army Service Forces, 1944 (Washington, 1944),

pp. 94-100. (3) Adjustments in required production

and their relation to strategic developments are

treated more fully in Chapter XXII, below. 45

 (1) History of Stock Control, United States Army,

MS, OCMH. (2) Frank, Army Supply Requirements,

I, 132-34.
132 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

that is, to provide for annual requirements with major revisions only semiannually. The purpose behind supply

control, then, was to make production

schedules more immediately responsive

to the fluctuation of supply and demand,

in much the same way as peacetime industrial production.

To put the system into effect involved

immense complications. One ASF officer,

in fact, reviewing the initial proposal for

a supply control system, commented:

The inventory and issue basis proposed

in your memorandum will leave to the

judgment of clerks and relatively untrained

supervisors decision as to projected rates of

issue on the basis of data of unknown accuracy which must be carefully adjusted for

changes in troop composition, non-recurring

issues and special future requirements.46

At least some of these difficulties were

recognized in the initial supply control

directive, which provided for a gradual

shift from ASP to supply control procedures.47

 Items of issue were divided

into two broad groups, Principal (P

items) and Secondary (S items). P items

were those of sufficient military or monetary importance to require central control either because of production problems (such as lead time or scarcity of

materials) or because of too little past

issue experience to provide an adequate

guide for the future. All the rest were

classified as S items. Initial classifications

were to be made by the responsible technical service and they were to be reviewed periodically. A progressive shift

of items from the P to the S group was

anticipated. Procurement of matériel in

group P was to continue to follow ASP

procedures for the time being, while

considerably more leeway was granted

the technical services in freely adjusting

requirements for S items from month

to month. Moreover, both types of items

were to be the subject of intensive supply

and demand studies in order to determine actual inventories and issue experience. Some items were to be reviewed

monthly, and none less often than quarterly. In either case, a total authorized

level for the zone of interior was to be

determined for each separate supply

item; it would include all depot stocks

destined to fill either ZI troop or overseas theater demands and the various

classes of reserves, but exclude all material overseas, en route overseas, in the

hands of troops in the zone of interior,

or under control of posts, camps, or stations. This level was to be converted to

a numerical quantity. The objective

would be to bring stocks in line with the

authorized quantity at the earliest practicable date and thereafter to make procurement schedules accord with anticipated future demand. In determining

future issue requirements, however, technical services were to use issue experience as the main guide only for items

having "a relatively stable or readily

predictable rate of issue." For other

items, issue experience was to be combined with all the other pertinent factors previously used in calculating the

Army Supply Program. The basic requirement, in any case, was "complete,

centralized, accurate, consolidated and

systematically recorded data" on all factors necessary to compute requirements.

These data, plus a "continuous sched46

 Memo, Brig Gen Hugh C. Minton, Dir Production Div for Dir Materiel ASF, in response to

Memo, Clay for Div Dirs, 28 Jan 44, 3 Feb 44, sub:

Proposed Supply Program Procedures, Purchases

Div ASF, File ASP. 47

 ASF Cir 67, 7 Mar 44.
ARMY REQUIREMENTS, 1943-44 133

uled review of requirements" were the

real essence of supply control.48

The Supply Control System had perforce to be put into effect gradually, as

necessary detailed inventories and records were developed and as procedures

were crystallized and refined. The first

ASF supply control manual was published on 20 July 1944; it was revised

twice before the end of the war. An

elaborate scheme of forms and records

was devised that provided a single sheet

for each important item in the supply

system. By August 1944, 950 items had

been brought under supply control, but

the system continued to coexist with the

Army Supply Program, the final edition

of which was published on 1 October

1944. Supply control procedures were,

however, used in the computation of

this final edition of ASP. By March 1945

the number of items under supply control had risen to 1,900 and the monthly

supply control report, ASF Monthly

Progress Report, Section 20, had superseded the ASP as the official War Department production program and the procurement authority for the technical

services.49

The Supply Control System was the

final phase in the evolution of the Army's

wartime system for forecasting matériel

requirements. In its provisions for detailed stock records, close and detailed

integration of requirements, procurement, and distribution, and for very frequent revisions of production schedules

to prevent surplus accumulations and

reflect current demand trends, it marked

a distinct improvement over earlier

methods. Its institution in the last phase

of the war undoubtedly helped to cure

some of the lack of realism and to curb

some of the wasteful tendencies that the

McCoy Board and Richards Committee

had noted earlier. Yet the system had

its own limitations and disadvantages.

It involved a Herculean task of assembling the necessary data on hundreds of

different items, and when assembled

these data did not necessarily provide

an adequate basis for predicting future

issues, which in many lines were bound

to be governed by the uncertainties of

war. A certain element of crystal gazing

necessarily remained in the calculation

of requirements and hence a strong

temptation to provide for all possible

contingencies, for there was no gainsaying the McCoy Board's conclusion that

the one irremediable error in a war supply program was not too much but too

little. Moreover, close adherence to the

supply and demand formula could easily

lead to violent, and not readily manageable, fluctuations in production schedules. There were safeguards against the

worst consequences of drastic upward

and downward revisions, but those very

safeguards negated some of the purposes

of supply control. Requirements calculation to the end of the war remained

as much an art as a science, requiring

the use of good common sense and the

judgment of experienced officials as well

as detailed statistical analyses.50

Production feasibility, as it applied to

the major reductions of the Army Sup48

 Ibid.

49

 (1) For a fuller treatment of the Supply Control

System see Smith, The Army and Economic Mobilization, pp. 162-67; Risch, Quartermaster Corps I,

226-29; Frank, Army Supply Requirements, I, 156-

65, 175-82. (2) The editions of ASF M413, The Supply Control System, are dated 20 Jul 44, 22 Dec 44,

and 10 Apr 45. (3) For the 1 October 1944 ASP see

below, Chapter XXII.

50

 (1) Smith, The Army and Economic Mobilization, p. 166. (2) Risch, Quartermaster Corps I, 229.
134 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

ply Program in 1942 or even the more

limited ones of 1943, was no longer an

important factor in 1944 and 1945, although this is not to say that production

always met scheduled goals, or that critical materials were always available in

adequate quantities, or that the military

requirements program in the later war

years did not strain the American economy. As will be more fully developed,

the full-scale commitment of U.S. forces

on two fronts in the fall of 1944 and

the winter of 1944-45 did bring out in

full relief some of the limitations on

American resources, massive as they

were.51 In the last analysis, however, the

strains were more severe on military

manpower and shipping than on productive capacity, particularly insofar as it

applied to production of supplies and

equipment for the ground army. Feasibility, in 1944 had become mainly a matter of individual items, and the acute

production problem was rather one of

balance than over-all capacity.

The shortfall against the revised goal

of $24.25 billion ASF-procured supplies

in 1944, according to contemporary calculations, was only $764 million or 3.2

percent.52 These over-all figures, of

course, concealed serious shortfalls in

certain lines and overages in others.

They also meant that the Army requirements program in 1944 was generally

being fulfilled on a current basis, and

that shortages of equipment that had so

plagued both training and operations in

the early part of the war were largely a

thing of the past. In the full-scale offensives of 1944 most shortages were to

be the results of errors in the distribution process rather than genuine line

item shortages except for a very few

items for which production schedules

were not adjusted in time. No operation

failed, or was even significantly delayed,

for lack of troop equipment.

51

 See below, ch. XXII.

52

 (1) ASF Monthly Progress Report, 31 Dec 44,

sec. 6, Analysis. (2) Crawford and Cook, Statistics:

Procurement, gives $21.37 billion as the dollar value

of ASF procurement in 1944 as opposed to the ASF

Monthly Progress Report figure of $23.48 billion.

(3) See CPA, Industrial Mobilization for War, pp.

753-854, for an over-all view of war production in

1944.
CHAPTER VI

The Mechanics of Wholesale Distribution

The Distribution Process

Distribution of supplies had to be

geared to strategy and operational plans

to an extent that requirements and production could not be. The major task of

the Army's logistical agencies was to deliver troops and supplies at the time and

place they were needed and in the right

numbers and quantities. The ultimate

test of success or failure lay in the efficiency with which this complicated and

intricate task was performed.

The work involved, besides the major

task of supplying overseas theaters, provision of necessities for troops in training and performing administrative duties in the United States, and delivery

of materials produced under Army auspices for the Navy and of lend-lease

material to foreign governments. Every

category of supply and almost every item

generated its own peculiar problems.

The primary concern here must perforce

be with the evolution of a general system under which all classes of supply

were handled, and more particularly

with procedures used in the support of

overseas theaters.1

The supply system involved huge magnitudes — thousands and thousands of

separate items, millions of tons of

freight, hundreds of thousands of troops,

and thousands of ocean miles. It required broad planning for movement

of carloads and shiploads of supplies to

fill needs calculated, like production requirements, on the basis of numbers of

different types of units with their respective Tables of Basic Allowances

(TBA's) and Tables of Organization and

Equipment (TOE's), and on replacement and consumption demands expressed in weighted averages (replacement factors and days of supply). It was,

in short, a wholesale process throughout most of its several stages, giving way

to a retail one only at the very end of

the line.

To provide the necessary supplies out

of which day-to-day retail needs could

be met, the system relied on the accumulation of reserves at various points along

the line—in depots and ports in the United States and overseas and in lesser quantities at posts, camps, and stations, and

army and division supply points. In a

sense, the basic concept was that of continuous pipelines of supply, with new

articles flowing in at one end each time

similar ones were issued at the other,

and with proper adjustments at the intermediate storage points. In the wholesale

sector, the one with which this chapter

is concerned, regulation of the distribution process was primarily a matter of

establishing and maintaining proper lev1

 Lend-lease distribution is discussed in Chapters

XXV-XXIX; the problem of Army-Navy co-ordination in Chapters XVIII-XIX, below.
136 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

els of supply at each of the critical points

along the pipeline. The system involved

a certain calculated degree of oversupply

for, if the distribution pipelines were

really kept full, stockages at intermediate points would never be used. The

primary problem was to maintain these

stockages at a high enough point to permit each installation and overseas theater to draw the particular items and

quantities to which it was entitled, and

at the same time prevent accumulation

of excesses that would unduly burden

production and storage facilities and,

in the end, become an embarrassment.

Basic economy measures always involved

principally efforts to reduce pipeline

quantities or to perfect the keeping of

inventories.

The Army Service Forces exercised

administrative control over the distribution process as it concerned ground

equipment, subject to policies and procedures (including initial setting of

levels) established by the War Department General Staff. Within the ASF

each of the seven technical services maintained control and responsibility for distribution as well as procurement of

supply categories falling under its jurisdiction. The Transportation Corps exercised "unbroken control of troop and

supply movements from domestic origins

to the overseas ports of discharge" with

the single exception of airborne traffic,

which was controlled by the Army Air

Forces. ASF control over supplies peculiar to the Air Forces, nonetheless, was

limited to this movements phase. In almost all other matters relating to distribution of AAF matériel, the Air

Service Command exercised a practical

autonomy, except for some common

items such as food, clothing, and certain

types of ammunition that were procured

and distributed to AAF through normal

ASF channels.2

In the distribution pipeline, the most

important points in the continental

United States were the depots, the ports

of embarkation, and the post, camp, and

station supply installations. Supplies normally flowed from factories into depot

stocks, and from depot stocks either to

posts, camps, and stations for distribution to ZI units or to ports of embarkation for shipment overseas. Holding and

reconsignment points near the ports

were used for temporary storage in order

to control the flow of material into the

ports and prevent port congestion. At

the storage depots each technical service

controlled its own categories, and continued to exercise technical supervision

over shipments even after they passed to

Transportation Corps control on rail

lines, at holding and reconsignment

points and ports. The depot structure,

consequently, followed technical service

lines. Some depots stored only material

controlled by a single technical service;

others were jointly occupied, and after

April 1943 were classified as ASF depots,

but separate sections were controlled by

responsible technical service chiefs.3

More important to the distribution

process was the classification of depots

by basic missions—filler, distribution, reserve, and key (or master) depots. Filler

depots were the normal source for sup2

 (1) Leighton and Coakley, Global Logistics, 1940-

43), pp. 244-46. (2) Quote in Wardlow, The Transportation Corps: Movements, Training, and Supply,

p. 7. 3

 On the problem of administration of depots and

ASF efforts to promote uniformity and to break across

technical service lines to establish functional missions

see History of Supply in the Zone of the Interior,

prepared by Distribution Division, ASF, 1946, Chapter V, MS, OCMH.
THE MECHANICS OF WHOLESALE DISTRIBUTION 137

plies to be shipped to overseas theaters,

distribution depots the normal source

for station supply in the zone of interior.

Key depots stored centrally selected

items not suitable for storage at filler

and distribution depots. Reserve depots

stored designated special-purpose items in

bulk and supplies in excess of current

needs. The general idea was that filler

and distribution depots should stock fastmoving items, while slow-moving items

and items in critical supply would be concentrated at the key depots. Also, limited

stocks were maintained at ports of embarkation to permit more rapid filling

of overseas demands. In theory ports relied on their own stocks and those of

filler depots as their primary sources for

filling requisitions from overseas theaters, and ZI stations depended upon

distribution depots to fill theirs. When

particular items were not available at

the immediate back-up depot the requisitions were extracted to other filler depots or to reserve depots to the rear.

Orders were placed directly on key depots for appropriate articles, with shipment direct from depot to post or port.

Technical service chiefs were responsible

for maintaining the detailed stock records that would indicate the depot from

which any given article could be supplied, and for controlling the distribution of critical items in accordance with

War Department policy.

Practice was not, naturally, a complete

reflection of theory. The clear-cut classification of depot missions was not adopted until relatively late in the war. Record

keeping was never ideal, and sometimes

the whole depot system had to be

combed to find a specific item required

to fulfill a specific demand. Distribution depots might be called on to furnish articles for overseas supply, and

filler depots to furnish training needs.4

In any case, ZI depot stockages were

authorized at levels calculated in terms

of so many days of supply for all troops

in the United States and overseas translated into actual quantities of specific

items by use of allowance tables and

replacement and consumption factors.

This was the general fund from which

the needs of both ZI stations and overseas theaters were met. Stations and theaters were authorized to hold also their

own general funds, again expressed in

terms of days of supply, out of which

they in turn served the units and installations for which they were responsible. Their demands on port and depot

were formulated in terms of anticipated

need to maintain authorized levels, or,

in many cases, port and technical service computed those needs in accordance

with stipulated allowances and forwarded the necessary supplies automatically.

Thus the entire fund for meeting day-today requirements in the theaters consisted of the combined levels earmarked

for this purpose in ZI depots, actually in

existence in theater stocks, and in transit; similarly, the combined fund for

meeting ZI requirements consisted of

depot levels in the United States earmarked for this separate purpose and

of the actual quantities of supplies at

posts, camps, and stations or in transit.

Total requirements, as has been shown,

consisted of the amounts necessary to

equip units in the troop basis initially,

to maintain them over a prescribed period of time, to provide necessary operational supplies, to establish and main4

 (1) Annual Report of the Army Service Forces,

1944, p. 61. (2) TM 38-205, 21 Oct 43, Army Supply

Procedures, Parts 1 and 2.
138 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

tain the stocks at designated points on

the pipeline, and to keep the pipeline

between them filled. The distribution

process was thus the practical test of

the efficacy of requirements calculations,

and was as vitally affected by the accuracy or inaccuracy in setting replacement

factors and days of supply.

ZI requisitions, then, moved from unit

to station supply officer, and from station

supply officer to the appropriate technical service back-up depot. Initial

equipment for newly activated units,

however, was furnished automatically

(without requisition) based on calculations of allowances of each item by the

technical service concerned.5 Overseas

theaters and bases placed their orders

on a designated responsible port of embarkation, which then channeled the orders to the proper source of supply and

arranged shipment. Once supplies were

delivered at a theater port a new distribution pipeline started wherein the level

of supplies to be held at each particular

point, the methods of ordering, and the

regulations governing the flow of supplies to troop units were all determined

by the theater commander.

Supply Priorities

Despite the increasing volume of production, plenty was always a relative

matter, and scarcities of individual items

of Army production continued to the

end of the war, necessitating a constant

measure of priorities control. Indeed,

the first step in the distribution process

—division of Army production among

the U.S. Army, the U.S. Navy, and the

several lend-lease claimants—was essentially an application of priorities. This

division was a responsibility of the

Munitions Assignments Board and its

ground subcommittee (MAC (G)) and

of the Joint Munitions Allocation Committee. In certain cases of exceptionally

scarce items, for instance DUKW's, the

MAC (G) established detailed priority

lists setting up specific numbers for distribution among the theaters and for

training.6 For the great mass of items,

the War Department received a bulk

allocation (nearly always the lion's share

of Army production) and distributed it

under its own priorities policy, which,

as its central feature, designated certain

items as controlled items, that is, items

for which real or anticipated demand

was greater than supply, or for other

reasons required close control over distribution. This control was centralized

in the War Department, with G-3 and

OPD's Logistics Group prescribing the

basic priorities; ASF administered them

through the technical services. (Distribution control over noncontrolled items,

those normally in plentiful supply to

meet all needs, was generally exercised

at the lower echelons in the depots and

at the ports.) The basic task of compiling controlled items lists fell to the

technical services. They prepared individual lists quarterly, which were consolidated, reviewed, and edited in Distribution Division, ASF, and then sent

to G-4 for approval and publication by

The Adjutant General. In the spring of

1943, 776 items were on the list, but

thereafter except for an occasional up5

 (1) TM 38-205, 21 Oct 43, Parts 1 and 2. (2) See

History of Supply in the Zone of the Interior, Chapters 3 and 4, for a detailed account of station supply.

6

 On the operations of the munitions assignment

machinery, see Leighton and Coakley, Global Logistics, 1940-43, Chapters X and XI, and below, Chapter XXVI.

140 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

ward spurt the general trend was downward. The final list, published on 27

June 1945, contained only 130 items.7

In the priorities system for controlled

items, three broad categories were established in 1942 and they remained relatively stable throughout the war. In mid1943 these categories consisted of an A

group to receive 100 percent equipment

in sequence as listed, a B group to receive 50 percent of most controlled

items, and a C group to receive only 20

percent. Into the A group fell, in order,

testing and laboratory units, units overseas, units on one to six months' alert for

overseas movement (in three groups),

units in a pool about to be alerted,

schools and training centers, and units

of defense commands. Included in the

B group were units in training for some

period of time but not yet earmarked

for overseas shipment, and in the C

group all others, mainly units newly

activated. Newly activated divisions were

entitled to receive a minimum 50 percent allowance of essential training

equipment despite the fact that they fell

into the C category. For the nondivisional units in C priority, AAF units

received highest preference, followed by

AGF and ASF units, in that order.8

The system was shaped to provide

progressive increments of controlled

items to each unit as it passed through

the various stages of training and prepared for overseas movement until, theoretically, just before embarkation it

would be 100 percent equipped. Initial

issues were made automatically by the

technical services on activation and with

each change in priority status; replacement items had to be requisitioned.

Commanding generals of the three major commands were authorized to make

necessary transfers among units to see

that those preparing for overseas movement received their full allowances, and

among B and C units within the limits

of their respective authorized allowances.9

The controlled items list was the

heart but not the whole of the system

of distribution by priorities. No major

items of Transportation Corps equipment—locomotives, rail cars, boats and

harbor craft, port cranes, and so forth—

were listed as controlled items until early

in 1945 though they were generally

among the most critical items of supply.

Transportation Corps equipment was

usually produced to meet specific demands and seldom was part of TOE

equipment of units, except for the

Transportation Corps' own units. Distribution control was exercised by the

corps and by the munitions assignments

machinery. Antiaircraft weapons with

their accompanying fire control equipment, and seacoast defense equipment

were issued by the Chief of Ordnance

under special directives. Motor vehicles,

7

 (1) WD Memo W 700-20-43, 21 Apr 43, shows

776 controlled items. (2) Numbers of items in later

lists were: WD Cir 260, 20 Oct 43—504; WD Cir 42,

1 Feb 44—415; WD Cir 191, 13 Mar 44—335; WD

Cir 355, 1 Sep 44—290; WD Cir 65, 28 Feb 45—475;

WD Cir 100, 31 Mar 45—278; WD Cir 191, 27 Jun

45—130. The item count does not always constitute

an accurate measure, however, because sometimes

different models of the same basic item were listed

separately and at other times they were not. 8

 (1) TAG Ltr, 1 Jun 43, sub: Distribution of Controlled Items of Equip, AG 400 (5-25-43) OB-S-C-M.

(2) Leighton and Coakley, Global Logistics, 1940-43,

pp. 303-15. (3) History of Supply in the Zone of the

Interior, ch. VI, pp. 6a-16. (4) Annual Report of

the Army Service Forces, 1943 (Washington, 1944),

p. 101. 9

 TAG Ltr, 1 Jun 43, sub: Distribution of Controlled Items of Equip.
THE MECHANICS OF WHOLESALE DISTRIBUTION 141

though not included on the controlled

list, were distributed under the same

general system of priorities except that

even C category units were entitled to a

50-percent allowance on activation and a

100-percent allowance at the end of six

months' training. Training units usually

received used vehicles, which they turned

in for new ones when preparing for

movement overseas. Priorities for controlled items informally governed the

distribution of substitutes suitable for

training purposes. Finally, there was a

category designated "credit items" over

which a modicum of control was exercised by allocating units and installations

depot credits for definite quantities of

supplies for prescribed periods of time.

The credit system was used mainly for

expendables such as POL and ammunition.10

The clear purpose of the priorities

system was to provide critical items of

equipment to overseas theaters or units

preparing for overseas movement at the

expense of units in training, but at the

same time to prevent equipment shortages from crippling the training effort.

Its successful application depended very

heavily on accurate and stable designations of units in the various categories

and on an orderly procession through

training to preparation for overseas

movement. During the first year after

Pearl Harbor there was little stability

or orderliness in these processes. Erratic

changes in designations of units for overseas movements and sudden calls for

units far down the priority list entailed

continual shifting about of equipment

from unit to unit. Moreover, unit training suffered from crippling shortages,

the subject of agonized complaints from

the Army Ground Forces.11

Beginning roughly with the April

1943 movements for the invasion of

Sicily, these problems became progressively less acute. By midyear the system

was working more or less as planned,

and the worst examples of equipment

shuffling were a thing of the past. The

increase in the availability of equipment and the diminution in the number of controlled items played no small

part. The inauguration early in 1943

of the OPD Six Months Forecast of

unit deployments, and establishment of

a pool of units within each major command from which emergency overseas

demands could be met introduced a

greater element of stability into movements forecasting. The AGF continued

to complain justifiably of shortages for

training, the complaints now being leveled more against the inadequacies of

the allowances than the failure of units

to receive them. By mid-1944 the equipment shortage problem had given way

to the more serious personnel problem

created by large-scale raids on training

divisions for overseas replacements.12

The emphasis shifted to intertheater

priorities. After 1942, except for the

small-scale requirements for laboratories

10

 (1) Leighton and Coakley, Global Logistics, 1940-

43, pp. 304-07. (2) TAG Ltr, 1 Jun 43, sub: Distribution of Controlled Items of Equip. (3) History of

Supply in the Zone of the Interior, ch. VI, pp. 9-11,

18. (4) Memo, G-3 for G-4 thru OPD, 30 Dec 44,

sub: Prop WD Cirs on Distr of Equip, G-4 400, VI.

11

 Leighton and Coakley, Global Logistics, 1940-

43, pp. 309-15. 12

 (1) The last WD directive on distribution of

controlled items was TAG Ltr, 1 Feb 44, sub: Distribution of Controlled Items of Equip, AG 400

(28 Jan 44) OB-S-C-M. (2) Palmer, Wiley, and Keast,

Procurement and Training of Ground Combat

Troops, pp. 463-68, 557-58. (3) Cline, Washington

Command Post, p. 288.
142 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

and testing (A-1-a), active overseas theaters received highest priority (A-1-b)

on all critical items of equipment. Troops

about to proceed to theaters ranked next,

in A-2 through A-4 depending upon

the imminence of movement. The competition between theaters necessitated,

however, arrangements within these categories to provide priority rankings for

areas and operations generally in accord

with the strategic decisions of the JCS

and the CCS. This priorities structure,

controlled by Logistics Group, OPD,

was complicated and viable. Highest priority was usually assigned to theaters

where operations had been specifically

approved and ordered, with preference

given to theaters in the war against

Germany over those of the war against

Japan. Thus in 1943 Mediterranean operations normally had first priority, the

principal Pacific theaters second, and the

China, Burma, and India theater last,

with various aspects of the build-up in

the United Kingdom sandwiched in between. During most of 1943, for instance, air forces in the United Kingdom

were assigned priority A-1-b-4, roughly

equal to that of Pacific operations;

ground forces held A-1-b-8, just above

the CBI; and the advance shipment program held a fairly low rating in the A-2

group.13

The administration of theater priorities was not entirely a matter of formal

ratings. If the priorities system had been

applied literally, all requirements for a

critical item for one theater would have

had to be satisfied before any requirements for a theater of lower priority

were considered. This proved impractical, and the system adopted attempted

to supply all TOE equipment for theaters first, then maintenance and operational supplies, and lastly all other requirements to the maximum level, so

that each theater was assured certain

minimum essential supplies, the priorities system applying only to its marginal requirements. Even in this area,

Logistics Group, OPD, did not follow

the ratings strictly if they threatened to

deprive low priority theaters of equipment vital to the success of approved

operations. In the last analysis, the preference accorded a theater depended as

much on troop deployment schedules,

allocations of shipping, and the evaluation of other factors in each instance

as it did on the formal system of priorities for allocation of critical items of

equipment. Still, the priority rating accorded a theater at any given time did,

as a rule, indicate its standing on the

preference scale in accordance with

which all these resources, insofar as they

were controlled by the War Department,

were allotted.14

13

 For development of the priority problem in

relation to the BOLERO build-up and the preshipment

program, see below, Chapters VII, IX, and XII.

14

 (1) Memo, Tansey, Logistics Gp, OPD, sub:

Allocation of Munitions for Log Support of Global

Strategy, no date, ABC 400 (2-17-42) Sec. 6. (2) TAG

Ltr, 1 Feb 44, AG 400 (28 Jan 44) OB-S-C-M. (3) ASF

Control Div, The Problem of Troop and Cargo Flow

in Preparing the European Invasion 1943-1944 (hereafter cited as The Problem of Troop and Cargo

Flow), prepared by Richard M. Leighton, pp. 102-

19, MS, OCMH. (4) TAG Ltr, 14 Feb 44, sub: MSR

Editing Levels, SPX 400 (11 Feb 44) OB-S-SPDDL-M.

(5) Cline, Washington Command Post, p. 285. (6)

Memo, Dir Plng Div ASF for OPD, 8 May 45, sub:

Theater Priorities, Thtr Files, Pac Sec General File,

Plng Div ASF. (7) Dir, Service, Supply and Procurement Div, WDGS, Logistics in World War II, Final

Report of Army Service Forces (Washington, 1948)

(hereafter cited as Logistics in World War II, ASF

Final Report), p. 79.
THE MECHANICS OF WHOLESALE DISTRIBUTION 143

Equipping Outbound Troops and the

Shipment of Troop Equipment

The first phase of support of overseas

operations involved the shipment of

troops with their accompanying equipment and impedimenta. The extent to

which systematized procedures in troop

movements had replaced the hurry and

confusion of 1942 was evidenced in the

marked contrast between the orderliness of movements for the Sicily operation and the disorder that had attended

the preparations for the North African

landings. Much of this orderliness had

been achieved through the preparation

and widespread distribution of standardized procedures in the booklet "Preparation for Overseas Movement" (POM),

by fixing in OPD the responsibility for

determining troop requirements and

making unit allocations to overseas theaters and in the three major commands

the responsibility for determining unit

availability, designating units to be

moved, and making initial preparations

for movement. By the fall of 1943 OPD's

Six Months Forecast of deployment was

stating "quite firm" requirements for

the next two months and reasonably accurate "theoretical" ones for the following four.15

 This made possible the

orderly processing of troops for movement according to the detailed procedures of POM. Movement orders, preparation of which was a joint responsibility of OPD and the major commands,

specified additional details as to port of

embarkation, appropriate TOE's, and

the supplies to be made available at the

port or staging area by the technical

services.16

The flow of troops into ports and

staging areas was controlled by port commanders in consonance with the availability of transports. Transport schedules for Atlantic sailings were worked

out by Movements Division, Office,

Chief of Transportation (OCT), subject

to arrangements with the Navy for convoys and routing and with the British

Ministry of War Transport when British

troop carriers were involved. The system

differed somewhat for Pacific sailings.

Here joint utilization of transports with

the Navy was necessary, and schedules

generally were worked out by joint committees in San Francisco. In any case,

Movements Division developed its own

six-months' forecast of troop lift in close

and direct co-ordination with OPD, the

agency responsible for the six-months'

deployment forecast on which preparation and initial movements of units was

based. At the very top level, the joint

and combined transportation committees serving the JCS and CCS made the

basic allocations of troop lift in the light

of existing strategy or other considerations.17

A fundamental problem in connection with all troop movements was the

assembly and shipment of authorized

supplies and equipment in close synchronization with the shipment of the

units themselves. Under POM regulations units moving overseas were en15

 Memo, unsigned, 19 Nov 43, sub: Procedure for

Assignment of Units to Overseas Theaters, Folder

Gen and Misc for Pac Theater, Plng Div ASF.

16

 On movement orders see Troop Movements in

World War II, prepared by Movements Br, Mobilization Div, ASF, MS, OCMH. 17

 (1) For a complete and detailed account of the

procedures involved in troop movements see Wardlow, The Transportation Corps: Movements, Training, and Supply, pp. 89-136. (2) On the Pacific system

see below, Chapter XVIII.
144 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

titled to their full TOE and TBA allowances, to certain maintenance supplies

and ammunition, and such further matériel as might be specified in Special

Lists of Equipment (SLOE's). POM procedures divided responsibility for seeing

that embarking troops were properly

equipped among unit commanders, station commanders, major ZI commands

(AAF, AGF, and ASF), service commands, technical services, and the port

of embarkation, with Mobilization Division, ASF, exercising general co-ordination over the process. At the initial alert

for overseas movement, unit commanders determined by means of showdown

inspections existing shortages of items

and quantities of combat serviceable

equipment to fill allowances and submitted lists to their respective station

commanders. Station commanders then

filled shortages to the extent possible

from station stocks and depots normally

supplying the station, drawing when

necessary on units of lower priority at

the same station. For items they were

unable to supply, station commanders

then prepared an "Initial List of Shortages" and forwarded it to the responsible

technical services, which filled them by

shipments either to the unit at home

station or directly to the port area. AGF

and AAF commanders were empowered

to transfer from other units of lower

priority under their command any items

not obtainable from ASF sources. Port

commanders were responsible for filling

such last-minute shortages as remained

when the unit moved into the port

area. ASF service commands rendered

advice and assistance all along the line.18

Despite the involved co-ordinating arrangements, the procedures became relatively routine and the large troop movements of 1943 and 1944 were carried

out with a minimum of waste motion.

The synchronization of the flow of

equipment and supplies into a port from

many different sources with the movement of troops on the port call remained

difficult, however, and inevitably units

sometimes sailed before all of their allotted supplies arrived. When this happened, shortages had to be made up in

follow-up shipments.

Troops carried only their individual

equipment (A and B bags, later the single canvas duffel bag) and minimum essential housekeeping equipment with

them. Organizational equipment was

shipped separately, and this gave rise

to the truly major problem of synchronization—that of insuring the arrival of

this equipment overseas at the time and

place where it could be issued to debarking troops without undue delay.

The ideal solution to the problem was

found in certain special types of loading

(combat, unit, and convoy), but all were

excessively expensive of shipping space.

Combat loading, whereby troops and

equipment were loaded on the same ship

18

 (1) Preparation for Overseas Movement (POM),

2d ed., 1 Aug 43, AG 370.5 (12 Jul 43) OB-S-E-GNAF-SPMOT-M. (2) For a graphic presentation of the

system for equipping a typical AGF unit see Leighton and Coakley, Global Logistics, 1940-43, p. 647.

(3) The procedure had been changed by 15 January

1945 only to the extent of excluding noncontrolled

items from the initial list of shortages. See POM,

3d ed., 15 Jan 45. (4) Certain additional procedures

and variants were prescribed for AAF units, see

Additional Preparation for Overseas Movement for

AAF Units (AIR-POM), 2d ed., 1 Aug 43, AG 370.5

(6 Aug 43) OB-S-AF-M. (5) A third procedure governed movement of replacements, see WD Pam 29-2,

Preparation for Overseas Movement of Individual

Replacements (POR), 15 May 44. (6) Troop Movements in World War II, pp. 6-7; see appendix B for

a typical movement order.
THE MECHANICS OF WHOLESALE DISTRIBUTION 145

TROOPS AND SUPPLIES ON A PIER AT OAKLAND, CALIFORNIA

with equipment stowed so that it could

be discharged quickly in the order

needed, required specially rigged ships

such as the Navy's APA's and AKA's

and was reserved for troops mounted

out directly for amphibious assaults.

Unit loading, whereby troops and equipment were loaded on the same ship but

without special facilities for discharging, was usually impracticable because

most troop transports did not have the

required cargo space; and even when

they did, wasteful loading practices frequently resulted. Convoy loading simply

involved sailing the cargo ships in the

same convoy as the troop transports but

it, too, was usually impractical because

troopships either did not sail in convoys or moved in fast convoys while

cargo vessels moved in much slower

ones. Thus the need to use cargo space

efficiently ruled out, for all but special

movements, methods that would have

insured the rapid marrying up of troops

and equipment overseas; instead, shipments of organizational equipment

usually had to be made in separate cargo

vessels, sometimes scattered over several

convoys.19

This last method of loading was a

frequent source of complaint from theater commanders who found it difficult

to locate and identify organizational

equipment after it had arrived in the

theater. The problem was particularly

acute in the Pacific where there was

19

 See Wardlow, The Transportation Corps:

Movements, Training, and Supply, pp. 148-50, 373.
146 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

seldom any central point for handling

all incoming shipments, and troops and

supplies were frequently unloaded at

widely separated points. No completely

satisfactory solution was found that applied to all areas. Much was achieved

by administrative improvements—the

adoption of a standard marking system

for shipments, meticulous record keeping at the ports, closer liaison between

ports and theaters, greater care and system in the preparation of shipment manifests, and greater speed in relaying advance information on manifests to the

theaters detailing the cargo to be expected on specific vessels. An Initial

Troop Equipment Division was established in each port, separate from the

Overseas Supply Division, with special

responsibility for handling initial shipments to accompany troops.20

Outside the realm of administrative

improvements, the major innovations

were preshipment of organizational

equipment to the United Kingdom for

the cross-Channel invasion forces and

bulk shipment of equipment to ports on

the Continent for follow-up divisions

coming directly from the United States.21

Both of these procedures put the emphasis on bulk shipments from technical

service depots, bypassing normal POM

procedures. Neither was used extensively

in the Pacific, although some instances

of preshipment of divisional equipment

occurred. All in all, in the later stages

of the war as equipment became more

plentiful, there was a marked tendency

to substitute bulk shipments to be

placed in theater stocks and then issued

to units as they arrived for the more

meticulous and time-consuming processes of gathering and shipping organizational equipment and supplies for

each unit as it sailed. Shipment of maintenance allowances with troops, for instance, was gradually abandoned, and

by late 1944 these allowances were being

shipped in bulk to all theaters and

placed in theater stock.22

Evolution of the Overseas

Supply System

The main principles governing overseas supply in World War II were laid

down in a directive issued shortly after

Pearl Harbor, hastily conceived and generally considered to be of an experimental nature. The salient feature of

the system then adopted was decentralization of operations to permit control

of the normal flow of supplies by ports

of embarkation based either on computation of standard allowances or on

requisitions submitted by theaters. The

War Department's role was confined to

determining policies, establishing allowances and levels, controlling particularly critical items, and supervising operations to see that practice was brought

into harmony with policy. Surprisingly

enough, this original plan proved flexible enough to meet the changing needs

of operations that quickly expanded into

every quarter of the globe. This flexi- 20

 (1) See Ibid., pp. 149-55, 396-403. (2) On the

importance and the evolution of the standard marking system see Leighton and Coakley, Global Logistics, 1940-43, pp. 644-45. (3) For more specific information on the problem of Pacific theaters see below,

Chapter XX. 21

 See above, ch. II and chs. VII, IX, and XIV,

below.

22

 (1) Wardlow, The Transportation Corps: Movements, Training, and Supply, pp. 155-61. (2) Msg,

AGWAR to CG's, USAFICPA, USAFCBI, San Francisco and Los Angeles POE's, 7 Aug 44, file 13b Day

File Cen Pac, Feb 44, ASF Plng Div.
THE MECHANICS OF WHOLESALE DISTRIBUTION 147

bility was, of course, largely a matter

of broad and general language that left

a multitude of concrete problems to be

solved in the future: organization at

ports of embarkation, theater supply

levels, methods of requisitioning and

controlling the flow of various types of

items, and co-ordination among staff and

operating agencies involved. Thus the

evolution of the system was still in progress in the summer of 1943, although

the general lines of its development were

quite clear.

No small part of the accomplishments

of 1942 and early 1943 was the development of a satisfactory mechanism for

controlling the flow of supplies in and

out of ports without disproportionate

sacrifice of the ultimate goal of the supply system — the shipment of specific

items and quantities of supplies overseas to meet the specific needs of overseas commanders. Satisfactory control

over the flow of supplies into ports was

largely attained through the use of holding and reconsignment points and establishment of procedures for calling

supplies forward into the port area as

shipping became available to transport

them. The first step in the marriage of

supply and transportation considerations

was the establishment in 1942 of an overseas supply division at each port responsible for the ports' overseas supply

activities. The second came in early 1943

with the working out of a modus vivendi

between General Lutes and General

Gross that provided, in effect, for close

co-ordination between Lutes' ASF operations staff, the Office of the Chief of

Transportation, and the port commanders in supervising the work of the overseas supply divisions. Thus, while the

overseas supply divisions continued to

be parts of the port commands and so

under the Chief of Transportation, the

Director of Plans and Operations was

authorized direct communication with

them on matters pertaining to supplies

to be shipped overseas.23 As the system

worked—and it did work better in practice than looked possible on an organization chart—the Office, Chief of Transportation, planned the availability of

shipping while Plans and Operations,

ASF, had cognizance over the types and

kinds of cargo to fill the ships.24

Each theater was assigned as the responsibility of a single port, and the

Overseas Supply Division in the primary

port was the key center for handling all

matters relating to overseas supply for

the theater or theaters for which it was

responsible, save only the shipment of

initial equipment for troops moving

overseas.

The procedures developed during

1942 provided for shipment of Class I

and III supplies on an automatic basis

by the ports, Class II and IV on requisitions initiated by overseas commanders,

and Class V on directives issued by the

commanding generals of ASF and AAF.

But even for classes II, IV, and V supply was to some degree automatic since

troops moving overseas were entitled to

maintenance allowances and these al- 23

 (1) On development of the overseas supply system in 1942 and early 1943 see Leighton and Coakley, Global Logistics, 1940-43, pp. 233-38, 317-36,

642-48. (2) See also Wardlow, The Transportation

Corps: Movements, Training, and Supply, pp. 335-

57. (3) Two useful monographs are: ASF, Control

Division, Development of Overseas Supply Policies

and Procedures, prepared by Richard M. Leighton;

and Harold Larson, Role of the Transportation

Corps in Overseas Supply, OCT Historical Monograph 27; both in OCMH. 24

 (1) Memo, Lutes for CsTechSvcs, 11 May 43. (2)

Memo, Lutes for CofT, 3 Aug 43. Both in Log File,

OCMH.
148 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

lowances normally constituted the first

step in building theater supply levels.

In the early stages of the war supply of

all classes for task forces was automatic.

For instance, in the North African invasion supplies were shipped on the

early convoys almost entirely on the

basis of initial and maintenance allowances and estimated consumption rates,

not on requisitions from the theater

commander. The whole emphasis during

1942 was on automatic supply to establish minimum theater levels; it was only

at the end of 1942, when massive evidence of resulting unbalanced stocks in

several theaters came to light, that the

emphasis began to shift to the more

selective process of determining actual

theater stocks and needs and governing

shipments accordingly

Meanwhile, basic procedures for requisitioning Class II and IV supplies had

been worked out. They provided that

the Overseas Supply Officer at the port

should edit requisitions for noncontrolled items in terms of theater allowances and furnish matériel to meet them

either from port stocks or by back-ordering on appropriate depots. (Chart 4)

Requisitions for controlled items were

to be forwarded to appropriate chiefs of

technical services for editing in accordance with existing priorities and determination of source of supply. (Chart 5)

The great problem that emerged was

that of determining the actual status of

theater assets as a basis on which intelligent editing could be conducted, either

at the port or by the technical services.

And, as unbalanced stocks of food and

POL appeared in the various theaters,

the problem of determining supply status became equally acute as it applied

to the automatic categories. Reporting

requirements in 1942 had been kept at

a minimum as too great a burden on

newly established overseas bases. The

major report required was the Materiel

Status Report, which listed on-hand

quantities of a selected list of scarce items

(similar to, but not identical with, the

controlled items list, and including ammunition); it was submitted directly to

the War Department each month and

used by the technical services in editing

requisitions for controlled items. It was

an imperfect instrument, and usually

contained outdated figures by the time

it was received. For the great mass of

noncontrolled and automatic supply

items the ports became the principal

record-keeping agencies, basing their figures largely on what had been shipped

and on whatever information "they

could cajole from overseas commanders."25

In May 1943 the War Department

took action to systemize reporting, and

in so doing gave the overseas supply system a new turn. Three reports were required for each theater: a Monthly Materiel Status Report (MMSR) for selected Class II and IV items, a monthly

Automatic Supply Report for Class I

and III supplies, and an Ammunition

Supply Report for Class V to be submitted every ten days. The port commanders were made primarily responsible for preparing these reports, but

definite deadlines were established for

overseas commanders to forward the necessary data. All reports were designed

to show theater stocks, quantities en

route, and the theater allowances against

which they should be matched; these

last, in the case of the MMSR, were to

25

 Leighton and Coakley, Global Logistics, 1940-

43, pp. 322-28.
THE MECHANICS OF WHOLESALE DISTRIBUTION 149

be compiled by the technical services.

OPD was made responsible for furnishing ASF within eight days after the end

of the month the official troop bases for

each overseas theater on which allowances were to be calculated.26

The stated purpose of these reports

was to serve a statistical and control

function to permit ASF headquarters,

the technical services, and the ports to

edit requisitions intelligently and adjust

the flow of automatic supply. The whole

evolution of the supply system at this

point, however, was toward use of the

reports as a form of requisition and the

semiautomatic flow of supply this implied. In September 1943 the trend was

formally recognized in a new "bible"

for overseas supply. The directive27 divided overseas supply operations, as they

might be expected to develop after the

occupation of a new theater, into three

consecutive phases. In the first phase

all supply was to be automatic "until

such time as normal supply procedure

can be put into operation." During this

phase all supplies would be shipped in

accordance with schedules and levels prescribed in the plan for establishing the

theater or base and, at least theoretically,

the theater commander would not have

to concern himself with the shipments

at all. From this stage it was intended

to hurry as quickly as practicable into

the second phase wherein procedures

styled "semiautomatic" would apply;

that is, ammunition and controlled items

would be supplied on the basis of status

reports and other supplies by requisition. Considerably later, after authorized

levels had been reached and stabilized,

a third phase of supply by requisition

only would be instituted with the status

reports to be continued for statistical

purposes.

The new instructions substituted a

Selected Items Report on certain Class I

and III supplies for the Automatic Supply Report. This report occupied a less

determinate status than either the

Monthly Materiel Status Report or the

Ammunition Report as a requisition.

Medical supplies were to be obtained

by requisition. The new circular also

confirmed special procedures for handling POL that had taken shape since

the founding of the Army-Navy Petroleum Board in July 1942, by which requisitions for POL from overseas theaters

were forwarded to the Board, and this

JCS agency then determined allocations

of petroleum products to theaters and

prescribed their sources, relying on the

Quartermaster Corps for procurement

to meet ground force needs and on the

Transportation Corps to arrange movements. For other items on the Selected

Items Report, mostly Class I rations, the

circular prescribed that "the port commander will take necessary action to

maintain levels," which was taken, at

least by port commanders, to mean that

rations would be shipped on a semiautomatic basis without requisition.28

Another practice confirmed at that

time was one by which Air Forces tech- 26

 TAG Ltr, 5 May 43, sub: Monthly Materiel

Status Rpt, Automatic Supply Rpt, and Ammunition

Supply Rpt, AG 400 (4-25-13) OB-S-D-M. 27

 (1) WD Cir 220, 20 Sep 43. (2) For the voluminous background papers on the drafting of the

circular and the preliminary drafts see Drafts on

Supply of Overseas Depots, Theaters and Separate

Bases, ASF Plng Div.

28

 (1) Quotation is from WD Cir 220, 20 Sep 43.

(2) TAG Ltr, 19 Sep 43, sub: Overseas Supply Rpts,

AG 400 (19 Sep 43) OB-S-SPDDL-M. (3) On the system of petroleum distribution, see Erna Risch,

Fuels for Global Conflict, QMC Historical Study 9,

(rev. ed.; Washington, 1952).
CHART 4—OVERSEAS REQUISITIONS FOR NONCONTROLLED ITEMS
CHART 5—OVERSEAS REQUISITIONS FOR CONTROLLED AND MATERIEL STATUS ITEMS
152 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

nical supplies were requisitioned directly from the Air Service Command at

Patterson Field, Ohio, with the port completely eliminated from the requisitioning channel. To give the port adequate

information on shipping requirements,

the AAF was directed to provide at periodic intervals information on cargo under its control requiring water shipment

and to maintain liaison officers in the

port overseas supply divisions. But the

AAF maintained near the ports its own

in-transit depots that received Air Forces

cargo, processed it for overseas shipment,

and delivered it to the port's Water Division for loading. AAF cargoes amounted

to some 10 percent of the Army cargo

moved through the various ports during

the war.29

The circular also contained a few new

provisions aimed at arresting the overaccumulation of stocks in overseas theaters. One of them enjoined commanders

to "establish and maintain an effective

inventory control system"; another prescribed "centrally located necessary records as to the status of supplies on hand

and due in and levels of supply to be

maintained in his command." Moreover,

the commander was to "continually review maintenance factors and submit

recommendations for changes" and to

request promptly instructions from higher authority concerning disposition of

any unbalanced stocks or excessive

amounts of supplies.30 These provisions

were straws in the wind indicating

mounting concern in the War Department with weaknesses in control that

were causing overstockage and uneconomical distribution of supplies in the

theaters, a concern that was concurrently amply reflected in the investigations

being conducted by the McCoy Board

into the requirements system.31

The system outlined in September

1943 continued in effect for all practical

purposes throughout the rest of the war.

A new directive published on 23 May

1944 was largely a refinement of the

earlier one. The only significant changes,

most of them products of the Richards

Committee report and the McNarney

directive, were specific stipulations that

the War Department should set overseas

operating levels and that neither ports

nor theater commanders could adjust

them, and specific instructions that theater commanders should establish definite

systems of supply control.32 Yet both

the September 1943 and the May 1944

circulars prescribed quite flexible limits

within which the evolution of the overseas supply system continued. The evolution moved toward more efficient

methods of stock control and record

keeping in the zone of interior and the

theaters, and, at the same time, toward

the third phase, requisition supply, as

a method still more efficient than either

automatic or semiautomatic flow.

Problems cropped up almost immediately in the operation of semiautomatic supply—inadequate theater inventories, divergent port and theater figures

for stocks on hand, and duplication of

status report shortages by separate theater requisitions. Moreover, because of

time delays involved in gathering data

29

 History Planning Div ASF, Text, II, 194. 30

 WD Cir 220, 20 Sep 43.

31

 (1) On the McCoy Board, see above, Chapter V,

pp. 119-24. (2) Leighton, Overseas Policies and

Procedures, pp. 210-13. 32

 (1) WD Cir 203, 23 May 44. (2) History Planning

Div ASF, Text, II, 196. (3) Annual Report of the Army

Service Forces, 1944, p. 9. (4) WD Cir 455, 30 Nov 44,

amended Cir 203 in some particulars, but made no

basic changes in the system.
THE MECHANICS OF WHOLESALE DISTRIBUTION 153

for the status reports in the theaters and

processing them in the ports and technical services, the reports tended to be

outdated by the time supply action was

taken on them. The Monthly Materiel

Status Report, in particular, gave rise to

a multitude of procedural problems. It

did not correspond to the controlled

items list, though a directive in the fall

of 1943 did prescribe that all controlled

items must be included in it. In practice

the Monthly Materiel Status Report

list was infrequently revised. A Control

Division report in mid-1944 noted:

Some items have lost the importance

which required their inclusion in the list.

Other items originally included for the reason of being in short supply are now in

long supply and should be removed. Important items now in short supply and not

on the list should be added. Other items

should be dropped for the reason they are

no longer issued.

The report concluded that the use

of the Materiel Status Report "slows up

rather than speeds up the actual delivery

of supplies to the theaters" because of

time consumed in processing the report,

and that "supply could be more readily

accomplished through the standard requisitioning procedure and standard supply channels."

 33

These conclusions took shape slowly

and had little effect on supply procedures until late in 1944. For the better

part of a year after the general initiation

of semiautomatic supply in September

1943 the ASF concentrated on making

the system work by educating everyone

concerned in its principles, and most

particularly by improving stock control

in overseas theaters. "Successful accomplishment of overseas supply by the War

Department," insisted a new directive

on reporting issued in mid-March 1944,

"is dependent in a large measure on

the availability and the coordination of

accurate and up-to-date supply statistics

from overseas commands," and went on

to prescribe a more precise system for

compilation of the Materiel Status Report.34

 The port commander was instructed to keep a "perpetual inventory"

for each overseas command for which

he had responsibility, to be based initially on a "firm inventory," furnished

by the overseas commander "as of a convenient date" mutually agreed upon,

and to be kept up to date through notification of vessel arrivals in the theater

and from theater reports on items and

quantities lost, expended, or transferred

to non-Army agencies. The theater commander was to keep a similar perpetual

inventory of Materiel Status Report

items in his theater, and the two would

be adjusted as occasion demanded. In

this way, it was hoped, the monthly formal compilation of the report would

give a true picture of theater shortages.

At the same time, for those inactive theaters that had been placed entirely on

requisition supply, a quarterly submission of the Materiel Status Report was

prescribed instead of a monthly one,

"for statistical and control purposes."35

Requirements for the Selected Items

Report and the Ammunition Report

were also tightened, though it was now

stipulated that rations as well as medical

supplies would be furnished on requisi- 33

 (1) TAG Ltr, 28 Nov 43, sub: Overseas Supply

Rpts, AG 400 (25 Nov 43), OB-S-SPDDL-M. (2) Control Div, ASF, Survey of Operation of MSR, Aug

44, Log File, OCMH.

34

 TAG Ltr, 14 Mar 44, sub: Overseas Supply Rpts,

AG 400 (10 Mar 44) OB-S-SPDDL-M. 35

 Ibid.
154 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

tion except to theaters still on an automatic supply basis. The Ammunition

Report, on the other hand, would be

used as the principal basis for supply of

items listed on it.

In pursuance of the goal of more effective inventory control overseas, on

15 May 1944 the ASF issued a new manual on stock control in overseas theaters,

laying down the general principles already in use in ZI depots, though it was

hardly expected that these operations

could reach the same height of efficiency

in areas where stocks were scattered

and troops engaged in active combat.36

All these efforts were soon merged in

the general endeavor, beginning in the

spring of 1944, to institute the Supply

Control System Army-wide. The key

feature of this system, it will be recalled,

was the use of central and accurate records of depot stocks and issues to forecast both production and distribution

requirements.37 In this connection, the

whole system of status report supply

came into question. The Control Division, ASF, in its adverse report on the

Materiel Status Report in August 1944,

proposed a new system to eliminate unnecessary duplication in planning, record keeping, and reporting that the coexistence of the Materiel Status Report

procedure and the Supply Control system would engender. Since overseas theaters, ports, and technical services would

all be keeping very nearly the same records, Control Division pointed out, the

port could be eliminated from the procedural chain and the burden of inventory control thrown directly on the overseas commands and the technical services. Overseas theaters would receive

supplies of critical items entirely on requisitions, which would be edited against

allocations projected six months in advance by the technical services based on

present and projected troop strength,

issue experience of the past three

months, and anticipated extraordinary

demands. Control would be exercised

through adherence to these allocations

(with interim changes on proper justification) with detailed ZI and theater

stock control records as a substitute for

the "perpetual inventory" at the ports.38

This proposal and its several variants

were extensively debated during the fall

of 1944. The faults of the Monthly Materiel Status Report were generally admitted, but there were those, such as

General Lutes and Brig. Gen. William

M. Goodman, Overseas Supply Officer,

New York Port of Embarkation, who

also thought it had virtues. "I have never

liked the MMSR system . . . ," wrote

Lutes. "We shouldn't lose sight of the

fact, though, that with [its] faults, we

have supplied our forces very well."39

He feared that elimination of the ports'

running inventories would result in loss

of effective editing control by the ASF.

"If we wiped out the ports' inventory,"

he remarked, "we would have to accept

the theater commander's figures and edit

alone on his statements."40 Lutes could

also point to existing discrepancies between port and technical service records

and to the need for ASF to have author36

 (1) TM 38-205, 15 May 44, Stock Control for

Overseas Commands, Part 3. (2) History of Stock

Control, U.S. Army, pp. 202-10. 37

 See above, ch. V.

38

 (1) Control Div, ASF, Survey of Operation of

MSR, Aug 44. (2) Annual Report of the Army Service Forces, 1945 (Washington, 1945), p. 32. 39

 Memo, Lutes for Somervell, 30 Aug 44, sub:

Monthly Materiel Status Report, Lutes Diary. 40

 NYPOE Conf, sub: Inventories; Changes in

System of Editing at Ports, 12 Oct 44, Lutes Diary.
THE MECHANICS OF WHOLESALE DISTRIBUTION 155

itative figures of its own on theater holdings to refute complaints from theater

commanders or outside criticism of ASF

performance.41 Because of the reluctance

to abandon a tried if imperfect control

instrument for untried stock control

methods, status report supply continued

in effect until the war in Europe was

almost over. Lutes's initial decision was

to institute requisition supply about 1

January 1945, when it was expected Germany would be defeated, but the prolongation of the struggle in Europe and

the reappearance of many scarcities led

to further postponement. Meanwhile,

editing procedures were liberalized for

noncontrolled items wherever it was determined that theaters were on a satisfactory inventory control basis, so that

ports checked only nomenclature and

form, accepting the theater's computations of its shortages against authorized

allowances. The list of items on the Materiel Status Report was revised with a

view to removing items no longer in

short supply. Finally, on 18 January 1945,

theaters were informed of the intention

to move into the third phase (requisition supply) as soon as possible, and

their concurrence requested. On receipt

of affirmative answers from all of them

a new system was announced on 16

March to be effective 1 May 1945—as it

happened, only one week before the war

in Europe ended.42

The new system incorporated many

elements of the Control Division plan

but it still maintained one essential feature of the old order — the perpetual

inventory at the ports. All overseas theaters were placed on requisition supply,

but requisitions for critical items were

to be submitted directly to the chiefs of

technical services, not to the ports. For

items expected to be in short supply the

technical services were to prepare "distribution plans" for three months in advance, a system not unlike the allocations suggested by Control Division. The

ports were to continue to prepare a status

report, now named the Critical Items

Report, based on data submitted by the

theaters, this to be used in conjunction

with the distribution plans in editing

requisitions for critical items. It was no

longer to be, in itself, a requisition.43

The final transition to requisition supply and even the beginning of full implementation of stock control as a method for regulating the flow of supplies

overseas came too late in the war to receive a thorough test. Experience with

the various forms of automatic supply

nevertheless led to the conclusion that

requisition supply with appropriate

measures of statistical control did represent the best method. The Planning

Division, ASF, recognized the need for

some form of automatic supply in the

41

 Note on ASF Conf on Reduction of Paper

Work at Various Depots, 7 Nov 44, Lutes Diary. 42

 (1) Memo, Lutes for Somervell, 28 Sep 44.

(2) TAG Ltr, 7 Oct 44, sub: Overseas Supply Rpts,

AG 400 (5 Oct 44) OB-S-SPDDL-M. (3) Memo, Lutes

for Dir Supply ASF, 17 Oct 44, sub: Items on MSR.

Both in Lutes Diary. (4) TAG Ltr, 18 Jan 45, sub:

Placing of Overseas Comds on Phase III Supply

Basis, AG 400 (11 Jan 45) OB-S-E-M. (5) Memo, Hq

ASF for Staff and Tech Svcs NYPOE, 29 Jan 45, sub:

Editing Policies for NYPOE for ETO, Log File,

OCMH. (6) TAG Ltr, 16 Mar 45, sub: Overseas Supply Rpts, AG 400 (17 Mar 45) OB-S-D-M. (7) History of Stock Control, U.S. Army, pp. 211-13. (8)

Annual Report of the Army Service Forces, 1945,

pp. 32-35. 43

 (1) TAG Ltr, 16 May 45, sub: Overseas Supply

Rpts, AG 400 (17 Mar 45) OB-S-D-M. (2) Ltr, Hq

ASF to CG's POE's and CsTechSvcs, 17 Mar 45, sub:

Overseas Supply Rpts, SPX 400 (17 Mar 45) OB-SSPDDL-M, Log File, OCMH. (3) Annual Report of

the Army Service Forces, 1945, p. 33.
156 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

early stages of operations, but shortly

after war's end concluded that:

The varying conditions encountered

through the world with corresponding varying supply requirements leads to the con- clusion that passing to a 100% requisition

basis at the earliest practicable moment is

essential if excesses are to be avoided and

desired items only are to be shipped.44

Levels of Supply

Regardless of the method of ordering

and shipping supplies — whether automatic, semiautomatic, or by requisition

—the key factor in determining any theater's authorized stockage was its prescribed level of each class of supply. The

concept of theater levels had already undergone a considerable evolution by

mid-1943. The original supply plan in

January 1942 set certain reserve levels

to be reached but not exceeded in each

of the then existing theaters and bases;

these reserve levels were considered as

insurance should sea supply lines be cut.

The ever-present fear of interruption

of oversea supply lines was behind the

May 1942 decision that reserve levels

should be considered almost inviolate,

not to be drawn on except in an emergency. The reserve level then ceased to

be a ceiling and was redefined as a minimum level. In July 1942, to counter the

possibility that a given theater might

continue to build its stocks ad infinitum

at the expense of others, the concept of

the maximum level was introduced. In

this concept each theater was entitled to

certain minimum reserve levels of each

class plus an operating level defined as

"the quantity required for normal consumption prior to the date upon which

the next consignment of supplies may

reasonably be expected to arrive at an

overseas base."45 A limit of 90 days' supply was set on the operating level except

where shipping conditions or the tactical

situation required a higher one; even

then any higher level had to have the

express approval of the Commanding

General, ASF.

In July 1943, as a corollary to the

standardization of status reporting, theater levels were reduced in modest proportions and the whole system refined

and clarified. The existing concept of

maximum and minimum levels was confirmed, but confined to uncontrolled

Class I, II, and III supplies. Operating

levels for these classes (still not to exceed 90 days except in special instances)

were to be determined by the port and

overseas commanders in collaboration

"based on the frequency of shipments

and the time required for supplies to

reach their destination." Materiel Status

Report items, ammunition, and any other articles in short supply would be furnished only to the minimum level "until

such time as the supply situation permits furnishing the operating level of

supply. . . ." Class IV supplies were to

be furnished on the basis of operational

projects and were not to be included in

theater levels. For purposes of computing stocks on hand against levels, all

supplies "at ports of debarkation, intransit within the theater, or in depots

in the theater" were to be considered.46

44

 History Planning Div ASF, Text, II, 200.

45

 TAG Ltr, 19 Jul 42, sub: Levels of Supply for

Overseas Depots, Theaters, and Base Comds, AG

400 (7-11-42) MS-SPOPS-M. 46

 (1) TAG Ltr, 10 Jul 43, sub: Levels of Supply

for Overseas Areas, Depots, Theaters and Bases, AG

400 (8 Jul 43) OB-S-SPOPI-M. (2) History Planning

Div ASF, text, II, 201-02. (3) Leighton and Coakley,
THE MECHANICS OF WHOLESALE DISTRIBUTION 157

Events in 1943, meanwhile, were rapidly outdating the concepts on which

supply levels had been based. The submarine threat in the Atlantic lessened,

and the shift from defensive to offensive

operations in the Pacific put an end to

any imminent threat that the enemy in

either major area would be able to cut

American supply lines. This was a prime

consideration with the Richards Committee in drawing its conclusions that

reserve levels were too high all along the

line. The committee accepted the existing concept of minimum and operating

levels, but insisted that minimum levels

should not be held sacred and that supplies held against them should be used

temporarily at any time there was an

interruption in the normal flow. The

committee went on to develop a formula

for computing authorized theater levels

for all classes as follows—for Classes I

and III: theater level = theater distribution time (including unloading time) +

convoy interval time + operating level;

for Classes II, IV, and V: theater level =

theater distribution time (including unloading time) + emergency replacement

time + operating level. Based on information from the Transportation

Corps that shipping capabilities insured

delivery of maintenance supplies to every theater at least once every 30 days,

the Richards Committee recommended

a uniform operating level of 30 days for

all theaters except for certain stations

such as Greenland that were frozen in

for part of the year or those where the

garrison was too small to justify monthly

sustaining shipments. It then proceeded

to calculate the other factors for the various theaters, finally recommending minimum levels that reduced the average,

considering all theaters, from 120 to 97

days. The committee felt that direct control over all levels should be exercised

by the War Department and not delegated to the ports and theater commanders as prescription of operating levels

had formerly been.47

The Richards Committee recommendations on levels were accepted in toto

and officially promulgated in the McNarney directive of 1 January 1944.

(Table 13) They remained in force,

with minor modifications mainly affecting inactive areas, until the end of 1944

when further reductions were made in

levels in the Pacific theaters. They were

at first regarded almost universally as

too low by both theaters and ASF operating agencies, largely because they

seemed to make no provision for the

long time lag between preparation of

a requisition or semiautomatic supply

report and the actual arrival of supplies

in the theater. Much of this criticism

was obviated by the recognition, shortly

after the promulgation of these levels,

of order and shipping time as a factor

in editing theater requisitions. Port and

theater commanders were instructed to

determine the average length of time

required between requisition and delivery at a theater port and to add that

number of days to the theater's requisitioning objective. Since order and shipping time varied between two and four

months, it provided a sizable cushion

against which theater requisitions were

edited. The net effect was to establish

Global Logistics, 1940-43, pp. 333-36, 643-44. Appendix F-1 shows authorized levels of supply in June

1942 and June 1943.

47

 (1) Levels of Supply, app. F: Richards Com

Rpt, pp. 23-30. (2) See Leighton and Coakley,

Global Logistics, 1940-43, Appendix F-1 for levels

prescribed in July 1943.
158 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

TABLE 13—AUTHORIZED LEVELS OF OVERSEAS SUPPLY: JANUARY 1944a

a

 Special operating levels were authorized for those stations frozen in for part of year and those served direct from a port, where the

garrison was so small that monthly shipments would be uneconomical. b

 Minimum in terms of 15-day increments. c

 Exclusive of current operations.

Source: McNarney Directive, 1 Jan 44.

a new formula reading: theater requisitioning objective = theater level + order and shipping time. Except in the case

of critical items, the actual theater level

was expected to fluctuate between the

minimum and maximum authorization

of each class of supply.48

The investigations of the Richards

Committee also affected levels of supplies in the zone of interior. The McNarney directive set back-up stocks for

overseas theaters at 60 days in filler depots plus the strategic reserve (equipment for 10 divisions, 27 air combat

groups, and supporting troops) and a

contingency reserve of 30 days' supply

of items not included in the strategic

reserve. It provided only 105 days' sup48

 (1) History Planning Div ASF, Text, II, 204-05.

(2) TAG Ltr, 20 Jan 44, sub: Levels of Supply for

Overseas Areas, Depots, Theaters and Bases, AG 400

(11 Jan 44) OB-S-E-M. (3) TAG Ltr, 29 Dec 44, sub:

Overseas Supply Levels, AG 400 (12 Dec 44) OB-S-E-I.
THE MECHANICS OF WHOLESALE DISTRIBUTION 159

ply on hand and on order in distribution depots and posts, camps, and stations (45 days normally to be held in

the latter) to serve ZI units, as against

a previous maximum authorization up

to 270 days at the discretion of the commanding generals, ASF and AAF. ASF

aimed its most vociferous protests against

these provisions because they did not

take into account in-transit allowances

that would permit inclusion of order and

shipping time in requisitioning objectives. In the case of overseas back-up

stocks, the ASF admitted that strategic

and contingency reserves would, in effect, provide for in-transit quantities,

but found the whole system too inflexible

in its classification of the various types of

reserves. On the other hand, the 105-

day ZI level made no provision for intransit distribution at all.49

The ASF objections went unheeded

for a time. ZI stock levels were officially

fixed in late February 1944 in strict accordance with the Richards Committee

recommendations. Two other types of

reserves were identified and defined at

this time—utility reserves of special types

of equipment to be used mainly as a

back-up for operational projects and to

meet other special demands; and production reserves, defined as stockages made

necessary "when production reasons

make it mandatory to accept delivery

of supplies in addition to stocks prescribed. . . ."50

For the next two months, the diligent

effort to bring stock levels in line with

these authorizations went ahead, but concomitantly the ASF was moving toward

the Supply Control System, the premises

of which in many cases were at variance

with the rigid levels prescribed in the

McNarney directive. Finally, on 24 May

1944, with the issuance of a new directive on ZI levels, ASF for all practical

purposes won its case. While the 45-day

level for posts, camps, and stations was

retained, the ZI depot level was made

very largely a matter for determination

by ASF and AAF subject to G-4 review,

and without exception was to be "that

quantity necessary to assure uninterrupted supply under current procurement

conditions." When the future issue of

items could be estimated with reasonable accuracy—as S items in the Supply

Control System—this level was not to be

higher than expected issues for the next

90 days; other items, for which future

issue could not be estimated or which

had to be stocked against undeterminable issues—as P items in the Supply Control System—had no ceiling.

At the same time the strategic reserve

was further defined and expanded to include, besides initial issue for the units

composing it, a 90-day reserve of medium and heavy artillery ammunition at

War Department day-of-supply rates,

and 90 days of replacement of initial

issue items whose rate of production

could not be raised within 90 days.51

49

 (1) Draft Memo, Somervell to CofS, 9 Jan 44

(prepared in Office Dir Materiel, ASF) sub: Changes

in Sup Levels and Sup Procedures, Dir Materiel,

ASF File, Richards Com Rpt. (2) Related papers in

same file. (3) Levels of Supply, app. F, Richards Com

Recmns 31, 32, 42, 51. (4) See ch. V, above. 50 WD Cir 85, 25 Feb 44, Sec III. The Richards

Committee apparently recognized the existence of

these two types of reserves but did not include them

in its formula for requirements calculation. 51

 (1) WD Cir 206, 24 May 44, Sec VIII. (2) Memo,

IG for DCofS, 3 May 44, sub: Memo, 1 Jan 44. . . .

(3) Memo, Dir Supply ASF, for G-4, 16 May 44,

same sub. (4) Memo, ASF for G-4, 19 May 44, sub:

Proposed WD Cir and Memo Changes in Supply

Procedures and Sup Levels. Last three in G-4 334

WD Spec Com, vol. 2.
160 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

The net effect was to leave ASF depot

levels for all practical purposes under

the administrative control of ASF. The

problem of levels soon resolved itself

largely into one of establishing effective

stock control, both in the zone of interior

and overseas, and of determining both

accurate troop bases and accurate day-ofsupply and replacement factors in terms

of which actual quantitative levels could

be computed.52

Not the least problem was that of determining existing and projected troop

bases for each theater accurately enough

to permit basing supply action on them.

Until mid-1944 the Victory Program

Troop Basis that was used for procurement purposes did not even contain an

approximate theater breakdown. For distribution purposes a far more accurate

instrument was required, and to develop

a satisfactory one took time. All through

1943 operations were handicapped by

the use of three different sets of figuresone set furnished by OPD's Logistics

Group in the form of periodic theater

troop bases and the Six Months Deployment Forecast; a second set compiled

by Planning Division, ASF; and a third

set maintained at each port of embarkation. The second and third sets were

based on the first only in part, and there

were frequent discrepancies among all

three. Technical services frequently used

one troop basis in editing requisitions

while ports used another. In late 1943

ASF, charged by War Department regulations with furnishing a troop basis to

its own agencies for supply purposes, set

up a special section in the Mobilization

Division to prepare a Troop List for

Operations and Supply that would provide current data on the location of all

units in the Army together with their

projected movements. The first usable

list was produced in January 1944; revised monthly thereafter, for six months

it was the standard basis for all ASF supply action. In the meantime, it became

evident that the problem transcended

the limits of ASF authority, and the

Strength Accounting and Reporting Office was set up in the Office of the Deputy

Chief of Staff cadred by trained personnel drawn from the OPD Logistics

Group and ASF's Mobilization Division.

Beginning in July 1944 this special office

produced a monthly Troop List for Operations and Supply showing both existing and projected data for the zone of

interior and all theaters; it provided for

the first time a satisfactory instrument

on which distribution operations could

be conducted. Deployment schedules, of

course, were themselves becoming more

stable and reliable by this time.53

Requisitioning and Shipment

Procedures

As the overseas supply divisions in the

ports were the key centers of contact

between theaters of operations and the

ZI supporting establishment, the efficiency of the whole overseas supply system

depended in no small measure on port

procedures for handling orders and making shipments. In mid-1943 New York

was assigned responsibility for the European and Mediterranean theaters, San

Francisco for the three main Pacific theaters, Seattle for the North Pacific, Los

Angeles for the CBI, New Orleans for

the Panama Canal and Caribbean bases,

52

 (1) See above, ch. V. (2) History Planning Div

ASF, Text, II, 202-03. 53

 History Planning Div ASF, Text, II, 210-12.
THE MECHANICS OF WHOLESALE DISTRIBUTION 161

Boston for North Atlantic bases, Hampton Roads for Bermuda, and Charleston

for the Middle East, Central Africa, and

the Bahamas. The larger ports had subports directly under their control, or

they used outports, that is, independent

ports in their own right, to relieve the

load on their own facilities. Thus Boston, Hampton Roads, and Charleston

often served as outports for New York;

all Pacific ports, New Orleans, and sometimes ports on the Atlantic coast, served

as outports for San Francisco. In the case

of subports or outports, the main port

of embarkation received and processed

the theater orders, and planned shipments to the theater for which it was

responsible.54

Requisitions from overseas, usually

containing great varieties of items and

quantities, were first broken down by

the port Overseas Supply Division into

their component parts. Materiel Status

Reports or separate requisitions for controlled items were forwarded directly to

the Stock Control Division in ASF headquarters. The rest of the requisitions

were edited at the port. Editing involved

first a check of technical details such as

nomenclature and form and then a determination whether the supplies requested were within the theater's allowances. Requests for quantities in excess

of established levels were supposed to

be accompanied by complete justification. Such requests, even if for noncontrolled items, were also frequently referred to ASF headquarters for decision,

particularly if they involved supplies for

a special operation; at other times adjustments were made in telephone or

teletype conferences with the theater.

Editing was frequently something less

than an exact process; its general purpose was not so much to hold theaters

to exact limitations of allowances as it

was to eliminate what was genuinely

excessive and unnecessary. Liberal editing was particularly characteristic of the

period of intensive build-up for operations on the European Continent in

1944 when the New York port was instructed to honor all reasonable requests

and to use "sound judgment and common sense, predicated on past experience and the tenor of cables and other

correspondence being received at the

base."55 Other theaters were not treated

quite so kindly during 1943 and most of

1944, nor, for that matter, was the ETO

during the earlier part of this period.

Theaters frequently complained about

port actions in reducing requisitioned

quantities. Much of the time misunderstanding arose because of differences in

port and theater records of theater stocks

or the use of inadequate replacement

factors and days of supply. Better stock

control and refinement of factors progressively minimized these problems but

never completely eliminated them. Nevertheless, as stock control procedures became more effective, editing was generally liberalized.56

Once requisitions were broken down

by technical service and edited, the next

step was to determine source of supply.

Within the discretion of the port commander, some supplies were furnished

54

 (1) Wardlow, The Transportation Corps: Movements, Training, and Supply, p. 340. (2) Leighton

and Coakley, Global Logistics, 1940-43, app. G.

55

 Quoted in Larson, Role of the Transportation

Corps, p. 113. 56

 (1) Ibid., pp. 103-18. (2) Wardlow, The Transportation Corps: Movements, Training, and Supply,

pp. 342-43. (3) General Goodman's remarks at Port

Comdrs Conf, Boston, 30-31 Aug 43.
162 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

from port stocks, the remaining parts

of the requisition "extracted" to appropriate filler or key depots. After decisions had been made on the extent to

which theater orders would be honored,

the port had to arrange shipment following priorities laid down by the theater

commander within the limitation of

availability of both the supplies and shipping. In this phase, the port had responsibility not only for matériel furnished

on requisitions edited in its Overseas

Supply Division but also for AAF technical supplies, Materiel Status Report

items, special operational supplies, and

petroleum.

Theater priorities were usually of

three types. The first, a time priority,

required shipment of designated items

within a given period or by a certain

limiting date; the second, a type priority, stipulated in order of relative need

the various types of supplies ordered by

the theater; the third, a shipment priority, gave a particular shipment or series

of shipments an overriding preference.57

Meeting the priorities, of whatever kind,

depended on close synchronization of

movement of exact types and quantities

of supplies into the port with the availability of cargo shipping to move them

out. And it involved, almost inevitably,

some compromises. The theater commander's wishes could not always be met

because of the practical limitations imposed by the necessity of making the

utmost possible use of cargo space, because supplies simply were not shipped

by depots on time, or because of conflict between a single theater's priorities

and the intertheater priorities imposed

by the War Department on critical items.

The first step in the shipment procedure was to determine the availability

of ships to load Army cargo at specific

ports. Long-range allocations were usually made within the framework of the

Joint Military Transportation Committee, while specific nominations for specific tasks were worked out between

WSA and the Water Division in the

Office of the Chief of Transportation

for Atlantic shipments, and by the Joint

Ship Operations Committee in San Francisco for shipments in the Pacific. The

Water Division provided WSA with a

monthly statement of the number of

vessels required for Army loading at

each port; after adjustments, WSA

named the specific vessels to be used,

adjusting the schedule as required in

daily meetings with representatives of

the Army and Navy. The Ocean Traffic

Branch, OCT, working in close co-ordination with Plans and Operations,

ASF, undertook to balance shipping and

cargo on a nationwide basis, but each

port was responsible for planning its

own shipment schedules and calling forward the cargo to meet them.58

The basic system for following up

requisitions, planning shipments, and

loading cargo was developed for the most

part at the New York Port of Embarkation in connection with the heavy shipments to the North African theater, and

later extended to other ports. It involved

a judicious mixture of long- and shortrange planning geared to the convoy

cycle. First, the convoy cycle was planned

on an average of six months in advance,

to cover all convoys or shipping periods

within that half-year. Charts were prepared by the Overseas Supply Division

57

 History Planning Div ASF, Text, II, 195.

58

 Wardlow, The Transportation Corps: Movements, Training, and Supply, pp. 357-59.
THE MECHANICS OF WHOLESALE DISTRIBUTION 163

at the beginning of the period and distributed to all interested agencies, ZI

and overseas, in time to reach the theater before the preparation of requisitions for movement on the first convoy

or during the first shipping period indicated. Revisions were published as necessary and distributed in the same way.

These Convoy Cycle and Shipping Period Charts showed the amount and the

type of cargo shipping expected to be

available as a basis for planning utilization of cargo space.

Planning for each convoy or shipment

began with the processing of requisitions

and the preparation of cargo distribution charts. These charts, prepared by

the Overseas Supply Division and revised from day to day as required, served

as a kind of general repository for virtually all data pertaining to future shipments including all supplies scheduled

for shipment to each destination from

the main port, subports, and outports

in each convoy or shipping period. They

were the chief source of information

for planning the actual loading of supplies, a function performed by a port

loading committee composed of representatives of the Overseas Supply Division and of the other port agencies

(Water Division and Army Transport

Service) responsible for loading and sailing vessels.

Planning, however, could proceed only

so far without definite information on

what supplies would be available in the

port on certain dates. The New York

port developed a follow-up system for

this purpose that was perhaps the most

distinctive feature of its procedures.

Called the Date-line System, it anchored

the whole series of actions taken on a

requisition to the sailing date of the

vessel on which supplies were to be loaded. Starting with the sailing date, the

schedule moved backward, establishing

deadlines for each phase of the supply

process. The first deadline was the Cutoff Date, the date on or before which

all requisitions for supplies to be forwarded in a given convoy or during a

given shipping period must be dispatched from the port to depots or appropriate War Department agencies.

The second was the Initial Date, the

date on or before which supplies called

for should be ready at depots for shipment to port. The third was the Limiting Date by which time all supplies

must be set up at depots for shipment.

The fourth was the Deadline Date, on

or before which shipments should arrive

in the port. The fifth and last, the Sailing Date, was the date on which loading

must be completed. The time intervals

between the various dates could be expected to vary somewhat but the standard cycle used at New York allowed 39

days from the time of receipt of a requisition to the final loading of supplies

aboard ship—2 days for processing the

requisitions at the port, 10 days from

Cut-off Date to Initial Date during which

requisitions would go to depots and be

processed there, 7 days for depot crating and marking between Initial Date

and Limiting Date, 10 days for movement into port between Limiting Date

and Deadline Date, and a final 10 days

for loading aboard ship.

Geared to the whole Date-line System

was a port follow-up of requisitions to

determine their status, and on the basis

of this follow-up cargo distribution

charts were constructed. In October 1943

a detailed procedure was prescribed for

depot reports on availability of supplies,
164 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

but prescribed procedures were not as

important as an aggressive follow-up by

every means of communication, as General Goodman of the New York port emphasized "to put the pressure on" the

depots.59

Follow-up at San Francisco was not

quite so aggressive. The accumulation

at that port of a large number of unfilled requisitions in the fall of 1943

led to a full-scale Control Division survey of the port's operations in support

of the Pacific theaters that occasioned

appropriate corrective measures. The

survey at San Francisco became the prototype for similar surveys at other ports

of embarkation. It also gave impetus to

development of a standard operating

procedure for all ports, which the Transportation Corps established in January

1944. Drafted by General Goodman, for

the most part it simply codified procedures already in effect at the New York

port.60

The port surveys showed that the

major problem in procedures revolved

around the relationship of ports and depots and the flow of information between them. When requisitions could

not be filled at the first depot to which

they were sent, the transaction tended

to degenerate into extracts and re-extracts until the order sometimes became

lost in the complicated machinery. Procedures for cancellation of unfilled requisitions were imperfect and some ports

simply left them in the files for months

on end. The Transportation Corps

standing operating procedure prescribed

a more aggressive follow-up. Port overseas supply divisions were required to

maintain records showing the status of

all requisitions, granted authority to request status reports on them when necessary, and instructed to initiate followup action on any items where availability

had not been determined two days after

the Limiting Date. Procedures developed by the end of the war along these

lines had been simplified to the point

where depots were simply required to

file notices when items were delayed or

could not be made available.61

The flow of information between depots and ports in many ways was simply

accessory to the flow between ports and

overseas theaters. This was a most vital

link in the whole chain of overseas supply because advance information on each

ship's cargo was a prime requisite to

theater planning for handling it on arrival, as well as to the theater's actions

in ordering further supplies. During

1942 the principal advance information

reaching the theater commanders consisted of a copy of each ship's manifest,

which sometimes did not arrive until

the ship was in a theater port and which

was not always accurate, nor did it contain enough detailed information. Airmailing the manifests produced some

improvement but theater complaints of

lack of advance information on ship59

 (1) Port Comdrs Conf, Boston, 30-31 Aug 43.

The talk made by General Goodman at this conference is an excellent and succinct description of the

way the system was working at the NYPOE in mid1943. (2) The above is generally based on Gen.

Goodman's talk; on Leighton, Overseas Supply

Policies and Procedures, pp. 170-88; and Larson,

Role of the Transportation Corps, pp. 118-35. 60

 (1) TC Pam 5, 27 Jan 44, Standing Operating

Procedure for Supply of Overseas Theaters and

Bases. (2) See Larson, Role of the Transportation

Corps, pp. 197-212 for port surveys. (3) On the survey at San Francisco and its effect on Pacific supply

see below, Chapter XX.

61

 (1) TC Pam 5, 27 Jan 44, and Revision, 1 Apr

44. (2) ASF Cir 336, 7 Oct 44. (3) WD Cir 5, 3 Jan 45.
THE MECHANICS OF WHOLESALE DISTRIBUTION 165

ments continued. The fault did not always lie with the port—the theaters themselves sometimes did not use the manifests properly. In 1943 and 1944 the

whole mechanism for keeping theater

commanders informed of the fate of

their requisitions greatly improved when

a regular series of actions, once again

developed for the most part from practices instituted at the New York port,

was prescribed. The first notification to

be sent overseas under the new procedures was a copy of the edited requisition,

dispatched by air courier as soon as completed. Cargo distribution charts and

depot notices of action taken on requisitions followed. At the time of each sailing a cargo summary was dispatched by

cable or radio; copies of the ship's manifest and stowage plan were then forwarded by air courier. The New York

port also attached to the manifests lists

of principal items by technical service

and, with installation of teletype facilities in 1944, conducted daily teletype

conferences with the European theater.

The use of a standardized War Department Shipping Document for each shipment from depot to destination greatly

simplified the process of furnishing adequate information to the theaters. By

early 1944 it had become standard practice to use the War Department Shipping Documents as annexes to a summary manifest. Also, for a time, most

ports furnished theaters additional periodic summaries of the status of requisitions, but this practice was abandoned in

mid-1944 as being too burdensome on

the ports.62

Standard operating procedures alone

could not, of course, provide solutions

for all the difficulties involved in the

complex relations between theaters and

ZI supporting agencies. Too many individual problems in supplying each separate theater required special handling,

special loading methods, and the expediting of individual items and categories

of supply. Despite increased standardization of procedures, each port and each

theater had its own peculiar problems

that had to be worked out in a neverending series of adjustments. Improvements normally reflected a growing ability of many different agencies to work

together as a team.

In early 1945 ASF Control Division

undertook to measure the efficiency with

which overseas supply operations were

being conducted by determining the

average turnaround cycle for each major

theater, that is, the lapse of time between the dispatch of a requisition from

the theater to the arrival of the supplies

requested at a theater port. The studies

were limited to routine requisitions for

maintenance supplies and did not include Materiel Status Report items. The

results showed a turnaround cycle of 133

days for the European Theater of Operations, 115 for the Mediterranean Theater of Operations, 118 for the Pacific

Ocean Areas, and 181 for the Southwest

Pacific Area. The greatest delays occurred in depot processing—75 days out

of 133 for ETO, and 66 days out of 181

for SWPA. Independent studies at New

York showed only 28 percent of requisitioned supplies reached port by the

Deadline Date and only 48 percent before the convoy sailed. At least half of

the convoy loads, therefore, seemed to

be of cargo requisitioned for previous

62

 (1) Wardlow, The Transportation Corps: Movements, Training, and Supply, pp. 349-52, 400-02.

(2) TC Pam 5, 27 Jan 44. (3) Leighton, Overseas

Supply Policies and Procedures, pp. 188-90.
166 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

months. Although further investigation

modified these conclusions by showing

that long delays on a small number of

items unfavorably affected the results,

the studies did reveal overlong delays

in the whole process of requisitioning

and shipping maintenance supplies.

These conditions were mitigated, however, by the quicker performance possible in shipping critical items on Materiel Status Reports and faster action

on cabled requisitions. In the very last

days of the war, considerable effort was

devoted to improving depot performance in processing requisitions and postV-E Day studies showed considerable improvement in the turnaround cycle to

Pacific theaters.63

Special Operational Supplies

In the distribution phase special operational supplies also constituted a separate and difficult problem, involving as

they did those extraordinary items needed for specific operations that could not

be calculated in terms of authorized allowances—items that one supply officer

in 1944 described as "to date the biggest headache of Army Service Forces."64

Procedures developed to deal with this

particular "headache" centered around

the operational, or keyed, projects system

developed in mid-1943, devised as a

means of shifting the burden of anticipating need from Washington to the

overseas theaters. As a device for forecasting long-range operational requirements for procurement planning the system was far from being a signal success,

and in many ways it proved to be of

greater significance in the distribution

process than in the calculation of requirements.65

The operational project system was

not all-inclusive. Another method by

which theaters secured equipment above

T/E and TBA was through War Department approval of Special Lists of

Equipment for particular units, still another was by simply requisitioning additional supplies or equipment on short

notice. The first of these was legitimate

enough, but the whole purpose of the

project system was to avoid the second

with all the confusion, haste, and waste

it entailed.66

Procedures established in the fall of

1943 placed the principal responsibility

for processing project requirements on

OPD and ASF-OPD for checking strategic justification and ASF for detailed

technical review and administration.

Each project was assigned a key number

by the theater commander and submitted directly to OPD, accompanied by a

detailed bill of materials or by enough

information to permit the War Department to compute one. In either case,

the theater indicated what would be

available locally, whether by procurement from indigenous sources or by use

of stocks on hand. After preliminary

review OPD forwarded the project to

Planning Division, ASF. Under the aegis

of Planning Division, the appropriate

technical service and other staff divisions

of ASF undertook a technical review

and appraisal, computing or revising the

bill of materials as required, determin- 63

 (1) Annual Report of the Army Service Forces,

1945, pp. 41-44. (2) Wardlow, The Transportation

Corps: Movements, Training, and Supply, p. 347. 64

 Lecture, Lt Col Clarke at Hq ASF School,

13 Apr 44, Log File, OCMH.

65

 See above, ch. V. 66

 Final wartime procedures for processing SLOE's

are in WD Memo 310-44, 1 Sep 44.
THE MECHANICS OF WHOLESALE DISTRIBUTION 167

ing the availability of necessary materials, and calculating the impact on the

Army Supply Program. Planning Division then returned the completed project to OPD for final approval or disapproval, and if approved supervised

subsequent actions in providing materials to meet it. The bill of materials did

not in itself constitute a requisition, but

served only to establish an approved requirement. Once the bill was approved,

the theater was authorized to requisition materials against it directly on the

responsible port and the port to process

the requisitions in the usual way, editing them only to see that quantities requested conformed to the bill. The original project normally indicated the desired phasing of shipments; ASF staff

divisions acted as co-ordinators in assembling materials to meet the schedules,

and prepared monthly status reports

containing performance data on all

keyed projects.67

These procedures were developed on

the assumption that the theaters would

submit their projects far enough in advance to permit orderly planning for

both procurement and shipment. In

practice, they proved unable to do so.

"At the present time," an ASF officer

commented in April 1944, "the majority

of projects are being received in the

War Department with barely sufficient

time to assemble the equipment and

place it aboard a ship to meet the requirements of the theater. The project

system is degenerating into an easy method of securing supplies over and above

normal requirements."68 Requisitions

frequently were submitted along with

the project, and then the project system

simply became a procedural framework

for submitting supply orders. The practice at first was officially frowned on but

was legalized in the revised outline of

the overseas supply system published in

May 1944, which provided that projects

submitted requiring shipment of material within go days were to be accompanied by requisitions so that "expeditious supply action can be effected on

approval."69 The ASF was authorized in

the interests of speedy action to ship supplies in advance of OPD approval if

there was not enough time for normal

processing, to act on minor amendments

and changes to approved projects, and

even to ship against emergency requisitions of sufficient urgency pending submission of projects to cover them. OPD

reserved the right of ex post facto review.70

The extent to which keyed projects

became simply a method for short notice

requisitions can, of course, be exaggerated. When the area and nature of operations could be predicted far enough

in advance, projects were submitted and

both procurement and shipment carefully planned in accordance with the

theory laid down in War Department

and ASF directives. One major project 67

 (1) WD Cir 220, 20 Sep 43. (2) Ltr, Hq ASF to

Dirs Plng, Reqmts, Sup Cntrl, Production Divs, 527

Oct 43, and to CsTechSvcs, 27 Oct 43, sub: Procedures

for Handling Reqmts of Operational Supplies, History Planning Div ASF, apps. 13-D, 13-E. (3) Lecture,

Clarke, Hq ASF School, 13 Apr 44. (4) Lecture, Lt

Col Scherer, 20 Apr 44. (3) and (4) in Log File,

OCMH. (5) History Planning Div ASF, Text, II,

216-18.

68

 Lecture, Clarke, 13 Apr 44. 69

 WD Cir 203, 24 May 44. 70

 (1) Memo, Handy for CG ASF, 10 Jan 44, sub:

Operational Projects. (2) Memo, Lutes for ACofS

OPD, 12 Feb 44, same sub, with 1st Ind by OPD,

14 Feb 44. Both in History Planning Division ASF,

Apps. 13-F, 13-G. (3) See also ASF Cir 32, 28 Jan 44.
168 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

—the rehabilitation of the port of Cherbourg—was submitted by the European

theater on 12 August 1943, materials

were placed under procurement on 23

August, and by D-day on 6 June 1944

all the necessary materials had been assembled in the British Isles. As the pace

of operations in Europe quickened, demands had to be presented on shorter

notice. In the Pacific, where a strategy

of opportunism prevailed, there was seldom time for advance planning for projects in specific geographic areas. In the

Southwest Pacific Area in particular the

project system became something of a

whipping boy, and was blamed for many

of the delays in receipt of engineer construction supplies.71

Recognizing that the project system

was not working well, ASF undertook a

thorough review in the summer of 1944.

The net result was the publication of

an ASF manual on operational supplies,

consolidating all existing procedures in

one place. The only major change to the

existing system was the provision that

War Department prepared projects (a

Planning Division responsibility) be the

main guide for theaters in calculating

their own requirements for operational

supplies. But no supply action was authorized until the theaters had presented their own projects, whether based on

those prepared in ASF or those developed independently. Basic procedures

for processing theater projects and shipping supplies to meet them were only

refined in detail. Among the refinements

was a provision for a separate category

of restricted items for operational supply

purposes (as distinguished from Materiel

Status Report items) over which ASF

headquarters and the technical services

would exercise control.72

Though the project system, even after

its modification to provide for War Department prepared projects, never was

regarded as a completely satisfactory

method of determining operational requirements it remained in effect through

the end of the war. Refinements and

changes proposed in 1945 never got beyond staff consideration. The basic problem, not completely soluble under any

system of calculation, was that of anticipating specific operations far enough in

advance to prepare for them. General

Tansey, chief of OPD's Logistics Group,

commented toward the end of the war:

It will be readily seen that unless the

theater commander is given long range strategical directives that he will be unable to

submit projects in time for procurement

and thus will be forced to take what the

Army Services Forces and Army Air Forces

have anticipated as his needs. One of the

outstanding things in this respect is the

super-ability of the Army Service Forces

and Army Air Forces to furnish anything

imaginable on practically no notice. While

this abundance of supply is commendable,

it has had the effect of removing restrictions

and control of supply for overseas theaters.

. . . The great ability of this country to

produce can and will supply theaters with

what they need, but will never be able to

supply them what they want. It would be

desirable in the future for all operational

projects to be prepared in detail by the War

Department and sent to the theater commander for such modifications as are necessary. This has been attempted by the Joint

Logistics Plans Committee and the Army

Service Forces and has met with a certain

amount of success, the trouble being that 71

 (1) Annual Report of the Army Service Forces,

1944, p. 12. (2) On the problem of operational projects in the Pacific see below, Chapter XX.

72

 ASF Manua l M415. Special Operational Supplies, 25 Aug 44.
THE MECHANICS OF WHOLESALE DISTRIBUTION 169

we started it too late in the war and operations usually overtake our plans.73

Conclusions reached in the Planning

Division, ASF, the other agency fundamentally concerned with operational

projects, were essentially the same.74

The Army's elaborate apparatus for

distribution of supplies, for all its faults

and imperfections, met its ultimate test

successfully. Supplies were delivered to

theaters in more than adequate quantities and usually at the right time and

place. No operation, once definitely

scheduled by the JCS or CCS, was ever

canceled or even significantly delayed

by failures in the delivery of supplies

attributable to malfunction of the system. As has been demonstrated, the system depended on a calculated degree of

oversupply, that is, on a generous stockage of all the way stations on the long

road from factory to using troops, and

in this as well as in other respects it was

wasteful. After the war critics would

charge that because of this built-in waste

more supplies were left over at the end

of the war than were used by the Army

in all its overseas operations. An officer

writing in 1951 remarked:

We operated on the principle of plenty

for everybody—plus a good padding in case

things went wrong. Our supply system operated on the principle of the shotgun rather

than the rifle. If you shoot enough pellets

you are bound to hit every one, but with

better aim we could have hit every target

with fewer bullets.75

The system was better geared to meet

routine and predictable demands common to all areas and operations than to

furnish the exceptional and extraordinary items needed at special times and

places. Even so, with timely special arrangements—often a judicious mixture

of preparation for the largest possible

number of contingencies plus a generous measure of improvisation — supply

agencies usually managed to meet all

legitimate demands. This, too, usually

involved a calculated degree of oversupply.

At other times and places and under

other circumstances, the system might

not have met the test so well. Certainly,

after early 1943 the success of supply

operations involving mass shipments by

sea and mass accumulations of reserves

at key points was in no small part due

to the absence of any large enemy air

or submarine threat. In the particular

time and circumstances of World War

II, and granted the wealth of national

resources it had to draw upon, the

Army's distribution system was well

adapted to the tasks it had to perform.

Before the war no one foresaw the magnitude or the complexity of supply operations involved in supporting troops

in theaters of war scattered round the

globe. That the system developed under

the stresses of war was wasteful in some

respects is not surprising. Of more fundamental importance is the fact that it

did provide adequate support for the

large-scale military campaigns necessary

for victory over the Axis. 73

 Memo, Tansey, no date, sub: Allocations of

Munitions for Log Support of Global Strategy, ABC

400 (2-17-42), Sec. 6. 74

 History Planning Div ASF, Text, II, 222. 75

 Lt. Col. Page H. Slaughter, "Substituting Speed

for Men," Ordnance, XXXV, No. 185 (March-April

1951), 415-18.

PART THREE

THE MEDITERRANEAN IN THE GLOBAL WAR

JUNE-DECEMBER 1943

CHAPTER VII

Outline OVERLORD and the Invasion

of Italy

The ponderous machinery of Army

production and distribution, while more

flexible in mid-1943 than it had been in

1942, still could operate efficiently only

with early and firm decisions to provide a basis for detailed logistical plans.

The American case in 1942 and 1943

for a firm decision on a major Channel

crossing, with a relatively fixed target

date, rested in large part on the presumed need to give the administrative

machine a stable and positive direction.

Unfortunately, the course marked out

by TORCH and the Casablanca Conference and confirmed at TRIDENT contained no built-in guarantee of stability.

In Europe, the Pacific, and the Far East

the conduct of the war after the summer of 1942 reflected a strategy of opportunity rather than of fixed long-range

goals. In the Mediterranean and in the

South and Southwest Pacific, where activity was most intense, the military situation was extremely unstable and vulnerable to radical shifts of direction dictated by opportunity or necessity. This

was the problem facing American strategists and logisticians in the interval between the TRIDENT Conference in May

and the QUADRANT Conference in August of 1943. TRIDENT had formally ratified the determination of the U.S. military leaders to conduct the war in the

Pacific in their own way and at an accelerating tempo. It had also produced Allied agreement on a major cross-Channel

invasion (ROUNDHAMMER) with a target date of 1 May 1944, along with provisos designed to ensure a strategy of

limited risk in the Mediterranean while

preparations for ROUNDHAMMER were

under way. On the other hand, a decision on future operations in the Mediterranean awaited the outcome of the

landings in Sicily early in July, and,

assuming success there, the British could

be expected to press for a determined

effort to force Italy out of the war. The

Americans faced this prospect with misgivings rather than practicable alternatives, and their misgivings grew out of

the very expectation of success. In their

view, the real prospect of further gains

in the Mediterranean, with the corollary

demand for further investment of resources to secure and exploit them, posed

the most serious threat to the continuity

of logistical preparation that they considered essential to a successful crossChannel invasion. (Map 3)

The Italian Debacle

The TRIDENT decision to undertake

operations in the Mediterranean "calculated to eliminate Italy from the war and

OUTLINE OVERLORD AND THE INVASION OF ITALY 175

to contain maximum German forces"

had, indeed, glossed over a basic disagreement. British and American leaders

could agree on the second aim, but the

Americans did not share the conviction

of their allies that eliminating Italy

would be the best way to accomplish it.

Churchill was fully aware that General

Eisenhower's judgment on the issue

might prove decisive. Immediately following the conference, accompanied by

General Marshall and with the President's blessing, he visited Eisenhower's

headquarters in Algiers in the hope of

winning him over to an invasion of Italy.

Eisenhower stood up well under the

onslaught of Churchillian charm. He

agreed to develop a plan for a move to

the Italian mainland along with the

plans for occupying Sardinia and Corsica, but with the understanding that a

final decision would not be made until

mid-August when the course of events

in Sicily would afford some basis for estimating enemy reaction.1

Already the TRIDENT estimates of the

cost of an Italian mainland invasion

were dissolving into mist. Largely because of limitations of assault lift and

the distance from the nearest fighter

bases, Eisenhower's staff had decided

that of the proposed mainland landings

only that in Calabria, on the toe across

from Sicily, could be undertaken. Even

this would require 68,000 additional antiaircraft and service troops to reach the

theater in August, borrowing fighter aircraft from other areas, and clarification

of TRIDENT schedules to permit retention of 9 U.S. APA's and 4 AKA's used

in HUSKY, 90 cargo ships, and 18 U.S.

destroyers for escort in the Mediterranean.2

Eisenhower's request launched the

familiar process of trading and shuffling

shipping. Cargo shipping presented no

difficulty; the problem centered on personnel vessels. To provide the 68,000

troops Eisenhower needed it was decided without much debate to switch a large

troop convoy in August from the United

Kingdom run to the Mediterranean and

at the same time to reshuffle various unescorted troop sailings. More difficult was

the provision of assault transports, for

their assignment to an operation in the

Mediterranean would not only further

delay BOLERO movements but would also

press upon operations in the Pacific and

Burma, a consequence the Washington

staffs were not willing to accept. Combat

loader assets actually in the Mediterranean at the time comprised 13 U.S.

APA's and 7 XAP's, along with 16 British LSI (L)'s, passenger liners converted

for assault use. All were reserved for

Sicily, but, of the entire fleet only 3

LSI (L) 's had been slated for post-Sicily

operations, and Eisenhower's staff was reluctant to risk these big, valuable ships

in a major assault. Three other LSI (L) 's,

earmarked for a putative Azores expedition though not for combat use, were

presently released as the necessity of a

forcible occupation of the Portuguese islands faded. Six more LSI (L) 's were

due to be redeployed to Burma in July,

the rest of them to the North Atlantic.

Of the American assault transports, the

XAP's were also assigned to the Atlantic

sector; in June Admiral King exercised

one of his TRIDENT options to assign two

1

 (1)CCS 242/6, 25 May 43. (2) Matloff, Strategic

Planning, 1943-44, pp. 153-55.

2

 (1) Min, Algiers Conf, 29 May 43, TRIDENT Book.

(2) CCS 268, 1 Jul 43, title: Post-HUSKY Opns, N

African Theater.
176 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

APA's to the same area, and ordered six

more to the Pacific to fill the complement of 18 required for the GilbertsMarshalls operation. The U.S. vessels

were due to depart immediately after

the Sicily landings.3

All these assignments left Eisenhower

a theoretical total of only 5 APA's and

3 LSI (L) 's, less expected heavy losses

off Sicily, for whatever operations might

follow. The British thought his needs

should be met but declined to offer

LSI (L) 's as substitutes for the requested

APA's. The Americans argued that Eisenhower should make do with the vessels he had been allotted. In the midst

of the debate 6 APA's and 4 AKA's departed as scheduled for the Pacific. Happily, the expected losses in the Sicily

landings did not materialize—all the

assault transports came out unscathed,

and losses in landing ships and craft

amounted to only 4 LST's, 2 LCT's, and

15 LCM's. This permitted a compromise

decision, transmitted to Eisenhower on

20 July, allowing him to keep the 7

remaining APA's and 2 of the 7 XAP's.

The British LSI (L)'s were expected

to make good most of the troop spaces

thus lost to BOLERO-SICKLE. Eisenhower was also granted 18 of the 48

destroyer escorts in the theater, 3 U.S.

cruisers, and the 90 cargo ships already

earmarked. His request for fighter aircraft was denied.4

Events were overtaking these arrangements even as they were made. As the

armored spearheads of Lt. Gen. George

S. Patton, Jr., fanned out through the

rugged terrain of Sicily, it soon became

apparent that the Italian troops on the

island had little stomach for further

fighting. Reports flooding into Allied

Force Headquarters indicated similar

low morale among Italian units occupying the Balkans. Palermo fell to the U.S.

Seventh Army on 22 July, and on the

25th the world heard the news broadcast

from Rome that Mussolini had been

arrested and a new government formed

by Marshal Pietro Badoglio. All signs

seemed to point to an early collapse of

Germany's principal partner.

Reacting promptly, on the basis of

intelligence reports of declining Italian

combat power, Marshall had proposed

to the CCS on the 16th, with King's

support, that Eisenhower be sounded

out on the feasibility of an amphibious

flanking attack on the Italian mainland

near Naples. Marshall hoped that a sudden landing in force south of Rome

might complete Italy's demoralization.

With Allied armies firmly ensconced in

southern Italy, and the Italian Government and people out of the war, the

Allies might venture to go on the defensive in the Mediterranean and devote

their full energies to preparations for

the Normandy invasion. Churchill, how3

 (1) Memo, Horne for Somervell, 16 Jun 43, with

related corresp in OPD 560 Security, II, Case 54.

(2) Memo, Col Claude B. Ferenbaugh for ACofS

OPD, 25 Jun 43, sub: Effect of Special Convoy on

U.K. Lift, ABC 384 Post-HUSKY (14 May 43), Sec 3.

(3) CCS 244/1, 25 May 43, Annex V. (4) CCS 268/2,

15 Jul 43, title: Post-HUSKY Opns N African Theater. (5) Memo, Somervell for Marshall, 30 Jun 43,

sub: Combat Loaders for Post-HUSKY Opns, OPD

Exec 3, Item 1c. (6) Min, 66th mtg, CPS, 10 Jul 43;

67th mtg, 17 Jul 43. (7) Table, Assault Shpg Med

Area, 3 Jul 43, in ABC 561 (31 Aug 43), Sec 1B.

(8) LSI(L)'s had an average capacity of about 2,500

troops, APA's about 1,500, XAP's about 1,100.

4

 (1) CCS 268/3, 19 Jul 43. memo by Reps Br COS,

Post-HUSKY Opns N African Theater. (2) CCS 268/4

and 268/5, 20 Jul 43, same title. (3) Min, 69th mtg,

CPS, 20 Jul 43. (4) Msg 172032, COMINCH to COMNAVEU, 17 Jul 43, OPD Exec 3, Item 5. (5) Paper,

Landing Craft Losses in HUSKY as Reported 28 Jul

43, in folder Misc Shpg Info, OCT HB.
OUTLINE OVERLORD AND THE INVASION OF ITALY 177

ever, professed to read into Marshall's

proposal a change of heart and an espousal of a more aggressive strategy in

the Mediterranean. The British Chiefs

of Staff also reacted enthusiastically to

the idea of landings south of Rome—

they suggested a target date of late August, offered to provide a heavy carrier

and four escort carriers for the operation, and finally urged that while Eisenhower was estimating his requirements

all withdrawals from the Mediterranean

be halted. Without waiting for the

American reply, on 24 July they ordered a halt to all movements of their

own troops, aircraft, and shipping from

the area and suggested that the Americans follow suit.5

The reaction in Washington was

sharp. What disturbed the U.S. Joint

Planners was not so much the immediate

consequences of a suspension of Mediterranean withdrawals, which would not

be dire, but the "plain inference," as it

seemed to them, that whatever Eisenhower might ask for, now or later, must

be given to him.6 On this premise they

foresaw disastrous consequences for Pacific and CBI operations and for the

build-up for the cross-Channel invasion.

In the light of the actual British proposals, these forebodings, in retrospect,

seem somewhat premature. The British

wanted, at the moment, simply to suspend decision on all imminent movemerits from the Mediterranean until

Eisenhower's needs were formulated and

could be debated on their merits. They

did not propose recalling ships already

departed, such as the six Pacific-bound

APA's, or any action that might prejudice planned movements to either the

Pacific or the United Kingdom. The elements immediately affected by the

"stand fast" order were (1) 3 groups

of medium bombers temporarily assigned to the theater for the scheduled

raid on Ploesti in August; (2) 2 U.S.

cruisers and a destroyer group scheduled

to depart about 12 August for Atlantic

escort duty; and (3) 6 British LSI (L) 's

and 8 LST's due to depart immediately

for India.

With the possible exception of the

destroyers, it seems unlikely that a brief

delay in any of these scheduled movements would have had serious consequences. The JCS had now decided,

however, to take "a very firm position."7

Because retention of the India-bound

LSI (L) 's and LST's would admittedly

delay planned operations in Burma, the

Americans made this the major issue.

In a stiff note on 26 July rejecting the

British proposals, the JCS informed the

British Chiefs:

The U.S. Chiefs of Staff do not consider

that the accelerated rate of success in the

Mediterranean eliminates the need for the

execution of the Burma operations as agreed

upon. They are now concerned with the

apparently slow progress of the plans and

preparations for operations in Burma.

The JCS made it clear that they regarded the proposed landings near Naples as a quick, bold stroke in a situation that justified taking risks. The op5

 (1) On Churchill's conversation with Stimson on

this matter, see Matloff, Strategic Planning, 1943-44,

pp. 156-59; Henry L. Stimson and McGeorge Bundy,

On Active Service in Peace and War (New York:

Harper and Brothers, 1947), pp. 429-39; Bryant,

Turn of the Tide, pp. 549-53. (2) Memos by Reps

Br COS in CCS 268 series, 19-24 Jul 43, under title

Post-HUSKY Opns N African Theater. 6

 JCS 421, rpt by JPS, 23 Jul 43, title: Post-HUSKY

Opns N African Theater.

7

 Memo, Wood for Somervell, 23 Jul 43, folder

CsofS, Jnt and Comb 1942-44, Hq ASF.
178 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

eration should be carried out, therefore,

with resources already provided—which,

even after planned withdrawals, would

give Eisenhower an estimated assault

lift for almost 80,000 troops, ample to

mount a 3-division assault even after

absorbing 25 percent losses in the Calabrian landings.8

This verdict the British were in no

mood to accept, for the Naples operation (AVALANCHE) had now become the

crux of Mediterranean strategy. On the

same day as the JCS reply, Prime Minister Churchill poured out his hopes in

a jubilant letter to Roosevelt, painting

a prospect of fighting between Germans

and Italians, surrender of the Italian

fleet, and wholesale capitulation of garrisons throughout the Mediterranean.

He wanted to increase pressure on Turkey, to throw agents, commandos, and

supplies into the Balkans, and in Italy

to seize lodgments on both coasts "as

far north as we dare"—and, he declared,

"this is a time to dare." With the Allies

dominating the Adriatic and the Balkans on fire, the Germans might be

forced back to the line of the Sava and

Danube; Italy could become a great air

base for bombing southern and central

Germany. Ten days earlier, in a sterner

mood, he had confided to Field Marshal

Jan Christian Smuts that he would "in

no circumstances allow the powerful

British and British-controlled armies

in the Mediterranean to stand idle." The

British Chiefs held to their "stand fast"

order pending a reappraisal of the situation at the impending conference at

Quebec.9

Revolt Against Overlord

Behind the apparently solid front of

the U.S. Chiefs, the new situation in

the Mediterranean stirred up a ferment

of critical discussion of European strategy among the Washington staffs. In

OPD some officers dared to hope that

the enemy was now on the run, and

that southern Europe might indeed be

the "soft underbelly" of the Axis, a

logical target for the main Allied effort.

Others reluctantly perceived a seemingly irresistible drift of events which

should be accepted and exploited. Brig.

Gen. John E. Hull, Chief of OPD's

Theater Group and one of the founding

fathers of American cross-Channel strategy, commented on 17 July that "our

commitments to the Mediterranean have

led me to the belief we should now

reverse our decision and pour our resources into the exploitation of our

Mediterranean operations."10 For many

Navy officers, of course, a shift of the

main effort to the Mediterranean had a

special appeal in that it might release

more resources for the war in the

Pacific.

The issue was soon joined. On 25

July, the day of Mussolini's fall, two

Army members of the Joint War Plans

Committee, Cols. William W. Bessell,

8

 (1) CCS 268/9, memo by U.S. CsofS, 26 Jul 43,

title: Post-HUSKY Opns N African Theater. (2) Memo,

Handy for CofS, 25 Jul 43, and related papers in

ABC 384 Post HUSKY (14 May 43), Sec 3. (3) Min,

103d mtg CCS, 23 Jul 43, and Spec mtg JCS, 26 Jul

43. (4) JWPC 67/2, 22 Jul 43, title: Post-HUSKY

Opns. (5) Draft, Notes for Gen Marshall, undated,

OPD Exec 5, Item 11.

9

 (1) Msg, Former Naval Person [Churchill] to

Roosevelt, 26 Jul 43, quoted in Churchill, Closing

the Ring, pp. 55-58. (2) Msg, Churchill to Smuts,

16 Jul 43, quoted ibid., pp. 35-36. (3) CCS 268/10.

memo by Reps Br COS, 26 Jul 43. (4) Msg FAN 177,

CCS to Eisenhower, 30 Jul 43, OPD Exec 3, Item 4. 10 Memo, Hull for Handy, 17 Jul 43, ABC 381

Strategy Sec Papers (7 Jan 43) 96-126/3, Tab SS 111.
OUTLINE OVERLORD AND THE INVASION OF ITALY 179

Jr., and Richard C. Lindsay, boldly attacked the cross-Channel strategy and

the following day the committee itself

raised the standard of revolt in a formal

report to the JPS.11 As the committee

saw the situation, Germany had already

been so weakened that she could not

destroy the Soviet armies while simultaneously under attack in the west. German leaders might well have already

concluded that their best hope lay in a

negotiated peace with the Western Allies. If so, the obvious course for the

Allies would be to increase, not relax,

pressure during the remainder of 1943

and early 1944 by strategic bombing and

further offensives in the Mediterranean

where strong and seasoned forces were

deployed in readiness to strike. From

Mediterranean bases, Allied air power

could extend its bombing range and,

ultimately, re-equipped French armies

could invade southern France. In this

perspective, an invasion from the northwest would not be "the opening wedge

for decisive defeat of the German armies," but rather the "final, as opposed

to the decisive, action—decisive action

having already taken place in the air

over Europe, on the ground in Russia,

and at sea." The committee concluded

that, while the invasion build-up should

continue, it should be "without prejudice to the achievement of our objective

in the Mediterranean, the elimination

of Italy." The seven divisions scheduled

for withdrawal should be left in the

theater, enabling the same amount of

shipping to be used to augment the

total Allied strength in Europe by bringing seven fresh divisions from the

United States.12

The seriousness of the challenge to

established strategic concepts was underlined when Admiral Leahy, on 26 July,

told his JCS colleagues that the President himself had suggested it might

become necessary to reorient Allied

strategy in Europe in view of events in

Italy. Leahy hinted that "we may not

mount OVERLORD." Invasion forces

might be deployed to the Mediterranean, and the decisive attack on Fortress Europe might be made through

northern Italy or southern France.13

Ten days later the Joint Strategic Survey Committee added the weight of its

prestige to the new line of thinking. In

an appreciation submitted to the JCS

on 5 August this senior group took note

of the "inviting promise of new situations" in analyzing the merits of an

advance up the Italian Peninsula to

Pisa and Ancona, possibly even to the

Po River, along with either a "collateral

threat" or a full-scale entry into southern

France to support the Normandy invasion. Most significantly, the JSSC was

willing to envisage "encroachments" on

the cross-Channel operation that might

reduce it to a purely opportunistic effort

to exploit "a marked deterioration" in

Germany's Atlantic defenses.14

Meanwhile, however, the JWPC had

reviewed its own conclusions and given

the argument a somewhat different turn.

The committee now regarded Mediterranean operations in a new light—as

neither a diversion nor a main effort, 11 (1) Rpt by Special Subcora, Conduct of the War,

25 Jul 43, ABC 381 (9-25-41), Sec 7. (2) JPS 231,

rpt by JWPC, 26 Jul 43, title: Adequacy of TRIDENT

Strategy. (3) The language of the two papers is

similar at many points.

12

 JPS 231, 26 Jul 43. 13

 Min, spec mtg JCS, 26 Jul 43. 14

 JCS 443, memo by JSSC, 5 Aug 43, title:

QUADRANT and European Strategy.
180 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

but rather as a co-ordinate part of an

integrated, converging offensive aimed

at driving the Germans from France.

During 1943 and early 1944 the emphasis would be on operations in the

western and central Mediterranean,

centering in a drive up the Italian Peninsula, while strategic bombing from the

United Kingdom continued with mounting intensity. By spring 1944 Germany

would be reeling under these pressures

and the blows of the Soviet armies in

the east, its position in France an exposed salient, its strength spread thin.

At this juncture the Western Allies

would launch a double offensive, one

prong reaching across the English Channel, the other up the Rhone Valley from

initial lodgments in the Toulon-Nice

area and an overland advance from

northern Italy. The JWPC contemplated no additions to the forces present in the Mediterranean and even conceded that the seven earmarked divisions

might safely be withdrawn, though the

committee hoped the withdrawals could

be held to three divisions. This would

leave about 29 divisions for the 1944

campaigns in Italy and southern

France.15

For its first conception of a main effort

in the Mediterranean followed by a coup

de grace delivered across the English

Channel, the JWPC thus substituted the

grander idea of a squeeze from north

and south on the whole peninsula of

western Europe. The northern claw of

the pincers would still be "the primary

action on the ground for the defeat of

Germany" in the west, but its primacy

clearly was of a different order from that

hitherto accorded to ROUNDUP and

ROUNDHAMMER.

Meanwhile, the champions of strategic

orthodoxy were organizing their counterattack. They were reinforced early in

August by the arrival from London of

Maj. Gen. Ray W. Barker, U.S. deputy

to COSSAC, who had come to explain

and defend the recently completed outline plan for the cross-Channel invasion

(OVERLORD) . In two JPS meetings on 4

August Brig. Gen. Albert C. Wedemeyer

and Brig. Gen. Laurence S. Kuter, the

Army members, sharply attacked both

the original and the revised JWPC

paper, urging that recent events only

underlined the need for an abrogation

of opportunism and a return to "sound

strategic plans which envisaged decisive

military operations conducted at times

and places of our choosing, not the enemy's." Merely to label OVERLORD "primary," they argued, would not prevent

it from being in fact "de-emphasized" by

the effort called for in the Mediterranean. Split between the Army and Navy

members and pressed for time, the JPS

sent up to the JCS both the revised

JWPC paper and a new version drawn

up by the Army planners.16

Wedemeyer and Kuter, it was soon

evident, had correctly read their Chiefs'

leanings. When the JSSC paper came up

before the JCS on 6 August, its authors 15

 (1) JPS 242, rpt by JWPC, 5 Aug 43, title:

Strategic Concept for Defeat of Axis in Europe.

(2) Memo, Col M. B. Stokes for Col Frank N. Roberts, 2 Aug 43, sub: Movement of 7 Divisions to

U.K., ABC 384, Post-HUSKY (14 May 43), Sec 3.

(3) It had been estimated that three divisions could

be moved from the Mediterranean in British shipping returning from the Indian Ocean.

16

 (1) JPS 242/1, memo by U.S. Army Planners, 5

Aug 43, title: Strategic Concept for the Defeat of

the Axis in Europe. JPS 242 became JCS 444; the

Army Planners' paper became JCS 444/1, 5 Aug 43.

(2) For a contrasting interpretation of this episode

see Harrison, Cross-Channel Attack, p. 94, note 35.

(3) For handling of JPS 231, see WDCSA 381, vol. II.
OUTLINE OVERLORD AND THE INVASION OF ITALY 181

were sharply interrogated, Admiral King

remarking that "he did not desire to

see this paper get into the hands of the

British." Lt. Gen. Stanley D. Embick,

the Army member of the JSSC, assured

him he was actually "decidedly in favor

of OVERLORD," and General Marshall,

coming to Embick's defense, said he was

sure the "tenor" of the passage referred

to was "due to its wording" and unintentional. Sent back to its authors for revision, the offending paper was returned

the following day purged of any hint

of a main effort in the Mediterranean.

On the 9th the JCS, who meanwhile had

been briefed on the two Planners' papers, agreed on a "Strategic Concept for

the Defeat of the Axis in Europe" that

was virtually identical with the Army

planners' version. This became the

American position paper on European

strategy at Quebec the following week.17

It was not, however, the return to

orthodoxy that it was represented to be.

The Army planners, no less than their

Navy opposites and the JWPC, were

eager to exploit the evident crumbling

of Axis fortunes, and recognized the immense potentialities of the 25 or more

Allied divisions and 5,000 combat aircraft that would be deployed along Fortress Europe's southern flank with no

shipping available to move them elsewhere. Merely to pin down the Germans

wherever in northern Italy they chose to

make a stand would not, the Army planners conceded, fully occupy all these

forces. If they were not occupied the

British might find ways of using them

in the Balkans. The Army planners

adopted the JWPC's Mediterranean program in full—to seize the islands of the

Tyrrhenian Sea, pin down enemy forces

and establish air bases as far north as

possible in Italy, bomb southern Germany and the Balkans, aid the Balkan

guerrillas, and finally open a new front

in southern France to support OVERLORD

—and they were only a degree less optimistic than the JWPC over the prospects for driving to the Po and overland

into France. On the other hand, both

groups saw OVERLORD, with a spring

target date, as the main effort for 1944,

the Army planners holding out for 1 May

instead of 1 June. Both agreed that no

additional resources should be allotted

to the Mediterranean, and that the TRIDENT withdrawals should be carried out

as scheduled. In approving this program

the U.S. Chiefs of Staff thus rejected the

older party line, still intoned in certain

quarters of OPD, that nothing whatsoever must be undertaken in the Mediterranean following the collapse of Italy.

They were committed henceforth to a

continuing effort in the southern theater,

centered in Italy, and providing a supplementary prong in a pincers strategy

destined to emerge full-blown in spring

of 1944 with the Normandy and southern France operations.18

The Overlord Plan

Thus ended, somewhat anticlimactically, the revolt against OVERLORD. It coincided, appropriately enough, with the

17

 (1) Min, 100th mtg JCS, 6 Aug; 101st mtg, 7

Aug; 102d mtg (Suppl), 9 Aug 43. (2) JCS 443 (Rev),

rpt by JSSC, 7 Aug 43. (3) CCS 303, 9 Aug 43, memo

by U.S. CsofS, title: Strategic Concept for the Defeat of the Axis in Europe.

18

 (1) JCS 444/1, 5 Aug 43. (2) SS 93, 3 Aug 43,

sub: Comments on Strategic Concept for the Defeat

of the Axis in Europe, ABC 381 Strategy Sec Papers

(7 Jan 43) 2-95. (3) OPD paper, no date, sub: Conduct of War in Europe after Collapse of Italy, ibid.,

240/11/24, Tab 240 Misc.
182 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

appearance of the prospectus for the

operation that General Morgan had been

directed to prepare at the end of the

TRIDENT Conference. The assignment

was a formidable one. Morgan had been

allotted enough assault shipping, theoretically, to lift five divisions, and

enough transport aircraft for about twothirds of an airborne division. He could

count on Allied superiority at sea and

in the air, with some reservations as to

local fighter cover and protection against

submarines. With these assets, he had

been instructed to draw up a plan for

seizing a lodgment on the Continent

from which further offensive operations

could be launched and which would contain facilities necessary to maintain from

26 to 30 divisions initially and subsequent increments of 3 to 5 divisions per

month.

General Morgan's response to these

prescriptions was not notably hopeful.

The COSSAC staff had concluded that

the most promising area for an amphibious attack was a 27-mile stretch of the

Normandy coastline between Caen and

the base of the Cotentin Peninsula, within fighter range of England but not so

near nor so heavily fortified as the Pas de

Calais. Success would depend on certain

conditions: German fighter strength

must be substantially reduced, and the

Germans should not have available in

France and the Low Countries at the

time of the assault more than twelve mobile, first-quality divisions, nor be able

to transfer from the Eastern Front during the first two months more than fifteen such divisions. In the target area

itself, it was essential that no more than

three mobile divisions be brought to

bear on D-day, five divisions on D plus 2,

or nine divisions by D plus 8. To help

achieve these conditions, COSSAC recommended skillful deception measures

and diversionary operations against the

Pas de Calais area and southern France.19

Aside from these conditions, General

Morgan's greatest concern was the problem of build-up and maintenance following the initial assault. The target

area contained only a few small ports,

and Cherbourg, the only sizable one

within striking distance, was not large

enough to support 26 to 30 divisions.

Therefore, until the Brittany and Seine

ports could be seized—possibly two or

three months after D-day—a considerable

part of the forces would evidently have

to be supplied over the beaches. To overcome this difficulty Morgan counted on

an expedient that was as yet scarcely

more than an idea—prefabricated ports

that could be towed across the Channel,

anchored off the beachhead, and protected by breakwaters made of sunken

ships. "I feel it my duty to point out,"

he warned, "that this operation is not to

be contemplated unless this problem of

prolonged cross-beach maintenance and

provision of artificial anchorages shall

have been solved."20

As for the assault itself, Morgan's analysis showed all too clearly the limitations

imposed by the meager allotment of amphibious shipping made at TRIDENT.

When the COSSAC staff set about breaking down this allotment into task and

subtask groups, it found that the sum

of the parts did not add up to the

19

 (1) Digest of Operation OVERLORD, 27 Jul 43.

Reproduced as Appendix A in Harrison, CrossChannel Attack, pp. 450-56, and as JCS 442, 5 Aug

43. (2) For full discussion see Harrison, Cross-Channel

Attack, pp. 71-79. 20

 Memo, Gen Morgan for COS Com, 15 Jul 43,

with Outline OVERLORD Plan in QUADRANT Conf

Book.
OUTLINE OVERLORD AND THE INVASION OF ITALY 183

GENERAL MORGAN

total lift assumed at the Conference. The

available lift was sufficient for five divisions simultaneously afloat, but small

craft could not safely be used to cross

so treacherous a body of water as the

English Channel, and there were not

enough combat loaders to carry them

or large landing vessels to substitute for

them. Moreover, the three assault divisions with their attached armor and

"overheads" (mainly antiaircraft and

special engineer troops) required so

much lift that two of the divisions following would have to be loaded in conventional shipping, and all of the followup and subsequent build-up would be

delayed. In the crucial first two days,

only the three reinforced assault divisions and one follow-up division would

be ashore and fighting, instead of the

seven divisions (three assault, two follow-up, two build-up) prescribed at TRIDENT.21

 In order to load all the follow-up

forces in assault shipping, the COSSAC

staff estimated that no additional LST's

or their equivalent would be needed,

and still more LST's and LCT's to load

some of the build-up formations tactically and to accelerate the flow of vehicles ashore. Nor could the planners even

count on all the assault shipping promised at TRIDENT, particularly LCT's. Of

the 555 LCT's of all types expected to be

operational on D-day, 44 were now being

used for net protection duties with the

British Fleet at Scapa Flow, with no prospect of being released for OVERLORD. Another 43 were to be converted to gun

and rocket support craft for the assault.

Requirements for more support craft of

various kinds, most of which would have

to be contrived from LCT hulls, were

snowballing and the end was not in sight.

The deficit on the eve of the Quebec

Conference was estimated at 72 LCT's,

about 11 percent of the entire LCT

allotment; in another month the figure

was to climb to 164.22

General Morgan recommended an allaround increase of 10 percent in assault

lift as "highly desirable in order to provide a greater margin for contingencies

within the framework of the present

21

 (1) Harrison, Cross-Channel Attack, pp. 74-75.

(2) Table accompanying CCS 304, note by Br COS,

10 Aug 43, title: Opn OVERLORD. (3) General Barker's

comments at 110th mtg JCS, 21 Aug 43.

"Follow-up" forces in amphibious operations were

preloaded at the time of the initial assault; "buildup" forces came ashore in craft surviving the initial

assault and, after the beach area was secure, in

vessels of all types. In the outline plan, reinforcing

armor to be landed on D-day was the equivalent of

a division, and there were three, not two, follow-up

divisions. But the first build-up division would not

come ashore until late on D plus 2, and would not

be operational until the next day.

22

 (1) Harrison, Cross-Channel Attack, p. 101.

(2) Corresp in SHAEF SGS 560, vol. I.
184 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

plan," and observed further that enough

additional lift for another division could

"most usefully" be employed for a landing on the Cotentin Peninsula west of

the target area, in order to ensure early

capture of Cherbourg. He did not press

the issue of how the two airborne divisions and additional parachute regiments

allotted to OVERLORD were to be transported, given the small allotment of

transport aircraft, but the outline plan

provided for airdropping both divisions.23

In presenting the plan to the British

Chiefs of Staff on 15 July, General Morgan had stressed what he called the "essential discrepancy in value" between the

position of an enemy awaiting attack

in carefully prepared defenses, and

troops assaulting them at the end of a

difficult Channel crossing subjected to

all the disadvantages inherent in movement under fire from water to land. He

reminded his superiors of the novelty

of the conditions that had to be faced—

tide, weather, relation between base and

target area and, above all, the problem

of prolonged maintenance over beaches

—and he warned against comparisons

with the Sicily operation. A more generous allotment of resources, he pointed

out, would permit alternative courses of

action, freeing the assault plan from

the limitations which dictated rigid adherence to a single course or none at all.

In the interests of greater flexibility he

was prepared to recommend, as a last

resort, postponement of OVERLORD'S target date.24

General Barker, Morgan's American

deputy, faced a skeptical audience when

he presented Outline OVERLORD to the

U.S. Chiefs of Staff on 6 August. Even

though the product of a combined staff,

as Barker's presence emphasized, the

plan seemed to the JCS to reflect British influence and aims. To Admiral King

in particular the conditions stipulated

in the plan looked suspiciously like the

old, familiar British reservations—what

King called their policy of "delay, linger

and wait." It was imperative, King insisted, to pin the British down to an

unequivocal decision "whether or not

we are really going to get down to actually do OVERLORD." Without such a decision, King thought, "we are frittering

away valuable means," which "could

better be used elsewhere . . . possibly the

idea of OVERLORD should definitely be

abandoned."25 Answering a pointed

question by General Marshall, Barker

assured his hearers that the British military from top to bottom were "one hundred percent favorable" to OVERLORD,

but he added a qualifying remark about

the effect of the "sun lamp" of the Prime

Minister's personality on the British

Chiefs. Barker made a persuasive case

for the feasibility of the OVERLORD plan.

He had to confess, however, that "if

there is any over-all compelling problem

for OVERLORD, it is that of a shortage of

landing craft," and he went so far as to

suggest that the proposed southern

France landings might be reduced to

a feint in order to provide more lift

for the Normandy assault.26

23

 Harrison, Cross-Channel Attack, app. A. 24

 (1) Memo, Morgan for COS Com, 15 Jul 43,

QUADRANT Conf Book. (2) Naval Branch (Br), Appreciation of Effect of Provision of Extra Ldg Cft . . . ,

27 Jul 43, SHAEF SGS 560, vol. I.

25

 (1) Min, 101st mtg JCS, 7 Aug 43; 100th mtg,

6 Aug 43. (2) JCS 442/1, 6 Aug 43, title: Opn OVERLORD, Suppl Notes by Maj. Gen. R. W. Barker. 26

 Min, 100th mtg JCS, 6 Aug 43.
OUTLINE OVERLORD AND THE INVASION OF ITALY 185

Despite their misgivings, the JCS decided to accept the OVERLORD plan as

the basis for further planning of the

cross-Channel invasion. It remained to

win the President's approval, which, in

the light of Admiral Leahy's recent report of his Mediterranean leanings, was

by no means to be taken for granted.

Roosevelt was, in fact, evidently searching for a basis for compromise with the

British. On 9 August he startled General

Marshall by inquiring whether it would

be feasible to send seven fresh U.S. divisions to the Mediterranean to replace the

seven to be withdrawn for OVERLORD,

observing that he felt more could be

done in the Mediterranean than did his

advisers. Military planners, he whimsically complained, were "always conservative and saw all the difficulties."27

Roosevelt's inquiry came at a time

when shipping estimates indicated, despite the August diversions from BOLERO

to the Mediterranean, a potential capability of moving about 100,000 more

troops across the Atlantic before May

1944 than anticipated at TRIDENT. However, the troop basis submitted by the

European theater in conjunction with

the OVERLORD plan called for almost exactly the total of 1,400,000 men that

the shipping estimates now indicated

could be moved. The transportation

staffs had little difficulty in demonstrating that the suggested movement would

cut deeply into planned deployments to

either the United Kingdom or the Pacific. The staff advised Marshall, and Marshall advised the President, that it would

be unwise to skimp the theater of primary effort in Europe, especially since

all the estimates were based on rather

optimistic assumptions of future ship

losses.28

On 10 August, shortly before the JCS

came to the White House to present

these arguments, Secretary Stimson gave

the President a careful analysis of British views as he interpreted them on the

basis of conversations with Churchill and

other leaders during his recent visit to

England. Both Churchill and Sir Alan

Brooke, Stimson asserted, were haunted

by "the shadows of Passchendaele and

Dunkerque," and mortally afraid of a

cross-Channel invasion, for all the "lip

service" they had given it in the past. As

for the Mediterranean, while admitting

that Churchill professed to have no desire for a land invasion of the Balkans,

Stimson believed nevertheless that most

British leaders thought Germany could

be defeated "by a series of attritions in

northern Italy, in the eastern Mediterranean, in Greece, in the Balkans, in

Rumania and other satellite countries."

Anthony Eden, the British Foreign Secretary, was reported to be openly in

favor of a Balkan invasion in order to

forestall Soviet domination of that region. Stimson was convinced that no

British commander could ever provide

the resolution or energy needed for a

cross-Channel invasion, and he urged the

President to insist that this assignment

be given to General Marshall.29

Stimson's imputations of British coolness to OVERLORD and hankering for a

27

 Memo, GCM [Marshall] for Handy, 9 Aug 43,

ABC 384 Post-HUSKY (14 May 43), Sec 2.

28

 (1) Memo, Stokes for Handy, 9 Aug 43. (2) Memo,

Handy for CofS, 9 Aug 43. Both in ABC 384 PostHUSKY (14 May 43), Sec 2. (3) Min, mtg at White

House, President and JCS, 10 Aug 43, ABC 337

(25 May 43). 29

 (1) Stimson and Bundy, On Active Service, pp.

335-38. (2) Min of mtg at White House, 10 Aug 43.

(3) Bryant, Turn of the Tide, pp. 573-76, disputes

Stimson's conclusions. (4) See also Matloff, Strategic

Planning, 1943-44, pp. 211-16.
186 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

Balkan invasion evidently made a deep

impression on the President. Roosevelt

had already assured Marshall that he

wanted no part of a Balkan campaign,

but hoped merely to ensure that the

Allies would gain a good position north

of Rome, occupy Sardinia and Corsica,

and "set up a serious threat to Southern

France."30 On Marshall's assurances that

Eisenhower would be able to do substantially this without replacing the seven divisions, and that to replace them

would be a clear invitation to the British to invade the Balkans, Roosevelt

gave up the idea of reinforcing the Mediterranean. In a burst of enthusiasm he

wondered whether OVERLORD might not

be made a purely American undertaking. Marshall reminded him that no

shipping was available to move elsewhere the 15-odd British and Canadian

divisions expected to be in the United

Kingdom. At least, the President persisted, OVERLORD'S commander must be

an American as Stimson had urged, and

he told Marshall to see to it that U.S.

forces on D-day were decisively preponderant over the British.31

Resources for a Pincers Strategy

Thus, on the eve of the Quebec Conference, despite widespread misgivings

about the OVERLORD plan, the OVERLORD

concept was riding high. Voices of staff

dissent had been stilled, and it seemed

likely that the President's support for

an OVERLORD-centered strategy could be

counted on in any showdown with the

British. OVERLORD, it was true, was now

blended into a larger strategic concept

in which continuing Mediterranean operations and strategic bombing during

1943 and early 1944 had an important

role. Still, the case for this grand design

rested on the dubious premise that resources allotted at TRIDENT with a lesser

strategy in view would suffice for major

operations in three widely separated

areas—Italy, southern France, and Normandy. The Washington staffs thought

that the 24 Allied divisions remaining in

the Mediterranean after seven had been

withdrawn for OVERLORD would be adequate. General Eisenhower, less confident, informed Marshall on 13 August

that everything would depend on German reactions. Though he anticipated

no difficulty in getting to the Po if the

Germans fell back, he doubted whether

he could even get to Rome if they stood

and fought. At any given time, he pointed out, he could count on no more than

two-thirds of the divisions theoretically

at his disposal to be fully equipped, at

full strength, and ready for action, and

the obstacles to rapid deployment within

the theater would reduce even that proportion. As for a southern France operation, what with the uncertainty as to

future enemy strength, limited port capacity, and, above all, "the constantly

annoying and limiting factor of shipping and landing craft," Eisenhower

found himself unable to predict his capabilities so far in the future.32

The Washington staffs had ample reason by mid-August to question the adequacy of the very slim margins of assault

30

 Memo, GCM [Marshall] for Gen Handy, 9

Aug 43. 31

 (1) Min of mtg at White House, 10 Aug 43.

(2) Min, 103d mtg JCS, 10 Aug 43.

32

 (1) Msg 7205, Eisenhower to Marshall (eyes

only), 12 Aug 43, OPD Exec 3, Item 5. (2) Msg

4751, Marshall for Eisenhower (personal), 11 Aug

43, OPD Exec 3, Item 4. (3) Min, 101st mtg JCS,

7 Aug 43.
OUTLINE OVERLORD AND THE INVASION OF ITALY 187

lift capabilities on which OVERLORD and

its southern France complement were being planned. One disturbing recent development concerned the movement

schedules of landing craft to be sent to

England from the United States and the

Mediterranean. Movements across the

Atlantic had started in July and were to

continue through the following March,

with most of the larger vessels sailing

after the turn of the year. Redeployments from the Mediterranean of vessels surviving the post-HUSKY operations

were not yet definitely scheduled, but

were expected to take place in November or earlier, after the landings in Italy.

Late in July it was learned that the

COSSAC planners now wanted one-half

of all OVERLORD assault shipping to be

on station by the first of the year, the

remainder by 16 March. To meet this

requirement, the British estimated the

following deadlines for arrival in the

United Kingdom: half of the LCT's

from the United States by 1 November,

half of all the LST's and LCI (L) 's by

1 December, and the remaining increments by mid-January and mid-February, respectively. American naval experts

challenged as excessive the time allowed

for refitting and movement to station,

and General Barker himself admitted

that the indicated arrival dates for the

first increment might be delayed as much

as a month.

While the matter was being debated,

the reports of low landing craft losses

in the Sicily operation seemed to indicate a way out. The windfall accruing

from Sicily could be assigned to OVERLORD, thus meeting COSSAC's steppedup schedule and obviating the need for

some of the later movements from the

United States. Perhaps the British could

even increase their own contribution to

OVERLORD, permitting some reduction

in that of the Americans. By 4 August

the Joint Staff Planners were venturing

to hope that in this way OVERLORD requirements could be "more than met."

The Navy was, in fact, already augmenting allotments of American landing craft

production to the Pacific.33

But while some of the joint staffs were

planning to move all surviving assault

lift out of the Mediterranean for OVERLORD, another group was estimating that

the Sicily windfall would leave an aggregate lift of two reinforced divisions for

the southern France operation.34 Admiral Cooke, calling attention in the JCS

meeting of 6 August to these conflicting

assumptions, roundly asserted that the

Allies could not mount two major amphibious operations in Europe simultaneously and that, if OVERLORD were to be

carried out, all the assault lift Surviving

the invasion of Italy would have to be

transferred to England. As Cooke was

aware, the prolonged tie-up of the Mediterranean amphibious fleet in over-thebeach supply operations in Sicily35

 was

already raising serious doubts as to the

extent to which even the TRIDENT allocations of Mediterranean assault lift to

OVERLORD, much less the "surplus" resulting from overestimation of losses,

would in fact be available for timely redeployment. As for the southern France

operation, the Joint War Plans Committee noted on 13 August in comment33

 (1) Min, 89th mtg JPS, 4 Aug 43, and OPD

notes. (2) Memo, JHC for Gen Wedemeyer, 6 Aug

43. Both in ABC 384 (9 Jul 43), Sec 1. (3) JPS

228/1, 2 Aug 43. (4) Diary entry, 12 Aug 43, in

Historical File 23, ASF Plng Div. 34

 JPS 242, 5 Aug 43, app. B. 35

 See below, pp. 189-90.
188 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

ing on the feasibility of the OVERLORD

plan that the withdrawal of additional

amphibious equipment from the Mediterranean to provide the increased lift

General Morgan had asked for would

"most seriously limit the possibility of

amphibious operations against Southern

France, which is ... a subsidiary but

nonetheless important element of our

overall strategy for the defeat of the

Axis in Europe."36

The JCS themselves were still unwilling to write off this operation. Their

position paper on European strategy for

the forthcoming conference at Quebec,

as finally approved on 9 August, omitted

the recent optimistic but now hardly

tenable estimates of landing craft availability based on the Sicily windfall, but

retained the end-product of those estimates, the statement that a southern

France assault by "at least" two reinforced divisions in support of OVERLORD

could be mounted. General McNarney

suggested that in cases of competing demands between the two theaters OVERLORD should be explicitly accorded an

"overriding" priority. Vice Adm. Richard S. Edwards quickly objected that

this might be construed to subordinate

the claims of the Pacific. The JCS accordingly modified McNarney's proviso

to read: "As between Operation OVERLORD and operations in the Mediterranean, when there is a shortage of resources, OVERLORD will have overriding

priority."37

The position of American military

leaders on European strategy before the

Quebec Conference was thus a curious

blend of optimism and caution. Axis reverses in the Mediterranean had inspired

hopes of eliminating Italy from the war,

occupying the islands of the Tyrrhenian

Sea and a large part of the Italian Peninsula, and, by combined overland and

amphibious operations, driving up the

Rhone Valley in spring of 1944 to a

junction with OVERLORD forces pushing

eastward from Normandy. In this way

Mediterranean strategy, hitherto regarded as peripheral and diversionary, might

be made to serve the orthodox strategy

centering in a decisive invasion of the

Continent from the northwest. For the

Americans, it had the additional attraction of being a means of keeping Mediterranean forces profitably occupied in

the western half of that vast theater and

thus unavailable for British-instigated

adventures in the Balkans. Yet, for all

its grandeur, it was still a strategy of opportunity, at the mercy of any upturn

of Axis fortunes or even a German decision to make a stand south of Rome.

The "overriding priority" formula

adopted by the JCS on 9 August was

ostensibly a hedge against such contingencies, calculated to ensure the primacy

of OVERLORD over the Mediterranean—

though not over the Pacific—in any situation dictating hard choices. The JCS

seemed hardly to recognize the inconsistency between this formula and their

stubborn hopes for an amphibious assault

in southern France, which at best would

require the retention in the Mediterranean of landing craft badly needed for

OVERLORD. They were already coming

to regard the southern France operation,

rather than Mediterranean operations in

36

 (1) JPS 253, 13 Aug 43, rpt by JWPC, title:

Comments on COSSAC Outline Plan. (2) Min, 100th

mtg JCS, 6 Aug 43; 101st mtg, 7 Aug 43. (3) Min,

71st mtg CPS, 13 Aug 43. (4) Min, 91st mtg JPS,

7 Aug 43. 37

 (1) Min, load mtg (Suppl) JCS, 9 Aug 43. (2)

CCS 303, 9 Aug 43.
OUTLINE OVERLORD AND THE INVASION OF ITALY 189

general, as the real southern prong of the

new pincers strategy, an integral part of

OVERLORD, which shared in some measure its primacy over other operations

in the southern theater. But this line of

thinking could not alter the facts of

geography. Southern France lay in the

Mediterranean theater, and "overriding

priority" could be invoked as readily

against a southern France complement

of OVERLORD as against the eastern Mediterranean involvements it was primarily

intended to forestall.

Assault Shipping and the

Invasion of Italy

In the theater, meanwhile, Eisenhower's planners were sniffing uneasily at

various schemes for getting into Italy.

They regarded a landing near Naples

(AVALANCHE), suggested by the CCS,

as too risky without a secure lodgment

in Calabria as a preliminary. Only on

26 July did Eisenhower assign priority

to planning for AVALANCHE, and the

operation was not definitely decided

upon until 16 August.38

The cautious pace of this planning

and the narrow range of its choices were

governed primarily by the twin limitations of air power and assault lift. Naples

itself lay beyond effective operating

range of single-engine fighters based on

Sicilian airfields. The area finally chosen

for AVALANCHE, some distance south of

Naples in the Gulf of Salerno, was barely within this range for fighters equipped

with extra tanks. Even with the few available long-range fighters and aircraft from

the five British carriers, air cover for the

assault would still be heavily outweighed

by enemy shore-based aircraft. To offset

this disadvantage, Eisenhower pleaded

repeatedly for more heavy bombers to

pound enemy airfields and isolate the

battlefield. All his requests were turned

down. The B-24's that carried out the

Ploesti raid on 1 August were withdrawn to England as scheduled, and Eisenhower was left with only about twothirds of the air strength his commanders wanted.39

Eisenhower's pleas for more air power

were aimed at offsetting a weakness in

assault lift that seemed to preclude putting ashore at any point, except perhaps

in Calabria, forces as large as those the

enemy could mass to oppose them. The

optimism engendered by the small losses

in the Sicily landings and the rapid disintegration of Italian resistance was soon

dispelled by the prolonged tie-up of

landing ships and craft in supplying

the forces ashore. LST's, LCM's, and

DUKW's were engaged in lightering

cargo ashore from freighters, while

LCI(L)'s, LCT's and other LST's ran

a cargo shuttle service between TunisBizerte and Sicily. More LCI (L) 's and

other personnel craft labored to roll up

the administrative tail as the invasion

progressed, and a few unscheduled amphibious landings in the enemy's rear

on the northern and eastern shores of

Sicily absorbed other vessels. The wear

and tear on vessels which, for the most

38

 Martin Blumenson, Salerno to Cassino, UNITED

STATES ARMY IN WORLD WAR II (Washington,

1968), chs. I, II.

39

 (1) Msgs, late Jul-19 Aug 43 in OPD Exec 3,

Item 5. (2) Eisenhower Dispatch, The Italian Campaign, 3 September-8 January 1944 (hereafter cited

as Eisenhower Dispatch), copy in OCMH, pp. 18-19.

(3) Craven and Cate, AAF II, pp. 492-96.
190 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

part, had not been built for prolonged

work of this sort, was severe.40

On 26 July Eisenhower was informed

that sufficient ships and craft could not

be released from Sicily in time to be

refitted and redeployed for another major operation before 7 September at the

earliest. This quashed any hope for amphibious landings in force either before

or immediately following the capture of

Messina, and left as the only means of

rapidly exploiting the fall of Mussolini

such highly risky undertakings as an airborne drop or direct entry into a portexpedients that were, in fact, considered

and prepared for but (except for a bold

dash into Taranto) ultimately abandoned. The Germans were thus given

ample time to organize countermeasures.41

Meanwhile, with lift in sight for only

one major undertaking, Eisenhower's

commanders, still dominated by the belief that a foothold in Calabria was

an indispensable preliminary to AVALANCHE, were compelled to divide even

this meager resource. They set up one

amphibious force for AVALANCHE, another smaller one for crossing the Messina

Strait (BAYTOWN) , and a third to be

used (BUTTRESS) either to support AVALANCHE if BAYTOWN prospered or to land

in northern Calabria if BAYTOWN went

badly. The crossing at Messina was to be

launched as soon as possible, thus releasing some shipping for either BUTTRESS

or AVALANCHE. The whole complicated

arrangement, Eisenhower confessed, involved "some sacrifice of efficiency in the

interests of flexibility.42

As the Sicilian battle roared to its end,

the outlook for AVALANCHE remained

uncertain. On 16 August, the day before

his forces entered Messina, Eisenhower

decided in favor of AVALANCHE and canceled BUTTRESS, but not unequivocally;

ship commanders had sealed orders providing for a possible last-minute switch.

Montgomery, in charge of the BAYTOWN

landings, gave up hope for an unopposed

crossing and demanded a lift so large as

to imperil the main landings south of

Naples. The preparations now considered necessary made it unlikely that BAYTOWN could be launched before September. Since AVALANCHE could not be delayed beyond the 9th of September, if

favorable moon conditions were to obtain, the likelihood of releasing BAYTOWN shipping to support it seemed remote.43

In Oran harbor were ten LST's, the

American contingent of the eighteen destined for India. They were scheduled to

be released on 20 August; the eight British LST's were being held under the

"stand fast" order of July pending decisions of the Quebec Conference, which

had convened on the 14th. On 18 August, Eisenhower cabled the CCS at Quebec an "earnest request" to be allowed

to retain the ten American LST's for at

least one trip in the forthcoming operations and, if possible, until the end of

40

 (1) CCS 268, 1 Jul 43. (2) Eisenhower Dispatch,

pp. 2, 22. (3) Rpt of Opns . . . Seventh Army, Part I,

pp. b-18-22; Part II, pp. e-13-15. (4) Msg NAF 265,

Eisenhower to CCS, 18 Jul 43, ABC 384 Post-HUSKY

(14 May 43), Sec 3. (5) Msg, COMNAVNAW to

COMINCH, 25 Aug 43, OPD 560 Security II, Case 63. 41

 (1) Msg NAF 300, Eisenhower to CCS, 27 Jul 43;

Msg NAF 312, 5 Aug 43. OPD Exec 3, Item 5. (2)

Capt. Harry C. Butcher, USNR, My Three Years

with Eisenhower (New York: Simon and Schuster,

1946), pp. 371-74.

42

 (1) Msg NAF 312, 5 Aug 43. (2) Eisenhower

Dispatch, pp. 20-21. 43

 (1) Blumenson, Salerno to Cassino, ch. III. (2)

Eisenhower Dispatch, pp. 24-31. (3) Msg NAF 326,

Eisenhower to CCS, 16 Aug 43, OPD Exec 3, Item 5.
OUTLINE OVERLORD AND THE INVASION OF ITALY 191

AN LCT BEING LIFTED FROM ITS "PIGGY-BACK" BERTH ON AN LST, Oran, Algeria.

September. Though Marshall favored a

short delay, the American admirals insisted they must be released on schedule,

since the process of fitting the vessels for

the voyage to India and taking on their

deck-loaded LCT's would hold them up

until mid-September in any case. Eisenhower was curtly informed, therefore,

that the Burma LST's, British as well

as American, must depart on schedule.

Before the end of the conference the

British Chiefs of Staff also ordered their

six LSI (L) 's, earmarked for the same

operation but held under the July order, to proceed to India.44

On 3 September Italian representatives formally took their country out of

the war, and on the same day the Allied

invasion of the mainland got under way

with an almost unopposed crossing of

the Strait of Messina by elements of the

British Eighth Army. Six days later Admiral of the Fleet Sir Andrew B. Cunningham boldly sailed four cruisers and

accompanying destroyers loaded with

troops of the British 1st Airborne Division directly into the harbor of Taranto,

encountering no organized resistance

from shore. The Germans had decided,

in fact, to mass their forces against the

main Allied landings, which they believed would be made farther up the

west coast, probably near Naples. By the

44

 (1) Msg NAF 330, Eisenhower to CCS, 18 Aug 43.

(2) Msg FAN 197, CCS to Eisenhower, 20 Aug 43.

Both in OPD Exec 3, Item 5. (3) Min, 108th mtg

JCS, 19 Aug 43. (4) Min, 74th mtg CPS, 15 Aug 43.

(5) Churchill, Closing the Ring, pp. 204-05.
192 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

9th they had three divisions in or near

the target area, with two more on the

way from the south and others within

easy reach farther north. When, in the

early hours of 9 September, one American and two British divisions of the

U.S. Fifth Army came ashore at Salerno,

they were soon engaged in one of the

bitterest battles of the war.45

Assault shipping for an adequate

build-up at Salerno was lacking. The

meager six days' interval between Montgomery's crossing of the Strait of Messina and the Salerno landings did not

permit the transfer of enough landing

craft northward to strengthen the assault

or early build-up of the forces in the

beachhead. In effect, enough assault lift

to mount a division or more was immobilized far to the south in what was virtually an unopposed operation. And

Montgomery's forces, hampered by demolitions and insufficient transport, never

got close enough to the Salerno battlefield to affect the outcome. At Salerno

the situation immediately became critical and remained so for a full week while

frantic efforts were made to bring in reinforcements. Fortunately, as in Sicily,

very few landing craft were lost in the

initial assault, but only limited reinforcements could be brought in during the

first few critical days. On 11 September

the CCS reversed their previous decision, and, at Eisenhower's urgent request, granted him permission to use the

18 Burma LST's. They also made available some additional heavy bombers.

The bombers helped to turn the tide

in the later stages of the battle, but the

loan of the LST's was too late to do

much good. Five days were required to

unload rails and other miscellaneous cargo, and in the end the vessels were used

to carry the British 78th Division to

Taranto. At Salerno, meanwhile, the

crisis had been weathered, and on 18

September Eighth Army elements linked

up with the beachhead.46

Salerno had been, as Churchill paraphrased the Duke of Wellington's comment on Waterloo, "a damned close-run

thing."47 German mistakes, as well as

Allied efforts, contributed to the outcome—for example, Hitler's decision not

to support Field Marshal Albert Kesselring by sending divisions from northern

Italy. Otherwise the denial by the CCS

of the assault shipping and heavy bombers Eisenhower requested might well

have had disastrous consequences. The

denial of the LST's seems doubly futile

in retrospect, since the Burma assault

shipping of which they were a part was

destined to sail all the way to India and

back again without landing a single soldier or vehicle on a hostile beach. "No

one," commented Eisenhower's naval

aide, noting American press criticism of

the Allied failure to rapidly follow up

the Sicilian victory, "seems to emphasize

the bitter truth, which is that troops

do not have that mysterious power attributed to Jesus when he walked across

the water. We still have to rely on landing craft and, unfortunately, we didn't

have enough to continue to supply Sicily

and conduct two other large-scale operations at the same time."48

45

 On these events, see Blumenson, Salerno to

Cassino.

46

 Blumenson, Salerno to Cassino, chs. X and XI.

(2) Msg, NAF 367, Eisenhower to CCS, 9 Sep 43,

OPD Exec 3, Item 5. (3) Morison, Sicily—Salerno—

Anzio, pp. 286-97, 314. 47

 Churchill, Closing the Ring, p. 147. 48

 Butcher, My Three Years with Eisenhower, p.

407. (2) Morison, Sicily—Salerno—Anzio, p. 294.
OUTLINE OVERLORD AND THE INVASION OF ITALY 193

Bolero in the Balance

Under the pressures created by events

in the Mediterranean, and beset by a

lack of firm strategic objectives, the BOLERO build-up continued uncertainly between May and August 1943. Movement

schedules developed at TRIDENT provided for placing 763,000 U.S. troops in

Britain by the end of 1943 and 1,300,000

by 1 May 1944, together with the supplies and equipment for launching a

cross-Channel assault on the latter date.

The schedules envisaged a progressively

mounting tempo of movement, reaching

a peak in the first three months of 1944,

but, in deference to the limitations of

British port capacity, spacing shipments

over the entire period to the maximum

extent practicable. The planners expected a substantial acceleration in the summer of 1943, particularly of supplies and

equipment shipped in advance for troops

who were to move later.49 These TRIDENT estimates represented little more

than educated guesswork, based on a

general appraisal of the future availability of shipping in the North Atlantic

and a highly tentative troop basis; they

were tied to no definite operational plan.

As in 1942 the real aim was to generate

some momentum. Precise objectives, and

the schedules for attaining them, would

come later.

A few days before the TRIDENT Conference the European theater had submitted a hastily concocted troop basis

for 1943, showing a total of 888,000 men.

This figure, rather than the TRIDENT

goal of 763,000 became the real basis of

planning in OPD and ASF. Even before

the final TRIDENT decisions, OPD gave

its blessing to a more comprehensive

policy, establishing the ground rules under which the preshipment program was

to proceed for the rest of the year. This

enabled ASF on 17 May 1943 to publish a new directive supplanting the

stop-gap instructions issued in April.

The new tentative ETOUSA troop basis

was attached as a supplement.50

The plan was to begin shipping immediately against the theater's total needs

through 1943 calculated in terms of the

tentative troop basis and known requirements for operational supplies. But it

was hedged by many restrictions. Units

under orders for April, May, and June

were to sail under normal POM procedures except that their equipment

would be withdrawn 30 days before the

sailing date and shipped in bulk to arrive in the theater simultaneously with

or shortly before the troops. Equipment

for units scheduled to depart from July

through December was to be shipped in

bulk, not marked for any particular unit.

However, a priority was set for these

shipments well below that for competing training allowances—and thus automatically below current requirements of

other theaters—and cargo was to be taken only from depot stocks and new production, not from equipment already in

the hands of troops. Even for equipment

to fill shortages at the time units sailed

and for other special supplies, the pri49

 See above, chs. II and III.

50

 (1) Ruppenthal, Logistical Support of the

Armies I, 123. (2) TAG Ltr to CG's ETO, NYPOE,

and CsTechSvcs, 16 May 43, sub: SOP for Shipments

of Equip and Sups to U.K., copy in History of

Preshipment, Annex 17. (3) Memo, Lutes for OPD,

7 May 43, sub: Cargo Shipments for U.K., with 1st

Ind, OPD to ASF, 17 May 43, Lutes File, folder ETO.

(4) Diary, Theater Br, entries for 7, 11, 14 May 43,

ASF Plng Div.
194 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

ority for ground force equipment for

the European theater was set at A-1-b-8,

below that of all other active theaters;

the priority for Air Forces equipment

was set at A-1-b-4.

The May 1943 troop list on which

advance shipments were to be based was

imperfect in many respects. It was only

partial—it did not add up to the total

numerical strength forecast for the end

of the year—and the only reasonably

firm entries were those units under orders for May and June. It was, moreover,

extremely tentative and made up predominantly of units not specifically

named but designated simply by type,

and the phasing of movements to the

theater beyond mid-1943 faded into

guesswork. The list of ground force units

was built around seven infantry divisions (including the 29th already in

England), two armored divisions, and

one airborne division—a total strength

of 390,000 ground combat forces with

directly supporting service elements.

The Services of Supply numbered 245,-

000 and there were 250,000 AAF troops.

Units not already in the theater or under orders for May and June were

phased, more or less arbitrarily, in

monthly increments from July through

December. This phasing bore no relation

to deployment plans, but was intended as

a guide for advance shipments with a

view to preserving a rough balance

among various types of material, subject to the availability of cargo and the

requirements of efficient stowage. In

short, the troop basis was hardly more

than a fiction, and it was to remain so

for some time to come.51

Preshipment procedures served the useful purpose of freeing the supply staffs

from pressure to balance the flow of various types of material and to meet a detailed schedule of interim requirements.

Under the low priority assigned, however, ASF staff officers were reduced to

scrounging in corners for whatever odd

fragments of unbooked cargo they could

find. Filling ships by this method was

objectionable on many counts and made

supply officers unhappy. But by May it

was evident that the available cargo space

could be filled in no other way. In short,

while the ultimate goal was to provide

a balanced stockpile of supplies and

equipment for units to be shipped, unbalanced shipments over any given period were a built-in feature of the plan.

The very real danger that advance shipments might build up a stockpile of

material in the theater unsuited to the

needs of forces eventually sent there was

ever present in the minds of the Army

planners, and inhibited more definitive

and far-reaching planning.

In this situation, Eisenhower's requests for more troops in the Mediterranean were disruptive. Troop movements to the United Kingdom in June

and July slightly exceeded the low TRIDENT estimates, but in August, when the

troop build-up was expected to move

into high gear, the diversion of an entire

BOLERO convoy to transport 68,000 men

to North Africa again upset the program. Only 174,000 U.S. troops moved

to the United Kingdom during the period May through August, and at the end

of the latter month theater strength stood

51

 (1) Ibid. (2). (2) Ltr, Lutes to CG ETO, 31 Jul

43, sub: Advance Shipment of Equip to U.K., quoted

in Leighton, Problem of Troop and Cargo Flow,

p. 13. (3) Memo, Lutes for Somervell, 18 May 43,

Lutes Diary.
OUTLINE OVERLORD AND THE INVASION OF ITALY 195

at 278,742 as against the TRIDENT estimate of 341,900.52

The impact on the preshipment program was twofold. Troops sailing for the

Mediterranean took with them initial

equipment originally destined for the

European theater. They were mainly

service troops who had been expected to

arrive in the United Kingdom in advance of combat elements in order to

construct cantonments and other facilities, unload preshipped cargo, and perform the thousand and one tasks involved in developing an administrative

base for the invasion. In this respect the

troop build-up in the United Kingdom

between May and August was disappointing. With AAF troops receiving

highest priority and diversions to the

Mediterranean draining the available

pool of trained service units, the theater received less than 46,000 service

troops during the period. The ground

force build-up lagged even more, but

with the invasion date still far off, this

was of less concern.53

Meanwhile, in the United States the

struggle to move cargo to port to fill

shipping space assigned to BOLERO continued on a hand-to-mouth basis. ASF

requests to WSA for shipping were carefully tailored to estimates of cargo availability, but even so the ships were usually not filled by the end of the month

for which they were requested. By 31

May only 24 of the 38 ships allocated

for that month had been filled; the

other 14 had to be carried over into

June. At the end of June, of 42 vessels

allocated, 12 had to be listed as carryovers into July.54

 In reality, the program was lagging more seriously than

these figures would suggest, since the

requests to WSA themselves fell far short

of original projections. Shipments over

the May-August period totaled 2.3 million tons, instead of the 3.2 million General Lutes had stipulated as a goal in

April. Measured against TRIDENT targets, shipments through September fell

about 53 shiploads short.55

Preshipped cargo accounted for 39

percent of the May-August total. This

relatively high proportion was to be expected at a time when troop movements

were at a low ebb. That it was not higher meant that the preshipment program

was failing at the very outset to attain

the double purpose of fully using available cargo shipping and exploiting British port capacity during the long daylight hours of summer. "We can never

recover," Somervell wrote the theater

SOS commander, "the precious time that

is now available to you during the good

weather."56

52

 (1) See Appendix D-5, below. (2) Ruppenthal,

Logistical Support of the Armies I, 131, 132. (3)

Memo, Gross for Somervell, 8 Jul 43, sub: Combat

Loaders for Post-HUSKY and UGF-10, Lutes File

ETO. (4) Memo, Col Alexander D. Reid, Chief,

European Sec, Theater Gp, OPD, for Gen Hull, 11

Jul 43, sub: Build-up of U.S. Forces in U.K., ABC

381 (9-25-41), Sec 5. 53

 (1) Ruppenthal, Logistical Support of the

Armies I, 130-32. (2) Corresp in Hq ASF, File ETO

(6).

54

 (1) Memo, Wylie for Gross, 2 Jun 43, sub: U.K.

Cargo Statement for May. (2) Memo, Vissering for

CofT, 29 Jun 43, sub: Cargo and Ship Sit for U.K.

Both in OCT 563.5 England May-June 1943. 55

 (1) See above, ch. II. (2) See Appendix D-5,

below. (3) The statement concerning the TRIDENT

target is made on the assumption that shipments

were projected as notional sailings of 10,000 measurement tons each. The target included 36 shiploads

mixed with British imports besides 259 sailings on

Army account, or a total of 295. Actual cargo movements in terms of notional sailings totaled 242. 56

 (1) Ltr, Gen Somervell to Maj Gen John C. H.

Lee, 30 Jul 43, Hq ASF, File ETO (6). (2) Leighton,

Problem of Troop and Cargo Flow, pp. 16-16a.
196 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

The basic cause of the shortfall was

the low priority assigned the preshipment program. The ASF made one attempt, in June and July, to secure additional equipment for preshipment by

holding troops in training strictly to

their percentage allowances, but ran into

a hornet's nest of opposition from Army

Ground Forces. OPD supported General McNair's objections, reaffirming existing priorities and specifically prohibiting any withdrawals for preshipment

from units in training, whether or not

the units had more than their allotted

percentages.57

Undoubtedly OPD's position was occasioned in part by the atmosphere of

uncertainty in July 1943 concerning the

future course of strategy for the war in

Europe. Even within ASF, there was a

gnawing fear that the whole preshipment program might prove to be wasted

effort. Though only on the fringes of

the debate over future operations in

the Mediterranean, the supply planners

could sense the strong pressures arising

from what one ASF officer called "intangible sources," to postpone or abandon OVERLORD and shift the main effort

to the southern theater.58 As early as

17 June General Lutes argued that a

successful HUSKY followed by an invasion of Italy would absorb the maximum

shipping effort to the exclusion of the

ground force build-up in England, and

he bluntly recommended to General

Somervell that "pre-shipping of cargo to

the United Kingdom be discontinued."59

Lutes's recommendation may have been

prompted mainly by a desire to secure

a high-level decision, but it illustrates

the difficult position of the ASF as initiator and principal champion of the

preshipment program. If a cross-Channel

invasion was to be undertaken in 1944,

it was imperative to expedite the buildup by preshipment of equipment in

1943; if the main Allied effort was to be

made in the Mediterranean, advance

shipment, clearly, should be halted as

soon as possible.

Opinion within the ASF was divided.

By mid-July Lutes had reversed his position and was arguing that preshipment

should continue as long as a prospect

remained that both BOLERO and Mediterranean operations could be supported. When on 8 July Somervell was apprised by OPD that the Chief of Staff

contemplated halting preshipment on

15 August "until the strategic situation

is more clarified," the ASF chief argued

forcefully against so abrupt a termination.60

By mid-July a decision seemed imperative. The bulk of the organizational

equipment for units on the tentative

ETOUSA troop basis for 1943 had been

set up for shipment by the end of August, excepting only critical items inaccessible under the low preshipment priority. Only if shipments were author57

 (1) Memos, Lutes for OPD, 19 Jun 43, Somervell for Handy, 14 Jul 43, Lutes Diary. (2) Memo,

CG AGF for CofS, 3 Jul 43, sub: Policies Governing

Issues of Equip, Log File, OCMH. (3) Memo, Handy

for CG ASF, 26 Jul 43, sub: Preshipment, 1a Policy

File SWPac, ASF Plng Div. 58

 Memo, Wood for Lutes, 7 Jul 43, sub: BOLERO

Build-up, Lutes File ETO.

59

 Memo, Lutes for Somervell, 17 Jun 43, sub:

Cargo Shipmts to U.K., in History of Preshipment,

Annex NN. 60

 (1) Memo, Lutes for Dir Stock Control Div ASF,

8 Jul 43, sub: Shipments to U.K., in History of Preshipment, Annex NN. (2) Memo, Dir Stock Control

Div for Gen Lutes, 12 Jul 43, sub: Pres Chgs and

Preshipment of Equip, Lutes File Svc Troops 1942-

43. (3) Memo, Lutes for Dir Stock Control Div, 19

Jul 43, folder Current Opns, Case 26, ASF Plng Div.
OUTLINE OVERLORD AND THE INVASION OF ITALY 197

ized against a troop basis extended

through the first four months of 1944,

when the bulk of ground combat units

were expected to move, could sufficient

cargo be assembled to fill the shipping

expected to be available in September

and the months following. OPD, awaiting strategic decisions at the joint and

combined levels, refused to sanction any

advance shipment of equipment for

troops scheduled to move after 31 December 1943. Transportation Corps officials could foresee only 50 shiploads of

cargo in September for the 120 ships

then expected to be available.61

On 20 July Somervell addressed a

pointed inquiry to the Chief of Staff:

"The status of ROUNDHAMMER is becoming indefinite," he wrote. "Fears are

prevalent that it may go the way of our

previous experience." Should the buildup in the United Kingdom proceed, he

asked, regardless of the uncertainty

whether the troops and matériel amassed

there would ever be used?62 For two

weeks the question went unanswered.

By 4 August, finally, the crystallization

of U.S. strategy positions for the forthcoming Quebec Conference had progressed far enough for Maj. Gen. Thomas T. Handy of OPD to give Somervell

a tentative go-ahead, though still within

the framework of a 1943 troop basis. A

few days later, as a cumulative result of

the appearance of the OVERLORD plan and

receipt of a new ETOUSA troop basis,

the completion of shipping estimates

showing that the 1,400,000 men in the

troop basis could be moved to the British Isles by 1 May 1944, and, finally, the

JCS decision on 9 August to insist on

OVERLORD as the main effort in 1944,

OPD gave ASF its full sanction to move

ahead with the preshipment program in

the remaining months of 1943. ASF was

sufficiently emboldened to issue instructions on 13 August anticipating an extension of the program to cover material

for units sailing in the first four months

of 1944, using the new ETOUSA troop

basis as a guide.63 In the existing atmosphere this was an administrative gamble

involving some risk. It remained to be

seen whether the decisions to be taken

at Quebec would justify it. Based on the

experience of the period since TRIDENT,

U.S. Planners felt that the decision must

be final and irrevocable. 61

 (1) Ltr, Gen Wylie to Brig Gen Frank S. Ross,

CofT, ETOUSA, 19 Jul 43, OCT 370.5 England,

Jan-Jul 43. (2) Diary, 20 Jul 43, Theater Br, ASF

Plng Div. (3) Memo, Lutes for Somervell, 29 Jul 43,

Lutes Diary. 62

 Memo, Somervell for CofS, 20 Jul 43, sub:

Planning, ABC 381 (9-25-41), Sec 7.

63

 TAG Ltr to CsTechSvcs, 13 Aug 43, sub: Shipment of Equip and Sups to U.K. on Extended Troop

Basis, SPX 400.22 (13 Aug 43) OB-S-SPDDL-M.
CHAPTER VIII

First Quebec

Almost four weeks before the battle

for Italy was joined on the beaches of

Salerno, Allied leaders had assembled

on the picturesque heights above Quebec

for their fourth wartime conference—

QUADRANT. The conference was in session from 14 to 24 August 1943. In retrospect the issues debated there seem difficult to define. Neither the British nor

the Americans proposed any significant

changes in either the broad strategy or

the specific decisions agreed on at TRIDENT, and the QUADRANT decisions were

largely reaffirmations of those reached at

the earlier meeting. But to the American

military leaders the conference seemed

to be a crossroads in the evolution of

the strategy of the European war, and

they came prepared to force a showdown

on what they considered to be the basic

issue: whether the main effort against

Germany should be made in northwestern France or in the Mediterranean.

The British, in contrast, apparently considered this issue dead, and refused to

debate on those terms. They took the

position at Quebec that within the

framework of the primacy of OVERLORD

adequate provision must be made for

maintaining the utmost pressure possible

on Germany's southern flank during

1943 and early 1944. More pessimistic

than the Americans as to the adequacy

of resources allotted at TRIDENT for both

European theaters, they were unwilling

to agree that the full burden of any unavoidable retrenchment must necessarily

fall upon the Mediterranean theater.

"Overriding Priority" and the

Conditions of Overlord

To the American military leaders and

their staffs in mid-August 1943 it seemed

that the really fundamental decisions

on European strategy had yet to be made

—or, rather, re-made. Recent British actions and pronouncements—the "stand

fast" order in the Mediterranean, talk

of operations in the Adriatic and farther

east, reservations and qualifications hedging acceptance of the OVERLORD plan—

all seemed to foreshadow a British attempt to renege on the TRIDENT agreements. There was no expectation of a

forthright proposal to cancel or downgrade OVERLORD. What the Americans

looked for from the British was, rather,

a variety of schemes for opportunistic

ventures in the eastern Mediterranean

along with a major effort in Italy, all

scheduled wishfully to be completed in

good time for release of resources earmarked for OVERLORD. Such a program,

the Americans were convinced, could

bring no decisive results and, because

operations once undertaken must be sustained, would eventually drain off resources needed for OVERLORD. Accordingly, the JCS had inserted into their
FIRST QUEBEC 199

position paper on European strategy the

proviso that OVERLORD should be given

an overriding claim on resources as

against operations in the Mediterranean,

though they were not prepared to assign

it a similar claim in relation to resources

allotted to the Pacific.1

On "overriding priority" the JCS

pinned their hopes for a successful showdown with the British at Quebec. Behind the proviso lay the accumulated

frustration resulting from a drift of

events which, since the summer of 1942,

seemed to have responded to British

manipulation, drawing the Allies deeper

and deeper into the Mediterranean and

away from the center of German power.

Many officers on the American staffs genuinely believed that by going into the

Mediterranean the Allies had thrown

away good prospects of ending the war

in 1943, and they were desperately afraid

that further operations there would sidetrack OVERLORD in 1944. A favorite staff

exercise in OPD was to contrast the

450,000 American troops actually in

Europe at the beginning of April 1943

with the force of one-million-plus which,

it was assumed on very dubious premises, could have been amassed in Great

Britain by that date if the strategy of

concentration had not been abandoned

with the decision to invade North Africa.2

 There was also a strong tendency

in the staff to think of OVERLORD, despite the TRIDENT compromise, in the

old, heroic terms of ROUNDUP, as "a

mass explosive air, sea, and ground

attack" that would crush the German

Army in the west as the Russians were

crushing it in the east. The corollary

seemed inescapable: to execute OVERLORD on an adequate scale would "leave

no margin of our limited resources available to implement any additional secondary operation."3

Underlying this view was the doctrine, deeply rooted in American military tradition and teaching, that concentration of resources and effort on a

single line of action was essential to success in war. As one OPD officer noted,

with reference to the TRIDENT decisions

on division of resources:

We should either choose an objective and

accept that we are going to commit within

reason the resources required, be they more

or less than estimated, or we must allocate

a fixed number of resources and direct the

commander to exhaust them in a given

direction. The first method is generally the

sound one strategically.4

The objective chosen for concentrated

effort should, it was generally assumed,

be one likely to bring decisive results.

But concentration per se was the important idea. Some of those who advocated a shift to the Mediterranean in

July felt that concentration even upon

an indecisive line of attack was preferable to a division of effort with the risk

of falling between two stools.5 The dominant view among the staffs was, in any

case, that a successful OVERLORD was the

supreme objective in Europe and that

any expansion of operations in the Medi1

 (1)CCS 303, 9 Aug 43. (2) See above, ch. VII. 2

 For BOLERO'S prospects in summer of 1942 see

Leighton and Coakley, Global Logistics, 1940-43,

Chapter XIV.

3

 (1)SS 90, 8 Aug 43, Conduct of the War in

Europe, ABC 381 Strategy Sec Papers (7 Jan 43) 2-95.

(2) See also OPD Paper, 25 Jul 43, Conduct of the

War. 4

 OPD Notes on JCS 98th Mtg, 27 Jul 43, ABC

337 (25 May 43). 5

 See General Handy's remarks at 104th mtg JCS,

15 Aug 43, and 105th mtg, 16 Aug 43.
200 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

terranean would seriously jeopardize its

fulfillment.

That the Joint Chiefs of Staff themselves leaned toward this view may be

inferred from the fact that a staff paper

expounding it and flatly opposing any

"expansion of operations in the Mediterranean" was included in the dossier

of each American military representative at Quebec.6

 Yet strategic concentration in so exclusive a sense was quite

clearly inconsistent with the pincers strategy the JCS were prepared to advocate

at the conference. In a wider frame of

reference, it was equally inconsistent

with the strategy of an expanding war

in the Pacific to which the Americans

had been formally committed since TRIDENT. "Overriding priority" for OVERLORD was, in a sense, an attempt to

invoke the classic principle of concentration in one sector of the war with

the hope of curbing trends that had

already outmoded it. Since midsummer

of 1942 Allied strategy had been on a

course that increasingly dictated not

concentration but a flexible, delicately

balanced division of effort among competing undertakings in many parts of

the globe—a division of effort that by

its very nature could not be rigidly governed by schedules and plans, but must,

without losing sight of objectives, be

constantly responsive to events and the

opportunities they offered. The somewhat equivocal pincers strategy that

emerged early in August from the staff

debate evoked by the events of July

was the most recent stage in this evolution. It would not be the last.

At Quebec the British promptly

avowed their full support of the principle "that OVERLORD should constitute

the major offensive for 1944 and that

Italian operations should be planned

with this conception as background."

Churchill himself insisted several times

during the conference that, whatever

his earlier views on a cross-Channel operation in 1942 or 1943, he was now

fully committed to carrying out OVERLORD in 1944. It was he, in fact, who

proposed that the OVERLORD commander

should be an American officer, thus disposing of the issue Stimson had raised

with Roosevelt on 10 August.7

To the surprise of the Americans,

moreover, the British presented no Mediterranean program of their own and

raised no objection to the American program. They accepted as a basis for discussion the American position papers

on European strategy, in which Brooke

professed privately to find evidence that

"at last they [the Americans] are beginning to see some daylight in the problems confronting us."8

 Particularly surprising to the Americans was the failure

of the British to put forward any proposals for action in the eastern Mediterranean. In mid-July, as it happened,

the British staff had examined and rejected as not worth the effort, the Durazzo venture advanced at TRIDENT. They

had further disparaged any other undertakings in the Balkans as likely to lead

to "an exhaustive and indeterminate

campaign," which even if successful

would be out of phase with OVERLORD.

6

 SS 90, 8 Aug 43.

7

 (1) Quotation is from Brooke's comments at

108th mtg CCS, 15 Aug 43. (2) Min, 1st Plenary

Mtg, QUADRANT, 19 Aug 43. (3) Min, 105th mtg JCS,

16 Aug 43. (4) Min, 71st mtg CPS, 13 Aug 43.

(5) Churchill, Closing the Ring, p. 85. (6) Bryant,

Turn of the Tide, pp. 575, 578-80. 8

 Bryant, Turn of the Tide, p. 577.
FIRST QUEBEC 201

By early August they had decided not

to press Turkey to intervene for the

present, but merely to "adjust" her neutrality somewhat in the Allies' favor.

As prospects for Turkish intervention

dimmed, British preparations to move

into the Dodecanese in order to open the

sea route to Smyrna were for the most

part suspended, although Churchill still

clung to the hope that a bloodless occupation of Rhodes might be brought

about if the Italian garrison could be induced to defect; as far as the British

planners were concerned, however, any

incursion into the Dodecanese was regarded as "no longer urgent."9

The focus of British interests in the

Mediterranean seemed, indeed, to have

shifted westward.10 Without advocating

a major effort to drive the Germans farther north than any line where they

might choose to make a stand, the British did raise for discussion early in the

conference the advantages of an advance

to the Milan-Turin area in order to secure air bases for bombing central Germany and to open an overland route

into southern France. A similar proposal had been put forward some weeks

earlier by General Arnold. Late reports

from the theater indicated, however, that

the Germans might dig in as far south

as the southern face of the Apennines,

and the idea was not pressed. On 17

August Churchill laid it to rest in a

paper prepared at the conference:

Although I have frequently spoken of the

line of the Po or of the Alps as being

desirable objectives for us this year in Italy, it is not possible to see so far at present. A

very great advantage will have been gained

if we stop at the Leghorn-Ancona line. We

should thus avoid the danger ... of the im- mense broadening of the front which will

take place as soon as that line has been

passed. . . . From such a position we could

by air supply a fomented rising in Savoy

and the French Alps . . . and at the same

time with our right hand we could act across

the Adriatic to stimulate the Patriot activ- ities in the Balkan peninsula.

The guiding thought in all this, he

pointedly added, was that "the integrity

of OVERLORD shall not be marred."11

In airing the possibility of an overland advance from Italy into southern

France, Brooke reflected British misgivings over American proposals for an amphibious assault in that area. The British

planners quickly concluded that neither

the forces nor the assault lift prospectively available for this venture would

be adequate. In a curious reversal of the

situation at TRIDENT, when the Americans had underestimated British-controlled forces in the Mediterranean, they

now overestimated them. Against an

American estimate of 28, the British

planners indicated only 22 organized

British divisions would be in the theater,

9 and only 19 (instead of 24) effective (1) Min, 71st mtg CPS, 13 Aug 43. (2) JP(43)221

(Final), Rpt by Br JPS, 12 Jul 43, Mediterranean

Strategy, ABC 384 Med (26 Oct 43) Sec 1-A. (3)

Memo, JPS for JCS, 16 Aug 43, ABC 381 Europe (5

Aug 43). (4) Churchill; Closing the Ring, pp. 203-04.

(5) John Ehrman, "History of the Second World War,

United Kingdom Military Series," Grand Strategy,

August 1943-September 1944, V (hereafter cited as

Grand Strategy V) (London: Her Majesty's Stationery

Office, 1956), 80-81, 88-92, 112. 10

 See Ehrman, Grand Strategy V, 112.

11

 (1) Churchill, Closing the Ring, p. 83; see also

comments at 1st Citadel Mtg, QUADRANT, 19 Aug 43.

(2) Msg W-7445/173, FREEDOM to BOSCO, 15 Aug 43,

Annex A to min, 105th mtg JCS, 16 Aug 43. (3) JS

(Q)16, 14 Aug 43, title: Comments by British JPS

on CCS 303. (4) Memo, JPS for JCS, 16 Aug 43. (3)

and (4) in ABC 381 Europe (5 Aug 43). (5) Matloff,

Strategic Planning, 1943-44, p. 155. (6) Min, 108th

mtg CCS, 15 Aug 43.
202 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

Allied divisions would be available for

operations in northern Italy and southern France after withdrawal of the 7

OVERLORD divisions and provision of

rear-area forces. The British regarded

these forces as insufficient to hold a defensive line in Italy while executing an

independent amphibious operation in

southern France, especially if the latter

were not supported by an overland

movement. As for assault shipping, the

British planners were quick to perceive

the contradictions in the JCS-endorsed

calculation of a 2-division residual lift

in the Mediterranean; their own estimates indicated a lift of less than one

division, badly unbalanced at that. "We

consider," the British planners asserted,

"that nothing less than a corps of three

divisions would be sufficient for an amphibious operation against southern

France," and with this verdict General

Eisenhower's representatives at the conference agreed. In the Mediterranean,

in short, the British urged a strategy of

concentration on the campaign in

Italy.12

Accepting the general pattern of the

American pincers strategy, the British

nevertheless flatly rejected the "overriding-priority" proviso for OVERLORD

and, to a degree the Americans found

disturbing, emphasized the conditions

stipulated in the plan for undertaking

the operation. They argued that whether

these conditions could be met would depend very largely on what was done in

the Mediterranean during the next nine

months, and that it would therefore be

unwise to decide irrevocably in advance

that any competition for resources between operations now in progress in the

Mediterranean and preparations for

OVERLORD must be resolved in favor of

the latter. Each case should be decided

on its merits as it arose. The British saw

no contradiction between making OVERLORD the main effort in 1944 and leaving the door open meanwhile to an

adequate provision for Mediterranean

operations during 1943. As for the projected 7-division transfer from the Mediterranean, they held that judgment

should be suspended until German intentions became clearer, leaving open

the alternatives of shipping fresh divisions to the Mediterranean or to England.13

In general, however, the British declaration of support for OVERLORD and

their conservative views on Mediterranean strategy left no major issue of European strategy to be debated except

that of overriding priority for OVERLORD. For this formula the British proposed to substitute a statement to the

effect that the CCS might at any time

"readjust" allocations between OVERLORD and the Mediterranean as the

situation demanded.14 Admiral Leahy

thought the proposal reasonable enough,

but his colleagues disagreed. British rejection of the "overriding priority" formula seemed, indeed, to bring to a head

the distrust of British intentions regarding OVERLORD, and this distrust was

fanned by the emphasis the British

placed on the conditions for undertak- 12(1) JS(Q)16, 14 Aug 43. (2) Min, 71st mtg CPS, 13 Aug 43. (3) Min, 116th mtg CCS, 24 Aug 43. (4) The

force estimates included 9 U.S. and 5 French divisions, with perhaps 6 more French divisions to be

available in spring of 1944.

13

 (1) Min, 108th mtg CCS, 15 Aug 43. (2) Min,

1st Citadel Mtg, QUADRANT, 19 Aug 43. 14

 Min, 108th mtg CCS, 15 Aug 43.
FIRST QUEBEC 203

ing the operation, their interest in north

ern Italy, and their unwillingness to

accept the pending 7-division transfer

as a settled matter. Admiral King suspected that what the British had in mind

was to "create an emergency" to justify

retention and even reinforcement of the

seven divisions. Although ostensibly sup

porting OVERLORD, King charged, they

were really seeking to "depreciate" and

"emasculate" the operation by emphasizing the dangers and difficulties, with a

view to getting it postponed and at last

abandoned altogether. In King's opinion,

unless the British could be forced into

unequivocal support of OVERLORD, the

United States should shift its main effort

to the Pacific—a strategy that at least

"we could reasonably expect would be

carried out."15

On the second day of the conference

General Marshall expounded the American view that without an overriding

priority OVERLORD would inevitably decline to the status of a subsidiary effort

as its resources were nibbled away by

successive ad hoc redeployments and reallocations. Apart from their effect on

OVERLORD, these would be enormously

disruptive and would have repercussions

"as far back as the Mississippi River."

On 16 August the JCS nailed their colors to the mast in a formal paper restating their demand "for a decision now

as to whether our main effort in the

European Theater is to be in the Mediterranean or from the U.K." They again

insisted that this decision must take the

form of a reaffirmation of the Allies'

intention to carry out OVERLORD with a

definite allocation of resources and an

overriding priority over other operations

in Europe. They added a warning:

The U.S. Chiefs believe that acceptance

of this decision must be without conditions

and without mental reservation. They ac- cept the fact that a grave emergency will

always call for appropriate action to meet

it. However, the long-range decisions for the

conduct of the war must not be dominated

by possible eventualities.16

Since the British were already on record as favoring OVERLORD as the main

Allied effort in Europe, and conversely

had shown no signs of weakening in their

stand on "overriding priority," this pronouncement was hardly calculated to

advance the debate. The JCS were, in

fact, not hopeful. On the day they submitted their manifesto, they sent its author, General Handy, posthaste to Washington to inform the President, who

had not yet departed for Quebec, that

they and the British had reached an impasse on the OVERLORD issue.17

Whether by some indication of the

President's attitude or not, the impasse

was broken in two closed CCS meetings

on the day Roosevelt arrived at Quebec,

17 August.18 In the main, the British

won their point. The CCS agreed that

OVERLORD with a 1 May 1944 target

date should be the "primary U.S.-British

ground and air effort against the Axis

in Europe," a principle the British had

agreed to from the start. They also ap15

 Min, 104th mtg JCS, 15 Aug 43.

16

 (1) CCS 303/1, 16 Aug 43, memo by U.S. CsofS,

Strategic Concept for the Defeat of the Axis in

Europe. (2) Min, 108th mtg CCS, 15 Aug 43. (3) Min,

104th mtg JCS, 14 Aug 43; 105th mtg, 16 Aug 43.

(4) Memo, JPS for JCS, 16 Aug 43, ABC 381 Europe

(5 Aug 43). 17

 (1) Memo, 16 Aug 43, in OPD Exec 10, Item 51.

(2) Matloff, Strategic Planning, 1943-44, note 26, p.

223.

18

 See Bryant, Turn of the Tide, pp. 579, 581.
204 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

proved the outline OVERLORD plan with

the conditions intact and instructed General Morgan to proceed with detailed

plans and full preparations. The U.S.

Chiefs accepted as a substitute for "overriding priority," a clause providing that,

if OVERLORD'S requirements should compete with those of the Mediterranean,

available resources should be "distributed and employed with the main object of insuring the success of OVERLORD." They also accepted the original

British condition that Mediterranean

operations should be carried out with

the forces allotted at TRIDENT, "except

insofar as these may be varied by decision of the Combined Chiefs of Staff."19

These conditions covered the disputed

case of the seven divisions, though the

assumption remained, for deployment

planning, that they would move to England as scheduled.

With the central issues disposed of,

there was little difficulty in agreeing on

a specific program of operations in the

Mediterranean. The program followed

the proposals in the original American

paper, except for the invasion of southern France, concerning which some concession was made to British reservations.

For Italy it was agreed that after the

anticipated surrender of the existing government the Allies would proceed with

the occupation of air bases in the Rome

area and "if feasible" farther north; occupation of Sardinia and Corsica (largely by infiltration and subversion); and

thereafter pressure on the Germans in

the north in support of OVERLORD. The

agreement on the southern France operation was studiously vague. Operations

in Italy, it was hoped, might somehow

create a situation favorable for "eventual" entry of Allied forces into the

south of France, including eleven French

divisions to be rearmed in North Africa.

General Eisenhower was directed to submit to the CCS by 1 November an outline plan for landings in the ToulonMarseille area in connection with OVERLORD, using only resources then allotted

to the Mediterranean. Only minor commando raids, bombing from the air, and

supply of guerrilla forces were scheduled

for the Balkans. It was agreed that the

time was not ripe for Turkish intervention; for the present the Turks would

be supplied on a modest scale and urged

to sit tight and remain benevolently

neutral. Nothing was said about operations in the Aegean.20

The conferees also agreed that the

strategic bombing offensive against Germany "from all convenient bases" was

an indispensable prerequisite to OVERLORD and, as at TRIDENT, gave it "highest strategic priority." They approved,

in addition, a series of plans (RANKIN)

prepared by the COSSAC staff for an

earlier return to the Continent in the

event of a collapse or marked weakening

of Germany's defenses in the west, thus

imposing on the OVERLORD build-up program the necessity of ensuring that, at

least from early 1944 on, balanced forces

would be on hand in the British Isles

ready to move across the Channel on

short notice. Finally, as a highly theoretical alternative to OVERLORD, the con19

 CCS 303/3, 17 Aug 44, resolutions by CCS, title:

Strategic Concept for the Defeat of the Axis in

Europe.

20

 (1) Ibid. (2) CCS 319/5, 24 Aug 43, title: Final

Rpt to President and Prime Minister. (3) CCS

328/1, 27 Aug 43, title: Directive to General Eisenhower.
FIRST QUEBEC 205

ference left on the books Churchill's

long-cherished project for an invasion

of Norway.21

In estimating the availability of

ground forces for the two European

theaters, the final figures adopted at the

conference provided for 19 U.S. and 17

British divisions in the United Kingdom

for a 1 May 1944 OVERLORD of which

all but 5 U.S. divisions would be available for operations. British figures

formed the basis for final QUADRANT

estimates that 29 divisions would remain

in the Mediterranean after the withdrawal of 7 for OVERLORD, and that 20

of them would be available for operations on 1 November 1943. Two additional French divisions over and above

garrison requirements were expected by

1 June 1944.22

"To my great relief," Sir Alan Brooke

wrote in his diary on the 17th, after the

decisive CCS meeting, "they accepted

our proposals for the European theatre,

so that all our arguing has borne fruit

and we have obtained quite fair results."

Yet on the day before the conference ended he wrote: "We have not really arrived

at the best strategy, but 1 suppose that

when working with allies, compromises,

with all their evils, become inevitable."23

It is not without significance that the

War Department planners, who had so

ardently sought an "overriding priority"

for OVERLORD at Quebec, looked back

on the conference with a similar mixture

of satisfaction and disappointment.24

Assault Shipping for Two Wars

As far as OVERLORD was concerned,

the British had apparently come to Quebec prepared to debate not its primacy

but the adequacy of the assault and immediate build-up as set forth in the outline plan. To them the question of priority between OVERLORD and the Mediterranean seemed of less moment than

the scale of the proposed OVERLORD assault, which they regarded as a dangerous weakness in the plan. This feeling

lay behind their stress on the conditions

of OVERLORD, and led them to consider

the invasion of southern France an unwelcome new claimant for the inadequate amphibious resources allotted to

the European war.25 On 12 August the

British had invited General Morgan to

prepare a detailed report on the shortage of landing craft and other naval resources for the operation. The study was

not completed until long after QUADRANT, so that the British were not able

to present a detailed case at the conference. They did, nevertheless, raise the

question of the adequacy of OVERLORD'S

allotted assault lift, only to meet with

determined resistance by the Americans

against any attempts to raise it above the

figures agreed to at TRIDENT.

On 18 August the British Chiefs called

attention to the developing shortage of

LCT's for OVERLORD resulting from the

diversion of 44 of them to net protection duties at Scapa Flow and the need

to convert many more to gun support

craft. They asked for an increase in

American production to meet the deficit.

In the CCS meeting on 18 August Admiral King cautiously informed them

21

 (1)CCS 319/5, 24 Aug 43. (2) CCS 320, 20 Aug

43, title: RANKIN. 22

 CCS 329/2, 26 Aug 43, title: Implementation of

Assumed Basic Undertakings and Specific Opns for

Conduct of the War, 1943-44, Annex II. 23

 Bryant, Turn of the Tide, pp. 581, 586. 24

 See Matloff, Strategic Planning, 1943-44, p. 242.

25

 CCS 304, 10 Aug 43, Opn OVERLORD, Outline

Plan, Covering Note by Br COS.
206 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

that preliminary reports from Washington indicated some possibility of an increase of 25 percent in landing craft production across the board. But two days

later in an official reply to the British

request the JCS bluntly stated they could

not increase their existing commitment

of 146 LCT's because any acceleration

in production would not be felt before

April 1944. OVERLORD'S deficiencies in

vehicle lift would have to be made good

"from the Mediterranean," unless, the

statement continued, some of the broken-down LCT's already in the United

Kingdom could be put into serviceable

condition.26 In the same way, the Americans showed no inclination to provide

for production of gun support craft, the

demands for which were encroaching

more and more on the available supply

of LCT's.27

On 20 August the British raised the

question of the supply of DUKW's, citing doubled requirements for OVERLORD

"to mitigate the great problems involved

in prolonged maintenance over the

beaches under difficult conditions." They

asked that the Americans examine the

possibility of increasing production as a

matter of urgency, that the CCS accept

the principle that "priority of allocations of production be given to OVERLORD/' and that allocations for OVERLORD be made concurrently for American and British needs in a ratio to be

stated by General Morgan. The Americans were in fact already exploring the

question of increasing DUKW production, but they were by no means ready

to adopt the priority or the system the

British urged. Admiral Cooke pointedly

remarked that the overriding priority

for OVERLORD applied only to Europe,

"not throughout the world." General

Somervell complained that the British

seemed to "wish us to turn DUKW's

over to them in lavish fashion," citing

the fact that they proposed to use 280

per 60,000 troops in unloading operations whereas the Americans would use

but 100.28 The CCS finally decided to

defer the matter. Eventually it was settled within the munitions assignments

committees, which continued to assign

DUKW's as before—by country and theater on the basis of priorities that were

by no means exclusive. Without fanfare, meanwhile, in the fall of 1943

production of DUKW's was substantially increased.29

The British Prime Minister, in full

conclave on 19 August, brought the

whole issue to a head by proposing that

the OVERLORD assault be strengthened

by at least 25 percent and that it include

a right flank landing on the east Cotentin beaches to insure a stronger initial

lodgment. In the eight or nine months

remaining before D-day, he suggested,

it should be possible somehow to obtain

the additional assault lift needed. The

American response was guarded and unenthusiastic. General Marshall emphasized that "the shortage of landing craft

26

 (1)CCS 314/3, 20 Aug 43, memo by U.S. CsofS,

title: Allocation of Ldg Cft (Opn OVERLORD—Vehicle

Lift). (2) CCS 314, 18 Aug 43, memo by Br COS,

same title. (3) Min, 111th mtg CCS, 18 Aug 43. 27

 (1) See above, ch. VII. (2) Memo, Head of Navy

Branch (British), 2 Sep 43, sub: Provision of Support

Cft, with related corresp in SHAEF SGS 560, I.

28

 (1) CCS 326, 21 Aug 43, memo by Br COS, title:

Amphibians for OVERLORD. (2) Min, 111th mtg JCS,

23 Aug 43. 29

 (1) Min, 115th mtg CCS, 23 Aug 43. (2) Min, WD

Conf Gp on Amphibious Vehicles, 11 Oct 43 and

13 Mar 44, folder 451.94 Amphib Vehs, ASF Plng

Div. (3) Memo, Gen Somervell for Lt Gen Sir Thomas

Riddell-Webster, 23 Aug 43. (4) Msg, Clay to Somervell, 21 Aug 43. Last two in folder British, Hq ASF.
FIRST QUEBEC 207

places the greatest limitation on all our

operations," but Admiral King assured

the Prime Minister that prospects were

excellent for having more landing craft

available than previously anticipated.30

In their own councils, General Barker

reminded the U.S. Chiefs that the

COSSAC planners were dubious of the

merits of widening the assault, and that

it was the follow-up elements that needed to be strengthened, not the D-day

assault forces, which were already stronger than the three divisions prescribed

at TRIDENT. Admiral King ventured to

hope that the Prime Minister had failed

to grasp this point, but when General

Marshall tactfully intimated as much at

the next plenary meeting, Churchill

made it clear that he wanted separate

landings on the Cotentin anyway. Marshall assured him the matter would be

looked into. Roosevelt made no comment, and the JCS received no instructions to explore the question.31

 The

Combined Planners meanwhile went on

to agree on allocations of U.S. landing

craft for OVERLORD, which were, in all

essential respects, the same as those set

at TRIDENT for ROUNDHAMMER.

The key to these tactics in large measure lay in American concern lest an increase in the OVERLORD allotment prevent an acceleration of Pacific operations. American plans for the war in the

Pacific, had matured considerably since

TRIDENT. Operation CARTWHEEL, the

converging drive on Rabaul from the

South and Southwest Pacific was now

well under way, and in the Central Pacific Admiral Chester W. Nimitz was preparing to launch a parallel offensive

with an attack on the Gilbert Islands

in mid-November. A tentative timetable

of operations presented at Quebec called

for bringing these converging lines of

advance to points just short of the Philippines by the end of 1944 in phase with

the reconquest of Burma and the overland advance through China to the

coast.32

The American delegation brought to

Quebec only "broad estimates" of the

assault shipping required in Pacific operations. From them it appeared that

requirements through mid-1944 could

be met in most categories, but only on

the premise that OVERLORD allocations

would not be increased.33 The lack of

specific requirements for the Pacific reflected the opportunism inherent in the

strategy for that area. To exploit opportunities as they arose, large numbers

of all types of vessels would obviously

be needed. To reach the China coast

or the mainland of Japan in this oceanic

theater would require a series of amphibious operations rapidly succeeding

one another. For most of the contemplated operations, all attacking forcesassault, follow-up, and build-up—would

have to be ferried to the target area in

one trip. Distance precluded the incremental shuttling of forces from bases to

target areas in the same assault shipping,

or the repair of badly damaged vessels

for use in later stages of the same operation. Huge distances were also involved

in in-transit movements between operations, particularly from one theater to

another.

30

 Min, 1st Plenary Mtg, QUADRANT, 19 Aug 43. 31

 (1) Min, 110th mtg JCS, 21 Aug 43. (2) Min, 2d

Plenary Mtg, QUADRANT, 21 Aug 43.

32

 Pacific strategy is treated separately in greater

detail in Chapter XVI, below. 33

 CCS 329/2, 26 Aug 43, Annex V.
208 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

In the South and Southwest Pacific

up to this time, amphibious lift had been

grossly inadequate. In SWPA, for instance, General MacArthur had to rely

mainly on smaller types of vessels

manned by Engineer special brigades—

LCM's and LCVP's — and a miscellaneous collection of ordinary small craft

and merchant vessels. For longer hops

along the New Guinea coast and the

island chain of the Solomons, the demand for larger landing craft and ships

would certainly mushroom. Meanwhile,

a major new requirement was emerging

in the Central Pacific where the Navy

was to commit most of its expanding

fleet. In that vast theater, now favored

by the JCS as offering prospects for a

more rapid advance than the south,

would take place most of the long

transoceanic amphibious leaps by fully

equipped assault forces simultaneously

afloat. The basic carriers would be assault transports (APA's) and assault cargo ships (AKA's), with their complementary small craft and vehicles, especially amphibious tractors. These operations would, however, also require a

large fleet of LST's and LCT's, the vessels most needed in Mediterranean and

English Channel operations.

The timetable the JCS brought to

Quebec did not fully reflect their real

long-range strategic goals. The Combined Staff Planners, acting on instructions of the CCS at TRIDENT, had long

been working on an outline plan for the

ultimate defeat of Japan. The first plan

submitted provided for a three-pronged

advance toward the China coast—from

the Pacific, overland through China, and

by sea around Malaya. It contemplated a

prolongation of the war with Japan until 1947 or 1948, even assuming Germany's defeat in 1944. At QUADRANT

the U.S. planners took the position that

Japan must be defeated within twelve

months after the surrender of Germany.

The British planners, while agreeing

that some acceleration might be possible, would not accept the twelvemonths' target, which they said involved

"an entirely new concept of operations."34

The U.S. staff, nevertheless, began immediately to explore the possibility of

achieving the one-year goal. The search

began with a plan to project very long

range (VLR) bombers — B-29's — into

China before the opening of a land supply line and led eventually to a marked

acceleration of the American advance

through the Pacific islands with the aim,

among others, of basing the VLR bombers in the Marianas. While this outcome

was not yet foreseen at Quebec, the

American staffs, especially the Navy

members, began to think in terms of

amphibious resources that would be

needed for an accelerated Pacific advance. They had to reckon with the

probability, suggested by the prolonged

tie-up of assault shipping in Sicilian waters, that the shipping used in OVERLORD

would not be quickly released for redeployment to the Pacific, TRIDENT assumptions notwithstanding. The estimated date for releasing OVERLORD shipping was now moved back from the

TRIDENT prediction of one month to

four months after OVERLORD—almost certainly too late for any of it to be used

in the Pacific during 1944.35

34

 CCS 313, 18 Aug 43, title: Appreciation and

Plan for the Defeat of Japan. 35

 (1) CCS 239/1, 23 May 43. (2) CCS 329/2, 26

Aug 43, Annex V.
FIRST QUEBEC 209

The Navy was, in fact, already planning to enlarge its assault shipping construction programs with a view to supporting an intensification of the Pacific

war long before the defeat of Germany,

building up to a massive offensive almost

immediately thereafter. The Quebec

Conference was, in a sense, almost incidental to this development, the day-today course of which occasionally produced faint echoes in staff discussions

at the conference. The Navy's latest (1

August 1943) production schedules were

the basis of the conference discussions of

U.S. landing ships and craft. These

schedules envisaged increased production of LST's, LCI (L) 's, and LCT's, but

mainly in 1944, too late to provide

any sizable increment for OVERLORD.

Planned monthly production rates for

LST's were to be boosted from 12 to

at least 20, and for LCI (L) 's from 20

to 25, during the first six months of

1944 (actually an extension of the 1943

rate into that period). Owing to the

changeover from the LCT (5) to the

improved LCT (6) no LCT's had been

produced in the United States between

January and August. The Navy now

proposed to increase the planned production of the new type in the period

October 1943-May 1944 from 200 to

300, but the largest part of the increase would not come until 1944. Even

the 105 LCT's promised for OVERLORD

at TRIDENT, the Navy said, could not be

moved in time to meet the readiness

dates proposed by COSSAC—a result of

the production stoppage caused by the

changeover. The allocation schedules the

Americans brought to QUADRANT, based

on the new production schedule, assigned to the Pacific the entire expected

increase in all types while holding Atlantic allocations to those agreed to at

TRIDENT.36

On the first day of the conference, before the British had even raised the

question of landing craft production,

Admiral King had telephoned instructions to the Navy Department in Washington to look into the possibility of a

further increase. An accompanying message to the War Department rather tortuously explained:

Reason for this is that the availability of

landing craft and landing ships is resulting

in tight situation relative to carrying out

vital planned operations unless furtherance

of war in Pacific is to deteriorate.37

King's "reason" was ample evidence of

the dilemma in which the Americans

found themselves in the face of British

pressure to strengthen the OVERLORD assault. Unless landing craft production

could be accelerated immediately to increase significantly the number of LST's,

LCT's, and LSI (L) 's coming off the

ways in the closing months of 1943 and

the early months of 1944, the only source

of additional craft for OVERLORD would

be Pacific allocations. King clearly was

not prepared to slow down or dilute his

Pacific program in order to provide more

lift for OVERLORD, particularly in the

light of his oft-stated conviction that

the British would probably contrive, in

one way or another, to prevent its execution. Nor were the naval authorities

willing to embark on another accelerat36

 (1) Mowry, Landing Craft and the War Production Board, pp. 28, 33. (2) See above, ch. III, for

TRIDENT allocations. (3) JPS 228/1, 2 Aug 43, appendixes. (4) CCS 329/2, 26 Aug 43, Annex V, app. B. 37

 (1) Msg No. 16 for Gen Gross, unsigned, 14 Aug

43 (rec'd as CM-IN 10723, 15 Aug 43), OPD Exec 5,

Item 11. (2) For the sequel to this inquiry, see below,

Chapter X.
210 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

ed program of production to meet the

needs of both the European and the Pacific war if it meant disrupting other

vital building programs. On 17 August

King received his reply from the Navy's

Bureau of Ships in Washington to the

effect that not merely a 25 percent but

a 35 percent increase in landing craft

production was possible. To realize it

before April 1944, however, would involve disruption of other programs.38

An increase at so late a date promised

few additional craft for OVERLORD, particularly in view of the accelerated arrival schedules COSSAC was then demanding. On the other hand, it would add

immensely to amphibious resources

available for acceleration of Pacific operations. These circumstances probably

explain the contrast between King's studiously vague promises of an increase in

landing craft production in the meetings

with the heads of state and the concurrent insistence of the Americans in the

planners' meetings on holding the line

against further allocation of craft for

OVERLORD.

At Quebec the British tried again,

and for the last time, to challenge the

American determination to pursue an

aggressive multifront strategy in the Pacific. Would it not be less costly, Sir Alan

Brooke inquired early in the conference,

to make the main effort against Japan

along the Central Pacific axis, with only

a subsidiary effort in the southwest, and

thus release resources for OVERLORD? Admiral King promptly rejoined that both

lines of advance were "complementary

and equally essential," but that, in any

case, whatever resources could be released

from the Southwest Pacific would go to

the Central Pacific, not to Europe. General Marshall attempted to soften somewhat the implications of this stand by

pointing out that operations in the

Southwest Pacific were not, in the main,

employing types of amphibious equipment most needed in the Central Pacific

and in Europe. Furthermore, he added,

the commitment to the Southwest Pacific had already gone so far that a radical

shift of emphasis was no longer practicable. The British decided to let the

matter drop, leaving unsaid their private

convictions that in the Pacific the Americans were making a virtue of the strategy of dispersion they rejected in Europe.39

 The American program of operations in the Pacific was approved with

only perfunctory discussion, and the

long-range plan was sent back to the

CPS for further study in light of the

American determination to defeat Japan

within twelve months after the end of

the war in Europe.40

Meanwhile, as usual, the principal debate on the war against Japan was revolving around the future course of operations in the Far East. The U.S. staff

successfully resisted Churchill's renewed

pleas for his Sumatra project, a long

amphibious leap to the southeast that

would have required considerably more

assault transports than the currently

38

 (1) Memo, Chief BuShips for VCNO, 17 Aug 43,

sub: Additional Ldg Cft Programs, app. A to JCS

462, 30 Aug 43, title: Landing Ships and Craft, Means

of Increasing U.S. Production. (2) For a more complete discussion, see below, Chapter X.

39

 (1) Min, 110th mtg CCS, 17 Aug 43. (2) Bryant,

Turn of the Tide, p. 576. 40

 (1) Min, 114th mtg CCS, 24 Aug 43. (2) Min,

113th mtg CCS, 20 Aug 43. (3) CCS 313/1, memo by

U.S. CsofS, 20 Aug 43, title: Appreciation and Plan

for the Defeat of Japan.
FIRST QUEBEC 211

planned Akyab-Ramree landings. The

British Chiefs themselves had no enthusiasm for Churchill's project, but neither

they nor he were willing to commit

themselves to the Akyab-Ramree venture nor to the full-scale campaign in

southern Burma to which it would serve

as prelude. The Americans had to settle

for a Southeast Asia program that was,

in effect, simply a reiteration of the TRIDENT decisions, but with the priority between the land offensive in north Burma

and the air effort in Burma and China

implicitly if not explicitly reversed.41

As for amphibious operations, the CCS

agreed simply that preparations should

continue for landings in the spring of

1944 "of the order of those contemplated for . . . Akyab and Ramree."

In consonance with this decision the

British agreed to send to India the 6

LSI (L) 's and 8 LST's they had recently

retained in the Mediterranean under

the "stand fast" order, and as already

noted, the JCS refused Eisenhower the

temporary use of the 10 U.S. LST's and

10 LCT's that were also earmarked for

movement to India.42

The CCS also ratified the allocations

of American assault shipping that the

JCS had worked out before the conference. From August 1943 through March

1944 all the assault transports, about 55

percent of the LST's, 60 percent of the

LCI (L) 's, and 45 percent of the LCT's

expected to be built in the United States

were to be assigned to the Pacific. For all

types except LCT's these allocations

would increase the percentage of total

U.S. active-theater assault shipping deployed against Japan on the eve of the

cross-Channel invasion—from 67 to 73

percent for the assault transports, from

51 to 52 percent for LST's, from 41 to

54 percent for LCI (L) 's. (Tables 14

and 15) The schedules took no account

of the proposed increases in production

that presumably would also accrue to

the benefit of the Pacific.

These figures were not, of course, the

whole picture. As long as British-controlled assault shipping remained concentrated in European waters, a preponderance of Allied assault lift—in large

landing craft, at least—would remain

deployed against the European Axis.

Distances and other conditions peculiar

to the Pacific war also to some degree

invalidated the significance of any purely arithmetical analysis of the division of

amphibious shipping between the two

main sectors of the global war. Nevertheless, there was real paradox and striking

irony in the fact that, as the war in Europe approached its climax and the

American military leaders' distrust of

British loyalty to the OVERLORD strategy

became increasingly vocal, these same

leaders were resisting British urging to

strengthen the OVERLORD assault while

at the same time sending to the other

side of the world the greater portion of

the United States' immense assets in

what was probably the most critical single branch of weaponry in the Allied

arsenal—certainly the most critical limitation on the scale of the OVERLORD assault. Small wonder that the British became sceptical of American pretensions

41

 On this aspect of CBI strategy, see below, Chap- ter XXI. 42

 (1) CCS 329/2, 26 Aug 43, Annexes 1 and V.

The British were to provide most of the lift: 9

LSI(L)'s, 1 LSC, 1 LSH, 1 LSI(H), 8 LST's, 12

LCI(L)'s, and 5 LCT's, besides numerous small craft.

(2) See above, ch. VII.
212 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

TABLE 14—QUADRANT LANDING CRAFT (MAJOR TYPES ONLY)

ALLOCATIONS FROM U.S. PRODUCTION

SEPTEMBER 1943-MARCH 1944a

a

 No losses considered. b

 Includes 3 LST's to be taken from training if needed to meet TRIDENT commitment for OVERLORD. c

 Includes 25 LCT's to be taken from training if needed to meet TRIDENT commitment for OVERLORD.

"Twelve LCT's included in total allocation to British to replace losses already incurred in transit.

Source: CCS 329/2, 26 Aug 43, title: Implementation of Assumed Basic Undertakings and Specific Operations for Conduct of the War,

1943-44, Annex V.

of fidelity to the "Germany-first" strategy.43

Although the JCS insisted that any

OVERLORD deficit must be made up

"from the Mediterranean," they clung

to their original position that the surplus of landing craft over TRIDENT allocations resulting from light losses in Sicily

and anticipated light loss rates in Italy

should stay in the Mediterranean for

the southern France operation. The British thought this surplus should be allotted to OVERLORD in accordance with the

TRIDENT agreement. Since neither side

would yield, they went their separate

ways. The British increased the planned

transfers of their own craft to the United

Kingdom—48 LST's instead of the 38

agreed on at TRIDENT, 44 LCI (L) 's instead of 20, 75 LCT's instead of 18, 174

LCA's instead of 65, and 12 large gun

support craft instead of 5. The Americans, despite the overriding priority

formula, held to the transfers of their

own craft stipulated at TRIDENT —48

LST's, 24 LCI(L)'s, and 41 LCT's.

(Table 16) Based on an agreed loss rate

of 15 percent for landing ships and 30

percent for landing craft in post-HUSKY

operations, these transfers would leave

in the theater an estimated 3 LSI (L) 's,

26 LST's, 84 LCI (L) 's, 38 LCT's, and

miscellaneous smaller craft—a meager

and unbalanced lift for perhaps 27,000

troops and 1,500 vehicles, and hardly

adequate to mount more than a threat

against southern France. Its inadequacy

was reflected in the studiously vague fin43

 (1)CCS 329/2, 26 Aug 43, Annex V. (2) The

above figures on landing craft deployment do not

include substantial numbers of U.S. craft intended

for training in home waters, almost all of which, by

late spring of 1944, could be considered as serving

the Pacific war. Even so, the figure of "eleven

twelfths" cited by Bryant in Turn of the Tide, p.

587, as the allotment of U.S. landing craft to the

Pacific at the time of QUADRANT is obviously a great

exaggeration and cannot be supported by the figures

available to all the principals at Quebec.
FIRST QUEBEC 213

TABLE 15—PLANNED DEPLOYMENT (MAJOR TYPES) OF U.S. ASSAULT SHIPPING

AT QUADRANTa

a

 All figures represent vessels estimated to be operational on dates shown. For planning purposes the following serviceability rates were

used: LST's, 85 percent; LCI(L)'s, 80 percent; LCT's, 75 percent. No serviceability factor was used for assault transports nor for craft in

training.

Source: CCS 329/2, 26 Aug 43, title: Implementation of Assumed Basic Undertakings and Specific Operations for Conduct of the War,

1943-44, Annex V.

al pronouncements of the conference on

operations in this area.44

The Shipping Budgets

"One of the difficulties with this conference," observed Lewis Douglas as the

Quebec meetings were drawing to a

close, "is that it started with the misapprehension that there is a surplus of

[dry cargo] shipping. ... So we have

been spending some time bringing the

military face to face with reality."45

The optimism of the military was understandable. In the Atlantic the victory

over the U-boat appeared to be complete, while the flood of new American

shipbuilding continued each month to

add between a million and a million and

a half dead-weight tons, net, of new

bottoms to the Allied merchant fleets.

By conservative estimates, these fleets

were expected to increase by almost five

million dead-weight tons by the end of

1943, and by ten million by mid-1944.

British merchant tonnage, which had

44

 (1) CCS 329/2, 26 Aug 43, Annex V, apps. A

and B. (2) The QUADRANT schedules for assault shipping movements to the United Kingdom, in keeping

with General Morgan's desires, rested "on the assumption that landing craft will be sent from the

Mediterranean to OVERLORD so as to arrive by 15

December 1943, and assault ships by 1 March 1944."

The British schedules provided for arrival of their

craft some time in December, the American for

arrival of theirs by 1 November. Landing ships and

craft from American production were to move to

England early in 1944, and all to be on station by

1 April. Ibid. (3) Min, 71st mtg CPS, 13 Aug 43.

(4) Min, 116th mtg CCS, 24 Aug 43. (5) Churchill,

Closing the Ring, p. 83. (6) JS (Q) 16, 14 Aug 43,

Comments by Br JPS. (7) Msg, Brig J. F. M. Whiteley

to Gen Smith, 15 Aug 43, OPD Exec 5, Item 11.

45

 Ltr, Douglas to Land, 21 Aug 43, folder Quebec

(Douglas) 1943, WSA Conway File.
214 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

TABLE 16—PLANNED U.S. AND BRITISH CONTRIBUTIONS OF ASSAULT

SHIPPING FOR OVERLORD—TRIDENT AND QUADRANT CONFERENCESa

a

 Vessels expected to be on hand 1 May 1944. No allowance for unserviceability. b

 Includes 8 XAP's. c

 Includes 6 XAP's. d

 Not shown in source. e

Includes 8 LST's expected to return from India, following ANAKIM.

f ANAKIM LST's not expected to return in time for OVERLORD; 10 additional LST's, over TRIDENT commitment, included. g

 Represents the net result of a cut in the number of LCI(L)'s to be turned over to the British for manning, and an increase in the

number of British LCI(L)'s to be redeployed from the Mediterranean.

Source: (1) CCS 244/1, 25 May 43, title: Implementation of Assumed Basic Undertakings .... Annex V. (2) CCS 329/2, 26 Aug 43, title:

Implementation of Assumed Basic Undertakings and Specific Operations for Conduct of the War, 1943-44, Annex V, app. A.

reached its lowest level of the war in

March, was climbing again for the first

time since 1941. The situation bore out

the bright expectations embodied in the

budgets prepared at TRIDENT when deficits had been labeled "not unmanageable." These deficits for 1943 had, in

fact, dwindled almost to the vanishing

point and those for 1944, it now appeared, would be replaced by fat surpluses. In short, cargo shipping was no

longer the "stranglehold on all offensive

operations" it had appeared to be seven,

even five, months earlier.46

One by-product of this abundance,

which military planning had to take

into account, was an increasing imbalance between troop and cargo shipping.

To rectify it, construction of troop transports and conversion of cargo ship hulls

into troop carriers had been expanded

—in the latter case to the point where,

in the opinion of War Shipping Administration officials, the output of finished

cargo vessels was being seriously jeopardized. WSA expected the shortage of

troop lift to disappear before the middle of 1944, and feared that expanding

military and war economy requirements

would before long wipe out the expected surplus of cargo shipping. But on the

eve of the Quebec Conference Army

calculations showed a troop lift deficit

of more than 300,000 spaces against the

number of troops that available cargo

shipping theoretically could be expected to support overseas by the end of

1943, and predicted that the deficit

46

 (1)On the TRIDENT estimates, see above, Chapter III. (2) JMTC Survey of U. S. Shpg, 13 Aug 43,

folder Future Opns, Case 5, ASF Plng Div. (3) Behrens, Merchant Shipping, pp. 69, 328. (4) CCS 329/2,

26 Aug 43, Annex VII.
FIRST QUEBEC 215

would be almost doubled a year later.

This combination of anxiety over troop

movement capabilities and complacency

over the outlook for cargo shipping was

among the presuppositions that the

American military staffs brought to Quebec.47

As at TRIDENT, balancing the U.K. and

U.S. shipping budgets was one of the last

items of business at QUADRANT. The

U.S. cargo shipping budget, in general,

showed approximately the same volume

of tonnage available for the various war

services as did the TRIDENT budget, and

anticipated little increase after the beginning of 1944—even though the total

size of the merchant fleet would be

rapidly expanding. Requirements, which

at TRIDENT had been projected on a rising scale through the first few months

of 1944, now were expected to decline

after reaching a peak in the last quarter

of 1943. Moreover, for the whole tenmonth period covered, the budget forecast a reduction of almost 12 percent—

757 sailings—in requirements projected

at TRIDENT. (Table 17)

Cuts in military requirements accounted for only a small part of the

reduction. Most of the cuts were in the

BOLERO program and were largely dictated by shortages of dock labor in Great

Britain and the anticipated swamping of

British port and transit facilities during

the weeks immediately preceding the

Normandy invasion. Only small cuts

were made in military requirements of

other areas. The major portion of the

reduction in TRIDENT requirements was

in assistance to British shipping programs, a result in large part of the increase of about 800,000 dead-weight tons

in cargo shipping under British control

since TRIDENT. For United Kingdom

imports, the U.S. shipping authorities

budgeted a total of 872 sailings, representing the estimated equivalent of the

deficit in the British budget which, as

at TRIDENT, the Americans were asked

to assume. Through the remainder of

1943 this assistance was scheduled at

approximately the same level as at TRIDENT, but for the ensuing six months

was scaled down by 172 sailings, a reduction also dictated by the traffic congestion anticipated during the mounting of

OVERLORD. A more drastic reduction was

made in the regular U.S. lend-lease shipping assistance to the British (known as

"customaries") —from 478 to 117 sailings

over the ten-month period from September 1943 through June 1944. U.S.

assistance to British military programs,

set at 108 cargo ship sailings at TRIDENT,

was eliminated entirely.

Part of the ostensible reduction was

fictitious. Soon after TRIDENT, under the

President's order to transfer 15 to 20

new U.S. cargo ships per month to British control, 29 vessels had been turned

over to the British on lend-lease bareboat charters, and 162 more were scheduled for delivery by mid-1944. This form

of American assistance did not appear in

the U.S. shipping budget except for the

initial voyages of each ship. Since they

would account for 192 additional sailings after transfer, this represented the

extent to which the QUADRANT budget

actually exaggerated the reduction.48

(Tables 17 and 18)

Even so, the real reduction in U.S.

help to Great Britain was Substantiat47

 (1) JMTC Survey, 13 Aug 43. (2) JCS 420, 22

Jul 43, ltr from WSA, title: Army and Navy Reqmts

for Troop Transportation. (3) JCS 420/1, 9 Aug 43,

rpt by JMTC, same title. 48

 See Behrens, Merchant Shipping, p. 385.
216 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

TABLE 17—U.S. CARGO SHIPPING BUDGET—QUADRANT CONFERENCE

(COMPARABLE ENTRIES IN TRIDENT SHIPPING BUDGET IN PARENTHESES)

a

 TRIDENT figures shown here are arranged somewhat differently from those shown on page 850. b

 Requirements included the British deficits and also 50 ships for operational use in Mediterranean for post-HUSKY, 80 ships after 1

April 1944 for OVERLORD, and 71 ships for use in Southwest Pacific. c

 Each BOLERO cargo ship was to lift about 1,500 tons of British import cargo, and the equivalent of 12 shiploads of measurement

cargo for BOLERO was to be lifted on ships carrying British imports. d

 Includes 10 sailings in compensation for British ships employed in Mediterranean.

Source: (1) CCS 329/2, 26 Aug 43, title: Implementation of Assumed Basic Undertakings and Specific Operations for Conduct of the

War, 1943-44, Annex VII, Part III. (2) Table, Summary of U.S. Shpg Reqmts, QUADRANT . . . OCT HB Plng Div Studies folder Misc

Shpg Info, p. 92.
FIRST QUEBEC 217

TABLE 18—U.S. SHIPPING FOR BRITISH PROGRAMS — QUADRANT AND TRIDENT BUDGETS

(In Sailings)

a

 Assuming 29 bareboats already in service on 1 September.

Source: Compiled from CCS 329/2, 26 Aug 43, title: Implementation of Assumed Basic Undertakings and Specific Operations for Conduct of the War, 1943-44, Annex VII.

almost 18 percent of the aid scheduled

at TRIDENT. It was tantamount to releasing, on an average three-month turnaround, some 855,000 dead-weight tons

of shipping for American use out of the

4.9 million tons previously earmarked

for British use. (See Table 18.) With

British dependence on U.S. aid thus declining, and military requirements for

the first time showing a tendency to

level off, the military planners at Quebec might well be pardoned for regarding the future, as far as cargo shipping

was concerned, with confidence.

The optimism of civilian shipping officials was more restrained. Lewis Douglas and Lord Leathers attached a caveat

to the shipping budgets suggesting that

they did not "reflect the real situation."

War requirements, they charged, had

not been "fully submitted," and they

thought them unlikely to be lower during the first half of 1944 than in the last

quarter of 1943.49 Their misgivings were

not without foundation. The military

cargo shipping budget badly underestimated some requirements and omitted

others. It did not fully reflect either the

needs of an accelerated advance in the

Pacific or the demands for operational

shipping for intratheater use. In the

latter category, the Americans assigned

50 cargo vessels for extended service in

the Mediterranean and 80 to be retained

in British waters from 1 April 1944 onward for OVERLORD; the British made

somewhat larger allocations in terms of

tonnage. The adequacy of these allocations was open to question. Moreover,

there was no provision at all for retention of shipping in the Pacific where

the demand was bound to be great—an

omission dramatized during the conference by the arrival of a message from

General MacArthur requesting permission to retain 71 WSA-controlled vessels

in the Southwest Pacific for impending

operations in New Guinea. The request

was granted, but failed to get into the

U.S. shipping budget. Also omitted were

certain looming but unpredictable de49

 Comments by Mr. L. W. Douglas and Lord

Leathers on the Dry Cargo Shipping Position, attached to CCS 329/2, 26 Aug 43, Annex VI, Part III.
218 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

mands for shipping to support civilian

populations in occupied areas as well as

developing requirements for old freighters to form a sunken breakwater off the

Normandy beaches during OVERLORD.

Hidden and omitted costs undoubtedly

sufficed in the aggregate to transform

the small indicated cut in military requirements into a net increase over

those in the TRIDENT budget, lending

some substance to the candid suspicions

of the shipping officials.50

The anxiety of the U.S. military staffs

focused, nevertheless, mainly on troop

shipping. This preoccupation was a consequence both of deficits in personnel

movements since April and of studies

on the eve of the conference indicating

a visible American troop lift capability

from October through the following

June of only about 1.6 million. Against

this capability the staffs had approved

deployment plans for adding more than

2.4 million to the existing overseas troop

population during the same period.

Three months after TRIDENT, the military staffs had not yet succeeded in "integrating" (the current euphemism for

"reconciling") deployment plans with

shipping capabilities, even though the

JWPC and JMTC had directives, already more than two months old, to

get together and do so.51

On the face of it, the figure of 1.6

million troops was a conservative estimate of the deployment capability over

the next nine months of a transport

fleet that already comprised 267,000 passenger spaces (not counting assault transports or other vessels permanently assigned to the military services) and that

was expected to be augmented by another 150,000 spaces by mid-1944. Even

if the real capacity of the U.S. transport

fleet still fell short of the 2.4 million

troops the JCS hoped to send overseas

by the middle of 1944, it was backed up

by the immense troop-carrying capacity

of British shipping, which at the moment was even larger than the American

and was expected to hold at about that

level. By mid-1944 new American construction in all probability would bring

the aggregate capacity of the two transport fleets to more than 700,000 spaces.

On an average turnaround of two

months, they could be expected to transport over the next ten months more

than three million troops.52

Most of the British troop lift was now

available to help their allies. By mid1943 British overseas establishments for

the most part were fully manned, and

their projected deployments, compared

to American, were quite modest. British

plans for the future involved a total lift

of 744,000 men, mostly replacements and

limited reinforcements, to overseas stations from Gibraltar to India and Canadian troops across the Atlantic to the

United Kingdom for OVERLORD. After

meeting these commitments, the British

were prepared to make available enough

shipping to move 860,000 U.S. troops

by mid-1944, mainly in the North Atlantic, to accelerate the long-delayed

American build-up in the United King50

 (1) CCS 329/2, 26 Aug 43, Annex VII. (2) On

Pacific shipping, see below, Chapter XIX; on civilian

supply, see below, Chapters XXX and XXXI. 51

 (1) JPS 193/1, 15 Jul 43, title: Strategic Deployment of U.S. Forces to 1 Jul 44. (2) Memo, Secy

JPS for Secy JWPC, 21 Jul 43, ABC 320.2 (3-13-43),

Sec 1. (3) JMTC Survey of U.S. Shpg, 13 Aug 43,

Tables III and IV.

52

 (1)CCS 329/2, 26 Aug 43, Annex VII, Part IV.

(2) JMTC Survey, 13 Aug 43.
FIRST QUEBEC 219

dom. QUADRANT schedules provided for

a slow start in September, rapidly accelerating thereafter with monthly installments of 150,000 troops and upwards.

The British proposed to increase the

capacity of the Queens on the winter

runs, to return them to the three-week

cycle abandoned in the spring, and to

furnish additional capacity in transports

returned from other areas and in

LSI (L) 's converted from American cargo ship hulls. All told, the British were

prepared to make available enough

transport to ferry some 625,000 U.S.

troops to England from August 1943 to

May 1944 and still more thereafter. With

almost 700,000 men to be ferried in

American transports, the total U.S. Army

strength in Great Britain was scheduled

to reach 814,300 by the end of 1943 and

1,416,900 by the end of April 1944—

116,000 more than the TRIDENT final

target. Moreover, the British offered to

pick up in convoys returning from India

one of the four U.S. divisions slated for

redeployment from the Mediterranean

to the United Kingdom, and they allotted some additional lift for U.S. movements to the Mediterranean and India

and one fast transport for two trips in

the Pacific.53

These arrangements appeared adequate to cover American troop deployment requirements on the Atlantic side.

In the Pacific, where little British assistance was expected, the problem was

somewhat different and a tight situation

was in prospect during the period of

preparation for the Central Pacific offensive. It was foreseen, however, that

existing deficits would be overcome once

the conversion program was completed,

which, at the outside, should be by the

second quarter of 1944. All in all, as the

final QUADRANT report stated, the "heavy

strain on troop transports" seemed likely

to ease by 1 May 1944.54 (Table 19)

Full provision of shipping for the

BOLERO program now seemed assured.

QUADRANT schedules provided for a tremendous movement of troops and cargo

across the Atlantic, which from September 1943 on would dwarf all other overseas deployment programs. The chief

limiting factor now in prospect was the

capacity of British ports and internal

transport to handle the load. Cargo shipment schedules spread the burden more

evenly over the entire period than had

been done at TRIDENT, accentuating

again the importance of maximum advance shipment of supplies in the fall

of 1943 to make up for the summer deficit and to avoid overloading British ports

while OVERLORD was being mounted.

Planned BOLERO cargo sailings on Army

account for the fourth quarter of 1943

were slightly augmented—from 280 to

298—while those for the first and second

quarter of 1944 were cut back from 420

and 400 to 365 and 332 respectively.

TRIDENT provisions for an equivalent of

36 sailings per quarter in BOLERO measurement cargo on U.K. import ships and

for shipment of 1,500 tons of U.K. im53

 (1) CCS 329/2, 26 Aug 43, Annex VII, Part IV.

(2) Informal Notes on Mtg held at 5 p.m., Aug 18,

1943. (3) Memo, Douglas for Lord Leathers, 19 Aug

43. (4) Notes for Lord Leathers and Mr. Douglas ....

19 Aug 43. (5) Table, Employment of Troop Lift

for U.S. Forces, 18 Aug 43. (2) through (5) in folder

Quebec (Douglas) 1943, WSA Conway File. (6) Msg

32 W-17, CM-IN 12033, Stokes to CofT, ASF, 16

Aug 43, OPD Exec 5, Item 11.

54

 (1) CCS 329/2, 26 Aug 43, Annex VII, Part V.

(2) For a fuller treatment of the Pacific problem see

below, Chapter XVI.

FIRST QUEBEC 221

port cargo on each BOLERO ship were

carried forward.55

These decisions justified the action,

already taken by ASF on 13 August, to

extend the preshipment program to cover the new ETOUSA troop basis through

April 1944. It remained to be seen

whether the strategic planners were sufficiently convinced of British commitment to OVERLORD to give the program

the high priority needed to release cargo

up to the full capacity of shipping now

available.

In conclusion, a certain imbalance in

the QUADRANT allocations of assault and

merchant shipping must be noted. For

operations approved by the CCS and

the heads of state at Quebec, allocations

of assault shipping to the Pacific were

far more generous than those to the Atlantic. On the other hand, QUADRANT

plans for the use of ordinary troop and

cargo shipping were more generous to

the Atlantic theaters. In the war against

Germany, from the end of the Quebec

Conference until almost the end of 1944

shortages of merchant shipping were virtually nonexistent — indeed, something

like a glut developed in mid-1944;

whereas, by contrast, the shortage of assault lift was the crux of the problem

of mounting OVERLORD and amphibious

operations in the Mediterranean. If the

shortage of ordinary personnel and cargo

shipping in the Pacific never became

quite so acute, it was largely because as

shortages began to develop shipping authorities were able to divert some of the

Atlantic surplus to that area. Similarly

the U.S. Navy eventually revised, more

or less unilaterally, some of the approved

allocations of large landing vessels to

the Pacific in order to make more adequate provision for OVERLORD and Mediterranean operations.56

 This curious

asymmetry in initial allocations of resources to the two major sectors of the

war resulted from the conflict between

deep-seated national and service interests and proprietary attitudes which stubbornly resisted thoroughgoing pooling

of resources and effort and yielded only

to the pressure of extreme emergency.

The conflict made logistical planning at

all the wartime conferences something

less tidy and more complex than a classic

textbook exercise.

55

 (1) CCS 329/2, 26 Aug 43, Annex VII. (2) The figures of 298, 365, and 332 are derived by deducting

Navy requirements from the total requirements for

sailings to the United Kingdom on military account

in each quarter. Navy requirements (10 in 3d quarter 1943 and 1st quarter 1944, 8 in the 2d quarter

1944) are shown in TC Summary, U.S. Cargo Shpg

Reqmts . . . QUADRANT, in OCT HB File Plng Div

Studies, Misc Shpg Info, though they are not shown

separately in the QUADRANT budget itself. Compare

Ruppenthal, Logistical Support I, 136-38, whose

figures include the sailings on Navy account.

56

 On the Pacific shipping problem see below,

Chapter XX. On diversions of landing craft from

Pacific allocations to the European theaters, see

below, Chapters X, XI, XIII.
CHAPTER IX

Bog-down in the Mediterranean

Underlying the QUADRANT decisions

on operations in the Mediterranean was

a belief that once the Allies had gained

a firm foothold in Italy, the Germans

would not seriously dispute their advance south of Rome but would withdraw to a defense line farther north. In

August this was indeed the enemy's intention, but by October Hitler had

changed his mind, and the Allies thus

faced a long and bloody contest in southern Italy under conditions that strongly

favored the defenders. As soon as Hitler's decision became apparent, the Allied high command was compelled to

reappraise its own hopes and plans—in

the process exacerbating Anglo-American differences over strategy and allocation of resources.

On 9 September 1943, as battle was

joined at Salerno, Prime Minister

Churchill made the most of a visit to

Washington to lay before Roosevelt and

the CCS his views on the "next steps"

in the Mediterranean. He did not expect the Germans to make a prolonged

defense of Rome. He anticipated that

by the end of the year at the latest the

Allied armies would come up against

the main German positions north of the

city. Beyond that point he believed, now

as at Quebec, they should not go. He

proposed instead that a fortified front

should be established, manned in part

by refurbished Italian divisions, releasing other Allied forces for action elsewhere "either to the west or to the east."

Westward, as Admiral King later noted,

Churchill seemed at the moment to see

only Sardinia and Corsica. To the east

he had his sights on the Dodecanese

where he thought prompt action might

provoke "far-reaching reactions" in Germany's Balkan satellites and even, possibly, the unsolicited intervention of

Turkey. In the western Balkans Churchill also hoped to organize concerted

action against the Germans by Italian

and patriot forces. With their help, he

boldly suggested, it might be possible

"to open quite soon one or more good

ports on the Dalmatian coast, enabling

munitions and supplies to be sent in by

ship and all forces that will obey our

orders to be raised to good fighting condition." From these ports Allied forces

released from Italy might later "emphasize a movement north and northeastward." Churchill disclaimed any thought

that the Allies should "work from the

bottom of the Balkans upwards." Nor

was there any question, he assured the

Americans, of "whittling down" OVERLORD, and he promised that the movement of the seven OVERLORD divisions

from the Mediterranean would be carried out.1

1

 (1) Churchill, Closing the Ring, p. 136. (2) Matloff, Strategic Planning, 1943-44, pp. 250-51. (3) Min,

special mtg JCS, 9 Sep 43.
BOG-DOWN IN THE MEDITERRANEAN 223

The generally eastward orientation of

Churchill's thinking and the specter of

a land campaign in the Balkans alarmed

the U.S. Chiefs and staffs—a reaction

shared by the British Chiefs. Nevertheless, the general optimism concerning

German intentions in the Mediterranean

prevented serious dissent. The President

himself reaffirmed his interest in possible action in the Adriatic area and

agreed that whatever opportunities

might offer in the Balkans should be

seized. On 10 September the U.S. Chiefs

cautiously endorsed the idea of using

Dalmatian ports provided no Allied amphibious landings would be involved.

They also approved current British plans

for occupying some of the Dodecanese

islands. Neither then nor later, however,

did they give much support to Churchill's idea of arming Italian combat divisions, and they were of course no more

inclined than earlier to contemplate any

augmentation of resources already allotted to the Mediterranean.2

Build-up in Italy

For the moment no action was called

for, and the roar of the Salerno battle

drove long-range plans into the background. The ensuing victory insured the

capture of Naples (1 October) and of

the Foggia airfields on the other side of

the peninsula, which were overrun on

25 September. Sardinia and Corsica fell

to rearmed French forces as by-products

of the mainland advance. By 26 September optimism was restored and Eisenhower ordered the capture of air bases

in the Rome area as the next objective,

with a subsequent advance to Arezzo,

Leghorn, and Florence—all, hopefully,

to be accomplished by the end of the

year.3

Meanwhile, a new problem was emerging. At Quebec General Eisenhower's

representatives had warned that, even if

his forces could get ashore in Italy, success would depend on their ability to

match the enemy's rate of build-up. Inherent advantage seemed to rest with the

Germans, who would be fighting a defensive battle and would enjoy excellent

rail communications from the north as

far south as the Rome-Naples area. The

Allies would have to rely on the scantier, more difficult roads and railroads

of southern Italy and on ports that the

Germans could be counted on to demolish with the same thoroughness as

at Palermo. Superior Allied naval and

air power and the hoped-for Italian resistance to the Germans could not wholly

offset these disadvantages. A German

withdrawal was far from a foregone conclusion, and the Quebec decisions on redeploying assault shipping would, if carried out, soon nullify the theater's ability to make flanking amphibious landings behind enemy lines.4

The theater's first estimates of the rate

of the Allied build-up—twelve divisions

by 1 December—were so pessimistic as

to draw vehement protests from both

Churchill and the British Chiefs. The

2 (1) Matloff, Strategic Planning, 1943-44, pp. 250-

51. (2) On arming of Italian divisions, see Chapter

XXVIII, below. (3)Ehrman, Grand Strategy V,

151-52.

3

 (1) Blumenson, Salerno to Cassino, chs. III and

IV. (2) Ehrman, Grand Strategy V, 67. 4

 (1) Msg 7205, Eisenhower to Marshall (eyes only),

13 Aug 43, OPD Exec 3, Item 5. (2) Eisenhower

Dispatch, 3 Sep 43 to 8 Jan 44, pp. 1-7. (3) Msg

W-7445/173, Smith for Whiteley, 15 Aug 43. Filed

as Annex A to Min, 105th mtg JCS, 16 Aug 43.
224 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

CCS immediately queried Eisenhower

on what could be done to speed the

movement of forces onto the peninsula.

In his reply Eisenhower emphasized that

the primary limitation was the capacity

of the Italian ports and that a secondary one was the shortage of vehicles,

particularly in British formations. Ports

in Calabria and Apulia, he noted, were

small and far from the front, and it remained to be seen how soon Naples

could be captured and put into operating order. To insure full use of port

facilities as they became available, Eisenhower asked for 14 more freighters besides the 126 allotted at TRIDENT, ample

numbers of tugs, barges, and lighters,

and, above all, permission to retain all

LST's then in the theater until an adequate build-up was in prospect, since

the main problem was one of loading

and off-loading vehicles. He promised

to make every effort to release the LST's

"in numbers and on the dates laid down

in the QUADRANT decisions."5

The CCS readily granted Eisenhower's

requests for tugs, lighters, barges, and

freighters, and the British Chiefs undertook to send more vehicles for their

forces. But the request for LST's aroused

misgivings both in Washington and London. Naval officers especially deplored

the "misuse" of landing craft in a purely

logistical role on the scale that had developed in Sicily. The British Chiefs

were willing to postpone again movement of the 18 LST's earmarked for

India and held over for the Salerno

crisis, but yielded to American insistence

that they should proceed as planned no

later than 10 October. Eisenhower was

also instructed to send 24 LST's (12

British and 12 American) to arrive in

the United Kingdom for OVERLORD

training no later than 10 November and

72 more (36 British and 36 American)

to arrive no later than 15 December.

This would complete the movement

scheduled at Quebec. The only concession granted with regard to assault shipping was an authorization to use whatever vessels might be available from the

eastern Mediterranean.6

Meanwhile, during the last three

weeks of September, the build-up of

Allied forces in Italy went ahead at a

rate that belied the early gloomy estimates. In the U.S. Fifth Army sector

it was accomplished almost entirely without ports. Salerno was wrecked by German artillery fire within a few days of

the landings, and by the time Naples

was taken on 1 October the Germans had

wrought a masterly work of ruination

on that harbor and its facilities. Even

so, the large assemblage of landing ships

and craft in the theater, including some

159 LST's, were used to good effect, and

troops and cargo began to discharge in

Naples in the first week of October. By

the end of that week more than 212,000

troops, 45,000 vehicles, and 154,000 tons

of cargo had been brought ashore in the

Naples-Salerno area. In the south and

on the east coast the British Eighth Army

rapidly built up its strength and mobil5

 (1)Msg NAF 408, Eisenhower to CCS, 18 Sep

43, Incl to CPS 88/2, 19 Sep 43, title: Build-up in

Italy. (2) CPS 88/1, 16 Sep 43, same title. (3) CCS

334, 2 Sep 43, memo by Reps Br COS, title: Slowness of Build-up for AVALANCHE. (4) Churchill,

Closing the Ring, pp. 95-96.

6

 (1) Msg FAN 240, CCS to Eisenhower, 24 Sep 43,

OPD Exec 3, Item 4. (2) Min, 120th mtg CCS, 24

Sep 43. (3) Memo, JHC for Col Roberts, 28 Sep 43,

sub: Build-up in Italy, ABC 561 (31 Aug 43), Sec

1 B. (4) JCS Memo for Info No. 139, 29 Oct 43, sub:

Misuse of Ldg Cft in Combined Opns.
BOG-DOWN IN THE MEDITERRANEAN 225

THE RUINED PORT OF NAPLES. Generals Eisenhower (left) and Clark (behind him)

inspect the damage.

ity. Thirteen Allied divisions (including

two airborne divisions soon to be withdrawn) were now in Italy, and a total of

twenty facing the enemy was confidently

anticipated by the end of the year.7

The optimism engendered by this rapid

progress was soon dispelled. As the British Eighth Army and the U.S. Fifth

Army pressed northward from Foggia

and Naples early in October they encountered increasingly stubborn resistance. This reflected, in fact, a basic

change in Axis strategy. Increasingly uneasy over his exposed position in the

Balkans, which a retreat in Italy would

make even more vulnerable, Hitler had

decided to hold a line along the river

and mountain barriers south of Rome.

In October German reinforcements began to move into both Italy and the Balkans. Churchill's hopes for easy gains in

the eastern Mediterranean went glimmering, and the Allies faced the necessity of reappraising their long-range

7

 (1) H. H. Dunham, U.S. Army Transportation

and the Italian Campaign (hereafter cited as Transportation and the Italian Campaign), OCT Historical Monograph 17, MS, OCMH, pp. 42-43, 52-

55, 60-61. (2)Ehrman, Grand Strategy V, 66-68.
226 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

GENERAL WILSON

strategy in the entire theater, with dis

turbing implications for OVERLORD.8

Setback in the Aegean

Events in Italy coincided with the

swift development of a crisis in the

Aegean. Axis forces lodged in the Dodecanese chain, especially on Rhodes, had

long been a thorn in the side of the

Allies. Axis air power based in the islands effectively closed the Aegean Sea

to Allied shipping, which, by hugging

the Turkish coast, might otherwise have

had practicable, though precarious, access to the Straits and the Black Sea beyond. Conversely, Allied air power

lodged in the Dodecanese could have

dominated the whole Aegean area and

shielded Turkey from an Axis onslaught

by sea and air. The whole question of

Turkish intervention on the side of the

Allies was therefore closely bound up

with occupation of those islands—especially Rhodes.

The general disintegration of Italian

resistance late in July convinced Churchill that the islands were ripe for plucking. Plans were made to land an Indian

division on Rhodes about 1 September,

but had to be abandoned because of

the Turks' coolness to the idea. The

division was then put at Eisenhower's

disposal for use in Italy, and the departure of six assault transports for India

left the Middle East Command, by the

end of August, without the means for

executing an amphibious assault.9

With Italy's surrender in September

British hopes once again revived. On

the 10th, as noted earlier, the CCS approved in principle a new attack in the

Dodecanese. Spurred on by Churchill

to "improvise and dare," General Sir

Henry Maitland Wilson, British commander in the Middle East, parachuted

emissaries onto Rhodes to urge the Italian garrison to overpower the German

division stationed there. The coup failed

to materialize, but before the end of

the month Wilson did manage to land

small forces on Kos, Leros, Samos, and

a number of other small islands north

of Rhodes. Then on 22 September Wilson submitted, and the British Chiefs

endorsed, a new plan to attack Rhodes

in October using the partially equipped

10th Indian Division with some armor

and airborne troops. Part of these forces

would have to come from the central

Mediterranean, along with most of the 8

(1) See Ralph S. Mavrogordato, "Hitler's Decision on the Defense of Italy," in Greenfield, ed.,

Command Decisions, pp. 303-22. (2) Ehrman, Grand

Strategy V, 66-69.

9

 (1) Churchill, Closing the Ring, p. 204. (2) Ehrman, Grand Strategy V, 88-92.
BOG-DOWN IN THE MEDITERRANEAN 227

warships, ordinary shipping, troop carrier aircraft, and assault lift—3 LSI (L) 's

with accompanying small craft and 2

LST's. General Eisenhower gave his support to the plan, and the assault on

Rhodes was scheduled for 23 October.10

At the time it did not seem likely that

these diversions would jeopardize the

build-up in Italy. Then on 3 October

the Germans launched a heavy airborne

attack on Kos, overwhelming the small

British garrison and seizing the only airfield from which effective air support

could be given to the attack on Rhodes.

These developments alarmed Eisenhower, who feared they might lead to further demands on his own resources. As

the British frantically reinforced Leros

and sought the wherewithal to carry out

the Rhodes operation as the only way

to avert disaster, Eisenhower warned the

CCS that further diversions to retrieve

the situation in the Aegean would endanger the Allied position in Italy and

thus, indirectly, OVERLORD itself.11

In Washington the Army staff immediately stiffened its opposition to any

diversion of resources to support what

they called a "strategically unimportant

secondary operation." The prevailing

view was that an attempt to take Rhodes,

even if successful, would inevitably

broaden into a major campaign on the

Balkan mainland, although a minority

discounted this danger and held that

Rhodes was well worth taking. Since the

British already had official American

blessing for their current effort in the

Aegean, at General Marshall's suggestion

the JCS decided to tell the British Chiefs

that operations there should be given

whatever support General Eisenhower

felt he could spare from the central

Mediterranean.12

At this juncture Churchill, on 7 October, brought the whole matter to a head

by a personal appeal to Roosevelt. He

spelled out his aims: an assault on

Rhodes using a first class division to be

replaced later by static troops; occupation of the Dodecanese; and establishment of British air forces in the area,

possibly on bases in Turkey as well as

in the islands. He defended the considerable air effort involved as offering an

opportunity to force the enemy to spread

and expend his dwindling air forces. To

mount the assault would require, besides local shipping, the loan of nine of

the OVERLORD landing vessels (presumably LST's) scheduled to leave the Mediterranean soon; their departure would

be delayed perhaps six weeks, a trifling

encroachment on the six months remaining before they would be needed in

OVERLORD. Still unaware of the recent

about-face in German strategy, Churchill

felt that the needed forces could easily

be spared from Italy. He repeated his

disclaimer of any desire to "send an army

into the Balkans," and concluded with a

pointed request that the President not

let his request be "brushed aside" by

his military advisers.13

Despite Churchill's pleas, Roosevelt

supported the JCS recommendation to

leave the matter up to Eisenhower, and

10

 (1) Churchill, Closing the Ring, pp. 205-10.

(2) Ehrman, Grand Strategy V, 93-94. (3) CCS 341/2,

10 Sep 43, title: Review of Strategic Situation. . . . 11

 (1) Ehrman, Grand Strategy V, 94. (2) Matloff,

Strategic Planning, 1943-44, pp. 254-55.

12

 (1) Memo, OPD for CofS, 5 Oct 43, sub: Future

Opns in the Eastern Mediterranean. (2) OPD Notes

on 117th mtg JCS, 5 Oct 43, with related papers.

All in ABC 381 Strategy Sec Papers (7 Jan 43) 131-

159. (3) OPD Notes on 84th mtg CPS, 7 Oct 43, ABC

384 Med (3 Oct 43). (4) Min, 117th mtg JCS, 5 Oct 43. 13

 Churchill, Closing the Ring, pp. 210-11.
228 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

told the Prime Minister he opposed any

diversions that would "in Eisenhower's

opinion jeopardize the security of his

current situation in Italy" or "prejudice

OVERLORD as planned." He also turned

down a last-minute request from Churchill to send Marshall to Eisenhower's

headquarters for a meeting with him

(Churchill) and the British Chiefs. The

President's reply to the latter request

(drafted for him by the Army staff)

made it evident that he and the JCS

still assumed as fact what Churchill contested as the point at issue—that to attack Rhodes would be in actuality "to

enter into a Balkan campaign, starting

with the southern tip." On this premise,

American fears for OVERLORD were understandable, but they ruled out any

objective consideration of Churchill's

proposals on their immediate merits. An

annoyed Churchill was later to declare

that American insistence that the retention of a handful of LST's for six more

weeks would jeopardize OVERLORD "was

to reject all sense of proportion."14 Before the month was out, the JCS were

in fact to permit the retention of many

times this number of LST's and for a

longer period in order to retrieve the

situation in Italy.

The decision now rested with the theater commander and was to be made on

other grounds altogether. By 8 October

Eisenhower had ample evidence of the

German decision (taken on the 4th)

to fight it out south of Rome, though

Churchill himself may not have been

aware of it until the 9th or l0th. Facing

probable enemy superiority on the

ground, Eisenhower's staff felt that the

Allies would be more than ever dependent on air superiority and that they

could not spare, even for a limited time,

the bombers and fighters needed for the

attack on Rhodes. With this conclusion

all the top commanders, British as well

as American, concurred at a meeting in

Tunis on 9 October. The choice was,

simply, "between Rhodes and Rome,"

and the decision of the CCS to support

the view of the commanders on the spot

was a foregone conclusion—particularly since the British Chiefs themselves lacked Churchill's enthusiasm for

Rhodes. The Prime Minister yielded

with the best grace he could muster,

and the Rhodes operation was canceled.15

The decision sealed the fate of the

British forces in the Aegean. Leros fell

after heroic resistance on 16 November,

and the Germans mopped up the remaining islands of the Dodecanese before the end of the month. The prospects of Turkish intervention now became more than ever remote. Late

in October Washington staffs learned

with alarm that Soviet representatives

at the Foreign Ministers Conference at

Moscow had proposed that the Allies

should jointly "suggest" to Turkey the

advisability of immediate entry into the

war. Believing as they did that the Turkish Army would be unable to stand up

under a German attack, even with the

limited aid promised in Anglo-Turkish

agreements in spring of 1943, the Americans feared Turkey's entry would prob14

 Ibid., pp. 212, 214.

15

 (1) Msg NAF 384, Eisenhower to CCS, 9 Oct 43,

OPD Exec 3, Item 3. (2) Churchill, Closing the Ring,

pp. 215-18. (3) Ehrman, Grand Strategy V, 98-99.

(4) Dwight D. Eisenhower, Crusade in Europe (New

York: Doubleday and Company, Inc., 1948), p. 191.

(5) Craven and Cate, eds., AAF II, 550. (6) Arthur

Bryant, Triumph in the West (New York: Doubleday and Company, Inc., 1959), pp. 30-32.
BOG-DOWN IN THE MEDITERRANEAN 229

ably lead to full-scale involvement of

Allied forces—which would mean opening a new front, new ports, and a new

line of communications. With the establishment of Allied strategic air power

in Italy, moreover, the advantages to

the Allies of Turkish air bases now

seemed less compelling. Churchill, of

course, grasped eagerly at the Soviet

demarche. On his instructions Foreign

Secretary Eden sounded out the Russians

on a renewed British attempt with Turkish support to clear the Aegean in order

to send naval forces and war material

into the Black Sea and ultimately, perhaps, "to give them [the Russians] our

right hand along the Danube." The Russians, it soon became apparent, were not

ready to support such an undertaking

and Eden and U.S. Secretary of State

Cordell Hull joined in declining their

proposal. In any case, discussion of intervention now seemed academic, as the

Turks watched the unfolding British debacle in the Aegean. By early November

British negotiations with Turkey had

reached a temporary impasse.16

LST's and the Crisis in Western

Strategy

The American stand in the Rhodes

episode, as finally defined in Roosevelt's

messages to Churchill, was that nothing

must be undertaken in the eastern Mediterranean, even on a minor scale, that

might jeopardize the success of the Italian campaign, and that nothing must be

undertaken in the Mediterranean as a

whole that might interfere with the execution of OVERLORD as planned. Given

the immediate situation, the British fully concurred with the first half of the

proposition, and probably at least in

principle with the second. Churchill,

whose acquiescence was reluctant, remained unconvinced that the Rhodes

operation could not have been "fitted

in," and regarded its rejection as "improvident." Understandably, too, he resented the American attempt to influence the decision by what he considered

to be irrelevant considerations—fear of

further involvement in the Balkans and

the alleged threat to OVERLORD posed

by delaying the scheduled transfer of a

few LST's to the United Kingdom.17

Neither Churchill nor the British Chiefs

were prepared to accept the second half

of the American proposition under any

rigid interpretation of the phrase "as

planned," believing as they did that the

fortunes of OVERLORD and operations

in the Mediterranean were so intertwined as to make an "either-or" approach meaningless to begin with.

The issue came to a head in the context of a deteriorating situation in Italy,

described in a long, gloomy message

from General Alexander on 24 October.

Although the Allies still held a slight

edge over enemy forces facing them

south of Rome, at least 15 and perhaps

19 German divisions were reported concentrating in the north. From them and

from strategic reserves beyond the Alps,

Alexander said, the Germans could rapidly replace their tired divisions on the

Italian battlefront and be in a position,

if the Allied offensive bogged down, to

launch an immediate counterattack. On

16

 (1) Churchill, Closing the Ring, pp. 219-26,

286-89, 334-35. (2) Ehrman, Grand Strategy V, 99-

103. (3) John R. Deane, The Strange Alliance (New

York: The Viking Press, 1947), pp. 21-22. (4) OPD

Notes on JCS 546, Swedish and Turkish Participation in War, OPD Exec 9, Book 13, Case 84.

17

 See his reflections in Closing the Ring. pp.

218-25.
230 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

the other side, the speed of the Allied

build-up was dwindling as wear and tear

took its toll of landing vessels, tugs, and

harbor craft, as OVERLORD LST's and

LCT's departed or prepared to depart

for the north, and as the port of Naples

remained unusable for ocean-going

ships. Instead of a hoped-for 1,300 vehicles per day, Alexander reported, forces

ashore were receiving only about 1,000

per week. His ground forces, moreover,

now had to share the inflow of men and

materiel with heavy bomber elements,

which, as a result of recent U.S. decisions, were to be moved forward immediately to the Foggia bases instead of

waiting for capture of the Rome airfields, and augmented at the expense of

those in the United Kingdom.

Alexander now estimated his build-up

at only thirteen divisions by the end of

November, and one or two additional

divisions per month thereafter through

January. With the drive on Rome already grinding to a halt, it seemed all

too likely that the enemy would stabilize

the front and then strike back with fresh

troops at the weary and depleted Allied

divisions. Winter weather would deny

the Allied ground forces the full support

of their superior air power, and coastal

flanking operations would be ruled out

by lack of assault shipping.18

On 23 October, the day before he received Alexander's message, Churchill

had once again unburdened himself in

a long message to the President. He was

worried over the division of Allied forces

in Europe between two theaters, in either one of which the enemy, operating

on interior lines, could mass superior

strength while holding fast in the other.

The situation demanded "the most accurate timing between the two theatres,

and . . . the greatest possible forces for

both operations, particularly OVERLORD."

In the Mediterranean, where the immediate threat as well as the immediate

opportunity lay, the impending withdrawal of assault shipping threatened

to "cripple . . . operations without the

said craft influencing events elsewhere

for many months." These withdrawals,

Churchill reminded the President, were

hinged to OVERLORD'S 1 May target date,

which had been set "by splitting the difference between the American and British views." The implication was plain:

postponement of OVERLORD might not

only serve to meet the immediate threat

in Italy but also to allow more time for

building up larger invasion forces in the

United Kingdom. Although the Prime

Minister did not press the point, and

reaffirmed his adherence to the QUADRANT agreements, he referred with undisguised bitterness to the absence from

the Italian front of the two crack British

divisions already withdrawn for OVERLORD.

 19

On receipt of General Alexander's

grim dispatch from Italy the next day,

Churchill impulsively transmitted it verbatim to Anthony Eden, who was at the

Moscow Foreign Ministers Conference,

with orders to show it to Marshal Josef

Stalin. He authorized the Foreign Secretary to tell the Soviet premier that

1 will not allow, while 1 am responsible, the great and fruitful campaign in Italy . . .

18 (1) Msg NAF 486, Eisenhower to CCS, 24 Oct 43,

Incl to JPS 310/D, 26 Oct 43, title: Opns in Mediterranean. (2) Craven and Cate, eds., AAF 11, 564-

72, 723-27.

19

 (1) Churchill, Closing the Ring, pp. 312-13.

(2) See also Msg OZ 3351, Prime Minister to Field

Marshal Sir John Dill for Gen Marshall, 24 Oct 43,

OPD Exec 5, Item 12a.
BOG-DOWN IN THE MEDITERRANEAN 231

to be cast away and end in a frightful disaster, for the sake of crossing the Channel

[OVERLORD] in May. The battle must be

nourished and fought out until it is won.

We will do our very best for OVERLORD, but

it is no use planning for defeat in the field

in order to give temporary political satisfaction.20

At Moscow, Stalin apparently took the

bad tidings of a possible postponement

of OVERLORD with astonishingly good

grace, seeming, as Eden put it, "to show

he no longer regards an overseas operation as a simple matter."21

 Eisenhower

in the meantime had forwarded Alexander's message to the CCS with his own

endorsement and reinforcing comments.

The Allies, he said, must at all costs retain the initiative in the Mediterranean

until early spring, when an enemy counteroffensive in Italy would help, not

hinder, OVERLORD, "and it then makes

little difference what happens to us."

He accordingly proposed to drive on toward Rome in both the Eighth and the

Fifth Army sectors and to execute powerful amphibious runs around both the

enemy's coastal flanks — with a brigade

group on the east coast and a full division on the west. More assault lift would

of course be needed and Eisenhower

promised to forward his detailed requirements soon.22

To the British Chiefs, the developments in Italy constituted a crisis of the

first magnitude. On 26 October, through

their representatives on the CCS in

Washington, they issued what appeared

to be a virtual ultimatum, developing

the theme expressed by Churchill in his

messages to Eden and the President.

They warned that in their opinion adherence to OVERLORD'S current target

date and to the preparatory schedules

tied to it might become impossible if

the situation in Italy continued to deteriorate. "We are convinced," they declared, "that if the campaign in Italy

should lead to a reverse, or even to a

stalemate, resulting in the Germans recovering the initiative, then OVERLORD

would inevitably have to be postponed."

They echoed the Prime Minister's assertion that the campaign in Italy must be

backed to the full whatever the cost,

and hinted darkly that they intended to

bring up for reconsideration soon "the

whole position of the campaign in the

Mediterranean and its relation to OVERLORD." For the present they again urged,

as they had in July, that all amphibious shipping be held in the Mediterranean until Eisenhower's exact needs

could be determined.23

Had the Allies really faced the threat

of a "frightful disaster" in Italy, it would

have been hard to deny that, as Churchill

insisted, "Eisenhower and Alexander

must have what they need to win the

battle, no matter what effect is produced

on subsequent operations."24 As yet,

however, reports from Italy hardly justified such hyperbolic language. Larger

forces did not seem to be needed, and

the British had made no explicit demand

to hold the remaining OVERLORD divisions in the Mediterranean. The real

problem was to bring to bear the sizable

forces already in the theater in order to

avert a protracted stalemate south of

Rome. The best solution, in the opinion

of commanders on the spot, was to turn

the enemy's exposed coastal flanks by

20

 Churchill, Closing the Ring, p. 290. 21

 Ibid., p. 293. 22

 Msg NAF 486, 24 Oct 43.

23

 CCS 379, 26 Oct 43, memo by Reps Br COS,

title: Opns in Mediterranean. 24

 Churchill, Closing the Ring, p. 290.
232 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

landings in his rear. On this point Washington and London did not disagree.

On the broader issue of the relationship of the Mediterranean and OVERLORD the U.S. Chiefs took their stand on

the principle asserted in the Rhodes

crisis earlier in the month: Eisenhower

must be strongly supported, of course,

but not at the expense of OVERLORD,

Most of the original objectives in the

Mediterranean had already been won,

earlier than anticipated. In the last resort, if Eisenhower could not keep the

initiative with the forces he had, then

he must go on the defensive on the

ground, while continuing the bombing

offensive from his Foggia bases. "We

are convinced," the JCS asserted, "that it

would be militarily unsound to take any

action to the possible detriment of OVERLORD merely to insure that we advance

farther on the Italian mainland." In

view of Allied air and naval superiority,

they believed a serious setback to be

extremely unlikely. Meanwhile, Eisenhower should be directed to report his

specific requirements for the flanking

operations he proposed.25

Requirements, however, could not be

simply stated. With respect to LST's,

the nub of the question, inquiries via

transatlantic telephone on the staff level

elicited the following information: of

the 48 American and 56 British LST's

scheduled to leave for the United Kingdom by 1 December, 36 of the former

were almost ready for departure. General Eisenhower wanted to retain the remaining 68 (56 British, 12 American)

at least until 15 December and preferably until 5 January, making a total of

100 including the 32 permanently assigned to the theater. By the earlier date

arrears in the build-up of auxiliary

ground force units for the divisions

ashore could be made up, and substantial progress could be made in the strategic air force build-up; the proposed

one-division flanking assault could also

be mounted. If the LST's were held for

three more weeks, the entire strategic

air force could be established in Italy.

Under the first alternative the OVERLORD

vessels would reach the United Kingdom

by the beginning of February; under the

second, a month later. There were no

LST's at all in the Middle East. Clearly,

the build-up problem was overshadowing the proposed amphibious landings,

for which plans were rather vague. Indeed, the projected east coast operation

seemed to have been quietly abandoned,

and the west coast landings could not

be launched before mid-December, if

at all. "We cannot say definitely," warned

Maj. Gen. Walter B. Smith, Eisenhower's chief of staff, in a telephone conversation with General Handy, chief of the

Operations Division, "that we will get

any operational assault under way, and

if we do not get it under way by January 5, we will let the craft go at that

time." General Handy suggested that

some of the "great concentration of shipping . . . other than landing craft" in

the area might be used for the build-up.

Smith's reply was succinct and illuminating:

My answer is that if these ships were

packed head to foot or if we had twice as

many as there are now here, it wouldn't

help a bit, as the port capacity for ocean- going ships is the limiting factor. The rea25

 (1)CCS 379/1, 29 Oct 43, memo by U.S. CsofS,

title: Opns in Mediterranean. (2) See also Msg, Marshall to Prime Minister, 27 Oct 43, OPD Exec 5,

Item 12a.
BOG-DOWN IN THE MEDITERRANEAN 233

son we need landing craft is that they can

go where ocean-going ships are not able to

go. 1 can say that everything is being used

that can be used.26

Elsenhower's confirming message the

following day reported simply that the

proposed landings would be carried out

if the OVERLORD LST's could be retained. Without them the build-up requirements would leave barely enough

amphibious shipping for a single brigade group, a force too weak to be even

considered. Eisenhower concluded:

1 am not certain what effect the two

alternatives [retention until 15 December

or 5 January] . . . would have on OVER- LORD, but I am very sure that the success

of our operations in this area will have a

great effect on OVERLORD and a greater on

POINTBLANK. Therefore, while 1 am reluctant to repeat my previous request for delay

in returning LST's to the United Kingdom,

the enormous value to us of being able to

use these additional LST's for a compara- tively short period beyond the time originally scheduled for their return is so

impressive from our local viewpoint that 1

have decided after consultation with my

senior commanders again to present these

facts for your consideration.27

Again the British Chiefs of Staff

backed up Eisenhower's request. They

went further:

In our view, unless General Eisenhower

has at his disposal the resources to enable

him to carry out amphibious operations on

both east and west coasts of Italy in adequate strength, probably of the order of a

division on each side, we shall be faced

with a long drawn-out campaign involving

a series of frontal attacks at heavy cost. . . . Anything short of this would in our view

fail to afford our commander on the spot

the latitude of maneuver which he clearly

requires for obtaining a quick decision.

They specifically proposed that the theater not only be permitted to retain the

68 LST's requested, but be given enough

additional LST's and combat loaders to

mount a one-division assault on the east

coast of Italy.28 The Prime Minister followed through with a direct appeal to

the President.29

The Joint Chiefs were caught once

more between the promise of great results at little cost on the one hand and

the threat of disaster on the other. The

OVERLORD deadlines were no longer beyond the horizon. In order to begin amphibious training, COSSAC wanted half

of the entire complement of assault shipping to be on hand in the United Kingdom by the first of the year. The 68

LST's in question represented more than

a third of the whole OVERLORD contingent. To hold them back until early

January would mean that, under existing schedules for deliveries from the

United States, OVERLORD training would

have to be conducted with 43 fewer vessels than needed during January, and

23 fewer during February. Each American LST retained in the Mediterranean,

26

 (1) Synopsis of telephone conversation with Gen

Smith in Conf Room, Pentagon, 1400 DST 31 Oct

43. (2) Msg 1328, Handy to Smith, 30 Oct 43. Both

in OPD 560 Security II, Case 100. (3) See also related

papers in ABC 561 (31 Aug 43) Sec 1B. (4) See LST

movement schedule in Ehrman, Grand Strategy V,

73.

27

 (1) Msg NAF 496, Eisenhower to CCS, 31 Oct 43,

Incl to CPS 103/D, 1 Nov 43, title: Opns in Mediterranean. (2) See also NAF 498, Eisenhower to CCS,

3 Nov 43, Incl to CCS 379/4, 4 Nov 43, same title.

This message corrects the earlier request for 60

LST's to 68. (3) POINTBLANK was the code name for

the combined bomber offensive against Germany. 28

 (1) Msg COS(W)929, Br COS to JSM, 4 Nov 43,

ABC 561 (31 Aug 43) Sec 1-B. (2) CCS 379/3, 3 Nov

43, memo by Reps Br COS, Opns in Mediterranean.

(3) Min, 126th mtg, CCS, 5 Nov 43. 29

 Churchill, Closing the Ring, p. 248.
234 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

moreover, would also hold back an

LCT.30

Even so, most of the Army staff

thought General Eisenhower should

have his LST's. Fortunately, at this juncture, Admiral King made the decision

easier by allotting to OVERLORD a number of additional LST's and LCT's, some

of which would be sent in November

and December.31 On 5 November the

Joint Chiefs agreed with the British representatives to allow the 68 LST's to be

retained in the MTO until 15 December. At the same time Eisenhower was

pointedly admonished that the high command expected him to use them as fighting vessels, not "as freighters." The JCS

saw no good reason, moreover, for giving him more than he had asked for—

that is, additional shipping for an east

coast operation, as the British had proposed. In any case, all U.S. combat loaders within reach were already scheduled

to move troops from the Mediterranean

to the United Kingdom, return to the

States for refitting, and then carry more

U.S. troops to England.32

Clearly, the JCS were resigned to the

probability of still further delays in the

transfer of LST's from the Mediterranean. When Admiral Leahy noted that

the build-up in Italy would still be incomplete in mid-December, Admiral

King pointed out that "a decision on

any further holding of landing craft

could be taken at a later date if General

Eisenhower put in a further request."

Field Marshal Sir John Dill was at pains

to remind the U.S. Chiefs that his superiors in London did not consider the size

of the planned amphibious operation

south of Rome a closed question and

that General Alexander was in fact already pleading with London for a full

month's extension of the 15 December

deadline. Churchill decided on 9 November to risk an American veto, and

told Alexander to make his plans on the

assumption that the LST's would stay

in the theater until mid-January.33

Thus, by mid-November the U.S.

Chiefs were adjusting to the military setbacks of October in the Mediterraneanmuch as they had adjusted to the gains

of July and August. The grand design

of early August had receded into the

realm of the improbable. Few now believed that Alexander could reach the Po

even by spring, and early in November

assignments of assault shipping and other resources were being made on the

basis of requirements for reaching a line

north of Rome, no farther. One underlying feature of the pincers strategy remained: the Allies were committed for

better or for worse to maintain a "going" front in Italy so that it might play

its part when OVERLORD was launched

in the spring. (Table 20)

Eisenhower's report on the southern

France project, submitted as directed

late in October underlined the degree

30

 (1) Memo, Handy for CofS, 4 Nov 43, sub:

Retention in Mediterranean of Ldg Cft Scheduled

for OVERLORD, and Memo, 5 Nov 43, same sub, with

related papers in ABC 561 (31 Aug 43), Sec 1-B.

(2) Msg, Gen Barker to Gen Morgan, 4 Nov 43,

SHAEF SGS 560, vol. I. (3) CCS 379/5, rpt by CPS,

4 Nov 43, title: Opns in Mediterranean. (4) Min,

126th mtg CCS, 5 Nov 43. 31

 See ch. X, below. 32

 (1) Min, 126th mtg CCS, 5 Nov 43. (2) CCS

379/5. 4 Nov 43. (3) JCS 548/1, JPS rpt, 10 Nov 43,

title: Opns in Mediterranean. (4) CCS 379 (SEXTANT), memo by U.S. CsofS, 18 Nov 43, same sub.

33

 (1) Churchill, Closing the Ring, p. 249. (2) Min,

123d mtg JCS, 15 Nov 43. (3) Eisenhower Dispatch,

pp. 86-87. (4) Field Marshal Sir John Dill was head

of the British Joint Staff Mission in Washington and

the chief British representative on the Combined

Chiefs of Staff.
BOG-DOWN IN THE MEDITERRANEAN 235

TABLE 20—LST'S IN THE MEDITERRANEAN: SEPTEMBER-DECEMBER 1943

a

 CCS 329/2, title: Implementation of Assumed Basic Undertakings and Specific Operations for Conduct of the War, 1943-44.

b Estimated; source not available. Based on subtraction of known HUSKY losses from reported totals in theater for early October. c

 Msg FAN 240, 24 Sep 43, Exec 3, Item 4; ASF Spec Rpt, Ldg Cft, 25 Oct 43, Tabs D, E. d

 ASF Spec Rpt, Ldg Cft, 25 Oct 43. e

 CCS 428, (Rev), 15 Dec 43, title: Relation of Available Resources to Agreed Operations, app. A. f

 This figure is two less than the remainder left after subtracting the British withdrawals for India from the early October theater total.

It is one of several unexplained discrepancies involved in calculations of Mediterranean LST's in October. As the theater status report for

1 January 1944 indicates (last line in table), the status report for 31 October may itself have been in error. g

 Tel conv with Gen Smith, 31 Oct 43. h

 See page 234, note 32. i

 Theater status report, in ABC ... 561 (30 Aug 43), Sec 2.

j See note f, above.

Source: Compiled by Richard M. Leighton from numerous sources, all cited in the text.

of adjustment. He advised the CCS not

to assume as yet that that operation was

"certain to be the best contribution this

theater can make at, or near, the time

of OVERLORD." Under certain conditions,

he thought, a threat to southern France

might actually attract German forces

into France and thus imperil OVERLORD.

If spring should find the Allies bogged

down before fortified positions across

the waist of Italy, they might be able to

pin down more German divisions there

by frontal assaults and amphibious turning movements than in any other way.

If a southern France diversion must be

undertaken in these circumstances, Eisenhower thought it would be more

useful as a threat—to be kept poised from

a few weeks before until a few weeks

after the cross-Channel attack, and actually carried out only if the Germans

seemed unlikely to oppose it in force.

In the remote event that the Allies

should reach the north Italian plain by

spring, the original plan of a co-ordinated overland and amphibious operation

might be effective, but it should be

launched after OVERLORD, following a
236 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

threat of several weeks' duration. In any

case, an amphibious attack with the assault lift likely to be available in the

spring would be very weak—a division

strong, at most, with only two brigades

in the initial assault, and even weaker

if wastage of craft during the coming six

months proved heavy. Eisenhower recommended, essentially as he had done

in mid-August, that the operation be

regarded "as but one of the various alternative opportunities which will lie open

to us for assisting OVERLORD." In London General Morgan, though still convinced that OVERLORD would need some

sort of diversion in southern France,

preferably more than a feint, shared Eisenhower's misgivings as to its feasibility. The British Chiefs passed Eisenhower's report on to Washington with

their endorsement.34

On 11 November the JCS concurred

in the British recommendation. The

southern France operation stayed on the

books and theater preparations for it

continued. But it had been relegated to

the limbo of contingent plans, tailored

to an improbable degree of enemy weakness and designed, in general, to help

OVERLORD more by the threat than by

the reality of diversionary action. So improbable was its execution considered

that it was not even included on the

agenda of the forthcoming international

conference at Cairo and Tehran. As Admiral King tersely expressed his and his

colleagues' view: "Our plan is OVERLORD. Operations such as against southern France are diversions. We do not

have facilities to carry out these diversions and also OVERLORD."35

The Mediterranean Lock-up

The limited capacities of ports in Italy

during the early stages of the invasion,

which helped to produce the crisis over

LST movements, had similar repercussions on the movement of merchant shipping to and within the theater. September and October 1943 saw the first appearance in the Mediterranean of the

kind of shipping congestion that on several occasions in 1942 had seriously impeded military operations in the South

Pacific and the flow of aid to the USSR.

During the build-up for HUSKY the

volume of shipping pouring into the

Mediterranean areas had risen nearly to

the limit that Algiers and the ports farther east could then handle, and the decision to invade Italy ensured that there

would be no early diminution in the

flow. The old potential bottleneck—the

size and frequency of convoys—for the

most part no longer threatened. In July

the Navy raised the ceiling for UGS

convoys from 60 to 80 ships, and beginning with UGS 14 on 6 August stepped

up their cycle from two weeks to ten

days. By 7 September in response to

pressures from the Army, Admiral King

had agreed that beginning in November

these convoys could sail at 7-day intervals if desired.

The port situation in the theater made

it impossible to take full advantage of

the relaxation of convoy restrictions. Be34

 (1) Msg NAF 492, Eisenhower to CCS, 29 Oct 43,

quoted in Ehrman, Grand Strategy V, 188, 190-91.

(2) CCS 394, 10 Nov 43, memo by Reps Br COS,

Opns against South of France to Assist OVERLORD.

35

 (1) Min, 123d mtg JCS, 15 Nov 43. (2) Memo by

S&P Gp OPD, 7 Nov 43, sub: Compilation of Background Material for SEXTANT, ABC 337 (19 Oct 43),

Sec 5. (3) CCS 394/1, 11 Nov 43, title: Opns Against

South of France.
BOG-DOWN IN THE MEDITERRANEAN 237

cause North African ports could not yet

accommodate so heavy an influx of shipping, the July and early August convoys

sailed with far less than their full complements, and a backlog of loaded and

partially loaded ships began to accumulate in U.S. east coast ports. By midAugust 91 ships were lined up for

UGS-16, scheduled to sail on the 26th,

and 79 more were already earmarked

for UGS-17, sailing 5 September. But

these and later convoys departed with

far fewer than their full quota of 80

ships and the Navy's offer to sail the convoys at 7-day intervals had to be turned

down.36

This attempt to tailor convoy schedules to port capacities for receiving and

discharging cargo in order to avoid a

shipping tie-up was only partially successful. The situation was complicated

by the need to retain shipping in the

theater for movements across the Mediterranean to Italy. At Quebec it had

been agreed that an average of 80 British and 50 U.S. cargo ships should be

retained in the Mediterranean for this

purpose. In practice, ships were held for

only one or two intratheater voyages and

then replaced by new arrivals; the number actually in use fluctuated widely,

but the total in the area tended to exceed

QUADRANT allocations. On 14 September the WSA representative at Algiers

reported that 103 British and 59 U.S.

vessels were then being held. The nine

excess U.S. ships were scheduled for early

departure; however, the British, who

had requirements for an accelerated

build-up through Taranto and support

of operations in the Aegean, did not expect to be able to reduce their own retentions below go before the end of the

year. They also requested temporary use

of a number of westbound U.S. freighters returning from the Red Sea and Indian Ocean areas to carry cargoes to the

western Mediterranean. Other demands

for intratheater shipping were imminent.37

Shipping retained in the theater, engaged largely in trans-Mediterranean

movements to Italy, had to be outloaded

from the North African ports that were

also handling incoming cargoes; the

turnaround in Italy was slow and uncertain. Shipping was thus tied up at

both ends. Algiers and Bone, the major

North African ports supporting the

troops in Italy, carried the heaviest burden. By 28 September, 22 loaded cargo

ships were lying idle at Algiers awaiting

berth with no prospect of completing

discharge before mid-October, by which

time 24 more were expected to arrive.

The situation at Bone was similar.38

During the next few weeks the shipping authorities in Washington and London watched with growing uneasiness

as matters steadily worsened. The North

African Shipping Board (NASBO), the

interallied co-ordinating agency for shipping in the theater, made strenuous

efforts to halt the trend. Some ships waiting with cargoes at Algiers were diverted 36

 (1) Msg, COMINCH to CESF, 2 Jul 43; Msg,

COMINCH to Admiralty, 21 Jul 43, folder N Africa,

WSA Douglas File. (2) NYPOE charts, Convoys to

N African Theater. (3) CCS 222/2, 20 Aug 43, rpt

by CMTC, title: Future Convoy Arrangements in

Atlantic; CCS 222/3, 22 Aug 43, and CCS 222/5,

20 Sep 43, same title. (4) OPD Notes on CCS 222/3,

undated, ABC 560 Atlantic (1-19-43), Sec 1.

37

 Msg NAWS 370, Kalloch to Douglas, 14 Sep 43,

folder N Africa, WSA Douglas File. 38

 (1) Msg NASAB 595, NASBO to CSAB, 28 Sep 43.

(2) Msg NAWS 415, Kalloch to Westernlund, WSA,

2 Oct 43. Both in folder N Africa, WSA Douglas

File.
238 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

to Oran; others were sent on to Italy.

A number of operational loadings for

U.S. forces were shifted to Oran, and for

U.K. forces to Bougie and Philippeville.

Large-scale discharge of packaged gasoline at Algiers, a major factor in the

congestion there, was drastically curtailed. At all ports, the work of discharging and clearing incoming cargoes from

the docks and loading cargoes for forward movement went on around the

clock.39

Apart from these and other local corrective measures, the situation seemed

to call for prompt action in Washington and London to curtail further the

flow of shipping into the congested

areas. On this question a sharp difference of opinion emerged between British and American shipping authorities.

Even though, beginning in late September, the British had reduced the KMS

convoys somewhat, they now took the

position that no further curtailments

were necessary and that local remedial

measures had already gone far toward

breaking the shipping jam. They confidently predicted that the crisis would

pass before the end of November. According to London, the theater was unwilling to forego a number of high-priority shipments of munitions due in

October and November and destined

primarily for British forces. It appeared,

moreover, that most of this material

would have to be carried in American

bottoms, since the British Ministry of

War Transport had submitted requests

for about 40 WSA vessels in October

KMS convoys and 14 in October and

November UGS convoys to carry British military cargo. The British also needed help in their coal shipments to Italy

for civilian relief.

WSA officials suspected there was

more here than met the eye. It was hard

to believe that many, if not all, of the

high-priority items needed in the theater could not be found among the

scores of loaded freighters lying idle in

North African ports. WSA held that

whatever was not actually on hand in

the theater should be sent in a few special shipments instead of being loaded,

as was evidently the plan, along with a

large amount of routine cargo for which

there was no immediate need and which

would only aggravate the existing congestion. WSA also wanted to know why

the British did not meet their Mediterranean needs by diverting some of the

150 or more ships they ordinarily sent

each month in ballast to North America

and the West Indies for return loadings

to the United Kingdom. American shipping would be far more economically

employed in replacing these diversions

than in serving British needs in the

Mediterranean. And WSA objected to

delaying American vessels returning

from the Middle East to take on British

cargoes at Cairo. What WSA officials

thought they detected in all this was a

deliberate British attempt to shift U.S.

shipping from the United Kingdom import service in the North Atlantic to

more distant and riskier service in the

Mediterranean, while they reduced the

number of their own ships servicing the

Mediterranean in order to build up their

commercial trades, hitherto starved by

the demands of military programs.40

39

 Msg SABLO 345, London to Washington, 16

Oct 43, folder N Africa, WSA Douglas File.

40

 (1) Ibid. (2) Msg NA 5544, Douglas to Philip

Reed, 22 Oct 43. (3) Msg, Schneider to Nicholson,

13 Oct 43. (4) Msg, Douglas to Kalloch, 18 Oct 43.

All in folder N Africa, WSA Douglas File.
BOG-DOWN IN THE MEDITERRANEAN 239

Douglas informed the British of these

suspicions on 22 October, and cited figures to show that the accumulation of

shipping in the Mediterranean had

reached crisis proportions. As of 11 October reports showed a total of 396 Allied ocean-going ships in these ports;

less than a third of them were actually

working, and at least a fifth were lying

idle awaiting berth for discharge or loading. At Algiers alone there were 74 Allied ships: 43 of them were idle, and

only 15 were being discharged or loaded. If ships under way to and from and

within the area were added to these tonnages, at least 6 million dead-weight tons

of shipping were engaged in the Mediterranean service, amounting to almost

a seventh of the entire Allied merchant

fleet. At the moment, an estimated onesixth of all shipping serving the Mediterranean appeared to be idle. "This is

by far the greatest wastage of shipping

in the war to date," Douglas declared.

"We regard it as a high military necessity that this be stopped."41

In the face of Douglas' stringent representations, the British did make some

concessions, abandoning their position

that purely local measures would suffice

to keep the ports clear. Lord Leathers

repeatedly assured the WSA representative in London, Philip Reed, that he

was in "whole-hearted agreement" with

the WSA policy of limiting shipments

to cargo urgently needed by local commanders but insisted that U.S. bottoms

were required for that purpose. He

stoutly denied any intention of shifting

the burden of British maintenance services in the Mediterranean to American

shipping or of building up British commercial trades, and he maintained that

some "switches" of this kind were necessary because of the types of ships involved. Requests for American shipping

to fill KMS convoys were, nevertheless,

scaled down during late October and in

November, and the entire British shipping program for the Mediterranean

during those months was somewhat reduced.42

As the British had predicted, the situation did improve rapidly after the middle of October. Reductions in cargo

shipments by both the Americans and

the British helped, but more directly effective was the reconstruction of the port

of Naples, where by November enough

piers were in operation to discharge

ocean-going freighters on a large scale.

After November Naples, together with

Taranto, Bari, and the smaller Italian

ports, provided an outlet for shipping

backlogged in the North African ports,

and also handled the bulk of new shipping entering the theater. There was

little diminution in the volume of merchant shipping engaged in the Mediterranean services, which held at a level of

about 6 million dead-weight tons, or in

the number of operational retentions,

which remained above the level agreed

to at QUADRANT. Expanded port capacity,

however, restored fluidity to port operations. For example, an analysis of shipping supporting U.S. Army forces in the

theater, excluding vessels retained for

operational purposes, showed that at the

41

 (1) Msg NA 5544, Douglas to Reed, 22 Oct 43.

(2) See also Msg HAL 200, Reed to Douglas, 29 Oct

43, and related papers in folder N Africa, WSA

Douglas File.

42

 (1) Msg SABLO 375, Reed to Douglas, 10 Nov

43, with related corresp in folder N Africa, WSA

Douglas File. (2) Memo, J. A. McCulloch to Reed,

17 Nov 43, sub: Allocation of WSA Ships to KMS

Convoys, folder BMSM Misc, WSA Douglas File.
240 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

peak of the congestion on 11 October

ships that had been delayed longer than

ten days had spent 1,674 ship days in

port; by the end of November, this index

had dropped to 200. At Algiers, where

congestion had been worst on 11 October, conditions a month later were nearly normal with only 6 vessels awaiting

berth of a total of 38 in port. One salutary result of the improved situation

was a lessening of the need to use landing craft in routine logistical operations.43

The Mediterranean port crisis did not

seriously affect the Allied war effort in

that region, but it did cause bad feeling between the British and American

shipping authorities, paralleling in some

ways the differences on strategy that

were simultaneously developing. Despite

British assurances, the whole question

of the use of American shipping aid in

a manner designed to permit the expansion of British overseas trade in wartime

was due to come up for discussion at

the Cairo Conference late in November.

The Progress of Bolero

One reason the Mediterranean lockup had no really serious consequences,

for all the inefficient use of cargo shipping it involved, was because that commodity had become relatively abundant

in the Atlantic in the fall of 1943. The

cutbacks in outward sailings from the

United States to the Mediterranean increased the surplus and made it possible

to shift a sizable block of cargo ships to

the Pacific in November and December

to meet the growing demands of preparations for the Central Pacific offensive.44

Moreover, the availability of cargo shipping ceased to be even a theoretical

limitation on the advance shipment of

supplies to the United Kingdom for invasion forces.

The decisions at Quebec cleared the

air considerably with regard to BOLERO,

justifying the action taken by OPD on

13 August to extend the preshipment

program to include the ETOUSA troop

basis into 1944. In the theater a more

definitive troop basis for the Normandy

invasion was rapidly developed, and in

November it received War Department

approval. In its final form it provided

for 1,418,000 U.S. troops to be in the

United Kingdom on D-day—a figure very

close to the QUADRANT estimate. Of this

total (designated the first-phase troop

basis), 626,000 were ground force troops,

417,000 AAF, and 375,000 Services of

Supply. Theater estimates for the ultimate build-up on the Continent brought

the grand total—the second-phase troop

basis—to 2,583,000. With these figures,

which remained relatively firm, the War

Department was able to proceed rapidly

with the designation of units and the

preparation of more accurate movement

forecasts. This gradual shift from type

units to actual units definitely assigned

to the operation as the basis for programing advance shipments of material

to the theater eliminated much of the

43

 (1)Ibid. (1). (2) Memo, Col Joseph J. Billo for

Col George A. Lincoln, 3 Dec 43, sub: Shipping

Turnaround in Mediterranean, ABC 381 Strategy Sec

Papers (7 Jan 43) 160-95, Tab 173. (3) Bykofsky and

Larson, The Transportation Corps: Operations

Overseas, pp. 205-07. (4) Graph showing trend of

ship delays in overseas theaters is in ASF Monthly

Progress Report, 31 Aug 44, sec. 3, Transportation,

p. 48. (5) Msg, Corbett to Schneider, WSA, 23 Nov

43, OPD Exec 5, Item 14.

44

 See below, ch. XIX. Some ships for Pacific and

CBI destinations were loaded out from Atlantic

and Gulf coast ports.
BOG-DOWN IN THE MEDITERRANEAN 241

uncertainty that hitherto had clouded

the future of the preshipment program.45

Special operational requirements also

could be developed within the framework of the outline OVERLORD plan. Beginning in June 1943 the theater submitted a series of "keyed" operational

projects, including a very important one

for the rehabilitation of the port of Cherbourg, and the ASF undertook to fit procurement of the necessary material into

the Army Supply Program. Project material, like organizational equipment,

thus became an integral part of the

total ETOUSA demand against which

advance shipment was to be made. The

principal remaining problems were the

lack of a priority high enough to produce cargo in volumes commensurate

with the shipping now available and the

capacity of the ports and the supply organization in Britain to absorb shipments. The priority problem was the

more pressing.

QUADRANT plans for the movement of

one U.S. division from Iceland and four

from North Africa and for completion

of the rearming of eleven French divisions in North Africa by the end of December 1943 somewhat complicated

shipping arrangements and intensified

the problem of filling cargo ships. Under

the QUADRANT arrangement, the four

U.S. divisions moving from the Mediterranean would leave their equipment

behind for the French divisions, and

pick up new equipment in Great Britain from the preshipped stockpile for

type units. The division moving from

Iceland would be equipped in the same

way. Theoretically, the ASF could find

new equipment for continuing the preshipment program in new production resulting from Army Supply Program requirements for rearming the French divisions. Since French rearmament materiel held a higher priority for shipment

than preshipped BOLERO materiel, however, to actually get it reassigned to the

preshipment program was not a simple

matter.46

In the period following QUADRANT

the invasion build-up moved at least into

second, if not into high gear. Troop

movements from the United States spurted upward from 46,000 in August to

77,000 in September and 156,000 in October. Cargo shipments reached 907,-

000 measurement tons in September and

a 1943 high of 1,018,000 in October.

Troop movements from the Mediterranean and from Iceland were carried

out generally as scheduled—the 5th Infantry Division moved from Iceland to

England late in August; the 1st and 9th

Infantry Divisions, the 2d Armored Division, and the 82d Airborne Division came

in from the Mediterranean, mainly in

November. Nevertheless, neither the

personnel nor the cargo build-up in the

end actually met the QUADRANT schedule. The shortfall in cargo shipments

was the more serious of the two, threatening as it did to defeat the plan to

space these movements over the whole

period in order to prevent overloading

of British facilities in the period just

before D-day.47

In large measure, the failure to meet

the QUADRANT schedule was a conse45 Ruppenthal, Logistical Support I, 126-31.

46

 (1) Leighton, Problem of Troop and Cargo Flow,

pp. 84-101. (2) On French rearmament, see below,

Chapter XXVIII. 47

 Leighton, Problem of Troop and Cargo Flow,

pp. 87-91.
242 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

quence of the same factors that had

beset the program earlier—low priority

and complications resulting from the demands of the Mediterranean campaign.

As noted, cargo shipping was not a problem; personnel shipping, on the other

hand, continued to be in short supply,

and this shortage contributed to the delay in the build-up.

Certain supporting units originally included in transfer plans for the four

U.S. Mediterranean divisions were held

back to support operations in Italy, and

in response to Eisenhower's request, two

new U.S. divisions, the 85th and 88th,

were set up for shipment to Italy in December to partially compensate for the

divisions transferred to England. Most

of the shipping space was found by using

personnel capacity available on cargo

ships, although some diversion from

planned troop movements to the European theater was required. Moreover,

equipping the two divisions necessarily

cut into the cargo bank available for

BOLERO. Officials in ASF thought there

was enough surplus equipment in the

Mediterranean theater to equip the divisions after they arrived, even granting

that materiel left by the four departing

divisions must be used for French rearmament. But the theater pointed to combat losses in Italy, and OPD instructed

ASF to supply the two divisions with

100 percent of their noncontrolled items

and 50 percent of their controlled items

of equipment.48

Moreover, the complex schedule of

troop movements in and out of the Mediterranean areas inevitably affected the

flow of both troops and supplies to the

United Kingdom. Toward the end of

November one of the regular troop convoys from the United States to England

was diverted to the Mediterranean to

handle part of the 4-division movement.

As a result BOLERO troop movements in

November fell to 68,000 from 156,000

the previous month, and ASF officials

again had to search for cargo to fill the

shipping space that would have been

occupied by the equipment of the outgoing troops. Although in September

and October almost all allocated cargo

space for BOLERO was filled, ASF fell

well behind again in November and December. Shipments dropped from the

October peak of over a million tons to

848,000 in November, and rose only to

910,000 in December, when they had

been expected to reach 1.25 million tons.

"We haven't yet filled the total number

of ships for any month since August,"

an ASF planner complained early in December.49

 Against the QUADRANT schedule the shortfall was about 56 notional sailings (10,000 measurement tons

each) .50 Even though personnel shipping was in shorter supply, the troop

build-up came nearer to meeting its goal.

At the end of December 1943, 773,753

48 Diary, Theater Branch, entries for 4, 6, 21, 24

Sep 43, 4, 8 Oct 43, and 11 Nov 43, ASF Plng Div.

49

 (1) Memo, Theater Br for Dir Plng Div ASF,

1 Dec 43, sub: Supply Situation, ETO, Plng Div

Historical File #75. (2) See Table, Appendix B-5.

(3) Diary, Theater Br, Plng Div ASF; weekly entries

of planning figures in the Diary for from midAugust through December 1943 show considerable

variation, but the evidence generally supports the

shortfalls described. 50

 This calculation is based on a total QUADRANT

goal for the quarter of 334 sailings (298 on Army

account plus 36 on U.K. Import Program ships), as

communicated to the ASF from Quebec on 20 August

—104 for October, 105 for November, and 125 for

December. Diary, Theater Br, 20 Aug 43, Pl Div

ASF. Actual sailings carried approximately 2.78

million measurement tons or the equivalent of 278

notional sailings. Compare figures in Ruppenthal,

Logistical Support I, 138.
BOG-DOWN IN THE MEDITERRANEAN 243

U.S. troops were in the United Kingdom,

as against the QUADRANT target of 814,-

300. Moreover, the flow of service troops

was stepped up during the last four

months of the year, tripling the strength

of the ETOUSA Services of Supply.51

Despite a substantial volume of advance cargo shipment during these

months, the failure to use all the available shipping space again reflected a

lag in the preshipment program. Low

priority was still the root of the problem. The effects of low priority were twofold: it diminished the net total of cargo

of all kinds available for BOLERO, and

it resulted in unbalanced shipments, for

the priorities system applied more particularly to items in short supply. Thus,

in the shipments of organizational equipment made through the end of August

1943 for type units on the ETOUSA

troop basis, there were numerous shortages of critical items—in signal equipment, for example, which the ASF had

not even attempted to preship. On 24

September ETOUSA complained bitterly of the situation and asked for a delivery schedule that would assure full

equipment for all divisions 45 days before arrival of personnel.

Stock Control Division, ASF, found

in an item-by-item survey, that the situation was less alarming than the theater

had painted it, but pointed out that

"shipments have reached the point

where the existing priority is not sufficient to forward balanced stocks."52

 Col.

Frank A. Henning, Acting Chief of Stock

Control Division, urged that the priority

for preshipment be raised at least above

that of troops in training. Officials who

were in closest touch with strategic developments, both OPD and ASF, were

not yet ready to take this step. Col. Carter B. Magruder of Planning Division,

ASF, was reported by Colonel Henning

to feel that

in view of tactical considerations we would

not be justified in increasing the priority of

this project for the sole purpose of provid- ing the theater commander with equipment

45 days in advance of the arrival of units

simply to permit him comfortable time for

distribution. Colonel Magruder stated that

all written directives pointed to OVERLORD

as the main effort, but that the fluidity of

the tactical situation at the present time

was such that he considered it a definite

possibility that the emphasis would be taken

from this operation in favor of augmentation of forces in the Mediterranean. . . ,53

Further study by Stock Control Division indicated that the total amount of

equipment for the OVERLORD troop basis

could probably be laid down in the

United Kingdom by D-day (then

planned for 1 May 1944) if the priority

for signal equipment were raised by 1

December 1943 and for the rest of the

technical service equipment by 1 January 1944. If cargo had to be found to

fill all available ships, then the priority

must be raised by 1 November. With

these assurances concerning the total

amount, which seemed to take little note

of the problems of overloaded British

ports and distribution within the theater, higher authority was apparently satisfied. One small concession was made

late in October—current theater priorities (A-1-b-8 for ground equipment;

A-1-b-4 for air) were extended to cover

51

 Ruppenthal, Logistical Support I, 132, 232. 52

 (1) Memo, Col Henning, Actg Dir Stock Control

Div, for Dir Opns ASF, 2 Oct 43. (2) Msg, W-4888

WXCB 505, London to AGWAR, 24 Sep 43. Both

in Log File, OCMH. 53

 Ibid. (1).
244 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

shortages against TOE's of units scheduled to sail before the end of 1943. In

reality, this hardly involved priorities

for advance shipments at all, because

by that time all further shipments would

be less than 60 days in advance of troops

sailing in November and December. Certainly little of it could arrive in

ETOUSA in time to permit the 45 days

for distribution demanded by that theater. The real preshipment problem, by

the end of October, involved units scheduled to embark in 1944. For these the

priority for advance shipment remained

low in the A-2 category.54

As the prospects for filling available

shipping in November faded, pressures

for a revision of priorities mounted. The

only alternative appeared to be a cutback in the schedule of allotted ships

to bring cargo space in line with ASF

capacity to ship. At least partially facing

up to this situation, ASF on 6 November formally requested from OPD an

A-2-b priority for preshipment against

the 1 May 1944 troop basis with a

special priority of A-1-b-1 for automotive equipment to insure supply of heavy

vehicles direct from production. OPD

approved this request on 10 November,

but the upgrading did not go into effect

until the 22d, too late to have any

appreciable effect on November shipments.55

By early December 1943 the situation

had reached a point where more farreaching decisions were needed. Priority

for preshipment in itself could no longer be considered the basic issue. It was

rather the priority of the European theater and of OVERLORD in the whole scale

of global war. The long daylight hours

of summer were no longer a consideration, and relatively little time remained

even for using advance shipments to

spread the load on British ports and inland transportation facilities with a view

to avoiding congestion just before D-day.

In general, the flow of troops in late

1943 was rapidly catching up with the

flow of cargo. On 1 November 1943 an

estimated 1,040,000 tons of preshipped

equipment were available for issue in

the United Kingdom. Two months later,

despite the continued flow of supplies,

these stocks had dwindled (through issue

to troops) to less than half that amount

—445,000 tons.56

In short, preshipment was only a limited success in 1943, since it had failed

to achieve its larger purposes. By the end

of the year its continuation was justified

mainly as a convenient method of shipping in bulk all organizational equipment, necessary maintenance, and special

operational supplies that must be on

hand for a 1 May 1944 D-day. The major

questions now were whether these supplies could actually be provided on time

under existing priorities, and whether,

if they were loaded in the United States

in the intervening months, British ports

and inland transport facilities could

handle the deluge of incoming freight.

It might well be argued that the delays in executing BOLERO in 1943, of

which the shortfall in the preshipment

program was probably the most significant aspect, made almost inevitable the

postponement of D-day beyond May

1944, though this point is not clearly

54

 (1) Ibid. (2) Leighton, Problem of Troop and

Cargo Flow, pp. 109-11. 55

 Ibid. (2).

56

 (1) Memo, ASF for OPD, 4 Nov 43, sub:

QUADRANT Decisions. (2) Memo, Dir Plans and Opns,

ASF, for CG ASF, 4 Jan 44, sub: SEXTANT Decisions.

Both in Historical File #9, Plng Div ASF.
BOG-DOWN IN THE MEDITERRANEAN 245

demonstrable and the issue was never

really debated at the high levels. From

another point of view, for all its inadequacies the BOLERO build-up by November 1943 had reached a stage where the

decision to go ahead with OVERLORD was

practically irreversible, leaving only the

precise date at issue. The assembly of

troops and supplies in the United Kingdom, the construction of facilities, the

training of troops, and the development

of administrative plans and schedules

had created a momentum that could

have been arrested only by some cataclysmic event, such as a German debacle

in the Mediterranean or in Russia and

imminent collapse of Hitler's regime.

No such event seemed in the cards when

the Cairo Conference convened late in

November.
CHAPTER X

Ships, Landing Craft, and Strategy

While the strategic issues were being

debated in fall of 1943, important decisions were in the making on shipbuilding and landing craft programs for the

following year. Both problem areas had

taken on a new complexion. For merchant shipbuilding, the problem no longer was to produce maximum tonnages

in order to offset and outpace the drain

of ship sinkings, but rather to strike and

maintain a balance between general and

special types of shipping and among

the various special types themselves. As

might be expected, the most critical decisions for the immediate future centered on assault shipping—both combat

loaders and landing craft—the provision

of which was the chief complicating

factor in the formulation of plans for

the war in Europe. Ironically, the very

urgency of the need in the ETO worked

against its solution. With OVERLORD'S

D-day not far off, and a production lead

time of many months to reckon with,

the time of decision had virtually passed.

In the Pacific theaters, where the Navy's

greatest interest lay, the lead time was

longer, and Navy planners began to

shape a new assault shipbuilding program mainly in terms of Pacific needs.

Shipbuilding: A Record-breaking

Year

The year 1943 was the greatest year

for Allied merchant shipbuilding in

World War II. American shipyards

poured out 19.2 million dead-weight

tons, more than two-and-one-third times

as much as in 1942 and, added to the

1942 output, exceeding the President's

original goal for 1942-43 by more than

3.2 million tons. In ocean-going merchant shipping alone, this mammoth output registered a net gain of 15.2 million

tons over American losses in 1943; it

was mainly responsible for a net increase

of 16.4 million tons in Allied and neutral shipping during the year. As early

as October, statisticians could jubilantly

report that the vast cumulative deficit

in Allied and neutral shipping that had

existed since the beginning of the war

in Europe had finally been wiped out.

Henceforth, the charts would show a

steeply climbing curve above the inventory level of September 1939. At the end

of 1943 the U.S. ocean-going merchant

fleet alone stood at 29.4 million deadweight tons, almost two-and-a-half times

as large as it had been when the European war started.1

That the shipping tonnage built in

1943 was not even greater was largely because of a shortage of steel. By late spring

1943 the Maritime Commission had

1

 (1) U.S. Maritime Commission, Statistical Summary, Tables A—3 and A-4. (2) Lane, Ships for Victory, p. 638. (3) ASF Monthly Progress Report, sec. 3,

Transportation, 31 Mar 44. (4) Behrens, Merchant

Shipping, p. 23.
SHIPS, LANDING CRAFT, AND STRATEGY 247

established a goal of 21 million tons of

shipping for the year, but under military protest that steel allocations for such

a program would cut too far into other

essential military production, the goal

had to be reduced to 18.9 million tons.

As indicated, the goal was exceeded by

300,000 tons, largely by squeezing more

steel, through improved management,

from raw stock inventories and backlogs

of fabricated parts in the shipyards

themselves.2

Over 1,200 of the 1,949 ships of all

types built in this record-breaking year

were Libertys (70 percent of total deadweight tonnage), more than twice the

number built in 1942. Yet the spectacular performance of the shipyards in 1943

was not wholly a matter of the application of mass production techniques to

standardized, easy-to-build ships such as

the Liberty. The output of standard

cargo vessels (C-types), built to peacetime standards, was three times that of

the year preceding, and the number of

military types built by the Maritime

Commission for the armed services—combat loaders, Navy tankers, troop transports, escort carriers, frigates, and LST's

—more than quadrupled. The number of

minor and special types, such as concrete

and wooden ships, ore carriers, and tugs,

multiplied more than eightfold over the

1942 program. These were signs of the

beginnings of a transition from emergency shipbuilding programs that emphasized simplicity of design, standardization, and rapid construction, toward

more diversified programs designed to

meet specialized military needs.3

Twenty-One Million Tons

for 1944

How these specialized military needs

would figure in the 1944 program was

not apparent in the planning early in

1943 for ship construction during the

following year. The first phase of that

planning involved instead a bitter controversy between the War Production

Board and the Maritime Commission

over the relative merits of standardization and mass production of cargo ships

versus smaller production of faster,

higher quality vessels. Independently of

any stated military need the Maritime

Commission had, as far back as September 1942, introduced the Victory ship,

a fast (16.5 knots) carrier, slightly larger

than the Liberty and a better all-around

vessel. It was designed with half an eye

to postwar commercial competition, although it was not so well adapted for

that purpose as the standard C-type cargo

ships normally built in American shipyards before the war. For wartime use,

its potentialities were obvious: its speed

reduced the need for naval escort and

made it suitable for conversion as a troop

carrier. In a sense, too, the Victory was

a product of the steel shortage, though

it used more steel than the Liberty. Since

there seemed little prospect of the shipyards getting enough steel to build all

the Libertys they were capable of building, the Maritime Commission decided

2

(1) On the dispute over allocation of steel see

Ltr, JCS to Donald M. Nelson, Incl to JCS 282/5,

10 Jun 43, title: Third Quarter Allocations of Steel,

and JCS 500/3, 18 Sep 43, title: Allocation of Steel

Plate for Fourth Quarter, with related papers in

ABC 411.5 (4-28-63 and 11 Sep 43). (2) Leighton

and Coakley, Global Logistics, 1940-43, pp. 625-29.

(3) Lane, Ships for Victory, pp. 334-53, especially

charts page 345. (4) Maritime Comm, Statistical

Summary, Table B-10.

3 (1) Maritime Comm, Statistical Summary, Table

B-3. (2) Lane, Ships for Victory, pp. 574, 637-38.
248 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

the yards' extra capacity should be used

to construct better, faster ships that took

longer to build. Shipyards with the best

records in turning out Libertys were

scheduled to convert to the Victory in

the latter part of 1943. The commission's 1944 program, as it stood in April

1943, called for 524 Victory ships, 369

C-type vessels, and only 367 Libertys in

a total goal of 19.2 million dead-weight

tons.4

The program immediately came under

sharp attack from the War Production

Board, which wanted the commission to

reduce the number of types in order to

increase total output. The chief spokesman for this point of view was William

F. Gibbs, a naval architect of national

prominence, who was named Controller

of Shipbuilding under WPB in December 1942 and in March 1943 became

chairman of a new Combined Shipbuilding Committee (Standardization of Design) under the CCS. The details of the

controversy cannot be recounted here,

but by July 1943 Gibbs and WPB had

forced a revision of the 1944 shipbuilding program to increase total tonnage to

21 million (22.3 million tons including

conversions) with a marked shift of

emphasis back toward the mass-produced

Liberty. In the July plan 814 Libertys

were to be built, along with 340 Victorys and 314 standard C-type vessels.

This new program, essentially a compromise, did not end the controversy.

WPB pressed for elimination of the Ctype ships entirely in favor of one fast

ship, the Victory, using a single standardized turbine engine, and a further increase in the number of Libertys. The

Maritime Commission resisted WPB's

proposals and denied its jurisdiction in

matters relating to vessel design. The

two agencies thus reached an impasse

that could only be broken by higher

authority. Who or what that higher authority would be remained for a while

in doubt. Then on 15 July Charles E.

Wilson, executive vice-chairman of

WPB, put the problem to the Joint

Chiefs of Staff by asking for a statement

of strategic shipping requirements for

1944. In this form, the question was

referred to the Joint Military Transportation Committee for detailed study.5

The JMTC made no pretense of recalculating military requirements for

shipping. Instead they listened to an

exposition of the respective positions

and then examined the military implications of each. On the main question, the

JMTC was impressed by the military advantages offered by fast cargo carriersfewer losses, lower escort requirements,

more round trips and more cargo delivered per year, smaller crew requirements, better adaptability to conversion

as troop carriers. Some of these points,

to be sure, had been challenged—for example, until fast ships became available

in large numbers (probably in 1945),

they would have to be used along with

slow ones in convoys where their speed

would be a wasted asset. However, the

21 million tons of shipping the Maritime Commission planned to build in

1944, would, according to JMTC calculations, support an overseas Army deployment of five million men by the end

of 1944, together with all other military

4

( 1 ) Maritime Comm, Statistical Summary,

Tables A-4, B-10. (2) Lane, Ships for Victory, pp.

28, 574-77, 607. (3) See Table 21, p. 258, below.

5

 (1) For details of the controversy, see Lane, Ships

for Victory, pages 587-604. (2) Memos, Wood for

Somervell, 13 Jul 43 and 9 Aug 43, folder CsofS Jt

and Comb 1942-44. Hq ASF.
LIBERTY SHIP (top) AND VICTORY SHIP (bottom)
250 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

and civil commitments. Strategy for 1944

and 1945, as now foreseen, was built

around this scale of deployment, which

was also the estimated maximum for

which the country was expected to be

able to produce munitions. It followed

that more shipping would not be needed

—perhaps could not even be used—and

this cut the ground from under the WPB

argument. Admiral Leahy summed up

the case in a letter to Wilson on 9

August:

The [CS believe . . . that shipping . . .

will not continue to be the bottleneck of

our war effort overseas, that limitations in

production of war products other than mer- chant shipping will govern. The urgent

necessity to produce the greatest possible

number of ships in a given time, met by

mass production of Liberty ships, therefore

becomes less compelling.

Since the beginning of the shipbuilding

program, the fast C ships, particularly the

C2 and C3, have best met the strategic

needs. . . . They are now being rapidly con- verted as combat loaders and as combination passenger and cargo to fill vital military needs. The C4 is building in direct

response to Army requirements. The increased speed of these faster ships reduces

the danger of loss of troops and cargo from

submarine attack, shortens the time of turnaround, decreases the requirements for escorts and saves crew manpower. . . . This

experience leads to the conviction that our

strategic needs in 1944 will best be met by

the maximum number of fast ships.6

The JCS, Leahy concluded, "endorsed"

the Maritime Commission's program for

1944.

This verdict from the group representing the principal users of merchant

shipping apparently settled the controversy, although neither the WPB nor

the Maritime Commission recognized

the JCS as a superior authority in matters relating to ship construction. The

21-million-ton program of July stood

for the time being. The JCS endorsement of the program was nevertheless

premature, for it took into consideration

neither the amount of steel required for

a program of such magnitude nor the

growing demands for specialized types

of military shipping. In the July program military types accounted for only

2.3 percent of proposed 1944 construction.7

Once the increased demands for steel

engendered by the 21-million-ton program became apparent, the JCS was

forced to reconsider. Early in September

1943 the Maritime Commission opened

the battle over fourth-quarter steel allocations with a request for 225,000 tons

more steel than it had been allotted in

the third quarter, citing as justification

the need to meet first-quarter 1944 schedules under the new building program.

The plate requested (1,725,000 tons)

represented 64 percent of the total

amount available for the Army, Navy,

and Maritime Commission together instead of the 60 percent the commission

had been receiving. This posed a threat

to military production programs for

which steel plate was already shortArmy trucks, harbor craft, landing mat,

steel drums, naval combat vessels, and,

above all, the vital landing craft program. On the recommendation of the

Joint Administrative Committee, the

JCS on 14 September asked WPB to

hold fourth-quarter steel plate alloca- 6

 (1)JCS 448/1, 12 Aug 43, ltr, Leahy to Wilson,

9 Aug 43, title: Large Dry Cargo Ships. (2) JCS 448,

7 Aug 43, rpt by JMTC, same title. (3) See also draft

of (1) in OCT HB, Gross Day File 1943, Case 197. 7

 See Table 21, p. 258.
SHIPS, LANDING CRAFT, AND STRATEGY 251

tions to the 60-40 ratio then prevailing,

and directed the JAdC to restudy military requirements for steel to bring allocations to the three principal users "into

more effective balance." Finally, on 22

September, the JCS informed the chairman of the Maritime Commission, Rear

Adm. Emory S. Land, in some embarrassment (and in contradiction of the record) that their earlier "endorsement"

of the 1944 building program referred

only to types of vessels and not to the

aggregate size of the program. They

added that the JAdC had been instructed

to examine military shipping needs in

order to determine "the total program

that can be undertaken without impinging on other necessary military programs."8

This casual announcement flashed a

danger signal to Admiral Land. The

JCS, he replied, were at liberty to examine the Maritime Commission's program insofar as it related to military

requirements, but they had no jurisdiction whatsoever over merchant shipbuilding, and he could not recognize

their authority to review the shipbuilding program "in relation to programs

other than military programs."9 Regardless of the merits of this contention, the

Maritime Commission was, in fact, swimming against the tide. All the war agencies were under heavy pressure from the

Office of War Mobilization to cut back

their supply requirements. The huge

shipbuilding program for 1944, larger

even than that for 1943, invited attack,

particularly since the JCS were on record as stating that in 1944 merchant

shipping would no longer be the bottleneck of the war effort. On 28 September

the President directed James Byrnes to

have the Joint Production Survey Committee (JPSC) of the JCS review the

entire shipbuilding program of the

Navy, Army, and Maritime Commission.

Roosevelt's instructions indicated that he

had in mind primarily combat types, and

that the study of possible cuts in merchant shipbuilding should be left to the

Maritime Commission. Byrnes chose, ostensibly as a matter of administrative

convenience, to interpret the directive

broadly, and, over the protests of Land

and Douglas, ordered the commission to

submit its recommendations directly to

the JPSC. He added a revealing comment on the report that the commission

had already submitted in defense of its

program:

Assuming all ... uncertainties . . . there

seems little room for doubt that the actual

production of ships in accordance with [the

program] will lead, after the first quarter

of 1944, to an accumulation of merchant

tonnage, for which there will be no war- time need and which it will be difficult and

unnecessary to man and use under the man- power deficiency with which we will be at

that time confronted.10

8

(1) Ltr, Leahy to Land, 22 Sep 43, Incl in JCS

501/1, 22 Sep 43, title: Endorsement of Maritime

Comm Shipbldg Program 1944, with related papers

in ABC 561 (7 Aug 43), Sec 1. (2) Ltr, Leahy to

Nelson, 14 Sep 43, Incl in JCS 500/1, 14 Sep 43,

title: Allocation of Steel Plate for Fourth Quarter.

(3) JCS 500, 13 Sep 43, rpt by JAdC, same title.

(4) Min, 26th mtg JAdC, 13 Sep 43; 27th mtg, 14

Sep 43. (5) Min, 114th mtg JCS, 14 Sep 43; 115th mtg,

21 Sep 43. 9

 Ltr, Land to Leahy, 9 Oct 43, Incl to JCS 501/2,

16 Oct 43, title: Endorsement of Maritime Comm

Shipbldg Program.

10 (1) Ltr, Byrnes to Land, 16 Oct 43, folder Maritime Comm Proc Rev Bd 1945, WSA Conway File.

(2) On the procurement review boards, see above,

Chapter IV. (3) Memo, President for Byrnes, 28

Sep 43, filed with JCS 501/2, 16 Oct 43, title: Endorsement of Maritime Comm Shipbldg Program.
252 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

Pending completion of the survey, the

President on 18 October provisionally

authorized the Maritime Commission to

proceed with its 1944 program (21 million tons of ocean-going shipping), with

the understanding that the decision

would be reviewed in January. But the

commission had read the signs. On 29

October, its procurement review board

reported to Byrnes that, if sufficient steel

were provided to permit building at the

existing rate through the first half of

1944, schedules could probably be cut

back about 20 percent beginning in

July. 1 1

Combat Loaders for the Pacific

At this juncture, the emergence of

concrete military demands for specialized types of shipping—chiefly transports,

assault ships, and landing ships and craft

for the Pacific campaigns—gave the whole

controversy a new turn. Expansion of

the landing craft program would remove

steel and facilities from the Maritime

Commission's program altogether. Since

transports and assault ships took longer

to build, ship for ship, than the massproduced cargo carriers, and usually involved time-consuming design changes

while on the ways and conversion processes after the completion of the basic

vessel, a given number of them displaced

much more than their equivalent tonnage of merchant shipping in the program.

Even in July and August 1943, when

the military services endorsed the Maritime Commission's plan to build more

fast cargo ships, they were primarily interested in them as potential troop carriers. Since May military demands for

troop-carrying tonnage to be provided

either by conversion or completion on

the ways had multiplied at such a rate

that on 21 July Admiral Land registered a protest with the JCS. Conversions demanded in 1943 alone, Land

warned, would absorb all the new C-2's

and C-3's now scheduled, cutting deeply

into the fast cargo fleet at a time when

military requirements for cargo movement were still growing. Shortly before

the Quebec Conference in mid-August

the JCS made some concessions but they

involved mostly conversions of Libertys

rather than the faster C-types. After

Quebec, with new and larger deficits in

Pacific troop lift imminent, the Maritime Commission received new demands

for conversions and agreed in mid-September to add 13 C-1 and 15 C-4 hulls

to the existing program. This raised the

1943-44 program total for conversions

to troop carriers to about 220 ships, almost all from standard cargo types.12

This was only the beginning. The

Navy's desire to provide adequately for

accelerated advances in the Pacific soon

brought new demands which promised

to have far greater impact on the 1944

11

 (1) Rpt of Maritime Comm Procurement Review

Board in reply to OWM Ltr of 16 Oct 43, 29 Oct

43, folder Maritime Comm Proc Rev Bd 1945, WSA

Conway File. (2) Ltr, President to Adm Land, 18

Oct 43, Incl to JCS 501/4, 20 Oct 43, title: Endorsement of Maritime Comm Shipbldg Program.

12(1) JCS 420, 22 Jul 43, ltr, Adm Land to JCS,

title: Army and Navy Reqmts for Troop Transport.

(2) JCS 420/1, 9 Aug 43, rpt by JMTC, same title.

(3) JCS 493, 10 Sep 43, rpt by JMTC, title: Provision

of Adequate Trooplift for Movement of U.S. Forces

Overseas. (4) Ltr, Douglas to Land, 22 Aug 43, folder

Quebec (Douglas) 1943, WSA Conway File. (5) Douglas Notes on conf with Adm Smith and Comdr Ross,

31 Aug 43, folder Navy Allocs, WSA Douglas File.

(6) Ltr, Leahy to Land, 13 Sep 43, OPD 561 Sec I,

Case 13. (7) In November 1943, 30 more C-4's were

added to the conversion program. See Lane, Ships

for Victory, pp. 617-24, for the full story.
SHIPS, LANDING CRAFT, AND STRATEGY 253

program. On 18 September Admiral

King tossed into the hopper a new requirement for combat loaders—40 APA's,

20 AKA's, and 3 AGC's (amphibious

headquarters ships) —to meet the schedule of Pacific operations agreed to at

QUADRANT. These vessels were to be obtained by converting C-2, C-3, or Victory hulls—as many as possible to be completed in 1944, all of them by mid-1945.

With these added to vessels already in

service, and the building and conversion

programs already approved, the Navy

would eventually have about 140 APA's,

83 AKA's, and 8 AGC's for the final

offensives against Japan.13 Then on 4

October the Navy planners submitted

through the Joint War Plans Committee

a new combat loader program more than

three times as large as the one King had

proposed—133 APA's, 53 AKA's, and 13

AGC's, besides those already approved

and in service. Most of them would be

needed by the end of the year 1944, an

acceleration of six months over King's

18 September schedule.14

The Navy program rested on the strategic concept, currently under study, of

defeating Japan within a year after the

defeat of Germany, then hopefully anticipated by 1 October 1944. Its avowed

purpose was to provide assault lift in the

Pacific theaters for ten amphibious divisions by October 1944 and for two more

by the end of 1944, not counting lift

available in landing ships and craft. It

assumed concurrent advances in the Central, South, and Southwest Pacific, in the

last instance accelerated by six months

over the QUADRANT schedule. The planners made ample allowances for the fact,

as Rear Adm. Bernhard H. Bieri explained, that "distances in the Pacific

precluded quick turnaround and rapid

shifting of combat tonnage from one

area to another." Additional allowances

were provided for a lapse of three months

between the delivery of a new vessel in

the United States and its readiness for

assault, and for an accelerated and expanded amphibious training program on

the west coast.15

While OPD planners considered these

estimates of combat loader requirements

based on yet unapproved plans for Pacific operations after mid-1944 "of little

or no value," they agreed to accept them

as long-range estimates subject to quarterly review. The Joint Planners accordingly sent them on to the Joint Administrative Committee for consideration in

connection with the review of the ship

construction program the JCS had directed in September.16

The whole issue was beclouded during

most of October by an assumption in the

joint committees that the combat loader

program could be accomplished by conversions in Navy shipyards without substantially affecting the Maritime Commission's ship construction program. On

this assumption, the JMTC, from which

the JAdC had requested estimates of

shipping requirements for 1944 and of

new construction necessary to meet them, 13

 (1) JCS 507, 18 Sep 43, memo by COMINCH,

title: Combat Loader Reqmts for USN, ABC 561

(18 Sep 43). (2) As of 1 October 1943 the Navy reportedly had 30 APA's and 14 AKA's in service.

CCS Memo for Info No. 154, title: Landing Craft

Reports, ABC 561 (31 Aug 43) Sec lA. 14

 JPS 285/1, 4 Oct 43, rpt by JWPC, title: Shipbldg Program of Maritime Comm for 1944.

15

 (1) Ibid. (2) Quotation from Min, 105th mtg JPS,

6 Oct 43. 16

 (1) OPD Notes on JPS 105th Mtg, 6 Oct 43,

ABC 561 (7 Aug 43), Sec 1. (2) Min, 106th mtg JPS,

6 Oct 43.
254 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

on 27 October in effect re-endorsed the

Maritime Commission program. The

committee reported a need for as much

as 18.7 million dead-weight tons of new

dry cargo shipping in 1944 and concluded that the 16.7 million tons programed by the Maritime Commission

(making up, with tanker tonnage, the

21-million-ton program) would be a safe

goal only because of uncertainties surrounding requirements in the last

quarter of the year.17 The Navy had decided meanwhile that it had nothing

like the yard capacity to carry out the

conversions, and on 24 October had

asked the Maritime Commission to estimate the impact of constructing the combat loaders from the keel up in its facilities. The Joint Logistics Committee (the

successor to the Joint Administrative

Committee) had therefore finally to face

an entirely new factor in framing its report for the JCS.18

Time by now had grown short since

10 November was the deadline for placing mill orders for steel plate to be rolled

in the first quarter of 1944. On 5 November the Joint Logistics Committee

(JLC) turned in its report. Under pressure from the Maritime Commission and

ASF, the committee had pared down the

number of combat loaders to 130 APA's

and 30 AKA's and postponed the delivery date for most of them to the last

three months of 1944; the AGC's were

to be obtained through conversion in

Navy yards. If the 160 combat loaders

were put into the 1944 building program, the JLC reported, they would displace from the building program 386

fast cargo ships (mostly Victorys) and

about 30 tankers. The committee proposed, however, to cut more than twice

this number of tankers in order to release still more steel plate (at 4,200 tons

per tanker) for other programs, mainly

landing craft. By these means, it was

hoped that steel plate allocations to the

commission during the first three months

of 1944 could be held down to 60, 55,

and 50 percent, respectively, of the supply available for the three major claimants (the Maritime Commission was

then demanding 61.1, 62.2, and 58.5 percent) . The net reduction in the whole

shipbuilding program for 1944 would

be about 3.5 million dead-weight tons.19

Neither the small proposed reduction

in the number of combat loaders nor the

postponement in deliveries caused more

than a ripple of dissent. These modifications, the JWPC noted, might somewhat

reduce "flexibility," but the original program had evidently embodied it in more

than ample measure. The size and implication of even the reduced program,

on the other hand, alarmed ASF officials,

who had been worried from the start

over the impact of the combat loader

program on ship tonnages needed for

the ordinary tasks of moving and supplying troops. "Undoubtedly more combat loaders are needed," General Gross

admitted, ". . . but the number . . .

should be more carefully justified and

approved before shipping for other needs

17 JMT 35/1, 27 Oct 43 (JLC 17), title: Steel

Allocations to Army, Navy, Maritime Comm for

1943-44. 18

 (1) Ltr, Rear Adm Howard L. Vickery, Maritime Comm, to Adm Badger, ACNO Log Plans, 28

Oct 43. (2) Memo, Col Stokes, Chief Planning Div,

OCofT, for Col Magruder, 1 Nov 43, sub: Interim

Rpt Shpg Situation. Both in folder Shpg vs Pers vs

Supply, ASF Plng Div.

19

 (1)Ibid (2). (2) JCS 569, 5 Nov 43, rpt by JLC,

title: Allocation of Steel Plate and Endorsement of

Maritime Comm Shipbldg Program.
SHIPS, LANDING CRAFT, AND STRATEGY 255

is so easily tossed aside."20 ASF officials

were concerned over an estimated deficit

of 233 cargo sailings in the last quarter

of 1944 and about 100 small (4,000-ton)

freighters needed for the Southwest Pacific that the JCS had not yet formally

requested from the Maritime Commission. This fourth-quarter deficit, to be

sure, rested on such dubious assumptions as full American responsibility for

rehabilitation and economic support of

occupied territory, growing lend-lease

commitments, and, finally, a continuous

increase in deployment to Europe to the

very end of 1944. As General Lutes admitted, these assumptions were inconsistent. If the war in Europe ended in

October there would hardly be an increase in lend-lease commitments or in

deployment to Europe; if it did not, the

burden of rehabilitation and economic

support of liberated or occupied territory was not likely to be so large.

Nevertheless, there was something

akin to sleight of hand in the ease with

which the supporters of the combat loader program now wrote off new cargo ship

and tanker tonnage for which the JMTC

had foreseen a need only nine days earlier. Faced with a Navy attempt to have

the combat loader program approved by

informal JCS action, General Lutes insisted that it be formally considered and

suggested that the ASF "press for an approved strategic plan as foundation."21

The JLC report was formally considered by the JCS on 9 November, but

little was said about strategic foundations. It was the day before the deadline

for placing first-quarter steel orders, and

Admiral King, flanked by Admirals

Home and Badger, made the most of

this circumstance to counter Somervell's

request that the report be studied before

it was approved. After a spirited debate,

in which Somervell stood alone against

the report, General Marshall ended the

discussion by suggesting the JLC proposals be accepted, with steel plate allocations for January to be made firm and

those for February and March to be suspended until 15 December. The shipbuilding situation as a whole was to be

reviewed again in January, as the President had already directed. Letters were

formally dispatched to WPB and the

Maritime Commission requesting adjustments in the 21-million-ton program to

accommodate the 160 combat loaders.22

The JCS decision coincided with the

other pressures on the Maritime Commission for reduction in its program, and

by 20 November 1943 the commission

had readjusted its sights for 1944 along

lines indicated by the JCS. The 20 November program showed a net reduction

of slightly over three million dead-weight

tons. It provided for 171 new combat

loaders instead of the 160 asked for, and

in compensation reduced the number of

C-4 troop transports from 27 to 17.

It increased the number of Victorys at

the expense of standard cargo vessels,

while the number of Libertys remained

very nearly the same. Over-all, by various

20

 (1) Memo, Gross for Somervell, 8 Nov 43, sub:

Comments on JCS 569, OCT HB Gross Day File,

1943, Case 245. (2) JPS 285/2, 8 Nov 43, rpt by

JWPC, title: Shipbldg Program of Maritime Comm,

ABC 561 (7 Aug 43), Sec 1.

21 (1) Memo, Lutes for Styer, 5 Nov 43, and Memo

for Dir Opns, 6 Nov 43. (2) Memo, Col Stokes for

Gen Gross, 6 Nov 43. Both in folder Current Opns,

ASF Plng Div, Case 45.

22

 (1) Min, 122d mtg (suppl) JCS, 9 Nov 43. (2) Ltrs,

Leahy to Nelson and Leahy to Land, 9 Nov 43,

Incls to JCS 569/1, 9 Nov 43, title: Allocations of

Steel Plate. . . .
256 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

adjustments the Maritime Commission

program cut the anticipated deficit in

cargo ship sailings in the fourth quarter

of 1944 from 233 to 164. Even at this

lesser cost, ASF spokesmen were not satisfied. On 25 November Brig. Gen. Walter A. Wood, ASF member on the Joint

Logistics Committee, challenged the JCS

decision as having been made in undue

haste and "without clear justification"

and asked that the JLC draw up "a more

thoroughly prepared program of ship

construction in 1944."23

By this time ASF opposition seemed

to be directed less at the scope of the

combat loader program as such than at

the general failure of the JCS committees to really integrate the shipping study

with proposed strategy or to stipulate the

use and control of the huge pool of combat loaders when they were not engaged

in amphibious operations. The Navy's

defense of its combat loader program,

despite an allusion to the possibility of

using the vessels "to supplement overall

troop and cargo requirements as primary

operational needs would permit" had

not been reassuring on the latter score.24

General Wood's paper never emerged

from the lower committees for consideration by the JCS. Following the SEXTANT Conference, the Joint War Plans

Committee re-examined the combat

loader requirements in the light of decisions reached there on Pacific strategy

and concluded that the combat loaders

should not be made available according

to the quantities and schedules of the

JCS decision of November, but according to those the JWPC had proposed

early in October. These schedules called

for 23 more APA's and 3 more AKA's

and for delivery of 148 of the 186 total

during the third quarter rather than the

fourth quarter of 1944. Against this proposal General Gross issued a final blast

describing it as "impossible" and "unrealistic," since it would cause "further

drastic invasion of cargo ship tonnage."25

But Gross had already been forced back

to a defense of the Maritime Commission's latest (as opposed to the earlier)

program, and he got no support from

OPD even against the proposal for accelerating the combat loader program further. "Although General Gross states that

the combat loader requirements are unrealistic," wrote an OPD officer, "it

would be equally unrealistic to produce

hundreds of cargo vessels to serve armies

and then find that these armies cannot

be placed in contact with the enemy

due to the lack of combat loader shipping."26

The JCS took no formal action on the

JWPC's proposals to accelerate the combat loader program further. Nonetheless, during December and early January other demands emerged to push the

23

 Memo, Dep Dir Plans and Opns, ASF, for Secy,

JLC, 25 Nov 43, sub: Review of JCS 569 to Determine Maritime Comm Construction Program for

1944, file CG ASF 1943-44, Hq ASF.

24 JPS 285/2, 8 Nov 43.

25 (1) Memo, Gen Gross for Gen Wood, 26 Dec 43,

sub: Combat Loader Reqmts. (2) Memo, Secy JLC

for Secy JPS, 9 Dec 43. (3) JPS 285/4, 14 Dec 43,

rpt by JWPC, title: Combat Loader Reqmts. All in

ABC 561 (7 Aug 43), Sec 1. 26

 (1)Memo, Col Billo for Chief, S&P Gp, OPD,

29 Dec 43, sub: Memo for Gen Wood Concerning

Combat Loader Reqmts, ABC 381 Strategy Sec

Papers (7 Jan 43) 196-213, Tab 201/1. (2) Colonel

Billo and other OPD officers during this period show

some confusion as to the difference between the

original requirement set forth by the Navy in JPS

285/1 and the program approved by the JCS in

JCS 569. Billo's memo therefore did not, in fact,

squarely meet the points raised by Gross.
SHIPS, LANDING CRAFT, AND STRATEGY 257

Maritime Commission further in the direction of building military types at

the expense of ordinary cargo tonnage.

Though Admiral Land protested again

to the JCS on 10 December about the

continuing drain of fast cargo tonnage

into the military pool, in reality the

Maritime Commission seems to have given up its fight against the trend. It also

accepted steel allocations for February

and March as the JCS had proposed

them, thus freeing steel plate for use in

other military programs, particularly in

the critical landing craft program that

was concurrently undergoing expansion.27

By January 1944 military types of

shipping made up about 11 percent of

the Maritime Commission program, as

against 2.5 percent in April 1943. The

proportion of ships to be finished as fast

cargo carriers had fallen correspondingly

from over 45 percent to less than 17 percent. This trend, ironically enough, reversed not only the Maritime Commission's plans for 1944 building but also

the military services' own verdict of 9

August. Similarly, WPB, although at the

time it had apparently lost its fight for

continuing emphasis on construction of

Libertys, could take some satisfaction in

the fact that this category, which the

commission in April had planned to reduce to only 20 percent in the 1944

program, now comprised almost 46 percent. (Table 21)

The Joint Production Survey Committee, meanwhile, on 7 November 1943

had returned a verdict endorsing the

Navy's current program for building

combat vessels, and on 8 January 1944

it filed a second equally uncritical report

endorsing the programs for building other types.28

 The JPSC report was apparently accepted as the January review the

President had ordered. By this time even

the ASF seemed to be satisfied. A Planning Division report noted: "At first it

was believed that the reduction in dry

cargo tonnage demanded by the heavy

combat loader program would cause serious shortages of dry cargo space. Continual examination has developed that

these fears were groundless."29

The Maritime Commission viewed the

future less serenely and, as it turned out,

in some respects more prophetically. In

January its Procurement Review Board

replied to a request from the Office of

War Mobilization for a report on possible cutbacks in the event the European

war ended in 1944. The board pointed

out that heavy merchant shipping losses

could be expected in the Normandy

landings and subsequent operations, and

that no requirements had yet been submitted for supporting civil economies in

occupied Europe, for maintaining occupation forces, or for carrying on the war

in the Pacific. In the light of these immense unknown factors, the board considered that further cutbacks would be

unwise.30

27

 (1) See Lane, Ships for Victory, p. 328. (2) Ltr,

Chmn Maritime Comm to JCS, 10 Dec 43, Incl to

JCS 641, 23 Dec 43, title: Manning of Cargo Vessels

with Navy Crews. (3) JCS 569/5, 18 Dec 43, rpt by

JLC, title: Allocation of Steel Plate for Feb-Mar 44.

28

 (1) JCS 573, 7 Nov 43, rpt by JPSC, title: Rpt

on Army, Navy, and Maritime Comm Shipbldg.

(2) Min, 141st mtg JCS, 11 Jan 44.

29 Memo, Lt Col Cooper for Chief Strat Log Br,

Plng Div, ASF, 7 Jan 44, sub: Shpg Situation . . .,

folder Shpg vs Pers vs Supply, ASF Plng Div.

3° (1) Rpt of Maritime Comm Procurement Review

Bd, 17 Jan 44, folder Maritime Comm Proc Rev Bd

1945, WSA Conway File. (2) Rpt of Maritime Comm

Procurement Review Bd, 11 Feb 44, folder Reading

File, WSA Douglas File.

SHIPS, LANDING CRAFT, AND STRATEGY 259

More Landing Craft: The

"Percentage Game"

Although the Navy's plans as early as

June 1943 had contemplated a moderate

increase in landing craft production in

the fall, the first strong impulse for a

new "crash" program on the scale of

that undertaken in 1942 came in August

1943. In that month pressure to produce

more landing craft became heavier in

both main sectors of the war—in the

Pacific as a result of the JCS decision

to seek means of defeating Japan within

a year of the defeat of Germany; in the

European war as a result of the appearance of the OVERLORD outline plans and

demands from many quarters to strengthen the OVERLORD assault. At the same

time, the unmistakable completeness of

the victory over the U-boat promised to

release facilities and materials hitherto

pre-empted by construction of escort vessels. Yet the new landing craft program

was not designed for a two-front war.

A companion piece to the Navy's big

new combat loader program, it was

shaped by the demands of the Pacific

war, not the war in Europe.

On 17 August the Navy's Bureau of

Ships, in response to Admiral King's telephoned inquiry from Quebec, reported

that it would be possible to expand production of landing craft by as much as

35 percent. (On the following day King

told the conference that no increase

greater than 25 percent was being

considered) .

31

 The greatest limitation

would be the output of diesel engines,

the power plant for all principal types

except LST's. Steel requirements would

require cuts in Army and Maritime Commission allocations, not to mention other

Navy programs, during the remainder

of 1943 and early 1944; from spring of

1944 on, steel production was expected

to be more adequate. As for facilities,

the Bureau of Ships report ruled out

those used in the major combat vessel

program, indicated that the yards to be

released by cutbacks of submarine chasers were unsuitable in one way or another, and advised against assigning the

building of LST's to Maritime Commission yards as had been done the year

before. All this seemed to point to the

yards engaged up to then in building

escort vessels, especially since these yards

had performed most brilliantly in the

crash landing-craft program the previous

winter. Two conclusions emerged clearly: (1) a 35 or even a 25 percent increase

in monthly output could not be attained

before spring of 1944, and (2) the rate

of acceleration before then would be

about the same for any program, regardless of its ultimate size.32

Studying the report later in the month,

the Joint Administrative Committee concluded that a 35 percent increase would

have a "real, though not destructive effect" on various Army and Maritime

Commission programs, and advised that

no more than a 25 percent increase be

undertaken for the present. The committee recommended that the necessary

steel be contributed in equal amounts

over the next six months by the three

major users, and thereafter by the Navy

alone. Costs were estimated — to the

31

 See above, ch. VIII.

32

 (1) Memo, BuShips for VCNO, 17 Aug 43, sub:

Additional Ldg Cft Program, app. A to JCS 462,

rpt by JAdC, 30 Aug 43, title: Landing Ships and

Cft, Means of Increasing U.S. Production. (2) See

also Memo, Wood for Somervell, 18 Aug 43, sub:

Expansion of Production of Landing Ships and

Craft, folder Future Opns, ASF Plng Div, Case 19.
260 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

Army, 9 million square feet of landing

mat, 125 medium tanks, 360 flat cars,

and 5,500 heavy trucks; to the Navy, 65

destroyer escorts and 12 submarine chasers; to the Maritime Commission, 35

Liberty ships. On 9 September the JCS

endorsed these recommendations with

the stipulation that by the 20th the JAdC

should have ready a more thorough study

of a 35 percent increase in the program.33

Meanwhile, the Joint Deputy Chiefs

of Staff (JDCS) had directed the Joint

Planners to determine the "exact percentage" of increase in each type that

would result from boosting the whole

program by 25 percent. This was a poser,

for a "25 percent increase" might mean

many things. In its original report the

Bureau of Ships experts had assumed

that any agreed percentage of increase

would be applied to the directed average

output of each type of vessel. This level

had in most cases not yet been attained

and bore little relation even to scheduled production over any given short

period. The Navy used program goals

and monthly schedules (on which directed average output was based) as incentives to greater production, setting

both goals and schedules higher than

was justified by a realistic estimate of

capabilities. What Navy officials actually

expected to be produced was often difficult to determine. The JDCS directive

to the Joint Planners implied that the

basis used in the Bureau of Ships report

for calculating the actual increase might

not necessarily be used. Did it mean, an

OPD officer wondered, that the percentage should be applied to actual current

output, or to the directed average over

the entire period of the program, or to

the average that the Navy realistically

expected to attain? Was the increase to

be roughly uniform for each type of

craft, or was it to be only in the most

critical types? What was to be the unit

of measure — numbers of craft or tonnage?34

Two weeks after receipt of the JDCS

directive the planners were still mulling

over these questions. Navy members had

suggested that a decision should await

the results of current tests of certain new

types of craft. In their general approach

to the problem, moreover, their Army

colleagues thought they detected signs

of a "reluctance to realistically resolve

these matters." Then, on 22 September

came a startling development—someone

in OPD dug up "fairly accurate evidence" that the Navy had in fact already

put into effect, not a 25, but a 35 percent

increase in the landing craft program.35

The evidence was accurate enough.

At the planners' meeting on 22 September the Navy members belatedly produced a copy of a directive from Admiral

King to the Vice Chief of Naval Operations and approved by the Secretary of

the Navy, ordering an increase of "approximately thirty-five percent" in the

program. It was dated 6 September, three

days before the JCS had approved the

25 percent increase, and implementing

instructions had gone out to the bureaus

on the 13th. The JPS found themselves

in the awkward position of having to

33

 (1) JCS 462, 30 Aug 43. (2) JCS 462/1, 8 Sep 43;

and JCS 462/2, 15 Sep 43, same title. (3) See also

papers in OPD 560 Security II, Case 66.

34(1) OPD Notes on JPS 101st Mtg, 15 Sep 43,

ABC 561 (30 Aug 43). (2) CPA, Industrial Mobilization for War, p. 607. (3) Mowry, Landing Craft and

the War Production Board, p. 33. 35(1) OPD Notes on JPS 103d Mtg, 22 Sep 43.

(2) Min, 101st mtg JPS, 15 Sep 43. Both in ABC

561 (30 Aug 43).
SHIPS, LANDING CRAFT, AND STRATEGY 261

recognize as a fait accompli the launching of a production program whose feasibility the JAdC was even then investigating and which the JCS had yet to

approve or disapprove. Although the

Navy was technically within its rights,

it remained to be seen whether the

new program would deny materials, facilities, or labor to other programs. The

JPS hurriedly directed the JWPC to analyze the new program and determine

whether it would meet strategic requirements laid down at Quebec. At the same

time the planners decided that the 25

percent increase directed by the JCS on

9 September should apply to the gross

tonnage of all craft to be produced, while

the increase in output of each type

should be governed, within this limit,

by the ratios indicated in the QUADRANT

tables of theater requirements. A subcommittee was assigned the task of working out the figures.36

Within two weeks the JAdC found a

way to resolve the difficulty without embarrassment to either the Navy or the

JCS. What had been labeled a 35 percent

increase was, it soon appeared, considerably less than that—only 32 percent of

gross tonnage and only 22 percent of the

numbers of craft produced per month.

This discrepancy suggested to the committee the happy fiction of equating the

Navy's alleged 35 percent increase with

the 25 percent increase already approved

by the JCS. Thus the Navy's instructions

to its bureaus on 13 September became

the "implementation" of the JCS directive of 9 September, rather than of the

COMINCH directive of the 6th, and the

JAdC was free to recommend either that

the program be left at the level to which

the Navy had raised it or that it be still

further augmented.37

The real significance of the Navy's

new program was not a matter of percentages, but of types and timing. The

entire emphasis was put on a brand new

type of craft—the LCT (7), a longer and

heavier model than the LCT (6), with

a cruising radius of 1,500 miles and

ocean-going capabilities. It was essentially a smaller edition of the LST, equipped

with the characteristic bow doors of that

vessel, and in fact was soon to be renamed landing ship, medium (LSM).

Production had not yet begun. First deliveries were expected in May or June

1944, rising to a monthly level of 25 by

October at the earliest. Not only would

the new ship contribute nothing to the

war in Europe, but the production effort

it would absorb would detract heavily

from the output of older types. Apart

from the LCT (7), the new program

promised an increase of only 15 percent

over the old program in gross tonnages

of craft produced per month. It added

only two LST's to the existing average

monthly output, and no LCT (6)'s at

all. None of the scheduled increases,

finally, was expected to be realized before spring of 1944. In short, the program was designed specifically, very nearly exclusively, for the war in the Pacific.

36

 (1) Memo, Secy JPS for Secy JWPC, 23 Sep 43.

(2) Memo, no date, Secy JPS for named officers.

(3) Min, 103d mtg JPS, 22 Sep 43. (4) Memo, COMINCH for VCNO, 6 Sep 43, sub: Revision of Shipbldg Program; and Ltr, VCNO to Bureau Chiefs,

13 Sep 43, both in app. A to JPS 270/1, 27 Sep 43,

title: Landing Ships and Craft, Means of Increasing

U.S. Production. (5) Min, 104th mtg JPS, 29 Sep 43,

with OPD notes. All in ABC 561 (30 Aug 43).

37

 (1) JAdC 56/1, rpt of subcom, 13 Oct 43, title:

Ldg Cft and Ships, Means of Increasing U.S. Production, ABC 561 (30 Aug 43). (2) Comments by

General Tansey, 26 Oct 43, on JCS 462/4, OPD

Exec 9, Book 13, Case 51.
262 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

As the JWPC reported on 27 September, the increased output would permit

a marked acceleration of amphibious operations by the latter part of 1944 but

"the QUADRANT decisions relative to

OVERLORD . . . will not be affected."38

Lobbying for Overlord

While the percentage game was in

progress, pressure to strengthen the

OVERLORD assault had been mounting.

Churchill's proposal at Quebec that the

cross-Channel assault force be enlarged

by at least 25 percent had set in train a

re-examination in the United Kingdom

of the possibilities of squeezing still more

landing craft from Great Britain's shipyards and factories. The results were not

encouraging. With British manpower

and war industries mobilized to the hilt,

landing craft production could only be

expanded by diverting steel, components, facilities, and labor from other programs, and even the present level of

output was endangered by a shortage of

engines. Production officials feared even

more the displacement of labor and unsettling of established wage patterns that

such a shift might cause. Beyond the

production problem loomed the equally

baffling one of finding manpower for

additional crews. To attempt to increase

landing craft output on a large scale

would produce effects, the British Chiefs

of Staff were warned, that would be "disastrous and permanent." The effort was

nonetheless made and proved less disruptive than expected. British landing craft

production rose from 327,300 tons in

the third quarter of 1943 to 361,200 tons

in the fourth quarter, a 10 percent increase. After declining somewhat in the

first three months of 1944, it rose to an

even higher level in the spring. At the

beginning of October 1943, however,

this achievement was not foreseen.39

To the OVERLORD planners in London, in fact, Churchill's proposal seemed

like asking for the moon. They already

faced a substantial deficit of lift for the

force now planned, particularly in armored LCT's and various types of support craft, many of which were to be

converted from LCT's. Before widening

the assault front, as Churchill had suggested and as the British Chiefs proposed to Washington on 24 September,

General Morgan wanted first to liquidate

the existing deficit, then to strengthen

the assault on the front then planned.

On 30 September Morgan explained

his ideas to the British Chiefs in detail.

He reminded them that the assault lift

promised him at TRIDENT "bore little or

no relation as to numbers and types to

the actual requirements of the proposed

operation." To mount the initial assault

with this allotment would be barely possible, and then only by skimping dangerously on the immediate follow-up.

Two divisions, which for lack of assault

lift would have to be preloaded in conventional shipping, could not enter the

38

 (1) JPS 270/1, rpt by JWPC, 27 Sep 43, title:

Ldg Cft and Ships, Means of Increasing U.S. Production. (2) JAdC 56/1, 13 Oct 43. (3) MFR to Msg,

Morgan for Barker, 6 Nov 43, OPD 560 Security II,

Case 102. (4) ONI 226, Allied Landing Craft and

Ships, 7 Apr 44.

39

 (1) Quotation from Memo, Vice Chief of Navy

Staff, 22 Sep 43, sub: Availability of LCT for OVERLORD. (2) Notes on Br COS Mtg for COSSAC, dated

4 Oct 43. Both in SHAEF SGS 560, vol. I. (3) M. M.

Postan, "History of the Second World War, United

Kingdom Civil Series," British War Production

(London: Her Majesty's Stationery Office, 1952), pp.

292-93.
SHIPS, LANDING CRAFT, AND STRATEGY 263

battle until D plus 2. As a result, D plus

1 would be "a very lean day," and the

recent Salerno landings had shown the

risks of a weak follow-up. To widen the

planned front, whether westward into

the swampy coastland of the Cotentin or

eastward toward the guns of Le Havre,

Morgan thought would be a grave error.

Instead, he wanted more lift to flesh out

the D plus 1 follow-up—as he put it, to

stock the "back premises" rather than

the "shop window." After this had been

done, an extra assault-loaded division

to be used as a floating reserve would be

more than welcome. To improve the

assault as he proposed would require,

over and above the lift originally allotted, 18 LST's, 251 LCT's, 108 support

craft, and 6 small combat loaders; to

mount an extra division would add another 21 LST's, 138 LCT's, 18 LCI (L)'s,

80 support craft, and 9 combat loaders.40

(Table 22)

While not wholly convinced by Morgan's arguments as to the form the assault should take, the British Chiefs did

not question the need for more lift. In

view of the bleak prospects for expanding British production, they decided

early in October to send Morgan himself

to Washington to plead his own case.

There seemed to be more than a faint

hope, indeed, that the Americans' resistance to increasing their own production

of landing craft might at last be weakening. In a recent chat with Donald Nelson, Chairman of the U.S. War Production Board, then visiting in England,

Morgan had received a distinct impression, he reported, "that we could obtain

more craft from the United States." Actually, Nelson had already, on 27 September, cabled an urgent message to

Wilson of the WPB:

I am convinced that landing craft, especially LCT and LST types, are the most

important single implement of war in the

European theater. The requirements have

been grossly underestimated, in my opinion. The whole landing craft program should

without fail be advanced at least one

month. My conviction is that 25,000 or more

lives depend on our doing this. Do everything possible to investigate this program

at once. My suggestion would be to secure

the best production man you can get to

speed up the production of landing craft

with the objective of stimulating even more

. . . the step-up of one month.41

In Washington Navy officials whom

Wilson approached with his chief's anxious message already knew, from the report of the JWPC submitted on 27 September, that the expanded landing craft

production ordered three weeks earlier

held no promise for OVERLORD and that

any substantial increase in output before spring was considered unlikely. Wilson accordingly got no encouragement

and little or no information. "No one in

the lower echelon," stated one Navy official after more than a week of fruitless

inquiries from WPB, "is competent to

40

 (1) Memo, Morgan for Secy Br COS, 30 Sep 43,

sub: Sup of Ldg Cft for Opn OVERLORD, OPD 560

Security II, Case 62. (2) Memo, COSSAC for Secy

CsofS, 10 Sep 43, sub: Ldg Cft for OVERLORD, with

related papers in SHAEF SGS 560, vol. I. (3) The

British Chiefs' proposal to the JCS to add an extra

division is in Msg OZ 2915, Br COS to Britman

Wash, 24 Sep 43, ibid.

41

 (1) State Dept Msg 6463, Nelson for Wilson

(Reed to Stettinius, OLLA), 27 Sep 43, OPD 561,

Sec I, Case 14. (2) Memo, Morgan for Nelson, 29

Sep 43, sub: Re-estimate of Reqmts of Ships and

Craft for OVERLORD. (3) Min, 236th mtg Br COS, 3

Oct 43; 237th mtg, 5 Oct 43. (4) Memo for COSSAC,

unsigned, 4 Oct 43. Last three in SHAEF SGS 560,

vol. I.
264 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

TABLE 22—REQUIREMENTS VERSUS ALLOCATIONS, ASSAULT SHIPPING FOR OVERLORD

30 SEPTEMBER 1943

a

 Includes 2 British, 1 U.S. divisions, Commandos, and Rangers. Serviceability factors applied: assumed 90 percent of available LST's,

85 percent of landing craft, and 100 percent of all other ships and craft serviceable on D-day. b

 Includes LSI(L)'s. LSI(M)'s, LSP's, LSI(S)'s, LSI(H)'s, and LSH's. c

The additional division, whether British or U.S., was to have 1 LSH. A U.S. division would have 2 LSI(L)'s, besides the 6 APA's

noted; a British division would require 8 LSl(L)'s to carry support craft. d

 Includes LCF's, LCG(L)'s, LCG(M)'s, LCG'(Spec), LCS(L)'s, LCS(M)'s, LCS(S)'s. See note f. e

 Included a deficit of 72 LCG(L)'s, LCG(M)'s, and LCF's, partly offset by surplus in LCS types. f

 Rocket launching LCT's listed separately for no apparent reason. g

 Includes LCVP's, LCP(L)'s, LCP(R)'s, LCP(L)'s Smoke, LCA(H)'s.

Source: Table attached to Memo, Gen Morgan for Secy COS, 30 Sep 43. OPD 560 Security II. Case 62.

give you the material to answer the

cable."42

One possible reason for the Navy officials' evasiveness was that the staffs were

still awaiting the JAdC study, ordered

a month before, on the feasibility of further increases in landing craft production. After several extensions of the deadline, the study at last appeared on 13

October. The committee had reversed

its earlier verdict. A 35 percent increase

over the basic program, it now reported,

would be perfectly feasible, the chief

condition being a prompt expansion of

diesel engine production, and steps were

already being taken to do this. Since the

42

 Quoted from Ltr, L. W. Powell to C. E. Wilson,

8 Oct 43, in Mowry, Landing Craft and the War

Production Board, pp. 29-30.

outlook for steel had improved, the impact on other programs would be less

severe than had been expected: the Navy

would lose 29 more destroyer escorts,

the Maritime Commission one more Liberty ship, the Army about 2,000 trucks

it had already decided were not needed

anyway. The cost, an OPD officer commented, would not be heavy "compared

to the strategic importance of the landing craft program."43

 Certainly the proposed program promised an impressive

yield. The 35 percent increase in numbers of craft to be produced per month

amounted to a 57 percent increase in

gross tonnages over the basic program.

Also LST production would rise to 28

43

 OPD Notes on JCS 120th Mtg, 26 Oct 43, ABC

561 (30 Aug 43).
SHIPS, LANDING CRAFT, AND STRATEGY 265

per month, LCI (L) 's to 27 per month,

LCT(6)'s to 41 per month, the new

LCT (7) 's to 35 per month and a total

of 132 by the end of 1944.44

Like its predecessor, the new program

smiled upon the Pacific war and turned

its back upon Europe. Little increase in

production was expected before mid1944; of the types critical for OVERLORD

only two LST's and 17 LCT (6) 's could

be expected by March. When General

Handy, looking over the JAdC report,

wondered whether it would "do OVERLORD any good," he was told "not much."

OPD's chief logistical officer explained:

No matter what our efforts, no appreciable change in OVERLORD availability can

be expected at this late date. Any drive on

one type craft, for example LCT (5), would

affect our total program in favor of a craft

that now has limited use.45

The JAdC report of 13 October thus

appeared to rule out the only likely

means of providing more craft for

OVERLORD. Exploration of other sources,

prompted by the British Chiefs' proposals on 24 September to mount another

U.S. division in the assault, had been no

more productive. On 1 October the Joint

War Plans Committee had emphatically

rejected diversions from the Pacific or

Southeast Asia and affirmed that only

in the Mediterranean could significant

numbers of craft be found to strengthen

OVERLORD, and then only by sacrificing

the planned southern France landings in

spring 1944. Even this would not release

enough craft to meet Morgan's bill of

requirements for an improved and enlarged assault.46

Although the Army members of the

JWPC presumably went along with the

verdict, it did not pass unchallenged in

the Army staff. Col. George A. Lincoln,

soon to become deputy chief of OPD's

influential Strategy and Policy Group,

objected particularly to the implication

that resources allotted for operations in

the Pacific and even for the still embryonic southern France project could not

be touched without "disrupting" approved strategy. While the demands of

the Pacific war had multiplied, OVERLORD had been held to an assault shipping budget that was demonstrably obsolete, even though OVERLORD was supposed to be the supreme effort against

Germany and the defeat of Germany had

been accorded primacy over the defeat

of Japan. OVERLORD, according to the

JWPC, had been allotted enough resources to give it a "reasonable chance

of success." Should not OVERLORD be

allotted, Lincoln demanded, all it needed "to give assurance of success"? "The

U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff," he declared,

"cannot face history if OVERLORD is a

failure or only a bloody partial success."47

General Marshall was sufficiently worried over the OVERLORD assault about

44 this time to consider supporting WPB's (1) JAdC 56/1, 13 Oct 43, JLC 12, 20 Oct 43,

same title (a slightly revised version of JAdC 56/1).

(2) Memo, A. D. Douglas and Capt Donald R.

Osborn, Jr. for Adm Bieri, 13 Oct 43. (3) Memo, Gen

Hugh C. Minton, Dir Production ASF, for OPD,

8 Nov 43, and OPD MFR, 22 Nov 43. All in ABC

561 (30 Aug 43). 45

 (1) Paper by Gen Tansey on JCS 462/4, 26 Oct

43, OPD Exec 9, Book 13, Case 51. (2) Memo, A. D.

Douglas and Capt Osborn for Adm Bieri, 13 Oct 43.

46

 (1) JPS 228/4, rpt by JWPC, 1 Oct 44, title:

OVERLORD Assault. (2) JPS 228/5, 7 Oct 43, same

title. Both in ABC 384 (9 Jul 43), Sec 1. 47

 (1) Memo, Col Lincoln for Col Roberts, 18 Oct

43, sub: OVERLORD Assault. (2) OPD Notes on JPS

105th Mtg, 6 Oct 43. Both in ABC 384 (9 Jul 43),

Sec 1.
266 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

efforts to persuade the Navy to accelerate production of landing craft, but

apparently decided finally not to do so.

Lincoln's suggestion that the Navy

should give up some of the craft earmarked for the Pacific was not pressed.

At least a few OPD officers felt that too

much was being made of the problem.

"Landing craft alone cannot win the

war," one observed. "There will never

be enough . . . and any increase must

necessarily be an increase within a balanced program."48

In any case, the final JPS draft reply

to the British Chiefs' recommendations

for enlarging the OVERLORD assault was

an even more forceful statement of Navy

views than had been the JWPC's report

three weeks earlier. Whether more landing craft should be taken from the Mediterranean to reinforce OVERLORD should,

the JPS paper suggested, be left for the

OVERLORD commander to decide. A few

craft might be scraped together from

the Middle East, training pools, and

other "miscellaneous sources." But no

further benefit for OVERLORD could be

expected from new production, and any

diversions at the expense of the Pacific

would "require a major modification of

plans for prosecution of the war against

Japan and . . . involve political and

psychological considerations of grave importance to the Nation. This source is

therefore rejected." The JCS concurred,

and the British Chiefs were so informed

on 23 October. On 26 October the JCS

approved the 35 percent increase in the

landing craft program and just two weeks

later its companion piece, the combat

loader program, was also approved.49

Thus, at the end of October 1943

there seemed no reasonable ground for

hope that the OVERLORD assault could

be strengthened. General Morgan, who

had arrived in Washington early in the

month with high expectations, soon

found himself uncomfortably situated

as he later put it "between the millstones

of interservice politics," his pleas for

more American landing craft answered

by pointed queries about restrictions on

British production. He suspected, he

wrote General Barker, that "if sufficiently powerful pressure was applied at the

right spot, U.S. landing craft production

. . . [could] in fact be increased," but

he had been unable to find "just exactly

whence to have this pressure applied."

Nelson's earlier "optimistic gestures,"

Morgan was forced to conclude, had

been illusory; the only hope for a stronger assault for OVERLORD seemed to lie in

postponing the target date. Wilson's inquiries, which had been reinforced by

representations from U.S. Ambassador

John G. Winant in London, continued

to draw noncommittal replies; "no decision has been arrived at as to ... our

potentialities . . . for acceleration of

these programs," he informed Nelson

on 27 October, the day after the adverse

JCS decision on these same potentialities. Nelson apparently learned the bad

news a few days later when he returned

from London. On 2 November he cautiously reported to the WPB that "an

advance of one month [in landing craft

48

 (1) OPD MFR, 1 Oct 43. (2) Memo, Lt Col

Edward B. Gallant for Gen Handy, 18 Oct 43, sub:

Ldg Cft Production Program. Both in OPD 561,

vol. I, Case 14.

49(1) JCS 449/1, 18 Oct 43, rpt by JPS, title:

OVERLORD Assault. (2) Min, 119th mtg JCS (suppl),

19 Oct 43; min, 120th mtg, 26 Oct 43. (3) Min, 107th

mtg JPS, 17 Oct 43. (4) Msg JSM 1272, Britman

Wash to London, 23 Oct 43, SHAEF SGS 560, vol. I.
SHIPS, LANDING CRAFT, AND STRATEGY 267

production] may be too much to expect."50

For understandable reasons the JCS

had no wish to inform the Russians of

this blow to OVERLORD'S prospects. At

the Moscow Foreign Ministers Conference in October, in fact, Maj. Gen. John

R. Deane, the American military representative, played up the new landing

craft program as the best proof the Western Allies could offer of their firm intention to go through with the cross-Channel invasion. Deane declared to the

Soviet representatives:

The effects of such a readjustment [in

production] are felt not only in England

but throughout the breadth of the United

States including the California coast. Such

a change in production affects the shipyards

along the coast and the engine manufac- turers in the Middle West. It is inconceivable that such a dislocation of industry

would be permitted if the intention to

launch the operation was questionable.51

This was on 20 October, the day after

the JCS had discussed the JWPC report

on the implications of the new program

and had decided to tell the British that

no more landing craft would be forthcoming for OVERLORD.

A little more than two weeks later

Admiral King, without warning, reversed that same verdict—at least in principle. On 5 November, while the CCS

were discussing the retention of LST's

in the Mediterranean, he abruptly announced that during the coming six

months, over and above previously scheduled shipments, he would send 23 LST's,

24 LCI (L) 's, and 24 LCT's to the United Kingdom for OVERLORD.52

 For the

LST's and LCI (L) 's these were roughly

the equivalent of the one month's extra

output (at current levels) that Nelson

had asked for. Whether it represented

an unexpected windfall in production

or was a belated concession by the Navy

to the pressures to increase the OVERLORD lift can only be conjectured. Whatever the reason, the Bureau of Ships

now was predicting a somewhat larger

output than had been estimated two

weeks earlier — more than enough of

LCI (L) 's and LCT's to permit the modest addition to OVERLORD allocations.

Production of these craft had shot ahead

of even the Navy's incentive schedules

for three months past. The 24 LCI (L) 's

would only partly restore the cut in the

U.S. allocation of this type of vessel made

5 0 (1)Lt. Gen. Sir Frederick Morgan, Overture to

Overlord (New York: Doubleday and Company, Inc.,

1950), pp. 204, 206. (2) Ltr, Morgan to Barker, 28

Oct 43, quoted in Harrison, Cross-Channel Attack,

p. 105. (3) Paper by Gen Tansey, 26 Oct 43, OPD

Exec 9, Book 13, Case 51. (4) Msg, Wilson to Reed

(London), 27 Oct 43, quoted in Mowry, Landing

Craft and the War Production Board, p. 30. (5) Min,

72d mtg WPB, 2 Nov 43, in Civilian Production

Administration, Minutes of the War Production

Board, January 20, 1942 to October 9, 1945, Historical Report No. 4 (Washington, 1946), p. 287. 51

 (1) Rcd of mtg of Tripartite Conf . . . Moscow,

20 Oct 43, OPD Exec 5, Item 12. (2) At the Tehran

Conference American representatives made substantially the same claim. See Min of Mil Mtg (EUREKA),

29 Nov 43.

52

 (1) Min, 126th mtg CCS, 5 Nov 43. (2) Memo,

Adm King for Comdr 12th Fleet, 5 Nov 43, sub:

BOLERO Ldg Cft Schedule, ABC 561 (31 Aug 43),

Sec 1-B. The shipment schedule was as follows:
268 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

at QUADRANT, but they more than covered the requirements recently laid down

by the OVERLORD planners. As for LCT's,

the problem was not one of production

but one of shipment. LCT's shipped to

the United Kingdom either had to go

"piggy-back" on LST's or be broken

into sections and loaded on freighters.

Many LCT's were constructed in the

Middle West, and freezing weather

would prevent much of the winter output from being moved over inland waterways to Atlantic ports. LCT's, the

Navy said, were available for OVERLORD

if they could be moved.53

The outlook for LST's was less promising. October deliveries had taken a

sharp dip, and the November output

was to continue below that of August

and September. More disturbing was the

lag in Navy contracting. In September

and early October the Navy had canceled more than 300 destroyer escorts

from its building program, releasing

yards that had gained experience the

year before in constructing LST's. But

only one LST contract had been let to

one of these yards (in September, for

25 LST's) ; and no more were to be let

to any of them until December. No deliveries from these yards were expected

before February 1944. The vessels scheduled for delivery through January had

been contracted for no later than June

1943 and most of them many months

earlier.54

Nevertheless, the output of LST's predicted for the winter and early spring

months was slightly higher than that

predicted in August, on which the QUADRANT allocations had been based. Under

the August allocations, OVERLORD had

been slated to get most of the new deliveries in November, December, and

January, then expected to run at about

20 per month; with 3 more LST's from

the Atlantic training pool, this would

have amounted to 62 in all to be shipped

during January, February, and March.

Winter production now (that is, in November) was estimated at 23 or 24 per

month. Admiral King's new schedule

provided for shipment of 83 LST's to

the United Kingdom from December

through April, based mainly on allocations from new production during October, November, December, and January.

The last 5 of the 83, tentatively scheduled for shipment during April, were

not likely to reach the United Kingdom

in time for a 1 May D-day, and for this

reason probably would not be sent; 5

more from March production were not

even included in the shipment schedule.

(Table 23)

Nor had King allotted the entire anticipated winter production of LST's to

OVERLORD. Six were to be converted to

amphibious repair ships (ARL's) destined for use in the Pacific; five more,

from October production, were assigned

to the Central Pacific. The remaining 12

from October deliveries now assigned to

OVERLORD included 10 originally destined at QUADRANT for the Pacific as loss

replacements for the Marshalls operation in January; from November deliveries another LST was similarly diverted.

These diversions evidently were possible

because the Central Pacific had already

received its full quota of allocations, a

month ahead of schedule. In effect, King

53 (1) Notes to Appendixes in Memo, Secy JPS for

listed officers, 6 Nov 43, sub: Preparations for Next

U.S.-Br Staff Conf, ABC 337 (11 Jan 45), Sec 1-A.

(2) Mowry, Landing Craft and the War Production

Board, tables on pp. 28, 72-73. 54

 Mowry, Landing Craft and the War Production

Board, pp. 33-36, and app. B.
SHIPS, LANDING CRAFT, AND STRATEGY 269

TABLE 23—ADMIRAL KING'S BONUS FOR OVERLORD: 5 NOVEMBER 1943

(LST's only)

a

 The remaining 2 from predicted production were allocated to training.

* Shipments normally were made in the second month after delivery. c

 Includes three from training. d

 Actual production was 16, but calculations evidently assumed 17. e

 These S would be too late for an early May D-day. f

 Includes three from training. g

 These S might be too late for an early May D-day.

Source: (1) CCS 329/2, 26 Aug 43, title: Implementation of Assumed Basic Undertakings and Specific Operations for Conduct of the

War, 1943-44, Annex V, app. B. (2) CCS 428 (Rev), 15 Dec 43, title: Relation of Available Resources to Agreed Operations, Annex V.

had added to the three-months' production of LST's already assigned to OVERLORD about two-thirds of the meager October output, now no longer absolutely

essential in the Pacific, plus half of the

small expected increase in production

during the three months following. Together with the accompanying LCT's

and LCI (L) 's, the increases left a deficit,

against General Morgan's latest requirements for a strengthened assault, of 16

LST's, 365 LCT's, 188 support craft,

and 15 combat loaders.55

The net result of American decisions

just before the Cairo Conference to

boost production of both combat loaders and landing craft served mainly to

underwrite the Pacific campaigns after

mid-1944 for which specific strategic

plans did not yet exist. They went far

to assure that the supply of assault ship55

 (1) For QUADRANT schedules and allocations, see

CCS 329/2, 26 Aug 43, Annex V, app. B, especially

Tables I and II, and JPS 228/1, 2 Aug 43, appendixes

and notes. (2) For the 5 November shipment schedule and allocations, see appendixes to Memo, Secy

JPS for listed officers, 6 Nov 43; and CCS 428 (Rev),

15 Dec 43, title: Relation of Available Resources to

Agreed Operations, Annex V. (3) For September

estimates, see above, Table 22, p 264.

Note that the 83 LST's in the new shipment schedule represented an increase of 21, not 23, over the

QUADRANT schedule; evidently the QUADRANT schedule had been cut back in the interim.
270 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

ping would be no barrier to a vast acceleration of the Pacific war in that period,

even if the war in Europe did not end in

the meantime.

If Admiral King's belated concession

of craft for OVERLORD involved some

small encroachment upon Pacific interests, it still fell far short of meeting General Morgan's stated requirements for

an enlarged OVERLORD assault. With the

additional prospect that LST's would be

tied up in Italy well beyond their scheduled dates of departure for the United

Kingdom, the assault shipping situation

alone argued for a postponement of

OVERLORD beyond the 1 May target date.

New U.S. production schedules promised more craft by June or July—but not

by May. Another month or two would

permit use of the LST's in the Mediterranean to complete the build-up of supplies in Italy and exploitation of opportunities for amphibious landings in the

rear of the Germans. The situation, like

the rate of the BOLERO build-up, constituted a basic handicap for the American staffs going to the conferences at

Cairo and Tehran with instructions to

insist on a May target date for OVERLORD.
CHAPTER XI

The Cairo-Tehran Conference

In early November 1943 preparations

in Washington and London for the

forthcoming conferences at Cairo and

Tehran (SEXTANT-EUREKA) were drawing to a close.1

 Tension between the two

Western Allies arising from their longstanding and recently aggravated differences over European strategy mounted

to a dangerous pitch. The reaction in

London to the twin crises in Italy and

the Aegean has been noted earlier.2 The

worsening situation in the Mediterranean, combined with Washington's refusal to consent to the emergency measures the British proposed to meet it,

had produced among the British leaders

not merely resentment, but a hardening

determination to do something about it.

"We are now beginning to see the full

beauty of the Marshall strategy," Sir

Alan Brooke bitterly noted in his diary.

"It is quite heart-breaking when we see

what we might have done this year if

our strategy had not been distorted by

the Americans."3 The British Chiefs of

Staff served notice on Washington that

at the forthcoming conferences they intended to bring to a head the whole

issue of the relation between current

operations in the Mediterranean and the

various preparatory deployments and redeployments for OVERLORD agreed upon

at Quebec in August. They then drew

up a careful statement of their position

on OVERLORD and Mediterranean strategy, together with a set of proposals for

action in the Mediterranean theater to

be placed before the Americans at the

conference. To these proposals, which

were fully expected to produce a showdown, perhaps even a crisis in Allied

relations, the Prime Minister gave his

hearty endorsement.4

In Washington a similar mood prevailed. General Morgan, who had been

exposed to it during his recent visit,

warned his superiors in London of

"American indignation at certain trends

1

 The meetings were held from 22 November

through 7 December 1943. Roosevelt and Churchill

met at Cairo (22-27 November) for the first time in

a formal conference with the President of China,

Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek. At Tehran (28

November-1 December) they met for the first time

with Marshal Stalin. From 2-7 December the Western leaders held additional conferences at Cairo.

For preparations for these conferences, see Matloff,

Strategic Planning, 1943-44, Chapter XV, and

Churchill, Closing the Ring, Chapter 17. For discussions of grand strategy see Matloff, Strategic

Planning, 1943-44, Chapter XVI; Ehrman, Grand

Strategy V, 155-202; Richard M. Leighton, "OVERLORD Versus the Mediterranean at the Cairo-Tehran

Conferences," in Greenfield, ed., Command Decisions,

pp. 255-85; and Leighton, "OVERLORD Revisited: An

Interpretation of American Strategy in the European

War 1942-1944," American Historical Review,

LXVIII, 4 (July. 1963), 919-37. 2

 See above, ch. IX.

3

 Diary entry for 25 Oct 43, quoted in Arthur

Bryant, Triumph in the West, copyright 1959 by

Arthur Bryant, p. 36. This and later quotations

from this book are reprinted by permission of

Doubleday & Company, Inc. See also pp. 30-44. 4

 Ehrman, Grand Strategy V, 118-21.
272 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

in Allied strategy in the Mediterranean."5

 The feeling was hardly new, but

it was more intense than before and it

colored American attitudes toward the

substantive issues to a degree not evident

in earlier pre-conference periods when

essentially the same issues had been on

the block. American indignation had

developed from a rankling suspicion,

quickened by British actions and attitudes since midsummer, that the British

secretly intended somehow to sidetrack,

weaken, or indefinitely postpone OVERLORD, subordinating it to peripheral and

indecisive ventures in the Mediterranean

that would serve their own long-range

political purposes. Now, at long last, the

true aims of the British seemed about

to come out in the open. Not only the

sharpness of British reaction to the crisis

in Italy, but, even more, the readiness

with which they sought to link the fortunes of OVERLORD with the developing

situation in the Mediterranean, combined with the ominous warning that

the issue would be raised at Cairo and

Tehran, seemed to leave no room for

doubt that the whole OVERLORD-centered

strategy was under attack. And, for all

the misgivings the prospect inspired in

Washington, the staffs faced the showdown boldly and with feeling akin to

relief.6

Perfidious Albion and

Inscrutable Ivan

In the Army staff, which since the days

of the old ROUNDUP plan had felt a

strong paternal attachment to the crossChannel invasion concept, the sense of

impending crisis was particularly intense. OVERLORD was considered the

legitimate offspring and reincarnation

of ROUNDUP, and for the Army staff had

become a symbol of the American way

in war and of the dominant doctrines

of American strategic thinking—the direct approach, the power drive, the setpiece attack, meticulous preparation and

massive logistical support—the antithesis

of the opportunism and indirection that

the Americans believed to be the British

way. OVERLORD seemed to promise an

escape from the involutions of Mediterranean strategy and the quicksands of

Mediterranean politics, a means of forcing the war in Europe to a climax and

quick victory, thus enabling the United

States to turn its full power against

Japan. The expectation of an attack on

the OVERLORD strategy was in itself sufficient to arouse strong emotions.7

Behind this feeling lay two and a half

years of growing distrust of British motives, embittered by the pent-up impatience and frustration growing out of

a drift of events in the European war

that seemed somehow usually to have

acceded to British aims and perhaps even

responded to British manipulation. According to this view, reflected in various

staff studies and position papers drawn

up in preparation for the forthcoming

conferences, Churchill had been the real

architect and Roosevelt only a pawn in

the postponement of the cross-Channel

invasion in summer of 1942, in violation of British pledges made in April.

As a consequence, invasion preparations 5

 (1) Ltr, Barker to Handy, 17 Nov 43, Exec 5,

Item 15, folder 3, Case E20. (2) See above, ch. X. 6

 See, for example, OPD Draft Memo, CofS for

President, 8 Nov 43, sub: Conduct of European

War, OPD Exec 9, Book 13, Case 81.

7 The following analysis is based largely on staff

papers in ABC 381 Strategy Sec Papers (7 Jan 43),

131-59 and 160-95.
THE CAIRO-TEHRAN CONFERENCE 273

had been suspended, the British Isles

stripped of U.S. troops, and U.S. resources diverted, with attendant confusion and waste, into the development of

a new line of communications and a new

invasion base in North Africa. At Casablanca, in this retrospective view, the

British had maneuvered the Americans

into new decisions ensuring that the

Mediterranean area would continue to

be the main theater of the European war

and that no cross-Channel invasion could

be attempted until 1944 at the earliest.

Since then British persuasion and the ineluctable logic of momentum had drawn

the Allies ever deeper into the Mediterranean—from Tunisa into Sicily, Italy,

Sardinia, Corsica, the Dodecanese. The

drain of resources into the region at the

expense of the lagging invasion preparations in the British Isles had gone on

unabated, and a long, costly uphill

struggle had still to be fought in Italy.

Most alarming to the Army staff were

the persistent British attempts to broaden the Mediterranean front eastward—

by pressure on Turkey to enter the war,

by proposals to seize ports on the Dalmatian coast and to step up aid to the

Balkan guerrillas, and by the recent, illstarred incursion into the Dodecanese.

Apart from the strategic eccentricity of

this eastward orientation, it raised in

American minds the specter of military

operations and political involvement in

the Balkans, a land of inhospitable terrain, primitive communications, and

turbulent peoples. Aversion to "Balkan

ventures," a term often applied indiscriminately in staff papers to any proposed undertaking in the eastern Mediterranean, colored the Army staff's approach to the whole question of Mediterranean strategy.

In its present frame of mind the Army

staff was inclined to gloss over or ignore

many aspects of Anglo-American collaboration since Pearl Harbor. Staff papers

reviewing the history of that collaboration made no mention of British efforts

late in 1942 to keep alive the American

invasion build-up in the British Isles at

a time when the Americans seemed willing to let it die, of the rise in British

production of landing craft during the

first half of 1943 while U.S. output declined, of the assignment to OVERLORD

of surplus British landing craft in the

Mediterranean while surplus American

craft were retained for possible landings

in southern France, of persistent British

efforts against American opposition to

strengthen the planned cross-Channel assault, or of the immense investment the

British had already poured into the invasion preparations. Above all, the staff

tended to ignore the implications of the

full mobilization of British manpower,

which made imperative a major effort to

defeat Germany in 1944 because thereafter the scale of Britain's war effort

must inevitably diminish.8 In the eyes

of the Army staff, the British attitude

toward the BOLERO program during the

past year and a half appeared "indifferent" and "cool" in contrast to their "enthusiasm" for Mediterranean operations

and their "alacrity and resourcefulness"

in seeking to increase the forces in that

theater.9

8

(1) See Leighton and Coakley, Global Logistics,

1940-43, pp. 482-86, and above, chs. VII-X. (2) Ehrman. Grand Strategy V, 42-47. 9

 (1)OPD Draft Memo, CofS for President, 8 Nov

43. (2) SS 180, 7 Nov 43, U.N. Overall Strategy in

Europe-Africa Area, ABC 381 Strategy Sec Papers

(7 Jan 43) 160-95, Tab 180. (3) OPD paper [circa

12 Nov 43], Course of Action at SEXTANT, OPD Exec

9, Book 13, Case 119. (4) Greenfield, American Strategy in World War II: A Reconsideration, pp. 41-45.
274 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

The Army staff therefore discounted

heavily the assurances of British leaders,

from Churchill on down, that they fully

intended to go through with the crossChannel invasion, and branded as disingenuous the rationale of their Mediterranean strategy as essential to the success

of OVERLORD. In the context of this belief, British references to the conditions

in the OVERLORD plan stipulating that the

operation should not be undertaken if

German strength in the West rose above

certain levels seemed to take on an ominous significance—even though the U.S.

Chiefs of Staff had themselves accepted

the conditions along with the plan.

Churchill's insistence upon these conditions at Quebec caused particular concern. "The British," one staff paper observed, "always extremely cool toward

OVERLORD, have repeatedly stated the

conditions which must exist before

OVERLORD can be mounted. They feel

that it is doubtful that all of these conditions will be met."10

Behind the British reservations, it was

widely believed, lurked a fear of coming

to grips with the German Army on

ground of its own choosing, a desire to

wait until the process of defeat and exhaustion on other fronts crumbled the

defenses of western Europe from within.

OVERLORD would then be replaced by

RANKIN—a mop-up action, or, in the

President's words, "a railroad invasion."11

 An Anglophobe minority on

the Army staff had become convinced

that British leaders were deliberately

plotting to create a situation in which

abandonment, dilution, or indefinite

postponement of the cross-Channel operation would appear to be unavoidably

dictated by circumstances. The Western

Allies' contribution to the war against

Hitler would be limited to strategic air

bombardment and indecisive ground operations along the southern periphery

of Europe, leaving to the Russians the

task, for which they had displayed such

talent, of crushing the German Army.

Those who held this view of British intentions accepted also its corollaries —

that the British were willing to gamble

in Europe against the near certainties

of slowing momentum, drag-out, even

stalemate; and that, in order to hoodwink their allies, they were prepared to

see the great invasion build-up in the

British Isles carried to completion, with

attendant deprivation of the war against

Japan, even though in the end the whole

massive effort would go for naught. Staff

papers foretold the eventual role of the

invasion forces in hyperbolically gloomy

terms: "a gigantic deception plan and

an occupying force"—or "a huge military

force that is to sit idle awaiting either

the achievement of military victory by

our Russian allies, or the success of a

gamble on political and psychological

disintegration within the German citadel of Europe."12

In the midst of these forebodings, the

Washington staffs in the second week of

November received a rude shock. Gen10

 SS 180, 7 Nov 43. 1 1 (1)Ibid. (2) OPD Paper [circa 12 Nov 43],

Course of Action at SEXTANT. (3) SS 133/3, 4 Nov 43,

Survey of Conditions Prerequisite to Launching of

OVERLORD, ABC 381 Strategy Sec Papers (7 Jan 43)

131-59, Tab 133/3. (4) OPD Paper [circa 12 Nov 43],

U.S. Courses of Action in Case SEXTANT Decisions

Do Not Guarantee OVERLORD, OPD Exec 5, Item 12a.

(5) JCS 533/6, 16 Nov 43, rpt by JPS, title: Recommended Line of Action. ... (6) For Roosevelt's remark see Min, 124th mtg JCS, 17 Nov 43. 12

 (1) OPD Paper [circa 12 Nov 43], sub: U.S. Course

of Action. ... (2) OPD Draft Memo, CofS for President, 8 Nov 43.
THE CAIRO-TEHRAN CONFERENCE 275

eral Deane, who had stayed behind at

Moscow after the Foreign Ministers Conference to head the U.S. Military Mission, had been puzzling over the strange

behavior of the Russians—their casual

acceptance of the possibility of a postponement of OVERLORD, their lively interest in current and proposed operations in the Mediterranean, their attempt to force Turkey into the war.

Deane's uneasiness increased when Soviet military representatives, while showing little concern for OVERLORD, complained bitterly that the Allies were dragging their feet in the Mediterranean,

whence the Germans had recently transferred some divisions to the Eastern

Front. These signs persuaded Deane that

the Russians, as he notified his superiors

on 9 November, "want to end the war

quickly and feel they can do it." He

concluded that they were less interested

in OVERLORD, six months distant, than

in immediate action to draw German

strength from the Eastern Front. Deane

warned that at the forthcoming conference the Russians might demand a greater effort in Italy and "some venture in

the Balkans," even if it meant delaying

OVERLORD.

 13

Deane's prediction, even though labeled as only an "impression," added

to the disquiet already aroused in Washington by indications of a hardening

British attitude. Taken together, they

conjured up a nightmarish vision of a

joint Russian and British demand at

Tehran for a major shift to the Mediterranean — or, worse, to the eastern

Mediterranean—at the expense of the

cross-Channel invasion.14 There was a

flurry of staff activity. Old staff studies

on Balkan operations were resurrected

and new ones prepared. All of them led

to the familiar conclusions, summed up

in a recommendation already made to

the President just before the arrival of

Deane's message, that "the Balkan-Eastern Mediterranean approach to the European Fortress is unsuitable," and that

no additional Allied resources should be

committed to that region even to secure

Turkish intervention.15

Facing what threatened to be the major crisis in Allied strategy since the

ARCADIA Conference almost two years

earlier, the Army staff was resolute but

pessimistic. Through the studies prepared for General Marshall on the eve

of the Cairo-Tehran conferences ran one

dominant theme: the unacceptable strategic consequences and logistical costs

of shifting the main effort in 1944 to

the Mediterranean. In the present advanced state of preparations for OVERLORD, General Marshall told the President on the way to Cairo, such a reorientation would leave more than a million

tons of American war materiel stocked

in the United Kingdom and would disrupt an administrative apparatus reaching all the way back to the Rocky Moun13

 (1) Msg 51, 9 Nov 43, Deane to JCS, and related

papers in OPD Exec 5, Item 15, Envelope 3. (2)

Deane, Strange Alliance, p. 35. (3) Churchill, Closing

the Ring, pp. 286-89. (4) Cordell Hull, The Memoirs of Cordell Hull, 2 vols. (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1948), II, 1301. (5) Ehrman, Grand

Strategy V, 100-01, 156-57. (6) Matloff, Strategic

Planning, 1943-44, pp. 303-05. (7) Harrison, CrossChannel Attack, note 143, p. 121.

14

 See Memo, Col Lincoln for CofS, 10 Nov 43,

sub: Msg from Gen Deane . . . , ABC 381 Strategy

Sec Papers (7 Jan 43) 160-95, Tab 181/1. 15

 (1) Memo, Adm Leahy for President, 9 Nov 43,

sub: U.N. Strategy in Balkan-E Mediterranean

Region, OPD Exec 9, Book 13. (2) JCS 558, 1 Nov

43, and JCS 558/1, 5 Nov 43, same title. (3) See also

studies and corresp on Balkan operations in ABC

381 Strategy Sec Papers (7 Jan 43) 160-95, and in

OPD Exec 9, Book 13.
276 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

tains — without producing any decisive

military results or even assured help to

the Russians.16

Curiously enough, however, the American staffs explored no alternative

courses of action (other than a shift to

the Pacific) or possible bases for compromise with the British and Russians.

In particular they appear to have made

no examination of the contingency of

which the British Chiefs had given clear

forewarning: a proposal for a short postponement of OVERLORD, with its possible

advantages in terms of added time for

transatlantic deployment of troops, materiel, and, above all, assault shipping.

To the expected Anglo-Soviet proposals the Army staff had, in fact, only

one recommended answer: abandon

OVERLORD, continue strategic bombing

against Germany and limited offensives

in the Mediterranean, and go all out in

the Pacific. The pessimism of the staffs

apparently infected their chiefs. In the

final shipboard conferences with the

President en route to Cairo, the JCS

spoke almost as though British proposals

for an invasion of the Balkans were already before them. General Marshall

told the President:

We have to see this Balkan matter finished up ... the British might like to ditch

OVERLORD at this time in order to undertake operations in a country with practically no communications. If they insist on

any such proposal we could say that... we

will pull out and go into the Pacific with

all our forces.17

In their formal position on the strategy of the European war for 1944, then,

the U.S. Chiefs of Staff stood pat on the

basic grand design centering in OVERLORD with a 1 May 1944 target date as

"the primary U.S.-British ground and

air effort against Germany," preceded by

the final phases of the combined bomber

offensive, intensifying according to plan.

Emphasis on the role of air power was

made even more explicit than heretofore. OVERLORD'S principal objective was

stated to be to secure the Channel ports

and to establish bases for Allied air

power on the Continent, preparatory to

launching a major air offensive "designed to precipitate the collapse of enemy resistance prior to a general assault

on the hostile ground forces in the advance into the heart of Germany." Balanced forces were to be held in readiness

for a quick move across the Channel before D-day if the opportunity presented.

With respect to the Mediterranean,

the U.S. Chiefs reaffirmed the principles

of limited liability and subordination to

OVERLORD: in Italy maximum pressure

with forces already allocated in order to

create conditions favorable to OVERLORD

and an "eventual" entry into southern

France; in the eastern Mediterranean no

further operations other than minor

commando raids, bombing of selected

targets, and supply of guerrilla forces,

"so long ... as the present strategic situation in this area remains substantially

16

 (1) Min, JCS mtg with President [on USS Iowa],

19 Nov 43, OPD Exec 2, Item 11. (2) OPD Paper,

11 Nov 43, Opns in Mediterranean, ABC 381 Strategy Sec Papers (7 Jan 43) 160-95. (3) JCS 533/7,

18 Nov 43, rpt by JPS, title: Recommended Line of

Action. . . . 17

 (1) Min, JCS mtgs with President, 19 Nov 43

and 15 Nov 43, OPD Exec 2, Item 11. (2) OPD

Paper, 11 Nov 43, Opns in Mediterranean. (3) See

also Memo, Gen Magruder for Chief, Theater Br,

ASF, 8 Nov 43, sub: Plng Data, in folder Prep for

U.S.-Br Stf Conf, SEXTANT, ASF Plng Div. This

memo directed the preparation, on a few hours'

notice, of a staff study on the logistical implications

of a major redeployment to the Pacific beginning

in January 1944.
THE CAIRO-TEHRAN CONFERENCE 277

unchanged." Reflecting the inconclusive

outcome of the recent discussions at Moscow, the U.S. Chiefs recognized the desirability of bringing Turkey into the

war and sanctioned "pressure" to this

end, in collaboration with the USSR,

looking to a Turkish offensive in the

Balkans—but only on condition that it

involved no diversion of Allied resources

that might prejudice success elsewhere.

They reasserted their belief that "the

Balkan-Eastern Mediterranean approach

to the European Fortress is unsuitable,

due to terrain and communication difficulties, for large-scale military operations." As to the division of scarce resources between OVERLORD and the

Mediterranean, they again invoked the

established provisos: resources should be

"distributed and employed with the

main object of insuring the success of

OVERLORD" and operations in the Mediterranean would be limited to forces already allotted "except insofar as these

may be varied by decision of the Combined Chiefs of Staff." Recommendations

on missions, objectives, and operations

in the Mediterranean would be made to

the CCS by the OVERLORD commander,

when appointed, and to the latter by the

Allied commander in the Mediterranean,

when appointed—all with a view to making "the greatest contribution towards

insuring the success of Operation OVERLORD."18

Bush-League Strategy in the

Mediterranean

At Cairo, after some inconclusive discussion of strategy in southeastern Asia

with the Chinese at the early meetings,

the British opened the debate on European strategy on 24 November with a

blunt attack on what their position paper described as American obsession

with the "sanctity of OVERLORD."

We must not. . . regard OVERLORD on a

fixed date as the pivot of our whole strategy

on which all else turns. In actual fact, the

German strength in France next spring may, at one end of the scale, be something which

makes OVERLORD completely impossible,

and, at the other end, something which

makes RANKIN not only practicable, but

essential. Consequently, to assume that the

achievement of a certain strength by a certain date will remove all our difficulties and

result in shortening the duration of the

war is entirely illusory. This policy, if liter- ally interpreted, will inevitably paralyze

action in other theaters without any guarantee of action across the Channel. ... It

is, of course, valuable to have a target date

to which all may work, but we are firmly

opposed to allowing this date to become

our master, and to prevent us from taking

full advantage of all opportunities that

occur to us to follow what we believe to

be the correct strategy.

They were prepared, they asserted, to

carry out the cross-Channel invasion "as

soon as the German strength in France

and the general war situation gives us a

good prospect of success," but they insisted that unless the Allies pursued an

aggressive course of action in the Mediterranean during the coming winter and

18

 (1)CCS 398, memo by U.S. CsofS, 18 Nov 43,

title: Specific Opns for the Defeat of Germany and

Her Satellites 1943-44. The paper also alluded to

plans for operations in collaboration with the USSR

aimed at bringing Sweden into the war in the event

that OVERLORD could not be executed and for coordination with the USSR in other areas. (2) For

an account of negotiations and planning on these

matters at the Moscow Conference and subsequently,

see Matloff, Strategic Planning, 1943-44, pp. 296-99,

and John L. Snell, Illusion and Necessity: The

Diplomacy of Globar War, 1939-45 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1963), pp. 141-42.
278 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

spring, such conditions were unlikely

to develop.19

After this ominous manifesto the program of Mediterranean operations that

it served to introduce was somewhat

anticlimactic. The British proposed that

the Allies should advance in Italy only

as far as the Pisa-Rimini line; extend

more aid to the Balkan partisan forces

in the form of weapons, supplies, technical assistance, and commando raids;

try to bring Turkey into the war before

the end of the year; and, with Turkish

help, capture Rhodes, clear the Aegean,

and open the Dardanelles to Allied shipping. Chastened by their recent setback

in the Aegean, the British made Turkish

intervention a prerequisite for the attack on Rhodes, thus assuring adequate

air cover from the mainland. German

garrisons on other Aegean islands would

be smoked out by air attacks or left to

starve. All forces required, including air,

were already on hand in the Middle East,

and the assault shipping, which would

have to come from the Mediterranean

pool, would be needed for only a short

time.

Beyond Rhodes stretched a vista that

Churchill hoped would attract the Russians. With Allied supplies flowing to

Turkey and through the Straits into the

Black Sea, Allied air squadrons ensconced in Anatolia, and Allied antiaircraft and technical units stiffening

the Turkish army, Turkey might attack

Bulgaria with reasonable hope of success.

Rumania and Hungary, already threatened by the USSR from the northeast,

would be caught in a squeeze, and the

Germans might even have to evacuate

Greece. Allied naval forces would dominate the Black Sea, protecting the flow

of supplies to the Soviet Union—by a

route Churchill described as "far less

costly, far more swift, and far more

abundant than either the Arctic or the

Persian Gulf." To carry out their Mediterranean program the British wanted,

finally, control of the whole region to

be unified under a British commander—

a concession the Americans were already

prepared to make in return for the appointment of a U.S. commander for

OVERLORD.

 20

In short, the British hoped by means

of a major effort in Italy and what Ambassador Winant called "bush-league

tactics" farther east to force the Germans back along the entire Mediterranean front. The Americans reacted with

understandable suspicion, and seriously

discounted the Prime Minister's reckoning that the operations in the eastern

Mediterranean would involve not more

than one-tenth of the combined British

and American strength in the theater.

General Marshall branded the Aegean

venture as both "laborious" and "dangerous,"21

 and General Somervell expressed scepticism of the alleged benefits

of opening the Black Sea route to Russia.22

Nevertheless, the Americans quite evidently had expected far more extrava19

 (1) CCS 409, note by Br COS, 25 Nov 43, title:

OVERLORD and the Mediterranean. (2) Ehrman,

Grand Strategy V, 109-12.

20

 (1) Churchill, Closing the Ring, pp. 346, 371,

686. (2) CCS 409, 23 Nov 43. (3) Matloff, Strategic

Planning, 1943-44, pp. 278-79, 339.

21 Min, 129th mtg JCS, 24 Nov 43. 22(1) JCS 611, rpt by JPS, 26 Nov 43, OVERLORD

and the Mediterranean. (2) Mins, 127th mtg JCS,

22 Nov 43; 132d mtg, 28 Nov 43. (3) Min, 2d Plenary

Mtg, SEXTANT, 24 Nov 43. (4) Ehrman, Grand Strategy V, 104-21, 165-67. (5) CCS 409, 25 Nov 43.
THE CAIRO-TEHRAN CONFERENCE 279

gant demands, and the British were astonished at the mildness of their objections. "We did not meet with half the

reaction we were expecting," Sir Alan

Brooke confided to his diary.23 The

Americans were particularly taken aback

by the limited character of the measures

proposed for the Balkan area, while the

stated objectives of the Italian offensive

coincided generally with those they were

prepared to support. Admiral King's

only reaction to the proposals for Italy

was to remark that, once the Pisa-Rimini

line was reached, the British would

probably change their minds and want

to drive on to the Po.24

Pressure to go beyond the Pisa-Rimini

line in Italy came, not from the British,

but from General Eisenhower, who presented his views to the conference on the

25th and 26th. Eisenhower made it clear

that he still considered the Po Valley the

only logical stopping point in Italy.

From that point, he argued, the Allies

could bomb the industrial heart of Germany, conduct raids into Yugoslavia by

way of islands in the Adriatic, clear the

Aegean, and eventually push on into

France or the valley of the Danube. The

American planners were inclined to favor a sustained offensive in Italy over

one that would have to be cut short in

order to open a new front in the Balkans.25

From the American point of view,

however, the overriding drawback to

both the British program, and even

more, to Eisenhower's scheme (which,

in effect, superimposed upon it a drive

to the Po), was the impact upon OVERLORD that would result from the retention of assault shipping in the Mediterranean. The British timetable—"Rome

in January, Rhodes in February"— terminated in a 1 July OVERLORD. By Eisenhower's own reckoning his program

would delay OVERLORD until 1 August;

the American staff thought it would rule

out a full-scale cross-Channel invasion

in 1944 altogether. Their pessimism on

this score owed something to Eisenhower's own analysis in a recent message of

the immediate outlook for the drive on

Rome, which the JCS had hoped to expedite by their recent acquiescence in

the theater's request for delaying the

departure of the 68 OVERLORD LST's.

It now appeared that the planned amphibious landings south of Rome could

not be launched until the main drive

had reached a point, in the general area

of Frosinone (a little more than halfway between Naples and Rome), from

which it could link up with the beachhead within 48 hours, since winter weather made over-the-beach maintenance

precarious. Field commanders had no

hope of getting so far until mid-December at the earliest, and they were worried over the growing weariness of the

troops. Eisenhower emphasized that an

amphibious hook was the only alternative to exhausting frontal attacks, which

would require more divisions than he

now had and would again, as in the initial build-up in Italy, tie up assault shipping in prolonged ferrying of troops,

vehicles, and supplies. Yet he seemed

not at all confident of carrying off the

operation successfully. "In any event,"

his message had concluded with disturbing ambiguity, "it is essential that these

23 Diary entry, 25 Nov 43, quoted in Bryant,

Triumph in the West, p. 57.

24 Min, JCS mtg, SEXTANT, 26 Nov 43. 25

 (1) Min, 131st mtg CCS, 26 Nov 43. (2) Min,

JCS mtg, SEXTANT, 25 Nov 43. (3) JCS 612, 27 Nov 43.
280 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

LST's remain in the area."26 In his testimony at Cairo he indicated that he

would like to have, over and above the

larger numbers of craft needed for

build-up and maintenance, a full division assault lift constantly on hand to

slash around the enemy's coastal flanks

whenever opportunity offered. Admittedly "not sure of his figures," he said he

would have to keep all this shipping,

along with some additional personnel

transports, "for a considerable part of

the winter ... at least until the end of

January." His staff officers at Cairo, more

cautious, said "indefinitely."27

Regardless of the pros and cons of the

British Mediterranean program, the

Americans bridled at the British Chiefs'

remarks on the "sanctity" of OVERLORD.

The Joint Planners professed astonishment that the British could fail to appreciate "from our common experience

to date that without a target date, firmly and honestly accepted by all, no major operation can be mounted successfully." To them the British attitude

seemed clearly to betray an intention "to

relegate OVERLORD to an operation of

opportunity."28 The Americans had

also, however, to consider an alternative

proposal by the British that held promise of permitting the Rhodes assault

without postponing OVERLORD: namely,

to transfer the needed assault lift from

India at the expense of the planned

Allied offensive in Burma.

Rhodes Versus Buccaneer

At this time (late November) the amphibious phase of the Burma offensive

was still not definitely planned.29 The

general plan (CHAMPION), as submitted

to Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek at

Cairo, was to launch converging drives

into northern and central Burma by

British-Indian forces from the west,

by Stilwell's American-trained Chinese

from the northwest, and by Chiang's own

armies from southern China. Subsidiary

features of the plan included a British

naval demonstration in the Bay of Bengal by fleet units to be released from the

Mediterranean after the surrender of

Italy, and amphibious landings at some

point from which mainland operations

could be supported. Assault shipping for

the landings — 6 attack transports, 18

LST's, and a number of smaller crafthad recently arrived in the theater after

a protracted holdover in the Mediterranean. Churchill meanwhile had

come out strongly for an "Asiatic-style

TORCH" in the form of a surprise descent on the northern tip of Sumatra

(CULVERIN) , which the Americans opposed as eccentric to the main effort and

his own advisers thought would require

more resources than were available. The

commanders in the theater, finally, had

proposed a more modest substitute in

26

 (1) Memo by CinC AFHQ, 22 Nov 43, Incl to

CCS 379/7, 27 Nov 43, title: Retention of LST's in

Mediterranean. (2) Fifth Army History, Part IV,

Cassino and Anzio, pp. 11-12. 27

 (1) Min, 131st mtg CCS, 26 Nov 43; 132 mtg,

30 Nov 43. (2) Min, JCS mtgs, SEXTANT, 24, 25, 26,

28 Nov 43. (3) JCS 611/1, rpt by JLC, 26 Nov 43,

title: OVERLORD and the Mediterranean. (4) Min,

2d Plenary Mtg, SEXTANT, 24 Nov 43. (5) American

and British estimated timetables for Mediterranean

operations and ship movements differed considerably. The U.S. staffs allowed more time for intratheater movement, repairs, and rehearsals attendant

on the Rhodes operation, and less time for passage

to the United Kingdom and training and rehearsals

for OVERLORD, than did the British. 28

 JCS 611, rpt by JPS, title: OVERLORD and the

Mediterranean, app. A. 29 See below, ch. XXI.
THE CAIRO-TEHRAN CONFERENCE 281

the form of landings in the Andaman

Islands, southwest of Rangoon, in March

or April 1944. This operation (BUCCANEER) had been tentatively endorsed

by both the British and the U.S. Chiefs

of Staff, although it, along with the other features of the general plan, still

awaited formal approval at the highest

levels. BUCCANEER was, then, the amphibious part of the general plan

(CHAMPION) submitted to Chiang at

Cairo.30

The plan immediately ran into heavy

weather. Hardly anyone, in fact, had

much enthusiasm for BUCCANEER, except

perhaps Chiang, who had not been informed of its objective but may have

learned of it through private channels;

in any event, while at Cairo he suggested the Andamans as a likely target

for an amphibious operation. The most

serious defect of BUCCANEER was that it

seemed to have little connection with

the mainland operations it was intended

to support, and hardly represented a

threat serious enough to provoke a

strong enemy reaction. The U.S. Chiefs

of Staff preferred it to CULVERIN, but

were not committed to any particular

operation. Admiral King favored a landing on the mainland near Moulmein

with a view to cutting across the isthmus

to Bangkok, but such an undertaking

was not thought feasible with the assault

shipping available. Evidently the most

that could be said for BUCCANEER was that

it would provide a base for future amphibious landings on the mainland and

for bombing the new Bangkok-Moulmein railroad, which gave the Japanese

in Burma direct overland connections

with the Gulf of Thailand.31 Churchill

made no secret of his distaste for BUCCANEER and had earlier declared that if

he could not have CULVERIN he would

send the British assault shipping back

to the Mediterranean. At Cairo he expanded on the idea: If the Americans

would not accept CULVERIN, and if they

refused to postpone OVERLORD the few

weeks necessary to carry out the attack

on Rhodes and move assault shipping

back to the Mediterranean, then why

not take the shipping needed for Rhodes

from southeast Asia? BUCCANEER might

be postponed rather than canceled.

"There really cannot be much hurry,"

he remarked. "The capture of the Andamans is a trivial prize compared with

Rhodes, and also it can be undertaken

at any time later in the year."32

That Churchill was willing to entertain the idea of carrying out BUCCANEER

at all, despite his aversion to it, could

be attributed to the position taken at

Cairo by Chiang Kai-shek. The Generalissimo immediately branded the whole

Burma plan as inadequate. As a price

for his participation in a more ambitious

one, moreover, he demanded an immediate increase in the airlift far beyond

30

 (1)Ehrman, Grand Strategy V, 148-53. (2)

Charles F. Romanus and Riley Sunderland, Stilwell's

Command Problems, UNITED STATES ARMY IN

WORLD WAR II (Washington, 1956), ch. II.

(3) Vice-Admiral the Earl Mountbatten, Report to

the Combined Chiefs of Staff by the Supreme Allied

Commander, Southeast Asia, 1943-1945 (London: Her

Majesty's Stationery Office, 1951) (hereafter cited as

Mountbatten Report), p. 27. (4) Matloff, Strategic

Planning, 1943-44, chs. XIV-XVI.

31

 (1) Mountbatten Report, p. 27. (2) Romanus and

Sunderland, Stilwell's Command Problems, p. 51.

(3) King and Whitehill, Fleet Admiral King, pp. 509-

10. (4) Ehrman, Grand Strategy V, 162. (5) Min, 129th

mtg CCS, 24 Nov 43. 32

 (1) Msg, Prime Minister for Br COS Com, 21

Nov 43, quoted in Churchill, Closing the Ring, p.

686. (2) Ehrman, Grand Strategy V, 114, 159. (3) Min,

2d Plenary Mtg, SEXTANT, 24 Nov 43. (4) Romanus

and Sunderland, Stilwell's Command Problems, p.

66. (5) Min, 131st mtg JCS, 26 Nov 43.
282 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

the capacity of available transport aircraft and explicit guarantees from the

British that the land operations would

be supported simultaneously by major

co-ordinated naval and amphibious attacks. Chiang's attitude caused the Western military leaders to close ranks.33

 A

moderate increase in airlift was ordered,

but the Chinese were told unequivocally

that they must choose between an offensive in Burma and expanded ferry

operations, since both competed for

transport aircraft. As for BUCCANEER, the

U.S. Chiefs of Staff did not at first push

hard for it, agreeing to postpone debate

pending decisions yet to be taken on the

broader strategy of the war against Japan

and the British role in it. In the CCS,

therefore, Chiang's demand for an amphibious operation was carefully and

noncommittally "noted," with merely

a promise of future "consideration."

Churchill himself sharply challenged

Chiang's view of the interdependence of

the naval and amphibious phases of

CHAMPION and the land operations. He

pointed out that in the absence of accessible bases and because of the time needed for redeployment from the Mediterranean British naval forces would not

be able to provide direct support for the

landings. Finally, he told Chiang emphatically that no definite undertaking

could then be given to carry out an

amphibious operation in conjunction

with the land campaign.34

Chiang thus faced defeat on all his

demands. Early in the afternoon of 25

November he agreed to the CHAMPION

plan as drawn, with the stipulations that

the British should gain naval superiority

in the Bay of Bengal—which Churchill

had already promised—and that the plan

should include an amphibious operation, to which Churchill was willing to

agree if the Americans met his own conditions in the Mediterranean. At the

same time Chiang was asking that President Roosevelt give him something to

show for attending the conference.35 The

President obliged. On the same afternoon he told Stilwell and Marshall that

he had decided, as a further concession

to Chiang, to greatly enlarge the program for equipping Chinese divisions,

and some time on the same day he seems

to have given Chiang a pledge that BUCCANEER would be carried out on the scale

and at the time planned.36

The President's pledge, if such it was,

left his military advisers very little room

for maneuver. If the Soviet leaders at

Tehran should insist, as the JCS fully

expected them to do, on an immediate

major effort by the Western Allies in

the Mediterranean, with or without

33

 (1) See Marshall's outburst quoted in Joseph W.

Stilwell, The Stilwell Papers, arranged and edited

by Theodore H. White (New York: William Sloan

Associates, Inc., 1948), p. 255. (2) Min, 129th mtg

CCS, 24 Nov 43. (3) Min, 130th mtg JCS, 25 Nov 43. 34 (1) Churchill, Closing the Ring, p. 328. (2)

Ehrman, Grand Strategy V, 162, 164-65, 571. (3) Min,

128th mtg CCS, 23 Nov 43. (4) Romanus and Sunderland, Stilwell's Command Problems, p. 65. (5)

Min, 1st Plenary Mtg, SEXTANT, 23 Nov 43.

35 See Marshall's remark at the JCS meeting

earlier in the day. Min, 130th mtg JCS, 25 Nov 43. 36

 The evidence on this point is strong though not

absolutely conclusive. Churchill (Closing the Ring,

p. 328) and Leahy (I Was There, p. 201) assert unequivocally that the pledge was given and Ehrman

accepts this as fact (Grand Strategy V, 165). Matloff

(Strategic Planning, 1943-44, p. 350) noncommittally

cites Churchill's statement in the reference noted.

It may be significant that the President, in the interview with Marshall and Stilwell mentioned above,

seemed from his remarks to have had the Andamans

operation on his mind. The most convincing evidence is to be found, as shown below, in the abrupt

change in the attitude and position of the JCS on

the morning of 26 November. See also Romanus

and Sunderland, Stilwell's Command Problems, pp.

63-71, and Bryant, Triumph in the West, pp. 63, 73.
THE CAIRO-TEHRAN CONFERENCE 283

OVERLORD, approval of the British program seemed assured. The assault shipping allotted to BUCCANEER, now sacrosanct, could not be made available for

Rhodes. If OVERLORD shipping currently

in the Mediterranean were used instead,

how could it be replaced in time to meet

the OVERLORD target date? Most new

American production after January was

allotted to the Pacific, and Admiral King

was in no mood to give up any of it. The

only remaining possibility seemed to be

to postpone OVERLORD a few weeks as

the British had proposed, thus giving

more time to redeploy assault shipping

from the Mediterranean and, incidentally, making available another one or two

months' production of landing craft. As

Admiral Leahy remarked, the problem

was brutally simple: the JCS had to decide whether or not they could accept

a delay in OVERLORD; if they could not,

"the problem appeared insoluble."37

A delay of OVERLORD had been in the

President's mind even before he made

his pledge to Chiang. Back in Washington OWM Director Byrnes had received

a "very urgent message" from Roosevelt

on the 23d inquiring whether, with an

overriding priority, the output of landing craft could be increased during the

first five months of 1944—an inquiry that

made sense only under the assumption

that OVERLORD might be postponed beyond 1 May. Byrnes' reply, dispatched on

the 25th, indicated that substantial increases might be possible in April and

later, but virtually none before then.

Roosevelt probably knew, therefore,

when he promised Chiang an amphibious operation, that if OVERLORD were

postponed to July it could be bolstered

by the addition of some 22 new LST's,

not to mention 10 more now allocated

but unlikely to reach the United Kingdom in time for a May assault—and this

without encroaching on Pacific allocations of February and later output.38

Final decision had to wait, then, until

the Russians showed their hand. At the

last Cairo meeting with the British (on

26 November), the U.S. Chiefs of Staff

stressed the sanctity of BUCCANEER, but

were strangely noncommittal on OVERLORD and the Mediterranean. Sir Alan

Brooke asked them whether they understood that "if the capture of Rhodes and

Rome and Operation BUCCANEER were

carried out, the date of OVERLORD must

go back?" Marshall assured him they

did. Would it not be better, urged

Brooke perplexedly, to postpone BUCCANEER rather than OVERLORD? What if

the Russians demanded both a strong

Mediterranean offensive and an early

OVERLORD? The situation had become

embarrassing. Finally, Admiral Leahy

offered a broad hint: the U.S. Chiefs

of Staff "were not in a position to agree

to the abandonment of Operation BUCCANEER. This could only be decided by

37 Min, 131st mtg JCS, 26 Nov 43.

38

 (1) See below, Chapter XII, for results of this

inquiry. (2) Msg, FDR [Roosevelt] to Byrnes, Dir

OWM, 23 Nov 43, OPD Exec 5, Item 14. (3) Msg,

Byrnes to President, 25 Nov 43, in JCS Memo for

Info 171, 27 Nov 43, ABC 561 (30 Aug 43). (4) Mowry,

Landing Craft and the War Production Board, pp.

30-32. For other indications that the American staff at

Cairo was seriously considering a postponement of

OVERLORD, see (5) Memo, Col A. D. Reid for Gen

Handy, 26 Nov 43, sub: Movement of OVERLORD

Divs, OPD Exec 5, Item 15, folder 3, Case E17,

containing a reference to a "four to six weeks" delay

in OVERLORD; and (6) Memo, Gen Tansey for Gen

Handy, no date, sub: Production of Ldg Cft, OPD

Exec 5, Case E15, showing estimated production of

LST's, LCI(L)'s, and LCT's under the existing program for April, May, and June.
284 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

the President and the Prime Minister."

There was little more to say. The Americans accepted the British program as a

basis for discussion at Tehran but on

the contradictory assumption that it

"would in no way interfere with the

carrying out of Operation BUCCANEER."

The British departed with the distinct

impression, as Lt. Gen. Sir Hastings L.

Ismay reported to the Prime Minister,

that the Americans, now rigid against

any tampering with BUCCANEER, contemplated a postponement of OVERLORD

"with equanimity."39

Enter Anvil, Compromise

on Overlord

At the opening general meeting at

Tehran on 28 November, the three principals, at Stalin's brusque suggestion,

promptly got down to business. Roosevelt noted in his opening remarks the

possibility that OVERLORD might have

to be postponed "for one month or two

or three," and spoke of the operations—

in the Aegean, in the Adriatic, and in

Italy—that were being considered to relieve German pressure on the Eastern

Front. OVERLORD, he pointed out, would

draw off to the west more German divisions than any of the Mediterranean ventures, and he urged that, if possible, it

not be delayed "beyond May or June."

Churchill presented the British case,

elaborating on the promising opportunities that could be exploited in the eastern Mediterranean without detriment

either to the campaign in Italy or to

OVERLORD. How would Marshal Stalin,

he asked, regard this prospect "even if it

meant as much as about two months'

delay in OVERLORD?"40

Up to this point the atmosphere had

been cordial. To the pleased surprise

of the Western leaders, Stalin opened

his remarks with an almost casual promise that the Soviet Union would intervene in the war against Japan as soon

as Germany was defeated. This statement

confirmed and strengthened the more

tentative offers the Soviet Premier had

made on earlier occasions. His next

words brought the discussion abruptly

to a tense climax. He declared bluntly

that to him the whole Mediterranean

program appeared to involve an excessive dispersion of forces. OVERLORD, he

said, should be made the "basic" operation for 1944; and all others, however

attractive, should be regarded as diversions. He saw only one useful possibility

in the Mediterranean, an attack on southern France followed by a drive northward toward an eventual junction with

the main OVERLORD forces—the classic

pincers strategy, which the Russians had

employed so often in their own theater.

Why not, he blandly suggested, suspend

the Italian campaign immediately in order to release forces for this operation,

and then launch OVERLORD two or three

months later?41

Whatever the reasons for the sudden

evaporation of Stalin's recently displayed

interest in Mediterranean operations

and for his return to the familiar de39

 (1) Min, 131st mtg CCS, 26 Nov 43. (2) Ehrman,

Grand Strategy V, 166-67.

40

 (1) Min, 1st Plenary Mtg EUREKA, 28 Nov 43.

(2) See also Robert E. Sherwood, Roosevelt and Hopkins: An Intimate History (New York: Harper &

Bros., 1948), pp. 777-81. Marshall and Arnold were

not present, having misunderstood the time of the

meeting. According to Sherwood, Roosevelt also

mentioned the possibility of landings in southern

France. 41

 (1) Min, 1st Plenary Mtg, EUREKA, 28 Nov 43.

(2) Ehrman, Grand Strategy V, 174-76.
THE CAIRO-TEHRAN CONFERENCE 285

mand for a second front in France,42 his

deceptively simple proposals injected

new difficulties into an already complicated problem. The Mediterranean was

a going theater of war in which both

Western allies had a heavy investment.

To stop short on the present line in

Italy would not satisfy the declared

American desire to maintain strong pressure against the Germans and, as Churchill promptly asserted, for the British the

capture of Rome was both strategically

and politically imperative.

Stalin seemed, moreover, not to have

grasped the constraints that shipping and

landing craft placed upon the timing

and sequence of operations. He had to

be reminded that the troops in the Mediterranean, except for the seven divisions

already in transit to the United Kingdom, were irrevocably bound there for

lack of shipping to deploy them elsewhere. He missed the point that the

southern France operation and the landings in the Adriatic had been suggested

as mutually exclusive alternatives, and

that the Rhodes operation was very modest in scope. When Churchill reminded

him of this last fact, Stalin conceded

that on those terms the capture of

Rhodes might be worth undertaking.

But it was obvious that if both the Rome

and Rhodes operations were to be carried out, or even only the latter, the

proposed landing in southern France

two or three months before OVERLORD

could be worked into the crowded schedule only by postponing OVERLORD—for

which, up to this point, Stalin had stipulated no date.43

 The Soviet Premier's

lack of interest in what he may have regarded as mere details in the grand design of a long-awaited major second front

in the West was understandable. Following Roosevelt's and Churchill's rather

careful exposition of those details, however, Stalin's analysis of the problem

must have appeared to the Western military leaders present to reflect an appalling ignorance of, or indifference to,

the hard realities of amphibious warfare.

At this juncture Roosevelt interposed.

Stalin's proposals, he said, had raised a

serious problem of timing. A choice must

be made: either undertake Churchill's

Aegean operations, which would delay

OVERLORD a month or two or, as the

Soviet Premier had suggested, "attack

[southern] France one or two months

before the first of May and then conduct

OVERLORD on the original date." (Italics

supplied.) His own preference, he added, was for the latter alternative.44

Churchill was caught off balance.

Nothing in the President's earlier remarks had suggested any intention to

insist on adherence to the 1 May target

date for OVERLORD. On the contrary,

Roosevelt had appeared to accept the

idea of postponement, urging only that

it be brief; and, when the Cairo meetings ended, his military advisers had

seemed resigned to the inevitability of

some delay. By now implying that Stalin

had demanded a 1 May date (although

he had not, in fact, done so), the Presi42

 As Herbert Feis points out (Churchill, Roosevelt, Stalin: The War They Waged and The Peace

They Sought [Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University

Press, 1957], p. 258), since October the Russians had

suffered a temporary setback on the front southwest

of Kiev, and this may have made Stalin more wary

of an Anglo-American offensive in the eastern Mediterranean, which might lead to an extension of

Western influence into southeastern Europe before

the arrival of the advancing Soviet forces.

43

 (1) Churchill, Closing the Ring, p. 355. (2) Ehrman, Grand Strategy V, 175. 44

 (1) Min, 1st Plenary Mtg, EUREKA, 28 Nov 43.

(2) Ehrman, Grand Strategy V, 176.
286 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

STALIN, ROOSEVELT, AND CHURCHILL AT TEHRAN

dent may have hoped to enlist support

for an early and definitely scheduled invasion. If so, it was an adroit maneuver,

for Stalin failed to challenge the innuendo. Its significance was not lost on

Churchill, who immediately protested

the idea of condemning twenty or more

divisions in the Mediterranean to inactivity "solely for the purpose of keeping

the May date for OVERLORD," and chided

the President for the "rigid timing" of

the program he had proposed.45

Stalin had shown his hand. For the

Americans, the nightmare of an AngloSoviet demand for a shift to the Mediterranean had been dissipated in the

comforting assurance that the Soviet

leaders once more stood solidly for the

primacy of OVERLORD and shared the

American aversion to operations in the

eastern Mediterranean. That the Russians shared American suspicions of British motives quickly became apparent

when, in the course of the following

day (29 November), both Churchill and

Brooke, under polite but persistent questioning by their hosts, were repeatedly

obliged to go through the ritual of affirming their loyalty to OVERLORD.46

 At

a meeting of the military representatives

on the same day the Soviet representa45

 (1) Min, 1st Plenary Mtg, EUREKA, 28 Nov 43.

(2) Ehrman, Grand Strategy V, 176.

46

 (1) Min, Military Mtg, EUREKA, 29 Nov 43.

(2) Min, 2d Plenary Mtg, EUREKA, 29 Nov 43. (3) See

also Churchill's account of Stalin's castigation of

General Brooke at the banquet on the evening of

30 November, in Closing the Ring, pages 386-88.
THE CAIRO TEHRAN CONFERENCE 287

tive, Marshal Klementy Voroshiloff, indicated no very specific notions as to

what should be done in the Mediterranean or when. In answer to Sir Alan

Brooke's observation that a landing in

southern France so long in advance of

OVERLORD might be crushed before the

latter could get well under way, Voroshiloff merely reasserted rather woodenly

that the operation would be a valuable

complement to OVERLORD. Anyway, he

added, Stalin did not insist on a southern France operation. All other undertakings in the Mediterranean, "such as

Rome, Rhodes, and what not," were diversions that, if carried out at all, should

be "planned to assist OVERLORD and certainly not to hinder it." Evidently the

Soviet Premier had no intention of becoming embroiled in Western squabbles

over Mediterranean strategy. According

to Voroshiloff, however, Stalin did insist

on OVERLORD and "on the date already

planned."47

Thus the issue was finally joined on

the timing of OVERLORD. On this same

29 November Roosevelt, now committed

to a May OVERLORD and evidently confident that with Soviet support he could

win, sent a message to Washington tardily instructing Byrnes to call off the

proposed speed-up in landing craft production about which he had inquired on

the 23d. "The increase in critical types

. . . ," the President explained, "does not

become effective soon enough to justify

change in present construction programs."48

 At the plenary meeting that

afternoon, Stalin set forth his position

in the language of an ultimatum: OVERLORD "must be carried out by the limiting date." He also pressed for an early

appointment of a commander for the

operation. Soviet forces, he promised,

would match the invasion from the west

by a simultaneous offensive from the

east.49 Churchill held the floor for most

of the session with a spirited defense of

the British Mediterranean program. He

vainly tried to draw out Stalin on his

proposed southern France operation, for

which, as he pointed out, no plan had

yet been drafted; as Brooke had already

done, he warned that if the attack were

too weak or launched too early, it would

invite disaster. On the other hand, if

a two-division amphibious lift could be

left in the Mediterranean, bright possibilities opened up—turning movements

along the Italian coasts, then a swift capture of Rhodes, finally, an invasion of

southern France in conjunction with

OVERLORD. OVERLORD might have to be

set back by six or eight weeks, or (here

Churchill introduced the alternative

for the first time at Tehran) the needed

assault shipping could be brought back

from India. Anyway, Churchill concluded, if the handful of vessels needed for

Rhodes could not somehow be found,

it was unreasonable to suppose that the

larger number required for an invasion

of southern France or any other diversionary operation in support of OVERLORD could be provided. His reminder

that OVERLORD could not be undertaken

at all unless there were a reasonable ex47

 Min, Military Mtg, EUREKA, 29 Nov 43. 48

 (1) Quoted in Mowry, Landing Craft and the

War Production Board, p. 31. (2) For acceleration

of landing craft production in response to Roosevelt's message of the 23d, see below, Chapter XIII.

4 9 (1)Min, 2d Plenary Mtg, EUREKA, 29 Nov 43.

(2) According to Churchill, Stalin told him at lunch

on the 30th that he wanted OVERLORD in May or in

June in order for it to synchronize with the Soviet

offensive. In the event the Soviet offensive started

on 23 June. See Churchill, Closing the Ring, pp.

380, 383.
288 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

pectation of success based on certain

specified conditions of enemy strength

brought from Stalin a sarcastic query:

Would OVERLORD be ruled out if there

were 13 instead of 12 mobile German

divisions in France and the Low Countries on D-day? Churchill assured him

it would not.50

Stalin made no attempt to answer

Churchill's arguments. He ignored the

allusion to BUCCANEER, restated his demand for a May OVERLORD, and indicated his preference for a southern

France invasion to be launched two or

three months before OVERLORD—or, if

this were not possible, simultaneously

with OVERLORD or even a little later. All

other operations in the Mediterranean

he regarded as diversions. Roosevelt finally interposed to suggest a date for

OVERLORD "certainly not later than 15

or 20 May, if possible." Churchill

promptly and emphatically dissented,

and the atmosphere again became tense.

Finally, the problem was referred to the

military representatives to work out before the next afternoon when final decisions would be reached.51

Despite the appearance of a deadlock,

a compromise was beginning to take

form. Both Stalin and Roosevelt had refrained from insisting on a 1 May date.

Before lunch the next day (30 November) Churchill decided to agree to a

date sometime in May, and that morning the British Chiefs of Staff came to

the meeting with their American opposites with specific proposals worked out

on that basis.52 General Eisenhower

would be allowed to keep the 68 OVERLORD LST's in the Mediterranean until

15 January in order to ensure the early

capture of Rome. By British calculations, this meant that OVERLORD could

not be earlier than June—but to satisfy

Stalin the British Chiefs of staff were

willing to define this as "in May." They

were also prepared to support an operation against southern France. Most important, they would agree that no assault shipping earmarked for OVERLORD

should be retained in the Mediterranean

specifically for the Rhodes operation.

The key to this last concession lay in

their final proposition: as a result of

Stalin's momentous pledge on the 28th

to enter the war against Japan after Germany's defeat, they argued, the role of

China in the coalition had been automatically reduced and the whole case for

an offensive in Burma in spring 1944,

including BUCCANEER, had been weakened. The British therefore hoped to

persuade the Americans to cancel BUCCANEER and send its assault shipping back

to the Mediterranean, where it could be

used to help mount the southern France

operation—and, as a likely by-product,

the attack on Rhodes as well. If the

Americans refused to cancel BUCCANEER,

the burden would be upon them to find

assault shipping for southern France elsewhere, leaving the same probability that

it could also be used for Rhodes.53

Meanwhile, the U.S. Chiefs of Staff,

confident in the assurance of Soviet support, had worked out their own position.

The assault shipping now in the Mediterranean could be safely kept there un50

 (1) Min, 2d Plenary Mtg, EUREKA, 29 Nov 43.

(2) Churchill, Closing the Ring, p. 371. (3) Ehrman,

Grand Strategy V, 179. 51

 (1) Min, 2d Plenary Mtg, EUREKA, 29 Nov 43.

(2) Churchill, Closing the Ring, p. 370. (3) Ehrman,

Grand Strategy V, 180. (4) Sherwood, Roosevelt and

Hopkins, p. 788.

52

 (1) Churchill, Closing the Ring, p. 376. (2) Ehrman, Grand Strategy V, 181. 53

 Ehrman, Grand Strategy V, 181.
THE CAIRO-TEHRAN CONFERENCE 289

til mid-January to support the Italian

campaign, as General Eisenhower had

asked, without endangering an early May

OVERLORD. With what remained after

the withdrawals, the staff thought, a

2-division assault could be mounted

against southern France (now labeled

ANVIL) . This operation, for tactical and

strategic reasons, should be launched no

earlier than three or four weeks before

OVERLORD rather than on the date suggested by Stalin. But even a date three

or four weeks before OVERLORD would

not leave time, the Americans emphasized, to shift any landing craft over to

the eastern Mediterranean for an attack

on Rhodes and get them back to Corsica

in time to refit for the ANVIL landings.

Ergo—no Rhodes operation. The problem, as Admiral Leahy triumphantly

summed up, "seemed to be a straightforward one of the date of OVERLORD."54

The argument that a southern France

operation would be feasible but a

Rhodes operation would not hinged on

logistical calculations of an extremely

speculative nature. The American estimates of ANVIL requirements at Tehran

were hastily concocted and based on an

old outline plan used at Quebec three

months before, the only plan for the

southern France operation they had

brought to the conference. While projections showing a 2-division assault lift

for ANVIL could not be positively disproved at the time, the case for the

ANVIL landings seemed particularly flimsy to the British. Sir Alan Brooke could

cite against it the recent verdicts of General Eisenhower that the assault lift remaining in the Mediterranean would

suffice for only one division, that the

build-up following the assault would be

very slow, and that no attack on such

a scale would be likely to succeed. Moreover, the British did not believe the

OVERLORD assault vessels to be used in

Italy could be moved back to the United

Kingdom in time for a May D-day if

they left the Mediterranean after midJanuary; and they continued to express

their oft-repeated fears that the landing

craft allotment for OVERLORD was inadequate. Brooke flatly asserted in his diary

that a 1 May ANVIL, simultaneous with

OVERLORD, was "an impossibility."55

Caught between contradictory logistical estimates, the discussion deadlocked. Nevertheless, the afternoon deadline was at hand, and the Russians had

to be given an answer. The military

leaders therefore agreed (falling back

on the subterfuge suggested by the British) that the Russians could be told

"we will launch OVERLORD during May

in conjunction with a supporting operation against the south of France on the

largest scale that is permitted by [available] landing craft," with a target date,

for planning purposes, the same as that

for OVERLORD. The advance in Italy

would continue as far as the Pisa-Rimini

line, and the 68 LST's requested by Eisenhower would be left in the Mediterranean until 15 January. The fate of

BUCCANEER and the Aegean operations

was reserved for discussion at Cairo.56

Thus hopefully, or perhaps resignedly, the Western military leaders added

54

 Min, 132d mtg CCS, 30 Nov 43.

55

 (1) Ibid. (2) Quote in Bryant, Triumph in the

West, p. 64. (3) Matloff, Strategic Planning, 1943-44,

pp. 365-66. (4) Harrison, Cross-Channel Attack, p.

125. (5) On Eisenhower's views, see above, Chapter

IX.

56

 (1) Min, 132d mtg CCS, 30 Nov 43. (2) Ehrman,

Grand Strategy V, 182. (3) Msg FAN 281, 1 Dec 43,

CCS to Eisenhower, OPD Exec 3, Item 13.
290 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

another major amphibious undertaking

to their already crowded agenda for mid1944, leaving unanswered the knotty

questions of timing and provision of

means that its introduction had raised.

The political leaders, facing an impasse,

were in no mood to cavil. On the same

afternoon, two days after Stalin had

dropped his bombshell, the Big Three

ratified the CCS program and declared

OVERLORD and ANVIL the "supreme" operations of the Western Allies in 1944.

No breath of discord ruffled their meeting. As Churchill declared, it was inconceivable that the United States and Great

Britain, "with their great volume of production, could not make the necessary

landing craft available."57

Second Cairo: Scratch

Buccaneer

Back at Cairo, the CCS faced up to

the problem of finding enough assault

lift to carry out (1) a late May or early

June OVERLORD, (2) a simultaneous

southern France operation, (3) an attack

on Rhodes as soon as possible following

the impending landings south of Rome,

and (4) BUCCANEER, still scheduled for

March. Thanks to the firmness of the

Western leaders at Tehran, the heart of

the Mediterranean program—capture of

Rome and advance to a defensible line

beyond — now seemed assured, despite

Stalin's attempt to call a halt to operations in Italy. Prospects for the rest of

the British Mediterranean program remained bright. The modest program for

the Balkans had been accepted, and

Stalin had agreed to the British proposal that Turkey should, if possible,

be brought into the war before the end

of the year. The attitude of the Turks

themselves, which in the last analysis

could make or break British fortunes

in the eastern Mediterranean, was soon

to be tested anew in negotiations at

Cairo. American opposition (with, on

this point, only lukewarm Soviet support) had centered on the proposed operations in the Aegean, for which Admiral King had warned he would not

under any circumstances turn over American landing craft. On the other hand,

the introduction of an assault lift requirement for ANVIL, which the Americans were virtually committed to meet,

promised to increase the available pool

of assault shipping. If the timing of the

two operations at opposite ends of the

Mediterranean could be worked out,

American insistence on mounting one

to the exclusion of the other might prove

difficult to maintain.58

The British made it clear that in any

event they intended to press on with

their plans for the Aegean and that, in

view of Stalin's firm pledge of participation in the war against Japan, they

now considered BUCCANEER fair game.

That operation was, in fact, even more

vulnerable than before, since Admiral

Lord Louis Mountbatten, Supreme Allied Commander, Southeast Asia, in his

most recent plan provided for a considerably stronger assault with increased

requirements for assault, shipping and

carrier-borne aviation. Even though Admiral King had promised to provide

the carriers, and the other means were

57

 Min, 3d Plenary Mtg, EUREKA, 30 Nov 43.

58

 (1) Min, 131st mtg JCS, 26 Nov 43. (2) See Hopkins' strong statement on Aegean operations in

Sherwood, Roosevelt and Hopkins, pp. 793-96.

(3) CCS Memo for Info 165, 2 Dec 43, title: Military

Conclusions of the EUREKA Conference.
THE CAIRO-TEHRAN CONFERENCE 291

available in the theater, the ends in

view seemed hardly commensurate with

the cost, for more than 50,000 troops

were to be concentrated against a garrison estimated at only about 5,000.

The British insisted, moreover, on debating the larger issue of the whole campaign in Burma, which, in view of

American plans for the Pacific and

Stalin's firm promise to enter the lists

against Japan, seemed to them to make

little sense. Even the JCS found BUCCANEER difficult to defend on its merits.

General Marshall candidly admitted that

if the operation could be dropped without wrecking the mainland campaign,

"he personally would not be seriously

disturbed."59

Whatever the defects of BUCCANEER,

the JCS were, of course, no more inclined than ever to release assault shipping for an attack on Rhodes. But the

British now adroitly shifted ground.

They soft-pedaled their Aegean plans

(which depended mainly on the outcome of negotiations with the Turks,

anyway), and concentrated on the problem of mounting an adequate attack

against southern France, to which the

Americans were firmly committed. ANVIL, they argued, must not be tailored

to the leavings of other undertakings

(as implied in the Tehran formula),

but should be made strong enough to

form a genuine complement to OVERLORD—specifically, an assault by at least

two divisions, perhaps three. But when

the staffs checked their hasty Tehran

estimates against the more ample data

available at Cairo, they found that after

OVERLORD withdrawals the residual assault lift in the Mediterranean would

not exceed one and two-thirds divisions

and might be even less. After a halfhearted attempt to hew to the Tehran

line, the JCS conceded the need for at

least a two-division assault, and on 4

December Admiral King, in a surprise

move, offered to meet the ANVIL assault

shipping deficit from new production

previously allotted to the Pacific. The

total extra lift required was calculated

at the time at 3 XAP's, 12 motor transport (MT) ships (these were especially

fitted to carry deck loads of vehicles), 26

LST's, and 31 LCT's. King promised to

provide all the XAP's and LST's, and

26 of the LCT's which the LST's would

carry to the theater. The MT ships were,

or would be, available in the area. The

five additional LCT's could be taken

from craft earmarked for OVERLORD and

replaced from the contingent Admiral

King had promised for OVERLORD on

5 November.60

King's offer opened no breach in JCS

opposition to the Rhodes operation

since, as he made clear, the new ships

and craft could not reach the Mediterranean in time to be used for it. On

the other hand, although they almost

covered the calculated deficit for a 2-

division ANVIL assault, they fell short

of guaranteeing this operation. They

left no margin for unforeseen contingencies, and many on the American as

well as on the British side considered

59

 (1) Min, 135th mtg CCS, 5 Dec 43. (2) Ehrman,

Grand Strategy V, 185-86. (3) Romanus and Sunderland, Stilwell's Command Problems, pp. 65-67.

60

 (1) Min, 133d mtg CCS, 3 Dec 43. (2) Min, 3d

Plenary Mtg, SEXTANT, 4 Dec 43. (3) CPS 131/1,

3 Dec 43, title: Amphibious Opns Against South of

France. (4) Msg 10131, Adm Badger to VCNO, 5

Dec 43, OPD Exec 4, Item 13. (5) CCS 424, rpt by

CPS and CAdC, 5 Dec 43, title: Amphibious Opns

Against South of France. (6) Ehrman, Grand Strategy

V, 184, 187, 195. (7) On the possible basis of King's

offer see below, Chapter XIII.
292 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

even a 2-division assault too weak. Moreover, OVERLORD'S own weakness, even

after the allocations of 5 November

caused growing uneasiness. Time was

growing short. OVERLORD and ANVIL

were now designated the supreme operations for 1944. The responsible commanders were about to be named,61

 and

few doubted that when they reviewed

the existing plans they would demand

a more ample provision of means. At

the plenary meeting of 5 December

Harry Hopkins elicited from the military leaders, after some sharp cross-questioning, the remarkable admission that

although they had given the stamp of

approval to a 2-division ANVIL and a

31⁄2-division OVERLORD, they believed

nevertheless that both operations should

be strengthened.62

After two days of discussions at Cairo,

the problem had taken on new dimensions. Instead of merely mounting the

ANVIL assault at a fixed scale, it now

seemed necessary to provide a pool of

assault shipping large enough to mount

both ANVIL and OVERLORD on a scale as

yet undetermined but adequate to give

both operations a reasonable margin of

safety. Precisely how much shipping

would be needed could not be known

until the plans were revised and developed in detail. The very uncertainty on

this score lent force to the British argument that it would be folly to commit

precious assault shipping irrevocably to

a venture in southeast Asia that even the

U.S. Chiefs of Staff conceded to be of

secondary importance.

At the plenary meeting on the 5th,

Churchill bluntly pointed out that only

President Roosevelt's unilateral pledge

to Chiang stood in the way of agreement. He suggested that Chiang might

be offered some lesser substitute for BUCCANEER for the time being, the remainder

of the campaign to be carried out as

planned. Hopkins supported the idea.

The President, obviously unhappy, finally agreed to the suggestion that Mountbatten's representatives, then in Cairo,

and Mountbatten himself should be

queried as to what small-scale amphibious operations might be undertaken if

he had to give up most of his assault

lift. At the same time the CCS were

ordered to re-examine forthwith the two

European operations "with a view to

increasing the assaults in each case."

Roosevelt's full capitulation swiftly followed. The same afternoon, after consulting with his advisers (only King in

the JCS held out against postponing

BUCCANEER) , he sent Churchill a brief

message: "BUCCANEER is off."63

The Joint Chiefs were not informed

of the decision until the next day, but

after their meeting with the President

they must have realized that it could not

long be delayed. What had now to be

decided were the precise alternatives to

be offered Chiang. On the night of the

5th the British and U.S. planners made a

list of amphibious operations that might

be undertaken in Burma during the

spring, assuming arbitrarily that the

shipping to be withdrawn from the theater would comprise most of the LST's,

combat loaders, and small aircraft carriers. The list was not impressive. The

61 The President announced General Eisenhower's

appointment as OVERLORD commander on 6 December.

62 Min, 4th Plenary Mtg, SEXTANT, 5 Dec 43.

63

 (1) Churchill, Closing the Ring, p. 411. (2) Min,

4th Plenary Mtg, SEXTANT, 5 Dec 43. (3) Ehrman,

Grand Strategy V, 190-92. (4) King and Whitehill,

Fleet Admiral King, p. 425. (5) Leahy, I Was There,

p. 213. (6) Sherwood, Roosevelt and Hopkins, p. 801.
THE CAIRO-TEHRAN CONFERENCE 293

Joint Chiefs, studying it the following

morning, were inclined to conclude that

it might be better to give up serious amphibious ventures in the Southeast Asia

Command (SEAC) altogether during

that season, and to transfer all the BUCCANEER assault shipping back to European waters. The British agreed. The

CCS accordingly recommended that major amphibious operations in the Bay

of Bengal be delayed until after the

monsoon season and that Chiang Kaishek be offered two alternatives: (1) the

mainland offensive as planned with British naval control of the Bay of Bengal

assured, but without BUCCANEER, for

which would be substituted carrier

strikes, commando raids, and bombardment of Bangkok and the railroad; or

(2) postponement of the mainland offensive, compensated for by increased

airlift to China and more rapid development of the long-range bombardment

program from bases in China. Mountbatten's reply, later that day, stated flatly

that seaborne operations smaller than

BUCCANEER would not be worth the effort. He proposed that, in anticipation

of Chiang's probable reaction, only limited land operations in northern and

central Burma and along the Arakan

coast should be undertaken, and that

the aim of opening the land route to

China during the spring be abandoned.64

By the evening of 6 December all

knew that the President, without informing the JCS, had decided to abandon

BUCCANEER and, moreover, had already

cabled Chiang the bad news, presenting

the same alternatives arrived at by the

Chiefs of Staff that morning.65 Chiang's

reply had not yet been received, but the

President was due to leave Cairo the

following morning and the conference

decisions could not wait. Accordingly,

the alternatives presented to Chiang

were both included in the final SEXTANT

paper approved by the President and

Prime Minister at the plenary meeting

on the night of the 6th.

In the light of the Generalissimo's

known attitude, there could be little

doubt that he would reject the first alternative; there was considerable doubt

that he would accept even the second.

Actually, by ruling out any worthwhile

substitute for BUCCANEER and by so informing the Chinese leader forthwith,

the President had thrown away an option that might have been acceptable

to Chiang, inasmuch as the latter had

never been told precisely what sort of

operation was contemplated, but only

that it would be a major one. At the

time the conference decisions were approved, however, the leaders had Mountbatten's word for it that nothing less

than BUCCANEER would serve. Later in

the month he changed his mind, but by

then the President's message had left

Chiang in no mood for compromise. In

any case, Mountbatten's small residue

of assault shipping was soon to be swallowed up in the maw of swelling European requirements. On 7 December the

worldwide redeployment of assault shipping dictated by the SEXTANT decisions

began as the CCS ordered Mountbatten

to send 15 LST's and 6 LSI (L)'s-the

64

 (1) Min, 136th mtg JCS, 6 Dec 43. (2) Min,

136th mtg CCS, 5 Dec 43. (3) Min, 137th mtg CCS,

6 Dec 43. (4) CCS 427, rpt by CPS, 5 Dec 43, title:

Amphibious Opns in Southeast Asia Alternative to

BUCCANEER. (5) Romanus and Sunderland, Stilwell's

Command Problems, p. 70. (6) Ehrman, Grand Strategy V, 192-93.

65

 (1) Msg, President to Chiang, 5 Dec 43, OPD

Exec 10, Item 70. (2) Min, 5th Plenary Mtg, SEXTANT, 6 Dec 43.
294 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

bulk of his amphibious fleet—back to

European waters.66

Acceleration in the Pacific

At Cairo the CCS also approved a tentative "Over-All Plan for the Defeat of

Japan" providing for simultaneous advances along the Central and Southwest

Pacific axes as the main effort against

the Asiatic adversary. Operations in

China and southeast Asia were definitely

relegated to a subsidiary role. Although

the plan did not fulfill the American

prescription that Japan must be defeated

within a year after the defeat of Germany, it did provide for a marked acceleration in Pacific operations during 1944.

MacArthur's forces were to reach the

Vogelkop Peninsula at the western end

of New Guinea by October 1944, and

Central Pacific forces were to push to

the Mariana Islands about the same time.

This represented a substantial speed-up

of the schedule to which the Americans

had secured agreement at Quebec three

months earlier. In addition, bombing of

Japan by the giant B—29's was to be initiated from bases in China early in 1944.

Ultimately these bombers would be deployed in the Marianas.67

Beyond 1944 the plan was necessarily

and perhaps deliberately vague. How the

operations in China and southeast Asia

might contribute to the general design

was more than ever uncertain, especially

with the cancellation of BUCCANEER. It

also remained to be decided whether

Japan would be defeated in the end by

air blockade and bombing or by invasion

of the home islands. The plan stipulated that British fleet units would be

used in both the Pacific and the Indian

Oceans after the defeat of Germany, but

failed to spell out a specific role for

them. The possible contribution of Soviet forces, in the event the USSR entered

the war against Japan, received considerable attention along with the attendant requirement for advance build-up

of supplies and preparation of Siberian

airfields.

The British went along with the plan,

as presented by the Americans, willingly

and with no recorded debate. The concept of a main effort in the Pacific and

the importance attached to the USSR,

with a corresponding downgrading of

China as an ally in the war against Japan,

dovetailed neatly with their arguments

for the transfer of Mountbatten's assault

shipping back to the Mediterranean. Sir

Alan Brooke perceived, even if his chief

did not, that the American drive in the

Pacific was already gaining so much momentum that British plans for southeast

Asia, like American plans for China,

were likely soon to be overtaken by

events and that if the British Fleet were

to find profitable employment against

Japan, it would probably have to be

in the Pacific.68

It has become almost a commonplace

in American interpretations of World

War II to say that at Tehran the British

were forced to abandon their reservations concerning OVERLORD. Thus, it is

asserted, the primacy of OVERLORD vis66

 (1)Ehrman, Grand Strategy V, 193, 211-12. (2)

Mountbatten Report, p. 29. (3) Romanus and Sunderland, Stilwell's Command Problems, pp. 75 ff. 67

 (1) CCS 426/1, 6 Dec 43, title: Rpt to President

and Prime Minister. (2) CCS 417, 2 Dec 43, Rpt by

CPS, title: Over-all Plan for Defeat of Japan. (3) CCS

397 (Rev), memo by U.S. CsofS, title: Specific Opns

for Defeat of Japan, 1944. (4) See below, Chapters

XVI and XXI, for fuller discussion of strategy in

the war against Japan. 68 Bryant, Triumph in the West, pp. 112-14.
THE CAIRO-TEHRAN CONFERENCE 295

a-vis the Mediterranean, and, indeed, its

very execution were finally assured.69

Like the classic query, "When did you

stop beating your wife?" this interpretation accepts as fact what is actually the

nub of the issue, namely, the American

allegation that the British, and Churchill

in particular, had never intended to go

through with OVERLORD and only resigned themselves to do so under Soviet

pressure at Tehran. In reality, both

Churchill and Brooke, forced repeatedly

by the Russians to state their intentions

concerning OVERLORD, stood firm. At the

end of the conference their position was

the same as it had been before: OVERLORD would be the main effort of the

Western Allies in Europe, and, as far as

the British were concerned, it would be

carried out, as Churchill told Stalin on

30 November, "provided the enemy did

not bring into France larger forces than

the Americans and British could gather

there."70 In essence, this was the reservation already spelled out in the OVERLORD

outline plan and accepted by the U.S.

Chiefs of Staff themselves. Whether British leaders secretly harbored reservations

of a more far-reaching nature is not

known now (except by themselves) and

probably will never be known. Certainly

the Americans had no basis at the time,

other than hearsay, for suspecting that

they did. The historian's position is likely to depend largely on where he decides

to place the burden of proof—on the

Americans to demonstrate that their suspicions were based on fact, or on the

British to show that their professions

were sincere.71

As for Stalin's stand on OVERLORD, it

was no more than a restatement of the

familiar "second front" theme dinned

into Western ears from the time of the

German invasion down to the Moscow

Conference of October 1943. The most

puzzling question it raises is why the

U.S. Chiefs and staffs accepted so readily

General Deane's erroneous predictions

before the Cairo-Tehran Conferences.

It may be doubted whether Stalin at

Tehran was taken in by the transparently vague formula suggested by the

British and U.S. Chiefs of Staff to define the target date for OVERLORD, but

there is no indication in his recorded

utterances at the time that he attached

any importance to fixing the date more

precisely than sometime in May or June.

His pronouncements on OVERLORD added nothing to earlier Anglo-American

agreements on the relation between the

cross-Channel operation and operations

in the Mediterranean. The most significant decision at Cairo-Tehran was not

the designation of OVERLORD and ANVIL

as "supreme" operations in 1944, but

the corollary CCS decision of 5 Decem69 For example, Sherwood (Roosevelt and Hopkins, p. 788) states that Churchill at the plenary

meeting on the 29th "bowed to the inevitable"

accepted OVERLORD) by promising Stalin that "Britain would hurl every ounce of her strength across

the Channel at the Germans." Admiral Leahy in

his memoirs (I Was There, p. 209) speaks of the

decision on a May OVERLORD (which he represents

as a capitulation by the British, not a compromise)

in the same sense: the British "fell into line." See

also Harrison, Cross-Channel Attack, pp. 125-26;

Cline, Washington Command Post, p. 229; Matloff,

Strategic Planning, 1943-44, pp. 365, 384-85; and

Maurice Matloff, "The ANVIL Decision: Crossroads

of Strategy," in Greenfield, ed., Command Decisions,

p. 287; also Kent Roberts Greenfield, The Historian

and the Army (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1954), p. 54; and Trumbull Higgins,

Winston Churchill and the Second Front (New York:

Oxford University Press, 1957), pp. 212-13, 244.

70 Churchill, Closing the Ring, p. 380.

71

 See Feis" interpretation of Churchill's position

at Tehran in Churchill, Roosevelt, Stalin, pp. 261-

262.
296 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

ber to explore the possibility of strengthening the two assaults. This decision,

which virtually invited the responsible

commanders to demand the means they

considered necessary, formally recognized what the JCS since spring of 1943

had refused to concede—that the limit

placed on the size of the OVERLORD assault at the TRIDENT Conference was

arbitrary and unrealistic. It vindicated

the stubborn efforts of the British since

early 1942 to persuade the Americans

to provide more assault lift for the operation.72

To Stalin's stand at Tehran can also

be attributed the declaration that OVERLORD and ANVIL would be the supreme

operations for 1944, with the stipulation

that "nothing must be undertaken in

any other part of the world" to jeopardize their success. Never before had the

primacy of the European war been affirmed in such sweeping terms. The statement wiped out at one stroke the U.S.-

dictated provisos at TRIDENT that in

the face of reverses in the Pacific the

United States would intensify its effort

there even at the expense of the war in

Europe, and for the first time spelled

out the corollary implicit in the Germany-first coalition strategy. In principle, at least, the war in the Pacific was

now subordinate to the war in Europe

in the American scheme of things as well

as in the British.73

Coming when they did, the decisions

at Cairo and Tehran relating to the war

in Europe have taken on a retroactive

luster from the dramatic events of the

following summer—the invasions of Normandy and southern France, the advance

up the Italian Peninsula, the sweep

across France to the Rhine. The decisions foreshadowed the events; it is less

certain that they shaped them as well.

ANVIL, for instance, though now closely

linked to OVERLORD, faced a precarious

future and, in the form in which it was

eventually carried out, could not have

been justified by the arguments used

at Tehran. Within a few weeks after the

conferences, unforeseen circumstances

were playing havoc with the decisions

on Turkey, the Aegean, Italy, and southeast Asia.

As for OVERLORD, Stalin's insistence

upon it undoubtedly enhanced the likelihood that the means would be found

to execute the operation even if there

should be an unforeseen increase in German power. On the other hand, American staff thinking had already been moving in that direction, and the massive

preparations for the invasion had generated a momentum difficult, if not impossible, to arrest. Any radical change

of direction or of emphasis at this time

—let alone later—would have caused an

upheaval in plans and preparations more

costly than many military defeats. As a

practical matter, the war in Europe had

progressed beyond the point of no return. Even the date was hardly any longer in the realm of strategic decision.

After Tehran strategic planning was

pointed toward a late May or early June

OVERLORD (though the administrative

staffs continued for some time to work

toward an early May deadline). In the

end the actual date of OVERLORD was

dictated, as Churchill has remarked,

mainly "by the moon and the weather."74

72

 On this point see Greenfield, American Strategy

in World War II: A Reconsideration, pp. 34-35,

40-41. 73

 CCS 426/1, 6 Dec 43. 74

 Churchill, Closing the Ring, p. 376.
CHAPTER XII

Inventory and Aftermath

As the major decisions were taking

shape at Cairo, the Combined Administrative Committee, assisted by shipping

and logistics experts, was preparing a

general appreciation of the relation of

available resources to approved operations. While most of the work was done

at Cairo, the resources paper was not

completed and formally presented to the

CCS until a week after the conference

had ended. The final assessment was

highly optimistic. Apart from assault

shipping, still a problem area, the staffs

predicted that ground, air, naval, and

merchant shipping resources would be

ample for contemplated operations in

both main sectors of the war. Certain

shortages were noted, but none were

judged likely to have an adverse effect

on planned operations. A shortage of

service troops impended for both ANVIL

and the Pacific campaigns; supply of

naval escorts, escort carriers, and destroyers would be tight during the early part

of 1944 but would be "considerably

eased by new construction as the year

progresses." Shortages of air transport

were in prospect both for ANVIL and

for operations in China, Burma, and

India, and of land-based aircraft for

Pacific operations. A mildly critical situation was expected in the supply of high

octane gasoline. Army organizational

and project equipment (Classes II and

IV) would continue in short supply "but

in no case [would be] so serious as to

preclude mounting of operations scheduled." The impact of these shortages

would be felt mainly in the Pacific and

CBI because of the high priority now

assigned OVERLORD and ANVIL.1

Shipping: The Deficits Vanish

The general optimism and the reasons for it were nowhere better reflected

than in the merchant shipping estimates.

What with new construction and conversion programs, the coming year held out

the prospect of a larger deployment of

U.S. forces overseas than ever before,

beyond even the expectations of the Quebec Conference. Now that U.S. deployment plans were for the first time, "adjusted to conform to ... estimates of

shipping capabilities," it was expected

that by the end of 1944 almost 6.9 million U.S. personnel of all services, including 4.9 million Army troops, would

be overseas.2 During the first nine

months of 1944 (the limit of SEXTANT

shipping projections), 2,837,000 U.S.

troops were scheduled for overseas move1

 CCS 428 (Rev), 15 Dec 43, title: Relation of

Available Resources to Agreed Operations. 2

(1) JPS 193/2, 1 Oct 43, title: Strategic Deployment of U.S. Forces to 31 Dec 43. (2) Figures include

all forces outside the Continental U.S. and Canada

except Bermuda and Greenland. Actual overseas

deployment of U.S. Army forces at the end of 1944

was in fact just under 5 million.
298 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

ment—almost a million more than had

been sent during the entire preceding

year. The British, with 200,000 tons of

troop shipping in excess of that expected in August, were prepared to make an

even more massive contribution to this

movement than before by transporting

more than 800,000 American troops overseas between January and October 1944,

over and above handling their own commitments. (Table 24)

The planned British contribution was

concentrated on the U.S. build-up for

OVERLORD, the increase in American lift

being mainly reserved for the Pacific.

Army forces in Pacific theaters and in

CBI were to be built up by mid-1944

to strengths 167,000 greater than contemplated at Quebec, and 45,000 troops

were to be redeployed out of the Alaskan area. Accelerated by shipments from

the United States east coast, deployment

to the Pacific was expected to draw

abreast of objectives, thereby eliminating the deficit forecast at Quebec. QUADRANT deployment objectives for the

Mediterranean theater had also been

raised, in the main simply to reflect the

large volume of movements to that area

that had occurred since the earlier conference. MTOUSA strength on 1 January 1944 stood at 613,000 against a QUADRANT estimate of only 495,800. At Cairo,

with the intrusion of ANVIL, an additional 40,700 troops were scheduled to sail

for the Mediterranean between January

and April 1944; after that date the theater

strength was expected to remain stable.

The 1 May 1944 target for the OVERLORD build-up was now set at 1,366,100,

slightly below the QUADRANT objective

and the ETOUSA troop basis for the

operation, with average monthly movements of 100,000 thereafter through September 1944. British shipping was expected to carry 736,000 troops, more than

half of the 1,340,400 U.S. soldiers scheduled to sail to Britain from January

through September. In all this picture

of expanding promise, only one warning

note sounded: The flood of troops moving across the North Atlantic depended

heavily on continuous shuttling by the

great British-controlled passenger liners

— Ile De France, Nieuw Amsterdam,

Aquitania, Mauretania, and the Queens

—and no allowance was made for possible interruption in service. With the

target date now only four months distant, and completion of the program dependent on monthly troop movements

of 150,000 men, the loss—even serious

damaging — of one of the "monsters"

would be little short of disastrous.3

As for cargo shipping, there were no

"unmanageable" deficits in prospect.

Even the rosy expectations of expanding tonnage at the time of the Quebec

Conference had been exceeded by a substantial margin. The British- and American-controlled dry cargo fleets had grown

by the end of the year to a total of 41.7

million dead-weight tons, 800,000 more

than predicted in August and almost

6.5 million more than the tonnage available in mid-1943.4

 Shipping losses from

3

(1) CCS 428 (Rev), 15 Dec 43, Annex VII, Part

IV. (2) Ruppenthal, Logistical Support of the

Armies I, 129-32. (3) On the QUADRANT schedules

see below, Chapter VIII. 4

(1)ASF Monthly Progress Reports, 31 Mar 44,

sec. 3, Transportation, p. 12; 30 Sep 43, p. 6.

(2) Behrens, Merchant Shipping, p. 69. (3) The fleet

under U.S. operation grew from 16.77 million tons

on 30 June 1943 to 21.62 million tons on 31 December 1943; the British-controlled fleet from 18.53

million tons to 20.08 million tons. These figures

exclude United Nations and neutral shipping not

working on British Empire or U.S. services, and

vessels owned by or under bareboat charter to the

U.S. Army and Navy.

300 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

August through November 1943 hovered

in the neighborhood of 200,000 deadweight tons monthly, despite the reappearance of a U-boat pack in the North

Atlantic armed with a new weaponacoustic homing torpedoes. Meanwhile,

the shipyards each month were adding

six or seven times this tonnage to the

merchant fleets. It seemed a reasonable

expectation that in the year to come

British- and American-controlled merchant shipping might grow another ten

million tons or more.5

Nevertheless, the British shipping budget showed a deficit of 2.7 million deadweight tons for the first half of 1944 and

slightly more thereafter. As at Quebec,

the chief task of the shipping experts

was to absorb it into the American budget. Even though the British deficit was

500,000 tons smaller now than anticipated at Quebec, it did not go unchallenged by the Americans—a symptom of

the coolness that had developed between

U.S. and British shipping authorities.6

The Americans sharply questioned the

British goal for the U.K. Import Program in 1944 — 26 million tons —even

though it was substantially lower than

the QUADRANT estimate and slightly less

than the amount actually imported in

1943. They argued that, whatever the

need, it was unrealistic to expect that

Britain's ports, roads, railways, and storage facilities could handle all this freight

along with the immense burdens attendant on the OVERLORD operation; 24 million tons, they thought, would be a more

nearly attainable goal. The British insisted that the need was real and that

their supply agencies were actually asking for 27.5 million tons; to reduce imports to 24 million tons would draw

raw material stocks back down to the

danger level above which they had with

difficulty been raised by the end of 1943.

The precise timing of the OVERLORD

movements and their impact upon import traffic could not be predicted with

certainty. The British further pointed

out that the traffic burden would be

greatly eased if the build-up of American forces were scheduled to taper off

about the time the roads and ports would

be saturated by the outward movement

instead of, as now seemed likely, reaching its peak at that time.

The only concession the British would

make was to re-examine, without abandoning, the 26-million-ton import goal

for 1944. A tentative midyear objective

of 12.5 million tons was set, subject to

reduction at the first clear indication

it would not prove feasible. The QUADRANT allocation of shipping for British

imports was proportionately reduced.7

The British did not correspondingly

reduce their demand for American aid,

and this provoked further debate. Their

shipping budget lent color to American

suspicions that British overseas commerce was expanding. While there had

been no visible rise in British exports

and shipping services since 1942, the

Americans strongly suspected that one

was concealed in the mounting volume

of civilian supply shipments among Brit5

 (1) CCS 399/1, 23 Nov 43, title: Progress Rpt on

U-Boat War. (2) ASF, Control Div., Statistical Review, World War II, p. 144. Copy in OCMH. (3) ASF

Monthly Progress Report, sec. 3, Transportation,

31 Mar 44, p. 15. 6

 (1) See above, ch. IX. (2) The British budget

actually showed 650,000 more dead-weight tons of

shipping in operation in 1944 than had been counted

on at Quebec, but the military services were expected

to absorb 150,000 tons of the increase.

7

 (1)Behrens, Merchant Shipping, pp. 398-402.

(2) Msgs, Reed to Douglas, 11 Dec 43; Douglas to

Reed, 28 Dec 43, folder U.K., WSA Douglas File.
INVENTORY AND AFTERMATH 301

SHIPS UNDER CONSTRUCTION AT LOS ANGELES

ish areas of responsibility, identified in

the shipping budget as the "cross trades."

At QUADRANT, 2.25 million dead-weight

tons had been budgeted for these cross

trades; by December 1943 actual employment had risen to about 3 million, and

the British proposed to allot 3.1 million

tons to them during the coming year.

The additional 850,000 tons coincided

neatly with the reduction in shipping

allotted to U.K. imports for the first

half of 1944, and it was to this program

that U.S. aid was almost entirely pledged.

To the American shipping authorities

it looked very much as though the British were simply shifting more than threequarters of a million tons of their shipping from import services vital to the

joint war effort into permanent services

abroad in order to pave the way for the

revival of their commerce after the war

—in the process inflating the deficit that

the United States was asked to absorb.8

As in other areas of Anglo-American

distrust, this suspicion was not susceptible of proof. The substantive issue really came down to the question of the

essentiality of the overseas services the

British wanted to expand, and in debating this point the Americans were somewhat at a disadvantage. In the end, without too much argument, the British won

their case. The American shipping rep8

 (1) Behrens, Merchant Shipping, pp. 343-53,

394-96. (2) Memo, McCulloch for Reed, 17 Nov 43,

sub: Allocation of WSA Ships to KMS Convoys,

WSA Douglas File BMSM Misc. (3) See below,

Table 25, p. 304.
302 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

resentatives at Cairo, while insisting that

U.S. aid must not rise above the levels

agreed to at Quebec, made no determined effort to lower it. U.S. tonnage

for "maintenance of the war-making capacity of the British Empire" was budgeted at the very same amounts which,

three months earlier, had been calculated as sufficient to make up a British

deficit 500,000 tons greater than the one

it now purported to meet. If anyone at

Cairo wondered how this came to pass,

the fact has not been recorded.

Negotiations at Cairo were mainly

concerned with the distribution, not the

amount, of American shipping to be

employed in British services. The British had given notice in the fall of 1943

that they wanted a more flexible arrangement that would permit them to switch

their American allocations from one

route to another as the situation dictated. Cases in point were their requests

in October and November for U.S. ships

of the required size and speed for the

KMS convoys to the Mediterranean, and

disagreement over this practice had been

primarily responsible for the coolness of

their relations with the U.S. War Shipping Administration.9

 At Cairo Lewis

Douglas offered a solution: The United

States would resume the "Eastern customaries," ten recently discontinued

American sailings monthly on British

account to the Red Sea and Indian

Ocean areas, thus permitting the British

to transfer American vessels of suitable

types allotted to them under bareboat

charter from these routes back to the

Atlantic where they would be available

to fill out KMS convoys to the Mediterranean. In addition, 16 "flexible customaries" would be offered each month to

sail from North America, probably to

North Africa and Italy. American allocations to the U.K. Import Program

would be reduced proportionately—to

about 60 sailings per month, besides

what could be carried as bottom cargo

with U.S. Army BOLERO shipments.10

Another issue in the shipping negotiations at Cairo involved responsibility

for emergency wheat shipments to Italy,

where a food crisis had suddenly developed, and for the carriage of coal to the

same area. In general, the British wanted

to shift responsibility for these shipments

to the Americans.11 The whole issue was

not resolved at the conference, but the

Americans did accept responsibility for

providing 174 sailings for Italian relief

during the first half of 1944 and for continuing shipments at the same level

thereafter. Relief requirements for other

areas to be liberated following OVERLORD would have to be faced, but no

shipping was budgeted for this purpose

at Cairo. Both WSA and BMWT considered all the available estimates as too

speculative in nature to warrant definite

commitments, but they warned that the

delicate balance in the shipping budgets

might be upset when European civil relief demands materialized, as they eventually must.12

9

 See above, ch. IX.

10

 (1) Msg, Bilge 3804 (London) to Nicholson, 10

Dec 43, with related papers in folder Cairo Misc

Rpts Douglas 1943, WSA Conway File. (2) See also

Corresp in OPD Exec 5, Items 13 and 14. (3) CCS

428 (Rev), 15 Dec 43, Annex VII, Parts II and III.

(4) The British budget showed these arrangements

in fine print; they were not reflected in the U.S.

budget, which showed all American aid (except 10

"southern customaries" and the bareboats) as applied

against the U.K. Import Program. 11

 See ch. XXX, below. 12

 Comments by Lord Leathers and Mr. L. W.

Douglas on the Dry Cargo Shipping Position, 7 Dec

43, in CCS 428 (Rev), 15 Dec 43, Annex VII, Part III.
INVENTORY AND AFTERMATH 303

The U.S. cargo shipping budget that

emerged from the discussions at Cairo

showed an increase of nearly 300 cargo

sailings for the first half of 1944 over

the QUADRANT budget. More than twothirds of the increase was accounted for

by projected civilian supply shipments

to Italy and aid to the USSR. Most of

the increases in military supply were in

the Pacific, reflecting in part a transfer

of cargo shipping to that area in the

autumn of 1943, and requirements for

China-Burma-India also showed a moderate rise. For the war against Japan

as a whole U.S. military cargo shipments

scheduled for the first half of 1944 now

exceeded the estimates for Europe.

In Europe, readjustments in the BOLERO program resulted in a small net

reduction in scheduled cargo sailings before OVERLORD D-day. Despite British

objections, however, second-quarter shipments were again scheduled to rise, and

after D-day the volume of maintenance

shipments to northwestern Europe was

expected to swell to 200 per month by

September (double the March and April

quota), augmented by 20 shiploads per

month on tanker decks. Only in the

Mediterranean, among active theaters,

were military cargo shipping requirements expected to taper off, a reduction

more than counterbalanced by an increase in shipments for civil relief.

Both the U.S. and the British military shipping budgets at Cairo allotted

even larger blocks of tonnage than at

Quebec for retention overseas in direct

support of major operations in 1944.

More than a million tons of British shipping were thus budgeted for OVERLORD

and operations in the Mediterranean,

while American shipping similarly retained overseas was expected to reach

a peak of 120 ships in the Mediterranean,

100 in U.K. waters, and 120 in the Pacific—all during the first quarter of 1944.

(Tables 25 and 26)

These arrangements made for a very

tight budget—without deficits, to be sure,

but also without the fat (and suspect)

surpluses of the QUADRANT budget. As

far as the estimates for the first six

months of 1944 were concerned, the shipping authorities gave a cautious endorsement. For the period following, they

warned, "the situation . . . is susceptible

of such wide and unpredictable changes

that only by frequent review can any

variations that promise materially to affect the position be satisfactorily disposed of."

 13

To American military officialdom the

decisions on OVERLORD at Cairo and

Tehran came as a long-awaited green

light for BOLERO, replacing one that

hitherto had alternated frustratingly between red and flickering yellow. With

OVERLORD now unequivocally in top strategic priority, it now became possible

to free BOLERO cargo shipments from the

administrative priority restrictions that

since April 1943 had artificially prevented full use of the abundant shipping

available.

On 9-10 December, ASF officials again

approached OPD, pointing out that the

existing priorities of the European theater—A-1-b-4 for air equipment and

A-1-b-8 for ground—would not permit

shipment of necessary supplies in time

for the OVERLORD operation. They urged

OPD to raise these priorities to A-1-b-1

and A-1-b-2 respectively—that is, to the

13

 (1) Comments of Lord Leathers and Mr. Douglas, 7 Dec 43. (2) Memo, Col Stokes for Gen Wylie,

26 Dec 43, sub: SEXTANT Conf Decisions, folder

Implementation of SEXTANT Decisions, ASF Plng Div.
304 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

TABLE 25—BRITISH SHIPPING BUDGET—SEXTANT CONFERENCE

a

 Actually, this figure was shown under two entries: "Tonnage Permanently Abroad" (2.2) and "Additional Tonnage Temporarily

Operating to and Within the Same Areas" (0.9).

b

 After allowing for an average of 1,500 tons on each ship carrying military cargo for U.S. Army forces in the United Kingdom. c For the Mediterranean, provides for average of 70 ships in the first quarter, 39 in the second quarter, 36 in the third quarter. For

OVERLORD, provides for one-half (agreed upon as British share) of following requirements: 625,000 tons of coastal shipping for the first three

months and 100,000 tons thereafter, besides 160 MT ships in the first month, 100 in the second, 70 in the third. In addition, provides 90

ocean-going stores ships (9,000 dead-weight) to be taken up about middle of second month of OVERLORD, for British account only. Includes

no allowance for expected requirement to ship naval aircraft and landing craft to the Pacific in the second half of 1944 for the build-up of a

British task force.

d

 When translating the British deficit into requirements against the U.S. budget, allowance was made for (1) imports of British cargo in

BOLERO sailings, (2) the effect of the bareboat chartering program, and (3) 10 customary sailings of U.S. ships monthly from North America

to south and east Africa and the ANZAC area. After these allowances, the following U.S. sailings were estimated as required in the first

half of 1944: (a) 10 Eastern customary sailings per month from North America to India and the Red Sea; (b) 60 sailings per month from

North America (including the Gulf ports) to the United Kingdom; (c) 16 flexible customary sailings per month from North America to Italy

and North Africa (equivalent to 22 sailings from North America to the United Kingdom).

These sailings were estimated to be covered by the U.S. budget, except for a small manageable deficit under (c); for the third quarter,

the deficit was estimated to be equivalent to (a) and (b) above, plus 19 flexible customary sailings, equivalent to 26 per month from North

America to the United Kingdom, which was expected to prove manageable.

Movement of coal to Italy was to be met by subsequent arrangements between BMWT and WSA, probably by WSA ballasters carrying

coal from India during first quarter, and an allowance was therefore not carried in the British budget.

Source: CCS 428 (Rev), 15 Dec 43, title: Relation of Available Resources to Agreed Operations, Annex VII, Part II.
INVENTORY AND AFTERMATH 305

TABLE 26—U.S. CARGO SHIPPING BUDGET—SEXTANT CONFERENCE

(Comparable Entries in QUADRANT Shipping Budget)

a

 Operational retentions are not included in total requirements, but are allowed for in total sailings available.

b

 Requirements cover British deficits to extent indicated in the British budget. As in the QUADRANT budget, each BOLERO cargo ship

carried about 1,500 tons of British import cargo, and U.K. import vessels carried equivalent of 12 shiploads of measurement cargo each

month on the U.S. Army account.

Source: (1) CCS 428 (Rev), 15 Dec 43, title: Relation of Available Resources to Agreed Operations, Annex VII, Part III. (2) Table, Summary Reqmts for Cargo Shpg . . . SEXTANT, no date, OCT HB Plng Div Studies, Misc Shpg Info, p. 96.
306 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

very top of the overseas theater priority

scale—and to apply them to advance shipments as well as to equipment accompanying troops. With a 45-day lag between arrival and distribution in the theater, it was obvious that relatively little

material could now be shipped in advance of troops for a 1 May OVERLORD.

A uniform priority for normal and advance shipments would enable ASF to

make the most of the few weeks remaining for advance shipments, thus spreading the flow of cargo as evenly as possible over the entire period.

OPD acquiesced a week later. On 21

December a formal directive established

a uniform theater priority of A-1-b-2 for

all shipments to the European theater

involving items needed for the invasion.

The directive specifically included supply shortages for units already in the

theater, supplies preshipped against the

invasion troop basis, and supplies for

operational projects through D plus 90

—categories that previously had had separate and lower priorities.14

The way was thus paved for a massive

acceleration of the build-up in the few

months remaining before OVERLORD. It

was late in the day. The effects of the

new priority would not begin to be felt

until February, bringing shipments to

their peak about the same time that

British ports, depots, and inland transport were swamped with outbound traffic for the assault. This was precisely

what the British had feared and repeatedly warned against; it was what the

preshipment program had been designed

to avoid. The priority problem had been

solved, but too late — which was, of

course, better than not at all. Still to be

dealt with were the consequences of this

failure: the gap between reception and

handling capacity in the United Kingdom and the flood of traffic soon to

arrive.

Assault Shipping: The New

American Program

Assault shipping had been the critical

logistical issue at Cairo and Tehran.

In their final report to the President

and Prime Minister, the CCS urged that

"every effort must be made, by accelerated building and conversion, to provide essential landing craft for the European Theater."

 15

 The estimates written

into the SEXTANT resources paper, however, indicated no expectation that any

additional craft would actually be provided from these sources. Along with

the somewhat ritualistic characterization of assault shipping as a general bottleneck, in fact, appeared the optimistic

prediction that "there should be sufficient landing craft to carry out approved

operations."

 16

 This optimism rested, in

the last analysis, on the general assumption that combat loaders, the mainstay

of Pacific amphibious operations, could

be shifted from one main axis to the

other in the Pacific as needed, and that

LST's, LCT's, and LCI (L)'s could be

redeployed with similar flexibility in the

Mediterranean and OVERLORD areas.

Yet the assumption that landing craft

in European waters could be used, in

rapid succession, in a landing on the

Italian coast in December and in an assault on Rhodes at the end of February 14

 (1) See above, ch. IX. (2) TAG Ltr to CsTechSvcs,

21 Dec 43, sub: Priorities for ETO (U.K.), SPX

400.22 (21 Dec 43) OB-S-SPDDL-M. (3) Leighton,

Problem of Troop and Cargo Flow, pp. 115-17.

15

 CCS 426/1, 6 Dec 43. 16

 CCS 428 (Rev), 15 Dec 43, Annex V.
INVENTORY AND AFTERMATH 307

ASSAULT SHIPPING ALLOCATED FOR OVERLORD AND ANVIL

—and could then be assembled, refitted,

and redeployed for both the OVERLORD

and ANVIL assaults sometime in May,

was, to say the least, tenuous. Even more

tenuous was the assumption that the

assault shipping allocated for OVERLORD

and ANVIL was sufficient for both operations to be executed simultaneously.

For the present, over and above the

TRIDENT and QUADRANT allotments the

planners could count on the vessels assigned from Southeast Asia, most of

about two months of U.S. production

of LST's, LCI (L)'s, and LCT's pledged

by Admiral King on 5 November and

4 December, a few more U.S. and British assault transports, and an indeterminate number of new British LCT's. (See

table above.) The craft allotted, the logistical planners recorded, "should provide a satisfactory lift for both OVERLORD

and ANVIL."

 17

 With these assurances in

hand, the CCS awaited the verdicts of

the commanders who were to carry out

the operations.

Admiral King's willingness to divert

additional vessels from American production for OVERLORD and ANVIL probably owed something to the accelerated

production schedules set in train in September 1943.18

 As indicated earlier, the

new schedules did not actually provide

for any substantial increase in time to

benefit a 1 May OVERLORD: they did,

however, promise a marked increase for

Pacific campaigns after mid-1944. King's

Cairo offer of 26 LST's and 31 LCT's

for ANVIL was ostensibly based on the

new target date "in May" (that is, early

June), which presumably would make

available another month's production.

The 26 LST's were to be taken from

an estimated February and March output of 48—specifically, from the 38 previously allocated to the Pacific, since

10 had already been allocated to OVERLORD. It is a reasonable supposition that

Admiral King was willing to accept this

diversion from Pacific allotments early

in 1944 in anticipation of the increased

output that would be available for the

Pacific later in the year. The offer was

accompanied by a warning that the operation against Truk, the main Japanese

base in the Carolines, might be adversely affected. Actually, the possibility of

bypassing Truk was already under discussion and in the event was realized.19

Moreover, by this time King may have

been counting on an even greater augmentation of the landing craft program

17 Ibid. 18

 See above, ch. X.

19

 See Min, 123d mtg JCS, 15 Nov 43, and 124th

mtg, 17 Nov 43; also below, ch. XVI.
308 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

than the 35 percent increase ordered in

October. It will be recalled that the

President, evidently with a postponement of OVERLORD in mind, had cabled

OWM Director Byrnes from Cairo to

investigate immediately the prospects of

increasing the program during the first

five months of 1944 "on the assumption

that [it] takes precedence over all other

munitions of war." Even on this assumption, Byrnes found when he consulted

the production people, only meager increases could be expected through

March, but in April and May output

could be raised substantially.20

Partly because immediate steps had

to be taken to insure that the steel plate

would be available in the event the President ordered the increase, Byrnes decided, in consultation with Army, Navy,

and WPB officials, to go ahead with the

augmented program. By the time the

President replied from Tehran on 29

November that the increases would come

too late to do OVERLORD any good, the

vast undertaking was already in trainrolling mill schedules had been revamped to turn out 39,000 more tons

of plate in December, steps had been

taken to move up delivery of components by three months, and special priority assistance had been ordered. In the

main, the revised program involved a

three-months' acceleration of production

of LST's, LCI(L)'s, and LCT's, with

the aim of delivering by 31 May all vessels previously scheduled for delivery

through August. The estimated increases,

by month, were:21

LST LCI(L) LCT(6)

Total ....... 50 71 116

1944

February ................ 2 3 10

March .................. 5 10 21

April ................... 15 20 35

May .................... 28 38 50

One more important modification in

the landing craft program was made

about the same time, and must be noted.

In the latter part of November U.S.

forces landed on Tarawa in the Gilbert

Islands and after one of the bloodiest

actions of the Pacific war destroyed the

enemy garrison. A major lesson drawn

from the experience was the usefulness

of the amphibious tractor (LVT) for

carrying assault troops over offshore reefs

that landing craft could not surmount.

Without the 125 LVT's used by the 2d

Marine Division in the assault, the

troops might not have got ashore at

all, and, indeed, this number proved to

be too few to maintain the momentum

of the attack. Production of LVT's, armored and unarmored, had risen by

November to slightly more than 300 per

month. To double that output within

the next few weeks, as was now demanded, seemed out of the question, and no

substantial increase was expected before

June 1944. Nevertheless, the program

objective was immediately raised from

2,620 to over 6,000, and incentive sched20

 (1) See above, ch. XI. (2) Quoted from Msg,

President to Justice Byrnes, 23 Nov 43, OPD Exec 5,

Item 14. (3) Mowry, Landing Craft and the War

Production Board, p. 31. (4) JCS Memo for Info

171, 27 Nov 43, title: Ldg Cft Production. (5) Memo,

Ad Hoc Com for CsofS, 28 Nov 43, ABC 561 (30

Aug 43).

21

 (1) See schedules in JCS 569/5, rpt by JLC,

18 Dec 43, title: Allocation of Steel Plate for FebMar 1944, app. B. (2) Mowry, Landing Craft and

the War Production Board, pp. 38-41. (3) Memo,

Clay for Somervell, 26 Nov 43, sub: Allocation of

Steel Plate for 1944; and Memo, Styer for Somervell, 27 Nov 43, sub: Status of Allocation of Steel

Plate, folder CG ASF 1943-44, Hq ASF. (4) Memo,

Ad Hoc Com for CsofS, 28 Nov 43.
INVENTORY AND AFTERMATH 309

ules for the next few months, already

impossibly high, were more than doubled.22

 Meanwhile the Army had already

moved to increase DUKW production,

almost doubling the schedules in effect

at the time of the QUADRANT Conference.

By mid-December 1943 a series of actions had been taken which, in the aggregate, inaugurated a new landing craft

program of unprecedented magnitude.

Embodying the 35 percent over-all increase in ships and craft agreed to in late

October 1943, the three months' acceleration of LST's, LCI(L)'s and LCT's

now projected, and the huge "Tarawa"

program of LVT's, it foreshadowed a

monetary expenditure in 1944 57 percent greater than all previous landing

craft production put together. The impact of this new demand on U.S. industry was less disruptive than might have

been expected a few months earlier.

Special expediting assistance by WPB

would be needed, as in earlier crash programs, and the prospects of fulfilling the

new LST schedules during the first six

months of 1944 were uncertain, largely

because the Navy had been laggard in

placing new contracts and assigned most

of them to firms that had performed badly in earlier programs. On the other

hand, the marked improvement, described earlier, in the outlook for availability of steel plate in spring of 1944

provided a solid underpinning for the

additional output now scheduled. Cutbacks in Army programs during November—notably in trucks, more recently in

small coastal cargo ships—and in production of merchant shipping promised to

relieve pressures in many sectors of war

production. In the main, despite all the

head-shaking of the experts in September and October and even the misgivings

aroused by the President's message to

Byrnes on 23 November, indications

were that the whole program might be

absorbed with little or no derangement

of other war production.23

For OVERLORD and ANVIL, however,

the augmented program still held out

no prospects of a substantial increase in

assault lift. Like the September and October program increases, the more recent

ones promised to bestow virtually all

their benefits on the Pacific war. This

was the inescapable, and ironic, outcome

of the President's belated recognition

of the needs of the war in Europe, which

had prompted his message from Cairo

on 23 November. The planners at Cairo

had based their allocations on the Navy's

1 November production schedules and

merely added to the QUADRANT allocations for Europe the two increments bequeathed by Admiral King and the shipping ordered back from southeast Asia.

Subsequent increases in American production were automatically allocated to

the Pacific. Moreover, Admiral King's

concessions to the needs of the European

war, in effect hypothecating future increases in production, clearly implied

that any further allotments to OVERLORD and ANVIL from the same source

would depend on Navy officials' judgment as to how much could be spared

22

 (1) Mowry, Landing Craft and the War Production Board, pp. 28-30, 40. (2) Philip A. Crowl

and Edmund G. Love, Seizure of the Gilberts and

Marshalls, UNITED STATES ARMY IN WORLD

WAR II (Washington, 1955), pp. 164-65. (3) CCS

428 (Rev), 15 Dec 43, Annex VI.

23

 (1) See above, ch. X. (2) Mowry, Landing Craft

and the War Production Board, pp. 33-52. (3) OPD

MFR, 22 Nov 43, ABC 561 (30 Aug 43). (4) Memos,

Clay for Somervell, 26 Nov 43; and Styer for Somervell, 27 Nov 43. (5) JCS 569/5, 18 Dec 43.
310 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

from the Pacific. In any case, under the

most optimistic expectations very little

scheduled U.S. production of LST's remained that could be diverted in time

to be used in European operations. For

the first three months of 1944 the old

LST production schedules had provided

for a total output of 72. The crash program raised this total expectation to 79,

of which 58 had now been allocated to

OVERLORD and ANVIL. It was problematical whether all vessels that came off

the ways in March could reach either

the Mediterranean or the United Kingdom in time for landings in late May

or early June. The new program thus

joined the list of measures, not too little

but too late, to meet the need for assault

shipping in the European war.

Postscript: The Tribulations

of Shingle

During December the Allied commands in Europe were busy with arrangements for the Mediterranean operations ordered at Cairo—landings south

of Rome, the assault on Rhodes, eventually ANVIL. Shipping released from

the canceled operation in the Andaman

Islands, now on the way back to the

Mediterranean, seemed to have solved

the problem of assault lift for Rhodes,

but the questions of timing left unanswered at Cairo and Tehran now had

to be faced. The SEXTANT decisions stipulated that the Rhodes operation must

be fitted in "without detriment to OVERLORD and ANVIL," and the Americans

were determined that this restriction

should be rigidly enforced. The assault

on Rhodes accordingly must be executed in time to permit the release of landing ships and craft for ANVIL "in May."

A related problem was the scope and

timing of the amphibious operation

along the Italian coast. At Cairo and

Tehran it had been almost taken for

granted that this operation would be

launched in December and that the Allies would march into Rome by the end

of January. This assumption lay behind

the permission granted to Eisenhower

to retain his 68 LST's until 15 January,

and indeed the entire British Mediterranean program. At least some of the

air power required to cover the British

landings on Rhodes and to protect Turkish forces when they entered the war

would have to come from Italy. Thus

any delay in the advance in Italy had

serious implications for the Rhodes operation and, of even grater significance,

for the timing of the release of Mediterranean assault shipping for OVERLORD.24

In the last analysis, however, the

Rhodes operation depended on the attitude of Turkey, for the British had made

Turkish entry into the war a prerequisite to its execution. Negotiations with

the Turks at Cairo, in which President

Roosevelt also participated, had left

Churchill in a hopeful frame of mind,

and conversations on the military level

were scheduled to follow at Ankara.25

As the Cairo meetings ended, prospects

seemed reasonably good that the eastern

Mediterranean would soon be ablaze.

Then on 17 December the CCS received General Eisenhower's preliminary report on his nearly completed outline plan for ANVIL, and with it the

incidental news that HERCULES, the

Rhodes operation, was now tentatively

scheduled for 22 March, the earliest date

24

 Ehrman, Grand Strategy V, 193-95, 207- 25

 Ibid., p. 194.
INVENTORY AND AFTERMATH 311

by which the assigned British division

would be ready. What particularly

caught the attention of the U.S. Chiefs

of Staff was Elisenhower's announced intention to use the ex-Andamans assault

shipping for HERCULES, evidently without considering whether, if committed

so late, it could be released in time for

a May ANVIL. For the latter undertaking,

the Allied commander demanded a full

3-division lift, and he blandly inquired

whether the necessary shipping could be

found "from any source having a priority on resources lower than ANVIL."

 26

The CCS did not at once debate the

question of the size of ANVIL, since detailed requirements had not yet come

in and would have to be studied in connection with those for OVERLORD, which

were also being re-examined. But the

U.S. planners, under instructions from

the JCS, promptly produced a study purporting to demonstrate that any assault

shipping used for Rhodes late in March

could not be released in time for ANVIL;

if the two operations were executed

seriatim, HERCULES would have to be

scheduled no later than 1 February. This

conclusion was dictated by the limiting

factors introduced into the problem—a

full thirty-day tie-up of shipping at

Rhodes, two weeks voyage time from

Rhodes to the ANVIL staging area, three

to four weeks for overhaul, two weeks

for staging before ANVIL. As an Army

officer candidly put it, the object of the

study was "to prove that it will not be

possible to mount HERCULES without

prejudice to ANVIL." Not surprisingly,

the argument was "based on the worst

conditions."

 27

But it was the Turks, not the JCS,

who settled the fate of HERCULES. In the

military conversations at Ankara on 12

December they abruptly raised the ante

on the military aid demanded as the

price of intervention, influenced at least

in part by a growing realization that the

United States was lukewarm if not hostile to their entry into the war. Though

the British made some concessions, by

the third week in December negotiations

had reached a stalemate. While the

Americans continued to worry lest the

British yield still more, or undertake

unilateral action, by 23 December

Churchill himself had despaired of the

Turkish attitude and was ready to write

off the Rhodes operation. On Christmas

Day he minuted laconically to the British Chiefs of Staff, "Rhodes is not on."

A few days later, when the Army staff

in Washington got the word, someone

scribbled an exultant finis to the whole

episode "The PM has quit!!"

 28

The Prime Minister was impelled toward his decision not only by the attitude of the Turks but also by the worsening situation in Italy. By mid-December

it appeared that the landings south of

Rome would also be called off. This amphibious operation had been planned in

26

 (1) Msg NAF 552, Eisenhower to CCS, 17 Dec

43, Incl to CPS 131/3/D, 18 Dec 43, title: Assault

Lift for ANVIL, ABC 384 (1 Nov 43), Sec 2-A. (2) Min,

138th mtg (Suppl) JCS, 21 Dec 43.

27

 (1) Army Comment on JCS 639, 24 Dec 43, ABC

381 Strategy Sec Papers (7 Jan 43) 196-213, Tab

202/1. (2) JCS 639, 23 Dec 43, rpt by JPS, title:

Assault Lift for ANVIL. 28

 (1) Pencil note on draft study, 30 Dec 43, in

ABC 381 Strategy Sec Papers (7 Jan 43) 196-213,

Tab 209. (2) Related papers in this file. (3) Ehnnan,

Grand Strategy V, 212-13. (4) Churchill, Closing the

Ring, pp. 430, 433. (5) Negotiations with the Turks

dragged on through January, but on the 31st the

British abruptly cut off all military aid to Turkey.

On 7 February the CCS released forces that had

been earmarked for Aegean and Turkish operations.
312 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

November as a one-division assault at

Anzio to be executed on 20 December,

but its timing depended on a prior advance by Fifth Army up the Liri Valley

to positions within supporting distance

of the beachhead. Fifth Army's drive,

which jumped off on 1 December, soon

bogged down and by the middle of the

month it was clear that it would be nowhere near its objective in time for the

scheduled landings on the 20th. By the

time that date arrived, SHINGLE, as the

operation was now called, had first been

postponed, and then canceled.29

At this juncture Prime Minister

Churchill, recovering at Carthage from

a bout with pneumonia, intervened to

demand from the British Chiefs a detailed accounting for what he termed

the "scandalous" failure to employ the

amphibious resources available in the

Mediterranean. The result was the revival of a suggestion already made by

Lt. Gen. Mark W. Clark, Fifth Army

commander, that the discarded plan be

reviewed and enlarged to provide for a

2-division assault, which was judged

strong enough to seize and hold a bridgehead until Fifth Army could link up

with it. On 23 December both Eisenhower and Alexander endorsed the idea,

and by the 25th the target date had been

set for 20 January.30

For the 2-division "cat-claw," as

Churchill called SHINGLE, the bill of

requirements was estimated, somewhat

generously, as 8 LSI (L)'s, 88 LST's,

60 LCT's, and 90 LCI (L)'s. Finding

the LCI (L)'s and LCT's presented no

problem, and the six ex-BUCCANEER

LSI (L)'s, now on their way back from

India, were expected to reach the Mediterranean on time. At the moment, 105

LST's were in the Mediterranean, but

68 of them (56 British and 12 U.S.)

were due to leave about 15 January for

the United Kingdom, and 10 more were

expected to require immediate repairs.

Another 10 were earmarked to begin the

build-up of air forces on Corsica but

might be held back for a limited time.

The 15 ex-Andamans LST's, not due

to reach Suez until mid-January, would

be too late. At best, therefore, it appeared that only 37, probably no more

than 27, LST's would be on hand for

SHINGLE.31

It was thus clear from the outset that,

if the gap were to be closed, some of the

68 OVERLORD LST's in the Mediterranean would have to remain there past

the 15 January departure date. The question was, how many and for how long?

If some leeway could be found in the

schedules for intertheater passage and

repair and training in the United Kingdom for OVERLORD, some delay in departure might be accepted. By the same

token, the 15 ex-Andamans LST's, and

possibly even the 26 from the United

States promised for ANVIL, might be

turned to SHINGLE'S account by proceeding directly to the United Kingdom, thus

29

 (1) Ehrman, Grand Strategy V, 207-209. (2)

Fifth Army History, IV, 14-15. 30

 (1) Msg, Prime Minister to COS, 19 Dec 43, and

Msg, COS to Prime Minister, 22 Dec 43, quoted in

Churchill, Closing the Ring, pp. 429-30. (2) Ehrman,

Grand Strategy V, 209-10. (3) Report by the Supreme

Allied Commander, Mediterranean, to the Combined

Chiefs of Staff on the Italian Campaign, 8 January

1944 to 10 May 1944 (Washington, 1946) (hereafter

cited as Wilson Despatch), p. 11.

31

 (1) Ehrman, Grand Strategy V, 210, 214. (2)

Churchill, Closing the Ring, pp. 431, 435. (3) Maj.

James D. T. Hamilton, The Invasion of Southern

France, ch. II, "The Shadow of ANVIL," pp. 33-35,

MS, OCMH. (4) CPS Memo for Info 14, 17 Jan 44,

and 15, 19 Jan 44, ABC 561 (31 Aug 43), Sec 1-A.
INVENTORY AND AFTERMATH 313

permitting a like number to be retained

in the Mediterranean for SHINGLE and,

later, ANVIL.

Accordingly, the energetic Prime Minister fixed a critical eye upon the timetables for movement, docking, and training on which all the calculations rested.

One of Admiral Cunningham's planners,

Capt. M. L. Power, was able to provide

the technical arguments he needed. Power pointed out that since the crews of

the LST's in the Mediterranean were

now veterans needing little additional

training, the 68 OVERLORD LST's could

assemble in the United Kingdom for

final rehearsals and loading as late as

three weeks before D-day. Adding another four weeks for refitting, and two weeks

for passage, he produced a late-February deadline for departure from the

Mediterranean, even if OVERLORD were

to be launched at the beginning of

May.32

In consultation with the principal

commanders in the Mediterranean,

Churchill ascertained that the two divisions could be ready to assault on 20

January and get ashore with necessary

supplies by 5 February, leaving ample

time to send the OVERLORD LST's back

to the United Kingdom. On Christmas

Day he cabled London his plan: hold

the 56 British LST's assigned to OVERLORD until 5 February, sending 12 American LST's immediately to England, and

hold the ex-Andamans LSI (L)'s and

LST's in the Mediterranean when they

arrived. All naval and mercantile construction in England, he exhorted, must

be subordinated to the aim of speeding

the refitting of LST's for OVERLORD.

On the same day, without waiting to

hear from the British Chiefs, Churchill

appealed directly to Roosevelt, urging

that unless the 56 LST's were held

back the whole Mediterranean campaign

would be ruined. He assured Roosevelt

that "various expedients" were under

study by which the three weeks lost for

OVERLORD preparations could be regained, and added parenthetically that

he had decided to sidetrack his Aegean

plans "in these higher interests."

 33

In London, the British Chiefs were

not entirely convinced by Captain Power's arithmetic, and they dreaded the

explosion they expected the Prime Minister's request to set off in Washington.

The best alternative they could offer,

however, was to hold back 48 instead

of 56 LST's for SHINGLE, while sending

the ex-Andamans LST's straight on to

the United Kingdom. This would put

less strain on the OVERLORD docking program than Churchill's scheme, but it

would give SHINGLE, at most, only 84

LST's (against Churchill's 92) — and

then only on the unrealistic assumption

that all would be operational when the

landings took place. Rather bluntly the

British Chiefs pointed out to Churchill

that he seemed to be staking everything

on SHINGLE and passing all the risks on

to OVERLORD and ANVIL, whereas the

Cairo-Tehran decisions would seem to

demand precisely the contrary. Neither

plan, they thought, left an adequate margin for contingencies, although theirs

was less objectionable. Moreover, they

32

 (1) Ehrman, Grand Strategy V, 216. (2) Churchill,

Closing the Ring, pp. 422-23.

33

 (1) Msg, Former Naval Person to Roosevelt,

25 Dec 43, quoted in Churchill, Closing the Ring,

pp. 436-37; also pp. 433-36. (2) Msg, Prime Minister

to COS, 25 Dec 43, quoted in Ehrman, Grand Strategy V, 216-17.
314 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

did not expect a favorable reaction from

the Americans.34

To the JCS, as to the British Chiefs,

Churchill's proposal seemed to leave

very little margin of safety for OVERLORD, and they were sceptical of the still

unrevealed "expedients" by which the

lost time was to be made up. On the

other hand, they felt compelled to yield

to what seemed the evident necessity of

mounting the Anzio operation in order

to get to Rome and the defensible line

beyond that was considered essential for

the support of ANVIL. Churchill's apparent concession on Rhodes was another

lure—"we should grasp this opportunity," General Handy counseled Marshall,

"to eliminate HERCULES from further

consideration. . . ,"

 35

 The upshot was

that when Churchill read the President's

reply on 28 December he was pleasantly

surprised. Roosevelt agreed to retention

of all 56 British LST's for the Anzio

landings on 20 January, making only

the expected reservation that OVERLORD

and ANVIL must not be endangered as to

timing or strength. He also wanted the

15 ex-Andamans LST's to go on to the

United Kingdom, where they would arrive by mid-February, while 15 of the

OVERLORD LST's in the Mediterranean

would stay there for ANVIL. Churchill

was quite ready to accept this amendment, and replied forthwith with a fervent "I thank God for this fine decision

which engages us once again in wholehearted unity upon a great enterprise."

 36

The search for LST's for SHINGLE,

which did not end with "this fine decision," played a part in the final liquidation of plans for amphibious operations

in southeast Asia. Casting about for all

possible sources, the British Chiefs had

originally suggested to the Prime Minister that the three LST's remaining in

southeast Asia after the departure of the

ex-Andamans shipping might also be recalled. These vessels were British-built

LST(1)'s, faster and more seaworthy

than the American LST (2)'s. If they

could reach the Mediterranean by 20

January, which seemed possible though

far from certain, they might take part

in the Anzio landings. If not, they could

go on to the United Kingdom and substitute for three OVERLORD LST's, or

stay in the Mediterranean for ANVIL.

Since the SEXTANT Conference, however,

a new amphibious project had emerged

in Admiral Lord Louis Mountbatten's

theater. Despite his "all-or-nothing" reaction to the query from the CCS at Cairo

whether any lesser substitute for BUCCANEER might be feasible, only four days

thereafter Mountbatten had submitted a

plan for a new venture, Operation PIGSTICK, a small seaborne landing on the

Mayu Peninsula behind Japanese lines

in the Arakan. PIGSTICK might support

either the original mainland operations

or the more limited ones recently proposed. While it was being discussed in

Washington and London, Mountbatten

on 21 December offered the plan to Chiang on his own responsibility as fulfillment of the original promise of an amphibious operation. The Generalissimo,

however, in his reply to the President's

message of 5 December, had already in34

 (1) Ehrman, Grand Strategy V, 216-17. (2) Msg

COS(W)1035, Br COS for CCS, 31 Dec 43, OPD 360

Security, III, Case 117. 35

 (1) Memo, Handy for CofS, 27 Dec 43, sub:

Proposed Msg from President to Prime Minister. . . .

(2) Memo, CofS for Adm Leahy, no date. Both in

ABC 561 (31 Aug 43), Sec 1-B. 36

 Msg, Prime Minister to President, 28 Dec 43,

and Msg, President to Prime Minister, 28 Dec 43,

Churchill, Closing the Ring, pp. 440-41.
INVENTORY AND AFTERMATH 315

dicated he would prefer postponed landings "on a grand scale" to an immediate

watered-down version of BUCCANEER. His

reaction to PIGSTICK was wary, and the

usual devious negotiations ensued.37

From the beginning Churchill and his

advisers had considered the prospects of

Chinese co-operation in a Burma offensive too remote to gamble on, and wanted to bring back all of Mountbatten's assault lift to Europe where it could be

put to better use. Although Churchill

was careful not to make an issue of this

in his Christmas Day message to the

President, as soon as American agreement to the principle of using OVERLORD

LST's for SHINGLE had been secured the

British Chiefs formally proposed that

PIGSTICK be canceled. On 30 December,

on their own initiative, they ordered

Mountbatten to return his three LST's

in order to get them back to the Mediterranean by 20 January. Mountbatten,

in turn, had no choice but to cancel

PIGSTICK immediately, since his commanders had informed him that preparations could no longer be delayed if the

landings were to be made before the

onset of bad weather in March. The

British Chiefs followed up with an order to the Southeast Asia Command to

return all remaining assault shipping to

the United Kingdom or to the Mediterranean. This action, which rendered academic any further discussion of amphibious operations in SEAC, considerably

annoyed the JCS, who had not given

up hope of bringing the Generalissimo

around to accepting PIGSTICK or something like it. Under the circumstances,

they could only acquiesce in the fait

accompli.38

By the end of December, SHINGLE

thus appeared to have in sight a grand

total of 95 LST's, of which the theater

commanders hoped 90 would be operational—seemingly a more than ample

allocation, since General Alexander on

the 29th had thought he could make do

with only 84. But it soon appeared there

were other problems. General Clark informed Alexander on 2 January that

after the departure of the 12 OVERLORD

LST's on 5 February, allowing for losses,

damage, and resumption of the build-up

on Corsica, only 6 LST's would remain

to carry supplies and vehicles to the

Anzio beachhead. Clark said he needed

at least 24 for the first two weeks, and

10 thereafter for an indefinite period.

The Prime Minister made short work

of this crisis. By figuring losses and damage more closely, by reducing the number of vessels assigned to Corsica, and

by spacing the departure schedule of 33

OVERLORD LST's over the entire month

of February (the remaining 8 were to

refit in the Mediterranean before their

departure), Churchill was able to assure

the theater commanders that they would

have 25 LST's for supply operations until the middle of February and half this

number until the end of the month.

With these arrangements completed,

Churchill could report to Roosevelt on

8 January that "everyone is in good heart

37

 (1) Msgs, Chiang to Roosevelt, 9 and 17 Dec 43,

quoted in Romanus and Sunderland, Stilwell's Command Problems, pp. 74-77. (2) Ehrman, Grand Strategy V, 222-23.

38

 (1) For the discussion of PIGSTICK, see CCS 452

series. (2) Min, 119th mtg JPS, 1 Jan 44. (3) OPD

paper, 5 Jan 44, sub: PIGSTICK Should Not Be Canceled, with related corresp in ABC 381 Strategy Sec

Papers (7 Jan 43) 214-27, Tab 217. (4) Ehrman,

Grand Strategy V, 222-23. (5) Romanus and Sunderland, Stilwell's Command Problems, p. 81. (6) The

assault vessels remaining in SEAC in addition to

the three LST's, included 3 LSI(L)'s, 1 LSI(H), 12

LCI(L)'s, and 2 LSD's. See JCS 639, 23 Dec 43, app. B.
316 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

and the resources seem sufficient" —

which, considering the misgivings of all

the American commanders, was something of an overstatement.39

 (Table 27)

The effort to find LST's for the Anzio

operation added a significant postscript

to the Tehran compromise on OVERLORD'S target date. In the interests of

prudence, and for administrative purposes, the target date had continued to

be regarded as early May, and fading

prospects for operations in the Aegean

might under other circumstances have

prompted an American attempt to abrogate the Tehran agreement altogether in

favor of a fixed 1 May date. It quickly

became evident, however (Captain Power notwithstanding) that delaying the

departure of the OVERLORD LST's from

the Mediterranean until late in February would leave almost no margin against

an early May date—if, indeed, it could

be met at all—and would leave very little margin, as General Handy told his

chief on the 27th, "even though OVERLORD is not launched until late May."

Churchill himself, for all his enthusiastic

endorsement of Captain Power's calculations, apparently conceded the probability.40

 By the end of December, moreover, Churchill had reason to expect that

other considerations might result in

stretching the Tehran agreement. Eisenhower and Montgomery, recently appointed Supreme Commander and Deputy Commander, respectively, for the crossChannel operation, had told him that,

from a preliminary look at the OVERLORD plan, they were both shocked by

the weakness of the planned assault. It

was likely, Churchill wrote the British

Chiefs confidentially, that after the new

commanders had studied the plan they

would ask for a postponement of D-day

to, perhaps, 3 June or even 6 June

(when the moon phase would be favorable). Eisenhower had gone so far as to

suggest that he would be willing to telegraph Stalin to that effect. Churchill

did not pursue the matter, but the prospect of a delayed D-day offered, as he

remarked, "something to veer and haul

on."

 41

On 22 January the Anzio landings

went off without a hitch—"a model of

amphibious operations," General Wilson

said of them in his report. Landing

craft losses on the first and following

days were negligible; the weather was

fine except for two days (the planners

had expected only two good days out

of seven), and troops and matériel

flowed into the beachhead at a phenomenal rate. By the end of the second day

the assault convoy was almost completely unloaded, and within two weeks

70,000 men, 21,940 vehicles (including

380 tanks), and 27,250 tons of stores had

been landed. During the last ten days

of January the daily average discharge

of cargo into the beachhead was over

3,600 tons, and it fell very little below

39

 (1) Morison, Sicily—Salerno—Anzio, pp. 326-28,

app. III. According to Morison, only 74 LST's participated in the Anzio landings. (2) Msg, Prime Minister to President Roosevelt, 8 Jan 44, quoted in

Closing the Ring, p. 447. (3) Ehrman, Grand Strategy V, 219-20. (4) Fifth Army History, IV, 17. (5)

Churchill, Closing the Ring, pp. 446-47. (6) Wilson

Despatch, pp. 19-22. (7) Martin Blumenson, "General Lucas' Decision at Anzio," in Greenfield, ed.,

Command Decisions, pp. 254-56. 40

 (1) Memo, Handy for CofS, 27 Dec 43, sub:

Proposed Msg President to Prime Minister . . . . ABC

561 (31 Aug 43), Sec 1-B. (2) Churchill, Closing the

Ring, p. 440.

41

 Msgs, Prime Minister to Br COS, 29 Dec 43 and

26 Dec 43, quoted in Closing the Ring, pp. 442, 436.
INVENTORY AND AFTERMATH 317

TABLE 27—PLANNED DEPLOYMENT OF LST's FOR SHINGLE AND ANVIL

JANUARY 1944

a

 On 1 January there were actually in the Mediterranean 69 British and 36 U.S. LST's, making a total of 105.

b

 The S3 LST's being sent from the Mediterranean to the United Kingdom, added to the 15 ex-BUCCANEER LST's which were going

direct (instead of to the Mediterranean, as planned at SEXTANT), make the total of 68 LST's assigned at SEXTANT to be sent to OVERLORD

from the Mediterranean. Note that the figure of 41 British LST's in the table "To the United Kingdom after SHINGLE" reflects the retention of 15 British LST's in the Mediterranean out of the 56 earlier destined for OVERLORD before the decision to send the 15 ex-BUCCANEER

LST's directly to the United Kingdom. c

 Losses, attrition, and serviceability not considered. Losses of LST's in the Anzio operation totaled 4 vessels, 3 British and one U.S.

Source: Compiled by Richard M. Leighton from various sources cited in the text.

that level during the entire following

month. The landing of vehicles in a

ratio of more than one to every four

soldiers reflected a performance by LST's

and LCT's far beyond the most optimistic expectations. It also meant that the

forces holding the beachhead had, as

Churchill acidly commented, "a great

superiority of chauffeurs," at the expense

of infantry.42 By the end of February,

even though large reinforcements had

been poured into the beachhead to stem

enemy counterattacks that very nearly

obliterated it, the flow of supply, still

dependent to a great degree on landing ships and craft, had proved more

than adequate. "Plans originally made

for 50,000 men," the Prime Minister

gleefully wrote to Field Marshal Smuts,

"are now comfortably supporting 170,-

000."

 43

 Comfortable though the support

may have been, it could be continued

only by keeping LST's and LCT's at

Anzio to maintain the flow of supply, a

fact that was to weigh heavily in the future planning for OVERLORD and ANVIL.

42

 (1) Msg, Prime Minister to CinC Med, 10 Feb

44, quoted in Closing the Ring, pp. 487-88. (2) Wilson Despatch, pp. 38, 40-42. (3) Msg, Prime Minister

to Dill, 9 Feb 44, Exec 3, Item 16. (4) Fifth Army

History, IV, 71. (5) Bykofsky and Larson, The Transportation Corps: Operations Overseas, pp. 209-11.

(6) Ehrman, Grand Strategy V, 227.

43

 Msg, Prime Minister to Smuts, 27 Feb 44,

quoted in Closing the Ring, p. 493.

PART FOUR

FINAL ASSAULT ON EUROPE

CHAPTER XIII

OVERLORD and ANVIL

With the new year, 1944, strategic

planning and preparations for the European war moved into a new phase. The

Americans were now reasonably confident that OVERLORD would indeed come

off, and their confidence lent a new impetus to the preparations, which had by

this time acquired a momentum of their

own. For both sectors, northwestern Europe and the Mediterranean, the top

commanders who would be responsible

for the climactic operations of the

months to come had been appointed by

early January — Eisenhower for OVERLORD, with Montgomery as his principal

ground commander; Wilson in the Mediterranean, with Alexander staying on as

commander of the forces in the field.

The principal subordinate commands

had been filled and major questions of

command relationships within the whole

structure had been settled. Allocation

of resources for the major competing

operations could, therefore, be decided

upon with a degree of finality hitherto

impossible. Finally, the competition for

resources—which still centered in assault

shipping—had been narrowed down by

the successive elimination of the small

amphibious projects in southeast Asia

and the eastern Mediterranean, so that

the only remaining contenders, outside

the special American sphere in the Pacific, were OVERLORD, ANVIL, and the campaign in Italy. Of these three, OVERLORD

now enjoyed a pre-eminence, but one

that still required a definition of its relationship with ANVIL, an operation

which had also been accorded an overriding priority at SEXTANT, and was

scheduled to be executed at the same

time as OVERLORD.

The Move to Strengthen

Overlord

Early in January the staffs were finally

able to come to grips with the long-deferred problem of strengthening the

OVERLORD assault. The impetus to do

so came almost simultaneously from

Montgomery, who arrived in London

with instructions from his new chief to

review the existing OVERLORD plan, and

from General Morgan, who seized the

opportunity to renew an old appeal.

Montgomery's immediate reaction to his

first briefing in London was to demand

more punch in the assault and a broader

front—specifically four or five reinforced

divisions in the initial assault instead

of the three then planned. He added

what seemed the obvious corollary: the

necessary assault shipping would have

to come from the Mediterranean, at the

expense of ANVIL.

The last point raised a basic issue, for

Eisenhower's recommendations for ANVIL in December, made in his capacity as

Commander in Chief, AFHQ, had been
322 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

for an increase in assault shipping that

would permit a 3-division lift. The

OVERLORD planners, however, had faced

a deficit of assault shipping even after

the new allotments made at SEXTANT,

and before Montgomery's new demand.

A conflict between the two operations

was consequently inescapable. General

Morgan, while he differed from Montgomery in favoring use of the additional

assault lift mainly to strengthen the follow-up rather than the initial assault,

agreed that the necessary resources

should come from ANVIL. The southern

France operation, he reminded the British Chiefs on 6 January, had been conceived in the original OVERLORD plan

as a diversionary threat that would materialize into actual landings only if the

weakness of enemy defenses promised

easy success. He did not hesitate to recommend a return to this concept in the

interests of strengthening OVERLORD.1

The British Chiefs found Montgomery's and Morgan's arguments persuasive since, as they informed the Prime

Minister on 14 January, there seemed

no other way to find additional assault

lift for OVERLORD short of reducing Pacific operations, a suggestion no one in

London was prepared to make. To leave

OVERLORD weak in order to make ANVIL

strong, they said, would create "the serious risk of our falling between two stools

and of both operations failing."

 2

 General Smith, whom Eisenhower had retained as his Chief of Staff, was also convinced, and shortly afterward Montgomery set the top headquarters planners to

work determining how best to employ

resources released from ANVIL should

they materialize.

The premises adopted were that ANVIL should be reduced to a one-division

assault (the minimum lift General Wilson said he would need in the Mediterranean) and that the lift thus released

would be made available for OVERLORD.

The attempt to strengthen OVERLORD

thus began, much as the plan itself had

originally taken form, within the framework of a specified and arbitrarily defined, though still hypothetical allotment of resources. Logically, the allotment should have been preceded by, and

based upon, an objective analysis of

needs translated into concrete requirements. Instead, following a now familiar

fiction, the hypothetical allotment would

presently emerge unchanged from staff

discussions, duly labeled as requirements, and ready to be retranslated into

an allocation of resources—real ones, this

time.

General Eisenhower arrived in London to assume his new command at Supreme Headquarters, Allied Expeditionary Forces (SHAEF) on 16 January.

Within a week he had ruled in favor of

Montgomery's plan for a broader front

with a 5-division assault and a 2-division follow-up, the latter to be loaded

in ordinary transports rather than landing ships and craft. On 23 January he

sent the CCS his recommendations,

based on the headquarters studies, presenting assault shipping requirements

on that scale—6 combat loaders with full

complements of small craft, 2 headquarters ships, 47 LST's, 72 LCI (L)'s, and

144 LCT's, over and above existing assets. These "requirements" were, of

course, identical with the hypothetical

1

 (1) Harrison, Cross-Channel Attack, pp. 159-60,

165-67. (2) Ehrman, Grand Strategy V, 232-34. (3)

Msg, NAF 552, Eisenhower to CCS, 17 Dec 43. 2

 Msg, Br COS to Prime Minister, 14 Jan 44,

SHAEF SGS 560, vol. II.
OVERLORD AND ANVIL 323

GENERAL MONTGOMERY

allocation figures with which the London staffs had been working for the past

two weeks. They included, besides all

the ANVIL shipping over and above a

one-division lift as then calculated, some

96 additional LCT's that could be expected from British production if the

early May target date for OVERLORD were

postponed a month. Eisenhower told the

CCS he was willing to accept such a postponement if he could be "assured of

then obtaining the strength required."

Nothing was said about new American

production.3

With regard to ANVIL, Eisenhower was

in an embarrassing position in view of

his recent plea for a 3-division lift for

that operation and his belief that a real

assault on southern France would help

OVERLORD more than a feint. If means

could be found, he said, the ideal would

be a 5-division OVERLORD plus a 3-division ANVIL—"or, at worst, a two division

ANVIL." If the only means of building

an adequate OVERLORD was to reduce

ANVIL to a one-division threat, Eisenhower reluctantly endorsed that solution,

but "only as a last resort."

 4

From the British Chiefs came enthusiastic agreement. OVERLORD, they thought,

should be built up to five divisions

"whatever the cost to ANVIL or any other

projected operations," and should be

scheduled for late May or early June

when it could better profit from the

promised Soviet offensive; ANVIL should

be mounted on a 2-division-plus scale,

if possible. Actually the British saw little hope for ANVIL if OVERLORD were

strengthened, and thought the small

amount of assault shipping that would

remain in the Mediterranean after the

required diversions might be better employed in maintaining the impetus of

the offensive in Italy.5

The date of OVERLORD was quickly

settled. Churchill, confident that Eisenhower and Montgomery would recommend a target date early in June during

a moon phase corresponding to the original early May date, had discussed the

matter with the British Chiefs and then

3

 (1) Ibid. (2) Msg, Eisenhower to CCS, 23 Jan 44.

(3) Msg, Montgomery to Eisenhower (eyes only), 10

Jan 44. (4) SHAEF Memo, 23 Jan 44, sub: Computation of Methods of Employment of Additional

Resources. All in SHAEF SGS 560, vol. II. (5) Harrison, Cross-Channel Attack, pp. 166-67. (6) Ehrman,

Grand Strategy V, 233-36. (7) Neither Ehrman nor

Harrison recognizes the fictitious character of the

OVERLORD assault shipping "requirements." That

they were fictitious is borne out by documents cited

in (1) and (3) above, and the point was explicitly

commented on a month later by U.S. officers sent

from Washington to participate in the planning.

See below, p. 334. 4

 Msg, Eisenhower to CCS, 23 Jan 44.

5

 (1) Msg, OZ 456 COS (W) 1094, Br COS to JSM

Wash, 26 Jan 44, SHAEF SGS 560, vol. II. (2) Ehrman, Grand Strategy V, 237.
324 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

taken it up with Roosevelt. He argued

that the Tehran agreement would permit any date up to the end of May, and

in any case the preliminary feints and

air bombardment would mark the real

beginning of the operation. The commanders, he thought, should be allowed

some latitude in fixing the exact date of

the landings, and he saw no need to

solicit Stalin's approval. Roosevelt replied noncommittally that any decision

should await the recommendations of

the commanders. When the Joint Chiefs

received the London proposals at the

end of January, their first reaction was

to accept a 31 May target date, since more

assault shipping would then be available,

but to resist an explicit extension into

June. A few days later, they conceded

that a 31 May target date would give

the Supreme Commander sufficient latitude to launch the operation as late as

2 June. The concession was really little

more than a formality, for by the end of

January detailed planning and preparations had reached a stage where the

exact date was more a question of administration than of policy. The London

staffs, as General Smith told General

Handy via transatlantic telephone, had

already assumed that "we have a week

one way or the other," and were actually

figuring on 6 June as the most probable

date. Handy raised no objection.6

The Battle of Statistics

Hardly anyone in Washington disputed the judgment of the commanders in

London that OVERLORD should be

mounted with at least a 5-division assault

and ANVIL, if possible, with a 2-division

assault. Standing in the way of a decision

on appropriate measures to these ends

was an administrative, largely statistical,

difficulty: the inability of the staffs to

agree on the amount of assault lift that

could reasonably be counted upon for

the two operations when the time came.

The picture of both existing and prospective assets had been clouded in many

ways: by successive changes in production programs and fluctuations in actual

production; by redeployment of vessels

within and among theaters; by the constantly shifting statistics of vessels operational and under repair; by differences

in planning allowances made in each

theater for loss, attrition, and immobilization by repair; by the inevitable errors

and time lag inherent in theater status

reporting; and especially, of course, by

the rapid succession of changes in major

strategic plans and assault shipping deployment during the period of the CairoTehran conferences. In short, the staffs

on both sides of the Atlantic and in the

Mediterranean had lost track of their

own calculations; the books were in a

mess, and no qualified auditor was available to straighten them out.

Moreover, as had so frequently happened in the past, differing British and

American approaches to the problem,

colored by divergent strategic views, influenced the compilation and use of statistics. From the American viewpoint,

OVERLORD and ANVIL were strategically

6

 (1) Tel Conv, Gen Handy and Gen Smith, 4 Feb

44, OPD Exec 10, Item 52a. (2) Churchill, Closing

the Ring, pp. 442-43, 448-49. (3) JCS 658/1, rpt by

JPS, 30 Jan 44, title: Recommendations of SCAEF

on OVERLORD and ANVIL. (4) Msg 1478, JSM to Br

COS, 1 Feb 44, SHAEF SGS 560, vol. II. (5) JCS

658/2, rpt by JPS, 5 Feb 44, title: Recommendations

of SCAEF on OVERLORD and ANVIL. Approved as

CCS, 1 Feb 44, SHAEF SGS 560, vol. II. (5) JCS

238, 240.
OVERLORD AND ANVIL 325

one, a proposition that seemed more real

in Washington than it did in London

where preoccupation with OVERLORD

naturally tended to overshadow the

claims of ANVIL—and where the British,

at least, were inclined to see prosecution

of the Italian campaign as more important to the support of OVERLORD than

ANVIL would be.

The U.S. planners in Washington,

convinced that nothing less than a 2-division ANVIL assault would do, critically

scrutinized the assertion, hardly challenged in London except by the Supreme

Commander himself, that if OVERLORD

were to be strengthened ANVIL must be

reduced. They started by re-examining

ANVIL not OVERLORD, analyzing the estimated requirements of a 2-division assault and matching them against currently planned allotments in the hope of

squeezing out a surplus to strengthen

OVERLORD. Finally they proceeded to a

critical re-examination of OVERLORD'S

5-division requirement and of the resources allegedly available to meet it.

The findings of an inquiry undertaken

in this spirit were likely to be quite different from those based on the premise

that the claims of OVERLORD were unequivocally overriding. From this point

of view the inclination was, first, to interpret requirements liberally for both

operations, then to fatten OVERLORD

while starving ANVIL; from the other,

requirements would be tightly interpreted in order to squeeze both operations

into the framework of available assets.

Interpretation was the key, for both aspects of the calculation—the numbers of

vessels and the size of forces a given number of vessels could lift—depended heavily on variable or speculative factors that

could hardly fail to be influenced by the

opinion, bias, and purpose of the planners.

The London proposals to strengthen

OVERLORD found the staffs in Washington mired deep in the statistics of ANVIL,

into which they had been drawn by

Eisenhower's recommendations in midDecember for a 3-division assault. Hasty

estimates, made in the absence of any

statement of requirements from the theater, established little except the likelihood that the lift thus far earmarked

for ANVIL would not be enough for a

3-division assault. Then on 29 December

the theater's detailed requirements were

received, calling for 15 LST's and 15

LCT's over and above existing allocations. With the air still thick with unsettled statistics on arrangements for

the Anzio landings, no one in either

Washington or London was able to

reconcile the theater's availability estimates with those of the central planning

staffs—not so surprising, perhaps, since

the planning staffs were hopelessly at

variance among themselves. The effort

to find a common basis for calculation

dragged on through January, while the

American staffs awaited SHAEF's statement of the needs of an expanded OVERLORD.

 7

7

 The above generalities are based on a detailed

analysis of the following staff papers: (1) CPS 131/5.

4 Jan 44, title: Assault Lift for SHINGLE, OVERLORD,

ANVIL, with Incls, in ABC 384 (1 Nov 43), Sec 2A.

(2) Min, 121st mtg JPS, 12 Jan 44. (3) JCS 639, 23

Dec 43, interim JPS rpt, title: Assault Lift for ANVIL.

(4) Memo, Col Billo for Chief, S&P Gp, OPD, 22

Dec 43, sub: Assault Ships and Ldg Cft for Opn

ANVIL; and Memo, 7 Jan 44, same sub, ABC 381

Strategy Sec Papers (7 Jan 43), 196-213, Tabs 202

and 202/1. (5) CCS 424, 5 Dec 43, title: Amphibious

Opn Against South of France. (6) Memo, Billo for

Chief, S&P Gp, OPD, 30 Dec 43, sub: Comparison

of Figures Given in NAF 569 with those in JCS 639

and SS 202, with related papers in ABC 561 (31

Aug 43), Sec 1B.
326 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

What gave the American staffs most

cause for concern in this statistical controversy was the low serviceability factor

used by the British in their calculations.

This factor, a percentage of all vessels

available in a theater, was used to estimate the number expected on the basis

of past experience to be actually serviceable at the time an operation was

to be executed. At Quebec in August

1943 the British and American staffs

had agreed to use for OVERLORD planning serviceability factors of 90 percent

for LST's and 85 percent for LCT's and

LCI (L)'s; and, in planning Mediterranean operations, 85 percent for LST's,

80 percent for LCI (L)'s, and 75 percent

for LCT's. Since American experience

in both the Mediterranean and in the

Pacific had, in the meantime, consistently bettered these estimates, averaging

something like 95 percent for all landing ships and craft, American planners

understandably considered the QUADRANT rates as unreasonably low. On the

other hand, the British, with older vessels and equipment and possibly a less

efficient maintenance system, had not

done nearly so well, and held to the

QUADRANT rates, insisting that it was

"very much better to plan on too little

and then have a bonus" than to face

an unexpected shortage at the last moment.8

The Americans insisted just as strongly on a 95 percent serviceability factor.

Applied to the problem of finding means

to strengthen OVERLORD without reducing ANVIL, their optimism produced

spectacular, if varied, results. Eisenhower's estimates of the needs for a 3-division ANVIL had been based on serviceability rates purportedly drawn from

Mediterranean experience which the

U.S. planners found too low; the latter

calculated that an assault force of eight

regimental combat teams could be

mounted with the same shipping that,

according to theater estimates, would

only carry seven. Similarly, one officer

proceeded to show that if 95 percent of

the vessels, British and American, expected to be on hand for OVERLORD

could be made serviceable, additional

lift for almost 9,000 personnel and 1,300

vehicles over and above current estimates would accrue. Another calculation, using the same data for vessels on

hand and rated capacities, boosted that

estimate to almost 26,000 personnel and

3,600 vehicles for OVERLORD and an additional 7,400 personnel and 700 vehicles

for ANVIL. With no more effort than

that required to punch the keys of the

adding machine, here was a lift of more

than 33,000 personnel and 4,300 vehicles that could be used to strengthen the

OVERLORD assault. By including three

BOLERO XAP's, Mountbatten's residual

shipping from southeast Asia, and the

surplus that would be released if ANVIL

were held to a 2-division assault, the staff

could predict a grand total in assault

lift of 72,000 personnel and 5,900 vehicles that theoretically might be scraped

together to strengthen OVERLORD — an

"optimum," as the author of the computation admitted, "which undoubtedly

will not be achieved"; but still something to shoot at.9

8

 (1) Msg, RED 445, JPS London to JPS Washington, 4 Jan 44, Incl F, CPS 131/5, 4 Jan 44. (2) Memo

for ACofS, OPD, unsigned, 21 Jan 44, sub: Assault

Lift for European Opns, ABC 384 (9 Jul 43), Sec 1.

9

 (1) Memo for Gen Roberts, unsigned and undated, sub: Assault Shpg for European Opns. (2) Tel

Conv, Adm Bieri and Gen Roberts, 30 Dec 43. Both

in ABC 561 (31 Aug 43), Sec 1-B. (3) Unsigned

Memo for ACofS, OPD, 21 Jan 44. (4) In the event
OVERLORD AND ANVIL 327

Based on these computations of paper

riches, the general opinion in Washington in mid-January 1944 was that there

would be no need to divert any ANVIL

shipping at all to OVERLORD. That Eisenhower and the British thought otherwise

became apparent when the Supreme

Commander's formal recommendations

for a 5-division OVERLORD, closely followed by the British Chiefs' enthusiastic

endorsement, reached Washington toward the end of the month. Jarred by

the size of Eisenhower's listed marginal

requirements (6 combat loaders, 47

LST's, 72 LCI(L)'s, and 144 LCT's),

which gave no indication of the calculations behind them, the Joint Chiefs

immediately sent a detailed questionnaire back to London asking the number of craft expected to be available,

rated capacities, serviceability factors,

and other details pertaining to the loading plan.10

The SHAEF reply was prompt,

brusque, and not altogether enlightening. "I would emphasize" the message

began, "that there is one main question

to which an answer is required now.

Will the additional lift asked for OVERLORD be provided?" The technical questions were answered in detail,11

 but the

Washington planners found it impossible to reconcile their own figures on

expected availability with those of the

theater staff and hence could give no

categorical answer to Eisenhower's pointed question. For instance, in the case of

LCT's, the Washington planners estimated there would be 890 available for

an early June OVERLORD while the theater estimated there would be only

636.12 During the first week in February

Washington and theater planners feverishly sought to clear up the discrepancies in a series of messages and transatlantic telephone conferences. By the 6th

they were able to agree on figures that

became the basis for calculation on both

sides of the Atlantic. For the most part,

the Washington planners conceded the

battle and accepted theater estimates.

At the same time they were able to make

a few scattered, though tangible, additions to the OVERLORD lift: 3 XAP's from

the BOLERO convoys (other than the 3

already allotted to ANVIL), besides 27

more LCT's and 30 more LCI (L)'s, some

of the last two types partly at the expense of training but most of them from

spring production. The Joint Chiefs further suggested that Mountbatten's single

remaining LSI (L) should also be assigned to OVERLORD, together with two

more that he had recently been ordered

to send back to the Mediterranean.13

American optimism as to serviceability rates proved

justified. Actually, 99.3 percent of all U.S. assault

shipping and 97.6 percent of all British assault shipping on hand in the United Kingdom on D-day

were used in the cross-Channel assault. See Harrison,

Cross-Channel Attack, note 44, p. 171. 10

 Msg, JCS to Eisenhower, 25 Jan 44, SHAEF

SGS 560, vol. II.

11 Msg B-55, Eisenhower to JCS, 28 Jan 44, SHAEF

SGS 560, vol. II. Rated capacities were set at 300

personnel and 60 vehicles per LST, 200 personnel

per LCI(L), 55 personnel and 11 vehicles per LCT.

There would be 2,530 vehicles per assault division

and 550 vehicles per assault regimental combat team

(RCT).

12

 The source of the discrepancy appears to have

been the question of the cutoff date for new LCT's

for OVERLORD from British production and the

method of accounting for the 105 LCT's to be

converted to support craft. See Msg 43, AGWAR to

SHAEF (for Smith's eyes only), 28 Jan 44, SHAEF

SGS 381 OVERLORD-ANVIL, vol. I. 13

 (1) JCS 658/1, 30 Jan 44, rpt by JPS, title:

Recommendations of SCAEF on OVERLORD and ANVIL. (2) Ltr, Gen Handy to Gen Smith, 2 Feb 44, with

attached Memo, Col Billo for Col Lincoln, 2 Feb

44, sub: Reconciliation of Figures in SEXTANT Estimates . . . , and supporting tables, ABC 561 (31

Aug 43), Sec 1-B.
328 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

The resultant estimates are shown in

Table 28.

Even with conservative estimates of

total availability, the U.S. staff was able,

by means of the magic wand of high serviceability, to transform what London

insisted was a deficit into a fat surplus.

Conceding the pessimistic QUADRANT

rates for British craft and applying the

95 percent serviceability factor only to

American vessels, they still produced figures that showed that the shipping already allocated to OVERLORD would be

sufficient to mount an assault of 6 1/3

divisions by 31 May, while ANVIL would

have enough for 2, maybe even 2 2/3

divisions. The additional American lift

proposed (3 XAP's, 27 LCT's and 30

LCI (L)'s) they thought would accommodate roughly another combat team,

and the 3 British LSI (L)'s about 6,000

more troops. To these gains might be

added, the staff pointed out, assault lift

for another OVERLORD combat team if

the British could only attain a 95-percent level of serviceability among their

own vessels.14

London agreed to make all three

LSI (L)'s available as suggested, but on

the serviceability question the British

Admiralty obstinately held its ground,

arguing that repair facilities were already stretched to the limit and that

training and rehearsals would tie up

craft right to the last minute.15 So the

London planners won a second concession in the continuing battle of statistics.

Accepting for the present an across-theboard application of the QUADRANT serviceability rates (90 percent for LST's,

85 percent for landing craft, 100 percent

for ships), the Washington planners

could still argue, nevertheless, that with

the shipping already allocated and the

bits and pieces to be added, OVERLORD

would have an assault lift totaling about

177,000 men and over 20,000 vehicles.

On the assumption that the heavily reinforced divisions would average about

24,000-25,000 men and on the reduced

scale of 2,500 vehicles per division adopted by the theater planners, these totals

were reckoned in Washington to be the

equivalent of 7 or 7-1/3 divisions in personnel lift and 8 divisions in vehicular

lift. The findings stood up, moreover,

under the scrutiny of the British planners in Washington so that General

Handy could cable triumphantly to London on 7 February: "Combined planners agree . . . there is lift for at least

seven divisions . . . leaving a two-division ANVIL lift."

 16

This optimistic conclusion, General

Handy learned in a telephone conversation with General Smith on 8 February,

did not coincide with that reached in

14

 (1) JCS 658/1, 30 Jan 44. (2) CCS 465/3, 31 Jan

44, memo by U.S. COS, title: Recommendations of

SCAEF on OVERLORD and ANVIL. 15

 (1) Msg OZ 632, COS(W) 1127 to Britman Wash,

4 Feb 44, SHAEF SGS 560, vol. II. (2) The British did

concede that the rate for LST's might be improved

in the Mediterranean.

16

 (1) Msg R-9085, Handy to Smith (eyes only),

7 Feb 44. (2) Tel Conv, Handy and Smith, 8 Feb 44.

(3) Msg R-9135, Handy to Smith, 8 Feb 44. (4) Msg

76, Marshall to Eisenhower (eyes only), 7 Feb 44.

All in OPD Exec 10, Item 52A. (5) Msg JSM 1496,

Britman Wash to War Office, 8 Feb 44, SHAEF SGS

560, vol. II. (6) CCS 465/6, 6 Feb 44, memo by U.S.

COS, title: Recommendations of SHAEF. . . . (7)

These conclusions do not appear altogether consistent with those in JCS 658/1, which indicated a

lift, even with higher serviceability, of only about

7 divisions (6 1/3 plus 1 RCT plus 6,000 personnel).

Possibly this was a result of differences in the loading capacities used in the two sets of calculations.
OVERLORD AND ANVIL 329

TABLE 28—WASHINGTON PLANNERS' ESTIMATES ON AVAILABILITY OF

ASSAULT SHIPPING FOR OVERLORD AND ANVIL: 6 FEBRUARY 1944

a

 Includes 1 British LSI(L) in Southeast Asia and 2 British LSI(L)'s in use as troop carriers which could be made available for either

OVERLORD or ANVIL.

b

 Includes 27 additional offered by JCS on 31 January 1944.

c

 Includes U.K. production through 15 April 1944. Excludes 69 support craft. d

 Includes 30 additional offered by JCS on 31 January 1944.

Source: (1) Memo, Col Billo for Col Lincoln, 2 Feb 44, sub: Reconciliation of Figures in SEXTANT Estimates . . . , ABC 381 Strategy

Sec Papers (7 Jan 43); 227-40/10, Tab 240. (2) Memo, U.S. Secy CPS for CPS, 6 Feb 44, sub: Recommendations of SCAEF . . . , ABC

384 Eur (5 Aug 43), Sec 2-A.

the theater although both groups of

planners were now using approximately

the same figures on vessel availability.

The difference, clarified in messages on

the following day, revolved around rated

capacities of the vessels. The so-called

7-division lift, General Smith carefully

explained, actually was to provide for

assault loading of 5-2/3 heavily reinforced divisions (averaging a division

slice of 31,000, not 25,000, men), 5 for

the initial assault, and 2 brigade groups

to be assault loaded in the follow-up.

The rest of the 2-division follow-up

force was to be preloaded in ordinary

transports. The total force to be lifted

in assault shipping was now estimated

at 176,475 men and 20,111 vehicles—all

of which, according to Washington estimates, would be neatly covered by the

expected available lift. But the theater

staff still figured a substantial deficit—

(about 20,300 men and 2,200 vehicles)

for which they said an additional

LSI (H), 42 LST's, and 51 LCI (L)'s

would be needed. These vessels were not

additional to the stated requirement of

23 January, but represented the unfilled

residue after deducting the resources

scraped together since that date.

The issue, Washington planners decided, boiled down to the technical question of how many troops and vehicles

could be loaded on the larger more valuable types of vessels, principally the

LSI (L)'s. American naval experts in

Washington and British naval experts

in London differed on the question, and

Smith and Handy concluded after a

final sharp wrangle on 9 February that
330 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

it would have to be thrashed out on a

higher level.17

The Debate Moves to London

On the strategic level, meanwhile, the

differences between the British and

Americans over ANVIL had hardened. At

the end of January the Joint Chiefs, fortified by their staff's estimates of the lift

then in sight for OVERLORD, had restated

the case for ANVIL in vigorous terms:

A successful ANVIL assault is required to

make effective use of the French forces and

permit the employment of U.S. divisions

now in the Mediterranean. This we think

is very important. We believe that ANVIL is

most important to the success of OVERLORD

and that the value of a mere threat in the

Mediterranean is questionable. We doubt

that a threat alone would contain German

divisions for any appreciable length of time,

whereas an actual operation would not only

contain enemy divisions already there, but

should draw in additional German forces

which otherwise would be employed against

OVERLORD.

Moreover, they reminded the British,

Stalin had been promised at Tehran a

supporting operation, not a threat, in

southern France. On these premises, the

Joint Chiefs took the stand that ANVIL

must be mounted on a 2-division scale,

no less, while OVERLORD should be carried out merely "with as large an assault

lift as possible," and the Supreme Commander should be authorized to redistribute as he saw fit the surplus lift the

American staff was confident would be

available after providing for a 2-division

ANVIL.18

"Apparently," Churchill noted when

he saw the paper, "the two-division lift

for ANVIL is given priority over OVERLORD."

 19

 Whether this interpretation

could in fact be placed on the JCS move

depended on which estimates of available assault lift proved correct — those

produced in Washington or those produced in London. One or the other set

(or both) must be wrong. The British

Chiefs, after four days of discussion with

the Prime Minister, still contended that

the deficit was genuine, and that to meet

it ANVIL must be reduced to a one-division threat. Such a threat, they still

thought, would contain as many divisions as Were likely to be shifted north

to oppose OVERLORD anyway. They underlined the difference in their approach

to the problem:

In the first place we feel that the funda- mental consideration . . . is the chance of

a successful OVERLORD, and that the right

approach . . . is therefore to build up OVER- LORD to the strength required by the Supreme Commander and then allocate what

additional resources can be found to the

Mediterranean.

The British Chiefs flatly rejected, moreover, the proposal to give Eisenhower

authority to reallocate shipping between

OVERLORD and the Mediterranean, insisting that this authority rested exclusively with the Combined Chiefs "who

alone have the means of judging every 17

 (1) Tel Convs, Smith and Handy, 8 and 9 Feb 44.

(2) Msg R-9135, Handy to Smith, 8 Feb 44. Both in

OPD Exec 10, Item 52A. (3) Msgs, Smith to Handy,

B-212, 8 Feb 44; and B-134 and B-135, 9 Feb 44,

SHAEF SGS 560, vol. II. (4) Memo, Marshall for

Dill, 9 Feb 44, Exec 10, Item 66. (5) Memo, Marshall

for Leahy and King, 9 Feb 44, sub: OVERLORD-ANVIL,

ABC 384 Europe (5 Aug 43).

18

 CCS 465/3, 31 Jan 44, memo by U.S. COS, title:

Recommendations of SCAEF on OVERLORD and

ANVIL. 19

 Churchill, Closing the Ring, pp. 511-12.
OVERLORD AND ANVIL 331

factor and seeing the whole war in

proper perspective."

 20

Actually, as a result of the worsening

situation in Italy, British opposition to

ANVIL now went beyond mere anxiety

about its effect on OVERLORD. By early

February General Clark's forces in the

Anzio beachhead were on the defensive

under heavy German counterattacks,

while General Alexander's main forces,

not far to the south but hopelessly

barred from a junction by cruel terrain

and fierce resistance, were making little

headway. Plainly, the German High

Command had decided to hold the current Italian front at all costs. The British found in these circumstances both

a compulsion and an invitation "to

prosecute the Italian campaign with utmost vigor." German strategy would

serve the Allied purpose of tying down

all German forces then in Italy and,

quite possibly, of drawing others from

France. The Allies should therefore "do

all we can to pin down her forces and

commit them still further" even if it

proved necessary to abandon ANVIL. This

line of reasoning dovetailed neatly with

the British view that ANVIL was simply

a diversion, not "strategically interwoven with OVERLORD," that threatened to

deprive the latter of amphibious resources vital to its success. The Rhone

Valley, they thought, was too far from

the OVERLORD area for the pincers argument used at Tehran to have much

validity, and its rugged terrain possessed

defensive capabilities almost equal to

those of Italy. The French forces rearmed in North Africa could be used

just as effectively in northern France.

The British Chiefs consequently recommended that ANVIL "as at present

planned," be canceled and that General

Wilson's amphibious resources be reduced to a one-division lift to be used

as he saw fit.21 "The British and American Chiefs of Staff," Marshall told Eisenhower on 7 February, "seem to have

completely reversed themselves and we

have become Mediterraneanites and they

heavily pro-OVERLORD."

 22

Army planners in Washington were

not impressed by the British arguments.

There were, they contended, enough

landing craft for both OVERLORD and a

strong ANVIL; enough air, ground, and

naval forces for both ANVIL and the campaign in Italy. There was not enough

shipping to move French forces out of

the Mediterranean, and AFHQ estimates

had consistently indicated doubt that all

the forces available in the Mediterranean could be supported in Italy. Even

if they could, an augmented effort in

Italy would hardly be worth the price.

The Germans could be contained there

with forces on the spot. ANVIL, the Americans argued, would serve far more effectively to bring into action against

the enemy all available forces at the

climax of the European war and to pin

down German divisions that might otherwise be moved immediately against

the OVERLORD lodgment area. In this

sense ANVIL was as "strategically interwoven" with OVERLORD as the promised

20

 (1) Msgs OZ 631, COS(W) 1126 to Britman

Wash, 4 Feb 44; and OZ 632, 4 Feb 44, SHAEF SGS

560, vol. II. Quotes from former. (2) Msg RED 491,

JPS London to JPS Wash, 7 Feb 44, AGC 384

Europe (5 Aug 43), Sec 2-A. (3) British staff calculations of the deficit, in terms of specific types of

vessels, varied somewhat from the statement by

Eisenhower's staff on 9 February but the impact

was the same.

21

 Msg, OZ 631, COS(W) 1126, 4 Feb 44. 22

 Msg, Marshall to Eisenhower (eyes only), 7 Feb

44, OPD Exec 10, Item 52a.
332 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

Soviet offensive, the Italian campaign,

and the strategic bombing offensive.23

The Joint Chiefs were sufficiently

confident of the accuracy of their statistics to leave to the commanders concerned both the factual determination

of resources available for the two European operations and the appraisal of

their adequacy. They were willing to

yield to British insistence that the allocation of resources between theaters was

a matter solely within CCS jurisdiction.

But they were determined not to give

up ANVIL, and on this score they suffered some uneasiness during the first

week in February because of indications

from Eisenhower that he might be leaning toward the British position. On

7 February General Marshall bluntly

asked the Supreme Allied Commander

to state his views. Was he prepared to

insist, Marshall queried, that OVERLORD

must be assigned all available assault

shipping over and above a one-division

lift in the Mediterranean, even though

the Combined Planners in Washington

now agreed, contrary to the views of the

London planners ("or Montgomery, I

don't know which"), that there was sufficient lift for at least a 7-division OVERLORD and a 2-division ANVIL? "If you

consider this absolutely imperative, then

it should be done that way. . . . I merely

wish to be certain that localitis is not

developing and that the pressures on

you have not warped your judgment."

 24

On the same day General Handy, under

explicit instructions from his chief, inquired pointedly of General Smith:

"How much of this pressure is Montgomery and how much is Eisenhower?"

 25

Eisenhower's prompt reply, despite its

tone of earnest candor, did not quite

face up to Marshall's query. He conceded

the strategic value of a strong ANVIL, but

at the same time insisted on the absolute

need to insure the success of OVERLORD.

His aim, as two weeks earlier, was still

a 5-division OVERLORD and a 2-division

ANVIL. He denied that "pressure" had

been exerted or that "localitis" had set

in, but he seemed not to grasp the significance or the depth of disagreement

between Washington and London over

ANVIL. The crucial question, whether

the available lift would be sufficient for

a 2-division ANVIL after OVERLORD'S requirements were met remained, as Marshall dryly informed his colleagues, "in

the air."

 26

A few days earlier, Prime Minister

Churchill had suggested to the President that the Joint Chiefs come to London and, with their British counterparts,

try to break the deadlock at the conference table. Involved at the moment in a

debate on Pacific strategy with representatives of the Pacific theaters, the

Joint Chiefs were unwilling to hold another full-dress conference on European

strategy so soon after Cairo-Tehran.

They consequently decided to designate

Eisenhower as their representative to

reach agreement with the British Chiefs 23

 (1) Memo, Gen Handy for Gen Roberts, 5 Feb

44, sub: OVERLORD and ANVIL, ABC 384 Europe (5

Aug 43), Sec 2A. (2) CCS 465/6, 6 Feb 44, memo by

U.S. COS, title: Recommendations of SCAEF . . .,

and JCS 658/2, 5 Feb 44, same title. 24

 (1) Msg 76, Marshall to Eisenhower (eyes only),

7 Feb 44. (2) Msg W-10678, Eisenhower to Marshall

(eyes only), 6 Feb 44. Both in Exec 10, Item 52a.

(3) CCS 465/6, 6 Feb 44.

25

 Tel Conv, Smith and Handy, 7 Feb 44, OPD

Exec 10, Item 52a. 26

 (1) Msg W-10786, Eisenhower to Marshall (eyes

only), 8 Feb 44, OPD Exec 10, Item 52a. (2) Memo,

Marshall for Leahy and King, 9 Feb 44, sub: OVERLORD and ANVIL, ABC 384 Europe (5 Aug 43), Sec 2-A.
OVERLORD AND ANVIL 333

and to send General Hull, chief of OPD's

European Theater Section, and Admiral

Cooke, the Navy's chief planner, to London to present the conclusions of the

Washington staffs on technical aspects of

the questions involved. The decision to

send technical experts grew out of a fear

that Eisenhower, however loyally he

might support American views on the

strategic value of ANVIL, might be influenced on technical matters by the opinion of his principal naval adviser, British Admiral Cunningham. "You had better," General Smith had warned Handy,

"send a senior admiral, because the

whole thing hinges on loading. . . ,"27

Arriving in London on 12 February,

Hull and Cooke plunged into a round

of conferences with the SHAEF planners

at Norfolk House. They quite easily

demonstrated that in the aggregate there

was ample personnel and vehicle capacity already in sight to meet OVERLORD requirements, if full advantage

were taken of the bunk capacity of

LSI (L)'s, APA's, XAP's, and AKA's, and

of the small boats that these landing

ships carried on their davits (this despite

the fact that 3 of the 21 LSI (L)'s counted on were not now expected to be converted from troop carriers in time).

Landing both troops and vehicles from

these vessels, the Washington representatives urged, could be greatly accelerated by organizing a ferry service immediately following the first assault wave,

using all landing craft returning from

their first missions. Moreover, the ferry

service could be augmented by 68 additional LCM's (carrying an incidental

contribution of additional vehicles) if

2 LSD's and 2 LSG's, expected to be

available, were assigned to bring them

to the scene.

To these expedients, evidently based

on the U.S. Navy's experience in the

Pacific, the British Admiralty imposed

objections that large transports crammed

with troops, as well as LSG's and LSD's,

were too valuable to expose to enemy

fire for long periods during unloading.

It also objected to ferrying on the proposed scale on the ground that it would

aggravate the traffic problem.28

General Eisenhower was sufficiently

impressed by the arguments of the Washington group to order a general re-examination of the existing plan to determine whether its tactical framework

could be covered by a reduced assault

lift. Strong opposition was soon evident

in the 21st Army Group planning staff,

which found the various expedients discussed in the SHAEF meetings unsuited

to the tactical plan. The lift for Commando and Ranger units, the planners

pointed out, was swallowed up in the

gross totals, apparently on the dubious

assumption that these special troops

were to be crowded into attack trans27

 (1) Ibid.(2). (2) Quote from Tel Conv, Handy

and Smith, 9 Feb 44. (3) Msg, Marshall to Eisenhower, 9 Feb 44. Both in Exec 10, Item 52a. (4) OPD

MFR, 12 Feb 44, sub: Recommendations of SCAEF

. . ., OPD 381 Security, vol. VIIA, Case 217. (5 Matloff, Strategic Planning, 1943-44, p. 418. (6) Hull

and Cooke were accompanied by Colonel Lincoln of

the OPD staff and Capt. Donald R. Osborn, Jr., of

Admiral King's staff, as principal advisers.

28

 (1) Memo for CofS, SHAEF, 13 Feb 44, sub:

Personnel and Vehicle Lift for OVERLORD. (2) Memo,

13 Feb 44, sub: Comparison of Available Lift for

OVERLORD with That Used for Plng Purposes. . . .

(3) Min of spec mtgs at Norfolk House 0930, 13

Feb 44; 1500, 13 Feb 44; 1000, 14 Feb 44. All in OPD

560 Security, vol. III, Case 125. (4) The LSD's, of

which four in all had been produced by this time,

could transport loaded small craft and launch them

at sea. Two were then in the United Kingdom, one

in the Mediterranean, and one in SEAC; only one

had actually been allocated to OVERLORD.
334 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

ports along with other forces. To use

LSI(L)'s, APA's, XAP's, and AKA's

crammed with troops and vehicles on

the first three tides, instead of LST's and

LCI (L)'s, would not merely endanger

these valuable ships and their contents,

but, because of the time required to discharge vehicles, would delay uniting

troops and vehicles into fighting formations ashore. Slow vehicle discharge

would also, they contended, seriously retard the build-up. The army group staff

also strongly seconded the objections of

the Admiralty to Hull's and Cooke's proposed ferry service and employment of

LSD's and LSG's.29

How much of this opposition really

stemmed from technical considerations,

the Washington representatives could

not be sure. The London planners were

naturally reluctant to scrap the results

of weeks of arduous staff work. By persistent questioning, Hull and Cooke

learned for the first time that SHAEF

requirements, in specific numbers and

types of assault shipping, had originally

borne little relation to any specific conception of the OVERLORD assault, but had

been calculated simply by adding together earlier OVERLORD allocations, half of

the lift assigned to ANVIL, and roughly

a month's additional output of new landing craft in the United Kingdom.30

 The

a priori assumption that ANVIL must be

reduced was thus a built-in feature of

the plan and was supported by the

strong conviction in the London staffs

that ANVIL would be of no help to OVERLORD anyway. On the fourth day of the

meetings an apparent deadlock was

reached when General Montgomery, supporting the 21st Army Group objections,

voiced sharp protest against the whole

effort to modify the current plan.

I consider that in planning OVERLORD

we must ensure initial success, and must

have such a good build-up that the initial

success can be rapidly exploited and maintained. I further consider that no other

considerations should weigh where that

success is endangered . . . these proposals

compromise tactical flexibility, introduce

added complications, bring additional haz- ards into the operation, and thus generally

tend to endanger success. . . . From an Army

point of view the proposals put forward

are not acceptable.31

Yet by the following day, 17 February,

the purely technical disagreement apparently had narrowed to the proposed

use of attack transports instead of LST's

for lifting some 2,400 vehicles in the

assault, mainly on the third tide (D plus

1)—roughly equivalent to the lift of the

42 additional LST's the SHAEF planners had requested on the 9th. LST's

would, of course, also solve the problem

of slow vehicle discharge in the build-up.

"It looks," remarked Colonel Lincoln,

"as if we are throwing away ANVIL, an

effective diversion during the critical

period sometime after D plus 8 . . . in

return for the lift of a couple of thousand

administrative vehicles on the third tide

in landing craft, which might perhaps

be carried almost as well as in AKA's

29

 (1) Memo, Gen Smith for ANCXF, 15 Feb 44,

SHAEF SGS 560, vol. II. (2) 21st Army Gp Memo on

Implications of SHAEF Proposals . . . , 17 Feb 44.

(3) Msg W-1152, Eisenhower to Marshall (eyes only),

14 Feb 44. Both in SHAEF SGS 381 OVERLORD-ANVIL.

(4) Memo, 13 Feb 44, sub: Comparison of Available

Lift. . . . 30

 (1) Msg, COMNAVEU to COMINCH, 14 Feb

44, SHAEF SGS 560, vol. II. (2) Memo, Col Lincoln

for Gen Roberts, 16 Feb 44, in ABC 384 Europe (5

Aug 43), Sec 1A.

31

 Memo, Montgomery for SCAEF, 16 Feb 44,

SHAEF SGS 560, vol. II.
OVERLORD AND ANVIL 335

and APA's."

 32

 The familiar villain of

Mediterranean amphibious logistics—the

LST—clearly was ready to play the same

role in OVERLORD.

Early in February the U.S. Navy had

given short shrift to an inquiry from

London as to the possibility of providing more new LST's from spring production in the United States now that

OVERLORD had been definitely set for

early June. LST allocations to OVERLORD

and ANVIL up to this point included

most of the new production through

February, plus 18 more currently being

used to train LST crews. If the eight

still not allocated from February output and twelve more from March output were sent to England, they might,

Navy officials said, arrive before the middle of May. This might be early enough

for the vessels to be used in OVERLORD,

but only half a dozen LST's would then

be available for training new crews during late March and none at all during

most of April. Moreover, LST's from

March and April production, now earmarked for the Pacific, would have to

be assigned to training. The Navy concluded the cost was too high; "no more

LST's," the Joint Planners were informed, "are available for OVERLORD."33

Few in London took this verdict as

final. After all, the date of OVERLORD

had been postponed a month. "Somewhere," General Smith stubbornly insisted, "there is additional production of

LST's," and he indicated that the formal

deadline for arrival 30 days before the

operation could informally be reduced

to two weeks.34

In the planners' meeting on 14 February, in fact, Admiral Cooke cautiously

admitted the possibility that 10 new

LST's might be brought from the United States for OVERLORD, but even if these

did materialize in time (and Cooke

made no promises), a deficit of 32 would

still remain. The Americans renewed

their old argument for higher serviceability rates and, since the British still

refused to budge on this question, the

U.S. Navy command in the theater finally undertook to assure a serviceability

rate of 95 percent for the American landing ships and craft used in OVERLORD.

On paper, this would produce seven

more LST's. Overloading LST's by two

or three vehicles each might add the

equivalent of seven to ten more. But at

best these expedients represented probabilities that might not materialize. The

British had little faith in them, preferring the "certainties" of taking the needed LST's from ANVIL.35

On 18 February an uneasy compromise emerged. The 21st Army Group

staff, whether relying on American assurances of higher serviceability or on

a reassessment of their own needs,

dropped 7 LST's from the requirement

of 42, and 30 LCI (L)'s from the require32

 Memo, Lincoln for Hull, 17 Feb 44, sub: Pros

and Cons on OVERLORD and ANVIL Assault Lift,

ABC 384 Europe (5 Aug 43), Sec 1A. 33

 (1) Memo, Capt Osborn for JPS, 5 Feb 44, sub:

COS(W) 1127, Comment on Further Availability of

U.S. Ldg Cft, ABC Europe (5 Aug 43), Sec 1-A.

(2) MFR, OPD, 14 Feb 44, OPD 560 Security, III,

Case 125.

34

 (1) Tel Convs, Handy and Smith, 4 and 8 Feb

44. (2) Quotation from 8 Feb conversation. (3) Msg

R-9085, Handy to Smith (eyes only), 7 Feb 44. All

in OPD Exec 10, Item 52a. 35

 (1) Min of spec mtgs at Norfolk House, 1000

and 1100, 14 Feb 44, with related papers in OPD

560 Security, III, Case 125. (2) Min spec mtgs 1615,

17 Feb 44, and 1100, 18 Feb 44, SHAEF SGS 381

OVERLORD-ANVIL, I. (3) Memo, Lincoln for Hull, 17

Feb 44. (4) Memo, Lincoln for Cooke, 17 Feb 44,

sub: Serviceability and Loading of Ldg Cft, SHAEF

SGS 560, vol. II.
336 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

ment of 51. It was then proposed that

20 LST's and 21 LCI (L)'s be taken from

ANVIL (the vessels to depart the Mediterranean for the United Kingdom not

later than 1 April) and, by way of compensation for the LST's, to transfer to

the Mediterranean the 6 more or less

unwanted AKA's, which represented

roughly their equivalent in vehicle lift

and were more suitable for amphibious

employment under Mediterranean weather and tide conditions than in the

Channel. The remaining deficit of 15

LST's, it was hoped, might be absorbed

by the various "probabilities" — higher

serviceability, overloading, and new

American production. Upon the lastnamed source Eisenhower put in a strong

bid for at least 7 new LST's, which might

be used in the build-up even if they

could not arrive in time for the assault.

The proposal was contingent also upon

allocation of 3 British LSI (L)'s, 2 LSD's,

and 64 more cargo ships for the buildup, as well as the necessary escort groups

for the extra convoys of personnel ships

that would be needed in the build-up

to compensate for the reduction in

LCI (L)'s. To all these arrangements

Montgomery acceded, though with a

marked lack of enthusiasm, and Eisenhower forwarded them to the British

Chiefs as his and the American Chiefs'

solution to the problem.36

The British Chiefs were of the opinion "that both OVERLORD and ANVIL are

skimped" but were prepared to accept,

though reluctantly, the proposed allocations of assault shipping—if, that is, ANVIL were to be mounted at all. Their

real objection was to continue planning

and preparations for ANVIL on any basis.

"The shadow of ANVIL," they warned,

"is already cramping General Wilson,"

who, they were more than ever convinced, would need the bulk of his current resources to prosecute the campaign

in Italy. Events on the peninsula indeed

gave cause for alarm. In mid-February,

a series of fierce attacks on the heights

of Cassino had failed to dislodge the

enemy, and heavy enemy counterattacks

at Anzio had seriously threatened the

beachhead. Surveying the situation, General Alexander resigned himself to the

probable necessity of regrouping, reinforcing heavily, and launching another

major offensive in the spring in order

to link his main forces with the beachhead, destroy the enemy forces south of

Rome, and push on to the Pisa-Rimini

line. Such a program, primarily because

of the demand for bringing in fresh divisions, would swallow up most of the

forces earmarked for ANVIL. Urging that

"we must . . . make certain of one battle

before preparing for another," the British Chiefs proposed that ANVIL be canceled at once, and on 22 February General Wilson sent in his own recommendation to that effect.37

With assault shipping resources now

in sight for both OVERLORD and a 2-division ANVIL, the Joint Chiefs of Staff were

not ready to consider canceling ANVIL

except as a last resort. If circumstances

required, they were even prepared to

consider accepting a stabilized front

south of Rome as an alternative. But

they saw no immediate necessity for a

36

 (1) Memo by SCAEF, 18 Feb 44, sub: Assault

Shpg and Cft for OVERLORD. (2) Memo, Gen Smith

for SCAEF, 18 Feb 44, sub: Reassessment of Assault

Shpg. . . . Both in OPD 560 Security, III, Case 125.

(3) Min, spec mtg at Norfolk House, 1700, 18 Feb 44,

SHAEF SGS 381 OVERLORD-ANVIL, I.

37

 (1) Msg COS(W) 1156 to JSM, Wash, 19 Feb 44,

OPD Exec 3, Item 16. (2) Ehrman, Grand Strategy V,

230-31.
OVERLORD AND ANVIL 337

decision, and for the present they wanted to go ahead with plans for ANVIL,

conceding meanwhile that all ground

combat forces in the Mediterranean

should be regarded as available for the

drive on Rome. In the normal process

of pulling tired divisions out of the line

for rehabilitation, the necessary forces

could be readied for ANVIL, and the

whole situation could be reviewed about

1 April. In the meantime, the proposed

transfers of assault shipping should be

approved, and the United States would

undertake to provide the requested seven

LST's, largely at the expense of training

new crews. The Joint Chiefs instructed

Eisenhower, as their designated representative, to approach the British Chiefs

again with a view to securing either

agreement "or carefully stated disagreement" on the ANVIL question. To this

charge they added a pointed reminder

from the President that the United

States was "committed to a third power"

to carry out the operation.38

General Eisenhower, still convinced

that OVERLORD needed a diversionary

landing in southern France, had come

to share British doubts as to the likelihood, given the situation in Italy, that

ANVIL would ever come off. Worried

about OVERLORD itself—as he saw German strength across the Channel inching

closer to the stipulated maximum the

planners would accept — the Supreme

Commander sought to preserve "flexibility," a word that appeared with increasing frequency in his correspondence and

speech about this time. He wanted to

postpone as long as possible decisions

and preparations that would make it

impossible to transfer ANVIL resources

to OVERLORD, to draw from Italy or elsewhere formations earmarked for ANVIL,

or to make other dispositions to meet

a developing situation.39

How far his desire for flexibility had

led Eisenhower to deviate from the U.S.

Chiefs' conception of Mediterranean

strategy emerged on 22 February when

he met with the British Chiefs to work

out a final compromise. He succeeded

in persuading the British to postpone

cancellation of ANVIL but only by conceding on behalf of his own superiors

that ANVIL was only one, even though

the favored one, of various alternatives

that might be undertaken to support

OVERLORD after the situation in Italy

had cleared. The U.S. Chiefs, he asserted, "would be prepared to regard as implementation of the undertaking at Tehran any diversionary operation, whatever

its name, on the largest scale possible

with the resources at General Wilson's

command after meeting the requirements of the battle of Italy."40

 On this

basis it was agreed that planning and

preparations for ANVIL (with a 2-division assault and a 10-division build-up)

would go ahead along with plans for

alternative projects, but only so far as

they did not interfere with the battle

in Italy, which must have overriding pri38

 (1) Msg 151, JCS to Eisenhower, 21 Feb 44.

(2) Msg 152, Marshall to Eisenhower, 21 Feb 44.

(3) Msg 154, Leahy to Eisenhower (eyes only), 21

Feb 44. All in SHAEF SGS 381 OVERLORD-ANVIL,

vol. I. (4) Min, 147th mtg JCS, 21 Feb 44. (5) JCS

658/3, 20 Feb 44, rpt by JPS, title: OVERLORD and

ANVIL.

39

 (1) Msgs, Eisenhower to Marshall (eyes only),

W-11152, 15 Feb 44; W-11500, 19 Feb 44; and

W-11674, 19 Feb 44. (2) Min of spec mtgs at Norfolk House, 4, 17, 18 Feb 44. All in SHAEF SGS

381 OVERLORD-ANVIL, vol. I. (3) Tel Conv, Handy

and Smith, 20 Feb 44, OPD Exec 10, Item 52a.

(4) Harrison, Cross-Channel Attack, pp. 174-75. 40

 Min of 54th mtg, Br COS, 22 Feb 44, SHAEF

SGS 381 OVERLORD-ANVIL, vol. I.
338 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

ority over all Mediterranean operations.

General Wilson would assume for the

present that the proposed disposition of

assault shipping—exchange of 20 (mostly

British) LST's and 21 British LCI (L)'s

from the ANVIL allotment for the 6 OVERLORD AKA's—would go into effect about

1 April. But all arrangements and plans

were to be reviewed on 20 March in the

light of the situation then prevailing

in Italy, and if it were then decided to

cancel ANVIL, OVERLORD would get as

much of its assault shipping over and

above a one-division lift as could profitably be used. The whole arrangement,

as Lord Ismay informed the Prime Minister with some satisfaction, supported

the British position on all essential

points; at the same time, in deference

to the Americans, it did not "entirely

close the door on ANVIL." On 26 February the President, the Prime Minister,

and the Combined Chiefs approved. As

far as the U.S. Chiefs were concerned,

however, the agreement involved no

abandonment of their preference for

ANVIL over any alternative if events in

Italy permitted the release of needed

forces. Everything now depended on

what happened in Italy during the next

four weeks.41

Anvil Postponed

Within two days developments in the

Anzio beachhead demanded new emergency measures, and the controversy over

what these measures should be reagitated

the assault shipping question. Once

again LST's were the heart of the problem. Under the new arrangements for

deployment of landing craft for OVERLORD and ANVIL, 41 LST's (almost all

British) were scheduled to move from

the Mediterranean to the United Kingdom, 13 at the end of February, 14 more

about 20 March, and a final 14 early in

April. In April, also, 26 new American

LST's, each carrying an LCT piggy-back,

were scheduled to arrive in the

Mediterranean, earmarked and specially equipped for use in the invasion of

southern France.

The crisis at Anzio upset these arrangements. General Alexander, expecting further counterattacks, proposed to

relieve one tired division in the beachhead, bring in an extra division, and step

up the general rate of reinforcement and

supply. In a message to the British

Chiefs on 29 February General Wilson

asked as an emergency measure that he

be allowed to retain for two more weeks

the 13 LST's due to depart that day,

A second message the same day asked

for a further extension to 1 April, and

for postponement of the departure of 14

more LST's scheduled to leave later until the 26 new American LST's arrived

in the theater.42

Wilson's first request, for emergency

retention of 13 LST's, was approved

without demur, but a lively three-cornered discussion ensued among Washington, London, and the theater over

subsequent provisions for carrying out 41

 (1) Quotation from Memo, Ismay for Prime

Minister, 23 Feb 44, SHAEF SGS 560, vol. II. (2)

Related papers in same file. (3) Min, 147th mtg

JCS, 21 Feb 44. (4) Matloff, Strategic Planning,

1943–44, p. 421. (5) Harrison, Cross-Channel Attack,

p. 172. (6) Forrest C. Pogue, The Supreme Command, UNITED STATES ARMY IN WORLD

WAR II (Washington, 1954), pp. 114-15.

42

 (1) Msg MEDCOS 47, Wilson to COS, 29 Feb 44.

(2) Msg, Alexander to CIGS, 28 Feb 44. (3) Msg,

CINCMED to Admiralty, 28 Feb 44. All in SHAEF

SGS 560, vol. II. (4) CCS 379/8, 1 Mar 44, Memo by

Br COS, title: Retention of LST's in Mediterranean,

with Incl. (5) Ehrman, Grand Strategy V, 244-45.
OVERLORD AND ANVIL 339

Alexander's program at Anzio. At first

the British Chiefs proposed canceling

all planned LST movements from the

Mediterranean and, instead, to assign to

OVERLORD the 26 new American LST's

allotted to ANVIL together with their

deck-loaded LCT's, which would sail directly from the United States to England, and to retain in the United Kingdom 3 of the 6 AKA's recently scheduled for movement to the Mediterranean. For the precious LST's, this

arrangement would avoid "wasting three

weeks of their useful life" in passage to

the United Kingdom during the period

when the Anzio beachhead had to be

nourished.43 But the substitution of

AKA's for LST's, even though providing

a roughly equivalent lift, ran directly

contrary to the recent verdict of the

Norfolk House conferences and Eisenhower strenuously objected. The British Chiefs then reshaped their proposal,

with Eisenhower's concurrence, to provide that in addition to the 26 LST's

from the United States 15 British LST's

would be transferred from the Mediterranean early in April.44

The modified British proposal provided a bonus for OVERLORD in the form of

the 26 piggy-back LCT's. For ANVIL it

would offer 26 older British LST's to

replace 26 new American ones equipped

with additional davits for carrying small

boats. General Wilson objected to the

substitutions and the U.S. Chiefs supported him. The latter proposed that

Wilson be allowed to retain the 13 LST's

until 1 April, and that further dispositions be postponed until 20 March when

the whole fate of ANVIL was to be reviewed. Should ANVIL then be canceled,

there would be ample time to transfer

landing craft from the Mediterranean

for OVERLORD. If ANVIL were not canceled, Wilson should then be permitted

to retain 14 of the additional 28 LST's

scheduled to depart for the United Kingdom until the first 12 of the 26 American

LST's arrived. As alternatives, the last

14 of the 26 American craft could be

sent either directly to the United Kingdom or by way of the Mediterranean in

order to drop off their new LCT's for

ANVIL.45

The British proposal would insure

that the new American LST's would all

arrive in the United Kingdom by the

end of April and join the OVERLORD assault forces in the first week in May.

Under the American proposal, on the

other hand, the first 13 LST's, if retained

in the Mediterranean until 1 April to

support the beachhead, would have to

refit after their arrival in the United

Kingdom, and therefore could not join

the assault forces until the third week in

May. Both the British and General Eisenhower felt that this delay would seriously handicap OVERLORD. On 9 March

Eisenhower addressed a sharp protest to

the Joint Chiefs, warning against the

tendency in Washington to skimp on

OVERLORD assault shipping and complaining that the results of the Norfolk

43

 Undated draft msg, Br COS to JSM Wash, ca.

29 Feb 44, in SHAEF SGS 381 OVERLORD-ANVIL,

vol. I (ser. 31 926-28). 44

 (1) Ibid. (2) Msgs, COS(W) 1183 and 1184, 29

Feb 44, COS(W) 1195, 7 Mar 44, to JSM Wash.

(3) Min, 78th mtg Br COS, 29 Feb 44. All in SHAEF

SGS 560, vol. II. (4) CCS 379/8, memo by Reps Br

COS, 1 Mar 44, title: Retention of LST's in Mediterranean.

45

 (1) CCS 379/9, memo by U.S. CsofS, 4 Mar 44,

title: Retention of LST's in Mediterranean. (2) JSM

1558 to Br COS, 4 Mar 44, SHAEF SGS 381 OVERLORD-ANVIL, vol. I. (3) Msg COS(W) 1195 to JSM

Wash, 7 Mar 44.
340 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

House conferences had left OVERLORD

"fifteen LST's short in the interest of

keeping ANVIL alive." He bluntly expressed the view that ANVIL seemed more

than ever a forlorn hope and that transfer of some of its landing craft to OVERLORD was "inevitable."46

The very next day, the U.S. Navy

offered a solution to the difficulty in the

form of a new sailing schedule for the

26 American LST's. The first 20 would

now reach the Mediterranean by 31

March and the remainder by 10 April,

assuring adequate support for Anzio until the spring offensive. On the basis of

this undertaking, the Joint Chiefs suggested that the first 13 of the OVERLORD

LST's now in the Mediterranean should

depart for the United Kingdom about

20 March as originally scheduled, and

the remaining 28 early in April after

refitting, as they were relieved by LST's

arriving from the United States. To this

arrangement the British agreed, but on

the understanding that any further losses

among the 41 OVERLORD LST's would

be made good by the United States and

that very probably only 22 of the 28

could actually be refitted in time to meet

the scheduled sailing dates.47

As an emergency measure, the retention of LST's at Anzio paid for itself

during the month of March, when a

daily average of nearly 5,100 tons of supplies was unloaded over the beaches,

1,100 tons more than the goal Alexander

had set. By the end of the month the

logistical situation was excellent, and

even earlier than that the last serious

German counterattacks had been beaten

off. With improving weather and diminishing enemy fire on the beach, LCT's

and DUKW's could be used more continuously to unload large freighters in

the harbor, reducing the need to rely on

LST's.48 But the victory at Anzio was

only a defensive one, and the situation

in Italy remained a stalemate. In midMarch new Allied attacks on the Cassino

front failed.

On 21 March General Wilson sent in

his and Alexander's appraisal of the

Mediterranean situation. The spring offensive in Italy was now planned to begin on 15 April; a junction of the southern forces with the beachhead troops,

the Allied commanders believed, could

not be expected before mid-May, the

capture of Rome not before mid-June.

Forces and assault shipping could be assembled and reorganized for ANVIL no

sooner than ten weeks after the link-up

with the beachhead, pushing D-day back

to the end of July at the earliest. Wilson, who regarded ANVIL as a risky and

unprofitable undertaking anyway, again

recommended that ANVIL be canceled

immediately and planning for any landings in southern France be limited to

the assumption that they would be unopposed. He thought the most profitable

alternative would be to continue the offensive in Italy, using a one-division46

 (1) Msg, Eisenhower to JCS, 9 Mar 44, SHAEF

SGS 560, vol. III. (2) Msg COS(W) 1195, 7 Mar 44. 47

 (1) Msg, JSM 1564 to Br COS, 9 Mar 44. (2) Msg

COS(W) 1204 to JSM Wash, 10 Mar 44. (3) Min, 82d

mtg Br COS, 10 Mar 44. (4) Msg, JSM 1565 to Br

COS, 10 Mar 44. All in SHAEF SGS 381 OVERLORDANVIL, vol. I. (5) Msg, Marshall to Eisenhower, 12

Mar 44. (6) Msg, Handy to Smith, 12 Mar 44. (5) and

(6) in OPD 560 Security, III, Case 130. (7) Memo,

Brig Redman to Col MacFarland, 20 Mar 44, in

ABC 561 (31 Aug 43) Sec 1-B. (8) Corresp and

papers, 11-18 Mar 44, in SHAEF SGS 560, vol. III.

48

 (1) Bykofsky and Larson, The Transportation

Corps: Operations Overseas, p. 211. (2) Fifth Army

History, vol. IV, Cassino and Anzio, 168-70.
OVERLORD AND ANVIL 341

plus assault lift for coastal end runs as

needed.49

On the same day Eisenhower, who had

not yet seen Wilson's message, delivered

a similar verdict, declaring himself unwilling to gamble any longer on the

diminishing prospects of ANVIL to offset

the dangerous lack of flexibility in the

OVERLORD assault and build-up. He

asked for 26 more LST's and 40 more

LCI (L)'s from the Mediterranean to be

delivered in the United Kingdom by 30

April, together with three specialized

types of landing ships.50 These figures,

he told Marshall, did not represent the

estimated needs of OVERLORD, of which

they fell far short, but rather the amount

that the SHAEF planners estimated

could be withdrawn from the Mediterranean and still leave a one-division assault lift. This meant, of course, reducing ANVIL once again to a threat, but

Eisenhower saw no alternative in view

of the stalemate in Italy.51

These developments sealed the fate of

ANVIL as a supporting operation simultaneous with OVERLORD. Even in Washington there was little disposition to

cling to a June ANVIL. But in the American view, ANVIL at a later date was still

the most useful operation that could be

undertaken in the Mediterranean to support OVERLORD. The Joint Chiefs feared

that the Germans would react to OVERLORD by rushing part of their forces from

Italy to Normandy while conducting a

fighting withdrawal with those remaining. Washington estimates concluded that

such delaying tactics might hold up an

Allied advance to the Pisa-Rimini line

for six months, and Wilson's reports indicated that only eight Allied divisions

could be supported north of Rome.

Thus the Americans could envisage no

more profitable employment for the surplus Mediterranean forces than a strong

thrust into southern France, timed to

take place as soon after OVERLORD as

resources would permit. Indeed, for the

Joint Chiefs the capture of Rome had

lost its appeal, though they conceded

that the Anzio forces must be joined with

the main front at all costs.52

Even for a delayed invasion of southern France, there remained the question

whether the ANVIL assault lift should be

reduced to one division in order to give

Eisenhower what he wanted. Happily, the

Joint Chiefs were spared a hard choice.

On 23 March the Navy reported that

the requested 26 LST's and 40 LCI (L)'s,

if taken from the Mediterranean for

OVERLORD, could be replaced by new

vessels from the United States now slated for the Pacific, and that they could

arrive in the theater toward the end of

June.53

It may be more than a coincidence

that this offer followed by about a week

another move by General Somervell to

49

 MEDCOS 73, Wilson to Br COS, 21 Mar 44,

Incl A to CCS 465/12, memo by Reps Br COS, 23

Mar 44, title: Firm Recommendations with Regard

to OVERLORD and ANVIL. 50

 One landing ship, headquarters (LSH), a landing ship, emergency repair (LSE), and an LSD. 51

 Msg B-320, Eisenhower to Marshall, personal,

21 Mar 44, SHAEF SGS 381 OVERLORD-ANVIL, vol. I.

52

 (1) Memo, Col Lincoln for Gen Roberts, 22 Mar

44, sub: What Shall We Do About ANVIL, ABC 384

Europe (5 Aug 43), Sec 9A. (2) Memo, Gen Handy

for CofS, 23 Mar 44, sub: German Capabilities As

to Withdrawal of Divisions from Italy . . . , ABC

381 Strategy Sec Papers (7 Jan 43) 227/40/10. (3) Ltr,

Gen Handy to Sir John Dill, 23 Mar 44, OPD Exec

10, Item 66. (4) CCS 465/13, 24 Mar 44, memo by

U.S. CsofS, title: OVERLORD and ANVIL. 53

 Memo, Capt Osborn for Adm Bieri, 23 Mar 44,

sub: Study of Ldg Cft Withdrawals from Mediterranean and Replacement for Later ANVIL, ABC 384

Med (26 Oct 43), Sec 1A.
342 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

dislodge some of the Navy's assault shipping from the Pacific on behalf of OVERLORD and ANVIL. On 14 March he had

called General Marshall's attention to

the disparity between allocations for the

war in Europe and the "secondary effort" in the Pacific, raising the question

"whether Eisenhower should be reinforced in combat loaders and landing

craft at the expense of Nimitz while

there is yet time to do so."54 Even

though OPD smothered Somervell's proposal with facts and figures to show that

movement of assault shipping from the

Pacific to Europe was not required and

that in any case, it could not be accomplished in time, the demonstration of

the latter point was less than conclusive.55

The Navy's actual offer of 23 March,

however, did not involve movement of

LST's and LCI (L)'s from the Pacific, but

diversion to the Mediterranean of craft

from new production slated for the Pacific. The most plausible explanation of

the offer is to be found in the prospective mushrooming of landing craft production as a result of the decisions of

December 1943. LST production shot

up from a low of 18 in February 1944

to 28 in March; in April it reached 50,

and in May a record high of 82, and it

was to continue at an average rate of

better than 40 per month through January 1945.56

 While most of this upsurge

in production would come too late to

benefit OVERLORD or a simultaneous ANVIL, it promised to provide LST's for the

Pacific in even more ample quantities

than required by JCS decisions on 12

March to accelerate the Pacific advance.

It would thus leave a surplus for a delayed ANVIL. How far the Navy actually

foresaw the extent of the upswing in

production by mid-March 1944 is not

clear, but it seems very likely that the

prospect entered into the calculations on

which the 23 March offer was made.

The JCS decisions of 12 March on

Pacific operations provided for an accelerated advance in both major Pacific

areas in 1944, with major amphibious

operations against Hollandia in the

Southwest Pacific in the spring, against

the Marianas in the Central Pacific in

June and the Palau Islands in September, and an assault on Mindanao, the

entry point to the Philippines, in November. Assault and fleet shipping used

at Hollandia would be shuttled northward for the Marianas and Palaus, and

back again in time for the landings on

Mindanao.57 The contingent of LST's

and LCI (L)'s that the Navy offered for

use in the Mediterranean had been slated to arrive in the Pacific in August.

Estimates indicated that even without

them, barring heavy losses in earlier operations, there would be a surplus for

the Palaus attack. Large numbers of

landing ships and craft would begin to

reach the Pacific in September from the

increasing output of American yards and,

it was hoped, by redeployment from Europe after OVERLORD. These would provide more than adequately for the Mindanao operation, and in all probability

54

 Memo, Somervell for CofS, 14 Mar 44, OPD

560 Security, vol. III, Case 125. 55

 (1) Memo, Col Lincoln for Gen Handy, 16 Mar

44, sub: Time Required to Ship LST's from Pacific

to England, OPD 560 Security, vol. III, Case 125.

(2) See Matloff, Strategic Planning, 1943–44, pp.

421-22. 56

 CPA, Official Munitions Production, p. 100. 57

 See below, ch. XVI.
OVERLORD AND ANVIL 343

for even more extensive amphibious operations on an accelerated time schedule.58

The Joint Chiefs, thus, had a strong

card to play when they replied to the

British Chiefs on 24 March. They acquiesced to Eisenhower's requested transfers of assault shipping from the Mediterranean, the postponement of ANVIL,

and a major effort in Italy to join the

bridgehead with the main front. They

also laid down their own program for

subsequent action—hold a line south of

Rome, mount a threat against southern

France to minimize the detachment of

enemy forces immediately before and

after OVERLORD, and launch a 2-division

ANVIL assault on 10 July. For this operation they undertook to send the 26

LST's and 40 LCI (L)'s from the United States during June, and suggested

that 15 of the OVERLORD attack transports also be released immediately after

the cross-Channel assault. To this offer

they attached a significant proviso:

The U.S. Chiefs of Staff can agree to

accept the impact of this withdrawal on the

Pacific operations only on condition that

it is agreed by the British Chiefs of Staff

that preparations for the delayed ANVIL

will be vigorously pressed and that it is the

firm intention to mount this operation in

support of OVERLORD with the target date

indicated.59

This, as the British interpreted it, was

more than a bribe; it was an ultimatum

— "holding the pistol of withdrawing

craft at our heads," Sir Alan Brooke angrily called it.60

 British tempers were

not improved when the Americans

pulled out all stops in emphasizing the

sacrifice their offer involved for Pacific

operations. There is little evidence that

any real prospective shortage existed in

the types of craft involved in any specific

scheduled operation in the Pacific, however great the chronic shortage in that

area of all types of floating equipment.

The real limiting factor emerging in

Pacific operations at this particular time

was not landing craft and ships but ordinary cargo shipping. Ironically enough,

only a few weeks later cancellation of

ANVIL was to make possible a transfer

of cargo shipping from the Atlantic to

the Pacific that was to go far to meet

that shortage.61

Though unaware of this situation, the

British nevertheless had a strong impression that the Pacific had not been stinted

on assault shipping as had the European

58

 (1) Memo, Capt Osborn for Adm Bieri, 23 Mar

44. Requirements for the Palaus operation were

set at 80 LST's, against a total of 100 expected to

be available. (2) Current projections put 353 LST's

and 429 LCI(L)'s in the Pacific as of 30 September

1944, but they were based on the expectation of

extensive redeployment from Europe. See JCS 521/3,

4 Feb 44, title: Strategic Deployment of U.S. Forces

to 31 Dec 44. There were actually 367 LST's and 465

LCI(L)'s in the Pacific on 31 October 1944, although

the planned extensive redeployment from Europe

did not materialize. See JCS 521/9, 23 Dec 44, title:

Strategic Deployment of U.S. Forces Following the

Defeat of Germany. (3) It seems clear that production

rates must have exceeded those on which the earlier

projections had been made, even allowing for a

lower than anticipated rate of loss. In any case, the

conclusion that the Navy's offer was based on the

prospect of expanding production of landing craft

seems justified.

59

 CCS 465/13, memo by U.S. CsofS, 24 Mar 44,

title: OVERLORD and ANVIL. 60

 (1) Min, 12th mtg SCAEF, 27 Mar 44. SHAEF

SGS 381 OVERLORD-ANVIL, vol. I. (2) See Brooke

diary entry, 19 Apr 44, quoted in Bryant, Triumph

in the West, p. 134. 61

 (1) Ibid. (2) Msg, From D 183, Dill to Br COS,

personal, 1 Apr 43, OPD Exec 10, Item 66. (3) Matloff, Strategic Planning, 1943-44, pp. 424-25. (4) See

below, Chapters XIV and XIX, on the Pacific shipping situation.
344 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

and Mediterranean theaters. Brooke told

Eisenhower that

if our basic strategy, which was to defeat

Germany first, had been adhered to, the

landing craft required for ANVIL would

now be available and they would not be in

the Pacific, as was the case. He considered

that the failure to adhere strictly to the

basic strategy had already resulted in a setback of approximately six months in the

defeat of Germany. Furthermore . . . the

lack of sufficient landing craft and other

resources in the Mediterranean resulted in

our failure to take full advantage of the

fall of Italy.62

None of this resentment was evident

in the carefully worded British reply;

however, the Joint Chiefs still sensed in

it an attempt, as Sir John Dill reported,

"to accept their legacy while disregarding the terms of the will."63

 On both

sides, therefore, there was an undercurrent of resentment in negotiations during the next three weeks, which may

even have been decisive in the outcome.

The area of agreement was, as a matter

of fact, very broad and the margin of

disagreement remarkably narrow. Both

sides agreed that the touchstone of Mediterranean strategy must be support of

OVERLORD; they agreed that the offensive

in Italy must be carried out to link the

main Allied forces with the Anzio beachhead; neither proposed to cancel ANVIL;

and both admitted in principle that

plans must be kept flexible, leaving the

door open to whatever course of action

events might dictate. The dispute boiled

down almost entirely to a question of the

timing of ANVIL, with the implications

it had for the effort in Italy. It hinged

on divergent views of what the enemy

was most likely to do—the British expected the Germans to stand and fight

in Italy; the Americans expected them

to withdraw and delay. To the British

a great battle south of Rome held the

best promise of helping OVERLORD by

holding German divisions in Italy and

away from the Normandy beachhead.

The Americans were convinced that only

the threat, followed by the reality, of a

full-scale invasion of southern France

(the only place where all the remaining

disposable Allied forces in the Mediterranean could be brought into action)

would prevent the detachment of large

enemy forces from that area and Italy

for use against OVERLORD.

Thus the British thought that to agree

to the JCS proviso and immediately commit themselves to preparation for ANVIL

would close the door on any major effort

in Italy by forcing the premature withdrawal of forces from that area. Wilson's

first report indicated the spring offensive

would start in mid-April and the link-up

with the Anzio forces would occur in

May. Under this estimate, ANVIL could

not be launched before the end of July.

A week later a revised theater plan postponed the spring offensive another

month, pushing ANVIL even further into

the future. While the British, as a concession to American insistence, agreed

to set a planning date of 10 July for

ANVIL, they refused to commit themselves in advance to a schedule of preparations that would involve withdrawing

troops from Italy regardless of consequences.

For their part the Americans insisted

that forces for ANVIL could be withdrawn

from Italy without endangering the Allied position or expectations there, and

that to postpone the final decision on

62

 Min, 12th mtg SCAEF, 27 Mar 44. 63

 (1) Ibid. (2) CCS 465/14, memo by Reps Br

COS, 28 Mar 44, OVERLORD and ANVIL.
OVERLORD AND ANVIL 345

what to do after the link-up would be

tantamount to surrendering the initiative to the Germans. Better, they

thought, to force the enemy into the

position of waiting passively, all forces

committed, in expectation of Allied attacks in both Italy and southern France.

They sharply criticized the postponement of the spring offensive in Italy,

and urged that General Wilson be impressed with the necessity for aggressive

action without "ideal arrangements."

Underlying it all was a lingering suspicion, even at this late date, that British

designs in Italy still reflected something

less than a whole-hearted commitment

to OVERLORD.64

"The implication," angrily wrote the

British Chiefs on 31 March, "that in the

British view Mediterranean strategy is

any less subservient to OVERLORD than

in the American view is particularly

painful to us on the eve of this the

greatest of our joint ventures. We fully

realise and equally deplore that time is

being lost, but we think a right decision

is even more important than a quick

one."65 Doubtful whether the "pressure"

contemplated by the Americans would

measure up to their own notions of what

might be required if the Germans decided to fight it out south of Rome, they

remained unconvinced that an unequivocal immediate decision on ANVIL would

be "right." Distressed though they were

by the postponement of the beachhead

battle until mid-May, they had been convinced of its necessity by General Alexander, who made a flying visit to London

for this purpose.

The British had, in fact, little reason

to yield. The assault shipping that constituted the American bargaining weapon was not at this point as essential to

British designs in the Mediterranean as

it was to American. While the British

would have preferred to have a 2-division lift available for either ANVIL or

further landings in Italy, they were unwilling to pay the price the Americans

demanded. Churchill and the British

Chiefs made their final pleas on 16

April, but by that time the Americans

had made up their minds: If ANVIL was

to be of any use to OVERLORD, most

American staff officers thought, it must

be mounted before the end of July, and

forces must be withdrawn from Italy

during the first half of May. On 8 April

word came from General Wilson that he

could no longer postpone troop dispositions for the coming offensive in Italy.

These would preclude launching ANVIL

before the end of July "at the earliest."

Since the British were evidently determined to postpone decision, a July ANVIL seemed to be out and any support

for OVERLORD must come from the

weight of operations in Italy.66

It remained for the Joint Chiefs to

decide whether to go through with their

offer of additional landing vessels thus

leaving open the option of a later ANVIL,

or to withdraw them as they had threat64

 See exchange of views between U.S. and British

Chiefs of Staff in CCS 465 series, CCS 465/14-20,

28 Mar-8 Apr 44, all titled: OVERLORD and ANVIL. 65 Quoted in Ehrman, Grand Strategy V, 253.

66

 (1) Msg OZ 1985, Prime Minister to Dill for

Marshall, 16 Apr 44. (2) Msg COS(W) 1284 to JSM

Wash, 16 Apr 44. Both in Exec 3, Item 16. (3) CCS

465/21, 17 Apr 44, memo by Reps Br COS, title:

OVERLORD and ANVIL. (4) SS 240/4, 8 Apr 44, sub:

OVERLORD and ANVIL, ABC 381 Strategy Sec Papers

(7 Jan 43) 227-240/10, Tab 240/4. (5) MEDCOS 85,

Wilson to Br COS, 8 Apr 44, ABC 384 Europe (5

Aug 43), Sec 9-A. (6) Draft Msg, Marshall to Prime

Minister, undated, OPD 381 TS, Case 217. (7) See

Brooke diary, entries for 8 Apr, 11 Apr 44, quoted

in Bryant, Triumph in the West, p. 132.
346 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

ened to do. Feeling, in the words of

General Handy, "that a point had been

reached where strong action must be

taken," the JCS took the latter choice,

and the British representatives were so

informed at the CCS meeting on 8

April.67 On the 18th, after a final flurry

of correspondence with Churchill, the

Joint Chiefs approved the directive to

General Wilson drawn up by the British

Chiefs, which, within the broad mission

of containing German forces on behalf

of OVERLORD, gave him a free hand to

use the lift he would have after the

OVERLORD withdrawals "either in support of operations in Italy, or in order

to take advantage of opportunities arising in the south of France or elsewhere."

Preparations for amphibious operations

were not to interfere with the forthcoming offensive in Italy, which was to be

launched as soon as possible. Nothing

was said about providing additional

landing vessels from the United States.68

Anvil Revived

Ten days later the Joint Chiefs relented. General Wilson's reply to the directive apparently revived hopes that the

still-warm corpse of ANVIL might be

brought back to life. The Mediterranean

commander said he was planning to develop a "positive threat" to southern

France during the critical OVERLORD

period by air action, ostentatious assault

training of unengaged divisions in

North Africa, and possibly a small-scale

landing on the island of Elba. Meanwhile, all his assault shipping would

be held in readiness for whatever opportunity presented itself, whether in Italy,

southern France, or the Adriatic. Wilson

stressed the fact that the small amount

of this shipping available to him (in an

earlier message he had said it would suffice for only two combat teams rather

than a division) would limit his ability

to seize any opportunity in southern

France or elsewhere except in an unopposed landing.69

OPD officers noted that, although Wilson stated that the Italian offensive

would absorb all his army except security forces, some five divisions were specifically mentioned as not so employed.

The British Chiefs had also noted this,

and told the JCS they had asked Wilson

to come to London to discuss with them

and with Eisenhower his plans for using

these divisions in the best interests of

OVERLORD. They particularly wanted to

know, they said, how Wilson would react

if the Germans decided at an early stage

of the Italian offensive to withdraw to

the Pisa-Rimini line—precisely the possibility that most worried the U.S. Chiefs.

Washington planners noted with interest that the British Chiefs, despite their

recently expressed views, were still considering a southern France invasion,

even though a small one, as early as

OVERLORD D-day plus 20. This concession, however, was coupled with a new

and interesting suggestion that bore the

distinctive mark of Churchill's fertile

mind—an alternative landing in the Bordeaux region of western France. Churchill had sounded out his military advisers 67

 (1) Min, 157th mtg JCS, 8 Apr 44. (2) Min,

154th mtg CCS, 8 Apr 44. 68

 CCS 465/22, 18 Apr 44, memo by U.S. CsofS,

title: OVERLORD and ANVIL. The directive was sent

as COSMED 90, 19 Apr 44.

69

 (1) MEDCOS 100, Wilson to Br COS, 23 Apr 44,

Incl to CCS 561, 27 Apr 44, title: Opns in Support

of OVERLORD. (2) MEDCOS 85, Wilson to Br COS,

8 Apr 44, ABC 384 Europe (5 Aug 43), Sec 9A.
OVERLORD AND ANVIL 347

on such a scheme (given the code name

CALIPH) early in February, but this was

the first time it had been mentioned in

the councils of the CCS. The U.S. Joint

Planners were inclined to throw cold

water on it, citing the long haul for

landing craft, the problem of air cover,

the submarine menace, and the difficulties of supply. Nevertheless, the plan

provided another indication that the

British were now considering seriously

the problem of finding useful employment for all forces in the Mediterranean at the time OVERLORD reached its

climax.70

Implicit in all this discussion was the

possibility that with more assault lift

Wilson might be able to help OVERLORD

more and, if the Americans provided the

lift, they still might be able to influence

the uses to which it would be put. At

the CCS meeting on 28 April Admiral

King remarked that the approaching discussions between General Wilson and

the British Chiefs seemed to raise the

hope that ANVIL "or some similar operation" might be revived and added that,

speaking for himself, if some definite

operation should eventuate "he would

be prepared to recommend . . . that a

month's supply of U.S. landing craft

should be made available. . . ."71 Though

the offer received little further definition during the meeting, it gave the British Chiefs a strong incentive to try to

meet American specifications for the projected use of additional assault shipping.

The upshot of the London meeting

with General Wilson, the British Chiefs

informed Washington on 7 May, was

that the alternatives for Mediterranean

amphibious operations were narrowed

to four general areas, the final choice to

depend on the outcome of the Italian

offensive and OVERLORD. Two areas—the

neighborhood of Sète in the Gulf of

Lions, and the Riviera farther east—were

in southern France; the other two—the

Gulf of Genoa, and somewhere north

of Rome—were in Italy. The British

promised that preparations for any of

the alternative Mediterranean operations would be put in train without

awaiting the results of the Italian offensive. These preparations would include regrouping and retraining of

American service troops, the recently

arrived U.S. 91st Infantry Division and

two French armored divisions. Any planning for operation CALIPH, they had decided, had best be transferred to Eisenhower's staff in London. Conspicuous by

its absence from the list of projects was

an Adriatic operation, discreetly omitted

(though still on the theater's planning

agenda) as a result of intimations from

Washington that the United States

planned to send no occupation forces

whatever into the Balkans. The British

planners calculated that for any of

the alternative operations Wilson could

scrape together a one-division lift — a

"somewhat scratch collection" Wilson

called it—and that the shipping conditionally offered by Admiral King would

provide lift for another division. "It

would be an immeasurable advantage,"

the British Chiefs tactfully observed at

70

 (1) CCS 561, 27 Apr 44. (2) Memo, Lt Col Paul W.

Caraway for Lt Col William H. Baumer, Jr., 28

Apr 44, sub: Opns in Support of OVERLORD, ABC

381 Strategy Sec Papers (7 Jan 43), 240/11-240/24,

Tab 240. (3) Churchill, Closing the Ring, pp. 692-93.

(4) Ehrman, Grand Strategy V, 259-62. (5) JCS 843.

1 May 44, rpt by JPS, title: Opns in Support of

OVERLORD. 71

 (1) Min, 158th mtg CCS, 28 Apr 44. (2) It should

be noted that King's offer came toward the end of

a month when LST production had reached 50.
348 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

the end of their report of the London

meeting, "to be able to count on the

early arrival in the Mediterranean of the

26 LST's which the U.S. Chiefs of Staff

at one time had in mind to allot to

ANVIL."72

To this formula the Americans agreed,

in order, as Admiral King explained, "to

keep ANVIL alive."73 ANVIL was indeed

alive, but not a July ANVIL. A month

had passed with no decision and no

preparations, since the early April estimate that only an immediate decision,

with preparations launched promptly

thereafter, would permit a July ANVIL.

The 26 LST's that the Joint Chiefs had

then thought of sending to the Mediterranean should have arrived before the

end of June. The JCS now undertook

to send 19 LST's, carrying the same number of LCT's; the last ten would not

reach the Mediterranean until about 20

July. They would replace, one for one,

the 19 lately withdrawn from the Mediterranean for OVERLORD in accordance

with the decision of 24 March.74 Three

other LST's had been sent a few days

earlier to compensate for the transfer of

three Mediterranean LST's on short

notice to the United Kingdom as replacements for two lost and one damaged by German E-boats in late April

during OVERLORD exercises off the English coast.75

 The Navy's final additional

contribution to ANVIL thus came to 22

LST's and 19 LCT's. Their diversion,

Admiral King assured his colleagues,

would not be felt "too seriously" in the

Pacific.76 (Table 29)

On the eve of OVERLORD, then, ANVIL

was one of several alternative operations

by which the Allied commander in the

Mediterranean hoped to exploit the results of the impending offensive in Italy

to the advantage of the cross-Channel

attack. On 11 May the Italian offensive

jumped off to a good start, and a week

later Wilson sent in his appraisal of future prospects. The 2-division amphibious operation that, thanks to the recent

allotment of American landing vessels,

he was now able to mount, would take

place, he indicated, no earlier than midAugust and possibly as late as mid-September—an estimate based on allowances

for the arrival schedules of the American LST's, the involvement of all but

three of his divisions in Italy at least

until the beachhead and the main line

were joined, and the necessary preparation and loading of assault and followup forces. Of the two points of entry

into southern France, the Riviera and

the Gulf of Lions, Wilson now favored

the Riviera because of its accessibility

to fighter bases and the character of its

beaches and ports. With a build-up to

ten divisions such an operation would

leave no more than enough forces in

72

 (1) Msg COS(W) 40, Br COS to Britman Wash,

7 May 44. (2) JP 44 (100) (Final), rpt by Br JPS,

4 May 44, title: RANKIN Case C, Responsibilities of

AFHQ. (3) JP 44(125) (Final), Aide-Memoire by Br

JPS, 2 May 44, title: Mediterranean Opn—MEDCOS

101. (4) Min, 143d mtg Br COS, 3 May 44, and 147th

mtg, 6 May 44. All in SHAEF SGS 370.2/2, Opns

from Med in Support of OVERLORD. 73

 Min, 162d mtg (Suppl) JCS, 9 May 44. 74

 The JCS had yielded to British reasons for

sending only 19 LST's and 19 LCT's from the Mediterranean instead of the 26 LST's Eisenhower had

asked for.

75

 OPD MFR, 4 May 44, OPD 560 Security, III.

Case 148. For the incident, see Harrison, CrossChannel Attack, p. 270. 76

 (1) Min, 162d mtg (Suppl) JCS, 9 May 44. (2) JCS

843/2, 9 May 44, JPS rpt, title: Opns in Support of

OVERLORD. (3) Msg, JSM 44 to Br COS, 9 May 44, circulated as CCS 561/3, memo by U.S. CsofS, 9 May 44.

(4) Msg, Marshall to Eisenhower, 10 May 44, OPD

560 Security, III, Case 125.

350 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

Italy to stabilize the front there. On the

other hand, an assault on the Italian

coast somewhere between Civitavecchia

and Pisa might become necessary if the

Germans succeeded in holding farther

south than the Pisa-Rimini line. In that

case, Wilson warned, he would probably

need more assault shipping of the shoreto-shore type.77

 ANVIL and Italy continued to compete for resources.

If in the course of the protracted negotiations from January through May

1944 ANVIL lost its place as one of the

two supreme operations for 1944 that

had been decided upon at Tehran, OVERLORD was, by contrast, assured the assault

shipping it needed. In place of the 191

LST's which the Washington planners

had on 6 February assumed would be

enough, successive transfers from the

Mediterranean and a small extra increment from the United States provided

a total of 234 for OVERLORD on D-day,

6 June 1944. Twenty-seven additional

vessels (20 from the Mediterranean, 7

from the United States) were allocated

to OVERLORD as a result of the mid-February Norfolk House conferences; 19

more came from the Mediterranean as a

result of Eisenhower's representations

and the postponement of ANVIL in late

March; and 3 were sent from the Mediterranean to replace the 3 OVERLORD

LST's lost in training. Also, 61 LCI (L)'s

and a number of LCT's were withdrawn

from the Mediterranean and brought to

the United Kingdom as a result of decisions to strengthen OVERLORD essentially

at the expense of ANVIL.

Barring a shift of assault shipping

from the Pacific, an unlikely eventuality, OVERLORD could hardly have gotten

its full contingent of vessels without the

withdrawals from the Mediterranean

that made a simultaneous ANVIL impossible. The conclusion seems inescapable

that, given the supply of amphibious

lift available for both northwest Europe

and the Mediterranean, the Tehran

scheme for simultaneous assaults was impossible from the start. The whole picture was, nevertheless, vastly complicated

by Allied failure to win a timely and

decisive victory in Italy either through

the landings at Anzio or the attacks on

the main German front in the winter of

1943-44. The Italian campaign competed with ANVIL both for assault shipping and for troops necessary to carry

out the invasion of southern France.

This competition played perhaps the decisive role in the decision in late March

to postpone ANVIL, and it undoubtedly

was the decisive factor in making impossible an invasion of southern France

about a month after OVERLORD, as the

Americans proposed. For this delayed

ANVIL, the U.S. Navy's offer to replace

the 26 LST's and 40 LCI (L)'s withdrawn from the Mediterranean for OVERLORD promised a sufficient assault lift;

it was the assault forces and not the assault shipping that could not be readied

in time. Uncertainties about the future

in Italy and British insistence that the

campaign there must have a priority over

an invasion of southern France combined to leave planning for ANVIL in

limbo as the date of the cross-Channel

invasion approached, and the question

of ANVIL versus Italy as a final issue to

be settled in the long Anglo-American

strategic debate on the conduct of the

war in Europe.

77

 MEDCOS 110, Wilson to Br COS, 17 May 44,

SHAEF SGS 370.2/2, Opns from Mediterranean in

Support of OVERLORD.
CHAPTER XIV

The OVERLORD-ANVIL Build-up

While the strategic debate over European operations raged from January

through May 1944, the build-up of

troops and supplies for OVERLORD proceeded apace. Logistical preparations for

ANVIL, meanwhile, proceeded haltingly

and with considerable waste motion.

Fortunately, this operation, being on a

lesser scale than OVERLORD, required a

less elaborate build-up, and only a marginal part of it had to be specifically

separated from that or for an alternative

action in Italy.

Planners had to look forward to the

day when assault shipping would no

longer be the main limitation on Allied

strategy in Europe. Once substantial

forces were ashore in France, the more

familiar constraints of ports and internal

lines of communication, merchant shipping, and service troop support would

again dominate logistical planning. Indeed, throughout the long strategic debate, the problem of merchant shipping

intruded with irritating frequency.

The Logistical Outlook

As the year 1944 opened, the Army's

logistical staffs were generally satisfied

with supply prospects for the year ahead.

Army units moving overseas, an ASF

study concluded, would be "adequately

although not completely equipped";

existing overseas shortages would be

filled, overseas reserves maintained, and

current commitments met for lend-lease

and the Navy.1 The Army Supply Program had been cut back as a result of

the decisions in late 1943, but it still

promised to provide adequately for a

troop basis that had also been reduced,

with some reserve capacity left to meet

unforeseen needs. The problems ahead,

in any case, were not likely to be those

of quantity per se, but of specific critical

items. The ASF cumbersome machinery

was being modified to permit swift adjustments of supply to demand within

the limits that industrial lead time would

permit. The more routine elements of

logistical preparations no longer worried

the strategic planners as they had earlier

in the war—a consequence of more ample resources as well as of greater experience and efficiency at the lower levels

of logistical organization.2 For OVERLORD

and ANVIL top priority had solved the

supply problem.

There was, however, an impending

shortage of military manpower. The

troop basis for 1944 was tightly drawn

beneath the prescribed ceiling of 7,700,-

000 officers and men. At the end of 1943

1

 (1) Memo, Lt Col A. J. Cooper for Chief, Strat

Log Br, Plng Div, ASF, 4 Dec 43, sub: Shpg Situation

Versus Supply Versus Personnel. (2) Memo, Cooper

for Chief Strat Log Br, Plng Div, ASF, 7 Jan 44, sub:

same. Both in folder vol. 5 Shpg vs Supply vs Personnel, ASF Plng Div. 2

 See above, chs. V and VI.
352 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

the Army was still 200,000 men short

of this goal, largely because of a lag in

Selective Service inductions. It was with

some reluctance that General Marshall

had deferred indefinitely the activation

of 15 divisions in the strategic reserve,

gambling that a total of 90 ground combat divisions with supporting troops

would be enough to win the war. Behind

the gamble was the hope that Germany

could be defeated without a protracted

land campaign in Europe on the scale

of that in World War I.

As far as ground combat troops were

concerned, the pinch would not be felt

in the first stages of OVERLORD and ANVIL,

but late in the year if German resistance

proved stubborn. The shortage of service

troops seemed to be the more immediately pressing problem. During January

General Somervell bombarded the Chief

of Staff with memoranda showing a clear

deficit of 40,000 service troops for ANVIL

and an uncertain outlook for OVERLORD,

not to mention a further deficit of 112,-

000 for the later stages of Pacific operations. Because of the generally stringent

manpower situation, Marshall turned

down Somervell's pleas for revision of

the troop basis, and warned theater commanders to economize in their use of

service troops. At the end of January an

ASF study showed a shortage of 62,500

service troops against a "balanced" troop

basis for OVERLORD and ANVIL, quite

apart from Pacific and zone of interior

requirements.3

As for shipping, staff officers dared to

hope that their worries were over. Troop

shipping, after the chronic shortages of

1943, now seemed abundant and promised to become more so—to such an extent that zone of interior commands

seemed likely to have difficulty finding

trained and equipped units to meet

movement schedules. Some of the expanding troop lift capacity was in converted Liberty ships that could, if necessary, be reconverted for cargo carriage at

relatively low cost in time and labor, thus

providing an element of flexibility. For

cargo shipping, the ASF thought in January, the chief uncertainty lay in the

still undefined and potentially huge demand for relief and rehabilitation supplies in the wake of conquests in Europe.4

The bright outlook for shipping was

somewhat dimmed in the first three

months of the year when construction

dropped behind 1943 levels. In January

1944 Maritime Commission yards delivered only 131 ships, less than two-thirds

of the peak December production, and,

while output rose in the months following, throughout 1944 it stayed well

under the 1943 average. Early in April

the JCS took the Maritime Commission

sharply to task for the slowdown, which

reflected slackening effort in the yards

as well as the smaller size of the 1944

building program. Fortunately, an unexpected diminution in ship losses in the

same period neatly offset the reduced

output, so that military authorities had

at their disposal at the end of March just

about the same amount of shipping they

had anticipated.5

3

 (1) See above, ch. VI. (2) Matloff, Strategic Planning, 1943-44, pp. 408-12. (3) Memo, Somervell for

CofS, 19 Jan 44, sub: SEXTANT Reqmts for Service

Troops, with related papers in file SOS Svc Troop

Reqmts for Present and Proposed Opns, ASF Plng

Div. (4) Memo, Somervell for CofS, 28 Jan 44, sub:

ASF Units Required for Overseas, and inclosed

Study, in History Planning Div ASF, app. 12-A. 4

 Memo, Cooper for Actg Chief, Strat Log Br,

7 Jan 44, Plng Div, ASF. 5

 (1) See above, ch. X. (2) Memo, Isadore Lubin
THE OVERLORD-ANVIL BUILD-UP 353

In any case, the real dangers ahead in

spring 1944 lay elsewhere than in the

shipyards. On 4 February Admiral Land,

in a letter to Secretary of State Hull concerning a Brazilian request for shipping,

dropped a comment that contrasted startlingly with the current optimism of the

military authorities:

May I say candidly that the shipping

position, insofar as we can see it, for the

next five or six months is as tight as it has

been at any time since the war started. The

reason is that as each theater of war has

become active, huge tonnages have been

necessarily retained for operational pur- poses.6

"Operational purposes," in the context in which Admiral Land used the

term, covered a wide variety of uses, including not only intratheater troop and

cargo movements directly involved in

military operations but also all the manifold demands of theater maintenance and

communications and the use of ships as

floating warehouses where inadequacy of

port facilities slowed discharge. Up to this

time, except for a brief period in the

early fall of 1943 in the Mediterranean,

the retention of shipping for local use

had attained serious proportions only in

the South and Southwest Pacific, where

the problem had become acute during

December and January. By spring of

1944 the practice had spread to the Central Pacific and to India in lesser proportions, and there was every reason to believe it would appear in northwestern

Europe when the invasion got under

way. Shipping held overseas for extended

periods, for whatever reasons, meant less

shipping for moving cargo outward from

the United States. Isadore Lubin, statistician for the Munitions Assignments

Board, told the President early in April

that he expected five million dead-weight

tons of shipping to be tied up for local

use during the next few months. At

about the same time shipping authorities

were beginning to anticipate deficits in

both the Atlantic and the Pacific in April

and May—the first harbingers of a situation which before the end of the year

was to develop into a major shipping

crisis.7

The Final Build-up for Overlord

Increased demands for operational

shipping for OVERLORD originated not

only in the revised plan for an enlarged

assault but also in a growing imbalance

in the build-up, a result of the 1943 delays in the preshipment program.

The supply build-up reached its climax in the first five months of 1944,

profiting from the top priority assigned

to it in December. On several occasions

other theaters had to be deprived of

units or supplies earmarked for them in

order to meet urgent demands for the

invasion forces. Ports, camps, depots, and

staging .areas in the United Kingdom

were flooded by incoming troops and

supplies. With troop lift plentiful, U.S.

troop strength in the British Isles rose

rapidly from 774,000 at the end of December to 1,527,000 by the end of May

1944, more than had been anticipated for President, 6 Apr 44, sub: Shpg Reqmts for Next

4 Months, WSA Conway File Misc. (3) ASF Monthly

Progress Report, 31 Mar 44, Sec 3, Transportation.

(4) Ltr, Gen Marshall [for JCS] to Adm Land, 8

Apr 44, JMTC Papers 1944, WSA Conway File. 6

 Ltr, Adm Land to Secy State, 4 Feb 44, folder

Reading File, WSA Douglas File.

7

 (1) Memo, Lubin for President, 6 Apr 44. (2) JMT

44/M, 2 Mar 44, title: Opnl Use of Shpg by Theater Comdrs. (3) On Pacific shipping, see below,

Chapter XIX.
354 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

BAILEY BRIDGE SECTIONS AND OTHER ENGINEER SUPPLIES IN OPEN STORAGE,

Ashchurch, England.

either at Quebec or at Cairo. This total

was achieved despite increasing competition for facilities, toward the end of the

period, between debarking troops and

preparations for outloading movement.

The competition delayed the arrival of

some combat and service elements recently added to the ETOUSA troop

basis, but the OVERLORD forces available

on D-day were clearly adequate in numbers and reasonably well-balanced.8

Cargo flow still lagged far behind

troop flow, if matched against the QUADRANT and SEXTANT schedules. While top

priority had released large amounts of

cargo for BOLERO shipments, the full effects, like those of any transfusion, were

not felt immediately. December shipments showed little change, and even in

January only 100 ships were filled against

expectations of 147. A January survey

revealed, meanwhile, the extreme imbalance of the stockpile built up in Great

Britain during the first eight months of

the preshipment program—for example,

Quartermaster equipment for 18 divisions, but Signal equipment, a more critical category, for only five.9

The imbalance would, of course, soon

be rectified in the process of catching up

with the total arrears in cargo movement.

But the volume of shipments now

8

 See Ruppenthal, Logistical Support of the

Armies I, 231-34.

9

 Leighton, Problem of Troop and Cargo Flow,

pp. 120-22.
THE OVERLORD-ANVIL BUILD-UP 355

planned in the few months remaining

before D-day—even an early June D-day

—was greater than British ports could be

expected to handle.

This was the prospect that led the

theater, late in January, to propose using

ships as floating warehouses, a practice

abhorrent to shipping authorities under

normal circumstances, but accepted in

this instance because of special urgency.

The scheme, commonly known as prestowage, involved loading vessels at U.S.

ports with specified units of supplies to

be held for discharge directly on the

Continent. Deck space on the same ships

would be used for cargo to be unloaded

in the United Kingdom. The ships

would be held in British waters until

their deck cargo was unloaded, then be

consigned to the Continent for selective

discharge when and where needed. By

March plans called for 54 prestowed

ships carrying a variety of blocks of supplies. Soon afterward, the theater also

proposed a variant scheme for loading

additional ships almost solidly with a single commodity group or several affiliated

types of cargo to be similarly held for

continental discharge. Commodity loaders, as these ships were called, were easy

and economical to load and discharge

and lent themselves ideally to use as

floating warehouses. Once the cost in

immobilized ships was accepted, both

prestowage and commodity loading offered an efficient and convenient solution to the problem of limited discharge

capacity. By the end of May a demand

for 155 commodity loaders had been

added to the prestowage requirement.10

Neither had been anticipated in the

SEXTANT estimates of operational shipping for OVERLORD, which had provided

for more orthodox employment of cargo

vessels—160 MT ships and 625,000 tons

of coastal shipping, mostly British, for

the immediate build-up on the Continent. These requirements grew as plans

took shape. On 23 January Eisenhower

asked the CCS, as part of the shopping

list for an expanded OVERLORD assault,

for 64 more MT ships, and for all 224 to

be preloaded for the immediate buildup. The coastal shipping requirement

held at 625,000 tons, but SHAEF planners were soon demanding that 250,000

tons be marked for retention after the

original D-plus-42 release date. To supplement the coasters they also wanted up

to 126 ocean-going "stores ships," 48 of

them for the period before D plus 42.

In all, by May the revised OVERLORD

plan provided for a tie-up of over three

million dead-weight tons of merchant

shipping in operational service for a

month or more after D-day besides the

great assault armada and the huge tonnages shuttling across the Atlantic.11

With the utmost pressure behind

them, all these requirements for merchant shipping were provided for in one

way or another, and the load was divided

between British and Americans on as

equitable a basis as circumstances would

permit. (Table 30)

The Uncertainties of Anvil

Logistical preparations for ANVIL

posed somewhat different problems. In

10

 (1) Ibid., pp. 131-40. (2) Ruppenthal, Logistical

Support of the Armies I, 236-40. (3) See below, Chapter XX, on development of a similar system in the

Pacific.

11

 (1) The foregoing material on OVERLORD shipping requirements is based on papers in SHAEF

SGS 560, vols. III and IV, and folders London 1944,

CMTC Papers, and Misc 1944, WSA Conway File.

(2) See also Msg, Eisenhower for CCS, 23 Jan 44.
356 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

TABLE 30—OPERATIONAL SHIPPING REQUIREMENTS FOR OVERLORD

Source: Ltr, Conway to Reed, 22 May 44, folder Misc 1944, WSA Conway File.

conception the operation was expected

to be mounted, in the main, with resources already in the Mediterranean.

The central problem was thus one of disengaging troops, material, and shipping

from the Italian campaign. ANVIL had

certain additional needs, however, which

the Americans, as its sponsors, had to

meet—more service troops, special operational supplies for the task force and

follow-up, shipping for the same kind of

operational uses as in OVERLORD, and, of

course, assault shipping, object of the

contention described in the preceding

chapter. The first two posed no insuperable problems. ANVIL'S priority was high

enough to dislodge the operational supplies needed, and various planned expedients were brought to bear on the

service troop shortage—breaking up and

reforming as service units the 2d Cavalry

Division and other ground combat units,

diverting others from Pacific theaters,

putting pressure on the French to provide their own service support, and using

Italian POW units in rear areas.12

To provide the operational shipping

promised to be more difficult. ANVIL requirements, like those of OVERLORD, began to grow as soon as the theater staffs

got to work on the plan. On 1 January

AFHQ estimated its shipping needs for

a 2-division assault as 227 MT ships (267

ship loadings) for the first 30 days, 147

of them to be preloaded for the initial

12

 (1) Memo, Somervell for CofS, 19 Jan 44. (2)

Memo, Wood, Dep Dir P&O, ASF for CG ASF, 5

Apr 44, sub: SEXTANT Decisions, file Misc TS, ASF

Plng Div. (3) Leo J. Meyer, Logistics and Strategy in

the Mediterranean Theater, MS, OCMH, draft chapter, Theater Logistical Preparations for ANVIL.
THE OVERLORD-ANVIL BUILD-UP 357

assault and immediate follow-up, 120

MT ship loadings for the second month,

and 80 for the third—a total of 467 loadings. This was 174 more than had been

allotted at Cairo.13

To officials in Washington the crux

of the problem appeared to lie in the first

30-day requirement, which was more

than double the SEXTANT estimate. For

a 1 May ANVIL, the 147 MT ships intended for the assault phase would have

to be withdrawn from other employment

almost immediately, especially loaded by

the process known as "flatting" (that is,

floored with bottom cargo on which deckloads of vehicles could be superimposed

in the theater) and dispatched in time

to reach the theater well in advance of

D-day. The other 80 vessels would need

less preparation and would not be needed

so early, but the entire movement would

have to be accommodated to the regular

convoy schedule beginning in February.

The effect, the Washington staff estimated, would be to create a deficit of 110

cargo sailings in the Atlantic area during

late April and May that would have to

be absorbed by other programs—British

imports, the OVERLORD build-up, maintenance shipments to the Mediterranean

and the Indian Ocean, or aid to the

USSR.

An alternative arrangement was suggested, on the assumption of a 21⁄2-division assault lift—100 flatted MT ships,

a total of 205 MT ships in the first

month, and enough shipping subsequently to provide for 173 instead of

200 loadings during the second and third

months. This scheme, hopefully, would

reduce the whole Atlantic deficit to a

"manageable" 75 sailings spread over

the three months of April, May, and

June. The CCS in Washington endorsed

this plan and on 25 January sent the

estimates back to the theater for comment.14

Meanwhile, on 23 January Eisenhower

had sent in his request for 64 more MT

ships for OVERLORD. The demand for

prestowed ships was also in the offing,

and there was a good chance of increased

shipping demands for Italy, where the

campaign hung in the balance. The British Chiefs of Staff in London, apparently

after only a cursory examination of the

figures developed in Washington, on 4

February affirmed that the provision of

more MT ships for both OVERLORD and

ANVIL would "seriously upset allocations

agreed at SEXTANT," that no British shipping was available for the purpose, and

that in their opinion the major Atlantic

programs could not, in the critical

months of April and May, "make any

significant contributions." The obvious

solution, they argued, was to reduce

ANVIL to a one-division threat and reallocate any shipping thus released to

OVERLORD.

 15

This argument, paralleling the current

British position on assault shipping for

the two operations, at once injected the

merchant shipping problem into the

mainstream of the OVERLORD-ANVIL, debate. The American staffs distrusted British cargo shipping estimates even more

than British assault shipping estimates,

13

 (1) Msg NAF 574, Eisenhower to CCS, 1 Jan 44,

SHAEF SGS 560, vol. II. (2) Requirements for a

3-division assault were less, in the aggregate, because

a larger amount of assault shipping would be available for use in the follow-up and build-up, in support of the same total force.

14

 (1) CCS 470, 17 Jan 44, rpt by CMTC, title: Personnel and Cargo for ANVIL. (2) Min, 142d mtg CCS,

21 Jan 44 (Suppl). (3) Msg COSMED 11, 25 Jan 44,

CCS to SACMED. 15

 Msg OZ 632, COS(W) 1127 to Britman Wash,

4 Feb 44, SHAEF SGS 560, vol. II.
358 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

DECK-LOADED TANKS LASHED DOWN TO PREVENT SHIFTING

but expert opinion in Washington at the

moment appeared to support the British

contention. At the request of the Combined Staff Planners, representatives of

WSA, the British Ministry of War Transport, and the U.S. Army Transportation

Corps met hurriedly on 6 February, a

Sunday, to consider the problem. Their

conclusion, duly reported to the CPS two

days later, was prompt, emphatic, and apparently unanimous: if the requirements

of both main operations were to be met,

other Atlantic programs would have to

be cut during the March-June period by

the equivalent of 245 cargo ship sailings.

Then on 9 February, whether after

second thoughts or because of pressures

brought to bear—in any case, for reasons

still obscure—they issued a revised statement: Shipping could be found for both

OVERLORD and ANVIL "without cuts in

other programs of so radical a nature as

to be incapable of being handled directly

by agreement between the shipping authorities and claimants for shipping."

They added a warning:

These assurances are based on certain

schedules of retentions and releases in the- aters, definite as to both number and time, which have been furnished by the military

authorities. The shipping authorities point

out that under the most favorable circum- stances the provision of shipping required

will place a serious strain on merchant

shipping resources and leave absolutely no
THE OVERLORD-ANVIL BUILD-UP 359

margin whatsoever, and that deviations

from schedules or retentions and releases

would necessitate cuts in some lower priority programs but would not endanger

OVERLORD and ANVIL. 1 6

During the next few days WSA exhorted

its regional directors overseas to expedite

ship turnarounds and addressed like appeals to the Army and Navy. No more

was said about the deficit of 245 sailings

predicted on the 6th. Meanwhile ASF,

working now toward an early June Dday, was planning the special ANVIL shipments the theater had requested. The requirement for flatted ships was fixed at

96, of which 64 were to be loaded by

early April. With the loading of the first

of these ships in February the specific

build-up for ANVIL, expected to continue

through May, got under way.17

American plans and preparations for

ANVIL went ahead, however, without

British agreement. The CCS counterproposal of 25 January for meeting ANVIL

shipping requirements brought no immediate decision, even after the change

of heart on the part of the shipping authorities. In London the British insisted

on looking at the problem in terms of

the original theater requests. The whole

issue was soon overtaken by the events,

described earlier, that led the CCS on

25 February to give an overriding priority within the Mediterranean theater to

the Italian campaign and to postpone

final decision on ANVIL until 20 March.18

This decision not only underwrote

OVERLORD'S shipping requirements at the

expense of ANVIL if necessary, but also

left ANVIL at the mercy of increased demands for the Italian campaign.

These increased demands for Italy

were not long in coming. For the spring

offensive General Wilson planned to

move 71⁄2 fresh divisions and replacements onto the peninsula, and certain

other forces to Corsica, during the seven

weeks beginning on 20 February—in all,

some 276,000 troops and 44,000 vehicles.

A week after the CCS decision of 25

February, he sent in additional shipping

requirements for 180 MT ship sailings in

the Mediterranean during March and

160 sailings during April—40 and 100

sailings, respectively, higher than the

SEXTANT estimates. In so doing he entered his bid for at least the entire original ANVIL allotment of operational shipping.19

Washington and London staffs were to

wrangle over these requirements for the

next month and a half. The issues and

the attitudes were the same as those involved in the assault shipping controversy. The Americans tried to save ANVIL

from obliteration under the rising shipping demands of the Italian campaign,

while the British were determined to

support the campaign in Italy regardless

of the effect on ANVIL. One of the Cairo

agreements had been that the two countries would share equally the burden of

16

 (1) CMTC 53/1, rpt by Combined Military

Transportation Committee, 9 Feb 44, title: Recommendations of SCAEF. . . . (2) Memo, Gen Gross for

Gen Somervell, 6 Feb 44, sub: Shpg Statements in

CCS 465/5, OPD 560 Security, III, Case 129. (3) CCS

465/7, 8 Feb 44, rpt by CPS, title: Recommendations

of SCAEF. . . . 17

 (1) Msg, Douglas to WSA Reg Directors, 12 Feb

44. (2) Ltrs, Douglas to Gen Somervell and Adm

Horne, 12 Feb 44. Both in folder Conserv of Shpg,

WSA Douglas File. (3) Meyer, draft chapter, Theater

Logistical Preparations for ANVIL.

18

 (1) See above, ch. XIII. (2) Memo, Stokes for

Connor, 29 Feb 44, sub: ANVIL Shpg Allocations,

OPD 560 Security, III, Case 125. 19

 (1) Msg, Wilson to Br COS and JSM, 20 Feb 44,

ABC 384 Post-HUSKY (14 May 43), Sec 2. (2) CCS

470/1, 11 Mar 44, memo by Br COS, title: Personnel

and Cargo Shpg for ANVIL, with Incls.
360 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

providing cargo shipping to support operations in Italy. The British were always

willing to provide their share; dispute

focused on what they regarded as the

American commitment.

The JCS readily agreed to furnish

their March quota of sailings, on the

assurance of WSA that it could be provided without strain, but they balked at

providing the April quota of 80 sailings,

50 of them additional. To do so without

disturbing the ANVIL reserve, the JMTC

predicted, would produce an "unmanageable" May deficit of 118 sailings in

the Atlantic, more than a quarter of the

total scheduled for major military and

civilian programs. WSA was willing to

consider an Atlantic deficit of 75 sailings

in May as "manageable," and to meet it

by cuts or adjustments in nonmilitary

programs, but that would require furnishing only 37 instead of 80 ships for

internal movements in the Mediterranean in April. After scrutinizing Wilson's requirements, the Joint Chiefs concluded that his build-up program was

designed to provide forces for the whole

campaign to capture Rome, not solely

for the operation aimed directly at joining the Anzio beachhead with the main

front, the only one that in their opinion

had been granted overriding priority.

They consequently recommended to the

British Chiefs that Wilson be asked to

review his requirements in this light, on

the supposition that, once the link-up

was consummated, necessary resources

would be devoted to preparations for

ANVIL.20

Before this proposal came to the top

of the CCS agenda on 31 March, the

whole situation had changed once more,

and all that could be said with certainty

about ANVIL was that it would not take

place in June as a companion piece to

OVERLORD. A new round of debate was

under way, centering on the American

offer to furnish additional assault shipping from the Pacific for a July ANVIL.21

At Sir John Dill's suggestion, the CCS

agreed to ask General Wilson to again

review his shipping requirements with

a July ANVIL in mind. But meanwhile

the British Chiefs in London had received word that the whole shipping picture had changed, and decided that the

intended message to Wilson was out of

date. Only 145 of the scheduled 180 sailings in the Mediterranean had actually

occurred in March and only 50 of them

had been by U.S. vessels, leaving a carryover of 35 sailings to be added to the

April requirement. This now totaled 195

sailings. The British Chiefs drafted a

new message for Wilson asking him to

reconsider his requirements for the next

three months. In transmitting the draft

to Washington they inquired whether

the JCS, in view of the changed strategic

outlook, would be prepared to provide

100 of the 195 sailings now indicated as

the April requirement.22

By this time the first requirements for

the commodity loader program for OVERLORD were coming in, BOLERO cargo shipments had been increased by 20 shiploads in May and June, and the JMTC

foresaw deficits replacing surpluses in

20

 (1) CCS 470/1, 11 Mar 44. (2) CCS 470/2, 23

Mar 44, memo by U.S. CsofS, title: Personnel and

Cargo Shpg for ANVIL. (3) Msg, Douglas to Kalloch,

17 Mar 44, with related corresp in folder N Africa,

WSA Douglas File. (4) JCS 761, 14 Mar 44, rpt by

JMTC, title: Personnel and Cargo Shpg for ANVIL.

21

 See above, ch. XIII. 22

 (1) CCS 470/3, 1 Apr 44, memo by Reps Br

COS, title: Personnel and Cargo Shpg for ANVIL.

(2) CCS 470/4, 3 Apr 44, memo by Reps Br COS,

same title.
THE OVERLORD-ANVIL BUILD-UP 361

the Atlantic in the next three months.

Moreover, a long-brewing shipping crisis

in the Pacific had come to a boil, and

representatives from the Pacific theaters

were about to meet with the shipping

staffs in Washington to seek a solution.23

To meet the Mediterranean requirement at least in part, the JMTC recommended, in keeping with a theater proposal, that sailings of 22 ANVIL flatted

ships be applied to the April requirement for Italy, but with a warning that

such expedients must be carefully regulated if shipping was to be available for

mounting ANVIL at a later date. These

22 sailings, with 28 American carry-overs

from March and the original U.S. commitment of 30 sailings in April, would

make a total U.S. contribution of 80

sailings in that month—20 less than the

British had proposed, and 28 less than

the U.S. quota under a 50-50 split for

March and April.24

In the angry atmosphere of the debate

over a July ANVIL, then reaching its

climax, the JCS reply to the British on 7

April merely reiterated that Wilson

should re-examine his requirements for

the next three months with a July ANVIL

in view. A few days later, however, having decided to give up ANVIL altogether,

they relented to the extent of undertaking to provide the 80 sailings in April

as recommended by the JMTC. But they

declined to make any further commitments, even in the face of an urgent plea

from General Wilson that he must have

his full April shipping allocation by 14

April in order to avert an interruption

of the scheduled flow of troops into Italy

during the second half of the month

which could have dangerous implications

for the offensive due to jump off on 10

May.25

In the end General Wilson got his 195

sailings after all. At a CMTC meeting on

14 April WSA representatives refused to

support unequivocally the Army's contention that the 20 additional sailings

requested could be provided only at the

expense of OVERLORD. It developed that

the formidable four-months' deficit reported a few days earlier by the JMTC

had already been dissipated in the ebb

and flow of day-to-day requirements and

availabilities. Atlantic programs for May

were now in fair balance, though deficits

amounting to some 80 sailings in a grand

total of up to 1,500 were in the offing for

June and July. An arrangement was

finally worked out under which the British would provide the 20 disputed sailings in April as a loan, to be repaid in

U.S. sailings during succeeding months.26

These arrangements to provide Wilson

his operational shipping for the April

build-up had a curious aftermath in the

context of the continuing speculation

about Atlantic deficits during this period. On 18 April a new directive was

sent to General Wilson giving the coup

de grâce to a July ANVIL. As a result, it

now appeared that there would be a surplus of cargo shipping in the Atlantic

even after the mushrooming demands of

OVERLORD were met. Wilson had already

fixed his May requirements for opera23

 See below, ch. XIX. 24

 (1) JCS 761/2, 6 Apr 44, rpt by JMTC, title:

Shpg Reqmts, Med Theater. (2) Msg, WARX 17229,

Gross to Stewart, 1 Apr 44, and Msg WSNA 645, Conway to Kalloch, 28 Mar 44, folder Algiers 1944, WSA

Conway File.

25

 (1) CGS 470/5, 7 Apr 44, memo by U.S. CsofS,

title: Shpg Reqmts, Med Theater. (2) CCS 470/6,

10 Apr 44, memo by U.S. CsofS, same title. (3) CCS

470/9, 14 Apr 44, memo by U.S. CsofS, same title. 26

 (1) Min, 85th mtg CMTC, 14 Apr 44. (2) Min,

155th mtg CCS, 14 Apr 44. (3) CMT 49/3, 14 Apr

44, title: Shpg Reqmts, Med Theater.
362 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

tional shipping at 135 sailings, including

10 MT ships to simulate a movement

against southern France while OVERLORD

was being launched. For June he tentatively estimated that he would need 60,

and for July 30 sailings—always assuming that no further operations, in southern France or elsewhere, were decided

upon. Under a 50-50 split, the U.S.

share would come to only 68 sailings in

May, 30 in June, and 15 in July, as contrasted with earlier estimates based on

a southern France operation of 125, 196,

and 116 sailings, respectively. The Pacific

Shipping Conference, concurrently meeting in Washington to seek means of alleviating the developing shipping crisis in

the Pacific, was thus presented with an

unexpected windfall. U.S. shipping authorities agreed to transfer more than

200 ships from the Atlantic to the Pacific

during the next several months. Even

after the transfer, they found it possible

to allow for an additional 50 internal

Mediterranean sailings per month from

July onward against the faint possibility

that a post-OVERLORD invasion of southern France might still be carried out.27

ANVIL'S uncertain future also complicated logistical preparations for it at the

administrative level. These preparations

slowed down immediately after Wilson's

and Eisenhower's recommendations on

23 March, and with the decisions of midApril came virtually to a halt. The first

impulse in both ASF and OPD was to

suspend the whole process of loading

and shipping supplies and troop units

for ANVIL in order to release them for

operations that had been definitely approved. Before the end of March OPD

had decided to cancel some shipments of

operational supplies and troop units, and

proposed that ANVIL'S high priority for

critical items be dropped to the bottom

of the list of active theaters, below that

for even the CBI. Early in April second

thoughts took hold. ASF officials closely

watching the progress of the strategic

debate argued against the change in

priorities, since there seemed some likelihood that the American position might

prevail. If the priority were lowered only

to be raised again at a later date, the

momentum of preparations would be

broken and difficulties certainly encountered in providing supplies on short notice. On 6 April OPD, having ascertained

that the JCS still had hopes of mounting

ANVIL in time to be of help to OVERLORD, decided to leave it for the present

in the priority immediately below OVERLORD. Preparation of the flatted cargo

vessels and their movement to the theater continued, though at a slower

pace.28

The respite was temporary. Two weeks

later OPD, reviewing the recent top level

decisions, concluded that ANVIL had now

been definitely ruled out and called a

halt to administrative preparations. All

outstanding requisitions for supplies

specifically for the invasion of southern

France were canceled, loading of ships

was stopped, and movements suspended

except for one convoy almost ready to

27

 (1) On the Pacific shipping crisis see below,

Chapter XIX. (2) JCS 762/4, 26 Apr 44, rpt by

JMTC, title: Shpg Reqmts, Med Theater. (3) Msg,

MEDCOS 88, Wilson to Br COS, 11 Apr 44, Incl in

JCS 761/3, 13 Apr 44. (4) Msg WSNA 736, Conway

and Bissell to Kalloch, 28 Apr 44, folder Algiers

1944, WSA Conway File.

28

 (1) Memos, Gen Roberts for ACofS OPD, 23

Mar 44, and 6 Apr 44, sub: Shipment of Troop

Units and Supplies for ANVIL, with related corresp in

ABC 381 Strategy Sec Papers (7 Jan 43), 227-240/10,

Tab 240/2, and 240/11-240/24, Tab 240. (2) Memo,

Gen Wood for CG ASF, 5 Apr 44, sub: SEXTANT

Decisions, file Misc TS, Plng Div ASF.
THE OVERLORD-ANVIL BUILD-UP 363

sail. By this time, 64 flatted vessels had

been loaded and most of them had already sailed; all 64 eventually did reach

the Mediterranean. OPD further ruled

that both vessels and supplies could be

used to support operations in Italy, as the

British had contended all along. In the

event the results were less devastating

than might have been expected. Lt. Gen.

Jacob L. Devers, U.S. theater commander and commander-designate for ANVIL,

decided to freeze stocks in depots and on

flatted ships that had been earmarked for

ANVIL, and maintained the freeze against

pressures from the War Department to

make them available for operations in

Italy.29

Devers' optimism was soon justified.

The liquidation of ANVIL preparations

had scarcely been ordered—and on operating levels was still being executed—

when hopes for the operation were revived. ANVIL, it appeared at the end of

April, still had the edge over alternative

undertakings, and on 28 April Admiral

King renewed his offer of assault shipping with less restrictive conditions. On

12 May Alexander's forces launched their

offensive in Italy. By the 17th it was progressing so well that Wilson reported

good prospects for launching a 2-division

ANVIL (now definitely his first choice)

between mid-August and mid-September.30

On 13 May, General Wilson forwarded revised estimates of shipping requirements for continuing the campaign in

Italy and for a possible southern France

operation in August. He added 100 sailings to the 90 earlier estimated as sufficient for internal maintenance in June

and July (including those for operations

in Italy). For a new ANVIL in August he

said he would need 100 MT ships preloaded before D-day, 150 cargo sailings

in each of the first two months of the

operation, and 50 sailings in the third

month. Intratheater troop lift requirements amounted to 22,000 per month

during June and July for Italy, and

32,000 for the initial ANVIL movements;

for the follow-up convoys, a lift of 16,000

would suffice. In conclusion he pointed

out that, even though a definite decision

to launch the operation could not yet

be made, shipping must be assembled in

the theater by the end of June if it was

to be preloaded for an August ANVIL.

Preparations must therefore begin immediately.31

In the calmer atmosphere that now

prevailed, arrangements were amicably

worked out before the end of May to

meet these requirements and to divide

the burden equitably between British

and American shipping. Basically they

called for an approximately even split,

with the British to provide somewhat

more than half the shipping for the

Italian campaign, in which they were

primarily interested, and the United

States somewhat more than half that

for ANVIL, its own primary concern.

Troop shipping arrangements were complex, but the cargo shipping burden was

to be equally shared, taking both operations into account. U.S.-controlled cargo shipping in the Mediterranean by

this time included all 64 flatted ANVIL

ships, which it was estimated in Wash29

 (1) Memo, Gen Handy for Dir P&O, ASF, 26

Apr 44, sub: Priority for ANVIL, with accompanying

MFR, in ABC 381 Strategy Sec Papers (7 Jan 43)

227-240/10. (2) Meyer, draft chapter, Theater Logistical Preparations for ANVIL. 30

 See above, ch. XIII, and Ehrman, Grand Strategy V, 263-67.

31

 Msg, MEDCOS 107, Wilson to Br COS, 13 May

44, SHAEF SGS 560, vol. IV.
364 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

GENERAL DEVERS

ington would be almost enough to meet

the whole American quota of sailings in

June and July and most of the U.S.

share of the 100 preloaders. The rest

could be provided from the contingency

allowance of 50 ships authorized in April

and expected to become available by

July.32

Thus, on the eve of OVERLORD, it appeared that the merchant shipping (and,

as has been noted, the assault shipping

as well) needed for an August ANVIL

could be provided. The CCS agreed that

Wilson should be informed that he could

count on the necessary shipping for internal maintenance movements in June

and July, and, for planning purposes,

on having the shipping for a revised ANVIL in August as well, but that the shipping would not be allocated until the

operation had definitely been decided

upon and a target date set. He was to

be reminded further that his requirements for shipping must be submitted

60 days in advance of D-day. Wilson

therefore had until mid-June to decide

definitely for or against a mid-August

ANVIL.33

Before these instructions could be

sent, the ASF raised a further difficulty.

The cessation of preparations for ANVIL

in April and the lowering of its priority

had brought the expected consequences.

Supplies earmarked for the operation

had been released, some of the service

units had been shipped to other theaters, and multiplying demands for specially loaded vessels for OVERLORD were

eating into depot stocks in the United

States. ASF officials thought, nevertheless, that ANVIL'S supply needs could be

met except for a few critical items

(heavy engineer supplies and heavy artillery ammunition) if the original priority were restored. There was also a

possibility that replacements for some

of the diverted service units could be

improvised in the theater. The crux of

the matter was the time required to

restore momentum to ANVIL preparations. Originally an interval of 97 days

had been expected between receipt of

the first requisitions (late in January)

and the sailing of the final supply convoy in May. While this schedule could

now be telescoped, additional allowance

had to be made at the beginning of the

process for preparation and dispatch of

new requisitions to replace those canceled, and at the end for transit, un- 32

 (1) CCS 470/15, 26 May 44, rpt by CMTC, title:

Shpg Reqmts Med Theater. (2) Msgs exchanged between Conway and Kalloch, 14-29 May 44, in folder

Algiers 1944, WSA Conway File.

33

 (1) Ibid. (1). (2) CCS 470/16, 26 May 44, memo

by Reps Br COS, 26 May 44, title: Shpg Reqmts,

Med Theater.
THE OVERLORD-ANVIL BUILD-UP 365

loading, and distribution. ASF calculated a minimum of 68 days for the

whole process, even assuming all supplies could be sent in a single convoy.

If shipments were spaced over three

convoys sailing at normal l0-day intervals, as seemed likely, 20 more days

would be required. ASF concluded that

a minimum of 90 days must be allowed

between the time a definite decision was

made to launch ANVIL and to give it the

requisite priority and the date on which

the operation could be launched.34

But ASF officials had reckoned without knowledge of General Devers' action

in freezing ANVIL stocks. It soon appeared that there was enough material

already in the Mediterranean to support the operation for the first month.

Thus a mid-June decision would still

permit a mid-August D-day, and supplies shipped directly to southern France

would be in the area before the backlog of theater reserves had been consumed. All these calculations took time.

Not until 11 June, three weeks after

ASF had raised the problem, did the

Joint Logistics Committee finally assure

the JCS that the 90-day proviso would

not rule out a D-day 60 days following

a top-level decision.35

By this time German defenses south

of Rome had disintegrated, the Allies

had entered Rome on 4 June and were

rolling northward at a steady pace. On

the 7th General Wilson jubilantly reported that he could now definitely

promise an amphibious operation on

the scale of ANVIL, with a target date of

15 August. Somewhat ambiguously he

added, "planning is being carried out

on the assumption that the launching

of ANVIL at this date will fit into the

general European picture," and he asked

for firm allocations of shipping, supplies, and troops. Two days earlier the

British Chiefs had already notified him

that his shipping requirements would

be met under the stipulations to which

the CCS had agreed. The CMTC now

recommended that Wilson's whole request be approved.36

 At that moment

the JCS were on their way to England

to confer with the British on future

strategy in Europe and to visit the beachhead that Eisenhower's forces were carving out on the Normandy coast. The

future course of operations in the Mediterranean would be discussed in that

context.

Atlantic Shipping on the Eve

of Overlord

As one might suspect from the foregoing, the shipping situation in the Atlantic area just before the Normandy

invasion had improved considerably. In

the war at sea during this period Allied

shipping losses stayed at a low level,

and new construction climbed steadily

upward from the doldrums of January.

Huge net gains in tonnage were registered each month in the Allied merchant fleets.

In April the situation in the North

34

 (1) Memo, Gen Wood for OPD, 22 May 44,

sub: Shpg Reqmts for Med Theater, OPD 560 Security, III, Case 126. (2) CCS 470/17, 31 May 44, memo

by U.S. CsofS, title: Shpg Reqmts, Med Theater,

with related papers in ABC 384 (1 Nov 43), Sec 2-B. 35

 (1) JCS 761/5, 28 May 44, memo by JMTC, and

JCS 761/6, 11 June 44, titles: Shpg Reqmts Med

Theater. (2) Meyer, draft chapter, Theater Logistical

Preparations for ANVIL.

36

 (1) CCS 470/19, 11 Jun 44, rpt by CMTC, title:

Shpg Reqmts, Med Theater, with incl msg from

Wilson to Br COS. (2) CCS 470/18, 5 Jun 44, memo

by Reps Br COS, same title.
366 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

Atlantic was favorable enough to permit some relaxation of protection and

an acceleration of convoy schedules. Convoys between Halifax and the United

Kingdom were suspended and those between New York and British ports significantly speeded up and enlarged. They

were to run thereafter in three speed

groups—10, 9, and 8 knots—on alternating cycles ranging from 5 to 9 days within a span of 45 days with no set limits

placed on the number of ships in a single convoy.37

One measure of the improvement was

the extent to which actual sailings exceeded WSA forecasts made early in

the year. Late in February WSA was

counting on 379 sailings in March and

only 374 in May; three months later

the May figure had increased to 539 and

the forecast for June stood at 555. The

improvement was not entirely a matter of more plentiful tonnage; it also

reflected growing efficiency in ship operations. Whether as a result of WSA's

concerted efforts following the early February wrangle over ANVIL shipping or

not, there was a marked speed-up in ship

turnarounds. (The British Ministry of

War Transport took similar steps to

speed the turnaround of British shipping.) Improvement was especially

marked in the Mediterranean. During

January and February, at the height of

the battle at Anzio, the volume of shipping in the Mediterranean was building

up at an alarming rate, and the shipping staffs began to prepare for another

congestion crisis. It did not materialize,

however, largely because of a rapid increase in the rate of discharge over the

beaches at Anzio in March. At Naples,

meanwhile, tonnages handled in March

were so great that U.S. officials there

could claim, with some justification, that

it was the "largest allied military port

in the world."38

Faster turnarounds in the Mediterranean were accompanied by a reduction

in retentions of WSA vessels for operational purposes in April and May to

well below the SEXTANT estimate of 120.

The theater reported no retentions in

mid-February; by 8 May the figure had

fallen to 38, rising thereafter to 66 at

the end of May as ANVIL shipping began to assemble. In any case, the net result of all factors was that the number

of ships returning from the Mediterranean to the United States increased from

91 in February to 144 in April.

Comparable improvements in turnarounds were achieved during the same

period by U.S. shipping in British ports.

Early in January WSA vessels were

spending, on the average, 26 days in

these ports in an over-all turnaround

time of 80 days on the North Atlantic

run. In mid-April these figures had

dropped to 18 days and 70 days, respectively.39

37

 (1) COMINCH Memo FX-3723, 31 Mar 44, sub:

New Schedule for NATL Trade Convoy, folder Convoys, WSA Conway File. (2) Samuel Eliot Morison,

"History of United States Naval Operations in World

War II," vol. X, The Atlantic Battle Won: May

1943-1945 (Boston: Little, Brown and Company,

1956) describes the course of the battle against the

submarine during this period. (3) Control Div, ASF,

Statistical Review, World War II, p. 37.

38

 (1) Official Commendation to the 6th Port, 13

Apr 44. The claim was true if only Army cargo was

considered, but the New York port handled far more

cargo of all kinds. (2) Shipping tables in folder

Reqmts and Avlbles, WSA Conway File. (3) Ltr,

Kalloch to Douglas, 18 Feb 44, folder N Africa,

WSA Douglas File. (4) Memo, Nickell for Conway,

30 May 44, folder Italy, WSA Conway File. 39

 (1) Ltr, Conway to Reed, 15 May 44, folder

Reading File 1944, WSA Conway File. (2) Corresp

in folder Algiers 1944, WSA Conway File.
THE OVERLORD-ANVIL BUILD-UP 367

The general speed-up in ship turnarounds in the Atlantic area was therefore a major factor in creating a favorable outlook for OVERLORD and ANVIL

during May despite the simultaneous

rise in requirements for the former operation, as well as in making possible the

transfer of a sizable block of shipping to

the Pacific. Combined with the concomitant rise in over-all tonnages, it also

made possible American contributions

to the Soviet protocol and British import programs during the first five

months of 1944 that substantially exceeded commitments, thus creating credits to be drawn upon later if necessary.40

There was one dark cloud in this

generally bright sky. By the middle of

May transatlantic cargo shipments were

threatening to overwhelm British ports.

In April the movement of cargo had

reached a total of 1,637,690 tons—an

increase of almost 700,000 over January

and more than 300,000 tons over and

above the theater's indicated capacity

to receive. Shipments in May, including

some prestowed ships and the first 18

commodity loaders, came to more than

two million tons and were scheduled to

continue at that level during June and

July.41

The impending crisis brought a demand from U.S. military authorities for

a reduction in British import movements to ease the congestion. Fortunately, with a backlog of credits already

built up, the import program was well

able to absorb a temporary cut. The

121⁄2-million-ton goal set at Cairo had

subsequently been reduced to 12 million, and the movement of cargo in U.S.

bottoms against this goal had exceeded

commitments by 45 shiploads. Although

responsible British officials still insisted

that they had accepted dangerous reductions in food and raw materials stocks

in setting the original goals for 1944,

there seemed to be some reason to suspect (as British official historians have

subsequently confirmed) that the stock

levels in question, in reality well above

any realistic appraisal of need, had come

to be regarded as sacrosanct.42

The British did not contest the necessity for holding back domestic imports

temporarily in order to provide berthing space for incoming BOLERO shipments, asking only that they be compensated later. It was agreed that up to

half a million tons of imports over a

period of four months would be deferred, the vessels carrying them to be

diverted to anchorages for later discharge. This expedient would make

room for only about half of that amount

of incoming BOLERO cargo, owing to

the larger bulk of military supplies. The

British also undertook to step up rail

movements and the discharge rate in

ports, and U.S. Army authorities agreed

to turn over additional locomotives.

These arrangements, worked out on the

lower levels, were presented in a formal

request from General Eisenhower to the

Prime Minister on 24 May, and accepted by Churchill on condition the Unit40

 JMT 50/6, 4 May 44, title: Shpg Reqmts and

Availabilities, Pac Opns. 41

 Leighton, Problem of Troop and Cargo Flow,

pp. 138-40.

42

 (1) JCS 879, 27 May 44, rpt by JMTC, title:

Present Critical Port Situation in U.K. (2) Min

155th mtg, Br COS, 12 May 44. Annex I: Min to

Prime Minister on OVERLORD Shpg Reqmts, SHAEF

SGS 560, vol. IV. (3) Postan, British War Production,

pp. 215-16. (4) R. J. Hammond, "History of the

Second World War, United Kingdom Civil Series,"

Food: The Growth of Policy (London: His Majesty's Stationery Office, 1951), pp. 271-82. (5) Behrens,

Merchant Shipping, pp. 401-02, 406-07.
368 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

ed States would make up the import

deficit later in the year. The JCS, on their

part, agreed to later compensation with

the proviso that it should only be sufficient to enable the British to meet their

original import goals for 1944.43

These arrangements helped to resolve

the immediate problem of discharging

BOLERO cargoes needed in the United

Kingdom in order to assure that troops

crossing the Channel had their full allotments. On 19 May 38 cargo ships, all

carrying BOLERO cargo, were awaiting

discharge at anchorages in British waters

for want of berthing space. Two weeks

later, as the OVERLORD armada was getting under way, 67 ships were at anchor, but only 7 of them carried BOLERO

cargo, and 3 of the 7 were reefers held

up for lack of port storage and refrigerator capacity, not for lack of berths.

Nineteen of the others were prestowed

and commodity loaded ships destined

for unloading on the Continent. The

48 conventionally loaded idle ships were,

as a WSA official remarked, "a good

measure of the excess of arrivals over and

above U.K. handling and clearance capacity."44

All 67, nevertheless, represented the

true measure of the extent to which

shipping was already being used to store

rather than to move cargo. The prospects were that the situation would become worse before it got better. In June

119 BOLERO ships were scheduled to

reach England, and shipping officials

hoped that by shunting import cargoes

temporarily aside all 119 could be discharged. But the ASF had been able to

keep the number down to this level only

by diverting more and more cargo into

commodity loaders for discharge on the

Continent. At least 27 commodity loaders were already scheduled to reach the

United Kingdom in June, and they were

only a small fraction of the scores destined to arrive in June, July, and

August. Continental accommodations

would also have to be found for the

gathering fleet of MT and stores ships

that were to transfer cargo stored in

England across the Channel. Whether

the artificial harbors and whatever ports

the invading forces might succeed in

opening up would suffice to absorb all

this shipping was the great imponderable

facing shipping authorities as D-day for

OVERLORD drew near. "So far," observed

one WSA official with unconscious irony

on 3 June, "the position does not appear unmanageable."45

43

 (1) Ibid. (1) and (2). (2) Msg, WARX 45591,

JCS to Eisenhower, 2 Jun 44. (3) Msgs HAL 689,

Reed to Land for Conway, 12 May 44; and HAL

312, Reed to Conway, 24 May 44; folder London

1944, WSA Conway File. (4) Msg S-52375, Eisenhower to Marshall (eyes only), 23 May 44, ABC 540

(27 May 44). (5) Churchill, Closing the Ring, p. 712.

(6) Compare Ruppenthal, Logistical Support of the

Armies I, 239, who holds that there was an "impasse"

which was resolved only two weeks before D-day. 44

 (1) Ltr, Reed to Conway, 30 May 44, folder

U.K. 1944, WSA Conway File. (2) Msgs, HAL 721

and 733, Reed to Conway, 27 May and 3 Jun 44,

folder London 1944, WSA Conway File. (3) Msg,

London to BMSM, 25 May 44, folder BMWT,

WSA Conway File. 45

 (1) Msg, HAL 733, Reed to Conway, 3 Jun 44.

(2) Behrens, Merchant Stripping, p. 405. (3) Msg NA

8071, Conway to Reed and Kerr, 29 May 44, folder

London 1944, WSA Conway File.
CHAPTER XV

The Aftermath of OVERLORD

In June 1944 the war in Europe entered a new and climactic phase. The Allies entered Rome on the 4th, gained a

lodgment on the Normandy beaches on

the 6th, and in both sectors rapidly exploited their initial success. Pushing

north of Rome, the U.S. Fifth Army by

the end of the month had driven threequarters of the way to Florence, while

on the other side of the peninsula the

British Eighth Army advanced almost

to Ancona. In Normandy the invaders,

after securing the beachhead on the second day, quickly overran the Cotentin,

capturing Cherbourg at its tip on 26

June and eliminating the last pockets of

resistance in the first days of July.

New Logistical Problems

With the invasion of Normandy the

nature of the logistical problem of the

war in western Europe rapidly changed.

For more than a year Allied planning had been dominated by the primary requirement of landing forces on

a hostile shore. Once the Normandy

beachhead had been secured, the critical

limitations were the capacities of ports,

roads, rail lines, airfields, storage facilities, and a multitude of other elements

essential to large-scale land operations.

The supply of military manpower

was not an immediate problem in June

1944—although if Germany held out

long enough, it could become the most

critical factor of all. The major concern

of the Allied high command at this point

was to bring all available trained and

equipped manpower to bear against Germany. On 6 June the Allies had available or in prospect for deployment in

Europe, more than 100 infantry, airborne, and armored divisions, quite

apart from forces already deployed or

earmarked for the war against Japan.

Approximately 38 divisions were British-controlled, including Commonwealth

forces and Polish troops serving under

British command. Nineteen of them

were in the Mediterranean area—14 in

Italy, the other five garrisoning far-flung

points throughout the Middle East. In

the United Kingdom, on the eve of

OVERLORD there were 15 British, one

Polish, and 3 Canadian divisions, plus

5 understrength British divisions suitable for home defense only. Thirteen

British divisions and the 3 Canadian

divisions formed part of the OVERLORD

force, all scheduled for commitment before the end of August. These 16 divisions represented very nearly the effective limit of the British contribution to

OVERLORD in ground forces, after provision for rotation and maintenance of a

small reserve in the United Kingdom.

The OVERLORD reserve was primarily

American and most of it was still at

home. By this time the War Department
370 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

had earmarked for possible commitment

in Europe 65 of the Army's 89 divisions.

On D-day 28 of them were already in

the European area—8 in the Mediterranean, and 20 in the United Kingdom.

The 7th Armored Division was en route

to England, and the 80th Infantry Division was preparing to move there in

July. With these movements, 39 divisions would remain in the United States,

most of them in an advanced state of

training. As of mid-June up to 35 were

earmarked for Europe and only 4 definitely scheduled for the Pacific. How

many actually went to Europe would

depend, of course, on how long it took

to defeat Germany. Any forces remaining in the United States in strategic reserve at the end of the war in Europe

would be deployed against Japan, and

their places taken by combat weary divisions withdrawn from Europe. Additional ground forces required for the

defeat of Japan, over and above those

already in the Pacific or in strategic

reserve, would have to be redeployed

from Europe.1 The scheme for progressive deployment into the main battle in

northwestern Europe is shown in Table

31.

In addition to the American forces

there were now 8 French divisions rearmed with American equipment and

serving under Allied command. One,

the French 2d Armored Division, had

been brought to England to join the

OVERLORD forces. The other 7 were in

the Mediterranean, 4 of them actively

engaged in Italy, and 3 in North Africa

and Corsica.2

The dominant aim of the Army staff

was to find ways to rapidly deploy

enough of this latent American power

to northwestern Europe to crush the

German Army in the west. JCS deployment schedules in mid-June were still

conservative, visualizing a movement of

only about four divisions to Europe per

month beginning in August. There was

ample troop and cargo shipping in the

Atlantic to accelerate these schedules,

and, while the supply of some types of

equipment was limited, the OVERLORD

priority could be counted on to provide

sufficient quantities. The bottleneck, it

was soon apparent, was reception capacity for both troops and supplies in

France, and it was to decisively influence

both the developing tactical situation

in Normandy and the course of the summer's debate on strategy.

In the southern theater the central

problem was how best to employ the

forces already in the area. There were

26 British, American, French, and Polish

divisions in Italy; only 3 French and

one recently arrived U.S. division (91st

Infantry) remained uncommitted in

North Africa. The problem was familiar: should these forces be concentrated

in Italy to mount a really serious threat

to the enemy's southern flank, or should

the Italian front be stabilized with limited forces in order to open a new sector in southern or western France. British and American perceptions of the

1

 (1) Deployment of Allied Divisions, 31 May, 30

June, 31 July, 31 August 1944, prepared in Log Gp,

OPD, Misc 320.2, folder Deployment 1941-45,

OCMH. (2) JCS 521/6, 11 Jun 44, rpt by JPS, title:

Strategic Deployment of U.S. Forces to 30 Sep 45.

(3) Matloff, Strategic Planning, 1943-44, apps. D-1

and D-2. (4) Roland G. Ruppenthal, Logistical Support of the Armies, Volume II: September 1944-

May 1945, UNITED STATES ARMY IN WORLD

WAR II (Washington, 1959) (hereafter cited as

Ruppenthal, Logistical Support of the Armies II),

Table 8, 282-83.

2

 On the French divisions, see below, Chapter

XXVIII.
THE AFTERMATH OF OVERLORD 371

TABLE 31—PLANNED DEPLOYMENT OF U.S. DIVISIONS ASSUMING GERMANY NOT DEFEATED

11 JUNE 1944

Source: JCS 521/6, 11 Jun 44, title: Strategic Deployment of U.S. Forces to 30 Sep 45.

question were inevitably different. The

capture of Rome and the launching of

OVERLORD set the stage for the last round

in the Anglo-American debate on the

strategy for defeating Germany.

Follow-up

OVERLORD follow-up plans provided

for one division to be shipped from the

United States to England in July and

4 in August, making a total of 26 divisions in the theater. On the Continent

the build-up was expected to reach 21

divisions by D plus 90 (later equated

to 31 August 1944). In the initial stages

the flow of combat troops would predominate but the plan envisaged a balanced combat and service force on the

Continent by the end of August. Beginning in September the build-up was expected to continue at a rate of 3 to 5

divisions (with balanced supporting

forces) per month, most of them to be

shipped directly from the United States

for discharge on the Continent.3

The European theater's proposed procedures to govern this build-up were

received in Washington late in December 1943. For the first three months

troops would be sent to the United Kingdom for transshipment to the Continent

under procedures similar to those for

pre-D-day movements, including preshipment of their equipment. For the

second three months, during which it

was expected most units would move

from the United States directly to the

Continent, the theater requested that

all general purpose and combat vehicles

be preshipped to the United Kingdom

for assembly and transshipment, and

that all other equipment accompanying

troops be combat loaded and/or force

marked to the destination of troops. For

troops arriving after the first six months,

the theater wanted equipment preshipped to destinations on the Continent.4

The War Department agreed readily

to continue preshipment to the United

Kingdom until 31 August. Because of

congestion in British ports, however,

much of the initial equipment of the

June-August build-up divisions had to

be loaded on prestowed ships and commodity loaders for discharge on the Continent. It soon became evident, moreover, that the other features of the theater plan could not be carried out.

Equipment was still not plentiful

enough to permit advance shipment on

3

 Ruppenthal, Logistical Support of the Armies I,

298-99.

4

 Ltr, Hq ETOUSA to WD, 24 Dec 43, sub: Preshipment of T/E Equipment, AG 400.22 (5-16-43)

(1), Sec 1A.
372 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

so lavish a scale without deprivation to

other theaters and troops in training,

particularly if movements of combat

units to Europe were to be accelerated.

Vehicular requirements would have to

be supplied in part by rehabilitated

vehicles, which normally were shipped

on wheels rather than packaged for overseas assembly. The double handling involved in preshipment to England and

transshipment to the Continent could

hardly be justified for vehicles on

wheels, as it could for packaged ones,

by savings in shipping space.

Procedures for shipping troop equipment after D plus 90 remained unsettled, therefore, until well after D-day.

The theater insisted that whatever the

arrangements troops must receive their

equipment and be ready to go into action within 15 days after arrival. The

solution ultimately devised was the socalled Red List procedure, which was to

be in effect during the second three

months. Equipment for each unit was

assembled and shipped in bulk in cargo

convoys timed to arrive about the same

time as the troops themselves or a little

earlier. After D plus 180, the War Department ruled, troops would move with

their equipment under normal procedures. The preshipment program thus

came formally to an end on 31 August

1944, though some advance shipments

continued to trickle overseas as late as

October to make up for units on the preshipment troop basis whose movement

had been postponed.5

Meanwhile, almost from the start, logistical operations were plagued by inadequate reception capacity in Normandy for incoming troops and material.

The problem had been foreseen but not

in its magnified dimensions which resulted from weather, German demolitions,

and early delays in expanding the lodgment area. On 19 June a Channel storm

wrecked the artificial harbor at OMAHA

Beach on which so much reliance had

been placed, and disrupted discharge activity for three days. At Cherbourg the

Germans had done their usual thorough

work of destruction; captured on 27 June,

the port did not begin to handle an appreciable amount of traffic until August.

The minor ports in Normandy did not

measure up to expectations. Fortunately, the facilities at OMAHA Beach, behind

their breakwater of sunken blockships,

proved to be capable of absorbing cargo

in far greater volume than anticipated.

It became the mainstay of the American

sector in Normandy during the remainder of the summer.

The capture of Cherbourg was behind

schedule, and the advance fell further

behind during the difficult hedgerow

fighting of July. Not until the end of

that month did Allied armies break out

of Normandy and begin the rapid advance across France that was to carry

them to the German border by early

September. The advance in France was

thus at first slower, then faster, than

anticipated. It also moved in directions

not planned. The original aim had been

to capture the Breton ports—Brest, SaintNazaire, Lorient and others — to serve

as the main ports of entry for U.S. troops

and supplies, and to develop secure communications from Normandy and Brittany forward before launching a general

advance to the Seine and beyond. Instead, in order to smash the German

5

 (1) Leighton, The Problem of Troop and Cargo

Flow, pp. 123-30, 141-46. (2) Wardlow, The Transportation Corps: Movements, Training, and Supply,

pp. 157-59.
THE AFTERMATH OF OVERLORD 373

SCUTTLED LIBERTY SHIPS FORM BREAKWATERS AT OMAHA BEACH

armies in front of the Seine, the weight

of the American offensive was thrown

in that direction. The forces diverted

into Brittany were smaller than planned,

and the Germans clung tenaciously to

the ports. Before these could be captured, the Allies had partly encircled

and crushed the Germans west of the

Seine, then plunged on toward the German border without the ports or the

supply lines needed to support so rapid

and massive an advance. Enough American forces were diverted to Brittany to

take Saint-Malo (17 August) and Brest

(18 September), but by the time Brest

fell, badly wrecked by its defenders, the

decision had already been made that

the Breton ports were too far from the

main axis of advance to justify their

rehabilitation and use.

Thus for almost four months after

the launching of OVERLORD its logistical

support had to be brought in over the

beaches and through Cherbourg, smaller

ports in Normandy, and a few small

ports on the north coast of Brittany that

had not even figured in the original

plans.6

6

 For detailed treatment, see Ruppenthal, Logistical Support of the Armies I, Chapters X through

XIV, and Ruppenthal, Logistical Support of the

Armies II, Chapters 1 through IV.
374 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

Nevertheless, the force build-up on

the Continent during the first three

months fell only slightly behind schedule. By early September (D plus 90)

20 of the 21 scheduled U.S. divisions

were in France, and the French 2d Armored Division, supported over the

American supply line, had also crossed

the Channel. The initial imbalance in

combat and service troops had been redressed much as planned.

There was mounting pressure, meanwhile, to speed the flow of troops in

September and the months following.

But by this time the lack of ports was

cramping support of the forces ashore,

and Eisenhower was reluctant, and the

theater SOS even more so, to agree to

any acceleration. For while the force

build-up continued on schedule the supply build-up fell far behind. With few

deep-water berths for ocean-going vessels, shipping piled up off the Normandy coast, and there was an inevitable

temptation to use the ships as floating

warehouses. By the end of August, moreover, Allied forward elements were racing for the German border with no assurance that they could be supported

over bombed-out transportation lines. A

logistical crisis was in the making.7

Anvil Versus Italy

Against the background of this developing situation in northwestern Europe the debate over ANVIL and operations in Italy moved toward its conclusion. The Americans were soon to find

their principal justification for an invasion of southern France in the prospect

of securing additional ports of entry for

American divisions. This would, they

hoped, lead to a consolidated singlefront drive into Germany and an end

to the European war in 1944. The British, even more anxious to end the war

in Europe quickly because of growing

strains on their economy and manpower,

took a different view. With all their

forces committed soon after the launching of OVERLORD and a large proportion

of them in Italy, the British looked to

an exploitation of the gains of May and

June in Italy as the most effective

complement to OVERLORD in breaking

through Germany's last defenses in 1944.

To General Alexander the long-delayed break-through in Italy created for

the first time a real prospect of striking at, or at least threatening, areas as

vital to Germany as those menaced by

the cross-Channel invasion. In the first

week of June he was confident that if

allowed to keep his forces intact he

could push on without a pause to the

line Pisa-Florence-Ancona by the end

of July, and in another month could

break through the Gothic Line defenses

(anchored on Pisa and Rimini) and

into the Po Valley. From there he would

be in a position in September to turn

either west toward Turin and Genoa

and thence into France, or east toward

Padua, Venice, and through the Ljubljana Gap into the Danube Basin.

The latter threat, Alexander estimated,

would compel the Germans to reinforce

in Italy by at least ten more divisions,

regardless of the cost to other fronts,

and in his opinion would assist OVERLORD far more powerfully, as well as

sooner (since the threat would become

apparent to the Germans long before

September) than any entry into southern or western France.

7

 Ruppenthal, Logistical Support of the Armies II,

1-8, 276-83.
THE AFTERMATH OF OVERLORD 375

Alexander's ideas gained no immediate support, even from his superior,

General Wilson. On 7 June Wilson,

although he had already read Alexander's report, notified the British Chiefs

that he was now definitely prepared to

carry out an amphibious operation with

a 15 August target date and asked for

the needed additional resources. The

British Chiefs were not yet ready to settle finally on ANVIL as the choice, but

agreed that it was necessary to proceed

with the allocation of shipping, supplies, and service troops.8

The CCS considered the matter at

some length during the second week

of June while the JCS were in England

to take stock of the new situation. Both

sides rejected Alexander's views. It was

agreed that he should pause at the PisaRimini line to disengage forces for a

separate amphibious operation elsewhere in at least 3-division strength.

Neither side took a rigid position on

the alternatives presented, the same ones

discussed in May, although more interest than formerly was expressed in the

possibility of landings at the head of

the Adriatic in the event the Russians

decided to strike southward through the

Carpathians into the Danube Basin.

The Americans insisted that the target

date should be moved up from 15

August to 29 July.

Accordingly, the CCS on 14 June

notified General Wilson that after

achieving his main objective—destruction of German forces south of the PisaRimini line—he should halt and launch

an amphibious operation against southern France (either in the Toulon-Marseille area or at Sète), on the Bay of

Biscay coast, or at the head of the Adriatic. The choice would depend upon the

progress of OVERLORD, the direction and

progress of the impending Soviet offensive, and German reactions. As the

Americans desired, the target date

would be 29 July, provided this did not

prejudice the campaign in Italy, and

the assault would be on a scale of 3 divisions, perhaps with a one-division airdrop. Wilson and Eisenhower were

asked to confer and submit their views

without delay.9

Insofar as the CCS showed a preference, they deplored the difficulties of

the advance from Marseille up the

Rhone Valley and noted the advantages

to be gained by early capture of Bordeaux either by overland movement after a landing at Sète or by direct assault

in the Bay of Biscay. The expressed

preference for Bordeaux reflected growing concern in Washington and at

SHAEF over the reception capacity in

western France for incoming U.S. divisions, a concern that temporarily dampened the old American enthusiasm for

the Toulon-Marseille version of ANVIL.

Bordeaux was, after all, closer to the

United States, to England, and to the

beachhead than was Marseille.

Meanwhile, the old problem of providing a 3-division amphibious lift for

ANVIL had seemingly been solved. On

the basis of lighter than expected losses

in the Normandy landings, SHAEF estimated that 15 attack transports, 24

LST's, 24 LCI (L) 's, one AKA, and one

LSD could be released and sent to the

8

 (1) Ehrman, Grand Strategy V, 345-46. (2) See

above, ch. XIV. (3) CCS 561/5, 10 Jun 44, memo by

Reps Br COS, title: Opns in Support of OVERLORD.

9

 (1) Info notes of 163d mtg CCS, 11 Jun 44, at

Stanwell, Middlesex, England, prepared by U.S. Secy,

OPD Exec 9, Book 19, Item 838. (2) Ehrman, Grand

Strategy V, 268-70. (3) Matloff, Strategic Planning,

1943-44, pp. 467-69.
376 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

Mediterranean in time for the assault.

The JCS promised to send 9 more LST's

and 23 to 25 LCT's from rising U.S.

production. With what he already had

in the theater, Wilson would then have

well over the required 3-division lift.10

The range of choice was soon narrowed. By now, despite the on-againoff-again decisions, preparations for ANVIL had generated a momentum of their

own. The build-up of air forces on Corsica was far advanced, western Mediterranean ports were ready to assume their

outloading functions and, partly as a

result of General Devers' action in retaining his ANVIL stockpiles intact, necessary supplies were on hand or in prospect. Only the Toulon-Marseille operation had been planned in detail, and

the theater staff believed it was the only

one that could be carried out by 29

July; the earliest date for either a Bay

of Biscay or an Adriatic landing would

be mid-August. While the ANVIL landings might be shifted westward to the

Sète area, the beaches there were far

more strongly defended than those east

of Toulon, the lodgment area would be

hard to hold against a counterattack, the

ports were inadequate, and the route

of advance toward Bordeaux was infinitely more difficult than that up the

Rhone Valley.11

Both operations aimed at Bordeaux

thus seemed too risky. The choice narrowed down to one between an invasion

of southern France near Marseille and

Alexander's proposed nonstop offensive

up the Italian peninsula combined with

landings at the head of the Adriatic

later on. The British commander in

Italy, ordered on 14 June to begin the

withdrawal of forces for the new amphibious operation, protested vigorously against the lost motion and delay involved in shifting direction and opening

a new front. By August, he argued, he

could push all the way to the Ljubljana

Gap, within striking distance of the

Hungarian plain and Vienna beyond.

By 19 June General Wilson, though

buffeted by competing influences in his

own staff, had made his own choice in

favor of Alexander's plan.

He reached this decision despite a

message from Eisenhower expressing an

emphatic preference for a southern

France operation over one in the Adriatic and pointing out that Marseille,

though inferior to Bordeaux as a port

and base, would serve the forces in

northern France almost as well.12 Eisenhower's views were reinforced by Generals Marshall and Arnold, who visited

Wilson at his advance headquarters at

Caserta on 17-19 June.

Ironically, Marshall's main argument

—the need for another port through

which to funnel into France the mass

of the U.S. Army — apparently helped

Wilson to decide in favor of the advance in Italy. The British commander

had decided, after analyzing the views of

his subordinate commanders and staff,

that forces could not be withdrawn from

10

 (1) Memo, SHAEF, 12 Jun 44, sub: Release of

Shpg and Ldg Cft from Opn NEPTUNE, ABC 384

Europe (5 Aug 43), Sec 9-A. (2) Memo, Deputy Dir,

P&O, ASF, for Gen Somervell, 17 Jun 44, sub: Opn

ANVIL, OPD Exec 9, Book 19, Item 832. (3) Table,

Status of Assault Shipping, Med, ANVIL, 16 Jun 44,

ABC 384 Med (26 Oct 43), Sec 1-A. (4) The total

lift available was estimated to be 77 LST's, 128

LCI(L)'s, 134 LCT's, and 24 attack transports. 11

 (1) AFHQ Med JPS, Msg to SACMED concerning operations in support of OVERLORD, 19 Jun 44.

(2) Brief for SACMED, 15 Jun 44, sub: Implications

of Alternative Opns in Support of OVERLORD. Both

in ABC 384 Europe (5 Aug 43), Sec 9-A. 12

 Hamilton, draft ch. IV, On Again, pp. 55, 60-63.
THE AFTERMATH OF OVERLORD 377

Italy in time to execute ANVIL before

15 August. Assuming that the process

of feeding new American divisions onto

the Continent would probably extend

well into 1945, he concluded that the

Americans must have given up hope of

ending the European war in 1944. As

Wilson explained to the British Chiefs

on 19 June, Marshall's argument seemed

"to face the Combined Chiefs with a

decision as to whether our strategy in

the coming months is to be aimed at the

defeat of Germany this year, or . . . at

ensuring his defeat in the first half of

1945." In the latter case the proposed

3-division landing in the Toulon-Marseille area and an advance up the Rhone

seemed the best course. If, on the other

hand, the high command wanted "to

strike a blow which may cause the enemy to divert or withdraw divisions from

France and at the same time face him

with the prospect of defeat this year,"

Wilson favored Alexander's plan of driving through northeastern Italy to the

Ljubljana Gap.13

A drive pointed toward southern Hungary would, in Wilson's opinion, force

the Germans from early August onward

to evacuate the Balkans and to draw

divisions from northern France. In September the threat would be emphasized

by amphibious landings near Trieste,

and Wilson was confident that despite

German reinforcements the Allies would

reach the Ljubljana Gap that month.

ANVIL, on the other hand, would produce no effect at all until mid-August,

and the best that could be expected

from it was a slow withdrawal of German forces up the Rhone Valley until

they established a common front with

those in the north. The Italian operations, Wilson assured his superiors, were

logistically feasible, and as a by-product

would result in opening ports in northern Italy through which fresh divisions

from the United States might be funneled.14

The arrival of Wilson's message in

London coincided with the Channel

storm of 19 June. With over-the-beach

supply of the forces ashore suddenly

endangered, Eisenhower's advocacy of

the southern France operation took on

a new urgency. ANVIL, he argued, promised to provide a good port and the most

direct route to eastern France, "where

the great battles for the Ruhr will be

fought." Alexander's forces did not directly threaten any vital area and their

advance, though perhaps of some containing value, would neither surely divert German divisions from France nor

open up ports for deployment of forces

from the United States—"one of the most

important considerations." Nor would

it, Eisenhower thought, have much positive effect before 1945—a neat reversal

of Wilson's case for Italy against southern France.15

If, however, the dangerous situation

on the Normandy beachhead heightened

Eisenhower's zeal for ANVIL, it also imposed limits on the assistance he felt he

could render at the very time the requirements were being raised. For a 15

August ANVIL, Wilson requested 50

13

 (1) Msg, B-12995, Wilson to Eisenhower and

Br COS, 19 Jun 44, SHAEF SGS 370.2/2, Opns from

Med in Support of OVERLORD. (2) SAC Conf, Min of

Spec Mtg with Gen Marshall and Gen Arnold, 17

Jun 44, ABC 384 (5 Aug 43), Sec 9-A.

14

 Ibid. (1). 15

 Msg S-54425, Eisenhower to CCS, 23 Jun 44,

SHAEF SGS 370.2/2, Opns from Med in Support of

OVERLORD, vol. II.
378 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

OVERLORD LST's rather than the 24 offered, and he wanted them released by

10 July to allow time for overhaul and

arrival in the theater two weeks before

the ANVIL target date. Wilson also wanted enough airborne lift for a full division. Meanwhile, Eisenhower's naval

staff reported the build-up of vehicles

in Normandy already 58,000 in arrears,

and saw little hope of reducing the backlog until the latter part of July even if

all the OVERLORD LST's could be retained. Reluctant to part with either the

LST's or any of his airborne troop carrier reserves, Eisenhower suggested as

an alternative that if ANVIL could not

be launched with good prospects before

the end of August, one or two of the

American divisions and all of the seven

French divisions assigned to ANVIL might

be sent instead to reinforce the Normandy beachhead.16

Meanwhile, staff opposition in Washington to Wilson's proposed Italian

drive had hardened. It rested not only

on the objections voiced by Eisenhower,

but generally on revived fears of involvement in the Balkans, and, more specifically, on doubts whether the French

could be persuaded to engage in an operation leading away from their homeland or whether any sizable forces could

be supported logistically north of the

Apennines. In a note to London on

24 June the JCS again insisted that

ANVIL was the only operation that would

assure rapid concentration of maximum

forces in France. They maintained that,

even after withdrawal of the ANVIL

contingent, more than sufficient forces

would remain in Italy to exert "a very

heavy pressure on the enemy."17

The debate was soon joined along

familiar national lines. While the British Chiefs took a far less optimistic view

than Alexander or Wilson of the prospects of driving into the Danube Basin

from northeastern Italy, they still

thought that a threat in that direction

would compel the Germans to withdraw forces from other areas. After some

wavering they decided to support Wilson—influenced apparently by Field Marshal Smuts who strongly urged this

course on Churchill after conferring

with Wilson and Alexander.18 There

followed a brief exchange of notes between the British and American Chiefs

and between Churchill and Roosevelt,

ending on 2 July. The whole affair took

place in a tense atmosphere dominated

by the consideration that, according to

Wilson's estimate, large-scale withdrawals

of forces from Fifth Army (small ones

were already in progress) would have

to begin on 28 June if ANVIL were to

be launched by 15 August.

The basic tenets of the British position, as presented to the Americans

were two. First, the British agreed that

the essential requirement was the support of OVERLORD and the earliest possible exploitation of its successes. Sec16

 (1) Ibid. (2) Msg, Gammell to Smith, 15 Jun 44,

with related papers in SHAEF SGS 370.2/2, Opns

from Med in Support of OVERLORD, vol. II.

17

 (1) CCS 603, 24 Jun 44, memo by U.S. CsofS,

title: Opns to Assist OVERLORD. (2) Memo, Lt Col

F. S. Henry for Chief, Strategy Sec OPD, 20 Jun 44,

same sub, ABC 381 Strategy Sec Papers (7 Jan 43),

240/11-240/24, Tab 240/17. (3) Unsigned Memo for

Gen Handy, 23 Jun 44, sub: Courses of Action in

Med, ABC 384 Europe (5 Aug 43), Sec 9-A. 18

 (1) JP 44 (161) (Final), rpt by Br JPS, 15 Jun

44, title: Exploitation from N Italy, ABC 384 Eur

(5 Aug 43), Sec 9-A. (2) Winston S. Churchill, Triumph and Tragedy (Boston: Houghton Mifflin

Company, 1953), pp. 57-62. (3) Bryant, Triumph in

the West, pp. 164-66.
THE AFTERMATH OF OVERLORD 379

ond, they held that within the context

of the whole European war it was imperative at this stage to "engage the enemy on the largest scale with the greatest violence and continuity" in order to

hasten his collapse.19

They denied that ANVIL was the best

way to achieve either objective. To

withdraw forces from the peninsula in

order to seize and develop another

beachhead in southern France would

give the enemy a badly needed respite

and throw away a priceless opportunity

to destroy his forces in Italy. Far better,

the British thought, to leave the Allied

armies in Italy intact and concentrate

on the effort to funnel new U.S. divisions directly to the OVERLORD front by

increasing intake capacity in western

France from the Loire northward. The

early capture of the Breton and Channel ports would do far more to help

OVERLORD than would development of

a distant line of communications from

Marseille. In the interim, the British

pointed out, much could be done to

develop smaller ports in Normandy that

had not figured in the OVERLORD logistical plan as well as increasing intake

capacity at ports along the western coastline as they were taken.

To this end they urged that Eisenhower be allowed to retain all the assault shipping scheduled to move to the

Mediterranean for ANVIL. They further

proposed—seizing on Eisenhower's alternative proposal—that the seven French

divisions and at least one U.S. division

be brought around from the Mediterranean to western France. Churchill also

pointed to the heavy preponderance of

service "tail" in the July-September

movement schedules for the American

build-up and pleaded for a higher proportion of ground combat troops. Neither Churchill nor the British Chiefs,

significantly, attempted to defend Alexander's proposals for an advance beyond

the Ljubljana Gap into southern Hungary; they rested their case on the havoc

they hoped to wreak on the enemy

south of the Alps, where they fully expected him to stand and fight. The

British proposals thus hinged on two assumptions: first, that the Germans would

in fact make a major effort to hold

northern Italy and, second, that the intake capacity of ports, beaches, and

the transportation network of western

France could be expanded sufficiently

to accommodate the additional U.S.

and French divisions. Churchill tersely

summed up the case: "Let us resolve not

to wreck one great campaign for the

sake of winning the other. Both can be

won."20

The Americans refused to see the

issue in this light. To them the heart

of the British position was abandonment

of ANVIL, still regarded as an essential

prop for OVERLORD, and an all-out prosecution of the offensive in Italy with

ultimate objectives north of the Alps.

Hasty logistical studies persuaded them

that, as the President told Churchill, it

was doubtful whether "within a decisive

period, it would be possible to put into

the fighting beyond the Ljubljana Gap

more than six divisions," and the bare

possibility of an advance "into the Balkans" (that is, across the northern tip of

19

 (1) CCS 603/1, 27 Jun 44, memo by Reps Br

COS, title: Opns to Assist OVERLORD. (2) Msg 718,

Prime Minister to President, 28 Jun 44, ABC 384

Europe (5 Aug 43), Sec 9-A. (3) The quoted phrase

appears in both papers. 20

 Msg 718, Prime Minister to President, 28 Jun 44.
380 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

Yugoslavia) raised emotional hackles.21

The American staff denigrated British

contentions that withdrawals for ANVIL

would seriously impair Alexander's

chances of reaching the Pisa-Rimini line

and maintaining strong pressure on the

Germans thereafter. They also heavily

discounted the likelihood that the Germans would reinforce in Italy, and held

to this view in the face of an intelligence report to the contrary produced

by the British on 28 June. "The desire,"

asserted the Joint Chiefs, "is to deploy as

many United States divisions in France

and as quickly as possible. A successful

advance by Alexander's force in Italy

does not promote this possibility."22

The Americans made no attempt to

answer the British argument for expanding the reception capacity along the west

coast of France other than to insist that

it was "definitely Eisenhower's responsibility." "The forces we are sending him

from the United States," the President

wrote, "are what he has asked for. If he

wants divisions ahead of service troops

he has but to ask—the divisions will be

ready." Until these forces in the United

States were exhausted, Roosevelt said, he

was "opposed to the wasteful procedure

of transferring forces from the Mediterranean to OVERLORD."23

The twin problems of acceleration

and balance had, in fact, been under

study in Eisenhower's headquarters for

some time, and Churchill's remarks

about administrative "tail" gave them

new point. The prevailing view in

SHAEF toward the end of June was

that no marked acceleration of the flow

of combat troops at the expense of service elements was feasible. The planned

emphasis on service-troop build-up from

July to September was aimed at offsetting the predominance of combat over

service troops in the early movements,

looking to an eventual division slice of

about 40,000; this was the slice originally planned for and generally prevalent

in other theaters. Theater planners were

justifiably apprehensive that when a

break-through came insufficient service

troops would be available to operate the

longer line of communications that

would be needed.

These conclusions were, of course,

tentative. The possibility of an accelerated flow continued to be studied in

SHAEF and the War Department, but

there was little expectation of a major

expansion of intake capacity for both

combat and service troops, as the British had proposed.24

 In any case, the decision on ANVIL had to be made at once.

Both the JCS and the President, reminding the British that the southern France

operation was part of the grand design

promised to Stalin at Tehran, firmly demanded acquiescence to the American

proposals. On 30 June the British Chiefs

advised Churchill that although their

views were unchanged they were prepared to yield "in the broadest interests of Anglo-American cooperation."

Churchill, in a final message to Roosevelt on 1 July, submitted on a note of

warning to what he styled "the first major strategic and political error for which

21

 (1) Msg, President to Prime Minister, 29 Jun 44,

quoted in Ehrman, Grand Strategy V, 353-55. (2)

CCS 603, 24 Jun 44. 22

 (1) JCS msg 27 June, quoted in Ehrman, Grand

Strategy V, 352. (2) CCS 603/2, 27 Jun 44, memo by

U.S. CsofS, title: Opns to Assist OVERLORD. 23

 Ibid. (1).

24

 Ruppenthal, Logistical Support of the Armies I,

421, 449-53.
THE AFTERMATH OF OVERLORD 381

we two have to be responsible"—his annoyance seeping over in a barbed reminder of Roosevelt's earlier interest

in an Adriatic operation and the observation that the British did not now contemplate, nor had they ever contemplated, "moving armies into the Balkans." Stalin, he added, would probably

be pleased with the decision since it

would open up eastern, middle, and

southern Europe to Soviet control. On

2 July the CCS directed Wilson to execute ANVIL, if possible on 15 August.25

Dragoon and Its Aftermath

The die was thus cast for ANVIL, now

renamed DRAGOON. Logistical preparations once more went ahead at full

speed. Early in July the withdrawal of

the three American and four French

divisions from Italy began. Meanwhile,

the allotment of assault shipping had

been amicably arranged between Eisenhower and Wilson, the latter deciding

he could make do with only 24 (instead

of the requested 50) OVERLORD LST's

after all and Eisenhower promising to

release them on 15 July rather than the

10th, along with some additional miscellaneous assault and naval craft. Eisenhower also promised the necessary troop

carrier aircraft and gliders. On the whole

DRAGOON seemed to be comfortably provided for—so comfortably indeed that

Wilson found himself unable to say in

good conscience that his promised 6

LSI (L) 's were really essential for the

immediate follow-up movement, and as

a consequence had to accept ordinary

troop transports instead.26

The debate had a final, rather anticlimactic, chapter. The spectacular Allied break-through in Normandy at the

end of July seemed to the British to

alter the whole situation and led them

to a last-minute revival of the scheme

to feed the ten DRAGOON divisions

through Breton ports, the capture of

which, at the moment, seemed imminent. On 4 August Churchill personally

appealed to the President urging this

diversion, and the next day the British

Chiefs urged the same course upon the

JCS. The American staff rejected the

proposal out of hand, arguing that since

OVERLORD was still somewhat behind

its original schedule, the need for the

southern France operation had not lessened; capture of the Breton ports was

still uncertain, and, in any case, there

were plenty of divisions in the United

Kingdom and the United States to funnel into France whenever it became possible to do so.27

Churchill, meanwhile, had asked Wilson to report on the technical feasibility

of the project. Wilson replied on 6 August that shipping was immediately

available, including the vessels in which

some of the DRAGOON assault forces had

already embarked, to move seven of the

ten divisions to Brittany with their assault ships and craft; they could arrive

25

 (1) Ehrman, Grand Strategy V, 355-56. (2) Matloff, Strategic Planning, 1943-44, pp. 471-73.

Churchill also pointed out that Istria and Trieste

were in Italy, not the Balkans.

26

 (1) Papers in SHAEF SGS 370.2/2, Opns from

Med in Support of OVERLORD. (2) Robert Ross Smith

and Charles F. Romanus, The Riviera to the Rhine,

a MS in preparation for the series UNITED STATES

ARMY IN WORLD WAR II. (3) Meyer, draft chapter, Theater Logistical Preparations for ANVIL. 27

 (1) CCS 603/16, 5 Aug 44, memo by U.S. CsofS,

title: Opns to Assist OVERLORD. (2) Ehrman, Grand

Strategy V, 363-65.
382 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

by the end of the month or by the first

few days in September. Eisenhower

would have to provide the reception

capacity and any small craft that might

be necessary. Sensing a new prospect

for ending the European war in 1944,

Churchill again appealed to Washington—this time to Harry Hopkins, since

the President was on a trip to the Pacific—stressing the impact that would be

produced by thrusting ten fresh divisions into the main front. The Prime

Minister also approached General Eisenhower with a variant undertaking aimed

farther south at Bordeaux. But although

some of the SHEAF staff were taken by

the idea Eisenhower and Hopkins held

firm. Hopkins advised Churchill on 7

August:

While 1 have seen no analysis of the

logistics involved, 1 am absolutely certain

you will find the supply problem insurmountable. Divisions are already available

for Eisenhower's immediate build-up which

will tax the ports to the limit. Then, too,

no one knows the condition of the Brittany

ports. . . . To change our strategy now would

be a great mistake and 1 believe would

delay rather than aid our sure conquest of

France. . . .28

On the following day Roosevelt added

his voice to the chorus of dissent.

Churchill yielded and the debate finally

ended. Exactly one week later Allied

assault craft touched down on the

beaches of the French Riviera.

As Hopkins had indicated, no careful

study was ever made of the logistical

feasibility of the Brittany operation,

much less the one against Bordeaux.

Yet, if the American decision seemed

arbitrary at the moment, the turn of

events on the European battlefield soon

justified the decision against redeployment of the DRAGOON forces to Brittany

or the Bay of Biscay. Instead of sweeping into Brittany to seize the ports,

American armies threw the main weight

of their offensive toward the Seine and

beyond. SHAEF soon decided that the

Seine and Channel ports, principally Le

Havre and Antwerp, would have to provide the main support for Allied forces

advancing rapidly toward the German

border. Brest and Saint-Malo were not

used after their delayed capture, and

Saint-Nazaire and Lorient remained in

German hands until the end. British

forces took Antwerp on 4 September

and Le Havre on the 12th. Le Havre was

badly damaged and the Germans remained in control of the approaches to

Antwerp for two months. The reception

capacity in western France through

which to feed the divisions from the

Mediterranean, or for that matter those

waiting in the United States, simply did

not develop.

Then, in the rapid advances across

France in August and September 1944,

the problems caused by lack of port capacity were compounded by lengthening lines of communication. During the

critical period in September, when advance Allied elements struck into the

Siegfried Line, the limiting factor was

not the number of divisions on the Continent but the ability to support the

divisions already there at the farthest

reaches of their advance.

28

 (1) Quoted in Ehrman, Grand Strategy V, 367.

The episode is treated in some detail on pages 363

through 367. (2) See also Churchill, Triumph and

Tragedy, pp. 67-71; Butcher, My Three Years with

Eisenhower, p. 634; Eisenhower, Crusade in Europe,

pp. 281-84; Matloff, Strategic Planning, 1943-44, pp.

473-74; Pogue, Supreme Command, pp. 224-26.
THE AFTERMATH OF OVERLORD 383

In mid-August Eisenhower finally

yielded, with some misgivings, to War

Department proposals to accelerate the

movement of divisions from the United

States. Under the new plan, the 5 divisions originally intended to arrive in

October were to be shipped in September, 2 of them to go directly to Cherbourg. The War Department proposed

to ship in October the six divisions

scheduled for shipment in November

and December, thus bringing the European build-up to 42 divisions some two

months earlier than originally anticipated. The whole acceleration was premature, for the divisions arriving in September could not be supported over the

existing line of communications and

were forced to sit idle in Normandy or

to assume logistical functions. The accelerated movements in October could be

accommodated only by diverting some

of the arrivals to the United Kingdom

and to Marseille.29

Given these circumstances, it is highly doubtful that the effort to feed the

DRAGOON divisions through the Breton

ports or Bordeaux would have been justified. It would not have solved the crucial logistical problem of August and

September — sustaining the hot pursuit

across France—any more than did the

accelerated movements from the United

States in September.

Contrary to British fears, the landings

in southern France were a resounding

success. The invaders swiftly captured

Toulon and Marseille and swept up the

Rhone to a junction, early in September, with Third Army elements that had

penetrated to the area of Dijon. This

success owed much, of course, to the

swift advance of Eisenhower's armies

across France, which threatened the rear

of German forces in the south and forced

them to disengage and withdraw. On

the other hand, DRAGOON contributed

nothing to OVERLORD itself except as the

threat served to keep German forces in

southern France while the main invasion was being launched, and it did not,

any more than the Brittany or Bordeaux

projects would have done, provide a

solution for the major logistical problems in Europe in the critical months

of September and October. Later, the

new line of communications up the

Rhone Valley did help to relieve the

shortage of port capacity in northwestern Europe, which, even with this addition, continued to cramp operations on

the western front until December. The

ports in southern France were used to

handle three divisions that sailed directly from the United States in October

under the accelerated schedule, thus relieving the load on the ports and beaches

in northwest France and in the United

Kingdom. By the end of the year the

divisional build-up in the European

theater had reached 49 as opposed to

the originally scheduled 43, not counting the 3 U.S. assault divisions in DRAGOON and the 7 French divisions that followed. By that time only 5 more American divisions remained in the strategic

reserve for possible commitment to Europe. The deployment of U.S. ground

combat power into the main front in

northwestern Europe had been accelerated, but logistical limitations prevented its full employment when it was most

needed. For by November the Germans

had dug in along the Siegfried Line and

the prospects of ending the war in Eu29

 Ruppenthal, Logistical Support of the Armies I,

449-58, and II, 276-89.
384 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

rope in 1944, which had seemed so

bright in August and September, had

gone glimmering.30

To the campaign in Italy, however,

DRAGOON dealt a blow that may well

have been decisive (though this, of

course, cannot be proved) by prolonging the war in that sector through the

winter and following spring. Seven divisions were withdrawn for southern

France at the precise moment that the

Germans were reinforcing their Italian

front with eight fresh divisions; soon

thereafter, as Allied pressures weakened,

the Germans were able to withdraw four

divisions.31

In acquiescing to ANVIL early in July,

the British Chiefs had clung to the hope

that the Italian offensive might still be

salvaged. Approving Wilson's revised

plans for a drive through the Apennines

to the Po, then north and northeastward to a line running from Venice

westward to Brescia, they asked the

Americans to support the campaign in

the same spirit that they themselves were

supporting ANVIL. For their part the

British managed to scrape together from

various corners of the Mediterranean

the equivalent of two more divisions

and nine air squadrons. But the Americans by now regarded the Italian front

purely as a holding operation, and were

already considering a transfer of the

Fifth Army into France as soon as the

Po Valley had been gained—or sooner, if

General Alexander's drive should bog

down in the Apennines. Accordingly,

they declined to sanction any particular

line of advance beyond the Po Valley

so as to keep open the option of a westward movement along the Ligurian

coast. Reinforcements to the Fifth Army

were limited to divisions already scheduled to move to the Mediterranean—an

American Negro infantry division (the

92d) and a Brazilian division, both

scheduled to reach the theater in September and October. In August the U.S.

91st Infantry Division, which had arrived in North Africa in the spring, was

also committed in Italy.32

Despite the ANVIL withdrawals during

July, Alexander's two armies pushed

steadily forward during that month,

reaching the Gothic Line by the beginning of August. There they had to pause

to regroup, and did not resume the offensive until the 25th. For a time the

operation went well; Pisa and Lucca

fell to Fifth Army while Eighth Army

pushed almost to Rimini on the Adriatic coast. On the eve of the second Quebec conference in September, Wilson

and Alexander were confident that the

Gothic Line could be breached and the

Allies would be in the Po Valley before

winter. But time and momentum had

been lost, and these hopes were to be

dashed before the end of September.33

The battle in Italy settled down into a

long stalemate that was to endure until

nearly the end of the war.

30

 (1) Ruppenthal, Logistical Support of the Armies

II, 280-83. (2) See also Ruppenthal, "Logistics and

the Broad-Front Strategy," in Greenfield, ed., Command Decisions, pp. 419-27. 31

 Ehrman, Grand Strategy V, 350-51, 384.

32

 (1) CCS 603/8, 10 Jul 44, memo by Reps Br

COS, title: Opns to Assist OVERLORD. (2) CCS 603/9,

12 Jul 44, memo by Reps Br COS, same title. (3) CCS

603/11, 24 Jul 44, memo by U.S. CsofS, 24 Jul 44,

same title. (4) Related papers in ABC 384 Europe

(5 Aug 43) Sec 9-A. (5) Ehrman, Grand Strategy V,

358-59. (6) Matloff, Strategic Planning, 1943-44, p.

475.

33

 Ehrman, Grand Strategy V, 359-61, 529-31.
THE AFTERMATH OF OVERLORD 385

Portents of a New Shipping

Crisis

For four months following the Normandy landings the immense pool of

Allied shipping concentrated in British

waters and plying the North Atlantic

sea-lanes proved more than adequate

to its tasks. Preparations and shipping

allocations for the southern France operation went forward, moreover, despite

the uncertainties surrounding it. The

mounting of DRAGOON in August raised

no unforeseen problems in the provision

of ocean-going tonnage.

Ultimately, nevertheless, the failure

to secure adequate port capacity in

northwestern Europe brought the inevitable penalty. By the end of June the

American supply build-up on the Continent was about 30 percent behind

schedule and the vehicular build-up

about 35 percent behind. To speed up

movements from the United Kingdom

to the Continent the theater received

an additional allotment of 34 MT ships

and authorization to retain the entire

complement (258 all together) through

the second month of the operation. The

net effect was to add 118 ocean-going

MT ships to the 140 already counted on

for July. At the same time, because

Cherbourg was still not in operation and

there were very few deep-water ports

anywhere else in the beachhead, the

transfer of coasters servicing the American sector back to the British domestic

trade was postponed; coasters were indispensable not only in the small ports

and on the beaches but for full utilization of the capacity of the larger ports

as well. Almost all the coasters assigned

to the American and British sectors in

fact remained in service right to the end

of the campaign. Their retention did

permit the release of some of the oceangoing shipping. By the end of August

the Americans were using only 35 of

the 60 stores ships originally allocated

to supplement and replace coasters, and

the MT ship allocation had been reduced to 62. This was still 22 more than

the original MT ship allotment, and no

further releases were in prospect before

mid-September.34

Thus the pool of shipping engaged in

moving supplies across the Channel

diminished very little before late August.

Meanwhile more and more ships were

being assigned to the transatlantic service with an increasing number each

month destined for discharge directly on

the Continent. The spectacular advances

of July and August, moreover, gained

much ground but few ports. As early as

July the inevitable consequence had begun to appear—a growing accumulation

of cargo shipping ostensibly awaiting

discharge but actually serving as mobile

depots from which the forces ashore

drew supplies selectively as needed.

At the end of June approximately 200

ships were scheduled to reach the European theater from the United States

during July and 200 more during August. The theater proposed to unload

100 on the Continent in July and 125

in August—mostly commodity loaders.

By mid-July it was becoming ever more

evident that all these commodity loaders could not be unloaded on the Con34

 (1) On the original allocations, see above, Chapter XIV. (2) Ruppenthal, Logistical Support of the

Armies I, 415-22, 426, and II, 124-26. (3) Papers in

folders London 1944, Cont M and S Com, U.K.,

BMSM 1944, WSA Conway File. (4) JMTC Memo

No. 8, 24 Jun 44, title: Additional Cargo MT Shpg

for OVERLORD. (5) CMT 57/8, 29 Jul 44, rpt by

CMTC, title: Shpg Reqmts for OVERLORD.
386 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

tinent, and WSA began to view the situation with alarm. Even by optimistic

theater estimates, 76 commodity loaders

would still not be discharged at the end

of July, and 129 more were scheduled

to arrive in August, making a total of

205 to be unloaded during the latter

month. It was difficult for WSA officials

to accept the theater's estimate that 133

ships could be discharged in August,

120 of them on the Continent. Even if

continental discharge could be stepped

up to that extent, it appeared that at

the end of August there would still be

from 160 to 170 idle ships in northwestern Europe.35

These fears were well-founded. Only

76 cargo ships from the United States

were discharged on the Continent in

August, and by the end of the month

207 commodity loaders, loaded or awaiting return convoy, had accumulated in

northwestern Europe. Meanwhile the

July-August offensives generated even

greater demands. In late July the theater hoped that, with Saint-Malo and

probably other Breton ports coming into

operation, and higher intake through

the small ports, an average continental

discharge rate of 27,000 tons per day

might be attained in September (10,000

tons above the daily average in July) and

40,000 in October. With this expectation the theater first asked for 285 arrivals in September; pressed by the War

Department it finally settled for 250 as

the "irreducible" minimum. Of these

175 were for discharge on the Continent, 50 more than the theater staff really

expected to be able to unload. Discharge of all the ships would depend,

admitted Lt. Gen. John C. H. Lee, the

communications zone commander, "on

tactical advances and capture of additional anchorages and ports." Whether

these materialized or not, he felt that it

was "the theater's responsibility to provide a flow of supplies."36

During August, ASF and WSA tried

hard to meet the theater's demands for

September, even as requests came in for

additional September retentions for the

build-up in southern France, and indications appeared of another rise in Pacific requirements. At first it seemed likely that the European demand could only

be met by nearly suspending nonmilitary programs in the Atlantic, including

both the U.K. Import Program and

USSR Protocol sailings, and by reducing departures for the Mediterranean

and Pacific. The War Department joined

WSA in attempting to persuade the European theater to curtail its demands,

pointing to the large backlog of ships

awaiting discharge and the generally

slow turnaround in that theater, but the

only concession they could get was a reduction of ten vessels in each of the six

convoys sailing between 12 September

and 10 October. Requirements for arrivals in September were not affected, and

were met in full.37

35

 Msgs exchanged between WSA, Washington,

and WSA, London (Conway and Reed) 17-27 Jul 44,

folder London 1944, WSA Conway File.

36

 (1) Memo, CG COMZ ETOUSA for CG ASF,

Attn Gen Gross, 28 Jul 44, copy in folder Army 1944,

WSA Conway File. (2) Msg, Conway to Kerr, 27 Jul

44, and other corresp in folder London 1944, WSA

Conway File. (3) Ruppenthal, Logistical Support of

the Armies II, 126-27. 37

 (1) Msg W-76034, AGWAR to ETOUSA, 5 Aug

44, SHAEF AG 400.2 Shipments and Tonnage Allocations. (2) Ruppenthal, Logistical Support of the

Armies II, 126-28. (3) Msg, Wylie to Lee, 15 Aug 44,

folder War Dept 1944, WSA Conway File. (4) Ltr,

Monroe to Kerr, 30 Aug 44, folder U.K., WSA Conway File. (5) Msg, Somervell to Lee, 31 Aug 44,

folder Navy 1944, WSA Conway File.
THE AFTERMATH OF OVERLORD 387

As it happened, only a moderate reduction had to be made in British import

sailings, partly because a number of MT

and stores ships were released from the

cross-Channel cargo shuttle in August

and reached U.S. ports in time to be

loaded and join convoys arriving in Europe in September. But this proved to

be merely a transfer from one pool tied

up in the theater to another. On the

Continent, only 95 ships were discharged

in September. Before the end of the

month the theater, in desperation,

agreed to discharge some of the commodity loaders in British ports for later

transshipment to the Continent. This

was only a palliative. By the beginning

of October, with Le Havre not yet in

operation and the approaches to Antwerp still in enemy hands, the pool of

idle and fully-loaded shipping in the

area still numbered 180 ships.38

By late September 1944, then, a new

Atlantic shipping crisis was in the making, a part of the broader logistical

dilemma created in the European theater by the rapid advance of Allied

armies eastward without adequate lines

of supply. It coincided with a similar

crisis in the Pacific resulting from the

accelerated advance in that theater— particularly the decision to invade Leyte

ahead of schedule.39 These developments, together with new shipping requirements for civilian relief in Europe

now in prospect, and the supply buildup in Siberia in anticipation of Soviet

entry into the war against Japan, in October were to combine to make cargo

shipping again, after almost two years

of relative plenty, the principal limitation on Allied strategy.40

When the Western Allied leaders assembled at Quebec on 12 September

1944, the logistical crisis developing in

northwestern Europe was only a cloud

on an otherwise bright horizon as far

as the war with Germany was concerned.

The Germans were retreating on all

three European fronts; in Italy and

France, indeed, they seemed about to

disintegrate. In eastern Europe Soviet

armies had swept through Bulgaria and

Romania and had reached the Yugoslav

frontier near Belgrade. Finland had

dropped out of the war. Only in Poland

had the Soviet armies temporarily halted. In Washington and London, Germany's collapse before the end of the

year was confidently predicted, though

Churchill himself had serious doubts.41

The final decisions on the grand design for defeating Germany had been

made and resources had been allocated

to execute them. The only major questions still awaiting decision at the highest level concerned the possible transfer

of the U.S. Fifth Army from Italy to

the western front, and future (necessarily limited) undertakings in the eastern

Mediterranean. The second Quebec conference therefore dealt mainly with the

war against Japan and political ques38

 (1) Msg NA 9037, Conway to Reed, 8 Sep 44.

(2) Msg NA 9008, Conway to Reed, 6 Sep 44. Both

in folder London 1944, WSA Conway File. (3) Ltr,

Conway to Monroe, 24 Aug 44, folder Reading File

1944, WSA Conway File. (4) Min, 35th mtg Cont

M and S Com, 13 Sep 44, folder M and S Com 1944,

WSA Conway File. (5) Memo, Donald for Conway,

16 Sep 44, folder Reqmts and Avlbles 1944, WSA

Conway File. (6) Ltr, Conway to Gross, 29 Sep 44,

folder Army 1944, WSA Conway File. 39

 See below, chs. XVI and XIX.

40

 See below, ch. XXII. 41

 (1) Ehrman, Grand Strategy V, 377-84, 395-403.

(2) Churchill, Triumph and Tragedy, pp. 195-96.
388 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

tions relating to postwar adjustment.42

To bring these developments into perspective, it is now time to turn to the

logistics and strategy of the war against

Japan in 1943 and 1944.

42

 On the second Quebec conference, see below,

Chapter XXII, and Matloff, Strategic Planning,

1943-44, Pages 508-31.
PART FIVE

THE WAR AGAINST JAPAN

1943-44

CHAPTER XVI

Pacific Strategy and Its Material Bases

The Question of Priority

The over-all Anglo-American strategy

for the conduct of the war, reiterated

time and again at every major international conference from ARCADIA to Yalta,

gave first priority to the war against Germany. The concurrent objective in the

war against Japan, agreed finally after a

considerable verbal battle with the British at TRIDENT, was defined as "to maintain and extend unremitting pressure

against Japan with the purpose of continually reducing her military power

and attaining positions from which her

ultimate surrender can be forced." Upon

the defeat of Germany, the "full resources" of the United States and Great

Britain were to be directed toward bringing about at "the earliest possible date"

the unconditional surrender of Japan.1

The word extend in the formula stood

as a pointed reminder of American determination not to allow the priority

accorded the war in Europe to prevent

allocation of sufficient resources for the

war against Japan to enable the allies

to seize and maintain the initiative in

the Pacific and southeast Asia. The

Americans did not, indeed, agree to accord OVERLORD an "overriding" priority

over Pacific operations, as opposed to

those in the Mediterranean area, until

SEXTANT late in 1943.2

In terms of the allocation of American resources, the priority given the

European war was never quite so overweening as even the TRIDENT formula,

interpreted literally in terms of the traditional military principle of concentration of force, might have indicated. During 1942, in order to establish defensive

positions strong enough to blunt the

force of initial Japanese drives, American troops were committed in the Pacific in as great numbers as in Europe

and North Africa. These initial dispositions generated pressures of their own,

and the strategy of "unremitting pressure" was interpreted on the American

side as dictating continuous augmentations, particularly as long as the major

Allied effort against Germany was in the

Mediterranean, which Americans considered a peripheral theater. Admiral

King and his staff became the confirmed

supporters of aggressive action in the

Pacific; and Army planners, aware of the

advantages to be gained by exploiting

every opportunity to hasten victory over

Japan and under similar pressures from

their own theater commanders in Pacific areas, seldom found it either neces1

 (1) CCS 242/6, 15 May 43, title: Final Rpt to

President and Prime Minister (TRIDENT). (2) See

above, ch. III. (3) See also CCS 319/5, 24 Aug 43,

title: Final Rpt at QUADRANT, and CCS 426/1, 6

Dec 43, title: Final Rpt at SEXTANT. 2

 See above, chs. III, VIII, XI.
392 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

sary or expedient to recommend curtailment of the commitments required to

carry out an aggressive strategy in that

area.

Whether the resulting scale of American commitments to the war against

Japan constituted any conscious violation of the "Germany first" principle is

a moot question. It would be more accurate to say that the commitments reflected a liberal interpretation of the

TRIDENT formula. Moreover, in no small

measure they reflected the power generated by the American military machine once the economy of the nation

was fully geared to war, a power that

enabled the Americans to wage war successfully on two fronts. A considerable

part of the resources committed in the

Pacific could not be used to great advantage in Europe in any case. The

principal resource in this category was

the rapidly growing U.S. fleet, the main

body of which could find no profitable

employment in the Atlantic. In this

sense, the scope of the commitment to

the Pacific war was determined in production plans and priorities dating back

to 1940 that provided for a two-ocean

Navy. The very existence of a large fleet

in the Pacific served as a magnet for

other resources—Army troops and planes,

merchant shipping, landing ships and

craft, and all the paraphernalia of supporting elements needed to put them

to use. It was for these other resources,

and principally assault shipping, that

marginal needs in the Atlantic and Pacific were in clear competition.

During 1943 the flow of Army troops

and other Army resources to the areas

of the war against Germany was considerably greater than that to the areas

of war against Japan, a sharp contrast

to the situation a year earlier, but the

flow to the Pacific was still considerably

greater than originally anticipated. If

naval resources are also counted, the

general distribution of American military power between the two major areas

two years after Pearl Harbor was still

about even.3 Nor did the momentum

of the build-up in the Pacific slow perceptibly during the first six months of

1944, despite the demands of OVERLORD.

While Army divisions in the European

theaters were increasing from 17 to 28

during this period, they rose from 13

to 20 in the Pacific. Only after the

launching of OVERLORD and the final

commitment of the great mass of the

U.S. Army in Europe did the effects of

the "Germany first" strategy begin to

show. After June 1944 the Army planned

to send only 4 more divisions to the

Pacific until after the war in Europe

ended. The rest of the 39 divisions in

the United States were scheduled for

progressive commitment to the European front should the conflict there continue into 1945.4

By mid-1944, in general the Army's

concentration was in the war against

Germany, while that of the Navy was in

the war against Japan. On 30 June 1944,

Army personnel strength in the theaters

of war against Germany stood at 2,398,-

000; in theaters of war against Japan it

was 1,232,000; in contrast, the Navy had

approximately 1,200,000 men in the Pacific, and a total of 800,000 in the Atlantic, Europe, and the Mediterranean.

Marine Corps units overseas were almost entirely in the Pacific. While the

3

 For a strategic inventory at the end of 1943 see

Matloff, Strategic Planning, 1943-44, pp. 388-401. 4

 (1) Ibid. (2) See above, ch. XV, especially Table

31.
PACIFIC STRATEGY AND ITS MATERIAL BASES 393

ratio of Army-controlled shipping serving the two areas fluctuated from 3-2

to 5-4 in favor of the Atlantic front, the

total cargo shipping serving both Army

and Navy was in relative balance between the Pacific and Atlantic fronts by

the fall of 1944. Total figures for aircraft, Army and Navy, show a slight

preponderance in the Atlantic theaters

after mid-1943, but it should be noted

that the AAF's most significant new

plane, the B-29 bomber, was committed

only in the war against Japan. Most

important of all, the largest, newest, and

best units of the U.S. Navy—aircraft

carriers, battleships, heavy and light

cruisers, destroyers, and submarines —

were concentrated in the Pacific, together with an immense supporting establishment afloat and ashore. Along with

the fleet went almost all the Navy's assault transports (APA's) and assault

cargo ships (AKA's) with their smaller

craft, and they were the mainstays of

amphibious operations over the long

ocean distances of the Central Pacific.

When the Normandy landings were

made, the European and Mediterranean

theaters had more LST's and LCT's,

then the truly critical types in those

areas, although this had not been true

of LST's during most of the period immediately preceding. Amphibious vehicles were divided between the two areas

on a roughly equal basis in accordance

with suitability and peculiar need. The

European and Mediterranean theaters

got a clear priority on Army-produced

DUKW's, but the lion's share of the

Navy-produced amphibious tractors, peculiarly suited for use in operations

against coral atolls, went to the Pacific.5

About the main area in which the

competition for resources between Atlantic and Pacific vitally affected strategy in 1943-44, that of assault shipping,

much has already been said and little

more need be added here. American

assault shipping was finally supplied in

ample quantities for European operations, some at the expense of operations

in the Pacific, but failure to make a

timely decision to provide those ample

quantities complicated strategic planning for both OVERLORD and ANVIL at

every turn and seriously weakened the

American position in the long strategic

debate with the British. The accelerated

building program of fall 1943, pushed

through at the insistence of the Navy,

promised an increasing supply in the

Pacific as the year 1944 wore on, and

enough by mid-1945 to make possible

a 10-division assault on the Japanese

homeland without any substantial redeployment from Europe.6

 When the

rapidly broadening scope of Pacific operations began to put a strain on available resources late in 1944, the critical

area was not assault shipping, but rather

ordinary cargo shipping and Army resources necessary for support of largescale land operations.

The "Germany first" strategy, in any

case, as modified and interpreted in

American councils, left enough sinews

for maintaining and extending "unre5

 (1) Army figures are taken from ASF, Statistical

Review, World War II, and from STM-30, 1 Jan 48,

Strength of the Army. (2) Navy figures are from

JCS 521/6 , 11 Jun 44 title: Strategic Deployment

of U.S. Forces to 30 Sep 45. (3) The comparison of

cargo shipping in fall 1944 is based on JCS 1173,

11 Nov 44, title: Remedies for Existing and Prospective Shortages in Cargo Shipping. (4) On the division

of assault shipping in mid-1944 see Table 29 at the

end of Chapter XIII. 6

 See above, chs. X and XII.
394 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

mitting pressure" in the Pacific in 1943-

44. The war against Japan was kept going during that crucial period at almost

the same level of intensity as the war

against Germany. The year 1943 was a

year of preparations and limited offensives in Europe and the Mediterranean

as well as in the Pacific. During the summer and fall of the next year, 1944, the

advances of American forces in the Pacific were just as spectacular, at times

more so, than those in Europe. At the

same time in 1944 that the supreme operation of the year, OVERLORD, was being mounted from the British Isles,

Operation FORAGER against the Marianas

was being mounted in the Pacific, involving in its assault phases almost as

many troops and almost as much amphibious lift as the Normandy invasion.7

The really decisive campaigns against

Japan were fought simultaneously with

those against Germany. Though by the

end of 1944 American forces were only

as far as the Philippines—about 1,800

miles from Japan—attrition of Japanese

air, naval, and merchant marine strength

in these supposed preliminary campaigns

had reduced Nipponese power to a shell.

If in the basic strategy these advances

had been designed only to secure bases

from which a final decisive assault could

be launched, they did in fact bring

Japan so close to the brink of defeat

that, when joined with the development

of new and more destructive instruments

of war, they rendered actual invasion of

the industrial heart of Japan unnecessary.

The remarkable progress of the war

in the Pacific was attributable, for the

most part, to the steady growth of the

U.S. Fleet in that area. The Army nevertheless did commit to the Pacific in

1943 and 1944 at least one-third of its

resources overseas — a smaller commitment proportionately than in 1942, but

it still meant more troops, more aircraft,

more shipping, and better and more systematic supply support. This is not to

say that the war in the Pacific ever became one of unlimited means. Inevitably, shortages limited the scope of operations, but resources did prove sufficient

to permit several successive accelerations

in the timetable.

Insofar as priority affected the availability of means in the Pacific, it was

largely a matter of Army resources and

merchant shipping. In the Army's formal supply priorities structure, the European and Mediterranean theaters normally rated higher than the Pacific theaters, and this inevitably affected both

the quantity and quality of support furnished troops in the Pacific.8

 It meant

that on newer and better types of equipment and on critical items of all sorts

the Atlantic theaters got first call if they

could definitely prove they needed them.

This was particularly true after SEXTANT, when OVERLORD was given overriding priority. That it worked certain

hardships on the Pacific theaters and

was a prime factor in creating a dual

standard of living in the Pacific, a higher one for the Navy, and a lower one

for the Army, is undeniable. It also

meant that the Central Pacific, primarily

a naval theater, was apt to suffer less

for want of resources than the South7

 For the forces engaged in Operation FORAGER,

see Samuel Eliot Morison, "United States Naval

Operations in World War II," vol. VIII, New

Guinea and the Marianas (Boston: Little, Brown

and Company, 1953), 156-57.

8

 On the priorities structure, see above, Chapter

VI.
PACIFIC STRATEGY AND ITS MATERIAL BASES 395

west Pacific, where the predominant

forces and the commander were from

the Army. Yet the volume of American

production after mid-1943 went far to

negate the effects of lower priority.

Truly critical matériel shortages became fewer and fewer and resulted primarily from maldistribution. The Pacific theaters were more likely to be short

particular items than total quantities.

A similar situation existed with regard to Army troop units and merchant

shipping. As long as there was a large

uncommitted pool of Army units in the

United States, Pacific needs could be met

quite satisfactorily if shipping could be

found to transport and support them,

but by mid-1944 the military manpower

situation was becoming increasingly

stringent as overseas deployment to both

Europe and the Pacific mushroomed.

With most of its remaining available

units slated for Europe, the Army could

not furnish the service and supporting

troops needed for Pacific operations. In

this way the pinch of the "Germany

first" strategy was finally felt. Similarly,

allocations of merchant shipping were

more adequate after QUADRANT for Atlantic than for Pacific areas. Each shipping crisis in the Pacific was solved by

diverting a temporary surplus from the

Atlantic pool. In the fall of 1944, however, the mounting shipping demands

for support of the large Army forces deployed in Europe seemed to rule out any

further transfers.

In any case, low priority only aggravated logistical problems that geography

created. Vast ocean distances and primitive facilities created demands for shipping, construction, supplies, and service

troops, that for all practical purposes

were insatiable. The development of policies, procedures, and techniques best

suited to the Pacific areas was necessarily

slow. In the last analysis, it was the

China-Burma-India area that suffered

most acutely from the priority given the

European war, for it was the CBI that

was most frequently in direct competition for the very resources already committed to Europe — a large land army

with all its accouterments and British

naval resources.

A Strategy of Opportunism

Pacific strategy during the middle war

years was largely opportunistic.9 Though

efforts began as early as the TRIDENT

Conference in May 1943 to develop an

over-all plan for the defeat of Japan, it

proved easier to agree on specific operations some months in advance than on

any grand design. Elaborate timetables

of operations prepared for each great

international conference were generally

outdated by the time the next conference met. The mobility of the Pacific

Fleet, particularly its supply bases and

its great floating carrier air bases, and

the development of new techniques for

employing land-based aircraft along the

fringes of Pacific islands made this approach a most feasible and successful

one. Moreover, the inability of Army

9

 The various Army and JCS papers concerned

with the development of Pacific strategy are not all

cited here individually except where they are quoted

or developed in some detail. Complete accounts of

the development of Pacific strategy in this period

are to be found in Matloff, Strategic Planning,

1943-44 and Louis Morton, Strategy and Command:

The First Two Years, UNITED STATES ARMY

IN WORLD WAR II (Washington, 1962) (for the

earlier part of the period covered), and in Grace

Hayes, Section IV: The War Against Japan, 2 vols.,

in History of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in World

War II, MS, JCS Historical Sec. When not otherwise

indicated, this section is based on these three works.
396 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

and Navy staffs to agree on any single

line of attack made temporary modi

vivendi a necessity. The fact that almost all resources in the Pacific were

under American control and therefore

subject to the direction of the JCS alone

without consultation of the British facilitated rapid decision. After one final

challenge at QUADRANT, the British

Chiefs left questions of Pacific strategy

and accompanying allocations of American resources entirely for American decision. Combined debate on matters relating to the war with Japan was confined largely to the questions of operations in southeast Asia and China and

of the over-all strategic plan for the ultimate defeat of Japan in which it was

initially expected these areas would play

an important role.

Roughly five different lines of advance

figured in strategic planning for the ultimate defeat of Japan, three across the

Pacific and two from India. The northern route across the Pacific ran from

Alaska along the Aleutian chain and

the Kurile Islands directly to Hokkaido,

the northernmost of the Japanese home

islands. All the other routes had as their

vital objective the Luzon-Formosa-China

coast area, from which Japan could be

brought under devastating air attack or

actually invaded by Allied ground forces.

One Pacific line to these objectives proceeded northwest from Australia along

the New Guinea coast and through the

Bismarck Archipelago to the Vogelkop,

thence to Halmahera Island, the Palaus,

and Mindanao (the southernmost of the

Philippine Islands). The second ran

across the Central Pacific from Hawaii

through the Gilberts, Marshalls, Carolines, Marianas, and Palaus, directly to

Luzon in the Philippines, or to Formosa.

From India the first route was an overland one through Burma and China to

Canton, Hong Kong, and Shanghai on

the coast; the second was a sea route

around southeast Asia through the Strait

of Malacca and the South China Sea.

(Map 4)

The disposition of Allied forces in

early 1943 militated against concentration on any one line of advance for some

time to come. This disposition, primarily defensive, had been made to counter

the Japanese outward push in all directions in early 1942. Defense bastions

were established and held in Australia

and the South Pacific islands, in Hawaii,

Alaska, and in India, and each of these

bastions could serve as a starting point

for a counteroffensive. The first such

counteroffensives were actually begun in

the South and Southwest Pacific in 1942,

and resulted in the ejection of the Japanese from Guadalcanal and the north

coast of Papua. By early 1943 the planners were beginning to explore other

possibilities. At Casablanca an offensive

from India against Burma was tentatively agreed upon, the Americans presented a plan for an attack on either

Attu or Kiska in the Aleutians, Admiral

King revived the classical naval concept

of a drive across the Central Pacific to

the Philippines, and the British indicated their desire to move ultimately

against Sumatra and Singapore. The

earliest over-all plan for the defeat of

Japan, presented by the Combined Staff

Planners at TRIDENT, envisaged an attack converging on the China coast from

all directions save the North Pacific.

This plan assumed a long war against

Japan, to continue for three years after

the defeat of Germany. There was no

agreement on it either at TRIDENT or
PACIFIC STRATEGY AND ITS MATERIAL BASES 397

MAP 4

at QUADRANT, where a revised and more

detailed version was presented.

The JCS at QUADRANT specifically rejected the concept and asked the planners for a new accelerated plan that

would provide for the defeat of Japan

within one year after the surrender of

Germany.10 The search for such a formula inevitably drew attention away

from China and southeast Asia where a

maze of conflicting national purposesAmerican, British, and Chinese—plagued

every effort, and to which areas resources

(large ground forces and the British

Navy) could not be made available until

the end of the war in Europe. It fixed

attention on the Pacific where the bulk

of American naval strength lay and

where American resources could be

massed under the unilateral direction of

the JCS. Though no specific plan for

the defeat of Japan within one year after

the surrender of Germany was ever approved, the stage was set for decisions

at SEXTANT that would finally and definitely subordinate the campaigns in 10

 See above, ch. VIII.
398 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

GENERAL MACARTHUR AND ADMIRAL NIMITZ

southeast Asia and China to an accelerated advance across the Pacific.11

In the Pacific the northern line was

quickly ruled out as a main route of

advance. The cold climate and dense

fogs of the Aleutians and Kuriles hindered both air and naval action, and the

barren islands and rocky harbors were

unsuited for major base development.

In May 1943 Attu was taken in a bloody

fight and in August Kiska was occupied

without bloodshed. When these fundamentally defensive positions had been

acquired, the advance stopped. The possible necessity for a northern line of

supply to the USSR, should that country enter the war against Japan, kept

planning for a possible advance through

the Kuriles alive but activity was limited

to air bombardment and surveillance.

The future lay rather with the Central,

South, and Southwest Pacific. In the

Central Pacific naval forces could be

most profitably employed, and in the

South and Southwest the principal Army

forces in the Pacific had already been

committed.

Until some time after the QUADRANT

Conference, the South and Southwest

Pacific continued to be the only active

areas of operation. Although the South

Pacific was a part of Admiral Nimitz'

Pacific Ocean Areas command, the campaign waged there in 1943 was so integral a part of that waged by General MacArthur in the Southwest Pacific Area

11

 On strategy in China, Burma, and India see

below, Chapter XXI.
PACIFIC STRATEGY AND ITS MATERIAL BASES 399

that the JCS finally agreed that over-all

strategic direction of the effort should

be entrusted to MacArthur, thus settling the troublesome Pacific command

problem for the operations of the next

year and a half. The Pacific Military

Conference in March 1943 had set the

goals for the entire campaign, tailoring

them to the resources available. The

SWPA goal for the year 1943 was the

occupation of the north coast of New

Guinea as far west as Madang and of

Cape Gloucester on the south coast of

New Britain Island; meanwhile the

South Pacific forces, under tactical control of Admiral William F. Halsey, were

to advance up the Solomons ladder as

far as the southern end of Bougainville.

The ultimate goal, defined in a JCS

directive that dated back to July 1942,

was the Japanese stronghold of Rabaul

on the northeastern tip of New Britain.

Because the resources Halsey and MacArthur thought necessary were not available, the final reduction of Rabaul was

postponed to the next year.12

The converging operations on Rabaul, designated CARTWHEEL, involved

a series of major landings beginning in

June 1943 and ending in March 1944.

In SWPA successive amphibious assaults

were successfully mounted against the

islands of Kiriwana and Woodlark, along

the coast of New Guinea at Nassau Bay,

Lae and Salamaua, Finschhafen, and

Cape Gloucester, against Arawe on New

Britain Island, Saidor (also on the New

Guinea coast), and Manus Island. In the

South Pacific assaults took place against

New Georgia, Vella Lavella, and Arundel islands, the Treasury Islands, Bougainville, and Emirau Island.13

 In each

of these areas similar techniques were

used. Japanese strongpoints were bypassed to the maximum extent possible,

and attacks undertaken against weakly

defended areas where air bases were

then captured or constructed and base

and harbor facilities set up. The strongpoints were then neutralized from the

air bases, leaving the Japanese in bypassed areas to be slowly mopped up

or to simply wither on the vine. The

key to success lay in the establishment

of air and naval supremacy that enabled

the Americans to choose the point of

attack and, once it had been chosen, to

effectively isolate the Japanese forces

holding it. The technique was so successful that, applying the doctrine of strategic opportunism, the JCS decided that

Rabaul could be neutralized and bypassed. Yet, even with these techniques,

the advance during 1943 was slow, and

not until the spring of 1944 was the

Bismarcks Barrier broken and Rabaul

neutralized, opening the way for the advance along the north coast of New

Guinea toward the ultimate objective

in the Philippines.

The Navy meanwhile was looking to

the Central Pacific as an area in which

the Pacific Fleet could be far more profitably employed than around the islands

to the south, and the pace of the advance

thereby tremendously speeded. There

was little argument about the eventual

desirability of a drive across the Central Pacific; the issue was rather its timing and the emphasis to be placed upon

12

 On these decisions of the Pacific Military Conference and the reasons for them, see Leighton and

Coakley, Global Logistics and Strategy, 1940-43,

pages 694-95.

13

 For a detailed account of these operations see

John Miller, jr., CARTWHEEL: The Reduction of

Rabaul, UNITED STATES ARMY IN WORLD

WAR II (Washington, 1959).
400 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

it in relation to the campaign in the

southwest. The Navy at first conceived

that the advance in the Central Pacific

should begin with an operation directly

against the Marshalls, to be followed,

when the situation permitted, by assaults on the far more difficult strongholds of the Caroline group, including

the principal Japanese naval and air base

at Truk. From thence two possible lines

suggested themselves, one through the

Mariana, Bonin, and Ryukyu Islands toward the Japanese home islands or Formosa, the other through the Palaus to

the Philippines, Formosa, and the China

coast. The second line was the one generally accepted until early in 1944, providing as it did for much closer co-operation with the forces advancing in SWPA

toward the Philippines. MacArthur saw

this advance toward the Carolines and

Palaus as merely flank protection for

the main attack from New Guinea

northward, but Admiral King saw it as

the main effort and he had important

support for his viewpoint even from

members of the Army staff. Perhaps the

majority of resources necessary to support two lines of advance were available in, or peculiarly suited to, one area

or the other; yet, for certain vital elements—notably trained and experienced

amphibious divisions, assault shipping,

and aircraft—there was clear and unmistakable competition. There was also in

the offing competition for ordinary troop

and cargo shipping between two theaters

equally dependent upon water transport

and for the resources of the South Pacific Area when its mission was completed

by the neutralization of Rabaul.

The Central Pacific advance was approved in principle at the TRIDENT Conference. In June 1943 the Joint Planners began to work on schemes for direct

assaults against Kwajalein, Wotje, and

Maloelap in the Marshalls. Weighing

the requirements for these assaults, they

soon concluded that to meet a November

target date the 1st Marine Division

would have to be withdrawn from

SWPA and the 2d Marine Division from

the South Pacific along with assault shipping to move them, and that one heavy

and one medium bomber group of the

AAF from SWPA would be necessary to

supplement the Navy's carrier task

forces. These proposals evoked strong

protests from MacArthur, who sensed a

shift in strategic direction in the Pacific.

He urged that the advance from SWPA,

firmly supported by land-based aircraft,

offered a far less hazardous method of

approach to the Philippines than amphibious attacks through the mandated

islands with only carrier-based support.

General Marshall pointed out to Admiral King the high shipping cost involved

in moving the 1st Marine Division from

Australia and replacing it with an amphibiously trained Army division from

the United States. On the other hand,

the elder statesmen of the JSSC bluntly

proposed that the Central Pacific drive

be accorded clear first priority since it

offered the quickest and least expensive

approach to the vital objectives along

the China coast.

The JCS decision in July was the first

of a long series of compromises involving the priority of the two lines of advance. It approved a less expensive first

effort in the Central Pacific against

the Gilbert Islands and Nauru to be

launched on 1 December 1943 as a prelude to an attack on the Marshalls a

month or two later. At this time the

ultimate objective of CARTWHEEL was
PACIFIC STRATEGY AND ITS MATERIAL BASES 401

also revised to provide for the neutralization rather than the reduction of Rabaul, at least partially on the reasoning

that neutralization would require fewer

resources and would enable the South

Pacific to release the 2d Marine Division

and some amphibious lift. In place of

the 1st Marine Division from SWPA,

the Army's amphibiously trained but inexperienced 27th Infantry Division then

in Hawaii would be used.

These decisions were consolidated

and extended in a timetable of specific

operations presented by the JCS at the

QUADRANT Conference. In this timetable

the advance along the two axes in the

Pacific was to be synchronized with the

reconquest of Burma and the overland

advance through China to the coast. The

target date for the Gilberts was moved

up to 15 November 1943, the assault on

the Marshalls to follow on 1 January

1944, then Ponape in the Carolines on

1 June, Truk on 1 September, and the

Palaus at the very end of the year. It was

expected that in SWPA, meanwhile, the

neutralization of Rabaul would have

been completed by 1 May 1944, followed

by attacks on Manus Island 1 June, Hollandia 1 August, Wakde 15 September,

Japen Island 15 October, and Manokwari on the Vogelkop 30 November,

bringing both lines of advance to the

approaches to the Philippines at the end

of 1944. No definite priority between

the two was set, but the JCS stipulated

that "due weight" was to be given to

"the fact that operations in the Central

Pacific promise more rapid advance."14

This carefully stated conclusion gave

rise to the British question whether it

would not be better to curtail Southwest Pacific operations, concentrate on

the Central Pacific, and free more resources for the war against Germany.

While General Marshall's answer minimized this competition on the ground

that most of the forces and reserves for

the continuing offensive in the Southwest Pacific were already deployed, he

did not really set British doubts at rest.15

And the competition Marshall so minimized flared up briefly immediately after

QUADRANT as the costs of launching the

Central Pacific drive were evaluated

more closely.

The major issue was personnel and

cargo shipping, both ordinary and assault. The Navy's fleet of APA's and

AKA's in the Pacific was still, in mid1943, meager, and the new production

program was not yet launched. To assemble the vessels required for the Gilberts

invasion necessitated withdrawals from

the South Pacific and the Mediterranean

and the swift return of transports used

in the Kiska landings. The Marshalls

operation would require more, most of

them to come from new production in

the United States. Analyzing the operational shipping requirements for both

assaults—32 APA's, 16 AKA's, 9 AP's, and

33 AK's—on 31 August 1943, the Army

Transportation Corps claimed that they

exceeded the amount of assault shipping

used in either TORCH or HUSKY, and

that they (or acceptable substitutes)

could be provided only at considerable

expense to either the BOLERO-SICKLE

build-up or outward troop movements

to the South and Southwest Pacific, already well in arrears. At Somervell's be14 hest, the matter was referred to the JCS

 (1) JCS 446, 6 Aug 43, title: Specific Operations

in the Pacific and Far East, 1943-44. (2) See also

above, ch. VIII.

15

 (1) Min, 110th mtg CCS, 17 Aug 44, Item 4.

(2) See above, ch. VIII.
402 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

and by that body to the Joint Staff Planners for study.

By the time the planners submitted

their report, the issue had narrowed to

the question of nine ordinary troop

transports (AP's), since it appeared that

requirements for both assault vessels and

ordinary cargo ships (AK's) could be

met. And in the light of a recent JCS

decision to ask the Maritime Commission to accelerate and augment the program for conversion of freighters to

transports, the planners ruled that the

9 AP's for the Central Pacific could be

provided by taking them off the transpacific run for four months. They admitted this would result in a continuing

deficit in troop movements to the South

and Southwest Pacific (mounting to

33,900 places by February 1944), but

they felt that this deficit could be rapidly made up afterward as the fruits of the

conversion program were realized and

would not prevent the scheduled execution of operation CARTWHEEL. The planners calculated that the deficits in Pacific troop lift could be erased by April

1944 and SWPA provided with ample

troops for post-CARTWHEEL operations.16

The planners' optimism was only partially justified by events. By October

1943 both troop and cargo shipping

schedules for all Pacific areas were so

far behind that shipping of both types

had to be diverted from the Atlantic to

meet a growing crisis. Yet by the end

of the year the situation had cleared and

by April 1944, as predicted, the personnel shipping problem had been generally solved, at least insofar as transpacific

lift was concerned. The cost to the CARTWHEEL operation of undertaking the new

Central Pacific offensive could be measured in terms of the extent to which

MacArthur and Halsey were forced to

improvise and get along with what they

had rather than in any operational failure.17

The greatest impact, in terms of assault shipping, was felt during the Bougainville operation, which was roughly

contemporaneous with the Gilberts landings. For this operation Halsey had to

make do with a total of only eight APA's

and four AKA's, enough lift to carry

only one division, for it was considered

too dangerous to expose LST's and other large beaching craft to anticipated

violent air attacks in the initial landings

in Empress Augusta Bay. Eight LST's

and eight APD's were used to bring in

reinforcements, and some of the large

assault ships returned to Guadalcanal

for a second load. By these expedients

"Operation SHOESTRING No. 2," as some

naval officers called it in memory of

Guadalcanal, was carried out successfully. Meanwhile, in SWPA MacArthur

was getting along with the smaller shoreto-shore landing craft of the 2d Engineer

Special Brigade, the assault shipping attached to the Seventh Fleet, and an improvised fleet of merchant shipping. In

16

 (1) Memo, Dep Chief Plng Div OCT for Gen

Somervell, 31 Aug 43, sub: Shpg for Seizure of

Marshall Is, folder Transportation SOS 1943, Hq

ASF. (2) JCS 471, 6 Sep 43, memo by CofS, USA,

title: Pacific Opns and Availability of Shpg. (3) JCS

471/1 23 Sep 43, rpt by JPS, same title. (4) Min,

113th mtg JCS, 7 Sep 43, Item 10. (5) JCS 493, 10

Sep 43, title: Provision of Adequate Trooplift for

Movement of U.S. Forces Overseas. (6) Samuel Eliot

Morison, "History of United States Naval Operations in World War II," vol. VII, Aleutians, Gilberts,

and Marshalls: June 1942-April 1944 (Boston: Little,

Brown and Company, 1951), pp. 109-10. The AP's

and AK's were used in lieu of AKA's and APA's for

the follow-up or "garrison" elements.

17

 For greater detail on the Pacific shipping situ

ation during this period, see below, Chapter XIX.
PACIFIC STRATEGY AND ITS MATERIAL BASES 403

the Central Pacific operation against

Makin and Tarawa, the major shortage

that developed was of LVT's, the amphibious tractors—the only type of amphibious equipment, it proved, that

could negotiate the barrier reefs off the

coral atolls.18

The balance between resources and

requirements in Pacific areas was most

precarious as the Central Pacific drive

got under way. Afterward, the situation

improved. There was a slow but steady

growth in the fleet of assault personnel

and cargo shipping. On 1 November

1943 there were 30 APA's, 11 AKA's,

and 12 APD's (converted destroyers)

in all Pacific areas. By 1 May 1944, six

months later, there were 45 APA's, 14

AKA's, and 17 APD's.19 The augmented APA-AKA, LST, landing craft, and

amphibious tractor programs, developed

in the closing months of 1943, promised to provide much more ample quantities of assault shipping by fall 1944 to

support increasingly large-scale amphibious operations. Two more Engineer special brigades with their complement of

small landing craft were added in the

meantime to SWPA resources. Simultaneously, the Navy successfully was resisting all attempts to cut back its overall construction program as had been

suggested by some as a result of the waning submarine menace and the fact the

French and Italian Navies had been

eliminated from the war. The strength

of the Pacific Fleet increased rapidly.

The Army, profiting from the improved

personnel shipping situation, dispatched

eight new divisions to the Pacific between January and July 1944, adding

two divisions in the Central Pacific, one

in SOPAC, and five in SWPA. Procedures for co-ordination between Army

and Navy began to take on substance, and

existing supply systems within each individual service underwent critical scrutiny and improvement. All these developments would contribute to a greatly

accelerated drive in the Pacific in 1944

along both of the main fronts.20

When the SEXTANT Conference convened at Cairo in late November 1943,

South and Southwest Pacific forces were

entering the last phases of the converging operation on Rabaul and the assault

against Makin and Tarawa in the Gilberts was under way. The American commitment to the Pacific and the successes

promised by continuation of the practice

of isolating and bypassing Japanese

strongpoints had already led American

planners to conclude that advances along

the two mutually supporting axes in the

Central and Southwest Pacific should

constitute the main effort against Japan.

The prospective deployment of the first

new B-29 very long range bombers

heightened the optimism about hastening the final defeat of Japan. At SEX18

 (1) Samuel Eliot Morison, "History of United

States Naval Operations in World War II," vol. VI,

Breaking the Bismarcks Barrier: 22 July 1942-1 May

1944 (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1950),

pp. 234-59, 272-305. (2) Miller, CARTWHEEL, pp.

234-59, 272-305. (3) Philip A. Crowl and Edmund

G. Love, The Seizure of the Gilberts and Marshalls,

UNITED STATES ARMY IN WORLD WAR II

(Washington, 1955), pp. 164-65. (4) On MacArthur's

improvised fleet and small landing craft in SWPA,

see below, Chapters XIX-XX. 19

 (1) CCS Memo for Info, 23 Nov 43, title: Landing Craft Rpts, 1 Nov 43. (2) CPS Memo for Info 23,

23 May 44, title: Status Rpt of U.S. and British

Landing Ships and Craft as of 1 May 1944.

20

 (1) See above, ch. X, and below, chs. XVII-XX.

(2) Memo, President for Secy Navy, 28 Sep 43, sub:

Navy Bldg Program, with related papers in ABC

561 (7 Nov 43). (3) JCS 573, 7 Nov 43, title: Rpt on

Army, Navy and Maritime Comm Shipbuilding.
404 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

TANT an "Over-all Plan for the Defeat

of Japan" was adopted by the combined

staffs, definitely stating that "the main

effort against Japan should be made in

the Pacific" with the campaigns in the

North Pacific, Southeast Asia, and China

reduced to subsidiary roles. The necessity for establishing air bases in China

for initial deployment of the B-29's

within range of Japanese industry and

for general air support to the Pacific

effort as it neared the China coast was

recognized, but neither China nor

southeast Asia was any longer considered a decisive theater of conflict. Events

at Cairo and Tehran that produced cancellation of British amphibious operations in the Bay of Bengal in order to

release landing craft for European operations finally sealed the fate of these

theaters.21

Within the Pacific the central line was

given a measure of favor, more than at

QUADRANT but not enough to set up any

hard and fast priority:

The advance along the New GuineaN.E.I.-Philippine Axis will proceed concurrently with operations for the capture

of the Mandated Islands. These two series

of operations will be mutually supporting.

United Nations naval forces can be deployed

to support successive operations along each

Axis, and to prevent interference by hostile

surface units with simultaneous operations

in the two areas. Transfer of forces and

resources from one area to the other is

contemplated. When conflicts in timing and

allocation of means exist, due weight should

be accorded to the fact that operations in

the Central Pacific promise at this time a

more rapid advance toward Japan and her

vital lines of communications; the earlier

acquisition of strategic air bases closer to

the Japanese homeland; and, of greatest

importance, are more likely to precipitate

a decisive engagement with the Japanese

Fleet.22

The nature of the final thrust against

Japan, whether by air and sea blockade

or by invasion, was left purposely vague

and the schedule of operations tentative

in order to permit continuation of the

strategy of opportunism. The SEXTANT

timetable did, nevertheless, provide for

a definite acceleration in the advance

across the Pacific and added a new target in the Central Pacific—the Marianas.

Admiral King had long insisted that

the Marianas were the key to control of

the Central Pacific, but had little support for his contention until the fall of

1943 when the Army Air Forces also

decided, because it had legitimate

doubts of ever, being able to mount

large-scale operations in China, that the

Marianas could provide the best bases

for mass employment of the VLR's.

When SEXTANT convened the seizure of

the Marianas had become an integral

part of the plan for specific operations

in the Pacific and was scheduled to

begin on 1 October 1944, following the

reduction of the Truk area in the Carolines, now scheduled to begin in July

rather than September. VLR bombing

from the Marianas would begin at the

end of 1944 if this schedule could be

met. The SWPA schedule was simultaneously accelerated to place the target

date for operations against the Vogelkop in line with the Central Pacific

schedule, to begin 15 August 1944 instead of 30 November.23

21

 See above, chs. XI and XII.

22

 CCS 417, 2 Dec 43, title: Over-all Plan for the

Defeat of Japan. 23

 CCS 397, 3 Dec 43, Memo by U.S. CsofS, title:

Specific Opns for the Defeat of Japan, 1944.
PACIFIC STRATEGY AND ITS MATERIAL BASES 405

The logistical planners had serious

doubts that these accelerated schedules

would prove feasible, but the CCS went

on to agree that resources generally

would be available, with the possible

exception of those required to launch

the VLR program in China. To the

Joint Logistical Committee it appeared

the fulfillment would impose a heavy

strain on supply lines, and that the

program for the last half of the year

could hardly be accomplished unless

Germany were brought to her knees by

midyear, freeing resources for redeployment to the Pacific. The committee otherwise foresaw shortages in shipping, aircraft, amphibian tractors, service troops,

and critical items of organizational and

project equipment. Prophetically, the

JLC called attention to the tremendous

demand there would be for service

troops to prepare and operate bases and

to the critical shortage that would result unless the troop basis were revised

to provide them. Interestingly enough,

it appeared there would be adequate

landing craft and assault shipping, usually the critical bottleneck, if all those

in the Pacific were pooled and shuttled

rapidly from one area to the other in

keeping with the timing of operations.24

In general, then, the accelerated schedule rested on the premise that the mobility of the Pacific Fleet and its amphibious resources would permit the

advance along two axes without exacting the full cost that supporting two

separate theaters might be expected to

do.

The SEXTANT timetable was mostly a

shot in the dark—an estimate of future

possibilities rather than an operational

plan. The operational plan had to be

worked out by the JCS and the theater

commanders in the period following the

conference, and in this process the conflicting interests of the Army and Navy

and of the commanders of the two major

theaters, MacArthur and Nimitz, again

emerged. Nimitz submitted plan GRANITE in early January, with a target date

for the Marianas one month later than

the SEXTANT schedule. MacArthur's

RENO IV called for concentration of resources on the New Guinea—Halmahera—

Mindanao line, quite in contrast to the

thinking of the JCS. At a conference

held between representatives of the two

commands at Pearl Harbor late in January, the general consensus seemed to

favor MacArthur's views, that is, to emphasize early entry into the Philippines

and to discount the importance of the

Marianas as well as the potentialities of

strategic bombing with the B-29's.

Though no plan was set on paper, the

conferees generally seemed to favor as

immediate steps completion of the Marshalls campaign by taking Eniwetok in

the Central Pacific, and assaults by South

Pacific forces on the Japanese stronghold of Kavieng on New Ireland and on

the Admiralties by SWPA forces, with

more than a suggestion that the Carolines and Marianas could then be bypassed in favor of a direct thrust against

the Palaus by converging forces from

all theaters to be followed by a move to

Mindanao and Luzon in the Philippines.

Admiral King was quick to point out

that concentration on the SWPA line

was not in keeping with SEXTANT decisions, and the AAF was now sold on the

24

 (1) JPS 581/3, 4 Dec 43, rpt by JLC, title: Specific

Opns for the Defeat of Japan. (2) CCS 428 (Rev), 15

Dec 43, title: Relation of Available Resources to

Agreed Operations.
406 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

need for the B-29 bases in the Marianas

at the earliest possible date. While the

argument waxed hot in the JCS, the

rapidity with which Admiral Nimitz

completed the next moves in the Central Pacific went far to settle it. The assault on Kwajalein, launched on 30 January 1944, went so well that the scheduled operation against Eniwetok was

moved up from 1 May to mid-February

on Nimitz' schedule and was actually

executed on 19 February. Coupled with

the Eniwetok assault came a massive carrier task force strike at Truk on 17-18

February that proved that base to be

much weaker than had originally been

supposed and opened up the possibility

of bypassing it.25 Not to be outdone,

MacArthur also accelerated his operations. On 29 February he moved into

the Admiralties—Manus and Los Negros

Islands—two months ahead of the schedule that had called for this operation in

April. Strategic opportunism had thus

borne new fruits and made it imperative that the JCS decide on operations

to be undertaken during the summer

and fall of 1944.

Formosa Versus Luzon

In the discussions over a plan of campaign for 1944, based on the premise of

an accelerated advance, the question of

an objective in the Luzon-FormosaChina coast area held the central place.

All were still agreed that American forces

must be landed on the China coast rather than move directly to Japan proper,

but to MacArthur and his staff it seemed

axiomatic that the Philippines should be

the stepping stone, while to Admiral King

and the naval planners it seemed equally obvious that it should be Formosa.

King and MacArthur were the two most

active protagonists; the support they attracted in many cases cut across service

lines. The choice of objective would necessarily shape the course of operations

during 1944. If it were Formosa, the

Central Pacific would get the clear-cut

first priority it still lacked; if it were

Luzon, the largest of the Philippines,

then that priority would go to MacArthur. Existing allocations of forces and

resources to the Pacific seemed sufficient

to insure success of at least one line of

advance—whether they were adequate to

support two lines was not so clear. One

central question was the disposition of

South Pacific forces once the neutralization of Rabaul had phased them out of

active operations; another was the extent

of naval resources and assault shipping

to be placed at MacArthur's disposal.

The logistical argument, nevertheless,

at first revolved not so much around these

issues as around that of bases. Discussions, in which representatives of both

theaters took part, began in Washington in early February 1944 and continued until mid-March. The JSSC fired

the opening gun by again proposing that

the primary effort be made in the Central Pacific with SWPA forces in only

a supporting role. Either the Marianas

or Carolines should be occupied in June,

and the Palaus in September; from the

Marianas-Palaus line an attack should

be mounted directly against Formosa,

or, if it seemed necessary, against Luzon

first; SWPA forces would meantime

move into Mindanao, the southernmost

25

 On the Gilberts-Marshalls operation and their

strategic significance, see Crowl and Love, Seizure of

the Gilberts and Marshalls, particularly pages 372-74.
PACIFIC STRATEGY AND ITS MATERIAL BASES 407

island of the Philippines.26 This proposal raised numerous issues, most important among them being whether

Truk could be successfully bypassed and

whether the Marianas and Palaus could

actually provide adequate bases for

mounting the massive forces that would

be required for assaulting points within

the inner ring of Japanese defenses over

1,800 miles of open sea. The ASF logistical planners, supporting MacArthur's

viewpoint, thought that they would not.

"Bases from which supplies will have to

be transported to support the landings,"

General Wood of ASF Plans Division

told Somervell,

are so far distant that movement will be

slow and supplies will have to be trans- ported in freighters and transferred at sea

to small craft to be put ashore instead of

being moved directly in small craft from a

close-in base. . .. The line of communication

will be much more exposed to raider, air

and submarine attack than would the line

of communication from SWPA... .The easy

success that has been enjoyed against the

Gilberts and Marshalls is an outpost action

which does not adequately justify any as- sumption that landing operations closer in

to the Japanese inner zone can be executed

with equal facility. . . .27

Admiral King insisted that there was

no intention of mounting more than a

small part of the expedition against Formosa or the Philippines from the Marianas, that it should be mounted instead

from such distant and separate points

as Hawaii, Manus, Milne Bay in New

Guinea, New Caledonia, Guadalcanal,

and Espiritu Santo, with routine followup support coming "largely direct from

the United States, via the Marshalls."

Some such plan for mounting the final

assault would be necessary, he thought,

regardless of the route of approach.

There are no areas along the northern

New Guinea coast now built up, nor are

there any . . . where facilities can be readily

developed to accommodate mounting operations greater than about one division.

None of the positions in New Guinea are

suitably developed or situated to support

the campaign. Nor does it appear that the

United States should expend its resources to

develop extensive facilities in this area which

is off the direct lines of communication,

will very soon be in the back area, and over

which it will have no control after the war.28

The positions taken by Army and

Navy logisticians in this controversy reflected in no small degree the differences

in methods of operation that were

emerging in MacArthur's and Nimitz'

theaters. In POA the long jumps across

broad expanses of the ocean required

primary reliance on combat loaders —

APA's and AKA's—for movement from

distant bases and on the Navy's fast-moving aircraft carriers for air support. In

SWPA the moves were over much shorter water distances and were frequently shore-to-shore operations depending

mostly on small landing craft. Only small

numbers of combat loaders were available and support for troops once ashore

depended for the most part on ordinary

troop and cargo ships. Air support came

mainly from land-based aircraft. Similarly, the Navy was developing elaborate techniques for providing floating

base support in the Pacific, using combat

loaders and fleet auxiliaries, while the 26

 JCS 713, 16 Feb 44, rpt by JSSC, title: Strategy

in the Pacific. 27

 Memo, Wood for Somervell, 20 Feb 44, sub:

Strategy in the Pacific (JCS 713), folder Pac Theater,

ASF Plng Div.

28

 JCS Memo for Info 203, 11 Mar 44, memo by

COMINCH and CNO, title: Mounting an Invasion

Force for Luzon-Formosa-China Area.
408 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

Army still clung to its belief in the necessity of large land bases. In advocating

the long jump to Formosa King was obviously counting heavily on the output

of the augmented combat loader program and on extensive use of floating

bases. The ASF, by contrast, thought

that this type of support would be entirely inadequate for troops engaged in

a large-scale land campaign such as

would be necessary either on Formosa

or in the Philippines, and clung tenaciously to its stand that the Formosa

operation would prove logistically infeasible unless Luzon were taken first.29

For the time neither the Joint Planners nor the Joint Logistics Committee

could see any insuperable obstacle to a

Formosa operation. Although noting

that base development all along the line

must be accelerated and that the whole

strategic program would depend upon

the Maritime Commission's meeting its

combat loader construction schedules,

they emphasized most strongly the necessity for an immediate strategic directive

so that logistical preparations could go

forward on a firm basis.30

In rendering their decision of 12

March 1944, the JCS arranged the priorities by operation rather than by area,

though in deference to the wishes of Admiral King and General Arnold they

declared the Marianas-Carolines-Palaus

area most vital to entry into the Formosa-Luzon-China triangle. They instructed Nimitz to make plans for the

seizure of the Marianas (target date 15

June), and the Palaus (target date 15

September), bypassing and isolating

Truk in the process. In the South Pacific

the operation against Kavieng was to be

canceled and that stronghold bypassed

as had been Rabaul. Fleet units and

assault shipping allotted for use in the

Kavieng operation and in one scheduled

in SWPA against Hansa Bay were to be

used in a jump 350 miles further along

the New Guinea coast toward Hollandia.

These naval units would then be returned to POA for use in the Marianas

and Palaus campaigns, while MacArthur

continued such further advances along

the New Guinea coast as might be feasible

"with available forces" in support of

the Palaus operation and in preparation

for entry into Mindanao (target date

15 November). In the Mindanao operation, SWPA forces would again have

the support of the main Pacific Fleet

expected to be freed by that time from

its major tasks in the Palaus. The schedule of major operations was thus to be

Hollandia, Marianas, Palaus, Mindanao.

There was a strong presumption that

after Mindanao the next operation

would be against Formosa, but the JCS

decision was not definite, prescribing

"occupation of Formosa, target date

February 15, 1945, or occupation of Luzon should such operations prove necessary prior to the move on Formosa, target date February 15, 1945." Planning

for Formosa was assigned to Nimitz, that

for Luzon to MacArthur.31

The fact that neither axis of advance

had a really clear-cut priority was made

evident by the JCS decision some days

later on disposal of the resources of the 29

 See Memo, Lutes for Somervell, 13 Mar 44, sub:

Future Operations in the Pacific (JCS 713 series),

History Planning Div ASF, app. 8-K. 30

 JCS 713/1, rpt by JPS in collaboration with

JLC, 10 Mar 44, title: Future Operations in Pacific.

31

 (1) JCS 713/4, 12 Mar 44, title: Future Opns in

Pacific. (2) Memo, Brig Gen Frank N. Roberts for

Col William L. Ritchie, 19 Feb 44, OPD 381 TS,

case 301.
PACIFIC STRATEGY AND ITS MATERIAL BASES 409

MAP 5

South Pacific Area, where the final combat operation—against Emirau—was to

be executed late in March. Early planning papers definitely favored POA, but

the final version, approved by the JCS

on 25 March 1944, went much further

to meet SWPA's needs. (Map 5) MacArthur was allotted the six Army divisions from the South Pacific, the entire

Thirteenth Air Force, and naval resources, including all PT boats and most

of the smaller types of landing craft of

the South Pacific Amphibious Force up

to and including LCT's. "All other combat troops and all service and supporting

troops, when not required for the operation of bases retained in the South Pacific Area," were also to progressively

pass to the control of SWPA as the area

was phased out. Two Marine divisions,

the Marine air forces, and nearly all the

major naval units of Halsey's fleet, including all its aircraft carriers, were to

go to POA. The Seventh Fleet, under

MacArthur's control, was nevertheless allotted a certain minimum number of
410 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

units, which Nimitz was to be obligated

to maintain, including 3 light cruisers,

27 destroyers, 7 combat loaders, 60

LCI (L) 's, and 40 LST's.

The major consequence of this decision was to increase the concentration of

Army resources in the Pacific under MacArthur and of naval resources under

Nimitz, leaving each commander short

of the balanced force needed to execute

a major operation against either Luzon

or Formosa. Moreover, as far as the Army

forces were concerned, the division of resources was a paper affair for it would

take time to move troops from one area

to the other. Also, because the South Pacific retained major functions as a staging

and rehabilitation area for POA and installations there had to be guarded and

supplies outloaded, service troops could

not be moved to SWPA in phase with the

combat troops they were supposed to support. The net effect was to aggravate

the shortage of service troops in SWPA

at the same time that Nimitz was finding that he also lacked adequate service

troops to support a land campaign on

Formosa. This produced a continuing

source of irritation between the two area

commands lasting almost until the end

of the war.32

In any case, the JCS directive of March

1944 did provide a blueprint for accelerated operations in the intermediate

stage in the Pacific—the approach to the

Philippines and Formosa—that seemed

feasible within the limits of available

resources. In SWPA the Hollandia assault was successfully executed in April,

and MacArthur followed it with landings at Sarmi in New Guinea, the islands

of Wakde and Biak in May, Noemfoor

Island on 2 July, and Sansapor on the

Vogelkop on 26 July. Early in September came the jump to Morotai in the

Molucca Islands, northeast of Halmahera, the next-to-the-last island stepping

stone on MacArthur's planned route to

the Philippines. During the same period POA forces carried out their assaults

on the Marianas and Palaus, attacking

Saipan and Tinian successfully in June,

Guam in August, and Peleliu and Angaur in the Palaus in September. Preparations were advanced for an assault on

Yap to complete the isolation of Truk.

The advances brought both theaters'

forces by mid-September to the edges of

the inner citadel of Japanese defenses,

the strategic goal since early 1943—the

Philippines-Formosa-China coast triangle.33

Concurrent operations along the two

axes produced an increasing strain on

resources as lines of communication grew

longer, and both MacArthur and Nimitz found it necessary to augment their

local shipping fleets. A midsummer shipping crisis was resolved only by diverting additional shipping from the Atlantic to the Pacific.34

 As the two lines of

advance converged on the objective area

shortages of all sorts began to crop up—

in all categories of shipping, in troops,

and in materials and labor for base construction. The need for a final decision 32

 (1) JPS 391, 10 Feb 44, JPS 391/1, 24 Feb 44, and

JPS 391/2, 4 Mar 44, title: Redeployment of Forces

in Pacific upon Completion of FOREARM and MERCANTILE. (2) JCS 713/5, 17 Mar 44, title: Redeployment of forces in Pacific following Opn RECKLESS.

(3) Memo, Ritchie for Roberts, Chief, S&P Gp OPD,

16 Feb 44, sub: Discussion of JPS 391, ABC 320.2

(10 Feb 44).

33

 For detailed histories of these operations see

Robert Ross Smith, The Approach to the Philippines

(Washington, 1953) and Philip A. Crowl, Campaign

in the Marianas (Washington, 1960), both volumes

in UNITED STATES ARMY IN WORLD WAR II. 34

 See below, ch. XIX.
PACIFIC STRATEGY AND ITS MATERIAL BASES 411

on the issue of Luzon versus Formosa

that would permit a greater degree of

concentration of resources became imperative.

All through the summer the controversy continued as to whether a direct

jump from the Marianas and Palaus to

Formosa was practicable, or whether, as

MacArthur contended, Luzon must be

taken first to provide a closer and more

adequate base for the Formosa assault.

There were those who, like Admiral

King, for a time argued that the Philippines could be bypassed entirely, and

in June the Joint Planners optimistically

drew up a plan for the invasion of Kyushu that would bypass both the Philippines and Formosa. Neither Nimitz nor

MacArthur believed such a direct assault

feasible, and the plan was soon discarded. Nimitz himself agreed with MacArthur that some positions in the Philippines, if not necessarily on Luzon, must

be taken to provide air bases to support

the assault on Formosa, and both commanders continued to plan for an operation in the southern or central Philippines to follow the attack on the Palaus.

MacArthur believed that, in addition to

military reasons for taking the Philippines first, the United States had an

irrevocable moral obligation to liberate

these islands. He got a sympathetic reception for his views from President

Roosevelt who met with the two Pacific

commanders at Honolulu in July 1944,

though no Presidential decision made

at this conference appears to have affected the normal course of military

planning for Pacific operations.

On 15 June MacArthur forwarded to

the JCS his RENO V plan, which contained his ideas on how to fulfill the requirements of their March directive. In

the new plan he proposed to seize only a

small area around Sarangani Bay in Mindanao, late in October, and to carry out

his major operation against Leyte on 15

November, the date on which the JCS

had scheduled the assault on Mindanao.

Leyte was selected because of its superior

harbor and its central location in the

Philippines, and also because air bases

there would be closer to target areas in

Luzon, Formosa, and China. In view of

the need to neutralize the air bases on

Luzon, Nimitz interposed no objection

to this increase in the scope of SWPA

operations, although he foresaw that it

would require most of the assault shipping and naval support that the Pacific

Fleet could furnish; furthermore, he

considered the timing "optimistic."35

That the timing had indeed been optimistic, MacArthur himself soon confirmed. On 23 July, saying he had

learned that the amount of amphibious

lift in the Pacific would be "less than

that anticipated . . . for operations toward the end of the year,"36

 the SWPA

commander revised his target dates. Because the same amphibious lift would

have to be used for both the Sarangani

and Leyte operations, there would have

to be 35 days between the two rather

than 20 as originally planned. Also, because forces would have to remain at

Sarangani five weeks before they could

get air support from Leyte, he would

have to undertake a preliminary operation against the Talaud Islands in October to secure air bases, thus postponing the date for the Mindanao invasion.

35

 M. Hamlin Cannon, Leyte: The Return to the

Philippines, UNITED STATES ARMY IN WORLD

WAR II (Washington, 1954), pp. 2-4. 36

 Msg CX 15229, GHQ to WD and CINCPOA,

CM-IN 19231, 23 Jul 44.
412 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

The new timetable read: Talaud 15 October, Sarangani 15 November, and Leyte 20 December.

Since the postponements would delay

both the provision of air support and

the return of amphibious lift and naval

striking forces for the Formosa invasion,

OPD looked diligently for some way to

speed up the SWPA schedule. They

found that MacArthur's figures on assault shipping were old estimates, far

too low, and that there apparently would

be enough in the Pacific to mount Sarangani and Leyte simultaneously. But this

encouraging development only served to

reveal the fact that the real bottleneck

was not the quantity of assault shipping

but the limited capacity of concentration areas and the timing of base and

airfield development. MacArthur's revised timetable, for the moment at least,

seemed the most optimistic estimate.37

This timetable was not developed primarily with the need for providing air

support for the invasion of Formosa in

mind. It was based on MacArthur's inflexible determination to go on to Luzon. On 27 August 1944 he presented the

War Department with his plan, prepared in pursuance of instructions under

the March directive, for securing the

whole Philippine Archipelago. Following Leyte, a 5-division assault, he proposed to carry on with a 2-division amphibious assault on Aparri (on the

northern coast of Luzon) on 31 January 1945, a combined airborne and amphibious operation against southern

Mindoro on 15 February, and finally a

7-division assault on Lingayen Gulf, Luzon, on 20 February. These designs obviously could not be carried out unless

the Formosa operation were postponed

and the main strength of the Pacific

Fleet and all available amphibious lift

concentrated in the Philippines.38

As MacArthur's plan called for the

use of naval resources necessary for the

Formosa campaign, it soon became apparent that Nimitz' plans for Formosa

in turn depended on Army resources,

considerably less mobile in character

which could only come from MacArthur's command. In the final round of

arguments over Formosa versus Luzon,

the old question of mounting from distant bases was relegated to the background and a new one emerged—whether sufficient resources in cargo shipping

and ground combat and service troops

were available in the Pacific to support

an invasion of Formosa.

On 3 August 1944 the strength of the

ground army in the Central Pacific came

to only about 238,000, and Army deployment schedules contemplated no sizable

augmentations anywhere in the Pacific

until after the end of the war in Europe.

The pinch on Army manpower occasioned by the concentration in Europe

was finally being felt. There were, to be

sure, enough combat infantry divisions

in the Central Pacific (6) to form, in

combination with Marine divisions (5),

the sinews of the new Tenth Army, but

there were insufficient artillery and service troops to support them. Previous operations in the Central Pacific had involved relatively small land masses and

had not required the large supporting

establishment necessary for an army operating with a long land line of communications. The Marine divisions were

self-sufficient units with enough organic

37

 Teletype Confs, Washington-Brisbane, 9 and 25

Aug 44, OPD Exec 2, Item 1c.

38

 Msg C-16693, GHQ SWPA to WD, CM-IN

24770, 27 Aug 44.
PACIFIC STRATEGY AND ITS MATERIAL BASES 413

service support to enable them to sustain themselves in short island engagements but not enough to establish a real

communications zone. Estimates of the

exact troop shortage for a Formosa invasion varied, depending on whether Nimitz' concept of a limited operation to

seize only the southern end of Formosa

and a foothold on the China coast opposite were accepted, or the generally held

Army opinion that occupation of all

Formosa would eventually be necessary.

Maj. Gen. Clark Ruffner, chief of staff

of Army forces in POA, in a conference

with OPD officers on 13 August, estimated the troop shortage for even a limited

operation at 181,000 and stated further

that direct shipping required from the

west coast to support the Formosa operation would be "well beyond the capabilities of available shipping in the Pacific unless all shipping to SWPA is

stopped."39

Since the troops could not be had

from the United States, the Navy tried

to get them from SWPA, but MacArthur

adamantly refused. When he reached the

Philippines, MacArthur told visiting

OPD officers, "his supply line would be

extended to the elastic limit of the service troops available to him and . . . the

release of any of these service troops

would result in starvation of his own

troops in the forward area."40 Reasoning that MacArthur would still have to

support the same number of divisions

whether he moved forward or not, OPD

endorsed his position. The other possible source for filling part of the shortage lay in the South Pacific, where approximately 44,000 service troops were

scheduled for release when the divisions

there were moved into SWPA. Nimitz

had been eyeing this particular asset for

some months but again ran up against

MacArthur's adamant insistence that

SOPAC's service troops were required in

SWPA and irrevocably committed to

that theater by the terms of the March

JCS decision. OPD was more flexible in

its attitude toward the South Pacific

service troops, but still insisted that

MacArthur's needs for the Leyte invasion must be met first.41

Faced with this serious shortage of

service troops, and with the cargo shipping situation still a question mark,

Army leaders generally came to believe

that the Formosa invasion could not be

carried out until resources were released

from Europe. General Marshall suggested in the JCS meeting on 1 September

that the most that could be done immediately was to issue a directive to MacArthur to proceed with the Mindanao

and Leyte operations on schedule. Admiral King insisted that a directive ordering preparations for Formosa should

also go forward arguing that the Army

scale of service and artillery support was

too high, that some service troops could

in any case be withdrawn from the South

39

 (1) Notes on Conf at Hq, COMGENPOA, 13

Aug 44, ABC 384 Pacific (1-17-43), Sec 5. (2) Memo,

Gen Magruder for Gen Wood, 22 Jun 44, sub: JPS

267/1—Seizure and Occupation of Formosa, folder

Pac Theater, ASF Plng Div. (3) United States Army

Forces Middle Pacific and Predecessor Commands,

7 December 1941-2 September 1945 (hereafter cited

as AFMIDPAC History), vol. II, 215-20, MS, OCMH.

(4) OPD Weekly Status Map, 3 Aug 44. (5) Msg

240957, NCR 426, CINCPOA to radio Washington,

CM-IN 20244, 24 Jul 44. (6) Msg 180437, NCR 8754

CINCPOA to COMINCH, CM-IN 16755, 18 Aug 44-

40

 OPD Notes on Conf, 7 Aug 44 at GHQ, SWPA,

ABC 384 Pacific (1-7-43), Sec 5. 41

 (1) Min, 171st mtg JCS, 1 Sep 44, Item 2. (2)

Draft Memo, OPD for CofS, 1 Sep 44, sub: Opns in

Western Pacific. (3) Draft Memo, OPD for CofS, 5

Sep 44, same sub. Last two in OPD Exec 2, Item 1c.
414 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

Pacific and naval construction battalions

substituted for others, and that all the

remaining deficit could be made up by

redeployment from Europe after the defeat of Germany, then thought to be

imminent. But the logistical problem

was forcing King to take the defensive,

and the JCS decided to first ask the Joint

Logistics Committee to make a thorough study and report. Meanwhile, they

ordered preparation of a directive for

the seizure of Leyte with a target date

of 20 December.42

Before the logistical planners' report

was ready, events in the Pacific forced a

reappraisal of the situation. Admiral

Halsey, conducting carrier strikes against

the central Philippines on 12-14 September 1944 in support of the Palaus

operation, found resistance so surprisingly weak that he reported that there were

few if any Japanese on Leyte; he therefore suggested that intermediate operations, against Yap by Central Pacific

forces and against Talaud and Mindanao

by SWPA forces, be canceled and a direct landing be made in Leyte Gulf. The

force intended for the invasion of Yap,

XXIV Corps, could be made available

to MacArthur along with the amphibious craft and carriers in Halsey's task

force. MacArthur accepted on the 15th

and the JCS, then at the second Quebec

conference, quickly instructed MacArthur to invade Leyte on 20 October,

two months ahead of schedule.43

Acceleration of the advance into the

Philippines, bypassing Mindanao, gave

MacArthur's arguments for moving on

to Luzon an almost irresistible logic.

He now reported that he could undertake the invasion of Luzon on 20 December and that reduction of that island

would take no more than six weeks.

The lengthy report of the Joint Logistics Committee, submitted to the JCS

on 25 September, showed that no comparable acceleration in the date for Formosa would be possible, and that the

earliest date that would permit redeployment of assault shipping after Leyte

would be 1 February 1945. Even then,

counting on transferring the service

troops from the South Pacific and a few

thousand from SWPA, and using all

other possible expedients, there would

still be a shortage of 69,000 supporting

troops for the limited operation to seize

only part of Formosa if there were no

redeployment from Europe. The deficit

would be larger if two more divisions

had to be included in the follow-up to

carry out the occupation of the northern

part of the island. The report stated that

there would also be deficits in service

troops for the Luzon operation, but they

would not be so serious in character as

on Formosa, and that friendly Filipino

labor could be counted on to make up

most of them.

These facts forced the JLC to the

conclusion that adequate resources for

the Formosa operation would not be

available until three months after the

defeat of Germany, but would be sufficient to permit an advance to Luzon

sixty days after the invasion of Leyte

regardless of what happened in the European war. The JMTC, studying independently the availability of cargo and

42

 (1) Memo, King for JCS, 4 Sep 44, JCS 713/12,

title: Troops for Occupation of Formosa. (2) Min,

171st mtg JCS, 1 Sep 44, Item 2. (3) JCS 713/10, 4 Sep

44, memo by COMINCH and CNO, and JCS 713/11,

4 Sep 44, memo by same, titles: Employment of

Marine Divisions in Formosa Opn. (4) JCS 713/13,

5 Sep 44, title: Proposed Directive to CINCSWPA

and CINCPOA. (5) Min, 173d mtg JCS, 7 Sep 44. 43

 Cannon, Leyte: The Return to the Philippines,

pp. 8-9.
PACIFIC STRATEGY AND ITS MATERIAL BASES 415

personnel shipping, foresaw deficits in

cargo shipping for either operation, but

generally supported the JLC conclusions as to their relative feasibility. The

conclusions of the two committees,

viewed in the light of a now diminishing prospect for an early end to the war

in Europe, forced Admiral King to bow

to the inevitable. He proposed that

POA forces reorient the direction of

their attack, moving against the Bonins

(target date 20 January 1945), and the

Ryukyus (target date 1 March). The

question of whether Formosa would

still have to be taken remained in abeyance, although there was ample reason

to believe that it as well as the China

coast could now be bypassed and, with

the Philippines and Ryukyus in American hands, a final thrust against the

"industrial heart of Japan" could be

mounted.44

Plans called for the use of bases in

the Ryukyus and possibly on Luzon to

supplement the B-29 strategic bombing

offensive being mounted from the Marianas. Any hopes that significant results

could be achieved by bombers operating from China had long since been

dashed by repeated logistical failures and

the successful Japanese offensive against

the U.S. airfields in east China.45 Meanwhile, the decision had been taken at

the Quebec Conference of September

1944 that air bombardment and blockade would probably not suffice to bring

about a final victory and that invasion

of Japan would be necessary. The schedule proposed at the time was based on

taking Formosa on 1 March 1945 and

moving from there to the China coast,

the Bonins, and Ryukyus between March

and June, then mounting a final assault

on southern Kyushu in October and on

Honshu (the Tokyo Plain) in December 1945.46

 This schedule was of course

tentative, and was based on a hoped-for

German surrender in fall 1944. It had

to be adjusted immediately to the decision to take Luzon instead of Formosa,

and again later to the prospect of a long

extension of the war in Europe. Yet the

main outlines of the plan for the final

campaign against Japan had taken clear

shape.

When informing Admiral King of his

final decision that he considered the

Luzon operation better than Formosa,

General Marshall on 22 September 1944

remarked: "The major difficulty in planning for the coming months is a shortage of resources, particularly those

which must be furnished by the Army,

such as service troops, and those required

to support land forces, such as cargo

shipping."47 King's rejoinder that "both

at the present time and throughout our

campaign the major shortage has been

Naval amphibious resources"48 was a

more accurate appraisal of the past than

of the present or future. Augmentation

of the amphibious lift in the Pacific was

now going on so rapidly that it would

soon no longer be a real limiting factor,

except insofar as it had to be used for

44

 (1) Msg C-18103, GHQ SWPA to WD, CM-IN

19803, 21 Sep 44. (2) JCS 1070, 26 Sep 44, rpt by JLC,

title: Availability of Resources for Pacific Operations. (3) JCS 1070/1, 30 Sep 44, rpt by JMTC, same

title. (4) JCS 713/19, 3 Oct 44, title: Future Operations in Pacific. 45

 See below, ch. XXI.

46

 (1) CCS 417/8, memo by U.S. CsofS, 9 Sep 44.

title: Opns for the Defeat of Japan, 1944-45. (2) On

the OCTAGON decision see below, Chapter XXII. 47

 JCS 713/15, 22 Sep 44, memo by CofS, USA,

title: Future Opns in Pacific.

48 JCS 713/16, 25 Sep 44, memo by COMINCH and

CNO, title: Future Opns in Pacific.
416 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

logistical purposes. The campaigns in

the Philippines and in the Ryukyus were

to put far greater strain on cargo shipping resources than on assault shipping.

Looking to the ultimate invasion of Japan, the great need was for rapid construction of bases and development of a

large supporting establishment for the

major land, sea, and air forces to be engaged in the bombardment and invasion

of the enemy homeland. Viewed in this

light, the priority given to the European

theater was finally beginning to exact

its price.
CHAPTER XVII

Joint Logistics in Pacific Operations:

The Continental System

The Nature of Pacific Logistics

Geographic factors and the nature of

operations in the Pacific generated logistical problems different in many respects

from those in Europe. Although both

major theaters had to be served by a sea

supply line from the United States, not

only was the Pacific line longer, but it

did not end at any major overseas port

or ports. Pacific lines of internal theater

transport were also primarily water lines.

European ports like Naples, Cherbourg,

Marseille and Antwerp, once taken and

rehabilitated, were entrepots capable of

handling the large tonnages necessary for

the support of massive mechanized land

armies. In the vast ocean triangle formed

by Hawaii, Australia, and the Philippines, the arena of the Pacific war in

1943-44, no such ports existed. Pacific

operations had to be mounted and supported from distant bases on the west

coast of the United States, or from Hawaii, Australia, or such undeveloped,

unfamiliar, and uninviting points as

Guadalcanal, Espiritu Santo, Makin,

Kwajalein, Saipan, Ulithi, Manus, Milne

Bay, Finschhafen, and Hollandia. Battlefronts separated from one another by

long expanses of water made it difficult

to operate the kind of supply pipeline

that funnels men and materials to the

front in normal military operations on

large land masses without an inordinate

investment in shipping and service personnel. In Europe well-developed roads

and rail lines, storage depots, and multiple other facets of an industrial economy

could be quickly adapted to military use;

in the Pacific in 1943-44 virtually all

these facilities had to be started from

scratch as the advance moved rapidly

from island to island. Almost everything

necessary for the support of military

forces had to be imported—construction

materials and labor, land and water transport, and elements of public utility systems, as well as combat supplies—and most

of it from the United States. While Australia and New Zealand continued to be

important sources of supply in the South

and Southwest Pacific, they were not the

mainstay after mid-1943 as the American

forces, and hence their needs, multiplied,

and as the front moved further and further away from the Australian base.

The battles of 1943 and 1944 in the

Pacific were fought either for small island

atolls or for coastal fringes of larger

islands well-suited to development of

airfields, ports, and other base facilities.

Along the Central Pacific line particularly, battles between U.S. and Japanese

forces were usually short, though violent;

although these contacts were more pro-
418 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

longed in the South and Southwest Pacific, decisive victories frequently came

quickly after the landings. For the most

part only small combat forces, at least in

comparison with those engaged in Europe, were involved in each operation.

Simultaneously, other combat forces carried out mopping-up operations and prepared base defense lines, while service

forces feverishly prepared the bases required for the next campaign. The construction effort was in many ways the key

to the pace of the advance, particularly

in the Southwest where land-based aircraft were necessary to neutralize Japanese strongholds and isolate Japanese garrisons in the next target area. If the

Japanese were not, in the last analysis,

such formidable opponents as the Germans, their preference for death to surrender, and the mere physical difficulties

of mounting operations against their entrenched positions, combined to make

them seem so. The war in the Pacific was

a naval, air, and engineers' war more

than a land war conducted along orthodox lines. The battle was, as always, the

payoff; however, much of the secret of

American victories lay in the successful

marshaling of superior resources to conquer the logistical problems involved in

island-to-island assaults. The massive resources of an industrial economy that

they managed to so marshal dwarfed the

Japanese effort, even though, to Americans accustomed to the best of everything, logistical support seemed at times

to be woefully inadequate.

In a theater of vast ocean distances

shipping, large and small, was the prime

element in logistics, for ships were the

main method of transport within the theaters as well as from the United States to

Pacific bases. Much of this shipping had

to be of amphibious types—combat loaders and landing craft—because the first

phase of every Pacific operation was an

amphibious assault. Theater pools of

other types of shipping were also required. These local fleets of personnel

and cargo vessels of all denominations

absorbed much of the shipping that

might otherwise have been used for the

movement of troops and supplies from

the United States to Pacific theaters. Yet

these pools were never large enough to

give the kind of mobility to the Pacific

logistical establishment that would allow

rear establishments to be dismantled and

moved forward in a timely manner.

Shipping, of itself, was not the only

problem. Simply loading more ships led

only to congestion at the receiving end

if the development of unloading facilities

did not keep pace. The problem was one

of balance, of properly scheduling and

synchronizing movements of troops and

supplies with the development of bases

to receive them. Troop labor—always in

shorter supply in the Pacific than fighting

troops—was of paramount importance. In

short, this war of island engagements imposed interlocking demands for shipping,

troop labor, and base construction that

were for all practical purposes insatiable.

Another distinctive feature of the Pacific war was the continuous intermingling of Navy, Marine Corps and Army

forces on land, sea, and in the air. The

primary function of the Navy in the war

in Europe was to secure and protect the

supply line across the Atlantic and support landings on hostile shores. Neither

Navy nor Marine forces were involved

to any great extent in the land battles in

Europe and Africa once the beaches had

been secured, nor did naval aviation participate in the strategic bombing offen-
JOINT LOGISTICS IN PACIFIC: CONTINENTAL SYSTEM 419

sive. In the Pacific, on the contrary, Marine and Army units shared in landings,

Army and Navy planes bombed the same

targets, and base facilities were built side

by side on the same or adjacent islands.

Naval surface craft and submarines

teamed with AAF units in battling Japanese Fleet vessels, cutting Japanese supply lines, and isolating island battlefields

from reinforcement. In these circumstances, logistical arrangements, of necessity, had to incorporate a modicum of

joint action.

Any logistical system must be based

on the system of military command. To

recapitulate briefly, the Pacific command

system involved a division into two primary theaters, the Southwest Pacific under General MacArthur and the Pacific

Ocean Areas under Admiral Nimitz.

Nimitz' POA command was subdivided

into three areas, the Central, South, and

North Pacific, over the first of which he

exercised direct command while entrusting the North and South Pacific Areas to

subordinate commanders—in late 1943

Admiral Halsey in SOPAC and Vice

Adm. Frank J. Fletcher in the North

Pacific. The South Pacific Area operated

for all practical purposes as an independent theater.1

Within each area, the commander was

entrusted with complete operational control over all U.S. and Allied ground,

sea, and air forces under the principle

of unity of command as formally defined

by JCS in April 1943. Joint commanders in areas involving joint Army-Navy

operations were to have the same responsibilities "as if the forces involved

were all Army or all Navy." They were

to organize joint staffs composed of officers from both services and were not

to function in the dual capacity of joint

force commander and commander of a

service component of the force unless

so directed by the JCS. The joint force

commander would normally exercise his

command through assigning missions to

service or task force commanders, giving his subordinates the responsibility

for determining the "tactics and technique of the force concerned"; he would

also leave administrative matters in the

hands of service commanders to the maximum extent possible.2

Under this system Nimitz and Halsey

disposed of large Army forces, while MacArthur had under his command Marine

Corps units and the U.S. Seventh Fleet.

MacArthur was also a supreme Allied

commander with sizable Australian forces

at his disposal. The naval forces in SWPA

were also Allied and Admiral Thomas

C. Kinkaid doubled in the role of Allied

naval commander and commander of the

U.S. Seventh Fleet. Nimitz had few Allied components in his command (only

the New Zealand units in the South Pacific) , but he also had a double role (by

consent of the JCS) as Commander in

Chief, POA (CINCPOA) and Commander in Chief, Pacific Fleet (CINCPAC).

As CINCPAC he exercised strategic control over the entire U.S. Pacific Fleet,

shifting its resources as circumstances required. While the permanent components of the Seventh Fleet in SWPA

were excepted from this arrangement,

they were supplemented for major op1

 For full treatment of the Pacific command set-up

see Morton, Strategy and Command: The First Two

Years.

2

 (1) JCS 263/2/D, 20 Apr 43, title: Unified Command for U.S. Joint Opns. (2) Unified commands had

been governed by the principles set forth in Joint

Action of the Army and Navy, prepared by the Joint

Board in 1927 and last revised in 1935.
420 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

erations by major units from the main

fleet that remained subject to Nimitz'

call. Army commanders in Nimitz' area,

Lt. Gen. Millard F. Harmon in the South

Pacific (COMGENSOPAC) and Lt. Gen.

Robert C. Richardson in the Central

Pacific (CG, USAFISPA, later COMGEN, USAFPOA), did not exercise operational control over troops except as

Halsey or Nimitz dictated; they were

primarily administrative commanders

responsible for training and for logistical

support of Army forces in their areas. In

SWPA Admiral Kinkaid exercised operational command by virtue of his position as the Allied Naval Commander

rather than as Commander, Seventh

Fleet, a position that, again, was primarily administrative in character.

Leaving the North Pacific out of consideration, since it rapidly became an inactive theater, there were still three almost completely separate theaters during

1943 and the early part of 1944, which

meant three competitors for shipping,

supplies, and personnel from the mainland. All attempts to unify command in

the Pacific, and there were many, collapsed on the simple barrier of the reluctance of either service to accept an overall commander from the other. The only

substantial change in 1944 was the liquidation of the South Pacific Area and the

distribution of its resources between the

two remaining giants—SWPA and POA.

Given these conditions—scattered bases

and battlefronts, primitive base facilities,

vast water distances, and divided and

complicated command channels—the Pacific war fronts were peculiarly susceptible to the combination of scarcity and

waste that inevitably characterizes modern war. The calculation of supply requirements for any particular operation,

force, theater, or base is at best an inexact science, and a balance of supply

and transport is even more difficult to

achieve. Even under conditions of general plenty, in the critical battle area

there is almost inevitably too much of

one thing, too little of another. Requirements for both supplies and shipping

may be best predicted and their flow best

regulated when operations have been

planned well in advance, when large

numbers of troops are involved on a single broad front, when the necessity for

special construction, rehabilitation, or

development of facilities is least, when

requisitions flow back and supplies flow

forward in response to them through a

single well-established channel, and when

the whole supply line is relatively free

of bottlenecks. These ideal conditions,

nonexistent in any theater, were the direct obverse of those obtaining in the Pacific in 1943 and 1944. Strategic opportunism imposed heavy burdens on the

logistical planners. With battlefronts

and bases scattered and separated by expanses of ocean, backlogs of supplies

inevitably developed in the rear while

the front suffered from want. Special requirements for base development were

many, varied, and difficult to predict in

advance. Separate supply lines for three

different theaters and for two separate

services complicated problems of allocation, of requisitioning, and of loading.

Lack of ports and receiving facilities at

the end of the line produced shipping

congestion and delays in turnaround that

inevitably hampered both logistical planning and operations. In many cases the

real crux of the logistical problem in Pacific operations was less in any over-all

shortages of supplies, or even of shipping,

than in difficulties in a distribution proc-
JOINT LOGISTICS IN PACIFIC: CONTINENTAL SYSTEM 421

ess that had to achieve balance among

theaters, bases, and services—in short,

provide the right men and right supplies

at the right time and place.

To cope with this peculiar set of circumstances, what may be loosely described as the Pacific logistical system

was shaped. That it was imperfect and

could not completely fulfill the goal of

eliminating imbalance—the combination of scarcity and waste—goes without

saying, but the system as it evolved did

work toward this end and did produce

an adequate measure of efficiency to make

possible the rapid advances of 1944. In

describing the system we shall turn first

to the arrangements for logistical cooperation between the Army and Navy,

then to the problem of ocean-going

shipping, and finally to those logistical

problems that were of particular concern to the Army alone

The Problem of Joint Logistics

The first year of the war in the Pacific

brought an effective challenge to the

traditional separation of Army and Navy

supply and administrative systems. During that year it became evident that two

separate and parallel supply lines to the

same area produced waste and duplication in nearly every aspect of logistical

operations, most of all in the utilization

of ocean shipping. Outloading to the

same areas and bases by two separate organizations in separate ships without

either over-all control of priorities between them or co-ordination in the use of

personnel or cargo space was obviously

inconsistent with the need for conserving

shipping space. Unloading at the receiving end by separate organizations in accordance with their individual and peculiar needs could only further confuse a

situation that was already confused

enough by primitive facilities and lack

of planning by the services individually

for handling the load. The monumental

shipping congestion at Noumea during

the Guadalcanal Campaign brought this

lesson home with singular force. Similarly, independent construction by the

Army and Navy of airfields, depots, hospitals, and other facilities side by side

on the same islands pyramided requirements for construction materials and

labor. Also, by any standard distribution

of common commodities and performance of common services by each service separately on each island base was

uneconomic. Though the supply and

servicing of the fleet afloat was a sufficiently distinct problem to warrant a

separate system, the logistical problems

of Army and Navy forces ashore were like

enough to dictate a large measure of

unity in the supply line serving both.

And even in the case of the fleet, logic

would seem to dictate that commodities like food and oil should come from

a common storehouse. Elementary justice was involved as well as economy of

effort, for in the interests of good morale

it was desirable that both services have

a common standard of living.3

By the end of 1942 such prominent

Army logisticians as Generals Somervell

and Lutes had come to the conclusion

that the logic of a unified supply and

transportation system to serve both Army

and Navy was irrefutable. Indeed, before the end of the war Somervell was

supporting the creation of one massive

3

 (1) See Leighton and Coakley, Global Logistics,

1940-43, ch. XV. (2) Memo, Dir Opns, ASF, for Gen

Wood, Dir Reqmts Div, 5 Jul 43, folder Unified

Supply: Army-Navy 1942-43, Lutes File.
422 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

FLOATING DRY DOCK WITH CARGO SHIP UNDER REPAIR

service organization for all military forces,

ground, air, and naval.4 That the ASF

chiefs were never able to put their ideas

over is testimony to the strength of the

tradition of separation and to the counterlogic arising from the fundamentally

different philosophy and purpose of

Army and Navy logistical systems.

The Army system was developed primarily for the support of ground forces

ashore, the Navy system primarily for

support of the fleet afloat. The Army

turned much earlier in World War II to

a fundamental reorganization of its supply services and developed a more centralized system of planning and controlling the flow of supplies to theaters scattered over the globe. The Navy clung to

its older concepts longer because its expansion was not so rapid and violent and

because less centralized control seemed to

provide more adequately for the support

of the fleet. For fleet support, the best

system was a decentralized one, which involved the stocking of a series of major

bases within reasonable distance of the

areas of operations to which fleet units

could return for refueling, replenishment of stocks, and servicing and repairs.

Beginning in 1942 the Navy carried

this concept of mobility a step further

with the development of fleet service

4

 See Millett, The Organization and Role of the

ASF, pp. 27-80.
JOINT LOGISTICS IN PACIFIC: CONTINENTAL SYSTEM 423

squadrons. One of the really great logistical innovations of World War II, these

squadrons were mobile logistics bases

composed of all sorts of fleet auxiliaries

that carried fuel, provisions, ammunition, and other types of supplies to the

fighting ships at sea, and performed essential repair and other services for them,

enabling the fleet to move almost at will

without fear of failure for want of logistic support. The Navy's advance bases

thus became mobile and the Navy in the

Pacific far less dependent than the Army

upon the progressive development of land

installations close behind the line of

advance.

The Navy's concept of flexibility and

mobility conditioned the development

of its logistical system. Requirements for

the fleet, or at least so the Navy contended, could not be fixed in time and

place to the extent that requirements for

land troops could. The Navy therefore

preferred to place its depot system in the

United States in the ports, and to stock

both depots and forward bases generously

so that no fleet unit or service squadron

should want for anything when it put

into port. Moreover, the Navy tried to

adapt this system to the supply of Marine

Corps forces ashore, and to its shore installations in forward areas, maintaining

to the maximum extent possible the concept of mobility, of floating rather than

fixed depots, and of keeping the impetus

of supply from the rear. Continental and

forward base establishments enjoyed a

measure of autonomy unknown in the

Army; the Navy's bureaus, counterparts

of the Army's technical services, went

their own ways without that measure of

centralized control exercised by General

Somervell's ASF headquarters. Despite

some moves in that direction, the Navy

never developed any over-all supply program such as the Army Supply Program,

but relied mainly on consolidation of

individual calculations by its bureaus.

To the Navy Somervell's proposals for

unified logistics seemed to carry an implied threat of absorption of a system developed to meet naval needs within a

large monolithic Army organization hardly adaptable to supporting the fleet. To

Army observers, on the other hand, the

Navy's system seemed unbelievably haphazard and chaotic. Any operational flexibility gained by concentrating depots in

the ports, they thought, produced a lack

of flexibility in the zone of interior either

in regulating the flow of supplies into

port or in transferring shipments from

one seaboard port to another. Overseas

shipments seemed to be governed less by

proven theater requirements than by the

amount of cargo available in seaboard

depots.

That the system was uneconomic even

the Navy's leaders themselves were ready

to admit before the end of the war. But

it did provide support for naval forces

that, even if at times wasteful, was also

superior in some respects to support furnished by ASF to the Army. And in the

Pacific where the Navy was very much at

home decentralization and mobility led

to development of procedures within the

theater that often were better adapted to

the situation than the more precise but

more cumbersome procedures of Army

supply.5

5

 (1) See Rear Adm. Worrall Reed Carter, Beans,

Bullets and Black Oil (Washington, circa 1953); also

see Duncan S. Ballantine, U.S. Naval Logistics in the

Second World War (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1947), especially pp. 132-51, 160-66.

(2) Ltr, Lt Col Richard D. Meyer to C. C. Wardlow,

OCT Historian, 21 Jul 49, OCT HB folder A-N Jt

Logs. (3) Min, 79th mtg JMTC, 1 Jul 44, Item 6;

80th mtg, 14 Jul 44, Item 1.
424 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

Another factor influencing the situation was the wide variance in the emphasis the two services placed on the

Pacific war. Whatever the theory, for the

Navy the Pacific war was the most important one, for it was in the Pacific that

the largest part of the Navy and its best

units were concentrated, and it therefore

tried to support its units in the Pacific

as well or better than those in the Atlantic and the Mediterranean. The Army

—for whom the war in Europe was paramount in fact as well as in theory—perforce placed the Pacific theaters in lower

priority. The Navy was never ready to

apply the Army's rigid standards of economy to its Pacific establishment. Consequently, the development of common

standards of support, particularly in the

area of troop comforts, was difficult if

not practically impossible. All these considerations serve to explain why the

Lutes-Somervell proposals for genuine

unity in the service supply line to the

Pacific theaters, however logical they may

have seemed, were never put into effect

during World War II—were, in fact,

never even seriously considered after early

19436—and why the joint logistical system that took shape and hardened emphasized, instead, co-ordination in the

interest of eliminating duplication of

effort.

Joint Planning and Procurement

At the top military level, the JCS and

its various committees performed the

very broad functions of balancing the

Army and Navy's manpower and procurement programs within the limits of

feasibility as indicated by civilian agencies, and of co-ordinating the logistical

plans of the two services and relating

them to strategy. The joint committees

were the essential link between the JCS

and the operating administrative agencies of the War and Navy Departments,

bringing together the plans and requirements developed by these agencies (and

often the people who drew them up),

weighing them in the balance of strategic

priorities, and determining the guidelines for adjustments. It was their task to

preserve the connection between joint

strategic plans and independent service

logistical plans and policies. The work of

the committees was, nevertheless, largely

of a co-ordinating and advisory nature.

In certain cases they allocated scarce resources, acting under the authority of the

JCS, but they did not initially determine

the requirements on which these allocations were usually based nor did they

exercise any supervision over the processes of production and distribution.7

Of greatest importance in the field of

Pacific logistics were the Joint Military

Transportation Committee and the Joint

Logistics Committee. The JMTC, acting

for the JCS, progressively asserted its

control over the allocation of shipping

to the various Pacific areas.8 The Joint

Logistics Committee conducted a continuing study of Pacific logistics, attempting to anticipate requirements in

the light of strategic plans, to place the

spotlight on critical problems, and to

prevent duplication between the services

in procurement and in development of

base facilities. Nevertheless, there was

never any agreed formula for the use

6

 On the Lutes-Somervell proposals and their fate

see Leighton and Coakley, Global Logistics, 1940-43,

Chapter XXIV.

7

 For a complete discussion of joint committee

functions, see above, Chapter IV. 8

 See below, ch. XVIII.
JOINT LOGISTICS IN PACIFIC: CONTINENTAL SYSTEM 425

of these studies in the actual determination of requirements by the War

and Navy Departments, whose planners

relied principally on advice from theater

commanders and on projections made independently by service logistical planners. The studies served more frequently

the broader purpose of keeping the Joint

Staff Planners, the Joint War Plans Committee, and the JCS themselves informed

of the relationship between requirements

and resources, present and projected, in

the Pacific.9

Co-ordination at the operating level

in the continental establishment was

more frequently a product of direct contact of ASF and the naval supply agencies

or the work of a multiplicity of more

ephemeral joint committees, great and

small, sometimes formed under the aegis

of the JCS but more frequently independent of it. In June 1943 the JCS appointed a committee to study the problem of overlapping and duplication in

Army-Navy functions, but differences in

approach by the two services prevented

any effective action.10 Other committees

achieved a greater measure of success but

the answer in every case was co-ordination, not unification.

Co-operative arrangements for the procurement of common articles were numerous, many of them antedating the war.

The Army, for example, by arrangements

of long standing, procured Marine Corps

requirements for small arms, tanks, machine guns, ammunition, and other common items of ground ordnance. During

the war arrangements were made for the

Army Chemical Warfare Service to procure chemical warfare equipment for

both the Navy and the Marine Corps. By

the same sort of arrangement the Navy

procured large quantities of heavy ammunition and rockets for the Army, and

took care of the landing craft requirements of the Engineer special brigades.

The Army Quartermaster placed about

90 percent of the Navy's contracts for

subsistence through its Quartermaster

market centers and field buying offices,

though the Navy usually had representatives at these agencies to compile requirements and handle payments. Lumber

procurement was eventually fully integrated by a central procuring agency in

the Corps of Engineers, staffed jointly by

Army and Navy personnel. Petroleum requirements of the two services were consolidated by the Army-Navy Petroleum

Board and presented to the Petroleum

Administrator for War, but actual purchasing was separate. Bulldozers were

procured by the Army Engineers and

then allocated among the two services

and lend-lease claimants by a War Department conference group working under the auspices of the Munitions Assignments Committee (Ground) ; DUKW's

were procured by the Army and amphibious tractors by the Navy, and were al9

 (1) See JLPC 3 and JLC 31 Series, titles: Logistical

Aspects of Bases and Phases, Pacific Campaigns

1943-44; Logistic Support, Pacific Campaigns, 1944

and Beyond; Availability of Resources for Pacific

Opns. (2) Diary, Theater Br, entries for 27 Nov and

26 Dec 43, ASF Plng Div. (3) Memo, Magruder for

Wood, 29 Jun 44, sub: Logistic Support, Pacific Campaigns, 1944 and Beyond (JLPC 3/8), with related

papers, folder Pac Theater, ASF Plng Div. (4) Memos,

G-3 and G-4 for OPD, 7 Jul 44, sub as in (3). (5) DF,

G-4 for OPD, 4 Aug 44, sub as in (3). (4) and (5) in

OPD 400 TS, Cases 189/3 and 5. (6) Memo, Tansey

for Handy, 7 Sep 44, sub: Joint Over-all Logistics

Plan. OPD 400 TS, Case 224. 10

 (1) JCS 351/5, 21 Jun 43, title: Proposed Revision of Navy and Marine Corps Aircraft Program.

(2) Memo, Col Ray T. Maddocks, OPD, for Gen

Wood, ASF, 30 Jun 43, sub: Duplication or Overlapping of Activities in the A and N. (3) Memo, Dir

Opns for Wood, 5 Jul 43. (2) and (3) in folder Unified

Supply: Army-Navy 1942-43, Lutes File.
426 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

located by MAC (G) under generally

similar arrangements.

Efforts were made, with varying degrees of success, to extend joint arrangements into such fields as construction materials and machinery, motor vehicles,

diesel engines, electronics, post exchange

stores, and boats and other floating equipment. The Joint Army-Navy Standardization Committee for Vehicles and

Construction Materials was formed in

mid-1943 and continued to sit throughout the rest of the war. It reached agreements on standardization of much of the

Army's automotive equipment for both

services, and by mid-1944 the Army was

procuring only slightly less than 50 percent of the Navy's vehicles; but the Navy

procured the rest independently. Procurement of many individual types of

construction machinery was also consolidated, but the committee was able to

make little progress toward establishing

common construction standards.11

The development of joint procurement practices in some fields was balked

by difficulties over establishing specifications and common standards, and in

others by fear of relinquishing control

over critical items. The Navy, for instance, consistently refused to lower its

standards of construction in the Pacific

to conform to those of the Army, and the

Army felt unable to raise its own. On the

other hand, it seemed logical that the

Navy should procure all small boats and

floating equipment, but General Gross,

apparently with MacArthur's interests in

mind, objected strenuously, fearing, as he

put it, that it would reduce Army commanders to the role of "petitioners."12

Gross's logic convinced his superiors and

it stuck despite sporadic pressure from

civilian authority for a unified requirements and procurement program. In August 1944 the JLC and JMTC in a joint

report to the JCS noted that although

there was informal collaboration and central procurement of certain particular

types, no joint procedure had been established for calculating requirements or

for placing contracts for small craft and

floating equipment generally, and concluded that "a more complete and formalized method ... would ... result in

substantial economies in requirements,

in standardization of design and in more

intensive use of facilities already in each

theater."13 But apparently action had

gone too far along independent lines to

permit many changes. A joint small craft

subcommittee was formed, but found

about all it could do was to check re11

 (1) Memo, Capt Lewis L. Strauss, USN, and Col

William H. Draper for Secy Navy and Under Secy

War, 8 Feb 45, sub: Final Report on Coordination of

Procurement Between War and Navy Departments

(hereafter cited as Draper-Strauss Rpt) (February,

1945), 3 vols., ICAF Library. This voluminous study

of the problem of co-ordination in procurement was

undertaken at the direction of the secretaries. (2)

Millett, Organization and Role of the ASF, pp. 268-

77, contains a summary of the Draper-Strauss Report. (3) On the work of the Joint Army-Navy

Standardization Committee see Memo, Gen Lutes

for Brig Gen Minton and Col R. M. Osborne,

OCOrd, 8 Oct 43, CofS ASF, file Navy Dept; Ltr,

Somerville to VCNO, 24 Mar 44, Hq ASF, file Navy

1942-44; Memo, Robert P. Patterson, Under Secy

War, and H. Struve Hensel, Assistant Secy Navy,

for CG ASF, 15 Feb 45, sub: Joint Procurement

Study—Construction Machinery and Mechanical

Equip, folder 1-a-1, Jt Sup Prog, ASF Plng Div.

12

 (1) Memo, Gen Gross for Gen Somervell, 22 May

43, sub: Gen Lutes' Memo of May 21 re Army-Navy

Coordination, file 5a C1 IV Supplies SOPAC, ASF

Plng Div. (2) Memo, Lutes for Somervell, 21 May 43,

Lutes Diary. 13

 (1) JLC 119/1, 9 Aug 44, title: Army, Navy, Maritime Comm Shipblg Program. (2) Diary, entries for

18 and 21 Aug 43, Strat Log Br, Plng Div, ASF.
JOINT LOGISTICS IN PACIFIC: CONTINENTAL SYSTEM 427

quirements of one service against the surpluses of the other. It seems to have met

only twice.14

The case of small boats was typical of

many other fields—co-operative arrangements for procurement of one type, no

arrangements for another type, and no

over-all system for joint determination

of requirements. As a rule, then, co-operation in procurement was sporadic and

haphazard with no institutional device to

promote or direct it. A committee appointed to study the matter noted early

in 1945 that "in general . . . the services

and bureaus have worked together to

meet specific problems as they have

arisen. As a result, the methods used have

usually been designed to meet the immediate need and have followed no consistent plan."15

 Even when there was joint

procurement it generally was based on

separate determinations of requirements,

and deliveries most frequently were made

by each service with material flowing

into two different service depots unless

arrangements had been made within the

theaters for delivery of specific commodities by one service directly to the other.

Also, except in the latter instance, the

Army had to be reimbursed for material

procured on Navy account, and vice

versa. With no genuine system for joint

procurement or joint processing of requirements, outside of a very limited

sphere, the flow of supplies had necessarily to go through separate channels,

with the only semblances of unified control exhibited in the handling of shipments outward from the ports, in the

establishment of priorities, the distribution of materials, and the performance

of services within theaters of joint operations.

The Basic Logistical Plan

The obvious effects of duplication in

this distribution phase impelled the

Army and Navy to come to a more fundamental agreement. On 7 March 1943 the

chiefs of the two services promulgated a

joint directive titled "Basic Logistical

Plan for Command Areas Involving Joint

Army and Navy Operations," more familiarly known as the "Basic Logistical

Plan." The stated purpose of the plan

was to insure "coordinated logistical effort and procedure . . . to the end that the

combined personnel, equipment, supplies, facilities, shipping and other services of the Army and Navy are most

effectively utilized and adequately provided." Joint commanders were entrusted with "full responsibility for all

logistical services within their areas" and

instructed to organize "suitable unified

logistical supply staffs" or provide for

"joint staff planning and operations on

the part of respective Army and Navy

staffs." Each area logistical organization,

whichever form it took, was to establish

procedures for:

a. Keeping the Commanding General,

Services of Supply, U.S. Army and the Vice

Chief of Naval Operations, U.S. Navy, informed of future service requirements and

of the state of readiness and adequacy of

available services, facilities and personnel.

b. Making recommendations to the Commanding General, Services of Supply . . .

and the Vice Chief of Naval Operations . . .

relative to levels of supplies, including reserve stocks, to be maintained in the area.

14

 (1) Ibid. (1). (2) Min, 83d mtg JMTC, 17 Aug 44;

84th mtg, 21 Sep 44. (3) Memo, Maj Gen John M.

Franklin, ACofT, for JLC and JMTC, 10 Aug 45,

sub: Joint Small Craft Subcom Rpt of Activities,

ABC 561 (7 Nov 43). 15

 Draper-Strauss Rpt, 8 Feb 45.
428 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

c. Wherever possible, supply items or services common to both Army and Navy by a

single agency. d. Establishing liaison with the adjacent

Area Commanders to provide for interchange of emergency logistical support.

e. Furnishing timely information to responsible supply and shipping agencies relative to:

(1) Current status and prospective

needs of services and supplies for all naval

and military forces within the area.

(2) Priority of Army and Navy shipments arranged in a single list for each area,

sub-divided into three categories, i.e., specially requisitioned items of immediate urgency, "must" or automatic supply items, and other items arranged in the order of

relative urgency. (3) Availability of existing storage by

types and localities and status of projected

storage with probable dates of completion.

(4) Port of discharge facilities and

capabilities at shipping destinations.

(5) Items obtainable locally which can

be screened out of requisitions submitted to

mainland agencies.16

On the basis of this information and

"acting upon identical copies of shipment priorities" seaboard shipping agencies were to effect the necessary co-ordination to meet fully the combined requirements of both services with respect

to allocation, loading, and routing of

ships.

The charter was a compromise, the result of three months of negotiations that

had begun with the far more radical proposals of Somervell and Lutes for a genuine union of the overseas supply lines of

the two services. The compromise, which

prescribed co-ordination as the remedy

for the ills of duplication and put the

main burden for it on the theater commanders, at least by implication set certain limits beyond which even co-ordination could not go. The directive failed to

provide any joint system for procurement, storage, or movement in the

United States or for any real union of

supply lines from U.S. ports to Pacific

theaters. Without unity at the source of

supply, there was little prospect that

there could be unity further along the

line. Nevertheless, however weak the

plan was in positive and compulsive arrangements, it was still a practical

achievement of considerable import. It

left a great deal to the discretion of theater commanders so that co-ordinating

arrangements could go ahead at the pace

they deemed practicable and desirable.

In the last analysis, the plan was perhaps

the best that could be achieved in midwar without creating a series of dislocations more harmful than helpful in their

effect. It prescribed co-ordination for

areas where joint action was clearly most

needed, and left service supply lines to

operate with a maximum of independence in theaters where that was the most

practicable way.

The West Coast Establishment

The establishments of both services

principally concerned with moving men

and materials to the Pacific were centered on the west coast. Here the port

of San Francisco occupied the same preeminent position that New York did in

the East. San Francisco was the site of

the Army port of embarkation charged

with the supply of all three of the major

Pacific theaters; it was also the site of

the headquarters of the Twelfth Naval

District, and of the Navy's Service Force

16

 TAG Ltr to Major Army Comds, 7 Mar 43, with

Incl, sub: Basic Logistical Plan for Command Areas

Involving Joint Army and Navy Operations, AG 381

(3-5-43) OB-S-E-M.
JOINT LOGISTICS IN PACIFIC: CONTINENTAL SYSTEM 429

Subordinate Command, Pacific (the

main headquarters of the Service Force

Pacific was at Pearl Harbor). The Naval

Transportation Service also maintained

its major Pacific coast port command

at San Francisco; nearly all supply shipments for the Navy and Marine Corps

in the Pacific went from this port. At

Los Angeles the Army first maintained

a subport, which was elevated to the

status of a full POE in mid-1943. Earlier,

in May 1943, responsibility for supply

of the CBI had been transferred from

Charleston, South Carolina, to Los Angeles; Los Angeles also handled some of

the overflow from San Francisco for the

South, Central, and Southwest Pacific.

The main naval facilities in the southwest were at San Diego, where most Marine Corps units were outloaded; others

were at San Pedro, and at Port Hueneme, newly activated for staging naval

construction battalions (Seabees), their

impedimenta, and supplies. In the northwest a second area centered around Seattle and Tacoma, Washington, and Portland, Oregon. Seattle was the site of another major Army port of embarkation,

with subports at other points in Washington, Oregon, and at Prince Rupert in

British Columbia. The Seattle port was

charged primarily with support of the

North Pacific, but, under the general

aegis of the responsible port at San Francisco, was also used extensively for cargoes moving to Hawaii. Headquarters

for the Thirteenth Naval District were

at Seattle and a major naval advance

base for the support of the North Pacific at Tacoma.17

The establishments within each service at San Francisco exercised a certain

measure of control over facilities at all

the other ports serving the far Pacific,

and the main instruments for ArmyNavy co-ordination took shape there. Because shipping was the most critical

factor in Pacific logistics, west coast coordination involved primarily means of

assuring an economic utilization of that

resource. The shipping congestion that

developed at Noumea in the fall of 1942,

which started the chain of events that

produced the Basic Logistical Plan, also

led to the formation of the Joint ArmyNavy-WSA Ship Operations Committee

at San Francisco in early 1943. The committee was composed of the commandant of the Twelfth Naval District, Vice

Adm. J. W. Greenslade (later Pacific

Coast Coordinator of Logistics), the

commanding general of the Army's San

Francisco Port of Embarkation, Maj.

Gen. Frederick Gilbreath, and the senior

WSA representative in San Francisco,

John A. Cushing. Its duties, as informally agreed in February 1943, were "to

consider all matters pertaining to the

handling of shipping of cargo and personnel ... to the end that the maximum

use will be made of ships and facilities

available."18

17

 (1) Chester Wardlow, The Transportation Corps:

Responsibilities, Organization, and Operations,

UNITED STATES ARMY IN WORLD WAR II

(Washington, 1951), pp. 97-100. (2) Ltr, Col Frederic

H. Nichols to Maj Gen Edmond H. Leavey, 5 Feb

47, inclosing Precis of Joint Overseas Transportation

Problems, OCT HB, folder POA. (3) Memo, Capt

Milton S. Davis, Regional Shpg Dir NTS, San Francisco, for Dir NTS, Washington, 26 Apr 44, sub:

Estimate of West Coast Shpg Sit, WSA Douglas File,

Navy Allocations. (4) Bureau of Yards and Docks,

Navy Department, Building the Navy's Bases in

World War II, 2 vols. (Washington, 1947), I, 194-207. 18

 (1) Memo, A. R. Lintner, WSA, for Adm Greenslade, Gen Gilbreath, Mr. Frazier A. Bailey, 4 Feb 43,

folder Pac Coast Opns Com, WSA Douglas File. (2)

Leighton and Coakley, Global Logistics, 1940-43, pp.

398-404.
430 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

Until early 1944 the committee functioned unofficially, without formal charter. Though it had no powers of compulsion over the services, it made itself

an indispensable instrument for co-ordination of loading and scheduling. It

served as a collecting point for information on shipping requirements for the

Pacific theaters, on the potential availability of ships from returners and new

construction, and on port capacities at

overseas destinations. Once over-all allocations had been determined in Washington, it became the effective executive

agency for carrying them out on the west

coast, designating the individual ships to

be employed on each run and arranging

for interchange of cargoes and personnel

between services where practicable. It

also kept its finger on the stevedore situation on the west coast, the greatest limiting factor in outloading capacity, and

worked with west coast labor authorities

in shifting stevedores or loadings from

one port to another. However, unanimous agreement of Army, Navy, and

WSA representatives was required on

all issues affecting the conflicting interests of the three agencies, and this limited the committee's sphere of action.

That it was not and could not be the

type of joint supply and transportation

agency Lutes and others had advocated

is apparent; its functions were limited

to co-ordination and in this field the

committee served its purpose well. As

with most such organizations it generated a plethora of subcommittees to

take care of details—among them the

Vessel Allocation and Cargo Subcommittee, the Joint Personnel Priorities Committee, and a joint subcommittee handling priorities on towing operations to

the Pacific theaters. A number of other

committees also took shape on the west

coast to provide joint action along other

lines; the most important of them was

the Joint Ship Repair Committee, formally chartered by the War and Navy

Departments in mid-1943 to establish

schedules for ship repair.19

In the fall of 1943 the Navy Department decided it should establish closer

co-ordination of all the elements in its

own logistical organization on the west

coast, (including bureaus, naval districts,

the Naval Transportation Service agencies, and the Subordinate Command,

Pacific Service Force), and proposed to

make Admiral Greenslade Pacific Coordinator of Logistics. In communicating this plan to General Somervell, Admiral Horne proposed a realignment of

the joint organizations on the coast to

conform. He would combine the Joint

Ship Repair Committee with the San

Francisco Ship Operations Committee,

officially charter the new organization,

and extend its purview to cover the

entire Pacific coast. To Somervell this

looked like the kind of autonomous west

coast authority the Army had always

resisted as contrary to its system of maintaining control in Washington. He finally did agree to formally charter the

San Francisco Ship Operations Committee, but would restrict its functions to

those it was already performing. The

Joint Ship Repair Committee remained

separate, and separate ship operations

committees were established at Los Angeles and Seattle. The Army's refusal

to adapt its west coast organization to

that of the Navy was one more evidence

19

 Minutes of the Ship Operations Committee, on

which this summary is based, are filed in OCT Records, OCT 334, Jt A-N-WSA Ship Opns Com, San

Francisco.
JOINT LOGISTICS IN PACIFIC: CONTINENTAL SYSTEM 431

of the difficulty of marrying two incompatible logistical organizations. The

whole effort to provide unity in west

coast operations, even within the Navy's

own sphere, proved only partially successful. The San Francisco Committee

did, nevertheless, greatly overshadow the

committees at the lesser ports and to

some extent did regulate shipping from

all of them to the major Pacific theaters.20

The Joint Priority List

In the basic Logistical Plan the central feature of joint logistics in the Pacific was conceived as the formulation of

joint requirements in the theaters and

the forwarding of joint priority lists for

both personnel and cargo to the seaboard shipping agencies. These shipping agencies, though separate, could,

by acting on "identical copies of shipment priorities"21

 and by effecting necessary co-ordination through the ship operations committee, actually achieve the

same economies in utilization of shipping that would be possible under a

joint seaboard transportation and supply agency.

The development of joint priority lists

proved to be a slow and difficult task.

In Washington, long conferences during

April and May 1943 failed to produce

any agreement on procedures for allocating cargo space and the matter was allowed to lapse while the theaters themselves worked out the application of the

Basic Logistical Plan.22 Under the pressure of an acute shortage of personnel

shipping space, considerably greater success was achieved in regulating the flow

of personnel.

By March 1943, when the Basic Logistical Plan was promulgated, there was

already a critical shortage of troop shipping in the Pacific. By using its combat

loaders for troop movements, the Navy

had enough to meet its own deployment

needs, but the Army foresaw a deficit

of some 40,000 troop spaces for April.

The Transportation Corps began to

press for some more equitable distribution of troop shipping under a system

of joint priorities such as the Basic Logistical Plan provided. In April Admiral Halsey precipitated action in that direction by forwarding a single consolidated priority list to Washington for

both services for May shipments to the

South Pacific, instead of following his

former practice of sending separate priority lists for each service. The War

and Navy Departments instructed their

port agencies on the west coast to honor

Halsey's preferences, and on 26 May

followed up with a directive extending

the principle to cover all Pacific theaters

except the North and Southeast Pacific.

A long shake-down period ensued before any definite formal procedures

could be agreed to for the operation of

the joint personnel priority system, but

during that time at least rudimentary

lists for each month's shipments were

compiled. By early June a Joint ArmyNavy Surface Personnel Transportation

Committee had taken shape in San Francisco. It functioned as part of the Joint

20

 (1) Ballantine, U.S. Naval Logistics in the Second

World War, pp. 210-13. (2) Exchange of Correspondence, Adm Horne with Gen Somervell, 15 Dec 43-11

Feb 44, with related papers in folder POE Jt Coms,

OCT HB Gross File. 21

 Basic Logistics Plan, 7 Mar 43.

22

 Memo, Gen Gross for Adm Smith, 30 Apr 43,

and voluminous related papers in OCT HB File A-N

Jt Logistics.
432 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

Ship Operations Committee, and was

charged with operating a single pool of

personnel shipping as well as insuring

that all available accommodations were

used to the fullest advantage. Nimitz,

MacArthur, and Halsey were instructed

to forward joint priority lists to Washington for their respective theaters each

month, which Army-Navy authorities

would use to work out a single list for

the entire Pacific. This list became the

basis for action in San Francisco.23

The system was not yet strong enough

to weather the crisis arising out of the

vast increase in movements to the Central Pacific beginning in August 1943.

By early September shipments against

the Joint Priority Lists were 45 days in

arrears and in emergencies both the

Army and Navy were prone to move

new units at the expense of those listed.

The Navy moved personnel on its combat ships quite independently of the

priority system, and all the theater commanders, desperately trying to meet

their most urgent requirements, sent

ships from their own pools to the west

coast to move personnel to their theaters

without regard to assigned priorities.

"The confusion caused," reported the

San Francisco Committee later, "was considerable and actually scuttled the basic

plan of applying all troop carrying vessels to the agreed over-all Pacific requirements as indicated in the Joint Single

Priority List."24

The general improvement in the personnel shipping situation that resulted

from emergency shipments to the Pacific from the east coast enabled the Army

and Navy in December to turn to the

problem of systematizing procedures in

a calmer atmosphere. Nimitz agreed that

he should consolidate the lists for the

South and Central Pacific before forwarding them to Washington, and it was

further agreed in Washington that a

separate list should be submitted by

MacArthur for Army and Navy forces

in SWPA. On the basis of these two

lists, a joint Army-Navy committee

would draw up the master Joint Priority List for the entire Pacific. Overruling

Nimitz' suggestion that the Navy continue to use fleet ships as it desired, the

Washington authorities decided that

these vessels and any additional "windfall shipping" should be "distributed

equitably to all areas involved." Only

assault-loaded troops destined for direct

shipment to combat areas, supercargoes,

and ships' complements were to be excluded from the list. Changes in the

list, once promulgated, were to be made

only when absolutely required by operational urgency or when exchanges of

similar size units were involved; small

emergency quotas were allotted the Chief

23

 (1) Memo, Brig Gen Robert H. Wylie for ACofS,

OPD, 13 Mar 43, sub: Shpg for South and Southwest

Pacific. (2) Memo, ACofS OPD for ACofT, ASF, 29

Mar 43, same sub. Both in OPD 370.5 PTO, Sec II,

Case 120. (3) Memo, Gen Handy for Gen Harmon,

1 Nov 43, sub: Troop Availability List . . . , OPD

370.5 PTO Sec IV, Case 278, (4) Rough draft of Navy

Plan OP-39-T-O-CC, circa 1-7 May 43, sub: Joint

Priority Lists—Pacific Joint Directive, Gen McNarney

and Adm King, 26 May 43, sub: Joint Priority List

for Pacific Shipments. (5) Ltr, Dir NTS and CofT to

Comdt, 12th Naval Dist and CG SFPOE, 7 Jun 43,

sub: Transportation of Army and Navy Personnel

. . . to Pacific Areas. OCT HB folder Jt A-N Logistics. (6) Min, Joint A-N-WSA Ship Opns Com, San

Francisco, 2 Jun 43, Item VI. (7) Rpts of Joint Surface Personnel Transportation Com, San Francisco,

1 Jun-1 Nov 43, in OCT 334, Jt A-N-WSA Ship Opns

Com, San Francisco.

24

 (1) Min, Joint A-N-WSA Opns Com, San Francisco, 21 Apr 44. (2) See also other minutes of San

Francisco Committee and of the Joint Surface Personnel Transportation Committee, Aug-Dec 43, in

OCT 334, Jt A-N-WSA Ship Opns Com, San Francisco.
JOINT LOGISTICS IN PACIFIC: CONTINENTAL SYSTEM 433

of Staff, Chief of Naval Operations,

CINCPOA, and CINCSWPA to meet

unexpected contingencies, and a small

quota was set aside for civilians traveling to Hawaii. The Chief of Naval Operations was made responsible as the agent

of the JCS for promulgating the list

each month.25

The system worked generally as follows. The Navy Department, drawing

on OPD for the necessary information

on the readiness of Army units, informed

CINCPOA on the 17th of each month

of all units available for shipment to

his theater during the second succeeding month (i.e., on 17 January for units

to be shipped in March). In the same

way, the War Department, drawing on

the Navy for necessary information, furnished a complete list of units available

to CINCSWPA. The two theater commanders then indicated by the 5th of

the next month the units on these lists

that they desired and the relative priorities of shipment. A joint Army-Navy

committee matched the commanders'

choices against availability of transports

in the light of approved strategic and

operational plans and consolidated the

two lists into a single Joint Priority

List. The final list agreed to between the

War and Navy Departments was promulgated by the Chief of Naval Operations on or about the 13th of each month

preceding the month of movement (i.e.,

13 February for March movements).26

In general, by mid-1944 the joint

personnel priority system was working

smoothly, although there remained some

discontent in the Army over continued

use of fleet vessels primarily to transport

Navy personnel. The system had other

imperfections, without doubt, but it did

provide a pool of troop shipping in the

Pacific that effectively prevented one

service or one theater from asserting its

priority independently over the others.

Occasional shortfalls occurred in any

given month, but as long as the backlogs did not mount too high (and they

were kept to manageable proportions

during 1944) they could be handled by

carrying them over to the next month.

The greatest difficulty in the operation

of the system lay in the lack of any established priority between Nimitz' and

MacArthur's theaters. Fortunately, during 1944 the availability of personnel

shipping outran that of cargo, and consequently decisions on this question

were seldom necessary.27

Troop unit priorities carried with

them corresponding priorities for unit

equipment and other impedimenta. Beyond this the two services were never

able to arrive at any procedure for drawing up a single joint cargo priority list

comparable to the one in effect for personnel. The extent to which Army and

Navy requirements for cargo tonnage

were screened or consolidated by joint

commanders varied from area to area.

The question of priorities between theaters or areas was left hanging in mid- 25

 (1) Msg 101609, CNO to CINCPAC, 2 Dec 43. (2)

Msg 132235, CINCPAC to CNO, 2 Dec 43. (3) Ltr,

CINCPAC/CINCPOA to CNO, 21 Nov 43, sub: Joint

Personnel Priority List, POA, serial 001553. (4) OPD

MFR attached to above documents. All in OPD 370.5

PTO, Sec VI, Case 266. (5) Joint Priority List of February 1944, OCT 370.5, Jt Priority List, 12 Jan 44. 26

 (1) Joint Priority List of February 1944, OCT

370.5 Jt Priority List, 12 Jan 44. (2) Ltr, CNO to

Distr List, 13 Oct 44, sub: Joint Priority List...

Nov 44, Incl A, OCT 370.5 POA, Jt Priority List,

13 Oct 44. 27

 See minutes of Jt A-N-WSA Ship Opns Com and

Joint Surface Personnel Trans Com during 1944;

also series of OPD 370.5 POA Joint Priority List files

covering that year.
434 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

air to be decided largely in terms of bulk

cargo shipping allocations by the JMTC,

and even then these allocations had normally to be made by service within each

area. One factor militating against joint

cargo priority control was the fact, previously noted, that much of the Navy's

demand for cargo space originated with

the bureaus in the United States rather

than with the theater commanders. Also,

in the recurrent shipping crises of 1943

and 1944 Atlantic shipping from east

and Gulf ports was frequently used to

fill Pacific deficits, making it difficult for

either service to strictly follow theater

priorities. Moreover, even within the theaters, the genuine unification of logistical systems, a prerequisite for any

sound system of joint cargo priorities,

proved impossible of achievement.
CHAPTER XVIII

Joint Logistics in the Pacific Theaters

Though Pacific theater commanders

exercised that measure of central control over logistics in their theaters so

lacking in the United States, no real

unification of the Army-Navy logistical

effort existed even there. True unification would have been practically impossible as long as supply lines from the

United States remained separate, even

had Pacific commanders been inclined

to push for it. Nevertheless, logistical coordination in the theaters was much closer than in the continental establishments. The limited capacity of supply

lines, particularly in the early stages of

assault operations, made joint control

and utilization of supplies, facilities, and

services imperative; and joint arrangements at the front necessitated close coordination at the rear bases. Arrangements differed in the three main Pacific

areas, and in each area they were adapted to the local situation and to the personalities involved.

Joint Logistics in SWPA

In MacArthur's theater in the Southwest Pacific, logistical co-ordination was

primarily achieved through centralized

planning and direction at the top rather

than through detailed arrangements at

the operating levels. Very little of the

SWPA system grew out of the Basic Logistical Plan. Over-all control was exercised by MacArthur's staff at GHQ, a

staff both joint and combined, as was

SHAEF in Europe; it included American and Australian personnel from all

services and a small complement of

Dutch officers. The fact that the theater

was an Allied command vastly complicated the problem of logistical organization, for co-ordination of logistical support of Australian and American forces

assumed a place every bit as important

as that of co-ordination of Army and

Navy supply. The solution adopted by

General MacArthur was to leave supply

lines of the various national service components separate and to exercise control

largely through the dictation of priorities.

Five major commands were functioning under GHQ during 1943 and 1944

—Allied Land Forces, Allied Air Forces,

Allied Naval Forces, ALAMO Force (U.S.

Sixth Army), and U.S. Army Forces in

the Far East (USAFFE). The relations

between these commands and their component parts were complicated and viable, too much so to permit of any comprehensive description here. Australian

forces in all commands maintained their

own supply lines separate from the

Americans'. The major U.S. Army supply command was the theater Services

of Supply (USASOS), a subordinate

headquarters of USAFFE, charged generally with operation of a communica-
436 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

tions zone (though one was not formally

organized) in support of advancing

Army forces. Service Force, Seventh

Fleet, occupied a similar position in the

Navy. Neither of these American administrative headquarters owed more

than a shadowy allegiance to the intermediate Allied headquarters of the three

services. Channels of communication for

administrative matters and of requisitioning on the United States went from

USASOS or USAFFE to the San Francisco port and the War Department on

the Army side, and from Seventh Fleet

to Hawaii, the west coast, and the Navy

Department on the Navy side.

GHQ determined the nature, scope,

and goal of operations, assigned responsibilities to each of the major commands

under it, determined priorities on supplies and shipping, and exercised general supervision and control over both the

planning and execution of each operation. ALAMO Force Headquarters, a U.S.

organization under Lt. Gen. Walter

Krueger (virtually the same as the headquarters of U.S. Sixth Army), rather

than Allied Land Forces, normally handled detailed planning for major operations, setting up task forces as the situation demanded. In co-operation with

naval and air commanders, ALAMO Force

determined supply and transportation

requirements for the assault force,

which, after GHQ approval, then became the responsibility of the various

administrative echelons to meet. Operational control of the amphibious phase

of an assault usually rested with Allied

Naval Forces, as did control of shipping

for the movement of the assault and supporting forces and for resupply during

the first phases. Once forces were safely

ashore command passed to ALAMO Force

Headquarters and control of supply

movements to the normal administrative

echelons of which USASOS was the most

important. As soon as practicable after

a landing the task force commander

turned over the support function to an

Army base commander who was in turn

responsible to USASOS headquarters.

The naval component set up its own

separate base organization and facilities.

As can be seen, there was no unity of

organization with respect to supply,

administrative services, communication,

transportation, or construction below the

GHQ level, and only limited arrangements for cross-servicing or joint procurement. Local procurement in Australia was handled by the General Purchasing Board, a joint agency with an

Army chairman. Marines in SWPA task

forces were supplied through Army

channels except for items peculiar to the

Marine Corps. The Navy furnished marine spare parts for landing craft operated by the Army. Army and Navy headquarters were located in close proximity,

as were their respective service echelons

(USASOS and Service Force, Seventh

Fleet), facilitating a modicum of close

co-operation, interchange of information, and mutual assistance. But of formal system of joint logistics there was

none; rather, two separate Army and

Navy systems operated under the central direction and co-ordination of GHQ

SWPA.

For instance, in the case of transpacific shipping, the Seventh Fleet and

USASOS computed their requirements

separately and submitted them to GHQ.

GHQ then made an over-all allocation

of shipping to each service and forwarded it as a request to the War and Navy

Departments. Ships for the Seventh Fleet
JOINT LOGISTICS IN THE PACIFIC THEATERS 437

were procured by the Navy through the

JMTC, loaded, and sailed by the Navy,

while the Army handled USASOS requirements in the same manner. Co-ordination in loading and dispatch had to

be achieved almost entirely through the

San Francisco Ship Operations Committee.1

In view of an extensive intratheater

sea line of communications, responsibility for manning and operation of seagoing craft in the local fleet was an issue

of particular importance in SWPA. It

had long been accepted in traditional

joint service doctrine that the Navy

should operate all seagoing vessels in

actual theaters of war, but this principle

was never fully applied in SWPA. MacArthur's local fleet was originally a

makeshift affair. Some Dutch merchantmen and a few others of miscellaneous

national origins that had escaped the

Japanese dragnet in early 1942 were

pressed into service during the early

stages of the New Guinea Campaign.

Most of the small boats and harbor craft

came mainly from Australian sources.

Larger ships and small boats were

manned by their own native crews. WSA

ships retained in the theater to supplement this fleet kept their American civilian crews. The small boats and Lake

steamers sent later on from the United

States were normally operated by Army

Transportation Corps personnel or civilians hired for the purpose in the United

States or Australia. The Navy was in no

position, during this formative period,

to man any of these vessels nor to replace

them with Navy-manned craft.2

In April 1943 the JCS reaffirmed the

general principle that "merchant ships

habitually under theater commander

control in direct support of naval and

military operations should be commissioned in the naval service and manned

by naval crews."3 Almost immediately,

however, the directive was rendered inoperative by exceptions made for SWPA,

and to a degree for other theaters, because the Navy obviously was still not

prepared to assume its complete responsibility. The issue remained dormant until August 1943 when MacArthur presented requests for 71 Liberty

ships and for 14,000 men to operate

small boats and harbor craft in the impending campaign in New Guinea. He

specifically requested that 30 of the Liberty ships be manned by Navy crews and

that Army Transportation Corps composite companies and boat companies

be furnished to man the small boats and

harbor craft. Shortly thereafter, on 16

October 1943, the JCS issued a new directive stipulating that all merchant

ships under control of a military commander and operating within 400 miles

of the combat zone should be manned

by Navy crews; and, somewhat alarmed

at the vast differential in pay for civilians

and servicemen operating small boats,

1

 (1) For a brief sketch of SWPA organization and

a chart showing the main lines of command see

Smith, The Approach to the Philippines, pp. 14-16.

(2) Bykofsky and Larson, The Transportation Corps:

Operations Overseas, pp. 425-43. (3) Carter, Beans,

Bullets and Black Oil, pp. 63-67. (4) Memo, Col Hugh

C. Johnson, Chief, Pac Sec, theater Gp, OPD, for Maj

Gen Howard A. Craig, 29 Dec 44, sub: Command,

Pacific. (5) Memo, Brig Gen George A. Lincoln for

Gen Hull, 18 Mar 45. (4) and (5) in OPD 384 TS,

Cases 1 and 1/26 (2945 file). (6) Answers by USASOS

Hq to Somervell Questionnaire, Sep 43, in Control

Div, ASF, folder SWP Questionnaire, Somervell Trip

file.

2

 James R. Masterson, U.S. Army Transportation

in the Southwest Pacific Area, 1941-47 (hereafter

cited as Transportation in SWPA), OCT HB Monograph, MS, OCMH, ch. XI. 3

 JCS 240/2/D, 23 Apr 43, title: Auxiliary Ships

Operated Regularly in Combined Areas.
438 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

the JCS also ruled that these vessels and

harbor craft should be manned by military personnel from one service or the

other.4

MacArthur's request and the new directive brought the issue of responsibility for vessel operation in SWPA to

a head. OPD, seeing the disparity between the apparent intent of the JCS

directive and conditions prevailing in

SWPA, took an aggressive attitude. The

staff planners insisted that the Navy

should man all the merchant vessels in

the theater fleet. Furthermore, they argued, the Army troop basis would not

permit furnishing service troops to man

small boats and harbor craft and that

the Navy should furnish these personnel. The Navy was willing to go no further than to meet MacArthur's specific

request to man 30 Libertys, insisting,

on its own part, that it could not furnish men for the small boats without

putting some of its own vessels out of

commission. At this point, WSA, ever

sensitive to Navy manning of merchant

ships, muddied the water further by insisting that transpacific Liberty ships retained in SWPA could not be taken over

by the Navy. The JCS finally reached

a compromise arrangement in March

1944. Navy manning was to be confined

to the "larger seagoing types" to include

5 Libertys already delivered and 25 C1-

M-AV1's to be delivered to SWPA later

in the year; the Navy would also provide Coast Guard crews for craft from

99 to 182 feet in length; the Army

Transportation Corps would continue to

man and operate craft up to 47 feet. For

all other ships and craft, including the

rest of the merchantmen in the SWPA

local fleet, maximum use would be made

of civilian personnel — American, Australian, and Dutch. In effect, the Navy

let its prerogative of vessel operation

in SWPA go by default, and the central

role in the operation of MacArthur's

local fleet fell to the Army Transportation Corps in co-operation with WSA

and Australian shipping agencies.5

Requirements for boats and floating

equipment were forwarded to Washington through separate channels by Seventh Fleet and USASOS. It was mainly

because of the large requirements generated by the Army in SWPA that General Gross so stoutly maintained that

the Army boat procurement program

must be kept separate from that of the

Navy.

The situation with regard to landing

craft was dissimilar only in that procurement in the United States was consolidated under the Navy. JCS directives also provided that the Navy should

man and operate all landing craft in

theaters of operations, but again an exception was made for SWPA because of

4

 (1) JCS 240/5/D, 27 Oct 43, title: Auxiliary Ships

Operated Regularly in Combined Areas. (2) Masterson, Transportation in SWPA, pp. 637-38.

5

 (1) JLC 42/3, 14 Mar 44, title: Manning of Sea

Transportation and Harbor Facilities in SWPA. (2)

JCS Decision Amending JCS 644/1, 22 Mar 44, same

sub. (3) Memo, Maj Gen Ray E. Porter, G-3, for

OPD, 22 Oct 43, sub: Shortage of Manpower, ABC

570 (3-1-43). Sec 4. (4) Memo, CofS, USA, for Secretariat, JCS, 27 Dec 43, sub: Manning of Cargo Vessels with Navy Crews (JCS 641); Manning of Sea

Transportation and Harbor Facilities in SWPA (JCS

644). (5) Memo, Wylie for Somervell, 28 Dec 43, sub:

JCS 644. . . . (4) and (5) in folder CsofS, Jt and Comb.

Hq ASF. (6) Ltr, Adm Land to CNO, 6 Jan 44; Ltr.

VCNO to CG ASF, 11 Jan 44, sub: Assignment of

Navy Manned Auxiliary Vessels in Service of Army

in Combat Areas, folder Navy 1942-44, Hq ASF.

(7) Memo, Col Magruder for Gen Wood, 8 Mar 44,

sub: Manning of Sea Transportation and Harbor

Facilities in SWP, folder Pac Theater, ASF Plng Div.

(8) Masterson, Transportation in SWPA, pp. 640-47.
JOINT LOGISTICS IN THE PACIFIC THEATERS 439

the proven utility of the Army's Engineer special brigades in the type of shoreto-shore operations conducted in that

area. The Southwest Pacific was the only

U.S. theater in World War II in which

operation of landing craft was not exclusively a Navy function. Instead, the special brigades manned and operated the

landing craft assigned to them as table

of organization equipment and the Navy

handled craft attached to the Seventh

Fleet. In amphibious assaults the services pooled amphibious resources, while

GHQ exercised the usual co-ordination

over determination of requirements. Until mid-1943 these requirements were

actually calculated separately and forwarded to Washington through separate

Army and Navy channels. In August

1943 MacArthur agreed that Seventh

Fleet and amphibian brigade requirements should be consolidated and forwarded through Navy channels to the

Navy Department in Washington, but

this still did not produce any fundamental change in the SWPA system.

There was no organizational consolidation of the amphibious forces in the

theater, and MacArthur continued to

rely on the War Department to see that

his landing craft requirements for the

amphibious brigades were met. Shipment of craft for the brigades went on

through Army channels. Mainly involved were small craft, such as LCM's

and LCVP's; LCT types and larger craft

were normally assigned to the Seventh

Fleet. While this in general resulted in

the Navy operating most of the large

landing craft in SWPA and the Army

most of the smaller craft, the lines of

demarcation were never quite so distinct, for the Seventh Fleet also had its

share of LCM's and LCVP's and the

Army had at least a few of the larger

craft.6

Thus the whole SWPA system embraced only a minimum of unified requirements determination or functional

division of responsibility between services. In justice to the SWPA command,

it must be noted that the system was as

much a product of circumstances as of

design. The existence of an extremely

complicated Allied structure made common channels of supply for all forces

practically impossible. American naval

forces in SWPA were never stable; major fleet units were shuttled back and

forth between SWPA and POA and had

to receive much of their support from

mobile service squadrons based on POA.

Shore-based naval personnel represented

only a small proportion of the SWPA

command. The theater had been a going

concern for more than a year before the

Basic Logistical Plan was promulgated,

and its established policies and procedures were not susceptible to much

change. Local circumstances dictated the

division of function in the operation

and control of water transportation far

more effectively than could abstract directives from the JCS.

Yet, circumstances were not the only

explanation. MacArthur himself was not

convinced that unification of Army and

Navy supply lines was advisable. British

observers, who visited the theater in

1944 put it quite succinctly: "General

MacArthur believes that each separate

6

 (1) Memo, Adm King for CofS, USA, 25 Apr 43,

sub: Small Landing Craft in SWPA. (2) MFR OPD,

accompanying draft msg to CINCSWPA, 17 Aug 44.

Both in OPD 560 SWPA, Case 6. (3) Msg CM-OUT

5133, AGWAR to CINCSWPA, 12 Jun 43. (4) Msg

C-4468, Brisbane to WAR, CM-IN 2395, 4 Aug 43.

(5) For a more detailed account of landing craft supply for SWPA see below, Chapter XX.
440 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

service should retain its own line of

communication in order to retain mobility."7

Under a system in which each national

service did retain control of its own line

of communications, priorities control

necessarily became the essential element

of GHQ co-ordination. A priorities system for the shipment of cargo into the

theater, including Army, Navy, and

lend-lease shipments from the United

States and Australian service material

from the United Kingdom, was instituted by MacArthur in August 1942 and

continued thereafter. It was evidently

considered good enough to meet the

standards of the Basic Logistical Plan.

Still, because vessels for all these different purposes were assigned and loaded

separately, there was in reality no single

unified priority list. Moreover, priorities

seldom were geared to available shipping, with the result that each seaboard

shipping agency tended to ship in response to the theater agency it served.

Given limitations on port capacity

even greater than those on transpacific

cargo shipping, priorities control became

even more a matter of regulating movements into theater ports. In Australian

ports, control was first exercised by the

Australian Government in close co-operation with MacArthur's headquarters;

in the forward ports in New Guinea,

however, there was at first no clearly

established system and much of the control over movements was left to be independently adjusted by the several

transportation agencies at each port. Incoming and outgoing supplies and personnel were soon competing for the limited port facilities, and the inevitable

confusion and congestion resulted.

The obvious answer seemed to be

over-all control of movement priorities.

At one time or another this was entrusted to various USAFFE and USASOS

agencies, but the logic of the situation

called for control at the GHQ level, and

in November 1943 a chief regulating

officer (CREGO) was established in

that headquarters. CREGO was given

responsibility for assigning priorities on

all personnel and cargo movements within the theater by water, air, or rail, except those of naval combatant vessels

and auxiliaries supporting them. While

the chief regulating officer was a U.S.

Army officer, his staff was drawn from

all the Allied services, as were the staffs

of the subordinate regulating officers set

up in all the important ports in SWPA.

CREGO was intended to be the impartial referee, to determine what supplies and personnel should be moved

and unloaded over limited facilities, basing his decisions on policies and plans

established by G-3 and G-4, GHQ.

CREGO responsibilities were eventually extended to include surveillance of

the priorities system on movements into

the theater from points in the Central

and South Pacific. Liaison officers from

CREGO were established in Hawaii, in

Noumea, and in the Overseas Supply

Division of the San Francisco POE.

However valid the theory, in practice

CREGO's system of regulation left much

to be desired, as frequent instances of

ship congestion along the New Guinea

coast and in the Philippines attest. The

task was a difficult one at best, in view

of the primitive port facilities in the

operations area and the numerous agen7

 (1) Memo, Wood for Somervell, 11 May 44, sub:

British Rpt on Problems of War versus Japan, folder

Gen and Misc Pac Theater, vol. I, ASF Plng Div.

(2) See also MacArthur's views as expressed to the

War Department late in 1944, below, Chapter XXIII.
JOINT LOGISTICS IN THE PACIFIC THEATERS 441

cies whose claims had to be considered.

And CREGO occupied an awkward position as an independent agency in GHQ

—he was referee over movement priorities but had no functions in the operation of transportation; he was the purveyor of G-3 and G-4 decisions but had

no part in their determination. USASOS,

the principal supply and transportation

agency, was continually at odds with

CREGO, insisting that the regulating

function of the GHQ agency was exercised at so low a level and in so detailed

a manner as to interfere with the normal exercise of the operating transportation function, and that CREGO was too

far divorced from this function to make

such detailed decisions intelligently.

Neither USASOS, nor the Seventh Fleet,

nor G-4, GHQ, were ready to accept

CREGO's authority without qualifications, and in the instances of worst congestion there is every evidence that

CREGO's control over movements broke

down. The WSA representative in the

theater, Herbert Schage, continually criticized CREGO's activities.

The difficulties of the regulating system clearly reflect the want of any really

unified control of the logistical function

in SWPA. GHQ determined over-all

plans but left the determination of requirements to fulfill them up to subordinate commands. Then GHQ screened

the requirements and, through CREGO,

acted as monitor over the movement of

supplies and personnel to meet them.

The various service administrative agencies at the intermediate level generally

went their own way, which inevitably

reacted so as to limit the effectiveness

of GHQ co-ordination. Requisitions

were placed on the United States, on

Australia, and on other sources of supply largely in terms of need and without much regard for limitations on

transportation. As large backlogs of requisitions mounted in San Francisco, the

priority system for shipment tended to

break down, and the Army as well as

the Navy began to ship the material

most readily available. The dispatch of

the CREGO liaison group to the San

Francisco port does not seem to have

appreciably improved that situation. As

late as December 1944 Brig. Gen. Robert

H. Wylie of the Transportation Corps

was complaining that the theater supply echelon seemed to have little understanding of the theater's shipping problems, and pointing out the "absolute

necessity of tieing together transportation and supply in the Southwest Pacific Area."8

Informal Co-operation in the

South Pacific

In the South and Central Pacific, areas

of naval responsibility, arrangements for

joint logistics were considerably more

detailed and far-reaching than in SWPA.

The problem was also more acute, for

in these areas Army and Navy forces

were deployed ashore in almost equal

numbers. In the South Pacific the first

steps toward a joint logistical system

were taken very early. In May 1942 a

Joint Purchasing Board was established

to exploit New Zealand resources and

those of the smaller Pacific islands, with

8

 (1) Memo, Wylie for Wood, 19 Dec 44, sub: SWPA

Shpg Situation, OCT HB, Folder Shpg in Pacific,

Wylie File. (2) On CREGO generally see Larson and

Bykofsky, The Transportation Corps: Operations

Overseas, pp. 437-46; Masterson, Transportation in

SWPA, pp. 744-808; History of the General Headquarters Regulating System, prepared by Office,

CREGO, GHQ. (3) Ltr, Schage to Capt Granville

Conway, 25 Dec 44, folder Pac Area (1944), Box

122893, WSA Conway File. (4) See below, ch. XX.
442 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

the Navy responsible for delivering the

supplies procured from these sources to

both services; later the Army was entrusted with procuring necessary supplies from the United States mainland

for all shore-based forces except those

in the Samoan Islands, the Navy similarly for furnishing all POL. As a result

of the confusion during the Guadalcanal

Campaign and particularly the congestion at Noumea, Admiral Halsey put

into effect further joint arrangements

for handling incoming shipments and

movements to forward areas. The Army

service commander on New Caledonia,

Col. Raymond E. S. Williamson, was

given responsibility for port and unloading operations at Noumea; the Army

area commander, Maj. Gen. Robert G.

Breene, was put in charge of co-ordination of logistical support for Guadalcanal. Breene was to be advised in determining priority of shipment by a priorities board composed of Army, Navy,

and Marine Corps representatives.9 Halsey's philosophy, apparently, was to entrust each service with certain responsibilities at each base and to develop coordination through meetings of major

commanders. Harmonious relations were

established early between Admiral Halsey and General Harmon and this informal method of co-operation proved

highly effective in combat operations.

"Our relations with the Navy," wrote

General Breene in May 1943, "have been

so cordial that it has been possible to

get many things done by pure co-operation without even a scratch of the

pen."10

Admiral Halsey, like General MacArthur, at first proposed to make no change

in this informal system of co-ordination

to meet the Basic Logistical Plan, but

Nimitz overruled him, and on 20

May 1943 he issued a formal Base Logistic Plan for the South Pacific Area.

Halsey's plan established a Joint Logistics Board composed of the principal

Navy, Army, and Marine Corps service

commanders who had been meeting in

informal fashion. The board never actually functioned as such but operated

as a supervisory body over a Joint Working Board composed of subordinates

who, grouping themselves into various

subcommittees, attempted to extend the

sphere of joint logistical action. The

board gave way in early 1944 to a joint

logistical staff, following again the precedent set by Nimitz in Hawaii, but the

joint logistical staff in the South Pacific

was never more than a facade. The principal achievements in the direction of

logistical co-ordination were made either

by informal co-ordination or by the

Joint Working Board.

The board extended existing co-operative arrangements in several fields. The

agreements on cross-servicing for provisions and POL were refined and extended, the Army assuming responsibility for ordering all dry provisions for

units afloat as well as ashore and for fresh

provisions for units ashore, the Navy

for ocean delivery of fresh provisions in

its reefer ships. The Army took over the

operation of all cold storage facilities

ashore, responsibility for all antimalarial

supplies, and for salvage for both services. Progress along the line of crossservicing also included Army operation

of such installations as major repair facilities for both services at some bases and

9

 Leighton and Coakley, Global Logistics, 1940-43,

chs. VII and XV. 10

 Ltr, Breene to Lutes, 20 May 43, folder So Pac

1942-43-mid-44, Lutes File.
JOINT LOGISTICS IN THE PACIFIC THEATERS 443

the Navy at others, and establishment of

common stocks of some types of motor

vehicles and spare parts and of certain

types of ammunition.11

Arrangements for handling incoming

cargo shipments and outloading cargo

for forward destinations were also extended as the advance into the Solomons

proceeded. In general, control and operation of all vessels save certain harbor

craft and other small vessels was vested

in the Navy; the Navy thus controlled

convoys and routing to forward areas,

but the control of ports, both forward

and rear, was arranged as the occasion

demanded. General Breene continued,

with the advice and assistance of the

priorities board, to control the forward

movement of cargo and the scheduling

of shipping from the United States to

Noumea and other rear bases. The Navy

controlled priorities for personnel movement within the theater, although the

Army's Theater Transportation Division

issued instructions for loading in accordance with the priorities. The Navy also

controlled all assault shipping and scheduled its movement during the amphibious phase of combat operations. In sum,

then, the system for shipping controls

was a joint one, based on a complicated,

often informal, division of responsibility

between the services and dictated by Admiral Halsey by and with the advice of

his service and task force commanders.12

These achievements were not inconsiderable; however, they still left major

areas of joint interest untouched. The

basic principles of joint action in the

South Pacific were almost entirely those

of cross-servicing and exchange of supplies rather than genuine unification.

Army and Navy housing facilities, depots, hospitals, and recreational facilities remained separate; even though in

some cases they were jointly used, the

opposite was more frequently true. In

the vital field of construction, almost no

progress was made either in developing

common standards or in pooling supplies. Not only did the two services use

different types of material and different

terminology but the Navy's standards

were far higher than those of the Army.

Navy men lived in roofed barracks with

wooden floors in New Caledonia while

Army troops had to be satisfied with

thatched huts with dirt floors. Similarly,

the Navy was far better supplied with

such luxury items as beer and had far

better recreational facilities. It also

seemed to have more machinery and

power facilities; no sight, one observer

remarked, was better calculated to set a

doughboy cursing then to see a machine

digging slit trenches for Navy personnel. If combat conditions tended to reduce everyone nearer to a common standard, the generally higher Navy standard

of living in rear areas was a continuing

testimonial to the failure of the system

of informal co-operation to produce even

an equitable division of resources, much

less a unified logistical system.13

11

 History of the United States Army Forces in the

South Pacific Area from 30 March 1942 to 1 August

1944 (hereafter cited as USAFISPA History), MS,

OCMH, pp. 337-55. 12

 Larson and Bykofsky, The Transportation

Corps: Operations Overseas, pp. 501-09.

13

 (1) USAFISPA History, pp. 346-47. (2) Wesley F.

Craven and James L. Cate, eds., "The Army Air

Forces in World War II," vol. IV, Pacific: Guadalcanal to Saipan (Chicago: University of Chicago

Press, 1950) (hereafter cited as Craven and Cate,

AAF IV), pp. 270-73. (3) Memo, CG ASF, for Adm

Horne, 25 Aug 43, folder 2d Pac Trip, Lutes File.

(4) Answers made by SoPac Army Hq to Somervell

Questionnaire, Sep 43, in folder SoPac Questionnaire,

Control Div, ASF, Somervell Trip file.
444 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

The most serious defects in the South

Pacific system, however, lay in the lack

of any satisfactory mechanism for determining joint supply requirements on

the United States, for planning base

development, or for exercising inventory

control. While the Joint Logistical

Board pioneered and managed to perfect a mechanism for working out the

joint personnel priority list each month,

it met with little success in developing

a similar cargo priority list. The area

Joint Screening Board, established to

exercise close supervision over requisitions for supplies for both services, never had sufficient personnel to function

adequately and soon found itself merely

passing on requisitions received from

each service with little examination. Nor

was the Joint Traveling Inventory Board

able to do much more than arrange for

readjusting local surpluses. And the

Joint Base Planning Board, charged with

developing integrated plans for base development, never managed to establish

anything more than a loose co-ordination in this field.14

Some of the difficulties arose because

it never proved possible in the South

Pacific to anticipate operations far

enough in advance to lay out development plans carefully. An atmosphere of

emergency characterized the South Pacific theater during most of its existence.

The development of planning procedures and of a stable supply system, even

by each service separately, had to go

ahead in the hectic atmosphere created

by the rapid forward advance in the

Solomons. The theater had concluded

its mission before it really had time to

settle down and develop routine procedures and systems; by that time the

pressing need for them had almost

passed.

In this atmosphere perhaps informal

co-operation was the best and most effective instrument—at least all observers

had nothing but praise for the effectiveness of co-operation in the island campaigns. The close control maintained

over shipping to and within the theater

by Halsey's headquarters, although exercised through many different organizations, produced over-all economy in the

use of that controlling element in theater logistics—water transportation.

The Central Pacific System

In the Central Pacific joint logistics

reached their highest point of development during World War II, despite the

existence of a strong tradition of separatism in Hawaii. Since operations there

did not get under way until November

1943, eight months after the promulgation of the Basic Logistical Plan, there

was a considerably longer time for necessary preparations. After a slow start,

Admiral Nimitz gradually extended the

province of joint action in his theater,

taking a very liberal view of the "full

responsibility"15 assigned him for development of logistical plans and policies.16

Nevertheless, the basic decision, taken

early and maintained ever after, was for

co-ordination and not unification of logistical systems—"in general, each service

would continue to procure its own materials; either this or change the entire

system from Washington on down."17

14

 USAFISPA History, pp. 351-75.

15

 Basic Logistical Plan, 7 Mar 43. 16

 AFMIDPAC History, pp. 1138-54. 17

 Notes on Meeting of Joint Working Com of

Joint Logistics Supply Board for CPA held 19 March

1943 . . . Pearl Harbor, quoted in AFMIDPAC History, p. 1034.
JOINT LOGISTICS IN THE PACIFIC THEATERS 445

On 6 April 1943, acting on the basis of

recommendations of a joint Army-Navy

committee that had devoted some time

to the study of the implications of the

Basic Logistical Plan, Nimitz established

a Joint Logistics Board, composed of

the Commander, Service Force Pacific

Fleet, the Commanding General, Hawaiian Department, and the Commandant,

14th Naval District, with a Joint Working Board under it that was charged

with "coordinating logistical effort and

procedure."18

This organization served as the prototype for the board Halsey established

in the South Pacific, but Nimitz went

further in formally laying down the

principles under which it would operate.

In Hawaii, the Army was given primary

responsibility for ground defense and for

military government, the Navy for the

great fleet base at Pearl Harbor. In

Hawaii, also, each service would be responsible for meeting its own needs for

all classes of supply save POL, which

would be a Navy responsibility, and for

its own services and facilities. Every

effort would be made to promote free

interchange of supplies, services, and

facilities to meet strategic and tactical

needs, and co-ordination of procedures

of procurement, requisitioning, and issue, subject always to limitations set by

higher authority. Where one service had

practically exclusive requirements for a

given item that service would, if possible,

supply it to the other. Existing co-ordination in the use of port and terminal

facilities under supervision of the military governor (General Richardson)

would continue. At three of the outlying

island bases — Canton, Christmas, and

Fanning—supply responsibility was to be

divided between Army and Navy; at the

others—the French Frigate Shoal, Midway, Johnston, and Palmyra—the Navy

would assume complete responsibility.

Shipping for outlying bases would continue for the present to be operated by

the owning service and loading co-ordinated to insure best use of space, but as

soon as arrangements could be perfected,

the Navy would take over, man, and

operate all vessels in this service. Each

service would continue to requisition

separately on mainland sources, with

only a collation of data to prevent duplication.

The plan clearly did not prescribe

any radical change in the method of

doing business in Hawaii. Insofar as

future operations forward of Hawaii

were concerned it lacked detail, but

such outlines of a joint logistical plan

as it did contain were highly disturbing

to ASF officials. Exponents though they

had become of unified logistics, they

looked on the proposed Navy control

of shipping to forward bases with some

alarm, fearing that it presaged Navy control of the Army's line of supply. Without adequate Army representation on

Nimitz' staff, ASF did not believe any

system of joint logistics for the Central

Pacific campaigns would be workable.

General Lutes, on his Pacific trip in the

fall of 1942, had urged on Nimitz the

creation of a genuine joint staff organization, but there seemed no indication

in the plan that Nimitz intended to

carry out this suggestion. Somervell took

the ASF case to Admiral Horne and to

Adm. William L. Calhoun, Commander, Service Force Pacific Fleet, when

Calhoun visited Washington in April

18

 Ltr, CINCPAC to Distr List, 6 Apr 43, sub:

Basic Logistics Plan—Establishment of in CPA, Ser

987, in History Planning Div ASF, Text, IV, 18-26.
446 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

1943. Fearing that merely drawing personnel from General Richardson's staff

in Hawaii, accustomed as they were to

independent Army and Navy action,

would foredoom any joint staff to failure, Somervell insisted on fresh blood

from the ASF. He was finally able to

persuade Calhoun to accept two ASF

officers for joint logistical planning in

POA, Brig. Gen. Edmond H. Leavey

for the CINCPOA staff and Col. David

H. Blakelock for Calhoun's staff for advance base planning. Somervell's insistence on fresh blood had important consequences, for Leavey was to prove his

ability to take an independent position

as a member of Nimitz' staff and his

support of joint action provided an effective balance to General Richardson, who

was far more prone to uphold traditional

service prerogatives of the Army.19

For the moment just what Nimitz'

staff organization was to be and what role

Leavey would play in it remained undetermined. Leavey was first dispatched on

a tour of Pacific supply establishments

beginning in San Francisco and extending into Halsey's command in the South

Pacific. He returned to Hawaii with a

bad impression of both the Navy's command system and its logistical system,

pointing out that Nimitz' staff was organized as a fleet rather than a theater

staff. "From the logistics and supply

standpoint," he wrote, "there seems to be

no section, and not even an officer, on

the Commander-in-Chief's staff, charged

with supervision ... of the overall logistics and supply situation in the theater.

. . . From my observations so far 1 am

convinced that in order to have a complete and coordinated operation in the

Pacific Theater, it will be necessary for

Admiral Nimitz to set up a GHQ type

of theater headquarters with a combined

Army, Navy and Marine Corps staff, including Air officers, for both operational

and service functions."20

Leavey's views were endorsed by Lutes

who, on a second trip to the Pacific a few

weeks later, reported he found that the

Joint Logistical Board in Hawaii was

working satisfactorily for local supply

matters but that there was a definite lack

of joint planning for impending operations. As did Leavey, Lutes thought

Nimitz should give up his dual role of

Commander in Chief, Pacific Fleet, and

direct command over the Central Pacific

Area, and should restrict himself to the

over-all command of POA; and he should

exercise POA command through a joint

theater staff and through area commanders with similar joint staffs in the North,

Central, and South Pacific.21 While

Lutes suggested that Leavey and Blakelock should "sell" the Navy on the GHQ

19

 (1) Memo, Gen Wylie for Gen Gross, 16 Apr 43,

OCT HB folder A-N Joint Logistics. (2) Memos,

Somervell for Horne, 25 Mar and 2 Apr 43, sub:

Detail of Officers with Staffs of Adm Nimitz and

Halsey. (3) Memo, Horne for Somervell, 1 Apr 43. (2)

and (3) in folder SoPac 1942-43-mid-44, Lutes File.

(4) Memo, Horne for Somervell, 22 Apr 43. (5) Memo,

Somervell for Horne, 22 Apr 43. (4) and (5) in folder

Navy 1942-44, Hq ASF. (6) Memo, Dir Opns ASF

for Gen Leavey, 11 Jun 43, sub: Detail to PTO,

folder POA 1942 thru Nov 45, Lutes File. (7) And

compare Leavey's views expressed in an interview

with Joseph Bykofsky, OCMH, on 30 October 1950,

with those of Richardson in his letter to CofS, USA,

15 Mar 46, sub: Final Rpt of CG AFMIDPAC. Both

in folder Pac Gen, OCT HB Overseas Comd file.

20

 Ltr, Gen Leavey to Gen Somervell, 29 Jul 43,

folder Theaters of Opn, Pacific (A and N) 1944, Hq

ASF.

21

 (1) Ltr, Lutes to Somervell, 11 Aug 43, sub:

Attached Ltr from Gen Leavey, folder POA 1942

through Nov 45, Lutes File. (2) Ltr, Lutes to CG

ASF, 17 Aug 43, sub: Report. (3) Ltr, Lutes to CG

ASF, 18 Aug 43, same sub. (2) and (3) in folder 2d

Pac Trip . . . , Lutes File.
JOINT LOGISTICS IN THE PACIFIC THEATERS 447

staff plan and "gradually increase the

number of Army officers on the staff to

accomplish the work," General Somervell decided to try at a higher level.22

He forwarded Leavey's and Lutes's reports to General Marshall who in turn

sent them to Admiral King with a suggestion that the conditions reported were

"a clear indication ... of the urgent necessity of creating a Combined Theater

Staff as quickly as possible."23

King's blistering reply castigated Leavey for not making a "forthright report

through his responsible superior" (Admiral Nimitz) and concluded that it

would not be "either appropriate or wise

to force on Admiral Nimitz any staff organization on the basis of reports by

officers who have had very limited opportunity to observe, or know of, the overall

situation in his command, and who have

none of the responsibility therefor."24

General Marshall decided it was best to

let the matter drop and Admiral Nimitz

was left to work out his own arrangements without further directives from

Washington.

Apparently, Nimitz was himself convinced of the necessity for a stronger instrument than the Joint Logistical Board

in the forthcoming campaigns in the

Gilberts and Marshalls. In September,

whether influenced by General Leavey's

recommendations or not, he decided to

create a joint staff and designated Leavey

as J-4. He announced that CINCPOA

would exercise his authority to co-ordinate and control logistical services

through this joint staff, with the subcommittees of the Joint Working Board

to continue to function under its aegis.25

With the formation of the joint staff

with its J-4 section headed by an Army

officer, the logistical system in the Central Pacific began to take final form for

the campaigns to follow. Although considered a step in the right direction, it

was not entirely satisfactory to the Army

staff in Washington. Nimitz retained his

position as Commander in Chief, Pacific

Fleet, and continued to exercise direct

command over the Central Pacific Area

instead of designating a subordinate as

area commander; he did not take many

steps to exercise closer control over the

South and North Pacific Areas nor to

integrate requirements for these subareas

into joint plans for the whole POA. No

attempt was made to provide a joint special staff such as Leavey favored, containing representatives from the Army's technical services. The whole command setup in both the Central and South Pacific

continued to have a predominantly Navy

flavor that Army leaders felt never gave

them a voice proportionate to Army

strength in these areas. But after some

abortive efforts to convince the Navy that

Nimitz should divorce himself from immediate command of any of the subordinate elements in POA, the Army at

last decided to give up and await a more

propitious time to raise the issue again.

They had at least gained one major point

—the Central Pacific would have a joint

logistical staff with an Army officer at its

head. A general desire not to rock the 22

 Quote from Ltr, Lutes to Somervell, 11 Aug 43. 23

 (1) Memo, Marshall for King, 10 Aug 43, folder

Theater of Opns Pacific (A and N) (11) 1944, Hq

ASF. (2) Memo, Marshall for King, 26 Aug 43, OPD

384 PTO Sec 2. 24 Memo, King for Marshall, 30 Aug 43, Ser 001801,

OPD 384 PTO, Sec 2.

25

 (1) AFMIDPAC History, pp. 1050-53. (2) Ltr,

CINCPAC/CINCPOA to Distr List, 17 Sep 43, sub:

Control of Logistical Services, CPA, folder 133 Diary

CenPac, 4 Oct 43, ASF Plng Div. (3) Msg, Richardson

to Marshall, 7 Sep 43, OPD 384 PTO Sec 2.
448 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

boat at a critical moment left further

development of this joint logistical system in theater hands.26

For all its supposed defects, the POA

joint staff proved a satisfactory instrument for the purposes for which it was

designed—in Leavey's words it "succeeded

in achieving an unprecedented correlation of logistical effort."27

 By the time

it was formed the emphasis had shifted

in the Central Pacific from static defense

of Hawaii to preparations for the advance into the Gilberts and Marshalls.

These island groups, composed of small

atolls, had limited space for base development, a factor that undoubtedly influenced development of plans for joint

utilization.

The basic charter for joint logistics

in the coming campaigns was announced

by Admiral Nimitz on 20 September

1943 in the form of a basic logistic supply policy for advanced bases.28

 The

joint logistical system for the Central

Pacific advances established by this directive and its numerous supplements

and revisions was a very complicated

affair; the most that can be done here

is to describe the main lines of responsibility and control in the simplest possible terms, keeping in mind that it was

never a completely static affair.

The central feature of the system was

unified control of both operations and

logistics forward of Hawaii by Admiral

Nimitz as joint theater commander; he

exercised this control through the joint

staff and through assignment of missions

to Navy, Army, and Marine Corps task

and garrison force commanders. In

Hawaii and on the adjacent islands held

by the United States before the Central Pacific offensive began, the separation of Army and Navy logistics stayed

much as it had been—a testimonial to

the strength of tradition. The heart of

the joint logistical system was in the

arrangements for furnishing support to

shore-based forces in the areas wrested

from Japanese control, from Makin and

Tarawa to Iwo Jima and Okinawa.

As officially defined in CINCPOA directives there were normally three phases

in each operation—the first, an assault

phase, under an amphibious task force

commander; the second, a land operations phase, under a ground force commander; the third, a garrison phase, under a base or garrison commander from

the service furnishing the major part

of the garrison. The garrison force commanders on Makin in the Gilberts, Kwajalein in the Marshalls, Saipan in the

Marianas, and Angaur in the Palaus, for

instance, were from the Army, and the

Army had major responsibility for development of these bases; most of the

other atolls or islands were a Navy or

Marine Corps responsibility. The commander in each phase exercised over-all

control of logistics subject to plans and

policies laid down by the POA joint

staff. There was no genuine unified supply line. Each service continued to requisition separately through its own channels on rear bases and on the mainland,

26

 (1) Memo, Somervell for Marshall, 12 Sep 43,

folder CofS 1943, Hq ASF. (2) Personal Memo, Gen

Handy for Adm Cooke, 20 Sep 43, OPD 384 PTO,

Sec 2. (3) Memo, Somervell for Marshall, 22 Sep 43,

ABC 322.01 Pacific (Aug 43). (4) Memo, Col Godwin

Ordway, Jr., for Gen Hull, 16 Nov 43, sub: Comments of South and Central Pacific Officers Made to

Undersigned During Period 20 Sept to 23 Oct 43,

OPD Exec 9, Item 13. 27

 Interview, Bykofsky with Gen Leavey, 30 Oct 50. 28

 Ltr, CINCPOA to Distr List, 20 Sep 43, sub:

Advance Base Logistic Supply Policy—Promulgation

of, CINCPOA Ser 02248, folder 1-a-1 Jt Supply Program, ASF Plng Div.
JOINT LOGISTICS IN THE PACIFIC THEATERS 449

but each service was assigned certain

specific responsibilities for supply and

services and for development of facilities at each base. As far as possible joint

requirements were anticipated in the

joint staff planning that preceded each

operation. CINCPOA also controlled

movement of all shipping through all

three phases of each campaign.

Army, Navy, and Marine Corps forces

involved in assault operations were accompanied by their normal table of basic

allowance equipment subject to the peculiar needs of any particular operation or

the limitations on shipping; as soon as

the tactical situation would permit, specific levels of supply were established;

these were common to all forces ashore,

and increased to a maximum of sixty

days for all classes as the operation progressed. TBA equipment for the initial

landing forces was made available at the

loading port by the service concerned in

accordance with the plans of the amphibious force commander, who also arranged for joint loading. These theater

loading plans were normally followed

regardless of where various parts of the

task force were outloaded, whether from

Hawaii, the west coast of the United

States, or other ports in the Pacific. The

Navy (Service Force, Pacific Fleet) was

charged with delivery of all supplies to

the beaches; from that point they were

handled by the receiving service. The

two services were assigned certain definite responsibilities for each class of supply: the Army, as usual, for all subsistence; the Navy for fuel and lubricants;

ammunition, bombs, and pyrotechnics

for aircraft were supplied by the Army

except for special Navy items; medical

supplies were the responsibility of whichever service operated the hospital in a

given area; the Army was first made responsible for spare parts and motor maintenance for common type vehicles but

the arrangement proved unsatisfactory

and was abandoned. Each service furnished and maintained all equipment

and supplies of its own special type,

notably clothing, unit equipment, and

construction supplies.

Service Force, Pacific Fleet, handled

all shipping to advance bases and arranged convoys and routing. Under it

a Joint Overseas Shipping Control Office

(JOSCO), composed of Army, Navy,

Marine Corps, and WSA representatives,

co-ordinated terminal operations in Hawaii and arranged booking, loading, and

forward movements of cargo. This office

was considered to be something of a

counterpart to the Joint Ship Operations Committee in San Francisco. Port

operations and cargo handling were assigned to one service at each base, usually according to the predominance of

force.

The J-4 section of the POA joint staff

exercised general supervision over the

entire logistical effort, reviewing service

requirements in the light of tactical

plans, assigning priorities on both supplies and shipping, developing the plans

and policies for joint base development,

and scheduling forward movement of

shipping in accordance with the capacity

of the receiving ports or beaches. The

J-4 Transportation Section's control of

shipping provided the essential link that

bound two separate systems of requisitioning supplies together and provided

a means of reconciling conflicting demands of services and bases. The J-4

section, acting for CINCPOA, consolidated tonnage requirements for the advance bases and determined the over-all
450 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

requirements that should be placed

against the United States for cargo shipping, either for direct shipment from the

United States or for the theater pool to

be used in the movement of supplies

from the rear to forward bases.29

The system used in the Central Pacific

to control the flow of shipping into forward areas minimized the importance of

requisitioning during the early and intermediate stages of any campaign, and

placed the emphasis on advance joint

planning of requirements for both supplies and shipping. Support shipping was

divided into three categories—assault,

garrison, and maintenance—following

the planned phases of operations and

base development. For the assault phase,

ships were combat loaded under direction of the task force commander, and

carried the troop units participating in

the assault and their TBA equipment.

Once the assault forces and their initial

supplies were safely ashore, the garrison

shipping procedure was placed in effect.

This procedure provided for echeloning

of shipping, each separate echelon to

move into the advance base in step with

the progress of operations and the development of beach and port capacity to

discharge supplies. Succeeding echelons

carried both troops and supplies to build

up prescribed levels and to provide for

planned base development; all were

loaded in accordance with a prearranged

plan worked out by J-4 in consultation

with service and task force commanders.

Garrison forces designated to relieve

combat task forces were organized into

groups sixty days in advance and moved

into the area with their initial equipment on a time schedule. Control or regulating points were established—at Eniwetok during the Marianas campaign

and at Saipan later—where ships could

be held pending favorable developments

for movement into the discharge area.

The whole principle was one of automatic supply, which was to continue

until the base was sufficiently developed

to permit institution of what the Navy

called "maintenance shipments" sent in

response to specific requisitions.30

Automatic supply was of course no

new thing in theater logistics, nor was

the principle of echeloning shipping in

the early phases of assault landings on a

hostile coast; both were used generally

in all theaters of war. The difference was

that in the Central Pacific they were

used more extensively and for longer

periods than anywhere else. And as the

advance moved forward and operations

had to be mounted and supported from

several different areas echeloning plans

became more and more elaborate. On

the islands of Saipan, Tinian, and Guam

in the Marianas, for example, approximately 2,831,000 tons of material came

in under the garrison shipping procedure in 32 echelons in the year begin29

 (1) Ibid. (2) See Ltr, CINCPAC/CINCPOA to

Distr List, 26 Jun 44, sub: Advance Base Logistic

Policy—Revision of, CINCPOA Ser 02775, and other

CINCPAC/CINCPOA directives amending this advance base plan in folder 1-a-1 Jt Sup Prog, ASF

Plng Div. (3) AFMIDPAC History, pp. 1054-1132. (4)

Memo, Col Morrill W. Marston, G-4, USAFICPA,

for Gen Richardson, 11 Sep 43, sub: Notes on

CINCPAC Conf . . . , OPD 384 PTO, Case 57. (5)

Larson and Bykofsky, The Transportation Corps:

Operations Overseas, pp.513-16. (6) Interview, Bykofsky with Gen Leavey, 30 Oct 50. (7) Ltr, Nichols to

Leavey, 5 Feb 47.

30

 (1) Ballantine, U.S. Naval Logistics in the Second

World War, pp. 233-37. (2) Larson and Bykofsky,

The Transportation Corps: Operations Overseas, ch.

X. (3) Notes prepared by Col. David H. Blakelock

for Lecture, Joint Overseas Transportation Problems

Which Confronted CINCPOA, 27 Jan 44, OCT HB

files. (4) AFMIDPAC History, pp. 1083-89.
JOINT LOGISTICS IN THE PACIFIC THEATERS 451

ning June 1944, about 57 percent of the

total supplies shipped to that area.31 At

first the system applied only to outward

movements from Hawaii, but when direct shipments from the west coast to

forward bases began in early 1944 it was

extended to include them, and still later

to those originating in the South and

Southwest Pacific.

The echeloning system regulated the

flow of shipping better than it did the

flow of supplies because, as the Army had

learned by bitter experience in North

Africa, any automatic supply system involved the dangers of waste and unbalanced stocks. One Army Transportation

Corps officer, commenting after the war,

thought J-4's loading plans "far too elaborate, far too detailed, and far too generous."32

 The system was, without doubt,

better geared to the Navy's method of

doing business than to the Army's, for,

as pointed out earlier, the Navy preferred to rely on anticipation of need by

the various supply bureaus at west coast

and Hawaiian ports rather than on theater requisitions. The POA procedure

for advance bases was typical of the

whole Navy supply system, and if POA

procedures involved waste of materials it

was certainly in part because the Navy

never, during World War II, applied the

same critical standards of economy to

Pacific requirements that the Army felt

compelled to do because of the competition of Atlantic theaters and the limitation on over-all national resources.

The POA echeloning procedure involved waste in some respects, but it

promoted economy in others. If efficient

use of shipping may be judged by the

relative absence of congestion and of

long turnarounds, then that use in the

Central Pacific was among the most efficient of all American theaters of World

War II. There was also a clear economy

in the use of material when loading plans

for both services had to be determined

in advance, for in advance determination

a great deal of the customary duplication

in Army and Navy requirements could

be eliminated and joint loading arranged. The garrison shipping procedure

was therefore of fundamental import in

producing something resembling a unified supply line in the absence of any

genuine unification of Army and Navy

logistical organizations. It also provided,

as the Okinawa operation in 1945 was to

demonstrate, perhaps the most feasible

means of mounting and supporting an

assault from many scattered points. Even

before that time SWPA had adopted one

of the principal features of the systemblock loading of ships for a particular

destination in accordance with a prearranged plan.33

The garrison shipping procedure applied only to operational requirements

of forces forward of Hawaii, and not to

routine maintenance shipments either to

Hawaii or to other rear bases as the tide

of battle moved forward. Maintenance

shipments often began to arrive at any

particular base before garrison shipments 31

 Ballantine, U.S. Naval Logistics in the Second

World War, p. 235. 32

 (1) Ltr, Col Richard D. Meyer to C. C. Wardlow,

21 Jul 49, OCT HB folder A-N Jt Logistics. (2)

Colonel Blakelock commented also that the system

"required use of the crystal ball by J-4 and usually

resulted in scheduling more supplies than were actually required," in Notes for Lecture, 27 Jan 44.

33

 (1) For the complicated arrangements for mounting the Okinawa operation, see Roy E. Appleman,

James M. Burns, Russell A. Gugeler, and John

Stevens, Okinawa: The Last Battle, UNITED

STATES ARMY IN WORLD WAR II (Washington,

1948), pp. 36-43. (2) On block loading see below,

Chapter XX.
452 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

ended, just as garrison shipments began

before the assault phase had ended.

CINCPOA control extended to maintenance shipments to forward areas such

as the Marshalls and Gilberts but not to

shipments from the mainland into Hawaii and the Line Islands for the Army

or for the civilian economy; requirements for these purposes were calculated

separately by General Richardson and

shipping allocations made to the Army

by the JMTC to meet them. Similarly,

after the South Pacific reverted to rear

area status in mid-1944, shipping for support of troops in bases there was allocated directly to the Army and controlled by it. Also, whereas the Navy

operated all shipping to forward areas,

the Army procured and operated coastal

and interisland shipping that served its

garrisons in the Hawaiian group and the

outlying islands such as Christmas, Fanning, and Canton; this shipping was also

procured through Army, not CINCPOA,

channels.34

This system was not satisfactory to

either Nimitz or Richardson, though for

different reasons. Nimitz thought control

over shipping too divided to permit the

"degree of flexibility necessary in the

coordination and utilization of dry cargo

shipping required for the heavily increased scope of operations in POA."35

Richardson, on the other hand, felt his

lack of control over shipping to support

the sizable units of Army troops at forward bases left him without the necessary

authority or means to fulfill his mission.

In late October 1944 Nimitz sent to

Washington a proposal that he be assigned control over all dry cargo shipping within POA, his staff to determine

requirements, furnish all information to

the JCS on which allocations would be

based, and suballocate shipping to Army,

Navy, and subarea commanders in accordance with the requirements of the

over-all military situation. General Richardson, then in Washington, called this

a "bold move on the part of the Navy to

obtain complete control of all dry cargo

shipping in POA," and objected violently to further encroachments on his

authority.36

In view of their general support of centralized control of shipping in all theaters, it was hard for the ASF chiefs to

give Richardson much support. A compromise of a sort was reached and approved by the JCS in December that

met most of Nimitz' desires as to the

allocation system but left the Army free

to present its shipping requirements directly to the JMTC through the Office

of the Chief of Transportation, ASF.

Nimitz was given responsibility for determining all operational requirements

for both dry cargo and refrigerator shipping including retentions, for allocations

within POA to subordinate elements,

and for furnishing information to the

ASF, the Naval Transportation Service,

and the west coast port authorities on

which all shipping requirements, including those for maintenance, were to be

based. But the Office Chief of Transportation, ASF, was to be responsible for

actual presentation of nonoperational re34

 (1) Larson and Bykofsky, The Transportation

Corps: Operations Overseas, p. 514. (2) Ballantine,

U.S. Naval Logistics in the Second World War, p. 236.

(3) Blakelock, Notes for Lecture, 27 Jan 44. 35

 Ltr, CinC U.S. Pacific Fleet and CINCPOA, to

COMINCH and CNO, 20 Oct 44, sub: Centralization

of Control of Dry Cargo Shpg in POA, folder 10a

Shpg Cen Pac, ASF Plng Div.

36

 (1) Ibid. (2) Quote from Memo, Lutes for Wood,

31 Oct 44, sub: Control of Cargo Shpg in POA, folder

10a Shpg Cen Pac, ASF Plng Div.
JOINT LOGISTICS IN THE PACIFIC THEATERS 453

quirements for Army shipping to the

JMTC, including requirements for the

Hawaiian civilian economy and other

nonmilitary purposes; the Naval Transportation Service was to have similar

responsibility for the Navy's nonoperational requirements. The JMTC would

make allocations in bulk to CINCPOA

based on the requirements stated by

all these sources; the extent to which

CINCPOA would be bound to follow

the statements of requirements in making final allocations was not clearly

stated, the only provision being that

deficits against requirements should be

applied to maintenance shipments, not

to operational ones. For accounting purposes ships for individual voyages were

to be assigned to the Army or to the

Navy as before. The net effect was a

definite strengthening of Nimitz' control over all shipping in POA, but his

control was still left somewhat less positive than the POA commander had proposed.37

Neither before nor after the establishment of CINCPOA control over all cargo

shipping to POA, was there any complete

joint cargo priority list covering the entire area. True, J-4 of the CINCPOA

staff established priorities on the operational requirements and on maintenance

shipments to forward areas, but to a great

extent fleet supply and Army supply in

Hawaii continued separate to the end.

Moreover, though J-4 determined priorities on operational requirements, it did

not itself requisition supplies from the

United States. These requisitions continued to flow through the separate channels of the two services, the Army including those supplies it was to furnish

the Navy in its calculations and the Navy

those it was to provide the Army.38

The joint logistical system in the Pacific, then, was far from simple, or even

uniform for all theaters. It might best

be described as a congeries of local arrangements, varying in nature and effectiveness, for furnishing supplies and personnel and for transporting them to the

points where needed scattered throughout the Pacific theaters, for reconciling

the conflicting demands of theaters,

areas, and bases, and for providing at

least an element of cohesiveness to the

widely differing supply systems of the

Army and Navy. If the committees of the

JCS and the supply authorities of the

War and Navy Departments presided

over the whole process, they did not,

and could not, dictate the exact form

the Pacific logistical system would take.

37

 (1) JCS 762/9, 30 Nov 44, memo, COMINCH and

CNO, title: Procedure for Allocation and Control of

Dry Cargo Shpg in POA. (2) Memo, Somervell for

CofS, 11 Dec 44, sub: Procedures for Allocation and

Control of Cargo Shpg in POA, ABC Pac (6 Sep 43),

Sec 1-B. (3) JMT 50/18, 19 Dec 44, title: Procedures

Relating to the Allocation and Control of Cargo

Shpg in POA. (4) JCS Memo of Policy No. 8, 26 Dec

44, title as in (3).

38

 This required the establishment of a principle

of nonreimbursement between services for supplies

so furnished. See: (1) WD Memo W-35-14-43, 10 Jun

43, title: Nonreimbursement Policy in Respect to

Authorized Transfer of Material, Equipment Supplies and Services between Army and Navy Components Outside Continental U.S. (2) TAG Ltr to Distr

List, 7 Jan 44, sub: Transfer of Army Supplies and

Equipment to Navy in Overseas Theaters; Ltr, CNO

to Distr List, 31 Jan 44, sub: Transfer of Navy Supplies . . . . (3) Ltr, CINCPOA to CG, USAFICPA

et al., 12 May 44, sub: Interchange Without Reimbursement of Material . . . in CPA. Last two in OPD

400 Hawaii, Sec 2, Case 36. For accounts of transfers

in POA rendered each month see monthly letters,

CINCPOA to CofS and CNO, sub: Exchange of

Materials, Services and Supplies Without Reimbursement between A and N, in folder 12a Genl CPA, and

OPD 400 Hawaii, ASF Plng Div Theater files.
454 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

The most they could do was to lay down

general plans for guidance, such as the

Basic Logistical Plan of March 1943, and

determine priorities when critical resources were involved. Perhaps the system's greatest strengths were in its flexibility and its adaptability to peculiar

conditions, to personalities, and to

changes in operational plans. Any examination of the system shows, as might

well be expected from the nature of the

Pacific theaters, that its central feature

was the control exercised over shipping

at the several echelons of command.

Through control of shipping the JCS

committees exercised priority control

over supply shipments to the Pacific theaters, and theater commanders in their

turn controlled the movement of those

supplies in support of operations and

provided for the co-ordination between

Army and Navy that could not be

achieved in the actual operation of supply lines.
CHAPTER XIX

Shipping in the Pacific War

The demand for ocean-going shipping

in the Pacific was, as has already been

noted, almost insatiable. It was compounded of dual requirements for transporting personnel and supplies from the

United States and for local theater fleets

for transport within and between theaters. Primitive facilities at the end of

the line caused long delays in ship turnarounds that increased requirements for

both purposes. The facilities—or lack of

them—also created a great temptation to

use ocean-going ships for floating storage. Putting ships to this use had a certain rationale in the Pacific, but it was

expensive of shipping and ran contrary

to the philosophy under which the whole

great Allied pool of merchant shipping

was operated in World War II.

Ships retained for use in local fleets

or delayed in their return to the Pacific

coast inevitably reduced the number

available for transpacific voyages. These

internal theater demands made Pacific

requirements difficult to predict; after

1943, they were largely responsible for

the major shipping crises in the Pacificcrises that several times threatened to

interfere with the execution of strategic

designs.

The problem of the local fleet was always more acute in MacArthur's theater

than in Nimitz'. Nimitz had at his disposal most of the combat loaders and

auxiliary vessels of the Pacific Fleet,

while MacArthur had to rely on a miscellaneous collection of merchantmen.

For this reason, MacArthur found it necessary to retain WSA ships in his theater almost from the start. But Nimitz'

demands for supplementary merchant

shipping also played their part in producing the shipping crises of 1943-44.

Ship losses to submarine action were

practically nonexistent in the Pacific, so

that new construction normally represented a net gain to the Pacific pool.

Moreover, there was little competition

from commercial or lend-lease services

except for the Soviet Pacific program,

which absorbed approximately ninety

cargo vessels and tankers during the war.

These vessels were formally transferred

to the Soviet flag and thus never formed

part of the pool available for military

service.1 A few vessels were absorbed in

transporting lend-lease supplies to Australia and New Zealand and in commercial service to the west coast of South

America, but their numbers were never

sufficient to affect the situation appreciably. If there was little competition,

neither were there any commercial

or lend-lease services to draw from to

meet military shortages, leaving the Atlantic pool as the only source from

which emergency demands could be met.

1

 See below, ch. XXVII.
456 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

Fortunately, surpluses turned up in

the Atlantic shipping pool at certain

critical junctures, and diversions from

that pool helped to solve a shipping crisis

in the Pacific in late 1943 and another

one in early summer 1944. By fall 1944,

in the face of a new and more formidable

crisis, it appeared once more as though

the Atlantic pool would have to be

tapped to meet a deficit that had become,

in the language of the shipping authorities, "unmanageable."

In each recurrent crisis, the JCS and

JMTC sought to tighten the reins of

control over the use of transpacific shipping by theater commanders for local

purposes. Their efforts were never completely successful, nor could the JMTC

determine any effective strategic priorities between theaters as long as the advance was authorized along two axes on

what amounted to equal priority. The

allocation of merchant shipping was carried out, much like the determination

of strategy, largely on an ad hoc basis.

Each crisis was met as it occurred, and

long-term calculations of shipping requirements proved ephemeral. No system for definitely controlling theater retentions was established until June 1944,

and no really effective pressure was exerted to prevent theater commanders

from using ships as floating warehouses

until the very end of that year.

The prosecution of the advance along

two lines in the Pacific was expensive in

terms of cargo and personnel shipping,

for these resources could not be used, as

were parts of the Pacific Fleet and its

amphibious adjuncts, alternately in one

theater and then in the other. The Pacific pool was constantly augmented during 1943 and 1944 by new construction

and transfers from the Atlantic, and ships

diverted usually stayed in the Pacific

service. But, grow as it might, the demand for ships grew even faster as the

size of forces to be maintained, the magnitude of operations, the numbers of

bases, and their distance from the United

States also increased.

The Crisis of Fall 1943

The balance between requirements

for merchant shipping in the Pacific and

American ability to meet them swung

back and forth throughout 1943 and

1944. Of the two principal types, it

was generally true that personnel shipping caused the greatest difficulties during 1943 and cargo shipping during

1944. After the acute crisis of fall 1942,2

the cargo shipping situation eased during the first half of 1943, certainly in part

because scheduled personnel shipments

fell far in arrears cutting down on the

number of troops to be supported in far

Pacific areas. The cumulative deficit in

troop shipments to the South and Southwest Pacific had mounted to 55,900

places by August, and hopes that it could

be eased during the fall were dashed

when nine transports had to be removed

from the transpacific run for use in the

Gilberts-Marshalls invasion.3

Meanwhile, a shortage of cargo shipping had begun to develop. In May,

when there appeared to be a surplus of

cargo shipping on the west coast, CBI

shipments were shifted from Charleston

to Los Angeles, imposing an additional

drain on the Pacific pool. Shortly thereafter some west coast shipyards began

the conversion from production of Lib2

 See Leighton and Coakley, Global Logistics,

1940-43, pp. 395-98. 3

 See above, ch. XVI.
SHIPPING IN THE PACIFIC WAR 457

ertys to that of Victorys and output was

cut back drastically while the yards retooled. Also, the program for converting

cargo ships to transports and tankers took

some ships out of the pool. Moreover,

transfers to the Soviet flag were particularly heavy during the first six months

of 1943.4

In this situation, the demands of the

Central Pacific offensive combined with

the need to retain ships in SWPA to supplement the local fleet to produce a

shipping crisis. The calculations of the

JCS after QUADRANT, based on the premise that Central Pacific operational requirements could be met by temporarily

cutting back personnel (and consequently cargo) shipments to the South and

Southwest Pacific, allowed only a narrow margin of error. Even as the planners calculated, the Ship Operations

Committee at San Francisco was noting

a mounting deficit of both types in prospect for the ensuing months. The cargo

shipping situation seemed the less serious of the two only because the committee reasoned that if the troops could

not be shipped then their impedimenta

would necessarily stay in the United

States. At about the same time, Lewis

Douglas wrote Admiral Land from Quebec in a pessimistic vein:

our position in the Pacific for September,

the final quarter of this year and the first

quarter of the next is extremely tight, almost

dangerously so. Moreover, the operations

that may commence in that theater may

require more than is at present estimated. Against this we should have some unpublished reserve. This we do not have; indeed, we have a deficit against the presently calculated requirements.5

Douglas proved to be a good prophet.

Both the Army and the Navy had to increase their requirements for cargo sailings to the Central Pacific—the Army,

for instance, from 14 to 27 for the month

of November. In the meantime, prospects

that even the Quebec schedule could be

met had been considerably diminished

by an increase in operational requirements in MacArthur's theater and by the

failure of ships to return from voyages

to SWPA on schedule.6

Since mid-1942 MacArthur had been

sporadically holding WSA ships in his

theater for use in transporting troops

and supplies between Australian ports

and from Australia to New Guinea.

Though WSA protested continually, he

really had little alternative if he was to

continue his offensive—the few combat

loaders he had and the permanent local

fleet at his disposal were totally inadequate for his needs. The permanent local fleet was made up mostly of small

vessels ranging from 2,000 to 5,000 tons,

Dutch vessels and Lake steamers sent

from the United States, though it also

included a few Libertys on permanent

assignment to the Army. It was growing

and would continue to do so, but never

fast enough to keep pace with the theater's needs. At the time of the Quebec

Conference SWPA was retaining 21

transpacific Libertys. If the practice

were to continue, it clearly had to be

4

 (1) Memo, Chief, Ocean Traffic Br, Water Div,

OCT, for Control Div, OCT, 4 Dec 43, sub: Action

Required by "Survey of Supply of Pacific Theaters,"

OCT HB File Pac Areas. (2) See above, ch. X. (3) On

transfers to the Soviet flag see Leighton and Coakley,

Global Logistics, 1940-43, pages 564, 586, 591.

5

 (1) Ltr, Douglas to Land, 22 Aug 43, WSA Conway

File Quebec (1943). (2) Min, Joint A-N-WSA Ship

Opns Com, San Francisco, 6 Aug 43. (3) On the JCS

decision, see above, Chapter XVI. 6

 Ltr, Ralph Keating, WSA to Adm Smith, Chief,

NTS, and Gen Wylie, ACofT, 8 Oct 43, folder Shpg

1943—SWPA, OCT HB Overseas Comd File.
458 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

regularized, and MacArthur took the

first step in that direction in mid-August.

Pointing to the need for moving 75,000

additional troops with their supplies

from Australia to New Guinea to complete the CARTWHEEL operation, he

asked the War Department that he be

permitted to retain the 21 Libertys he

already had and to increase this number

to 71 by 15 October. He also asked for

10 freighter transports of an average

1,500-2,500 capacity, and reiterated that

he would need all the accretions to his

permanent fleet that had been promised.

"It is coming to be evident," said MacArthur,

that sustained effort may be impossible in

this theater because of lack of mobility

which effectively prevents taking advantage

of hostile weaknesses developed or successes

gained. Each successive operation will be

delayed for purposes of concentration, thus

allowing the Japanese to reconsolidate

ahead of our offensive effort. This results

from lack of shipping. If any form of limited

offensive is to be continued, heavier concen- trations must be on hand closer to the com- bat zone and ships must be on hand to carry

these concentrations to forward staging

areas and maintain them there. Because of

the inadequacies of port facilities in the

forward areas and the considerable period of

time required to build them, reserves of sup- plies, equipment and personnel must be

held afloat, immediately available to follow

our offensive efforts.7

Despite the imminent shortage of

transpacific shipping, ASF and OPD

went as far as they could to meet MacArthur's requests. The theater was informed that it could build its retention

level to the equivalent of 71 Libertys

if certain impending additions to the

permanent local fleet were counted, other cargo ships arriving in SWPA returned expeditiously, and the prospect

of further cutbacks in sailings from the

United States accepted. In the more critical field of passenger ships, they could

promise MacArthur only four of a relatively undesirable type and of considerably less than the required capacity.

MacArthur accepted the solution, except

for the part pertaining to further reductions in sailings to his theater, which he

insisted would result in "operational

failure."8

The promised quick turnaround of

ships in SWPA failed to materialize, and

for some time afterward accounting of

the number of retentions remained in

a muddle. There seems to have been

some confusion in Washington circles

as to the distinction between vessels permanently allocated to the SWPA local

fleet and temporary retentions, and the

War Department lacked information on

departures from SWPA ports. By midOctober, the ASF was contending that

MacArthur had his quota of 71 Libertys, while MacArthur insisted he was

still well below it.9 In any event, the

effect on the availability of shipping on

the west coast was the same, and the

failure of ships to return from SWPA,

together with the increased demand for

the Central Pacific, compounded an already existing deficit. The deficit was

7

 (1) Msg, MacArthur to CG ASF, CM-IN 10721,

14 Aug 43. (2) Masterson, Transportation in SWPA,

pages 319-76, contains a full discussion of MacArthur's local fleet.

8

 (1) Msg C-4907, MacArthur to WAR, 19 Aug 43,

CM-IN 14061. (2) Msg 74-WAR-75-W-36, Somervel

to MacArthur, 18 Aug 43, folder Australia Mar 1942-

Aug 1944, OCT HB Wylie File. (3) Msg 57, Hull to

Handy and Somervell, QUADRANT-KKAD, 15 Aug 43,

OPD Exec 5, Item 11. 9

 (1) Exchange of msgs between Somervell and

MacArthur, 19 Oct-31 Nov 43, folder Australia

March 1942-August 1944, OCT HB Wylie File.

(2) Masterson, Transportation in SWPA, pp. 319-76.
SHIPPING IN THE PACIFIC WAR 459

further accentuated by increased Army

requirements for shipments to the CBI

as a result of the QUADRANT plan for

acceleration of the development of the

line of communications there.10

The result was an extremely muddled situation. By mid-September troop

movements to the Central Pacific were

running 45 days behind schedule and,

though cargo shipping was sufficiently

plentiful to synchronize movements to

that area with troop movements, there

was, in the aggregate, a shortage of both

types. At the same time, cargo for the

South and Southwest Pacific piled up

in ports and at holding and reconsignment points, and long-standing requisitions went unhonored. The cutback in

shipping schedules for SWPA in particular had not been synchronized with

the requisitioning of supplies, causing

confusion that was not cleared up for

some months.11 The supplies and equipment projected for the CBI, the lowest

priority theater, also began to pile up.

The need for the "unpublished reserve"

that Douglas had stipulated was more

than evident.

Fortunately, an unpublished reserve

did develop in the Atlantic. "We are

short of tonnage on the Pacific Coast

and long on the Atlantic Coast," a WSA

official noted on 8 October.12 But utilizing the Atlantic surplus was not so

simple a matter as it at first might seem.

WSA first proposed to move CBI shipments back to the east coast but the

Army Transportation Corps protested

that this would necessitate reversing an

already established flow of troops and

equipment through staging areas and depots. The ultimate decision was to use

east coast facilities for shipping bulk

loads of subsistence, construction supplies, and other special project materials

that did not have to accompany troops,

not only to the CBI but also to the Pacific theaters. Besides a number of troop

transports, 63 cargo ships sailed from

east and Gulf coast ports to Pacific and

Far East destinations in October, November and December 1943, and in early

January 1944. Some of the freighters

were adapted to carry small numbers of

troops. Nearly all the ships returned to

the Pacific coast at the end of their

voyages to join the Pacific pool.13

The crisis was thus resolved. The

needs for the build-up for the Gilberts

and Marshalls were met, the shipments

for the CBI line of communications

went forward as planned, and even the

deficits for the Southwest Pacific did not

prove as serious as anticipated. By 22

December the San Francisco Committee

could report that there were more cargo

vessels on the Pacific coast than were

needed to meet military demands. The

converted freighters becoming available

after 1 January 1944 were expected to

overcome quickly the deficit in troop

movements to the South and Southwest Pacific. Meanwhile, at the SEXTANT Conference the planners boosted

Pacific allocations for 1944 well over

10

 See below, ch. XXI. 11

 For the effects of this situation on the Pacific

supply situation see below, Chapter XX. 12

 (1) Ltr, Keating to Smith and Wylie, 8 Oct 43.

(2) See also above, ch. IX.

13

 (1) Min, Joint A-N-WSA Ship Opns Com, San

Francisco, and Vessel Allocation and Cargo Subcom,

Sep-Dec 43. (2) Memo, Chief Ocean Traffic Br, for

Control Div, OCT, 4 Dec 43. (3) Memo, Col Magruder, Dir Opns ASF, for Gen Lutes, 3 Nov 43,

sub: Cargo Movement to Pacific Areas, folder 10a

Shpg Cen Pac, ASF Plng Div. (4) Memo for Diary,

Col Vissering, OCT, 9 Oct 43, sub: Policy Covering

Shipments from the East Coast, folder Pac Areas,

OCT HB.
460 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

the quantities assigned at QUADRANT,

taking advantage of a much improved

shipping situation to provide for the

needs of an accelerated advance.14

Shipping Congestion in SWPA

With the advent of the new year, 1944,

the critical area shifted from personnel

to cargo shipping. The cargo shipping

situation also seemed good in early 1944

but one shadow darkened the pictureexcessive retentions and slow turnaround

in the Southwest Pacific. To obtain

more adequate information on the utilization of shipping in SWPA, in November 1943 the War Department instituted a system of semimonthly reports

on retentions, which, although useful,

did not clear up misunderstandings because the definition of "retentions" was

still obscure. It is clear, nevertheless,

that by early 1944 SWPA retentions had

reached the prescribed total of 71 Libertys by any accounting, and they were still

mounting. The whole matter of retentions was by this time becoming obscured by ship congestion at New Guinea

ports where serious delays in ship turnarounds exerted an even more significant

influence in cutting down on the number of returners to the Pacific coast.

The problem of ship congestion and

slow turnaround in the far Pacific theaters was of course no new phenomenon;

it did not disappear when the situation

at Noumea cleared up in fall of 1942,

but continued sporadically in both the

South and Southwest Pacific throughout

1943 — an inevitable concomitant, it

seemed, of rapid projection of operations into areas having no developed

port facilities. In the South Pacific the

alleviation of the situation at Nouméa

was followed by increasing troubles at

Espíritu Santo and Guadalcanal during

the spring months of 1943. The lesson

of Noumea was taken to heart in the

South Pacific, nevertheless, and immediate steps were taken when congestion

appeared further forward to temporarily

cut back shipments into those areas. For

instance, in April General Breene instituted an embargo on further shipments

into Guadalcanal, the main forward

base for the New Georgia assault, until

most of the ships already in the harbor

had been unloaded. Again in November

1943 during the Bougainville campaign,

when incoming shipments outran discharge capacity at Guadalcanal, many

ships were diverted to the Russell Islands where development of new port

and transshipment facilities was under

way. Even then a severe tropical storm

on Guadalcanal in January so damaged

docks and piers that congestion appeared

anew at this point, coinciding with its

development in more serious proportions in New Guinea.15

It does not appear that SWPA authorities properly appreciated the lessons

of Noumea, Espíritu Santo, and Guadalcanal. The main ports in use on the

New Guinea coast by fall 1943 were

Port Moresby on the southern coast,

Milne Bay on the eastern tip, Oro Bay

some 200 miles further west, and Lae,

further along but more an unsheltered

beach than a port. In most of the

operations of late 1943 and early 1944,

Milne Bay was the key point, used as the

main advance port for supporting op- 14

 (1) See above, Chapter XII, for SEXTANT schedules. (2) Min, Vessel Allocation and Cargo Subcom,

San Francisco Opns Com, 22 Dec 43.

15

 Bykofsky and Larson, The Transportation

Corps: Operations Overseas, pp. 501-06.
SHIPPING IN THE PACIFIC WAR 461

erations on the Huon Peninsula and

the Cape Gloucester area, pending the

development of Finschhafen. To avoid

uneconomical transshipment from Australia, USASOS instituted in mid-1943

the policy of direct shipments from

the United States into Milne Bay. By

September 1943 Frazier Bailey of WSA

thought he saw "a repetition of what

occurred at Noumea" shaping up at

Milne Bay as shipping poured into a

port area as yet not ready to handle

large tonnages.16 By January 1944 his

predictions had been borne out—by at

least one count 140 vessels were in the

harbor at one time, some of them having been there for more than a month.

WSA, the San Francisco Committee, and

the War Department, all showed signs

of alarm as delayed turnarounds produced a smaller number of "returners"

to the Pacific coast.

Admonitions to MacArthur poured

out from the War Department thick

and fast during January and February,

highlighted by a message from General

Marshall on 17 February advising the

SWPA commander to review all manifests of ships in the harbor to see what

could be diverted to other ports and

to defer all shipments of material from

the west coast to Milne Bay that were

not urgently needed. Explanations from

the theater flowed back just as thick and

fast. Milne Bay had been used as a regulating point for shipments to all forward points in the theater and much of

the shipping held there was not intended for immediate discharge. SWPA authorities tended to view the congestion

as an inevitable result of the shift from

Australia to New Guinea as the receiving point for supplies from the United

States. By the time Marshall's cable was

received they were able to point to a

much improved situation as ports further forward, particularly Finschhafen,

opened up to receive the shipping held

at Milne Bay, and port operations at

Milne Bay itself were vastly improved

by development of facilities and arrival

of more service troops. By the end of

March Marshall was congratulating MacArthur on his success in clearing up the

situation, citing it as an "outstanding

example of vigorous and effective action

in the solution of a difficult problem."17

The problem was, nevertheless, not

entirely solved, as sporadic congestion

continued both at Milne Bay and in

forward areas such as Finschhafen, and

later at Hollandia.18 The Leyte operation was to prove that SWPA had not

yet learned the lesson of close scheduling of shipments to forward areas but

evidently preferred to take the risk of

tying up shipping in order to insure

adequate supply. And from mid-1943

onward the long delays in the return of

ships from the Southwest Pacific, either

because of failure to unload rapidly or

because of retention in the theater for

operational purposes, seriously affected

the entire Pacific shipping situation. To

a lesser degree the same held true of the

16

 (1) Ltr, Bailey to Douglas, 15 Sep 43, folder

SWPac, WSA Douglas File. (2) Masterson, Transportation in SWPA, pp. 433-51.

17

 (1) Msg WAR 15402, Marshall to MacArthur,

28 Mar 44. (2) Messages exchanged between AGWAR

and SWPA in period 21 Jan-28 Mar 44, and other

correspondence in OCT 565.2 SWPA 1944. (3) Min,

Joint A-N-WSA Ship Opns Com, San Francisco, 4,

11, 18, 25 Feb, 17 Mar 44. (4) Msg 313, Douglas to

Brown, WSA, Sydney, 18 Feb 44, folder Australia,

WSA Douglas File. (5) Douglas Diary, 4 Mar 44,

Record of Telephone Conversation with Brig Gen

John M. Franklin, folder SWPac, WSA Douglas

File. (6) Masterson, Transportation in SWPA, p. 781. 18

 Masterson, Transportation in SWPA, p. 782.
462 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

South Pacific up through the spring of

1944, but cancellation of the Kavieng

operation and passage of that area to an

inactive status brought an end to the

acute phase. In the Central Pacific the

problem of retentions, congestion, and

slow turnaround never reached such

alarming proportions, but delays did occur at Eniwetok, Saipan, Guam, and other points. And almost every month naval

requirements for shipping to and within

this theater expanded.

The Cargo Shipping Shortage

of Mid-1944

Slow turnaround, combined with increased demand for operational shipping

attendant on the speed-up in Pacific

operations in early 1944, made the favorable shipping situation on the west coast

at the turn of the year short lived. On

16 February the San Francisco Committee foresaw a shortage of vessels for

March loading possibly as high as 25

to 30 ships "due in part to a decrease in

the number of new deliveries, but for

the most part . . . the result of everincreasing . . . retentions and greater

length of retentions of vessels in the

South and Southwest Pacific areas."19

The committee also noted that the increasing number of troop ships becoming available from conversions would require a proportional increase in the

number of freighters to operate with

them, and it foresaw an even more serious shortage of cargo ships in April and

the ensuing months unless remedial

steps were taken.

With the decisions in early 1944 to

accelerate the advance in both main

Pacific theaters, the shortage soon took

on crisis proportions. A request from

Nimitz for shipping to supplement the

combat loaders and auxiliaries of the

Pacific Fleet in the Marianas operation

arrived in early March, just about the

time that operational shipping requirements for OVERLORD and ANVIL were

mounting. CINCPOA asked for 18 AK's

and for 2 AP's of the Liberty type capable of carrying 1,100 troops each for

April; 18 AK's and 17 AP's capable of

carrying 1,600 troops each for May; and

an additional 17 AK's for June. On 14

March Admiral King recommended to

the JCS that these ships be provided

substantially as requested.20

It was soon obvious that meeting

King's and Nimitz' request would necessarily involve some curtailment of other

Pacific services. On 25 March WSA informed the JCS that Pacific requirements from April onward could not be

met and presented a tabulation showing

deficits of 23 cargo sailings in April,

28 in May, 47 in June, and 48 in July.

With the large military commitments in

the Atlantic incident to mounting OVERLORD any considerable aid from that

quarter seemed out of the question. The

west coast program for construction of

combat loaders, WSA pointed out, would

cut heavily into new deliveries of merchant ships in coming months. "Should

the heavy tonnage of ships held awaiting discharge in forward areas (approximately 1,360,000 dead-weight tons as

of March 1, 1944) be promptly released," Land and Douglas pointedly

reminded the military leaders, "the cumulative deficiency might be substantially

reduced but not, we believe, eliminat19

 Min, Vessel Allocation and Cargo Subcom, Joint

Ship Opns Com, San Francisco, 16 Feb 44, Item 3.

20

 JCS 762, 14 Mar 44, memo, COMINCH and

CNO, title: Amended Shpg Reqmts for Pacific Opns.
SHIPPING IN THE PACIFIC WAR 463

A LIBERTY SHIP UNLOADING AT A DOCK IN ORO BAY, NEW GUINEA, while other

vessels wait their turn.

ed."21 The JMTC, studying the problem,

came up with somewhat different figures

but approximately the same conclusions.

They found there would be little problem in furnishing the necessary troopships for Nimitz, but that cargo shipping

could only be supplied by drastic curtailment in programs not directly related to military operations. They would

limit conversions for the present to minor alterations that required minimum

time out of service, impress on Pacific

commanders the necessity of returning

vessels as rapidly as possible, and nudge

the Maritime Commission on the delays

in ship construction. Nevertheless, they

estimated deficits of 37 sailings in May,

54 in June, and 26 in July, and recommended that the War and Navy Departments review their prospective shipments to see what items could be postponed. The JMTC did not recommend

any positive theater priorities as a basis

for apportioning the deficit; it simply

adopted the principle that needs for major operations should, when reduced to

minimum essentials, be given an inviolate priority, while any reduction should

be applied against routine maintenance

requirements for all Pacific theaters.22

While the JMTC proposals were

21

 Memo, Land and Douglas for JCS, 25 Mar 44,

folder JCS 1944, Box 122894, WSA Conway File.

22

 (1) Min, 65th mtg JMTC, 27 Mar 44, Item 1. (2)

JCS 762/1, 29 Mar 44, rpt by JMTC, title: Amended

Shpg Reqmts for Pacific Opns.
464 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

pending before the JCS, the ASF turned

to an evaluation of Army requirements

with a view to making desired reductions. General Gross queried MacArthur

on the possibility of reducing retentions,

by this time well above the approved

limit of 71 Libertys. MacArthur came

back with a request for an increase. He

pointed out that in the advance along

the New Guinea coast a large proportion of his supplies must be transshipped

from Australia—the bulk of the rations,

POL and some construction supplies for

American forces, and virtually all the

supplies for Australian troops—across approximately 2,200 miles of water to forward bases. He said he would need to

retain, besides his permanent fleet, 99

Libertys in April, 145 in May, 153 in

June, 148 in July, 146 in August, 161

in September, 149 in October and November, and 195 in December. Faced

with these estimates, General Marshall

asked that the JMTC reconsider the

Pacific shipping situation in order to

bring the increased requirements of both

Nimitz and MacArthur into their proper

relation. The JMTC could no more

question MacArthur's operational requirements than it could Nimitz'; they

therefore decided that any deficits must

be absorbed by outward sailings from

the United States. None would result in

April, it now appeared, but in May the

deficit was assessed at 56 sailings, at 85

in June, and 35 in July—about one-third

of scheduled Pacific sailings during those

months. "Only by a sterner approach to

the doctrine of bare necessities," reported the JMTC, "can cargo shipping support the contemplated operations in

both theaters."23 The committee suggested a conference of representatives of

all three Pacific areas on ways and means

of absorbing the deficits.

The Pacific Shipping Conference, held

18-25 April 1944, subjected the whole

situation to a searching review by Army,

Navy, WSA, and theater representatives.

All approaches were discussed — reduction of requirements, improved turnaround, reduction of retentions and diversions, and increased direct loading

on the west coast for forward areas—

but none of the suggestions elicited any

really positive response from theater representatives or pointed the way to any

real solution. Spokesmen for Nimitz and

MacArthur insisted that their requirements, both for retentions and outward

sailings, had already been reduced to a

minimum. The first suggestions from

WSA that some shipping might be available from the Atlantic were therefore

doubly welcome. The solution to the

Pacific shipping problem at last was

found when the final decision to cancel

a July invasion of southern France freed

something over 200 vessels for diversion

from the Atlantic to the Pacific during

the rest of 1944. With this prospective

windfall, the conferees were able to

draw up a shipping schedule that con23

 (1) JCS 762/2, 4 Apr 44, rpt by JMTC, title:

Amended Shpg Reqmts for Pacific Opns. (2) Memos,

Gen Wood, Dep Dir Plans and Opns, ASF, for Dirs

Supply and Plng Divs, ASF, 30 and 31 Mar 44, sub:

Amended Shpg Reqmts for Pacific Opns (JCS 762/1),

folder Shpg Conf, ASF Plng Div files. (3) Msg, WAR

14990, AGWAR to CINCSWPA, 28 Mar 45. (4) Msg,

C-10245, CG Rear Echelon, GHQ SWPA, to

AGWAR, 31 Mar 44, Incl B, JMT 50/2/D, 31

Mar 44, title: Amended Shpg Reqmts for Pacific

Opns. (5) OPD notes on JCS 762, 30 Mar 44.

(6) Memo, Lt Col Florence T. Newsome, Asst Secy

WDGS for Secy JCS, 1 Apr 44, sub: Amended Shpg

Reqmts for Pacific Opns. Last two in ABC 561

Pacific (6 Sep 43) Sec 1A. (7) Min, 156th mtg JCS,

2 Apr 44, Item 1. (8) Ltr, Gen Marshall to Adm

Land, 8 Apr 44, folder JMTC Papers Jan-Mar, Box

122894, WSA Conway File.
SHIPPING IN THE PACIFIC WAR 465

siderably reduced the previously estimated deficits in outward movements

from the United States while providing

the operational requirements of both

Nimitz and MacArthur in full. The deficits then amounted to only 9 sailings in

May, 26 in June, and 38 in July; by November, it appeared, there would actually be a surplus of cargo shipping in

the Pacific.24 (Table 32)

While the remaining deficit in the

Pacific was of far more manageable proportions, it still required apportionment

among the various theaters—something

the JMTC did not attempt to do. The

Joint Staff Planners tried to evaluate the

deficits in the light of strategic necessity, but found it difficult since they as

yet had no information on MacArthur's

specific plans for operations between

Hollandia and Mindanao. The ASF

Planning Division, meanwhile, looking

at the situation in its worst light, and,

assuming that the entire deficit would

have to be borne by the Army, concluded it could be absorbed by a temporary

reduction of reserve supply levels in all

Pacific theaters with serious but not crippling consequences. The JPS, however,

found new means of reducing the deficit

before making any final decisions on its

apportionment. MacArthur's unexpectedly rapid success at Hollandia in May

enabled him to reduce his retention requirements by 20 ships per month in

June, July, and August; the JPS also

found suspect 32 sailings set up for the

CBI for an air commando project. On

5 May they directed the JMTC to make

adjustments for these factors and then

to proceed with allocations to the Pacific

theaters for May, June, and July in accordance with the recommendations of

the shipping conference, with the proviso that the Marianas assault, the subsequent development of B-29 bases in

those islands, and MacArthur's reduced

retention requirements should have an

absolute first priority, with deficits to be

apportioned among all Pacific theaters,

including the CBI, against maintenance

tonnages. Theater commanders were instructed to set up priorities immediately

on cargo for their areas, dividing them

into (1) indispensable, (2) necessary,

and (3) desirable, as a guide for mainland shipping agencies. Commanders

were warned that retentions should be

kept under "continual examination"

and reduced when possible. MacArthur

was asked to forward detailed plans for

operations between Hollandia and Mindanao on the assumption that forces in

his area would not be increased beyond

temporary diversion of naval combat

ships and assault transport from POA

when feasible.25

Following these decisions, the JMTC

was able to reduce the deficit in May

24

 (1) Min, Pacific Shpg Conf in: 68th mtg, JMTC,

18 Apr 44; 69th mtg, 20 Apr 44; 70th mtg, 22 Apr

44; 72d mtg, 25 Apr 44. (2) JCS 762/3, 25 Apr 44,

rpt by JMTC, title: Shpg Reqmts and Availabilities

for Pacific Opns. (3) For papers on much of the

spadework of the conference, see folder Shpg Conf,

ASF Plng Div. (4) On the background of the shift

from the Atlantic see above, Chapter XIV.

25

 (1) JCS 762/4, 5 May 44, rpt by JPS, title: Shpg

Reqmts and Availabilities for Pacific Opns. (2)

Memos, Gen Roberts, OPD, for Rear Adm Donald

B. Duncan, 28 Apr 44; Memo, Gen Tansey for Chief

S&P Gp, OPD, 1 May 44, sub: Shpg for CBI. Both

in ABC 561 Pac (6 Sep 43) Sec 1A. (3) JPS 445/1,

2 May 43, title: Shpg Reqmts and Availabilities for

Pacific Opns. (4) Memo, Wood for Somervell, 1 May

44, sub: JCS 762/3 . . . . and related papers in ASF

Plng Div File Shpg Conf. (5) JMT 50/6, 4 May 44,

title: Shpg Reqmts and Availabilities for Pacific

Opns. (6) Ltr, Capt Conway, WSA, to Adm Smith,

Dir NTS, 3 May 44, Reading File—Apr-May 44, Box

122893, WSA Conway File.
466 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

TABLE 32—PACIFIC SHIPPING REQUIREMENTS AND AVAILABILITIES

MAY-DECEMBER 1944

(Estimates at Pacific Shipping Conference)

Source: JCS 762/3, 25 Apr 44, title: Shipping Requirements and Availabilities for Pacific Operations.
SHIPPING IN THE PACIFIC WAR 467

from 9 to 7, in June from 26 to 24, in

July from 38 to 25. These deficits were

then allocated proportionately to the

Pacific theaters, and the JCS sent the

resulting figures to the San Francisco

Committee as the ship allocations for

the months of May, June, and July.

The net effect of the shipping crisis,

therefore, was to produce neither any

curtailment of scheduled operations nor

any clear priorities on shipping among

the Pacific areas. At the same time it

did result in impressing on Pacific commanders the "critical shortage of ships"

and brought the JMTC, acting for the

JCS, much more actively into control

of Pacific allocations.26

A by-product of the conference was

the development of a system for classification and control of shipping in theater pools. Vessels available to theater

commanders were to be divided into

three groups: permanent local fleets, rotational retentions, and transport diversions. Vessels in the first category would

be assigned permanently to the theater

and were to be completely under theater

control. Rotational retentions, that is,

cargo ships held for temporary periods,

would be subject to control by the

JMTC, acting for the JCS. Requests

for rotational retentions in each area

for both Army and Navy would be consolidated by the theater commander and

presented to the JMTC for review. The

JMTC, with approval of the JCS, would

establish quotas for each theater for

definite periods of time. Theater commanders would be responsible for holding retentions within the quotas set for

them, though in case of "emergency military need" they might make arrangements for temporary additional retentions directly with WSA representatives

in their theater. When vessels were retained to haul supplies between areas

(as from the South Pacific to SWPA or

Central Pacific), they would be charged

to the theater of destination. Retention

pools were to be maintained by interchanging vessels arriving from the United States from time to time in such a

way as to permit all vessels to return

periodically to the United States. Transport diversions (covering vessels with

troop capacity over 500) would be controlled by the JMTC under a similar

system.27

The JMTC exercised its tighter control by periodic review and revision of

schedules arranged after the shipping

conference. In early June a final review

of June-July figures produced a further

reduction in deficits because of the shift

of 15 additional vessels from the Atlantic

to the Pacific. At the same time tentative allocations were set up for the period August-December and, to give the

San Francisco Committee more lead time

in designating individual ships, the system of making final allocations for two

months in advance rather than one was

adopted. The June figures still showed

deficits of 21 sailings for that month, 17

for July, 32 for August, 23 for September, and 7 for October to be apportioned

among the theaters, but there is little

evidence that these deficits actually ma- 26

 (1) JCS 762/5, 13 May 44, rpt by JMTC, title:

Shpg Reqmts and Availabilities for Pacific Opns.

(2) JMT 50/7/D, 8 May 44, same title. (3) The contingent requirement for the CBI air commando

project was retained.

27

 Min, Pacific Shpg Conf, app. C, approved by

JCS as app. G of JCS 762/7, 7 Jun 44, title: Shpg

Reqmts and Availabilities for Pacific Opns.
468 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

terialized during the summer months.28

By persuading the Navy to permit fast

ships to proceed unescorted on the Caribbean run, WSA was able to produce still

more ships from the Atlantic; then too,

both Army and Navy requirements

proved somewhat inflated. At least on

16 July Capt. Granville Conway of WSA

could write that the Pacific crisis had

"evaporated" after the "heroic measures" taken to meet it (partly, he

thought, because the Navy had overestimated its July requirements) and

during that month the Army found itself searching for cargo to fill all ships

presenting on the Pacific coast.29

The Deficits Become Unmanageable

The favorable situation was again

short lived. Very soon the pendulum

began to swing again as retentions and

congestion delayed turnarounds and a

new acceleration of Pacific operations

produced larger and larger requirements. By August a greater and more

serious deficit, rather than a surplus,

seemed in store for the fall. The first

disturbing element was an increased operational requirement from the Central

Pacific received on 28 July for some 17

additional sailings in August and 20 in

September for the Palaus operation.

The JMTC, following the principle that

operational requirements must get first

priority, had little choice but to meet

Nimitz' request and apportion the resulting deficit on maintenance shipments to all theaters. The deficit tended

to grow as ships going out to both

SWPA and POA took increasingly long

periods to return. For the time, the congestion problem seemed equally serious

in the two theaters, centering at Hawaii

and Eniwetok in the Central Pacific and

at Milne Bay and Finschhafen in the

southwest. A WSA analysis of Pacific

shipping at the end of August 1944

showed some 229 vessels en route and

301 in port in far Pacific areas. When

weighed against a total requirement of

182 outward sailings, a requirement

barely met, the heavy cost of long turnarounds is evident.30

 But the trouble

was only beginning in August. The midSeptember decision to again accelerate

28

 (1) JCS 762/7, 7 Jun 44, rpt by JMTC, title:

Shpg Reqmts and Availabilities for Pacific Opns.

(2) JCS 762/8, 21 Aug 44, rpt by JMTC, title: Notice

of Approved Allocation of Sailings to Pacific Areas.

(3) Decision Amending JCS 762/8, 4 Sep 44. (4)

Memo, Brig Gen Carl A. Russell for Gen Handy,

25 Aug 44, sub: JCS 762/8. . . . (5) Memo, Gen

Roberts for Asst Secy, WDGS, 26 Aug 44, sub: Notice

of Approved Allocations of Sailings to Pacific Areas.

(4) and (5) in ABC 561 Pac (6 Sep 43) Sec 1A.

(6) The JMTC first proposed to make these allocations and notify theater commanders on its own

authority, but the JCS decided that it must be done

through regular Army and Navy channels. See (3),

(4), and (5), and JMT 50/16, 7 Sep 44, same title,

with related papers in ABC 561 Pacific (6 Sep 43)

Sec 1A. 29

 (1) Ltr, Conway to Reed, Mission for Economic

Affairs, London, 16 Jun 44, Reading File June-July

44, Box 122893, WSA Conway File. (2) Memo, Lutes

for Somervell, 2 Jul 44, sub: Backlog of Cargo,

Pacific Coast, folder POA 1942 thru Mar 1945, Lutes

File. (3) Memo, Adm Smith for Rear Adm F. S. Low,

CofS, 10th Fleet, 9 Jun 44, sub: Alterations to the

Convoy System, folder Navy 1944, Box 122894, WSA

Conway File. (4) Min of Joint A-N-WSA Ship Opns

Com, San Francisco, May-Jul 44. (5) On the improvement of the situation in the Atlantic during this

period, see above, Chapter XIV.

30

 (1) Min, 81st mtg JMTC, 27 Jul 44, Item 3; 82d

mtg, 31 Jul, Item 1; 83d mtg, 17 Aug 44, Item 4; 84th

mtg, 21 Sep 44, Item 1. (2) Memo, Adm Smith for

JMTC, 27 Jul 44, sub: Increased Shpg Reqmts for

Pacific, folder JMTC Papers Jul-Aug 44, Box 122894,

WSA Conway File. (3) Monthly Rpt #2 for Aug 44,

T. J. White, WSA Rep, POA, to F. M. Darr, Dir of

Traffic, WSA, folder Traffic Dept Monthly Rpts,

Box 122876, WSA Conway File. (4) Min, Joint

A-N-WSA Ship Opns Com, San Francisco, 4 Aug

44, Item 1.
SHIPPING IN THE PACIFIC WAR 469

operations and invade Leyte two months

ahead of schedule soon threw off all previous calculations and expanded the

Pacific shipping deficit to unmanageable

proportions.

The JMTC issued stern warnings in

August that meeting the schedule of

Pacific shipping would depend upon

prompt return of vessels to the U.S. west

coast, but its warnings had no real teeth

in them and in the logistical confusion

that followed the sudden switch to the

Leyte plan, SWPA found it necessary to

disregard them. The decision to invade

Leyte in force in October posed an almost impossible burden on SWPA's

logistical planners who had previously

had their sights set on smaller operations in October and November against

Talaud and Mindanao. The introduction of XXIV Corps from the Central

Pacific further complicated the problem

and there was little time to plan the flow

of shipping. What plans they had were

thrown out of kilter by the difficulties

encountered after the landing in developing exit roads from the beaches, so

that ships were held as floating storehouses for want of facilities ashore. The

result was shipping congestion that

dwarfed previous tie-ups at Noumea,

Guadalcanal, and Milne Bay.

It first reached considerable proportions at the principal regulating and

transshipment point at Hollandia, and

soon spread out. The system operated

by the Chief Regulating Officer, GHQ,

worked badly by all accounts, and the

movement of shipping into both Hollandia and Leyte Gulf was poorly coordinated, with subordinate elements

ignoring CREGO's priority orders.

CREGO was, nevertheless, perhaps more

the victim of circumstances than a

prime mover in the situation. Some

months afterward MacArthur, defending his theater before ASF officers, "accepted full blame for any congestion of

shipping by stating that it was on his

orders to move ahead in spite of the

fact it would cause logistic confusion,

that his own staff officers had advised

him he would have congestion, but that

he felt that the goal of getting into

Manila ten months ahead of schedule

was worth some supply difficulties." General Wylie of the Transportation Corps

felt constrained to add that "what he

did not mention was that his own staff

was very slow in adjusting themselves

to the change," and in canceling shipping from the zone of interior that

could not be unloaded in the theater

anyway.31

Whatever the cause, the situation

rapidly took on crisis proportions. On

18 October, with the Leyte task force en

route, 86 vessels were in Hollandia harbor—12 discharging, 33 awaiting discharge, 24 awaiting call to Leyte, 3 loading, 5 waiting to load, and 10 simply

classified "miscellaneous." Of the 45 vessels awaiting discharge or actually discharging, 38 were cargo ships of which

only 9 had actually been scheduled by

the Chief Regulating Officer, according

to his statement. He thought the supplies

on the other 29 ships "could just as well

have remained in the United States, because they are no closer to being in the

hands of troops while idly awaiting dis31

 (1) Quoted in Rpt, ACofT for Opns (Gen

Wylie), undated, sub: Notes on Trip from Washington to POA and SWPA, 19 March to 22 April

1945, folder Pacific-Rpts of Visits, OCT HB, Wylie

File. (2) Masterson, Transportation in SWPA, pp.

782-84. (3) Min, 83d mtg JMTC, 17 Aug 44, Item 4.

(4) Cannon, Leyte: The Return to the Philippines,

pp. 184-87.
470 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

charge in the Hollandia harbor than if

they had been held in San Francisco."32

As the Leyte operation developed the

congestion worsened. On 5 December

1944 the Transportation Corps found

the situation as follows: 72 vessels in

Leyte harbor of which only 5 had completed discharge, 12 more en route from

New Guinea, 39 awaiting call at other

ports in SWPA, 70 en route from the

United States, 28 loaded and awaiting

call in the South and Central Pacific—a

total of 221 ships tied up in the Leyte

operation. Also, rotational retentions in

SWPA had mounted to 195, some of

which undoubtedly were tied up in the

Leyte congestion.33

This shipping congestion in SWPA

began to develop at precisely the same

time as, on the other side of the world,

similar congestion was mounting in

European waters as a result of the failure

to take and develop adequate ports to

support the rapid advance across

France.34 To add to these pressures,

there were competing demands for merchant shipping for civilian relief in

Europe and for the new program to provide Siberian reserves for the USSR

against the day of its entry into the war

with Japan. A global cargo shipping

crisis of larger proportions than any

since 1942 thus appeared to be taking

shape. In the immediate context of the

Pacific shipping situation, an actual

deficiency of 101⁄2 notional sailings occurred in October 1944 against stated

requirements, and by early November

Somervell was estimating the prospective military deficit in that area for

November at 79 sailings, at 83 in December, 64 in January 1945, 64 in February,

and 57 in March. These figures, representing 30 to 40 percent of total requirements for outward sailings in the Pacific

during these months, obviously represented what the shipping authorities

usually called "unmanageable" deficits.

They were a central consideration, along

with the shortage of service troops, in

leading to the choice of Luzon over

Formosa. They threatened to make even

the former impossible unless additional

shipping was transferred from the Atlantic or the idle theater pools of shipping were broken up. The JCS, WSA,

and the President were soon to have to

face up to this problem in the context

of a full-scale war on two fronts that

placed ever-increasing strains on American military resources.35

32

 Memo, Dep CREGO GHQ, for DCofS GHQ, 18

Oct 44, sub: SWPA Shpg Sit, folder Shpg in Pacific,

OCT HB Wylie File. 33

 Memo, Col Ronald A. Hicks for Gen Wylie,

5 Dec 44, sub: Shpg Sit at Leyte, folder Shpg in

Pacific 1944, Correspondence ASF-WSA, OCT HB

Wylie File. 34

 See above, ch. XV.

35

 (1) Monthly Rpt #4 for Oct 44, White to Darr,

WSA, 4 Nov 44, folder Traffic Dept Monthly Rpts,

Box 122876, WSA Conway File. (2) Msg, Somervell

to MacArthur, 5 Nov 44, copy in folder SWPac 1942

thru Apr 1945, Lutes File. (3) Ltr, Conway, WSA,

to Gross, 2 Oct 44, folder Reading File Aug-Nov 44,

Box 122893, WSA Conway File. (4) JCS 1173, 17

Nov 44, memo by CofS, USA, title: Remedies for

Existing and Prospective Shortages in Cargo Shpg.

(5) For the steps taken to resolve the crisis, see below.

Chapter XXII.
CHAPTER XX

Supplying the Army in Pacific Theaters

Though the over-all logistical problems in the Pacific were those requiring joint action of one sort or another,

the task of supplying Army forces in

these theaters was still, by and large,

primarily an Army problem handled by

Army agencies. Its dimensions were formidable. During 1943 and 1944 the

Army moved some 1,300,000 passengers

and over 23 million tons of cargo to

major Pacific areas. By the end of 1944

there were roughly 1,200,000 Army

troops in these areas—700,000 in SWPA,

440,000 in POA, and 60,000 in Alaska

and western Canada. Over 800 oceangoing ships were serving the Army in

the Pacific.1

Supplying forces that were scattered

over vast expanses of ocean required

some adaptation of the general Army

system for overseas supply.2 Normal procedures were better suited to the support of large bodies of troops operating

on a continuous land front. Excessive

dispersion made it difficult, if not impossible, to establish central reserve

stocks or a systematized flow of supplies

through a series of depots from rear to

front. The normal distinction between

wholesale and retail supply was blurred.

By the end of 1944 the Army was making shipments direct from the United

States to over 70 different Pacific destinations. This required a degree of coordination between theaters and ports

thousands of miles distant extremely difficult of attainment, as well as innovations in ordering and loading practices

that forced the ports to assume some

of the burden of retail distribution.

Procedural Problems

Difficulties began in the very first

stage of overseas supply—the shipment

of troop units from the United States

with their initial equipment and maintenance allowances. Seldom was either

unit or convoy loading possible; to make

full use of shipping space, equipment

all too frequently followed troops in

bits and pieces, shipped on many different vessels destined for different ports

in the South and Southwest Pacific. In

SWPA the practice of assigning all incoming units the code designation of

Brisbane and actually designating other

ports when the transports arrived at

Wellington, New Zealand, further complicated the situation. Marrying up

troops and equipment in the theaters

was seriously delayed, and sometimes

was never accomplished. The Army commander on Guadalcanal, when asked by

General Somervell in September 1943

1

 (1) Control Div, ASF, Statistical Review, World

War II. (2) OPD Weekly Status Map, 9 Nov 44. 2

 For a description of the general system, see above,

Chapter VI.
472 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

what would be the greatest help from

the United States replied simply: "Ship

equipment with units when they are

sent from the States. One air service unit

arrived June 23rd and is just now receiving its equipment."3

 In a similar

vein, the chief Engineer officer in SWPA

complained that many vital Engineer

units could not go to work for as much

as five months after arrival because

equipment had been loaded on a multiplicity of ships and sent to scattered

destinations in Australia and New

Guinea.4

General Somervell, alarmed about the

situation, suggested a three-point solution—unit loading to the maximum extent practicable, advance naming of

ports for which units were destined, and

preshipment to those ports of equipment

and maintenance supplies that could not

be unit loaded. Only the second point

really proved practicable. Unit loading

as a regular practice simply was not conducive to efficient utilization of troop

transports in the Pacific and had to be

reserved for urgent cases. Nor was

equipment available to permit a BOLEROtype preshipment program without deleterious effects on training. The only

known instances of preshipment to a Pacific theater involved cases when a division moving from Hawaii to the Southwest Pacific left its equipment behind

for a fresh division moving from the

United States to Hawaii. In these cases

the ASF shipped a complete new divisional set of equipment to SWPA in

advance.

The principal result of Somervell's intervention was a tightening of co-ordination between theater and port in arranging shipments. The War Department

agreed to notify commanders in SWPA

and SOPAC as far in advance as possible

of troop units available in any given

month; the theater commanders in turn,

when designating their selections, would

notify the San Francisco port of the destination of each unit. Cots and tentage

would either be shipped in advance or

on the same ship with the troops; the

rest of troop equipment and maintenance supplies would be sent out on

as few ships as possible, timed to arrive

at approximately the same time as the

troops and at the same destination.5

Under this system, fewer instances of

separation of troops and equipment occurred after the fall of 1943, but it would

be too much to say that the problem was

ever completely solved. As late as the

Philippine campaign, service troops at

times could not do their jobs properly

because their equipment had been

shipped to the wrong base.6

The same factors of distance and excessive dispersion created even greater 3

 (1) Somervell Questionnaire, Guadalcanal, Question 12, Control Div, ASF, Somervell Trip file. (2)

Masterson, Transportation in SWPA, pp. 270-77.

(3) Alvin P. Stauffer, The Quartermaster Corps:

Operations in the War Against Japan, UNITED

STATES ARMY IN WORLD WAR II (Washington,

1956), pp. 147-50. 4

 (1) Memo, Brig Gen Hugh J. Casey, Chief Engr

SWPA, 18 Sep 43, sub: Shpg of Equipment with

Units, Control Div ASF, Genl Engr Problem, Somervell Trip file. (2) Somervell Questionnaire, SWPA,

Question 191, Control Div, ASF, Somervell Trip file.

5

 (1) Masterson, Transportation in SWPA, pp. 277-

82. (2) The procedure was in consonance with that

developed for the Joint Priority List; see above,

Chapter XIII. (3) On the triple division move of

the 33d, 24th, and 40th Infantry Divisions see ASF

History of Mobilization Division, ASF, MS, OCMH,

vol. VI, Sec 1, and papers in OPD 370.5 PTO Sec 3,

Case 99. 6

 Stauffer, The Quartermaster Corps: Operations

in the War Against Japan, pp. 148-50.
SUPPLYING THE ARMY IN PACIFIC THEATERS 473

difficulties in the succeeding stages of

the supply process. Both automatic and

semiautomatic supply had serious disadvantages. The automatic method, based

as it was on highly doubtful maintenance

and consumption factors and often on

inaccurate forecasts of the numbers of

troops to be in each theater or at each

base, produced badly unbalanced stocks.

Semiautomatic supply based on the

Monthly Materiel Status Report, Class

V Ammunition Report, and Selected

Items Report, depended on inventories

that were usually inaccurate and on requisitions that had to be filed as much as

six months in advance in order to take

care of the excessively long processing

time and shipping cycle. Maintenance

factors, days of supply, and projected

troop bases continued to be as unreliable

as before. It was some time before any

special factors based on Pacific experience could be compiled; and even then

there was so much variation in activities

at different times and places in the three

theaters that the factors were, at best,

educated guesses. To gather the data

for the supply reports from the bases

and forward it to San Francisco took

time; more time was needed for the port

to process the reports and set up shipments to fill the shortages reflected in

them. At first this time lag, an average

of four months in SWPA, was not recognized when setting the requisitioning

objective for editing purposes. The general shortage of shipping in the late summer and fall of 1943 made the time lag

even longer. For some time, too, the San

Francisco port was slow and inefficient

in its handling of Pacific requisitions,

many of which, it seemed to the theaters,

got lost in the supply machinery. The

imbalance that semiautomatic supply

was supposed to correct tended to become a chronic condition.7

Minimum levels of supply for most

classes, prescribed by the War Department in July 1943, were 90 days in

SOPAC and SWPA and on the outlying

islands in the Central Pacific, 75 days

in Hawaii. Operating levels were set at

90 days in SWPA, 60 days in the South

and Central Pacific. Maximum levels

thus varied from 135 to 180 days. By

mid-1943 the minimum levels had been

generally achieved in the Pacific theaters

for most classes of supply. At the same

time the operating level, except in a few

cases, was not very high. Moreover, so

many critical shortages existed of individual items and of types and quantities

specifically needed that the generally

satisfactory over-all levels were deceptive. Then standard T/E and TBA allowances of equipment for many units

were insufficient, quantitatively as well

as qualitatively, and requisitions for additional quantities, or types better suited

to the terrain, had to undergo extremely

critical scrutiny by OPD and ASF.8

Lack of balance in types was aggravated by imbalance in geographical distribution. Satisfactory over-all supply

levels for each theater did not neces7

 (1) See above, Chapter VI, on the development of

these procedures. (2) History Planning Div ASF, Text,

II, 190-91. (3) Stauffer, The Quartermaster Corps:

Operations in the War Against Japan, pp. 134-47

(4) Somervell Questionnaire. (5) Office of the Chief

Engineer, General Headquarters, Army Forces Pacific, "Engineers of the Southwest Pacific, 1941-

1945," vol. VII, Engineer Supply (hereafter cited as

Engineers of SWPA, VII) (Washington, 1947), p. 104. 8

 (1) Leighton and Coakley, Global Logistics, 1940-

43, app. F-1. (2) See above, ch. VI. (3) Stauffer, The

Quartermaster Corps: Operations in the War Against

Japan, pp. 134-40. (4) Somervell Questionnaire, particularly answers to Question 13, Control Div, ASF,

Somervell Trip file. (5) Engineers of SWPA, VII,

75-76, 108-12.
474 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

sarily mean satisfactory levels at each

individual base. Transportation was never certain enough to make the reserve

in Australia or New Caledonia available

to meet shortages at such places as Oro

Bay or Vella Lavella. Neither in the

South nor in the Southwest Pacific was

there any good central distributing point

where supplies could be stocked in sufficient volume and variety and distributed through a theater supply system

to both forward and rear bases. The two

theaters struggled to establish orthodox

theater distribution systems but not with

outstanding success. In the South Pacific

a general depot was established at Noumea in mid-1943 that stocked 30 days of

reserve supply for all classes and complete replacement equipment for one

regimental combat team, but it served

mainly as a source of emergency supply

rather than as the normal source on

which outlying bases requisitioned.9

Large ports in Australia, such as Sydney and Brisbane, could serve as receiving points for most supplies from the

United States and collecting points for

those procured in Australia, but their

utility as distributing centers was limited by inadequate overland transportation to points northward and by their

distance from the eventual scene of operations in New Guinea and the Philippines. A new succession of base establishments along the New Guinea coastPort Moresby, Milne Bay, Finschhafen,

and Hollandia, to mention the most important—became new entrepots for direct shipments from the United States.

With the advance into the Philippines,

first Leyte Gulf and finally Manila became the principal ports of entry. Still,

no one port ever assumed the full burden, and Pacific operations always were

mounted and supported from a number

of different bases that, in the aggregate,

furnished the combined capacity that

one of them alone did not possess. Until

SWPA forces became firmly established

in the Philippines, Australia continued

to be the site of the major reserve bases

in the theater, and in early 1945 theater

stocks were scattered all the way from

Sydney to Lingayen Gulf.

Similarly, Hawaii served the Central

Pacific as a distribution center for some

supplies forwarded to advance bases,

but never completely fulfilled the role of

a central receiving and distributing

point for all Army forces in the theater.

General Richardson at first proposed to

build up reserves on Hawaii in preparation for the Gilberts-Marshalls offensive

and, with the support of Admiral Nimitz, secured a 2-division stockpile of replacement equipment over and above

his normally allotted levels.10 But even

in the Gilberts and Marshalls, it proved

necessary to make direct shipments from

the U.S. west coast, and very soon the

whole idea of using Hawaii as the principal supporting base was abandoned in

favor of shipping all supplies possible

directly to advance bases from the port

of embarkation. Nevertheless, the role

of Hawaii continued to be an important

one. The joint staff there prepared its

logistical support plans based on co-ordinated shipments from both the United

States and Hawaii to the Gilberts, Marshalls, Marianas, and Palaus; ships going out from the United States stopped

9

 (1) Leighton and Coakley, Global Logistics, 1940-

43, pp. 406-07. (2) USAFISPA History, pp. 696-91.

10

 Charles H. Owens, Jr., Logistical Support of

the Army in the Central Pacific, 1941-44, unpublished dissertation, Georgetown University, Washington, D.C., June 1954, pp. 77-78, copy in OCMH.
SUPPLYING THE ARMY IN PACIFIC THEATERS 475

at Hawaii to top off their loads with supplies necessary to meet any deficiency

between the actual requirements of the

forward base and the amounts loaded

on the west coast. As the advance moved

farther across the Pacific, bases in the

Marianas, the Palaus, and in the South

Pacific took over some functions formerly performed in Hawaii.11

The operation of such a diffuse distribution system inevitably involved a

tremendous amount of waste, and made

over-all theater control difficult. Multiple handling and transshipment at several points took their toll in breakage,

deterioration, and pilferage. Storage

north of Australia or New Caledonia

was usually inadequate, and deterioration in open storage in a tropical climate

appallingly swift. Rations spoiled, canvas

rotted, ammunition became unusable,

and machinery rusted. "There has been

considerable wastage in all types of supplies . . . ," wrote Somervell from the

South Pacific in September 1943. "This

loss has been particularly high in ammunition and rations. No one really knows

how much food has been spoiled. It is

certain, however, that as much as 50

percent of some types of ammunition

has gone to waste and hundreds of thousands if not millions of rations have

been lost."12 In June 1943 an observer

thought at least 40 percent of the rations in SWPA spoiled or unconsumable.13

Moreover, as once vital bases like Port

Moresby, Milne Bay, the Fiji Islands,

and Kwajalein lost their importance,

large backlogs of excess supplies built

up. Because of the difficulties of selecting

items needed at forward bases and the

poor condition of much of the equipment left behind, commanders were inclined to reorder from the United States.

The forward areas had neither the personnel nor the facilities for handling

these supplies in bulk. The roll-up of

bases during 1943 and 1944 was therefore usually impracticable, and to some

degree uneconomical. The port at San

Francisco was far better equipped to

provide loads tailored to the needs of

each base and each operation.

Another complicating factor was the

general lack of effective supply control.

Accurate accounting or inventory control by theater headquarters over the

many widely scattered bases in each area

proved to be all but impossible during

periods of intense combat; and even at

rear bases neither was perfect. As long as

most American forces remained in Australia, inventory control in SWPA seems

to have been relatively good, but once

the movement to the more primitive

bases on New Guinea began the situation

got out of hand. "It was practically impossible for me," observed General

Lutes on his visit to SWPA in August

1943, "to determine what items are critically short in this theater . . . a shortage

of some item at Port Moresby does not

mean that the item is short in SWPA.

Specific information at the front is not

helpful due to the fact that no one there

can tell me whether a shortage is due

to failure in the States or to inability to

get the item forward from some Australian base. . . ."14

11

 (1) AFMIDPAC History, Part IV, ch. III, app. 2.

(2) ASF Hq Staff School, Lesson on Special Procedures, Overseas Supply, 12 Apr 44, Log File, OCMH. 12

 Ltr, Somervell to Marshall, 27 Sep 43, Hq ASF

File, Gen Somervell's Trip. 13 Stauffer, The Quartermaster Corps: Operations

in the War Against Japan, p. 189.

14

 Memo, Lutes for CG ASF, 30 Aug 43, sub:

Report, folder 2d Pacific Trip, Lutes File.
476 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

In the South Pacific matters from the

very beginning were even worse. General Lutes continually urged General

Breene, the South Pacific SOS commander, to establish effective inventory control, and Breene made herculean efforts

to comply, but simply did not have the

personnel to accomplish the task for the

eleven different bases and 400 separate

organizations under his administrative

control. Not until October 1944, when

the South Pacific had become a rear base,

did supply accounting become relatively

accurate. At the advance bases in the

Central Pacific the story was much the

same as in New Guinea, with the added

complication that Navy officers, in command at some bases, did not understand

the intricacies of the Army's system of

calculating days and levels of supply.15

Given this inaccuracy in theater inventories, the supply status reports on which

semiautomatic shipments were based obviously did not contain the sort of exact

computations the ASF desired. Similarly,

theater requisitions were more apt to

reflect a general estimate of future need

than a close reckoning of materials required to build up, balance, and maintain stock levels. Requisitions for totally

unreasonable quantities though infrequent were not unknown, and their presentation strengthened the ASF conviction that all orders had to be carefully

edited on the basis of projected troop

strengths, allowances, and prescribed

maintenance factors. To the theaters, on

the other hand, the need to create reserves outweighed the need for careful

accounting. "It is assumed," the South

Pacific SOS responded to a question from

Somervell, "that from the standpoint of

the War Department the main purpose

of stock control is to prevent excessive

accumulations of critical items in any

given theater, at the expense of other

theaters. In this connection, it can be

stated that an excessive or unusable

quantity of major critical items does not

now exist in this Theater nor has it at

any time in the past. In general, the

reverse situation prevails."16

The same was true of the Southwest

and to a lesser degree of the Central

Pacific. Requisitions based on what the

Pacific theaters conceived to be their

needs piled up at San Francisco. ASF

agencies were slow to adapt the supply

machinery in the United States to filling

them, particularly when they involved

any unusual items or quantities. The

shipping shortage in the summer and fall

of 1943 made matters worse. Pacific theaters complained bitterly of overcritical

editing and overlong delays in processing requisitions. In mid-August General

Richardson, immersed in preparations

for the forthcoming Gilberts and Marshalls offensive, told Lutes that the San

Francisco port was editing his requisitions to the bone, to the point where he

could not properly outfit task forces then

being formed or meet other demands

being placed on him from areas outside

Hawaii. Port personnel, he said, had no

knowledge of forthcoming operations

that would permit them to edit intelligently; he asked that they therefore

refrain from editing at all and fill his

requisitions to the best of their ability.

The request for cessation of editing

was familiar, having been heard from 15

 (1) USAFISPA History, III, 513. (2) Lutes-Breene

Corresp in folder SPA 1942-43-mid-44, Lutes File.

(3) Ltr, Leavey to Lutes, 31 Mar 44, file 10a Shipment

File 1 Feb to _______, ASF Plng Div.

16

 Somervell Questionnaire, South Pacific Area,

Question 37, Control Div, ASF, Somervell Trip file.
SUPPLYING THE ARMY IN PACIFIC THEATERS 477

Atlantic as well as Pacific theaters on

numerous occasions, but the War Department could hardly relinquish this

established control over the flow of supplies. Richardson's immediate complaint

was met by instructions to forward a

list of materials for secret operations

directly to the War Department; approved materials on the list were assigned

a secret code designator, and the port

authorized to honor requisitions identified by the code against the approved

list.17

Richardson's complaints, in any case,

had less justification in the fall of 1943

than those from the South and Southwest

Pacific, for during this period preparations for the Gilberts and Marshalls offensive got a higher priority on both

supplies and shipping.18 From the South

Pacific, General Somervell wrote in September 1943:

The level of supply fixed for the theater

has been placed at ninety days and it required one hundred and twenty days to

process a requisition. In addition to this,

the Theater has never built up a reserve

of T.B.A. equipment. Much of the equipment now in the theater was subjected to

grueling use; some motor equipment, for

example, has been in use for over three

years and will need replacement. Owing to

the wide-spread activities (some 3,000 miles

across the area), it is necessary for the

Theater Commander to have enough material in stock to effect prompt replacements

for these items without having to await

their arrival from the United States. All

requisitions should be edited on the basis

of providing for this stock. An examination

of the time required to fill some of the

requisitions placed on us does not reflect

any credit on the Army Service Forces. Engineer materials are particularly bad.

There has been too much disposition to

get into exchanges of telegrams and not of

supplies. . . .19

The situation Somervell found in

SWPA was, if anything, worse. There

had been unconscionable delays in meeting requisitions and a huge backlog of

SWPA orders had built up at San Francisco, many of them dating back to the

early months of 1943. Despite the fact

that over-all levels were satisfactory (between 90 and 180 days) for most classes,

SWPA officials could present a typewritten list of critical shortages several

pages long. Engineer and transportation

materials, the two most critical categories

in theater operations, were farthest in

arrears.20

Improving the System

The growth of such a heavy backlog

of requisitions at San Francisco had already been noted by General Somervell

when passing through that port on his

way to the Pacific, and he ordered immediate action to determine the causes and

prescribe remedies. Control Division,

ASF, accordingly undertook a thorough

study, which was completed on 24

November 1943. The report, called "Survey of Supply of Pacific Areas," revealed

that of the total requisitions received at

San Francisco from March 1942 through

September 1943 some 40 percent were

still outstanding at the end of the period.

Fifteen percent of all outstanding requisitions were 90 days old or more. Figures

for the technical services furnishing the

17

 Correspondence in folder 2d Pacific Trip, Case

Cen Pac, Lutes File. 18

 See above, ch. XVII.

19

 Ltr, Somervell to Marshall, 27 Sep 43. 20

 Somervell Questionnaire, SWPA, particularly

Questions 64-70, and comments thereon in indorsement by Col Harry A. Montgomery, Actg Chief,

Supply Div, OCE, 28 Oct 43, Control Div ASF,

Somervell Trip file.
478 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

most critical items were more startling—

53 percent for Signal equipment, 55 percent for Ordnance, 58 percent for Engineers, and 85 percent for Transportation.

The survey concluded that though shortages of supplies and of shipping were the

primary factors behind the delays, numerous other causes contributed—mislocation of stocks, inadequate planning,

inept operations, cumbersome organization, faulty procedures, and improper

record keeping, less specifically in the

port than in the whole complicated

supply network controlled by the technical services. When requisitioned materials were in port stocks they were normally shipped quickly; only occasional

delays occurred when they were available

at installations directly supporting the

San Francisco port. The real troubles

came when the materials had to come

from other sources. The whole process

tended to degenerate into

hundreds of transactions, each involving

numerous extracts, re-extracts, teletypes,

requisitions, back orders, and other correspondence and record-keeping . . . until the

transaction is finally so complex that it

challenges comprehension. Instances were

noted where supply on requisition was made

in driblets for more than a year after the

original receipt of the requisition. The possibility of these supplies being received,

related to the proper requisition, and utilized for the purpose requisitioned is considered remote. The more complex the

transaction becomes the more difficult it

is to control: the greater is the possibility

of failure.21

If the San Francisco port was not

initially responsible, the survey found

that the port's follow-up of extracted

requisitions was perfunctory and ineffective, and that its liaison with supply

sources on the one hand and theaters on

the other was entirely inadequate. Because it lost track of extracted requisitions it could not keep the theater posted

on their fate. Cargo planning had to be

confined to routine and automatic shipments and to expediting critical supplies

singled out by the theaters. Priorities

originally assigned by the theaters became outdated and meaningless. "Shipments . . . are largely based," wrote

General Goodman of the New York port

in a follow-up of the survey, "on whatever items the depots send in first, regardless of whether or not such items are

most urgently needed by the theater."22

The Control Division report stimulated

an intensive effort at improvement. Port

stocks at San Francisco were enlarged

and stocks at west coast filler and backup

depots brought up to authorized levels;

chiefs of technical services were instructed to make every effort to reduce the

practice of dispersing extractions to numerous regional depots and to speed up

the operation of their distribution machinery. Procedures modeled on those at

the New York port were installed at San

Francisco. The port's Overseas Supply

Division was strengthened and its followup system revamped; the dateline system

was instituted with its specific cutoff

dates for completion of the various steps

in processing a requisition; back orders

were reviewed and requisitions canceled

where they were no longer applicable;

the port was instructed to set up a simpler and more comprehensive system of

keeping the theaters informed of the

status of their requisitions. Lastly, and

21

 Survey of Supply of Pacific Areas, 24 Nov 43,

Control Div, ASF.

22

 Ltr, Gen Goodman to CG SFPOE, 16 Nov 43,

sub: Action Necessary to Attain Objectives Directed

by General Gross, OCT 401 POA 1943-44.
SUPPLYING THE ARMY IN PACIFIC THEATERS 479

most important, the port established a

definite system of cargo planning based on

theater priorities, designed to regulate the

flow of supplies by periods in accordance

with the theater commander's wishes.23

These procedural reforms were not

the kind that could be carried out in

a day, nor would their effects be felt

after they were instituted in any sudden

and dramatic manner. They were, in the

end, but imperfectly realized. Another

Control Division survey conducted a

year and a half later, in May 1945, still

rated the follow-up of extracted requisitions by the San Francisco port as "unsatisfactory" and its liaison with both

the Pacific theaters and its own backup

depots as inadequate. It also pointed out

that the Overseas Supply Division at the

port, badly undermanned, had been unable to exercise proper supervision over

its outports or to co-ordinate its cargo

planning with theirs.24 All of this notwithstanding, the 1945 survey recognized that there had been a vast improvement in the handling of Pacific

supply at San Francisco in 1944, resulting mainly from a new emphasis on

cargo planning in keeping with theater

priorities. The port no longer merely

forwarded whatever supplies it had on

hand but, within the limits of availability of supplies and shipping, was sending

to the Pacific theaters supplies and equip

ment they considered most essential.

Other improvements in procedures

and greater mutual understanding of

need among the theaters, the port, and

ASF headquarters also played their part

in producing smoother supply operations

in the Pacific. With the inclusion of

order and shipping time in the requisitioning objective, the problem of time

lag in making semiautomatic shipments

and filling requisitions became less acute,

and the effect of the reductions in supply levels brought about by the McNarney Directive of 1 January 1944 was

cushioned. Specific deficiencies in Pacific supply were pinpointed by General

Somervell during his tour in the fall

of 1943 and the ASF took corrective

action in hundreds of specific instances

to fill shortages, to supply types better

suited to theater conditions, and to provide quantities in excess of TBA and

T/E allowances when justified. In the

theaters themselves, a better understanding developed of the proper methods of

filing requisitions and preparing the

Monthly Materiel Status Report. Even

inventory control, though it had by no

means reached perfection, was at least

improved. Then, too, by the end of 1943

production of war materials in the United States had reached its peak, eliminating many of the over-all shortages that

always played a more important role

than procedural difficulties in preventing

timely shipment of types and quantities

of supplies needed in the Pacific.25

Naturally, all the delays and frustrations in handling Pacific supply, many

of them growing out of fundamental

23

 (1) Leighton, Development of Overseas Supply

Policies and Procedures, pp. 166-97. (2) Larson,

Role of the Transportation Corps in Overseas Supply, pp. 194-97. (3) Ltr, Gen Gross to Gen Gilbreath,

CG SFPOE, 27 Nov 43. (4) Ltr, Gen Gilbreath to

CofT, 15 Dec 43, sub: Overseas Supply Division. (3)

and (4) in OCT 401 1943-44. (5) See above, Chapter

VI, on the dateline system and the general move to

standardize port procedures at this time. 24

 Survey of Pacific Supply, 15 Jun 45, Control

Div, ASF.

25

 (1) History Planning Div ASF, Text, II, 204-05.

(2) Somervell Questionnaire, Control Div ASF, Somervell Trip file. (3) On war production see above,

Chapter V; on order and shipping time and the

effects of the McNarney Directive, see above, Chapter VI.
480 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

facts of geography, could not be eliminated. West coast ports were more distant from centers of American industrial

production than ports in the east. Rail

connections to western ports were far

less adequate. Communications between

port and theater over the long distances

in the Pacific remained imperfect. The

effects of a priority lower than that of

the European theaters were felt in many

ways. Limited cargo shipping, or, perhaps more accurately, limitations on reception capacity for this shipping at the

far end of the line, combined with all

the other factors to keep the Pacific supply situation, particularly in SWPA,

from ever approaching what might, by

American standards, be considered ideal.

New Methods of Shipment

If the over-all availability of supplies

was vastly improved, the old problem remained of providing, within theaters

having limited internal distribution facilities, adequate quantities at the right

time and place. By early 1944 the trend

was clearly toward direct, tailor-made

shipments from the United States rather

than the accumulation of theater reserves

and development of elaborate intratheater ocean supply lines. By that time,

any real danger of Japanese interruption

of Pacific shipping lanes had passed, making the maintenance of large reserve

stocks for emergencies unnecessary. Authorized levels of supply in Pacific theaters were therefore progressively reduced during 1944 until at the end of

the year the maximum authorization for

most classes stood at 90 days, including

both minimum and operating levels.26

The trend toward direct, specially

loaded shipments from the United States

to forward bases placed a far greater

burden on the San Francisco port and

the technical service installations serving it. The Control Division's 1945 survey cited the port's success in handling

these kinds of shipment in 1944 as its

outstanding achievement.

Both of the main Pacific theaters

moved in the same direction in this respect; the transition in POA, however,

was more rapid than in SWPA and its

procedures were more precise and systematic. POA stipulated the specific supplies to be shipped in each scheduled

convoy for advance bases and forwarded

its requisitions to the port on or shortly

before the cutoff date. The supplies were

then assembled from port and depot

stocks insofar as they were available, and

forwarded in accordance with the loading plan furnished by POA; if certain

items were not available or were not

forwarded by the depots in time, the

requisitions normally were canceled. If

the supplies were still deemed essential

by the theater, it could requisition them

again for the next convoy.

SWPA's orders were not at first so

closely related to either a specific loading

plan or the prospective availability of

shipping. Requisitions were presented in

the first instance simply with a priority

designation indicating relative urgency

at the time of ordering. The volume of

supplies ordered constantly exceeded the

shipping space available, and a chronic

backlog of unfilled requisitions resulted,

26

 (1) TAG Ltr, 29 Dec 44, sub: Overseas Sup

Levels, AG 400 (12 Dec 44), OB-S-E-I. (2) History

Planning Div ASF, Text, I, 142, and II, 203-05.

(3) Stauffer, The Quartermaster Corps: Operations

in the War Against Japan, pp. 150-51. (4) History

AFMIDPAC, Part IV, ch. III, app. 2. (5) Survey of

Pacific Supply, 15 Jun 45, Control Div, ASF.
SUPPLYING THE ARMY IN PACIFIC THEATERS 481

mounting to something over a million

tons by the end of 1944. These unfilled

requisitions were not automatically canceled but stayed in effect until revoked

by the theater. Priorities originally assigned were soon outdated, and the theater began to operate a priority system

within a priority system, calling for specified material from the backlog for each

month's loading to be shipped to a specific base. Thus the San Francisco port

edited SWPA's requisitions and forwarded them to the depots, but there

they were held in suspense pending instructions from the port to forward specific supplies for loading within a given

time period. In this way SWPA also

came to require tailor-made loads, but

within the framework of an older system that did not provide adequately for

adjusting orders to available shipping

space.27

Direct shipments to forward bases in

themselves did not take the burdens of

sorting, storage, and distribution off the

theater services of supply. To further

minimize these burdens the Central Pacific developed a special type of direct

shipment designed to bypass the theater

depot system and relieve its supply organizations of handling and sorting.

This was the system of block-loaded

ships, first used in the Gilberts and Marshalls operations. The theater determined the size of each standard block,

estimating on the basis of its experience

supply requirements of all types for a

given number of men for a given number of days—usually 1,000 men for 30

days. Once the port was informed of the

composition of a block, the theater could

order shipment of so many blocks to

any designated advance base. The port

then had to initiate the necessary requisitions on its supporting depots and assemble and load the shipments.

Block loading lent itself to any number of variations. The standard block

load was most useful for staging supplies in the early phases of an assault.

For replacement supplies solid block

ships were instituted, each block containing the initial requirements for

1,000 men for a particular class of supply for 30 days. All types of supply could

be spread out over a number of ships

sailing in a given convoy or a specified

shipping period. The numbers and kinds

of blocks and the combinations of them

tended to increase as the system came

into more general use. In the Central

Pacific requirements for the several types

of blocks were established as part of

CINCPOA's loading plan; ships carrying them moved to a regulating point

from where they could be called forward into the area of operations for unloading at a pace determined by the development of reception capacity. Knowledge of the contents of each block

enabled commanders in the forward area

to know exactly what was on each ship

and to call forward the ships in combinations best suited to their needs.

In SWPA block loading was first used

on a small scale in the Hollandia campaign and in increasing volume thereafter. It was employed extensively in the

Philippines though the ships were actually designated resupply ships. Because

Army operations in the Philippines were

of larger proportions than any of its

previous campaigns in the Pacific, the

standard loads on the resupply ships

consisted of all items required to support 10,000 men for 30 days. In addition

27

 (1) Survey of Pacific Supply, 15 Jun 45, Control

Div, ASF. (2) History Planning Div ASF, Text, I, 159.
482 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

to the standard loads, SWPA's resupply

ships also carried, as deck loads,

DUKW's and landing craft to facilitate

discharge over beaches or in ports

wrecked by a fleeing enemy.

Block loading was a partial solution

to the problem of lack of facilities to

establish an orthodox theater supply

line. It was not a panacea for all ills,

but a form of automatic supply that

could be as wasteful as other forms if

not carefully regulated. The determination of the composition of blocks was

as difficult as that of any other type of

requirements, a difficulty reflected in the

constant change orders with which the

San Francisco port had to cope. For the

Army supply agencies in the United

States also, it was a special supply procedure that had to be fitted into the

existing system of reporting and requisitioning. Moreover, block shipments were

adapted only to supplying routine needs

that could be precalculated; other arrangements had to be made for special

operational requirements. Nonetheless,

Planning Division, ASF, concluded at

the end of the war that block-loaded and

resupply ships were the best method of

providing supplies in the early stages

of operations:

The usage made of these methods showed

they had the advantages of automatic supply and relieved theaters of the administrative load of preparation of requisitions.

They provided adequate quantities of supplies immediately behind the assault forces

but still permitted theaters to control quan- tities and the rate of flow by ordering

blocks forward as needed, thus reducing

excesses.28

Engineer Supplies and Special

Project Material

The Engineer effort in all three Pacific theaters was the most important

single feature of logistics once troops

were ashore. Since island battlegrounds

had to begin with almost none of the

installations required for the support of

either air or ground forces, construction

of a whole nexus of facilities was necessary at each new base—airfields, harbor

and dock facilities, roads, hospitals, depots, water supply systems, maintenance

facilities, troop housing, and so forth.

The pace at which this construction proceeded affected every other aspect of the

logistical process. For example, waste

was always greatest where supplies had

to stay in the open for any length of

time; where roads were nonexistent supply had to depend upon the expensive

process of airdrop.

In the beginning, in both the South

and Southwest Pacific, the shortage of

both Engineer troops and equipment

and of construction supplies was acute.

In 1942 greatest reliance was on local

procurement in Australia and New Zealand and on distress cargoes originally

intended for the Dutch East Indies that

were landed in Australia. By mid-1943

the source of supply was shifting rapidly

to the United States. The shift coincided

with the development, in Washington,

of the keyed projects system as the primary method for ordering special operational supplies over and above authorized allowances for base construction

and development.29

28

 (1) History Planning Div ASF, Text, II, pp. 197-

200. (2) Stauffer, The Quartermaster Corps: Operations in the War Against Japan, pp. 150-59. (3)

AFMIDPAC History, Part IV, ch. III, app. 2. (4)

Lesson at ASF Hq School on Special Supply Procedures. 29

 See above, Chapters V and VI, for a description

of this system.
SUPPLYING THE ARMY IN PACIFIC THEATERS 483

It was not solely a problem of special

operational supplies, however, but also

one of adequacy of TBA and T/E allowances for Engineer units, and of the

whole range of Engineer supply. The

first Engineer units sent out were too

lightly equipped; they did not have either adequate quantities of equipment

or heavy enough equipment for clearing jungles and building in jungle terrain. The initial conception, in fact, was

apparently that much of the construction work in the Pacific would be pick

and shovel work. It soon became clear

that one of the principal points of American superiority over the enemy lay in

heavy construction equipment—bulldozers, cranes, rollers, graders, crushers,

drilling equipment, power shovels, power saw mills, and so forth—that could

do the work of many men. The shortage

of both machines and labor subjected

existing equipment of this sort to excessively hard use in round-the-clock operations. Excessively hard usage produced frequent breakdowns; repair was

difficult and sometimes impossible for

lack of adequate parts and maintenance

personnel. Moreover, in the Solomons

and on New Guinea it was almost impossible to establish major maintenance

facilities on each island, and movement

back to rear bases in Australia or New

Caledonia was impracticable.30

Requisitions for heavier equipment,

for unit equipment in excess of TBA,

and for larger and better balanced quantities of spare parts were presented as

early as the fall of 1942 but there were

long delays in filling them. Even the

principle that extra quantities and heavier equipment were required was inadequately recognized until after Somervell's trip to the Pacific in the fall of

1943. At that time he noted that the

Army engineers in the South Pacific had

made a "particularly bad showing," attributable at least in part to failures in

Engineer supply, and that the situation

had been saved only by the presence of a

large number of naval construction battalions in the area.31

In SWPA, where the Army engineers

carried the main construction burden,

Somervell received a long bill of complaints from Brig. Gen. Hugh J. Casey,

theater chief of engineers. Not only was

TBA equipment too small and too light,

Casey said, but also spare parts supply

was poor, authorized supply levels too

low, and supplies on hand in all too

many cases below those levels. Requisitions on the United States were too critically edited or were filled too slowly to

permit building a supply reserve. Along

with improvements in supply procedures,

Casey urged immediate shipment of

heavy equipment in excess of TBA for

all Engineer units in SWPA, more construction equipment for the Engineer

special brigades so they could perform

a dual role, increased stocks of spare

parts, and establishment of a theater re30

 (1) Office of the Chief Engineer, General Headquarters, Army Forces Pacific, "Engineers of the

Southwest Pacific, 1941-45," vol. I, Engineers in

Theater Operations (hereafter cited as Engineers of

SWPA, I) (Washington, 1947), pp. 90-93, 134-35;

Engineers of SWPA, VII, 63-78. (2) USAFISPA

History, pp. 587-92. (3) Ltr, Maj Gen Eugene Reybold for CG ASF, 16 Nov 43, sub: Engineer Personnel and Sup in SOPAC Theater, file 5b C1 IV

Supps Engr SPA, ASF Plng Div. (4) Memo, ACofS,

G-2 for Grnd, Genl and Spec Staff Secs, Hq AGF,

25 Aug 43, sub: Observations in SW and SPac Theaters During Period 5 Apr 43 to 14 Jul 43, file SWP,

ASF Plng Div. (5) Karl C. Dod, The Corps of Engineers: The War Against Japan, UNITED STATES

ARMY IN WORLD WAR II (Washington, 1966). 31

 Ltr, Somervell to Marshall, 27 Sep 43.
484 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

SHEEPFOOT ROLLER AND MAINTENANCE GRADER preparing an airstrip, New Guinea.

serve stockpile of Engineer equipment

and construction supplies.32

The ASF had to recognize the justice

of Casey's complaints but to remedy the

deficiencies he cited was no easy task.

Much of course was accomplished in the

general improvement of the Pacific supply system in 1944. But heavy engineering equipment was in short supply and

its allocation was handled on a strict priority basis by the Munitions Assignments Committee (Ground). Demands

for it from every corner of the globe

had been largely unanticipated. Quantity production was slow to get under

way. Production lead time was long, and

raw materials requirements were heavy.

Thus improvement was once again a

gradual process. It did prove possible to

speed the flow of heavy equipment beginning in late 1943. TBA allowances

were revised upward, and much equipment shipped in excess of TBA. The Engineer special brigades got their additional allotment. But General Casey was

never able to create the reserve stockpile

he wanted, and the supply of spare parts

continued to be a major problem. Engineer supply levels generally remained

low in SWPA until April 1944; from

April to October they were built up

considerably though there continued to

be critical shortages, and problems of

internal theater distribution were acute.

32

 Memo, Casey, 18 Sep 43, sub: General Engineering Problems, with separate memos on individual problems, Control Div, ASF, Somervell Trip

file.
SUPPLYING THE ARMY IN PACIFIC THEATERS 485

Then, beginning in October, the shipping situation led to a large backlog of

unfilled requisitions for Engineer supplies. This contributed to a fairly critical shortage in certain specific categories

in the invasion of the Philippines.33

Meanwhile, the keyed projects system

established by the War Department in

mid-1943 was causing its own complications. Under that system, theaters were

supposed to calculate their special project needs for base development and present bills of material well in advance as

a guide to both long-range procurement and shipping plans. To do so required that they foresee the course of

operations a year or more ahead, and

determine the bases to be developed and

the specific special supply requirements

at each base. Pacific commanders were

not gifted with such clairvoyance. Objectives of each operation were seldom

determined far enough in advance. The

operations themselves were all too frequently planned on such short notice

that projects with their accompanying

bills of material had to be presented almost simultaneously with the requisitions against them and indeed sometimes

the requisitions preceded the bills. Major projects in the South and Central

Pacific were almost invariably presented

too late to affect procurement plans, and

usually allowed only a short time to assemble the shipments themselves. The

project for one of the most extensive,

for instance, the development of a B-29

base on Saipan, was sent in on 3 June

1944 with a deadline date for the first

shipment of materials on 1 July. Operational project requirements for the

Palaus invasion, scheduled for September 1944, arrived in ASF on 23 May, and

most of the project requisitions on 4

June with a deadline for arrival of the

first materials at port on 1 July.34

SWPA did provide estimates further

in advance, but on a "typical," not a

"specific," basis. Twelve projects were

presented in 1943, each representing not

the needs of any given area or operation

but of those for particular types of construction such as airdromes, hospitals,

port and harbor facilities, water supply

systems, camps, storage and warehousing

facilities, and so forth, that might be required in any typical objective of the

SWPA advance. The twelve SWPA projects were really little more than bulk

advance estimates of requirements, calculated on a very generous basis. They

were accepted in Washington as a basis

of procurement planning but not for

supply action. Each requisition against

them had to be reviewed by ASF headquarters before the San Francisco port

was authorized to ship materials to meet

it—a system of double ordering extremely irksome to SWPA engineers.35

In mid-1944, the twelve SWPA projects were finally approved for supply

as well as procurement, but SWPA was

informed that for the forthcoming invasion of the Philippines, it must present

its projects by area and not by type.

Meanwhile in an effort to refine the 33

 (1) Engineers of SWPA, VII, 102-12, 124-40,

143-84. (2) Somervell Questionnaire, SWPA, Questions 64-70, Control Div, ASF, Somervell Trip file.

(3) Memo, Actg Dir Plng Div, for Dep Dir Pls and

Opns, ASF, 13 Dec 43, sub: Engineer Personnel and

Sup in SOPAC Theater, file 5b C1 IV Sup Engr

SPA, ASF Plng Div. (4) History Planning Div ASF,

Text, I, 158-59.

34

 (1) History Planning Div ASF, Text I, 139-40,

147-50; text, II, 195-96, 213-22. (2) Engineers of

SWPA, VII, 103, 146-47. 35

 (1) Engineers of SWPA, VII, 103, 147. (2) History Planning Div ASF, Text, I, 143.
486 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

project system, the ASF had transferred

part of the "crystal ball" function to

Washington, and itself was engaged in

considerable planning for Philippine

base development as a basis for procurement action.36

In the event, the invasion of Leyte

was launched two months ahead of schedule, and operational supplies in the first

stages had to come from materials ordered by SWPA for earlier campaigns

in New Guinea or by the Central Pacific

for the assault on Yap. Hurriedly prepared SWPA projects specifically designed for base development on Leyte

were received in the War Department

on 6 October 1944, only two weeks before the invasion, with a requested time

schedule for shipment beginning in December and running through May 1945.

Preparation of projects for the invasion

of Luzon was only slightly less hurried.37

SWPA engineers were inclined to attribute much of the blame for the shortages of Engineer supplies and special

project material that did develop in the

Philippines to the cumbersome project

system. Their historian has characterized it generally as "one of the major

reasons for the tremendous difficulties

experienced in engineer supply."38

This kind of criticism should not be

allowed to obscure the considerable success achieved by the ASF in meeting operational requirements of Pacific theaters in 1943-44, though it was achieved

very largely by not following the project

system in any literal sense. For the most

part the ASF was able to meet special

demands on short notice and without

any previous detailed blueprint of the

base establishments. Special construction supplies were usually bulky, and

shipping problems caused more delays

than did inability to meet bills of materials presented late in the game. In the

Philippines, for instance, after inevitable early delays because of the two

months' acceleration of the invasion,

project supplies ordered by SWPA were

always available in much greater quantity than was shipping to move them

or reception capacity in the Philippines

to unload them. The real difficulties on

Leyte and Luzon were the confused

shipping situation, already described,

which prevented movement of the supplies available, and the failure of SWPA

authorities themselves to adjust their requests for supplies to available shipping

space. And the major impact, in any case,

was not to delay operations in the Philippines but to disrupt the timetable for

further advances against Japan.39

Clearly, the keyed projects system did

require a level of detailed calculation

that was practically impossible either in

Washington or in the Pacific theaters,

given the general lack of advance knowledge of geographic features of Pacific

islands and the ever-accelerating pace of

advance that produced shifting objectives and rendered time schedules quickly obsolete. Some method of anticipating special project requirements was essential, however, and the Pacific theaters

had to bear their share of the burden.

The projects system did force them to

anticipate their requirements more than

they might otherwise have done, and

36

 (1) See above, ch. V, and below, chs. XXIII and

XXIV. (2) History Planning Div ASF, Text, I, 156;

text, II, 219-20. (3) Engineers of SWPA, VII, 148. 37

 (1) Engineers of SWPA, VII, 146-49. (2) History

Planning Div ASF, Text, I, 155-59; text, II, 232-39. 38

 Engineers of SWPA, VII, 103. 39

 See above, ch. XIX, and below, ch. XXIII.
SUPPLYING THE ARMY IN PACIFIC THEATERS 487

perhaps kept these requirements within

more reasonable bounds.

The Navy used a considerably different system of determining its requirements for construction and base development in the Pacific, and a far less specific and complicated one. For the most

part, bases were prepared in prepackaged units (called Lions, Cubs, and

Acorns) with a large number of variations on each individual package. Procurement was based on an over-all estimate of the total number of units of each

type, and theater commanders were authorized to order the units by type, or

separate functional components of type

units, prescribing in each case such

tailor-made variations as were necessary.40

 It is true that this system was not

entirely suited to Army operations, for

Army requirements tended to vary a

great deal more and the need for individual tailor-made requirements was

greater. Yet SWPA engineers, the major Army construction force in the Pacific, found establishment of requirements

by type rather than area far more convenient. If the Navy system was wasteful

in certain respects—the over-all requirement for Lions, Cubs, Acorns, and their

components were established on a generous basis and parts of the type base

were useless in specific locations—the

ASF achieved its own success in meeting

Army requirements in the Pacific largely by generous provision in the Army

Supply Program for as many contingencies as possible.

Water Transportation Equipment

A second critical category of supply

in the Pacific was water transportation

equipment for local use. The supply of

this equipment in both the Central and

South Pacific was mostly a naval affair,

though the Army did have specific requirements in these areas for various

types of small boats, barges, and port

equipment. The major requirements

for water transportation equipment for

Army use, however, arose from SWPA.

SWPA's requirements ran the whole

gamut of types; as two observers noted

in early 1944, the theater's needs were

so great it could use "anything that

floats."41 In general, though there was

some overlapping, these needs may be

divided into two categories. The first was

ocean-going vessels used for transport

over long distances, and the second,

smaller or less seaworthy craft for lighterage and other harbor work, amphibious landings, personnel and supply transport over shorter distances, towing, and

floating storage.

Of the local fleet of ocean-going vessels in SWPA, something has already

been said. It started as a miscellaneous

collection of Dutch, Chinese, and Siamese merchant ships in 1942 and was gradually expanded over the next two years

by the addition of Liberty ships, Lake

40

 BuDocks, Building the Navy's Bases in World

War II, I, 120-28. See especially p. 120: "It soon

became apparent . . . that . . . detailed planning for

specific locations was impractical, because it was not

possible to draft the complete plans in sufficient

time to permit procurement and shipment. . . . With

the establishment of . . . typical bases, accumulation

of stocks at the advance base depots was simplified;

requirements could be determined in terms of the

number and kind of unit needed."

41

 Memo, Col Frank A. Bogart for Dir, Plng Div,

ASF, 12 Feb 44, sub: Floating Equip and Small Cft

Being Sent Overseas, folder Floating Equip, ASF

Plng Div.
488 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

steamers, and vessels procured from other private sources in the United States

and Australia. In late 1944 and early

1945 it was further augmented by the

arrival of Baltic coasters from the West

Indian trade, concrete steamers, and new

C1-M-AV1's constructed in the United

States. The total number of vessels in

service in SWPA increased from 52 on

1 December 1943 to 94 on 9 May 1945.

The Baltic coasters and the C1-M-AV1's

were by far the most satisfactory types,

and their failure to arrive until very

late in the war left MacArthur with

only the old Dutch and Chinese vessels

and the unsatisfactory Lakers during

most of 1943 and 1944. These vessels

were constantly in need of repair and

neither the parts nor the facilities for

this work were available anywhere north

of Australia. The lack of either adequate

quantity or quality in the local fleet was

the principal factor forcing SWPA to

rely so extensively on the retention of

Liberty ships.42

Ocean-going vessels were not an item

of Army procurement, but were built

by the Maritime Commission or the

Navy or if, like the Lakers, they were

old ships of long service, their assignment was controlled by WSA. Extensive

demands for smaller steamers for domestic service and the runs to the Caribbean, South and Central America, and

Alaska left few available for diversion

to SWPA.

Most of the host of types of smaller

vessels in use, with the exception of

landing craft, were procured either in

Australia or by the Transportation

Corps in the United States. The Australian production program, launched

early in 1942, provided by the end of

1944 2,712 small craft ranging from 25

to 80 feet in length. It was delayed by

slow delivery of suitable marine engines

from the United States, and the final

product represented a considerable cutback from an original goal of over 5,000.

There were even greater delays in the

procurement of marine equipment by

the Transportation Corps in the United

States. The Survey of Pacific Supply in

September 1943 snowed the Transportation Corps had met only 15 percent of

SWPA's requisitions. The explanation

lay not in any faulty procedures but in

the difficulties of procurement. The

Transportation procurement program

was a new one, hardly well under way

until early 1943; the corps had no depot

stocks, and each SWPA order for marine

equipment normally required initiation

of procurement action after the requisition was received. In procuring marine

equipment the Transportation Corps

had to compete with the Maritime Commission and the Navy who had already

placed capacity orders with most of the

established shipbuilding firms. Furthermore, Army requirements had to undergo the critical scrutiny of WPB when it

came to the allocation of necessary steel

and other raw materials. For some time

after September 1943 SWPA's requisitions for floating equipment — barges,

tugs, floating cranes, freight supply vessels, launches, marine tractors, Y tankers, rescue boats, lifeboats, cargo boats.

and so forth—continued to pile up with

little to show in the way of end-products

shipped to the theater. Not until 1944

were the orders themselves consolidated

and placed in the Army Supply Program

in a systematic manner. This done, Gen- 42

 Masterson, Transportation in SWPA, pp. 338-52.
SUPPLYING THE ARMY IN PACIFIC THEATERS 489

eral Lutes ordered that further requirements be placed as parts of keyed projects rather than through Transportation

Corps technical channels as had been

done formerly. The program was subjected to considerable critical review and

reduction, which coincided with a similar reduction of the production of engines for the Australian boat program.

In mid-1944 end-products began to

come forth in volume, and by early 1945

the numbers of small craft delivered to

SWPA began to approach the requirements the theater had presented in early

1943. But the production and shipment

of spare parts still lagged, making it difficult to keep the boats in operation.

The shortage of floating equipment

plagued SWPA to the very end.43

Amphibious vehicles, both DUKW's

and LVT's, served to alleviate the shortage of small craft in SWPA and fulfilled

a very essential role in amphibious operations in the Central Pacific. The first

DUKW's arrived in the Pacific in the

spring of. 1943—50 in the South Pacific

and 25 in SWPA. The Central Pacific

did not get any until shortly before the

Gilberts invasion. They were received

with great favor in all areas but the supply was not adequate until well into the

middle of 1944. Until mid-1943 the

North African theater got first priority

on production, receiving 1,099 out of

a total of 1,535 produced through the

end of June. In the last half of 1943,

however, under the priorities distribution system operated by Munitions Assignments Committee (Ground), all Pacific areas did much better, the South

Pacific receiving 480, SWPA 885, and

the Central Pacific 250, of a total production of 3,924. Because of the success

of the DUKW, production was greatly

accelerated during 1944, when a total

of 11,316 were turned out. By midyear

production was sufficient to meet most

needs; nevertheless, distribution continued under the strict control of

MAC (G).44

The supply of amphibian tractors,

an article procured by the Navy, followed a generally similar course. A few

went to the Army in SWPA in early

1943 and were used principally as cargo

carriers in close support of landing operations. Then in the Gilberts offensive

in November the LVT came into its

own as the only amphibious craft that

could successfully negotiate the reef barrier at Tarawa, and the Navy greatly expanded its production program. While

by the fall of 1944 LVT's were, like

DUKW's, generally becoming available

in sufficient numbers to fill all essential

needs, distribution was closely controlled. The lion's share of LVT's was

assigned to either the Army or the Marine Corps for operations in the Central

Pacific because of their peculiar utility

in that area; SWPA and ETO received

more limited numbers for use primarily

as cargo carriers.45

43

 (1) Ibid., pp. 368-79. (2) Survey of Supply of

Pacific Theaters, 15 Nov 43, ASF Control Div.

(3) Memo, Lt. Col. William B. Bunker, Dir of Sup,

OCT, for Deputy Chief, Control Div, OCT, 8 Dec

43, sub: Comments on "Survey of Supply of Pacific

Theaters," OCT 401 POA 1943-44. (4) Materials in

file Floating Equip, ASF Plng Div. (5) Min, 71st mtg,

JMTC, 22 Apr 44. (6) Materials in series of OCT

565.4 SWPA files.

44

 (1) Min, WD Conf Gp on Amphibious Vehicles,

11 Oct 43, 9 Feb 44, 13 Mar and 17 Apr 44, file

Amphibious Vehicles Confs, ASF Plng Div. (2) Crawford and Cook, Statistics: Procurement. 45

 (1) See above, ch. XI. (2) JCS 754, 10 Mar 44,

title: Monthly Rpt of LVT, with series of reports

in ABC 561 (30 Aug 43), Sec 2.
490 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

LVT's OPERATING OVER REEFS IN THE CENTRAL PACIFIC

Landing Craft in SWPA

Of all types of floating equipment,

landing craft were the most vital in the

Southwest Pacific, useful not only for

their primary function as personnel and

cargo carriers in assaults on hostile shores

but for dozens of other functions. They

were produced under the auspices of the

Navy, but a large proportion of the small

landing craft in SWPA were operated

by the Army's Engineer special brigades,

and these craft the Navy turned over

to the Army for shipment. To conserve

shipping space, the Army shipped them

in sections for assembly in the theater.

At the beginning of 1943, however,

there were no Engineer special brigades

or landing craft assembly plants in

SWPA, and few landing craft of any sort

under either Army or Navy control. The

first of three special brigades arrived in

March 1943, followed by a second in

January 1944, and a third a few months

later. Troops and material for assembling landing craft were rushed to the

theater early in 1943, and by late May

a plant was operating at Cairns, Australia, capable of handling sectionalized

LCVP's. The plant at Cairns was expanded rapidly to handle LCM's and

other types, and a second one was established at Milne Bay, New Guinea, closer

to the scene of operations.

In May 1943 the Army's initial requirements for landing craft for opera-
SUPPLYING THE ARMY IN PACIFIC THEATERS 491

tion by the brigades had been set at

1,620 LCVP's (540 per brigade), 1,509

LCM's (503 per brigade), and 135

LCS (S)'s (45 per brigade). Five hundred of the LCVP's were already en

route or set up for shipment at the end

of April 1943. The Army asked the Navy

to make available 100 more LCVP's each

month beginning in May, 75 LCM's in

May with an increase to 100 per month

as soon as possible, and 45 LCS (S)'s per

quarter beginning with the third quarter of 1943.46

The Navy accepted the requirements

and the delivery schedule for LCVP's,

though with a caveat from Admiral King

that the number seemed excessive. "Naval experience indicates," he wrote, "that

they are unsuitable for ocean trips for

ferrying troops of more than a few

miles."47 The warning went unheeded,

perhaps because MacArthur felt that for

the time being he must accept any craft

that could be made available in quantity. For the Navy, in July 1943, said

it could furnish only 50 of the more

satisfactory LCM (3)'s per month up to

a total of 450 in 1943, and possibly 450

more in 1944 if steel and engine requirements could be met. In response to

MacArthur's protests, however, the Bureau of Ships was persuaded to step up

production. On 19 August the Navy

agreed to the total of 1,509 LCM (3)'s

and to an accelerated delivery schedule

promising 100 for SWPA in October

1943 and 150 per month thereafter until the requirement was met.48

Meanwhile, in the theater the 2d Engineer Special Brigade was struggling

along with only the initial shipments

of LCVP's and a few LCM (3)'s. SWPA

officials themselves soon confirmed the

Navy's warning about the LCVP's. "Experience . . . has shown," SWPA reported on 13 September 1943, "that LCVP's

are not suitable for transporting troops,

equipment, and supplies over the open

sea, and that a larger craft, namely the

LCM (3)'s and the LCT (5)'s are better

suited for this form of transportation."49

Accordingly, the theater recommended

that the 4th Engineer Special Brigade,

the last scheduled for shipment to

SWPA, be initially equipped with 63

LCT's in lieu of 270 of the LCVP's, and

that the equipment of the other two

brigades be gradually replaced on the

same basis. SWPA also asked that an

additional 6-foot section be added to the

LCM (3)'s to increase capacity and

speed. On 6 October MacArthur further informed the War Department that

a total of 620 LCVP's should be eliminated from his requirements program

and, if the LCT's could not be furnished, LCM's should be used as substitutes in ratio of four for one or a

46

 (1) Masterson, Transportation in SWPA, pp.

416-18. (2) Memo, Brig Gen John E. Hull, OPD,

for VCNO, 24 May 43, sub: Ldg Cft Reqmts for

SWPA, OPD 560 SWPA, Case 6. (3) Ltr, Hq, Engr

Amphib Comd to Chief of Engrs, 2 Jun 43, sub:

Progress Rpt on Assembly of 26-Foot Ldg Cft in

SWPA. . . , file 5d C1 IV Amphib SWPA, ASF Plng

Div.

47

 Memo, Adm King for CofS, USA, 25 Apr 43,

sub: Small Ldg Cft in SWPA, OPD 560, Case 6.

48

 (1) OPD Diary, 11 Jul 43. (2) Msg C-4404,

Brisbane to WAR, 19 Jul 43, CM-IN 13234. (3)

MFR, 2 Aug 43, sub: Conf on Ldg Cft Reqmts

for SWPA. (4) Ltr, VCNO to Chief, BuShips, 19

Aug 43, sub: LCM(3)'s—Delivery to Army Sectionalized. (3) and (4) in File 5d C1 IV Amphib SWPA,

ASF Plng Div. 49

 (1) Ltr, AG GHQ, SWPA, to TAG, 13 Sep 43,

sub: Supplemental Equipment for 4th Engineer

Special Brigade, file 5d C1 IV Amphib SWPA, ASF

Plng Div. (2) Msg CA 44, Port Moresby to WAR,

13 Sep 43, CM-IN 20611, 14 Sep 43.
492 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

LANDING CRAFT ASSEMBLY PLANT, MILNE BAY

total of 252 additional LCM's per brigade.50

The request for LCT's brought the

amphibian brigades into competition

with requirements for OVERLORD and

the Mediterranean. OPD merely passed

MacArthur's requests on to the Navy,

anticipating the refusal of LCT's that

came in due time. The Navy did agree,

however, to apply engines made available by reduction of the LCVP program

to production of LCM's and said it

would be able to deliver 165 additional

craft of this type by 1 June 1944. After

some experimentation the LCM (6) was

developed with the added 6-foot section

as the desired improvement on the

LCM (3). Also, MacArthur having

found the LCS (S) unsuitable as a command and navigation craft, the Navy

agreed to substitute 45-foot boats and

63-foot pilot boats in equivalent numbers for most of the initial requirement

for 135 of these craft.51

This proved to be far from the final

word. MacArthur insisted on the full

quota of LCM's for the amphibian brigades and added a requirement of 212

50

 Msg C 6423, Brisbane to WAR, CM-IN 3493,

6 Oct 43.

51

 (1) See above, ch. VIII. (2) Memo, OPD for

VCNO, 9 Oct 43, sub: Ldg Cft for SWPA; Ltr,

CNO to CofS, 5 Nov 43, same sub. Both in OPD

560 SWPA, Case 6. (3) Memo, Col Bunker, OCT,

for CNO, 2 Nov 43, sub: Addition of 6-Foot Section

of Tank Lighters (LCM-3). (4) Ltr, OCT to CNO,

18 Nov 43, sub: Crash, Picket and LCS(S) Boats.

Last two in folder 5d C1 IV Amphib SWPA, ASF

Plng Div.
SUPPLYING THE ARMY IN PACIFIC THEATERS 493

for operation by USASOS Transportation Corps. By the end of February 1944

his total requests for LCM's for 1944

operations stood at 2,334, excluding

craft for the Seventh Fleet. In July 1944

he presented a request for 450 LCVP's

to be shipped in the fall, saying all those

in the theater would be worn out by

that time. In September he asked for

2,160 more LCM (6)'s and 600 more

LCVP's for use by the Army in 1945,

240 of the LCM's for USASOS. Although the Navy protested the scale of

these requirements on several occasions,

it eventually accepted them, for the production problem had been largely overcome. LCM shipments to SWPA during

1944 proceeded at a rate of between 150

and 200 a month except for a brief period in midyear when the theater itself

asked a temporary discontinuance in order to permit assembly facilities in Australia and New Guinea to prepare for

movement to the Philippines.52

The allocations were generous enough

as far as they went. The difficulty arose

from the long time lags—one between

allocation and arrival in the theater; and

another between arrival, and assembly

and delivery to the Engineer special

brigades. Not until well along in 1944

were the brigades adequately equipped

with LCM's, and even then the number

out of operation for lack of spare parts

was unduly high. The naval channel for

supply of spare parts was never satisfactory to SWPA engineers; not until the

fall of 1944 were adequate scales of replacement parts accepted by the Navy

and channels of procurement and distribution clearly defined.53

In any case, the main complaint from

SWPA after mid-1944 was not of a lack

of adequate smaller craft for the amphibian brigades to carry out scheduled amphibious assaults, but of insufficient craft

of any size to speed up other troop and

supply movements and to facilitate unloading. MacArthur succeeded in obtaining some LCM's for USASOS for these

purposes but he was again turned down

on a bid made in spring 1944 for LCT's

as a substitute for ordinary freight and

passenger vessels destined for his theater.

Nor was he ever able to obtain the

LCT's he desired for use by the amphibian brigades.54

The Navy's refusal to furnish LCT's

for Army use in SWPA did not, nevertheless, mean that the theater was being

denied these craft entirely. Instead, they

were furnished to the Seventh Fleet to

form part of its amphibious force, and

at least occasionally were available for

supply work when not engaged in amphibious assaults. The build-up of the

Seventh Fleet's amphibious force went

on as slowly during 1943 as did that of

the Engineer special brigades. Original

CCS allocations for the year included

80 LCT's, 36 LST's, and 80 LCI (L)'s,

but as of March 1944 only 59 LCT's,

30 LST's, and 33 LCI (L)'s were available in the theater. The agreement on

52

 (1) Msg C 2219, Brisbane to WAR, CM-IN 20110,

29 Feb 44. (2) Msg U28218, Brisbane to WAR,

CM-IN 16174, 20 Jul 44. (3) OPD Summary Sheet,

4 Sep 44, sub: A and N 1945 Reqmts for LCM.

(4) Memo, DCofS, for Adm King, 6 Sep 44, sub:

LCM(6); Reqmts for SWPA. Last two in OPD 560

SWPA, Case 32.

53

 (1) Engineers of SWPA, VII, 136-39. (2) OPD

draft msg for CINCSWPA, 17 Aug 44, with accompanying MFR, OPD 560 SWPA, Case 6. 54

 (1) Msg C-2901, Brisbane to WAR, CM-IN

10673, 15 Mar 44. (2) Memo, Gen Clay, Dir Materiel

ASF, for CNO, 29 Mar 44, sub: Availability of

LCT(6) and LST for the Army. (3) Memo, Adm

Cooke, DCofS, COMINCH, for CofS, USA, 8 Apr 44,

Navy Ser 001109. Last two in OPD Exec 10, Item 68.
494 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

division of South Pacific amphibious resources in March 1944 set the major

landing craft strength for the Seventh

Fleet at a minimum of 40 LST's and 60

LCI (L)'s, plus any scheduled later additions from U.S. production. Almost

immediately thereafter the Navy started

to accelerate the shipment of large landing craft to the Seventh Fleet, as production soared in the United States. In

April the schedule was set at 26 LST's,

31 LCI (L)'s, 35 LCT's from May production, almost equal quantities from

that in June and July, and after July

regular increments of approximately 14

LST's, 8 LCI(L)'s, 13 LCT's, and 18

LSM's per month. May production, however, was not expected to reach the theater until September.55

The rapid augmentation of both Army

and Seventh Fleet amphibious resources

after mid-1944 did provide an adequate

supply of landing craft in SWPA during

the Philippine campaign. After the landing on Luzon, the main reliance for

many weeks was on supply by these craft

over the beaches. Yet the theater's full

demands for landing craft for logistical

use were by no means satisfied. The tremendous problem of rolling up rear

bases and bringing men and material

forward to the Philippines led to greater

and greater demands for the LST's and

LSM's that could be used for those

purposes.

Service Troops

Whatever the shortages of equipment

that may have remained in the Pacific

by the fall of 1944, none was so serious

as the shortage of troop labor to perform the thousand and one tasks involved in the operation of a supply line

in territory where facilities were primitive and native labor either nonexistent

or totally unskilled. The shortage of

service troops in the Pacific was a chronic condition—one that began with the

arrival of the first American troops and

endured until the end of the war. It was

a contributing factor to practically every

other problem of Pacific logistics. The

shortage of port battalions contributed

to every instance of ship congestion, the

shortage of Quartermaster troops to every instance of spoiled rations, that of

Engineer construction battalions to every instance of failure to build airfields,

roads, and other facilities on time. The

inadequate supply of service troops imposed far more severe limitations on the

pace of the Pacific advance than did the

supply of combat units. As General Somervell wrote from the South Pacific in

September 1943, it was not "a case of

'frills'—but one of getting beans, shoes

and bullets to the men who are fighting

and to save those fighting from being

laid out with pestilence," of building

facilities at primitive bases which the

Japanese did not have the resources or

ability to match. "It would be a great

mistake," he said, not to supply service

troops "in full measure and make the

most of this advantage."56

Supplying service troops "in full measure" was easier said than done. Each

55

 (1) Msg 768, AGWAR to CINCSWPA, CM-OUT

10852, 31 Jan 43. (2) Memo, VCNO for CG SOS,

15 Mar 43, sub: LST's for SWPA, folder SWPA 1942

thru Apr 45, Lutes File. (3) Msg, CG SFPOE to

WAR and Brisbane, CM-IN 5405, 8 Apr 44. (4)

Memo, Gross for Somervell, Mar 44, sub: Combat

Loaders and Ldg Cft, OCT HB, folder Shpg Capabilities and Reqmts, Gross File. (5) Memo, Lt Col

Gallant for Cols Tasker and Pennypacker, 6 Jul 44,

sub: Assault Shpg, Availability of, SWPA, ABC

320.2 (10 Feb 44). (6) JCS 713/5, 17 Mar 44.

56

 Ltr, Somervell to Marshall, 27 Sep 43, Control

Div ASF, Somervell Trip file (1).
SUPPLYING THE ARMY IN PACIFIC THEATERS 495

soldier sent to the Pacific theaters, be he

in an infantry division or a Quartermaster salvage company, represented a

charge against allocated personnel shipping to transport him and against cargo

shipping to support him. Theater commanders were seldom willing to sacrifice combat units and replacements to

make room for service troops, preferring to rely on the chance of getting additional shipping allocations to move

the latter. "As General Harmon says,"

wrote the SOS commander in the South

Pacific, "combat personnel can be used

for performing service functions in a

second class fashion, but service personnel cannot perform combat functions."57

The shipping factor, nevertheless, was

more a cause of delay in movement of

service personnel than an effective cause

of the ultimate serious shortage in the

Pacific in 1944. The real problem lay

in the composition of the troop basis

itself. By the end of 1942 the initial

error of the General Staff in not providing for an adequate number of service units had been at least partially corrected, but the struggle over a proper

balance between combat and service

troops continued throughout 1943 and

1944. "Four times have I had to ask for

augmentation of the service unit list,"

wrote General Lutes in August 1943,

"and four times the General Staff has

had to admit that the units were needed, but had they only approved such

lists in the beginning units would be

all trained and ready to go."58 All too

frequently the activation, training, and

shipment of service units was not a carefully planned routine but resulted from

an emergency demand from the theaters,

so that half-trained units were dispatched and hasty revisions made in the

troop basis. By early 1944 such emergency action was becoming less and less

feasible. The Army troop basis for the

year was tightly drawn, with the balances closely calculated among air,

ground combat, and service units, and

almost every unit activated or scheduled

for activation earmarked for one theater

or another or for essential ZI service.

The provision of a single construction

battalion, or even a depot company, became increasingly a matter of reviewing and re-reviewing service troop requirements around the globe.

Simply to say that the various troop

bases did not provide enough service

units for Pacific operations does not do

justice to OPD and G-3, the staff agencies primarily responsible for their determination. They recognized the pressing needs for service units in the Pacific,

but had to weigh them against over-all

troop requirements in a developing manpower crisis, and strive to maintain a

judicious measure of balance. To counter the continued pressure of the ASF

for an increase in service units the advocates of austerity, such as General

McNair, continually fought against proliferation of the service establishment.

There was, in fact, after the end of 1942,

very little net increase in the size of

the ground combat forces, while service

forces increased twofold. The 1944

Troop Basis as finally developed included a higher proportion of service units

than any previous version.59

57

 Ltr, Breene to Lutes, 12 Nov 43, folder SP

1942-43-mid-44, Lutes File. 58

 Ltr, Lutes to Breene, 4 Aug 43, folder SP

1942-43-mid-44, Lutes File.

59

 Greenfield, Palmer, and Wiley, Organization

of Ground Combat Troops, pp. 161, 219, 252-59.
496 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

Within the limits of available manpower, then, there seemed no better solution than to furnish the minimum essential units necessary to support operations

and to accept the necessity for continued

use of combat troops to perform service

functions when occasion demanded, for

imperfect performance of many of these

functions, and for a certain amount of

waste. Any other solution seemed likely

to involve sacrifice of combat units essential for operations in both Europe and

the Pacific. Though there was general

agreement that Pacific operations required a higher proportion of service

troops than did those in Europe, actually the ratio in effect in the two areas

in mid-1944 was roughly the same, testimony to the general practice of furnishing service units, like supplies, in standard proportions to the number of combat troops.60

The result was the chronic shortage of

service troops in the Pacific already noted. No theater suffered quite so severely

as did the South Pacific during its year

and a half of intense combat activity.

The ratio of combat to service troops in

the theater at the beginning of 1943 was

about 6 to 1, a result of the emphasis

task force commanders had initially

placed on building up combat strength.

Since the first tasks turned out to be

almost entirely construction and development of island bases, combat troops

had to be diverted to these functions,

and island commanders were soon crying for service troops of all kinds. But

the basic error proved difficult to correct. The first major step in that direction was taken by General Lutes who,

after his visit to the South Pacific in fall

1942, persuaded OPD to agree to send

additional service units to each South

Pacific base. Actual shipments, delayed

because the units simply were not ready,

never quite caught up with the demand.

Before they arrived General Breene was

asking for still more units for Guadalcanal, where a new base was being developed for the advance further up the

Solomons. OPD at first insisted he must

move troops forward from rear bases

but Breene pointed out that this would

not be possible without completely disrupting logistical operations. OPD made

piecemeal concessions totaling in the end

something over 10,000 men, but delays

60

 Any exact computation of the proportion of

combat and service troops in any theater is one of

the more difficult statistical problems of World

War II because of the dual nature of many units

such as combat Engineers, and because of the use

of U.S. Army ground service units to support the

AAF, the Marines, and Allied combat forces. Some

selected ASF calculations of the proportion of both

air and ground service troops in the entire troop

bases of three theaters in 1944 showed the following: MTO, 30 Sep 44—44.81 percent; SWPA, 31 Dec

44—39.81 percent; Central Pacific, 30 Jun 44—33.71

percent. History Planning Division ASF, app. 12-E,

Tabs F, J, K.

Another compulation made by the ASF after the

war, based on projected troop bases for all major

theaters for 30 June 1945 showed the following percentages of service troops: ETO—43.65 percent;

MTO—44.65 percent; SWPA—42.29 percent; Central

Pacific—42.29 percent. Using another measure, the

proportion of ASF troops to the total ground force

in both Europe and the Pacific was approximately

the same (around 30 percent) both at the end of

June 1944 and at the end of December. ASF Manual

M-409, Logistic Data for Staff Planners, 1 Mar 46;

JCS 521/6, 11 Jun 44, title: Deployment of U.S.

Forces to 30 Sep 45; JCS 521/9, 23 Dec 44, title:

Deployment of U.S. Forces Following Defeat of

Germany.

The division slice in each area (excluding air

forces) appears to have been roughly similar, if all

extraneous factors such as the partial support of

French and Brazilian divisions in Europe and of

Marine divisions in the Pacific by U.S. Army service

units are excluded. ASF Manual M-409, and OPD

Weekly Status Map, 19 Oct 44.
SUPPLYING THE ARMY IN PACIFIC THEATERS 497

in activation, training, and movement in

the summer and fall of 1943 kept supply

still a step behind demand. The same

general process was repeated when the

theater forwarded in July 1943 requests

for 14,000 service troops to complete

development of rear bases and for 20,000

for the New Britain-New Ireland area.

Finally convinced, OPD approved the

requirements, but most of the troops

did not reach the area until the spring

of 1944 when the South Pacific's combat

mission was rapidly coming to an end.

In the interim, the theater simply had

to use combat troops for service functions in rear as well as in forward areas.61

The imbalance between combat and

service troops never existed to quite the

same degree in SWPA, but the shortage

there was real and chronic nonetheless,

and became increasingly serious as the

advance moved along the New Guinea

coast. The shortage affected all the supply services, but was most serious for

the Engineers responsible for the massive construction effort required with

each step of the advance. A very great

proportion of this effort, about 80 percent by one estimate, had to be devoted

to construction of airfields and other

facilities for the Air Forces. Australian

military and civilian labor continued to

be the mainstay of the labor force until

well into 1943, but as the advance in

New Guinea got under way in earnest,

the shortage of U.S. troop labor became

critical. In his bill of complaint to Somervell, General Casey pointed out that

for over a year he had had but one Engineer aviation battalion and four Engineer general service regiments, a construction force "woefully deficient to

execute the extensive amount of work

which had to be performed."62 Casey

thought that Engineers should constitute at least 20 percent of the command.

This optimum figure was never reached,

although the flow did increase rapidly

during the fall of 1943. By April 1944

there were 62,061 Army Engineers in

the theater as opposed to only 7,600 a

year earlier, and by the end of the year

the number had reached 97,000, or

about 13.4 percent of the command—

an impressive number but something

less than General Casey's initial request.

Moreover, as in the South Pacific, the

supply was always a step behind the demand. The gap was filled by various

expedients. Australian engineers and

Navy construction battalions played important roles in SWPA. Heavy machinery did the work of many men; Engineer

combat battalions and the Engineer special brigades were employed in heavy

construction work.63

The story of the other services in

SWPA is much the same as that of the

Engineers—enough service forces to perform minimum essential services but

never sufficient to prevent delays and

waste. The redistribution of South Pacific resources in 1944 further intensified SWPA's service troop problem. The

61

 (1) See the Lutes-Breene correspondence along

with related papers in folder SPA 1942-43-mid-44,

Lutes File. (2) Somervell Questionnaire, South Pacific, Control Div, ASF, Somervell Trip file. (3)

USAFISPA History, I, ch. XV.

62

 Memo, Gen Casey, 18 Sep 43, sub: General Engineering Problems. 63

 (1) Office of the Chief Engineer, General Headquarters, Army Forces Pacific, "Engineers of the

Southwest Pacific, 1941-1945," vol. II, Organization,

Troops, and Training (hereafter cited as Engineers

of SWPA, II) (Washington, 1953), pp. 88-90, 120-22,

144-46, 184-87. (2) Memo, Chief Plans Br, Plng Div,

ASF, for Dir Plng Div, 17 Jan 46, sub: Recapitulation

of Troop Bases, History Planning Div ASF, app.

12-E, Tab J.
498 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

six combat divisions were transferred

from the South Pacific with little service

support, for most of the service troops

had to stay behind to man the installations remaining in the South Pacific,

pack and ship supplies, and service the

POA divisions that were staged or rehabilitated in the area. The South Pacific became a large service command

with a heavy preponderance of service

troops, an asset promised MacArthur by

the JCS directive redistributing resources of the theater but also coveted

by Nimitz because of a growing service

troop shortage in his own area.

The shortage in the Central Pacific

developed later and in somewhat different fashion. The Hawaiian base was initially well manned. The late start of

offensive operations allowed more time

for careful requirements planning and

the needs of each new island base were

normally met. The large naval establishment, including the major proportion of naval construction battalions, was

on hand to make up Army deficiencies,

particularly of Army Engineers. Up

through the invasion of the Palaus, service troops were available in adequate

numbers though by that time they were

stretched quite thin as each new island

garrison exacted its drain on units available in Hawaii or earmarked in the

United States. And in the end it was in

the Central Pacific that the most serious

deficit developed, one that played an

important part in the cancellation of the

Formosa operation.

The deficit came about in large part

because, though the ASF warned that

there would be a shortage of over 100,-

000 service troops for the latter stages

of Pacific operations, General Marshall

ruled against sacrificing combat units to

include them in the 1944 Troop Basis.

When the specific requirement for service troops for the Formosa operation

began to take shape in July, there were

consequently few uncommitted service

units available to fulfill them.64 There

was serious question that even the smaller scale requirements for operations on

Iwo Jima and Okinawa could be met.

Any hopes that service forces could be

withdrawn from either SWPA or the

South Pacific to relieve the situation were

ended with the decision to invade Luzon,

for MacArthur would also be short of

what he needed for this operation. By

the last of 1944 the shortage of service

troops was weighing as heavily on the

minds of the planners as that of cargo

shipping. On 3 November, General Marshall informed the JCS:

In both the Southwest Pacific and Pacific

Ocean Areas there has been a continual

shortage of Army service units to support

the large base establishments and the com- bat task forces required for the progressive

operations undertaken. This shortage will

continue to exist into the foreseeable future

until such time as the cessation of hostilities

in Europe permits redeployment of Army

forces to the Pacific.65

The service troop shortage notwithstanding, the Pacific supply situation by

the end of the year 1944 was, for all the

difficulties inherent in the geography of

the theaters, generally good. Sufficient

of the outpourings of the American industrial machine had reached Pacific

destinations to overcome most of the

acute shortages that had existed earlier.

Procedures for gearing shipments to the

64

 See above, chs. XIV and XVI. 65

 JCS 1149, 3 Nov 44, memo by CofS, USA, title:

Economy in Use of Svc Units in SWP and POA.
SUPPLYING THE ARMY IN PACIFIC THEATERS 499

specific demands of Pacific commanders

had been developed, and in block loading at least a partial solution to the problem of excessive dispersion had been

found. Fleets of vessels for intratheater

transport, if still inadequate, had been

vastly augmented. Maj. Gen. Walter A.

Wood, Jr., Deputy Director of the ASF

Plans and Operations Division, in a tour

of the Pacific in the fall of 1944 reminiscent of Somervell's trip a year earlier

found the "overall equipment situation

. . . operationally adequate and the quality and character of items generally excellent."66

 Wood noted old problems

touched on by every other visitor to the

Pacific since 1942—maldistribution within theaters and unbalanced stocks at

different bases, delays in developing

bases because of climatic conditions, excess supplies at rear bases, lack of the

newest types of equipment because of

the priority of European theaters—but

gave every indication that even these

problems were less acute than formerly.

The very fact that Wood cited as the

major shortage that of reefer ships and

shore refrigeration facilities to make

fresh foods available to the soldiery, indicates the extent to which Pacific supply had been improved. In 1942 and

1943 these luxuries could seldom be considered.

A civilian observer had somewhat earlier grasped the enormity of the American logistical achievement in the Pacific.

Mr. Warren H. Atherton, National Commander of the American Legion, wrote

General Marshall, on returning from a

Pacific tour, on 5 July 1944:

I was impressed by the fact that we excel

the Japs mostly in our ability to meet the

logistic demands of all-out war. In two years

of occupation the Jap had established puny

little bases and inferior air strips; 60 days

after capture of these bases, caterpillars and

bulldozers had moved the jungle; warehouses, roads and wharves had been built

and a modern soldier city of 100,000 or more

established; 12 or 14 air strips had been

completed and everything was in motion

to support the next advance; marvellous

planning and execution and adaptation of

the mechanical ingenuity have been used

in making our supply system the model of

modern warfare. . . .67

66

 Memo, Wood for Dir Pls and Opns, ASF, 15

Nov 44, sub: Rpt of Inspection of Pac and SWPac

Ocean Areas, File Actions Resulting from Pacific

Trip, ASF Plng Div.

67

 Memo, Gen Styer for Dir Pls and Opns, ASF,

6 Jul 44, inclosing quotation from Atherton Ltr,

CofS ASF File Pls and Opns 1943-45.
CHAPTER XXI

China, Burma, and India

The China, Burma, India theater,

rather than the Pacific, suffered most

markedly from the European orientation

of Allied strategy in World War II.

Once the demands of higher priority

theaters, both the European and the

Pacific, had been satisfied, there was all

too little left to support operations on

the Asiatic mainland. The effective use

of what could be committed to the theater was prevented by disagreements

over strategy arising out of divergent

national interests and conflicting personalities. While the Pacific drive gained

momentum in 1943 and 1944, British,

Chinese, and American forces in China

and India, stymied both by paucity of

means and lack of agreement on how

to use those few available, made little

progress toward getting even a preliminary offensive under way. As a result,

the campaign in Asia was eventually

relegated to a subsidiary role in the war

against Japan.

This was quite in contrast to American expectations at the outset of the

war. Indeed, throughout 1942 and 1943,

the JCS placed an inordinate emphasis

on the importance of China as a factor

in the war against Japan, as evidenced

by Admiral King's continued insistence

that China's manpower and geographical

position held the key to final victory in

the Far East.1 It was axiomatic that Allied air power, once firmly established

in China, could subject the Japanese

lines of communication and the Japanese

mainland to devastating attack; it was

equally clear that to prevent such a contingency the Japanese Army would have

to fight a life or death battle in China.

The back-door route to Japan via the

Asiatic mainland therefore appeared to

offer a shorter, if inherently more difficult, approach to areas vital to Japan

than did the advance across the Pacific.2

Despite the importance the Americans

attached to China, they sought to achieve

their great aims on the Asiatic mainland

at small cost, while committing their

major resources to Europe and the Pacific. The JCS envisaged no large military investment in the CBI, except perhaps eventually in American air power,

once Germany was defeated. In the

meantime, they looked to the British in

India, and the Chinese themselves, with

their vast reservoirs of manpower, to

achieve the necessary objectives in the

theater with a limited amount of American air and logistical support. In essence, American policy in the Far East

centered on support to China in the firm

belief that the China of Generalissimo

Chiang Kai-shek was capable of eventually exerting an effective effort against

Japan if given a sizable infusion of Amer1

 Min, 84th mtg CCS, 14 May 43, and 131st mtg,

26 Nov 43.

2

 See Roosevelt's remarks at QUADRANT, 1st Citadel

Mtg, 19 Aug 43.
CHINA, BURMA, AND INDIA 501

GENERAL STILWELL

ican know-how and American logistical

support.

The Japanese conquest of Burma early

in 1942, which cut the last overland supply route to China, frustrated the initial

American design for equipping and

training an effective Chinese Army. It

left a long, difficult airlift from Assam

to Kunming over the high peaks of the

Himalayas as the only remaining avenue

for the flow of supplies. The Americans

assumed responsibility for the airlift,

but its development was slow, hampered

by a scarcity of air fields, transport

planes, and trained pilots. Its capacity

at the end of May 1943 was only 3,000

tons monthly, most of which was required to support the small American

air force in China. With few supplies

coming in from the outside, the economy

of Free China continually tottered on

the brink of collapse. The Chinese

Army, though a massive force on paper was nevertheless ill-organized, illequipped, poorly led, and generally incapable of offensive action.

The U.S. Joint Chiefs early took the

stand that the only solution was to retake Burma and reopen the land supply

line. Their ambitious plan for this purpose (ANAKIM) , largely the work of

General Stilwell, American commander

in the theater, called for a British amphibious attack on Rangoon, a British

land offensive in central Burma, and a

converging attack on northern Burma

by Chinese forces operating from Yunnan Province in China (YOKE, or YForce) and from Assam Province in India (X-RAY Force).

The plans for the two Chinese forces

formed an integral part of Stilwell's overall plan for carrying out the mission assigned him of increasing the efficiency

of the Chinese Army. The X-RAY Force,

initially two divisions, was made up of

Chinese troops assembled in India,

trained in American methods, fed and

clothed by the British, and re-equipped

with American material. The YOKE

Force was planned as a much larger one,

which, with X-RAY forces in India,

would make a total of thirty Chinese

divisions. Stilwell hoped to persuade

Chiang to concentrate scattered and understrength divisions in Yunnan, there

to create effective divisions and to train

them in American methods. Although

they were to be supplied at first primarily from Chinese sources, certain selected items of American ordnance, vital

to their operations, would have to be

brought in over the Hump air line. Once

the land supply line was open, the YOKE

divisions would be given their full com-
502 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

plement of American equipment. Meanwhile, a start would be made on a similar

30-division program in east China. Stilwell hoped that sixty American-trained

and -equipped divisions would be able

to take the offensive against the Japanese,

drive to the coast, and open a port

through which additional supplies could

be poured. At the very least they should

provide an adequate protective force for

airfields in south and east China.

Neither the British nor Chiang had

any real enthusiasm for Stilwell's plans.

Chiang feared the risk involved in committing his own forces in Burma without the massive American and British

support that would assure victory. He

was dilatory in concentrating troops in

Yunnan. The British did not share the

American faith that Chiang's China

could or would play any significant role

in the war, and therefore regarded the

reopening of the land route to China

as of less strategic importance than early

preparations for an attack against the

East Indies and Singapore with the eventual goal a sea attack on the China coast

in the vicinity of Hong Kong. India was

an inadequate and undeveloped base for

a campaign in Burma, the line of communication to the Burmese border particularly poor. Burma was a particularly

inhospitable area in which to conduct

a campaign. In the British view an early

ANAKIM was a logistical impossibility if

the concentration on the war against

Germany was to be preserved.

Thus lack of resources combined with

a lack of enthusiasm on the part of the

British and Chinese to prevent even a

start on ANAKIM in the 1942-43 dry season (November through March), the

only period of the year suitable for campaigning in Burma. And while the British, with obvious reluctance, agreed at

Casablanca to schedule a full-scale

ANAKIM in November 1943, they soon

showed signs that they still considered

it both logistically infeasible and strategically unprofitable.

Meanwhile, a serious division had arisen in American councils, when General

Chennault, commanding the U.S. Fourteenth Air Force in China, came up with

a plan to mount an air offensive from

Chinese bases without opening the overland supply line. Chennault would concentrate on enlarging the capacity of the

Hump air line and use its entire capacity

to support air operations against Japanese-held coastal cities and Japanese supply lines to the exclusion of any attempt

to re-form and re-equip the Chinese

Army. He contended, in contrast to Stilwell, that with assured air supremacy

the Chinese Army in its existing state

could protect his airfields against Japanese attack. The two commanders were

soon at odds. The British, the Chinese,

and the American President were all

mightily attracted by Chennault's promises of great results at small cost. Only

the American Joint Chiefs stood behind

Stilwell in support of ANAKIM.3

The Trident Decisions and Their

Aftermath

At the TRIDENT Conference all these

issues were debated at great length.4 The

upshot was a compromise both between

British and American positions and be3

 (1) For a summary of these events see Leighton

and Coakley, Global Logistics, 1940-43, pp. 525-50.

(2) For a more detailed account see Charles F. Romanus and Riley Sunderland, Stilwell's Mission to

China, UNITED STATES ARMY IN WORLD

WAR II (Washington, 1953). (3) See also above, ch. I. 4

 See above, ch. III.
CHINA, BURMA, AND INDIA 503

GENERAL CHENNAULT AND GENERALISSIMO CHIANG KAI-SHEK

tween the conflicting viewpoints on the

American side. It was largely dictated

by the President's avowed belief that

Stilwell's and Chennault's projects were

not mutually exclusive, but that the airlift could be developed to supply enough

tonnage for both the air effort and the

Chinese divisions in Yunnan. First priority on resources within the theater was

accordingly given to increasing the capacity of the air route to 10,000 tons

monthly, with a view to (a) intensifying air operations against the Japanese

in Burma; (b) maintaining increased

air forces in China; and (c) maintaining

the flow of airborne supplies to China.

While the British point of view was

accepted and a full-scale November ANAKIM ruled out as beyond Allied resources, the CCS approved a limited offensive to free central and north Burma.

They also directed that administrative

preparations for an operation of the

general size of ANAKIM should continue,

and that the British should undertake

the amphibious operations against the

port of Akyab and Ramree Island already scheduled and originally designed

as a prelude to the amphibious attack

on Rangoon.5

The limited offensive in Burma, including the converging attack of X-RAY

and YOKE forces, was designed to open

a new supply route from Ledo in Assam

via Myitkyina in Burma to a junction

5

 CCS 242/6, 25 May 43, title: Final Rpt to

President and Prime Minister.
504 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

with the old Burma Road at Bhamo.

The Americans had assumed responsibility for building the Ledo Road in the

rear of advancing Chinese troops in December 1942 and starting shipping necessary materials and Engineer troops in

response to Stilwell's requests early in

1943. Though first designed as a supplement to the old supply line running

north from Rangoon, after TRIDENT the

Ledo Road rapidly assumed the position

of a substitute. Although the Americans

continued to insist that all of Burma

must eventually be recaptured and, indeed, that scarce assault shipping must

be diverted from the Mediterranean to

India for that purpose, their logistical

planning from TRIDENT onward concentrated entirely on development of the

airlift and the Ledo Road as the avenues

for supply to China.

The airlift had to be the immediate

reliance. Tonnage targets were set at

7,000 for July 1943 and 10,000 for September, the latter in keeping with an

earlier Presidential promise to Chiang.

Immediately after TRIDENT the President, in an agreement with Dr. T. V.

Soong, Chiang's brother-in-law and influential adviser, granted Chennault an

absolute priority on 4,700 tons of this

prospective capacity in July and August

and 7,000 in September.6 Viewed in this

light the TRIDENT decisions were not a

compromise between Stilwell and Chennault, but a clear victory for the latter.

For if the airlift did not, in fact, meet

its tonnage goals then obviously preparations for the ground attack must suffer.

This indeed proved to be the case.

In the weeks following TRIDENT an intensive effort was devoted to providing

transport planes and preparing airfields

for Hump operations. Transports were

rushed to India in sufficient quantities

to meet the tonnage targets, but the

preparation of airfields soon fell behind,

although given the highest priority on

theater resources. In support of the British effort on the airfields, native labor,

construction equipment, and service

troops earmarked for the Ledo Road

were shifted to airfield projects. Additional construction supplies and Engineer troops were rushed from the United

States. But the movement of supplies

into Assam for construction, for the airlift, and for routine support of British,

American, and Chinese troops there and

on the British front at Imphal, proved

more than the line of communication

north from Calcutta could handle. Moreover, heavy rainfall, difficulties with

native labor, and a thousand other obstacles inherent in the climate and geography of the region, all contributed to

the failure to build the airfields at the

rate necessary to meet tonnage goals over

the Hump.

The airlift actually carried 3,100 tons

in June, 4,338 in July, 5,764 in August,

6,719 in September, and 8,632 in October, thus meeting neither the 7,000-ton

target in July nor the 10,000-ton target

in September. Chennault's priority prevented delivery of anything more than

the most minute quantities of supplies

for YOKE Force. Similarly, the priority

given to movement of air materials over

the Assam line of communication (Assam LOC) cut into the build-up at Ledo

and Imphal for Chinese and British land

offensives from these points. It soon be6

 (1) Memo, Maj William H. Martin for Maj Gen

James H. Burns, 28 Jul 43, sub: China Air Priorities,

ID 400.318, Chinese Stockpile in India, I. (2) Romanus and Sunderland, Stilwell's Mission to China,

pp. 341-45.
CHINA, BURMA, AND INDIA 505

FERRY PUSHING TRUCK-LOADED BARGES ACROSS THE BRAHMAPUTRA RIVER,

Assam, India.

came clear that the TRIDENT decisions

had been based on an incomplete appraisal of the logistical problems involved—that a necessary preliminary to

development of a supply line into China

from India would have to be improvement of the line within India itself, a

problem to which not enough attention

had previously been given.7

The Assam LOC that had thus come

to occupy center stage ran northeast

from Calcutta, India's largest port and

commercial center, to Manipore State

and Assam, the respective centers of British and American military activity. Calcutta, itself a port of tremendous capacity, was nevertheless overcrowded and

inefficiently organized, and had neither

adequate storage facilities for military

supplies, nor enough personnel to handle a large volume of cargo. Calcutta,

however, was not the real problem in

mid-1943 — more critical was the line

of communication to the north which

was made up of a network of rail and

barge lines, of which the Bengal and

Assam Railway was the most important.

The railway consisted of broad-gauge

lines running northward from Calcutta

to Santahar and Parbatipur, whence

meter-gauge lines, almost entirely single

7

 (1) Ibid. (2) Craven and Cate, ed., AAF IV, 443-

45. (3) Msg 2701, AGWAR to AMMISCA, 21 May 43,

OPD 400 CTO, I, Case 47. (4) History of the Services

of Supply in China-Burma-India Theater, Feb 1942-

24 Oct 1944 (hereafter cited as History, SOS in CBI),

chart facing p. 300, MS, OCMH.
506 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

track, ran eastward to Ledo, with connecting spurs to barge lines on the Brahmaputra River and to a second metergauge line running northward from

Chittagong through Manipore State to

Ledo. The facilities for transshipment

of freight at Santahar and Parbatipur

were limited, and there was no rail

bridge, only a ferry at the Brahmaputra

River crossing. Operation of the whole

line had been traditionally leisurely, designed to serve the tea gardens in Assam.

The British had withdrawn much rolling stock from India for use in the Middle East in 1941, and by mid-1943 the

line had, even with lend-lease assistance,

only been rebuilt to its regular prewar

capacity. That this capacity was inadequate was amply demonstrated in June

and July 1943 when the pressure was on

to complete the Assam airfields.8

Quadrant: A Logistical Charter

for the CBI

The whole situation was reflected in

the pessimistic appraisal of the possibilities of meeting TRIDENT objectives

forwarded to the British Chiefs by General Sir Claude J. E. Auchinleck, British

Commander in Chief, India, just before

the QUADRANT Conference in August

1943. The very minimum requirement

in Assam and Manipore to build the

airfields and the Ledo Road, to furnish

supplies for the airlift, and to support

the British and Chinese drives from Imphal and Ledo respectively, Auchinleck

reported, had been calculated at 3,400

tons daily. Actual movements over the

Assam LOC during June and July had

averaged only 1,700 to 1,800 tons daily,

and it now appeared that planned improvements would not result in the necessary increase, at least in part because

of the devastating effects of floods on

the Brahmaputra that had breached the

rail line at several points. Meanwhile,

requirements had increased, and Auchinleck calculated there would be a net

deficit of 128,000 tons in movements

north of Calcutta by March 1944, or an

average deficit of 600 tons daily over the

intervening period. If the air program

were to be continued in the priority assigned at TRIDENT, he stated flatly, then

either the advance from Ledo or that

from Imphal, or both of them would

have to be called off. His personal recommendation was that neither be undertaken; that instead resources should be

concentrated on air supply to China

and on building up forces and bases for

amphibious operations in Malaya.9

Neither the Americans nor, for that

matter, the British Chiefs of Staff themselves, were willing to accept Auchinleck's pessimistic appraisal. The British

Chiefs came to QUADRANT prepared to

support land operations to open a supply line through northern Burma if the

logistical obstacles could be overcome,

but determined to make no fixed commitment on an amphibious operation to

accompany the limited ground offensive.

They offered as an interesting new aspect

of their plans for the area the proposals

of Brigadier Orde Charles Wingate for

operations of long-range penetration

groups behind Japanese lines in Burma

supported only by air.10 Accordingly,

the CCS referred the Assam LOC prob8

 History, SOS in CBI, pp. 37-38, 48-51.

9

 CCS 305, 14 Aug 43, title: Effects of Floods on

Burma Campaign. 10

 Min, 107th mtg CCS, 14 Aug 43; 110th mtg,

17 Aug 43; 113th mtg, 20 Aug 43.
CHINA, BURMA, AND INDIA 507

lem to a subcommittee on which Somervell and the British Quartermaster

General and chief supply officer, Lt.

Gen. Sir Thomas Riddell-Webster, were

the principal members. From this subcommittee and from other actions at

QUADRANT emerged a concrete logistical

plan for developing a supply line

through India and north Burma to

China in step with the limited operations for opening a ground supply line

approved at TRIDENT.

Somervell and Riddell-Webster early

agreed that the Assam LOC was the "key

to the whole situation," controlling the

pace at which both the airlift and land

operations could proceed.11 Somervell

promised to speed U.S. lend-lease aid in

the form of rail cars, locomotives, and

barges, and suggested the Americans

might take over operation of parts of

the rail and barge line. With this aid

and the improvements already under

way, it was estimated that the goal of

3,400 tons of dry cargo daily (102,000

tons per month) could be met by 1 November 1943. This would provide the

minimum tonnage necessary in Assam

for building the airfields, meeting the

needs of troops preparing for the offensive, and an additional 10,000 tons to

move over the Hump into China. By

1 March 1944, the capacity should be

increased to 140,000 tons monthly, by

1 January 1945 to 170,000 tons, by 1 May

1945 to 200,000 tons, and by 1 January

1946 to a final target of 220,000 tons

monthly. The plan was based on the

assumptions that the Ledo Road could

be completed by 1 January 1945 and

developed to full capacity as a two-way

road within a year, and also that the airlift would be doubled on an earlier time

schedule. Thus, of the eventual capacity

of 220,000 tons on the Assam LOC,

65,000 tons were to be delivered in

China over the Ledo Road and 20,000

by the airlift.12

To supplement the capacity of the

Assam LOC, the airlift, and the Ledo

Road, a network of POL pipelines was

also proposed. These, like the Ledo

Road and the airlift, were also to be an

American responsibility. The main elements in the pipeline system were to be

a 6-inch line running from Calcutta to

the Dibrugarh terminal west of Ledo,

and a 4-inch line paralleling the Ledo

Road from Dibrugarh into Kunming.

Plans for the 4-inch line were already

well advanced. To these essentials, in

highest priority, the ASF now added

projects for a second 6-inch line eventually to run all the way from Calcutta

to Kunming and for a second 4-inch line

from Assam to Kunming via Fort Hertz

over wild, mountainous territory unoccupied by the Japanese, to be used exclusively for delivery of aviation gasoline. The last, rather visionary, scheme

had been suggested by General Stilwell

in July.

The net requirement for delivery in

Assam once all lines were completed

was set at 96,000 tons of POL monthly

—72,000 via the two 6-inch lines, 15,000

on the barge line, and 9,000 to be procured locally from the Digboi refineries

11

 Ltr, Riddell-Webster to Somervell, 16 Aug 43,

folder QUADRANT Conf, Hq ASF File.

12

 (1) Ibid. (2) Memos, Somervell for Riddell-Webster, 17 and 20 Aug 43. (3) Memo, Somervell for

CofS, 23 Aug 43. (2) and (3) in folder QUADRANT

Conf, Hq ASF File. (4) CCS 305/1, 18 Aug 43, title:

Interim Rpt of Ad Hoc Com Appointed to Examine

CCS 305. (5) CCS 325, 21 Aug 43, title: Supply

Routes in NE India. (6) Ltr, Somervell to Maj Gen

Raymond A. Wheeler, 24 Aug 43, Stilwell Personal

File, Book 4, Item 240.
508 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

in Assam. Some 54,000 tons would eventually be sent into China by the lines

running into Kunming. Meanwhile, the

4-inch line paralleling the Ledo Road

would be used to support both road construction and the advancing Chinese

troops.13

In sum, then, the logistical plan

evolved at QUADRANT envisaged development of a supply line through India

that by 1 January 1946 would provide

220,000 tons of dry cargo and 96,000

tons of POL monthly in Assam; 85,000

tons of the dry cargo and 54,000 tons

of the POL would move on into China

via the Ledo Road, by airlift, and by

the pipelines. This was still a small tonnage, sufficient only to support limited

air operations and provide a minimum

quantity of modern equipment and

transport for the Chinese Army. It would

not be enough to support any considerable numbers of American or British

troops in China. Further development

of operations in China would depend

on the opening of a port on the China

coast either by an overland advance by

the Chinese Army or by attack from

the sea.

The British Chiefs still took the position that the proposed improvements in

the Assam LOC could not be effected

in time to permit timely launching of

the limited offensives in Burma without

some reduction in the airlift. They proposed that the main effort must be

placed on opening land communications

at the expense of the airlift, or on expanding the airlift at the expense of the

ground effort, or that both be curtailed

in the interest of concentrating on improving the line of communications in

1943-44.14 The Americans would not

admit of the necessity for such a hard

choice. In their own councils they were

divided on the issue, and the President

was determined that the priority for the

ground campaign should not be allowed

to obscure the air effort entirely. General Somervell, reflecting the views of

the American SOS in the CBI, insisted

that the proposed improvements in the

Assam LOC could be accomplished

speedily enough to permit land operations to go forward on a delayed schedule without crippling the airlift. The

final CCS decision was not unequivocal.

Although highest priority was accorded

"offensive operations with the object of

establishing land communications with

China and improving and securing the

air route," the decision stipulated that

priorities between the ground and air

effort could not be rigidly fixed.15

There could be little doubt, nevertheless, that even this equivocal decision

shifted the emphasis back from Chennault's immediate air effort to the limited ground offensive in Burma. The

logistical plan prepared by the subcommittee was approved, and the target date

for the land offensive in Burma reset at

15 February 1944. A brand new combined command, long under discussion,

was formed to carry it out—the Southeast Asia Command (SEAC) with Vice

Adm. Lord Louis Mountbatten as Supreme Commander and Stilwell as his

13

 (1) CCS 312, 18 Aug 43, Rpt by JAdC, title:

Pipeline from India to China. (2) CCS 312/1, 21

Aug 43, same title. (3) Min, 115th mtg CCS, 23 Aug

43, Item 4.

14

 CCS 327, 23 Aug 43, memo by Br COS, title:

Opns from India. 15

 (1) CCS 319/5, 24 Aug 43, title: Final Rpt to

President and Prime Minister (QUADRANT). (2) Memo,

Gen Somervell for CofS, 23 Aug 43, folder QUADRANT

Conf, Hq ASF File. (3) Min, 115th mtg CCS, 23

Aug 43.
CHINA, BURMA, AND INDIA 509

deputy—entirely separate from the British Command in India under General

Auchinleck, which was now to become

principally an administrative headquarters. Directives issued to Mountbatten

and Auchinleck immediately after QUADRANT ordered them to take the necessary

action to bring the Assam LOC to the

target figures on which Somervell and

Riddell-Webster had agreed.16

There remained the question of an

amphibious operation, originally the

very center of ANAKIM and something

Chiang had always insisted on as a condition for committing his own armies in

Burma. The Americans still contended

Rangoon must eventually be captured

and that Akyab and Ramree Island must

consequently be the first objectives. The

British believed the retaking of south

Burma no longer to be in step with the

strategy of the war against Japan and

wished to move toward Sumatra and

Malaya; they suggested as a first step

a landing on the Andaman Islands. In

the end the choice was deferred, and

Mountbatten was merely instructed to

continue preparations for an operation

similar to that planned at TRIDENT. But

meanwhile, in response to American insistence, the transfer of assault shipping

from the Mediterranean to India was

directed, with all its implications for the

campaign in Italy.17

In sum, then, the result of QUADRANT

for the CBI was a clarification of TRIDENT decisions accompanied by a shift

in emphasis from the airlift to the overland route. The conference decisions

finally centered logistical planning on

the concrete problem of the line of communications within India and from India to China, establishing a charter for

the development of this LOC in step

with the proposed course of military

operations in Burma.

The concrete logistical plan was late.

The whole scheme for the CBI rested

on the tacit premise of a long-drawn-out

war against Japan, such as was in fact

envisaged in the original over-all plan

submitted by the Combined Staff Planners at Quebec providing for converging attacks on the China coast from the

Pacific, China, and southeast Asia. But

the JCS did not accept this plan and asked

for a new one looking toward the defeat

of Japan within a year after the defeat

of Germany.18 The Pacific advance was

to offer opportunities for short cuts in

generous measure, while the only opportunity in China seemed to lie in another

"premature" air effort, this time with

the very long range B-29 bombers.

There was a legitimate question then

whether the continued postponements of

the first year and a half had not already

rendered the Burma campaign excess

baggage.

The ASF Follow-up on Quadrant

With the goals more clearly defined,

the ASF initiated a vigorous program for

meeting them. General Somervell on 1

September directed the establishment of

16

 (1) Directives to SEAC and CinC, India, are

appendixes to CCS 325, 21 Aug 43, (2) On the formation of SEAC see Romanus and Sunderland,

Stilwell's Mission to China, pp. 355-57, and Ehrman,

Grand Strategy V, pp. 135-46. (3) Min, 114th mtg

CCS, 21 Aug 43. 17

 (1) On the amphibious issue and its relation to

the war in Europe, see above, Chapters VII, VIII,

and IX. (2) Min, 107th mtg CCS, 14 Aug 43; 113th

mtg, 20 Aug 43; 115th mtg, 23 Aug 43. (3) Min, 1st

Citadel Mtg, 19 Aug 43. 18

 See above, chs. VIII and XVI.
510 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

an ASF India Committee with General

Lutes as its head, characterizing the development of the line of communications in the CBI as likely to be "the

greatest engineering undertaking of the

war and perhaps the major effort insofar

as supply is concerned."19 Somervell

adopted the approach that because of

the urgency of the projects, much of the

basic planning must be done in the ASF

rather than in the theater, where no

really adequate logistical planning staff

existed.

The task did not require an entirely

fresh start. Matériel requirements for the

Ledo Road and its accompanying pipeline were already in the Army Supply

Program and service troop requirements

in the troop basis. Shipments of men

and materials had begun in January

1943 in response to Stilwell's requests

for support for a March offensive, and

were continuing. For instance, 500 of

the 1,100 miles of pipe required for the

Ledo Road pipeline had been shipped

by 1 September 1943 and the rest was

either at port or en route. Some 8,000

truck-tractors with 5-ton semitrailers,

especially designed for the Ledo Road,

were included in the Army Supply Program with production to begin in May

1944. Requirements for the other pipelines,

the barge line, and the railroad, and

those for additional service troops, of

more recent origin, promised to create

more difficulties. But much material of

the sort required was also in the Army

Supply Program, initially earmarked for

use on the old supply line north from

Rangoon contemplated in the planning

for ANAKIM or as British lend-lease for

use in India or Burma. Other material

could be diverted from BOLERO and replaced later. By the end of September,

all American pledges of locomotives and

freight cars for the Assam Railway had

been fulfilled. And it appeared that most

of the needed service units and other

matériel could be shipped by early

1944.20

While the ASF plans were still maturing, competition for the still limited

capacity of the Assam LOC flared anew

in the theater, raising old unresolved

questions of priority. General Auchinleck, charged with administrative preparations for the forthcoming Burma campaign pending Mountbatten's arrival, interpreted the QUADRANT decisions to

mean top priority for ground operations,

particularly for support of the British

force at Imphal. Still insistent that the

Assam LOC could not support both the

land offensives and the continued buildup of the airlift, he proposed in September 1943 to move British engineers from

the Assam airfields to Imphal and to reduce shipments into Assam for airfield

construction and air transport over the

Hump. Generals Stilwell and Marshall

also wished to place the highest emphasis

on ground operations, but they had to

regard supply to the YOKE Force—possible only by air transport—as of equal

19

 Memo, Somervell for Lutes, 1 Sep 43, sub:

Establishment of India Com for ASF, ASF Plng Div,

file Pol Pgms, Obj, Pls & Gen Scope of Work, Col

I. G. Horowitz.

20

 (1) Memo, Gen Heileman, Dep Dir Opns, ASF

for Gen Somervell, 30 Aug 43, sub: LOC Project

Commitments for USAF, CBI, folder LOC Projs

CBI, ASF Plng Div. (2) Memo, Heileman for Dir

Personnel, ASF, 1 Sep 43, sub: Personnel for Pipeline Cos and Hqs, CBI, folder Future Opns, ASF

Plng Div. (3) Msg GW 781-T-1, Wheeler to Styer,

20 Sep 43, folder CM-IN CBI Sep 1 to Nov 1, 1943,

ASF Plng Div. (4) Min, 2d mtg India Com, ASF,

7 Oct 43, folder India Com Mtgs, ASF Plng Div.
CHINA, BURMA, AND INDIA 511

importance with support of ground operations from the India side. The American staff thought the QUADRANT decisions hardly established so positive a priority. Moreover, the President's interest

in the airlift had to be reckoned with.

Chennault and Soong, faced with possible reduction in the airlift and with

cancellation of the previous absolute

priority on 4,700 tons for air operations

in China (Stilwell proposed to reduce

it to 40 percent, giving 60 percent to

YOKE) , complained to Roosevelt. The

President in turn asked Marshall to investigate, intimating in terms that could

hardly be mistaken that his earlier

promise to Chiang (given after TRIDENT) that the Hump lift would be

raised to 10,000 tons must be met. The

JCS consequently took the position that

any decisions by SEAC or the India Command affecting the airlift must be presented to the CCS for approval in the

light of "political implications" of

Roosevelt's promises to Chiang.21

General Somervell remained convinced that the capacity of the Assam

LOC could be increased to accommodate

both the airlift and ground operations.

In mid-October, following his trip to

the Pacific, he went on to India and

China under instructions from the Chief

of Staff and the President to look into

the state of affairs there. On arrival in

the theater he received a message from

Marshall informing him of the President's concern about the airlift and instructing him to "give special consideration and attention to this whole business" and to put "real punch behind

it."22

There was more than a suspicion in

Somervell's mind that neither Auchinleck nor the Government of India was

pursuing the goal of increasing the capacity of the Assam LOC with anything

like enthusiasm, a fact of which he informed both Chiang and Mountbatten

in the course of a conference on 20 October. Turning to the concrete problems involved, he found that lack of hardstands

on the airfields was having a less serious

effect on Hump operations than lack of

proper organization, adequately trained

pilots, radios, and motor transport.

Throughout the U.S. sector in Assam

on the airfields, pipelines, and the Ledo

Road, he found the shortage of service

troops the most important delaying factor and urged speed-up in shipments,

particularly of engineers, and addition

of new units to the CBI troop list. Selecting certain key items of construction

equipment and spare parts, he requested

a special cargo vessel be dispatched to

the theater to bring them. Moving on

to Delhi, he found the British "do-nothing" spirit the chief reason for the

slow movements over the Assam LOC.

The head of the Indian Railway Commission had, Somervell reported to Marshall, "made the very naive remark that

they could secure more tonnage but that

. . . they had never been asked to move

more than the figure previously fur21

 (1) Msg 3208, AGWAR to AMMISCA, 27 Sep

43, Stilwell Personal File, Book 4. (2) Msg 72666/COS,

Auchinleck to Stilwell, 22 Sep 43. (3) Memo, unsigned, for Gens Handy and Hull, 24 Sep 43, sub:

Gen Auchinleck's Msg Regarding Removal of Engineer Units from Assam Airdrome Construction.

(4) Msg AMMDEL AG 1929, New Delhi to AGWAR,

23 Sep 43. Last three in OPD Exec 1, Item 22. (5) Msg

765, Stilwell to Marshall, 24 Sep 43, OPD Exec 1.

Item 22. (6) Romanus and Sunderland, Stilwell's

Mission to China, pp. 375-76.

22

 (1) Msg 3619, Marshall to Stilwell for Somervell,

16 Oct 43, OPD Exec 1, Item 23. (2) On Somervell's

instructions see Romanus and Sunderland, Stilwell's

Mission to China, p. 381.
512 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

nished by the India Command." This

remark, Somervell went on, "put the

discussions for the first time on a hopeful and common sense basis."23

 Mountbatten soon took a hand, reversing Auchinleck's previous decision and accepting the American offer to operate a section of the Bengal and Assam Railway

—804 miles of meter-gauge lines from

Katihar to Ledo.24

Somervell's trip resulted in a speed-up

in the pace of the CBI build-up and a

general refinement in the project planning the India Committee was conducting. Concrete plans for all the projects

involved in the land line of communications had taken relatively final shape by

early November 1943. Of the pipelines,

the 6-inch line from Calcutta to Dibrugarh was accorded first priority with a

target date for completion set at 1 July

1944. Second priority went to the 4-inch

line along the Ledo Road, while third

was accorded the Fort Hertz Line, or,

as this seemed likely to be impractical,

to a second 4-inch line from Ledo to

Kunming. The last line, the heavy 6-inch

one to run all the way from Calcutta to

Kunming, was placed in last priority

with a target date for completion of 1

July 1945. Meanwhile, a barge line to

run from Sirajganj Ghat to Dibrugarh

(also to carry mainly POL) was to be

completed 1 April 1944. Shipments of

both matériel and troops for both the

high priority pipelines and the barge

line were well advanced by mid-November.

Moreover, plans for U.S. operation of

a sector of the Bengal and Assam Railway were already well along by the time

the British accepted the offer. Col. Paul

Yount, formerly head of the Military

Railway Service in the Persian Gulf,

conducted a survey in late October and

recommended improvements which, he

said, together with American operation

of the Pandu-Ledo sector, would raise

the capacity of the road to 220,000 tons

monthly (the goal the CCS had set for

January 1946) by April 1944. Yount's

plan was accepted in Washington with

some diminution in the 4,600 troops he

asked for the U.S. sector. The target

date for American assumption of control was set, however, at 1 March 1944,

somewhat later than Yount had hoped.

British and Indian officials went ahead

in the meantime with some of the recommended improvements, though the

increase in tonnage capacity continued

slow and well below Yount's estimates.25

The tight shipping situation on the

west coast attendant on the launching

of the Central Pacific offensive at first

threatened to slow the CBI build-up,

but the transfer of shipping from the

Atlantic during the fall months saved

the day. Thus while the CBI retained

the lowest priority of all active theaters,

it was nevertheless possible to furnish

men and materials on an emergency

basis. Its low priority was, in fact, still a

higher one than that currently accord23

 Msg 2810 KM 2863, Tehran to AGWAR, Somervell to Marshall, 25 Oct 43, OPD Exec 1, Item 23.

Somervell's other messages on the airlift, pipelines,

need of service troops, etc., are also in this file. 24

 (1) Ibid. (2) Memo, Lutes for OPD, 4 Oct 43, sub:

Bengal-Assam RR, AG 617 (9-28-43) (1). (3) History,

SOS in CBI, pp. 53-59.

25

 (1) Memo, Somervell for OPD, 4 Nov 43, sub:

QUADRANT Decisions; Rpt by Col F. S. Strong on CBI

Projects, 13 Nov 43, folder Burma, ASF Plng Div.

(2) Min, 3d mtg India Com ASF, 14 Dec 43, folder

India Com Mtgs, ASF Plng Div. (3) Memo, Lutes for

OPD, 4 Oct 43. (4) Army Service Forces Activities in

the Supply of China, Burma and India, 1942-43,

MS, OCMH, pp. 105-12. (5) History, SOS in CBI,

pp. 56-63.
CHINA, BURMA, AND INDIA 513

ed the preshipment program for the

United Kingdom. OPD approved numerous diversions from the ETO of

specialized troop units needed in the

CBI, enabling Somervell's additional requests and emergency requisitions from

Maj. Gen. Raymond A. Wheeler, CBI

SOS commander, to be met, and permitting two railway operating battalions

to depart in December to operate the

meter-gauge railway.26

New Air Projects

Meanwhile, a new air project had taken shape which, though it was conceived

as self-supporting, could not help but

impose new burdens on the already overstrained logistical facilities of the CBI.

By August 1943 it appeared that ten

groups (28 planes each) of the AAF's

new very long range (VLR) bombers,

the B-29's, would be ready for operations by October 1944. These and the

squadrons to follow would be too late

to play any important role in the strategic bombing of Germany, but might

have decisive effects in the war against

Japan. Since no Pacific bases were then

in prospect by October 1944 within effective bombing radius of Japan, the

Air Staff turned its attention to China.

The use of B-29's from Chinese bases

offered one hope for speeding up the

timetable for defeat of Japan, and at

QUADRANT Brig. Gen. Laurence S.

Kuter, Chief of the Air Staff, presented

a plan for a massive air assault on Japan

from the Changsha region of east China.

The first ten groups of B-29's would

be moved into that area and begin operations in October 1944; ten more

would follow by May 1945. The plan

presupposed that the land route to China

would be secured by mid-1944 and that,

with the supplies carried over it and

over the airlift, Chinese ground forces

and Chennault's air force would be capable of protecting the exposed bases in

east China. Supply of the B-29 bases

themselves would be entirely by airlift

from Calcutta, utilizing 4,000 B-24

bombers converted to transports (C87's). Some 596,000 tons of supplies

would have to be laid down at Calcutta

monthly for the strategic air force alone;

about 40 new airfields would have to

be constructed around the Indian port

and a similar number in east China.27

ASF staff planners took one look at

the plan and declared it logistically impossible. The massive shipments of personnel and equipment would have to

be at the expense of other planned operations; the port capacity of Calcutta was

too small, the construction of the airfields impossible without early commitment of additional large numbers of

service troops to the CBI; it was doubtful if the Chinese Army could be prepared to protect the bases in time for

operations to begin on the dates scheduled.28

26

 (1) See above, chs. IX and XIV. (2) Diary, Theater Br, Plng Div, ASF Asiatic Sec, 17 Nov 43. (3)

Msg TIGAR GW 1112, Wheeler to Somervell, 11 Nov

43, folder CM-IN Nov to Dec 1943 CBI, Plng Div

ASF. (4) Memo, Gen Heileman for Gen Styer, 13

Nov 43, sub: Status of Railway Units for CBI, folder

CBIT, ASF Plng Div.

27

 (1) CCS 323, 20 Aug 43, memo by U.S. CsofS,

title: Air Plan for the Defeat of Japan. (2) Wesley

Frank Craven and James Lea Cate, eds., "The Army

Air Forces in World War II," vol. V, The Pacific:

MATTERHORN to Nagasaki: June 1944-August

1945 (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press,

1953) (hereafter cited as Craven and Cate, ed.,

AAF V), pp. 3-17. 28

 Memo, Col Magruder for Gen Somervell, 20

Aug 43, sub: AAF Plan for the Defeat of Japan . . . ,

file QUADRANT Conf, Hq ASF.
514 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

General Stilwell's air commander,

General Stratemeyer, echoed the ASF

objections, but on Washington's insistence submitted an alternate plan called

TWILIGHT conceived to be within the

logistic capabilities of the theater. Under

TWILIGHT, the main bases for the B-29's

would be near Calcutta, with advance

bases only in east China. The B-29's

would be partly self-supporting, hauling

their own fuel and bombs into China;

other supplies would be brought in by

converted B-24's and transports also directly from Calcutta. The theater proposed that ten B-29 groups might be

supported in this manner by April 1945

if in the meantime the overland supply

route had been secured, fifty U.S.-trained

and -equipped Chinese divisions put

into the field, and more fighter forces

assigned to protect the B-29's and their

bases.

The timetable in the TWILIGHT plan

was too slow for the AAF. By October

1943 it appeared that four B-29 groups

might be readied by March 1944 and

General Arnold was anxious to put them

into action as soon as possible. Out of

these circumstances grew the MATTERHORN plan, largely the work of Brig.

Gen. Kenneth B. Wolfe, AAF, a pioneer

in the B-29 program. Wolfe proposed

that three or four groups of B-29's begin

operations from advance bases in the

Cheng-tu area west of Chungking, a

much less exposed position than the fields

in east China, by April or May 1944.

The main bases would be, as in TWILIGHT, at Calcutta, but the operations

were to be completely self-sustaining and

independent of the theater line of communications. Two giant planes would

be used to transport supplies from Calcutta to the Cheng-tu fields for every

three engaged in flying combat sorties.

The existing Chinese armies and Chennault's air force would provide protection, with the addition of only two fighter groups specifically earmarked for defense of the B-29 bases. While from

Cheng-tu fewer profitable targets would

be within range than from east China,

the main concentration of Japanese coke

ovens on which their steel industry was

dependent could be bombed from the

Cheng-tu fields.29

Stilwell and Stratemeyer thought the

plan preferable to TWILIGHT, since it

would require little additional protection for the airfields, but Stilwell, at

least, regarded the whole B-29 scheme,

like Chennault's earlier plan, as premature. The President, however, was enthusiastic about the prospects of destroying the coke ovens. On 10 November he

asked Churchill to arrange with the Government of India to render every possible assistance in the construction of

bases around Calcutta, and he asked

Chiang to provide necessary labor and

materials for constructing the fields in

Cheng-tu under American technical supervision. "This is a bold but entirely

feasible project," Roosevelt told the

Prime Minister. "Together, by this operation, we can practically cripple the

Japanese naval and military power and

hasten the victory of our forces in

Asia."30 Churchill and Chiang agreed.

Though there was no formal CCS approval until some weeks later at SEXTANT, the War Department began im29 Craven and Cate, ed., AAF V, 17-21. 30

 (1) Msg CM-OUT 417, President to Prime Minister, 10 Nov 43. (2) Msg 3811, AGWAR to AMMISCA, President to Chiang Kai-shek, 11 Nov 43.

(3) Msg 876, AMMISCA to AGWAR, 14 Nov 43. (2)

and (3) in Stilwell Personal File, Book 4, Items 1235,

1259. (4) Craven and Cate, eds., AAF V, 21-22.
CHINA, BURMA, AND INDIA 515

mediately to plan the movement of the

necessary men and materials for construction of fields and facilities at Calcutta. Four Engineer aviation battalions,

four Engineer dump truck companies,

and two pipeline companies were added

to the CBI troop basis. A May target

date was established for completion of

five B-29 fields near Calcutta.31 The

addition of the MATTERHORN fields completed the complex pattern of American

projects in the CBI.

Sextant: The Plans Disrupted

Some 59,000 troops and 950,000 tons

of cargo were shipped from the United

States to the CBI from August through

December 1943. U.S. troop strength in

the theater rose from 46,000 to 94,500.

The build-up was expected to continue

at about this rate during the first six

months of 1944.32 In terms of numbers,

the CBI command was still small and

would remain so for some time to come.

But its strategic importance was still conceived to be out of proportion to the

numerical strength of the American

soldiery present. Its fundamental mission was to make possible the use of

highly strategic territory in China for

an air assault against Japan and to call

forth and make effective the tremendous

manpower of a hitherto ineffective ally

in the Pacific war.

On the eve of the SEXTANT Conference

late in 1943 the prospects for success in

this endeavor were brighter than ever

before. The airlift was finally approaching its target of 10,000 tons monthly.

If the Assam LOC still lagged, new spirit

and energy infused into its operation

by the work of Somervell and his staff

promised to produce better results in the

not-too-distant future. New techniques

of air supply promised to make possible

more effective operations against the

Japanese in Burma. In November Stilwell launched the drive of the Chinese

Army in India toward Myitkyina.

Mountbatten was putting new drive and

spirit into the British and proposed to

present at SEXTANT a plan of operations

for the following year that by combined

Chinese-American-British action would

finally break the land blockade of China.

Even Chiang, in November 1943, seemed

ready to give in to Stilwell's persistent

prodding and launch the attack of the

YOKE Force across the Salween River.33

The Allied conferences at Cairo and

Tehran completely changed these prospects. Old conflicts among American,

British, and Chinese interests reemerged, were given a new turn by

Stalin's promise to enter the war against

Japan, and the conferences ended in failure to agree on any strategy for the coming year that would achieve the purposes

enunciated at QUADRANT of opening an

overland supply route to China.

The story of SEXTANT and EUREKA has

already been told34 and needs little elaboration here. At Cairo, for the first and

last time, Chiang Kai-shek met with

Churchill and Roosevelt and their staffs.

As a plan for operations in the CBI,

Mountbatten presented CHAMPION, in- 31

 (1) Diary, Strat LOC Br, Plng Div, ASF, 16 Nov

43. (2) Memo, Col G. H. Williams, Actg Chief, Strat

LOC Br, for Dir Plng Div, ASF, 24 Nov 43, sub:

Implementation of TWILIGHT Plan, file Future Opns,

ASF Plng Div. 32

 (1) ASF Control Div, Statistical Review, World

War II. (2) STM-30, Strength of the Army, 1 Jan 48.

33

 See Romanus and Sunderland, Stilwell's Command Problems, chs. I and II. 34

 See above, ch. XI.
516 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

eluding two separate operations respectively designated TARZAN and BUCCANEER. TARZAN was to include the completion of the Chinese drive already underway from Ledo toward Myitkyina,

the advance of the YOKE Force from Yunnan to meet it, a British land drive toward the Chindwin, and an airborne

offensive in the Indaw-Katha region of

central Burma. BUCCANEER was to be a

British amphibious landing on the Andaman Islands in the Bay of Bengal.

Chiang made the British amphibious

operation a prerequisite to the participation of YOKE Force and the course of

events that led to the cancellation of

BUCCANEER to provide landing craft for

the Mediterranean consequently led also

to the cancellation of the other parts of

CHAMPION. Mountbatten's belated second entry, PIGSTICK, combining a smaller amphibious operation against the

Arakan coast and a TARZAN that included an attack on Mandalay as a substitute for the airborne offensive in the

Indaw-Katha area, also went by the

board when Chiang vacillated and the

British withdrew practically all the amphibious shipping remaining in SEAC.

Any prospect of a campaign that would

open an overland supply route to China

before the 1944 monsoon season disappeared and with it any chance that

either a full-scale air attack against

Japan could be mounted from China

in 1944 or that the Chinese could move

to the coast and seize a port before American forces advancing across the Pacific

arrived.35

Though these SEXTANT decisions were

but the last of a long series of delays in

launching operations on the Asiatic

mainland, this time they had an air of

finality. The new over-all plan for the

defeat of Japan, in recognition of the

growing American conviction that an

accelerated advance across the Pacific offered a quicker and easier way to defeat

Japan, relegated the campaigns in China

and SEAC to a secondary position in

support of the main line of advance.36

To OPD's planners, the problem now

seemed largely one of finding a way to

realize a reasonable return on a sizable

military investment with a minimum

additional commitment. Recording his

views on the "future military value of

the China Theater" on 8 January 1944,

Brig. Gen. Frank N. Roberts, head of

OPD's Strategy and Policy Group,

opined that air support of the Pacific

advance from bases in territory already

under Chiang's control would be the

probable limit of the CBI's contribution. There seemed little possibility that

an overland route could be secured and

readied in time to prepare a Chinese

Army to seize and hold forward bases

before July 1946, a full year after it was

anticipated Pacific forces would have

reached the Philippines. Therefore,

Roberts suggested, the American effort

should be concentrated on building up

the air supply route to China and air

bases in China, using the airlift entirely

for the latter purpose. The effort should

be continued to seize and hold Myitkyina in order to shorten the air route

and to place forces in a position to exploit a road to China should the oppor- 35

 For a full account see, in addition to Chapter

XI above, Romanus and Sunderland, Stilwell's Command Problems, pp. 49-82; Matloff, Strategic Planning, 1943-1944, pp. 347-52, 369-73; and Ehrman,

Grand Strategy V, 155-95, 211-23.

36

 (1) CCS 417, 2 Dec 43, title: Over-all Plan for the

Defeat of Japan. (2) See above, chs. XII and XVI.
CHINA, BURMA, AND INDIA 517

tunity develop, but any further land

advance or development of the road

seemed to Roberts of doubtful value.

The effort to equip a Chinese army in

China should also be deferred until Pacific forces reached the China coast, presumably late in 1945, and undertaken

then only if deemed "desirable to accelerate the defeat of Japan."37

While Roberts' superiors in OPD refused to accept the full implications of

this position, insisting that existing commitments to China must be met for

political if not military reasons, it became essentially the position of the Joint

Staff Planners. In a paper on Pacific strategy on 10 March, they put it bluntly:

It now appears that the Pacific advance

to the Formosa-Luzon-China Coast area

cannot, except for air support, be materially

aided by the SEAC and CBI theaters. . . . It

would seem logical then, that all efforts in

that area should be directed toward nourishing the air forces in China so that they,

by an all-out effort, can support our assault

from the Pacific.38

The British meanwhile had drawn

their own inferences from the SEXTANT

decisions. In early January they proposed that the effort in Burma be cut

to the bare minimum necessary to seize

Myitkyina and build and hold airfields

there, and that the major line of attack

be diverted toward Sumatra and Malaya

as soon as amphibious resources were

available for the purpose. Mountbatten

argued that the Ledo Road was now

"out of step with global strategy" and

should be halted at Myitkyina.39 The

end run around Malaya would, he and

the British Chiefs contended, bring

SEAC forces to a port on the China coast

earlier than an overland drive through

China.

In the American view, the proposed

end run was equally out of step with

global strategy and an even less profitable investment than the Burma campaign. Amphibious resources for an attack on Sumatra could not possibly be

made available until the end of the war

against Germany; thus SEAC forces

could not possibly arrive on the China

coast as early as those advancing across

the Pacific. Moreover, the Americans

argued, unless the British advanced

against the Japanese in central Burma

and seized the area south of Myitkyina

the airfields to be built there could not

be held. In the end the U.S. Chiefs

brought the British over, and by late

March there was general agreement that

"nourishing the air forces in China"

would be the primary mission of SEAC,

with the land offensive to be conducted

with this purpose in mind.40

If this proposed line of action constituted a clear and logical strategy,

there remained too many strands of past

plans still hanging in the air to permit

its execution with single-minded purpose. No directive was issued to Mount37

 Memo, Gen Roberts for ACofS, OPD, 8 Jan

44, sub: Future Military Value of China Theater,

Somervell Black Book, Strat Agenda for Asiatic

Conf, Tab 4, Hq ASF File. 38

 (1) JCS 713/1, 10 Mar 44, rpt by JPS, title:

Future Opns in Pacific. (2) Matloff, Strategic Planning, 1943-1944, pp. 436-38.

39

 Msg AM 38, New Delhi to AMMISCA and

AGWAR, 6 Jan 44, Stilwell Personal File, Book V,

Item 1602. 40

 (1) Memo, SAC, SEAC for CCS, 4 Feb 44, and

related materials in OPD Exec 1, Item 23a. (2) JCS

774, 16 Mar 44, rpt by JPS, title: Strategy in SEAC.

(3) This controversy may be followed in detail in

Hayes, The War Against Japan, II, 198-214, History

JCS.
518 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

batten until June while American leaders debated among themselves and with

the British on just what should be done

in the CBI to carry out their agreed

purpose. Even the air plan required as

a minimum the capture of Myitkyina in

order to shorten the airlift; to many it

seemed folly not to continue once threefourths of the battle to open a land

route had been won; the American investment required to get the road into

Myitkyina would be largely lost unless

the road were continued over the much

easier trail to Kunming; even if the road

were not completed, the pipelines at

least could play their role in transporting POL for the air forces. There was,

too, the long-standing American commitment to aid China that could not be

lightly pushed aside. Stilwell was still

operating under his original directive

prescribing his mission as one of increasing the combat effectiveness of the

Chinese Army. After SEXTANT, moreover, the President changed his attitude

toward Chiang and began to put pressure on him to undertake the offensive

against Burma from Yunnan, threatening him otherwise with the cut-off of

lend-lease supplies. If Chiang moved,

then there was a clear American commitment to open the road. ASF staff planners, deprecating the chances of rapid

success in the advance across the Pacific

to the Philippines or Formosa, continued doggedly to insist that the war

against Japan could not be won without

a campaign on the Asiatic mainland.

"In my opinion," one wrote, "as long

as there is a possibility of our requiring

a port in China, the construction of an

overland route into China from Burma

should be pressed to the utmost, so that

a strong tactical air force and some

Chinese ground forces can assist in the

capture of the port."41

Meanwhile the JCS were working out

a scheme for stockpiling POL, bombs,

ammunition, and other supplies in

China for air missions to be flown in

support of Pacific operations (PACAID) against Formosa where, in accordance with recent decisions on Pacific

strategy, American forces were expected

to land early in 1945. A JCS directive

on 2 May 1944 instructed Stilwell "to

commence immediately the progressive

stockpiling in China of supplies to be

used for these supporting operations."42

It had the effect of giving PAC-AID

supplies first priority on the Hump airlift, and in specific terms indicated that

it would undoubtedly require curtailment of support of ground forces in

China.43

Stilwell, evidently puzzled, cabled

Marshall on 24 May expressing some uncertainty about what the theater mission

was, stating his view that "ultimately

the Japanese Army must be fought on

the mainland of Asia," and renewing

his old request for an American corps

to assist in opening the land route to

China.44 Marshall's reply was tactful but

firm:

Japan should be defeated without undertaking a major campaign against her on

41

 (1) Memo, Col Magruder for Chiefs, Theater

Br and Strat LOC Br, Plng Div, ASF, 10 Feb 44, sub:

Future Opns SEAC, folder CBI Theater, ASF Plng

Div. (2) For a detailed exposition of the ASF view

see Strat LOC Study 58, sub: Opns Versus Japan,

Support from CBI, Rpt 13, Part 4, 10 Aug 44, ASF

Plng Div. 42

 JCS 839/1, 2 May 44. title: Instructions to CG,

USAF in CBI, Regarding Air Support of Pacific Opns. 43

 (1) Ibid. (2) Min, 161st mtg JCS, 2 May 44

(Suppl), Item 2. 44

 Unnumbered Msg, Stilwell to Marshall, 24

May 44, Stilwell Personal File, Book VII, Item 2740.
CHINA, BURMA, AND INDIA 519

the Asiatic mainland if her defeat can be

accomplished in this manner. Subsequent

operations against the Japanese ground

army in Asia should be in the nature of a

mopping up operation. Timely support of

Pacific operations requires that priority be

given during the next several months to a

build-up of our air effort in China. The

heavy requirements for our operations

against Germany and for our main effort

in the Pacific preclude our making available to you the American Corps you request to assist you in re-opening of ground

communications with China.45

Yet Marshall reaffirmed that Stilwell's

mission vis-a-vis the Chinese was to continue to be that of increasing the combat efficiency of the Chinese Army in

accordance with current plans for equipping 33 divisions and that, while primary

emphasis "for the present" should go

to the Hump airlift and its security and

to development of maximum effectiveness of the Fourteenth Air Force, he

should be prepared to "exploit the development of overland communications

to China."

The directive issued by the CCS to

Mountbatten on 3 June 1944 was of the

same equivocal character. Though he

was given as his primary mission

to develop, maintain, broaden and protect

the air link to China, in order to provide

the maximum and timely stock of petrol

and stores to China in support of Pacific

operations. . . .

he was also instructed:

So far as is consistent with the above, to

press advantages against the enemy, by

exerting maximum effort, ground and air,

particularly during the current monsoon

season, and in pressing such advantages to

be prepared to exploit the development of

overland communications to China.46

The last paragraph, vague as it was, had

the net effect of keeping the Ledo Road

alive as part of the CBI logistical plan.

It was added largely at the insistence of

General Somervell in the face of British

opposition and the apparent indifference

of OPD.47

On 5 April Stilwell had written to

General Arnold: "We can't do everything so why not get down to cases and

make out a priority list. . . . Right now,

everybody is frantically scrambling to do

everything, and another load will necessarily cause trimming everywhere."48

If the first priority for PAC-AID seemed

to be a step in that direction, it did not

in practice provide any solution, for the

demands of existing projects in the CBI

soon totally negated the effects of the

priority and rendered PAC-AID simply

"another load" on the already overburdened facilities in the theater. Everybody

continued to scramble to do everything

with the result that almost nothing was

really done well.

Matterhorn

Of the existing CBI projects that had

a part in preventing any real concentration on a single objective in the theater,

none played a more significant role than

MATTERHORN, approved finally by the

CCS at SEXTANT. If MATTERHORN was

fundamentally in keeping with the new

45

 WARX 42202, Marshall to Stilwell, 27 May 44,

Stilwell Personal file, Book VII, Item 2562.

46

 Mountbatten Report, p. 64. On the framing of

the directive, see Hayes, The War Against Japan,

II, 210-14, History JCS. 47

 See Memo, Somervell for CofS, 31 May 44, sub:

Strategy in SEAC, ABC 384 (8-25-42), Sec 6. 48

 Memo, Stilwell for Arnold, 5 Apr 44, OPD

381 (TS), Case 375.
520 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

concept that placed the primary emphasis on the air effort, its logistical demands furnished one of the stumbling

blocks that made the stockpiling of supplies for PAC-AID missions impossible.

MATTERHORN, in its final conception,

was definitely experimental in character,

a product of the desire to put the four

available B-29 groups into action as

soon as possible. With the speed-up in

the Central Pacific timetable, it was

agreed that the main strategic bombing

offensive by the B-29's would be undertaken from the Marianas. Even with an

accelerated advance, however, these islands were not expected to be in American hands before October 1944. The

use of bases in China for the first four

groups thus promised an earlier start.

MATTERHORN got the highest priority

of all CBI projects in the early months

of 1944. Yet even MATTERHORN had to

go ahead on the basis of a CCS decision

that it should be carried out "without

materially affecting other approved operations."49

 The planes themselves, and

their crews and air service personnel

were especially earmarked for the project, but furnishing the required shipping, ground service personnel, and construction equipment for the airfields

introduced complications. The restrictive

clause in the CCS decision had to be

given a liberal interpretation. Shipping

requirements—20,000 troop spaces, 200,-

000 tons of dry cargo space in the first

six months of 1944, and after April at

least 20,000 tons of tanker capacity

monthly—were met by juggling schedules at some expense to the movements

of men and material for other CBI projects. Even then there was considerable

delay in moving construction materials

and equipment, necessitating establishment of special priorities in February

1944. Meanwhile, both equipment and

troops had to be borrowed from the airfields in Assam, from the British, and

from the Ledo Road and pipeline projects.50

By dint of these expedients and the

best efforts of the theater SOS, two of

the five airfields contemplated for the

Calcutta area were readied to receive

the giant B-29's by early April 1944,

and two more were prepared by 1 June.

The fifth field, built to accommodate

transports, was not, however, completed

until 1 October, nor were all the runways on the others finished until that

time. Pipeline facilities to bring aviation gasoline from terminals at Calcutta

were constructed in step with the progress of the fields. Meanwhile, in China,

the construction of five similar fields in

Cheng-tu kept pace by dint of the labor

of thousands of Chinese coolies. The

B-29's were able to fly their first mission

—a trial run against railway shops in

Bangkok—on 5 June 1944.51

The four squadrons of B-29's stayed

in China until January 1945, flying both

strategic bombing missions and tactical

missions in support of Chinese, SEAC,

and SWPA forces. In the words of an

49

 (1) CCS 397 (Rev), 2 Dec 43, title: Specific Opns

for the Defeat of Japan. (2) Craven and Cate, ed.,

AAF V, 22-32.

50

 (1) Craven and Cate, AAF V, 74-75. (2) Msgs between Marshall and McNarney (SEXTANT and AGWAR) 20 Nov-7 Dec 43, in OPD Exec 5, Item 13.

(3) Memo, Col Williams, Strat LOC Br, for Dir, Plng

Div, ASF, 23 Nov 43, sub: TWILIGHT Plan for Strategic Bombing of Japan, file Future Opns, ASF Plng

Div. (4) Materials in file Spec Proj CBI, ASF Plng Div.

(5) Ltr, Maj Gen William E. R. Covell to Gen Somervell, 21 Jan 44, file Gen Covell's Ltrs from CBI, ASF

Plng Div. 51

 (1) Craven and Cate, ed., AAF V, 59-73, 92-98.

(2) History, SOS in CBI.
CHINA, BURMA, AND INDIA 521

Air Forces historian, the results obtained

in the strategic missions "did little to

hasten the Japanese surrender or to justify the lavish expenditures poured out

in their behalf."52 The tactical missions

were of more value but of hardly enough

to justify the drain MATTERHORN inevitably imposed on the limited logistical

facilities of the CBL MATTERHORN logistics proved to be a nightmare. It was impossible to make the force self-sustaining as Wolfe had originally visualized,

for the B-29's could not, in their shuttle

runs between Calcutta and Cheng-tu,

bring in enough fuel, bombs, and other

supplies to support more than a minimum of missions. Transports and converted bombers were early placed on the

run but they, too, proved insufficient.

The B-29's were soon competing with

Chennault's Fourteenth Air Force and

Chinese ground forces for the capacity

of the Hump airlift.

The presence of the B-29's in the theater had its impact in other ways—in absorbing a goodly portion of the cargo

shipping space allotted the CBI, in increasing congestion at the port of Calcutta, and in producing diversions of

both service troops and supplies from

other projects. The expenditures attending the construction of the airfields

at Cheng-tu speeded the inflation of

Chinese currency. Bales of Chinese dollars, printed in the United States, had

to be flown over the Hump, further taxing the limited capacity of that line.

The obligation the Americans assumed

to pay for the fields led to an acrimonious dispute over the rate of exchange.

The situation was complicated by

the command set-up. The MATTERHORN

force (XX Bomber Command) was directly under control of the Twentieth

Air Force headquarters in Washington,

not under the theater commander. The

latter had no right to use MATTERHORN

supplies for any purpose other than

the B-29 operations without permission

from Washington, nor to direct the operations of the bombers. Even though

Stilwell did control the priorities on the

Hump air line, he was under constant

pressure to be as generous as possible

with the XX Bomber Command.

In short, logistical support could not

be provided to enable the long-range

bombers to fulfill the role for which

they were designed, while their demands

cut into support for other theater projects. Also, the presence of the B-29's in

China stirred the Japanese, in mid-1944,

to launch a campaign to overrun the airfields in east China to which they feared

the bombers would ultimately be deployed.

It was the logistical considerations, together with the increasing Japanese threat

to the Cheng-tu bases themselves, that

finally decided the Twentieth Air Force

in January 1945 to abandon MATTERHORN and move the B-29's back to India,

leaving the Hump line to support Chennault and the Chinese army and the airfields to B-24's that could be used

to support tactical operations. Two

months later they were removed from

the theater altogether and sent to Saipan

where the major strategic bombing offensive against Japan was by that time

being mounted.53 If in China they had

52

 Craven and Cate, ed., AAF V, 171. See pages

92-175 for the whole story of B-29 operations from

Chinese and Indian bases.

53

 (1) Ibid., 33-57, 81-91. (2) Romanus and Sunderland, Stilwell's Command Problems, pp. 109-15,

297-302.
522 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

been able to contribute little to the winning of the war, the B-29 pilots and

crews had gained valuable experience.

The End of the Assam Bottleneck

Meanwhile, the LOC projects in the

CBI included in the QUADRANT charter

went ahead on a much reduced priority.

Immediately following SEXTANT five Engineer combat battalions earmarked for

Ledo Road construction and five pipeline companies designated for various

projects in the CBI were diverted to

the ETO along with considerable matériel, including 1,750 of the trucktractors and 3,500 semitrailers originally

designed for Ledo Road operations.

Other diversions followed. General Somervell asked OPD to replace them but

met with little success, and in the existing confusion about strategic aims in

the theater there seemed to be no fixed

policy on the matter.54

Despite the resultant shortage of service troops in CBI, the build-up did continue at a sufficient rate to enable the

solution, one by one, of the major logistical problems in India. And if Ledo

Road and pipeline construction were

slowed, they were still pushed ahead

about as fast as the tactical situation

would permit. Airfields were built alongside the road that permitted progressive

support by airdrop of the advancing

Chinese forces and of the small American contingent known as Merrill's Marauders. The major implications of the

diversions to ETO lay in the future

when the opportunity finally was to unfold for opening the land supply route

to China.55

In any case, the most pressing problem in early 1944 was still the Assam

LOC rather than the Ledo Road. The

plans of fall 1943 in this regard were

largely unaffected by the SEXTANT decisions. Yet the effects of an intensive effort were nowhere visible in early 1944

as the Assam line continued in a muddle. The bottleneck shifted back from

the meter-gauge line to the broad-gauge

line running out of Calcutta to Parbatipur and to the port of Calcutta itself. To the American command, the

problem of facilities seemed less important than that of control. There was

no military director for either the port

or the rail and barge lines and no priority, it seemed, for military material.

On 29 January, Marshall wrote the President urging him to ask Churchill's intervention to secure adoption of "forceful measures" to clear up the situation.

The situation on the Calcutta-Assam

LOC feeding our bases in Northeast India

is precarious. Civil administration directs

and controls all transportation in India. The Indian authorities have failed to operate the means at their disposal efficiently, the port of Calcutta is tied up, the broad

gauge railroad connecting Bengal with

Assam has been interrupted, the barge lines

most inexpertly handled. At this time three

of our ATC fields in India are without gas;

. . . Levels of supply are at dangerously

54

 (1) Memo, Gen Wood for CG ASF, 4 Jan 44,

sub: SEXTANT Decisions, Folder of same name, ASF

Plng Div. (2) Draft Memo, Somervell for CofS, 4 Jan

44, sub: Opns in CBI, Folder CBI Theater, ASF

Plng Div. (3) Memo, Gen Handy for Gen Somervell,

16 Apr 44. (4) Memo, Somervell for Handy, 19 Apr

44. (3) and (4) in OPD 320.2 (TS), Case 264. (5) Ltr,

Covell to Somervell, 27 Jan 44, Folder Gen Covell's

Ltrs from CBI—1944, ASF Plng Div.

55

 On the general progress of theater projects in

CBI during this period see History, SOS in CBI,

and Romanus and Sunderland, Stilwell's Command

Problems, pp. 275-93.
CHINA, BURMA, AND INDIA 523

low levels at all bases in Assam. Military

control of the Calcutta-Assam LOC is the

only solution to this problem. . . .56

Whether by the intervention of the

Prime Minister or not, in mid-February

steps were taken along the lines the

Americans urged. While the port of

Calcutta was not placed under military

control, a single civilian controller was

appointed with full powers and the

Americans were allotted the King

George V docks for their own military

operation. In March a similar system

of semimilitary control was worked out

for the Assam LOC, with a panel in

Calcutta to allocate monthly tonnage

among using forces. In the same month

the Americans took over the operation

of the meter-gauge railroad. Maj. Gen.

Daniel I. Sultan's appraisal on 21 March

that the "Assam LOC is and always will

be a frightful headache," proved pessimistic.57

 Improvements under the new

system soon became evident, and on 20

April Maj. Gen. William E. R. Covell,

the CBI SOS commander, reported the

Calcutta problem solved with the King

George docks cleared completely for the

first time in March and a total of 211,-

415 measurement tons of cargo unloaded

during that month. "No special concern

need be given to the capacity of the port

of Calcutta," wrote Covell, "nor has any

indication been given at this time that

it has reached its saturation point."58

Less than a month later, Covell could

also report to Somervell the final conquest of the Assam LOC:

Within the last four weeks the results of

all the hard work in the previous five

months on the Assam LOC have finally

begun to show up and to show up in almost

a flood. The bottleneck on the meter gauge

railway has been completely broken by the

operation of our railroad battalions. The

Control Panel in Calcutta over which we

fought and bled is now functioning with

the complete and enthusiastic cooperation

of the British. As a result the tonnage capacity for June for the first time in history

was equal to the sum of the bids of American and British forces. During the first ten

days of May the LOC not only met its high

targets but exceeded it by 700 long tons per

day. In fact both the British and my people

are beginning to complain that supplies are

arriving too fast. 1 believe it is safe to say

that, at the present writing at least, the

problem of the Assam LOC is licked and

should remain so except for acts of God

and of the public enemy.59

Only one postscript need be added.

The tonnage allocations for military

purposes for the month of July were set

at 229,000 short tons, slightly more than

the QUADRANT planners had agreed as

the goal for January 1946. With additional improvements planned, there was

every prospect of a further increase. The

6-inch pipeline from Calcutta to Dibrugarh was also completed in August, one

month behind schedule, further increasing the capacity of the line.60

 Had these

achievements been made one year earlier

the whole history of the CBI might have

56

 Memo, Marshall for President, 29 Jan 44, sub:

Failure of Assam LOC, file CBI 1944, Hq ASF. 57

 (1) Memo, Sultan for Stilwell, 21 Mar 44, Stilwell Personal File, Book 3. (2) On these procedural

improvements see Larson and Bykofsky, The Transportation Corps: Operations Overseas, pp. 563-77. 58

 (1) Ltr, Covell to Somervell, 20 Apr 44, OCT HB,

Gross Day File 1944. (2) For the story of the Calcutta

port see Larson and Bykofsky, The Transportation

Corps: Operations Overseas, pp. 563-67.

59

 Ltr, Covell to Somervell, 14 May 44, sub: Assam

LOC, file Gen Somervell, ASF Plng Div. 60

 (1) Memo, Brig Gen Thomas B. Wilson, Chief

Trans Service, CBI, for Gen Somervell, 15 Jul 44,

sub: Assam LOC, file CBI 1944, Hq ASF. (2) Ltr,

Covell to Somervell, 19 Aug 44, file Gen Covell's

Ltrs . . . 1944, ASF Plng Div.

524 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

been different. As it was they came too

late. The elimination of the Assam bottleneck, nevertheless, was perhaps the

principal factor making possible the

achievements of the last year of the war

in the CBI. (Map 6)

The Problem of Air Transport

Forward of the Indian railheads operational supply was heavily dependent

upon air transport. By early 1944 supply by airdrop had become almost the

accepted method of supplying troops actively engaged in Burma. The roads newly hewn out of the jungle could neither

keep pace with the advancing troops

nor provide supplies to the scattered

points at which Chinese, British, and

American soldiers were operating, many

of them behind Japanese lines. Transport planes in the CBI became the principal limiting factor on ground operations, while at the same time they

remained the only method of moving

supplies into China. Competition for

transports between the Hump line and

operations in Burma was therefore inevitable.

The CCS were first made aware of this

issue when Mountbatten at SEXTANT said

he would need 535 additional transport

planes for TARZAN if he were to execute

that operation while continuing the

Hump airlift at its planned levels. Not

hopeful of securing so many—Arnold

was able to promise only 35—he proposed to divert planes from the Hump

as required on the theory that these

were part of the total resources allocated

his theater. The JCS demurred, as they

had earlier, at allowing any British commander to make decisions affecting the

Hump airlift without reference to the

CCS. That body finally came up with

a schedule of diversions that would result in a serious diminution of the airlift

only in March and April, though the

scale of air transport promised for TARZAN was hardly that the SEAC commander had originally asked.61

Cancellation of TARZAN ended consideration of diversions from the Hump

momentarily. Then in February 1944

the Japanese struck in the Arakan, isolating a complete Indian division and

leaving them dependent on air supply.

To meet the need for air transport,

Mountbatten had again to apply to the

CCS for permission to divert planes from

the airlift to China, though he continued

to insist that it was within his prerogatives to do so anyway. The JCS were

sympathetic but firm in their insistence

that transports on the Hump must remain under CCS control. They agreed

to divert 30 C-47's as an emergency

measure but, when Mountbatten proposed to remove 70 more, told the British Chiefs to make a more determined

effort to provide the aircraft from their

own resources in other theaters. The

British already had 12 transport planes

earmarked for delivery to SEAC in April,

and they managed to scrape up 45 more

from the United Kingdom and the Mediterranean. However, they still asked for

an additional temporary diversion from

the Hump to fill the gap until these

planes could arrive in India. The JCS

instead decided to send one American

troop carrier squadron (64 planes) from

61

 (1) Msg 10059, SEXTANT to AGWAR, Arnold to

Gen Barney M. Giles, 26 Nov 43, OPD Exec 5, Item

13. (2) CCS 411/2, 2 Dec 43, title: Opns in SEAC.

(3) CCS 411/5, 7 Dec 43, memo by Br COS, same

title. (4) Chiang, it will be recalled, had made an

issue of the 535 transports. See above, ch. XI.
CHINA, BURMA, AND INDIA 525

the Mediterranean on 30-day loan, with

the understanding that all Hump transports should be returned and any further requirements be met by the Air

Transport Command in India.62

When the 30 days expired, the loan

had to be extended for 30 more despite

the anguished outcries of the Supreme

Allied Commander, Mediterranean. The

continuing need for tactical air transport

in India and Burma clearly indicated

there must be a more permanent solution. The AAF was, in fact, already considering one. General Arnold indicated

in March that in view of increased transport production and a lessening requirement for transport planes for training

airborne divisions, he would be willing

to send to SEAC four combat cargo

groups (100 C-47 transports each) and

four air commando groups, one group

of each type to arrive in the theater

monthly beginning on 1 July 1944.

The project had to be sharply curtailed almost immediately. There were

not enough personnel available at the

time to organize more than two air commando groups, and insufficient supporting service troops to enable either these

or the four combat cargo groups to operate in the theater. And it appeared unlikely, because of the critical shipping

situation in the Pacific, that cargo space

could be found to carry the necessary

supplies to India. Finally, the Navy indicated it could not provide tankers to

carry gasoline. In desperation, Arnold

suggested that four combat cargo groups

and two air commando groups be

shipped as skeletonized units with the

necessary planes, and that the units be

filled up in the theater with key American personnel and about 20,000 selected Chinese soldiers. This proposal General Stilwell rejected as impractical. The

upshot was that one combat cargo group

with 100 transports was dispatched in

May, earlier than planned, to meet the

immediate SEAC emergency and the JCS

decided to withhold decision on the rest.

In early July, they reached the tentative

conclusion that only one additional combat cargo group would be sent to SEAC,

this in August, while the other two and

the air commandos would go to the

Southwest Pacific.63

Airlift, PAC-AID, and the East

China Crisis

By the expedients adopted the crisis

on the Indian front was met without too

great interference to movement of supplies over the Hump, and the troop carrier squadron returned to the Mediterranean to take part in the battle in Italy

and the invasion of southern France.

The Hump lift did fall below 10,000

tons in March, but rose again to 11,000

in April and to nearly 16,000 in June.64

These Hump tonnages were far from

enough to meet the demand in China,

62

 Hayes, The War Against Japan, II, 214-21,

History JCS.

63

 (1) Memo, Maj Gen Howard A. Craig, Acting

Chief Air Staff for OPD, 11 Apr 44, sub: Air Commando Project, with related material in OPD 320.2

(TS), Case 267. (2) Memo, Col W. H. Wood for

Gen Handy, 12 Apr 44, sub: Air Commando Opn,

OPD 381 (TS), Case 342. (3) OPD MFR, 6 May 44,

OPD 381 (TS), Case 365. (4) Memo, Gen Arnold for

Gen Handy, 17 May 44, sub: Opn of U.S. Air Units

from China Bases, OPD 381 (TS), Case 375. (5) Draft

msgs, AGWAR to CG USAFCBI and CINCSWPA,

4 Jul 44, OPD 381 (TS), Case 418. (6) On the Pacific

shipping situation at the time, see above, Chapter

XIX. 64

 (1) Craven and Cate, ed., AAF V, 220. (2) Hayes,

War Against Japan, II, 220-21, History JCS.
526 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

particularly after the XX Bomber Command was added to the list of claimants

and the competition for Hump tonnage

among using forces became especially

severe in mid-1944. With the air line

hard pressed to meet Chennault's increasing operational needs, while at the

same time providing a necessary minimum for the U.S. overhead in China

and token quantities for the YOKE

Forces, the supposed first priority buildup of a PAC-AID stockpile fell hopelessly behind. In early April Stilwell had

been ready to cut off YOKE Force supplies entirely; on the 10th of that month

Chiang, under continuing pressure from

Roosevelt to strike while the Japanese

were extended in India, finally agreed

to launch the offensive from Yunnan

into Burma. Under the circumstances,

Stilwell not only could not cut off lendlease to China but also had to provide

transport planes to support the Chinese

advance. At almost the same time the

Japanese began their advance into eastern and southern China with the evident

purpose of seizing Chennault's air bases

and possibly overrunning the Hump terminal at Kunming. Chennault was compelled to devote his forces almost entirely to the defense of the airfields, and

found his supplies totally inadequate for

that purpose. In fact, finding air action

insufficient, he also began to demand

American supplies for the Chinese

ground forces in east China and air transports to serve on the line of communication running from Kunming to his bases.

Remembering Chennault's earlier

claims that he could prevent a Japanese

advance with air power alone, Stilwell

was something less than sympathetic. He

did, however, allot to Chennault the

lion's share of Hump tonnage. Under

these circumstances the Fourteenth Air

Force was obviously in no position to

stockpile PAC-AID supplies and indeed

it soon appeared that the bases from

whence it could launch PAC-AID missions would be lost. The XX Bomber

Command had made a small accumulation of supplies, but in June the Generalissimo appealed to the President to

turn this stockpile over to Chennault

to meet the emergency in east China.

Though the request for the stockpiles

was disapproved by the JCS, MATTERHORN'S Hump tonnage had to be cut in

June and July in order to give the utmost possible support to Chennault and

provide the most critical supplies needed

for YOKE forces. In sum, then, the situation in the theater negated the priority

the JCS had established for PAC-AID.

The only solution appeared to be an immense increase in Hump tonnage.65

The AAF came up with a plan for

this purpose in mid-July, General Arnold

proposing to furnish sufficient additional transports to bring Hump capacity to 31,000 tons monthly by December 1944. In approving this plan, the

JCS once again tried to set Hump priorities. This time, taking a more realistic

view, they made them less rigid and

shaped them only as recommendations

for the theater commander. PAC-AID

stockpiling was placed in a second pri65

 (1) See messages in Stilwell Personal File, Books

V and VI, particularly the messages exchanged between Roosevelt and Chiang: Book V, Items 1613,

1629, 1697; Book VI, Items 2031, 2109, 2145, 2151,

2164, 2186, 2194, 2202, 2214. (2) For detailed treatment see Romanus and Sunderland, Stilwell's Command Problems, Chapters VIII, X, XI. (3) Msg,

CM-OUT 53610, AGWAR to AMMISCA, AMMDEL,

and SEAC, 20 Jun 44. (4) Memo, Gen Handy for CG

AAF, 19 May 44, sub: Opns of Air Units from China

Bases, OPD 381 (TS), Case 375.
CHINA, BURMA, AND INDIA 527

ority to that of "supply of the Fourteenth Air Force (including the ChineseAmerican Wing) to develop the maximum effectiveness consistent with minimum requirement for support of other

activities in China and Burma."66 Below these two, in order, came the operational requirements of MATTERHORN

and requirements of Chinese air and

ground forces other than the minimum

placed in first priority.

The effects of augmentation were not

to be felt until November. But meanwhile, as a result of improvements in

operational efficiency and of the capture

of the airfield at Myitkyina, hump tonnage rose to 23,000 tons in August. Soon

afterward new airfields were built at

Myitkyina for refueling operations, making it possible for transports to carry

more cargo and less fuel on their flights.

With a less difficult run and the addition

of transports in November, Hump tonnage shot up to 35,000 in that month.

Neither of these increases added significantly to the amounts that could go into

PAC-AID stockpiles. Chennault's share

was maintained at a steady 12,000-14,000

tons from June onward; the increases

largely went to the XX Bomber Command and to the growing numbers of

U.S. troops in China engaged in operating a theater headquarters and a supply

line to the eastern air fields, in training

Chinese troops, and in supervising the

use of American materials in China.

(Table 33)

The principal explanation for failure

to give Chennault more supplies lay in

the poor transportation facilities within

China itself. Supplies set down at Kunming by transport planes still had to be

moved forward to the Fourteenth Air

Force bases over the so-called Eastern

Line of Communications (ELOC) by a

combination of rail, road, and river

transport. On this route coolies, animals,

and Chinese junks played as important

a part as motor vehicles and rail cars.

The roads were rough and the few

motor vehicles in China mostly old and

in poor operating condition. For want

of gasoline they had to use alcohol for

fuel. The scarcity of trucks in China put

a high premium on their value and led

to the same sort of graft and inefficiency

in operation that characterized Chiang's

government generally.

This, the final bottleneck in the whole

effort to aid China, the Americans belatedly started to grapple with in 1944. In

May they placed their own supervisory

staff over the Chinese transportation

agency. At the same time, a project was

developed (TIGAR 26-A) to fly 700

trucks. 2,000 tons of spare parts, and

American drivers and maintenance personnel into China, but the priority for

ammunition and POL for the air force

delayed its completion until September

and by then it was too late. The Japanese

had already captured the eastern airfields

and were moving threateningly in the

direction of those in central and south

China. Existing motor transport had to

be absorbed in evacuation and the ELOC

was so thoroughly disrupted that it was

impossible to move any sizable tonnages

over it until March 1945 when the Japanese, under pressure from all sides, began to withdraw. A final desperation

effort to move trucks from the Persian

Gulf to Kunming over a long and difficult route through Soviet Turkestan

and Sinkiang Province (TIGAR 26-B),

66

 (1) JCS 959/1, 25 Aug 44, title: Strategy in CBI.

(2) JCS 959, 15 Jul 44, memo by CG AAF, same title.
528 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

TABLE 33—DISTRIBUTION OF HUMP TONNAGE CARRIED INTO CHINA

JANUARY-DECEMBER 1944

Source: Craven and Cate AAF V, p. 220.

to which the Soviets finally agreed in

fall 1944, also was abortive.67

The phenomenal development of the

air transport line in late 1944 thus came

too late to save the air bases in east

China. And the necessity for moving

service troops, trucks, and supplies for

the troops over the line led to an evermounting overhead in China that also

had to be supported over the Hump.

The air line it seemed could never be

developed as fast as the demands for

supplies in China increased. And the

difficulties on the ELOC very definitely

proved that merely laying down supplies in Kunming could not, in itself,

solve the logistical problem of supporting either air or ground forces in China.

Meanwhile, the steady and inexorable

Japanese advance against the airfields in

east China, though it did not put an

end to Chennault's operations, forced

him to withdraw to fields further in the

interior and to use his limited supplies

primarily for tactical missions. This

crisis was the main influence shaping

American strategy on the Asiatic mainland in the last year of the war. It prevented realization of the plan to use

Chinese bases to any considerable extent

for support of Pacific operations, and

left the staff in Washington in something of a quandary as to just what use

their investment in Burma and China

could be put. There was no inclination

to liquidate this investment, nor was

there any desire to increase it significantly. The east China crisis provoked Roosevelt to urge Chiang Kai-shek to place

his armies under the command of General Stilwell; Chiang eventually refused

and asked for Stilwell's recall, a request

the President honored.68 Maj. Gen. Albert C. Wedemeyer was appointed commander of the American theater in

China, and the India-Burma Theater

67

 On these projects see Larson and Bykofsky,

The Transportation Corps: Operations Overseas,

pp. 591-603.

68

 On the relief of Stilwell, see the detailed account

in Romanus and Sunderland, Stilwell's Command

Problems, pp. 399-471.
CHINA, BURMA, AND INDIA 529

COOLIES PULL SAMPANS LOADED WITH U.S. ARMY SUPPLIES upstream through the

swift rapids of the Wu River.

separated from it and placed under General Sultan (now a lieutenant general).

Wedemeyer's mission was defined as that

of carrying out air operations from

China and assisting Chinese air and

ground forces in operations, training,

and logistics, somewhat different from

that given Stilwell of "improving the

efficiency of the Chinese Army." Wedemeyer was also, by agreement with Chiang, to be his chief of staff, but the

whole matter of command of the Chinese

Army was dropped.69 If Wedemeyer's

appointment and mission indicated that

the Americans were not ready to abandon China, they also carried in them

a note of resignation, of final abandonment of high hopes once entertained

that China's role in the war would be

an important one.

69

 Charles F. Romanus and Riley Sunderland,

Time Runs Out in CBI, UNITED STATES ARMY

IN WORLD WAR II (Washington, 1959), pp. 15-24.

PART SIX

SHIFT TO A ONE-FRONT WAR

CHAPTER XXII

Stresses and Strains of a Two-Front War

At the beginning of September 1944

optimism ran high among Allied leaders that the war with Germany would

be finished before the end of the year.

Much of their planning, indeed, was

geared to the expectation that that happy event would occur sometime in October. The rapid advance across France

and the apparent collapse of the German armies on the western front, the

easy success of DRAGOON, the breaching

of the Pisa-Rimini line in Italy, the

sweep of Soviet forces across Poland,

and the defections, one after another,

of German satellites gave this high optimism a solid basis. Had these optimistic hopes been realized the American

war machine would have been subjected

to no considerable strain in the final

achievement of victory on both fronts.

Redeployment from Europe to the Pacific and Far East would mainly have

involved naval and air forces since the

ground army elements for the defeat of

Japan could have been taken for the

most part from the strategic reserve in

the United States. A much earlier start

could have been made on the rehabilitation of war-torn or exhausted European economies. The British, in particular, pinned their hopes for an early

partial reconversion of war industry and

recovery of their foreign trade on the

defeat of Germany in 1944.

This expectation of an early victory

over Germany proved an illusion. The

Allied armies forging ahead into Belgium, the Netherlands, and Germany in

September outran their logistical support and the drive lost its momentum.

The Germans were able to regroup, reinforce, and man their fixed defenses

along the Siegfried Line. A bloody and

difficult campaign, lasting through the

fall and winter was necessary to dislodge

them. A similar stalemate developed

along the front in northern Italy. Not

until March 1945 were Allied forces to

reach and cross the Rhine barrier and

begin, in combination with Soviet forces

advancing into eastern Germany, the

final drive to victory in Europe.

As a result, the U.S. Army had to commit almost all of its reserve forces in

the United States to the European front.

Meanwhile, in the Pacific, the Army

and Navy were engaged in equally

bloody and difficult campaigns in the

Palaus and Philippines and in the progressive destruction of Japanese naval

and air power. Preparations began for

the seizure of final forward positions in

the Bonins, Ryukyus, and possibly on

Formosa and the mainland of China,

and for the invasion of the home islands

of Japan. The strategic bombing campaign against Japan was mounted from

the Marianas.

American military resources were thus

subjected to the stresses and strains of
534 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

full-scale commitment on two major and

excessively broad fronts, and they were

stretched to the practical limits of the

American economy in its existing state

of mobilization. This period of full-scale

war on two fronts was not, however, like

the early phase of the war in which the

shortage of military resources threatened

to have, and sometimes did have, disastrous consequences. Victory was clearly

in sight on both fronts and such shortages of resources as did develop principally affected its timing.

Second Quebec

During the period when optimism was

at its height, the sixth great AngloAmerican conference of the war (OCTAGON) took place at the Chateau Frontenac in Quebec, 12-16 September 1944.

In terms of vital decisions, OCTAGON was

perhaps the least consequential of the

wartime conferences. All the major strategic decisions on the war in Europe

had already been made. The Russians

did not attend and the postwar political

questions that were to hold the center

of the stage at Yalta a few months later

did not come up for extended discussion. Major strategic questions remaining involved the war with Japan, and

these had largely become matters for

unilateral American decision. The main

issue was, in fact, the extent and nature

of the British role in the final campaign

in the Pacific, an area over which the

Americans had no intention of surrendering their strategic responsibility. On

nearly all the issues considered, position

papers had already been exchanged between the British and American staffs

and decisions were already in the making. Perhaps for all these reasons, and

perhaps also because of the prevailing

high optimism, no effort was made to

cast the usual balance sheet of resources

and requirements nor, in particular, to

project the allocation of merchant shipping, a resource upon which the pressures of a two-front war were to be most

severe in the months following.

The questions involving European

strategy were settled with an ease and

harmony that contrasted markedly with

the long, sometimes acrimonious, controversy over OVERLORD and ANVIL. The

British came to Quebec fearing that the

Americans would insist on withdrawing

part of the U.S. Fifth Army from Italy,

or on directing Alexander's offensive to

the northwest into France, or at least

on sending all the assault shipping in

the Mediterranean to the Pacific or India. At this point British hopes were

still high that Alexander would be able

to breach the Gothic Line quickly.

Churchill and the British Chiefs were

determined that he should press onward

through northeastern Italy via Trieste to

Vienna should the opportunity offer, and

they wanted to retain enough assault

lift in the Mediterranean to carry out

landings in Istria.

Actually, by the end of August the

Americans were no longer hostile to a

northeastward advance in Italy nor, for

that matter, to British re-entry into the

Balkans with any forces they could scrape

together in the Mediterranean area. Eisenhower's needs by this time were less

for additional divisions than for ports

and adequate lines of communications

to support the forces already in northwest Europe. The great boost in American production had made the supply

of landing craft considerably less critical.

And it was now obviously too late for
STRESSES AND STRAINS OF A TWO-FRONT WAR 535

any major campaign to be mounted in

the Balkans. By the time the Quebec

Conference convened, therefore, the

Americans were already disposed to go

along with the British on the essential

points of their Mediterranean program.

Admiral King promptly indicated that

the assault lift in the Mediterranean,

though earmarked for the Far East, could

be used in the Istrian venture, and it

was agreed that General Wilson should

report his decision by 10 October. The

JCS also assured the British that no

major U.S. forces would be withdrawn

from Italy until the outcome of the current offensive could be evaluated. No

objection was raised to a drive toward

Vienna, and British proposals for action

in southeastern Europe in the event of

a German collapse, including the immediate dispatch of a small expeditionary

force to Greece, were approved without

discussion. General Wilson was also ordered, in event of a German withdrawal,

to occupy Venezia Giulia. To all appearances, controversy over Mediterranean

strategy had at long last disappeared in

a golden haze of Allied harmony.1

Discussions on the British role in the

final offensive against Japan were hardly so harmonious. Anxious to secure as

important a place as possible, the British were in a difficult position, for the

theater in which they had originally expected to make their major effort—southeast Asia—had, since SEXTANT, been relegated to a subsidiary status. Within British councils, the whole question was subjected to searching examination during

the first eight months of 1944. Churchill doggedly insisted on an Indian Ocean

strategy with Sumatra, Singapore, and

Hong Kong as objectives, but the British

Chiefs were convinced that any advance

through the South China Sea to Hong

Kong would be too late, and that the

American drive across the Pacific would

effectively cut communications to southeast Asia and render a campaign against

the Indies and Malaya no more than a

mopping-up operation. In the end their

opinion prevailed. Some three and a

half weeks before OCTAGON the British

presented their final views to the Americans. They proposed to concentrate in

southeast Asia on eliminating the Japanese from Burma in expeditious fashion

so as to secure the land and air routes

to China, while making their major contribution to the final campaign against

Japan by transferring fleet units and possibly air and ground forces to the main

drive in the Pacific.2

The British position on operations in

southeast Asia represented a capitulation

to American views, but in reality the

JCS no longer considered the freeing

of all Burma as a matter of great strategic consequence. The opportunity for

a timely reopening of the old supply line

north from Rangoon had long since

passed, and all American resources available for this theater were committed

to the Hump air line and the Ledo Road

in the north. The British presented two

plans—CAPITAL and DRACULA. CAPITAL

1 involved simply a British offensive in

 (1) Ehrman, Grand Strategy V, 384-91, 510-11.

(2) Matloff, Strategic Planning, 1943-44, p. 505. (3)

Churchill, Triumph and Tragedy, pp. 122-26.

(4)Min, 1st Plenary Mtg, OCTAGON, 13 Sep 44; 2d

Plenary Mtg, 16 Sep 44. (5) Min, 172d mtg CCS,

12 Sep 44. (6) CCS 680/2, 16 Sep 44, title: Rpt to

President and Prime Minister.

2

 (1) Ehrman, Grand Strategy V, 421-504, contains

a lengthy account of the internal British debate on

this issue. (2) See also Bryant, Triumph in the West,

pp. 111-24, 198-205, and Churchill, The Hinge of

Fate, pp. 571-81.
536 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

north Burma, in close co-operation with

the U.S.-sponsored Chinese forces, aimed

at overrunning the territory necessary to

protect and expand the airlift to China

and to open the road from Ledo. DRACULA would be a seaborne and airborne

attack on Rangoon, combined with a

lesser offensive in the north and an eventual push northward to eliminate the

Japanese from Burma entirely. CAPITAL

could be launched immediately mainly

with resources already in the theater.

DRACULA would require as many as six

additional divisions and amphibious resources from Europe, as well as more air

transport including the combat cargo

and air commando groups originally allocated to SEAC that the JCS now proposed to redirect to the southwest Pacific.

Even under the optimistic assumption that Germany would be defeated

before the end of 1944, it appeared that

the time required for the necessary redeployment of divisions would delay

DRACULA until March 1945. To the

Americans the immediate execution of

CAPITAL appeared to be the best means

of employing the resources already in

the theater, and they were far from anxious to make any of the additional commitments DRACULA might require. The

JCS tactfully turned down Churchill's

request for two U.S. divisions for SEAC,

though they did consent to the dispatch

of one of the two remaining combat

cargo groups and one air commando

group to that theater rather than to

SWPA. The CCS went on to agree that

the reconquest of all Burma should be

the objective of operations in SEAC and

approved both CAPITAL and DRACULA,

the latter with a target date of March

1945. But, on American insistence, the

approval of DRACULA was coupled with

a proviso that the British would launch

CAPITAL immediately and that preparations for the larger operation would not

be allowed to interfere with it.3

If the British abandonment of plans

for any major offensive against the Indies

and Malaya also represented a concession to a trend of events in the Pacific

dominated by the Americans, their proposal to contribute major naval and air

units for the main drive in the Pacific

was not entirely welcome to the JCS.

The SEXTANT over-all plan had stipulated they should do so, but in the interim

both Admiral King and General Arnold

had had sober second thoughts. They

could already count on more than ample

U.S. air and naval power to accomplish

the final defeat of Japan once the war

in Europe was over, and the introduction of a British fleet and air force in the

Pacific would bring complicated problems of command and logistics. The

Joint Chiefs had long been framing Pacific strategy without consulting the British and they did not wish, in the last

stages of the war, to surrender their exclusive jurisdiction over that area to the

CCS. General MacArthur, although ostensibly anxious to have British forces

of any sort in SWPA, was willing to

accept them only if they were placed

unequivocally under his command. He

was extremely suspicious that the British wanted to take over command in

SWPA and unalterably opposed to surrendering any part of the area to SEAC.

3

 (1) CCS 452/17, 31 Jul 44, memo by Reps Br

COS, title: Plans for Opns in Burma. (2) CCS 452/31,

22 Sep 44, title: Directive to SAC, SEAC. (3) JCS

774/7, 12 Sep 44, rpt by JPS, title: Allocation of

Two Remaining Combat Cargo Gps and Two Remaining Air Commando Gps. (4) Min, 2d Plenary

Mtg, OCTAGON, 16 Sep 44. (5) Romanus and Sunderland, Time Runs Out in CBI, pp. 81-85.
STRESSES AND STRAINS OF A TWO-FRONT WAR 537

In sum, then, the American military

staffs theoretically wanted the British to

do their part in the war against Japan,

but they were unable to stipulate just

what that role should be outside Southeast Asia where the campaign was now

regarded by both sides as decidedly

peripheral.4

American plans for the final blow

against Japan had matured considerably

since SEXTANT. In June and July 1944

the Joint Planners had drawn up, and

the JCS had approved, a plan for operations subsequent to Formosa (then still

envisaged as the main operation in early

1945) that incorporated the idea of invasion of the Japanese homeland, rather

than blockade and bombardment, as the

means for eventually forcing unconditional surrender. Specifically the concept was as follows:

a. Concurrent advances through the Ryukyus, Bonins and Southeast China coast

for the purpose of intensifying the blockade

and air bombardment of Japan and creating a situation favorable for:

b. An amphibious assault on Kyushu for

the purpose of further reducing Japanese

capabilities by engaging and fixing major

enemy forces and establishing a tactical

condition favorable to:

c. A decisive stroke against the industrial

heart of Japan by means of an amphibious

attack through the Tokyo plain assisted by

continued pressure from Kyushu.5

In this concept the British part was

still presumed to be an advance through

the Malay barrier to the southeast China

coast to begin shortly after the invasion

of Formosa, roughly concurrent with a

mounting air offensive on Japan from

the Marianas and China, and invasion

of the Ryukyus and Bonins. The timetable provided for mounting the assault

on Kyushu by 1 October 1945, to be

followed two months later by landings

on the main Japanese island of Honshu.

The British were, at the time, only

informed of the revised objective—invasion of the industrial heart of Japan—

and to this they agreed after seeking

assurances that it would not upset existing priorities for European operations.

They were well aware, however, of the

implications of the current American

strategic thinking, if not informed of its

details, and their decision to abandon

plans for the advance through the Malay

barrier and seek a place for the British

fleet in the main drive against the Japanese homeland was shaped as a result.

In their proposals made before OCTAGON,

they suggested two alternatives. The first,

for which they expressed preference, was

that a detachment of the British fleet

operate as a part of the main U.S. fleet

under Admiral Nimitz, the second that

a British Empire task force be formed

to operate from Australian bases under

the supreme command of General MacArthur. The U.S. Chiefs on 8 September

accepted the second preference as the

least complicating, though some private

fears were expressed lest this give the

British the naval command in SWPA.6

At OCTAGON, the principal American

paper on the war against Japan discreetly omitted any significant reference to

British participation. It set forth quite

simply the new objective of invasion 4

 (1) See Matloff, Strategic Planning, 1943-44, pp. and the timetable in the June-July plan

513-16. (2) Hayes, War Against Japan, II, 279-90,

History JCS. 5

 JCS 924, 30 Jun 44, rpt by JPS, title: Opns

versus Japan Subsequent to Formosa.

6

 (1) Ehrman, Grand Strategy V, 498-502. (2)

Hayes, War Against Japan, II, 276-78, 283-89, History JCS.
538 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

based on a Formosa invasion on 1 March

1945, while indicating that no decision

had actually been reached on whether

Luzon should be invaded instead of Formosa. The Americans said a different

schedule was under study in case the

choice fell on Luzon.7

The British accepted the American

schedule without argument though they

were skeptical of its timing, and they

secured a concession that the planning

date for the defeat of Japan should be

eighteen rather than twelve months after

the defeat of Germany. Meanwhile, also,

they had decided to insist on their first

alternative, that the British Fleet be employed in the main drive against Japan.

Behind this lay their own misgivings

about the complications of the command

question in the Southwest Pacific and

their own doubts that they could provide a balanced task force in time to

exert much effect, or support it adequately from Australian bases. The Prime

Minister adroitly secured Roosevelt's

agreement in the first plenary session

and the JCS, over Admiral King's vehement protests, were forced to acquiesce.

Yet, by stressing the requirement that

the British fleet units must be balanced

and self-supporting, they were able to

defer more than a general decision. In

their final report to the President and

the Prime Minister, the CCS stipulated

that the "method of employment of the

British Fleet in these main operations

in the Pacific will be decided from time

to time in accordance with prevailing

circumstances." Similarly, in response to

a British offer of air units, the British

Chiefs were invited to put forward as

a basis for planning "an estimate in general terms" of the contribution the Royal

Air Force might be prepared to make.8

There was little discussion, and no

recorded decision, at Quebec on redeployment of British ground forces from

Europe for the war against Japan except

for six British and Indian divisions for

DRACULA. The British presented no concrete plans for further redeployment,

though they refused to accept the divisions for Burma as the upper limit of

their ground force contribution. Obviously, still to be considered was the question of further operations in SEAC once

Burma was retaken, even if only of a

mop-up nature, and the question of a

ground element for a task force in SWPA

was still alive. In the absence of specific

plans, the CCS simply noted that British

operations "not yet approved," would

require "allocation of resources," and

should be borne in mind in planning

production.9

The OCTAGON plans for the war against

Japan were clearly based on the hope

of Germany's defeat in 1944. In any

realistic appraisal of the tentative schedule of operations, the major logistical

problem was that of redeployment of

forces from Europe. The CCS recognized this, but, beyond a preliminary

investigation of the availability of shipping for personnel movements, there

was no detailed consideration of the

problem at OCTAGON. Instead the matter

was referred to the Combined Planners,

the Combined Administrative Commit7

 (1) CCS 417/8, 9 Sep 44, memo by U.S. CsofS,

title: Opns for the Defeat of Japan, 1944-45. (2) On

the Formosa versus Luzon debate, see above, Chapter XVI.

8

 (1) CCS 680/2, 16 Sep 44. (2) Ehrman, Grand

Strategy V, 504, 518-24. (3) Min, 1st Plenary Mtg,

OCTAGON, 13 Sep 44. (4) Min, 174th mtg CCS, 14

Sep 44. 9

 (1) CCS 680/2, 16 Sep 44. (2) Hayes, War Against

Japan, II, 283-84, History JCS.
STRESSES AND STRAINS OF A TWO-FRONT WAR 539

tee, and the Combined Military Transportation Committee for detailed study

and report. The Americans had, in fact,

already begun to prepare their own plans

for redeployment, the scope and intent

of which were such as to leave little place

for the British in the war in the Pacific.10

Early Plans for Redeployment

Some sort of planning for redeployment went back almost to the time the

first large numbers of U.S. troops moved

to the European theater, though it first

began to assume a prominent place in

joint staff circles early in 1944. Redeployment promised to present logistical

problems of challenging magnitude. It

would involve troop and supply movements of unprecedented size over longer

distances and in a shorter period of time

than in any previous operation. Moreover, it would require reversing the

logistical processes of the European theaters and a shift in the center of gravity

in the United States from the east to the

west coast. The most precise advance

planning for efficient use of shipping,

of inland transport, and of staging areas

and ports stretched around the entire

globe was clearly prerequisite to its successful execution.

The scope of redeployment from Europe, as opposed to shipment of troops

to the Pacific from the United States

for the final stage of the war against

Japan, depended on the timing of the

defeat of Germany. As long as the war

in Europe continued, the Army was obligated to exhaust the reserve pool of

troops in the United States in that direction. The earlier this flow could be

stopped, the more troops would remain

in the United States available for Pacific

service, and the less imposing the problem of redeployment. Conversely, the

longer the war in Europe continued, the

more difficult and complicated the problem would become.

In either case, the load on west coast

installations resulting from a shift to

concentration on the war against Japan

would be heavy. This was a matter of

some concern. The rail net serving the

west coast ports was decidedly inferior

to that serving those on the east and

Gulf coasts. The capacity of the principal ports—San Francisco, Los Angeles,

Seattle, and Portland—was hardly comparable to that of New York, Boston, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Norfolk,

Charleston, and New Orleans. As a result of hurried wartime industrial expansion, labor was a continuous and plaguing shortage. Storage facilities for Army

supplies and staging areas for Army

personnel would obviously require considerable expansion at the same time

that the Navy, as it also shifted almost

its entire effort to the Pacific, would

need to enlarge its west coast establishment.

The earliest specific preparations for

redeployment, begun by the ASF in

1943, were concentrated for the most

part on planning the use of the limited

transcontinental rail net and the expansion of west coast facilities. Until the

JCS agreed on the deployments that

10

 (1) Min, 174th mtg CCS, 14 Sep 44. (2) CCS 679,

14 Sep 44, memo by U.S. CsofS, title: Redeployment

of Forces after the End of the War in Europe.

(3) CCS 675, 12 Sep 44, memo by Br COS, title:

Priorities for Personnel Shpg Subsequent to Termination of Hostilities in Europe. (4) CCS 675/1, 13

Sep 44, title: Combined Memo on Troop Movements

Covering Period Oct 44 to Mar 45. (5) CCS 675/2,

15 Sep 44, Note by Secys, title: Combined Personnel

Movement Problem Arising During First Year after

Defeat of Germany.
540 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

would be necessary for the final phase

of the war against Japan, these preparations had to be based on general estimates. Shipping requirements, which

promised to be gargantuan, could hardly

be estimated at all.

In early April 1944, the JCS approved

the first general plan for redeployment,

worked out by the Joint Planners in the

preceding two months. It was admittedly something of a shot in the dark, since

no firm strategic concept for the final

stage of the war existed as yet. Based on

the alternate assumptions of German defeat by 1 July and 1 October 1944, and

on the expectation that the USSR would

subsequently enter the war against Japan, the concept projected deployment

forward in quarterly estimates for the

9-month period following each of the

two theoretical dates of Germany's defeat. In both cases the Joint Planners

surmised that only air and naval forces

need be directly redeployed, that there

would be "sufficient Army combat units

in the United States to meet the requirements of Pacific operations in late 1944

and early 1945."11

Under the more reasonable assumption—defeat of Germany by 1 October—

the planners provided for a progressive

reduction of European forces from 42

divisions and 149 air groups to 12 divisions and 20 groups by 30 June 1945,

with a corresponding build-up in the

Pacific from 22 divisions and 56 air

groups to 42 divisions and 178 groups.

On the same date 36 divisions and 34

air groups would be in the United States,

15 of the divisions to constitute a strategic reserve for possible employment in

the war against Japan, the rest to be

either used as a replacement and training pool or demobilized. Eight of the

divisions in the Pacific were earmarked

for an operation against the Kuriles or

Hokkaido to keep open the line of communication to the USSR. As soon as possible after 30 June 1945 the European

force was to be reduced to the total

agreed to as necessary for occupation, 8

divisions and 20 air groups, or approximately 400,000 men. Virtually all naval

forces were to be redeployed to the Pacific except for a few vessels necessary

in the Atlantic for local defense and

mine sweeping.

The main movements contemplated

for the nine months following the defeat of Germany, apart from naval vessels, were: 102 air groups from Europe

direct to the Pacific and CBI; 27 air

groups and 30 ground force divisions

from Europe to the United States; and

20 divisions and 20 air groups from the

United States to the Pacific. All divisions and air groups would be accompanied by normal complements of supporting troops. A basic premise of the

plan was that these movements would

receive priority over all others, military

or civilian, during the 9-month period.

On that premise, and assuming the British Queens would continue available to

the United States, the planners anticipated that transport shipping would be sufficient to carry out the movements.

The ASF was also ready, by early

April 1944, with its own administrative

and logistical plan for redeployment,

based largely on the concurrent deliberations in the joint committees but differing in some respects from the final

joint plan. The ASF was disturbed by

the prospective shortage of service troops

in the final phase in the Pacific, since

11

 JCS 521/5, 2 Apr 44, rpt by JPS, title: Strategic

Deployment of U.S. Forces to 31 Dec 44.
STRESSES AND STRAINS OF A TWO-FRONT WAR 541

the General Staff had ruled against including the additional allotment of 100,-

000 or more, the ASF estimate of the

need, in the troop basis. The supply

planners consequently decided service

troops must be provided by early direct

redeployment from Europe and included a provision for this movement in their

plan. They also proposed to accelerate

the movement of troops out of Europe,

so that only the 400,000-man occupation force would remain in Europe nine

months after the defeat of Germany.

The whole redeployment movement during the first nine months, they estimated,

would involve moving 1,354,000 soldiers

from Europe to the Pacific, 1,597,000

from Europe to the United States, and

1,088,000 soldiers and 343,000 naval personnel from the United States to the

Pacific. The ASF planners optimistically

predicted that troop shipping would be

available to carry out the accelerated

movements and that Pacific bases would

be capable of receiving the men and supplies. The greatest bottleneck, they

thought, would be on the west coast of

the United States. They proposed to

overcome it by enlarging berthing capacity at Pacific coast ports and storage

capacity nearby, by eliminating all nonessential rail movements into the area,

and by taking steps to relieve the labor

shortage.12

At the time neither the joint agencies

nor the ASF investigated the availability

of cargo shipping to support the redeployment moves. The general assumption

that there would be enough was predicated on a very low estimate of requirements for civilian relief in Europe and

on a supposition that civilian relief demands would take second place to military needs. The JMTC did undertake

a study of the problems involved in moving fighter planes and light bombers

from Europe to the Pacific (heavy and

medium bombers would go by air) and

concluded it could be accomplished by

extensive use of tankers to carry deck

loads of aircraft.13

The whole question of shipping, cargo

and personnel, required combined consideration with the British. The premise

that the British Queens would be available for redeployment of American

troops could hardly be taken for granted since the British would themselves

want to carry out extensive personnel

movements after V-E Day. Attempts by

the Combined Staff Planners to draw up

a combined redeployment plan, however, came to nought, and protracted

negotiations during the summer of 1944

failed to produce more than the vaguest

of assurances from the British on the

subject of the Queens. The British planners insisted that an over-all evaluation

in the light of agreed strategy and other

Allied objectives in the post-V-E Day

period must precede firm shipping plans

or commitments, and no such agreed

strategy existed as yet. Moreover, time

was to prove that the British had entirely different ideas on the scope and priority of civilian relief in Europe than

did the Americans.14

12

 Strat LOC Br, Plng Div ASF Study, 8 Apr 44,

sub: Redeployment of U.S. Forces After Fall of

Germany, ASF Plng Div.

13

 JMT 53/1, 6 May 44, title: Transport of Aircraft by Water, Redeployment Plng. 14

 (1)CPS 120/2, 21 Feb 44, title: Redeployment

of Forces Against Japan after the Defeat of Germany.

(2) JWPC 189/4, 5 May 44, same title. (3) JCS 930,

4 Jul 44, title: Combined Use of Troopships after

Defeat of Germany. (4) Min, 167th mtg CCS, 14

Jul 44. (5) CCS 615 series, title: Combined Use of

Troopships after Defeat of Germany.
542 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

Going ahead therefore without British agreement, the JPS produced another redeployment forecast in mid-June

1944. It was little more than an up-dating of the earlier plan, based this time

on Germany's defeat on the alternate

dates 1 October 1944 and 1 January

1945, with deployments projected forward to 30 September 1945 in each case.

The figures in the 1 October plan differed from the earlier ones only in that

they reduced the deployment of air

groups to the Pacific from 178 to 170

and deferred movement of 13 of them

by three months. The 1 January plan,

though it recognized that at least 14

more divisions would be deployed from

the United States to Europe by the

end of the year, still contemplated

no substantial redeployment of ground

troops from Europe to the Pacific. The

plan did stipulate that six divisions for

the North Pacific operation, should it

prove necessary, would have to come

from the strategic reserve reconstituted

in the United States by troops returning from Europe. Although the detailed

breakdown indicated some redeployment

of service troops, the joint planners did

not attempt to analyze that problem

either. Nor did they indicate, for air or

for service troops, whether redeployment

would be directly from Europe to the

Pacific, or indirectly by way of the United States.15

Up to this point, then, joint redeployment planning had largely been orderof-magnitude planning. The question of

service troops was unresolved; redeployment of aircraft, despite the reduction,

was calculated at near maximum without sufficient consideration of actual

need or requirements for construction

of bases from which they could operate.

Policies and procedures were still undefined; principles on which any partial

demobilization would proceed after the

defeat of Germany unstated. In essence,

planning was still divorced from any

agreed joint or combined strategy for

the final phase of the war on which firm

force calculations and firm logistical plans

could be based. The ASF, attempting

to lay the detailed groundwork for redeployment, found itself operating on

too many premises that would later

prove false.

By August 1944 the prevailing atmosphere of optimism about the early end

of the war with Germany had given redeployment planning a new air of urgency. On 12 August OPD established a

special redeployment committee to recommend, after consultation with other

interested agencies, basic policies for redeployment of the Army. Meanwhile,

the War Department Personnel Readjustment Plan had, after long discussion,

been developed to govern the selection

of men for discharge from the Army

after V-E Day. It established an elaborate point system based on length of

service, overseas service, dependency,

combat experience, and decorations as

criteria for determining each individual

soldier's eligibility for separation. It

promised to complicate the whole process of redeployment considerably by

requiring extensive adjustment of personnel in units before their movement

from Europe to the Pacific.

On 6 September the OPD committee

submitted its recommendations. Following cessation of hostilities against Germany, no further forces or means were

to be moved to the European-African

15

 JCS 521/6, 11 Jun 44, rpt by JPS, title: Strategic

Deployment of U.S. Forces to 30 Sep 45.
STRESSES AND STRAINS OF A TWO-FRONT WAR 543

area other than the minimum essential

for support and maintenance of occupation forces. Bases were to be closed out

or reduced as rapidly as possible; service

requirements of occupation forces were

to be met to the maximum extent possible by civilian labor. Insofar as possible, units and individuals remaining

in the United States when the war in

Europe ended were to be employed in

the Pacific before any similar types were

redeployed from Europe, but "certain

critical units and individuals, not immediately available in the United States"

were to be "moved promptly from the

European-African and other relatively

inactive areas." Only the most critical,

however, would move directly: "When

time and other considerations permit,

units which have been overseas an appreciable length of time, and which are

scheduled for redeployment, will be returned to the United States for rehabilitation and conditioning before being

moved to the Pacific." Conversion of

units from one type to another, when

necessary, was to be accomplished in the

United States. Except when military necessity dictated otherwise, selection of

both units and individuals for redeployment from Europe to the Pacific was

to be governed by the point system; personnel were to be returned from the

Pacific to the United States for discharge

on the same basis. In order to keep requirements for new production at a

minimum, surplus supplies in Europe

and other inactive theaters were to be

transferred directly to the Pacific. Units

directly redeployed were to be accompanied by full T/E; units indirectly redeployed via the United States were to

bring only minimum essential equipment but the rest of their T/E was to

be shipped directly from Europe to their

Pacific destination to the extent that

the theater could accomplish it.16

Detailed redeployment planning within ASF had previously been going ahead

on the premise that veteran units would

proceed intact directly from Europe to

the Pacific theaters. Adoption of the committee's recommendations would, the

ASF insisted, result in loss of logistical

efficiency. The reshuffling of units required by application of the point system would cause a delay of as much as

a month in starting movements; indirect

redeployment via the United States

would add to the time lag in placing

these units in action and increase the

shipping load and the burden on U.S.

ports and railroads. But these protests

were to no avail. The preponderance of

opinion among the General Staff was

that public support was more important

than logistical efficiency. Unless troops

were redeployed via the United States,

the redeployment committee noted,

there was a "strong likelihood" of "restrictive legislation . . . upon the War

Department, forcing the issue and possibly hampering the redeployment."17

16

 (1) Memo, Col Maxwell W. Tracy, Lt Col Harvey H. Fischer and Lt Col Edward M. Harris for

Gen Handy, 6 Sep 44, sub: Redeployment of U.S.

Forces Upon the Defeat of Germany, ABC 320.2

(3-13-43) Sec 5. (2) On the War Department Personnel

Readjustment Plan see Maj. John C. Sparrow,

History of Personnel Demobilization in the United

States Army, DA Pamphlet 20-210 (1952), pp. 64-84. 17

 (1) Ibid. (1). (2) Memo, Gen Wood for Gen

Roberts, 29 May 44, sub: JPS 193/8—Strategic

Deployment of U.S. Forces. (3) Memo, Gen Somervell for ACofS, OPD, 2 Sep 44, sub: JCS 521/7—

Redeployment of Forces Re-Oriented from Europe

Against Japan. Both in ABC 320.2 (3-13-43) Secs 3

and 5. (4) Memo, Wood for Roberts, 15 Aug 44,

sub: WD Plan for Readjustment of Personnel after

Defeat of Germany, ABC 381 Strategy Sec Papers

(7 Jan 43) 297-313. Tab 308.
544 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

These new procedures were not the

only factors dictating revision of the

existing joint redeployment plan. The

ASF continued to harp on the service

troop theme, and the appearance of a

shortage for the Formosa operation gave

their warnings a force that could not

be ignored. The Joint Logistics Committee, moreover, in an exhaustive analysis of the joint plan found that the

airfield capacity in the forward areas in

the Pacific would be inadequate until

the large land masses of Luzon or Formosa were taken and developed, and it

pointed to the need for early dispatch

of construction troops for this purpose.

By late August the Joint Planners themselves were ready to admit that the high

priority given the redeployment of the

AAF must be reappraised and consideration given to moving service and supporting troops first to prepare the way.

"The shortage of service units . . . ," the

JWPC noted on 7 September, "is tending to dictate our strategy in the war

against Japan."18

The Joint Military Transportation

Committee, meanwhile, studying the

shipping implications, expressed doubts

that shipping would be available to support the deployments envisaged. No

real assessment could be made, the committee pointed out, until a combined

redeployment plan had been agreed to

with the British within the CCS, for

redeployment would depend on the

"utilization of combined shipping resources."19

Formulation of a combined deployment plan for the final phase of the war

on which a combined shipping plan

could be based depended on development of a combined strategy in which

the British role in the war against Japan

would be carefully spelled out. The

plans that emerged from OCTAGON were

much too general to provide that basis;

seeming agreement cloaked a basic divergence in national views and aims. In

reality the American redeployment plan

provided all the forces likely to be necessary for the final blow against Japan,

and more, it appeared, than Pacific bases

would be able to accommodate. If U.S.

redeployment plans were carried out,

British naval and air participation in the

Pacific would be really unnecessary, and

to some extent embarrassing. The British also had reservations about singleminded concentration on the war with

Japan once the war with Germany was

over, feeling that the need for reconstruction of their own war-shatttered

economy and the economies of the liberated nations of Europe would preclude

giving unlimited first priority on shipping to movement of troops and supplies to the Pacific. What the Americans

really wanted was a simple promise that

the British Queens would be available

for American redeployment after V-E

Day. The British were unwilling to consider this problem outside the whole

framework of a combined strategy for

the defeat of Japan and over-all consideration of civilian as well as military

18

 (1) JWPC 259/17, 7 Sep 44, title: Reorientation

of U.S. Resources to the War Against Japan. (2)

Memo, Somervell for OPD, 2 Sep 44. (3) JCS Memo

283, 17 Aug 44, title: JLC Study. (4) JCS 521/7, 30

Aug 44, rpt by JPS, title: Redeployment of Forces

Re-Oriented from Europe Against Japan. 19

 (1) JCS 521/8, 8 Sep 44, rpt by JLC in collaboration with JMTC, title: Deployment of Forces Reoriented from Europe Against Japan. (2) JLC 183,

2 Sep 44, title: Logistical Study of Strategic Deployment of U.S. Forces.
STRESSES AND STRAINS OF A TWO-FRONT WAR 545

demands to be placed on troop and cargo

shipping after victory in Europe.20

In the preliminary studies of availability of personnel shipping at OCTAGON, the British Chiefs therefore rejected

every American effort to formulate a specific schedule of combined movements,

objecting with particular vehemence to

one prepared by Somervell and Lord

Leathers based on the premise that the

principal British movement after V-E

Day would be of the six divisions to

India for DRACULA. The combined committees, to whom the problem was referred, wrestled unsuccessfully with it in

the ensuing two months. The U.S. planners were not ready to proceed without

a clear determination of what the British part in the war against Japan would

be, and the British were apparently not

ready to present a specific plan and to

fight for it within the committee structure. Finally, in November the British

proposed to postpone the study "until

the defeat of Germany is clearly imminent and a realistic date can be firmly

accepted as the basic assumption of the

paper," and the Americans readily accepted, fearing that insistence on completing it "might result in the acceptance of British operations for planning

purposes that will add little to the early

defeat of Japan but will provide a basis

for new demands on U.S. resources in

direct conflict with U.S. requirements."21

The deadlock in the combined committee seems to have delayed any revision of the American joint plan. At least,

no new plan appeared until late December, and in the meantime 1 October

came and went without the hoped-for

German surrender. Preparations on the

operating level were quickened during

September. Pacific coast stocks were

boosted to the extent European operations would permit, and old inactive

stocks cleared out; ASF teams were prepared for dispatch to Europe to help in

the outshipping program; operating procedures and plans were elaborated and

codified. But it was clear by mid-October that the war in Europe still had a

long time to run. As the combined committees postponed their studies, the joint

committees had to recast their own plans

in the light of recent developments in

both wars. For some months redeployment planning no longer seemed to have

the same urgency as it had had in August

and September. The movement of both

combat and service troops to Europe

was accelerated as the fighting on the

Siegfried Line took its inevitable toll

of American manpower and the lengthened continental supply lines made their

demands felt. The prospect that redeployment from Europe would permit

meeting the service troop crisis in the

Pacific rapidly faded as did the prospect

that the major portion of Pacific ground

force needs could be met from troops

remaining in the United States at the

end of the war with Germany.

At the height of the discussions of the

Formosa versus Luzon issue in September 1944, the JCS dispatched a message

to U.S. commanders in Europe and

North Africa asking whether any air and

service units urgently needed in the Pa20

 On the civilian relief issue, see below, Chapter

XXXI. 21

 (1) Memo, Maj J. A. Davison, British Secy, CPS

and CAdC, for U.S. Secy, 15 Nov 44, sub: (a) Redeployment of Forces after War in Europe, (b) Relation of Available Resources to Agreed Opns. (2)

Memo, C. H. Donnelly, U.S. Secy CPS and CAdC,

for U.S. Members, 22 Nov 44, same sub. Both in

ABC 320.2 (3-13-43) Sec 7. (3) CCS 675, 12 Sep 44;

CCS 675/1, 13 Sep 44; CCS 675/2, 15 Sep 44; and

CCS 679, 14 Sep 44.
546 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

cific could be spared before the end of

the war with Germany. At the same time

the CCS asked combined commanders

to release landing craft at the earliest

possible date. The replies were for the

most part disappointing. Neither General Eisenhower nor General Devers felt

he could spare any air or service troops.

A few antiaircraft artillery units were

reassigned but nothing else of significance. Of amphibious resources, SHAEF

reported 18 LST's on their way from

Europe to the Pacific and 20 British

LCI (L) 's outbound for SEAC, but even

the movement of amphibious craft was

on a far smaller scale than the planners

had supposed it would be after completion of DRAGOON. Either the craft were

unserviceable, or they were needed for

port operations, or they were assigned

for the British eastern Mediterranean

program. And in the last analysis, amphibious craft were no longer the most

critical items in the Pacific. On 3 October the Joint Logistics Committee reported that instead

the most critical shortages required to

support further operations in the Pacific . . . are in medium and heavy artillery,

truck units, motor maintenance units and

engineer units, particularly portable bridge

units. These shortages in the Pacific have

been caused primarily by the high priority

given to the provision of resources to the

ETO as compared to other theaters. Units

of the type required to reduce critical

shortages in the Pacific are also essential to

the continuation of operations in Europe.

No possibility of redeploying medium and

heavy artillery battalions or portable bridge

units will exist until major German opposi- tion is reduced. The greatly extended lines

of communications and rapidity of move- ment have caused the theater to request

expedition of the flow of truck companies

and railway units and the shipping of

engineer, signal, and medical units prior to

the completion of their normal training.22

Strains on Manpower

and Production

The critical shortages the Joint Logistics Committee noted in the Pacific

in October 1944 were a measure of the

strains full-scale war on two fronts was

imposing on U.S. military resources,

particularly on military manpower, cargo shipping, and Army supplies. These

strains can be fairly assessed, however,

only in terms of the basic programs that

had been agreed on during the preceding three years, not in terms of the full

capabilities of the American economy.

Practically no significant adjustments

could be made in these programs to

meet the immediate situation, regardless of the theoretical capacity for further expansion of war production. Moreover, the whole question of adequacy of

existing production programs was continually obscured by difficulties in the

distribution process growing out of

shortages of shipping for transoceanic

movements and inadequate internal theater supply lines in both Europe and

the Pacific. In cases of some specific

types of supplies, production programs

were probably inadequate; more frequently the distribution machinery

failed to insure the arrival of supplies,

produced in adequate quantity, at the

time and place required. Only in the

22

 (1) JCS 1051/1, 6 Oct 44, rpt by JLC, title:

Reorientation of U.S. Resources to the War Against

Japan. (2) JWPC 259/17, 7 Sep 44, same title. (3)

JCS 1051, 12 Sep 44, title: Early Reorientation of

U.S. Air and Service Units from the ETO to Pacific.

(4) Memo, Gen Roberts for Assistant Secy, WDGS,

8 Oct 44, sub: Reorientation of U.S. Resources to

War Against Japan, ABC 320.2 (3-13-43) Sec 6.
STRESSES AND STRAINS OF A TWO-FRONT WAR 547

case of military manpower did the limitations take on something of an absolute character hardly susceptible of solution by any kind of administrative action.

By October 1944 total Army strength

had reached 8,103,000 officers and men,

400,000 above the 7.7-million ceiling

established by the President a year earlier, and very nearly the practical limit

of Army expansion. A net increase of

only 200,000 men was to be registered

by the end of May 1945. Army expansion

went ahead during this period under

special dispensations and without any

formal establishment of a new ceiling.

Meanwhile, the Navy sought and received sanction from the JCS and the

President to expand from 2,900,000 men

to 3,200,000 by the end of 1944 and to

3,396,000 by June 1945. The Navy's actual strength stood at 3,228,000 on 31

December 1944. The effects of heavy

drafts for the military services and the

tendency of individual members of the

labor forces in 1944 to seek employment

offering greater security and permanence

produced increasing labor shortages in

key war industries.23

The Army's overstrength did not permit activation of additional units in the

troop basis over and above those originally calculated for a 7.7-million-man

army, however numerous the internal

adjustments within that troop basis. The

overstrength was absorbed in providing

for the "pipeline," that is, men in hospitals, replacement and reassignment

centers, in transit, or on furlough under

rotation policies—in short, what General MacNair once called "the invisible

horde of people going here and there

but seemingly never arriving."24 The

overstrength was insufficient to cover

this "invisible horde," and the Army

was hard put to maintain its schedule

of activations. With mounting demands

for special types of units for service

functions, 90 divisions and supporting

troops remained the fixed limit on

ground combat forces. The inactivation

of the 2d Cavalry Division to provide

service troops for DRAGOON actually reduced the eventual total to 89. Drastic

action was required to keep the divisions

filled at all and to meet mushrooming

demands for overseas infantry replacements. The drain on divisions in the

United States for overseas infantry replacements in 1944 seriously handicapped the AGF divisional training program and led to the dispatch overseas

of the last few of the 89 divisions filled

with soldiers who had gone through

only a short training cycle. The Army

Specialized Training Program was very

nearly liquidated, and 150,000 men in

the program were funneled into the

AGF; an additional 73,000 surplus aviation cadets were summarily sent back to

ground units; ZI establishments were

combed for men fit for combat duty, and

troops engaged in housekeeping functions cut to a bare minimum; antiaircraft artillery and tank destroyer units

were disbanded, and the men retrained

mainly as infantry; forces at nearby base

commands were progressively reduced.25

Insofar as manpower was available,

the European theater got first call. At

the end of October 1944 nearly 3 mil- 23

 (1) STM-30, Strength of the Army, 1 Jan 48.

(2) Maj William P. Moody, Planning the Troop

Bases for All Services for 1944 and Beyond, Sec IIC,

ch. VII, pp. 39-43, History JCS.

24

 Greenfield, Palmer, and Wiley, Organization of

Ground Combat Troops, p. 236. 25

 Ibid., pp. 237-51.
548 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

lion Army troops were deployed in the

European, Mediterranean, Middle East,

and African theaters and about 1,335,-

000 in the Pacific, CBI, and Alaska. Another 215,000 were in nearby Atlantic

base commands, making a total of roughly 4.5 million troops outside the continental United States with some 132,-

000 more en route. About 800,000 remained to be deployed before May 1945

when Army overseas strength was to

reach its peak of 5.4 million men. Of

these 800,000, about three-fourths went

to the European theater and the rest to

the Pacific and CBI.26

Despite this priority the European

theater, as well as the Pacific and CBI,

suffered from manpower shortages. As

the divisional build-up on the Continent

progressed the proportion of service

troops fell until, in terms of its eventual

troop basis of 61 divisions, the European

theater calculated that it would be short

something over 150,000 service troops.

The War Department was unable to

make up this deficit, despite ETOUSA

pressure. The theater finally agreed to

sacrifice ten heavy artillery battalions in

order to get the equivalent in service

troops, but a substantial shortage remained and made necessary more extensive use of civilian and prisoner-ofwar labor.

An even more serious shortage of infantry replacements developed late in

1944, reaching its most critical stage at

the time of the Battle of the Bulge. Unable to meet the demand for replacements, the War Department put pressure on the theater to squeeze men out

of its own rear establishment. Efforts

along this line were generally successful

in meeting the immediate problem

though in large part because casualty

rates started falling after the successful

repulse of the German Army in the

Ardennes.27

Concomitant with its manpower shortages, the European theater suffered from

supply deficiencies that played their part

in producing and prolonging the fall

and winter stalemate on the Siegfried

Line. How far the supply deficiencies in

ETO were the product of faults in the

theater distribution process and troop

wastefulness, how much the product of

lack of port capacity and adequate lines

of communication, and how much of

failure of sufficient quantities to arrive

in the theater is difficult to determine

in every instance. Each supply problem

constitutes a long and involved story in

itself. The shortage of POL, for instance,

so important in halting the drive to the

German border in September, was entirely a result of lack of port and line

of communication capacity. The same

can be said of sporadic shortages of particular types of rations and small arms

ammunition. Shortages of Class II and

IV equipment, on the other hand, and of

artillery ammunition derived at least in

part from failure of the Zone of Interior

agencies to ship adequate quantities.

This failure in turn was a compound of

inadequate production and theater failure to anticipate specific needs. The

most persistent shortages of Class II and

IV equipment were—and this is by no

means an exhaustive list—field wire, radios, bridging material, winter clothing,

trucks, tanks, tires, and gasoline drums.

The causative factors varied from case

26

 STM-30, Strength of the Army, 1 Jan 48.

27

 See Ruppenthal, Logistical Support of the

Armies II, 289-347, for a detailed account of the

manpower problem in ETO during this period.
STRESSES AND STRAINS OF A TWO-FRONT WAR 549

to case. The winter clothing situation,

for instance, was as much a result of

disagreements over design between the

theater quartermaster and the Office of

The Quartermaster General as it was

of the failure of either the theater or

the ASF to take adequate and timely

action to provide for an unanticipated

winter campaign. The shortages of

trucks, field wire, and bridging material

resulted from demands far in excess of

anything anticipated; of these, the shortage of trucks, at least, was accentuated

by delays in unloading ships carrying

motor vehicles to the theater. The tire

shortage was worldwide, and was produced by a rubber shortage that the new

synthetic rubber plants were only beginning to make up. Too many gasoline

drums were lost, strayed, or stolen, partly because of troop carelessness. On the

other hand, the Army Supply Program

for 1944 had simply not included enough

tanks to provide an adequate reserve

against combat losses and excessive wear

and tear, and the day of supply for most

types of artillery ammunition was set

too low to provide for the kind of fighting that occurred on the Siegfried Line.

The Americans had to borrow back lendlease tanks from the British in December 1944, and almost all U.S. tank production earmarked for the British in

1945 was diverted to the U.S. Army to

build up its reserves. Artillery ammunition for a time was strictly rationed.28

In any case, the large demands for

supplies that appeared with the extension of the campaign in Europe reversed

the earlier trend toward production cutbacks that had been dominant since the

McCoy Board and the Richards Committee had rendered their reports early

in 1943. The warning the latter group

had issued against the "specious wave of

optimism . . . sweeping the country,"

in the face of the fact that reserves had

not yet been "subjected . . . to the prodigious demands of large successful offensives on several fronts," proved amply

justified.29 But since the optimism prevailed, even in military circles, up

through the end of September 1944,

the reversal could not take full effect

until after the real crisis was over.

The cutbacks in Army production reflected in the 1 February 1944 Army Supply Program had already been reversed

to some degree in the intervening

months because of increased demands

for heavy artillery and ammunition and

for various types of operational supplies

attendant on the European invasion and

the accelerated pace of the advance in

the Pacific. The dollar value of required

ASF production had risen in interim

revisions from $21.6 billion in the 1 February ASP to $24.8 billion by 30 June

1944.30 The tendency in August and

September, however, was once again toward economy, particularly in calculating reserves, for hopes were high that

the war with Germany would soon be

over. In calculating production requirements for 1944 and 1945 in the 1 October edition of the ASP, the 15 divisions

over and above the 90-division ceiling

for which equipment was being procured were dropped, and the strategic

reserve thus reduced to only 10 divisions

and supporting troops. At the same time

stock levels for ZI depots were calculated

on the basis of 60 days of expected issue

28

 (1) Ibid., pp. 188-275. (2) On the diversion of

British lend-lease tanks, see below, Chapter XXV.

29

 (1) Levels of Supply. app. F, p. 89. (2) See above,

ch. V. 30

 See above, ch. V.
550 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

for items vital to combat and 45 days

for all other items in lieu of the previous provision for go days of all items.

The total ASF procurement program

for 1944, predicated on continuation of

the war with Germany, in October 1944

stood at $23.5 billion in dollar value and

that for 1945 at $23.6 billion.31 A special ASP to cover the first year of a onefront war provided for significant reductions in these goals should the war

with Germany come to an end in the

interim.

The increasingly critical supply situation of many items during October,

November, and December 1944 forced

progressive upward revision of these

goals. The program for 1945 received

the main impact because there was not

enough lead time to reaccelerate production in 1944. Nevertheless, by the

end of 1944 required ASF production

for that year had been boosted upward

to $24.5 billion and, in response to urgings from the European theater, pressure was being exerted to increase current production of artillery ammunition,

tanks, field wire, engineer construction

and bridging equipment, radios, and numerous other items. By February 1945

programed procurement for that year

(based on continuation of the war with

Germany) rose to nearly $28 billion.32

Meanwhile, actual production rates

rose only slowly, reflecting, first, the

difficulties of restoring or expanding

production lines on short notice, and

second, the scarcity or lack of mobility

of necessary skilled labor. Few of the

proposed boosts were realized before

new evidences of the impending defeat

of Germany again brought cutbacks.

Any significant boosts that did occur

were in the production of such items

as mortars, heavy artillery and artillery

ammunition, medium and heavy trucks,

bombs, and airborne radar, and took

effect mainly in the early months of

1945. The most dramatic effort was exerted to increase the rate of production

of artillery ammunition, which the European theater represented as the most

serious shortage it was facing. But only

limited acceleration of production on

short notice was possible because of the

lead time required to prepare new facilities. Some boosts in the artillery ammunition program had been begun

much earlier in 1944 following the appearance of an artillery crisis in Italy.

The most the War Department could

do in the emergency of late 1944 and

early 1945 was to push for maximum

output with existing facilities. And as

so frequently happened, the demand in

the ETO eased some time before the

effects of these efforts could be fully

felt.33

In summary, then, the supply shortages that developed in overseas theaters

as a result of full-scale commitment on

two fronts produced a flurry of plans for

expansion of production of Army supplies, but their practical effect was limited to a very few lines. They also produced a considerable diminution of

lend-lease to the British.34 Since most

of the expansion plans were not carried

into effect because of the rapid dissipation of the crisis in early 1945, they im- 31

 Frank, Army Supply Requirements, pp. 145-54. 32

 (1) ASF Monthly Progress Reports, Sep-Dec

1944, Jan-Feb 1945, sec. 1-C, Procurement, and sec

6, Analysis. (2) ASF, Annual Report for the Fiscal

Year 1945, pp. 173-74.

33

 See Ruppenthal, Logistical Support of the

Armies, II, 247-75. 34

 See below, ch. XXV.
STRESSES AND STRAINS OF A TWO-FRONT WAR 551

posed no heavy additional strain on

American productive facilities, which,

after the cutbacks early in the year, were

operating at something less than their

maximum capacity. In this light, it seems

likely that the limitation on the American war effort, had further expansion

been necessary, would have been in the

supply of military manpower rather than

the production of military material.

The Fall Shipping Crisis

The principal contributing factor to

supply shortages in both the major areas

of the war in the fall and winter of 1944

was not the shortage of supplies in the

United States, but rather the difficulties

of transporting the supplies to the using

troops at the end of the line. In Europe

and the Pacific, supply lines had been

stretched to their elastic limits as a result of rapid advances. The lack of port

facilities in both areas had produced

shipping tie-ups that inevitably had their

repercussions on the availability of cargo shipping for outward movement from

the United States at a time when requirements for outward movements

were mounting to their zenith. The large

pools of shipping being employed for

transport of supplies within the theaters

themselves added to the drain. In Europe

the effects of limited port capacity were

compounded by the inadequacy of inland clearance facilities. While this latter

factor was not so important in the island

warfare in the Pacific, it had a part in

producing shipping congestion in the

Philippines.

By early October more than 200 ships,

mostly commodity loaders, awaited discharge in European waters. The theater

was still insisting, in the face of a discharge rate of only 95 ships in September, that new arrivals should continue

at an average rate of 265 per month

through the end of the year. If these requests were completely unrealistic in

terms of ability to discharge, they still

represented the theater's calculations of

supply requirements for the operations

it had to support. At the same time Pacific requirements were also expanding

for operational shipping to be used in

the invasion of the Palaus and of Leyte

as well as for outward sailings from the

United States. Concomitant with the decision to invade Leyte two months ahead

of schedule, shipping congestion was already appearing in Hollandia harbor,

and the actual invasion on 20 October

was to produce a tie-up of monumental

proportions.35

Merchant shipbuilding, meanwhile,

though it had recovered from the doldrums of the early months of the year,

was still running considerably behind

the schedule that called for construction

of 18.4 million dead-weight tons of cargo

shipping in 1944, largely because of

labor shortages, which were particularly

prevalent in the yards on the west coast.

Indications were, by the fall of 1944,

that the slippage would amount to between one and two million dead-weight

tons. Although the JCS on numerous

occasions during the spring and summer

had expressed concern to the Maritime

Commission about this slippage, at the

behest of Admiral King, they reserved

their heaviest pressure for the combat

loader program, which in midsummer

was about one month behind schedule.

The manpower priority granted the combat loader program, and the even higher

35

 (1) See above, chs. XV and XX. (2) Ruppenthal,

Logistical Support of the Armies II, 126-30.
552 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

priority assigned companies producing

B-29 aircraft, had some effect in slowing

cargo vessel production on the west coast.

More significant factors, however, appear

to have been the tendency of skilled

laborers in the yards to seek employment elsewhere, which they believed offered better postwar opportunities, and

the growing shortage of manpower for

both the military services and war production.36

In producing the shipping crisis of

fall 1944 the slippage in the construction

program was, in any case, of less importance than the growing retention of

shipping in overseas theaters. The slippage had been more than balanced by

a low loss rate and savings effected

through reduced convoy requirements.

As General Somervell noted in sounding a warning on 24 October, new tonnage was being added to the Allied merchant fleet at a rate of 500,000 tons per

month, but there had still been an actual

reduction of two million tons since the

first of the year in shipping available

for outward movements from the United States.37

Somervell's specific purpose was to call

attention to the impending requirements

for shipping civil relief supplies to Europe—for grain to Italy to raise the bread

ration and for a large national import

program for France. Only a few days

later a further complication was to appear in the form of a concrete Soviet

requirement for shipments of supplies

to Siberia to stockpile against the day

the USSR would enter the war against

Japan. This new, and seemingly imperative, demand presented at the October

Foreign Ministers Conference in Moscow, was initially calculated at 130 ship

sailings in the Pacific over the next six

months. Demands for civil relief needs

and the Soviet program not only added

to the dimensions of the resulting shipping crisis, but gave it strong political

overtones.38

Even before the Russians made their

demand, the situation looked serious

enough. In terms of already reduced theater requirements, deficits were being

predicted in both the Atlantic and Pacific, 20 sailings in October and 80 in

November, for instance, just to northwest Europe. But in the light of the

proven inability of the European theater to unload ships, these deficits on the

Atlantic side simply could not be taken

at face value. The ASF had already instituted cuts to take effect in October

and November in spite of protests from

the theater, but new requirements in

the Mediterranean, the Western Hemisphere, and the Pacific, together with a

lag in returners from the Mediterranean,

combined to absorb most of the assets

made available in this way. Early in October, therefore, Captain Conway of

WSA proposed that substantial further

cuts be made in sailings to the ETO

and the ships be ballasted to the west

coast to provide for Pacific deficits. Reviewing the dismal record of ETOUSA

in forecasting its own discharge capacity

36

 (1) JCS 896/3, 8 Jul 44, memo by Adm King,

title: APA-AKA Program. (2) Ltr, Gen Marshall to

Adm Land, 16 Jul 44. (3) Ltr, Adm Land to JCS,

9 Aug 44. (2) and (3) in ABC 561 (7 Aug 43), Sec 2A.

(4) JCS 896/5, 12 Aug 44, rpt by JLC, title: Effect

of Recruitment by WMC on APA-AKA Program.

(5) JLC 163/5, 13 Oct 44. rpt by JLC, title: APA-AKA

Program. 37

 Memo, Gen Somervell for Gen Hull, OPD,

24 Oct 44, sub: Increased Requests for Shpg, ABC

560 (4 Jul 44) Sec 2.

38

 (1) On the Soviet aid program, see below, Chapter XXVII. (2) On the civil relief issue, see below,

Chapter XXXI.
STRESSES AND STRAINS OF A TWO-FRONT WAR 553

(125 in August as opposed to actual discharge of 76, 180 in September as opposed to actual discharge of 90) Conway called the current theater forecast

that it could discharge 260 vessels in

October "fantastic." The weather was

bound to deteriorate, which meant that

any increase of intake through Le Havre

would be offset by declining performance over the beaches. Antwerp, it was

now evident, could not be in operation

before November at the earliest. Conway proposed, therefore, to reduce scheduled convoys to Europe by another 113

sailings over the next three months, and

to divert 86 cargo ships to the Pacific.

This would provide, he estimated, 118

arrivals in October, 88 in November,

and 156 in December; these, he thought,

would be sufficient, with the existing

backlog of an estimated 180 idle ships

in the theater, to keep continental discharge facilities fully employed. Assuming a discharge rate of 150 ships in October, 175 in November, and 200 in

December, there would still be a backlog

of 18 unloaded ships at the end of the

year. Conway admitted the risk involved

in thus reducing the offshore floating

warehouses in Europe. "The decision to

assume this risk," he wrote Gross, "is

obviously a strategic one which must be

made by the military authorities."39 He

indicated that in the meantime 24 vessels had already been diverted from the

British Import Program and that he

would pursue negotiations to secure further releases from that source.

The military authorities accepted Conway's solution in principle if not in detail, and promptly cut back scheduled

sailings to the ETO in October, November, and December. The theater's protest that it needed 139 more sailings than

offered, based on the frank admission

that if forecasted discharge capacity did

not develop they would be used for

floating warehouses, was disregarded because of the need for ships on the other

side of the world. During October the

process of ballasting ships to the Pacific

began and the deficit for that month

was held to about 10 sailings. When on

20 October the discharge situation in

Europe had not improved and there remained some 240 ships in European

waters, Somervell informed the theater

that it would get no more commodity

loaders until the bank of such ships had

been reduced to reasonable levels. He

was willing to let the theater keep a

bank of around 70 to 80 ships for selective discharge, but he was not willing

to accept assurances of an improved discharge rate in the future as a basis for

increasing the flow of shipping to ETO

until the bank had actually been brought

down to this figure.40

Meanwhile, the bank of ships off Leyte awaiting selective discharge was also

mounting, and the situation in SWPA

soon paralleled that in Europe. Into the

deepening crisis was injected the Soviet

demand for shipments to Siberia, eventually calculated on a reduced scale as

requiring 85 sailings from the west coast

from December 1944 through March

1945. Taking into account the sailings

for Soviet aid, Somervell in mid-November estimated the prospective military

deficit in the Pacific in succeeding

months as 79 sailings in November, 83

39

 Ltr, Conway to Gross, 2 Oct 44, Reading File

Aug-Nov 44, WSA Conway File.

40

 (1) Ruppenthal, Logistical Support of the

Armies II, 128-30. (2) Monthly Rpt #4 for Oct 44,

White to Darr, WSA, 4 Nov 44, folder Traffic Dept

Monthly Rpts, Box 122876, WSA Conway File.
554 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

in December, 64 in January, and 57 in

March. These figures, representing 30

to 40 percent of total requirements for

outward sailings in the Pacific during

these months, were, in the terms of the

shipping authorities, "unmanageable."

Somervell pressed on MacArthur the

need to release ships for return to the

Pacific coast, and warned him of drastic

reductions in November sailings for lack

of returners. Admiral King took similar

steps to warn Nimitz. At the same time

an obvious need to increase shipping to

Europe once Antwerp was opened made

it apparent that deficits on the Atlantic

side would become even more "unmanageable" since so much cargo shipping

was in process of being diverted to the

Pacific. Somervell's mid-November estimates showed deficits of 25 sailings

against an already reduced schedule in

the Atlantic in November, 113 in December, 162 in January 1945, 142 in

February, and thereafter at only a slightly reduced rate during the next four

months.41

To reduce the deficits on both fronts

to "manageable" proportions, Somervell

on 11 November proposed to the Chief

of Staff that drastic reductions be made

in the nonmilitary programs in the Atlantic, beginning in December 1944. He

would eliminate entirely American assistance to the U.K. Import Program,

currently running at 40 sailings per

month, and reduce assistance to other

lend-lease programs by 12 sailings per

month. Moreover, he would cut civilian

relief sailings to the Mediterranean by

25 per month, those to northwest Europe by 9, and Russian Protocol shipments in the Atlantic by 10. These expedients, he suggested, together with

some curtailment in military sailings to

the Mediterranean, would provide an

average of 200 sailings per month to

northwest Europe in the months December through March 1945 and would

concurrently reduce the Pacific deficit

to an average of 50 sailings per month.

As there would still be, he said, a deficit

for all areas of 9 sailings on military

account in December, 75 in January,

108 in February, 36 in March, and 53

in April, he proposed that the Maritime

Commission step up its building program and WSA try to secure even more

shipping from British sources. In connection with the last suggestion he noted

that the chairman of the Maritime Commission had indicated that if a labor

shortage of 35,000 men in the shipyards

could be overcome by 1 January, shipbuilding could be accelerated by about

five additional cargo ships per month.

Somervell asked for a decision "at the

highest level."42

Somervell's proposals became the basis

for a JCS request to the President on

18 November "that the Executive action

necessary to bring about these results be

taken." Before forwarding it, the Joint

Chiefs scaled down the deficit figures

slightly and at the suggestion of Admiral

King added a proviso that "if the full

number of ships proposed cannot be obtained from the Atlantic or other sources,

the deficit will be applied to the pro41

 (1) JCS 1173, 17 Nov 44, Memo by CofS USA,

title: Remedies for Existing and Prospective Shortages in Cargo Shpg, forwarding Memo by CG ASF.

(2) Msg, Somervell to MacArthur, 5 Nov 44, folder

SWPac 1942 thru Apr 1945, Lutes File. (3) Min, 87th

mtg JMTC, 3 Nov 44, Item 2. (4) Msg, CNO to CINC

POA, 9 Nov 44, copy in Navy (Year 1944), Box

122894, WSA Conway File. 42

 Ibid. (1).
STRESSES AND STRAINS OF A TWO-FRONT WAR 555

posed Russian requirement and not to

shipping for Pacific areas."43

The President Decides

The Somervell proposal constituted,

as Colonel Lincoln, the Army's chief

planner, noted, "another wallop" for the

British.44 The civilian shipping authorities were by no means ready to deliver

the "wallop" for it would upset long

standing arrangements on American aid

to British shipping programs. They believed the idle pools of shipping in overseas theaters to be the real root of the

trouble. In a JMTC meeting on 14 November Captain Conway asserted that

"the present critical shortage of ships is

wholly due to the retention of large

numbers of vessels in the four major

theaters of war," and told the assembled

military shipping experts that they must

take immediate steps to control more

effectively the use of shipping by theater

commanders. A system should be placed

in effect, he said, that "would bring

about promptly and automatically a reduction in sailings from the United

States to any theater that is failing to

turn vessels around promptly, unless the

theater has a specified and authorized

reason for failing to do so."45

Since there was no mention of any

such action in the final JCS memorandum to the President, Conway enlisted

the aid of the ailing Harry Hopkins in

getting his own views before Roosevelt.

In a letter to Hopkins he proposed that

the President should tell the JCS:

Until we can show that our own shipping

is being efficiently used, I can not request

the British Government to make a major

sacrifice for the purpose of giving us assistance. There is every evidence that their

shipping is being well used and used only

for essential purposes. While our assistance

to them should be held to the lowest level

which will meet their urgent needs, we can

not be in the position of asking them to

bear the brunt of our failure to utilize our

ships properly. For the same reason we

must grant the Russian request to ship

additional supplies from here beginning in

December.46

On 22 November, Admiral Land,

chairman of the Maritime Commission,

took up the cudgels, presenting to the

JCS chapter and verse on the military

misuse of shipping:

As of 15 November there were nearly

400 WSA controlled vessels retained for

local operational use and . . . approximately

350 Army and Navy allocated ships idle

awaiting discharge. . . . The extent of miscalculations by theater commanders is indi- cated by the fact that if the WSA had been

able to meet in full the stated requirements

of the Army and Navy, the number of vessels put on berth for dispatch to the four

principal theaters in October, November

and December would be 520 greater than

it actually was. . . . The rate of discharge

rather than the availability of shipping has

been the ultimate limitation on supply in

every major theater. . . . It is essential that

theater commanders be held accountable

for making realistic appraisals of reception

capacity and reducing their requirements

if congestion develops.47

43

 JCS 1171/1, 18 Nov 44, title: Remedies for

Existing and Prospective Shortages of Cargo Shpg. 44

 Memo, GAL (Col George A. Lincoln) for Gen

Hull, 16 Nov 44, sub: Shpg Situation, ABC 560 (4

Jul 44) Sec 2. 45

 (1) Min, 88th mtg JMTC, 14 Nov 44, Item 1.

(2) For Conway's full statement see unsigned memo

dated 13 Nov 44, sub: Recommended Action to

Reduce Shpg Congestion in Major Theaters, folder

Harry L. Hopkins, Box 122891, WSA Conway File.

46 Ltr, Conway to Hopkins, 20 Nov 44, folder

Harry L. Hopkins, Box 122891, WSA Conway File.

47 Memo, Land for JCS, 22 Nov 44, Incl to JCS

1173/3, 22 Nov 44, title: Remedies for Shortages in

Shpg.
556 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

Roosevelt accepted neither the JCS

nor the WSA position in its entirety.

Acting quickly on 20 November, the

President asked WSA to negotiate with

the British for release of 40 sailings per

month from their Import Program during December, January, and February;

instructed that use of American shipping for civilian purposes be cut to the

bone; and suggested that if shipyards

could be given assurances that they

would be used to capacity throughout

1945 the manpower situation would improve. In a separate memorandum to

Justice Byrnes, now director of the Office

of War Mobilization and Reconversion

(OWMR, formerly OWM), he urged

the utmost efforts to solve the manpower

situation in the shipyards; and in another memorandum, this one to Admiral

King, he suggested that 10 to 12 sailings

from the United States per month might

be saved by reducing the Mediterranean

convoy cycle from 10 to 5 days. Finally

he told the JCS that they must make the

"most urgent representations" to the

theater commanders to break up idle

shipping pools and to gear the number

of sailings into their areas to reception

capacity. He indicated that he would go

no further in seeking transfer of Britishcontrolled shipping until he was satisfied

that these steps had been taken. Meanwhile, he wanted the shipments to the

USSR started in December.48

The President and WSA had, quite

obviously, put the burden of proof that

shipping was being efficiently utilized on

the military services. On 24 November,

the JMTC, with the President's directives and the letter from Admiral Land

in hand, reviewed somewhat defensively

the steps that had already been taken to

bring ship arrivals and discharge capacity

in line and concluded that: "There remains the acceptance by all agencies,

both in the United States and the theaters, of the fundamental principle that

the use of ships from the United States

in retained pools for storage purposes

is prohibited."49 Recognition of this

"fundamental principle" was, of course,

what WSA was insisting on. After some

further discussion in the JMTC and

among the Joint Chiefs themselves, the

JCS finally took strong action on 9 December, issuing a positive prohibition

to theater commanders against the use

of ocean-going ships for storage, whether

loaded in the United States or in the

theaters. They also directed that requirements for cargo shipping must be adjusted to discharge capacities and selective discharge discontinued. Reports

were to be made to Washington on compliance, the War Department to be

charged with supervision of ship utilization in European theaters and in SWPA,

the Navy with that in POA. Each theater was to establish a shipping control

agency to co-ordinate the use of shipping

within the theater in accordance with

the directive. On 6 January 1945 the

JCS added a definite penalty, which provided that any ships held in the theater

more than 30 days would be counted

either as rotational retentions against

quotas or as an accretion to the local

fleet.50

48

 JCS 1173/2, 21 Nov 44, title: Remedies for

Shortages in Shpg. The memo from the President to

JCS is inclosed with this paper; the other three

Presidential memos are appendixes to it.

49

 JCS 1173/4, 25 Nov 44, rpt by JMTC, title:

Remedies for Shortages in Shpg. 50

 (1) Msg WARX 74985, JCS to CG's of All

Theaters and Sea Frontiers, 9 Dec 44. (2) Min, 90th

mtg JMTC, 7 Dec 44, Item 3. (3) JCS 1173/7. 5 Dec
STRESSES AND STRAINS OF A TWO-FRONT WAR 557

Even before the JCS decision the ASF

had already been putting pressure on

MacArthur, informing him on 23 November 1944 that he must cut his reten- tions by 20 ships and that many of the

shipments scheduled for December must

be postponed. MacArthur protested at

first and pleaded for deferment of the

cuts until the critical phase in operations

in the Philippines was over; he said cuts

could be accomplished only at serious

cost to the Leyte operation and the

scheduled Luzon operations. But in light

of the JCS directive, the known backlog

awaiting discharge and the extremely

black picture of SWPA shipping practices as painted by the WSA representa- tive there (". . . all barrels and buckets

full and the taps still running . . . ," he

wrote),51 the ASF could hardly accept

his representations at face value. Mac- Arthur was forced to cut his retentions

and accept deferment of 10 sailings from

the mainland in December; in January

retentions were cut back more, reducing

them all together from 195 in mid-No- vember to 145; and shipping requirements on the United States continued

to be rigorously pared for some months

afterward. These measures, combined

with a normal improvement attendant

on the stabilization of the situation on

Leyte brought the worst of the SWPA

shipping tie-up to an end. While it con- tinued to be a bone of contention be- tween the theater and Washington during the Luzon Campaign, never again

did it reach such crisis proportions.52

The results in Europe were generally

similar. In November the theater discharged only 115 ships on the Continent

and in December only 130 despite the

opening of Antwerp. The German counteroffensive in mid-December forced the

theater to embargo shipments into the

forward areas, thus producing a glut of

supplies in the ports that inevitably re- acted on the rate of unloading. The pool

of idle ships remained unliquidated un- til March, while scheduled sailings for

December, January, and February were

cut back severely. Moreover, at General

Somervell's insistence, in December 25

of the 35 Libertys retained for crossChannel movements were returned to

the United States along with 21 other

partially unloaded Libertys. Not until

March did port discharge capacity in the

ETO finally reach a point where it

ceased to be a limitation on the rate

of flow of supplies.53

44, rpt by JMTC, title: Remedies for Shortages in

Shpg. (4) JCS 1173/8, 8 Dec 44, memo by COMINCH

and CNO, same title. (5) JCS 1173/9, 9 Dec 44, rpt

by JMTC, same title. (6) App. C, JMT 82/7, 6 Jan

45, title: Dry Cargo and Refrigerator Ships as Retentions. 51

 Ltr, H. L. Schage to F. W. Isherwood, WSA,

San Francisco, 27 Nov 44, sub: Shpg in SWPA, OCT

HB, folder Shpg in Pacific 1944-45, Corresp ASFWSA, Wylie File.

52

 (1) Msg 54876, MacArthur to Somervell, CM-IN

14952, 15 Dec 44; Msg C-54712, MacArthur to Somervell, CM-IN 12436, 13 Dec 44; Msg WARX 76544,

Somervell to MacArthur, 13 Dec 44; Msg, WARX

77844, Somervell to MacArthur, 15 Dec 44 and

WARX 80467, 21 Dec 44. Copies of all in OCT HB,

folder Ships for Pac Theaters Nov 44-Feb 45, Wylie

File. (2) Memo, Gen Wylie for Gen Wood, 19 Dec 44,

sub: SWPA Shpg Situation, OCT HB, folder Shpg

in SWPA 1944-45 Corresp with ASF, WSA, Wylie

File. (3) Ltrs of Herbert Schage to Capt Granville

Conway, Dec-Jan 1945 in folders Pac 1945 Box

122891 and Pac Area (1944) Box 122893, WSA Conway File. (4) Msg CX-56311, MacArthur to OPD

and OCT, CM-IN 15325, 16 Jan 45, OCT HB, folder

Ships for Pac Theater, Nov 44-Feb 45, Wylie File.

(5) Memo, Wylie for Gross, 22 Jan 45, sub: Summary of Actions and Msgs, SWPA-OCT, ASF, OCT

HB Overseas Comd file, folder Shpg, 1945 SWPA.

(6) Msg, Gross to MacArthur, CM-OUT 22708, 17

Jan 44. (7) Masterson, Transportation in SWPA, pp.

782–808. 53

 Ruppenthal, Logistical Support of the Armies

II, 131-133.
558 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

The results then, were both a curtailment of military requirements for cargo

shipping and, beginning in December

1944, an increase in the number of ships

returning to the United States for outward voyages. The shipping crisis gradually dissipated without resort to anything like so drastic a curtailment of

civilian shipping services as General

Somervell had initially proposed. The

Soviet program was begun with 16 sailings from the west coast in December

as the President had requested, and the

demands placed on the British were held

to much smaller proportions. Following

the President's instructions, WSA immediately began negotiations with the British for the release of 40 sailings per

month in December, January, and February. The British protested that they

had already released some 80 sailings in

the previous three months; they agreed

to accept some further reductions in

December, but said they could not accept those proposed in January and February 1945. On 9 December Admiral

Land proposed to President Roosevelt

a more flexible approach. Citing the

gains already made in breaking up idle

military pools and diverting ships from

the coastal and South American trade,

Land proposed to tell the British that

the United States would "provide as

many sailings as possible for their program but will have to reduce our assistance rather than allow military operations to be interfered with."54

 By adopting this flexible approach it proved possible to avoid any drastic cut in assistance in the British Import Program even

in December, and by the end of the

month prospects were very bright that

it would not be necessary to ask for any

of the 40 ships in January and February.

At this time Captain Conway wrote with

some satisfaction of the results of the

JCS directive to the theater commanders:

I informed Mr. Hopkins when the paper

was written that I believed it would be

equivalent to the construction of 200 new

ships within two months. I believe now

that I underestimated the results. For December, we supplied the military

with all the ships they could use and also

provided the British with the number of

sailings they requested. In January, not only

the military program will be met but also

the civilian and liberated areas will be pro- vided for in full, and I am sure that we will

also meet the entire British program, in- cluding 40 ships for the British imports.55

The British Import Program did suffer some curtailment in the last four

months of 1944. The level of U.S. aid

fell from 4 million dead-weight tons in

continuous employment in the third

quarter of the year to 3.5 million tons

in the fourth quarter. But the total British Import Program in 1944 exceeded

by a few hundred thousand tons the 25-

million-ton goal established at the beginning of the year, and this in the face of

much criticism of the high stock levels

of food in the British Isles. Moreover,

American shipping assistance actually

rose to the equivalent of 4.3 million

dead-weight tons of shipping continuously employed in the first quarter of

1945 and to 5 million in the second quar- 54

 (1) Memo, Adm Land for Roosevelt, 9 Dec 44,

sub: Merchant Shpg, Reading File Nov-Dec 44, Box

122893, WSA Conway File. (2) Ltr, William O. Hart,

BMSM, to Conway, 8 Dec 44, BMSM 1944, Box

122869, WSA Conway File.

55

 Ltr, Conway to W. Averell Harriman, Moscow,

29 Dec 44, Reading File Nov-Dec 44, Box 122893,

WSA Conway File.
STRESSES AND STRAINS OF A TWO-FRONT WAR 559

ter. The "wallop" to the British that the

shipping crisis seemed to portend thus

never materialized.56

The British, nevertheless, had sufficient reason to be worried, in December 1944, about the scale of future American shipping assistance, and about the

effect that the overriding priority the

U.S. Chiefs of Staff proposed to give to

military operations in the Pacific would

have on shipments of relief and rehabilitation supplies to liberated areas in Europe after the war with Germany was

over. Regretting now their failure to

secure the sort of commitments in the

form of a combined shipping budget at

OCTAGON that they had gotten at previous conferences, in early December they

proposed a new over-all review of the

cargo shipping situation on the combined level and dispatched a special mission to the United States for the purpose.

Negotiations were to drag on through

the conferences at Malta and Yalta. The

principal issue around which these negotiations would turn, however, was that

of the relative priorities of European

civilian relief and military requirements

for the war against Japan rather than

that of the British Import Program.57

The concentration on shipping congestion in overseas theaters as the real

root of the shipping crisis also brought

into question the proposals advanced for

accelerating and extending the cargo

ship construction program. In commenting on Admiral Land's severe criticisms

of military shipping practices, General

Somervell admitted that he had presented "a factual story . . . in agreement with

our statistics," but pointed to the slippage in the Maritime Commission's 1944

shipbuilding program as an additional

causative factor of which the admiral

should be pointedly reminded.58

Pointed reminders had little effect,

however. The basic issue was the President's proposal to extend shipbuilding

contracts through the end of 1945 at approximately the same rate as planned

for the first six months of the year,

which, in turn, was approximately the

same rate as originally scheduled during

1944. The purpose was clearly to assure

a continuing supply of labor in the shipyards rather than to meet any needs then

specifically calculated for the second half

of 1945. Justice Byrnes, in replying to

the President's memorandum proposing

this step, questioned whether it had any

real pertinence to the existing shortage,

which, following the WSA line, he described as "an artificial appearance"

caused by military waste. Noting that

no deficits were predicted for the latter

half of 1945 even if Germany continued

undefeated, Byrnes concluded that extension of the existing rate of ship construction would merely result in overbuilding. He suggested that the JCS and

WSA undertake a study of the shipbuilding program for the last half of 1945

based on requirements anticipated for

that period and the prospective availability of shipping to meet them, not in

terms of the existing crisis, which construction in late 1945 could do nothing

56

 For the British viewpoint on the crisis, see

Behrens, Merchant Shipping, pages 409-19. Figures

on American aid are from the table on page 419. 57

 For treatment of these negotiations, see below,

Chapters XXIII and XXXI.

58

 Memo, Somervell for CofS, 1 Dec 44, sub: Memo

from Adm Land on Merchant Shpg, ABC 560 (26

Feb 43) Sec 1A.
560 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

to alleviate. Meanwhile, he agreed, efforts should be pushed to accelerate ship

construction under existing contracts.59

This reasonable proposition was accepted by all concerned, and the studies

were soon closely tied in with the overall review of the cargo shipping situation on the combined level. Pending

completion of the studies, Byrnes

went ahead on 27 December to authorize a much-reduced construction program for the second half of 1945, including 102 Victorys but no Libertys at

all. Meanwhile, actual production of cargo shipping in 1944 amounted to 16.3

million dead-weight tons, more than 2

million less than projected in December 1943. Efforts to accelerate production in the fall crisis apparently had

little effect.60

Effects of the Crisis

The effects on military operations of

the 1944 cargo shipping crisis are difficult to assess; it is impossible to say

whether there was ever any genuine

shortage of shipping. Certainly all theater commanders in the fall of 1944 and

the winter of 1944-45 had to make do

with considerably less shipping than they

thought they needed. Obviously, however, their stated requirements were vastly inflated, and their reduction had none

of the disastrous consequences so often

predicted. While all theaters had to absorb some cuts, the heaviest impact was

on the European and the Southwest Pacific theaters, where congestion reached

its most serious proportions.

In assessing the effect on the European

theater, it must be kept in mind that

the curtailment of sailings to the Continent had been begun by the War Department long before the civilian authorities intervened, and that the effect

of this curtailment was felt from late

September 1944 onward. That the ETO

suffered from supply shortages of various kinds throughout the fall and winter

is undeniable, and failures in the distribution process, not lack of volume of

production, were the principal factors in

producing them. The shortage of shipping for outward movements to the

ETO, however, was not the cause of

these failures in the distribution process.

It was, rather, the reverse, for the shortage of port facilities and an adequate

supply line forward to the armies in

ETO was the prime factor in producing the shortage of shipping. Out of these

circumstances grew an idle pool of cargo

shipping larger than any that occurred

in any other theater during World War

II. Granted that the idle pool, with individual ships used as floating warehouses for selective discharge, provided

critical supplies necessary for operations,

it still does not follow that meeting the

theater's full requirements for cargo

shipping would have had any appreciable effect in solving the logistical crisis

in ETO. The root of the crisis was failure to take and develop ports in pace

with the rapid advance across France.

It was the lack of discharge capacity and

59

 Memo, James F. Byrnes for President, 25 Nov

44, Incl in JLC 249/D, 20 Dec 44, title: Review of

Shpg Situation for 1945. 60

 (1) JCS 1173/9, 9 Dec 44, title: Remedies for

Shortages in Shpg. (2) Decision Amending JCS

1173/9, 11 Dec 44, ABC 560 (26 Feb 43), Sec 1A.

(3) JLC 239/D, 11 Dec 44, title: Remedies for Shortages in Shpg. (4) JLC 249/D, 20 Dec 44, title: Review

of Shpg Situation for 1945. (5) JLC 249/1/D, 27

Dec 44, same title as (4), with Incl, Ltr, Byrnes to

Adm Leahy, 23 Dec 44.
STRESSES AND STRAINS OF A TWO-FRONT WAR 561

of an adequate depot system, and not

the shortage of transoceanic shipping,

that produced the logistical difficulties

in ETO that undoubtedly in turn played

their part in prolonging the war in Europe until May 1945. And it was this

prolongation of the war in Europe that

produced the excessive strains on cargo

shipping for use in supporting the war in

the Pacific and for civilian relief and

economic rehabilitation programs.

The situation in the Southwest Pacific

admits of less positive conclusions. The

reaction to worsening ship congestion in

connection with the Leyte operation

was quicker than in Europe, and the use

of ships for floating warehouses in

SWPA was consequently of shorter duration. Yet, supply on Leyte, like that in

Europe, was marked more by shortages

of suitable types of equipment, for instance Bailey bridges, than by an over-all

shortage of all types that could be laid

at the door of the shipping shortage.

The subsequent assault on Luzon was

postponed for three weeks, from 20 December 1944 to 9 January 1945, but

because of delay in building airfields

on Leyte and generally slow progress of

the advance there (in turn a result of

bad weather and terrain difficulties)

rather than because of lack of shipping.

More than one of SWPA's logistical

planners welcomed the respite the three

weeks delay offered for preparation of

adequate plans and schedules for Luzon

and for requisitioning the specific types

of supplies that would be needed to develop facilities on the island. In the

Central Pacific there was also a delay

in launching the operation against Iwo

Jima—from 20 January to 19 February

1945—but this in turn was mostly a byproduct of the delay in the Philippines,

whence the necessary air support was to

come.61

The major impact of shipping cutbacks in the Pacific fell on plans for

operations after Luzon and Iwo Jima. By

late 1944 plans were taking shape for the

development of a great base in the

Philippines from which the invasion of

Japan would be mounted. Concomitantly, the rear areas in the South and Southwest Pacific were to be rolled up, troops

and materiel moved forward to the new

base. The Philippine base development

plan required enormous tonnages both

from those rear areas and from the

United States. The cutback in outward

sailings from the United States forced

long delays in the shipment of material

from the west coast and the cutback in

SWPA retentions caused similar delays

in the roll-up of rear areas. Another casualty of the shipping shortage was MacArthur's plan to move rapidly into the

Netherlands Indies once he had gained

a foothold on Luzon; subsequently this

operation was so reduced in scale that

it bore little resemblance to MacArthur's

original plan. Yet these costs cannot be

ascribed to the shortage of shipping

alone. They leave unanswered the legitimate question whether, had the shipping been available, it could have been

used effectively in view of the lack of

ports, unloading facilities, and assembly

areas.

In the last analysis, then, the "shipping crisis" was really more a product

of a shortage in discharge facilities than

one of merchant shipping itself. Still,

the verdict of Justice Byrnes that the

61

 (1) Hayes, War Against Japan, II, 315, History

JCS. (2) Engineers of SWPA, I, 229. (3) Cannon,

Leyte: The Return to the Philippines, pp. 184–92.
562 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

shortage was "an artificial appearance"

caused by "waste of merchant shipping"

on the part of the military services seems

unduly harsh.62 Shipping congestion in

both the Pacific and Atlantic in the fall

of 1944 was a product of rapid advances

as theater commanders tried to end the

war as quickly as possible. To them, a

certain amount of waste of shipping

seemed justified if required to speed the

tactical advance. In their view, time was

of greater importance than efficient logistical management. The basic psychology that led commanders to seize tactical

advantage and worry about good logistical management later, the psychology

that produced the shipping congestion,

also undoubtedly played its part in hastening the end of the war on both fronts.

In any case, merchant shipping seemed

to have become, at the end of 1944 as

it had been shortly after Pearl Harbor,

the most critical of Allied resources.

The JCS directive of 9 December, inspired by WSA, forbidding the use of

cargo ships for floating warehouses in

either the Pacific or Europe went far to

ameliorate a rapidly mounting crisis and

to provide for more equitable distribution of these resources, not only for strategic military needs but for political

ends (such as civilian relief and the

British Import Program) that with the

approach of the end of the war were

taking on increasing importance. Despite

the amelioration, the cargo shipping

question weighed heavily on the minds

of the military staffs as they turned to

the problems of the final phase of the

war in the Pacific, where the increasing

scale of operations threatened to impose

demands that, simply because of geography, would assume astronomic proportions.

62

 (1) Memo, Byrnes for President, 25 Nov 44.

(2) See also the severe strictures on the waste of

merchant shipping by the U.S. military services in

Behrens, Merchant Shipping, pp. 409–30.
CHAPTER XXIII

The Pacific in Transition

By the end of November 1944 the

joint planning staffs had at least tentatively agreed on the basic outlines of a

strategy for the final phase of the war

against Japan. In the Philippines, the

occupation of Leyte was to be completed, Luzon taken, and operations conducted to reduce isolated Japanese garrisons on other islands in the group.

Meanwhile POA forces would proceed

with assaults on Iwo Jima and Okinawa.

Once positions in the Philippines,

Bonins, and Ryukyus were secured, the

strategic bombing campaign and naval

blockade would be stepped up and

preparations advanced for a final assault

on the Japanese home islands. Tentative

plans scheduled the final assault in two

phases: the first, Operation OLYMPIC

against Kyushu; the second, Operation

CORONET against Honshu, the principal

island of the Japanese homeland. OLYMPIC and CORONET were to be the Pacific

counterparts of OVERLORD in Europe and

the culminating strokes in the long offensive against Japan that had begun on

Guadalcanal in 1942.

As far as OLYMPIC and CORONET were

concerned, these were planning decisions. Only the operations in the Philippines, Bonins, and Ryukyus had actually

been directed by the JCS. And if the

planners had been able to agree on the

main outlines of strategy, it was with

many reservations by the Navy. Questions about subsidiary operations continued to be very much alive in their

discussions. In Nimitz' ICEBERG plan, the

invasion of Okinawa was to be followed

by further expansion in the Ryukyus requiring progressively larger forces. He

hoped then to go on to seize a base on

the China coast, most probably in the

Chusan-Ningpo area (Operation LONGTOM). MacArthur had designs to move

rapidly into the Netherlands Indies once

his foothold on Luzon was secure. The

planners in Washington also had to consider the possibility that if the USSR

entered the war against Japan, it would

be necessary to advance in the north

Pacific through the Kuriles to Hokkaido

to maintain a supply line to Siberia. Invasion of Hokkaido was also considered

as a prelude, or even as a substitute, for

the assault on Kyushu. Some thought

was given to the possibility of moving

from the Philippines against the island

of Hainan and thence to the Liaotung

Peninsula on the mainland of China.

Ostensibly these questions were debated in terms of the necessity of securing further bases for invasion of Japan

and for maintaining unremitting pressure on the Japanese. Actually they involved a basic conflict of viewpoint between the Army and Navy about the

necessity of the invasion itself. The Navy

placed a much greater emphasis on subsidiary operations along the China coast
564 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

and in the north Pacific as a means of

obtaining bases from which Japan could

be strangled by naval blockade and air

bombardment. The Army insisted on

subordinating all subsidiary operations

to preparations for mounting the final

assault against Japan at the earliest possible moment.

That final victory over Japan was assured, there was no longer any doubt

in U.S. councils. Timing was the vital

question. American staffs, reflecting the

temper of American public opinion,

were impatient. Their impatience, nevertheless, did not permit them to underestimate Japanese ability to resist. To

the Army staff, at least, mass invasion

seemed the quickest way, indeed the

only way, in which Japanese capitulation could be assured. It was also undoubtedly the costliest way both in human lives and resources, and the way

that would require the most extensive

redeployment of the forces from Europe.

The tentative plans of November 1944

established an almost unbelievably tight

timetable. The invasion of Luzon was

to begin in December, Iwo Jima to follow in mid-January, and the first phase

of ICEBERG, the attack on Okinawa, on

1 March. The second and third phases

of ICEBERG, seizure of Ie Shima and Miyako Jima and adjacent islands, respectively, were to follow between March

and mid-August. OLYMPIC, the invasion

of Kyushu, would begin in September

1945; CORONET, the assault on Honshu,

in December.1

This tight schedule certainly left little

leeway for any subsidiary operations.

The demands of the major phases of the

program already directed — Luzon and

Okinawa — promised to put a heavy

strain on Army resources and cargo shipping in the Pacific as long as the war

in Europe continued. Yet there was always the possibility that a long delay in

victory in Europe would require subsidiary operations to maintain pressure

on the Japanese; and the Navy constantly pressed for a fast pace in the Pacific

regardless of events in Europe.

The period of transition in the Pacific

from its assigned status as a secondary

theater in a two-front war to that of a

primary theater in a one-front war, extending roughly from November 1944

to May 1945, was thus a peculiarly difficult one for Army strategists and logisticians alike. They had to give first priority to the continuing war in Europe

while providing the essentials for Pacific

operations that were larger and more

demanding than ever before. Simultaneously, the planners had to lay the

groundwork for the even more massive

assaults of the final phase of the war

when Army forces could be redeployed

from Europe to provide a better balanced force in the Pacific. In retrospect,

there can be little question that the difficulties were overestimated, that the

planned commitments of resources were

far too generous, and the various shortages exaggerated. Yet the problems were

real enough in the perspective of the

time. The planners could not afford to

underestimate Japanese capabilities, for

all their previous experience had taught

them to expect fanatical resistance to

the bitter end. Few of them had any

knowledge of the magic brewing in the

MANHATTAN Project, and therefore could

not, even conditionally, base any plans

1

 (1) JCS 924/8, 23 Nov 44, rpt by JPS, title: Opns

for the Defeat of Japan. (2) Hayes, War Against

Japan, II, 312-16, History JCS.
THE PACIFIC IN TRANSITION 565

for victory on the use of new atomic

weapons.

The Problem of Bases

and Roll-up

By the end of November 1944 both

SWPA and POA forces were thousands

of miles ahead of their rear bases in

Hawaii, the Gilberts and Marshalls, the

South Pacific, Australia, and the eastern

end of New Guinea. For the impending

final blows against Japan, the most urgent problem was the establishment of

new bases closer to the inner ring of

Japanese defenses, primarily in the Philippines, Many of the facilities and supplies at the rear bases were now frozen

assets in areas the war had left behind.

In this light, a certain amount of redeployment of forces and supplies within

Pacific areas was a necessary prelude to

redeployment from Europe.

The South Pacific area had been earmarked by the JCS for roll-up as early

as March 1944, with almost all the Army

resources in the theater to pass progressively to SWPA as South Pacific bases

were reduced or phased out. Only a small

force was scheduled to remain in the

area to maintain bases for the staging

and rehabilitation of POA divisions and

for other minor functions.2 As the transfer was worked out in conferences between SWPA and SOPAC representatives, part of it would be accomplished

by simply extending SWPA's boundaries

eastward to include the Upper Solomons

in MacArthur's command. By this rearrangement, effected on 15 June 1944,

Bougainville, New Georgia, Vella Lavella, Choiseul, and the Treasury Islands

became rear bases in SWPA; four divisions and supporting troops and a considerable proportion of the Thirteenth

Air Force were transferred to SWPA in

place. The conferences also established

a tentative schedule for movement of

nearly 75,000 more troops from the rest

of the old SOPAC area to SWPA during the ensuing months, leaving only

about 55,000 troops in the command,

an indeterminate number of which were

also to be transferred at a later date.3

Troop movements began in June 1944

but they proceeded slowly. MacArthur

decided it would be more economical to

leave the troops in their original positions until they could be mounted out

directly for operations along the New

Guinea coast and in the Philippines. To

do otherwise would place an intolerable

burden on shipping, base facilities, and

service support available further forward

in SWPA, for when combat elements

moved forward they usually had to leave

their supporting service elements behind

to close out facilities. MacArthur found

that while the combat-service troop ratio

in the South Pacific had been 70 to 30,

the ratio in transfers to SWPA was about

90 to 10.4

The roll-up of supplies in SOPAC

proceeded at an even slower pace. The

War Department on 13 June authorized

transfer of all surplus Army supplies in

the area to SWPA, but MacArthur could

spare neither ships to bring in badly balanced loads of South Pacific surplus nor

docks and service personnel to unload

them. In the South Pacific itself, there

were inadequate numbers of service personnel to inventory, sort, and load sup2

 See above, ch. XVI.

3

 USAFISPA History, pp. 256–63. 4

 Msg CX-1567, GHQ SWPA to WD, CM-IN

4316, 5 Aug 44.
566 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

plies. When General Wood of the ASF

visited the area in October 1944 he found

"dumps scattered all over the Noumea

area . . . much of the stocks . . . surplus

to ... theater needs and much of it in

critical categories."5

The delays in movement, however

justified, almost inevitably led to a reassertion of POA's claim on some of the

Army resources left in SOPAC. The War

Department decided not to let troop

movements proceed automatically on

MacArthur's call, but to retain power

to divert units to meet urgent needs elsewhere. And by midsummer 1944, Nimitz

felt that his needs for service troops

were urgent. His policy, unlike MacArthur's in SWPA, was to move troops

from combat areas into rear rehabilitation and staging areas after each campaign, and at this time he decided to

expand the role of South Pacific bases as

rehabilitation and staging areas for POA

divisions. Late in June he proposed that

1 September be set as a terminal date

for movement of South Pacific troops

to SWPA and that any not physically

transferred by that time be permanently

assigned to POA to operate the staging

areas and provide a reserve for the prospective invasion of Formosa. MacArthur

protested vigorously, citing the terms of

the JCS directive promising all surplus

troops in the South Pacific to SWPA

and the serious imbalance in units already transferred. OPD at first sought to

effect a compromise by stipulating a later

terminal date but, swayed by MacArthur's arguments and the apparent reluctance of the Navy to accept a later

date, finally decided to drop the matter

and let the terms of the JCS directive

stand.6

The decision to invade Leyte two

months ahead of schedule and then to

move on to Luzon rather than Formosa

gave the situation a new turn. The 3-

division XXIV Corps from POA joined

SWPA forces in the invasion of Leyte.

It was scheduled to return to control

of POA for the Okinawa operation and

obviously would have to stage out of

the Philippines. Moreover, the Philippines would be a better base for mounting any later operation against Formosa,

the China coast, or Japan proper than

would the South Pacific. At a conference at Hollandia on 3-4 November

1944, representatives of Nimitz and MacArthur agreed that SWPA would provide support for XXIV Corps in the

Leyte operation, and staging, rehabilitation, and mounting facilities for its

subsequent movement to Okinawa. MacArthur would also set up staging and

rehabilitation facilities in the Philippines for nine additional POA divisions

to be engaged in later operations, and

naval bases for about one-third of the

Pacific fleet, all to be ready by May 1945.

In return Nimitz agreed to relinquish

any claims on Army service units in the

South Pacific except for certain specified

troops needed to support the 81st In5

 (1) Ltr, Gen Wood to Gen Lutes, 18 Oct 44,

folder SWPac 1942 thru Apr 45, Lutes File. (2)

WARX 50192 to CG's, USAFISPA and SWPA, 13

Jun 44.

6

 (1) USAFISPA History, pp. 263-68. (2) Msg

270200, NCR 8395, CINCPOA to COMINCH, WD

CM-IN 22076, 27 Jun 44. (3) Msg, CX-13810, GHQ

SWPA to WD, CM-IN 22773, 28 Jun 44. (4) Ltr,

CINCPOA to COMINCH, 20 Jul 44, sub: Final

Date for Compliance with JCS 713/5 . . . , Navy Ser

00058, OPD Exec 10, Item 68. (5) Memo, ACofS Pls,

COMINCH, for ACofS OPD, 28 Aug 44, sub: Termination Date for Transfer of Troops from SOPAC

to SWPA; OPD Draft Msg to CINCSWPA with

MFR, 1 Sep 44. OPD 320.2 TS, Case 240/7. (6) OPD

MFR, 6 Sep 44, OPD 381 TS, Case 392/15.
THE PACIFIC IN TRANSITION 567

fantry Division in the Palaus and to construct B-29 bases in the Marianas.7

This so-called FILBAS Agreement

temporarily ended the controversy over

South Pacific service troops and established the principle that the Philippines

would be the main base for the final

campaign against Japan. About the same

time, policies were established on the

disposition of surplus Army supplies in

the South Pacific. The new base commander, General Gilbreath, ordered a

complete inventory and on his recommendation the SOPAC supply level was

cut to 75 days. The base command was

instructed to dispose of supplies above

these levels. Some of them, it was decided, could be used to re-equip POA

divisions withdrawn from combat in the

Palaus and sent to the South Pacific for

rehabilitation; the rest became part of

the scattered stocks to which SWPA lay

claim, stocks stored in Australia and at

all the way stations in New Guinea as

well as in the South Pacific.8

By November 1944 the problem of

rolling up the South Pacific had merged

into the larger problem of rolling up all

the rear bases in SWPA and the establishment of a new base in the Philippines. Meanwhile, POA was also facing

its own roll-up problem in moving men

and supplies forward from the Gilberts,

Marshalls, and Hawaii. Although the

FILBAS Agreement provided that the

Philippines would be the main base for

mounting POA ground forces (Army

and Marine), Nimitz planned to develop smaller bases in the Marianas and

Ryukyus for this purpose. The main

air bases for strategic bombardment of

Japan would be in the Marianas and

Ryukyus, and the Navy had its own

plans for installations in these island

groups and in the Palaus. In October

1944, in a mammoth towing operation,

the Navy transferred the main base for

its mobile Service Squadron Ten from

Eniwetok to Ulithi.9

A complete roll-up could mean longterm economies in the use of service

troops, shipping, and supplies, but the

short-term expense could be high. The

same service troops needed to sort and

ship supplies from rear bases were also

required to prepare the forward bases.

Loads of ill-assorted supplies from rear

areas made the same demand on limited

port receiving capacity as did specially

tailored loads coming from the United

States. The shipping used in the roll-up

counted against theater retentions or absorbed part of the local fleet. When

theater retentions were cut back, there

was an inevitable tendency to move service troops forward, leave supplies behind, and order new material from the

United States. To a Pacific theater commander at the beginning of the year

1945 sacrifice of time seemed too high

a price to pay for long-term economy.

Quite apart from the shipping problem, the roll-up in SWPA could hardly

even begin until bases were prepared in

the Philippines to receive men and material. This was the conclusion the Joint

Logistics Committee reached when, at

the behest of General Marshall, it un7

 GHQ, SWPA, Rpt of Conferees as to Logistic

Support in the Philippine Islands for POA Forces,

4 Nov 44, Theater Files, Pac Sec, 11/1/44, ASF

Plng Div. 8

 (1) Ltr, Hq, SPBC to CGPOA, 22 Sep 44, with

Incls, sub: Surplus Supplies. (2) Memo, Gen Hull

for TAG, 20 Nov 44, same sub. Both in OPD 400 TS,

Case 271. (3) TWX Conf, Col Krueger and Col Bogart, 21 Oct 44, POA 1942 thru Mar 45, Lutes File.

9

 See Carter, Beans, Bullets and Black Oil, pp.

213-15.
568 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

dertook a study of the consolidation of

staging and rehabilitation areas in the

Pacific as a means of economizing on

the use of service troops. The committee,

somewhat critical of Nimitz' policy of

sending divisions to rear areas to rest

and recuperate, suggested that a saving

of some service troops might be achieved

immediately by a consolidation of Army

staging areas in the South Pacific at

either New Caledonia or Espíritu Santo,

and by squeezing more men out of the

Hawaiian establishment. But it could

foresee no further savings until the

Philippine base could be readied. As

soon as possible, they thought, facilities

in the South Pacific should be closed

out. For the final assault on Japan, the

committee foresaw a need for the construction of staging and rehabilitation

facilities for 19 divisions and of mounting facilities for 15 divisions in the Philippine group, for the continuation of

existing facilities for 3 divisions in the

Marianas and 4 on Hawaii, and for the

addition of a new area for 3 divisions in

the Ryukyus. The facilities for 4 divisions in the Aleutians, established in

1943, should be maintained on a standby basis for the contingency of a north

Pacific operation. These staging and

mounting areas would accommodate the

21 Army and 6 Marine Corps divisions

already in the Pacific—a sufficient force,

the planners estimated, to mount the

initial assaults in both OLYMPIC and

CORONET. Follow-up divisions and garrison divisions, the committee thought,

could be mounted in the United States

and staged through facilities vacated by

the divisions involved in the initial assault. This JLC projection, the first comprehensive base plan for mounting the

final assault on Japan, followed the lines

of the FILBAS Agreement, and neither

MacArthur nor Nimitz raised any appreciable objection to it. Both commanders warned, however, that the rapidity of Philippine base development

would determine the pace at which the

plan could be carried out.10

The speed of Philippine base development depended on a number of factors. First, the base sites must be taken

by American troops. Leyte was almost

entirely in American hands by the end

of December, but the invasion of Luzon

was not launched until 9 January 1945,

twenty days behind schedule. This delay

clearly portended further delays in taking other islands in the Philippine group

necessary for the full development of

the facilities required. Granted that the

islands would eventually be retaken,

much still depended on the speed with

which ports (particularly the largest,

Manila) could be put into operation,

on the availability of cargo shipping to

bring in materials either from rear bases

or from the United States, and on the

supply of labor to prepare the installations. As 1945 began the outlook for

none of these things was bright; port

reception capacity loomed ahead as the

ultimate limiting factor on the speed of

Philippine base development, but the

shortage of troop labor and of shipping

also promised to contribute to delays

that would prevent meeting the May

1945 target date established in the FILBAS Agreement.

Early in November 1944, pending

formulation of a keyed project, SWPA

forwarded to the War Department req- 10

 (1) JCS 1149, 3 Nov 44, memo by CofS, USA,

title: Economy in Use of Service Units in SWP and

POA. (2) JCS 1149/1, 2 Dec 44, rpt by JLC, same

title. (3) JLC 217/3/D, 16 Jan 45, same title. (4) JPS

595/1, 20 Jan 45, same title.
THE PACIFIC IN TRANSITION 569

uisitions for some 1,300,000 measurement tons of material for Philippine

base development. These requisitions

were in addition to project requirements

already submitted for the Leyte and

Luzon operations against which large

backlogs of material had long been piling up in ports and holding and reconsignment points in the United States.

The ASF found the quantities of materials in the SWPA requisitions well within the limits of requirements anticipated

for Philippine base development in its

own separately prepared plan and agreed

they should be approved for supply.

Recognizing, however, that, owing to the

large backlog of construction materials

already in existence and to the impending cutback in sailings to SWPA, nothing could be shipped for many months,

ASF officers did not bother to make

any detailed analysis of availability of

particular items.11

Approval for supply had little meaning, as the theater soon recognized. In

the light of the shipping situation, MacArthur adjusted his requirements downward. In early January SWPA, presenting its formal keyed project, requested

that the earlier series of requisitions be

canceled. The new plan, MacArthur said,

provided for the "irreducible minimum

facilities required for the logistic support of future operations," based on the

assumption that "the bulk of U.S. forces

in the Pacific will be concentrated in

the Philippines." He would provide naval installations for support of the Seventh Fleet and one-third of the Pacific

Fleet, facilities for 51 air groups (17 to

be redeployed from Europe), and for

receiving, staging, and garrisoning 19

ground divisions and simultaneously

mounting 15 divisions. To provide these

facilities would require rehabilitation

and expansion of port and transportation installations, particularly around

Manila, building of new staging and

mounting areas, airfields, and naval

bases on Luzon, Leyte, and in the Visayan group. Materiel requirements were

cut to the bone, and the need for "full

utilization of service forces, materials

and equipment which can be made available on time by the roll-up of rear bases,

and of Australian and Philippine procurement" was fully recognized. Of a

total dead-weight tonnage requirement

of 825,816 tons for all services, 480,869

tons were to come from theater resources,

only 344,947 tons from the United

States.12

Based on these minimum tonnage requirements, MacArthur hoped to complete the staging and rehabilitation areas

by May 1945, as provided in the FILBAS

Agreement, and the whole project by

July. But these optimistic hopes soon

went aglimmering. The ASF, working

with a theater mission, found that SWPA

had seriously underestimated its needs

for the kind of base proposed, and when

the final bills of material were completed, the total requirement for shipments

from the United States had once again

risen to 1,100,000 tons, including about

690,000 tons of engineer materials. Assuming, as the theater proposed, that

shipments of engineer materials started

in March 1945 and continued at the rate

of 100,000 tons per month, the projects 11

 (1) Memo, Gen Wood for OPD, 6 Dec 44, sub:

Requisitions for Manila and Central Luzon Rehabilitation and Construction Project, History Planning

Div ASF, app. 8–S. (2) Ste above, ch. XXII.

12 Ltr, GHQ SWPA to CofS, USA, 2 Jan 45, sub:

SWPA Base Development Plan, PI, ABC 384 Philippines (16 Jul 44) Sec 4.
570 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

could hardly be completed before the

end of the year. And this rate of shipments, the ASF predicted, could not be

achieved unless many of the Engineer

requisitions outstanding were canceled

or adjusted to the new plan. The supply

planners also found, though they could

not pinpoint units or numbers because

of uncertainties as to what would come

from the South Pacific, "a definite shortage of service troops . . . prior to V-E

Day which will adversely affect the completion date."13

MacArthur himself was soon forced

to admit that Philippine base development would be delayed. American troops

entered the city of Manila on 3 February but it took more than a month to

subdue Japanese resistance, and the port

was so severely damaged by the Japanese

that its rehabilitation was to take a much

longer time. Meanwhile, supply for Luzon was carried on over the beaches, limiting reception capacity for ordinary

cargo shipping and putting a premium

on amphibious cargo carriers of all types.

MacArthur could not move material forward from the rear bases as he had

planned; failure to develop adequate

port capacity acted as an effective counter to his arguments against the cutbacks

in his shipping retentions and in outward sailings to SWPA from the United States; shortages of service troops and

materials at the same time acted to increase the delay in developing port capacity. The theater was caught in a

triple squeeze by shortages of receiving

capacity, service troops, and cargo shipping, all in a continual process of interaction.

On 26 February MacArthur informed

both Nimitz and the War Department

that he could not fulfill the terms of the

FILBAS Agreement, and he placed the

blame squarely on the cutback in cargo

shipping for his area. With the shipping

that remained available, he said, he

could do no more than "strive to carry

out [SWPA's] own essential operations."

He would, he said, "give domicile to

the POA divisions by a mere allocation

of adequate land area but POA would

have to undertake all responsibility for

moving them, supplying them, and providing necessary installations."14

This was not to be the final word,

though it did end hopes that facilities

for the POA divisions would be readied

in the Philippines by May 1945. Nimitz,

faced with virtual abrogation of the

FILBAS Agreement, began to enlarge

his own base plans and to again show

reluctance to release SOPAC service

troops to SWPA. Planning for eventual Philippine base development on the

scale MacArthur originally proposed continued in Washington; indeed, the ASF

by this time was also preparing contingent plans for a considerable expansion. For the moment, however, logistical limitations and operational delays

had combined to frustrate the progress

of the roll-up and timely preparation of

bases for the final blow, to again confuse the relations of SWPA and POA,

and to call into question the optimistic

schedule for OLYMPIC and CORONET.

The Service Troop Shortage

in POA

If the delay in Philippine base development was one measure of the effects

13

 (1) History Planning Div ASF, p. 156 and apps.

8-S and 8-T. (2) Engineers of SWPA, VII, 151-53.

14

 Msg, CAX-50687, GHQ SWPA to WAR, CM-IN

27167, 26 Feb 45.
THE PACIFIC IN TRANSITION 571

PORT CONGESTION AT MANILA

of the shortage of Army resources in the

Pacific, the service troop problem in

POA was another measure, and one that

seemingly posed even more serious limitations. When the JCS in October 1944

had decided on Luzon rather than Formosa, a primary consideration had been

the lack of sufficient Army service and

supporting troops for a land operation

of any magnitude. The subsequent decision to direct the POA effort at Iwo

Jima and Okinawa did not lay the issue

to rest. While these operations would

require a lesser scale of service support

than Formosa, the basic shortages remained, and they weighed heavily on

all POA plans from October 1944 onward.

The newly seized bases in the Palaus

had to be manned, and in the Marianas

the plans for the B-29 fields were in a

continual process of expansion. More

fields would be built in the Ryukyus

when they were taken, adding further

to the need for construction troops. The

FILBAS Agreement ended any hope of

using the service troops from the South

Pacific other than a few units specifically excepted, and SWPA's increasing need

for service forces made it unlikely that

any could be drawn from that source.

The War Department painfully dug up

a unit here and a unit there, and Richardson stripped the Hawaiian establishment down to what he conceived to be

the limits of safety. In this manner

enough service troops were scraped up

to provide the minimum essential re-
572 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

quirements for the first phase of ICEBERG,

and a start was made at finding units for

the second phase. The JCS committees

devoted a great deal of study to the problem in December 1944 and January

1945, but were forced to the ultimate

conclusion that service troops would just

not be available for anything beyond the

second phase of ICEBERG and that further

exploitation of successes in POA would

depend upon rapid redeployment of

troops at the end of the hostilities in

Europe.15

The Navy, anxious to follow Okinawa

with an attack on the China coast,

pressed the Army vigorously to take

measures to furnish the necessary troops

for POA. On 4 January 1945 Rear Adm.

Donald B. Duncan of the Navy planners

called OPD "to express his concern over

the lack of service and supporting troops,

which is apparently going to stop our

advance in the Pacific and may thus

result in having the Japs quickly kick

back."16 There was more than a hint

that the Navy wanted the Army to convert combat units to service units, but

the Army response was almost entirely

negative. Few Army staff officers any

longer feared that the Japanese had a real

capability of "kicking back," and on the

other side of the world the Germans had

demonstrated a capacity for doing just

that in their offensive in the Ardennes.

The last two divisions earmarked for

Pacific deployment, the 86th and 97th,

were diverted to Europe and the deployment of seven other infantry divisions,

along with supporting troops, already

intended for the European theater,

speeded. The strategic reserve was thus

finally depleted. Until forces could be

freed from Europe, POA would have to

rely on its own resources to meet its

service and supporting troop needs with

only driblets of assistance from the United States.17

The over-all manpower shortage for

the two war fronts hardened Army opposition to any subsidiary operations

in the Pacific and even raised doubts as

to whether all the phases of the main

POA operation planned, the invasion of

Okinawa, could be executed. On 16 January 1945 the JCS issued a final directive to Nimitz for the Okinawan campaign, instructing him to make preparations for further expansion in the

Ryukyus following the seizure of Okinawa but making no definite commitments as to whether resources would

actually be available for Phase III. At

the same time the target date for ICEBERG was postponed from 1 March to

1 April because of the 20-day delay in

MacArthur's move on Luzon, whence air

support was to come. And, though the

JCS authorized the POA commander to

15

 (1) JCS 1149/1, 2 Dec 44, title: Economy in Use

of Service Units . . . (2) JLC 247, 20 Dec 44, title:

Service Units to Support Major Amphibious Opns

in the Pacific in the Spring of 1945. (3) JCS 1209,

23 Dec 44, title: Availability of Forces in Pacific after

Directed Opns. (4) Memo, Col Lincoln for Asst Secy,

WDGS, 10 Jan 45, sub: Availability of Forces in

Pacific after Directed Opns, ABC 320.2 (10 Feb 44).

(5) JLC 217/3/D, 16 Jan 45, title: Economy in Use

of Service Units. . . . (6) JPS 595/1, 20 Jan 45, title:

Economy in Use of Service Units. . . . (7) OPD MFR,

7 Feb 45, OPD 320.2 TS, Case 9/11. 16

 Memo, Lincoln for Chief, Strategy Sec, OPD,

4 Jan 45, ABC 320.2 (3-13-43) Sec 8.

17

 (1) Memo, Col Billo for Col Lincoln, 4 Jan 45.

(2) Memo, Col E. J. Rehmann, Troop Movements

Sec, OPD, for Chief S&P Gp, 5 Jan 45. Both in ABC

320.2 (3-13-43) Sec 8. (3) JCS 1225, 8 Jan 45, title:

Immediate Allocation of 86th and 97th Divs to

European Theater. (4) JLPC 46/11, 16 Jan 45, title:

Availability of Forces in the Pacific after ICEBERG.
THE PACIFIC IN TRANSITION 573

continue planning for a China coast

operation, he was not to make any actual

preparations for it.

On 6 March Nimitz reported that

Army troop requirements for Phase II—

seizure of Ie Shima—had been met to

an extent that would permit that operation to proceed but that a deficiency

of 91,000 Army troops, 60,000 of them

of service types, would remain for Phase

III, the assault on Miyako Jima and adjacent islands. The Army was, in the

end, able to fill part of the deficiency,

but Phase III of ICEBERG was never carried out. Cancellation of Phase III was

only partially due to the service troop

shortage; however, the long period of

doubt illustrates the restrictive effect the

shortage was having.

The same considerations affected planning for a North Pacific operation. Army

resources could certainly not be provided to carry it out before redeployment,

and, if executed after redeployment began, it would inevitably delay OLYMPIC

and CORONET. While contingent planning continued, no actual preparations

were instituted and the chances that it

would ever be executed rapidly diminished. At the conferences at Yalta in

February 1945, the Americans offered

the Russians little assurance that they

could or would maintain a supply line

to Siberia if the USSR entered the war

against Japan.18

Cargo and Assault Shipping

Ostensibly, the other critical problem

of early 1945, cargo shipping, also exercised its influence to constrict Pacific

operations. The studies undertaken by

the JCS in October and November 1944

of the cargo shipping shortage, it will

be recalled, in December merged into

an over-all combined study with the

British of the prospective cargo shipping

situation for the next six months.19 The

American military authorities brought

into these negotiations figures showing

deficits both in the Pacific and in the

Atlantic of from 7 to 9 percent against

estimated requirements. Corresponding

British figures showed deficits of from

4 to 8 percent. The CCS quickly moved

to issue on the combined level directives

to theater commanders restricting retentions of cargo ships in their theaters and

prohibiting their use for floating storage,

along the lines of the directive that the

JCS had already, at the behest of the

President, issued to U.S. theater commanders. The problem of allocating the

deficits nonetheless remained. On the

method of doing this there was no agreement. Liberation of various nations of

Europe had produced demands for civilian relief that would require cargo shipping commitments of as yet undetermined proportions. The British, with

the support of the American civilian

shipping authorities, argued that these

civilian requirements could not be completely subordinated to military ones,

that any curtailment in shipping made

necessary by the deficits would have to

be spread over all programs, military

and civilian. The JCS, on the other

18

 (1) Msg WARX 22012 to CINCUSAF POA, CG

USAFCBIT, CT, CINCSWPA, JCS to CINCPOA,

16 Jan 45. (2) Hayes, The War Against Japan, vol.

II, The Advance to Victory, pp. 315-16, 333-39,

History JCS. (3) JCS 713/22, memo by COMINCH

and CNO, 10 Mar 45, title: Army Troops for Phase

III ICEBERG. (4) Memo, Brig Gen George A. Lincoln

for Asst Secy WDGS, 26 May 45, sub: Pacific Logistic

Studies, ABC 320.2 (3-13-43) Sec 9. (5) Min, 2d Plenary

Mtg, ARGONAUT Conf, 9 Feb 45. 19 See above, ch. XXII.
574 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

hand, with the tremendous and evergrowing cargo shipping requirements of

the Pacific war in mind, held out for an

overriding priority for military demands.

The controversy delayed any agreement on an over-all combined cargo

shipping budget until basic decisions

had been reached at the Malta-Yalta

Conference (ARGONAUT). At the conference the President and Prime Minister,

the latter reluctantly, agreed on a formula giving first priority to basic undertakings, and included in that category

supplies to liberated areas only to the

extent that they would effectively contribute to the war-making capacity of

the United Nations. It was a decision that

generally conformed to the JCS view

but one that was open to varying interpretations. Certain specific allocations

for initiation of national import programs for the liberated nations preserved

these programs in principle and made

it certain that their demands would be

reasserted in the future. Also, military

priority or not, the projections for the

next six months showed continuing

though reduced deficits based on the

assumption that the war with Germany

would last through the end of June 1945.

These deficits against stated requirements amounted to 161 sailings in the

Pacific between March and June.20

The prospective deficits emphasized

the need for continuing restrictions on

both outward sailings to and retentions

within SWPA. An almost immediate

casualty was MacArthur's plan to invade

the Netherlands Indies in force. On 5

February the SWPA commander forwarded to the War Department a plan

for using a corps of three Australian

divisions in an assault on north Borneo

in April, the forces to be mounted in

New Guinea and supported by direct

shipments of supplies from Australia.

Among other things, MacArthur argued,

there was a need for new sources of oil

in the final stages of the war against

Japan. He asked permission to retain

57 transpacific Liberty ships and 10

troop-carrying vessels for the operation;

these, he said, represented almost the

total cost in terms of American resources.

It was cost enough in view of the deficits

in cargo shipping, and Somervell calculated that, once launched, the operation

would demand much more. The operation would be timed almost simultaneously with the invasion of Okinawa

and might well interfere with that assault, already approved by the JCS.

Moreover, studies indicated that Netherlands Indies oil would not be necessary

to supply Allied needs in the war against

Japan; there was, moreover, considerable doubt that the oil fields could be

rehabilitated before the war ended. Consequently, the War Department refused

MacArthur's request for shipping. He

was told to go ahead with such operations in both the Philippines and the

Indies as he could carry out with the

shipping already allotted. OPD later

pointedly inquired whether he could

not, with the same shipping needed for

even limited operations in the Indies,

bring in the supplies and personnel from

the rear necessary to enable him to fulfill the FILBAS Agreement.21

20

 (1) On the civilian relief shipping issue see

below, Chapter XXXI. (2) CMT 66/3, 12 Jan 45,

rpt by CMTC and CSAB, title: Over-all Review of

Cargo Shpg. (3) CCS 746/10, 2 Feb 45, same title.

(4) CCS 746/11, 8 Feb 45, title: Over-all Review of

Cargo and Troop Shpg Position for Remainder of

1945.

21

 (1) Memo, Somervell for OPD, 6 Feb 45, sub:

Shpg Implications of Proposed SWPA Opn, OPD
THE PACIFIC IN TRANSITION 575

This action reflected War Department

concern about shipping for ICEBERG. The

ICEBERG supply and movement plan was

the most elaborate one of its kind developed during World War II, and the

requirements for all types of shipping

were prodigious. Troops were to be

mounted at widely distant points—Leyte,

Guadalcanal, Espíritu Santo, the Russell

Islands, Saipan, Tinian, Guam, Hawaii,

and the west coast of the United States.

In the initial movement of troops and

supplies almost all the available assault

lift in the Pacific would be absorbed—

111 APA's, 47 AKA's, 184 LST's, and

89 LSM's, plus innumerable smaller

craft. Initial supplies were to accompany

troops in the assault and follow-up convoys, but most of the resupply ships

were to sail directly from the United

States. The operational plan, similar in

its principles to plans for all the earlier

operations in POA, set up an elaborate

schedule for the arrival of the resupply

ships in staggered echelons at 10-day intervals over a period extending up to

210 days after the landings. Assembly

and regulating points, where shipments

of all kinds might be held awaiting forward call to Okinawa, were established

at Eniwetok, Saipan, and Ulithi. The

first loaded maintenance ships were to

sail from the west coast on 20 February

1945 and arrive at regulating stations

five days before the assault.22

Like all such prearranged plans involving automatic supply, the ICEBERG

plan promised to produce its share of

waste. The scheduled shipments of Army

supplies would raise theater levels far

above those authorized, clear evidence

that POA was making little attempt to

use its own rear area surpluses. And

although the plan promised to insure

quick turnaround of ships in the target

area, it involved the risk, should development of port capacity not proceed

according to schedule, of shipping congestion at regulating stations and the

emergency discharge of cargoes especially tailored to needs on Okinawa at some

other point. Both types of waste did occur—some cargoes were unloaded in the

Philippines nearly a year later. But, once

again, at the time no one was ready to

stress economy if it involved loss of

time. The Army, though it made some

objections to the generous scale of supply for ICEBERG, in the end accepted

and supported CINCPOA's stated requirements for the operation.23

The large shipping requirements for

Okinawa were a major factor in producing the forecast of deficits in the Pacific

from March to June 1945. And shipping

was available to meet these requirements

in large part only because of the breakup of shipping congestion in SWPA and

the subsequent cutbacks in sailings to

that theater. In March, for instance, 20

scheduled sailings to the Philippines

were canceled and most of the ships reExec 9, Book 25. (2) Memo, Gen Tansey for Gen

Hull, 25 Feb 45, sub: Oil and Rubber Exploitation

in East Indies, with related papers in OPD 381 TS,

Cases 52/8, 10, 13. (3) Min, 189th mtg JCS, 7 Feb 45.

(4) Hayes, War Against Japan, II, 365-66, History

JCS.

22

 Appleman, Burns, Gugeler and Stevens, Okinawa: The Last Battle, pp. 36–41.

23

 (1) Memo, Gen Heileman, Dir Sup ASF, for

OPD, 3 Jan 45, sub: Request for Advance Shipment

of Maintenance to CPBC, OPD 400 TS (1945 file)

Case 4. (2) MFR's, 28 Jan and 20 Feb 45, sub: Supplies for ICEBERG, OPD 400 TS, Cases 16/2 and 16/4.

(3) Msg WARX 29425, to COMGENPOA, 28 Feb 45.

(4) WSA Rpt No. 10 from Cen Pac to Capt Granville Conway, folder Pac 1945, Box 122891, WSA

Records, WSA Conway File. (5) Ltr, Col Meyer to

Mr. C. C. Wardlow, 21 Jul 49, OCT HB folder A-N

Jt Logs.
576 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

allocated to POA. The delays in the

roll-up and in Philippine base development and the restriction on expansion

into the Netherlands Indies were thus

not without their compensating advantages for Nimitz' theater. Moreover,

some ships were loaded for Pacific destinations on the Atlantic coast, 15 ships

were diverted from the Soviet Pacific

program, and sailing time was speeded

by the removal of convoy restrictions as

far west as the Palaus. Some minor reductions were effected in Nimitz' schedules, but for the most part he got what

he asked for. Indeed, if measured against

capacity to receive, the heralded deficits

in the Pacific never materialized, a fact

that gives much weight to WSA contentions that they were only the result of

inflated requirements in the first place.24

The problems of the SWPA roll-up

and Philippine base development, nonetheless, remained. Though the War Department insisted MacArthur could not

use any more ordinary cargo shipping

effectively if he had it, the SWPA commander continued to lay the blame for

delays on the cutback in his retentions.

The War Department stuck to its guns

in holding back retentions, but was soon

casting an eye on the huge fleet of assault shipping in the Pacific, mostly under naval control, as a possible resource

for effecting the roll-up. After all, this

shipping could unload over the beaches.

At General Marshall's behest, the Joint

Logistics Committee undertook a study

to determine the "practicability of using

assault shipping of the LST type and

larger, not required for directed operations," to speed the SWPA roll-up.25

The first JLC study, mainly the work of

Logistics Group, OPD, showed that Pacific assault shipping ought to be available to speed it a very great deal. The

committee estimated the minimum availability of such shipping, assuming subsidiary operations against north Borneo

and the China coast, as enough to move

more than 800,000 troops and over 4

million tons of cargo from SWPA rear

areas to the Philippines within six

months after the initial assault on Okinawa; it suggested that the maximum,

assuming neither of these operations,

would be considerably greater.

The Army members of the JLC recognized these were rough estimates but

thought they served to establish the point

that the assault shipping now in the

Pacific was a potential resource of immense importance that should, after Okinawa, be returned to the control of the

JCS who were in the best position to

judge the most essential use to which

it could be put. At the same time, they

recognized that their estimates were

based on the premise that this shipping

would be used only in the assault phases

of "directed operations," and that both

Nimitz and MacArthur already were

using much of it for other purposes.

They consequently admitted that "the

actual extent of availability can be determined only by the theater commanders." 24 26 (1) Min, 91st mtg JMTC, 22 Feb 45, Item 2;

92d mtg, 24 Mar 45. (2) Memo, Gen Hull for CofS,

19 Mar 45, sub: Reduction of 20 Ships in Sailings

to Gen MacArthur for March. . . . (3) Memo, Lt

A. M. Smith, USNR, for Adm Carter, 22 Mar 45,

folder Navy 1945, Box 122891, WSA Conway File.

(4) On the Soviet Pacific program see below, Chapter

XXVIII.

25

 JCS 1286, 9 Mar 45, memo by CofS, USA, title:

Pacific Logistical Studies. 26

 JLC 279/2, 17 Mar 45, title: Pacific Logistical

Studies, Use of Assault Shpg for Logistical Support.
THE PACIFIC IN TRANSITION 577

When the Navy planners finished with

the study this recognition of the need

for consulting the theater commanders

was about all that was left of it. The estimates were eliminated, and even the

message that went to Nimitz and MacArthur was so watered down by Admiral

King that it amounted to a simple request to examine their requirements to

determine what assault shipping could

be spared either for the SWPA roll-up

or for redeployment of forces from Europe. The replies were not encouraging.

MacArthur said that virtually all his

LST's and LCT's and the few APA's

and AKA's of the Seventh Fleet would

be needed for continuing operations in

the Philippines and for the small-scale

expeditions he planned against the Netherlands Indies. Only 20 LST's could be

diverted to the roll-up. Nimitz, in the

midst of the Okinawan assault, first sent

back a totally negative reply, but on 27

April he agreed to send MacArthur 8

APA's and 6 AKA's, all he felt he could

spare from the more than 150 combat

loaders that had carried the assault divisions to Okinawa. Further efforts by

Marshall and Somervell to get the JCS

to assert its control and dislodge more

assault shipping from POA ran up

against the solid wall of Admiral King's

opposition. The only further concessions

made by King and Nimitz were of a

few more LCT's and LST's.

The fact was that almost all available

assault shipping in POA was tied up in

support of the forces on Okinawa in

much the same manner that the lesser

fleet in SWPA was tied up in supporting forces in the Philippines, and for

much the same reasons — lack of port

facilities and the need to unload over

beaches where combat loaders and landing craft were the only vessels that would

serve. Still, the failure of the JCS to

assert its control left both commanders

with no one to account to but themselves

for the efficient use of these vessels.

In any case, with these limited additional resources the SWPA roll-up continued haltingly, while the whole matter

of assault and cargo shipping became

merged in the larger considerations of

redeployment and a new system of Pacific command.27

The New Redeployment Plan

Joint planning for redeployment had

slowed perceptibly in fall 1944 when it

became apparent that the final defeat

of Germany would be delayed for some

months. On 23 December 1944, the Joint

Staff Planners finally presented to the

JCS the first new plan produced since

late June. At least ostensibly it took into

consideration all the new factors that

had appeared in the interim—the War

Department Personnel Readjustment

Plan, the commitment of virtually the

entire U.S. ground force reserve in Europe, and the service troop shortage in

the Pacific. It was based on the outline

strategic concept of November for the

final phase of the war, that is, operations

27

 (1) Memo, Gen Lincoln for Asst Secy, WDGS,

31 Mar 45, sub: SM-1013, with accompanying note

from Lincoln to Hull, ABC 320.2 (3-13-43) Sec 8.

(2) MFR, OPD, 5 Apr 45, sub: Staging Facilities in

Philippines, OPD 400 TS, Case 46/2. (3) JCS 1286/1,

9 Apr 45, title: Pacific Logistical Studies. (4) MFR,

OPD, 10 Apr 45, sub: Ldg Cft for SWPA Opns, OPD

560 TS, Case 16/3. (5) JCS 1286/2, 24 Apr 45, memo

by CofS, USA, title: Cargo and Assault Shpg for

Roll-up in Pacific. (6) JCS 1286/3, memo by COMINCH and CNO, 30 Apr 45, same title. (7) In a

memo to Marshall on 16 May 1945, Somervell proposed a far stiffer stand with the Navy than Marshall

took in (5) above, ABC 320.2 (3-13-43), Sec 9.
578 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

OLYMPIC and CORONET to be executed

in September and December 1945 respectively.

Deployment was projected for eighteen months ahead on the alternate assumptions that redeployment would begin on 31 December 1944 or 31 March

1945, the one plan to apply if Germany

was defeated before 15 January 1945, the

other if it were defeated afterward. Total

force goals in both plans remained much

the same as they had been in earlier

projections. Army combat forces in the

Pacific would be built up from 21 divisions and 71 air groups to 40 divisions

and 178 air groups within 12 months

after the defeat of Germany, and the

strategic reserve in the United States

simultaneously rebuilt to 15 divisions

and 31 air groups. The difference was

that major reinforcements for the Pacific must now come from Europe, not

directly from the United States. In the

31 March plan, about half of the Pacific

increment was to move directly from

Europe to the Pacific, the other half by

way of the United States.

The planners allowed thirty days for

personnel adjustments in units in Europe before major redeployment of

Army forces could begin. But the most

essential service units would move immediately after V-E Day, while other

units were readjusting personnel. Moreover, the new plan proposed a build-up

of ASF troops in the Pacific and CBI

from 325,000 to 750,000, an increase of

130 percent as opposed to only 78 percent of AGF troops.

In adhering to the optimistic fall target dates for OLYMPIC and CORONET, the

assumption was that OLYMPIC (the invasion of Kyushu) would be mounted

with forces already in the Pacific, supplemented only by the service troops to

be redeployed in first priority. The big

build-up would take place while the

battle on Kyushu was being fought.

The necessity for larger scale redeployment to the Pacific meant a long delay

in the reduction of the garrison in Europe to the 400,000-man occupation

force and in bringing high-point men

home for discharge. The plan provided

for no very great reduction in the size

of the Army as a whole until at least the

fourth quarter after Germany's defeat.28

Like earlier redeployment plans, much

of the new one was outdated before it

was presented. The target dates for the

defeat of Germany, if vague and flexible,

were still unrealistic; the shipping estimates were based on no thorough study

and included the as yet unwarranted assumption that sizable amounts of British troop shipping would be available

to assist in the move. The plan was nevertheless urgently needed to provide a

working basis for detailed logistical planning, and its presentation to the JCS

served to bring into focus many of the

other problems to be involved in mounting the final assault on Japan, most important among them the long-smoldering question of Pacific command.

In preparing the paper, the Joint Planners had allocated the forces for the invasion of Kyushu and Honshu to POA.

The Army Planner, Colonel Lincoln of

OPD, quickly perceived that the Navy

might assume that the final assaults would

be under Nimitz' command and that

MacArthur's role would be only one of

28

 (1) JCS 521/9, 23 Dec 44, rpt by JPS, title:

Strategic Deployment of U.S. Forces Following Defeat of Germany. (2) On earlier planning, see above,

Chapter XXII. (3) For discussion of the point system,

see below, pp. 594-95.
THE PACIFIC IN TRANSITION 579

carrying out mop-up operations within

the territorial limits of SWPA. Lincoln

warned General Marshall that the Navy

must understand the allocation had only

been made for convenience, that Army

troops must actually be assigned to

"whatever headquarters is directed to

conduct the operation." For any major

land campaign he thought this headquarters ought to be under an Army

commander.29

On 6 January 1945 General Marshall

informed the other members of the JCS

that though he did not regard the new

redeployment plan as "completely realistic," he accepted it as a basis of planning on the understanding that "the

troop basis planning for Army forces

. . . will be done by General MacArthur

in necessary collaboration with Admiral

Nimitz and the Twentieth Air Force

. . . and that the breakdown of Army

air, ground and service forces between

existent areas . . . will be revised in the

light of studies of the commanders concerned."30

Marshall's condition produced an almost immediate demurrer from Admiral

King, who insisted MacArthur could not

be allowed to do any troop basis planning for any area or operation outside

SWPA unless directed by the JCS. King

suggested the time had come to establish a "planning command" for the invasion of Japan, using that set up for OVERLORD as a model.31

 Despite objections of

the Army staff that King was interfering

in matters wholly within the province

of the Army, the Admiral was adamant.

The December redeployment plan was

never formally approved by the JCS.

It did serve for a time as the basis of

Army planning while the Joint Planners diligently labored to produce a

more realistic revision. Meanwhile, the

command issue, having been raised, had

to be settled; until it was, there could

be little finality about any logistical plans

for the last phase in the Pacific.32

The Pacific Command Question

By January 1945 the Army staff had

swung around to the position that all

Army forces and resources in the final

phase of the war in the Pacific should

be placed under the control of General

MacArthur. The Army's argument, stated in its simplest terms, was that under

the existing area commands Army resources were too compartmentalized to

permit their most efficient use. The tug

of war between Nimitz and MacArthur

over South Pacific service troops and the

misunderstandings over Philippine base

development seemed ample proof of the

thesis. Continuation of compartmentalization, they thought, would not be conducive to success in the final assault on

Japan.

There was, also, no little dissatisfaction with the extent to which the Army

was subordinated to the Navy in POA.

General Richardson, the Army commander in that area, was particularly

resentful. He regarded the POA joint

29

 Memo, Col Lincoln for Asst Secy, WDGS, 4 Jan

45, sub: Strategic Deployment of U.S. Forces Following Defeat of Germany, ABC 320.2 (3-13-43) Sec 6. 30

 Memo, Secy JCS for Leahy, King, and Arnold,

6 Jan 45, sub: Strategic Deployment of U.S. Forces

. . . . OPD 320.2 (3-13-43) Sec 6. 31

 JCS 521/10, 17 Jan 45, memo by COMINCH

and CNO, title: Strategic Deployment of U.S. Forces

. . . , Incl B.

32

 (1) JCS 521/11, 22 Jan 45, memo by CofS, USA,

title: Strategic Deployment of U.S. Forces. . . . (2)

Undated OPD Memo, same sub, ABC 320.2 (3-13-43)

Sec 6.
580 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

staff as a completely Navy dominated

staff, and thought CINCPOA looked on

the Army in POA as just another Navy

"type command." The decision in late

1944 to entrust Nimitz with almost complete control of military shipping in the

area was for Richardson virtually the

last straw. His views were shared in varying degrees by Army staff officers in

Washington. Though they acquiesced in

the POA system as long as the Army

component of Nimitz' command remained small, they had no intention of

allowing it to continue once redeployment had increased Army forces. Inevitably, also, the higher Navy standard of

living in the Pacific produced Army suspicions that the Navy was using scarce

service troops to build an elaborate postwar establishment for itself on Guam

and other islands and that CINCPOA's

practices in other ways were wasting

Army resources. One OPD officer

thought the service troop shortage primarily "the result of paving our way

across the Pacific with Army garrisoned

bases, and making a practice of withdrawing so-called assault troops to rear

areas between active phases of operations." The POA system of logistics,

which emphasized direct shipment of

tailor-made loads from the United States

without regard to authorized levels of

supply or normal Army procedures of

requisitioning, seemed unnecessarily

wasteful of Army supplies and upset the

normal routine procedures of the ASF.

Frequent POA project orders for complete divisional sets of equipment for

troops withdrawn from combat also

seemed excessive.33

As the Army saw it, Nimitz, in his

role as commander in chief of the Pacific Fleet, already exercised virtually

complete control over all naval resources

in the Pacific, including the vast assemblage of assault shipping now in that

ocean. The control MacArthur exercised

over the permanent elements of the Seventh Fleet, in the Army view, hardly

balanced the major Army resources committed to POA. Since Nimitz doubled

in the roles of over-all naval commander

in the Pacific and commander of POA,

it seemed to the Army only just that

MacArthur should double in the roles

of over-all Army commander as well as

commander of SWPA. As such he could

provide the centralized control hitherto

lacking over Army troops and other resources in the Pacific.

There was no lack of recognition that

a unified joint command for the entire

Pacific would be the ideal solution. But

almost no one on the Army staff believed

that agreement could be reached with

the Navy on either a joint commander

or a joint system of command. With

large-scale land operations in prospect,

the Army had no intention of entrusting

their direction to a naval commander.

In turn, the Army staff hardly expected

the Navy to turn over direction of its

tremendous sea forces to an Army commander. To protect Army interests there

seemed no other solution than the old

prewar concept of separate Army and

Navy commands, each exercising control

over its own resources and co-ordinating

operations in furtherance of a common

strategy. Such a system had the unqualified support of General MacArthur,

33

 (1) Quoted from undated and unsigned OPD

comments on JLC 247, ABC 320.2 (3-13-43) Sec 7.

(2) Min, 192d mtg JPS, Six Sessions, 10-15 Mar 45.

(3) Memo, Gen Richardson for CofS, 3 Nov 44, sub:

Organization of High Comd in POA, OPD 384 TS,

Case 78.
THE PACIFIC IN TRANSITION 581

who did not even give lip service to the

principle of unified command. His view,

presented to the Chief of Staff on 17

December 1944, was:

We have fairly strong Ground Forces and

Air Forces in the Pacific supported by inadequate service forces for the type of war- fare that is being waged. Only through the

most careful planning by a single respon- sible commander can these troops be used

in sufficiently efficient manner to justify the

hazards of a major operation. They are now

scattered, inequitably employed and not

susceptible of efficient grouping . . . I do

not recommend a single unified command

for the Pacific. I am of the firm opinion

that the Naval forces should serve under

Naval Command and that the Army should

serve under Army command. Neither serv- ice willingly fights on a major scale under

the command of the other. . . . The Navy

with almost complete Naval Command in

the Pacific, has attained a degree of flexibility in the employment of resources with

consequent efficiency that has far surpassed

the Army. It is essential that the Navy be

given complete command of all its units

and that the Army be accorded similar

treatment. Only in this way will there be

attained that complete flexibility and effi- cient employment of forces that is essential

to victory. . . .34

On 26 February 1945 General Marshall presented a plan embodying the

Army's views to the JCS. The Navy

finally agreed to accept it but only after

a long, hard fight. Admiral King insisted

on unified command. He did not propose such a unified command for the

entire Pacific but would set up a third

area around the Japanese home islands

and appoint a commander in chief,

Japan Area (CINCJAPA), to both plan

for and carry out the final invasion, leaving the old area commands to carry out

operations already directed and to provide administrative and logistical support for the final assault. In the protracted and difficult negotiations the

Navy placed its main emphasis on the

greater efficiency of a unified area command and on the disruptions that any

change in the existing system would undoubtedly produce in the execution of

the Okinawa operation and of the assault

on the China coast with which Nimitz

hoped to follow it. The Army spokesman claimed that the creation of a Japan

Area would simply lead to the addition

of still another compartment, and would

therefore complicate rather than solve

the basic problem. There were strategic

overtones to the controversy, the Navy

clearly visualizing that the China coast

operation would be carried out, the

Army insisting on subordinating it to

preparations for the assault on Kyushu.

Though the final agreement of the JCS

followed Army lines on both command

and strategic issues, there were concessions to the Navy viewpoint that rendered the Army victory something less

than complete.35

The JCS directive, issued on 3 April

1945, designated MacArthur Commander in Chief, U.S. Army Forces, Pacific

(CINCAFPAC), and placed all Army

resources there under his command save

those in Alaska and the southeast Pacific. Similarly, all naval resources were

placed under Nimitz as Commander in

Chief, Pacific Fleet (CINCPAC). The

34

 Msg C-55018, GHQ SWPA to WAR, CM-IN

16870, 17 Dec 44.

35

 (1) JCS 1259, 26 Feb 45, memo by CofS, USA,

title: Comd in Pacific. (2) Min, 192d mtg JPS, Six

Sessions, 10-15 Mar 45. (3) Memo, Gen Lincoln for

Gen Hull, 12 Mar 45, sub: Rpt on Progress in Pac

Comd Negotiations, OPD 384 TS, Case 1/7fl (4) JCS

1259/4, 3 Apr 45, title: Command and Opnl Directives for the Pacific.
582 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

JCS were themselves to act as the unified

command for the theater, determining

strategy, assigning missions to the two

commanders, and "fixing command responsibilities for specific major operations and campaigns." Normally CINCAFPAC would be charged with primary responsibility for land operations

and CINCPAC with responsibility for

sea campaigns. In order to permit completion of existing operations the old

area commands were to be retained and

the changeover to the new system was to

be gradual:

Until passed to other command by mutual

agreement or by direction of the JCS, the

localities under command of CINCSWPA

and the naval forces allotted to him will

remain under his command and similarly

the areas under command of CINCPOA

and the army forces allotted to him will

remain under his command. Changes in

command of forces or localities and changes

made in existing joint logistical procedures

will be effected by progressive rearrange- ments made by mutual agreement, or as

may be directed by the JCS.

CINCPAC and CINCAFPAC are each

authorized to establish joint forces or designate commanders to exercise unified com- mand for the conduct of operations for

which they have been made responsible,

and may also do so by mutual agreement.

They will also determine by mutual agreement when forces or localities revert or

pass to the appropriate commander follow- ing operations.36

The plan for a gradual transition "by

mutual agreement" meant that MacArthur would not be able to assert his

control over the Army resources in POA

for some time, and that in all probability the controversies over service troops

and Philippine base development would

continue. The strategic directive that

accompanied the directive on command

similarly lacked finality. As immediate

tasks, Nimitz was to complete his campaign in the Ryukyus, MacArthur his

in the Philippines. Each was to make

plans for certain subsidiary operations

—Nimitz for the Chusan-Ningpo assault;

MacArthur for occupying north Borneo.

Both commanders were to make plans

and preparations for the final invasion

of Japan—Nimitz for the naval and amphibious phase, MacArthur for the land

campaigns—with necessary co-ordination

to be exercised between them. The directive thus seemingly gave the preference to the Army view that after Luzon

and Okinawa the next move should be

to the Japanese home islands, but it did

not specifically direct either the Kyushu

or Honshu invasions.

In promulgating its directives on command and strategy, the JCS paid singularly little attention to the immense complications that must result in logistical

arrangements from the change in Pacific

command. No new logistical directive

replaced the Basic Logistical Plan of

March 1943. This plan had led to the

development of an elaborate system of

joint logistics in POA though it had not

been applied to the same extent in

SWPA. Yet even in SWPA the control

of shipping and the assignment of movement priorities had been on a joint basis.

The new command system would mean

that logistics in the Pacific could no longer be based on the concept of joint control over joint areas embodied in the

Basic Logistical Plan, but that a new

system must be evolved whereby each

service should control the flow of supplies and personnel for its own forces

throughout the Pacific. 36

 Ibid. (4).
THE PACIFIC IN TRANSITION 583

That the JCS did not attempt to resolve this question is perhaps the best

measure of the difficulty it presented.

Agreement on broad principles had been

hard enough to reach, and any effort

to spell out the details would have delayed agreement indefinitely. In the discussions between the Army and Navy

planners, the question of logistical complications came up repeatedly. The

Army planners were prone to look at

these matters from the vantage point of

the Southwest Pacific theater and to dismiss them rather lightly, for in SWPA

the separation of Army and Navy supply

lines promised to be a problem of little

consequence. The Navy planners, on the

other hand, were well aware that the

separation of Army and Navy logistical

functions in POA would be like unscrambling eggs. Yet their major concern was to preserve the existing system

intact for Nimitz' current operations in

POA and for a possible China coast assault, and they made no proposals for

a revision in the Basic Logistical Plan.

In the end, the Navy accepted the provision for gradual transition as sufficient

to protect Nimitz' interests.37

General Somervell, a leading exponent of joint logistics, went along with

the orthodox Army view in support of

the Pacific plan for separate commands.

When asked to comment, he did point

to the need for "some centralized logistics staff closely associated with the Army

and Navy commanders in the Pacific,"38

but he did not make clear just how such

a staff could serve two different commanders. In an ASF plan drawn up toward the end of March, a joint logistics

board was substituted for the joint staff,

and there was a suggestion that the Joint

Logistics Committee, acting for the JCS,

should screen requirements presented

either by the joint board in the Pacific

or by the Pacific commanders. The

whole proposal, a somewhat nebulous

one in the first place, got nowhere. The

Navy preferred to rely on a system of

co-operation between ASF and Navy supply officers in Washington and between

MacArthur's and Nimitz' staffs in the

field. The obvious inference is that the

Navy considered unified supply without

unified command impossible.39

The thorniest issue of all involved

control of shipping, always the center

of the entire system of joint logistics in

the Pacific. Previously it had been the

area commander's prerogative to determine the shipping requirements of both

services, to assign shipping priorities to

meet them, and to schedule the movement of ships to and within his area.

Nimitz had been able to assert his prerogative to the extent that all control

of operational shipping for destinations

west of Hawaii had been centered in

him as theater commander; MacArthur 37

 (1) See discussions in 192d mtg JPS, 10-15 Mar

45. (2) The most thorough OPD study of logistical

implications of the command change is contained

in memo, Col H. C. Johnson, Chief, Pacific Sec,

Theater Gp, OPD, for Gen Craig, 29 Dec 44, sub:

Comd Pac, OPD 384 TS, Case 1 (1945 file). (3) Memo,

Marshall for King, 22 Mar 45, sub: Draft of Directive for Reorganization and Future Opns in Pacific

Theater. (4) Memo, Gen Hull for Adm Cooke, 28

Mar 45. (3) and (4) in OPD 384 TS, Case 1/20.

(5) Memo, Cooke for Hull, 27 Mar 45, ABC 323.31

POA (1-29-42) Sec 3A.

38

 (1) Memo, Somervell for Handy, 27 Feb 45,

sub: Comd in Pacific. (2) Memo, Somervell for CofS,

23 Feb 45, sub: Procurement Plng for Pacific Opns.

Both in WDCSA 323.36 (27 Feb 45).

39 (i) Memo, Dir Pls and Opns, ASF, for Dir Reqmts

and Stock Control Div, 16 Mar 45, sub: Jt A and N

Reqmts for Pacific Opns. (2) Memo, Actg Dir Pls

and Opns, ASF, for Gen Lutes, 24 Mar 45, same sub.

(3) Memo, Lutes for Somervell, 25 Mar 45. (2) and

(3) in Folder POA 1942 thru Mar 45, Lutes File.
584 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

had left the Navy in SWPA to determine its own requirements and shipping schedules subject only to the regulation of movement priorities by GHQ.

One of the points the Army had hoped

to gain by the new system was control

over its own shipping in POA, but Nimitz was by no means ready to relinquish

that control so long as he continued to

be responsible for operations within the

existing POA command. The provision

for gradual transition gave him ample

leeway to assert his rights, and the whole

question of a new system of shipping

control in the Pacific was not resolved

for some time. The settlement of the

command issue was therefore neither

absolutely final nor an entirely unmixed

blessing.40

The Final Plan for Redeployment

While the question of command was

being threshed out, the planners were

also working feverishly on a realistic plan

for redeployment. In the Army view,

the redeployment plan had to be the

capstone of the whole structure of

preparations for the final phase in the

Pacific, for redeployment was the necessary prelude to mass invasion. And

while the planners worked, Somervell

continually bombarded both OPD and

the Chief of Staff with memoranda demanding a firm detailed redeployment

troop basis on which supply and movement plans could be based. All OPD

could do was put him off with tentative

answers to his questions.41

At the Malta-Yalta conferences, the

CCS provided a realistic planning date

for the end of the war with Germany—

1 July 1945—and directed the Combined

Staff Planners to present a combined redeployment plan by 1 April 1945.42

Promptly on 9 February a subcommittee

of the Joint Staff Planners began work

on the American part, using the unapproved December plan as a starting

point. In order to proceed, the planners

had to make strategic assumptions and

presuppose a schedule of operations to

which redeployment movements would

be geared. In so doing they accepted the

Army concept of mass invasion and the

general sequence of operations— ICEBERG,

OLYMPIC, CORONET—envisaged in the

previous redeployment plan with a

North Pacific operation fitted in immediately following the completion of ICEBERG. Attempting to tailor these strategic objectives to the logistical limitations

that had made themselves felt in the

Pacific since November 1944, and prospective delays in redeployment, the

members of the subcommittee at first

estimated that OLYMPIC could not be

executed until 1 April 1946 and CORONET not until 1 July. Then, pressed by

the JPS to speed up the schedule, they

dropped the North Pacific operation

completely and cut force requirements

for the others. By these means, and by

exploiting additional sources of personnel shipping, the subcommittee was able

to work the target dates back to 1 December 1945 and 1 April 1946, respectively.43

40

 (1) Memo, Gen Lincoln for Gen Hull, 18 Mar 45,

OPD 384 TS, Case 1/26. (2) Ballantine, U.S. Naval

Logistics in the Second World War, pp. 270-71. 41

 Somervell's numerous memos and OPD's replies

are in OPD 320.2 TS, Case 67/1-4.

42 Min, 186th mtg CCS, 7 Feb 45, and 178th mtg,

8 Feb 45.

43 Diary Entries, 20 Feb, 5, 8, 12, 14, and 20 Mar

45, Strat Log Br, Plng Div, ASF.
THE PACIFIC IN TRANSITION 585

The Army force goals were reduced

considerably from the December plandivisions from 40 to 36, air groups from

178 to 142, and the total personnel augmentation (for the Pacific and CBI)

from 1,694,500 to 1,074,600. The service

troop basis was most drastically cut, from

a 138 percent augmentation to a 72 percent one; the cut in ground combat force

augmentation was less drastic, from 78

percent to 64 percent.

The new force goals and the movement schedules to meet them were

geared to the target dates for OLYMPIC

and CORONET. For the invasion of Kyushu it was estimated that 13 divisions

would be required, 8 in the assault and

5 in the follow-up; for Honshu, 23 divisions, 12 in the assault, 2 in the followup, and 9 in the subsequent build-up.

In addition, 6 divisions would be required to fulfill garrison requirements

and constitute a forward area reserve,

making a total of 42. The 21 Army and

6 Marine Corps divisions already in the

Pacific would suffice for the initial assault and follow-up on both Kyushu and

Honshu. Fifteen divisions from Europe

would be required to complete the

build-up on Honshu and provide the

garrison forces and forward reserve.

Meanwhile, 21 more divisions would be

moved from Europe to the United States

(instead of the 15 in earlier plans) to

reconstitute the strategic reserve; these

would be moved to the Pacific only as

the course of operations after the initial

assault and build-up dictated.

The number of AAF groups in the

Pacific was to be virtually doubled despite the cutback, and many of the heavy

bomber groups redeployed from Europe

were to be reconstituted as very heavy

bomber groups and equipped with

B-29's in the United States before dispatch to the Pacific. The major units to

be moved to the Pacific totaled 15 divisions and 63 air groups, along with the

additional service and supporting troops

necessary to make up existing deficiencies and provide a proper ratio for the

additional major units. Meanwhile, more

than 2 million more men would have

to be moved from the inactive theaters

to the United States to reconstitute the

strategic reserve and for discharge as the

European theater force was cut to the

agreed 400,000 occupational requirement

and most other areas were closed out.

As had been provided in the December plan, the troops to make up existing

deficits in the Pacific and complete the

troop basis for OLYMPIC were to move

directly from Europe to the Pacific during the first quarter following V-E Day.

Other movements, either through the

United States or direct from Europe,

were arranged in accordance with the

required operational readiness dates in

forward areas for CORONET. (Table 34)

No troops would be repatriated for demobilization or to form the strategic

reserve until the end of the first quarter

save 75,000 hospital patients. Thereafter

the pace of repatriation would be controlled by the shipping space available

after higher priority movements to the

Pacific were carried out. Troop movements to the Pacific would have to be

completed within ten months after V-E

Day (assumed as 1 July 1945); repatriation for the strategic reserve and for

demobilization would take from 31⁄2 to

71⁄2 months longer.44

44

 (1) JCS 521/12, 29 Mar 45, title: Strategic Deployment of U.S. Forces Following Defeat of Germany. (2) JCS 521/13, 29 Mar 45, title: Factors

Underlying the Strategic Deployment of U.S. Forces

Following Defeat of Germany.
586 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

TABLE 34—SCHEDULE OF REDEPLOYMENT TROOP MOVEMENTS

Source: JCS 521/13, 29 Mar 45, Factors Underlying the Strategic Deployment of U.S. Forces Following Defeat of Germany.

Meeting the schedule, the planners

estimated, would require the concentration of all available troop-carrying vessels and planes in the redeployment

move, including all U.S. troopships then

in use in both the Atlantic and Pacific,

236 U.S. cargo ships presently fitted to

carry 350 troops each, 100 U.S. cargo

vessels to be converted to carry 500

troops each, all hospital ships in the

Atlantic on V-E Day, and the maximum

number of naval assault personnel carriers that could be made available in

the Pacific. In addition, combat aircraft

would be used to move air crews when

types of planes and routes of movement
THE PACIFIC IN TRANSITION 587

were suitable, and enough Air Transport Command planes and troop-carrier

groups were to be employed to provide a

lift of 15,000 monthly across the Atlantic. The naval assault shipping was to

be used only on the Pacific run. It was

estimated that a total of 80 APA's could

be spared to transport some 195,000 men

from the United States to the Pacific between July and December 1945, which

would still leave a minimum of 105 operational APA's with the Pacific Fleet

to take care of interarea and intra-area

troop movements.

With this American lift alone, the

planners predicted that the movements

to the Pacific could be executed within

the ten months stipulated, but they visualized considerable delay in repatriation

without the assistance of British troop

shipping and captured enemy vessels

converted to that use. It would take 171⁄2

months to return all personnel to the

United States without this assistance,

the planners thought, and only 131⁄2

months if the British would provide

70,000 spaces monthly in the Atlantic

(the assistance they had provided for

OVERLORD), and if 39,000 additional

spaces could be furnished in captured

and converted German liners. In short,

if the proposed first priority for movements to the Pacific could be maintained, the success of OLYMPIC and CORONET would not be dependent upon the

disposition of British and captured liners, though the speed of the whole redeployment movement would. And the

military planners were well aware that

public pressures might easily force a

change in the priorities.

The plan also provided for extensive

redeployment of supplies. Eighty percent of initial equipment for troops redeployed would have to come from

Europe, including almost all general purpose vehicles; the other 20 percent, plus

maintenance for vastly increased Pacific

forces and project materials, would have

to be shipped from the United States.

At least 17 fast cargo ships would have

to be loaded in Europe in August and

18 in September, besides routine slow

cargo shipments, to provide the needs

of the troops shipped in first priority.

The strain on available cargo shipping

then could be expected to continue despite the cutbacks in European requirements on V-E Day. The CCS, however,

had directed at ARGONAUT that a combined cargo shipping study be made an

integral part of the combined redeployment plan. The JPS subcommittees consequently made no extensive study of

their own, but reserved that problem

for combined consideration with the

British.45

Just as important as the shipping question was that of base and staging facilities—in Europe, in the United States,

and in the Pacific. In Europe facilities

for staging and outward movement of

400,000 men per quarter would have to

be set up; in the United States the west

coast installations must be made ready

to handle 180,000 troops at a time.

Neither requirement seemed to create

excessive difficulty. The ports in Europe

had the necessary capacity; the only

problem would be the time needed to

prepare assembly areas in back of them.

To provide the necessary capacity on the

west coast required only the addition of

space for 15,000 men at Fort Lewis, Wash45

 (1) JCS 521/13, 29 Mar 45. (2) CCS 746/11, 8

Feb 45, rpt by CMTC and CSAB, title: Over-all

Review of Cargo and Troop Shpg Positions for

Remainder of 1945.
588 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

ington. The really difficult base problem was in the Pacific. "Economic use

of shipping," the planners thought, "appears to result from movement of forces

to forward mounting areas in the Pacific

rather than moving them from the United States direct to the objective."46

Based on this premise, the Philippine

Base Development Plan retained its preeminent place as the most important

aspect of preparations in the Pacific itself for the final assault. Of the 36 Army

and Marine divisions to be engaged in

OLYMPIC and CORONET, 30 were to stage

and mount in the Philippines, 3 in the

Ryukyus, 2 in Hawaii, and 1 on Saipan.

Also, 3 or 4 divisions would be employed

as a garrison in the Philippines, 2 or 3

in the Ryukyus. The planners calculated that there would have to be facilities

in the Philippines to handle a peak load

of 22 divisions by November 1945 and

for simultaneously mounting 11 divisions for CORONET in February 1946.

All in all, the Joint Planners thought

the schedule of redeployment and of

Pacific operations could be met, but left

little margin of error in terms of ground

force deployment. They noted that target dates for OLYMPIC and CORONET

could hardly be moved forward in the

event Germany were defeated before 1

July 1945, since there would not be

enough time to make necessary preparations in Europe, return assault shipping

from Okinawa, or to develop the Philippine and Okinawan bases. If the war

against Germany were prolonged beyond

1 July, the planners thought target dates

for the two main operations would simply have to be postponed accordingly.47

The joint redeployment plan took little note of any British contribution to

the war in the Pacific. And the combined

plan, for which the CCS had asked at

ARGONAUT, was not based on any clearly

defined combined strategy. This plan,

presented by the Combined Staff Planners and the Combined Administrative

Committee to the CCS on 2 April, one

day after the deadline and only four

days after the American plan had been

presented to the JCS, consisted simply

of the two national plans, British and

American, placed end to end with the

points of conflict noted.48

The British refused to project their

deployments for a period longer than

six months after V-E Day. During this

six months they planned to move six

divisions to southeast Asia, a VLR

bomber force to the Pacific, provide

246,100 replacements for their armed

forces at overseas stations, and repatriate

122,600 Commonwealth forces, including 42,700 Canadian and New Zealand

troops for reorganization for the Pacific

war. By sacrificing any further repatriation of Commonwealth forces and some

other movements, the British said they

could make available the two Queens

and the Aquitania for transatlantic

movements of U.S. troops for the sixmonth period, providing a total monthly

lift of 50,000 instead of the 70,000 for

which the Americans had hoped. They

did not include any captured lift in their

calculations and urged that the Americans should likewise exclude it, reasoning that all shipping recovered after

Germany's surrender would be subject

46 JCS 521/13, 29 Mar 45.

47 Ibid.

48 CCS 679/1, 2 Apr 45, memo by CPS and CAdC,

title: Redeployment of U.S. and British Forces after

Defeat of Germany.
THE PACIFIC IN TRANSITION 589

to disposition by the four-power European Advisory Commission.

Moreover, the British also refused to

proceed with a combined analysis of

cargo shipping even for the first six

months. They insisted it must be postponed until food conferences then under way could determine the source of

food supply for European civilian relief. Reflecting their long-standing concern lest the cargo requirements for the

Pacific war preclude large-scale relief

shipments to Europe and the limited

revival of their own export trade, the

British would not agree to set a priority

on the redeployment movement, thus

indicating they did not regard the ARGONAUT decision as final.

Several weeks of negotiations failed

to persuade the British to abandon their

positions. The cargo shipping study, consideration of the use of captured shipping, and combined redeployment and

repatriation after the first six months

were consequently all deferred. With

captured shipping (39,000 spaces per

month) excluded, and the British offer

of personnel lift, even for the first six

months, less than expected (50,000 rather than 70,000 spaces per month), the

American planners estimated that it

would take fifteen months to complete

redeployment and repatriation of their

forces, and that the rate of formation of

the strategic reserve for operations in

the Pacific would be dangerously slow.

Hastily a new expedient took shapeconversion of 100 more fast American

cargo ships to carry 1,500 troops each.

The conversions would reduce the cargocarrying capacity of the U.S. merchant

fleet by about 9 percent and leave only

the bare minimum of fast cargo ships in

the Atlantic required to carry out the

immediate post-V-E Day supply movements from Europe to the Pacific. But

the JCS decided they must accept this

cost and persuaded WSA to undertake

the conversions. By this expedient and

by finding additional airlift across the

Atlantic, the JPS estimated that the

whole redeployment could be executed

in ten months if the British ships continued available beyond the six months

for which they were promised.49

Within American circles critical eyes

were in the meantime being cast on the

redeployment plan. To some the scale

of effort contemplated for a one-front

war seemed entirely too great. If ground

and service force deployment to the Pacific had been calculated at the bare

minimum required for mass invasion,

even in terms of this strategy the size

of the strategic reserve and the slow rate

of Army demobilization were suspect.

Air Force and Navy deployment seemed

to be calculated more in terms of a

strategy of bombardment and blockade

than in terms of mass invasion. Air and

naval forces in the Pacific were to be

increased right up through the end of

1946, long after the time it might reasonably be expected the Japanese Navy

49(1)Ibid. (2) CCS 746/14, 3 Apr 45, memo by

USCOS, title: Over-all Review of Cargo and Transport Shpg Position, Remainder of 1945. (3) CCS

746/16, 5 Apr 45, memo by Br COS, same title.

(4) CCS 679/2, 23 Apr 45, title: Redeployment of

U.S. and British Forces after Defeat of Germany.

(5) CMT 66/7, 4 Apr 45, title: Conversion of Dry

Cargo Shpg after V-E Day. (6) Memo, Col Stokes,

Chief, TC Plns Div, for Gen Somervell, 5 Apr 45,

sub: Effect of Additional Conversions on Repatriation Performance, ABC 320.2 (3-13-43) Sec 9. (7) JCS

1306, 8 Apr 45, rpt by JMTC, title: Acceleration of

Repatriation from Europe After V-E Day. (8) JCS

1306/1, 22 Apr 45, same title. (9) Diary entries, 12,

14, and 18 Apr 45, Strat Log Br, Plng Div, ASF.

(10) JMT 72/3, 3 May 45, title: Revised Estimate of

Personnel Shpg Including Air Transport.
590 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

and Air Force would have been completely destroyed.

Justice Byrnes first raised the issue of

the size of the air forces with the Joint

Production Survey Committee, inquiring as to the necessity for maintaining

almost as large an aircraft program for

a one-front war as for a two-front one.

But the JPSC, torn by conflicting service

interests, failed to agree on any positive

recommendations. Maj. Gen. Richard

C. Moore, Army representative on the

committee, privately informed General

Marshall that he could see little reason

for "assisting in the overall problem by

proposing a reduction in AAF deployment," when it was the Navy that was

"pressing a far greater relative preponderance." Moore wrote:

The size of the Navy has apparently been

based on not what was the minimum force

necessary to bring the war to a successful

conclusion, but what was the limit of pro- ductive capacity that could be assigned

naval construction. This relative preponder- ance has increased to such an extent that

the existing Japanese naval and air strength

is only the equivalent of one of our task

forces and this condition obtains eighteen

months prior to the assumed conclusion of

the war. In spite of past victories and pres- ent position, it is proposed . . . that naval

air carrier strength be increased by 48%

by 31 March 1946 and an additional 15%

by 31 December 1946, plus British naval

deployment in this area.50

General Marshall, seriously concerned

about the proposed slow rate of demobilization, secured some minor reductions in the over-all Army troop basis

and determined to raise the question of

reductions in all components with the

JCS. Admiral King preceded him on 7

April with a blast at the AAF deployment schedules:

The deployment of air forces set forth . . . appears to be based on an effort to deploy

all aircraft which can be built, or will be

in existence at specified dates, rather than

on an evaluation of what will be required

at the time, and what can be supported in

the areas at specified times . . . approxi- mately 30% more air [are deployed] in

December 1946 than in December 1945. This

in the light of current progress of events

and planning seems quite unrealistic and

unnecessary.51

King accompanied this blast with criticism of the mounting plan for the Philippines and questions concerning the reinforcements to be sent to the CBI. He

did approve, however, the recommendations for deployments through the end

of 1945 "for planning purposes," subject to examination with a view to revision "without delay."52

 General Marshall agreed, but with a tactful reminder

to Admiral King that it was not merely

the size of the AAF that should be called

into question:

There are elements in the paper which

are highly questionable and which the JCS

may be unable to support before the Amer- ican people. ... I agree with Admiral King

that. . . the deployment of air forces ap- pears quite unrealistic and unnecessary. This statement applies not only to air

forces, both Army and Navy, but also to

deployment of Naval forces and perhaps

also to ground forces . . . the total number ... in the armed forces shows an increase

from VE-Day until six months after VE-Day

and no decrease worthy of mention until 12

months after the assumed VE-Day, with

50

 Memo, Gen Moore for CofS, 31 March 45, sub:

Military Aircraft Reqmts after Defeat of Germany,

ABC 320.2 (3-13-43) Sec 8.

51

 JCS 521/15, 11 Apr 45, memo by COMINCH

and CNO, title: Strategic Deployment of U.S. Forces

Following Defeat of Germany.

52 Ibid.
THE PACIFIC IN TRANSITION 591

11,000,000 men under arms 18 months after

VE-Day.. . .53

With these qualifications on both

sides, the JCS approved the redeployment plan on 22 April 1945 as a basis

for planning, directing at the same time

that separate joint studies be made of

the possibilities of reduction in the

Army's strategic reserve, in the AAF,

and in the Navy.54

The Place of Philippine Base

Development

When presenting his opinions on the

redeployment paper, Admiral King had

called into question its provisions for

staging 30 divisions for OLYMPIC and

CORONET in the Philippines. The Philippine Base Development Plan, as incorporated in the redeployment study, had

undergone some change since it had

been originally presented by MacArthur

in January. On 24 February General

Marshall had forwarded it to the JCS

as a matter of joint concern. There the

Joint Logistics Committee and Joint

Staff Planners had revised it to bring it

in line with the strategic concept underlying the redeployment plan.

MacArthur's plan had been based on

fulfilling the FILBAS Agreement by providing facilities for 9 divisions from POA

(6 Army and 3 Marine) and gathering

the scattered divisions in SWPA into a

new concentration area; it made no provision for staging or mounting divisions

to be redeployed from Europe. By 30

March 1945, when the JLC rendered its

report, any hopes that the May target

date of the original plan could be met

had long ago gone into discard. The 3

divisions of XXIV Corps were even then

mounting out of bases on Leyte for the

invasion of Okinawa, but MacArthur

had decided a month before that he

could not provide facilities for the 9

POA divisions for later operations. As a

result, Nimitz had canceled his requirements for staging 4 of the 6 Army divisions from POA in the Philippines and

had decided to provide the necessary

facilities on Saipan and Okinawa. The

joint planners assumed, nevertheless,

that a requirement remained for staging

2 Army and 3 Marine divisions from

POA in the Philippines, though at a

later date than May 1945. They also

now foresaw a need for staging and

mounting 10 divisions to be moved from

Europe to the Philippines for OLYMPIC

and CORONET. The base development

plan was consequently revised to provide for staging and rehabilitating facilities for 22 divisions in the Philippines,

to be ready by November 1945, and facilities for simultaneously mounting 11

divisions to be ready by February 1946.

The plan for air facilities was also

changed to provide for fields for only

28 regular groups rather than 34 and

for an eventual build-up to 12 very heavy

bomber (VHB) groups, both on a delayed time schedule. The plan for

naval bases remained unchanged.55 The

53(1) JCS 521/16, 11 Apr 45, memo by CofS,

USA, title: Strategic Deployment of U.S. Forces

Following Defeat of Germany. (2) Memo, CofS for

Gen Moore, 10 Apr 45, sub: Military Aircraft

Reqmts after Defeat of Germany, ABC 320.2 (3-13-43)

Sec 8. 54

 (1) The decision on approval was reached without recorded discussion in the JCS. (2) For the continuing redeployment studies, see JWPC 49/26/M,

28 Apr 45, title: Continuing Redeployment Studies,

ABC 320.2 (3-13-43) Sec 9.

55(1) JCS 1258, 24 Feb 45, memo by CofS, USA,

title: SWPA Base Development Plan, Philippine

Islands. (2) JCS 1258/1, 30 Mar 45, rpt by JLC in

collaboration with JPS, same title.
592 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

changes in the time schedule now coincided with ASF shipping forecasts while

the material requirements stayed basically the same, so that detailed project

planning went on without interruption.

The JLC recommended that the JCS

approve.

Admiral King was not convinced. He

questioned both the requirement for

staging three Marine divisions in the

Philippines and the advisability of also

staging there the ten Army divisions

from Europe. For the latter he suggested it might be "more economical of shipping to stage and mount these divisions

from the United States direct to operations."56

 Marshall agreed to send the

plan back to the JLC for study and possible revision, but he said it would be

necessary for the Army to use it for the

time being as a planning basis "in connection with preparations, the initiation of which cannot be further postponed."57

 The Army staff reasoned that

shipments must be started, and that necessary adjustments in quantities could

be made later as plans were developed

in the Pacific theater under the new

command system for the final invasion

of Japan. The JPS and JLC, reporting

to the JCS, noted that the method shown

was only one solution to the problem of

staging and mounting divisions and that

final resolution would be subject to final

plans from the theater. A JCS message

to Nimitz and MacArthur on 23 April

stated:

The question of the number of divisions

to be staged through the Philippines re- quires further consideration with the par- ticular object of reducing the number and

the facilities required to be provided by

mounting and staging divisions from other

areas where facilities already exist, specifically by mounting and staging the maximum number of units directly from the

United States, Hawaii, the Marianas and

Okinawa.58

The whole master plan for redeployment thus could clearly be labeled "for

planning purposes only." General Somervell's continued pleas for adequate

data on which to base procurement,

supply, and movement schedules for the

Army undoubtedly influenced Marshall

heavily in his final determination to get

a planning decision accepted and to leave

the details for further study. Also, Admiral King, in accepting the strategic

premises on which the plan was based,

quite certainly did so with the feeling

that it would be better to make all the

preparations for invasion of Japan and

then cancel the operation later than to

be caught short should invasion really

prove necessary. By the end of April

King himself was urging that a directive

be issued to the Pacific commanders for

OLYMPIC, and only the continuing difficulty of resolving the question of how

command of the amphibious phase of

the assault should be arranged held it

up until 25 May 1945. The directive was

held up nevertheless, and in the meantime Nimitz continued under his earlier

56 Memo by COMINCH and CNO, 6 Apr 45, sub:

SWPA Base Development Plan, Philippine Islands;

Factors Underlying Strategic Deployment of U.S.

Forces . . . , app. to JPS 193/12, ABC 320.2 (3-13-43)

Sec 9.

57 Memo, Secy JCS for Leahy, King and Arnold,

11 Apr 45, sub: SWPA Base Development Plan,

Philippine Islands, SM-1161, ABC 384 Philippines

(16 Jul 44) Sec 5.

58

 (1) Memo, Secy JCS for CINCSWPA and CINCPOA, 23 Apr 45, sub: SWPA Base Development Plan

... . (2) OPD MFR, Lt Col H. W. Ebel, 13 Apr 45,

sub: SWPA Base Development Plan. . . . Both in

ABC 384 Philippines (16 Jul 44) Sec 4.
THE PACIFIC IN TRANSITION 593

directive to make plans for moving onto

the Chusan Archipelago and at least to

some extent to gear his logistical preparations to that end. Just before the issuance of the final JCS directive for Kyushu, Somervell was still complaining

about the lack of strategic guidance,

pointing out that while LONGTOM remained on the books, Nimitz would

withhold both Army resources in POA

and assault shipping from MacArthur.59

Somervell's expressed concern over the

matter had been increased by the fact

that in proposing the directive for OLYMPIC, King had moved the target date

forward a month from 1 December to

1 November 1945 in keeping with the

feeling of MacArthur and Nimitz that

weather conditions in November were

more suitable for an invasion of Kyushu.

Fortunately, in the interim the surrender

of Germany had actually occurred on 8

May 1945, almost two months ahead of

the 1 July estimate in the redeployment

plan, and with this development it appeared that the advanced OLYMPIC target date would necessitate no speed-up

in the redeployment schedule, but would

require acceleration in the pace of base

development in the Pacific.

By the time the German surrender

took place, the plan for redeployment

at least had been approved and the necessary movements could begin within its

framework. The many questions that

remained about logistics in the Pacific

in the final phase—the scope of Philippine base development, the disposition

of assault shipping, and the new logistical system to conform to the new command set-up—would simply have to be

arranged while redeployment and preparations for the final assault were under

way. These unresolved issues and uncertainties were in large part a result of

interservice disagreements that had their

roots in different concepts of strategy

and in ancient convictions of service prestige and prerogatives. Together, they

made impossible a realistic approach to

the question of the size of a balanced

force necessary to defeat Japan, as each

service inflated its requirements in the

interest of exercising a vital role, and

they forced the adoption of a system of

separate Army and Navy commands in

the Pacific at variance with the proven

efficacy of unified command experienced

in all other theaters of the war. Moreover, it seems curious in retrospect that,

even apart from considerations of the

atomic bomb, there was never any planning for the collapse and surrender of

Japan as there had been, even in 1942,

for the collapse of Germany.

59 (1) JCS 1331/3, 25 May 45, title: Directive for

Opn OLYMPIC. (2) Hayes, War Against Japan, II,

374-81, History JCS. (3) Memo, Somervell for CofS,

21 May 45, sub: Logistical Support of Pacific Opns,

OPD 400 TS, Case 80.
CHAPTER XXIV

Logistics of a One-Front War

The long-hoped-for surrender of Germany on 8 May 1945 freed the United

States of the burden of fighting a war on

two fronts. The commands in Europe

became reservoirs of both manpower

and supplies for the war against Japan.

This one-front war, in the event, lasted

for only a little more than three months

after the surrender of Germany and during that time no new major operations

were undertaken in the Pacific or the

Far East. The conquests of Okinawa

and of Ie Shima were completed, and

in the Southwest Pacific MacArthur's

forces carried out the final reduction of

organized resistance in the Philippines

and undertook small-scale invasions of

the Netherlands Indies. In China and

southeast Asia, now almost outside the

pale of major strategic decision, plans

for subsidiary operations against Sumatra and Singapore and for a Chinese

drive to seize a port on the China coast

never came to fruition. Principal emphasis during the period was on preparations for the final assault on Japan, operations OLYMPIC and CORONET, which in the

end did not have to be executed. These

preparations, nevertheless, represented

one of the major logistical challenges of

World War II and merit some description.

Procedures, Policies, and Problems

in Army Redeployment

The development of policies and procedures for redeployment of the Army

followed a smoother course than did the

joint redeployment planning described

in the previous chapter. The basic principles agreed on by the OPD committee

in September 1944 and approved by the

Chief of Staff at that time were still

the guiding lines in May 1945.1 The

procedures were codified in the War Department Basic Plan for Period I, which

was first published in early November

1944 and subsequently modified to meet

changing conditions. The plan established the basic procedures for movements to the Pacific and for the limited

demobilization that was to take place

before the defeat of Japan.2

Personnel readjustment in the Army

subsequent to V-E Day was to proceed

under a "point" system. Each individual

soldier would receive a point score

based on length of service, overseas service, battle participation, decorations, and

dependency. Subject to a military necessity clause, the men having the highest

point scores would be discharged, those

with the lowest would be assigned to

duty in the Pacific or to occupation

forces in Europe. In the European and

1

 See above, ch. XXIII.

2 (1)TAG Ltr to Maj Comds, 4 Nov 44, sub: WD

Policies and Procedures Governing Redeployment

of Army Upon Cessation of Hostilities in Europe,

AG 400 (30 Oct 44) OB-S-E-M, and revisions. The

last revision was on 7 April 1945. (2) ASF Booklet,

Basic Plan for Period I (Redeployment, Readjustment and Demobilization), 31 Oct 44, and revisions.

The following description of Army procedures is

based on these two sources.
LOGISTICS OF A ONE-FRONT WAR 595

Mediterranean theaters and in the

United States, immediately after V-E

Day, units were to be readjusted into

four different categories. Category I units

would include men to be retained for

continued service in their current commands; Category II, those to be redeployed to the Pacific either directly or

indirectly; Category IV units would

be made up of high-point men to be

sent home for discharge. Category III

was to consist of units to be reorganized in a great reshuffling of personnel and then brought under Categories

I or II. In the Pacific theaters and the

CBI, there was to be no categorization

of units, but, insofar as was "consistent

with the build-up and projected operations," high-point men were to be returned to the United States for discharge

on the same basis as those in Europe

as soon as replacements were available.

The determination of the number of

men to be discharged, the number required for the war against Japan, for

occupation, and for the strategic reserve

in the United States would be governed

by a new War Department Troop Basis

for a one-front war, to be published as

soon as possible after the defeat of Germany. Similarly, movement of Category

II units to the Pacific and the United

States and of Category IV units home

for inactivation would be controlled by

a Redeployment Forecast drawn up by

OPD.

The supply plan envisaged a cutback

in military production with the requirements for the first twelve months of a

one-front war incorporated in a Special

Army Supply Program. Maximum use

was to be made of supplies in inactive

theaters. Levels of supply in these theaters were to be cut to a maximum of 60

days of all classes for troops remaining;

all supplies above that level were to be

considered as surplus either for shipment to the Pacific or for return to the

United States. As far as possible, units

being redeployed to the Pacific were to

be furnished by the theater of origin

with initial issue of combat serviceable

individual and organizational equipment

plus 60 days of Class I and certain kinds

of Class III maintenance. Of this, only

minimum essential equipment (MEE)

was to accompany troops redeployed,

whether directly or by way of the United

States; the rest would be shipped directly

to the theater of destination. These bulk

shipments for the high priority units

redeployed directly after V-E Day for

participation in OLYMPIC were to move

by fast cargo ships and arrive at their

destinations as nearly as possible at the

same time as the units; shipments for

units indirectly redeployed would proceed by slow cargo ships, permitting less

hurried assembly and dispatch. Initial

equipment would be shipped to the

United States for units returning to reconstitute the strategic reserve, but no

maintenance shipments were required

for them. Category IV units returning

for inactivation would carry only allotted

quantities of individual equipment and

organizational equipment needed for

housekeeping.

Redeployment was not to be delayed

"because of shortages of any items of

supply or equipment" in theaters of

origins. On receipt of reports of such

shortages, the ASF would see to it that

they were made up in timely manner

by direct shipment to the Pacific or

supplied in the United States to troops

remaining in the strategic reserve. Only

combat serviceable equipment would be
596 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

shipped to the Pacific; items that did

not meet that standard could be returned to the United States to be placed

in a reserve pool. In the European and

Mediterranean theaters, troops being redeployed would have first priority on all

such combat serviceable equipment, the

permanent occupation force second priority. Any supplies or equipment surplus to those two priority requirements

were to be shipped in bulk either to the

Pacific or the United States, or, if not

needed in either place, disposed of locally

as surplus.

These procedures were to go into

effect on a designated R Day, the day

redeployment was to begin, that might or

might not be the same as V-E Day. On

V-E Day itself, the plan provided, units

under orders to move to the European

or Mediterranean theaters were to be

held and rerouted to the Pacific; units

en route were to continue to their destination. Normally, supplies en route to

Europe were also to continue to their

destination, though in isolated instances

requirements of the war against Japan

might necessitate rerouting. Supplies

and equipment slated for Europe in

ports, depots, and holding and reconsignment points were to be held, except

for subsistence, medical, and recreational

supplies, Army Exchange supplies, supplies for civilians in liberated areas, and

a few miscellaneous categories. With the

noted exceptions, requisitions and shipping orders were to be canceled and

theater commanders instructed to submit new requisitions only for items

essential in the new situation.

Since the procedures were relatively

stable from fall 1944 onward, and only

the dimensions of redeployment continued in doubt, the theaters in Europe

had ample time to become acquainted

with them and to make some of the

preparations for the execution of the

redeployment moves. A constant interchange of ideas and personnel between

the War Department and ETOUSA and

MTOUSA, aimed at educating the theaters in the problems involved in reversing

the flow of personnel and supplies, was

kept up. In Europe a special redeployment planning group was established in

the communications zone, and a special

command was set up to begin preparation of assembly areas back of the ports

for staging outgoing troops. A start was

made in the categorization of units in

both theaters, though the "critical score"

above which men would be entitled to

discharge was not determined until after

V-E Day. Marseille was designated as

the principal ETO port for direct shipments to the Pacific, and Le Havre,

Antwerp, and Liverpool as the principal

ports for shipments to the United States.

In the MTO, Naples was to be the principal port for all outshipments. That

these ports would be adequate, there

was never any question. The major

problems, the theaters early recognized,

would be to carry out the timely readjustment of personnel, to get battle-worn

equipment into combat-serviceable condition, and to pack and mark equipment

so that it could be identified and used

upon arrival in the Pacific.3

3

(1)Min of Conf on Distribution and Maintenance of Equipment for Units Deployed to Pacific

Areas, with Reps of ETO, 20 Mar 45, file 319.1 Rpts

and Confs, ASF Plng Div. (2) Addendum to Diary,

30 Apr 45, sub: Summary of Conf, ETO Comments

on Redeployment, Strat Log Br, Plng Div, ASF.

(3) European Comd, Historical Div, Redeployment,

prepared by Mildred C. Hester for "Occupation

Forces in Europe Series, 1945-1946," MS, OCMH,

pp. 17-18.
LOGISTICS OF A ONE-FRONT WAR 597

Though the European and Mediterranean theaters were to take over some of

the burden of outshipment of personnel

and supplies to the Pacific, the center of

control remained in the United States,

with over-all co-ordination of redeployment and establishment of policies and

procedures the responsibility of OPD,

and the detailed implementation the

concern of ASF. "Our mission," Somervell told key members of his staff on

15 May,

boiled down to its simplest terms ... is to

bring together in the active theaters the

units, supplies and equipment required, and

to marry them there at the right time. We

are dealing with distances half way around

the world. We are dealing in personnel by

the million. We are dealing with supply in

millions of tons. A mass of detail and delicate timing is involved. . . . The defeat of

Germany imposes new conditions in the

planning and implementation of the supply

program. . . . While there may have been

unavoidable reasons for shortage of supply

of some critical items during the two-front

war, there can be little excuse for shortages

from now on. From here out, there must

be the maximum possible tightening-up to

insure that we have enough but not too

much. . . .

4

Even before the end of the war in Europe, the ASF moved to curtail Army

procurement in line with computations

of the special program for a one-front

war. By 30 June 1945 total ASF procurement scheduled for the year had dropped

from the January figure of $28 billion

in value to $21 billion, a reduction of

about 24 percent. The reduction was

even greater, about one-third, in scheduled production for the last eight months

of the year. Expectations were that if

the war with Japan lasted longer than

twelve months, production could be cut

back considerably further once supply

reserves in the Pacific had been built up

to authorized levels.5

Meanwhile the ASF recognized that

not supplies of themselves, but transportation, storage, housing, and port facilities in the United States and the Pacific

were likely to be the critical factors in

determining the speed and efficiency of

redeployment, and lengthy studies were

conducted in all these areas. By V-E

Day the ASF had reached the conclusion

that facilities in the United States could

handle the load, if it were properly distributed. To alleviate the heavy burden

on rail lines leading to west coast ports,

on the ports themselves, and on the

depots and holding and reconsignment

points in that area, certain judicious adjustments were planned. On R Day shipments to the China and the India-Burma

theaters were to be moved from Los

Angeles back to New York, and those

to the North Pacific shifted from Seattle

to Prince Rupert in Canada, enabling

both Seattle and Los Angeles and their

subports to render full assistance to San

Francisco in handling the load for the

main Pacific theater. The distribution

was calculated at approximately 37 percent for San Francisco, 26 percent for

Los Angeles, 28 percent for Seattle, and

9 percent for Portland. The load for

each of these ports was to be geared to

the capacity of the transcontinental rail

lines, to the availability of stevedores,

and to the amount of berthing space;

rail capacity and labor supply impended

as the principal limiting factors. To

avoid overloading, the Transportation 4

 Remarks of Gen Somervell to Key Personnel of

ASF, 15 May 45, file 319.1 Rpts and Confs, ASF

Plng Div.

5

 ASF, Annual Report for the Fiscal Year 1945,

p. 174.
598 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

Corps estimated that approximately 16

percent of total Pacific shipments during

the first six months of redeployment

and about 40 percent by the middle of

1946 would have to be shifted to east

and Gulf coast ports to move to the

Pacific via the Panama Canal.6

Storage space was a more critical question. The ASF estimates showed that it

would be adequate only if the inflow to

depots in the United States could be

balanced by outflow to the Pacific within

three months after V-E Day. The prospects for such a balance were not bright,

for at the main Pacific destination in

the Philippines neither progress in rehabilitating the port of Manila nor in

carrying out the base development plan

was encouraging. Searching for alternatives, the ASF found considerable reserve capacity on Oahu but only the

most primitive facilities on Saipan and

other forward island bases. MacArthur

meanwhile had decided that once the

invasion of Kyushu was under way, supply shipments could be made directly to

that area rather than to intermediate

depots in the Philippines. This prospect

of a larger volume of direct shipments

on a delayed time schedule, however,

promised to contribute to congestion in

continental depots during the period

preceding the launching of OLYMPIC.7

Ultimate success in achieving a smooth

and orderly flow of personnel and supplies to the Pacific could depend then

largely on the uncertain factor of reception capacity, hardly at this point susceptible of accurate prediction. And this

problem indicated the extent to which

redeployment planning on V-E Day still

lacked the finality which could only

come when the Pacific theaters' estimates

were in and a firm troop basis and firm

supply requirements had been established. OPD, faced by the stall in redeployment planning at the joint level,

found it impossible to issue a firm Redeployment Forecast, despite the continual

pleas of General Somervell for a reliable

guide for supply planning. The staff

agency in February did dispatch a tentative Atlantic Section of the Redeployment Forecast to ETOUSA and

MTOUSA for comment, and in early

March followed with a Pacific Section

that went out to SWPA and POA; but

both rested on the unsound foundation

of the joint committees' December estimates then undergoing drastic revision.

The only firm forecast in the hands of

the European theater on V-E Day was

a special list of service units to be

shipped to the Pacific during the first

30 days of redeployment. Once the master redeployment plan had been approved by the JCS, OPD hastily got out

a second edition of the Redeployment

Forecast, but this did not arrive in the

theaters until well after V-E Day. MacArthur in the meantime was working on

comments and revisions on the earlier,

more or less obsolete, forecast. Since the

whole question of command and respon6

 (1) Diary entries, 3, 12, 18, 25 Apr 45, Strat Log

Br, Plng Div, ASF. (2) Memo, Col Stokes, Chief Plans

Div, OCT, for CG AAF, 1 May 45, sub: POE to

Serve Theaters After V-E Day, OCT HB File Port

Cap and Util. 7

 (1)Ibid. (1). (2) Remarks of Gen Somervell, 15

May 45. (3) Memo, Gen Lutes for Dir Pls and Opns,

ASF, 31 Mar 45, sub: Review of Plans for Pacific

War. (4) Memo, Gen Wood for Actg CofS, ASF, 5 Apr

45, same sub. (5) Memo, Wood for Dir Supply, ASF,

7 Apr 45, sub: Logistical Situation in Pac Theaters.

Last three in folder 1a Policy CenPac, ASF Plng Div

Theater Files. (6) OPD MFR, 9 Apr 45, sub: WD

Policies and Procedures for Redeployment. . . , OPD

400 TS, Case 55.
LOGISTICS OF A ONE-FRONT WAR 599

sibility was still being argued in the

JCS and MacArthur had no firm operational plan on which to proceed, his

comments and revisions were also bound

to rest on uncertain bases. Redeployment had to begin, and to continue for

some time, without benefit of a carefully

considered troop basis from the responsible theater commander.8

There were also uncertainties about

logistical arrangements under the new

command system. The Army staff went

ahead on the assumption that under

arrangements made in April MacArthur

would formulate the final plans for the

Army's part in OLYMPIC and CORONET

and that supply and shipping procedures

would be readjusted to conform to a

division of command along service rather

than area lines. But in conferences with

the Navy barely a week before V-E Day

the Army learned that its sister service

had rather different ideas.

The Army-Navy Shipping and

Supply Conference

With the Army and the Navy both

engaged in planning for a major shift

of forces to the Pacific theaters, and each

ready to impose parallel demands on

continental supply and service facilities,

the need for co-ordination somewhere

below the joint planning levels was obvious. The impetus for a conference on

logistical problems involved in the last

phase of the war came from the Navy,

which by the end of February 1945 was

facing a crisis in its own support operations on the west coast. Concomitant to

the increased scope of Pacific operations

and the cutback in shipping to all Pacific theaters in early 1945, congestion

began to appear in the Navy's west coast

depots, which were nearly all concentrated in the ports. Supplies flowed in

more rapidly than shipping could be

furnished to move them. The Navy

sought additional shipping, and in

March 20 ships were ballasted from the

Atlantic to the Pacific to meet its requirements, despite the protests of the

Army and WSA. The log jam of naval

supplies at west coast shipping centers

continued to mount notwithstanding;

at Port Hueneme it reached a million

tons. Without the benefit of holding and

reconsignment points to store this tonnage until ships were available, the situation threatened to become worse as the

demands of the constantly growing fleet

mounted. The Army had for some time

previously authorized naval use of space

within its holding and reconsignment

points, but took a dim view of any

extensive exercise of this privilege because the Navy often left the material

there for long periods.

The Navy decided the situation called

for a much more extensive use of east

and Gulf coast ports for shipments to

the Pacific and more careful planning

for the division of the load among ports

along all coasts (it was already using

east coast ports for a limited number

of sailings to the Pacific, mainly ships

carrying routine maintenance). To plan

the necessary adjustments the Navy Department established a Material Distribution Committee. The committee, conducting studies similar to those prepared

on the Army side by the ASF, found

that the average monthly requirement

for supporting the Navy in the Pacific

8

 See materials in OPD 320.2 TS, Cases 58, 58/5,

58/9, 58/17, 58/24, 58/38, 58/39, 58/43, 58/51, 67,

67/2, 67/3, and 67/4, too numerous to cite individually.
600 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

during the first year after V-E Day

would be 1,815,000 measurement tons.

Of this tonnage it estimated an average

of 1,167,000 tons monthly, or about 68

percent, could be handled on the west

coast. The committee then produced a

plan in some detail for the types and

quantities of supplies in the other 32

percent that would have to be shipped

from the east and Gulf coasts.9

Out of consideration that these plans

might well cut across those of the Army

grew the call for a conference, issued

by the Chief of Naval Operations to the

Commanding General, ASF, on 31

March. The Navy at first proposed a

restricted agenda dealing only with the

proposed distribution of continental

stocks, methods of integrating shipments

from the continental United States into

CINCPOA shipping plans and schedules,

and the establishment of a single clearing agency for requisitions from POA.

In subsequent exchanges the agenda was

broadened to include almost all the relevant topics pertaining to logistic support of forces in the Pacific in which

both the Army and Navy were concerned. The initial Navy proposals, nevertheless, raised some apprehension within the Army that the purpose of the

conference was simply to assure continued Navy control of shipping in POA,

and both G-4 and AAF insisted that

the Chief of Staff issue instructions to

the Army representatives that no agreement or commitment be made at the

conference without the approval of his

office.10

The conference met in the Navy Department in Washington 1-6 May 1945.

Admiral Royal E. Ingersoll, commander

of the Western Sea Frontier, presided,

and representatives of most of the staff

agencies and commands concerned with

Pacific logistics were in attendance. The

Army contingent included Lt. Gen. Wilhelm D. Styer, Somervell's chief of staff

who had received a new assignment as

service commander under MacArthur,

General Gross, Brig. Gen. Harold Eastwood of SWPA, Col. Rush B. Lincoln,

Jr., of the Army in POA, and Brig. Gen.

Charles K. Gailey, Jr., of OPD. On the

Navy side the Office Chief of Naval Operations was generously represented as

were most of the bureaus and the Naval

Transportation Service. Both Army and

Navy representatives from the Joint Staff

of POA attended.11

In its final form the agenda provided

for a broad "review of forecasted logistics support required to conduct the Pacific War" in relation to continental

U.S. supply and transshipment capabilities, reception capacity in the Pacific,

and the availability of shipping, and for

a "study of integration between Army,

Navy and Marine Corps requisitioning

and shipping procedures" necessary to

promote the most efficient use of facilities, supplies, and shipping.12

9 Ballantine, U.S. Naval Logistics in the Second

World War, pp. 255-63.

10 (1) Ltr, CNO to CG ASF, 31 Mar 45, sub: Study

of Supply and Shpg Problems Relevant to Support

of Pacific War, OCT 401 POA, 1944-45. (2) Ltr, Adm

Home to CG AAF, 17 Apr 45, sub: Joint Supply and

Shpg Conf . . . —Agenda For. (3) Memo, Maj Gen

Laurence S. Kuter, Actg Chief of Air Staff for CofS,

24 Apr 45, sub: Supply and Shpg for Pacific Opns.

(4) Memo, DCofS for CG's ASF and AAF, 29 Apr 44,

sub: Joint Supply and Shpg Conf. (2), (3), (4) in

G-4 400.22. (5) Diary entry, 19 Apr 45, Strat Log

Br, Plng Div, ASF, 19 Apr 45. (6) Memo, Gen Lincoln for Gen Hull, 1 May 45, ABC 320.2 (3-13-43)

Sec 9.

11 Min, Army-Navy Shpg and Supply Conf, 1-6

May 45, ABC 337 (1 May 45). 12

 Ibid., Proposed Agenda, pp. 1-3.
LOGISTICS OF A ONE-FRONT WAR 601

The development of the forecast proceeded harmoniously. It was largely a

matter of placing Army and Navy estimates together and matching them

against available resources. When this

was done, total requirements on the

United States for the Pacific war for

one year were found to amount to 53,-

880,000 measurement tons of supplies,

32,100,000 for the Army and 21,780,000

for the Navy. Against this total, west

coast capacity was estimated at 11,000,-

000 tons per quarter or 44,000,000 tons

over the course of the year. Army-Navy

plans provided for shipments of 33,957,-

000 tons out of west coast ports, with

the balance, 19,923,000 tons, to be shifted to the east and Gulf coasts. The conference concluded that "the contemplated shift of military loadings to the East

and Gulf Coast ports will permit the

West Coast to handle the load," thus

generally confirming the existing distribution plans of the two services. Existing

storage plans were also generally confirmed, and the Army agreed to continue

to provide space for Navy supplies in its

west coast holding and reconsignment

points, on assurances from the Navy

that it would not use the space for dead

storage. The only divergence of opinion

developed on the matter of distributing

the load on the west coast, the Army

prodding the Navy to emulate its example and show more flexibility in shifting shipments out of the San FranciscoLos Angeles area to Seattle and Portland.13

Based on these supply requirements,

the conference calculated that total shipping space needed for military cargo

movements in the Atlantic and the Pacific would average about 25,000,000

dead-weight tons per quarter against an

average WSA quarterly inventory of approximately 32,000,000 dead-weight tons.

This would leave an average of 7,000,-

000 dead-weight tons per quarter (a little over 20 percent of U.S. cargo tonnage) for all other purposes, but considerably less than that amount during

the period of peak shipments in the last

six months of 1945. Relying on the overriding military priority for which they

had long been contending, the conferees

assumed that the requirements could be

met by cutting back where necessary in

civilian supply movements.

In evaluating the final element in the

forecast, reception capacity in forward

areas in the Pacific, the conference was

not able to arrive at quite so precise or

positive conclusions. Though estimates

indicated 15,000,000 measurement tons

capacity in the third quarter of 1945

and 16,725,000 per quarter during the

following three quarters counting ports

in the Philippines, Marianas, and Palaus,

and on Iwo Jima and Okinawa, the responsible committee readily admitted

that its estimates might prove far from

accurate since "demand requirements by

destination" were unknown.14

In developing these estimates some

cognizance had to be taken of the additional capacity required to accommodate

the roll-up and other problems associated with it. The conference noted that

3.5 million measurement tons still had

to be moved forward in SWPA and

about 900,000 measurement tons in

POA, and that there would be a continuing requirement for moving forward

65,000 measurement tons of provisions

13

 Ibid., Rpt by Com I, p. 5. 14

 Ibid., Rpt by Com II, p. 6.
602 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

monthly from Australia. The Army representatives came to the conference determined to drive home their demand

for assault shipping from POA to help

with the SWPA roll-up, and succeeded in

getting the Navy to agree in principle

that an increase in LST's, AKA's, and

smaller craft suitable for lightering was

absolutely essential in the Philippine

area if the forecasted reception capacity

was to be developed in time. The theater

commanders, it was also agreed, must be

furnished in advance with firm figures on

shipping that would be available for the

roll-up. The conference itself, however,

produced no such firm figures.

The estimates of reception capacity

in the Pacific, in any case, represented

a hope, not a promise. If that hope were

realized, and assuming that maintenance

supplies for troops on Kyushu and Honshu would be forwarded by direct shipment as well as that much of the Navy's

support would come from its mobile

service squadrons, it appeared that reception capacity would be adequate.

Still, these estimates were undoubtedly

the most tenuous part of the logistic

forecast.

In making the logistic forecast, neither

service was being asked to sacrifice its

own plans, for, though the margin was

narrow, it appeared that resources would

be ample to fulfill the combined requirements of Army and Navy as long as military demands were given priority over

civilian needs. When the conferees

turned to the consideration of procedures, the situation was quite different

and a clear conflict emerged. The Army

representatives came prepared to insist

on logistical procedures in the Pacific

to conform to the new command system.

The Navy representatives, in contrast,

had apparently given little thought to

the requirements of the command

change, and wanted to discuss mainly

the proper shipping and supply procedures to support the CINCPACCINCPOA command as then constituted.

The Navy was determined that Nimitz' system, which it regarded as the

most efficient one in use in any theater

of war, should not be disturbed. The

Army was just as determined that autonomous Army control must be asserted

over shipping for all its forces in the

Pacific and that normal Army supply

channels be substituted for Nimitz' system in the area then known as POA.

Very clearly the Army visualized the

abolition of area commands and the

Navy tenaciously clung to them. When

Navy representatives asked how priorities were to be determined and the flow

of shipping regulated in areas of joint

operations, the Army answers were just

as fuzzy as were the Navy answers to

Army queries as to how the area system

was to be preserved when the JCS had

directed a changeover to a functional

system of command. General Gross stated the Army position quite positively:

Now that General MacArthur has been

given a wider command authority over all

troops, it is most natural that he should

extend the system that he is now using to

the one system the Army has used, at its

initiative, for its supply and transportation

system..... If there was ever any thought

that the CINCPOA system of supply ... is

satisfactory to the Army now—it should be

very clear that it is not satisfactory and

never was entirely satisfactory. The Army

adjusted to it because, after all, Admiral

Nimitz was in command and the command

functions gave him that authority. The

command system having been changed, the

Army wishes to control its system of requisi-
LOGISTICS OF A ONE-FRONT WAR 603

tioning, its system of transportation or shipments, as it does all over the world, for

troops, according to the central system that

has thus far governed. . .

 15

But neither Gross nor any of the other Army representatives could answer

very satisfactorily Admiral Ingersoll's

queries on how, under separate service

control, supplies and services common

to both Army and Navy would be handled or how priorities were to be determined in cases of conflicting service

demands. "Supposing that the requirements submitted by the various Army

and Navy commanders for something

amounted to say 250 ships," asked Ingersoll, "and the total capacity to receive

is only 200 ships. . . . Who makes the

decision as to where the reduction to

200 ships should be made?"16

These were the questions the Army

itself had been asking back in early 1943

when the original Basic Logistical Plan

that assigned logistical control to each

area commander was under discussion.

Since then, however, it had been in

POA, a theater in which the Navy had

over-all command, that the Basic Logistical Plan had been applied, while

MacArthur's policies had been much

closer to the old prewar conception of

co-ordinated but parallel supply lines.

To a certain degree at least the War

Department had been forced into the

position of championing the MacArthurian viewpoint that emphasized a minimum of joint arrangements in the field

of logistics. But in a larger sense, the

confusion over logistical arrangements

was simply a product of the failure to

agree on a single unified commander for

the Pacific, for the Navy's position was

no more defensible if the old area commands were to be abolished than was

the Army's insistence on separate supply lines if area commands were to be

kept intact. Each side was emphasizing

the part of the JCS command directive

that happened to fit its position—the

Navy using the part prescribing a gradual transition to insist on the preservation of the area commands indefinitely;

the Army using the part prescribing a

new command setup to insist on as rapid

a transition as practicable.

Lengthy discussion served only to

clarify the respective Army and Navy

positions. Finally two separate committees were appointed, one from the Army

and the other from the Navy, to draw

up their views on what the procedure

for shipping control should be. The

Navy proposal provided for the continuation of the existing area system indefinitely for delivery of supplies to

bases and mounting areas with shipping

control to be exercised in the final assault on Japan by an agency acting jointly for CINCPAC and CINCAFPAC,

"except that since CINCAFPAC's requirements for supplies will be paramount at the objective ports, he should

control all unloading at these ports."17

The Army proposal, on the other

hand, argued that with separate Army

and Navy commands, "separate Army

and Navy supply controls follow." It

pointed to a "solid core of command

functions embracing supply in the Pacific almost wholly a matter of Army

concern" and another solid core "almost

wholly a matter of Navy concern," each

sphere susceptible of separate control.

But the Army also recognized that there

15

 Ibid., 3d mtg, pp. 48-49. 16

 Ibid., 3d mtg, pp. 63-64, 72-73.

17

 Ibid., 4th mtg, Attachment E, Rpt of Navy Ad

Hoc Com on Shpg Control.
604 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

were "inherent in the Pacific situation

. . . localities and operations where Army

and Navy interests are so closely interwoven that reconciliation by joint or

unified control is and will be required

by mutual agreement between the commanders concerned or by direction of

the J.C.S."18 To handle these matters,

the Army report proposed temporary

joint co-operative arrangements between

Nimitz and MacArthur.

Between these widely divergent views

there proved to be no common meeting

ground. The Shipping and Supply Conference merely included the two opposing statements of position as a part of

its final report and there let the matter

rest.

Efforts to Resolve the Shipping

Issue

At the JCS level, where the shipping

issue was concurrently being debated,

there was even less agreement. The JCS

discussions of shipping control grew out

of the controversy over the use of Pacific assault shipping for logistical purposes. Despite Admiral King's earlier

refusals, General Marshall continued to

hammer away at the proposition that

there should be a study by the JCS committees of the availability of assault shipping for the roll-up of rear areas. Admiral King continued as adamant as

before, insisting that the theater commanders alone could properly estimate

the availability of assault craft for logistical uses, and ended by suggesting an

over-all study of cargo shipping requirements in the Pacific for the OLYMPIC

operation. Despite Somervell's desire to

continue the fight, General Marshall, on

the advice of OPD, decided it would be

best not to insist on treating the assault

shipping issue separately. Once the

OLYMPIC directive had been approved

on 25 May 1945, he agreed to King's

proposal for a study of over-all cargo

shipping requirements to support it, but

not without a polite suggestion that the

study should also include naval assault

shipping in its purview.19

Marshall's proposal followed by only

a few days the receipt of a message from

MacArthur summarizing the state of the

SWPA roll-up. Between 15 June and 15

September 1945, MacArthur said, he

would have to move 150,000 troops and

1,780,000 tons of Army supplies, and

11,000 naval personnel and 622,000 tons

of naval supplies, from rear bases to the

Philippines. Moreover, as a result of an

agreement with Nimitz that a large portion of the AAF in the Pacific should

be based in the Ryukyus rather than

the Philippines, 112,000 men, 24,000

vehicles, and 160,000 dead-weight tons

of supplies had to be moved from the

Philippines to Okinawa. To assist in

these moves, he said, Nimitz had made

available 24 LSM's in April to be used

until mid-July, and 7 APA's and 6

AKA's to be available from late May

until 1 July. Limited numbers of LST's

from the Seventh Fleet could be used in

July, August, and September. With the

18

 Ibid., 4th mtg, Attachment F, Rpt of Army Ad

Hoc Com on Shpg Control.

19

 (1) JCS 1286/2, 24 Apr 45, memo by CofS, USA,

title: Cargo and Assault Shpg for Roll-up in Pacific.

(2) JCS 1286/3, 30 Apr 45, memo by COMINCH

and CNO, same title. (3) JCS 1286/5, 28 May 45,

memo by CofS, USA, title: Cargo and Personnel

Movement Required for OLYMPIC. (4) Memo, Gen

Lincoln for CofS, 1 May 45, OPD 560 TS, Case 26/2.

(5) Memos, Somervell for Marshall, 16 May 45, and

29 May 45, sub: Co-ordination of Troop and Cargo

Lift for Redeployment and Support of OLYMPIC,

ABC 320.2 (3-13-43) Sec 9.
LOGISTICS OF A ONE-FRONT WAR 605

ordinary shipping available to him and

these amphibious resources, MacArthur

said, he could move only 50,000 men

and 1,600,000 tons of Army supplies

from rear areas to the Philippines by the

September 15 target date. For the additional 100,000 troops and 180,000 tons

of supplies, for the naval roll-up in

SWPA, and for the movement to Okinawa, he stipulated he must have more

shipping from outside. The SWPA commander admitted that Nimitz would be

willing to send more APA's to carry the

personnel; he had already been forced

to turn down some offered for lack of

cargo shipping to integrate personnel

and supply movements. The critical need

was for LST's, AKA's and ordinary cargo shipping, particularly vessels that

could carry vehicles.20

In the Army view, the magnitude of

MacArthur's requirements for the rollup and their close relation to the preparations for OLYMPIC clearly justified the

inclusion of assault shipping in any overall review, but King was unmoved. Replying to Marshall's memorandum on 5

June 1945, he restated emphatically his

position on theater control of assault

shipping, and at the same time presented at the JCS level the Navy's proposal,

made at the Shipping and Supply Conference, that control over other types of

shipping in the Pacific should be exercised by a joint agency under Nimitz

and MacArthur.21

If this was a way, as General Somervell

had earlier put it, of telling the Army

"that Admiral Nimitz will give you the

LST's when he makes up his mind to

do so,"22 there was little the Army could

do about it. King's second proposal, for

a joint agency to control other types of

shipping in the Pacific, served as an effective counterbalance and shifted the

whole basis of the JCS controversy. King

would make the establishment of a joint

shipping agency by CINCAFPAC and

CINCPAC a necessary prerequisite to

any over-all study of Pacific shipping requirements and availabilities. This joint

agency should submit, he said, as soon

as possible "a study of their coordinated

shipping requirements for the remainder

of the year, into which is integrated

estimated use of such assault craft as

can be made available for general lift

from time to time."23 On this basis the

JMTC and JLC would prepare their

over-all shipping study, taking into consideration the OLYMPIC directive and

other requirements.

On this rock the whole proposal for

a worldwide cargo shipping survey by

the JCS came to grief. To the Army neither the joint agency to determine shipping requirements nor the proposition

that assault shipping in the Pacific "be

considered, in effect, the private property of CINCPAC"24

 were acceptable.

Somervell proposed a torrid memo to

King, but Marshall chose merely to inquire into MacArthur's views on King's

proposals with a strong hint that the

War Department found them unacceptable. MacArthur's reply was not disappointing. He rejected the idea of a joint

shipping agency out of hand. "Such

20

 Msg CREGOX 17401, CINCAFPAC to WD, 25

May 45, ABC 320.2 (3-13-43). Sec 9.

21

 JCS 1286/6, 5 Jun 45, memo, COMINCH for

JCS, title: Joint Agency for Coordination and Control of Shpg Within the Pacific.

22

 Memo, Somervell for Marshall, 16 May 45, ABC

320.2 (3-13-43) Sec 9. 23

 JCS 1286/6, 5 Jun 45. 24

 Memo, Somervell for CofS, 6 Jun 45, sub: Joint

Agency for Coordination and Control of Shpg within

Pacific, ABC 320.2 (3-13-43) Sec 9.
606 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

action," he said, "would deprive me of

control of the principal means of transportation and would subject my requirements to review by representatives of a

commander who has no responsibility

for support of Army forces."25 Though

he questioned some of King's views on

assault shipping, there is no evidence

he really disagreed with the Navy's contention that the proper way to regulate

the distribution of this asset was by negotiation between himself and Nimitz.

His final recommendations were that

the Army procedure for dividing control

of ordinary cargo shipping along service

lines be adopted and that assault craft

for the roll-up be requested from CINCPAC under existing procedures, their

availability to be taken into consideration in computing other shipping requirements. MacArthur could hardly

have failed to perceive that if the Army

was to control its own resources in the

Pacific as well as the WSA shipping that

served it, then it must surrender to the

Navy control of amphibious resources

that could certainly be construed as being within its proper province. His solution was therefore "close and continued

coordination and cooperation between

CINCAFPAC and CINCPAC in the use

of shipping,"

 26

 and to this solution the

Army staff in Washington had perforce

to agree.

Meanwhile, the combined review of

cargo shipping with the British, so long

delayed, was at last completed early in

June 1945, but under conditions that

made it little more than an academic

exercise. On V-E Day the British announced they were ready to proceed with

the study since food discussions they had

previously been awaiting were now concluded, but in the negotiations that followed they steadfastly refused to grant

the absolute priority for military over

civilian requirements the Americans desired. The American staff consequently

decided to proceed with the study without any reference to priorities whatsoever, and to make it merely a tabulation

of combined shipping requirements for

both military operations and civilian relief as then known. The study subsequently prepared on this basis by the

Combined Military Transportation Committee (CMTC) in collaboration with

the Combined Shipping Adjustment

Board showed small deficits against the

U.S. pool averaging 29 sailings per

month and against the British pool averaging 85 sailings per month in the last

six months of 1945. However, the shipping authorities thought captured enemy vessels and liberated and neutral

shipping might well be sufficient to overcome these deficits and they characterized them as "manageable." Provisional

estimates of the situation in the first six

months of 1946 produced a similar conclusion.27

The CCS accepted the paper on 4

July 1945 though their acceptance had

no force in terms of allocations. As Brig.

Gen. George A. Lincoln, the Army Planner, noted, the estimates of U.S. military

25(1) Msg C-18697, CINCAFPAC to WD, CM-IN

11431, 12 Jun 45. (2) Memo, Somervell for CofS, 6

Jun 45. (3) Msg WARX 12523, Marshall to MacArthur, 6 Jun 45. 26

 Msg C-18697, CINCAFPAC to WD, CM-IN

11431, 12 Jun 45.

27

 (1) CCS 746/24, 2 Jun 45, rpt by CMTC and

CSAB, title: Over-all Review of Dry Cargo Shpg for

Remainder 1945 and First Half 1946. (2) CCS 746/19,

8 May 45, and CCS 746/21, 12 May 45, memos by

Reps Br COS, same titles. (3) CCS 746/23, 21 May

45, memo by U.S. CsofS, same title. (4) Memo, Gen

Lincoln for Col Wood, 14 May 45, ABC 560 (26 Feb

43) Sec 1C.
LOGISTICS OF A ONE-FRONT WAR 607

requirements in the Pacific as well as

those for civil affairs shipments to Europe were "largely theoretical" since

neither had been approved by the responsible theater commander.28

 Yet the

very fact that the British and Americans

had been able to bury the whole controversy over priorities was ample indication that in the over-all view shortages

of cargo shipping had ceased to be stringent.

Outlines of a New Pacific

Logistical System

The Army-Navy negotiations in Washington had, in sum, left the whole problem of a new logistical system in the

Pacific exactly where the JCS command

directive of 3 April 1945 had left itsubject to the mutual agreement of General MacArthur and Admiral Nimitz.

Efforts to reach such a mutual agreement

went on concurrently with the exchanges

in Washington and were stalemated by

much the same differences. A conference

held at Guam in mid-April between

Nimitz' staff and a group of SWPA representatives headed by Lt. Gen. Richard

K. Sutherland, MacArthur's chief of staff,

made little progress. Sutherland came to

the conference expecting to make arrangements for MacArthur to take over

Army forces and resources in POA, including the Ryukyus, at the earliest possible moment. Nimitz, who had just

launched the Okinawa assault, was in no

mood to release any resources he thought

necessary for the successful conclusion

of its several phases or, for that matter,

for a possible landing on the China coast.

Moreover, he saw no possible way to

separate Army and Navy functions at

the bases within POA, and felt that he

must hold on to Army service units at

such places as Saipan, Guam, and the

Palaus indefinitely. "The essential garrisons of all positions in POA," he reported to Admiral King, "must remain

under my operational control as long

as I am responsible for these areas. Abolition of unity of command in the subareas and outlying islands would produce

chaos and would retard the prosecution

of the war."29

Nimitz did agree to release operational control of Army units to MacArthur

as soon as they were released from POA

operations, but except for this concession, which had little immediate effect,

Sutherland's group had to go home empty handed. The conference never even

got around to discussing the vital matters of requisitioning and shipping control, nor was much said about logistical

arrangements for the final assault on

Japan.

Despite this setback, the Army went

ahead with its own arrangements. On

20 April General MacArthur was assigned administrative control over the

Army in POA, and the War Department

decided that henceforth all Army forces

and resources moved to the Pacific should

be assigned to CINCAFPAC except for

Twentieth Air Force units subject to

direct control of the JCS and troops

specifically earmarked for ICEBERG. This

extension of MacArthur's powers, however, did little more than to confuse the

28 (1) Memo, Gen Lincoln for Asst Secy WDGS, 5

Jun 45, sub: Over-all Review of Cargo Shpg. . . .

ABC 560 (26 Feb 43) Sec 1C. (2) CCS 746/25, 4 Jul

45, same title.

29 Memos, King for Marshall, 14 and 16 Apr 45,

inclosing msgs from Nimitz, 14-15 Apr 45. The first

memo is in OPD 384 TS, Case 1/42; the second is

in OPD Exec 10, Item 68.
608 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

situation further, for existing "elements

under operational control of CINCPOA" were also specifically excepted

from the Army commander's control.30

Also, since Nimitz retained control over

shipping in POA, MacArthur could not

exercise any jurisdiction over the movement of Army personnel and supplies

into that area regardless of the Army's

intent to assign them to his command

when they arrived.

Nor did the change in Army organization in the Pacific have much immediate practical effect. Two area commands

were established under MacArthur, one

embracing the old SWPA area and the

other embracing the Army within the

boundaries of POA. The first, Army

Forces, Western Pacific (AFWESPAC),

absorbed both the U.S. theater headquarters in SWPA (USAFFE) and the U.S.

Services of Supply (USASOS) in that

theater; the second, Army Forces, Middle Pacific (AFMIDPAC), was essen- tially simply a continuation of Headquarters, USAFPOA, under a different

name. General Richardson remained as

commander of AFMIDPAC with the

only change that he now reported to

MacArthur rather than directly to the

War Department. Of the two commands,

AFWESPAC was obviously destined to

be the more important. It represented

a new development in MacArthur's com- mand, a consolidation of the administrative and logistical functions of the theater headquarters and the theater SOS, and the purpose of its creation was to

provide a communications zone for the

assault on Japan. General Styer, ASF

chief of staff, became commanding general of AFWESPAC and several other

high ranking members of ASF headquarters soon joined his staff. Out of AFWESPAC the ASF hoped to create the

ideal theater supply command for the

final phase of the war.31

Of more immediate interest is the

anomalous position of AFMIDPAC in

this setup. Under the administrative con- trol of MacArthur, most of the troops

in its jurisdiction stayed under the op- erational control of Nimitz until he

chose to release them. Until that time,

MacArthur could not move troops between his two area commands, nor make

any firm estimates of the forces that

would be available to him for the inva- sion of Japan, nor exercise any control

over shipping and the flow of supplies

to troops in AFMIDPAC. Just as Nimitz

refused to surrender operational control

of Army troops in POA, he also declined

to take the operational control of the

Seventh Fleet, which MacArthur offered

him. As a consequence, the old joint

area commands continued to exist beside

the new functional commands, making

the new Army theater setup more a fic- tion than a fact. This confused situation continued after V-E Day to prevent the concentration of effort on preparations for the

invasion of Japan that the Army desired. On 21 May Somervell complained

bitterly to Marshall that "the orderly

and timely assembly of supplies, service

troops and shipping for the support of

Army operations in the Pacific is becoming increasingly difficult as the time for

30

 Msg WARX 75413, Marshall to MacArthur and

Richardson, 1 May 45.

31

 (1) Msg CM-IN 11201, MacArthur to Marshall,

12 May 45. (2) Msg WARX 87663, Marshall to MacArthur, 25 May 45. (3) Msg MacArthur to WARCOS,

CM-IN 6056, 7 Jun 45. (4) Memo, Lutes for Somervell, 28 Jul 45, sub: Comd and Logistical Responsibilities in Pacific, History Planning Div ASF, Doc

Suppl, III, app. 9 EE.
LOGISTICS OF A ONE-FRONT WAR 609

major land operations approaches and

as compliance with the spirit of the directive approved by the JCS ... is delayed."32

 He contended that Nimitz'

continued preparations for the invasion

of the China coast, or alternately for

extended operations in the Ryukyus,

served the POA commander as an excuse

to withhold both Army resources and

assault shipping needed by MacArthur

and to place orders for supplies on Army

as well as Navy agencies on the west

coast for those purposes. Somervell asked

for a firm JCS directive for OLYMPIC

at the earliest practicable date, that all

Army resources outside the Ryukyus be

assigned to MacArthur immediately and

that those in the Ryukyus be assigned

him when the occupation of Okinawa

(first phase of ICEBERG) was completed.

Under this scheme Somervell thought

it should be up to MacArthur to decide

whether further expansion in the Ryukyus would be necessary for successful

initiation of OLYMPIC.

The firm directive for OLYMPIC was

issued a few days later, on 25 May 1945.

It assigned to MacArthur primary responsibility for planning and execution

of the invasion of Kyushu, except for its

naval and amphibious phases. As a result

of this directive, Nimitz did cancel the

last phase of the Ryukyus Campaign and

further specific preparations for invasion

of the China coast.33 These decisions

went far to clear the air, but they did

not, as Somervell had hoped, make any

specific provision as to the time that

Nimitz should release Army resources.

With the directive for OLYMPIC an accomplished fact, representatives of CINCPAC-CINCPOA and CINCAFPACCINCSWPA met again at Manila on

1-3 June to iron out their problems—

this time with a greater measure of success, at least as far as arrangements for

OLYMPIC were concerned. Nimitz agreed

to furnish as much shipping as possible

for the SWPA roll-up and for transport

of air forces to Okinawa, and to release

to MacArthur three Army divisions at

the end of organized resistance on Okinawa, two of them to be shipped to the

Philippines in CINCPAC shipping. MacArthur in turn agreed to release divisions to CINCPAC for amphibious training. For OLYMPIC the two commanders

would, in general, furnish their own logistic support shipping. Each would control shipping completely "at ports under

their exclusive control"; at ports used

jointly, CINCAFPAC was to control in

co-ordination with CINCPAC; each service was to do its own unloading. MacArthur was to control the flow of shipping to Japan itself, as well as the ports

in Japan used by both services. He

would establish regulating stations at

Ulithi and Okinawa. He was also to be

responsible for harbor clearance and port

development, to allocate land areas in

Japan, to furnish Class I supplies for

Navy and Marine Corps elements operating under his control, and to deliver

other classes of supply (except POL)

to those elements on receipt from

CINCPAC at the regulating stations.

The agreement was limited to the arrangements for OLYMPIC. No specific

mention at all was made of release of

Army garrisons in POA or of shipping

control in that area. The omission constituted a tacit agreement that those

32

 Memo, Somervell for CofS, 21 May 45, sub:

Logistical Support of Pacific Opns, OPD 400 TS,

Case 80. 33

 (1) JCS 1331/3, 25 May 45. (2) History Planning

Div ASF, Doc Suppl, III, 179.
610 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

matters should remain generally as they

were, that Nimitz should continue to

control shipping within POA and to forward Army requirements for that shipping through Navy channels to Washington. By the same token, outside of

the three divisions to be released as soon

as organized resistance on Okinawa ended, there was no provision for a time

schedule of release of other Army units

in POA to MacArthur's operational

control, nor indeed any indication that

Nimitz did not intend to hold on to the

base and garrison forces there indefinitely. The anomalous status of AFMIDPAC

was not really changed.34

On 19 June an OPD officer noted:

CINCPOA's stranglehold on shipping for

Army forces in the Central and South

Pacific remains unbroken. It is also clear

that MacArthur wants us to arrange a procedure whereby he will control shipping

for support of all Army forces in the Pacific.

Further discussions with CINCPOA about

shipping are not planned until we have

settled the issue here.35

The basic question, which had been

shuttled out of Washington to the theaters, had been shuttled right back to

Washington again, but it seems no serious new attempt was made to settle it

there either. As the anomalous situation

of area and functional commands existing side by side had been tacitly accepted in the theater, it was also tacitly accepted in Washington, and arrangements

for executing the final assault on Japan

had to be based on its continued existence. The only further developments

came at the end of organized resistance

on Okinawa when Nimitz agreed that

CINCAFPAC should take over shore

positions in the Ryukyus on 31 July

1945; and the transfer took place on

the scheduled date.

Until the war against Japan ended,

then, MacArthur did not get that measure of centralized control over all Army

resources in the Pacific that the Army

staffs in Washington had envisioned for

him. Yet, for all the vicissitudes, controversies, and confusion, the trend was

clearly enough toward a new logistical

system in the Pacific that would emphasize separate service supply lines rather

than the joint arrangements that had

taken shape during the middle period

of the Pacific war. Just how successful

or viable the complicated and tenuous

arrangements for OLYMPIC would have

proved, it is impossible to say. Certainly

the ASF continued to complain to the

very end of the war of the uncertainty

of requirements planning in the Pacific

—for ships, for men, and for supplies—

under the mixed system that actually

prevailed. Even so, General Lutes, late

in July 1945, while recognizing some of

the defects, stated flatly that it was "more

satisfactory from an Army point of view

than any previous command and logistical arrangement in the Pacific."36

The Execution of Redeployment

The War Department designated 12

May 1945, four days after the German

surrender, as R Day, and on that day

34 (1) Memo, Col Johnson, Chief Pacific Sec, The

ater Gp, OPD, for Gen Hull, 15 Jun 45, sub:

CINCAFPAC-CINCPAC Arrangements for Opn

OLYMPIC, OPD 381 TS, Case 135/26. (2) Msg C-18697,

CINCAFPAC to WD, CM-IN 11431, 12 Jun 45.

(3) OPD MFR, 15 Jun 45, OPD 560 TS, Case 26/5.

35 Memo, TDR for Gen Lincoln, 19 Jun 45, sub:

Pacific Shpg, with attached transcript of teletype

conf of 18 Jun 45, ABC 320.2 (3-13-43), Sec 9. 36

 Memo, Lutes for Somervell, 28 Jul 45.
LOGISTICS OF A ONE-FRONT WAR 611

the administrative procedures worked

out for redeployment far in advance

were formally put into effect. Actually,

the shift to the one-front war had begun

more gradually a few weeks earlier when

it had become apparent that German

collapse was imminent. In mid-April,

the European and Mediterranean theaters were instructed to keep their supply orders to a minimum, and personnel

and supply movements to Europe were

both cut back drastically during that

month. A trickle of redeployment also

actually began before V-E Day, and the

prearranged system for disposition of

shipping was put into effect gradually

rather than in a single dramatic move

on the day of surrender. Between 2 and

8 May, 67 cargo ships originally destined

for Europe were either discharged at

east coast ports before leaving or were

returned for discharge; 50 more were

diverted to the west coast and to the

Pacific theaters. In this manner the

Army began its great reorientation of

effort from the Atlantic to the Pacific

theaters.37

The giant wheels of redeployment

turned for little more than three months

before they were reversed, so that the

machinery developed was never fully

tested. In evaluating the brief period

during which redeployment did proceed,

two points require emphasis. First, there

was never any final analysis by the Army

command in the Pacific of its troop

needs or of reception and mounting

capacities for OLYMPIC and CORONET.

Second, despite the theory that military

necessity would govern, there was constant competition between the requirements of the Pacific war and the pressure to bring American soldiers home

for discharge. These two factors created

the greatest complications in carrying

out the master redeployment plan drawn

up by the JCS committees at the end of

April.

Though MacArthur's headquarters

never presented a final troop basis for

OLYMPIC and CORONET, its preliminary

estimates, hastily drawn up in response

to the first OPD Redeployment Forecast,

produced the principal revisions in the

master redeployment plan after V-E

Day. MacArthur increased his requirements for divisions by two and asked

for an additional 100,000 service troops,

while substituting infantry divisions for

three of the armored divisions the JCS

had proposed to furnish him. In order

to allow more time for developing staging facilities, he asked that all 17 divisions to be redeployed from Europe be

sent through the United States.

His request for indirect redeployment

of all divisions was granted, but the

question of an ultimate Pacific troop

basis was never finally settled. MacArthur's various requests shoved total

requirements up to 2,624,000 men, almost 200,000 above the ceiling established in the JCS plan. Though OPD at

first insisted on holding CINCAFPAC

to the ceiling, preliminary drafts of a

new JCS plan drawn up in July provided for the increase. And they did not

take into account acceptance of a Canadian offer of a division, a French offer

of 2 divisions, and a British offer of 3 to

37(1) CCS 856, 9 May 45, title: Administrative Procedures for Readjustment of Personnel Prior to Redeployment. (2) Final Rpt, Ocean Traffic Br, Water

Div, OCT, 31 May 45, sub: Result of Activities in

Connection with Redeployment—ETO and MTO,

OCT HB file Redeployment. (3) Wardlow, The

Transportation Corps: Movements, Training, and

Supply, p. 183.
612 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

5 divisions for the Pacific war. Whether

all these allied troops would actually

be employed against Japan at all and, if

so, whether they would be substituted

for American divisions was still up in

the air when the war ended. The principal effect of MacArthur's evaluation

was to increase the number of divisions

to be moved by way of the United States,

and hence the load the continental establishment would have to carry. Other adjustments were naturally made in individual units to conform to CINCAFPAC's

desires. In other respects, redeployment

went ahead generally on the basis of the

April joint plan.38

As the planners had anticipated, shipping was the key problem. In the face

of public pressure to bring high-point

men home for discharge, the War Department virtually abrogated the "military necessity" clause, accelerating the

Category IV movements home from

Europe and applying the point system

in the Pacific in the same measure as it

applied in theaters now inactive. These

steps increased the demand for personnel shipping. The return of high-point

men from the Pacific generated a demand for replacements in larger numbers than had been anticipated. Simultaneously, the increase in requirements

for indirect redeployment and the net

augmentation of both Army and Navy

personnel requirements in the Pacific

served to increase further the load that

Pacific shipping had to carry. Meanwhile, though personnel shipping had

become available in approximately the

quantities anticipated it was largely concentrated in the Atlantic, except for the

Navy's combat loaders. During the summer the lift from Europe to the United

States exceeded expectations as ships

were overloaded and the airlift was expanded from an estimated 15,000 to

50,000 men monthly. Much of the increased lift was used to bring men home

for discharge, and meanwhile a large

deficit of personnel shipping appeared

to be developing on the west coast. By

29 June it had already mounted to a

total of 44,000 spaces and an Army-Navy

ad hoc committee, studying the situation, predicted that it would reach

673,000 by the end of the year. The

schedules for direct redeployment from

Europe were also generally behind.39

It was really more a question of imbalance than a genuine deficit. The

British Queens could be used only in

the Atlantic, the bulk of the Army's

regular troopships were concentrated

there, and the converted Victory ships

were initially destined for Atlantic service. The Navy's APA's, which had exceeded their schedules in the Pacific

during the first quarter of redeployment, would have to be withdrawn from

transpacific service at the end of Septem38

 (1) JCS 1053/2, 18 May 45, title: Revised Estimate on Personnel Shpg Including Air Transport.

(2) Diary Entry, 22 May 45, Strat Log Br, Plng Div

ASF. (3) JLC 321, 24 May 45, title: Logistical Analysis

of Strategic Deployment of U.S. Forces Between 1

Jul 45 and 30 Jun 46, ABC 320.2 (3-13-43) Sec 9.

(4) Msg C-17527, GHQ SWPA to WD, 1 Jun 45,

CM-IN 374. (5) Msg WARX 11721 to CINCAFPAC,

4 Jun 45. (6) OPD MFR, 10 Jun 45, OPD 320.2 TS,

Case 58/61. (7) Ltr, GHQ, AFPAC, to TAG, 24 Jun

45, OPD 320.2 TS, Case 58/71. (8) JWPC 49/27/M,

2 Jul 45, memo for JPS, title: Strategic Deployment

of U.S. Forces, ABC 320.2 (3-13-43) Sec 10. (9) OPD

Redeployment Forecast, 24 May 45, OPD 320.2 TS,

Case 54/96.

39 (1) Diary Entry, 29 Jun 45, Strat Log Br, Plng

Div, ASF. (2) Unsigned and undated OPD paper

entitled Discussion, ABC 320.2 (3-13-43) Sec 10.
LOGISTICS OF A ONE-FRONT WAR 613

ber to meet the 1 November target

date for OLYMPIC. The solution to the

dilemma was fairly obvious — transfer some of the shipping and airlift

from the Atlantic to the Pacific. On

28 July 1945 the JCS asked WSA to

modify the conversion program so as to

place 74 of the 100 converted Victory

ships in the Pacific rather than the

Atlantic in order to provide 111,000

additional spaces there. This scheme

would, the JMTC noted, delay the conversion, since additional facilities were

required for the longer Pacific voyage;

and these 74 ships over the course of a

year could move 965,000 troops from Europe to the United States, only 400,000

from the United States to the Pacific.

The committee felt, however, that the

"need for troop lift in the Pacific justifies

the cost" and the JCS agreed.40

As a second expedient, the Army proposed to divert much of the airlift from

the Atlantic to the Pacific, beginning in

August 1945. But MacArthur reported

that air terminal facilities in the Philippines could accommodate only 10,000

men monthly, and that any effort to

expand them could not be justified in

terms of shipping cost, construction effort, and service troops. By the time

General Marshall had approved this

limited increase in the Pacific airlift, the

first atomic bomb had been dropped and

the surrender of Japan without a mass

invasion was in sight. Thus, while tentatively approving the airlift on 6 August,

Marshall also decided to hold in abeyance the transfer of 26 of the 74 Victory

ships to Pacific service.41

Meanwhile, at the TERMINAL Conference in Potsdam in July, the U.S. Joint

Chiefs had once again opened negotiations with the British to secure additional

assistance in troop lift in the Pacific.

They pressed the British on three points.

First, they asked agreement that seven

specific captured enemy liners—Europa,

Caribia, Vulcania, Patria, Potsdam, Pretoria, and Milwaukee—be allotted for

U.S. use "as long as the emergency

exists," all save the Europa to be placed

in the Pacific service.42 Second, they

wanted the British to go ahead with the

conversion of 100 cargo ships to troopships as they had tentatively agreed at

ARGONAUT. Third, they wanted the

Queens to continue available for American troop movements in the Atlantic for

another six months with a provision that

they might be used in part for repatriation of Canadian troops.

The British would go only half way.

They agreed to allocate the seven captured ships to the Americans until 31

December 1945, on condition the Americans would allot space in them for repatriation of 16,000 Canadian troops. On

the other proposals, they asked for a

combined study of resources and requirements as a basis for determination, citing

the fact that the personnel lift remaining to them was sufficient to move "only

40

 (1) JCS 1306/2, 21 Jul 45, rpt by JMTC, title:

Use of Converted Victory Ships for Increased Pacific

Trooplift. (2) Ltr, Gen Handy (for JCS) to Adm

Land, 28 Jul 45, folder Conversions 1945, Box 122890,

WSA Conway File. (3) Related papers in folder Army

1945, Box 122890, WSA Conway File.

41

 (1) Memo, DCofS, USA, for Brig Gen Henry I.

Hodes, 6 Aug 45, sub: Decision Ref AAF Plan for

Increased Pacific Lift, with related papers, ABC

320.2 (3-13-43) Sec 10. (2) OPD MFR, 7 Aug 45, sub:

ATC Augmentation in the Pacific, OPD 320 TS,

Case 173/8. 42

 CCS 679/6, 18 Jul 45, memo by Br COS, title:

Disposition of Captured German Passenger Ships.
614 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

about two men out of every three" they

themselves wished to redeploy.43

The question of British cargo ship

conversions was quietly settled in separate negotiations. The British agreed to

furnish 25 sailings for ammunition cargoes from Europe to the Pacific and to

furnish ships to support the three to five

divisions that it was decided at TERMINAL

they should put into the Pacific. The

Americans agreed that these contributions would be more important and consequently dropped their request for the

conversions.44 The other matters remained unsettled as, with the abrupt

end of the war, the ground of the debate

shifted solely to one of troop lift for

repatriation.

In terms of accomplishment, some

886,000 troops were moved from Europe

and the Mediterranean to the United

States between 12 May 1945 (R Day)

and 25 August, and 155,354 were redeployed directly to the Pacific. Of the

troops returning to the United States,

between one-half and two-thirds were

slated for eventual movement to the

Pacific, but this phase of redeployment

had hardly begun when the news of the

Japanese intention to surrender cut it

to a trickle. In general, in mid-August

movement from the inactive theaters to

the United States was ahead of schedule

but direct movement to the Pacific from

Europe was considerably behind. Up to

this point, personnel redeployment was

proceeding successfully for the most

part, despite the deficit in direct movements to the Pacific. The real tests lay

ahead, during the fall of 1945, when the

outmovement from the United States

was expected to mount rapidly in volume, matching the inflow from Europe.

Whether the expedients planned to increase the Pacific troop lift would have

enabled the timely arrival of the units

necessary for launching OLYMPIC on 1

November 1945 must remain undetermined.45

Redeployment of supplies had, meanwhile, fallen considerably further behind. Outshipments from Europe by the

end of July totaled only about 900,000

measurement tons as opposed to a 1 May

forecast of 1,600,000 tons. This shortfall was mainly a result of difficulties

experienced in the European and Mediterranean theaters in assembling equipment, putting it into combat-serviceable

condition, getting it to port, and packing and crating it for the long voyage.

The shortfall freed more cargo shipping

in the Atlantic during the summer for

the movement of civilian supplies. Despite all the foreboding, no real cargo

shipping shortage developed. This is not

to say that a shortage might not have

43 (1) CCS 679/8, 22 Jul 45, memo by Br COS, title:

Employment of Captured Enemy Ocean-Going Passenger Shpg and British Troopship Employment in

U.S. Transatlantic Programs in First Half of 1946.

(2) CCS 679/6, 18 Jul 45, same title. (3) CCS 679/7,

19 Jul 45, title: British Troopship Employment in

U.S. Transatlantic Programs, First Half 1946. (4) CCS

679/9, 23 Jul 45, memo by Br COS, title: Employment of Captured Enemy Ocean-Going Passenger

Shpg and British Troopship Employment. ... (5)

Min, 199th mtg CCS, 23 Jul 45.

44 Msg, VICTORY 233, TERMINAL to WD, Land and

Bissell to Conway, CM-IN 23756, 23 Jul 45.

45 (1) ASF Monthly Progress Report, Aug 45, sec. 3.

(2) For a study of redeployment problems in the

European theater see European Comd, Redeployment, pp. 39-82. (3) A full treatment of the problem of rail movement in the United States during

redeployment is to be found in Wardlow, The

Transportation Corps: Movements, Training, and

Supply, pp. 190-203. (4) Similarly, the problems of

staging, organization, and training of ground troops

during redeployment are treated in Greenfield,

Palmer and Wiley, Organization of Ground Combat

Troops, pp. 623-47.
LOGISTICS OF A ONE-FRONT WAR 615

appeared during the fall and winter

when the real peak of cargo movements

both from Europe and the United States

to the Pacific would have been reached.

From 12 May to 25 August 1945 the

European and Mediterranean theaters

shipped out 576,432 long tons of cargo

to the Pacific and 705,645 long tons to

the United States. Both theaters were able

to keep their supply shipments to the

Pacific in pace with direct redeployment

of troops. In both cases, however, any

assessment of accomplishments must take

into consideration quality as well as

quantity. And in terms of quality, the

redeployment process, as far as it went,

revealed some very real defects. The application of the point system all too frequently resulted in the redeployment of

units whose efficiency had been badly

damaged by the withdrawal of highpoint men. Training time in the United

States was severely restricted by the necessity to grant furloughs and the tight

schedule on which Pacific operations

were expected to proceed. It seems extremely doubtful that the 17 divisions

destined for the Pacific would have been

truly efficient units when they arrived.

In the same way, haste in shipment of

supplies from Europe resulted in something less than efficiency in packing and

crating for the long voyage. Haste was

complicated by lack of materials for

fungus proofing, and much material

arrived in the Pacific unfit for use.46

Arrangements for Logistical Support of

Olympic and Coronet

Redeployment was only one aspect of

the arrangements for logistical support

of the invasion of Japan. Most of the

personnel increments for that invasion

were to come from Europe, but by far

the bulk of supplies would still originate

in the United States. Projections of quantities to be shipped over the ensuing

year tended to rise monthly with the

acceptance of a larger ultimate troop

basis for the Pacific, with development

of new requirements in the theaters,

and with the prospect that the volume

of supplies shipped directly from Europe

would fall below expectations. By 1 August the projections had reached a total

of 39 million measurement tons of Army

cargo for the first year of redeployment,

as opposed to the figure of 32 million

presented at the Army-Navy conference

at the beginning of May. Actual shipments during the May—August period

exceeded the May projections by some

600,000 measurement tons.47

The major problems in connection

with this massive movement of supplies

were the ones that had been anticipated

—outloading capacity on the west coast

and reception capacity in the Pacific.

With regard to the former, WSA sharply challenged the Army-Navy schedules

agreed upon at the May conference, contending that a definite ceiling of between

275 and 280 ship loadings monthly on

military account should be imposed —

some 25 to 30 sailings less than the military services had contemplated. WSA

argued that it would be inadvisable to

4 6 (1)Ibid. (4). (2) ASF Monthly Progress Report,

Jul and Aug 45, sec. 3. (3) Interoffice Memo, J. E.

Gushing, Asst Dep Adm, WSA, for Capt Conway,

22 Jun 45, folder Pac Coast 1945, Box 122891, WSA

Conway File. (4) European Comd, Historical Div,

Supply: Procurement, Storage, and Issue, "Occupation Forces in Europe Series, 1945-1946," MS,

OCMH, pp. 85-100. 47

 ASF Monthly Progress Report, Aug 45, sec. 3.
616 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

crowd west coast ports to their capacity

in view of the limitations on rail service,

the shortage of stevedores, and the prospect that repair facilities would be inadequate to maintain all the ships moving in and out in operating condition.

The military services, on the other hand,

held that the west coast should be used

to absolute maximum capacity, and only

the surplus above the absolute maximum should be diverted to the east and

Gulf coast ports. In the JMTC the Army

offered calculations showing that the

railroads could handle the load and suggested military port battalions might be

used to make up the stevedore shortage.

In the end the military position generally prevailed and the effort went ahead

full speed to use west coast facilities to

full capacity. Only a small number of

sailings were added to those scheduled

from the east coast.48

In its own major supply establishment

on the west coast, the San Francisco Port

of Embarkation, the Army carried out

a thoroughgoing reorganization. The

Control Division surveyed the port in

May and found numerous continuing

deficiencies, especially in the operation

of the Overseas Supply Division. There

was a general feeling in the ASF, to

which visiting SWPA officials wholeheartedly subscribed, that the San Francisco port should be reorganized along

the lines of the New York port. If this

was to be done, there were no better

people to do it than the commanders at

New York, and in June 1945 both Maj.

Gen. Homer M. Groninger and General

Goodman were transferred to San Francisco, the former to assume command of

the port and the latter to head up its

Overseas Supply Division. The move was

further evidence of ASF intentions to

get as strong a "team" as possible for

Pacific supply operations in the final

phase and to bring to bear all the experience gained in supporting the European

campaign on the final effort in the Pacific. Beyond these motives it evidenced

an intention to apply in the Pacific the

standard system of overseas supply for

the Army that had been worked out

for the most part in the New York

port.49

To the end of the war, however, reception capacity in the Pacific continued to be the unknown factor in the

whole equation. All the ASF projections

of cargo shipments to the Pacific were

based on the gross capacity of Pacific

areas to receive, not on a careful matching of cargoes and specific destinations.

Moreover, they did not take sufficiently

into account the extent to which capacity in the Philippines and other Pacific

islands would be absorbed in outloading troops for the invasion. A representative of MacArthur's headquarters severely criticized ASF planning for these reasons, but the fact was that the theater

itself had simply not furnished the ASF

the necessary information to enable it

48

 (1) Memo, Col Stokes for Gen Wylie, 20 May

45, sub: West Coast Shpg Situation. (2) OCT MFR,

Gen Wylie, 27 May 45. Both in OCT HB File Port

Capac and Util. (3) JMT 102, 11 Jun 45, title:

Merchant Ship Employment on West Coast.

49

 (1) Control Div ASF, Survey of Pacific Supply,

15 Jun 45. (2) Ltr, Gen Gross to Maj Gen Clarence

H. Kells, CG SFPOE, 11 May 45, OCT HB File,

San Francisco. (3) Memo, Col John W. Mott for CG

USASOS, APO 707, 7 Jun 45, sub: Rpt on Temporary Duty, U.S., folder Pac Sec Gen File, ASF

Plng Div Theater Files. (4) Ltr, Gen Wood to Gen

Lutes, 10 Jun 45; ltr, Lutes to Wood, 25 Jun 45.

Folder Pac Theaters Apr 45-Apr 46, Lutes File.
LOGISTICS OF A ONE-FRONT WAR 617

to do this sort of detailed planning.

"Our whole program here," wrote General Lutes to General Styer on 20 July,

now hinges on one intangible bit of criteria,

i.e., what will the discharge capacity be by

phases. As you know, we have always wanted

to get up a study correlating and collating

the production program, transportation or

shipping schedule, storage capacity, shipping capacity and capacity at the destination to receive. Such a study has been attempted and . . . has fallen flat due to the

fact that the last factor . . . governs. Now

our storage is beginning to pile up and our

production rolls merrily along without

definite knowledge on our part that we can

ever ship all that we are procuring and

storing. . . .

50

Lutes closed with a plea to Styer to provide the material for such a study, but

whatever efforts were made in that direction were overtaken by the swift march

of events.

In the period May-August 1945, Pacific reception capacity seems to have

been reasonably adequate for the shipments sent out, and for that period to

have been a potential rather than an

actual logistical limitation. The strict

instructions issued by the JCS at the

end of 1944 prohibiting use of ships as

floating warehouses and limiting ship

retentions in overseas theaters remained

in effect, and both MacArthur and Nimitz were careful in their month-by-month

estimates of requirements to avoid the

instances of heavy shipping congestion

that had occurred earlier. Some degree

of congestion did develop nevertheless

at Guam, where the Navy was preparing a major base, and at Manila. Furthermore, when the war with Japan ended, there were many ships en route to

all the Pacific islands that were not to

be unloaded for months afterward. The

most that can be said with any assurance is that reception capacity in the

Pacific remained an unknown quantity

to the very end. There is good reason

to believe that it would have continued

to act, as it had acted for a year or more

previously, as the principal limitation on

logistical support of forces in the Pacific.51

In any case, the logistical plans for

OLYMPIC and CORONET put their main

stress on direct shipments to the assault

area as the principal means for providing maintenance support once troops

were ashore, rather than reliance on the

Philippine or other island bases. The

ASF kept its plan on the books for expanding the Philippine base and actually

got MacArthur to agree to establishing

an Ordnance Base Center there; but the

continued uncertainty of reception capacity raised many doubts whether it

could in fact be set up and left the plans

of other technical services for such base

centers uncertain. The timetable for

OLYMPIC and CORONET did not, in short,

permit the ASF to make the Philippine

base the "England of the Orient," as the

supply planners had apparently contemplated it should be.

Also, the plans for providing direct

support for these operations were, in

their shipping aspects, more the product

of Pacific than Atlantic experience. They

provided, much as CINCPOA-CINC5 0 (1) Ltr, Lutes to Styer, 20 Jul 45, folder Pac

Theaters, Apr 45-Apr 46, Lutes File. (2) Memo, Col

Mott for CG USASOS, 7 Jun 45.

51

 (1) See above, ch. XXII. (2) Memo of Trip to

POA 1-24 Jun 45, by unidentified member of WSA

party, folder Pac Trip, Box 122890, WSA Conway

File.
618 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

PAC plans had previously, for blockloaded ships to move to the theater on

a time schedule. There were to be 482

of these specially loaded ships for the

invasion of Kyushu, and preliminary

planning for the invasion of Honshu

provided for 700. Loaded ships would

move to the regulating station at Ulithi

and await call forward into the assault

area, thus providing the main reserve

afloat rather than at depots in the Philippines or other Pacific islands. These

block-loaded ships somewhat resembled

the commodity loaders used in the European invasion. The system for regulating

the flow of shipping resembled more

closely that used in SWPA than the more

carefully regulated echeloning practices

typical of POA. The Chief Regulating

Officer, CINCAFPAC, was to control

movement into the combat area.52

OLYMPIC and CORONET also promised

to provide a final test for the system of

preparing operational projects in the

War Department.53 The ASF started

preparation of operational projects for

the final phase in the Pacific in December 1944, based on existing tentative

plans for the invasion of Kyushu and

Honshu and an operation in the North

Pacific involving 122,000 men. Separate

projects for each of these operations were

prepared and procurement planning instituted. The procurement planning,

however, had to proceed uncertainly, for

none of the operations was specifically

approved by the JCS until the end of

May 1945, and OPD would not permit

the dispatch of ASF plans to the theater

for adjustment until just before the decision on OLYMPIC was made on the

grounds that no Pacific command had

been designated as responsible for carrying out the operations. So, despite the

head start the ASF had, there was a flurry

of last minute adjustments between the

theater and the War Department in the

summer of 1945 that were by no means

complete when the war came to an end.

Because the lead time for CORONET was

considerably greater, the ASF was able to

furnish its project for that operation to

MacArthur's headquarters in time for it

to serve as the main basis for the theater's

planning. It was thus only for CORONET

that the theory behind the War Department prepared project was actually carried out, and the end of the war prevented any testing of the efficacy of this

type of operation.54

The unexpected end of the war arrested preparations for OLYMPIC and

CORONET in the planning stage, and few

shipments to the Pacific in May, June,

and July 1945 represented much more

than the accumulated backlog of Pacific

supplies, the necessities for Philippine

base development, support for going operations in the Philippines, Netherlands

Indies, and Okinawa, and routine maintenance for troops already in the Pacific.

Shipments showed a marked increase

over the immediately preceding three

months, 7.5 million measurement tons

of supplies going out as opposed to 5.4

million in the months of February,

March, and April. In the corresponding

period shipments to Atlantic theaters

decreased from 10.5 to 6.4 million tons.

These figures indicate that, while the

shift from the support of Atlantic the- 52

 (1) History Planning Div ASF, Text, I, 186-87.

(2) ASF Final Rpt, Logistics in World War II, pp.

53-54. 53

 See above, ch. VI. 54

 History Planning Div ASF, Text, I, 182-86.
LOGISTICS OF A ONE-FRONT WAR 619

aters to support of Pacific theaters was

gaining momentum, its full implications

still lay in the future.55

The Success of the Roll-up

Meanwhile, the roll-up of troops and

supplies within the Pacific itself proceeded at what seemed, at least in Washington, a desultory pace. The assault shipping Nimitz promised in the June conference at Manila was slow in forthcoming in the quantities required. The

philosophy that it was much easier to

reorder tailor-made loads from the United States than to inventory, sort, and

ship useful materials forward from rear

bases continued dominant. However, it

seems that by the time Richardson's command in POA was turned over to MacArthur a rather thorough job had been

done of rolling up bases on the small

outlying islands of the Hawaiian group

and the Army bases in the Gilberts and

Marshalls. The chief remaining roll-up

problems in the old POA were at Hawaii

—where the decision to abandon any immediate plans to expand the base rendered a good deal of material surplus—

and in the South Pacific Base Command.

In SWPA surpluses remained in Australia, the northern Solomons, New

Guinea, Morotai, and Manus. Disturbed

by a lack of information as to just what

had been done to roll up the surpluses,

the War Department on 9 August asked

MacArthur for a report on tonnages

moved since 1 February 1945 and those

still to be moved, stressing the need to

make maximum use of stocks already in

the Pacific as a means of "reducing to

a minimum duplicating shipments from

the Zone of the Interior," but denying

an intention "to initiate any drastic action to roll up rear areas which would

in any way affect the successful prosecution of the war."56

MacArthur's reply may be taken as

the best available summary of the

AFPAC roll-up as of the end of the war.

On 19 September he reported that a total

of approximately 2,382,000 measurement

tons of cargo had been moved forward

from old South and Southwest Pacific

bases and that approximately 1,398,000

measurement tons remained in those

bases. An earlier report showed that 216,-

000 measurement tons had been moved

forward from Hawaii and 700,000 tons

remained to be moved.57 As inexact as

these figures undoubtedly were, they revealed that the roll-up was at least between one-half and two-thirds complete

when the war ended. However, they

hardly indicate the extent to which the

evacuation of bases was accompanied by

wholesale destruction of supplies and

abandonment of facilities to the ravages

of the jungles in which they had been

created. Nevertheless, given the complicated problems of shipping, service

troops, and port capacity that were the

constant limiting factors in the Pacific

war, it is hard to say that the roll-up

was not executed in as effective a manner as circumstances permitted. It did

not end, of course, with V-J Day. That

event brought an even greater problem

of surpluses in the forward areas in the

55

 ASF Monthly Progress Report, Jul 45, sec. 3.

56

 (1) Msg WARX 46979 to CINCAFPAC, 9 Aug

45. (2) Memo, Gen Lutes for OPD, 6 Aug 45, sub:

Roll-up of Bases, Pacific Areas, OPD 400 PTO, Case

1077. 57

 (1) Msg CX-10235, CINCAFPAC to WAR, CMIN 26249, 27 Aug 45. (2) Msg CX-14733, CINCAFPAC

to WARCOS, CM-IN 15785, 20 Sep 45.
620 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

UNDERGROWTH ENCROACHES ON ABANDONED QUONSET HUTS, TINIAN ISLAND

Philippines, on Okinawa, and in the

Marianas, into which supplies from both

the rear areas and the United States

were pouring. On many Pacific islands

supplies were to deteriorate in open storage until 1950 when the United States

was to find a new and unexpected use

for them in the Korean War.

A naval historian, commenting on the

roll-up of naval supplies in the South

Pacific, has summed up the effort of the

Army just as fittingly:

The logic of rolling forward rear bases

was impeccable. In the case of personnel its

urgency could not be denied. But to set up

a cross current against the normal flow of

supply and support proved to be extremely

difficult, if not impracticable. Much of the

usable material was in fact moved forward.

The rest remained in the South Pacific to

be locally disposed of or to stand as a mon- ument to the unsparing waste of war and

the greater importance of time over cost.58

The "greater importance of time over

cost" might indeed be designated as the

most important factor in logistics in

World War II.

The Last Year in the CBI

While the massive preparations went

ahead in the Pacific for the final assaults

against Japan, the last act was also being

played out in the China and IndiaBurma theaters. The final American

strategy on the Asiatic mainland was

shaped largely in terms of a desire to

58

 Ballantine, U.S. Naval Logistics in the Second

World War, p. 286.
LOGISTICS OF A ONE-FRONT WAR 621

make the utmost practicable use of previous American investments and involved

no substantial new commitments. The

possibility that a port on the China coast

might be secured through the overland

advance remained, nevertheless, and gave

the continuing operation to open a land

route through Burma at least a small

place in the final American strategy for

the defeat of Japan. Also to be considered was the long-standing American policy of aid to China. Logistical support

of the two theaters was, accordingly,

shaped in these terms. In the redeployment plans, movement of troops to the

CBI after V-E Day was to be confined

to a limited number of service units; a

somewhat larger force was to be moved

in from the Pacific once a port on the

China coast had been opened. In the

interim, the CBI received only limited

augmentations of personnel.

It is ironic that only after the theater

had been relegated to a subsidiary role

did the great objects once proclaimed

for it at last come into sight. British and

Chinese forces advanced rapidly into central and southern Burma in the fall of

1944, and on 27 January the junction

between Chinese forces advancing from

India and Yunnan finally took place,

securing the trace of the Ledo Road. To

the south, the British completed the conquest of central Burma and entered Rangoon early in May 1945, without the

forces from Europe that had been presumed necessary at second Quebec for

the execution of DRACULA. The land

route to China was thus finally secured

on all sides.59 Mountbatten was at last

free to turn his attention to a move

southward against Sumatra, Singapore,

and Hong Kong. British operations along

these lines were finally approved by the

CCS at the Potsdam Conference in July,

but the Americans by then regarded

them as little more than mop-up actions.60

Because of the declining strategic importance of the CBI, the opening of the

Ledo Road proved a much less significant development than once had been

anticipated. The Americans were no

longer prepared to devote resources to

its exploitation. American service troops

in the theater were spread thin. Beginning in the fall of 1944, increasing numbers were moved into China as the center of gravity of U.S. operations shifted

forward. The SOS was spread over a

wide territory operating a line of communication from Calcutta to east China,

and its numbers were never commensurate with the tasks it was charged with

performing. Most of the limited augmentations in the last year were in air

personnel rather than ground service

troops.

As early as August 1944 OPD had tentatively decided, over ASF objections,

that the Ledo Road should be developed

for two-way traffic only as far as Myitkyina, and from there to Kunming only

as a one-way road for delivery of vehicles

and artillery to China. The decision was

based on the reasoning that the most

serious shortage in China was motor

transport and the road could be developed for truck deliveries without commitment of more resources, whereas to

develop it as a two-way road all the way

would require trucks and Quartermaster

trucking companies that currently were 59

 (1) On these operations, see Romanus and Sunderland, Time Runs Out in CBI, chs. 3-7. (2) John

Ehrman, Grand Strategy VI, 165-201.

60

 See below, Chapter XXVI, for the problem of

allocating lend-lease to the British for this campaign.
622 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

in short supply for European operations.

Other CBI projects were also adjusted

at the time in the light of the new situation in the theater. The Fort Hertz

pipeline was finally and definitely abandoned; the other pipelines were kept on

the books, the only change being that

the terminal for the second 6-inch line

from Calcutta was to be a submarine

terminal at Chittagong rather than on

the docks at Calcutta.61

As the day drew near when the Ledo

Road would actually be opened, the

whole problem of the CBI line of communication came up for a re-appraisal

in Washington. The re-appraisal was

conducted in the light of a shifting situation in China. In November and December 1944, Maj. Gen. Albert C. Wedemeyer, faced with what he thought

would be a last-ditch defense of Kunming, moved two of the Americantrained Chinese divisions by air from

India into China. At the same time, since

more supplies were coming in over the

Hump than ever before, he was able to

take the first steps toward re-forming and

equipping the existing Chinese Army in

China. Now confident of his ability to

repel the Japanese attack and then take

the offensive, he prepared his BETA plan

for an advance overland to seize first

Fort Bayard, a small port on the Liuchow Peninsula, then Kowloon and Canton, opening a new avenue for shipment

of supplies into China. In March 1945

Wedemeyer's staff presented its requirements for tonnages to be moved into

China to support his operations—77,000

tons each month in April and May,

80,000 in June and July, and 87,000 in

August for the support of 36 Chinese

divisions, plus the Tenth and Fourteenth

Air Forces. It appeared that prospective

airlift tonnages and those on the Ledo

Road under one-way operation from Myitkyina would fall 12,000 to 25,000 tons

short of meeting these goals. There was

the further consideration, as everyone

undoubtedly realized, that these tonnage

requirements would have to be expanded, particularly if Japanese resistance

was stiff. The ASF again proposed that

the Ledo Road be developed further but

the decision again went against it. The

requirements for trucks and operating

personnel to bring the road to a capacity of 60,000 tons monthly—5,759 more

truck-tractors, and 56,500 troops including 137 Quartermaster truck companies

—compared unfavorably with the matériel the Air Transport Command said

it needed to enlarge the airlift to 80,000

tons per month—150 more C-54's plus

reserves, and about 5,000 troops. The

resources committed to the airlift could

also be shifted much more easily to other

tasks, once a port had been opened on

the China coast, than could the fixed

investment in an overland route with

all the paraphernalia it required. Moreover, the removal of the B-29's from

the theater left the east Bengal airfields

open for Hump operations and freed

additional transports for the Hump.62

With the scale of road operations set

far lower than expected, the theater also

61

 (1) Memo, Lutes for ACofS, OPD, 29 Jul 44,

sub: Projs TIG-1A and TIG-1C, Ledo Road Construction and Opn, file OPD 1942-44, Hq ASF.

(2) Diary Entries, 23 Jul, 16 and 18 Aug, 20 Sep 44,

Strat Log Br, Plng Div, ASF. (3) Memo, Handy for

Marshall, 14 Aug. 44, and related papers, ABC 384

Burma (8-25-42). (4) For a more detailed account see Romanus and Sunderland, Stilwell's Command

Problems, pp. 384-87.

62

 Romanus and Sunderland, Time Runs Out in

CBI, chs. II, IV, VI-VIII.
LOGISTICS OF A ONE-FRONT WAR 623

finally decided to stop the 4-inch pipeline at Myitkyina and to divert pipeline

troops and materiel to a line to be run

east of Kunming—a decision that set a

precedent for the 6-inch pipeline from

Chittagong, which was stopped at the

same point. Thus the final version of the

supply line into China differed considerably from that envisaged at QUADRANT

in August 1943 when the basic logistical

plan for the CBI was drawn up. The

119,800 tons of cargo carried into China

by airlift, road, and pipeline in the peak

month of July 1945 nevertheless did

not fall far short of the goal of 129,000

set for January 1946 at QUADRANT. The

difference lay in the fact that the airlift

carried 74,000 tons as opposed to an

original estimate of 20,000, while the

road and pipeline fell far below QUADRANT estimates.63

The situation in early May 1945, however, seemed to justify General Somervell's fears that the airlift would be

insufficient to support the overland advance to the China coast. The Chinese

Army showed in its defense of Chihchiang

that it could stop limited Japanese attacks, but the resources to enable it to

move forward did not seem to be available. The C-54's for the Hump were

delayed; the transport system on the

ELOC improved slowly; the mounting

U.S. overhead in China ate heavily into

the supplies that could be brought over

the Hump for use of the Chinese Army.

The old, dreary prospect once again appeared—a major operation in the CBI

would be indefinitely delayed because

not enough resources were available for

its logistical support. The JCS, however,

in approving Wedemeyer's plans (Operation RASHNESS), had really counted

on Japanese withdrawals to make the

Chinese advance possible, and in this

calculation they were not mistaken. The

Japanese high command, faced with the

necessity of preparing a citadel defense

of the home islands, decided to shorten

its lines in China. In late May Japanese

troops began to withdraw from their recently acquired positions in east China,

opening the way for rapid, virtually unopposed, execution of the first phases of

RASHNESS.64

With these events the issue of further

development of the Ledo Road was

finally and definitely settled. Logistical

planning now centered entirely on early

development of Fort Bayard to support

an advance to Kowloon and Canton. The

target date for the first operation was

set for August 1945, and five fast cargo

ships were loaded in late July with supplies and equipment for shipment into

Fort Bayard. In addition, a schedule was

arranged for five more ships to move

into the port monthly. The target date

for opening Kowloon was set at 1 December 1945, and plans envisaged support

of 120,000 U.S. troops (to be made available by redeployment from Europe) and

39 Chinese divisions through that port

and Canton by 1 June 1946.65 The Japa63 For an account of detailed problems of operations on the Ledo Road and a table showing both

tonnages carried over the Ledo Road and the Hump

air line in 1945 see Larson and Bykofsky, The Transportation Corps: Operations Overseas, pp. 584-91.

64

 Romanus and Sunderland, Time Runs Out in

CBI, ch. VIII.

65 (1) Memo, Somervell for CofS, 7 Jul 45, sub:

Supply Procedures for China Theater, file Supply

Procedures for CT, ASF Plng Div. (2) Memo, Brig

Gen Henry C. Wolfe, Dir Plng Div, for Dep Director, Pls and Opns, ASF, 6 Aug 45, sub: Status of

Supply Support to Projected Opns in China, file 12a

Genl File 1945 (CBI), ASF Plng Div.
624 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

nese decision to surrender, of course,

rendered even this final CBI project

abortive.

On 6 August 1945 an American B-29

dropped one atomic bomb on Hiroshima. On 8 August the Soviet Union

declared war on Japan and its Far Eastern armies began their march into Manchuria. On 9 August another atomic

bomb fell on Nagasaki. On 15 August

a Japanese Government that had long

before concluded that the war was lost

made known its intention to surrender.

On 2 September the surrender was consummated in ceremonies aboard the

U.S.S. Missouri. The war against Japan

thus came to its end in a manner radically different from that which the military planning staffs had envisaged. The

elaborate plans and preparations for invasion of Japan had no ultimate utility.

Events seemingly justified those who,

like Admirals Leahy and King, had long

been skeptical of the necessity for mass

invasion. Yet King, at least, never advocated any diminution in preparations

for a concentrated, massive effort in the

Pacific, whatever line that effort might

take; and to the last he fought for naval

expansion beyond anything the circumstances seemed to require.

The argument can certainly be made

that the Japanese would hardly have surrendered except in the certain knowledge that the United States had the

means, the plans, and the intent to invade, whatever the effects of bombing

(atomic and conventional), blockade,

and Soviet entry into the war. Legitimate

criticism can still be directed at the massive scale on which the final effort against

Japan was planned when forces of the

Army and Navy and of America's allies

are taken into consideration, at the seeming absorption of the military staffs in

preparing for the execution of plans

that had generated a momentum of their

own, and at their failure to take into

consideration in their plans the possibility of Japan's collapse, or to even

begin a downward adjustment of force

requirements until that collapse was a

certainty. The framework of plans for

the final massive assault against Japan

had been started in 1943 and 1944; the

military machine for executing them

was in existence and needed only to be

moved into position. Schooled in the

necessity of preparing for every contingency, fearful that public pressures might

lead to the premature dismantling of the

military machine, and, for the most part,

unaware of the new technological revolution brewing in the laboratories and

on the testing grounds, American military staffs continued to work at completing the structure around the framework

of plans until the very moment that the

mushroom cloud over Hiroshima presented startling evidence of the arrival

of a new age in warfare.
PART SEVEN

FOREIGN AID

CHAPTER XXV

Lend-Lease and the Common Pool

The high rate of American production

during 1943 and 1944 finally made possible the realization of the dream of

1941—a tremendous outpouring of American munitions to aid the Allies. Shipments of ground and air munitions under

lend-lease during each of the middle war

years were more than double those of

1942. The increase in total volume was

achieved without any marked corresponding increase in the proportion of

American production allotted to lendlease (approximately 20 percent), a testimonial to the vastly increased output

of American factories. The British Commonwealth of Nations continued to be

the largest lend-lease beneficiary, receiving around 61 percent of the total military supplies transferred during 1943

and 1944. The USSR received approximately 22 percent, and the remaining

17 percent went to France, China, the

Latin American countries, and others.

Increased production, combined with

more careful planning for its use, measurably reduced the severe competition

for supplies between the U.S. Army and

lend-lease that had been characteristic

of the earlier period. True, shortages of

vital items continued, and these items

had to be carefully rationed in accordance with strategic priorities, but there

was a great change from the situation

in 1941 and 1942 when shortages were

so all-pervasive as to make allocations

largely a question of dividing a deficiency. During the last part of the war the

United States was able to fulfill its role

as the "arsenal of democracy" and at the

same time to support its own military

forces on a scale more lavish than had

ever been known in past wars.

The swelling flow of supplies was accompanied by a tendency toward increasing control over transfers on a unilateral

national basis and more careful scrutiny

of lend-lease requests and allocations.

Lend-lease was conceived, by both the

Congress and the military leaders, as an

instrument to be used solely for winning

the war and not for postwar purposes.

American military policy toward lendlease in the later stages of the war was

grounded on this principle, finding expression in the doctrine that lend-lease

allocations should be limited to quantities needed by Allied powers, over and

above their own production, to fulfill

strategic goals laid down by the CCS.

Application of this policy, particularly

to the British, produced a decrease in

the proportion of American production

going to lend-lease from approximately

20 percent in 1944 to about 13 percent

in the first six months of 1945.1

1

 These percentages are based generally on Crawford and Cook, Statistics: Procurement, 9 Apr 52

draft, and Lend-Lease, 15 Dec 52 draft. It should be

noted, however, that they are approximations. Only

approximate figures are possible for two reasons:

(Continued on next page)
628 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

The Common Pool

As the relationship had developed during 1942, Great Britain was not only

the principal lend-lease beneficiary, but

also a partner in the disposition of the

total war supplies of the two nations. In

January 1942 the President and the

Prime Minister had agreed that the

munitions resources of the two countries should be placed in a common pool

from which allocations should be made

in accordance with strategic need among

all the Allied nations fighting the Axis

Powers. To give effect to the principle, the Munitions Assignments Boards,

Washington (MAB) and London

(LMAB), were established, under the

aegis of the CCS, to allocate U.S. and

British munitions production. The twin

principles of lend-lease and reciprocal

aid served as the legal mechanisms to

make the common pool possible. Around

the boards the British and Americans

succeeded, during 1942, in building a

structure for allocation of munitions on

a combined basis unparalleled in the

history of coalition warfare. Though it

cannot be said that the common pool

was ever a literal reality, there was collaboration and consultation in almost

every phase of the planning and operation of the Anglo-American supply machinery.2

While the combined machinery continued to operate without much change

during the later war years, there was a

definite weakening of the British position vis-à-vis the American, and the concept of the common pool underwent a

gradual modification to the point where,

by the end of the war, it had become

little more than a figure of speech. The

theory of the common pool had been

advanced, and the combined machinery

set up, during a period in early 1942

when British experience in waging war

and British governmental and military

staff organization were far more mature

than American. In that early period, too,

the British war economy was more tightly organized and producing a greater

volume of munitions than was that of

the United States. As the war progressed

the situation gradually changed. American organizations gained experience,

confidence, and efficiency; planning for

effective utilization of the nation's resources in pursuits of war became more

exact and systematic; the American industrial machine began finally to show

its vast productive power, attaining a

height of four times British production

by mid-1943; more and more U.S. troops

completed their training and moved to

theaters of operations. The theaters within the area assigned as the exclusive responsibility of the British—the Middle

East and India—declined in relative importance to the European theater,

where the effort was genuinely combined, and to the Pacific theaters, where

the effort was almost exclusively American. In short, American military and

industrial power began to assert itself,

and with that development its military

directors tended more and more to resist

attempts, real or fancied, by the British

to direct its use.

The British position in relation to

(Continued from preceding page)

(1) dollar value statistics on procurement deliveries

are not strictly comparable to those on lend-lease

shipments and transfers, and (2) the tables do not

show annual breakdowns for theater transfers, which

form a significant portion of the lend-lease total in

the last part of the war. 2

 See Leighton and Coakley, Global Logistics,

1940-45, chs. X, XI, and XVIII.
LEND-LEASE AND THE COMMON POOL 629

the common pool was even at the start

a vulnerable one, since Great Britain

was dependent on U.S. production to a

far greater degree than the United States

was dependent on British. The British

in 1940, while still fighting virtually

alone, made the fateful decision that

in the interests of national survival they

should seek from the United States the

maximum quantities of supplies they

could use without regard to economic

consequences. In giving effect to this

decision in the years following, the British virtually abandoned their export

trade and concentrated upon mobilizing the maximum fighting force from

available manpower, relying heavily on

U.S. and, to a lesser degree, Canadian

production for supplies and equipment.

By the time the Americans entered the

war the British course was, to all intents,

irrevocable. The Japanese attack forced

the British to increase the size of the

Empire forces even further. Until the

end of the war the United Kingdom

maintained a far larger proportion of

its population in the armed forces than

did the United States or any other of

the allies.3

Under these circumstances the British

felt they must have a voice both in the

distribution of U.S. munitions and in the

planning of U.S. production programs,

and sought therefore to give a literal

interpretation to the common pool theory. The Americans, on the other hand,

had little reason to participate in the

formulation of British production plans

or the distribution of British-produced

munitions since they had few requirements for them. Reciprocal aid, though

it grew to substantial proportions, normally took the form of services, subsistence, and construction materials, rather

than finished munitions. Consequently,

the U.S. military staffs at first exerted

little effort to establish the same strong

representation on the London Munitions

Assignments Board that the British had

on the board in Washington, nor did

they concern themselves to any great degree with British production plans. To

the Americans the common pool all too

frequently seemed to mean American

production, and they inevitably looked

askance at a theory that gave the British

a dual role as applicant for aid and

participant in decisions rendered on

their applications.

During 1942 the British lost the first,

and perhaps the most vital, round in

their battle to secure a literal interpretation of the common pool theory. Their

attempt to get a genuine combined production program based on combined requirements as determined by the CCS

and administered by the Combined Production and Resources Board (CPRB),

was unsuccessful. By fall of the year,

when the time came to delineate a definitive munitions program for U.S. industry in 1943, the Americans insisted on

formulating the program on a unilateral basis and the British were not

permitted to participate. The British in

the meantime had secured acceptance of

the principle of strategic necessity as the

criterion for assignments by the MAB;

but in the application of that principle

they met many disappointments, and

they found themselves without any firm

3 (1) H. Duncan Hall, "History of the Second

World War, United Kingdom Civil Series," North

American Supply (London: Her Majesty's Stationery

Office, 1955), pp. 158-60, 473, 490. (2)W. K. Hancock and M. M. Gowing, "History of the Second

World War, United Kingdom Civil Series," British

War Economy (London: His Majesty's Stationery

Office, 1949), pp. 370-71.
630 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

basis on which to plan for the division

of their last reserves of manpower between industry and their armed forces

in 1943. The result was the negotiation

at the end of 1942 of what was, fundamentally, a compromise arrangement—

the Weeks-Somervell Agreement — for

distribution of ground munitions to be

produced in the United States during

the following year. In this agreement the

British reduced their stated requirements in the Army Supply Program by

approximately one-third; in return they

secured a definite promise that these

requirements would be accepted as an

equal obligation with U.S. Army requirements against American production, to

be sacrificed or reduced only in the same

proportion as American requirements.4

As a corollary to the Weeks-Somervell Agreement, ASF officials came up

with their own interpretation of the

common pool, which was called the

residual theory. Each country, they said,

should have exclusive control over its

own production facilities and determine

what and how much these facilities

should produce. Each country should

produce to the fullest extent possible

the war material it needed and have priority on its own productive capacity to

meet its own military needs. The common pool should apply only to residual

or marginal requirements that each

should have the right to place on the

other.5 This residual theory was seldom,

if ever, advanced in discussions with the

British. Yet it found expression in the

actions of nearly all U.S. Army officials

within and without the assignments machinery. It did not in any sense preclude

very generous allocations of American

production to the British; but it did

assert the right of Americans to determine and control these allocations in

the national interest, and thus posed a

definite threat to the British that these

generous allocations would be severely

reduced or cut off at any moment that

the Americans might deem it no longer

in their interest to continue them. It is

not surprising therefore that the British

continued to fight for a literal interpretation of the common pool. Nearly every

time the issue came up, however, the

Americans were in a position to insist

that their own actions in asserting the

superiority of American claims on American production were in consonance with

British practices in relation to British

production from the very inception of

the common pool. They also were able

to insist, as American forces came to

predominate in overseas theaters and

American ideas on strategy gained an

increasing dominance in decisions of the

CCS, that their claims had a better basis

in relation to strategic need, the very

cornerstone on which the common pool

was founded.

In accepting the Weeks-Somervell

Agreement, the Washington Munitions

Assignments Board prevented it from

assuming the status of a protocol by

stipulating that assignments should continue to be made by that body in keeping with strategic directives of the CCS.

And the principles of the Weeks-Somervell Agreement were not renewed when

British requirements for 1944 and 1945

4

 See Leighton and Coakley, Global Logistics,

1940-43, pp. 282-85. 5

 (1) International Division, ASF, Lend-Lease as

of September 30, 1945 (2 vols, text and 10 vols,

documentary supplement), Text, I, 217-18 (hereafter cited as ID, Lend-Lease), MS, OCMH. (2) See

also Study, International Division, ASF, sub: Study

on International Aid for Joint Staff Planners, Log

file, OCMH.
LEND-LEASE AND THE COMMON POOL 631

were presented. The British were soon

being required to give strategic justification for assignments even as in 1942,

despite the acceptance of their requirements in the Army Supply Program.

OPD insisted that these justifications be

based on prospective or actual employments of troops in battle in accordance

with plans approved by the CCS, not

simply on theater deployments as the

British had proposed in 1942.6 Thus the

doctrine of strategic necessity, which the

British had urged as a guide to assignments in 1942 when they had nearly all

their troops deployed in active theaters

and the Americans very few, turned out

to be a two-edged sword. The Americans

could and did wield it against the British in the last part of the war to deny

or reduce assignments of critical items.

There were other facets of the general reassertion of American national

interest in the administration of lendlease. Beginning in late 1943 British requirements were subjected to an increasingly critical scrutiny; greater restrictions were placed on the disposition of

materials made available under lendlease; numerous civilian articles were

ruled ineligible for lend-lease transfer;

other semicivilian articles, long procured

on military priority, were shifted to civilian agencies making it more difficult for

the British to secure them. In short, the

concept of lend-lease as an instrument

of U.S. national policy came gradually

to supplant the concept of lend-lease

as a mechanism for pooling resources.

The former concept had more solid

grounding in the original Lend-Lease

Act of 1941 and in the extensions voted

in 1943 and 1945; the common pool was

only the result of an executive announcement, with no congressional sanction.

The emphasis placed on this tendency

of American leaders to limit the application of the common pool concept must

not be allowed to obscure the important

role that the practical application of

pooling resources played in the victory

over Germany and Japan. The British

were able to carry out their design of

mobilizing an abnormally large proportion of their manpower in the armed

forces while relying on American aid

for much of their equipment. During

1943 British Empire forces received 24.5

percent of their total munitions supplies from U.S. lend-lease and in 1944

27.2 percent. Even in the first half of

1945, when the American desire to curb

lend-lease began to assert itself in earnest, that proportion decreased only to

21 percent.7

On the other side of the ledger, the

British in turn made substantial contributions to American operations in

nearly all theaters of the war. A British

statistician has, in fact, made a case that

British reciprocal aid to the United

States took almost as heavy a proportion

of British resources as American lendlease to Britain took of American resources.8

 In sum, the common pool, as

modified in actual practice, proved a

successful mechanism for its original

purpose—winning the war against the

Axis. Its reinterpretation in the last years

of the war in terms of American national

6 See, for example, Memo, Gen Tansey, Log Gp,

OPD, for Chmn MAC(G), 14 Apr 43, sub: Special

Issue of Equipment to U.K. in Support of a Special

Opn, Tab G, 89th mtg MAC(G), 15 Apr 43.

7

 Hall, North American Supply, p. 428. 8

 Ibid., pp. 432-33.
632 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

interest was an almost inevitable corollary of the vast expansion of American

military power vis-à-vis British military

power that had taken place since 1942.

Changes in Lend-Lease Administration

and Procedures, 1943-45

The combined machinery for administration of military lend-lease and the

common pool of munitions that had taken shape in Washington during 1942

centered around the MAB, which was

responsible to the CCS, and its three

committees, Ground (MAC (G)), Air

(MAC (A)), and Navy (MAC (N)),

which also were combined in structure

but operated within the War and Navy

Departments. This machinery exercised

complete responsibility for allocation of

all finished munitions of American production. For requirements there were

also two combined bodies, the International Supply Committee with responsibility for decisions on lend-lease requirements for ground equipment, and the

Joint Aircraft Committee with similar

responsibility for air equipment. The

MAB had also been assigned the responsibility for advising the CCS on the

relations of requirements programs to

approved strategy. The Combined Production and Resources Board, a civilian

board, was theoretically responsible for

combining the American and British

production programs into an integrated

whole adjusted to the strategic requirements of the war as indicated by the

CCS and all relevant production factors.

In reality, after the autumn of 1942

neither the MAB nor the CPRB exercised much influence on the American

military requirements program, which

became almost exclusively the responsibility of the JCS and the respective service departments. And the role of the

International Supply Committee had already been limited almost solely to consideration of various lend-lease requirements for noncommon items and for

spot demands. The actual determination

of the Army Supply Program, including

those parts devoted to lend-lease, fell to

agencies of the ASF. Within the ASF

the International Division exercised the

primary responsibility for lend-lease

functions, providing the chairman and

secretariat for the MAC (G), liaison

with all lend-lease governments, and the

necessary staff machinery for integrating lend-lease requirements with those

of the U.S. Army. While the ASF handled the administrative side of lendlease, OPD played the most important

role in determining assignments policy

on the American side.9

Such changes as were made in this

machinery during the period 1943-45

were directed either toward increasing

administrative efficiency or toward reducing the degree of British influence

in the disposition of American-made

munitions. In early 1943 the International Supply Committee was discontinued and the power of decision on

production of noncommon items delegated to the International Division, ASF.

The British, while they retained membership on some informal subcommittees

in the technical services to which each

specific request for production of a noncommon item was referred, no longer

were allowed a voice in the final decision. Appeals by any foreign government

9

 See Leighton and Coakley, Global Logistics,

1940-43, pp. 247-69.
LEND-LEASE AND THE COMMON POOL 633

under the new procedure could no longer be taken to the MAB, but went to

the Commanding General, ASF. The

British lodged no official protest against

this change, evidently because they had

derived little benefit from their membership on the International Supply

Committee during 1942 and found it

just as easy to negotiate directly with

the International Division.10

A similar change was effected in the

assignments machinery in the summer

of 1943 when the combined subcommittees of the Munitions Assignments Committee (Ground) were replaced by War

Department conference groups without

British representation. The combined

subcommittees had mushroomed until

by early 1943 they were in operation

for almost every type of equipment for

which MAC (G) was responsible. Reporting to the main committee through

an assignments subcommittee, they performed almost all the routine work of

preparing assignments schedules. When,

in early June 1943, Lt. Gen. George N.

Macready, head of the British Army staff

in Washington and British Army member of the MAB, complained of the

"bickering" that went on at the subcommittee level and the lack of sufficient

knowledge of strategic and operational

plans among subcommittee members to

enable them to make intelligent assignments, General Somervell and Brig. Gen.

Boykin C. Wright, chief of the International Division, seized the opportunity

to go one step further and eliminate

British representation on the subcommittees entirely. The Americans did not

have representation on the similar subcommittees in London, where most assignments were handled as a routine

matter. On 1 July 1943, by unilateral

decision, General Wright as chairman

of the MAC (G) placed a new system

of determining assignments in effect.

The British and other applicants would

submit monthly bids in writing to the

International Division, which would

then prepare assignments schedules

based on the recommendations of War

Department conference groups. The

British were to be allowed to have observers at the meetings of these groups

but no official representation. The British, or the Liaison Branch of the International Division, which acted for other

countries, were to indicate at an agenda

conference held two days before each

meeting of MAC (G) the adjustments

in decisions made by the conference

groups or the International Division that

they wanted considered in the full meetings of the ground committee. The combined subcommittees on amphibious

vehicles, chemical warfare supplies, diesel engines, quartermaster stores, signal

equipment, tanks, trucks, and explosives were accordingly replaced by War

Department conference groups. The

medical and engineer common stockpile

committees and the committee on transportation stores were continued on a

combined basis, but in November 1944

the engineer committee was also replaced

10 (1) Memo, Col John B. Franks for OQMC, 2

Feb 43, sub: Discontinuance of Regular Mtgs of

ISC, ID 337, Confs, II. (2) Memo, Col George W.

Smythe, ID, tot CsTechSvcs, 13 Feb 43, sub: Procedure for Processing Lend-Lease Reqmts, LendLease, Doc Suppl, V. (3) Duncan H. Hall and C. C.

Wrigley, "History of the Second World War, United

Kingdom Civil Series," Studies in Overseas Supply

(London: Her Majesty's Stationery Office, 1956) pp.

153-54.
634 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

by a War Department conference group

on engineer items.11

Though "bickering ... at the subcommittee level" was advanced as the reason

for the change, the real motive was somewhat different, as General Wright confidentially noted:

The lessening of bickering and friction

is of course a minor consideration. There

is relatively little and that could be elim- inated without too much trouble. The real

goals are to remove the hypocrisy of having

subcommittees handling all sorts of minu- tiae where on the surface we and the U.K. are supposed to have equal voices (of

course, in the final analysis, we don't) and

to restore the concept that our production

and our facilities are our own until we

actually dispose of finished munitions and

not a joint U.K. and U.S. undertaking; to

have it understood that the reference to a

"common pool" is not to be taken literally

but instead is merely a metaphor. . . .

The result (it is hoped) would be that the

U.S. would give wisely and even very lib- erally out of its own production and that

in the few cases where there would be

dissents the resolution of the disagreement

would be made on a strategy or high policy level.12

British protests that the situation in

Washington was not comparable to that

in London, where there was little American demand for most articles of British

production, consequently fell on deaf

ears.

Procedures for repossession of material

assigned were also changed in the direction of vesting greater administrative

control in ASF agencies. The rule in

effect until mid-1943 provided that all

ground munitions assigned to foreign

governments and not shipped within 45

days should be reported to the MAB

through the MAC (G) for possible repossession by the United States or for

reassignment. Though leniently applied,

pressure under the rule did help keep

the lend-lease pipeline clear, and the

reports provided a guide for making

assignments in the light of proven ability to ship. The MAB decided in June

1943 that operation of the rule could be

safely delegated to the ground committee, reserving the right to hear appeals

when MAC (G) could not reach unanimous agreement. In early September

1943 the MAC(G), acting on the recommendation of its International Division

secretariat, revamped the procedures.

For material en route to and at port the

repossession date was set at 60 days, but

repossession was to be subject as before

to specific decisions by MAC (G) and

appeal to the MAB. For material remaining under control of the technical

services in depots, repossession was to be

permissible with the consent of the beneficiary government after 45 days, and

was to become automatic and mandatory after 75 days. The new procedures

made the formal rules of repossession

less stringent, recognizing that the 45-

day period originally set was too short,

but at the same time made repossession

more a matter of routine administration.

Of perhaps greater significance, the procedural changes were accompanied by

11

 (1) Ltr, Gen Macready to Gen Somervell, 3

Jun 43. (2) Ltr, Somervell to Macready, 3 Jun 43;

Memo, Gen Wright for Comdr D. C. King, 25

Jun 43, sub: Change in Assignments. (3) Ltr, Gen

Macready to Gen Somervell, 8 Jun 43. (4) Ltr, Somervell to Macready, 14 Jun 43. All in ID 334 MAB, I.

(5) Min 2184, 102d mtg, MAC(G), 15 Jul 43; min

3945, 165th mtg, MAC(G), 2 Nov 44. (6) Memo, Gen

Maxwell, G-4, for Chmn, MAC(G), 30 Mar 44, sub:

Engineers Common Stockpile Procedure, Director

Materiel File MAB in Washington. (7) ID, LendLease, Text, I, 261.

12 Memo, Gen Wright for Dir Materiel, ASF,

2 Jun 43, ID 334 MAB, I.
LEND-LEASE AND THE COMMON POOL 635

a gradual shift in policy whereby

MAC (G) normally refused to make new

assignments to replace material repossessed.13

At the higher levels, in the realms of

JCS, CCS, and MAB action, a similar

tendency developed toward substituting

joint for combined decisions. After early

1943 the MAB ceased to play a significant role in the determination of requirements, exercising the requirements

function set out in its charter only by

maintaining statistical balance sheets of

U.S. and British requirements and production as a guide to adjustments.14

 Effective control over this most important

aspect of the logistical process, as far as

it pertained to American production,

passed to the agencies serving the JCS.

There was a corresponding tendency for

JCS agencies to also exercise more and

more influence over assignments policy,

both because of the increasing predominance of American forces in overseas theaters and because of greater cohesion in

the JCS organization itself after the realignments of 1943. One of the results

of the realignments was the chartering

of an organization embracing the purely

American side of the MAB, first known

as the U.S. Representatives, MAB, and

later renamed the Joint Munitions Allocation Committee (JMAC). The

JMAC was given the primary function

of allocating munitions between the U.S.

Army and Navy, but it also was able to

give greater unity and cohesiveness to

the actions of American representatives

on the MAB and its committees. Three

subcommittees of the JMAC were

formed for ground, air, and Navy materials, respectively, so that the final organization paralleled that of the combined munitions assignments machinery.

Agreements reached within the JMAC

before meetings of the combined board

enabled the Americans to present a solid

front on issues where there was conflict

with the British.15

The formation of the JMAC was less

important than the general extension

of the cognizance of the JCS over logistical matters. This cognizance included

an increasing number of questions involving lend-lease policy, particularly as

it affected nations other than those of the

British Commonwealth, such as China,

France, and the independent nations

of the Middle East. In determining lendlease policy, the Joint Logistics Committee usually took the lead, while the

JMAC served as a mechanism for enforcing the policy after its approval by

the JCS. Once a policy had been determined within the JCS committees it

was very difficult for the British, in combined meetings of the CCS or MAB, to

get it changed.

Purely within the Army itself, in the

realignment of general staff functions in

13

 (1) Memo, Gen Wright for CG ASF, 29 Jun 43,

sub: Items for Consideration 73d Mtg MAB, in ID

file of MBW Min, Book IV. (2) Min 2a, 73d mtg

MAB, 30 Jun 43. (3) Memo, Secy for Chmn, MAC(G),

3 Sep 43, sub: 45 Day Rpt, Gen Tab 2, Agenda 110th

mtg MAC(G), 9 Sep 43. (4) Min 2340, 110th mtg

MAC(G), 9 Sep 43. (5) Hq, ASF, Cir 43, 9 Feb 44.

(6) ID, Lend-Lease, Text, I, 649-56.

14 Statistics on some major item or group were

normally presented by Isadore Lubin, MAB statistician, at each meeting of the board.

15

 (1) On the realignments in the JCS, see above,

Chapter IV. (2) JCS 202/20/D, 11 May 43, title: Charter U.S. Reps MAB. (3) Memo, Gen Burns for JCS,

20 Aug 43, and related papers in Director Materiel

File MAB in Washington. (4) JCS 450/8/D, 10 Nov

43, title: Charter JMAC. (5) ID, Lend-Lease, Text,

I, 210-13.
636 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

the fall of 1943 to give G-4 a more important place, a G-4 representative was

added on both the MAB and the JMAC,

and G-4 replaced OPD on the ground

committee. G-4 as a rule took a more

critical attitude toward lend-lease allocations than either the ASF or OPD had

formerly done, insisting that U.S. Army

requirements should have a clear first

priority. Shortly after gaining its place

on MAC (G), G-4 announced its intention of establishing policies for the

ground committee to follow. The question might well have been raised whether such policies could be established unilaterally, but the British evidently never

knew of the directive. There was always

a question, never resolved, as to whether

MAC (G) was in fact an agency of the

War Department or responsible solely to

the Munitions Assignments Board. G-4's

claim to the right to dictate policies for

the ground committee evidently was

based on the former theory; it was another of those straws in the wind that

pointed up the growing American desire

to exercise complete control over disposition of American equipment without

British participation.16 Toward the end

of the war General Tansey of OPD

summed it up succinctly: ". . . if we ever

have lend-lease again there should be

no combined assignment boards. Assignments should be made by a purely American agency whose decision is final."17

In the realm of War Department relations with civilian agencies responsible

for lend-lease, the pattern established in

1942 continued to prevail. Funds for

procurement of military articles, whether for the U.S. Army or for lend-lease,

continued to be appropriated in a lump

sum, thus permitting the MAB to make

allocations in accordance with strategic

considerations. Funds for civilian lendlease were appropriated separately. On

the civilian side, an important change

took place in September 1943 with consolidation of the offices and functions of

the Office of Lend-Lease Administration

(OLLA), the Office of Economic Warfare, and the Office of Foreign Relief and

Rehabilitation Operations into the Foreign Economic Administration (FEA)

with Leo Crowley as director.18 The

change made little difference in the

Army's relation with the civilian organization in handling lend-lease. FEA

merely inherited, with some broadening

of their scope, the powers formerly exercised by OLLA and was responsible for

maintaining over-all lend-lease accounts,

establishing the terms and conditions

under which lend-lease was rendered,

and determining policy outside the

strategic sphere. Similarly, the War Shipping Administration, through its forwarding corporations, continued to handle lend-lease shipments of military as

well as civilian material except for those

shipments specifically consigned, as were

those for France and China, to the Amer16 (1) Memo, Gen Handy, OPD, for CG ASF, 23

Dec 43, sub: OPD Representation at MAC(G) Mtgs,

OCS 334 MAB. (2) Memo, ACofS, G-4, for Chmn,

MAC(G), 11 Jan 44, sub: Sup Div, WDGS Participation in Munitions Assignment Activities, Director

Materiel File MAB in Washington. (3) At the MAB

meeting, 4 July 1945, Admiral Joseph M. Reeves

stated the contrary view that personnel of the committees were merely detailed by the War and Navy

Departments and that the MAB had sole authority

over them as far as assignments were concerned.

17

 Memo, prepared by Gen Tansey, sub: Allocation

of Munitions for Logistic Support of Global Strategy,

no date, ABC 400 (2-17-42), Sec 6. 18

 Executive Order 9380, Foreign Economic Administration, 25 Sep 43.
LEND-LEASE AND THE COMMON POOL 637

ican theater commander for delivery in

his theater.

British Requirements and

Assignments, 1943-44

The flow of American supplies to

Britain during 1943 and the first half of

1944, as a British historian has noted,

"ran at its highest levels," but "so

smoothly that there were relatively few

policy issues or serious difficulties."19

The main policy issues had been settled

during 1942, and by early 1943 the whole

system of handling lend-lease for the

British had taken relatively final form.

British requirements were submitted to

the International Division for inclusion

in the Army Supply Program at the time

of each semiannual revision (in July

and December). U.S. Army standard

items and some of the larger categories

of nonstandard British-type items such

as the .303-caliber rifle and ammunition

were included in Section I of the Army

Supply Program; requirements for most

other nonstandard items and for various

miscellaneous supplies such as clothing,

tank components, and certain signal and

engineer stores were included in Section

III (formerly Section VI). The British

were also allotted a small pool of raw

materials for production of spot items,

interim demands, and emergency needs.

These requirements programs formed

the blueprint for military aid to the

British; the rate of assignments to fulfill them was determined by the

MAC(G) and MAB at their weekly

meetings.

It would be well here to give a brief

description of the method by which the

British arrived at their military requirements on the United States. The procedure entailed, first, the determination

of a gross requirement (for Empire and

Commonwealth forces) for each article,

and second, the net deficit above Empire

production that would have to come

from the United States. The British, to

begin with, drew up an order of battle

based on forces required to fulfill British Army commitments under current

strategic plans. This table showed the

forces expected to be deployed progressively in each theater over the ensuing

two years and the estimated activity of

these forces by time period. Requirements were then calculated including

four main components: (1) initial

equipment including all ammunition carried by combat organizations; (2) General Staff Reserve, and emergency operational reserve in each theater of war to

cover the possible severance of communication lines or unexpected operational requirements; (3) a transit or

pipeline commitment to cover the quantity of stores which must be held over

and above the General Staff Reserve to

avoid depletion as a result of time taken

to replace wastage and loss; (4) maintenance to replace wastage and loss. The

last three factors varied from theater to

theater and from time to time in accordance with the classification of activity in

each area as "intense," "normal," or

"quiet." To the theater troop requirements many others had to be added:

training needs, Admiralty and RAF requirements for Army stores, demands

for home defense or from the Dominions and India for equipping forces other than those in theaters of war, a repair

pool for certain types of equipment, a

"War Office Reserve" based on unit 19

 Hall, North American Supply, p. 394.
638 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

equipment for a mixed force of six divisions to meet unpredictable demands.

Then, worth special mention, were the

requirements for materials that in U.S.

Army terminology had come to be

known as operational projects and the

British called theater stores, which embraced needs that did not depend upon

size and type of forces, but on special

considerations of geography, climate, or

terrain. Infinitely the most difficult of

all to compute, they were based on special strategic forecasts, and might include

as well as strictly military materials, some

that had definite civilian utility. The

gross Empire requirements for each article were then calculated in London, and

the deficit that could not be met from

Empire production was then forwarded

to Washington as the basis for the part

of the Army Supply Program covering

lend-lease to the British.20

The British did not have quite the

same respect for the "scientific" calculation of requirements that the Americans

at least professed to have, and regarded

the end result as merely an educated

guess. It is at least possible that American insistence that the British determine their requirements far in advance

was also conditioned less by their confidence in anybody's ability to do so

than by their desire to keep production

plans stable and not allow them to be

continually disrupted by British demands for bits and pieces. The fact that

in the pre-Pearl Harbor period the British had come to rely on American production to meet all sorts of emergency

demands led them after Pearl Harbor

to expect from American production a

flexibility they could not obtain from

their own.21 Much of Somervell's fight

during 1942 to reduce British lend-lease

to a sort of regular schedule was motivated by his desire to reverse that situation.

For the most part, the Weeks-Somervell Agreement represented a satisfactory compromise on this as well as other

issues. Its net effect was more to establish the over-all limits of the British

program for 1943 than to spell out in

their entirety the exact requirements to

be included. Within these over-all limits, the British were permitted as much

flexibility as possible in ordering equipment to meet shifting demands. This

flexibility was seldom as great, however,

as that allowed the U.S. Army. Each item

change, in the same way as the initial

determination of the requirements to be

included in the Army Supply Program,

became the subject of special negotiation, the philosophy of the ASF being

that the British request should be accommodated only if its fulfillment would

not unduly disrupt the regularly scheduled production program. Similarly, in

the assignments process, the accepted

British requirement was usually treated

as the upper limit on allocations, to be

waived only in case of unusual operational urgency. Exceptional items, like

DUKW's, where supply was far short of

the need, were assigned entirely on the

basis of operational priorities without

much regard for accepted requirements,

but the number of exceptions decreased

20 Memorandum on the Calculation of British as production of most items rapidly

Army Requirements on North America, Incl to

Memo, Col Joseph W. Boone for Maj Robert C.

Woods thru Maj Gen James K. Crain, 3 Nov 43,

ID 400.312 Reqmts U.K. II.

21 For a lucid discussion of the British viewpoint

see Hall and Wrigley, Studies in Overseas Supply,

pp. 166-69.
LEND-LEASE AND THE COMMON POOL 639

caught up with demand. There was, thus,

in the handling of military lend-lease

for the British, flexibility within certain

limits, which reflected the necessity for

both long-range production plans and

short-range adjustments in distribution.

In the Weeks-Somervell Agreement itself only a limited number of major

items of equipment were specifically listed (dollar value $1.9 billion). Other

British requirements remained to be

considered in detail; these the Americans

had promised to make "every effort" to

accept. General Clay understood this to

mean that the additional requirements

would still be limited in dollar value to

those included in the September 1942

revision of the ASP ($2.1 billion), since

to permit any expansion would inflate

the program beyond the agreed limits of

American productive capacity. The British, quite in contrast, asked for a vastly

expanded program of supporting and

accessory equipment and of equipment

for special needs, such as light antiaircraft cannon. As prospects brightened

for early satisfaction of the British

Army's basic needs for weapons and ammunition—the items covered in the main

agreement—peripheral demands for such

things as mechanical transport, signal,

and engineer equipment, increased. The

British presented requirements for 217,-

ooo trucks for 1943, for instance, most

of them of the heavy type they believed

more economical of operation. In the end,

though the ASF made some concessions,

the additional British requirements were

generally held within the limits of the

dollar value total in the September program. Truck requirements were cut in

half, since experience had proven that

the British could hardly ship more than

that number; signal needs were also severely curtailed because of obvious production limitations; the U.S. Navy's

mounting needs for Oerlikon light antiaircraft cannon precluded meeting British requests for this item for ground

army use.22

In mid-1943 the British renewed their

effort to get more of their truck requirements accepted in the ASP, and also

asked for increases in the provision of

heavy artillery, pistols, binoculars, Universal carriers, engines, and miscellaneous engineer equipment. The ASF refused most of these demands on the

ground that they could not be accommodated within the existing limits of

the American munitions program. Only

in the case of pistols, jeeps, and engines

was any sizable augmentation agreed to.

On the same occasion, the British presented their 1944 requirements program

for the first time, in dollar value about

two-thirds of the program for 1943.

Again the ASF made reductions in the

requests for trucks and signal equipment

as well as in miscellaneous categories in

the light of prospective production capacities.23

22 (1) Memo, Gen Wood, Dir Reqmts Div SOS, for

Dir ID, no date, sub: Revision of Sec VI, ASP, for Jan

43. (2) Ltr, Gen Macready to Gen Clay, 15 Jan 43.

(3) Ltr, Clay to Macready, 17 Jan 43. All in ID

400.192 ASP, I. (4) Hall and Wrigley, Studies in

Overseas Supply, pp. 190-99. (5) ID, Lend-Lease,

Text, II, 957-61.

23 (1)Memo, British Reps, ISC, for Dir ID, 1 Jun

43, sub: ASP, ID 400.312 U.K. I. (2) Memo, Col

George Olmstead for Dir ID, 28 Jun 43, sub: U.K.

Requested Changes 1943, ASP, ID 400.192 ASP,

III. (3) Ltr, Somervell to Venning, 5 Jul 43, with related papers in Hq ASF file British. (4) Ltrs, Venning to Somervell, 16 Jul 43, and Clay to Venning, 26 Jul 43, ID 400.192 ASP, IV. (5) Memo,

British Reps, ISC, for Dir ID, 2 Sep 43, sub: Provision for U.K. ASP I 1943-44, ID 400.312 Reqmts

U.K., I. (6) ID, Lend Lease, Text, II, 961-67.
640 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

In assignments, according to British

calculations, their accepted requirements

program was 86 percent fulfilled during

1943, a performance that compares quite

favorably with that of the War Department in meeting the Third Soviet Protocol and not far short of that of American industry in meeting the U.S. Army's

own requirements as stated at the time

of the negotiation of the Weeks-Somervell Agreement. And, at least in theory,

part of the materiel for French rearmament came out of the British share in

the ASP. In sum, then, the Weeks-Somervell Agreement was substantially fulfilled, as British requirements in 1943

were met in about the same proportion

as American.24

No similar agreement was negotiated

for 1944 and before long the British

were to feel the effects of its absence. Until the last part of 1943 negotiations most

often simply involved the issue of whether the United States could produce items

requested by the British. Little justification of end-use was required in the production planning stage; this was normally reserved for the time when bids were

placed before the MAB. Late in 1943,

however, under the whiplash of criticism

by the McCoy Board, the Richards Committee, and various members of Congress that there was virtually no screening of lend-lease requirements, the ASF

moved to require a definite statement

from the British as to the use to which

they intended to put equipment even

before a production requirement was

accepted in the 1944 program.25 Maj.

Robert C. Woods of the International

Division was dispatched on a special mission to London in November 1943, and

the British sent a delegation of War

Office supply officials to Washington to

assist in developing detailed justification

for their 1944 program.

In general, in the course of these negotiations, American officers found little

to criticize in the calculation of British

Army requirements. Major Woods

found those transmitted to Washington

"as realistic as the existing means of

calculation and the human element of

fallibility will permit."26 Random studies of individual items, made early in

1944, were "notably unproductive of any

substantiation that the U.K. replacement

requirements are materially higher than

our own. . . ."27 The net result of the

tighter screening undertaken in connection with the British presentation of

1944 lend-lease requirements in December 1943 was not so much to reduce

them as to establish for the Richards

Committee that screening did take place.

Tighter screening, nevertheless, soon

brought into focus one of the major

issues of requirements policy—the inclusion of British "civilian" requirements

in the Army Supply Program for procurement on military priority. In Britain there was no such fine distinction

between military and civilian require24

 (1) Hall and Wrigley, Studies in Overseas

Supply, pp. 196-97. (2) On the Soviet Protocols see

below, Chapter XXVII. (3) On the extent of the U.S.

Army's own requirements were met, see above,

Chapter V.

25 For discussion of the McCoy Board and Richards

Committee, see above, Chapter V. 26

 (1) Memo, Maj Woods for Dir ID, 13 Nov 43,

sub: Interim Rpt on British Reqmts. (2) Memo,

Woods, sub: Confs and Discussions with Regard to

Determination of U.K. Reqmts for Current Review

of ASP, 4-12 Nov 43. (3) Memo, Gen Lutes for Gen

Styer, 12 Nov 43. (2) and (3) in ID 400.192 ASP, V. 27

 Memo, Col Olmstead for Gen Wright, 23 Jan

44, sub: Your Memo 14 Jan . . . Regarding U.S.-U.K.

Relationships, ID 008 Lend-Lease, XII.
LEND-LEASE AND THE COMMON POOL 641

ments as was made in the United States.

The British frequently lumped together

military requirements for such items as

railroad rolling stock, communications

equipment, tractors, and engines with

requirements for civilian use closely related to military activity. Without doubt

considerable justification existed for this

practice, since the British war economy

was as tightly organized as it was humanly possible to make it and civilian

consumption had been cut to far lower

levels than in the United States. The

British could argue that tractors for

agricultural use in Great Britain were

as vital a military requirement as tractors for use of Montgomery's army on

the Continent. But the U.S. War Department held that civilian requirements

for Britain must have no higher production priority than similar requirements

in the United States; early in 1944 the

International Division informed the

British that all material designed for

civilian end-use must be eliminated

from the Army Supply Program and

that requests for such material must be

processed separately through the Foreign

Economic Administration. While the

British obtained a decision at a higher

level restricting the rule to relatively

few items, it still had some effect. For

instance, of 50,000 engines requested by

the British as military lend-lease, only

8,000 were accepted as designed for military end-use; the rest were shifted to

FEA for procurement on a much lower

priority.28

By this sort of screening an initial

British program for ground equipment

totaling $2.75 billion in dollar value

was reduced to $2.5 billion by the time

of the semiannual revision of the ASP

in mid-1944. The program for 1945,

presented at that time, which was based

on continuation of a two-front war and

totaled $2.1 billion in value, was subjected to an even more intense screening

to eliminate civilian requirements and

those having postwar implications.29

Tighter screening was but one evidence of the generally stricter attitude

toward British lend-lease that revealed

itself in American military circles as the

year 1944 wore on. Increasingly, the

residual theory of the common pool

came into its own. The principles of

the Weeks-Somervell Agreement were

soon repudiated. "The fact that a particular Allied requirement has been incorporated into the Army or Navy Supply Program," General Tansey instructed

OPD officers concerned with assignments, "does not dictate its assignment

to that Ally."30 Instead, Tansey directed,

each Allied bid must be intensely scrutinized to see that it was justified on a

strategic basis; data on stock position

should be required and no Allied army

allowed to pile up reserves in excess of

those of the U.S. Army; no assignments

must be permitted to establish postwar

28 (1) Ltr, Col Boone to Mr. C. W. Reid, British

Supply Council in North America, 1 Apr 44, ID file

Policy—Reqmts and Assignments. (2) ID, Lend-Lease,

Text, I, 248-49; 972-74. (3) Hall and Wrigley, Studies

in Overseas Supply, pp. 143-45.

29 (1) ID, Lend-Lease, Text, II, 972. (2) The acceptance of this program was highly tentative because of

the uncertainty of the duration of the war with Germany. Separate calculations were undertaken at the

same time for a special program designed for a onefront war against Japan. See below, ch. XXVI. 30

 Memo, Gen Tansey, 2 Jan 45, ABC 400 (2-17-42)

Sec 6. The cover note reads: "These were produced

by Gen Tansey ... as part of his education scheme

to insure against the U.S. equipping the postwar

armies of Europe."
642 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

stockpiles or for "quasi-military or nonmilitary use."

The effects of the stricter attitude

began to show in assignments to the

British in the last half of 1944. During

the first half of the year 45 percent of

the total of British requirements accepted in the ASP were assigned, but

during the second half only 30 percent,

making a total of 75 percent for the

year 1944 as opposed to 86 percent in

1943. Assignments during the last quarter made up only 15 percent of the total

for the year.31 To the British it often

seemed that denial of assignments was

based on the all-sufficient finding that

U.S. Army needs would absorb all the

available supply. On 21 December 1944

Brigadier J. M. Godfrey, British member of MAC (G), protested vigorously

against what seemed to be the policy

on the U.S. side to "fill all U.S. Army

requirements before giving consideration to outside bidders," in contravention of the principles of the common

pool.32 Godfrey got little satisfaction,

the chairman of MAC (G) (then Maj.

Gen. Glen E. Edgerton) insisting that

final assignments decisions were based

on "relative operational priorities."33

This was perhaps literally true, but the

British had a legitimate complaint that

"relative operational priorities" were

being given a distinctly American twist.

In several cases where the British appealed the decisions of the conference

groups and of MAC (G) to the MAB

they met a far colder reception than

they had in the early days of the war.

A brief history of the allocation of

medium tanks will serve to illustrate

the trends in assignments policy during

1943 and 1944. The British allocation

of 10,000 medium tanks in the WeeksSomervell Agreement, accepted only

over their violent protests, was raised

to 12,000 in February 1943 as a result

of cancellation by the Russians of their

major allotments under the Second Protocol. General Somervell at the time

proposed to go even further. He would

have the British abandon their own

plans for developing and producing

their new Cromwell tank and place virtually their entire reliance for medium

tanks on the United States, arguing that

previous British models had been decidedly inferior mechanically to the

American Sherman (M-4 series) tank,

and that cancellation of tank production in Britain would relieve the Americans of furnishing miscellaneous components for the program and free tank

production facilities in the United Kingdom to produce locomotives, heavy

trucks, and other heavy machinery for

which the British were placing sizable

demands on the United States. Although

technical problems and difficult production adjustments were involved, it does

not appear that they weighed so heavily

in the British rejection of Somervell's

offer as did the feeling of the Prime

Minister that an independent great

power could not be completely dependent upon outside sources for so important an item as tanks. The British did

cut back the scope of their tank program, but they continued to work on

31

 (1) Hall and Wrigley, Studies in Overseas Supply, pp. 196-97. (2) ASF compilations of assignments

of major items of ground equipment to the United

Kingdom in 1944 show: 1st quarter, $530 million;

2d quarter, $471 million; 3d quarter, $475 million;

4th quarter, $260 million. See ASF Monthly Progress

Reports, sec. 2-G, 30 Apr 44, 31 Jul 44, 31 Oct 44,

31 Dec 44. 32

 Min 4108, 172d mtg MAC(G), 21 Dec 44. 33

 Ibid.
LEND-LEASE AND THE COMMON POOL 643

development of the Cromwell and to

require some components from the

United States.34

American medium tank production

during 1943 totaled 21,250. Of this total

the British were assigned 10,464, slightly

less than their stated requirements but

sufficient to meet all their needs and

enable them to establish a sizable reserve. In September 1943 they set their

requirement for the following year at

8,500, 4,000 of them to mount the new

high velocity 76-mm. gun instead of the

75-mm. Meanwhile, the U.S. Army badly

underestimated its own need for medium tanks and set its 1944 requirements

at hardly a third of the British.35

As the European war dragged on,

tank losses ran higher than the Americans had anticipated. The Sherman's

75-mm. gun and armor proved no match

for the heavier German Tiger with its

88-mm. gun. The U.S. Army found itself

forced to cut heavily into the quantities

originally earmarked in the ASP for the

British. In September and October 1944

medium tank assignments to the British

were cut back severely; in November

and December they were suspended entirely. During the Battle of the Bulge,

Lt. Gen. Omar N. Bradley's forces borrowed tanks from the British in the

field. There could be little question of

the superiority of the American claim

since British tank reserves were far

higher, and the British at first were

co-operative. The British tank reserves

were seriously affected, however, when,

of the 4,000 tanks with the 76-mm. gun

requested, the Americans delivered only

1,330. In order to provide themselves

with tanks capable of meeting the Tiger

on something like equal terms, the British pushed production of the Cromwell

and began a reconversion program replacing the 75-mm. gun with a 17-

pounder on a limited number of Shermans. For this latter purpose they made

a determined bid for 324 Shermans from

the United States in December 1944,

arguing that although they could accept

cutbacks they could not afford to have

their assignments discontinued entirely.

The Americans, pointing to the need

for the U.S. Army in Europe—now twice

the size of the British Army there but

far inferior in tank reserves—and to requirements for an expanded armored

training center and their own tank rebuilding program, insisted they could

make no assignments to the British during the whole first quarter of 1945. Figures were produced showing that even

under this dispensation, the worldwide

American tank position in April 1945

would still be worse than that of the

British. The issue created the first really

heated controversy in the MAB since

1942, and the ailing Harry Hopkins was

finally called in in an effort to settle it.

In the end the British got a small concession—90 new M-4 tanks from January

production for their reconversion program in exchange for 90 used Shermans

to be turned over to ETOUSA—but the

real result was to make it clear to the

34

 (1) Ltr, Somervell to Venning, 22 Mar 43. (2)

Ltrs, Venning to Somervell, 23 Mar, 17 and 22 Apr,

and 3 Aug 43. (3) Ltr, Somervell to Venning, 5 Aug

43. (4) Memo, Brig Gen A. R. Glancy, DCOrd, for

Maj Gen Thomas J. Hayes, Chief, Production Div,

OCOrd, 5 Apr 43. All in ID 470.8 U.K. I. (5) Memo,

Averell Harriman for Gen Clay, 18 Jun 43, ID

400.312 Reqmts U.K., I. (6) Churchill, Hinge of Fate,

pp. 953-54. (7) Hall and Wrigley, Studies in Overseas Supply, pp. 18-19 35

 (1) Crawford and Cook, Statistics: Procurement,

Table PR-7. (2) ASF Monthly Progress Rpt, 31 Dec

43, sec. 2-B. (3) Ltr, Venning to Styer, 7 Sep 43, ID

470.8 U.K., I.
644 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

British that they could no longer count

on the United States for more than

token quantities of medium tanks.36

U.S. production of medium tanks during 1944 totaled only 13,468. Of these

the British were assigned 5,031, a shortfall of more than 3,000 under their ASP

requirement; the Soviet Union got 2,197

under the Third and Fourth Protocols;

79 were assigned to other nations, and

the rest went to the U.S. Army. While

these figures in themselves show that the

majority of medium tanks were still

going to lend-lease, only the U.S. Army

received substantially greater quantities

than its originally stated requirements.

British requirements for 1945 accepted

in the ASP for approximately 4,000

Sherman tanks mounting either the 76-

mm. gun or the 105-mm. howitzer and

for 1,150 of the newly developed heavy

tank, the General Pershing, proved to

be virtually meaningless. Only token

assignments had been made against them

before the end of the war in Europe and

these were almost all canceled shortly

after V-E Day.37

Whatever the merits of the American

position then, the net effect on the British was to leave them with the feeling

that they no longer could expect to

receive their former share of American

munitions—a feeling accentuated soon

afterward by similar disappointments on

bids for light tanks, field telephone wire,

and radio sets.38 "During the last year

of the war," two British war historians

conclude, "international aid in munitions came to be regarded by the Americans less and less as a matter of accepted

routine, more and more as an exception,

an incubus or an anachronism."39

Retransfers, Diversions, and Lend-Lease

to Independent Nations

Another facet of the reassertion of

American national interest in the distribution of lend-lease was revealed in

the increasing restrictions on British

disposition of assigned materials. The

main issues, all clearly interlocked, were

retransfers, diversions, and the right of

independent nations in British spheres

of influence to ask and receive supplies

from the United States directly and not

through British channels. Most of these

issues arose in the Middle East, which

after 1942 became largely an inactive

theater serving as a forward base for

operations in the Mediterranean, as an

avenue for forwarding supplies to the

Soviet Union, and as a rear base for

support of British forces in India.

Retransfers were covered by an explicit provision of the Lend-Lease Act:

All contracts or agreements made for the

disposition of any defense article or defense

information . . . shall contain a clause by

which the foreign government undertakes

36

 (1) Memo, Brig Gen Don G. Shingler, Actg

Chmn, MAC(G), for ExO MAB, 5 Dec 44, sub: Min

4016, 4018, 169th mtg MAC(G). . . , ID file MBW,

Min, MAB, 9 Dec 44. (2) Min 2b, 148th mtg MAB, 3

Jan 45; min 4, 151st mtg, 24 Jan 45. (3) Memo,

Shingler for ExO, MAB, 2 Jan 45, sub: Min 4096-b

and -c, 172d mtg MAC(G)—U.D. Dissent to . . ., ID

file MBW Min, Book VII. (4) Hall, North American

Supply, p. 416. (5) Hall and Wrigley, Studies in

Overseas Supply, p. 44. 37

 (1) Crawford and Cook, Statistics: Procurement,

Table PR-7. (2) ASF Monthly Progress Rpt, sec.

2-G, 31 Dec 44, 30 Jan, 28 Feb, 31 Mar, 30 Apr, and

31 May 45.

38

 (1) On light tanks see Min 4207, 177th mtg

MAC(G), 25 Jan 45; Min 3b, 152d mtg MAB, 31 Jan

45; and Min 2b, 153d mtg, 7 Feb 45. (2) On radios

and field wire see Min, 157th mtg MAB, 7 Mar 45;

160th mtg, 28 Mar 45; 161st mtg, 4 Apr 45; 162d mtg,

11 Apr 45. 39

 Hall and Wrigley, Studies in Overseas Supply,

p. 43.
LEND-LEASE AND THE COMMON POOL 645

that it will not, without consent of the

President, transfer title or possession of

such defense article ... by gift, sale or otherwise, or permit its use by anyone not an

officer, employee, or agent of such foreign

government.40

The original intent of this clause was

to prevent lend-lease recipients from

turning material received over to a third

country in such a manner as to obscure

the fact that the United States was the

real donor and also to prevent sale of

lend-lease goods through commercial

channels, particularly where they might

be in competition with American exports. In a White Paper issued on 10

September 1941 the British gave assurances on the latter point, asserting that

lend-lease materials had not and would

not be used for commercial exports, nor

would goods similar to those supplied

under lend-lease be exported through

commercial channels where it involved

any development or extension of British

export trade at the expense of that of

United States.41

The restrictions on retransfer of munitions, on the other hand, were soon

relaxed as Americans recognized Britain's need for flexibility in distributing

lend-lease supplies among Commonwealth nations and various smaller allies

under British sponsorship. In 1942 the

Lend-Lease Administrator, Edward R.

Stettinius, Jr., to whom the President

had delegated his powers under the act,

granted the British virtually blanket

authority to retransfer munitions to any

member of the Commonwealth or to

other nations the President had declared

eligible to receive lend-lease. This blanket

retransfer authority gave the munitions

assignments machinery the flexibility it

required in the strategic situation of

1942. Though the Americans never formally accepted the British proposal to

divide the world into protege nations,

the MAB nevertheless at first followed

this system generally in making assignments. The British bid in Washington

for munitions in bulk for the United

Kingdom, members of the Commonwealth, the several refugee governments

of Europe, and for Egypt and Turkey.

The LMAB then made final assignments

among these claimants. Under this system, the Americans bid before the

LMAB for British materials desired by

China, Iceland, and the Latin American

republics.

There was much criticism, even in

1942, of the latitude thus granted the

London Board and before the end of

the year breaches were made in the system. Australia and New Zealand, members of the British Commonwealth, lay

within the American sphere of strategic

responsibility, and American commanders in the South and Southwest Pacific

asserted the right to exercise final authority over all lend-lease requests emanating from those areas. Beginning in October 1942, materials assigned in Washington for Australia were earmarked and the

LMAB was forbidden to vary the assignment. After the invasion of North Africa,

the United States took over from the

British major responsibility for rearming the French.42

40

 PL 11, 77th Cong. (Lend-Lease Act), sec. 7. 41

 Copy of British White Paper in ID, Lend-Lease,

Doc Suppl, I.

42

 (1) Leighton and Coakley, Global Logistics,

1940-43, pp. 249, 253, 491-92, 497-502. 512-17. (2)

Ltr, Thomas B. McCabe, Dep Lend-Lease Admin, to

Hon Morris Wilson, Chmn British Sup Council in

N America, 26 Mar 42, ID, Lend-Lease, Doc Suppl,

II. (3) ID, Lend-Lease, Text, I, 272.
646 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

During 1943, the question of the

LMAB's prerogatives came to center

largely on the matter of assignments to

independent nations in the Middle East.

In the prevailing shortage of munitions

for all purposes during 1942 requests

from these nations received little consideration, for they were not actively

engaged in the war against the Axis and

needed arms only to preserve internal

order. The sole exception was Turkey,

a country the Allies were anxious to bring

into the war against Germany. For a

brief period the Americans received requests directly from Turkey, but at

Casablanca Churchill secured an agreement from Roosevelt that Turkey should

be a British responsibility, an agreement

that continued in force throughout the

rest of the war. Beyond this concession,

the Americans proved unwilling to go.

When, shortly after Casablanca, requests

of other nations in the Middle EastSaudi Arabia, Iran, Iraq, Ethiopia, and

Egypt—began to get greater attention,

the State Department and the JCS

agreed on a policy affirming that the

United States would welcome direct inquiries from all independent nations

outside the Axis orbit concerning American supplies, and that such supplies

would be furnished to them directly if

it were feasible to do so. The War Department decided it would rely primarily on its own representatives overseas to

determine the validity of these requests.43

This policy announcement, made in

June 1943, demolished the British claim

that independent nations in the Middle

East were their proteges and must submit their claims to the London Board.

In the face of it the British officially

withdrew their dissent from a proposed

American assignment to Iran, some

months old, then pending before the

MAB. But they continued to protest

further assignments, even those to Iran

where the United States had a special

interest in the supply line to Russia.

When the Americans proposed to make

assignments to Saudi Arabia, where the

British had long maintained close control over arms shipments, their protests

took on a new vehemence. While agreeing, perforce, that any independent nation might indeed submit requests directly to either the United States or the

United Kingdom, they insisted that the

British commander-in-chief in the Middle East should pass on requests arising

from within his area just as did MacArthur in Australia and Eisenhower in

North Africa. The Saudi Arabia case

produced a formal policy statement by

the MAB in Washington (MBW 69/1)

on 13 September 1943 in which a few

concessions were made to the British

viewpoint. MBW 69/1 again reaffirmed

the right of all independent nations to

apply directly to the United States for

aid, but it provided that the MAB when

acting on these requests should obtain

the views of the military commanders

involved and inform United Kingdom

representatives. On the specific case in

hand, it was agreed that each nation

should furnish half of a small quantity

of arms for Saudi Arabia.44

43(1)Ibid. (1), pp. 520-21. (2)Ltrs, Cordell Hull

to Adm Leahy, CofS to CinC, 25 May 43, and Leahy

to Hull, 3 Jun 43, with related papers in ABC

420.3295 (8 Jun 43). (3) Msg, CM-OUT 6075-76,

AGWAR to CG's, NATO and ETO, 12 Jun 43.

(4) Egypt was declared eligible for lend-lease on

11 November 1941, Iran on 10 March 1942, Iraq on

1 May 1942, Ethiopia on 7 December 1942, and

Saudi Arabia on 18 February 1943.

4 4 (1)Min 1329, 65th mtg, MAC(G), 10 Dec 42;

min 1961, 93d mtg, 13 May 43; mins 2095, 2100, 2105,
LEND-LEASE AND THE COMMON POOL 647

Meanwhile, at the MAB meeting on

7 July Admiral Joseph M. Reeves, the

U.S. Navy member, had launched an

attack on the British right to retransfer,

questioning their action in giving four

lend-lease LST's and six coastal transports to the Greek Government. Reeves

cited the pertinent section of the LendLease Act requiring explicit authority

from the President, and argued that if

these vessels were to be given to Greece

at all they should be given directly by

the United States. Harry Hopkins,

chairman of the MAB, then appointed

a special subcommittee composed of

Generals Somervell and Macready to

study the question. The subcommittee

had reached agreement before the end

of the month but it was November 1943

before a final paper (MBW 67/8)

codifying the new system of retransfers

could be agreed upon by the entire MAB.

The new system worked essentially

as follows. The head of the Foreign

Economic Administration, Leo Crowley,

revoked the blanket consent to retransfer munitions granted to the United

Kingdom and delegated the power to

consent to retransfers to the secretaries

of the U.S. Army and Navy. MBW 67/8

established as a fundamental policy the

rule that no lend-lease country should

be allowed to retransfer military or naval

lend-lease articles without the consent

of the secretary concerned. The Secretaries of War and the Navy, themselves,

then granted the United Kingdom a

new blanket consent permitting emergency retransfers within theaters of

operations and allocations of lend-lease

materiel among parts or units of the

British Commonwealth and Empire and

forces of other nations serving directly

under the British Chiefs of Staff, but

with the proviso that the Washington

MAB must give its approval in all cases

where any assignment earmarked for a

particular dominion, colony, area, or

theater should be varied by the London

board. Moreover, all retransfers made

under this blanket consent were to be

reported at agreed intervals to the Washington board. In cases requiring specific

consent from one of the secretaries, the

initial assignment was to be canceled

and the material reassigned by the Washington MAB to the second foreign government.45

Taken together, MBW 69/1 and

MBW 67/8 just about demolished the

British protégé system. The British

were left with the right to act as sponsors

98th mtg, 17 Jun 43. (2) Min 2C, 73d mtg MAB, 30

Jun 43; min 4, 81st mtg, 1 Sep 43; min 6, 83d mtg,

15 Sep 43. (3) Memo, Gen Somervell for Gen Burns,

MAB, 5 Jul 43, sub: Munitions Assignments Procedure, Hq ASF file MAB. (4) Memo, Wing Comdr

T. E. H. Birley for Gen Burns, 19 Jul 43, sub:

Munitions Bidding and Assignments Procedure;

Memo, Gen Clay for Gen Wright, same sub, 21 Jul

43. Both in ID 008 Lend-Lease, V. (5) Ltr, Hull to

Stimson, 24 Jul 43; Msg A756, Winant to Hull, 3 Aug

43; Msg, Gen Crain, LMAB, to Gen Burns for Gen

Wright, 25 Oct 43; Memo, Gen Crain for Maj Ogden,

14 Nov 43. All in ID, Lend-Lease, Doc Suppl, V and

VI. (6) MBW 69/1, 13 Sep 43, title: Munitions Bidding and Assignments Procedure. (7) Numerous

papers in Dir Materiel, ASF, file Middle East.

45 (1) MBW 67/8, 18 Nov 43, title: Retransfer of

Munitions. For the entire MBW 67 series, see ID

file MBW 67. (2) Min 1b, 74th mtg, MAB, 7 Jul 43;

min 6, 76th mtg, 21 Jul 43; min 4, 77th mtg, 28 Jul 43;

min 2b, 78th mtg, 4 Aug 43; min 4, 87th mtg, 13

Oct 43; min 4, 88th mtg, 20 Oct 43; min 4, 89th mtg,

27 Oct 43; min 4, 91st mtg, 10 Nov 43; min 6, 92d

mtg, 17 Nov 43. (3) Ltr, Gen Macready to Gen

Somervell, 15 Jul 43, Hq ASF file British. (4) Ltr,

Leo Crowley, FEA, to Rt Hon Ben Smith, British

Resident Minister of Supply, 13 May 44, ID LendLease, Doc Suppl, VII. See also related materials in

ID, Lend-Lease, Doc Suppl, V-VII. (5) In MBW

67/10, 14 March 1944, the British established similar

conditions on U.S. retransfers of British munitions

furnished under reciprocal aid.
648 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

before the Washington board only for

the military forces of the Commonwealth, the Empire, and associated nations directly under British command,

and for Turkey. Even then the clear

recognition of the right of the Washington board to earmark assignments

and the necessity for detailed reports

of retransfers further restricted the

powers of the LMAB. After mid-1943

this practice of earmarking became more

common and the Joint Military Allocations Committee, acting under the

powers delegated to the Secretaries of

War and Navy, rigorously scrutinized

all proposed retransfers falling outside

the blanket consent.

Meanwhile, diversions of military lendlease to civilian end-use in the Middle

East were receiving much critical attention. The problem of diversions, though

they in fact frequently involved retransfers, was normally treated as a separate issue. The U.S. Army Forces in

the Middle East (USAFIME) reported

such things as gifts of jeeps to King

Ibn Saud of Saudi Arabia and King

Farouk of Egypt, and the use of lendlease trucks for Syrian harvests, to fight

locusts in Arabia, and for commercial

purposes by the United Kingdom Commercial Corporation. In September 1943

the theater called particular attention to

the fact that the British were setting

up a committee with no American representation, for the disposition of scrap,

salvage, and surplus military goods,

much of it of lend-lease origin. There

were also allegations that the British

were hoarding military supplies in the

Middle East while still requisitioning

them under lend-lease for use elsewhere.

A report from G-4, USAFIME, on 25

February 1944 contained the astounding

charge that the British had millions of

tires stocked in the Tura Caves near

Cairo, "more than the entire holdings

in the hands of U.S. manufacturers,

wholesalers, distributors, retailers, department stores, gas stations, etc. at the

time of Pearl Harbor."46

Most of these reports that the British

were playing fast and loose with American materials in order to enhance their

own prestige in the Middle East proved

somewhat exaggerated. General Macready found the charge about the tires

"so palpably absurd" its author "must

have received his information from a

source ... deliberately malicious"; the

total stock of tires in the whole of the

Middle East and North Africa, he said,

was approximately one-sixth the quantity alleged to be in the Tura Caves.47

The International Division, ASF, reviewing the cases of British abuse of lendlease reported by USAFIME, thought

they only showed that the British had

interpreted their right to retransfer and

divert more liberally than intended and

that a "new set of ground rules" was

needed.48

There was, nonetheless, sufficient substance to charges that the British were

46 (1) Memo, Lt Col John B. Breckinridge, Actg

Chief, Economics Div, USAFIME, for CG USAFIME,

25 Feb 44, sub: Rpt No. 44. . . , G-4 400.3295. (2)

Memo, Lt Loftus E. Becker for Dir ID ASF, 25 Jan

44, sub: Booklet for Gen Somervell, ID 008 LendLease, XII. (3) Memo, Col Boone for Dir Materiel,

4 Sep 43, sub: Disposal of Battle Scrap, Salvage and

Surplus Lend-Lease Supplies and Facilities in Middle

East, Dir Materiel, ASF, file Middle East.

47 Ltr, Gen Macready to Gen Clay, 14 Mar 44, G-4

400.3295.

48(1) Memo, Col Olmstead for Gen Wright, 23

Jan 44, sub: Your Memo of 14 Jan. . . . (2) Memo,

Wright for Olmstead, Maj Harmon, Maj Palmer,

Capt Overby, 14 Jan 44. Both with related material

in ID 008 Lend-Lease, XII. (3) Memos, Gen Somervell for Gen Clay, 16 Mar 44; Clay for Somervell,

19 Mar 44, in Dir Materiel ASF, file Middle East.
LEND-LEASE AND THE COMMON POOL 649

using lend-lease "surpluses" in the Middle East for other than military purposes

under existing "ground rules" to lead

the Americans to hasten to prepare the

new set. FEA representatives in the

Middle East were just as critical of

British practices as were those of the

Army. On 21 January 1944 General

Somervell informed General Macready

that it was War Department policy that

military lend-lease items assigned the

United Kingdom should not be diverted

to civilian end-use without the consent

of the United States; on 3 March Macready gave assurances that this principle

would be observed and that instructions

would be sent to all theater commanders

to that effect. Meanwhile, early in 1944,

FEA representatives in the Middle East,

James M. Landis and Livingston Short,

secured formation of a Joint Transfer

Committee in Cairo with British and

American civilian and military representation to consider all cases of disposal

of surplus. It was agreed that transfers

of military lend-lease materials to civilian

end-use should be made only after

approval of USAFIME or FEA representatives in the theater or, in some

cases, reference back to the MAB in

Washington to determine whether military need for the articles existed elsewhere. Materials so referred to Washington were then considered in MAC(G),

which, if it approved the diversion to

civilian use, reassigned the material to

FEA for distribution through American

channels.49

James Landis of FEA wanted to go

further and urged that the restriction

on British disposal of military material

should be extended to goods similar to

those of lend-lease origin produced in

the United Kingdom itself. Landis

argued that any release of surplus in

the Middle East was possible only because of lend-lease production and its

natural origin was therefore only a matter of happenstance. The American

representatives on the MAB soon took

over this "similar goods" doctrine and

attempted to use it to block a British

assignment of 5,000 .303-caliber rifles

to Saudi Arabia on the grounds that

the British were still receiving large

quantities of .303 rifles from American

production. Moreover, Admiral Reeves

made the specific proposal that the MAB

accept the principle that the United

Kingdom could not dispose of any equipment either of lend-lease origin or of

similar goods "except upon terms acceptable to the United States."50

The British protested vigorously, describing the similar goods doctrine as

a "fantastic" extension of the principle

of their White Paper of 1941. A compromise settlement was reached permitting them to proceed with the assignment to Saudi Arabia, but in the aftermath the Secretaries of War and the

Navy urged the Secretary of State to

affirm the similar goods doctrine at the

diplomatic level. The State Department

note to the British Ambassador, dispatched on 20 June 1944, did not go

quite so far as the service departments

49

 (1) Ltr, Gen Somervell to Gen Macready, 21 Jan

44. (2) Ltr, Macready to Somervell, 3 Mar 44. Both

in ID, Lend-Lease, Doc Suppl, VI. (3) Ltr, Somervell

to Macready, 2 Feb 44, Dir Materiel ASF, file LendLease 1942-44.

50

 (1) Memo, Col Boone for Gen Clay, 29 Feb 44,

sub: Informal Mtg of JMAC, ID file MBW Mins,

Book VI. (2) Memo, Landis for Lauchlin Currie, 31

Dec 43, ID, Lend-Lease, Doc Suppl, VI. (3) ID, LendLease, Text, I, 284-89, gives a complete history of

the Saudi Arabian case.
650 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

asked, but stressed, rather, the necessity

for mutual agreement on retransfers

and diversions through the Munitions

Assignments Boards.51

The President himself saw and concurred in the note and as a corollary

asked that U.S. representation on the

LMAB be strengthened. An AAF member was thereupon added to the board.

At the same time, the JCS asked that

the LMAB modify its previous practice

of assigning many noncritical items by

administrative action and take formal

action on all items of British production

and captured enemy equipment that

U.S. forces might have an interest in

or that were proposed for transfer to

armed forces other than those of the

British Empire. Moreover, the JCS asked

for cumulative monthly reports showing

allocation by theater of all complete

items of military equipment received

under lend-lease.52

The British accepted these changes

and with them the necessity for consultation through the Munitions Assignments Boards on assignments to third

countries, but held out to the end

against acceptance of the similar goods

doctrine. The exchange of notes on the

matter ended in September 1944 with

a mild State Department reminder that

the decisions as to whether certain defense

supplies are transferred to Great Britain is

determined, of course, by the British need

for such supplies and bearing upon that

need is the use Great Britain seeks to make

of these or similar supplies of British

origin.53

The Americans had clearly gained a

point in that they were now assured a

voice in disposition of all "similar goods"

through consideration of them in the

LMAB, even though the British would

not accept their contention that such

transfers would have to be approved

in Washington. The British War Office,

in issuing instructions to its theater

commanders, told them that, although

the British Government could not agree

to the American contention, nevertheless "circumspection is ... necessary in

handling such transfers so as to avoid

embarrassment with the American Administration."54

The net effect of the American effort

to restrict British freedom in disposing

of military lend-lease materials was to

curb, but not entirely to prevent, their

use for civilian purposes in the Middle

East. Procedures established were at

best cumbersome and not well understood at any level. The British were

not inclined to accept so strict a definition of diversion as the Americans held.

They were accustomed to use military

supplies in support of local economies

in order to secure more indigenous

support for their armies and considered

that it constituted military end-use in

the broader sense. Thus they found

51

 (1) Ltr, Hull to Stimson, 20 Jun 44, with inclosed note, Hull to Lord Halifax, 20 Jun 44, ID,

Lend-Lease, Doc Suppl, VII. (2) Ltr, Gen Macready

to Gen Somervell, 19 Feb 44; ltr, Secys War and

Navy to Secy State, 22 Mar 44. ID, Lend-Lease,

Doc Suppl, VI. (3) Min 4, 106th mtg MAB, 1 Mar 44.

(4) Min 3209, 136th mtg MAC(G), 30 Mar 44.

52 (1) Ltr, President to Secy War, 23 Jun 44. (2) Ltr,

Robert Patterson to President, 29 Jun 44. Both in

ID, Lend-Lease, Doc Suppl, VII. (3) JCS 844/1, 15

May 44, title: Assignment of War Materials from

British Production.

53

 (1) Ltr, Secy State to Secy War, inclosing note

for dispatch to British Ambassador, 14 Sep 44. (2)

Note, Sir Ronald Campbell, British Embassy, to

Secy State, 22 Jul 44. Both in ID, Lend-Lease, Doc

Suppl, VII. 54

 Msg, 57/Gen (a) 3906 (D. L. M.), War Office to

Major Overseas Comds, 16 Jul 44, ID, Lend-Lease,

Doc Suppl, VII.
LEND-LEASE AND THE COMMON POOL 651

ways of using military materials for

what the Americans defined as civilian

purposes while keeping them under

Army control. As late as July 1944

USAFIME could still complain that

despite American restrictions "a provisioning program for Middle East

requirements is going forward on a

military priority basis, which, of course,

places the Middle East civilian needs

on a higher priority level than civilian

needs in the United States and elsewhere."55

The amount of controversy over

retransfers, diversions, and lend-lease to

independent nations led these questions

to assume proportions far beyond their

real importance in the scale of global

war. The net amount of munitions

furnished to nations in the Middle

East by either Britain or the United

States was small. Their priority was low

and assignments were made only when

it could be shown that the munitions

assigned were not needed for active

prosecution of the war. The largest

American allocations were made to Iran

for an 87,000-man army sponsored by

the U.S. Military Mission there, and

smaller ones were made to Saudi Arabia

and Ethiopia. Egypt and Iraq were in

effect left as British responsibilities and

American assignments in each case were

infinitesimal. The considerable assignments that had been made to Turkey

following the TRIDENT Conference (all

to go through British channels) were

severely cut back after August 1943 and

much of the material was repossessed

as the prospects of inducing Turkey to

enter the war faded. In August 1944 at

the request of the Supreme Allied Commander, Mediterranean (SACMED) the

flow of American supplies to Turkey

was resumed but never again assumed

large proportions.56

The principal effect of the American

policy on retransfers, diversions, and

lend-lease to independent nations was

to pose restraints on the British in developing their base in the Middle East

either for operations in the eastern Mediterranean or in India or for postwar

purposes. The restraints thus imposed

were reinforced by critical screening of

military requirements for British forces

in the Middle East by USAFIME and

the War Department, and of civilian

requirements by FEA. No formal system

of screening in the theater was adopted

for the Middle East as it was for India

and southeast Asia, but a good deal of

informal screening was authorized. Likewise, no formal inventory of all British

stock in the Middle East was undertaken, as Somervell had once asked, but

inventories of specific items such as tires

did prove that British stocks were excessive (if not as large as once charged)

and assignments were accordingly cut

back or canceled.57

Beyond a local effect in the Middle

East, the net result was to restrict the

liberty of the LMAB in allocating materials on a broader front, and to enhance

the powers of the JMAC acting for the

War and Navy Departments in making

assignments of American materiel. None

55

 (1) Rpt No. 52 of Office ACofS G-5, USAFIME,

17 Jul 44, ID, Lend-Lease, Doc Suppl, VII. (2) On the

effort to evolve an "Interpretative Memo" on the

policies for retransfers, diversions, and related matters extending from September 1944 to May 1945 see

ID 008, Lend-Lease, X and XL

56

 (1) ID, Lend-Lease, Text, II, 1310-15, 1317-27,

1344-48 contains a complete summary of assignments

to these countries. (2) Memo, Gen Handy for Gen

Somervell, 22 Jun 43, sub: Gen Ridley's Mission to

Iran, Dir Materiel ASF, file Middle East. 57

 Min 5, 38th mtg JMAC, 6 Dec 44.
652 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

of these restraints could be considered

unreasonable ones. The British retained

considerable freedom in making allocations to the Empire, Commonwealth,

and associated forces actively engaged in

the war. The way the LMAB operated

had never been fully in keeping with

the principles of the common pool,

which the British insisted on so vociferously in Washington. And the U.S. insistence on broadening the scope of the

LMAB and requiring reports of its actions brought British allocations more

definitely under the jurisdiction of the

CCS than they formerly had been. In

net effect the new restrictive doctrines

on British disposal of U.S. munitions

served to emphasize the fact that Britain

could not count on American lend-lease

aid for anything beyond the immediate

effort to win the war.

Problems and Procedures in India

and Southeast Asia

In contrast to the Middle East, an

inactive theater where the major problems arose out of the disposition of surplus and confusion of civilian and military requirements, India and southeast

Asia were the main areas of active British operations in the war against Japan.

The Americans had, since 1942, harbored

a healthy skepticism about British requirements for forces in India—the large

quantities of material requested seemed

hardly in keeping with the scale of the

British effort in 1942 and 1943. In view

of the basic conflict of aims in that

area,58 the Americans sought to restrict

lend-lease aid to projects specifically designed to support operations approved

by the CCS, that is, the campaign in

Burma, and to keep to a bare minimum

supplies furnished for support of the

Indian economy and development of

the Indian base for broader purposes.

The establishment in August 1943 of

the Southeast Asia Command under

Lord Louis Mountbatten, separate from

the British Indian Command and responsible for the conduct of combined

operations under the CCS, made such a

policy reasonably feasible. All together

the British maintained in India forces

totaling upward of 2,000,000 men under

arms, but only 200,000 were assigned for

operations in SEAC; the rest consisted

of static defense forces chiefly concerned

with maintaining internal security. Using

this division of forces between static

and operational as a rough rule of

thumb to determine which requirements

for India were actually justified in terms

of strategic need, the American staff

adopted the general principle that only

SEAC forces should be eligible for military lend-lease. The British and the Government of India would, for the most

part, have to support the static defense

forces and develop the Indian base.

SEAC's requirements on the United

States for operational equipment were

considerable, nevertheless, since many of

the special types of supplies needed for

warfare in the jungle were not produced

in Britain at all. In the wake of

QUADRANT, preparations for the campaign in Burma reached their high

point, and SEAC's operational requirements for this campaign were given a

relatively high priority and special efforts made to meet them. Especially

significant was the effort devoted by the

ASF to meeting Brigadier Orde Wingate's highly specialized requirements

for his long-range penetration groups. 58

 See above, ch. XXI.
LEND-LEASE AND THE COMMON POOL 653

Even so, assignments were limited to

those deemed necessary for the initial

assault in Burma, as far as they could be

distinguished.59

At the same time, aid to India was

confined in great part to materials necessary for base development in direct

support of operations and minimum

support of the civilian economy, much

of it coming under FEA control rather

than that of the MAB and the War

Department. Of materials under War

Department control, the major contribution was in locomotives for the Indian

railways and in can and drum plants.

The Army also shared in the administration of the civilian aid program by FEA,

though hardly to the extent General

Somervell desired. An FEA mission was

sent to India and it worked in close

co-operation with the American SOS

there and with General Wheeler, Principal Administrative Officer, SEAC, in

determining the priorities to be granted

Indian requests. The Indian program

had to labor under the same disabilities

of low priority and lack of shipping

space that civilian programs did generally, and these handicaps limited the

extent to which the Indian base could

in fact be built up.60

In the tangled web of conflicting strategic purposes in the Far East that

emerged after the SEXTANT Conference,

the British effort in SEAC came to occupy a place of declining importance in the

American scale of strategic values. In

this situation, even British requirements

for operations in SEAC came under increasingly critical scrutiny.61

In January 1944 the British suggested

a procedure for handling India and

SEAC requirements by which they

would be, for the most part, merged

with those of U.S. and Chinese forces in

the CBI and processed as combined requirements. General Somervell would

have no part of the system, insisting that

supply for the British should go through

British channels, that supply for Americans and Chinese should go through

American channels, and that requirements for India and SEAC must be segregated. The whole matter was referred

to the CCS, who in July 1944 approved

a procedure basically in keeping with

Somervell's ideas. In this procedure, a

basic distinction was made between organizational and maintenance equipment for troops and "theater stores,"

the British term for special projects in

support of operations. Requirements for

unit equipment and maintenance for

U.S. and Chinese forces would be processed through normal SOS CBI channels

as before. Similarly, unit requirements

for British forces would be processed

through British channels, with the authorities in London determining what

proportion would have to be met under

lend-lease. In the case of theater stores

the Principal Administrative Officer,

SEAC, meeting with representatives of

GHQ, India, and U.S. theater headquarters should decide whether each

individual project should be British,

American, or combined. If American,

the requirement would be passed directly

to Washington through normal U.S.

channels; if British or combined, it was

to be processed in the same manner as

59(1) See above, ch. XXI. (2) ASF, Lend-Lease

Information, 31 Dec 43, Rpt 10, Part 3, pp. 14-16.

(3) Materials in Log file, OCMH, and file CBI Theater, ASF Plng Div. (4) Min 2297, l09th mtg MAC(G),

1 Sep 43; min 2639, 119th mtg, 11 Nov 43. 60

 Lend-Lease Information, 31 Dec 43, ASF Rpt 10,

Part 3. 61

 See above, chs. XVI and XXI.
654 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

British requirements for organizational

equipment. Requirements for SEAC

were to be carefully segregated from

those for India, and the availability of

resources in India carefully investigated

before requisitions were placed on outside sources.62

In August 1944, General Sultan, IndiaBurma Theater commander, suggested

another step, proposing that his headquarters screen all British and combined

requirements for American lend-lease.

On 30 August Somervell notified Macready of the American intent to institute

this screening. Macready agreed, though

reluctantly, to its application to operational projects in India designed to support SEAC operations but protested

strenuously that screening of British requirements for unit equipment went far

beyond the intent of the CCS and violated the long established custom whereby each country determined what organizational equipment and maintenance

were needed by its own forces. Moreover, Macready said, it would be impossible for commanders in India, British

or American, to say what part of total

requirements must be met under lendlease. Only the British Government in

the light of its knowledge of Empire

resources could determine this. Somervell admitted there would be difficulties

involved, but he was adamant in his

insistence that the War Department

must have the privilege of consulting its

theater commander on any foreign requirements arising in his theater, and

the British War Office perforce finally

agreed to the screening.63

The screening procedure was first

applied to current bids for assignment

to SEAC. Comments from India-Burma

Theater were requested after the British

Army staff in Washington had presented

its bids to MAC (G). As time went on,

however, the British found it more convenient to work with Americans in the

theater to segregate as far as possible in

advance the requirements to be presented under lend-lease before forwarding them via London to Washington.

An informal group came into being at

SEAC headquarters dedicated to this

purpose. Before the end of 1944 the system had been extended to include forward programing of requirements by

the International Division. Although the

screening in the theater theoretically

did not involve final decisions, the War

Department and the MAC (G) almost

invariably followed theater recommendations. Moreover, criteria for screening

were those policies on lend-lease that

had gradually taken shape during 1943

and 1944. Materials furnished were to

be exclusively for execution of plans approved by the CCS, thus ruling out any

projects for development of the Indian

base or the equipment of forces for

distant campaigns such as the proposed

British advance to Sumatra and Singapore; the British were not permitted to

build up reserves of U.S. equipment in

excess of those held by U.S. forces in

Burma and India, whatever their own

tables might call for. Almost always initial British requirements were reduced, 62

 (1) CCS 583/1, 15 Jul 44, title: Development of

a Procedure for Submission of Reqmts and Establishment of Shpg Priorities for CBIT. (2) Memo, Gen

Macready for Gen Somervell, 24 Jan 44, sub: Administrative Instructions to SAC, SEAC. (3) Ltrs, Somervell to Macready, 29 Jan and 3 Mar 44. All in ID,

Lend-Lease, Doc Suppl, VI.

63 (1) Ltrs, Gen Somervell to Gen Macready, 31

Aug, 5 and 21 Sep, 4 Nov 44. (2) Ltrs, Macready to

Somervell, 2 Sep and 2 Nov 44. Both in ID, LendLease, Doc Suppl, VIII.
LEND-LEASE AND THE COMMON POOL 655

although both General Covell, the theater SOS commander, and General Somervell insisted that the primary purpose of

screening was not reduction but to insure that the British got the type and

quantity of equipment best suited to

their needs.64

To the Americans this screening system seemed to provide, for the first time,

a method of intelligently appraising

British requirements for a theater from

which their demands had always been

regarded with some question. The British, on the other hand, naturally found

the system irksome and thought it served

to drive the final nail into the coffin of

the common pool theory. Macready complained to Somervell again and again of

delays occasioned in assignments while

waiting for comments from the theater.

He continued to insist that the procedure should apply only to operational

projects, and not to organizational and

maintenance equipment; his most vociferous protests were directed at the use

of U.S. reserve and maintenance scales

in screening British requirements. Indeed, Macready's contention that determination of these scales should be left

to the national authority concerned was

in keeping with opinions Somervell himself had expressed in 1943. But American philosophy on lend-lease had changed

considerably in the meantime and Macready's protests were to no avail.65

The American insistence on screening

of India and SEAC requirements certainly arose in part because the American theater command felt that the British

were being supplied on too lavish a scale

for what they were accomplishing. But

there was also a broader purpose behind

it, which fitted with the general American feeling that the British should supply their own forces for the war with

Japan to the utmost extent possible and

that any advances along the line of the

Netherlands Indies and Malaya should

be made only through the use of British,

not American, resources. Quite apart

from screening, the MAB in late 1944

began to take a dim view of the equipment requirements of SEAC where they

were in competition with the Southwest

Pacific for critical items. When the British joined the issue by dissents from

MAC (G) decisions on tractors, cranes,

shovels, jungle hammocks, and jungle

boots, they were able to get only token

assignments approved by the MAB. In

the case of tractors, the MAB in August

1944 resorted to the novel device of

negative earmarking, writing into the

bulk assignment to the United Kingdom

a prohibition on any reallocation of

these tractors to SEAC.66 Continued

failure of the CCS to give any definite

approval for the British plan of operations against Sumatra and Malaya led to

a further curtailment of SEAC assignments during 1945.

64 (1) Ibid. (2) ID, Lend-Lease, Text, I, 253-56.

(3) Ltrs, Gen Covell to Gen Somervell, 17 Jan 45,

16 Feb 45, 17 Apr 45, folder Gen Covell's and Gen

Terry's Ltrs, ASF Plng Div. (4) Ltr, Gen Shingler

to Exec U.S. Staff, LMAB, 23 Feb 45, sub: Bids for

India/SEAC, ID, Lend-Lease, Doc Suppl, IX. 65

 (1) Ltr, Macready to Somervell, 2 May 45. (2)

Ltr, Somervell to Macready, 7 May 45. Both in ID,

Lend-Lease, Doc Suppl, IX. (3) Memo, Somervell for

Wedemeyer, 23 May 43, sub: Memo on Shipments

Required for Opns in India, file Agenda, ASF Plng

Div.

66 (1) Min 3682, 155th mtg MAC(G), 17 Aug 42;

min 3695, 156th mtg, 24 Aug 44; min 3888, 162d

mtg, 5 Oct 44; min 3898, 163d mtg, 12 Oct 44; min

3937, 165th mtg, 2 Nov 44; min 4077, 171st mtg,

14 Dec 44; min 4807, 172d mtg, 21 Dec 44; min 4124,

173d mtg, 29 Dec 44. (2) Min 5, 139th mtg MAB,

25 Oct 44; min 2a, 140th mtg, 1 Nov 44; min 4,

146th mtg, 13 Dec 44; min 2, 148th mtg, 3 Jan 45.
CHAPTER XXVI

The End of the Common Pool

American moves to restrict the scope

of military lend-lease to Britain in the

latter stages of the war with Germany

fall into better perspective when viewed

in the light of plans for a more drastic

curtailment after V-E Day. In American

military planning for the period between

the defeat of Germany and the defeat

of Japan (in U.S. terminology Period I,

in British Stage II), the basic assumption was that the common pool arrangement would no longer apply, even theoretically. It was assumed that other nations would support their own war effort

against Japan to the maximum extent

possible and that lend-lease would be

confined to quantities absolutely necessary to meet marginal requirements of

forces actively engaged against Japan,

with decisions on allocations to be made

unilaterally by the JCS. This proposed

policy was in keeping with the feeling,

openly expressed in Congress and strong

in the military services, that during the

last phase of the war the American taxpayer should be relieved as far as possible of the burden imposed by foreign

aid.1 Within the AAF and the Navy

there was also the feeling, scarcely concealed, that curtailment of lend-lease

would be an effective method of limiting British participation in the main

drive against Japan in the Pacific where

neither General Arnold nor Admiral

King wished to have anything more than

token British forces.

The JCS "Corollary Principle"

When, in the fall of 1943, the ASF

began compilation of a special Army

Supply Program to cover requirements

for the first year of a one-front war, the

formula adopted for the lend-lease portion was that after V-E Day shipments

should be made only to China, India,

Australia, New Zealand, the USSR (to

fulfill the Third Protocol), and Latin

American countries; those to inactive

areas in Europe, Africa, and the Middle

East would be stopped. This formula,

approved by OPD, was recognized as

being not entirely realistic, since much

1

 The Truman Committee, reporting on reconversion on 5 November 1943, recommended that:

". . . these programs [for lend-lease following the

defeat of Germany] should be determined as soon

and as definitely as possible and made known to

industry and to the public. Furthermore, every

effort should be made to reduce the cost to our

taxpayers to a minimum, both by obtaining reverse

lend-lease, and by compelling the recipients of lendlease to utilize the resources they have to a maximum before they request aid from us ... we should

never forget that lend-lease was originally authorized by the Congress solely because the English and

others . . . did not have sufficient American exchange

to purchase materials needed by them. Lend-Lease

was never intended as a device to shift a portion of

their war costs to us. . . ." Rpt of Truman Committee, 5 Nov 43, Outlines of Problems of Conversion

from War Production, excerpt in ID, Lend-Lease,

Doc Suppl, VI.
THE END OF THE COMMON POOL 657

would depend on both Soviet and British intentions and plans with regard to

the war against Japan. And the International Division was specifically forbidden, until May 1944, to undertake negotiations with lend-lease nations in order

to get a better idea of their post V-E

Day needs.2

Meanwhile, the AAF proposed gradual curtailment of aircraft production

as the day of the defeat of Germany approached, and got JCS approval for the

policy. It would serve, as one air officer

bluntly put it, to eliminate surpluses—

"the best method of anticipating Russian

and British requests, and thus in turn

limiting their potential capabilities in

the Pacific."3 As a corollary, General

Arnold asked the JCS on 15 March 1944

to adopt a policy stating that:

Upon the defeat of Germany, Lend-Lease

military aircraft and related equipment

should be assigned only to those nations

who will effectively employ their air forces

against Japan and who do not possess or

have access to adequate production facili- ties of their own to maintain that part of

the air forces so equipped.4

Since there seemed little point in

adopting such a policy for aircraft alone,

the Joint Logistics Committee was instructed to produce a broader set of principles to cover the entire field of military

lend-lease. The committee's report, presented on 2 May 1944, called for a "strict

policy on assignments of Lend-Lease material" to be administered by the JCS

rather than the MAB:

a. Assignment of Lend-Lease munitions

will be based on the assumption that after

the defeat of Germany, each Allied Nation

will maintain its forces to the fullest extent

from its own stocks and production, and

will make full use of such forces against

Japan in so far as they can be effectively

employed in accordance with our agreed

strategy.

b. Upon the defeat of Germany, assign- ment of Lend-Lease munitions will be lim- ited to those materials which are not avail- able to the Allied Nations concerned, and

which are necessary to support that portion

of the forces of such nations as, in the

opinion of the United States Joint Chiefs

of Staff, can and will be profitably employed against Japan in furtherance of our

agreed strategy.

c. It is contemplated that on the request

of the United States Government, Allied

nations will make available for return im- mediately after the defeat of Germany any

munitions furnished by the United States

which are not required by such nations

for their use against Japan in accordance

with our agreed strategy and which are

desired by the United States.5

The first of these principles did provide that lend-lease should be used to

promote a maximum and not a minimum participation by Allied countries

in operations against Japan—a viewpoint

2 (1) Memo, ACofS, OPD for DCofS, 16 Nov 43, sub:

Assumptions to be Used in Establishing Basis for

International Aid Reqmts during Period Following

Defeat of Axis and Prior to Defeat of Japan, ID,

Lend-Lease, Doc Suppl, VI. (2) Material in Readjustment Div, ASF, file Lend-Lease Policy Studies.

(3) Memos, Gen Handy for Dir Spec Plng Div,

WDGS, 11 Mar 44 and 4 Apr 44, sub as in (1),

G-4 400.3295. (4) Materials in ID 008 Lend-Lease,

XII. (5) Memo, Hq ASF for all BrCs, ID, and

CsTechSvcs, 19 Apr 44, sub: Materiel Demobilization Plan, Period I, ID, Hq ASF, ID, Lend-Lease,

Doc Suppl, VII. 3

 Memo, Gen Kuter, AC of Air Staff, Plans, for

Chief of Air Staff, 28 Apr 44, sub: Cutback in Airplane Production, USAAF files, 425.01-E, Production, RG 501 A-49-47. 4

 JCS 771, 15 Mar 44, memo by CG AAF, title:

Policy Concerning Assignments of Lend-Lease Military Munitions Following the Defeat of Germany.

5

 (1) JCS 771/3, 5 May 44, rpt by JLC, title: Policy

Concerning Assignments of Lend-Lease Munitions

Following Defeat of Germany. (2) JCS 771/1, 20 Mar

44, memos by CNO and CofS, same title.
658 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

championed by General Somervell. Yet

even Somervell, although he recognized

some of the problems of rehabilitation

that Britain, the USSR, and other nations would face, was reluctant to suggest that the American contribution to

their military effort against Japan might

be increased to ease the burden, and

neither this question nor that of the support of occupation armies was even discussed in the JCS.6

When the JLC report was considered

by the JCS on 9 May, decision was deferred mainly because Admiral Leahy

felt the timing was wrong as it was just

in advance of OVERLORD and a Soviet

drive on the Eastern Front. The JCS

did agree at that meeting on a memorandum to the President informing him of

the proposed gradual curtailment of aircraft production and asking him to approve the "corollary principle" as a guide

to future procurement planning for Period I: "That Lend-Lease munitions will

be limited to materials not available to

nations concerned and which can be

profitably employed against Japan in accordance with agreed strategy."

 7

 Roosevelt approved on the following day,

though later events indicate that he was

hardly aware of the full implications.

Then on 30 May 1944 the JCS definitely

put their seal of approval on the first

two JLC recommendations and tentatively accepted the third with some minor changes, instructing the JLC at the

same time to explore further this matter

of return of lend-lease munitions on the

defeat of Germany.8

The JCS policy, apparently accepted

as national policy, rested on the dubious

assumption that military lend-lease could

be treated as a separate entity apart from

the broader problem of the role American aid should play in the readjustment and rehabilitation of European

economies following the defeat of Germany. Neither the State Department

nor the Foreign Economic Administration had been consulted during its formulation. Of greater significance, the military leaders had taken no cognizance at

all of the plight of their wartime partner, Great Britain, a country nearing exhaustion after five years of all-out war

and dependent upon U.S. aid if it was

to make any kind of start during Period I on the extremely difficult adjustment of its economy.

By tight mobilization of all resources,

human and material, and with the aid

6(1) The original JLC report was JCS 771/2, 15

April 1944, title: Policy Concerning Assignments of

Lend-Lease Materials . . . Following Defeat of Germany. It was modified as a result of Memo, Somervell

for CofS, 18 April 1944, same subject, ABC 400.3295

(15 March 1944), Section IA, which Marshall presented to JCS at the 159th meeting, 18 April 1943,

and the JCS referred to the JLC for a revised report.

(2) JLC 86/4, 2 May 1944, title: Policy Concerning

Assignments of Lend-Lease Materials . . . Following

Defeat of Germany, contains memorandum of JSSC

on this matter. 7

(1) JCS 771/3, 5 May 44. (2) JCS 162d mtg, 9

May 44, Item 3.

8

(1) JCS 771/4, 10 May 1944, title: Policy Concerning Assignments of Lend-Lease Munitions Following the Defeat of Germany, notes the President's

approval without indicating whether it was written

or verbal. (2) JCS 771/5, 27 May 44, memo by JLC,

same title. (3) Min, 165th mtg, JCS, 30 May 44.

(4) The subsequent JCS study on returns is JCS

771/6, 2 September 1944, title: Policy Concerning

Disposition of Lend-Lease Material Following Defeat

of Germany. No action was taken on it as a result

of the President's directive just prior to OCTAGON

prohibiting further military planning on the future

of lend-lease. The matter was revived in 1945 and

made the subject of another study, JCS 1448, 23 July

1945, title: Policy Concerning Settlement of LendLease Obligations. But no determination was made

before the end of the war as to what U.S. policy on

returns should be; afterward it was decided few

returns should be required.
THE END OF THE COMMON POOL 659

of lend-lease and Canadian mutual aid,

the United Kingdom had been able to

generate military power beyond its ostensible capabilities. It was achieved at

the expense of disruption of Britain's

normal economy and by imposing on the

British people sacrifices that could not

be borne indefinitely. Both men and

women were impressed into national

service; hours of labor averaged more

than fifty per week; higher taxes were

imposed than anywhere else in the

world; capital equipment deteriorated

without normal maintenance or replacement; the aerial blitz and the buzz bombs

took their toll of houses, industrial

plants, and human lives. The British

by 1944 were a war-weary people, accepting their sacrifices in the hope of better

things to come. Yet the decision to devote all resources to the war without

regard to economic consequences threatened to postpone indefinitely the realization of those better things.

Britain's prewar position had been

built on overseas trade and overseas investment, and both had to be sacrificed

during the war in the interests of survival. Before lend-lease, the British had

exhausted almost all their dollar reserves,

real and potential, to obtain supplies

from the United States and Canada. A

large part of British overseas investments

and holdings, a major source of prewar income, was liquidated. Lend-lease

brought a measure of relief, but it could

not, nor was it intended to, restore assets

already lost. Moreover, it led to a further drastic reduction in British export

trade in order that all British resources

could be concentrated on the war effort.

It did not end the drain on British financial resources. The United Kingdom

continued to pay in sterling for certain

imports from some of the Dominions

and colonies, for supplies and services

for British troops in those areas, and

for much of the reciprocal aid furnished

American forces in various parts of the

Empire, in India, and in countries of

the Middle East and Africa. Without

the normal offset of exports to balance

these payments, British sterling assets in

many areas of traditional British influence were turned to liabilities.

The British therefore faced a bleak

outlook in the postwar world, even if

they could recoup some of their losses

during the last phase of the war. This,

at least, they hoped to do, and their program for what they designated as Stage

II called for some easement of civilian

living standards, some rebuilding of capital equipment, and some expansion of

exports (to two-thirds the 1938 level).

These goals, the British Cabinet knew,

could not be attained without continuation of American lend-lease on a generous scale if British forces were to participate in the war against Japan and fulfill their continuing commitments in the

occupation of Germany and the maintenance of order in the Middle East.

Neither the Prime Minister nor the Opposition had any intention of allowing

either of these obligations to go by default.9

In their own planning for Stage II,

consequently, the British presupposed

that civilian lend-lease would continue

on at least as generous a basis as during

the two-front war, and that American

military supplies would continue to be

furnished in at least as large a proportion of total British requirements. Yet

they, like the Americans, did their plan9 Hancock and Gowing, British War Economy,

pp. 518-24.
660 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

ning in secret and considered the truth

about their own plight as information

too dangerous to be communicated to

anybody. There seems to have been little

appreciation of the true nature of the

British position at any level in Washington. Even Secretary of the Treasury

Henry Morgenthau, a long-standing advocate of British aid, viewed with suspicion the gradual growth of British

dollar reserves to the point where, in

early 1944, they had reached over a billion dollars—large in American eyes perhaps, but considered by the British to

be but meagre insurance against the day

when they would have to pay for their

imports from the United States. In spring

1944, Treasury and FEA, with support

from the Army, undertook to reduce

those dollar balances by removing industrial equipment, machine tools, and

other items having possible postwar uses

from lend-lease, making the British pay

for them in cash. The British were also

asked to include under reciprocal aid

raw materials and petroleum products

that they procured from their colonies

and from such independent nations as

Iran and Saudi Arabia, items that the

Americans had themselves formerly paid

for in cash. Under the circumstances,

the British could hardly refuse.10

All these straws in the wind undoubtedly disturbed the British, but they were

not aware of the policy adopted by the

JCS. After the President had given his

approval to that policy, however, the

ASF was finally given the go-ahead signal for negotiations on lend-lease requirements to be included in the special

ASP for Period I. On 18 May 1944 Somervell asked General Macready for the

British figures for the first year of Period I, assuming that it would begin 1 October 1944. "The requirements so stated," he wrote, "should be for the support

of British forces which would be used

in the war against Japan."11 The British

promised, with evident reluctance, to

try to assemble such figures, protesting

all the while that there were too many

uncertainties, strategic and otherwise,

about Stage II to arrive at more than

tentative conclusions. As for the basis

on which Somervell proposed that the

requirements be calculated, British

spokesmen asserted they were "instructed by London to say that we are not

authorized to accept such a policy," that

it might "render it impossible for us to

exert against Japan the full military effort of which we might be capable."12

Subsequent conferences with the British Army Staff produced no agreement

and the requirements finally presented

in late July 1944 were, in the words of

Sir Walter Venning, "based on assessment of our entire needs during Stage II

and not confined to operations in any

particular theater of war." This basis,

Venning insisted, had to be used if the

British were to carry out cutbacks in

military production requisite to making

"some approach to a level of existence

which could be regarded as even tolerable in a civilized country."13

 The final

10

 (1) Ibid., pp. 524-27. (2) Somervell's interest in

this problem is reflected in his memorandum for

Under Secy War Patterson and Asst Secy War John

J. McCloy, 16 March 1944, Dir Materiel file LendLease 1942-44.

11

 Ltr, Somervell to Macready, 18 May 44, ID,

Lend-Lease, Doc Suppl, VII. 12

 Ltr, Macready and Venning to Somervell, 16

Jun 44, ID 400.192 ASP, Part I. 13

 (1) Ltr, Venning to Somervell, 18 Jul 44, ID

400.192 ASP, X, Part I. (2) Ltr, Maj Gen D. H. Pratt,

Br Army Stf, to Gen Somervell, 25 Jul 44, ID, LendLease, Doc Suppl, VII.
THE END OF THE COMMON POOL 661

British presentation the ASF found too

close to the program presented earlier

on the assumption that the war with

Germany would continue. "We do not

anticipate any serious question as to our

ability to produce the quantities requested," General Edgerton of the International Division admitted, "the question

is entirely one of the validity of the

requirements in the light of U.S. policy

set forth in J.C.S. 771."14

The Americans refused to accept the

British requirements as stated and the

matter soon came to an impasse. Finally,

on 21 August, General Lutes returned

the British statement to Sir Walter Venning and the ASF went ahead to make

its own approximate calculations of British needs for the war with Japan. There

the matter rested until shortly before

the President and his military advisers

departed for Quebec to meet with the

British in September 1944.15

The President Intervenes

On 9 September, the day before his

departure for Quebec, Roosevelt abruptly called a halt to the military planning

for the future of lend-lease. He wrote

General Marshall:

There has been a good deal of discussion

within the several Government Depart- ments relative to our Lend-Lease policy

after the collapse of Germany.

It is my wish that no Department of the

Government take unilateral action in regard to any matters that concern Lease

Lend, because the implications of such

action are bound to affect other Departments of the Government, and, indeed, our

whole national policy. I am particularly

anxious that any instructions which may

have been issued, or are about to be issued

regarding Lend Lease material or supplies

to our allies after the collapse of Germany

be cancelled and withdrawn. I intend to

give instructions to all Departments rela- tive to the Lease Lend policy of this government at an early date. . . .

16

According to the best information the

War Department could obtain, the State

Department had learned of tentative orders issued by the Transportation Corps

halting lend-lease shipments to Europe

on V-E Day and had protested through

Hopkins to the President. The President, having been apprised unofficially

of the British position, had decided he

must take a strong hand.17 In any case,

the JCS had to recognize that this directive rendered Roosevelt's approval of

the "corollary principle" in May a dead

letter, and all JCS papers on the subject

were withdrawn along with all the various tentative instructions issued by the

ASF.18

The sequel followed at Quebec a few

days later. The British had taken their

position in negotiations with the ASF

during July and August in anticipation

of a direct appeal from the Prime Minister to the President. At Quebec Mr.

Churchill made that appeal, marshaling

14

 Memo, Gen Edgerton, ID, for CG ASF, 7 Aug

44, with related papers, ID 400.192 ASP, X, Part I. 15

 Ltr, Lutes to Venning, 21 Aug 44, with related

papers, ID 400.192 ASP, X, Part I.

16

 Ltr, President to Gen Marshall, 9 Sep 44, ABC

400.3295 (15 Mar 44) Sec IA.

17 (1) See Memo, Gen Edgerton for Gen Clay, 12

Sep 44, sub: President's Letter of 9 Sep 44 on LendLease, Dir Materiel file Lend-Lease 1944. (2) On the

informal feelers the British had sent out to the

President, Hopkins, and FEA, see Hall, North American Supply, page 441. 18

 (1) JCS Memo for All Holders of JCS 771 Series,

20 Sep 44, ABC 400.3295 (15 Mar 44), Sec IA. (2)

Memo, Somervell for Dir Materiel, 19 Sep 44, sub:

Lend-Lease Policy after the Collapse of Germany,

file Lend-Lease High Policy, Readj Div ASF.
662 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

all the powers of his rhetoric and baring

every secret of the British financial balance sheets. In the end he prevailed and

the President accepted the British Stage

II program in all its essentials, initialing

an agreement with the Prime Minister

to that effect on 14 September 1944. The

British would continue to get "food,

shipping, etc." during the war with Japan to meet "reasonable needs"; lendlease munitions would continue on such

a basis as to permit "proportionate and

equitable conversion" in the United

States and United Kingdom; the British

would be permitted to take steps to reestablish their export trade and the

Americans would not impose restrictions

on lend-lease supplies that would jeopardize British progress in this direction.

To work out detailed plans for carrying

out these agreements, a combined committee of American and British members would be formed to meet in Washington under the chairmanship of Henry Morgenthau.19

The Anglo-American committee held

its meetings during October and November 1944. The official American

members were Henry Morgenthau, Edward R. Stettinius, and Leo Crowley.

The British delegation was headed by

Lord John Maynard Keynes, Mr. Ben

Smith, and Sir Ronald Campbell. A special military subcommittee was set up

to consider naval, air, and ground army

programs with Generals Somervell and

Macready as prominent members. Initially, the War Department proposed

that the basis of negotiation should be

the military formula that supplies should

be furnished only for the war against

Japan, but Morgenthau ruled it "too

rigid to fall within the general understanding reached by the President and

Mr. Churchill at Quebec." Other "reasonable needs," Morgenthau said, must

also be included.20 Under this dispensation, the military subcommittee proceeded to draw up programs for air,

naval, and ground army equipment that

were in general satisfactory to the British. The ground army program for the

year following V-E Day was to total

$828,256,066 in dollar value, a figure

somewhere between the British presentation in July and the separate calculations made by the ASF. In the broader

field, continuance of civilian lend-lease

was agreed upon, though it was to be

somewhat restricted by the further removal from lend-lease eligibility of many

articles that entered into the British export trade—the price Britain had to pay

for an American promise to free British

exports from the restrictions of the

White Paper of 1941.21

Despite this concession, the British,

by all outward appearances, had won

their point. The principle of proportionate and equitable conversion had

been accepted. But the agreements tentatively reached were not set down in

any binding documents to which both

19

 Record of Conversation Between the President

and Prime Minister at Quebec on September 14,

1944, and Official Memo of Quebec Conversations

14 Sep 44 initialed by FDR and WSC, forwarded by

Secy State to Secy War, 19 Sep 44, ABC 400.3295 (15

Mar 44), Sec IA.

20 Ltr, Morgenthau to Patterson, 20 Oct 44, ID,

Lend-Lease, Doc Suppl, VIII.

21 (1) Ltr, Military Sub-Corn to Henry Morgenthau, Chmn, British-American Com on Lend-Lease,

23 Oct 44, and related papers in ID, Lend-Lease,

Doc Suppl, VIII. (2) For accounts from the British

side see Hancock and Gowing, British War Economy,

pages 528-33, and Hall, North American Supply,

pages 441-47. (3) See also Memo, C. H. B[undy] for

Col Roberts, OPD, 7 Feb 45, sub: Combined Com

on Mutual Lend-Lease Between U.S. and U.K. . . . ,

ABC 400.3295 (15 Mar 44), Sec IA.
THE END OF THE COMMON POOL 663

countries subscribed. The Americans

really accepted them for planning purposes only. Ground army requirements,

for instance, were placed in the special

Army Supply Program with the usual

stipulation that assignment would depend upon strategic justification before

the MAB. The British did not get what

they really thought most desirable: a supply protocol on the Soviet pattern to

cover the period after the defeat of Germany. This failure was to have unfortunate consequences for them.

Planning in the fall of 1944 was originally undertaken on the assumption

that the war in Europe would end within

a month or two. This assumption proved

erroneous, and the Stage II Agreements

remained on the shelf while U.S. supply

agencies were absorbed in the manifold

problems of continuing to support a twofront war. Attention was not specifically

turned to the problem of post-V-E Day

lend-lease again until February 1945.

Meanwhile, in allocation of material by

the MAB, the British were forced to

accept many cutbacks because of the

dominant strategic need of U.S. forces

deployed in such large numbers in both

Europe and the Pacific. While the war

in Europe wore on, the Lend-Lease Act

came up for its biennial renewal, and

this time Congress wrote into it a proviso that lend-lease should not be used

for "post-war relief, post-war rehabilitation, and post-war reconstruction" except under specific restrictions.22

 The

then Vice President, Harry S. Truman,

played a significant role in shepherding

this final version of lend-lease through

the Congress.

The ailing President, meanwhile, did

not issue any further instructions to follow up his "cease and desist" order of

9 September 1944 except to authorize

negotiations with the USSR on a Fifth

Protocol, nor did he indicate any positive confirmation of the Stage II Agreements. The ASF, therefore, when it did

turn its attention to Period I planning

again in February 1945, had to assume

that the Presidential injunction of the

previous September remained in force.

Finally, on 27 March 1945 Assistant Secretary of War Robert Patterson formally

asked the President to remove his prohibition on lend-lease planning, but

Roosevelt died on 12 April without having answered Patterson's letter. Five days

after Roosevelt's death, the new President, Harry S. Truman, told the War

Department to go ahead with its planning; but he laid down no policy, merely

intimating that the agreements reached

with the British and under negotiation

with the Russians should serve as guides,

and instructing that any problems be

taken up with Judge Fred M. Vinson,

Byrnes' successor as Director of the Office

of War Mobilization and Reconversion.23

American policy thus drifted without

any positive direction as V-E Day approached. The military staff once again

grabbed the reins and were soon urging

a return to the principles enunciated by

the JCS in May 1944. The crux of the

question was whether the tentative agree22 (1) See Twentieth Report to Congress on LendLease Operations, pp. 56-59. (2) See above, chs. XXII

and XXV.

23 (1) Memo, Robert Patterson, Actg Secy War,

for President, 27 Mar 45. (2) Ltr, Harry S. Truman

to Secy War, 17 Apr 45. Both in ABC 400.3295 (15

Mar 44) Sec IA. (3) Memo, Gen Styer for Gen Somervell, 10 Mar 45, Hq ASF file Lend-Lease. (4) Voluminous material in Dir Materiel file Lend-Lease,

ID 008 XI and XX, and file Lend-Lease High Policy,

Readj Div ASF.
664 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

ments of October and November 1944

constituted official commitments. Somervell queried Morgenthau, who ruled

that they did not, that they had only

been accepted as "a suitable basis for

this government's budgetary and production planning."24

 Based on this assurance, when the final surrender of Germany came on 8 May 1945, the military

departments were prepared to act on the

assumption that further assignments of

American material to Britain would be

made only for active operations against

Japan; the British, on the contrary, still

assumed that the Stage II Agreements

would go into effect.

The British were soon disillusioned

by the actions of the MAB and MAC (G)

in May and June 1945. Most of the material previously assigned and awaiting

shipment to the United Kingdom was

repossessed on 10 May. Subsequent assignments of ground equipment to the

British during May and June totaled

only $20 million in dollar value and

were limited entirely to materials that

the British could not make for themselves—such as DUKW's, light tanks, and

carbines—and that the U.S. commander

in India approved as necessary for the

campaign in Burma under the SEAC

screening procedure. What the British

considered even more serious was that

assignments of almost all kinds of air

matériel except special types of naval

aircraft were denied mainly as a result

of cutbacks in American production

schedules. As of 27 June 1945, Maj. Gen.

F. H. N. Davidson of the British Army

staff claimed that since V-E Day only

20 percent of the quantities bid for by

the British had been assigned. In several stormy sessions of the MAB, the

Americans made it plain that they would

not make assignments on the basis of the

Stage II Agreements, but solely on that

of strategic necessity, and that in applying the latter criterion they conceived

that the British should produce for themselves everything of which they were in

any way capable. Under this policy no

allocations could be made for the later

stages of the campaign in SEAC or for

British operations in the final phase of

the Pacific war until the operations had

been specifically approved by the CCS.

Thus bids for matériel for the so-called

increment forces forming in the British

Isles and elsewhere in the Empire for

participation in the war against Japan

were turned down. In addition, when

queried specifically, Maj. Gen. John Y.

York, acting chairman of the MAB, said

that no assignments for Allied occupation forces in Germany could be made

until policy on this point had been

clarified.25

On 28 May 1945 Churchill cabled

President Truman protesting the standstill to which the MAB had come, citing particularly the damaging effect it

was having on the British air program.

He told Truman of the agreement he

had reached with Roosevelt at Quebec

and expressed hope that these "principles your predecessor and I agreed on

24 (1) Ltr, Morgenthau to Somervell, 27 Apr 45,

ID, Lend-Lease, Doc Suppl, IX. (2) MFR, OPD

S and P Gp, 27 Apr 45, sub: Lend-Lease Policies

After Collapse of Germany, ABC 400.3295 (15 Mar

44), Sec IA.

25 (1) Min 4502, 192d mtg MAC(G), 10 May 45;

min 4533, 193d mtg, 31 May 45; min 4550, 195th

mtg, 7 Jun 45; min 4557, 196th mtg, 14 Jun 45; min

4625, 198th mtg, 5 Jul 45; min 4600, 197th mtg, 23

Jun 45. (2) Min 3, 168th mtg MAB, 30 May 45;

min 4, 172d mtg, 27 Jun 45; min 3, 173d mtg, 4 Jul

45; min 4, 174th mtg, 11 Jul 45. (3) Hall and Wrigley,

Studies in Overseas Supply, pp. 44-46.
THE END OF THE COMMON POOL 665

. . . still hold."26 Churchill's cable arrived while a heated debate was in

progress within the administration over

lend-lease policy, with the service departments taking the lead in urging restriction of lend-lease to materials for

the war against Japan, the civilian officials for the most part holding that the

Stage II Agreements must be honored.

On 15 May 1945 Secretary of War Stimson presented the War Department's

views to Judge Vinson, stipulating that

certain of the British requirements already accepted in the Army Supply Program as a result of the Morgenthau committee's work might stand, but asking

that, apart from these,

materiel already in the possession or con- trol of the British Empire be employed

to the maximum possible extent in satisfaction of its requirements and that remaining requirements that may be referred to

the War Department be considered for

supply . . . only if such requirements (1)

appear necessary in order to carry out our

agreed strategy, (2) are beyond the supply

capabilities of the British Empire, and (3)

can be obtained only from United States

sources.27

After conferences with War, State, and

FEA officials, Vinson replied on 13 June:

It was agreed that the tentative principles

enunciated in your letter were not broad

enough to cover the understanding reached

between the late President and Prime Minister at Quebec. In general, it was agreed

that, in accordance with those understandings, lend-lease should be furnished on a

basis which would permit proportional and

equitable reconversion in the United Kingdom. It was further agreed that the require- ments estimated in the meetings held in

October and November 1944 should be

accepted as the basis for present require- ments. Such estimates, however, are always

subject to change in the light of strategic

demands and supply considerations. I assume, of course, that the War Department's

budget requests appropriations adequate to

fulfill these commitments.28

The State Department drafted a reply

for the President to send to Churchill

generally along this line.29 In the event

the draft was never used. On 19 June,

Stimson informed Vinson and the Secretary of State that the War Department

budget estimates for fiscal year 1946 had

not, in fact, been framed in terms of

the Stage II Agreements, but instead

had been based on "policies considered

appropriate by the Joint Chiefs of Staff."

If Vinson's instructions were to be carried out, Stimson said, the War Department would have to ask for additional

funds.30

The JCS policies to which Stimson

referred had not in reality taken final

shape, but their general tenor was already sufficiently clear to justify the secretary's statement. On 11 May General

Arnold asked the JCS to reaffirm the

policy adopted a year earlier and withdrawn at Roosevelt's direction. In the

Joint Logistics Committee this recommendation was modified, at the behest

of General Somervell, to permit use of

military lend-lease for occupation forces

and "exceptional military programs"

26 Paraphrase of cable from Prime Minister to

President, 28 May 45, folder Lend-Lease, Hq ASF

files.

27 Ltr, Secy War to Judge Vinson, Dir of War

Mobilization and Reconversion, 15 May 45, ID

Lend-Lease, Doc Suppl, IX.

28

 Ltr, Vinson to Secy War, 13 Jun 45, ID, LendLease, Doc Suppl, IX. 29

 Incl D to JCS Info Memo 418, 22 Jun 45, title:

War Material for British Empire for Period Following V-E Day. 30

 Ltrs, Secy War to Dir, OWMR and to Secy State,

19 Jun 45, ID, Lend-Lease, Doc Suppl, X.
666 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

within the discretion of the JCS.31 Somervell now foresaw that it would be practically impossible to cut off all support

—rations, POL, and maintenance—for

French, British, and other units in Germany that had previously been almost

completely dependent upon American

support. It was only a minimum of support pending placing occupation forces

of Allied nations on financial arrangements other than lend-lease that he proposed, but when the matter was discussed

in the JCS Admiral Leahy objected

strenuously to even that minimum as

being clearly illegal under the latest extension of the Lend-Lease Act.

Leahy's views soon proved to be those

of the President. On 5 July Truman

issued a directive to the JCS that settled the issue:

Now that the war in Europe has termi- nated . . . and in order to follow accurately

the letter and spirit of the Lend-Lease Act,

the following policy is established. . . . Approval of the issue to Allied Governments of Lend-Lease munitions of war and

military and naval equipment will be limited to that which is to be used in the war

against Japan, and it will not be issued for

any other purpose.32

Truman's positive declaration clearly

ruled out lend-lease for occupation

armies, but it did not specifically accept

the premise, on which the JCS was proceeding, that assignments to the British

should be limited to material for the

war with Japan that they could not provide for themselves. To this extent, it

still left the way open for a limited application of the principle of equitable

and proportionate conversion, and on

this line the State Department again

drafted the long-delayed reply to Churchill's cable of 28 May. The new draft was

rather vague. It still purported to accept

the Stage II Agreements but laid considerable stress on the possibility of scaling

down British requirements because of

of changed conditions and on the improved ability of the British to pay cash

for more of the material furnished them,

particularly articles which might evoke

criticism in Congress if supplied under

lend-lease, in the light of an improvement in their dollar reserves since November 1944. The President presented

this reply to Churchill at Potsdam on 17

July 1945. The private British reaction

was that their over-all financial position

had never been worse but, making the

best of a bad situation, they prepared to

make a final fight to salvage as much as

they could of the Stage II Agreements

at the Potsdam Conference.33

Sometime earlier, on 2 July 1945, the

British presented a paper to the CCS in

an effort to get the MAB out of its stall,

reiterating their understanding of the

Stage II Agreements and asking that

their programs, now revised, be accepted

within the framework of the agreements

as a guide to assignments. A few days

31

 (1) JCS 771/9, 29 May 45, rpt by JLC, title:

Policy Concerning Assignments of Lend-Lease Munitions Following Defeat of Germany. (2) The memo

by CG AAF is JCS 77 1/8, 11 May 45, same title.

32 (1) JCS 771/11, 6 Jul 45, title: Presidential

Policy on Military Lend-Lease. (2) JCS 771/10, 21

Jun 45, memo by CofS, USA, title: Amendments to

Policy Concerning Assignments of Munitions Following Defeat of Germany. (3) Memo, Gen Shingler

for CofS, ASF, 20 Jun 45, sub: Lend-Lease for

French and British Forces in Army Occupation,

Dir Materiel file Lend-Lease. (4) Materiel in ABC

400.3295 (15 Mar) Sec 1A.

33 (1) Memo, Secy State for President, no date, ID

008 Lend-Lease, XXII. (2) Memo, President for Prime

Minister, submitted 17 Jul 45, ABC 400.3295 (15

Mar 45), Sec 1A. (3) On the British reaction see Hall,

North American Supply, p. 459.
THE END OF THE COMMON POOL 667

later, in order to establish the strategic

basis of their need, the British Chiefs also

outlined their ideas on the contribution

they should make in the final phase of

the war. They proposed that three to

five British Commonwealth divisions

participate in the main attack in the

Pacific together with sections of the British Fleet and ten to twenty VLR squadrons of the RAF. They would also undertake operations in the "Outer Zone"

to maintain pressure on the Japanese

across the Burma-Siam frontier while

studying operations against Siam, Java,

Sumatra, and Hong Kong. Exact dates

and detailed plans for these operations

would be presented at a later date.34

Though the British ideas on strategy

were tentatively accepted with some

modification in the size of forces to be

employed in the Pacific, the pleas for

the Stage II Agreements left both the

War Department and the JCS still unmoved.35

 The issue was finally joined

at Potsdam. At that conference the British Chiefs, supported wholeheartedly by

the Prime Minister, argued forcefully

that the wartime partnership should continue in the occupation and rehabilitation of Europe and that supplies and

shipping for these purposes should continue to be allocated on a combined basis

and on a reasonably high priority in

relation to the war against Japan. The

U.S. Chiefs insisted on the narrower view

that only the pursuit of the war against

Japan should be continued as a combined military undertaking, that occupation and rehabilitation were not matters for a combined military commitment. In response to the direct pleas of

Churchill, however, on the subject of

continuing lend-lease for the occupation and for equitable and proportionate conversion in the United Kingdom,

President Truman promised to do the

best he could for the British within the

limitations imposed by Congress on his

action:

... he was handicapped in his approach to

this matter by the latest renewal of the

Lend-Lease Act. As Vice-President he had

worked out its clauses together with Senator George, who had explained to the

Congress that the act was intended to be

a weapon of war only. The President was

now striving to give to the Act the broadest

interpretation possible and he had no inten- tion of causing the British any embarrass- ment in the matter of furnishing supplies

to British troops or maintenance thereof.

However, he must ask the Prime Minister

to be patient as he wished to avoid any

embarrassment with Congress over the in- terpretation of the Act and it might be

necessary for him to ask for additional

legislation in order to clear up the matter.36

Following Potsdam, Truman laid

down a specific policy in detail indicating the extent to which this "broadest

interpretation possible" would go. He

reaffirmed that supplies should be furnished only for the war against Japan,

but accepted the principle of proportionate and equitable conversion insofar as it was compatible with this dictum,

thus overruling the JCS position that 34

 (1) CCS 888, 2 Jul 45, Memo by BrCOS, title:

Lend-Lease to U.K. (2) CCS 889, 6 Jul 45, memo by

BrCOS, title: British Contribution in the Final Phase

of War Against Japan. 35

 (1) JCS 771/12, 9 Jul 45, rpt by JLC and JSSC,

title: Lend-Lease to U.K., British Military Commitments in Stage II. (2) Memo, Somervell for CofS, 14

Jul 45, ABC 400.3295 (15 Mar 44), Sec 1A.

36 (1) Min, Plenary Mtg, TERMINAL, Babelsberg,

Germany, 24 Jul 45. (2) CCS 877, 14 Jun 45, memo

by U.S. COS, title: Basic Objectives, Strategy, and

Policies, and other papers, in CCS 877 series 5, 21

Jul 45. (2) Min, 195th mtg JCS (TERMINAL), 23 Jul

45, Item 11.
668 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

supplies should be limited to those the

British could not possibly make for

themselves. He ruled out supplies for

armies of occupation, but he authorized

them for any purposes that would further redeployment of U.S. troops, thus

providing a measure of flexibility. Such

other maintenance as the British or others requested for their armies in Europe

and the Middle East was authorized only

in return for cash payment and was to

be handled through FEA.37

The British had finally won a partial

confirmation of the Stage II Agreements,

although hedged about in many ways.

And, since the British strategic plans

(with some modifications) were approved at Potsdam, the MAB was at

last in a position to proceed with assignments for British forces in the war

against Japan. In the meantime, however, on the recommendation of the JCS

Truman had proposed to Churchill that

the time had come to end the system of

assignments by combined bodies, that

the MAB should be abolished and its

functions turned over to the Joint Munitions Allocation Committee. The British reply, from Clement Attlee, the newly elected Prime Minister, suggested that

the subcommittees at least should continue in existence to consider those few

remaining cases where scarcities of specific items were still involved.38

The war against Japan moved so swiftly and unexpectedly to its end that events

overtook the new policy before it could

be placed into practical effect and made

any further discussion of the future of

the combined munitions assignments

boards unnecessary. In an effort to avoid

the confusion on lend-lease policy that

had followed the fall of Germany, the

Joint Logistics Committee hastily completed a study on post-V-J Day policy,

which the JCS approved on 11 August

1945. Its main point was a recommendation to the President that lend-lease of

munitions terminate immediately on the

surrender of Japan, "except for assistance to Allied forces engaged against

Japanese forces which have not surrendered, and in certain unavoidable cases

where the abrupt termination of aid

already in programs would be unreasonable or would cause undue hardship."39

The President approved this policy, and

on 24 August officially announced that

lend-lease would end effective on V-J

Day.

Whatever the JCS influence may have

been, Truman undoubtedly felt obliged

to adopt this line because of promises

made to Congress in connection with

the last lend-lease appropriations in July.

On 5 September 1945 he issued more

formal instructions to the JCS indicating the cases where the flow of aid would

be allowed to continue even though

Allied forces were not engaged in subduing any continuing Japanese resistance. Rations, shelter, medical supplies

and services, petroleum products, fuel,

and transportation would be allowed

when they could not reasonably be furnished by the government concerned

and when denial would work immediate hardship; but they were to be eliminated at the earliest practicable date,

37

 JCS 771/14, 31 Jul 45, title: Presidential Policy

on Military Lend-Lease. 38

 (1) JCS 1397/5, 23 Jul 45, title: Review of

Combined Procedures for Munitions Assignments.

(2) Memo, Prime Minister to President, dated about

31 Jul 45, Incl to JLC 336/5, 13 Sep 45, same title

as (1).

39

 JCS 771/17, 11 Aug 45, title: Military LendLease after Unconditional Surrender or Defeat of

Japan.
THE END OF THE COMMON POOL 669

THE BIG THREE AND THEIR ADVISERS in the palace garden during the Potsdam Conference. Seated, Prime Minister Attlee, President Truman, Premier Stalin. Standing, Admiral

Leahy and Foreign Ministers Ernest Bevin, James Byrnes, and Vyacheslav M. Molotov.

and in no case were to be extended beyond six months after the formal Japanese surrender. Maintenance items might

also be furnished for U.S. equipment in

possession of Allied forces against payment on terms to be decided by the State

Department and FEA. Maintenance, repair, training, transportation, and other

services already undertaken would be

continued to the nearest practicable stopping point as determined by the U.S.

theater commander in the area concerned. A special exception was made

of the Chinese forces sponsored by the

Americans who were to continue to receive aid essential for the reoccupation

of all of China then occupied by the

Japanese, though not for "fratricidal

war."40

As a result of these exceptions, a small

trickle of lend-lease continued to flow

to the United Kingdom and other countries for some months, but to all intents

and purposes the surrender of Japan

signaled the end of lend-lease. In actual

fact, the flow of military materials had

been almost entirely cut off earlier in

anticipation of the surrender. The Munitions Assignments Board held its last

meeting on 8 August, though it was not

formally allowed to expire until November. Its residual functions, as expected,

40

 JCS 771/18, memo from President to JCS, 5 Sep

45, title as JCS 771/17.
670 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

were turned over to the Joint Munitions

Allocation Committee.41

To the British, the sudden end of

lend-lease was a virtual catastrophe, coming as it did at the end of a four-month

period when they had received few items

from the United States that they could

make for themselves. They were plummeted into the harsh realities of postwar readjustment without the cushion

they had hoped American aid would provide. Their dollar reserves were totally

inadequate to meet the cost of American

supplies for which they had a continuing need; and there was little prospect

that they could, for many years to come,

build up their export trade to the point

where they could pay for needed imports from either the United States or

elsewhere.

In the postwar period the United

States was to be forced to resort to new

devices to maintain a going British economy and to bolster British military

strength, starting with a loan in 1946

and progressing through the Marshall

Plan and the Mutual Security Program.

A forthright approach to the problem

in 1945 might have saved much lost time

and have been more economical in the

end. Certainly the restrictive attitude of

the JCS played some part in preventing

such a forthright approach to a situation

in which Presidential direction was uncertain and a practical policy vacuum

existed.

It seems evident that both Roosevelt

and Truman, the latter perhaps belatedly after Potsdam, saw the need for

helping the British in their postwar

economic adjustment, but Roosevelt's

hand was faltering in the last six months

of his life and he did not take the necessary steps either to lay down a clear

policy for the executive branch to follow or to secure the legislative authority

that would have made the course of his

successor easier. Without legislative authority, Truman felt his hands were tied,

and lend-lease was allowed to lapse without any real consideration of how it

might be used as an effective instrument

of U.S. policy in promoting postwar

adjustments—just as it had been used

during hostilities as an extremely effective means for fighting a coalition war.

41

 (1)JCS 771/19, 14 Sep 45, title: JCS Responsibilities under Presidential Lend-Lease Policy. (2)

JCS 1397/6, 6 Oct 45, title: Revision of Combined

Procedure for Munitions Assignment. (3) Memos,

Adm Leahy for President, 17 Oct and 2 Nov 45,

ABC 400.3295 (15 Mar 44), Sec IB. (4) JCS 1397/9,

28 Oct 45, title: Abolishment of MAB, Washington.
CHAPTER XXVII

Aid to the USSR in the Later War Years

Aid to the USSR continued during

the last two years of the war to absorb

its share of both American supplies and

shipping. By mid-1943 any imminent

danger of Soviet collapse had passed and

the Red Army had assumed the offensive

all along the Eastern Front; nevertheless, the Soviet Union continued to press

for aid on the largest possible scale and

the United States to grant it in the most

generous measure of which it was capable. Responsible American officials were

compelled to view the continuing contribution of the Red Army in the war

against Germany as an indispensable

condition to the success of the AngloAmerican assault from the west. Moreover, they expected the USSR to enter

the war against Japan at a propitious

moment after the defeat of Germany

and to play an important role in the

defeat of the Asiatic member of the Axis.

Having accepted, very early in the war,

these premises as to the essential character of the Soviet contribution to victory in both Europe and Asia, there was

little tendency to use the USSR's need

for American supplies as a bargaining

lever. During the first two years after the

German attack in 1941 the urgency of

Soviet needs had been so great, the threat

of Soviet collapse so imminent and foreboding for the Allied cause, that almost

any effort or sacrifice seemed justified

in order to deliver supplies. This sense

of urgency died hard even under the

changed conditions of the last half of

the war when victory over Germany and

Japan seemed assured. The postwar implications of thus helping to strengthen

the Soviet position in Europe and Asia

were either not foreseen or ignored.

The Soviet Aid Program continued

until the end of the war in Europe to

be based on annual diplomatic protocols, supply agreements at the governmental level, and was thus far more rigid

than were the lend-lease programs for

the British, French, and others. The

Third Protocol covered the period from

1 July 1943 through 30 June 1944, the

Fourth the period from 1 July 1944

through 30 June 1945.1 No fifth protocol

was ever signed, but arrangements were

made to supply materials to the Soviet

Union for a campaign against Japan in

Manchuria.

The formulation and administration

of the protocols fell to the President's

Soviet Protocol Committee (PSPC), an

organization directly responsible to the

President, composed of representatives of

the War, Navy, State, Treasury, and

Agriculture Departments, and of the

War Production Board, Foreign Economic Administration, War Shipping

1

 On the First and Second Protocols see Leighton

and Coakley, Global Logistics, 1940-43, pages 97-

102, 561-597.
672 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

Administration, and the Petroleum Administrator for War. General Somervell

was the War Department representative

on the committee. Harry Hopkins was

officially its chairman but because of his

ill health General York, executive of the

committee, functioned in that capacity most of the time. The Protocol Committee worked principally through its

two subcommittees, one for supply and

the other for shipping. The Army was

represented on the first by the International Division, ASF, and on the second

by the Transportation Corps. In addition, in formulating policy on Soviet

supply, the Protocol Committee normally consulted the Joint Chiefs of

Staff. All these arrangements insured

that military interests would have proper consideration in the administration

of the protocols, but the basic protocol

agreements transcended military authority. The guidelines for military policy

on supplying the USSR emanated from

the President himself.

Supply to the USSR continued to be

a collaborative effort with the British,

but the British contribution declined

in relative importance as U.S. aid increased in volume. Canada also associated itself with the United States and

Great Britain in the Third and Fourth

Protocols. They were thus four-cornered

political agreements, but each country

offered its own schedule of supplies separately and the U.S. schedule overshadowed the others. Collaboration centered

mainly in framing the conditions under

which supplies would be granted, in

preventing duplication among the various schedules, and in arranging convoys

over the northern route and through

the Mediterranean (for both of which

the British were responsible).

In terms purely of logistics, the flow

of supplies to the USSR was far smoother

during the later war years. By mid-1943

the main obstacles to a large-scale Soviet

supply program had been overcome.

The commitments for Soviet aid had

been fitted into American supply programs and the growing output of American factories was making it possible to

meet them without significant sacrifice

to the U.S. military effort. The shipping

situation was vastly improved. Most important of all, there was now adequate

capacity on the routes of delivery. Inability to maintain convoys over the northern route in the face of heavy losses,

inadequate facilities in the Persian Gulf,

and insufficient Soviet flag shipping in

the Pacific had all combined to frustrate

every effort to meet commitments under

the First and Second Protocols. But by

mid-1943 a capacity of well over 200,000

short tons monthly was in sight in the

Persian Gulf, and the transfer of vessels

to the Soviet flag in the Pacific had

created a fleet capable of transporting

an even greater tonnage to Vladivostok.

There was no further need to accept

prohibitive losses on the northern route,

although there remained a good chance

that it, too, could be used whenever the

British could spare naval convoys from

other operations.2

Formulation of the Third

Protocol

The outlook was hardly so optimistic

when consideration of the Third Protocol first began. In January 1943 deliver2

 On shipping experience during the First and

Second Protocol periods see Leighton and Coakley,

Global Logistics, 1940-43, pages 551-97.
AID TO THE USSR IN THE LATER WAR YEARS 673

ies on the Second Protocol were more

than a million short tons in arrears. The

President, in ordering an intensive effort

to overcome this deficit, also asked for

preparation of offerings for a Third Protocol on the assumption that "Russian

continuance in the war is of cardinal

importance and therefore it must be a

basic factor in our strategy to provide

her with a maximum amount of supplies

that can be delivered to her ports."3

At Casablanca, the CCS endorsed this

concept and approved a shipping schedule that envisaged bringing Soviet aid

shipments up to protocol commitments

by the end of 1943, assuming that the

commitments under the Third Protocol

would be the same as those for the Second (4,400,000 short tons) .4

The Casablanca schedule for the first

six months of 1943 proved impossible

of fulfillment. In March shipments over

the northern route had to be suspended

to permit preparations for the Sicily

invasion. Capacity in the Persian Gulf

increased much more slowly than anticipated. With these difficulties coming on

top of previous embarrassments in fulfilling protocol schedules, the Americans

sought to confine the commitment under

the Third Protocol to realizable proportions. In March and April 1943 WSA

formulated a shipping program providing for movement of 150,000 short tons

monthly through the Persian Gulf and

225,000 monthly over the Pacific route,

or a total of 4,500,000 short tons during

the Third Protocol year, approximately

the same volume of supplies originally

promised under the Second. The WSA

program left the northern route entirely

out of consideration and even assumed

that the bulk of British supplies (approximately 50,000 tons monthly) would

move through the Persian Corridor.

The Second Protocol deficit, now looming larger than it had at Casablanca,

was to be quietly forgotten.5

Meanwhile, the departments and

agencies reviewing Soviet requests came

up with a total offering of 7,080,000

short tons of supplies, exclusive of vessels and fly-away planes, but including

materials expected to be delivered but

unshipped at the end of the Second

Protocol period. When a small commitment of the Canadian government was

added, the total came to one-and-onehalf times the tonnage of the WSA shipping program. The Protocol Committee

decided to offer the USSR the whole

amount and ask that they select from

the list 4,500,000 short tons to fit the

maximum shipping available.6

The Soviet Government, unimpressed

by the generosity of the American offer,

insisted that the Soviet war effort required the import of much more than

4.5 million tons of supplies. The United

States could, Soviet representatives said,

by exerting itself, deliver at least 6 million tons—1.4 over the northern route

during the fall and winter months, 2.6

3

 Memo, President for Secy War, 6 Jan 43, ID

031.1, II. 4

 See Leighton and Coakley, Global Logistics,

1940-43. pp. 587-89.

5

(1)Ibid., pp. 589-92. (2) Memo, Adm Land and

Lewis Douglas for Harry Hopkins, 30 Mar 43. (3)

Memo, W. S. McPherson for Douglas, 13 Apr 43.

(4) Memo, Douglas for Hopkins, 15 Apr 43. Last

three in folder Russian Shpg 1/1/43, WSA Douglas

File. 6

 (1) Memo, Gen Burns for Secy War, 26 Mar 43,

ID 031.1, III, Part I. (2) Memo, Brig Gen Sidney P.

Spalding, PSPC, for Secy JCS, 9 Apr 43, sub: Status

of Proposed Third Soviet Protocol, ABC 400.3295

(19 Apr 42), Sec 1.
674 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

instead of 1.8 by the Persian Corridor,

but only 2 million via the Pacific where

turnaround time would inevitably be

greater than the 75 days WSA had assumed in its calculations. The Soviet

maneuver was obviously aimed at securing an additional commitment for reopening the preferred northern route.

The Americans agreed to go only part

of the way. In view of the vast improvement in the shipping situation since the

WSA calculations in March, the President's Soviet Protocol Committee, after

consultation with the JCS, agreed to increase the total commitment for the

Atlantic routes from 150,000 to 200,000

tons monthly, to be shipped either over

the northern route or by way of the

Persian Gulf "whichever in the light of

changing conditions proves from time

to time to be more efficient." The committee, while agreeing that the turnaround time in the Pacific should be 90

rather than 75 days, insisted that the

Pacific route was capable of handling

225,000 tons monthly since it was currently operating at that level. A provision that the Soviet flag ships in the

Pacific should be transferred to the

Atlantic in case of Japanese interference

with that route was also included in the

final draft of the protocol.

The final American offer was thus set

at 5,100,000 short tons for the Third

Protocol period, 2,700,000 by the Pacific

route and 2,400,000 by the Atlantic, with

a provision that, if conditions permitted,

the United States, Great Britain, and Canada would "gladly review the schedules

from time to time for the purpose of

increasing the quantities to be provided

and delivered." Soviet representatives

were also to be permitted to include a

500,000-ton stockpile in their selections,

making a total of 5,600,000 short tons.

The USSR accepted this compromise.

On 1 September 1943 Soviet representatives notified the State Department that

they would take the military and industrial equipment offered at full rates and

made specific deductions in their requirements for foodstuffs, metals, petroleum products, and chemicals. The logic

behind this move is obvious. Advance

planning was necessary for procurement

of military and industrial equipment

while there was always a possibility of

drawing from existing stockpiles of foodstuffs, petroleum, and raw materials if

shipping could be found to move them.

On 19 October 1943 the Third Protocol

was formally signed in London. Long

before that date, on 1 July 1943, it had

gone into effect as the practical program

under which the United States, Great

Britain, and Canada were continuing to

send supplies to the USSR.7

The military requirements of the

USSR under the Third Protocol clearly

reflected the change in the Soviet position. They emphasized aircraft, specialized types of transportation and communication equipment, clothing, medical supplies, and bulk explosives, rather

than the tanks, artillery, and ammunition emphasized earlier. This shift, already foreshadowed by cancellations under the Second Protocol, was to become

7(1) Quotes are from text of Third Protocol in

Dept of State Pub. No. 2759, Soviet Supply Protocols.

(2) Memo, Gen Burns for Gen Clay, 10 Jul 43, sub:

Proposals of Soviet Government in Regard to 3d

Protocol, ID 031.1, V. (3) Ltr, Gen Spalding, Asst

ExO, PSPC, to Secy War, 14 Jun 43, ID 031.1, IV.

(4) JCS 322/1, 17 Jul 43, title: Third Soviet Protocol.

(5) Memo of Embassy of USSR, Washington, in

answer to U.S. Remarks on Protocol, 1 Sep 43, ID,

Lend-Lease, Doc Suppl, V.
AID TO THE USSR IN THE LATER WAR YEARS 675

even more pronounced as the Soviet offensive gained momentum. In the sphere

of civilian supplies, the shift was even

more marked, moving toward industrial

equipment and other materials needed

for reconstruction and rehabilitation of

devastated areas in the wake of the German retreat.

War Department offerings, totaling approximately 1,700,000 short tons, substantially met Soviet requests in almost

all categories except aircraft. The Russians asked for 500 fighter planes, 100

light bombers, 50 medium bombers, and

30 transport planes monthly—a total of

8,160 planes. General Arnold refused

to agree to any substantial augmentation

over Second Protocol schedules — 100

fighters (P-39), 100 light bombers, 12

medium bombers, and 20 transports

monthly—with an additional 150 P-39's

going on British account each month, or

a total of 4,344. As a result of a special

pledge of the President to Stalin, 600

older type P-40-N fighters were added

and the number of B-25 bombers raised

from 144 to 222, but otherwise Arnold's

views prevailed.

In contrast, requests for 20,000 jeeps,

3,000 artillery prime movers, and 100,-

000 field telephones were met in full,

and 2,000 medium tanks (M4A2) offered and accepted for which the Soviets

had stated no requirement. A commitment was made for 132,000 trucks against

a request for 144,000. A requirement

for 10,000 railroad flatcars was accepted

in its entirety, but only 500 to 700 locomotives could be offered against a request for 2,000 to 3,000. Certain types

of signal equipment—radio locators and

direction finders—were reserved for future consideration because of the old

problem of proper specifications. A Soviet request for teletype apparatus was

initially turned down.8

By agreement with the British and

Canadians, certain conditions were

placed on the aid pledged in the Third

Protocol, though in order to meet Soviet

objections the USSR was assured that

they would not be invoked unless absolutely necessary. The shipping promised

was to be subject to reduction "if shipping losses, lack of escorts, deficiencies

in the anticipated capacity of available

routes, the necessities of other operations, or the exigencies of the situation

render their fulfillment impracticable,"

and the lists of supplies were to be subject to readjustment "to meet unforeseen

developments in the war situation."9

Military efforts to secure some small

quid pro quo from the USSR were less

successful. The War Department desired

a pledge from the Soviet Union that it

would extend American observers the

same facilities for visits and information

in the USSR that were accorded Soviet

representatives in the United States, and

the British Chiefs of Staff wanted a

pledge of Russian assistance in defending

the northern convoy route. The Protocol

Committee ruled against inclusion of

either of these conditions, remarking

that:

In the experience of those engaged in

the execution of previous Protocols, the

Soviets are very difficult to deal with on a

bargaining basis, but respond most satisfactorily in performing their share of an

8

 (1) Third Soviet Protocol. (2) Ltr, Patterson to

Hopkins, 17 Apr 43. (3) Memo, Gen Arnold for Gen

Somervell, 20 Apr 43, sub: 3d Extension, USSR

Agreement. (2) and (3) in ID 031.1, III, Parts I and II.

(4) Msg, Roosevelt to Stalin, 16 Jun 43, in MS Index

to Hopkins Papers, Book VII, Lend-Lease Aid to

Russia 1942-43, Item 65. 9

 (1) Third Soviet Protocol. (2) JCS 322/1, 17 Jul

43, title: Third Soviet Protocol.
676 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

understanding when a generous offer is

made, and which does not force the Soviets

into a bargaining position.10

In the face of this attitude the JCS and

CCS decided not to insist.

The Swelling Flow of Aid

to the USSR

Even before the Third Protocol was

formally signed in October, the improved situation on the delivery routes

was evident. By the end of September

1943 shipments on the proposed protocol

were 15 percent ahead of schedule. In

September, shipments over the Pacific

route mounted to a new high of 345,000

short tons and those to the Persian Gulf

reached 207,000 short tons. Brig. Gen.

Donald H. Connolly, head of the Persian

Gulf Command, reported that a continuing capacity of 242,000 short tons per

month could be anticipated on that

route under existing plans for development.

Shipments via the Pacific route, however, soon began to decline because of

difficulties of winter navigation, reaching

a nadir of 102,000 short tons in January

1944. The possibility of Japanese interference forced most Soviet flag shipping

in the Pacific to proceed by way of Kamchatka, Petropavlovsk, and the Strait of

Tartary rather than directly through

La Perouse Strait close to the northernmost Japanese island of Hokkaido. The

route was difficult in winter, and many

ships were icebound for long periods

when even icebreakers could not get

through the packed ice. Several Liberty

ships cracked up in the ice and had to

be replaced; most returned to the west

coast in need of extensive repairs.

Despite these difficulties the Russians

were completely unresponsive to WSA

suggestions that some of the Soviet flag

shipping be transferred temporarily to

the Alaska and Hawaii run, an attitude

that discouraged any further transfers

of American shipping to the Soviet

Pacific fleet.

In the face of declining Pacific shipments and continuing danger of Japanese interruption of that route, further

augmentation of the capacity of the

Persian Gulf was seriously considered.

In September 1943 General Connolly

offered alternate plans for an increase

from 216,000 long tons (242,000 short

tons) monthly to 244,000 and 260,000

long tons respectively. The first goal, he

said, could be achieved with a small

personnel increment, simply by putting

450 more railroad cars on the TransIranian Railway and setting up two

new mobile truck assembly plants. The

second goal would be more difficult,

requiring additional major port construction and a considerable augmentation of the motor transport service. The

Protocol Committee decided that the

additional rail and truck assembly equipment should be sent to provide a standby

capacity for 244,000 long tons, but that

no additional personnel should go and

no commitment should be accepted for

the increase.11

10 (1) Quoted from JCS 322, 18 May 43, title: Third

Soviet Protocol. (2) CCS 243, 22 May 43, and CCS

243/1, 31 May 43, both titled Third Soviet Protocol.

11 (1) Memo, Hq PGSC, 14 Sep 43, sub: Rpt on

Movement of 260,000 LT Russian Cargo thru Persian

Gulf with Alternative Plan for Movement of 240,-

ooo Tons. (2) Min, Protocol Subcom on Shpg, 5 Oct

43. (3) Rpt of Subcom on Shpg, attached to Agenda

for 6th mtg, PSPC, 30 Sept 44. All in ID 334 PSPC, I.

(4) FEA, Report on the Status of the Soviet Aid

Program as of September 30, 1943. (5) See below,

Appendix G-3. (6) Memos, Adm Land and Lewis

Douglas for President, 11 Oct, 10 Nov, 10 Dec 43,
AID TO THE USSR IN THE LATER WAR YEARS 677

LIBERTY SHIP WITH SUPPLIES FOR THE USSR at the port of Khorramshar, Iran.

Negotiations were already under way

for reopening the northern route, and

this undoubtedly influenced the decision

of the committee. In September 1943

the Soviet Union began to press urgently

for resumption of the northern convoys,

which had been suspended since March.

Soviet spokesmen insisted that the northern route was the only one over which

supplies destined for use on the northern

front could be delivered in time to

serve their intended purposes. Moreover,

much of the Third Protocol cargo consisted of heavy and bulky equipment

such as locomotives, power and construction equipment, and industrial

machinery—articles that for the most

part, because of their bulk and ultimate

destination in the USSR, could not be

handled in the Persian Gulf. In the

Pacific there were insufficient ships

equipped to handle locomotives; transport of other types of heavy equipment

across the Trans-Siberian Railway was

difficult.12

Resumption of the northern convoys

depended on the ability of the British

to furnish naval escort. Churchill was

willing to run convoys from November

11 Jan, and 10 Feb 44, folder Russia—Rpts to President, WSA Douglas File. (7) Msgs NA 5409, Douglas

to Harriman, 11 Oct 43; SD 2984, Douglas to Harriman, 17 Oct 43; 1857, Moscow to Secy State, Harriman for Douglas, 6 Nov 43; all in folder Rus Shpg

1/1/43, WSA Douglas File.

12

 (1) Ibid. (1). (2) JCS 517, 2 Oct 43, and JCS

517/1, 14 Oct 43, titles: Convoys to North Russia.
678 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

1943 through February 1944 at an

average rate of 35 ships per month, but

would make no contract or bargain on

the point and sought as a quid pro quo

a Soviet promise to relax restrictions on

the numbers and movement of British

personnel in the USSR. Stalin insisted

on a binding commitment without conditions. After an acrimonious exchange

of messages in which neither side would

give way, a modus vivendi was reached

at the Foreign Ministers meeting in

Moscow in late October and the convoys

were reinstituted on schedule in November. Churchill made no specific pledge

for their continuance, nor did Stalin

make any concessions on the matter of

British personnel in the USSR.13

The scheduled convoys sailed in

November, December, January, and February, and a fifth was added in March.

In February and March WSA found it

necessary to cut shipments to the Persian

Gulf in order to provide ships for the

northern route, since heavy shipments

to England in preparation for OVERLORD

were placing a strain on the Atlantic

shipping pool. When the northern convoys were suspended in April to allow

naval preparations for OVERLORD, shipments to the Persian Gulf were correspondingly increased, reaching a peak

of 289,000 long tons in May. With the

return of the icebound fleet, shipments

once again mounted to large proportions

in the Pacific in May and June. By the

end of the Third Protocol period on

30 June 1944, the calculations of the

capacities of both the Pacific and Persian

Corridor routes had been vindicated.

Total tonnage by each route was slightly

in excess of the protocol commitment

for the Atlantic and Pacific respectively.

With nearly one million short tons

more moving over the northern route,

the Third Protocol commitment of 5.1

million short tons was exceeded by

approximately 25 percent. Delivery of

aircraft was also maintained at protocol

rates.14

Meanwhile, negotiations for a fourth

protocol were under way. On 14 February 1944, the President issued one of

his periodic directives on the Soviet

supply program to the interested departments and agencies:

Russia continues to be a major factor in

achieving the defeat of Germany. We must

therefore continue to support the USSR by

providing the maximum amount of supplies which can be delivered to her ports.

This is a matter of paramount importance.

The USSR has been requested to state

requirements for a Fourth Protocol, to

cover the period from July 1, 1944 to June

30, 1945. It is desired that within the limitations of available resources, every effort

be made to meet these requirements. . . .

15

The initial American supply offering,

compiled in the same way as previous

protocols, was 7,383,073 short tons of

supplies, including a carry-over of stockpiles from the Third Protocol. The

Canadian offering amounted to 491,371

short tons. The shipping commitment

was initially set at 5,400,000 short tons,

equally divided between the Atlantic and

Pacific. Again the USSR felt that the

offering was too low and pressed for a commitment of 7,000,000 short tons. Maj.

13 Churchill, Closing the Ring, pp. 263-74.

14(1)See below, Appendix G-3. (2) Memos, Land

and Douglas for President, 11 Oct, 10 Nov, 10 Dec,

11 Jan, 10 Feb, 10 Mar 44, folder Russia—Rpts to

President, WSA File. (3) Min, 7th mtg PSPC, 10 May

44, ID 334 PSPC, I. 15

 Memo, President for Secy War, 14 Feb 44,

ID 031.1, VII.
AID TO THE USSR IN THE LATER WAR YEARS 679

Gen. Sidney P. Spalding, head of the

Lend-Lease Supply Mission to the USSR,

thought the figure not "unduly high" in

view of the extensive destruction in the

USSR and the valiant war effort the

Soviet people were exerting.16

The principal issue, once more, was

the northern route. At the insistence of

the Russians, supported by the U.S.

Joint Chiefs, the British agreed to start

convoys over the route again in August

1944, but it was still uncertain whether

the convoys would continue to run

monthly. With demands for OVERLORD

forces mounting, WSA was unwilling to

make a binding commitment of too

much shipping in the Atlantic. In the

end the Russians had to settle for a

definite increase of only 300,000 short

tons in the shipping commitment via

the Atlantic (raising the total to

5,700,000 short tons), and a promise that

more would be shipped if possible.

Again they were permitted to include

a stockpile, this time of 600,000 tons, in

their selections. Actually, in the light of

experience under the Third Protocol,

Soviet officials could have had little

doubt that the United States would exert

itself to exceed protocol quotas.17

The conditions on Soviet aid and the

escape clauses were generally the same

as those in the Third Protocol. War

Department offerings made up approximately the same proportion with heavy

types of equipment needed to rehabilitate transportation, communication, and

other facilities predominating. Railway

materials included 1,735 locomotives

and 12,244 flatcars; truck offerings

showed larger numbers of the very heavy

types, including for the first time 40-ton

tank transporters. Another important

addition was mobile construction equipment for roads and airports. The War

Department had also, during the Third

Protocol period, accepted responsibility

for certain types of industrial equipment

(industrial lift trucks and tractors,

cranes, power shovels, teletype apparatus, and the like), and considerable

quantities of these items were included

in the Fourth Protocol as part of a total

offering of industrial equipment valued

at $1,132,453,000.

The main change in aircraft schedules

under the Fourth Protocol was the elimination of light bombers and a corresponding increase in the number of pursuit planes (from 1,200 to 2,450,) and

medium bombers (from 222 to 300).

Soviet bids for heavy bombers (B-17

and B-24) and for newer, larger types

of transports (C-46 and C-54) were

refused. Plans called for delivery of

nearly all aircraft via the Alaska-Siberian

ferry route, rendering the aircraft assembly facilities in Iran of little further

use.18

16

 (1) Quote from Msg CM-IN 24565, 29 Jul 44,

U.S. Military Mission, Moscow, to Protocol Committee. (2) Min, 8th Mtg PSPC, 8 Aug 44, ID 334,

Pres Sov Prot Com, I. (3) Msg M 20156, U.S. Military Mission, Moscow, to Protocol Com, 13 Jul 44,

ID Cables Moscow IN and OUT Jan-Nov 44. (4)

Memo, Strategy and Policy Gp, OPD, for Asst Secy,

WDGS, 18 Aug 44, sub: Fourth Soviet Protocol,

ABC 400.3295 Russia (19 Apr 42), Sec 2. (5) JCS

874/1, 12 Aug 44, title: Resumption of Northern

Convoys to Russia. 17

 (1) Ibid. (2) and (4). (2) For copy of final version

of Fourth Protocol, see Dept of State Pub. No. 2759,

Soviet Supply Protocols. (3) War Department offerings as first formulated were forwarded by Memo,

Secretary Stimson for General York, 15 June 1944, G-4 400.3295.

18

 (1) Ibid. (2) and (3). (2) ID, Lend-Lease, Text,

II, 1027-28. (3) On the heavy bombers see below,

pp. 688-89. (4) All quantities represent those in the

final version of the Fourth Protocol, but do not include Annex III. Some items were the subject of

negotiation right up to the signing.
680 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

The Fourth Protocol was not formally

signed until April 1945 because of difficulties over terms of payment for industrial materials. The State Department

adopted the general formula that no

Soviet requirements that would be more

than 18 months in production could be

financed under lend-lease, on the assumption that such materials were for

postwar rehabilitation rather than for

the war effort. Much of the industrial

equipment fell into this category. The

Fourth Protocol was signed without any

final agreement on this issue. Delivery

of industrial equipment was made subject to future settlement of terms of payment and, indeed, most of it was never

delivered, owing mainly to Soviet intransigence over the interest rate.19

Despite the delay in signing, the

Fourth Protocol went into practical effect with the expiration of the Third

on 1 July 1944, following a precedent

established earlier. Shipping rates were

soon exceeding the high ones of the previous year. Availability of supplies and

shipping, principally the latter, had now

become the limiting factors on aid to

the USSR rather than capacity of the

routes of delivery. The British proved

able to maintain the northern convoys

without interruption, and with inconsequential losses, from August 1944

through the end of the war in Europe

in May 1945. Shipments via Vladivostok

and the Soviet Arctic ports were pushed

vigorously during the summer and fall

of 1944, and the diminution in the winter of 1944-45 was less than the previous

year. In this situation the Persian Corridor assumed the status of an auxiliary

route except for the delivery of unassembled trucks. During the last half of

1944 shipments through Iran were well

below the capacity of the Trans-Iranian

Railroad, and no appreciable tonnage

was moved by truck. In midyear the

Army and the Protocol Committee proposed disbanding the motor transport

service in the area so as to free about

8,000 service troops for duty elsewhere;

but the Russians urged delaying the

move to preserve a reserve capacity in

case the Japanese should interfere with

the Pacific route or the northern convoys

again be suspended. Not until November 1944 was the move finally accomplished, concomitant with the discontinuance of air assembly in Iran.20

By September 1944 the Russians had

regained complete control of the north

shores of the Black Sea, and it was apparent that great economies in both U.S.

military shipping and Soviet rail transportation could be effected by shifting

the lines of supply from the Persian

Gulf. The Turks agreed to allow passage

of the Dardanelles, and the British

agreed to provide convoy escort through

19 (1) Deane, The Strange Alliance, pp. 92-93. (2)

ID, Lend-Lease, Text, II, 1027. (3) Memo, Gen

Wright, Dir ID, for Harry Hopkins, Chmn PSPC,

25 Oct 43, sub: Policy on Industrial Equipment for

Russia, ID 008 Lend-Lease. (4) Ltr, Dean Acheson,

Dept State, to Gen York, PSPC, 14 Mar 44, ID

031.1, VII.

20(1) See below, Appendix G-3. (2) T. H. Vail

Motter, The Persian Corridor and Aid to Russia,

UNITED STATES ARMY IN WORLD WAR II

(Washington, 1952), pp. 270-71, 328, and app. A,

Tables 6 and 10. (3) Msgs, M 20156, U.S. Military

Mission, Moscow, to Protocol Com, 13 Jul 44; WAR

60899, Marshall to Deane, 5 Jul 44; M 20115, Deane

to Marshall, 19 Jul 44; WAR 77837, Deane to

Spalding, 9 Aug 44. All in ID Cables Moscow IN

and OUT Jan-Nov 44. (4) Diary Entry, 12 Jul 44,

Strat Log Br, Plng Div, ASF.
AID TO THE USSR IN THE LATER WAR YEARS 681

the Aegean Sea. By American standards,

however, the Russians moved very slowly in performing the essentials in their

own territory—arranging convoys in the

Black Sea, rehabilitating damaged ports,

and setting up truck assembly plants.

Though they asked for necessary equipment from the United States, they were

at first unwilling to allow U.S. personnel

to visit Odessa, the main port of entry

contemplated. After the usual tortuous

course of negotiations, these matters

were ironed out, a start made on rehabilitation, and shipments through the

Black Sea inaugurated in January 1945.

The first ships leaving the United States

carried with them port cranes necessary

to put the port of Odessa in condition

to handle the heavier cargo that followed

in other vessels. Two truck assembly

plants were rushed to Odessa from the

Persian Gulf. And despite some port

congestion in the beginning, the Black

Sea route soon supplanted the Persian

Corridor. Few supplies were shipped

from the United States to Iranian ports

after January 1945, and activity in the

Persian Gulf Command after that date

was confined mostly to cleaning up the

backlog of supplies on hand, transporting oil from the Abadan refineries to

the Soviet Zone, and liquidation of facilities. Liquidation proceeded slowly,

nonetheless, because of reluctance to

give up the insurance the Persian Corridor route offered against the failure of

the others. American port and railroad

facilities in Iran remained virtually intact until after V-E Day. Much of the

material made surplus by the declining

need for the Iranian route, in addition

to the truck assembly plants, was set up

for delivery to the USSR. Several port

cranes, assorted rails and accessories, and

792 10-ton trucks had been delivered by

V-E Day, and 3,663 rail cars were scheduled for transfer.21

Even with the Persian Corridor fading

rapidly from the picture, American aid

under the Fourth Protocol had already

surpassed the original 5.7-million short

ton shipping commitment by the end

of the war in Europe in May 1945.

Flight delivery of aircraft was also ahead

of schedule.22

The War Department and the

Protocols

During the period from July 1943 to

May 1945, when U.S. aid to the USSR

mounted to its highest point, War Department supply agencies were generally successful in discharging their responsibilities under the protocols. Their relations

with Soviet representatives, also, were

more cordial and smooth than earlier.

Yet certain problems persisted. Although

total shipments under the Third and

Fourth Protocols generally ran ahead of

schedule, the War Department was

usually slightly behind in meeting the

supply commitments for which it was

21

 (1) See numerous messages exchanged between

the Protocol Committee and the U.S. Military Mission in Moscow in ID Cables Moscow IN and OUT

Jan-Nov 44, and in folder Russia, Box 122869, WSA

Conway File. (2) JMT 73, 7 Sep 44, title: Allied

Communications to Russia Via the Black Sea. (3)

Various materials, mostly cables, on the closing out

of the Persian Gulf Command and difficulties in

early shipments to the Black Sea are in a notebook

kept by F. E. Phelps of Planning Division, ASF,

entitled PGO—Hands Off (hereafter cited as Phelps

Notebook), ASF Plng Div, Job A46-371. (4) ID,

Lend-Lease, Text, II, 1071-74.

22 (1) FEA, Report on Status of Soviet Aid Program

as of April 30, 1945. (2) Deliveries were only 95

percent of commitments if Annex III is included,

see below, pp. 691 ff.
682 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

responsible. Against Third Protocol

schedules, the War Department made

available 84 percent of its offerings and

in May 1945 had furnished 79 percent

of its share of the Fourth Protocol, as

opposed to a scheduled 82 percent.23

The cause of this lag was not any lack

of will or effort on the part of the ASF

in procurement and delivery of material

or any considerable retentions to meet

requirements of U.S. military forces. It

lay rather in the difficulty of programing

Soviet requirements for timely production and in the fact that shipping was

not always adequate to move certain

heavier types of equipment, notably

locomotives and trucks.

The Army Supply Program was drawn

up by calendar year, with a major

revision semiannually. The protocols

covered a fiscal year. They were never

made final until well after the period

they were to cover had begun, and requirements frequently changed in the

interim. Under this system, it was difficult to plan Soviet aid in the Army Supply Program, particularly where nonstandard items with special specifications

were involved. In December 1943, General Clay proposed that the protocols be

put on a calendar year basis to match the

Army Supply Program, but the Protocol Committee was reluctant to recommend a change on the ground that it

might be disturbing to the Soviet Union

at that stage of the war.

The greatest difficulties in production

planning arose in the case of signal

equipment—such as radio stations, radar

(where the issue of military secrecy was

also involved), measuring and testing

equipment—and in certain types of engineering, transportation, and industrial

supplies. All these materials were normally related to special projects and dependent upon the development of the

military situation in the USSR. Soviet

representatives in Washington, dependent on advice from supply commissars

in Moscow who themselves were not in

direct touch with the battlefronts, were

slow in developing and presenting both

requirements and specifications. For both

the Third and Fourth Protocols the

ASF found it necessary to make its own

advance estimates of Soviet needs in order to place contracts for timely procurement, and the estimates had to be based,

not on any knowledge of conditions on

the Eastern Front, but merely on previous Soviet requests and other fragmentary information. Adjustments and new

requests subsequently presented by Soviet representatives proved difficult to

handle. The ASF, following the Presidential directives to make all possible

supplies available to the USSR, did, time

after time, find the means to meet emergency Soviet requests despite the mushrooming of U.S. Army overseas requirements for special project materials in

1944 and 1945. Nevertheless, there were

certain delays in procurement of special

needs of the USSR, and in April 1945

the War Department was encountering

difficulties in meeting commitments for

construction machinery, landing mat,

specialized types of trucks and tractors,

rotary snow plows, ice plants, cloth, tarpaulins, and medical supplies, either be23

 (1) Memo, Dir ID, for Dir Materiel, 24 Jul 44,

sub: Rpt to President on Action by WD under 3d

Protocol Thru 30 Jun 44. (2) Rpt, Secy War to President, 28 Jul 44, ID 031.1, X. (3) Memo, Gen Shingler, Dir ID, for Dir Materiel, 7 May 45, sub: Rpt to

President on Action by WD under 4th Protocol.

(4) Rpt, Secy War to President, 11 May 45. (3) and

(4) in ID 031.1, XII.
AID TO THE USSR IN THE LATER WAR YEARS 683

cause of delayed placement of contracts

or competition with U.S. needs.24

The Soviet Union almost invariably

accepted War Department offerings at

their full rate in order to obtain the

advantages of advance procurement planning, and then, under changing conditions, sometimes gave preference to other supplies for shipment. Increases in

Third Protocol tonnage as a result of

the improved shipping situation were

made, at Soviet request, mainly in food,

steel, aluminum, nickel, and alcohol.25

Much of the reason for this lay in the

nature of available shipping space. Total tonnage in itself was never an adequate measure of ability to ship specific

items. Normally more shipping space for

bulk bottom cargo was obtainable than

for finished equipment, which in many

cases required deck loading or special

facilities for packing and handling. Shipment of petroleum products, toluol, alcohol, and other liquid cargo depended

upon the availability of tankers, not dry

cargo ships. The Russians often desired

particular cargo only by a particular

route of delivery, and there were other

factors influencing the nature of cargo

on each route. Finished military equipment was excluded from the Vladivostok

route, though items such as petroleum,

foodstuffs, trucks, locomotives, and engineering equipment of either military

or civilian end-use moved over it. Before

the opening of the Black Sea, the Persian

Gulf, because of its superior assembly

facilities, had to be the principal reliance for shipment of unassembled trucks.

Medium tanks had to be shipped almost

entirely over the northern route. The

Iranian ports could not handle locomotives and there were too few ships on any

of the routes equipped to carry them.

In these circumstances, shipment of some

types of military cargo lagged behind,

and this lag, rather than difficulty in

procurement, was the principal reason

why the War Department failed to meet

protocol schedules. For instance, under

the Third Protocol 121,620 trucks were

shipped instead of the 132,000 promised

and 1,802 medium tanks instead of 2,000.

Similarly, though at the Tehran Conference the greatest Russian emphasis

had been put on locomotives, many still

had to be held back under the Third

Protocol because of lack of ships capable

of delivering them. Movement of locomotives was speeded up, beginning shortly after the Tehran Conference, by adaptation of Soviet flag vessels in the Pacific

and performance under the Fourth Protocol was better.26

Regulation of assignments to the

USSR was normally accomplished at the

production end rather than in distribution. The protocol schedules were, at

least as long as the war in Europe continued, virtually ironclad commitments

24(1) ID, Lend-Lease, Text, II, 1023-28, 1050-58,

1074-83. (2) Memo, Gen Clay for Executive PSPC,

22 Dec 43, sub: Fourth Soviet Protocol, ID 031.1,

VI, Part II. (3) Memo, Gen Shingler, for Dir Materiel, 6 Apr 45, sub: Rpt to President on Action by

WD under 4th Protocol, ID 031.1, XII. (4) Other

Monthly Rpts of Secy War to President and related

material in ID 031.1, III-XII. (5) For correspondence relating particularly to the negotiation of the

Fourth Protocol see ID 031.1, Volume VIII.

25 (1) Memo, Col L. C. Strong, Liaison Br, ID, for

Gen Wright, 28 Feb 44, sub: Protocol Tonnage, ID

031.1, VII. (2) Deane, Strange Alliance, pp. 96-97.

(3) Msg 138, American Embassy, Moscow, to Dept

State, Harriman for Hopkins, 15 Jan 44, OPD Exec

9, Book 16, Paper 364.

26 (1) Rpt, Secy War to President, 28 Jul 44. (2)

Msgs, 10042, SEXTANT to AGWAR, CM-IN 15521,

25 Nov 43, Somervell for Styer; 10056, CM-IN 16123,

Douglas, WSA to MacPherson, WSA, 26 Nov 43.

All in OPD Exec 5, Item 13.
684 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

for delivery. Military materials were formally assigned by the Munitions Assignments Board, but that body's practical

jurisdiction over the protocols was limited mainly to adjustments in the rate

of delivery and to decisions on Soviet

bids for critical equipment that arose

outside the protocol commitments. The

responsibility for preventing interference with deliveries for the U.S. Army

rested for the most part with the ASF

agencies that drew up the protocol schedules and reviewed extraprotocol requests

for War Department materials.

Under this system, regulation of USSR

stockpiles was a major problem. Because

of the difficulties caused by excessive

backlogs during the first two protocol

periods, the Army placed the greatest

emphasis on limiting the stockpiles to

reasonable proportions. Under the Third

Protocol the Soviet Union was to be

allowed a stockpile of 500,000 tons and

under the Fourth 600,000 tons. However, the Russians began the Third Protocol period in July 1943 with a stockpile of 1,200,000 tons and, in fact, never

brought it down to the stipulated figures.

General Wright, head of the International Division, ASF, secured a clause

in the Third Protocol, one that was continued in the Fourth, reserving to the

United States "the right to limit the size

of individual stockpiles, either by control of production or diversion of product, or both, when in its judgment such

action is in the best interest of the common cause," but the clause was hedged

by another provision which said that

making up resulting arrearages was to

be given "all possible consideration."27

In an effort to give practical effect to

this principle, the ASF attempted in fall

1943 to secure application of its own

stock control procedures to all supplies

for the USSR, but the Protocol Committee was unwilling to go this far. The

committee did institute a program for

controlling the flow of supplies at the

production end, essaying in each case to

get Soviet representatives in Washington to cut back programs of their own

free will when it was apparent that materials would pile up in storage. Large

backlogs of trucks and locomotives were

forestalled in this manner. Along the

same line, the committee adopted the

principle that when the Russians made

requests for new materials, they must

cancel part of their existing requirements to provide the necessary shipping

space. As an example, during the Third

Protocol period, the Russians canceled

requirements on the War Department

for ammunition and scout cars in order

to permit extraprotocol shipments of

pipeline, 40-mm. antiaircraft guns, artillery pieces, and explosives. Only in extreme instances did the War Department resort to the repossession procedures administered by the MAB, and

then Soviet representatives were given

many warnings and several extensions

before any repossession action was taken.

Only in the case of 48 wreckers, repossessed in June 1944 after eight months

in storage, did the USSR suffer any serious inconvenience, for U.S. Army requirements prevented resupply of these

wreckers when the USSR bid for them

again.28

27

 (1) See final texts of Third and Fourth Protocols.

(2) Memo, Gen Wright for Gen Burns, 14 Sep 43,

sub: Revision of 3d Russian Protocol, ID 031.1, V.

28

 (1) Memo, Col Boone, Actg Dir ID for CG ASF,

11 Sep 43, sub: USSR Reqmts with related papers

in ID 031.1, V. (2) Memo, John N. Hazard, Secy

PSPC, for Gen Burns, 18 Oct 43. (3) Ltr, Burns to
AID TO THE USSR IN THE LATER WAR YEARS 685

In general, adjustment of the Soviet

program to both shipping capabilities

and the changing war situation in the

USSR itself was a difficult matter. Soviet

representatives in the United States

could take little action without constant

reference to Moscow, and U.S. representatives in or out of the Soviet Union

were permitted to get little firsthand information on Soviet needs on which to

base their own conclusions.

The Deane-Spalding Mission

The main effort to gain more firsthand information on Soviet needs and

on the use of American supplies in the

USSR was made by the U.S. Military

Mission established in Moscow in October 1943. At that time the United States

reorganized its representation in the Soviet Union. Averell Harriman replaced

Admiral William H. Standley as Ambassador, and at Harriman's suggestion the

military mission was created with General Deane, formerly U.S. Secretary of

the CCS, as its head. The military mission was to work with the Embassy in

promoting the closest possible co-ordination of the military efforts of the United

States and USSR. The old Supply Mission to the USSR under Col. Philip Faymonville, which had handled lend-lease

matters independently in the Soviet Union since October 1941, was supplanted

by a new lend-lease mission headed by

Brig. Gen. Sidney P. Spalding, long assistant to Maj. Gen. James H. Burns on

the Munitions Assignments Board and

the President's Soviet Protocol Committee. Spalding's mission was subject to

the over-all co-ordination of the Ambassador and the chief of the military mission, although he reported directly to

the Protocol Committee. In practice his

group functioned virtually as a part of

Deane's mission. Though both missions

were expected to render such technical

assistance as the Russians requested, neither was given any power or authority

to investigate or make more than informal recommendations on lend-lease requests. The United States Government

had evidently decided, after its bitter

experience with the Greely mission in

early 1942, that the USSR would hardly

permit any group charged with the latter

functions to enter the country.29

Both General Deane and Ambassador

Harriman soon became convinced that

the United States should establish a closer control over the flow of supplies to

the USSR now that the crisis in the

Russo-German War had passed. They

did not, at least in the beginning, want

power to screen all Soviet requests as

MacArthur screened Australian requests

or Stilwell did those of the Chinese; they

merely wished to force Soviet officials to

give them fuller information on, and

justification for, their requirements for

critical items. In January 1944 Deane

learned that many lend-lease diesel marine engines were rusting in storage beK. I. Lukashev, SGPC, 22 Oct 43. (4) Memo, Gen

Wright for Dir Materiel, ASF, 3 Dec 43, sub: Mtg

of Subcom on Supplies of PSPC. (2), (3), and (4) in

ID 334 Pres Sov Prot Com, I. (5) Min 3359, 141st

mtg MAC(G), 11 May 44; min 3483, 147th mtg, 22

Jun 44. (6) Memo, Gen Wright for Executive PSPC,

26 Jan 44, sub: Soviet Items on West Coast, Unshipped for Over 60 Days. (7) Memo, Gen York for

Gen Wright, 31 Jan 44, same sub. (6) and (7) in

ID 400.318 Russia I. (8) ID, Lend-Lease, Text, II,

1095-98.

29(1)For background material on the formation

of the Deane mission see OPD Exec 1, Item 21,

Moscow Mission September 1943, and Deane,

Strange Alliance, pages 9-12. (2) On the Greely mission see Motter, The Persian Corridor and Aid to

Russia, pages 65-81.
686 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

cause the Soviet Union had not prepared

hulls for their installation, a circumstance that gave rise to the suspicion

that much other lend-lease material

might be similarly misused. The USSR

was, at the time, pressing for an increase

in protocol tonnages of aluminum, nickel, alcohol, and copper wire, all materials vital to American war production. A. I. Mikoyan, Soviet Commissar

for Foreign Trade, turned aside lightly

all queries as to the use the Russians

intended to make of the materials, promising information in the near future but

intimating clearly that he thought Soviet

representatives in Washington could secure the materials without such specific

justification as requested. In mid-January 1944, Deane and Harriman both

recommended to Washington that before

items in critical supply were allocated

to the USSR, the military mission should

be required to obtain information and

submit recommendations that would indicate the relative urgency of the Soviet

need.30

In Washington, the War Department

and the JCS readily agreed to the application of the Deane-Harriman proposals, but it proved impossible to overcome the pronounced fear of wounding

Soviet sensibilities that prevailed in circles close to the President. The JCS

drafted a memorandum for the President

on 17 January 1944, asking approval of

Deane's recommendations. When it was

discussed with Isadore Lubin, statistician

on the MAB and an intimate of Harry

Hopkins, Lubin indicated that there

would be political objections. He recognized "some merit" in the proposal, but

felt that "if it were put into effect it

should be done gradually and not with

a full broadside at the Soviets."31 Admiral Leahy decided that the memorandum should not be sent to the President

pending word from Hopkins who at that

time was in the hospital and not permitted to have visitors. Somervell proposed to talk to Hopkins as soon as he

could, but there is no record that the

conversation took place.

At any rate, the military representatives were overruled in conferences between Hopkins, Leo Crowley, head of

FEA, and Edward Stettinius, Acting Secretary of State. On 25 February 1944

the Protocol Committee informed Harriman that it would be "inadvisable to

subject USSR requirements to screening

in Moscow or to reject Soviet requests

because of failure to provide operational

or other justification" to the military

mission. They argued that limitations

on ocean tonnage still had the effect of

forcing the Russians to give "continuous preference to badly needed high priority items," and that final determination of offerings to the USSR must be

made in Washington rather than in Moscow since complete information on overall U.N. requirements, resources, and

shipping were available only to the authorities there.32

30 (1) Msg 138, American Embassy, Moscow, to

Dept State, Harriman for Hopkins, 15 Jan 44, OPD

Exec 9, Book 16, Paper 364. (2) Msg CM-IN 11287,

Deane to JCS, 17 Jan 44. (3) Deane, Strange Alliance, pp. 96-98.

31

 (1) Memo, Secy JCS for Gen Handy, 21 Jan 44,

sub: Policy as to Furnishing of Items in Short

Supply to the USSR. (2) Memo, Capt M. Freseman,

USN, for Adm Leahy, 20 Jan 44. Both in ABC

400.3295 Russia (19 Apr 42), Sec 2. 32

 (1) Msg 407, Stettinius to Harriman, 25 Feb 44.

(2) Memo, Gen Somervell for CofS, 19 Jan 44. Both

in OPD Exec 9, Book 16, Paper 364. (3) Adm

Leahy's note on memo from Capt Freseman, 20 Jan

44. (4) Memo, Gen Styer for Gen Somervell, 31 Jan

44, folder CG ASF 1943-44, CofS ASF file.
AID TO THE USSR IN THE LATER WAR YEARS 687

Harriman protested that his proposals

had been misunderstood, that neither

he nor Deane had contemplated any farreaching decisions on the scope of the

Soviet Aid Program in Moscow, only a

limited screening as a lever to get information on Soviet requirements. He

did not feel that limitations on ocean

tonnage would necessarily continue in

the future, as they had in the past, to restrict Soviet requests to their more urgent needs. "We lay ourselves wide open

to just criticism at home," Harriman

wrote, "unless we now begin to get at

least some knowledge of the purposes

for which they are using our shipments."33

Harriman and Deane continued to

urge on every suitable occasion that the

military mission be permitted to screen

Soviet requests for critical materials. In

August 1944 Deane indicated he wanted

to go much further and have the mission

screen all military requirements for the

USSR. In December 1944 he expressed

to General Marshall his disgust at the

lack of any positive action on any of the

proposals: "The situation has changed

but our policy has not. We still meet

their requests to the limit of our ability,

and they meet ours to the minimum that

will keep us sweet."34

Despite the barriers placed in their

way, Deane and Spalding did furnish

some information on Soviet requirements, using intuition, common sense,

and the little knowledge they could glean

from their own contacts and those of

members of their respective missions.

The information had at least some influence on the formulation of the Fourth

Protocol schedules. The mission, however, had no lever with which to force

Soviet officials to give operational justification for their supply needs as long

as the normal channel for transmission

of requests stayed in the Soviet Government Purchasing Commission in Washington. The Soviet officials probably lost

more than they gained by their attitude.

Deane and Harriman were prepared to

support Soviet requests if justified by

"little more than a sob story." General

Spalding, who had particular responsibility for lend-lease, was never overly

critical of Soviet requests. On the few

occasions that Spalding and Deane were

permitted to travel and observe, they

obtained or speeded up shipments of

items such as DUKW's, trucks, landing

mat, and port cranes sorely needed in

the areas they visited.35

Milepost: Supply for the USSR's

War Against Japan

One of the primary tasks of the Deane

mission was to arrange for military collaboration with the USSR in the war

against Japan. At the Tehran Conference in December 1943, Stalin clearly

indicated that the western Allies could

count on the USSR entering the war

against Japan at the propitious moment

after the defeat of Germany. American

military planners, if they did not consider Soviet entry an absolute essential

to victory over Japan, did believe it

highly desirable. The JCS view, as stated

33

 Msg 699, American Embassy, Moscow, to Secy

State, 2 Mar 44. ABC 400. 3295 Russia (19 Apr 43),

Sec 2. 34

 (1) Deane, Strange Alliance, p. 84. (2) Memo,

BG F.N.R. [Gen Roberts], OPD, 12 Aug 44, ABC

400.3295 Russia (19 Apr 43), Sec 2.

35

 (1) Ibid. (1), pp. 91, 99-100, 210-11. (2) See also

msgs in ID Cable file Moscow IN and OUT JanNov 44.
688 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

to the President just before the Yalta

Conference, was:

We desire Russian entry at the earliest

possible date consistent with her ability to

engage in offensive operations and are pre- pared to offer the maximum support pos- sible without prejudice to our main effort

against Japan.36

The Americans hoped to use Siberian

bases in the strategic bombing of Japan

and thought the Soviet Siberian Army

could effectively prevent the withdrawal

of the Japanese Kwantung Army from

Manchuria to the home islands to oppose

an American assault. It seems fair to say

that, after late 1943, they counted more

heavily on the USSR to defeat the Japanese on the continent of Asia than on

either the Chinese or the British. All

operations on the Asiatic mainland were,

after the SEXTANT Conference, considered subsidiary to the main effort in the

Pacific; but in the whole scale of subsidiary effort in Asia, the prospective

Soviet contribution appears to have

ranked highest in American eyes.

The value of Soviet military collaboration would, in the American view, clearly depend on genuinely combined Soviet-American advance planning and

preparation. The U.S. staff reasoned that,

once the USSR was at war with Japan,

the Japanese Navy could certainly cut

the supply line to Vladivostok and the

Japanese Army could probably initially

cut the Trans-Siberian rail line. An advance build-up of supplies in Siberia

against these contingencies, to tide the

Soviet Siberian Army over until one line

or the other could be reopened, therefore seemed imperative. It seemed equally imperative to begin as soon as possible

the even more elaborate build-up required for strategic bombing from Siberian air bases and to plan for maintaining at least a minimum flow of

supplies across the Pacific to Siberia in

the event of a Soviet-Japanese clash. Assuming that the United Nations could

maintain control of the Sea of Okhotsk

north of Vladivostok, the port of Nikolaevsk and certain smaller ports in the

Amur River region could serve as supply

bases, as could Petropavlovsk on the

Kamchatka Peninsula. But these ports

were relatively undeveloped, and were

open only from June through October;

inland clearance facilities were poor. In

order to keep even this line open, the

Americans postulated that a campaign

to seize one of the Kurile Islands would

be required, and to support such a campaign and subsequently run convoys

through the Sea of Okhotsk, naval and

air bases on Kamchatka must be prepared.37

Even after Stalin's promise at Tehran,

General Deane found Soviet officials curiously indifferent to any of these things,

seemingly fearful of compromising their

neutrality too early and of permitting

Americans to make surveys in Soviet

territory. On the matter of Siberian air

bases, they blew hot and cold by turns.

When in April 1944 the USSR requested 500 B-17 or B-24 bombers as part 36

 (1) Memo, JCS for President, 23 Jan 45, in

Dept State, The Conferences at Malta and Yalta,

pp. 396-400. (2) Min, 1st Plenary Session, EUREKA

Conference, Tehran, 28 Nov 43. (3) For a detailed

treatment of the military view on this subject see

Dept of Defense Release, 19 October 1955, The

Entry of the Soviet Union into the War Against

Japan: Military Plans, 1941-45.

37

 (1) ASF Strat Log Study 57, no date, sub: Soviet

Far East, ASF Rpt 13, Part 3, ASF Plng Div files,

Job A 47-147. (2) JLC 260/M, 15 Jan 45, title: Log

Support of USAF in Pacific Russia. (3) JCS 1176/6,

18 Jan 45, title: Russian Participation in War

Against Japan.
AID TO THE USSR IN THE LATER WAR YEARS 689

of the Fourth Protocol, Deane and Harriman sought to use the request as a

lever to force the Soviet hand, reasoning that commencement of preparation

of the bases could be made a condition

on furnishing the USSR a small strategic

air force for use against Japan. After

some persuasion the JCS reluctantly

adopted this approach, but the Russians

continued to delay any action, in part,

Deane thought, because the Americans

proposed to have six groups to their

four. In the end no heavy bombers were

included under the Fourth Protocol.

Though negotiations continued afterward, the attitude of the Soviet officials

remained an enigma and the day of

preparation of the Siberian airfields was

postponed time after time on one pretext or another.38

During the course of these frustrating

negotiations, the military mission continued to press on other fronts for logistical preparations for eventual Soviet

participation in the war against Japan.

In April 1944 Deane urged that the

northern convoys be reinstituted as soon

as possible after OVERLORD to permit

supply shipments via the Atlantic for

that purpose. In May Spalding proposed

that a special effort be made to ship

large quantities of supplies to Vladivostok during the summer months while

navigation conditions were best in order

to provide a ready-made stockpile in

Siberia. There was even consideration

given to risking Japanese interference

by shipping military supplies over the

Pacific route. On 22 June, after having

finally been permitted to visit Vladivostok, Spalding urged that additional ships

be transferred to the Soviet flag in the

Pacific during the summer months, the

ships to be diverted to other services

during the winter.

The JCS, on the advice of the Joint

Military Transportation Committee, refused to consider further transfers to the

Soviet flag in view of the shortage of cargo shipping in the Pacific and doubts

that any greater tonnages could be unloaded expeditiously at Vladivostok. The

best that could be done, they decided,

would be to speed up the repair of vessels of the Soviet lend-lease fleet on the

Pacific coast, an effort that was falling

behind because of overcrowded facilities. It would be more practicable, the

JMTC thought, for the Soviet Union

to build its stockpile from supplies sent

by the northern route and transshipped

over the Trans-Siberian Railway.39

Shipments over the Pacific route were

accelerated during the summer months

but no more ships were transferred to

the Soviet flag. Americans were not in

a position to know to what extent materials shipped by either this or the

northern route were used to augment

stocks in Siberia. Indeed, there is no

indication that Soviet officials showed

any great enthusiasm for the DeaneSpalding proposals in the summer of

1944. Moreover, they gave out little information on what was being done to

prepare facilities in the Amur River

region or on Kamchatka, and they refused to allow any American survey

38

 (1) Deane, Strange Alliance, pp. 226-39. (2) JPS

442/3, 4 May 44, title: USSR Request for Heavy

Bombers and Transport Aircraft.

39 (1) JMT 55/D, 24 Apr 44, title: Resumption of

Northern Convoys to Russia. (2) JCS 901, 9 Jun 44,

title: Logistical Support of USSR for Possible Opns

Against Japan, with appendixes. (3) JCS 901/1, 13

Jun 44, and JCS 901/3, 1 Jul 44, rpts from JMTC,

titles as in (2). (4) Msg 722, U.S. Military Mission,

Moscow, to AGWAR, Spalding to JCS, 22 Jun 44,

Incl B, JMT 62/2/D, 24 Jun 44.
690 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

parties into those areas. Nevertheless,

the American staff continued contingent

planning for a North Pacific operation

to open a route through the Kuriles with

forces to be made available from Europe

once Germany was defeated.

In conferences between Churchill,

Stalin, Harriman, Deane, and Sir Alan

Brooke during the British Prime Minister's visit to Moscow in October 1944,

Stalin temporarily cleared the air. He

agreed definitely that the "Soviet Union

would take the offensive against Japan

three months after Germany's defeat

provided the United States would assist

in building up necessary reserve supplies and provided the political aspects

of Russia's participation had been clarified."40

 Moreover, the Russian leader

indicated that airfields in the Maritime

Provinces and on Kamchatka would be

provided, and he offered the use of Petropavlovsk as a naval base. He said that

great improvements were under way at

ports in the Amur River area and that

a rail line would be built connecting

the ports with the Komsomolsk area to

the south in which the Americans had

expressed interest as the site for their

air bases. Staff planning on these matters could begin immediately. Stalin

placed his primary emphasis, however,

on the supply build-up for Soviet ground

forces in the Far East, and Soviet representatives presented an additional list

of supplies they wished delivered via the

Pacific route before 30 June 1945. This

list included 500 transport aircraft; 230,-

000 tons of POL supplies including

liquid products, collapsible gas stations,

tanks, and pipelines; 186,000 tons of food

and fodder; 14,580 tons of clothing material and hospital supplies; 296,385 tons

of automotive vehicles, road machinery,

and airdrome equipment, including

1,000 DUKW's and 32,000 trucks; 306,-

500 tons of railroad equipment, including 500 locomotives and 6,000 rail cars;

20,175 tons of miscellaneous engineer

and signal equipment; medical supplies

valued at $3 million; and 4,200 tons of

small naval vessels and port equipment.

All of these were semimilitary types of

supplies previously delivered over the

Pacific route. The USSR evidently intended to build up its reserves of strictly

military equipment by way of the TransSiberian Railway. The total requested

from the United States came to 860,410

short tons of dry cargo and 206,000 tons

of liquid POL, all over and above commitments already made under the Fourth

Protocol.41

This formidable list of requirements,

cabled to Washington by General Deane,

arrived at a time when the fall shipping crisis was coining to a head.42

 The

Soviet program—designated MILEPOST—

was originally treated as a military project and referred to the JCS rather than

the Protocol Committee for decision.

The Joint Logistics Committee undertook a study on the premise that affirmative action was desirable but that the

Soviet requests were not to be met "at

the expense of operations in Europe or

those scheduled or projected in the Pacific."43

 The JLC concluded that the

requirements should be accepted in principle, but only the part that could be

furnished in 1945 should be scheduled

40

 Deane, Strange Alliance, p. 247.

41

 (1) Ibid., pp. 241-49. (2) Dept State, Conferences

at Malta and Yalta, pp. 361-74. (3) JLC 206/D, 19

Oct 44, title: Supplies and Equipment Requested by

USSR.

42 See above, ch. XXII.

43 JCS 1138, 26 Oct 44, rpt by JLC, title: Supplies

and Equipment Requested by USSR.
AID TO THE USSR IN THE LATER WAR YEARS 691

for production. On this basis, a commitment for only 46 percent, or about 400,-

000 tons, of the dry cargo could be undertaken. Certain items, such as locomotives, rolling stock, naval vessels,

transport aircraft, and heavy trucks, were

ruled out, but the entire POL requirement was accepted subject to availability

of shipping. Shipping in any case would

be the big problem, the JLC thought,

since it would mean new transfers to the

Soviet flag in the Pacific in the face of

an over-all shortage of cargo shipping

in that area and operations in winter

when ice conditions lessened capacity

on the Pacific route. The committee

therefore thought the commitment could

not "be based on a definite guarantee

as to the time this tonnage will be

moved," and speculated that twenty sailings per month might be available beginning no earlier than March 1945.

As an interim measure, the committee

suggested that the USSR might be asked

to substitute tonnage for MILEPOST for

supplies already in the Fourth Protocol.44

The JCS accepted the JLC report as

the basis for the MILEPOST project and

asked that the Protocol Committee administer it. The ASF, to whom responsibility for procurement of most of the

supplies was entrusted, soon reported

that the proposed availability schedules

could be improved considerably if the

USSR were willing to accept certain substitutions and diversions from the Fourth

Protocol, and if MILEPOST shipments

were given an operational priority (A-1-

b-5). Despite the fact that OPD ruled

against the operational priority (it

would have been higher than the A-2

priority granted U.S. troops on movement orders) and that the USSR refused

many of the substitutions, the ASF still

found that by adjustment of production

or release schedules, use of Persian Gulf

surplus, and diversions from the Fourth

Protocol it could provide virtually all

the material requested, not, it is true,

by 30 June 1945 but by stretching out

requirements to the end of the year. By

February 1945 schedules calling for delivery of 840,000 short tons of dry cargo

out of 914,000 requested (the USSR

had meanwhile added a request for

54,000 tons of landing mat) had been

set up. And since the original Fourth

Protocol commitment for POL had been

fulfilled by the end of 1944, further

shipments by the Soviet tanker fleet in

the Pacific in 1945 promised to surpass

the MILEPOST targets for liquid cargo.

Moreover, by February, it also appeared

that the naval vessels could be made

available later in the year. At Yalta

General Deane was able to persuade the

AAF to promise the USSR 150 C-47

transports to supplement the limited rail

facilities in Siberia. On 3 April 1945

the entire revised MILEPOST list was formally added to the Fourth Protocol as

Annex III.45

4 4 (1)Ibid . (2) JCS 1138/2, 11 Nov 44, title: Supplies and Equipment Requested by USSR. (3) Memo,

S&P Gp, OPD, for Asst Secy, WDGS, 27 Oct 44, same

sub, ABC 400.3295 Russia (19 Apr 42), Sec 2.

45(1) ID, Lend-Lease, Text, II, 1036-40, 1071-74.

(2) Memo, Gen Lutes for Gen Roberts, 15 Nov 44,

sub: Supplies and Equipment for MILEPOST. (3)

Memo, Gen Tansey for Gen Roberts, 15 Nov 44,

same sub. (2) and (3) in ABC 400.3295 USSR (24

Apr 44), Sec 2. (4) JCS 1138/3, 27 Jan 45, title:

Supplies and Equipment Requested by USSR. (5)

JCS Info Memo 360, 4 Feb 45, title: Summary of

Supplies and Equipment for "Milepost." (6) Deane,

Strange Alliance, pp. 99. 249-50. (7) Msgs, WAR

51933, PSPC to Spalding, 25 Oct 44; M 21510, Spalding to PSPC, 26 Oct 44; WAR 53251 to Spalding,

27 Oct 44; all in ID Cables Moscow IN and OUT

Jan-Nov 44. (8) Dept State, Conferences at Malta and

Yalta, pp. 834-39.
692 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

Meanwhile, a shipping program had

been arranged in the face of even greater obstacles and competing demands.

The general story of the steps taken to

alleviate the shipping crisis in fall 1944

has been told elsewhere. In the proposals made by General Somervell in November, provision was made for 85 sailings for MILEPOST, beginning with the

transfer of 16 ships to the Soviet flag

in the Pacific in December 1944. Shipping for this purpose and for simultaneously reducing deficits for support

of Pacific operations was to be made

available from the Atlantic, mainly by

reductions in the British Import Program and in protocol shipping via the

Atlantic. The JCS accepted this solution

subject to the proviso that "if the full

number of ships proposed cannot be

obtained from the Atlantic or other

sources, the deficit will be applied to

the proposed Russian requirement and

not to shipping for Pacific areas."46

WSA objected to cutting either British or Soviet quotas until the military

services had cleared up stagnant pools

of theater shipping, and the President,

while agreeing to negotiation with the

British on releases, forced the JCS to

take positive action to reduce congestion. At the same time, he made no

specific mention of cutting protocol shipments in the Atlantic and gave the MILEPOST program a high priority:

While the additional Russian request

complicates the program still further, I am

convinced we should move at once to get

these supplies moving. Specifically, I wish

that the 16 additional ships required for

December for Russian account be made

available and that prior to the 110th of

December a decision be reached whether

or not the ships required for Russian

account in January can be allocated. I consider this a matter of utmost importance, second only to the operational requirements in the Pacific and Atlantic.47

WSA provided the 16 ships in December, taking them as far as possible not

solely from the Atlantic but "from vessels . . . not as adaptable to military

needs as Liberty ships" in both the Atlantic and Pacific. Those from the Pacific

were taken with the understanding that

the tonnage was to be replaced. The

MILEPOST program was inaugurated

three months ahead of the March 1945

date the JLC had first predicted, and

the ASF was hard put to it to get the

necessary cargo to port to fill the ships.

Some sailings were shifted to the east

coast. By 10 December, also, the JMTC

had agreed, despite the fact that "deficits will still exist," to allocate twenty

additional ships to the USSR from Atlantic services in January 1945.48

 By the

end of December a total of 50 ships had

either been earmarked for, or had already been turned over to, the Soviet

flag in the Pacific and 2 more were earmarked shortly afterward, against an ultimate target of 85.49

In the event, only 37 ships were actually transferred. As the Joint Logistics

Committee had warned, the Pacific route

46

 (1) JCS 1173/1, 18 Nov 44, title: Remedies for

Existing and Prospective Shortages in Cargo Shipping. (2) See above, ch. XXII.

47

 JCS 1173/2, 21 Nov 44, title: Remedies for

Shortages in Shipping, app. A.

48 (1) JCS 1173/9, 9 Dec 44, rpt by JMTC, title:

Remedies for Shortages in Shipping. (2) Memo, Adm

Land for President, 9 Dec 44, sub: Merchant Shipping, WSA Conway Reading File, Nov-Dec 44, Box

122894. (3) Msg WAR 69405 to U.S. Military Mission,

Moscow, 25 Nov 44, with related material in OPD

400 TS, and ABC 400.3295 USSR (24 Apr 42), Sec 2. 49

 Ltr, Conway to Harriman, 29 Dec 44, WSA

Conway Reading File Nov-Dec 44, Box 122893.
AID TO THE USSR IN THE LATER WAR YEARS 693

proved incapable of carrying the load

imposed upon it during the winter

months. Ice in Tartary and La Perouse

Straits and congestion at Vladivostok

convinced WSA by late February that

the pace of the MILEPOST shipping program in the Pacific would have to be

slowed down. Fifteen of the ships intended for MILEPOST were instead allocated to meet urgent Navy requirements

for mounting the invasion of Okinawa.

In compensation, fifteen additional sailings were allotted to Soviet Protocol

account in the Atlantic. The goal of 85

ships was quietly abandoned, and a decision was reached that the 37 ships allocated could, by making repeated trips,

fulfill any MILEPOST requirements that

could not be met in Pacific shipping

already turned over to the Soviet flag.50

MILEPOST shipments were not far behind schedule on V-E Day, and any

deficits were more than remedied in May

and June 1945. Meanwhile, regular

Fourth Protocol shipments hardly suffered at all. The only month in which

any appreciable cutback occurred was

January 1945, and heavier shipments in

the three months following more than

made up for it. In November 1944 it

was contemplated that, with MILEPOST

shipments and the proposed reductions

in the Atlantic, a total of 7,063,000 short

tons of Soviet aid would be shipped by

30 June 1945. The actual total was

7,200,000 short tons, and this despite

a rapid cutback in Atlantic shipments

after 12 May.51

While the Americans were working so

diligently to fulfill their supply obligations, Soviet officialdom continued as

dilatory and obstructionist as before in

getting any combined planning under

way. With the effort at genuine collaboration stymied, General Deane

turned his planning teams to studies

of the very premises on which the Americans were operating—the actual value

or necessity of both the Siberian air

project and the proposed operation for

opening a supply route through the

North Pacific. The planners concluded

that, this late in the war, the limited

results to be obtained by establishing a

U.S. Strategic Air Force in Siberia would

not justify the high cost, and that the

supply route would not be vital to Soviet

success in a war against Japan though it

would be insurance against initial reverses and prolongation of the war.

Deane consequently recommended to the

JCS that the United States withdraw

from all these projects and await Soviet

initiative to resume them. In mid-April

1945 the JCS approved. The only contingent planning that continued was for

a naval operation to force passage of

convoys through the North Pacific.

The whole broad plan for SovietAmerican collaboration in the war

against Japan died without any real regrets, it appears, on the Soviet side. In

retrospect, it seems likely that all the

Soviets had originally expected out of

the negotiations was an extension of 50

 (1) Msg WAR 42974, WSA and PSPC to U.S.

Military Mission, Moscow, 23 Feb 45, Phelps Notebook, ASF Plng Div files. (2) Msg DTG 110917 Z,

NCR 3562, ALUSNA, Moscow to COMINCH, 11

Mar 45, CM-IN 12463, 12 Mar 45. (3) Memo, CG

ASF for U Secy War, 24 Feb 45, sub: Weekly Situation Report, ASF Ind Pers Div File Rpts to Under

Secy War and Secy War.

51

 (1) FEA, Rpt on Status of Soviet Aid Program as

of June 30, 1945. Actual shipments from 1 July 1944

through 30 June 1945 were no percent of Fourth

Protocol commitments, including Annex III (MILEI'osr). (2) See below, Appendix G-3. (3) Msg, WAR

67471 to U.S. Military Mission, Moscow, 23 Nov. 44.
694 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

their lend-lease supply program, and in

this they were outstandingly successful.52

The Soviet Aid Program After

V-E Day

On 30 September 1944, President

Roosevelt informed the Secretary of

State that the instructions issued on 9

September suspending all planning for

lend-lease after V-E Day should not

apply to "lend-lease negotiations current

with the Government of the USSR."53

Then on 5 January 1945 he issued the

last of his directives on aid to the Soviet

Union, ordering the formulation of a

Fifth Protocol covering the period 1

July 1945 to 30 June 1946, and emphasizing the importance of aid to the USSR

in almost precisely the same terms as a

year earlier.54 Though the reason given

continued to be the "defeat of Germany," even the most pessimistic of

prophets at the time hardly expected

the war in Europe to continue until

mid-1946. Roosevelt thus clearly implied

that aid to the Soviet Union would continue uninterrupted after V-E Day, despite the fact that the USSR would not

then be at war with Japan. Yet doubts

and misgivings plagued the heads of all

the agencies involved, and the opposition in Congress to supplying the USSR

under lend-lease for any purpose other

than the pursuit of the war was unmistakable. Roosevelt died on 12 April 1945

without having clarified his policy further.

The 5 January directive, meanwhile,

had led to the usual negotiations with

the Russians on their requirements for

a Fifth Protocol. Planning was well along

by mid-April, when it became obvious

that final victory over Germany would

not be long delayed. Averell Harriman

and General Deane, both then in Washington, felt that a change in lend-lease

policy was now imperative as a corollary

to the change in policy on combined

planning for Soviet entrance into the

war against Japan. In conferences with

the State Department and FEA, Harriman urged that no Fifth Protocol be

signed, that the escape clauses in the

Fourth be invoked on V-E Day, and that

further aid to the USSR be limited to

needs that could positively be justified

for the war against Japan. Deane asked

General Marshall to seek JCS support

for these views. Meanwhile, General

York, acting chairman of the Protocol

Committee, urged on everyone the necessity for an early decision, for without it,

he said, it would be impossible to stop

the massive shipments for May and June

—roughly 700,000 tons each month.

Nevertheless, V-E Day passed without

a final decision. The Joint Logistics Committee on 2 May 1945 presented the JCS

with a draft letter for the President embodying Deane's views, but it was apparently held pending final decision in

the State Department. That decision was

made in a meeting of all interested agencies, including the Army and Navy, held

at the State Department on 10 May 1945,

when a more drastic policy than the one

52 (1) Deane, Strange Alliance, pp. 249-66. (2) Dept

State, Conferences at Malta and Yalta, pp. 757-62,

834-39, 841. (3) JCS 1313, 16 Apr 45, title: Revision

of Policy with Relation to Russia. (4) JCS 1313/1,

16 Apr 45, title: Specific Actions to be Taken Under

Revised Policy with Russia. (5) JCS 1313/2, 23 Apr

45, title: Revision of Policy with Relation to Russia. 53

 (1) Ltr, President to Cordell Hull, 30 Sep 44,

OPD 400.3295 (Russia), Case 21. (2) See above, ch.

XXVI.

54 Memo, President for Secy War, 5 Jan 45, ID

031.1, XI.
AID TO THE USSR IN THE LATER WAR YEARS 695

proposed by the military authorities was

drawn up and approved in principle.55

This policy, expressed in a memorandum sent on 11 May to the new President, Harry S. Truman, by Acting Secretary of State Joseph Grew and Leo

Crowley of FEA, proposed that the supply program for the USSR be immediately and drastically curtailed. So long

as it was anticipated that the USSR

would enter the war against Japan, deliveries under Annex III of the Fourth

Protocol should continue, as should supplies to complete industrial plants for

which shipments had already begun; but

other supplies on hand or on order for

the Fourth Protocol should be delivered

only when they were required to support military operations against Japan.

"Other lend-lease supplies now programmed for the USSR should be cut off

immediately as far as physically practicable, and such goods and the related

shipping tonnage should be diverted to

approved supply programs for western

Europe." There should be no Fifth Protocol. Future supply programs for the

USSR should be designed to meet new

military situations as they arose, "on

the basis of reasonably adequate information regarding the essentiality of

Soviet military supply requirements and

in the light of all competing demands

for supplies in the changing military

situation." The residuary Soviet aid program would continue to get existing priority ratings for production, and the

Protocol Committee would continue to

administer it as before. The Soviet Union would also be allowed to purchase

other material for cash if it so desired.56

President Truman approved the policy on 11 May, informing Grew and

Crowley that they should "proceed on

the assumption that the USSR will enter

the war against Japan."57 The new policy, in its first expression, was even

tougher than the policy Deane had long

been urging. As General York succinctly

put it, the new approach should be

"when in doubt hold" instead of the

former approach of "when in doubt

give."58

In interpretation and application,

however, the new policy at first turned

out to be somewhat less tough than it

sounded. As General York had warned,

it took time to reverse the momentum

behind the protocol program. A literal

interpretation of the State-FEA memorandum meant that even ships at sea

should be turned around, supplies unloaded, and distinction made between

those intended for the war against Japan

and those for European Russia. The

Protocol Committee at first proposed to

so interpret the memorandum, though

55

 (1) Memo, Gen Shingler for CG ASF, 18 Apr 45,

sub: Lend-Lease Policy Toward USSR Following

Collapse of Germany, Dir Materiel file Lend-Lease.

(2) JCS 1325, 26 Apr 45, title: Allocation of U.S. Supplies to USSR. (3) JCS 1325/1, 2 May 45, rpt by JLC,

same title. (4) Memo, Gen Lincoln for CofS, 11 May

45. (5) Record of tel com, Gen York with Gen Hull,

27 Apr 45. (6) Memo, Gen Lincoln for Asst Secy,

WDGS, 11 May 45, sub: Allocation of U.S. Supplies

to USSR. (4), (5), and (6) in ABC 400.3295 Russia (19

Apr 42), Sec 3.

56

 (1) Memo, Joseph C. Grew, Actg Secy State, and

Leo Crowley, FEA, for President, 11 May 45, ABC

400.3295 Russia (19 Apr 42), Sec 3. (2) This policy was officially promulgated in Memo, Gen York for

Members, PSPC, 15 May 45, ID 334 Pres Sov Prot

Com, II. 57

 Memo, Harry S. Truman for Actg Secy of State

and FEA Administrator, 11 May 45, ABC 400.3295

Russia (19 Apr 42), Sec 3. 58

 Min, 29th mtg, Soviet Protocol Subcom on Shipping, 12 May 45, Dir Materiel file, folder Gen

Edgerton's Lend-Lease.
696 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

military spokesmen protested vehemently that it would only lead to confusion

and chaos. When Harriman, the principal architect of the new policy, also protested that he had not meant the phrase

"cut off immediately" to be applied so

literally, the Protocol Committee reversed itself and agreed that both ships

at sea and those already loaded in port

on 12 May should proceed. Material at

port, en route, or in storage, however,

was to be held for review to see that it

was in fact intended for Soviet Far East

programs. In successive Protocol Committee meetings, policy was defined as

permitting shipments for Annex III

(MILEPOST) , for a Trans-Siberian Airways project approved by the JCS in the

fall of 1944, for the annual summer program to the Soviet Arctic, and for maintenance of material already shipped.

However, because it was virtually impossible to conduct a real item by item

review, the committee decided simply

to permit all Pacific shipments to proceed as planned since about 90 percent

of them involved the approved programs, and to cancel all further berthings in the Atlantic for the Black Sea,

northern USSR, or the Persian Gulf. It

is ironical that under these policies, owing to the large Pacific shipping program

in May 1945, shipments for that month

totaled 768,400 long tons, the most that

had ever been shipped to the Soviet

Union in any one month. It was not

until June that the new policy was reflected by a fall to 329,200 long tons.59

These heavy shipments in May and

June left only the remainder of the

MILEPOST program (about 20 percent

of the total) and miscellaneous small

amounts of supplies scheduled for shipment during the rest of the year. Meanwhile, the USSR had been asked for its

additional requests on the United States

for the war against Japan, under a procedure whereby requests would be

screened by the military mission in Moscow before presentation to the Protocol

Committee by the Soviet Purchasing

Commission in Washington. No allocations against them would be made until

the military mission's recommendations

were known. Allocations of military material would be by the Munitions Assignments Board in the same manner as

to the British and others.

It proved virtually impossible to carry

out this procedure as intended. On 28

May Soviet officials presented in Moscow

and in Washington a list of requirements

approximating 1.8 million tons for the

period 1 July through 31 December

1945. For the most part the list consisted of material ordered and not delivered

under the Fourth Protocol and material

on which the Russians had been negotiating for the Fifth Protocol. They contended that most of the material had

really been destined for use in the Far

East and that Annex III had not repre59

 (1) Ibid. (2) Memo, Gen Lincoln for Gen Hull,

13 May 45. (3) MFR, Gen Lincoln, 14 May 45, ABC

400.3295 Russia (19 Apr 42), Sec 3. (4) Min of Mtg

on Soviet Lend-Lease Program in Mr. Clayton's

Office (State Dept), 14 May 45, ID 334 PSPC, II.

(5) Min, 10th mtg PSPC, 15 May 45, ID 031.1, XII.

(6) Min, 23d mtg, Protocol Subcom on Supplies, 16

May 45, ID 334 PSPC, II. (7) Msg WAR 83643, Protocol Com to CG U.S. Military Mission, Moscow,

16 May 45, Phelps Notebook, ASF Plng Div files.

(8) Memo, Gen Edgerton, Dep Dir Materiel, for

CG ASF, 17 May 45, sub: New Policy for LendLease. (9) Memo, Edgerton for ACofS 6-4, 21 May

45, sub: Revised Lend-Lease Aid Policy to USSR.

(8) and (9) in Dir Materiel file, folder Lend-Lease.

(10) FEA, Rpt on Status of Soviet Aid Program as of

30 June 1945.
AID TO THE USSR IN THE LATER WAR YEARS 697

sented their total requirements but was

only a supplement to other requirements

not positively identified under the

Fourth Protocol.60 When Deane was

asked to secure justification he ran into

much the same blank wall as he had before. Soviet officials satisfied themselves

with the statement that the 28 May list

constituted "minimum requirements of

the Far East in deliveries of equipment

and material necessary in order to meet

the urgent needs and strengthen the defense capabilities of the region and likewise for undertaking measures connected with-the Far East."61

Despite the extremely vague justification, Deane and Spalding believed there

was good reason to support the purpose

of the Soviet program—the rapid buildup of Soviet reserves in Siberia for the

war against Japan—and that Soviet officials were at least truthful in their

insistence that part of the regular Fourth

Protocol offering had been intended for

the Far East. They thought enough material should be scheduled each month

to use the full capacity of the Soviet

merchant fleet in the Pacific.

We definitely believe that it is in the

United States' interest to make certain that

our support is timely and effective even at

the risk of supplying the Soviet Union

some items over and above the needs which

could be fully justified. For this reason we

have selected a list of these items . . . which

we know will be required to support the

purposes of Annex III, at least in some

amount. In most cases, we cannot give full

justification for the amounts requested

and an effort to force the Soviet authorities

to do so would be so time consuming as to

destroy the effectiveness of our aid.62

The selected items approved included

30,000 trucks, 2.5 million yards of cotton

cloth, 1.8 million yards of woolen goods,

6,000 tons of leather, 600,000 pairs of

shoes, and 500 construction machines,

all for procurement by the ASF, and

naval supplies, industrial equipment,

raw materials, and foodstuffs for procurement by other agencies.63

There was considerable opposition in

Washington, among both civilian and

military authorities, to acceptance of

even the limited program proposed by

Deane without specific justification in

each case. Leo Crowley took the position that the USSR should pay for

the nonmilitary supplies, and Admiral

Leahy's attitude was critical. General

York, again in a quandary as the deadline for loading ships for July and August approached, pressed the JCS for

a policy decision as to the military importance of the program. The JCS

obliged on 23 June 1945, but limited

its approval of assignment of military

materials to those that could be shipped

during July and August; the rest of

Deane's list was approved for production planning purposes only. The Joint

Chiefs also expressed the opinion that

a similar policy for nonmilitary materials was justifiable on the basis of

military necessity. This policy, in its

broader application, was accepted, and

60

 (1) Msg M 24482, U.S. Military Mission, Moscow

to AGWAR, 28 May 45, Spalding for Protocol Com.

(2) Msg WAR 10182, Deane for Spalding from Protocol Com, 1 Jun 45. (3) Msg M 24531, Spalding to

Protocol Com, 3 Jun 45. All in Phelps Notebook,

ASF Plng Div files. (4) Ltr, Gen York, Exec PSPC, to

Lt Gen L. G. Rudenko. Chmn Soviet Govt Protocol

Com, 7 Jun 45, ID, Lend-Lease, Doc Suppl, IX. 61

 Msg M 24603, Deane to PSPC, 8 Jun 45, CM-IN

8091, 9 Jun 45, Phelps Notebook.

62 (1) Ibid. (2) See also Msg, M 24531, 3 Jun 45.

63 Memo, Gen Edgerton for Gen Somervell, 11

Jun 45, sub: USSR Developments, Dir Materiel file

Lend-Lease.
698 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

the State Department so informed the

Soviet Embassy on 27 June. Soviet ships

ready for sailing in July and early August were filled. July shipments totaled

309,000 long tons.64

Neither Deane nor the authorities in

Washington were able to secure any further justification for the Soviet requests

for the rest of the year. Deane concluded that the Soviet authorities were incapable of providing "detailed adequate,

military justification," and that the mission "could not verify such justification

if it were made available." The best the

mission could do was to obtain "impressions of urgency and sincerity."65

 With

Harriman's concurrence, Deane asked

for continued shipping of such supplies

as the mission recommended as long as

the Pacific route stayed open. The time

to revise the policy, Deane thought,

would be when and if the Japanese

closed the Pacific route, at which time

a military decision would be required

on the institution of convoys. The JCS,

not completely satisfied, simply extended

the existing policy for one month in

order to fill ships loading in the month

of September.66

At the Potsdam Conference, in July

1945, the problem of keeping a supply

route open to the USSR after it entered

the war with Japan was discussed, and

Admiral King indicated that the U.S.

Navy could push convoys through to

the Amur River ports, but that Tsushima Strait could not be cleared until

the Americans were established on Kyushu.67

 By this time, however, it was

not altogether clear whether even these

limited operations in the North Pacific

could be justified in terms of any approved supply program for the USSR.

By the end of July the major portion of

both the MILEPOST program and approved parts of the 28 May program

had been met. General Deane on 8 August cabled that he did not believe the

USSR could or would give adequate operational justification for many further

shipments and that in proposing convoys the United States seemed to be

"taking the initiative in setting up the

means to deliver a supply program which

under present policy we intend largely

to curtail."68

The dilemma never had to be resolved. Even before Deane's message

arrived in Washington the first atomic

bomb had fallen on Hiroshima, and the

Soviet Union's entry into the war on

8 August came largely as an anticlimax.

64

 (1) Record of tel conv, Gen York with Gen

Lincoln, 11 Jun 45. (2) Memo, Gen Lincoln for Chief

Log Gp, OPD, 14 Jun 45, sub: Strategic Guidance

for Lend-Lease Supplies for Russia. Both in ABC

400.3295 Russia (19 Apr 42), Sec 3. (3) JCS 1325/4,

16 Jun 45, memo from PSPC, title: Lend-Lease

Reqmts of USSR for Balance of 1945. (4) JCS 1325/5,

24 Jun 45, same title. (5) Memos, Actg Secy State

for Soviet Embassy, 26, 27 Jun 45, ID 334 PSPC, II.

(6) Memo, Gen Edgerton for CG ASF, 18 Jun 45,

sub: New Policy for Lend-Lease to USSR, Dir Materiel file Lend-Lease. (7) Min, 11th mtg PSPC, 29

Jun 45, ID 334 PSPC, II. (8) See below, Appendix

G-3.

65

 JCS 1325/6, 2 Jul 45, title: Lend-Lease Reqmts of USSR After 31 Aug 45. 66

 (1) Msg M 24897, U.S. Military Mission, Moscow,

to WD, 4 Jul 45, CM-IN 3446. (2) JCS 1325/7, 11

Jul 45, title: Lend-Lease Reqmts of USSR after 31

Aug 45. (3) Memo, Gen Lincoln for Asst Secy WDGS,

7 Jul 45, sub: Lend-Lease Reqmts of USSR, ABC

400.3295 Russia (19 Apr 42), Sec 3.

67 (1) Min, Tripartite Mtg held in Cecilienhof

Palace, 24 Jul 45. (2) Min, mtg of CsofS, U.S. and

USSR, 26 Jul 45. Both in TERMINAL Book. 68

 (1) JLC 304/2/D, 11 Aug 45, title: Policy on

Military Lend-Lease to USSR, Incl msg, Deane to

JCS, 8 Aug 45. (2) Rpt, Secy War to President, 11

Aug 45, on Status of Soviet Aid Program, ID 031.1,

XIII. (3) JWPC 393, 2 Aug 45, title: Delivery of

Supplies to Russia.
AID TO THE USSR IN THE LATER WAR YEARS 699

On 14 August, the Japanese Government made known its desire to surrender, and three days later the President

promulgated a new policy providing

that, effective upon the official announcement of V-J Day, further lend-lease shipments to the USSR would be cut off.

Only ships at sea and those already

loaded would be allowed to proceed.

Further supply to the Soviet Union after

that date would be under other than

lend-lease arrangements.69 In the interim, such cargo as was readily available

at west coast ports continued to be loaded, but the loadings stopped on V-J

Day. The President's Soviet Protocol

Committee was dissolved on 7 September 1945.70

The end of the Soviet aid program,

announced five days before the general

proclamation of the end of lend-lease,

came as a climax to the shift in American policy toward supplying the USSR

that had started belatedly with the end

of the war in Europe. This policy change

was one of the many harbingers of a

new period in Soviet-American relations,

a period when many Americans, in retrospect, would look back with a certain

amazement at the whole heroic U.S.

effort to supply the USSR during World

War II.

69

 JCS 1325/9, 24 Aug 45, title: Policy on Military

Lend-Lease to USSR.

70

 (1) Memo, Actg Dep Dir, USSR Br, FEA, 25

Aug 45, ID, Lend-Lease, Doc Suppl, X. (2) Memo,

Harry Hopkins for President, 7 Sep 45, ID 334 PSPC.
CHAPTER XXVIII

Military Supply to Liberated and Latin

American Nations

By the very nature of the situation,

lend-lease supplies for the war against

Germany had to be concentrated very

largely on the British Commonwealth

and the USSR. The other European

powers originally in the lists—France,

the Netherlands, Belgium, and Norway

in the west; Poland, Czechoslovakia,

Greece, and Yugoslavia in the east—lay

under the yoke of the Axis until well

past the middle of 1944. As early as 1940,

the British began to arm escapees and

Colonials of occupied countries, incorporating them usually as units in Commonwealth forces. These refugee units

were small, the most important elements

being the Free French Forces under

General Charles de Gaulle and the Polish

Army Corps evacuated from the USSR

through Iran in 1942. In addition, small

quantities of arms were provided by airdrop to resistance groups under combined British-American auspices.

The liberation of Axis-held territory,

beginning with the invasion of North

Africa in fall 1942, opened up new

sources of manpower for the Allied

armies. Yet only in the case of French

North Africa did liberation come in time

to permit the organization and preparation of a force that could play any significant role in the war. A start was made

toward organizing and equipping units

in Metropolitan France, Belgium, and

the Netherlands, but V-E Day overtook

the program before it was more than

barely started. Eastern Europe, with the

exception of Greece, fell to Soviet armies,

not to the western Allies. The British

effort to re-equip patriot forces in Greece

received little American support.

The problem of equipping liberated

manpower, resistance, and patriot groups

was treated from the first as a combined

Anglo-American problem, except for the

forces that formed parts of the British

Army. Although the Americans furnished 90 to 95 percent of the material

for French rearmament, decisions on the

scope of the program were rendered by

the CCS and not by the U.S. Joint

Chiefs alone. The Munitions Assignments Boards, Washington and London,

made their assignments to conform to

CCS directives, which normally spelled

out exact numbers and types of units to

be organized and sources from which

supplies were to be drawn.

The North African Rearmament

Program

The basis for the North African Rearmament Program was the agreement

reached at Casablanca between President

Roosevelt and General Henri Giraud,
MILITARY SUPPLY, LIBERATED & LATIN AMERICAN NATIONS 701

commander of French Forces in North

Africa, to provide modern equipment

for 11 French divisions (8 infantry and

3 armored), and planes for a rejuvenated

French Air Force.1

 Though the CCS did

not definitely ratify the 11-division commitment until QUADRANT (owing to both

a difficult shipping situation and British

opposition) the United States went

ahead during the intervening period to

complete one phase of the program2

and definitely schedule another, making

up between the two phases about half

of the rearmament materials for ground

forces promised by Roosevelt at Casablanca. These steps were taken directly

as a result of pressures brought by

Giraud, but the pressures would not

have been so successful had they not

appealed to American self-interest. Arming French divisions would save the personnel shipping required to move an

equivalent number of American ones;

moreover, the final reduction in the U.S.

Army's mobilization goal to 90 divisions

was definitely made with the 11 French

divisions in mind.3

Nevertheless, shortages of materiel,

shipping, convoy escort, and port capacity in North Africa forced the Americans

to move slowly. Control over the detailed formulation of the program and

the rate of shipment was entrusted to

the Supreme Allied Commander in

North Africa, General Eisenhower. Eisenhower was forced initially to limit

rearmament materials to 25,000 tons per

monthly convoy, out of which 4,000 tons

had to be used for maintenance of

French units, armed with old weapons,

who were already in the Allied battle

line. The Joint Rearmament Committee, a Franco-American agency set up

in AFHQ to run the program, drew up

its plans on this basis, but under pressure from General Giraud a way was

found to provide a special convoy in

March 1943 that carried more than 100,-

000 tons of rearmament materials. By

the end of April 1943 the French had on

hand in North Africa the major portion

of the equipment necessary for three infantry divisions, part of an armored division, and the numerous supporting units

necessary to place one expeditionary

corps in the field.

The American commitment was made

entirely to Giraud, but it was clear from

the start that Giraud's bitter rival, General de Gaulle, leader of the Free French

Forces, would also have to be reckoned

with. A modus vivendi between the two

was reached on 3 June 1943 with the

formation of the French Committee of

National Liberation (FCNL) with Giraud and de Gaulle as co-chairmen, an

agreement which provided a semblance

of unified control for Frenchmen everywhere fighting the Axis. It was, nevertheless, only an uneasy truce, and no

steps were taken at the time toward fusing the British-equipped Free French

Forces with the new French army being

re-equipped with American arms.

1

 Except where otherwise noted, this section is

based on Marcel Vigneras, Rearming the French,

UNITED STATES ARMY IN WORLD WAR II

(Washington, 1957), pp. 74-296. A concise account

of the first phase of French rearmament, December

1942-May 1943, is in Leighton and Coakley, Global

Logistics, 1940-43, pages 511-20. 2

 The designation of phases of French rearmament

as here used conforms to the usage in ASF at the

time. The phases apply only to the North African

Program and not to the French Metropolitan Program which was given separate phase designations.

The phases in the North African Program were

roughly as follows: Phase I—January-April, 1943;

Phase II—July-August 1943; Phase III—September

1943-January 1944; Phase IV—February-October

1944. 3

 See above, ch. V.
702 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

Following completion of the first

phase in April 1943, French rearmament

languished for a period of nearly three

months. The British and American members of the CCS, after failing to reach

agreement in March on the scope of the

program or the priority to be accorded

it, at the TRIDENT Conference simply

accepted a commitment to proceed "as

rapidly as the availability of shipping

and equipment will allow, but as a secondary commitment to requirements of

British and United States forces in the

various theaters."4 No specific mention

was made of the 11 -division program nor

was any strategic plan adopted for employment of French troops. This low

priority in a period when feverish preparations were under way in North Africa

for launching the invasion of Sicily

(HUSKY) left little available shipping

in convoys for French rearmament materials and even less port or internal

transport capacity to handle them.

AFHQ was reluctant to accept French

requisitions for a second phase of the

program. And, since the theater delayed

in sending requisitions, the MAB did

not make any new assignments after

March. In May and June 1943 only the

backlog of equipment for the first phase

was sent, and monthly shipments fell

well below the 25,000-ton allocation.

"There appears," noted the ASF Planning Division diary in mid-June, "to be

a definite lethargy insofar as the program is concerned"; and Colonel Magruder, director of that division, with

some pique characterized French rearmament as "a hand-to-mouth procedure

in which the basic directive is vague and

its execution unmanaged."5

The impetus for a second phase of

French rearmament came again from

General Giraud, who visited the United

States in July 1943. While Giraud was

on the high seas, at the War Department's request, Eisenhower's headquarters on 4 July cabled new requisitions

calling for equipment for the rest of the

first armored division and the nucleus

of a second, for elements of another infantry division, various corps and service

units, and for units of the French Air

Force and Navy. Eisenhower stipulated

that these requirements must be met

within the 25,000-ton allocation. Then

on 6 July, anticipating that Giraud

would press for substantially more, the

Allied commander warned the War Department that port capacity in North

Africa was severely limited, and that no

substantial increase in French supplies

could be handled until the load on Casablanca was relieved and the French allowed to take over operation of that

port—an event he estimated could not

take place before 1 November 1943.

Despite Eisenhower's pessimism, Giraud's requests, presented in a 10-day

round of conferences beginning on 7

July 1943, got a very sympathetic reception. The French commander, as expected, went beyond Eisenhower's recommendations and requested materials sufficient to equip a second French corps

to operate beside the first—that is, to

complete two full armored divisions, two

additional infantry divisions, and corps

and service troops. An ASF study revealed that shipping would be available

to transport the necessary supplies if

spaced over the July, August, and Sep4

 CCS 87th mtg, 18 May 43, Item 6. 5

 (1) Plng Div ASF, Diary of a Certain Plan, Entry,

23 Jun 43. (2) Memo, Col Magruder for Dir Opns,

ASF, 26 Jun 43, sub: Equipment of French Divisions,

folder Current Opns, ASF Plng Div.
MILITARY SUPPLY, LIBERATED & LATIN AMERICAN NATIONS 703

tember convoys and that the only bottleneck would be port capacity in North

Africa. Marshall and Somervell consequently promised Giraud approximately

what he asked for, with the time schedule to be dependent upon Eisenhower's

evaluation of reception capacity. Once

the invasion of Sicily had been successfully launched, the theater was able to

revise its earlier predictions, informing

the War Department on 16 July that

plans for the use of Casablanca had been

adjusted to permit accommodation of

200,000 tons of French rearmament materials in August and September. Giraud

was informed, before he returned to

North Africa, that Somervell's schedule

could be substantially fulfilled.

Phase II shipments were, in fact, considerably accelerated, and almost all materials, some 230,000 tons, had cleared

American ports by the end of August.6

Their arrival in North Africa provided

the French with most of the equipment

necessary for four infantry and two armored divisions as well as some of the

supporting units necessary to make up

two army corps, though shortages of numerous specific items remained.

As a corollary to Giraud's visit and

the Phase II shipments, and under pressure from Eisenhower and the CCS,

de Gaulle's British-equipped Free French

Forces were finally brought into the rearmament program. Though they were

allowed to keep the British equipment

they already had, they were to be issued

no new British equipment, and were to

become part of the consolidated forces

under the French Committee of National Liberation to be rearmed mainly from

American sources. Under the new arrangement, General Giraud became commander in chief of all French armed

forces fighting the Axis and continued

as co-president with de Gaulle, of the

FCNL. Giraud's pleas that the French

program be increased as a result of this

accretion of manpower from the Free

French Forces was turned down by Eisenhower; AFHQ did agree, however,

that the program should be revised to

include 7 infantry and 4 armored divisions, rather than 8 infantry and 3 armored as agreed at Casablanca.7

 Giraud

continued to press for an addition of

one division to the program, and for a

considerable time maintained one Free

French division, with its British equipment, outside the rearmament program.

The heavy Phase II shipments heralded the end of the major logistical barriers to the fulfillment of the entire

French rearmament program. The old

bottlenecks—scarcity of materiel and limitations on convoys, shipping, and port

capacity—were rapidly disappearing. At

the QUADRANT Conference in August

1943 the JCS presented a definite, detailed program for completing the equipment of the 11-division force by the end

of the year, and the British Chiefs approved it subject to the proviso that its

fulfillment should not "interfere with

operations scheduled previous to the

. . . Conference."8 The CCS also approved AFHQ's design to use the reequipped French forces in an assault

6

 Memo, Col Robert A. Case, Dir Stock Control

Div, ASF, for Dep Director Opns, ASF, 5 Sep 43,

sub: Weekly Rpt of Status Phase III, French Rearm Program, ID 475, Equipment of Troops France,

III.

7

 These were light armored divisions requiring

slightly less equipment than their U.S. counterparts.

The four French armored divisions were normally

equated to three and two-thirds American ones. 8

 CCS 317/3, 23 Aug 43, title: Equipping Allies,

Liberated Forces and Friendly Neutrals.
704 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

on Corsica in September, in larger operations in Italy, and to explore the possibility of using them in an invasion of

southern France.

The 15 August plan set up a schedule

for shipping equipment for one infantry

and one armored division in September,

for another infantry division in October,

for a third in November, and for the

last armored division in December. Each

monthly slice was to include materiel

for the necessary supporting combat and

service units. All shipments would be

made to Casablanca, which port would

be turned over to the exclusive control

of the French in September. Initial shipping requirements, totaling 630,000 tons,

were considerably reduced by transfer to

the French of American equipment left

by four U.S. divisions scheduled to move

from North Africa to England to participate in OVERLORD.

Phase III of French rearmament got

off to an auspicious start. Approximately

140,000 tons of materiel were shipped in

the September slice, and the October

slice (something over 50,000 tons) was

assigned and moved to port by the end

of that month.9 At this point Phase III

was interrupted. The first move toward

curtailment came as a result of Presidential objections to the growing political

ascendency of General de Gaulle, who

early in September 1943 moved to displace Giraud from his position on the

Committee of National Liberation, but

there is no reason to believe that the

ultimate decision was made on anything

other than military grounds. When President Roosevelt suggested a possible curtailment to check de Gaulle, General

Marshall's staff was already moving in

that direction for the different reason

that the French were proving unable to

provide the necessary supporting combat

and service units to make an 11-division

army self-sufficient.10

By early September 1943 the Joint

Rearmament Committee had worked out

a plan providing in detail for those supporting combat and service units—258

in all. AFHQ soon learned that the

French would not be able to organize

the units from available manpower.

There was a marked shortage of technically proficient personnel in North Africa. Skilled Europeans were already

spread thin to provide officers, noncommissioned officers, and technicians in

combat forces. Giraud from the start

placed his entire emphasis on the fighting divisions and placed the support

troops, particularly those designated to

perform service functions, in low priority for activation, almost completely

ignoring Eisenhower's repeated warnings that the French Army must be selfsupporting. Giraud took the position,

not altogether untenable, that it would

be bad policy to break up units capable

of efficient combat operations to form

semiefficient service units. He argued

that the French did not need as largescale service support as U.S. troops and

that, in the last analysis, it would be

wiser and easier for the Americans to

provide service support to the French

than to train and ship new combat units.

But neither Eisenhower nor Marshall

had any intention of furnishing U.S.

service units to support the French, however much they may have respected the

9

 Memo, Col Olmstead for U.S. Members, MAC(G),

30 Oct 43, sub: Status of French Rearmament Plan,

ID 475 Equipment of Troops France, III.

10

 Memo, Gen Handy for CofS, 19 Oct 43, sub:

Equipment of French Divs, with supporting documents in OPD 400 France, Case 51.
MILITARY SUPPLY, LIBERATED & LATIN AMERICAN NATIONS 705

"old gentleman." General Smith, Eisenhower's chief of staff, recommended that

the rearmament program be limited to

six infantry and two armored divisions,

a plan that would provide better balance between armor and infantry and

at the same time free personnel from

the combat forces to form necessary supporting units. Since the French continued to delay any definite response on

what they intended to do about the supporting units, and since in the meantime

their embryo supply organization seemed

to be incapable of ingesting the quantities of American equipment already

shipped, at Eisenhower's recommendation the JCS in early November suspended further shipments pending re-examination of the whole program.11

While the issue thus hung fire, the

main body of French troops already

armed were committed with the U.S.

Fifth Army in Italy where they acquitted

themselves well. At SEXTANT in December 1943 the CCS decided that most of

the French Army, after receiving battle

experience in Italy, should be used as

the main follow-up force in the invasion

of southern France. This plan called for

an immediate decision on size and composition. The National Defense Committee of the FCNL finally, but reluctantly, agreed on 11 January that two

infantry divisions should be disbanded

to provide supporting units for the rest,

and though Giraud, as commander-inchief, made a final desperate appeal to

General Marshall to preserve the entire

11-division program and furnish American service support, in the end he was

forced to acquiesce. And it was not long

afterward that de Gaulle forced him

into retirement. The new program, officially agreed to in North Africa on 23

January and approved by the CCS on

3 March,12 still included on paper 6 infantry and 4 armored divisions; however,

one of the infantry divisions remained

in cadre only, and one armored division

was deferred indefinitely. It also included 245 supporting organizations, of

which 210 were units included in the

former plan and 35 were new additions.

What really remained was a self-supporting 8-division force, of which 5 infantry

and 2 armored divisions were expected

to provide a balanced force for ANVIL.

The third armored division would be

employed in the immediate follow-up of

OVERLORD and participate in the liberation of Paris.

The 23 January plan was the final

word on North African rearmament, except for minor adjustments, and the

8-division program was established as

the practical limit on French ability to

mobilize manpower in North Africa. A

fourth phase of French rearmament got

under way in February 1944 in fulfillment of the plan and continued through

October, largely a matter of rounding

out the 8-division force by filling shortages, equipping supporting units, and

adjusting the whole program to the

necessities of Operation ANVIL. The

basic equipment for eight divisions, with

certain exceptions, was already in the

theater in February either in the hands

of the French or as surplus in theater

stocks. On paper the sole remaining

problems were those of equipping 81

support units and filling shortages. In 11

 JCS 547/2, 8 Nov 43, title: Distribution of

French Ground and Air Forces in the Various Theaters of Opns and the Rearmament of French Naval

and Air Forces.

12

 CCS 414/4, 3 Mar 44, title: French Army Rearmament Plan.
706 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

reality, more serious problems had

emerged during Phase III as parts of the

rearmed French army were committed

in combat. The Americans learned during this period the manifold difficulties

of raising, equipping, and supporting an

army in liberated territory where the

de facto government had few real resources at its command. The actual arming and training of combat forces proved

the easiest task, the provision of an adequate system of support the most difficult.

The initial American approach to

French rearmament involved elements

not completely compatible. A compact

French striking force was to be formed

to operate under the strategic direction

of the Anglo-American CCS in conjunction with British and American forces.

At the same time, this French striking

force was not to be supported directly

as a part of an American or British command, but was to be made as self-reliant

as possible. Supplies would be furnished

the French in bulk under lend-lease

arrangements in accordance with CCS

plans, and the French would be expected

to develop their own supply organization, paralleling the American one operating in the same theater. There would

be American advice and guidance in the

operation of the French supply system

as there would be in the equipping and

training of the striking force, but not

direct American management. French

military lend-lease was to be treated as

nearly as possible like British and Russian with the minimum of allowance for

the fact that the French political and

military organization in North Africa

was not a really going concern but at

least a semidependency of the Allied

military command.

The War Department accepted from

the start the obligation to furnish maintenance and replacement supplies for

the American equipment issued to the

French units in the approved program,

and in fall 1943 set up a system for discharging this obligation. All assignments

of initial equipment included a provision for thirty days' maintenance and

six months' supply of spare parts. Beyond this the French were expected to

submit timely requisitions for additional

maintenance and replacement requirements to the Joint Rearmament Committee in North Africa for submission

to the MAC (G) in Washington for assignment and shipment through normal

lend-lease channels, though in emergencies the theater commander was authorized to make issue directly from

theater stock. Approved units ready for,

or actively engaged in, combat with an

American command were authorized replacement and maintenance on the same

scale as U.S. troops operating in the same

theater, and those remaining in North

Africa on a U.S. zone of interior basis.13

The French were expected to provide

subsistence for all their forces either

from indigenous North African production or from food supplies shipped under

the civilian supply program. In either

case, they would themselves be responsible for storage and distribution of the

supplies available to them from both

America and indigenous sources. Lendlease supplies were shipped to North

13

 (1) Memo on Mtg to Establish Principles Governing Supply of Maintenance Equip to French

Forces in N Africa, 26 Oct 43, ID 475 Equipment of

Troops France, III. (2) The theater commanders'

emergency powers were covered in WD Circular

220, 20 September 1943, paragraph 14b. This provided that, except in emergencies, advance authority

for such transfers would be obtained from the MAB.
MILITARY SUPPLY, LIBERATED & LATIN AMERICAN NATIONS 707

Africa consigned to the American theater commander rather than to the

French, but the turnover in the theater

was usually automatic and, indeed, after

the French took over the port of Casablanca, they received most of these supplies directly.

Such a system presupposed the existence of a central French SOS organization in North Africa capable of performing the tasks of sorting, storage, distribution, and stock control as efficiently as

the American theater SOS, and French

willingness to in fact confine their distribution to the narrow limits set down

in CCS directives. Neither supposition

was valid. As a first step toward selfreliance, the French in September 1943

established a central SOS organization

for handling American materiel—the

Service Central des Approvisionnements

et Materiels Americains (SCAMA). But

even under expert American tutelage,

SCAMA's progress was slow and always

handicapped by language difficulties,

shortage of trained personnel, materials,

inadequate depot establishments, and unfamiliarity of French personnel with

American equipment and American

methods. And while SCAMA was suffering growing pains, the supply problems

it was supposed to handle were getting

out of hand. Moreover, while rearmament supplies were supposed to be

issued only to approved rearmament

units, AFHQ had no effective control

over diversions. In addition to approved

units, the French maintained around

200,000 troops in their Territorial and

Sovereignty Forces charged respectively

with operation of the supporting military establishment in North Africa and

with defense and internal security. There

were other units also, which, though not

approved under the rearmament program, were participating in active combat operations in Corsica and Italy. Because equipment for rearmament units

normally arrived far in advance of the

actual activation of the units, some of

it was inevitably diverted to nonprogram

troops.

The chaotic condition of the French

supply system became evident once the

French troops were committed in Italy.

The initial plan provided that French

requisitions should be processed by Fifth

Army to SOS NATOUSA, which would

then call on the French military authorities for the desired material (to be furnished out of lend-lease or indigenous

stocks). Should an emergency arise, the

theater commander was empowered to

make direct transfers out of theater

stocks to be replaced later by lend-lease

assignment. The French were expected,

in the meantime, to be preparing their

timely requisitions for maintenance and

replacement for submission by the Joint

Rearmament Committee to Washington

for assignment by MAC (G).

It is doubtful if such a highly complicated and cumbersome procedure

could have worked even had the French

possessed an efficient supply organization. Since they did not, it broke down

almost immediately. The first French

troops sent to Italy were not even issued

their full initial allowances before leaving North Africa, and U.S. Fifth Army

soon found itself forced to resort to

emergency measures to fill these shortages, disregarding the finer points of

lend-lease procedure. Similarly, SOS

NATOUSA frequently found it necessary to invoke the theater commander's

emergency powers in order to provide

timely maintenance and replacement to
708 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

meet Fifth Army's requisitions for the

French, either because the French had

already diverted material to other units

or could not locate it in depot stocks.

Even in the case of rations, the theater

SOS found it necessary to supplement

French stocks heavily. When they did

meet SOS requests the French frequently

took the materials out of the only ready

reserve available—the equipment shipped

for rearmament units not yet activated—

thus laying the basis for future shortages

and confusion. Moreover, they seemed

unable to anticipate future replacement

and maintenance requirements properly,

partially because they had no adequate

inventory of the stocks they already

possessed, and so delayed the submission

of requisitions for new shipments from

the United States.

Even apart from the inadequacy of

the French supply system, it was clearly

wasteful to ship supplies from the United

States to North Africa, place them in

French stocks, then withdraw them later

for transshipment. The red tape involved

was frightening, and there was obvious

duplication in the maintenance of two

separate reserve stocks in the theater for

the support of troops fighting in the

same command and receiving their supplies ultimately from the same source.14

Finally recognizing the need for American management to follow lend-lease

supplies, on 26 December 1943 Eisenhower recommended direct American

support be substituted for complicated

lend-lease arrangements. With little dissent, this idea was accepted by the War

Department and MAC(G); it was placed

into effect in supplying French forces in

Italy in January 1944. After the usual

refinements, the new system was formally

promulgated by the War Department on

8 March 1944. Approved French units

were authorized maintenance and replacement supplies on the same basis as

before, but these supplies for units ready

to move to, or already in, actual combat

zones under American command were

to flow entirely through American channels. Only French garrison forces and

forces operating independently or as part

of a British command were to receive

them through military lend-lease channels. American commanders were to include French forces serving under them

in their Monthly Materiel Status Reports (MMSR) to the port of embarkation, and forward requests for supplies

for the French outside the MMSR as a

part of their consolidated requisition on

the United States. These consolidated

requisitions were to include the balance

of the French ration, which the theater

SOS could not secure from the French

themselves.15 To provide data on which

after-the-fact assignments could be made

by the MAB and lend-lease accounts

drawn up, commanders were to estimate

the proportion of their requisition for

each article that was for French forces.

This system of accounting proved entirely

too burdensome for the theaters concerned, NATOUSA and ETOUSA, and

in 1945 it was abandoned in favor of a

straight per diem charge for each French

soldier maintained.

Under this arrangement, the French

supply organization in North Africa was

relieved entirely of the burden of supporting French troops in Italy and

14

 In addition to Vigneras, Rearming the French,

see ID, Lend-Lease, Text, II, 1205-08.

15

 TAG Ltr, 14 Mar 44, sub: Replacement and

Maintenance of Equipment and Supplies for French

Forces in Approved French Rearmament Program,

AG 400 (8 Mar 44) OB-S-SPLLD-M.
MILITARY SUPPLY, LIBERATED & LATIN AMERICAN NATIONS 709

France. All that was left to it were the

tasks of storing and distributing rearmament supplies in North Africa, providing the housekeeping services for the

entire French military establishment

there, and furnishing support for the

all-French operations on Corsica and

Elba. This simple solution, nonetheless,

was not without its complications. It

left the French without enough resources

to support adequately the part of their

military establishment outside the rearmament program. One problem, that

of nonprogram troops serving in the

combat zone, was generally solved by

July 1944 by blanketing them under the

rearmament program, but still left were

the Territorial and Sovereignty Forces

in North Africa (all together about

200,000 men) with a minimum of American support. This was a continual source

of trouble, since the development of a

French communications zone in North

Africa was largely dependent on these

American supplies. The CCS did agree,

in January 1944, to furnish certain

supplies and materials for the Territorial

Forces but the provision was, in French

eyes, inadequate. The Sovereignty Forces

received an even smaller allotment. Both

forces were, in fact, always poorly supplied, and the result was almost inevitably that diversions of material from units

in the rearmament program continued,

despite American efforts to prevent them.

These diversions contributed to the appearance of unforeseen shortages in

French units in both Italy and southern

France that had to be met from theater

stocks or by emergency order on the

United States.

The French were never able to activate all the supporting units provided in

the CCS plan of 3 March 1944, despite

the reduction in the scope of the program and the disbandment of two infantry divisions in February 1944. The

need for combat replacements and the

continued shortage of skilled personnel

militated against it. The 7-division force

that participated in the invasion of

southern France was reasonably well

rounded, but it never was able to meet

the goal of self-containment the Americans set for it. Thus, both in Italy and

in southern France, the Americans had

to provide a measure of service support

to the French forces operating with

them. To the obligation of providing

maintenance and replacement supplies

through their own channels, the U.S.

Army had to add the provision of port

and base services. A French base section

(Base 901) was organized and sent first

to Italy, then to southern France, but in

neither place was it able to stand entirely

on its own feet.

Despite these difficulties, the French

North African Rearmament Program

generally achieved the purposes for

which it was designed. It provided a

rejuvenated 8-division French Army

which played an important role in the

campaigns in Italy and in the liberation

of France, and it obviated the necessity

for activation and deployment of eight

additional American divisions.

The Metropolitan and Liberated

Manpower Programs

By October 1944 the North African

phase of French rearmament had come

to an end, and the scene of action had

shifted to Metropolitan France. The

shift of control of the 6th U.S. Army

Group, of which the French 1st Army

formed a part, from SACMED to
710 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

SHAEF in September 1944 brought a

shift of control over French rearmament

soon afterward. Most of the personnel

of the Joint Rearmament Committee

moved from North Africa to France in

October to form the Rearmament Division of the SHAEF Mission (France).

Meanwhile, the CCS had begun to

wrestle with the problem of arming

French manpower available in Metropolitan France.

In October 1943 the French Committee of National Liberation presented to

the War Department a grand scheme to

enlarge the rearmament program to 36

divisions and 2,800 first-line aircraft by

the end of 1945, recruiting of manpower

to begin as soon as the Allies entered

Metropolitan France.16 The FCNL

urged that this large-scale rearmament

of French manpower would be necessary

to enable the French to discharge their

obligations "to fight the Axis in Europe

to the finish, to contribute to the occupation of Axis territories and the maintenance of security in Europe, to assist

in the war against Japan, and to restore

French sovereignty to all territories of

the French Union."17

This proposal went far beyond anything the Americans were willing to contemplate. The JCS took the position that

rearmament of French forces should be

limited to those that could be profitably

used in the war against Germany; the

creation of a French army for postwar

purposes or even to aid in the war against

Japan, they thought, involved political

considerations beyond their jurisdiction.

At QUADRANT, they had already taken

the position that the equipping of

French forces after the invasion of the

Continent should be limited to those

required for garrison and guard duties.

During the first four or five months fol- lowing an initial assault. . ., all available

port and beach capacity will be required

for the build-up and maintenance of

United Nations forces ... a minimum of

six to eight months will be required be- tween the start of reorganization and reequipment of French Army units . . . and

their initial employment. Thus it would

appear that no continental French Army

units could be employed for ten to thirteen

months after the initial assault.18

The FCNL proposal was therefore

quietly slipped into the discard.

The British were eventually to take

the view that liberated manpower should

be used to create national armies in

Europe to insure postwar stability and

relieve the occupation burden on American and British troops, but this view

did not emerge full-blown in the councils of the CCS until August 1944. In

the interim they agreed to limit the

question, as the JCS desired, to what

contribution European liberated manpower—French, Dutch, Belgian, Danish,

and Norwegian—could make toward

winning the war in Europe. Even when

so limited, there were important issues

to be resolved, but the CCS had made

little progress in resolving them before

the Normandy invasion. The only conclusion reached, and it was tentative,

was that 172,000 men should be organized into internal security battalions, 175

(140,000 men) to be raised by the 16

 Except where otherwise indicated, this section

is based on Vigneras, Rearming the French, pp. 299-

390. 17

 Memo, National Defense Committee, FCNL,

16 Oct 43, ABC 091.711 France (6 Oct 43), Sec lA.

18

 CCS 317, 18 Aug 43, memo by U.S. CsofS, title:

Equipping Allies, Liberated Forces and Friendly

Neutrals.
MILITARY SUPPLY, LIBERATED & LATIN AMERICAN NATIONS 711

French, 50 (32,000 men) by the Dutch

and Belgians, all to be supplied with

either captured equipment or equipment in the hands of the British.

Meanwhile, a considerable effort was

devoted to furnishing supplies to resistance groups, particularly in France. This

program had begun in 1941 under the

auspices of the British Special Operations Executive (SOE), and it was joined

in later by its American prototype, the

Office of Strategic Services (OSS). The

operation continued to be predominantly British until shortly before the

Normandy invasion in 1944 when the

OSS sponsored several large-scale airdrops in an attempt to dispel a common

French illusion that their aid was coming entirely from the British. Even previously the SOE had procured many of

its supplies under lend-lease, through a

special procedure whereby its requirements were screened by OSS before submission to the War Department for procurement.19

 All in all, the airdrops

provided only small quantities of light

equipment—rifles, machine guns, ammunition, explosives, radios, and articles of

clothing—and, while they contributed

greatly to the effectiveness of the French

Forces of the Interior (FFI), they could

not provide the heavier equipment

needed for an organized army.

After the Normandy invasion, as long

as the beachhead in France continued

small, the bulk of supply for the French

continued to take the form of SOE-OSS

assistance. Meanwhile, a welter of conflicting voices sought to point a way to

some definite program for a new phase

of French rearmament. The French continued to press for the program of October 1943, but to little avail. After the

combat successes of July and August, the

American commanders concerned, Generals Eisenhower and Devers, indicated

it would be better to limit re-equipment

of French combat troops to small units

that could be quickly trained and put to

use. On 2 August 1944 the CCS definitely

authorized the organization of the 172,-

000 men into liberated manpower units

for rear area work as planned earlier, but

took no action on the question of combat

forces. When the matter came up again

for consideration on 22 August, the

British presented their view that an

8-division French army should be created to promote postwar stability in

Europe and suggested the United States

should assume responsibility for equipping such a force, while they themselves would provide equipment for the

smaller forces of other western Allies.

The JCS, however, held to their view

that postwar armies were a political

question "which should be subject of

agreement between the governments

concerned."20 The JCS recommended,

in keeping with the Eisenhower-Devers

view, that 39 separate battalions of

French combat troops be formed at the

discretion of SCAEF (General Eisenhower) and SACMED (General Wilson). They thought fullest possible use

should be made of captured equipment,

of U.S. equipment previously transferred 19

 On the development of this procedure see

Memo, Gen Wood for Gen Wedemeyer, 10 Nov 42,

sub: Procurement of Special Operations Equipment, AG 400.3295 (11-7-42) (1), and related papers

in AG 400.3295 (11-3-42) (1). For further discussion

of its development and new problems raised in

1944-45. see ID, Lend-Lease, Text, I, 249-53.

20

 CCS 661, 29 Aug 44, memo by U.S. CsofS, title:

Revised French Rearmament Plan and Use of

French Manpower.
712 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

FRENCH PATRIOTS WITH GUNS PARACHUTED IN BY THE ALLIES

to the United Kingdom and no longer

required in the prosecution of the war,

and of surplus equipment in U.S. theater stocks, and that the rest should be

supplied from the United States, the

United Kingdom, and Canada by agreement between the British Army Staff in

Washington and the War Department.

The British did not finally agree to this

American proposal until December 1944,

though the Americans went ahead and

shipped equipment for eleven infantry

battalions at Eisenhower's request.21

The French, in the meantime, showed

no inclination to confine their military

organization to a congeries of small

units for internal security and piecemeal

use in combat. The internal security

units took shape but slowly, and the

FCNL almost immediately began to organize the FFI into divisional organizations to the extent it was able to do so.

General Alphonse Juin, French Chief of

Staff for National Defense, personally

appealed to General Marshall for equipment for five French divisions, and on

31 October told SHAEF that the French

would not furnish units to be used as

part of British or American commands

21

 CCS 661/3, 16 Dec 44, memo by Reps of Br

COS, title: Revised French Rearmament Plan and

Use of French Manpower.
MILITARY SUPPLY, LIBERATED 8c LATIN AMERICAN NATIONS 713

but would insist that any new units

formed be included "within the framework of a newly rebuilt French Army."22

It was less the attitude of the French

than the turn of military events that

finally forced Eisenhower's hand. With

the Allied armies stalled on the German

border, on 1 November Eisenhower recommended to the CCS that the mobile

military labor, security, and other liberated manpower units be increased to

460,000 men, 243,081 to be recruited

from France and the rest from the

Netherlands, Belgium, Norway, and

Denmark, and that two additional French

infantry divisions be raised, since he now

believed they could be readied in time

for participation in the war. The program, tentatively approved in Washington, was soon absorbed within a broader

one that the French worked out with

SHAEF and Brig. Gen. Auguste Brossin

de Saint-Didier, head of the French Military Mission in Washington, presented

to the CCS on 18 December 1944. Under

this proposal the French would organize

eight new divisions, six infantry, one

mountain, and one armored, with 213

supporting units, one army and two

corps headquarters, in addition to the

security and labor units already authorized. Saint-Didier emphasized that the

plan was "one of active participation in

the war . . . not a postwar plan, the

present establishment of which seems

premature."23 The activation of troop

units was to be phased in accordance

with the availability of French manpower, and as much equipment as possible was to be furnished by French industry, now on its way toward rehabilitation.

Phase 1 would consist of three divisions,

Phase II of two, and Phase III of three

more. It was hoped that the five divisions

in Phases 1 and II would be ready by

1 May 1945, those in Phase III by August

1945. The French hoped to provide their

own equipment for the divisions in

Phases 1 and III, except for clothing and

individual equipment, tentage, heavy

engineering equipment, and most of the

vehicles and artillery. The United States

would have to supply these deficiencies,

also furnish complete equipment for the

two divisions in Phase II, and for all

the supporting corps, army, and service

units of all three phases. Equipment the

British had immediately available might

be used in training the divisions first

activated and, in some cases, to provide

part of the French share for Phases 1

and III.

General Eisenhower, now faced with

the serious crisis in the Ardennes and

fearful lest he should be short of manpower for the fighting in 1945, approved

the program in all its essentials, but

insisted SHAEF should carefully supervise its execution. The CCS accepted it

in principle on 28 December along with

the enlarged Liberated Manpower Program and instructed the CAdC to make

a further study of the sources from which

equipment should be drawn.

The wheels were thus set in motion

for an 8-division Metropolitan Rearmament Program. Requirements were hastily computed by the ASF, items supposedly available from French or British

sources deducted, and a phased shipping

program arranged providing for the

rapid fulfillment of the American share

of the 8-division commitment, save only

22

 Ltr, Juin to Marshall, 7 Sep 44, Incl, CCS

661/1, 29 Sep 44, title: Revised French Rearmament

Plan and Use of French Manpower. 23

 Memo, Saint-Didier for Chmn, CCS, 19 Dec 44,

Incl, CCS 752, 23 Dec 44, title: Plan to Increase the

War Effort of France.
714 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

for a few scarce items in too great

demand for U.S. forces.

Hardly had the shipments begun, in

January 1945, before the program was

revised. General Somervell, on a tour of

the European theater, quickly perceived

that not enough service units had been

planned for to make the 8-division force

self-sufficient, and ETOUSA soon raised

the proposed number of those units from

213 to 1,128, bringing the proposed division slice up from 25,000 to 37,500 men,

a figure roughly equivalent to what experience in the North African Program

had proven necessary.

Having revised the program, the theater then proposed that shipments be rephased to place the service units in first

priority, but the French objected that

this would disrupt their plans for activation of units and the ASF that it would

disrupt the procurement program and

delay shipment of materiel. The upshot

was that the January, February, and

March phases were shipped much as

planned, providing the major portion of

materials for three divisions and 167

supporting units; shipments for the later

months were rescheduled so as to defer

the other five divisions until after the

materiel for the supporting units had

been shipped. In the theater Eisenhower

placed the service units in highest priority, particularly those still needed to

complete the supporting organization for

the French 1st Army, though again he

ran into opposition from the French,

who showed the same propensity they

had in North Africa to favor combat

divisions.24

The difficulty over service troops was

not the only one that plagued the Metropolitan Program. The British promptly

furnished the equipment they had promised (most of it obsolescent), but it

turned out that the French had been

entirely too optimistic in their predictions of both availability of manpower

and the rapidity with which their own

industry could begin to produce war

materials. In mid-February they reported

that because of unexpected power shortages they would not be able to furnish

in time most of the materials they had

proposed to supply for the three divisions in Phase I.25

 The activation and

training of units—at least those Eisenhower asked for—also lagged, and the

Supreme Commander retained much of

the equipment shipped for them in U.S.

stocks. Similar problems afflicted the

Liberated Manpower Program. At first

no service troops were provided to support the internal security units. The initial scale of individual equipment furnished by the British proved inadequate,

and Eisenhower had to ask for an increase. The British War Office, without

a definitive CCS decision on responsibility for supply of either the original

equipment or the requested increase,

delayed action. The problem of control

of the units caused difficulty. Recognizing all these problems, Eisenhower recommended, and the CCS approved, a

reduction in the total liberated manpower to be mobilized from 460,000 to

400,000 men.

24

 In addition to Vigneras, Rearming the French,

see ID, Lend-Lease, Text, II, 1215-17, and CCS

768/7, 27 Mar 45, title: Equipment for Allied Forces

in Europe.

25

 Memo, Col Jean Regnault, Chief, French Gp,

Rearm Div, SHAEF Mission (France), for Brig Gen

Harold F. Loomis, Chief, Rearm Div, 15 Feb 45,

sub: French Manufacturers, ID 475 Equipment of

Troops France, X.
MILITARY SUPPLY, LIBERATED & LATIN AMERICAN NATIONS 715

It was this revised program— 8 French

divisions with 1,128 supporting units

and 400,000 men in Liberated Manpower units—that the CCS definitely accepted on 7 April 1945 (on the recommendation of the CAdC) with the

significant qualification that "any units

. . . which have not been equipped by

the time active hostilities with Germany

cease will not be equipped."26 The

United States was to underwrite the

entire Metropolitan Program, the British, the Liberated Manpower Program.

The British would, in addition, equip

6 Belgian infantry brigades and a new

Polish division, all without increasing

their lend-lease requirements on the

United States. Rations and POL for

Liberated Manpower units were to be

furnished by the national force, British

or American, with which they served.

The definitive CCS decision came as

an anticlimax. With the end of the war

in Europe clearly in sight, the pressures

that had been behind French rearmament in December 1944 were dissipating.

However much the British and French

might feel that forces should be created

to promote postwar stability in Europe,

U.S. opposition to any such course had

become inflexible. The very solicitude

of the French to protect their interests

in the postwar settlement provoked incidents that forced Eisenhower to suspend

issue of equipment for either the Metropolitan or the Liberated Manpower

Program even before hostilities ended.

The Liberated Manpower Program was

suspended early in April, when the

French Provisional Government refused

to permit use of units organized under

it to support U.S. or British troops outside France until a French zone of occupation was settled. The Metropolitan

Rearmament Program ground to a halt

at the end of the same month, when

French troops refused to withdraw from

Stuttgart at the order of General Devers.

These incidents were finally resolved to

the satisfaction of all, to be sure, but by

that time Germany had surrendered, and

the qualification in the CCS decision had

been invoked. As of V-E Day the only

American support still going to the

French took the form of maintenance

supplies to units partially or wholly

equipped under either the North African

or the Metropolitan Program.

The net results achieved in the Metropolitan Rearmament Program were

therefore small. Three infantry divisions

and about forty supporting units were

partially equipped by V-E Day, but almost none entirely, and only very limited combat use had been made of any of

them. The units had received most of

the equipment promised by the British,

but virtually none of the equipment the

French had hoped to be able to supply

for themselves. Of the American equipment shipped for the Metropolitan Program, only about one-third had been

issued by SHAEF to the units for which

it was designated.

Epilogue to French Rearmament

French rearmament came to a virtual

end on V-E Day.27 On 20 April 1945,

in anticipation of the imminent German

collapse, the JCS agreed that "equipment which cannot be used against German forces will not be shipped from the

26 CCS 768/11, 7 Apr 45, title: Equipment for

Allied Forces in Europe.

27 Except where otherwise indicated this section

is based on Vigneras, Rearming the French, pp.

361-99.
716 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

United States to complete the French

Metropolitan Rearmament Program,"28

and so informed General Eisenhower.

The question of issue of material

already shipped but still in SHAEF

stocks remained. The French protested

vigorously against SHAEF withholding

any of this material, but to no avail.

The JCS finally agreed to the issue of

equipment for twenty-two service units

certified by Eisenhower as necessary to

support French occupation forces, and

to two railway operating battalions and

one railway grand division needed to aid

in redeployment of American troops, but

ruled against even completing the equipping of the three partially outfitted divisions. Replacement and maintenance

supplies for French forces already

equipped was continued until 30 September 1945 in accordance with the

President's interpretative memorandum

on lend-lease on 30 July,29 but ETOUSA

divested itself of the responsibility for

direct support through American channels and these supplies were furnished

the French in bulk.

Some consideration was given in the

meantime to equipping a French force

for use in the war in the Far East. The

French had suggested this as far back as

October 1943 with Indochina evidently

in mind, but the Americans gave their

requests little consideration until after

V-E Day. The War Department then

finally agreed in principle to the use of

French troops in the Pacific, planning,

in accordance with Eisenhower's recommendations, that they should be organized strictly according to U.S. TOE's,

placed under U.S. operational control,

and supplied entirely through U.S. channels. At first the JCS proposed to use the

French troops in the Pacific. At Potsdam,

however, the British suggested that they

might best be used in Indochina, an

area within SEAC, and the CCS finally

approved a 2-division project with the

provision that it should serve either under British or American command and

in any area the CCS should determine.

The two divisions were to be equipped

as far as possible from materiel already

provided under the North African and

Metropolitan Programs; they could hardly be committed before the spring of

1946, the CCS said, because of shortage

of shipping to move them to the Pacific.30

The French protested that all equipment already in their hands was needed

for occupation forces, but before they

received an answer to this protest the

end of the war with Japan was in sight

and the Americans dropped the plan.

They had, in fact, shown little enthusiasm for it at any time. The French

return to Indochina therefore had to be

carried out with resources available to

the Provisional Government of France.

Italian Military Forces

In September 1943, following Italy's

surrender, that nation took its place

among those at war with Germany, but

not as a member of the United Nations,

only as a "cobelligerent." Italy declared

war on Germany on 12 October 1943.

The use of Italian manpower by Allied

commands in the Mediterranean had

begun even earlier. Within the limits

28

 Min, 160th mtg JCS, 20 Apr 45. 29

 See above, ch. XXVII.

30

 CCS 895/2, 19 Jul 45, title: Participation of

Two French Colonial Divisions in Far Eastern

Operations.
MILITARY SUPPLY, LIBERATED & LATIN AMERICAN NATIONS 717

permitted by the Geneva Convention,

co-operative Italian prisoners captured

in North Africa and Sicily were used

for rear area work, at first simply individually or in groups as day laborers.

Then in November 1943, after the surrender, Italian POW service units were

organized under special tables of organization. These units, when serving with

U.S. forces, were supplied through American channels and served as substitutes

for U.S. service units. The British made

similar arrangements for Italian prisoners of war serving as part of their

commands.31

The Italian Army, which the new

government under Marshal Badoglio

brought over to the Allied side and

which numbered some 551,000 men, was

in a different category from the prisoners

of war, since there were no restrictions

on its use under the Geneva Convention.

The situation in fall 1943 resembled

that in North Africa in late 1942 when

Admiral Francois Darlan had placed the

French Army at Eisenhower's disposal.

The American reaction in this case, however, was quite different. The United

States would approve no extensive program for Italian participation in the war,

except insofar as the Italians could so

participate using their own indigenous

resources. The United States position

was that as an ex-enemy country Italy

should not be declared eligible for lendlease, nor given more than a minimum

of support through other channels. The

British, who favored a more liberal policy in rearming Italian forces, did not

have the resources to do it themselves

and could not overcome American opposition to it as a combined project.32

The Allied command in Italy learned

soon after the surrender that it needed

the co-operation of the Italian Army to

preserve internal security, provide essential services, and bolster Allied fighting

forces. In view of this need, Eisenhower

informed the CCS in fall 1943 that he

would require monthly shipments of

12,600 tons of subsistence and clothing

to carry Italian forces through the winter, and that indigenous and captured

stocks would be insufficient. Some emergency shipments were made from the

United States in answer to Eisenhower's

request, but the whole question of policy

was placed before the CCS with a recommendation from the U.S. Joint Chiefs

that the British assume responsibility

for Italian armed forces (other than

prisoners of war) in the same way the

Americans had for the French. The

British, however, could do so only if

they could be assured of receiving many

of the necessary supplies under lendlease, and by this time the general prohibition against lend-lease retransfers

had been put into effect.33

The rations required were the same

the United States was already furnishing

the British, and U.S. stocks of used

31

 Col. Criswell G. Blankeney, ed., Logistical History of NATOUSA-MTOUSA (Naples: G. Montanino, 1945), pp. 283-85.

32

 For a statement of the War Department position on extending lend-lease to Italy, see Memo,

Somervell for Chief, Legislative and Liaison Br,

OCS, 22 Feb 45, sub: HJ Res 99 ... . Dir Materiel,

file Lend-Lease. 33

 (1) See above, ch. XXVI. (2) Msgs, CM-IN 187,

Algiers to WAR, 30 Sep 43; CM-OUT 8709,

AGWAR to CG FREEDOM, Algiers, 19 Oct 43; CMIN 13759, Algiers to WAR, 23 Oct 43; CM-OUT

13033, AGWAR to CG FREEDOM, Algiers, 29 Oct 43.

(3) Memo, Lt Col Orrin C. Krueger, Actg Chief

Theater Br, Plng Div, ASF, for Col Magruder, 5

Nov 43, sub: Equip for Italians, file Preps for U.S.-

Bri Stf Conf, ASF Plng Div.
718 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

clothing were available for the Italians.

Considering these facts, the Combined

Administrative Committee recommended

to the CCS in December 1943 that responsibility for supply should be splitthe United States furnishing subsistence;

the British, medical supplies and fuels;

and each country contributing clothing

according to its agreed capacity as determined by established assignments procedures. Supplies should be limited to

these categories, and furnished only to

those Italian troops who were effectively

contributing to the Allied effort. Combat equipment should come only from

Italian sources. The CAdC also suggested formation of a theater agency

similar to the Joint Rearmament Committee to be responsible for supply to

the Italians, its authority to be exercised

through the theater commander but

with "the duly authorized representative

of the country of ownership concurring

in the establishment of requirements

and disposition of supplies and equipment, under the principle that the country of ownership should control the distribution of its assets," an obvious

attempt by the Americans to guarantee

that the British would not control distribution of U.S. equipment.34

Provisions for shipment of subsistence,

clothing, and so forth, were immediately

agreed upon and placed into effect.

Clothing was pulled together from a

miscellany of sources, the United States

furnishing old Civilian Conservation

Corps stocks of green mackinaws and caps,

Army class X shirts, cotton socks, and

comforters, the United Kingdom supplying battle dress, boots, and pullovers

from surplus Middle East stocks.35 There

was some delay in agreement on the

whole CAdC paper since the British objected to the conditions placed on the

theater commander's control of the program (British General Wilson succeeded

Eisenhower as Mediterranean theater

commander in January 1944), and the

over-all policy was not formally accepted

and the theater notified until late February 1944.36

By that time both General Wilson

and General Devers, the new U.S. theater commander in the Mediterranean,

had gone ahead with plans of their own

that envisaged fuller use and support of

the Italians than the CCS policy explicitly sanctioned. Devers' interest was in

the use of Italian service troops. He was

preparing, he informed the War Department on 3 March, a project for equipping additional Italian military service

units on the same basis as the POW

units, and it would require more equipment from the United States. Wilson

had broader plans for forming an Italian

combat force of three divisions, one of

them to be committed to action as early

as possible. He thought these divisions

essential because many U.S. and French

troops were soon to be withdrawn from

Italy. He proposed to equip them to the

maximum extent possible from Italian

sources, but some necessary items of

armament, transport, and ammunition

34

 CCS 386/1, 27 Nov 43, rpt by CAdC, title:

Subsistence and Clothing for Italian Troops Other

than POW.

35

 (1) CCS 386/2, 29 Nov 43, title as above. (2)

Diary Entry, Theater Br, 21 Dec 43, Plng Div ASF.

(3) Memo, Secy for Chmn, MAC(G), 28 Dec 43, sub:

Clothing for Italian Troops not POW's, Tab J,

Min, 125th mtg MAC(G), 30 Dec 43. (4) Msg, CMOUT 11255, AGWAR to FREEDOM, Algiers, 29 Dec 43. 36

 CCS 386/3, 5 Feb 44, memo by Reps Br COS,

title as above. CCS 386/4, 22 Feb 44, memo by U.S.

CsofS; CCS 386/5, 26 Feb 44. The British succeeded

in knocking out the last clause in the proviso—

"under the principle . . . ."
MILITARY SUPPLY, LIBERATED & LATIN AMERICAN NATIONS 719

could not be secured in Italy and he

asked CCS approval for procurement

from the United Kingdom or the United

States.37

The CCS immediately replied that

there could be "no deviation from the

decision . . . that combat equipment is

to be provided only from Italian

sources."38 They withheld decision on

the matter of service troops pending

further information from the theater,

but informed Wilson that provision of

such heavy equipment as trucks and

bulldozers would be practically impossible, and suggested that Italian units be

organized to use the simplest available

tools. This CCS reply, dictated by the

CAdC, undoubtedly reflected almost entirely American views. In further CCS

deliberations on the subject the British

pressed for some effort to supply the

Italian combat forces under Wilson,

arguing that all forces "which are capable of making a contribution to the

defeat of Germany should be considered

in principle as eligible to receive such

share of combined Allied resources as

will ensure that the maximum impact

on the enemy is achieved."39 The U.S.

representatives were at first willing to

make concessions only as regards service

troops, and even those were rather limited. In the theater the British and American armies had both adopted as one

solution to the problem the "dilution"

of their own service units with Italian

personnel, thus making them eligible

for supply through national channels.

The CAdC in July 1944 recommended

approval of the practice, and proposed

further that all-Italian service units operating under U.S. command be loaned

equipment that would be returned at

the end of the war, a system similar to

that under which issues had been made

to the POW units.

The British still pressed for a more

elaborate program and finally won some

additional concessions. In August 1944

the CCS formally approved the equipping of the three combat divisions, stipulating that equipment might come, not

only from Italian sources, but also from

other captured equipment or from stocks

available without prejudice to other requirements of higher priority. Any U.S.

equipment furnished under this authorization was also to be on a loan basis to

be returned at the end of the war. A new

division of supply responsibility with

the British was made whereby they were

to assume support of Italian ground

combat forces to a limit of 63,000, Italian

air forces to a limit of 22,000, naval

forces to a limit of 75,000, and service

forces operating under their command

to a limit of 100,000. The United States

would assume complete responsibility

for service troops operating with its own

command to the limit of 90,000 men.

The two countries would continue as

before to share the furnishing of subsistence, clothing, fuel, and medical supplies to independent Italian forces, some

124,000 men, charged with internal

security and administrative functions.40

The concessions to the British proved

of minor importance. The Italian com37

 CCS 386/6, 4 Apr 44, title: Subsistence and

Clothing for Italian Troops Other than POW. 38

 (1) Ibid. (2) CCS 386/7, 10 Apr 44. 39

 CCS 386/11, 28 Jul 44, memo by BrCOS, title

as above.

40

 (1) Memo, Somervell for Lutes, 18 Jul 44, CofS

ASF, file CG ASF 1943-44. (2) CCS 386/10, 22 Jul 44.

(3) CCS 386/14, 10 Aug 44, title: Combat Equipment

for the Italian Army. (4) ID Rpt 10, Lend-Lease

Information, 31 Dec 44, Part 1, pp. 6-7.
720 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

bat forces were never welded into an

effective fighting unit. The main Italian

contributions continued to be in service

units and in maintaining internal security, and the American commitment was

consistently limited to that of supplying

troops essential to the operations of U.S.

commands plus miscellaneous subsistence

and clothing for internal security units

remaining under Italian command. The

British, within the resources available

to them, were unable to make much

progress in Italian rearmament, however much they may have wished to do

so. The real key to the failure to make

more extensive use of Italian manpower

lay in the American refusal to make

Italy eligible for lend-lease.

Military Aid in Eastern Europe

Though Greece, Yugoslavia, Poland,

and Czechoslovakia were all declared

eligible for lend-lease very early in the

war, circumstances prevented the delivery

of anything more than the most minute

quantities of supplies to any of those

countries. Until the very last stages of

the war, delivery to resistance groups

could only be accomplished by airlift

or, as in the case of Greece and Yugoslavia, by submarine or small surface

craft, and was handled under SOE-OSS

auspices. Refugee forces, such as Lt. Gen.

Wladyslaw A. Anders' Polish Corps, the

Czechoslovakian Armored Brigade, and

miscellaneous Greek units, were all

under British sponsorship, and any aid

furnished them was a part of the bulk

allocation to the British. By a practical

working agreement, during the first part

of the war these countries were assigned

entirely as responsibilities of the British.

In accordance with American policy

developed in 1943 affirming the right of

all independent anti-Axis nations to submit direct requests for lend-lease, requests were received from Eastern European refugee governments as well as from

resistance groups, and some efforts were

made to arrange delivery to them

through OSS and American theater

channels. However, insofar as both

Poland and Czechoslovakia were concerned, apart from the sheer difficulty

of delivery, the United States and

Britain were both reluctant to furnish

supplies to forces that seemed to fall

more properly into the Soviet sphere

of influence.41 The largest OSS-SOE

deliveries were made to Yugoslavia, the

next largest to Greece. Delivery of supplies to Yugoslavia was made a direct

responsibility of the British theater commander in the Mediterranean, but, as

far as possible, assignments of U.S.

materials to Yugoslavia were made direct.

They were shipped to the U.S. theater

commander in the Mediterranean, who

then arranged delivery, normally through

channels provided by the British.

At first most of the supplies to Yugoslavia went to Col. Draza Mihailovic, but

the British soon learned that Marshal

Josif Tito's forces were making the most

effective fight against the Germans. They

eventually concentrated their support on

Tito and persuaded the Americans to do

likewise. At the Cairo Conference in

December 1943 the CCS directed an

intensification of the effort to supply the

Yugoslav partisans. Since the operation

proposed by the British to open a port

41

 In the most important case in point, the Polish

uprising in Warsaw in 1944, the British wanted to

dispatch planes with supplies despite failure to

secure Stalin's agreement, but President Roosevelt

was very lukewarm. See Churchill, Triumph and

Tragedy, pp. 128-45.
MILITARY SUPPLY, LIBERATED & LATIN AMERICAN NATIONS 721

on the Istrian coast never came off, the

supplies continued to be OSS-SOE sponsored. In the end, the Red Army occupied Yugoslavia, as it did Poland and

most of Czechoslovakia. American and

British aid, which had played such an

important part in sustaining Tito, as a

consequence, was almost entirely cut off

early in 1945. The British entered Greece

in 1945, and proposed to organize and

equip a Greek army to restore order in

that disturbed country, but the JCS

ruled that American resources could not

be made available for the purpose because liberated manpower units in western Europe must have first priority.

They approved the British action only

on the same condition as stipulated for

the Belgian brigades—that it would result in no increase in British requests

on the United States.42

The extent to which the USSR used

American supplies to arm liberated

forces in eastern Europe can only be

conjectured. Upon several occasions

the United States informed the Soviet

Union that lend-lease retransfers must

have prior American approval, but the

Russians ignored the notes. They did,

in April 1945, approach General Deane

on the subject of re transfer of vehicles

of lend-lease origin to four Czechoslovakian divisions Stalin had agreed to

equip, but they never made any formal

request on the U.S. Government. Presumably, with the end of the war in

Europe the Soviet Union was able to

furnish vehicles of its own manufacture.

It may well be assumed, nevertheless,

that the USSR made whatever disposition it desired of lend-lease supplies

within its own sphere of influence since

the United States had little means of

controlling that disposition or of even

knowing what it was.43

Military Aid to Latin America

Lend-lease to Latin American republics did not figure greatly in American

plans after Pearl Harbor. All of these

republics, except Argentina and Chile,

followed the lead of the United States

and broke off diplomatic relations with

the Axis Powers; but, save for Brazil

and, to a lesser extent, Mexico, their

role in the war was purely defensive. As

the United Nations passed from the defensive to the offensive at the end of

1942, assignments of military equipment

to Latin American republics of necessity

got a very low priority. Though these

assignments were made by the combined

machinery in the same manner as others, British participation in decisions

thereon was largely perfunctory and

they were treated as almost exclusively

within the American province. The

U.S. State Department maintained a

close surveillance over all Latin American programs and assignments on the

grounds that their raison d'etre was

more diplomatic than military.

42

 (1) On the specific U.S. policy and actual quantities of supplies delivered to each country, see ID,

Lend-Lease, Text, II, 1305-10, 1315-17, 1340-44,

1354-57. (2) On the British SOE supply to Yugoslavia and Greece see Ehrman, Grand Strategy V,

141-64, 462-75. (3) CCS 768/1, 1 Feb 45, title: Equipment for Allied and Liberated Forces; CCS 768/2,

8 Feb 45, same title. (4) CCS 425, 4 Dec 43, title:

Directive for Intensification of Support of Partisan

Forces in Yugoslavia.

43

 (1) Aide-Memoire, U.S. Dept State to Soviet

Charge d'Affaires, Washington, 6 Jul 44, ID, LendLease, Doc Suppl, VI. (2) Ltr, U.S. Secy State to Soviet

Ambassador, 19 Dec 44, ID, Lend-Lease, Doc Suppl,

VIII. (3) ID, Lend-Lease, Text, 1307-09.
722 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

The basic program for military lendlease to Latin America was drawn up in

mid-1941 by the Joint Army-Navy Advisory Board on American Republics

and provided for a total of $400 million

in aid, about 75 percent of it to consist

of Army equipment. An arbitrary division of this sum was made among the

Latin American nations, generally in

accord with their population and strategic importance. In line with this program, the State Department, between

1941 and 1943, negotiated lend-lease

agreements with each of the Latin American countries save Panama and Argentina, the former being excluded because

it was already under the protective jurisdiction of the United States, and the

latter because of its pro-Axis leanings.

In each agreement the credit to be

granted was stated, the final total reaching $425,890,000, all but $100,000,000

for Army equipment. Brazil received

an allocation of only slightly less than

50 percent of the total, a recognition

of that country's strategic position and

also its willingness to take an active part

in the war. Military lend-lease to Latin

America was not to be totally gratuitous.

Each nation was to be expected to pay

a percentage of the cost of the material

it received in proportion to its ability,

the percentages varying from 2.73 in

the case of Paraguay to 69.23 in that of

Nicaragua.44

The lend-lease agreements were, in

effect, small protocols, but they carried

no time schedule for deliveries and each

one contained a clause providing that

they might be terminated when the defense needs of the Western Hemisphere

would no longer be served by their continuance.45

 Under these dispensations

the U.S. military authorities controlled

the flow of munitions to Latin America,

much as they did to other countries, in

the light of strategic need, making political concessions only when they posed

little or no threat to the fulfillment of

programs considered more vital to the

prosecution of the war. Until mid-1943,

the general scarcity of munitions for all

purposes held back the allocation of

any sizable quantities to Latin America;

after mid-1943 when munitions became

available in greater quantities, the danger of attack to the Western Hemisphere had largely passed, and the United States formally adopted a policy of

limiting military supply to Latin America for purely defensive purposes.

By June 1943 munitions of a dollar

value of 165 millions ($125 million

Army; $40 million Navy) had been allocated to Latin American republics,

some 70 percent to Brazil and Mexico. At

this point the State Department recommended formulation of a new policy in

the light of the improved strategic situation of the United Nations, and in

mid-August this policy was formally

agreed by the War, State, and Navy Departments. It provided that allocations

of military equipment to the Latin

American republics would be limited

in the future to that necessary for (1)

forces required for joint employment

with forces of the United Nations in

antisubmarine and other military operations in defense of common interests;

44

 (1) Stetson Conn and Byron Fairchild, The

Framework of Hemisphere Defense, UNITED

STATES ARMY IN WORLD WAR II (Washington,

1960), pp. 232-35. (2) ID, Lend-Lease, Text, II,

1231-34. (3) JCS 629, 23 Dec 43, title: Rpt of Joint

Army and Navy Advisory Board on American

Republics as Revised at Request of Dept of State. 45 JCS 629, 23 Dec 43.
MILITARY SUPPLY, LIBERATED & LATIN AMERICAN NATIONS 723

(2) training and equipping of Latin

American forces to be employed in overseas offensive operations; (3) repair

and maintenance of existing equipment

and that to be furnished in the future;

(4) continued development of an interest in American munitions and training

doctrine to the exclusion of foreign materials and influences; (5) maintenance

of internal security in those countries

whose governments continued to support the United States.46

In September 1943 the Joint Advisory

Board on American Republics was reinstated and assigned the task of refining

the policy and working out new programs in consonance with it. The

board's recommendations, in substance,

asked for abrogation of the old agreements and cessation of arms deliveries

to all save Brazil and Mexico while new

programs were developed for the postwar period—programs whose goal was

to be complete conversion of Latin

American armies to U.S.-type arms and

organization in the interests of hemisphere solidarity. What remained in the

wartime program were the provisions

for supply of Brazil and Mexico, the nations that formed the most important

links in the Atlantic antisubmarine defenses and that proposed to send small

expeditionary forces overseas. Further

allocations to other republics after mid1943 were inconsequential.47

The Brazilian project was the larger

and more important. In April 1943

President Getulio Vargas of Brazil proposed the formation of a Brazilian Expeditionary Force made up of a maximum of three infantry and one armored

or motorized division with suitable supporting troops and a small air force, all

to be equipped by the United States.

The Brazilians suggested that, for training purposes, only sufficient equipment

for one division need to be sent to

Brazil, this to be used to train the divisions in rotation. OPD decided to cut

this requirement in half and in July

1943 MAC (G) assigned to Brazil 50

percent of the equipment for one division. In January 1944 further assignments were made of tanks and armored

cars for training armored units, though

the JCS still withheld decision on the

size of the Brazilian force to be used

overseas. Finally, in April 1944, they

decided to limit it to one infantry division and one fighter squadron to be

used in the Mediterranean theater.

Agreement was obtained from the British Chiefs early in May and the wheels

set in motion for detailed arrangements

for movement and support. The Brazilian troops took only individual equipment with them, the rest was supplied

directly from the United States and

issued to them on arrival in Italy.

The training equipment initially furnished was left in Brazil. The first Brazilian regimental combat team arrived

in Naples in July 1944 and by fall the

whole division had taken its place in the

line with the U.S. Fifth Army. Maintenance and replacement were furnished

through U.S. channels in the same way

as for French forces. Naturally problems arose—of language, of unsuitability

46

 (1) Ibid. (2) Statement of Policy Regarding

Future Supply of Lend-Lease Materials to Latin

America as Agreed upon by State, War, and Navy

Depts, 6 August 1943, G-4 400.3295, I. 47

 (1)JCS 629/1, 31 Dec 43, title as JCS 629. (2)

JCS 629/2, 20 May 44, title: Staff Convs with Reference to Lend-Lease Agreements with Other American Republics. (3) JCS 629/3, 25 May 44; JCS 629/4,

1 Jun 44; both same title as (2). (4) For later development of the postwar policy see further papers in

the JCS 629 series.
724 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

of U.S. rations, of provision of personnel replacements, and of divers other matters involved in supply and administration of a separate national force in a

theater already possessed of the most

polyglot forces ever assembled. Most of

them were settled satisfactorily, but their

existence undoubtedly contributed to

the decision to make no further effort

to exploit the manpower available in

Brazil.48

The Mexican Government furnished

one fighter squadron that was sent to

the Pacific in early 1945 and supported

through American channels.

War Department lend-lease supplies

for Latin America totaled $323,710,000

in dollar value by the end of the war,

close to the amount promised in the

separate lend-lease agreements. Brazil

received 71 percent and Mexico 10 percent, the former considerably exceeding

its allotment. The other Latin American nations received proportionately

less, and it must be remembered that,

owing to the general rise in prices during the period, the dollar values do not

truly reflect the extent to which these

smaller nations were disappointed in

their anticipations. Taken all in all,

lend-lease to Latin America constituted

only about 1.5 percent of the total military aid furnished Allied powers during

World War II.49

48

 (1) JCS 284, 4 May 43, memo from CofS, USA,

title: Arming of Brazilian Expeditionary Force, with

related papers, ABC 400.3295 (5-4-43) Brazil. (2)

Memo, Lt Col L. C. Strong, Liaison Br, ID, for

Reqmts and Assignments Br, 14 Jun 43, sub: Assignment of Training Equipment for Brazilian Expeditionary Force, Tab 9, Agenda, 101st mtg MAC(G),

8 Jul 43. (3) Min 2167, 102d mtg MAC(G), 15 Jul 43;

2916, 127th mtg MAC(G), 13 Jan 44. (4) Memo, Gen

Wood, Dep Dir P&O, ASF, for Gen Roberts, OPD,

13 Apr 44, sub: Brazilian Expeditionary Force, ABC

400.3295 (5-4-43). (5) CCS 553, 18 Apr 44, title:

Brazilian Expeditionary Force. (6) Min 3368, 142d

mtg MAC(G), 18 May 44, with Tab 4, Agenda. (7)

Cables and other papers in OPD Exec 1, Item 28b.

(8) Study, Command and General Staff School, by

Maj. L. R. de Freitas Tacito of the Brazilian Army,

Logistical Support of a Brazilian Expeditionary

Force by American Supply Installations.

49

 (1) Statistics: Lend-Lease, 15 December 1952

draft, prepared by Theodore E. Whiting, Carrel I.

Tod, and Anne P. Craft (hereafter cited as Whiting,

Tod, and Craft, Statistics: Lend-Lease), MS, OCMH,

table Lend-Lease-7. (2) ID, Lend-Lease, Text, 1289-

90.
CHAPTER XXIX

Lend-Lease to China, 1943-45

China received 7 percent of the total

value of lend-lease supplies furnished by

the War Department during World

War II. Had the limited capacity of the

supply line from India to China not

prevented the United States from carrying out its expressed intention of equipping a sizable Chinese army for the war

against Japan, the percentage would

have been much higher. Under a basic

policy whereby lend-lease was assigned

only to forces that could use it effectively

in prosecution of approved strategic

plans of the CCS, assignments to China

had necessarily to be limited to materials

that either could be used by the Chinese

Army in India or transported into China

within a reasonable period of time.1

Assignments to China were made in

the normal manner, by the Combined

Munitions Assignments Board and its

committees; but British participation in

decisions on lend-lease to China was

largely perfunctory, confined mainly

to those instances in which assignments

to China affected British interests in

some way. British supplies, most of them

from Empire sources, were also furnished to China, but under close American control. The Chinese Army in India

was dependent upon Indian sources for

most of its subsistence, quarters, uniforms, and miscellaneous supplies; these

supplies and services were furnished administratively by arrangement between

the American SOS and the Government

of India, or in response to bids placed

by the United States before the Indian

Munitions Assignments Committee. Supplies procured in India for movement

into China were normally bid for, after

mid-1943, through the London Munitions Assignments Board. Other supplies

for Chinese troops, whether in India or

in China, were procured from Australia

and bid for before the Australian Munitions Assignments Committee. Supplies

from Canada, on the other hand, were assigned directly under Canada's own

Mutual Aid Program but the assignments were co-ordinated with those

made in Washington through a Joint

War Aid Committee. Thus, the sources

of supply were varied, but the control

almost solely American, exercised

through the U.S. commander in the CBI

and by the War Department and MAB

in Washington.2

1

(1) See above, ch. XXI. (2) Whiting, Tod, and

Craft, Statistics: Lend-Lease, p. 7.

2

 (1) See Leighton and Coakley, Global Logistics,

1940-43, pp. 547-49, and ID, Lend-Lease, Text, II,

1151-52. (2) On the Canadian program and procedures see CCS 542, 11 Apr 44, and CCS 542/1,

6 May 44, titles: Canadian Mutual Aid to China.
726 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

The Stilwell Program

General Stilwell's was the guiding

hand in shaping the Chinese lend-lease

program in the year and a half following

the fall of Burma in May 1942. His plan

for lend-lease was an integral part of his

general concept of reopening the supply

line through Burma and eventually

creating an effective Chinese army capable of coping with the Japanese invader.

To recapitulate briefly, Stilwell hoped

to persuade Chiang to reform and consolidate his scattered understrength

armies and to create a compact, efficient

force of 60 divisions, the first 30 (X-RAY

and YOKE, or X and Y, Forces) to be engaged in the effort to retake north Burma,

the second 30 (ZEBRA, or Z, Force) to provide an effective defense of east China.

These divisions were to be organized on

special tables of organization and equipment providing for considerably less

artillery, fewer motor vehicles, and generally less heavy equipment than comparable U.S., British, or French divisions. At first only the Chinese divisions

formed at Ramgarh in India (X-RAY

Force) could be completely equipped

with American or British materiel; the

YOKE and ZEBRA Forces in China were

to be initially supplied primarily from

Chinese sources supplemented by selected critical items that could be flown

over the Hump, most of them for the

YOKE divisions. Once the road from

India to China was open, however, Stilwell would give all 60 divisions enough

American equipment to enable them to

move on to take a port on the China

coast. Once a port was opened, Stilwell

hoped a large enough force could be

supplied to drive the Japanese out of

China. Just before the Cairo Conference

in December 1943, he proposed to

Chiang Kai-shek that he ask the United

States for equipment to provide, ultimately, an efficient army of 90 Chinese

divisions in the field.3

Realization of Stilwell's plan depended upon Chiang's willingness or

ability to reform and consolidate his

forces, on adequate airlift capacity over

the Hump, and adequate priority on

that capacity for YOKE Force supplies,

and finally on execution of the strategic

plan calling for the opening of a land

route through Burma. None of these

conditions, it will be recalled, was fulfilled during 1942 and 1943. Chiang was

slow to consolidate units in Yunnan for

YOKE Force and never brought these

units to full strength; none of the ZEBRA

divisions were even designated until

September 1943. At TRIDENT the air

effort in China got an almost absolute

priority over YOKE Force supplies. The

land campaign in Burma was postponed

time and again. The only part of the

plan on which Stilwell was able to make

early and substantial progress was in the

training and equipping of X-RAY Force

at Ramgarh, and it was with this Chinese

Army in India that he was finally forced

to move, alone, in November 1943 to

open the north Burma campaign.4

In retrospect it seems clear that Stilwell's plan offered Chiang his best hope

for an Army that would be effective

enough to enable him to play an important part in the war against Japan and

to strengthen his position internally

vis-a-vis his rivals, warlord or Commu- 3

(1)See Memo, Gen Stilwell for Generalissimo

Chiang Kai-shek, no date, printed in Romanus and

Sunderland, Stilwell's Command Problems, pages

57-58. (2) For the background, see above, Chapter

XXI. 4

 See above, ch. XXI.
LEND-LEASE TO CHINA, 1943-45 727

nist, in the postwar period. Yet it involved risks that Chiang was unwilling

to take and a measure of American control that he was loath to accept. Chiang

wanted supplies on the same basis the

British and Russians received them, with

no strings attached. Perhaps, also, the

reform and consolidation on which Stilwell insisted were beyond Chiang's

power to effect. Whatever the reason, lack

of will or lack of ability or a combination

of both, Chiang resisted Stilwell's pleas

for Army reform and consolidation and

time and again showed his preference for

air action in China as a substitute, with

all the implications this had for priorities on Hump tonnage.

Stilwell continually espoused a policy

of using lend-lease as a lever to force

Chiang to reform and consolidate his

armies and launch YOKE Force on the

drive across the Salween into Burma.

Although President Roosevelt refused,

until after the Cairo Conference, to

exercise this sort of pressure, this was

hardly so important a factor in the failure of Stilwell's plan as was the limited

capacity of the Hump air line and the

priority on air supply granted Chennault. Only the most minute quantities

of ground force supplies moved over the

Hump until well past the middle of

1943, leaving Stilwell very little to bargain with. Meanwhile, the continued

growth of a stockpile of Chinese lendlease in India served as the rationale for

further curtailment of the Chinese lendlease program by the War Department

and MAB.

If he was not granted the right to use

lend-lease as a lever in bargaining with

Chiang, Stilwell was granted powers that

to all intents and purposes made him

lend-lease administrator for China subject to policies established in Washington.5

 By decision of the MAB in June

1942, all military lend-lease for China

was consigned to Stilwell for delivery,

and he was empowered to divert materials for use by U.S. troops though cautioned not to do so without permission

from the Chinese Government. By early

1943 requirements for China in the

Army Supply Program as well as assignments made by MAC(G) were being

shaped entirely in terms of Stilwell's

60-division program and his specific requests for materiel for Chinese forces.

By an agreement negotiated at Chungking in January 1943, the American

commander was made responsible for

presenting all Chinese military requirements in Washington and granted the

right to comment on all requirements

for civilian-type supplies. Moreover,

since the Chinese did not have the

necessary personnel or facilities in India

to handle storage and movement of lendlease supplies, these functions were entrusted to the American theater SOS. On

the all-important airlift, the theater controlled priorities (subject, of course, to

high-level policy determinations in

Washington) on all movements by the

U.S. Air Transport Command and part

of those by Chinese National Airways

Corporation (CNAC) planes. Only on

the remaining CNAC lift, always small,

could the Chinese move such other essentials as they deemed necessary—arsenal

materials, bank notes, supplies for the

civilian economy, and military supplies

for forces outside the Stilwell program.6

5

 The International Division refers to Stilwell by

this title in Rpt 10, Lend-Lease Information, 31 Oct

43, section on China. 6

 See Leighton and Coakley, Global Logistics,

1940-43, pp. 532-34.
728 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

The ASF initially included requirements for the full 60 Chinese divisions

in the Army Supply Program for 1943

and 1944. Assignments, meanwhile, were

limited during 1942 to certain specific

tonnage figures (first 3,500, then 5,000)

monthly, but this policy was abandoned

in early 1943 in favor of one of simply

meeting Stilwell's requests. Under the

new policy, shipments rose to around

10,000 tons monthly by mid-1943.

Despite the seeming simplicity of the

basic program—material for 60 divisions

—there were many complications in administration. The theater SOS in India

inherited from the Chinese a stockpile

of miscellaneous materials, mostly lendlease but some of it consisting of purchases made by China Defense Supplies,

Inc. (CDS), in 1939—40. The materials

were scattered in various places, many of

them deteriorating in open storage, and

there was no adequate inventory. With

an excessively long supply line to operate and an acute shortage of trained personnel, the theater SOS was in no position either to provide proper storage or

to make an adequate inventory. Some of

the supplies in India could be used at

Ramgarh, others, with Chinese permission, were diverted to U.S. forces, but

the great bulk remained in storage in

India awaiting the day they could be

moved into China. Each month's shipments added to the burden of storage

and inventory, and the ASF soon observed a tendency to requisition new

material for Chinese troops when the

need arose rather than to try to locate

specific items already in India.

Besides duplicate requisitions, there

were others that fell outside the estimates originally made in preparing the

Chinese lend-lease section of the Army

Supply Program. Theater calculations of

the exact requirements for 60 Chinese

divisions were continually fluctuating.

Unprogramed requirements were exceedingly hard to meet because of the

low priority accorded Chinese forces.

Moreover, Chinese requirements had to

be processed through the military assignment machinery, which, the International Division estimated, took some nine

months between the filing of a requisition and the ultimate arrival of material

in India. Thus, however small they

might seem in relation to those of other

lend-lease recipients or other American

theaters, they had to be anticipated at

least nine months in advance.7

Concerned by the growing stockpile

in India and by the seeming lack of system in handling Chinese lend-lease,

OPD and ASF, applying the philosophy

that war material should never be allowed to accumulate in idle stockpiles,

moved in July 1943 to curtail the Chinese program further. While reaffirming

the 60-division commitment, they decided that the full second 30 divisions

were too far in the future to permit

inclusion of more than training materials for them in the Army Supply Program. They therefore cut back the Chinese requirements program for 1943 and

1944 from the full 60 divisions to the

first 30, plus 10 percent for training the

second 3O.8

The theater commander was forced to

concur, albeit reluctantly, since at this

point so very little ground force material

was moving into China. It was not until

7

(1)ID Rpt 10, Lend-Lease Information, 31 Oct

43, section on China. (2) Msg 2296, AGWAR to

AMMISCA, 11 Mar 43, ID Cables AMMISCA OUT,

vol. III. 8

 Msg 2976, AGWAR to AMMISCA, 6 Jul 43, and

related papers in OPD 400 CTO, Case 61.
LEND-LEASE TO CHINA, 1943-45 729

after QUADRANT, with an increase in the

capacity of the airlift and the cancellation of the absolute priority for Chennault's air force, that the first sizable

quantities of Y Force supplies moved

over the Hump. At that time Chiang

also began to show a more co-operative

attitude, designating some of the Z Force

divisions and enabling Stilwell to open

a Z Force training center at Kweilin.

With these developments the theater reopened the question of supplies for the

second 30 divisions. A complete plan

for equipping 60 divisions in accordance with the tables of organization and

equipment then in use at Ramgarh was

presented in Washington in October

1943. Total requirements for initially

equipping each division were estimated

at 4,612 tons, of which 600 tons were

placed in "A" priority for movement

over the Hump; the rest, so-called "B"

supplies, would be shipped to India to

await opening of the Ledo Road. Assuming that the road would be opened

by October 1944, the theater estimated

that the first 30 divisions could be almost completely equipped by the end

of 1944 and that equipping the second

30 could begin early in 1945. Therefore,

the argument ran, the material for the

second 30 would have to be placed in

the 1944 Army Supply Program if it was

to be on hand and ready to move in time.

OPD ruled against Stilwell on the

grounds that after the defeat of Germany material originally produced for

other Allied forces could be used to supply China; it would therefore be unwise

to "overburden American production"

during 1944 with full requirements for

60 Chinese divisions.9 Undoubtedly

"overburdening American production"

was less the real consideration than was

a belief that the 60-division program

was impossible of achievement, and a

concern lest supplies accumulate in idle

storage in India awaiting the uncertain

contingency of the opening of the Ledo

Road. Shortly thereafter, in any case,

OPD asked G-4 to work out a definite

policy that would effectively prevent

any further growth of the stockpile. As

finally agreed and dispatched to the

theater on 8 December 1943, this policy

established the rule that no assignments

or shipments should be made to India

for Chinese forces unless the theater

could give definite assurances that material to meet the requirement was not

already in the theater or en route and

that it could be delivered to using forces

in India or China within six months

after arrival in India.10

The message placing this restriction

on stockpiling in India arrived in the

theater just when hopes were highest

for a much larger lend-lease program

for China. Stilwell's plan for a Chinese

Army of 90 divisions had been presented to the President at SEXTANT in late

November, and the President had indicated at least a conditional assent. Marshall reported to the JCS on 25 November that the President had told him that

the Generalissimo should have something for his trip and that he (the Presi9

(1) DF, OPD for G-4 and CG ASF, 23 Oct 43,

sub: Logistical Plan for Equipping Chinese Divs.

(2) Ltr, Col Frank Milani, AG USAFCBIT, to Chief,

Asiatic Sec, OPD, 11 Oct 43, same sub. Both in OPD

400.3295 China, Sec lA, Case 50. (2) Romanus and

Sunderland, Stilwell's Command Problems, ch I.

(4) Msg AG 2524, AMMDEL to AGWAR, 29 Oct 43,

file CBI CM-IN Sep-Nov 43, ASF Plng Div. 10

 (1) Memo, G-4 for OPD, 6 Dec 43, sub: Proposed

Supply Policy Pertaining to Equipping Chinese Divs.

(2) Msg 4795, AGWAR to AMMDEL, 8 Dec 43. Both

with related papers, in OPD 400.3295 China, Sec

lA, Case 50.
730 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

dent) had spoken to Chiang about arming the third 30 divisions but had postponed any definite commitment. Taking his cue from these conversations,

Stilwell instructed his subordinates in

the theater to prepare requisitions for

the equipment for the second 30 divisions and forward them to Washington.

Brig. Gen. Benjamin G. Ferris' message

containing the requisitions crossed that

of OPD informing the theater of the

more restrictive policy. On receipt of

OPD's message, Ferris, evidently nonplussed, cabled Washington asking

whether this policy had not been prepared prior to SEXTANT decisions. But

OPD was not ready to make any change,

informing the ASF on 16 December

that it had received no notification of

any Presidential commitment and stating that if one had been given "an attempt will be made to have the decision

reversed as impractical."11

In reality, at Cairo and Tehran the

whole strategic concept behind the 90-

division plan had been swept away. The

swift pace of the Pacific advance, the

new emphasis on the air effort in China,

and the prospect of Soviet entrance into

the war against Japan left no compelling

necessity behind the Chinese ground

force program. The sequel was inevitable. On 28 December 1943 Col. Thomas S. Timberman, head of OPD's Asiatic

Theater Group, told General Handy

that "thirty divisions are the maximum

we will be able to reasonably equip

... in the course of this war. . . . Some

training of the second thirty divisions

with the very limited equipment can be

undertaken; any equipping of the third

thirty divisions is considered impossible."12

Handy took the matter to General

Marshall on 31 December, noting that

the President had made no commitment on the timing of the flow of equipment, and obtained the Chief of Staff's

approval for a message to the theater affirming the G-4 policy that set the upper

limit of the Chinese program at 33 divisions and established the 6-months' rule

on delivery.13

The President himself, whatever the

reason, seemed much less concerned

about Chiang's position after meeting

the Chinese leader at Cairo. He exerted

no such pressure on the War Department to speed up Chinese lend-lease as

he had after Casablanca to see that his

promises to General Giraud were fulfilled. On the contrary, he finally adopted a policy not unlike the one Stilwell

had long been urging, threatening to

halt the flow of lend-lease to YOKE Force

entirely if Chiang did not use it to attack across the Salween.14

The 33-Division Program

The 90-division program thus became

a vague, nebulous concept based on an

11

 (1) DF, Col John J. Binns for Dir Plng Div ASF,

16 Dec 43. (2) Msg CM-IN 9772, AMMDEL to AGWAR, 15 Dec 43. Both in folder CBI Theater, ASF

Plng Div. (3) Romanus and Sunderland, Stilwell's

Command Problems, ch. II. (4) JCS 130th mtg, 25

Nov 43, Item 6.

12

 Memo, Col Timberman for Gen Handy, 28

Dec 43, sub: Equipping Chinese Divs, OPD 400.3295

China, Sec lA, Case 50. 13

 (1) Memo, Handy for CofS, 31 Dec 43, sub:

Equipping Chinese Divs. (2) Msg 4171, AGWAR to

USAFCBI Forward Echelon, 31 Dec 43, with for

record note. Both in OPD 400.3295 China, Sec lA,

Case 50.

14 See Msg, AGWAR to AMMISCA, President to

Stilwell for delivery to Chiang Kai-shek, 27 Dec 44,

Stilwell Personal File, Book V, Item 1578.
LEND-LEASE TO CHINA, 1943-45 731

equally vague Presidential promise, and

soon disappeared entirely. Even the

60-division program soon vanished from

the planning boards. The mushrooming

requirements of Chennault's force and

of the XX Bomber Command kept the

movement of ground force supplies into

China at a low level throughout the

first half of 1944. Chiang's decision, under continuing American pressure, to

finally launch YOKE Force on a drive

into Burma in April 1944 came too late.

The lend-lease policy for China had already been cast in a mold that had hardened. Under the impact of the Japanese

advance in east China in summer 1944,

the theater itself despaired of the possibility of actually concentrating the second 30 divisions and training them,

recognizing that under existing conditions it would be better to use available

equipment for a smaller number of

units. Thus the 30 division plus 10 percent plan underwent a metamorphosis

whereby it became, in effect, simply a

plan for equipping a 33-division Chinese

force.15

The effort in Washington concentrated on systematizing the handling of lendlease for the 33 divisions and on reducing stockpiles to a minimum. The first

step toward more systematic accounting for both military lend-lease and

China Defense Supplies, Inc., supplies

in India and China was taken when, in

November 1943, Col. William S. Gaud,

Jr., was dispatched to China by the

War Department as "direct representative to the Government of China in all

matters pertaining to the assignment of

military supplies and equipment to the

Chinese Government."16 Gaud's first reports revealed deplorable conditions in

the storage of and accounting for Chinese lend-lease supplies, particularly

those shipped under civilian programs;

and he was instrumental in the establishment of a joint War DepartmentFEA Screening Committee in Chungking to pass on all Chinese lend-lease

requisitions for civilian supplies. The

theater continued to exercise primary

responsibility for the Stilwell program

but, again, Gaud's reports led to a more

concerted effort by the War Department

to secure a complete physical inventory

of all Chinese lend-lease supplies on

hand in India. Though some progress

was made with this inventory, it was

not to be completed to the satisfaction

of the War Department until April

1945. In the meantime its imperfection

constituted a stumbling block to intelligent stockpiling.17

The theater was never happy with the

restrictions placed on stockpiling by the

G-4 6-months' policy, realizing that, adequate inventory or not, the existing

stockpile in India was unbalanced and

could not provide critical items needed

in emergencies for forces at Ramgarh

or, more important, could not satisfy

the requirements that must be met on

that unpredictable date when the Ledo

Road would open. In April 1944 General Sultan, citing the long time lag

between assignments and arrival of materials in the theater, asked for a stockpile of equipment for 8 Chinese divi15

 (1) See above, ch. XXI. (2) Romanus and Sunderland, Stilwell's Command Problems, ch. VIII.

16

 TAG Ltr to Col Gaud, 11 Nov 43, sub: Instructions Relative to Duties of WD Military Aid Representative to the Republic of China, ID, Lend-Lease,

Doc Suppl, VI. 17

 (1) Gaud's reports are in ID file 319.1, Reports

Col Gaud. (2) See also ID Rpt 10, Lend-Lease Information, 31 Mar 44, section on China.
732 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

sions and supporting troops of 2 Chinese

armies to be shipped without regard

to the 6-months rule. The theater based

its request on an estimated shipping

time of 6 months; OPD, reasoning that

the shipping time was actually only 70

days, reduced the stockpile requirement

proportionately to 5 divisions and supporting troops for one army before approving it. Shortly afterward OPD also

approved, at Stilwell's request, the assignment and shipment of equipment

for 3 Chinese long-range penetration

battalions to be organized at Ramgarh.18

Despite OPD approval, the 5-division

stockpile for a long time was more promise than reality. MAC (G) delayed assignments awaiting proof from a physical

inventory that materials were not already in India, and the CBI theater

could not complete the inventory satisfactorily. A common feeling in OPD

that proper control of the Chinese program was "lacking within the theater"

played its part in dictating delays in

assignments calculated to insure that the

new stockpile in India would be built

at a leisurely pace.19

Continued complaints from General

Sultan finally brought some action.

Based on new tables of organization

and equipment forwarded from the theater and on a specific list of requirements for completing the stockpile, the

ASF secured assignments by MAC (G)

in August and September 1944 of most

of the critical items but they were made

on OPD's stipulation that they would

have to be furnished within theater priority. "It is believed highly desirable

to get this equipment out there," wrote

General Tansey, "but not at the expense

of American troops in other theaters."20

Meanwhile, OPD turned a deaf ear to

Sultan's plea, forwarded on 16 August,

that the stockpile be increased to ten

divisions. Also, MAC (G) postponed action on some of the requests for the

5-division stockpile, awaiting clarification of the priority question. Shipments

continued sporadic, and the stockpile

on hand in India when the Ledo Road

finally opened in early 1945 was an unbalanced one.21

While holding back materials for a

stockpile, the War Department and

MAB moved to establish more effective

procedures for supplying Chinese forces

who were actually fighting and for integrating the supply line in India that

18

 (1) Ltr, AG Hq, CBIT, to Chief, Asiatic Sec,

OPD, 7 Apr 44, sub: WD Policy on Supply of

Chinese Army. (2) Msg CRA-2487, CG USAFCBI

Rear Echelon, to AGWAR, 1 May 44. (3) Memo,

OPD for G-4, 2 May 44, sub: WD Policy on Supply

of Chinese Army with for record note. All in OPD

400.3295 China Sec lA Case 50. (4) Min 3382, 143d

mtg MAC(G), 22 May 44. 19

 (1) See Memo, Col William H. Wood, Asiatic

Sec, Theater Gp, OPD, for Gen Handy, 20 Jul 44,

and cables exchanged between War Department and

CBI, 19 May-16 Jun 44, in OPD 400.3295 China, Sec

lA, Case 50. (2) Memo, Col Kreuger, Chief, Theater

Br, Plng Div, ASF, for Col Magruder, 15 May 44,

sub: WD Policy on Supply of Chinese Army, folder

la Policy File (CBI) 1944, ASF Plng Div.

20

 (1) Memo, Gen Tansey for Gen Handy, 19 Aug

44, sub: Equipment for Chinese Divisions, OPD

400.3295 China Sec II, Case 59. (2) Memo, Handy

for G-4, 5 Aug 44, sub: Amendment to the Establishment of Procedure for Supply and Maintenance

to China for 30 Divs Plus 10% . . . , ID 008 LendLease, XIII. (3) Memo, Gen Lutes for Dir Plans and

Opns ASF, 17 Aug 44, sub: CDS Equipment—CBI,

folder CBI 1944, Hq ASF. (4) Memo, Gen Edgerton,

ID, for OPD, 28 Aug 44, sub: Equipment for Chinese

Forces, OPD 400.3295 China, Sec II, Case 59. 21

 (1) Min 3855, 161st mtg MAC(G), 25 Sep 44,

and Gen Tab 3, Agenda 161st mtg. (2)Msgs CMOUT 86075, Marshall to Sultan, 24 Aug 44 and

CRA 10983, Sultan to Marshall for OPD, 16 Aug 44,

OPD 400.3295 China, Sec lA, Case 50. (3) Ltr, Gen

Sultan to Gen Maxwell, ACofS G-4, 24 Sep 44,

ID 008 Lend-Lease, XIV.
LEND-LEASE TO CHINA, 1943-45 733

served both U.S. and Chinese troops. In

April the MAB authorized Stilwell to

divert Chinese lend-lease material in India to the use of U.S. troops without

first consulting the Chinese and without incurring any obligation, either on

the part of the theater or the MAB, to

make replacement. Only material originally purchased outright by the Chinese

was excepted from the arrangement.22

The next move came in August when

the theater was authorized to furnish

replacement and maintenance supplies

to the Chinese Army in India through

regular U.S. supply channels. Just as

with the French forces in Italy, the complicated lend-lease channels had proved

too slow and cumbersome to properly

serve the Chinese forces advancing in

north Burma, and the solution adopted

was the same as that for the Frenchdirect requisitions on the responsible

port of embarkation (Los Angeles) for

maintenance and replacement supplies

for the Chinese Army in India as part

of the U.S. theater's orders. This system

proved so much simpler and more efficient that in December the MAB extended it to include those units in the

Chinese Army in China that formed

part of the American 33-division program with which U.S. advisory personnel were serving. The final link in the

chain of American control over the flow

of supplies to the approved Chinese

divisions was thus forged. Although initial equipment for the Chinese Army in

China had still to be assigned by the

MAB, it, too, was shipped through U.S.

supply channels and its distribution to

Chinese units closely controlled by General Wedemeyer, successor to General

Stilwell, and his staff.23

The Final Phase

By early 1945 when the system was

put into effect, the one-way road from

Myitkyina to Kunming was finally open,

and, combined with the enlarged airlift, promised to inaugurate a new era

in the theater. The supply line was still

limited, it is true, and the major portion

of the airlift would still be absorbed in

carrying material for the American air

force, and for theater overhead, instruction, advisory, and supply personnel;

but, in contrast to the earlier period, it

promised to be one of relative abundance for China.

General Wedemeyer, taking up where

Stilwell left off and working in considerably closer harmony with Chiang, refined and developed the 33-division

plan. His first step was to organize a

force within China for defense against

the Japanese attacks in the east (Plan

ALPHA); his second step was to begin

preparations for the drive to the coast

to open a seaport (Plan BETA) . Wedemeyer urged on Chiang the same line of

22

 (1) Msg 6889, AGWAR to AMMISCA and

AMMDEL, 9 Mar 44, Stilwell Personal File, Book VI,

Item 2091. (2) Min 3268, 138th mtg MAC(G), 13 Apr

44, and Tab 9. (3) Msg WARX 25273 to CG USAFCBI, 19 Apr 44, ID, Lend-Lease, Doc Suppl, IX.

23

 (1) Min 201, 86th mtg MAC(A), 31 Jan 44. (2)

Memo, Col Olmstead, Secy, for Chmn MAC(G), 7

Aug 44, sub: Policy on Supply of U.S. Military Equip

to Chinese Army, ID 008 Lend-Lease, XIV. (3) Memo,

Lt Col James R. Stewart, Secy, for Chmn, MAC(G),

21 Jan 45, sub: Transfer of Lend-Lease Equip to

Chinese. (4) TAG Ltr to CG's, CT and IBT, 15 Feb

45, same sub. (3) and (4) in ID, Lend-Lease, Doc

Suppl, IX. (5) The final shift was made following

a visit by Colonel Olmstead of the International

Division and Brig. Gen. William J. Morrissey of

G-4 to the China Theater on a lend-lease inspection

mission in November 1944. For the Olmstead -

Morrissey Report see OPD 400.3295 China, Sec II,

Case 63.
734 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

action as had Stilwell—consolidation of

his scattered 300-400 division force into

a limited number of divisions that could

be better fed, better equipped, and better trained. From General Ho Yingchin, Chinese Chief of Staff to the Generalissimo, he received and approved a

plan for 36 divisions in China to be

American-equipped (including the 2

that had been moved by airlift from

India) with new and slightly reduced

tables of equipment and organization.

To these would eventually be added 3

more divisions from India to be moved

over the Ledo Road, to make up a total

of 39 U.S.-sponsored, U.S.-equipped

divisions in the Chinese Army. American equipment to be furnished the 39

divisions under the tables would be no

more than had been promised the 33

under the old plan. To insure proper

distribution and use of available equipment, Chinese as well as American,

Wedemeyer permitted his own SOS commander, Maj. Gen. Gilbert X. Cheves,

to assume the duties of commander of

the Chinese SOS as well. Finding the

Chinese soldiers suffered even more from

lack of food than from lack of equipment, Wedemeyer requested supplementary foodstuffs from American sources.24

Satisfied now of the theater's ability

to move and use equipment for the

Chinese in China, the War Department

and MAB moved rapidly in early 1945

to assign and ship the equipment for

the 39-division force. On 12 January

General Sultan relayed China Theater's

requests that this equipment be phased

through the first nine months of 1945.

"Stocks in India," Sultan reported, "are

neither sufficiently balanced nor sufficiently large to cope with this phasing

of China's program. They are so small

that with the increased rate of deliveries

now possible they can be entirely dissipated as to many important items within a very short time."25

 The ASF moved

quickly to comply and secured assignments by MAC (G) to meet the first

phases of the program in February. The

assignments committee also approved

Wedemeyer's request for foodstuffs,

agreeing to furnish 4,000 to 6,000 tons

of canned meat and canned or dehydrated vegetables monthly through U.S. supply channels for a 6-months' trial period. The phasing of shipments was generally in keeping with the theater's desires.26

The question of whether the Chinese

program should be enlarged was considered once again in the light of the

new developments, but the Joint Staff

Planners decided any move in that direction must await the demonstration by

the Chinese that they could now, with

American aid, put effective fighting

forces in the field. There was no longer

any overwhelming military importance

attached to even the 39 divisions, and

it seemed most unlikely that any larger

force could be formed, equipped, and

trained in time to play an appreciable

role in the war against Japan.27

24

 Romanus and Sunderland, Time Runs Out in

CBI, chs. IV and VI.

25

 Msg CRAX 943, CG USAFIBT to AGWAR,

12 Jan 45, OPD 400.3295, Sec II, Case 58. 26

 (1) Memo, Gen Styer for Gen Wood, 8 Jan 45,

folder 12a Genl File (CBI) 1945, ASF Plng Div. (2)

Mins 4174, 175th mtg, MAC(G), 11 Jan 45; 4266,

180th mtg, 15 Feb 45; 4286, 181st mtg, 23 Feb 45.

(3) Memo, Secy for Chmn, MAC(G), 12 Feb 45, sub:

Assignment of Available Equipment for Chinese 39

Div Program, Gen Tab 3, Agenda, 180th mtg

MAC(G). (4) Memo, Styer for Lutes and Shingler,

22 Jan 45, ID 008 Lend-Lease, XIV. 27

 Diary Entries, 26 Jan 45, 21 Apr 45, Strat Log

Br, Plng Div ASF.
LEND-LEASE TO CHINA, 1943-45 735

To summarize briefly the final plans

for Chinese lend-lease: They envisaged

the arming with standard American

equipment of 39 divisions and supporting army troops, all organized on special

Chinese tables of organization and

equipment. The units within each division were organized basically in the

same way as corresponding American

organizations; the differences were in

that the Chinese division was smaller

and had less artillery and motor transport; and their Army organization had

fewer supporting troops of various sorts.

There was some difference between the

five Ramgarh-trained divisions (Chinese

Army in India) and the 34 projected

divisions of the Chinese Army in China.

Both had the standard three infantry

regiments, but each of the former included one battalion of truck-drawn

105-mm. howitzers and one battalion of

75-mm. pack howitzers drawn by mules,

whereas the latter contained only the

75-mm. mule-pack battalion. The Ramgarh divisions also had more motor

transport, more signal troops, and a gas

platoon that the divisions organized in

China did not have. The total standard

divisional strength of each Ramgarh

division was set in mid-1944 at 11,968,

that of the divisions in China was later

set at 10,990. Total strength of the 5

India-trained divisions with supporting

army troops amounted to 89,071, that

of the 34 additional divisions in China

to 474,505—3 total of 564,206 Chinese

soldiers entitled to American lend-lease

support.28

Certainly a weakness in the whole

plan was the lack of any Chinese SOS

units in the approved troop basis for

American support. The main effort to

improve the Chinese logistical organization centered on the supply of trucks

over the Ledo Road and the establishment of Cheves' supervision over the

supply and transport system supporting

the approved Chinese divisions in

China. Most of the SOS supplies, apart

from those forwarded to American

troops, were requisitioned under the

Chinese civilian ministry program and

accorded a low priority. The only exception was the FEA truck program that

was integrated by theater headquarters

into the over-all program for rebuilding

the internal transportation system in

China.29

As of V-J Day approximately onethird of the equipment for the 39 Chinese divisions had been delivered to

them, one-third was in the India-Burma

or the China Theater, and one-fifth was

en route from the United States to Asian

ports. Almost all of the remainder had

been assigned to China by the MAB but

had not yet been shipped.30

In the Presidential order bringing an

end to lend-lease on V-J Day, China

was granted a special exemption and

continued aid was authorized in order

to permit Chinese armies to occupy the

parts of the country evacuated by the

Japanese. However, Truman specifically

excluded any aid to Chiang for prosecu28

 See tables in ID, Lend-Lease, Text, II, 1122-24.

29

 (1) Romanus and Sunderland, Time Runs Out

in CBI, chs. IV and VII. (2) ID, Lend-Lease, Text,

1121-44, 1159-63. (3) On the FEA truck program see

Larson and Bykofsky, The Transportation Corps:

Operations Overseas, Chapter XII. 30

 (1) Memo, Gen Hull, Actg DCofS, for President,

3 Sep 45, sub: U.S. Commitment for Equip of Chinese Army, WDCSA 091 China. (2) Memo, Hull for

Marshall, no date, sub: Lend-Lease to China, ID 014

Civ Sup, XXXV.
736 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

tion of a "fratricidal war."31 The systematic effort to arm the 39 divisions

stopped, though much of the material

shipped earlier was turned over to the

Chinese, as was a sizable proportion of

U.S. Army supplies in China. But the

aid furnished China in the period immediately following V-J Day consisted

mainly of transportation services and

supplies necessary to enable the Chinese

to reoccupy their land. This chapter in

the story of American aid to China belongs to the postwar period.

The end of the war with Japan was

hardly an unmixed blessing for Chiang.

The reform and consolidation of his

armies, on which both Stilwell and

Wedemeyer had insisted, was left incomplete, and the process of equipping

a select force with American supplies

was interrupted. Chiang did, of course,

have the Ramgarh divisions, which had

been both well-equipped and welltrained to a high level of efficiency,

and other divisions at least partially

equipped and trained in American

methods. But the process of creating a

modern Chinese Army that would be

under the close control of Chiang's government had only begun, and the momentum gained was soon to be lost in

the tragic postwar era.

It should be noted that, despite proposals presented from time to time to

arm the Chinese Communists, these

rivals for the control of China did not,

before the end of World War II, receive any American supplies except

small quantities furnished under the

auspices of the Office of Strategic Services.32

31

 JCS 771/18, Memorandum from President to

JCS, 5 Sep 45, title: Military Lend-Lease Policy after

Unconditional Surrender of Japan. See above, ch.

XXVI.

32

 See Romanus and Sunderland, Time Runs Out

in CBI for discussion of the Communist issue.
CHAPTER XXX

The Army and Civilian Supply — 1

At the outset of the North African

campaign, on 13 November 1942, President Roosevelt declared: "No one will

go hungry, or without the means of livelihood in any territory occupied by the

United Nations, if it is humanly possible within our power to make supplies

available to them."1 This announcement heralded the beginning of a civilian supply problem that was to complicate the work of military logisticians

immensely. It was not just a matter of

humanitarian concern as the President's

announcement might suggest, but one

of military necessity. Disease and disorder

in rear areas or lack of co-operation from

local governments could easily disrupt

lines of communications and endanger

the success of military operations.

Civilian supply was, of course, only

a part of the over-all problem of administration of civil affairs in liberated and

occupied territories. The establishment

of order in rear areas and the prevention of disease and unrest depended on

more than imported supplies. The reestablishment of local authority, the

restoration of public utilities, basic

transport, and communication facilities,

and the establishment of an equitable

system of distribution of available supplies were all of transcendent importance.

Liberated peoples would eventually

have to depend on their own production for the major portion of their

needs. Yet imports that could be brought

in only through Allied channels often

represented the vital margin necessary

to prevent famine and epidemic or, under better conditions, to permit a small

start toward restoration of normal agricultural and industrial production.

Civil affairs and civilian supply were

problems having both political and military aspects. In the last analysis, they

were closely related to high policy, to

the question of achieving the avowed

United Nations goal of a peaceful and

stable postwar world. They of course

raised questions of civilian versus military jurisdiction. And, since they were

handled as a combined responsibility

in theaters of combined operations, they

also raised delicate problems of reconciling British and American approaches.

There resulted a kaleidoscopic succession of complex organizational patterns,

the description of which must perforce

take up an inordinate amount of space

in this account of civilian supply. These

organizational complexities must not be

allowed to obscure the fact that military

authorities, national and combined,

came to exercise practical control over

civil affairs and civilian supply from

mid-1943 onward.

Some have viewed the extension of

military authority into a field at first 1

 New York Times, 14 November 1943, p. 3.
738 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

LEND-LEASE "TRADE GOODS" IN A DEPARTMENT STORE WINDOW, CASABLANCA

conceived to be a civilian realm as a

prime example of military lust for power and authority. The record does not

bear this out. The extension was more

a matter of moving into a vacuum than

of conscious grasping for power. Military leaders accepted the civil affairs

task in the first instance as an unwelcome burden under the pressure of

military necessity; they sought continually to limit the responsibility they had

undertaken; they were ready—even zealous, it sometimes appeared — to divest

themselves of it as soon as the military

necessity passed. But military necessity

did prove in some degree to be self-perpetuating. Once the military authorities

had taken over the tasks involved and

perfected organizations and procedures

for carrying them out, the transition to

civilian control became increasingly difficult, however much all concerned may

have wished to make it. The civilian

agencies were slow to develop a coherent organization or to make the necessary plans for taking over. The Army

had in being the organization, facilities,

and resources that civilian agencies were

not in a position to duplicate. Theater

commanders were reluctant to relinquish control over civil affairs as long

as the dangers of disorder and unrest

were still present, or over civilian supplies as long as they feared loss of control over the shipping necessary to bring

them in.2

2

 For a lucid discussion of the evolution of military

control and the reasons for it, see Harry L. Coles and
THE ARMY AND CIVILIAN SUPPLY-I 739

The North African Prelude

The invasion of North Africa was undertaken without any significant preparation for import of civilian supplies.

An ASF study concluded that no shipping space could possibly be made available for them until military operations

were well advanced. The CCS instructed General Eisenhower that economic

problems would be handled by American and British civil authorities except

as they affected military operations. The

general assumption was that French

North Africa, primarily an agricultural

region, would be able to feed itself. The

only provision for civilian supplies in

early shipments was some 1,500 tons of

"trade goods"—talcum powder, lipstick,

stockings, buttons, thread, piece goods,

and the like—intended to lure hoarded

agricultural supplies into the market.3

The planners did not reckon with the

dislocations created in the North African economy by German occupation.

Vital imports had been curtailed since

mid-1940, and the Germans had already

drawn off the fruits of an early 1942 harvest for use in occupied Europe. With

market places bare of consumer goods

farmers frequently preferred to hoard

their produce, thereby intensifying the

food shortage in cities. Shortage of civilian transport and the disruptive effect

of marching armies on both agriculture

and industry completed the pattern of

economic dislocation. Eisenhower soon

learned that he must import at least

minimum quantities of civilian supplies

or risk a breakdown in the North African economy that would endanger the

success of his entire campaign.4

Eisenhower's early requests, most of

them for foodstuffs, were met by

emergency procurement and shipment

through normal military channels. Meanwhile, a complicated organization was

evolved to handle what now promised

to be a serious and continuing supply

problem. General Somervell's recommendation that the Australian pattern

be instituted, under which lend-lease

representatives in the theater served as

part of the theater commander's staff

and determined civilian requirements

subject to his approval and assignment

of shipping priorities, was lightly turned

aside. On 18 November the President

placed full responsibility for civilian relief on the Department of State. Within

the State Department a special Office of

Foreign Relief and Rehabilitation Operations (OFRRO) was established with

Herbert Lehman, former governor of

New York, as its head. The Office of

Lend-Lease Administration (OLLA)

was made responsible for furnishing

funds and arranging procurement

through appropriate government agencies and departments (normally Agriculture, Treasury, and War). The Board

of Economic Warfare (BEW) was also

given a place in the picture because of

its interest in securing strategic materials

from North Africa. Then, as it was a

matter of combined concern (though it

was agreed at the outset that the United

Albert K. Weinberg, Civil Affairs: Soldiers Become

Governors, UNITED STATES ARMY IN WORLD

WAR II (Washington, 1964), pp. 91-95, 139-42. 3

 (1) International Div, ASF, Civilian Supply: A

History of the Civilian Supply Branch (2 vols, text,

3 vols, documentary supplement) (hereafter cited as

ID, Civilian Supply), MS, OCMH, Text, I, 13-26.

(2) Strat Log Div, SOS, Study, 10 Nov 42, sub: Joint

Pool of Military Supplies, ASF Plng Div files. (3)

Ltr, Secy CCS to Secy State, 12 Nov 43, in Coles and

Weinberg, Civil Affairs: Soldiers Become Governors,

P- 34. 4

 ID, Civilian Supply, Text, I, 14, 30-31.
740 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

HERBERT LEHMAN

States would be the chief source of civilian supplies for North Africa), a committee of the combined civilian boards

(Combined Production and Resources

Board, Combined Shipping Adjustment

Board, Combined Raw Materials Board,

and Combined Food Board) was formed

to serve as the principal policy-making

body for civil affairs. A subcommittee,

called the Combined Committee for

North Africa (CCNA) but mainly American in its composition, became the operating arm of the Committee of Combined Boards (COB) for handling dayto-day operations. The organization created in North Africa, which necessarily

followed the intricate Washington pattern, was the North African Economic

Board (NAEB) on which all interested

American and British agencies were represented.5

In the whole complex structure, the

military position was ill-defined. In

North Africa, both formulation of requirements programs and distribution to

French agencies were in the hands of

NAEB, which was associated with AFHQ

but not clearly subordinate to the theater commander. In the United States

both planning and procurement to meet

NAEB requests rested with civilian agencies, U.S. and combined. The Committee

of Combined Boards was a co-ordinate

body with the CCS, though the CCS did

furnish part of its secretariat and act as

a channel of communication with the

theater on civil affairs. The War Department, though it had as an emergency measure to procure and ship civilian supplies to meet Eisenhower's early

requests, at first had virtually no voice

at all in the new setup.

Experience soon revealed that the

Army must play a more important part.

General Eisenhower found civil affairs

and civilian supply to be integral parts

of military logistics in North Africa.

Only he was in a position to evaluate

the relative importance of civilian relief

and determine the shipping space to be

allotted it, given existing limitations on

convoys, ocean shipping, and port capacities. Within the theater he also had to

control the ports and internal transportation system. Even before the invasion

it had been agreed that coal and POL

should be treated as common-use items

to be requisitioned and imported entirely through military channels and allocated within the theater between civilian

5

 (1) Memo, Somervell for CofS, 11 Nov 42, sub:

Civilian Supply in N Africa, folder CofS, Hq ASF.

(2) Msg R-3008, AGWAR to USFOR, London, 10

Nov 42, AG 400.3295 (9-1-42) (3), Sec 5. (3) Msg 4990,

London to AGWAR, 17 Nov 42, ID Cables Economic

Sup Program N Africa. (4) ID, Civilian Supply, Text,

I, 13-26.
THE ARMY AND CIVILIAN SUPPLY-I 741

and military users. In order to maintain

unified military control over the ports,

Eisenhower also ruled that other civilian

supplies must be consigned to him for

delivery to NAEB, despite objections

from its civilian members. Limitations

on ocean shipping also made it imperative that civilian supplies be loaded on

the same ships as military cargo, not

separately by WSA. Thus while OLLA

procured the supplies, the Army Transportation Corps shipped them, giving the

War Department a continuing responsibility for meeting Eisenhower's requests.

By mid-December John J. McCloy, Assistant Secretary of War, had secured a

place on the Committee of Combined

Boards, and both OPD and ASF were

granted representation on the Combined

Committee for French North Africa.

Within the ASF, the International Division was soon assuming ex officio the

major War Department operating responsibility for civilian supply. On a

higher level the CCS secretariat, sitting

astride the channel of communications

between the Committee of Combined

Boards and NAEB, acted as a sort of

monitoring agency to see that civilian

decisions did not adversely affect military operations. Thus the consideration,

if not the primacy, of military interest

in civilian supply was assured.6

Early shipments of civilian supplies

to North Africa were sporadic, and by

10 December Eisenhower was disturbed,

warning that

civil needs are so closely tied up with

success of the military campaign, that

unless there is a general readjustment of

shipping to increase the tonnages received

here 1 shall be compelled to decide between

reducing the size of total forces or causing

disaffection with the French by failing to

supply essentials which they are expecting

to receive.7

The Washington authorities could do

little to resolve Eisenhower's dilemma

since the amount of shipping was controlled by limitations on the size of convoys, and asked him for a command decision. On 28 December Eisenhower

ruled that 30,000 tons of civilian supplies should be included in each convoy, but he did so on the mistaken assumption, advanced by shipping experts

in the theater, that the tonnage could

be accommodated by a combination of

reduction in ballast and use of broken

stowage. Army shipping experts in the

United States disagreed, and it was only

after the addition of three ships per convoy in early January 1943 for combined

French rearmament and civilian supply

tonnages that the goal was met. The

30,000-ton schedule was maintained during the following months. At Casablanca

General Giraud thought he had secured

a promise for an increase to 65,000 tons

monthly but the Combined Boards ruled

such an increase was not justified. Actual

shipments from December 1942 through

June 1943 amounted to 179,450 tons, of

which over 140,000 were foodstuffs,

17,000 tons cotton textiles, 10,000 tons

chemicals, and the remainder distributed among paper, iron and steel, agricultural machinery, tires, autos, spare parts,

6

 (1)Msgs 3996, AGWAR to USFOR, London, 5

Dec 42; 4054, 7 Dec 42, both in AG 400.3295 (9-1-42)

(3). (2)Msgs 1613, Algiers to AGWAR, 10 Dec 42;

1761, London to AGWAR, 12 Dec 42; 761, AGWAR

to FREEDOM, Algiers, 4 Jan 43; all in ID Cable File

Economic Prog N Africa. (3) ID, Civilian Supply,

Text, I, 16-39. 7

 Msg 1654, FREEDOM, Algiers, to AGWAR, 10 Dec

42, ID Cable File Economic Prog N Africa.
742 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

tools, and other miscellaneous industrial

items. In addition, approximately 65,000

tons of coal were furnished monthly

from England to ports inside the Mediterranean to meet combined civilian

and military needs, 20,000 tons monthly

from the United States to ports on the

Atlantic coast.8

In every phase the civilian supply program for North Africa showed the effects

of hasty planning and divided responsibility. Without an over-all plan, procurement was based entirely on monthly

requisitions by the North African Economic Board. The Office of Lend-Lease

Administration, charged with co-ordinating procurement by other agencies in

response to these requisitions, was illequipped for the task and found it difficult or impossible to secure necessary

priorities on scarce items when NAEB

requests were in competition with military orders. In general, requests for such

relief items as grain, flour, soap, and

clothing were met, but procurement and

shipment of items for industrial rehabilitation and for transportation and communication needs lagged far behind

NAEB requisitions.

The system of handling shipments was

satisfactory neither to the Transportation Corps nor to WSA. Army port authorities complained that OLLA did not

provide supplies at port at the time or

in the manner necessary to make proper

use of broken stowage on ships carrying

military cargo or to follow normal military practices in packaging and addressing supplies. WSA countered with criticisms of Army loading practices and

complained that when civilian supplies

were shipped along with military cargo

they had to go to whatever port the

latter was destined for, regardless of the

subsequent problem of overland transportation. WSA officials in North Africa

charged civilian supplies were neglected

or mishandled in the scramble to unload

military cargo—"loose flour as a result

of broken bags, has been piled as high

as five feet, . . . valuable agricultural

machinery broken, . . . cotton piece

goods piled loose in a jumbled mass

on dock and warehouse floors . . . barrels of powdered milk . . . discharged in

broken and smashed condition."9

WSA used these arguments to press

for a separate civilian supply program

for North Africa in ships under its own

control. The Army successfully resisted

this pressure until the end of active operations in North Africa, but in June

1943 WSA finally won its point.10

Relinquishing military control over

shipments to North Africa had little relationship to the trend of thinking with

8

 (1) ID, Civilian Supply, Text, I, 15-16, 32-35.

(2) Msgs, 3189, FREEDOM, Algiers to AGWAR, 28 Dec

42; 726, AGWAR to FREEDOM, 2 Jan 43; 4860, Algiers

to AGWAR, 5 Jan 43; 5021, 11 Jan 43; all in ID

Cable File Economic Prog N Africa. (3) For complete files of cable exchanges between Committee of

Combined Boards and NAEB see BOC-COB Cable

Files, ID.

9

(1) Ltr, Edward G. Meyers to Lt Comdr Donald

Watson, WSA, 16 Jun 43, folder Lend-Lease, Box

122874, WSA Conway File. (2) Memo, Lt Col Marvin

H. Dixon, Chief International Br, Movements Div,

TC for ACofT for Opns, 1 Apr 43, sub: Stockpile of

Civilian Sups for N Africa, TC 400 Africa Jan-Jun

43. (3) Memo, J. E. Slater, Regional Dir, WSA, N

Africa, for Lewis Douglas, 6 Apr 43, sub: Shpg

Aspects Lend-Lease Problems, N Africa, N Africa

Apr 43, WSA Douglas File. (4) ID, Civilian Supply,

Text, I, 33-38. 10

 (1)Ibid. (3). (2) Ltr, Gen Wright to OLLA, 15

May 43. (3) Memo, Maj Arthur E. Palmer, CSB ID,

for Gen Wright, 6 Jul 43. (4) Ltrs, Stettinius to

Gen Wright, 13 Jul 43, and to Douglas, WSA, 14

Jul 43. Last three in ID 014 Civ Sup N Africa, III.
THE ARMY AND CIVILIAN SUPPLY-I 743

regard to areas still to be liberated. "We

have had an opportunity to learn a real

lesson from North Africa," wrote General Somervell on 3 April 1943, "which

lesson is to me that you cannot separate

the handling of civil affairs from military operations in areas in which military operations are under way, and that

an attempt to do so in an hostile country

would be disastrous."11 In preparations

for entry into Tunisia, the last stage of

the North African campaign, some recognition was given this military viewpoint.

Governor Lehman agreed that all civilian supply operations in the initial stages

of the occupation of Tunisia should

be under Eisenhower's control with

OFRRO personnel participating under

military direction. This produced a sort

of State-War partnership in the execution of Tunisian relief, but one that was

confined to the theater of operations itself. There was no recognition in the

Tunisian pattern of military responsibility for procurement and shipment of

civilian supplies even during the early

period. Lehman seems to have assumed

that these supplies would be handled as

civilian lend-lease, with the theater commander to control distribution until

such time as the military situation would

permit turning it over to OFRRO. The

President seemingly confirmed Lehman's

views in a broad directive on 19 March

1943 centering authority in OFRRO to

plan, co-ordinate, and arrange for administration of relief activities in all areas

expected to be liberated from Axis control, with the proviso that relief operations in any specific area would be subject to approval of the U.S. theater commander there.12

Military Assumption of

Responsibility

The President's directive did little to

halt the trend already under way toward

military assumption of responsibility

for civil relief in the initial stages of

military operations. The proviso requiring the theater commander's approval

of relief programs for his area proved

more important than the broad authority delegated to Lehman. On 1 March

1943 the Civil Affairs Division was created on the General Staff, reporting

directly to the Secretary of War. Maj.

Gen. John H. Hilldring, head of the new

division, took a stand on the issue of

military responsibility as strong and

positive as had General Somervell. When

on 22 March 1943 the CCS Secretariat

suggested that the Committee of Combined Boards be given responsibility for

preparing plans for civil affairs, both

Hilldring and Somervell disagreed. Somervell reminded the Chief of Staff that in

addition to the need for complete military control over transportation to and

within theaters, security requirements

would preclude allowing civilians on the

boards the knowledge of future operations required for intelligent civil affairs

planning. In the end the JCS decided

that such planning should be carried

out by the War and Navy Departments

"as an integral part of planning for any

specific operation," the departments to

co-ordinate their activities to the extent

necessary "directly with the civilian

11

 Memo, Somervell for McCloy, 3 Apr 43, OPD

Exec 8, Book 8, Item 50.

12

 (1) ID, Civilian Supply, Text, I, 39-52. (2) Ltr,

President to Hon Herbert H. Lehman, 19 Mar 43,

ID CSB Basic Pol File Gen 1942-43.
744 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

agencies concerned." The Army's Civil

Affairs Division was selected as the "logical agency" to handle the major portion

of this military responsibility.13

Concomitant with this JCS decision,

Lehman agreed that there should be an

initial period of military responsibility

in each newly liberated area during

which the War Department would undertake "complete procurement, operating and administrative responsibility"

for all phases of civilian relief "as functions of the theater commander." This

period was to be sufficiently long to make

the transfer to OFRRO orderly, and was

estimated for planning purposes at

ninety days. With the upcoming invasion of Sicily in mind, the War Department informed all theater commanders

on 12 April that they must prepare

timely requisitions for civilian supplies

in advance of each operation.14

The establishment of a period of military responsibility was a development of

major importance. It launched the War

Department on active and systematic

preparations for civilian relief while the

civilian agencies still foundered in uncertainty and confusion. The initial

assumption that Army procurement

would be merely a supplement to that

undertaken under OFRRO auspices

soon gave way in the face of the revelation that OFRRO was in no position to

carry out a procurement program without military support in obtaining funds

and priorities. Likewise, the assumption

that the War Department program

would be totally guided by theater requisitions gave way as experience in preparations for the invasion of Sicily showed

that to wait for theater requisitions

would unduly delay procurement. A

special operational plan was hastily

drawn up and agreed to between Washington and the theater to provide for the

first 90 days of that operation. By July

1943 the ASF, under the direction of the

Civil Affairs Division, was engaged in

formulating a broader advance program

to cover the period of military responsibility in other areas.

In April 1943 a Civilian Supply

Branch was established in the International Division, ASF, charged with responsibility for co-ordinating civilian

supply responsibilities within the ASF

and handling relations with civilian

agencies. Shortly afterward, supply planning was initiated in the technical services. Finally in July 1943 a special Section VI was added to the Army Supply

Program solely devoted to civilian supply requirements. It was based on estimated relief needs of 45 million people

in the Mediterranean area, and 25 million in northwest Europe, for the 90

days assumed as the duration of the

military period. The calculation of requirements was made on the so-called

"disease and unrest" formula, calling for

only minimum quantities of food, fuel,

soap, and medical supplies needed to

prevent starvation and epidemics that

might endanger military operations.

Procurement would be carried out under Army appropriations, not as civilian

lend-lease, and it would be phased in

accordance with the expected pace of

13

 (1) JCS 250/2, 10 Apr 43, title: Planning for

Handling of Civil Affairs in Occupied Areas Which

May Become Theaters of Operations. (2) TAG Ltr

to Col John F. Haskell, 1 Mar 43, AG 014.1 (2-27-43).

(3) Memo, Somervell for CofS, 25 Mar 43, ID CSB

Basic Pol File Gen 1942-43. 14

 (1) Quotes from Msg CM-OUT 2457, AGWAR

to CG NATOUSA, 5 Apr 43. (2) WD Cable of General Application, 12 Apr 43, ID CSB Basic Pol File

Gen 1942-43.
THE ARMY AND CIVILIAN SUPPLY-I 745

operations. No large stockpiles would

be created in advance. Delivery during

the military period would be entirely

through military channels.15

The limited yet concrete nature of

this earliest military planning contrasted

sharply with the broad idealistic approach of OFRRO. In May 1943 that

agency completed an over-all estimate

based on relief and rehabilitation needs

of 150 million people to be liberated

in the Mediterranean area and northwest Europe by the end of 1944. The

approximate cost was set at $2.4 billion.

OFRRO went considerably beyond the

disease and unrest formula, providing

also for clothing, shoes, and industrial

and agricultural rehabilitation supplies.

Lehman proposed that the War Department support procurement of these supplies before Congress and the allocating

agencies and, in turn, requisition its

relief supplies for the military period

out of stockpiles to be created. The War

Department did not wish to put itself in

the position of supporting estimates that

far exceeded its own conception of military needs, nor did it want to lend any

support to an effort to create large stockpiles of relief supplies. In replying to

Lehman on 7 July 1943, General Hilldring agreed only to support such

OFRRO requests as were deemed a

"necessary part of any specific military

occupation," and as the specific need

arose:

1 would like to establish as a general

premise the thought that the War Depart- ment will provide the absolutely essential

supplies to meet the urgent needs of an

occupied area for the period which is necessary to permit the full exploitation of

military operations and until you have had

sufficient time after the start of an opera- tion to procure the supplies which will

enable you to discharge your responsibilities.

Our reason for the adoption of this

premise is that we regard supplies for the

support of the civilian population as an

integral part of our troop equipment. . . . We feel it would be unwise at this stage of

military plans to adopt the machinery you

suggest for the separate handling of this

most important phase of our military sup- ply problem. . . .16

General Hilldring's statement delimiting the positive area of military responsibility left Governor Lehman in the

difficult position of being without practical means to get the broad OFRRO

program off the ground, for the LendLease Administration concurrently was

insisting on developing its own plans for

procurement of civil relief supplies and

was also disinclined to support OFRRO

estimates.

The President, meanwhile, had come

up with still another scheme for insuring

over-all civilian control, this one originating in the Bureau of the Budget.

"The civilian agencies," he wrote, "have

considerable experience and talent that

it would be difficult and undesirable for

the Army to duplicate. The military

operations of our Army should not be

unnecessarily diluted or diverted by

the questions affecting relief, rehabilitation, . . . and other essentially civilian

problems."17 Yet, basically, the Bureau

15

 (1)ID, Civilian Supply, Text, I, 53-81. (2) See

below, pp. 755-56, on planning for Sicily.

16

 (1) Quoted from Ltr, Gen Hilldring to Gov

Lehman, 7 Jul 43. (2) Ltr, Lehman to Hilldring,

22 Jun 43. Both in CAD 400.38 (2-20-43), Sec 1.

(3) ID, Civilian Supply, Text, I, 68-72. 17

 (1) Ltr, President to Secy State, 3 Jun 43, ID

014 Civ Sup, I. (2)J. A. Stilwell, "Supplies for

Liberated Areas," Dept State Bulletin, X, 265, 20

May 44, 469-78.
746 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

of the Budget plan was little more than

a revamping of the discredited mode of

operations in North Africa. In Washington there would be an interdepartmental policy committee under the

chairmanship of State with an operating

arm, the Office of Foreign Economic

Coordination (OFEC), under the direction of Assistant Secretary of State Dean

Acheson. In each theater an area director would be appointed by the Secretary

of State to co-ordinate the activities of

U.S. civilian agencies there. The area

director was to be under two chains of

command, one to the military theater

commander and the other to the Assistant Secretary of State.

Again there was too much co-ordination and too little effective action. The

area director system never went into

practical effect and military commanders

continued in control in Sicily and took

over in the early stages in Italy. In

Washington the OFEC mechanism

failed to resolve the conflicts among the

civilian agencies themselves; perhaps its

principal achievement lay in the agreement reached within it in late July that

the period of military responsibility

should be extended from ninety days to

six months.18

On 25 September 1943, in a final

effort to centralize civilian responsibility

for all foreign economic matters within the administration, the President

brought the Office of Lend-Lease Administration, Board of Economic Warfare, and Office of Foreign Relief and

Rehabilitation Operations together in

the Foreign Economic Administration

headed by Leo Crowley.19 Though a

step forward, there were still divided

responsibilities. The State Department

was still the policy-making agency, the

War Production Board, the War Food

Administration, and the Treasury still

the procuring agencies, and WSA in

charge of shipping. The procession of

co-ordinating bodies continued as before, and FEA was unable to develop

any more practicable over-all plan than

had its separate components. The problem was by now complicated by the

necessity of developing a common program with the British for the war period

and a program within an even broader

international framework for postwar rehabilitation. In October 1943, the

United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA) was

founded at Atlantic City, with Governor

Lehman as its head and many of the old

OFRRO personnel as its American component. But the founding of UNRRA,

for the nonce, meant little. It had as yet

no funds and no workable international

machinery; it was, in any case, designed

mainly to take care of the postwar

period.

By early November 1943 it was apparent that no civilian agency, national or

international, was prepared to assume

the relief burden in time to meet the

situation expected to develop as Allied

forces moved onto the Continent of

Europe. The combined military authorities had, meanwhile, made considerable progress in planning civilian relief

for the period of military responsibility.

Recognizing that only the military authorities seemed prepared to act and to

act quickly, on 10 November 1943 the 18

 Memo, Palmer for Dir ID, 28 Jul 43, sub:

Responsibilities of Civilian Supply Subcom. ID 014

Civ Sup, I. 19 Executive Order 9380, 25 Sep 43.
THE ARMY AND CIVILIAN SUPPLY-I 747

President reversed his position and

placed primary responsibility for civilian

supply on the Army for an indefinite

period of time. He informed the Secretary of War:

Although other agencies of the Govern- ment are preparing themselves for the work

that must be done in connection with the

relief and rehabilitation of liberated areas,

it is quite apparent if prompt results are

to be obtained the Army will have to assume the initial burden of shipping and

distributing relief supplies. This will not

only be the case in the event that active

military operations are under way, but also

in the event of a German collapse. I envisage that in the event of a German collapse, the need for the Army to undertake

this work will be all the more apparent.

Therefore, I direct you that you have

the Army undertake the planning necessary to enable it to carry out this task to

the end that it shall be prepared to perform

this function, pending such time as civilian

agencies must be prepared to carry out the

longer range program of relief. You may take this letter as my authority

to you to call upon all other agencies of

the Government for such plans and assistance as you may need. For all matters of

policy that have to be determined in con- nection with this work, you will consult

with the State Department for any political

advice; and upon the Treasury for such

economic and fiscal direction as you may

need.20

The President's letter definitely and

finally confirmed military responsibility

for civilian relief during the initial

stages of operations and extended it by

adding the function of planning for the

eventuality of a German collapse. It gave

the War Department the leading role in

handling civilian supply that formerly,

at least in theory, had been in the hands

of civilian agencies. By this time it had

been determined that the War Department would not exercise this responsibility independently, but in co-operation

with responsible British agencies.

Combined Arrangements

The combined military arrangements

for handling civilian supply had taken

relatively final shape by the time the

President's directive was issued. The

combined arrangement for North Africa

was, of course, the Committee of Combined Boards, but the JCS, in deciding

that U.S. military planning for civil

affairs should be centered in the Army's

Civil Affairs Division, also ruled against

continuation of this arrangement and

recommended that a combined civil affairs committee be organized directly

under the CCS.21

This proposal for the marriage of

British and American organizations for

civil affairs posed difficult problems of

adjustment of divergent national policies, procedures, and interests. In July

1942 the British had established an Administration of Territories (Europe)

Committee (AT(E)) in the War Office,

responsible for all civil affairs planning

for the liberation of northwest Europe.

The committee sponsored the preparation of a phased statement of over-all

relief and rehabilitation requirements as

a basis of forward production and import planning—the so-called Young-Sinclair estimates, named for Sir Robert

Sinclair of the Ministry of Production

and Sir Hubert Young of the Board of

Trade who were jointly responsible for

their preparation. The Young-Sinclair

estimates provided for three six-month

20

 Ltr, President to Secy War, 10 Nov 43, ID,

Civilian Supply, Doc Suppl, 133. 21

 JCS 250/2, 10 Apr 43.
748 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

periods beginning in mid-1943 and running through the end of 1944, calculated

on both a "scorched" and an "unscorched" basis. This AT(E) program,

finished in the spring of 1943, was of

broad scope, recognizing no differentiation between military and civilian periods of responsibility. It went beyond

the approved U.S. War Department

categories of food, soap, fuel, and medical supplies, to include rehabilitation

items such as clothing, transportation

stores, fertilizer, seed, industrial first-aid

kits, and materials for repair of public

utilities. AT(E) estimates differed from

the ASF program, too, in that they were

divorced from consideration of supply

possibilities and initially from strategic

plans. It was contemplated that phasing

of procurement would be worked out

by application of "Strategic Keys," that

is, the CCS timetable for liberation of

each area. Such procurement would depend, in part, on imports from the

United States or other outside sources.

British civil affairs organization and

procedure also differed from American.

The British Directorate of Civil Affairs

in the War Office, like the U.S. War

Department Civil Affairs Division, reported directly to a civilian head of a

military department, but, unlike the

Civil Affairs Division, it was not part of

the General Staff. The Administration

of Territories (Europe) Committee also,

though in the War Office, was of a quasicivilian type, regarded by Americans as

comparable to OFRRO rather than to

any U.S. military agency. All procurement in Great Britain was carried on by

civilian ministries to whom the military

services submitted their requirements.

Even in determining requirements, the

War Office used different channels for

civilian supply than for troop needs.

Similarly, though movement to theaters

was through regular military channels,

distribution within those theaters was

handled by a separate civil affairs staff

reporting to the theater commander

through separate channels. Thus, though

the British also proposed a period of military responsibility in each area and a

later transition to civilian control, one

period was expected to shade very easily

into the other because of the quasi-civilian nature of the initial organization.22

The British proposed to reconcile the

differing approaches of the two governments by a simple territorial division

of responsibility. They agreed to the

formation of a combined civil affairs

committee in Washington, but also proposed, by adding U.S. membership to

the existing AT (E) Committee, to set

up a similar committee in London, this

committee to exercise primary responsibility for northwest Europe and the Balkans, the Washington committee to be

left with primary responsibility for the

western Mediterranean area. To this

scheme the Americans refused to agree

and the British finally gave in. On 3

July 1943 the CCS chartered the Combined Civil Affairs Committee (CCAC)

with responsibility for making recommendations to the CCS on civil affairs

in all combined theaters. The committee

was to sit in Washington, its membership to consist of representatives of the

U.S. Army, Navy, and State Departments, with British opposites from their

Joint Staff Mission and Foreign Office,

and in addition one other U.S. and one

other British civilian member. The addi22

 (1) J. A. Stilwell, "Supplies for Liberated Areas,"

Dept State Bulletin, X, 265, 20 May 44, 469-78.

(2) ID, Civilian Supply, Text, I, 95-102.
THE ARMY AND CIVILIAN SUPPLY-I 749

tional U.S. civilian member was John J.

McCloy, Assistant Secretary of War, who

acted as chairman of the CCAC throughout the life of the organization. To placate the British the existing AT(E)

Committee in London was also granted

status as a combined committee, and

the Commanding General, ETOUSA,

was instructed to designate a staff officer

to serve on it, but its exact functions

were left purposely vague.23

One of the first decisions of the CCAC

was to establish a supply subcommittee,

CCAC (S), organized in a somewhat similar manner to the Munitions Assignments Committee (Ground). Its initial

membership was made up solely of military personnel on the American sideone representative each from the Army

and Navy—while the British, in recognition of the role of their civilian ministries in military procurement, had only

one member from their Army staff in

Washington, while the other member

came from the Embassy staff. Another

U.S. military member, from the Civil

Affairs Division, was added later. In view

of the paramount responsibility of the

ASF in civilian supply, the International

Division furnished the chairman and secretariat for the CCAC (S) as it did for

MAC (G). The Civilian Supply Branch

became the effective operating arm of

the CCS subcommittee, much as other

parts of the International Division made

up the effective operating arm of

MAC(G). The CCAC (S) was in turn

to be both the planning and operating

arm for the CCAC and CCS in the administration of civilian supply in liberated areas.24

Before CCAC (S) could assume this

role, the basic differences in the British

and American approaches had to be further reconciled. Though forced to accept the American scheme of organization, the British did not abandon their

fight for a territorial division of responsibility. Moreover, they insisted that the

Young-Sinclair estimates, combining requirements for the military and civilian

periods, should form the basis for civilian supply planning by CCAC (S) and

that the civilian Combined Boards

should have a continuing and important

place in the determination of relief programs for both periods. The Americans

considered the question of territorial responsibility already settled. They made

it quite clear that the British could not

count on receiving lend-lease supplies

for redistribution as relief to other nations, and continued to insist on a combined military plan designating sources

of supply by commodity for each area

liberated. This plan the Americans

would confine to the military period,

and during this period provide only the

basic necessities—food, fuel, and sanitary

supplies. These matters, they insisted,

were of purely military concern and outside the province of the combined civilian boards. In insisting on a separation

of the military and civilian periods, the

War Department rejected the YoungSinclair estimates as a basis for planning,

23

 (1) CCS 190/1, memo by Reps BrCOS, 11 Apr

43, title: Planning for Handling Civil Affairs in

Enemy Occupied Areas Which May Become Theaters of Operations. (2) JCS 250/4, 19 Apr 43, same

title. (3) Min, 97th mtg CCS, 4 Jun 43. (4) CCS

190/6/D, 3 Jul 43, title: Charter of CCAC. (5) For

more complete discussion and a long series of documents covering the basic issues, see Coles and Weinberg, Civil Affairs: Soldiers Become Governors, pages

114-54.

24

 (1) CCAC 9/1/D, 9 Aug 43, title: Supply Subcommittee. (2) ID, Civilian Supply, Text, I, 108-12.
750 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

just as it had earlier rejected the broad

estimates of OFRRO.25

These differences made it impossible

for CCAC (S) to even hold a formal

meeting until after the CCS, at QUADRANT in August 1943, had reached decisions on at least some of the questions

at issue.

The CCS decisions were embodied in a

fundamental charter (CCS 324/1) that

afterward became the guide for all combined military planning for civilian supply. The CCS recognized that "minimum economic relief for the population

of occupied areas must be furnished by

the military during the period of military operations and for some time thereafter," and directed the preparation of

an over-all combined program by the

CCAC, that would indicate the division

of supply responsibility in each category

between the United States and the United Kingdom. Shipping was to be the responsibility of the nation furnishing the

supplies, and maximum use was to be

made of local resources to lessen both

the supply and the shipping burden.

The military program was to be confined

to "the basic ration, soap, medical, sanitary supplies, fuel . . . and other agreed

articles considered essential to military

operations." The basic ration should be

nearly as possible the same whether furnished by the United States or Britain.

Stockpiling should be limited to the

smallest amount possible, with food items

limited to the basic ration.26

The CCS charter generally conformed

to American rather than British views;

indeed, it consisted almost entirely of a

draft by the U.S. Joint Staff Planners.

The main concession to the British was

in the clause pertaining to "other agreed

articles," one that was open to varying

interpretations; nor were the Americans able to secure a clause they advocated making the British responsible

for all purchasing outside the United

States.27 Beyond this, the charter left

many other matters open to future settlement, and they became the subject

of the earliest deliberations of the Supply Subcommittee of the CCAC, beginning with its first formal meeting on 8

September. By that time the development of operating procedures was urgent, for in late August the first requirements for civilian supplies in Italy had

arrived from AFHQ.

In considering the requirements for

Italy, the British made one last attempt

to establish primary American responsibility for the Mediterranean area (except for coal and POL) and of course,

by inference, primary British responsibility for northwest Europe and the Balkans. It was foredoomed to failure, and

they abandoned their position at the

third meeting of CCAC (S) on 21 September when the Americans agreed to

25(1) ID, Civilian Supply, text, I, 102-04, 110-12.

(2) Memo, Arthur B. Van Buskirk, OLLA, for Edward

R. Stettinius, OLLA, 26 May 43. (3) Min, mtg ID

and OLLA officials, 28 May 43. (2) and (3) in ID

CSB Basic Policy File Genl 1942-43. (4) Ltr, Gen

Wright to Bernhard Knollenberg, 1 Oct 43, ID 014

Civ Sup, II. (5) Memo, Gen Wright for Gen Clay,

13 Jul 43, sub: U.K. Questions re Civilian Sups in

Military Opns, ID, Civilian Supply, doc suppl, 92.

26

 (1) CCS 324/1, 22 Aug 43, Ad Hoc Com Rpt to

CCS, title: Rehabilitation of Occupied and Liberated Territories. (2) The recommendations were approved in 115th meeting CCS, 23 August 1943. 27

 (1) For a brief sketch of the negotiations at

Quebec see Memo, Palmer for Dir Materiel, ASF,

25 Aug 43, sub: Rpt on Trip to Quebec, ID CSB

Basic Policy File Genl Aug-Dec 1943. (2) See also

ID, Civilian Supply, Text, I, 113-18, for a fuller

discussion of relative British and American positions

on each point.
THE ARMY AND CIVILIAN SUPPLY-1 751

ship against the first three months' requirements for Italy without prejudice

to the final determination of supply

source and supply responsibility.28

With that issue settled, and immediate shipments arranged, the major question became the general method of determining source of supply for items in

the over-all program CCAC (S) was expected to draw up. The British members took the position that the military

subcommittee should develop requirements for each area expected to be liberated, and then submit them to the

Combined Boards which would, in the

light of worldwide shipping and supply

availabilities, determine the extent to

which the requirements could be met

and the sources from which supplies

should be drawn. War Department

spokesmen contended that CCS 324/1

clearly designated the CCAC as the organization responsible for determining

sources of supply for the military period.

Again the American view prevailed, but

with the concession that either side of

the subcommittee could, at its own discretion, present specific questions to the

Combined Boards for advice through its

own national channels. In actual practice, because of the need for drawing

on worldwide sources of supply, civilian

supply programs would usually be submitted to the Combined Boards for advice, though the British members of

CCAC (S) were to regard this advice as

more binding than did U.S. War Department representatives.29

Disagreement over the basic ration

also delayed the processes of CCAC (S)

for a time. The Americans and British

agreed on 2,000 calories as the minimum

necessary for the health of civilian populations, but the British wanted to furnish specific supplements for each local

area, while the Americans proposed a

standard basic ration for all areas. In

particular, the British held out for larger quantities of sugar and fats for Belgium, Holland, and France, and for the

inclusion of coffee. A compromise was

reached on this issue in mid-November,

the U.S. members agreeing to the inclusion of limited amounts of sugar, fats,

and coffee. With this agreement the way

was clear for the preparation of the overall plan that the CCS had directed at

Quebec.30

Contemporary with these developments in the combined machinery, the

ASF began in September 1943 to revise

Section VI of the Army Supply Program

in accordance with the decisions reached

at Quebec. Although there had been no

combined agreement on the matter, for

planning purposes the ASF assumed a

50-50 division of supply responsibility

between the United States and United

Kingdom for a six months' military period. Broadening the base on which calculations had been made in June, the

revision of Section VI was drawn up on

the premise that supplies must be furnished from the United States to meet

28

 (1) Mins, 1st mtg CCAC(S), 8 Sep 43; 3d mtg,

21 Sep 43, Item 1. (2) The British retained responsibility for coal and POL see below, p. 758. 29

 (1) Ltr, Col G. A. Rickards, Civ Affairs Br,

BAS, to Gen Wright, 11 Oct 43, ID CSB Basic Pol

File Aug-Dec 43. (2) Ltr, McCloy to Wilson, CPRB,

26 Oct 43, with related materials in ID 014 Civ Sup,

III. (3) Min, nth mtg CCAC(S), 16 Nov 43, Item 4.

(4) Min, 16th mtg CCAC, 14 Dec 43, Item 5. 30

 (1) Ltr, Col Rickards to Gen Wright, 24 Sep 43.

(2) Memo, Palmer for U.S. Members, CCAC(S), 16

Oct 43. Both in ID CSB Basic Pol File Aug-Dec 43.

(3) Mins, 4th mtg CCAC(S), 28 Sep 43, Items 2 and 3;

8th mtg, 26 Oct 43, Item 1; nth mtg, 16 Nov 43,

Item 2. (4)CCAC(S) 2/1, 17 Nov 43, title: Agreed

Subsistence Reqmts for Northwest Europe.
752 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

50 percent of the minimum needs of

112 million people in combined areas

of responsibility in northwest Europe

and the Mediterranean.31

The basic premises on which a combined plan for relief and rehabilitation

could be formulated had therefore been

agreed by the time the President issued

his directive of 10 November. However,

in its relations with the British the War

Department had insisted on restricting

military responsibility to somewhat narrower limits than the President now proposed. It seemed necessary to redefine

the respective responsibilities of civilian

and military agencies.

The Problem of Rehabilitation

Supplies

The War Department, while insisting

adamantly on military control over civilian supply during the initial phases of

operations in overseas theaters, also

sought vigorously to limit that responsibility to the narrow field of relief. This

attitude in the end produced serious

delays in the provision of rehabilitation

supplies necessary for the resuscitation

of transportation and communication

facilities, and industrial and agricultural

production in liberated areas. Slow progress in rehabilitation almost inevitably

resulted in larger and larger demands

for relief. The experience in every liberated territory pointed to the need for

a balanced economic program with internal transport as perhaps the real heart

of the problem. The military formula of

food, fuel, and sanitary and medical supplies was therefore hardly a satisfactory

one.

There was no lack of awareness of the

rehabilitation problem. Reporting on

the North African situation as early as

April 1943, Colonel Wright of the International Division was moved to remark:

The requirements of this area . . . would

have been much more satisfactorily met had

the exports consisted of industrial items in

large quantities and cotton cloth and spare

parts for automotive equipment to reestablish the internal transportation which

is the most vital problem now facing the

population ... a rich food producing area

is importing food for its cities, and to some

extent food is piling up at the ports rather

than being distributed.32

ETOUSA officials also, in fall 1943, candidly criticized the existing restrictive

nature of the military civil affairs program, predicting the omission of industrial and agricultural maintenance materials would be "nothing short of catastrophic based on the North African experience in which failure of early planning for procurement of these items led

to long delays which frequently, by unduly delaying production and distribution in North Africa, led to increased

demands for imports of consumers'

goods."33

War Department insistence on limiting its responsibility to relief was based

on the assumption that rehabilitation

was a responsibility of the civilian agencies and on the desire, for budgetary

reasons as well as reasons of convenience, to limit Army procurement to the

smallest number of articles possible. The

Department stipulated that it would sup31

 ID, Civilian Supply, Text, I, 131-3

32

 Memo, Col Boykin C. Wright, 24 Apr 43, sub:

Civilian Supply, ID CSB Basic Pol file 1942-43.

33 Memo, Col Cornelius E. Ryan, Chief CA Sec

ETOUSA, for Chief ID ASF, 8 Oct 43, sub: Memo

on Civilian Supplies for Liberated Areas, ID 014

Civ Sup, III.
THE ARMY AND CIVILIAN SUPPLY-I 753

port procurement by civilian agencies

of any rehabilitation supplies specifically

justified on the basis of military necessity. This position was adopted while it

was still assumed that the period of military responsibility would be only 90

days. The War Department stuck to its

position with a certain dogged inflexibility after the military period had been

lengthened and the field of military responsibility broadened.

The concession made to the British

at QUADRANT that the military program

should include "other agreed articles

considered essential to military operations" caused some concern in military

circles, but led to no immediate broadening of the field of military procurement. Requirements for rehabilitation

supplies, if necessary to military operations, it was ruled, could be met in part

by using standard military equipment.

Beyond this CCAC (S) would process

requisitions from theater commanders,

make recommendations as to their military necessity, and include them in military shipments where justified. Civilian

agencies would remain responsible for

procurement and for development of

future programs.34 This system gave rise

to a new but ephemeral set of co-ordinating committees and a procedure whereby

requirements outside the military program were processed through CCAC (S)

to one of them, the Combined Supply

Committee. But CCAC (S) determined

first whether procurement should be supported as a military necessity or undertaken as a military task, and this proved

to be an effective means of controlling

the whole affair. CCAC (S) seldom gave

its sanction or support to requisitioned

items, but merely passed requests on to

the Combined Supply Committee for

consideration in the light of competing

U.S. or Allied civilian demands to be

produced on a civilian priority. Without

military priority, civilian agencies were

seldom able to make timely procurement.35

The President's November directive

clearly called for some broadening of

the military province, and new arrangements took shape in meetings between

State, War, and FEA representatives in

December 1943. It was agreed that the

War Department would initiate and develop plans for relief for all areas to be

liberated, working out its estimates in

close collaboration with State and FEA.

Besides food, fuel, soap, and medical

supplies, the military programs would

include transport equipment, utility repair items, clothing and shoes, and seeds,

fertilizer, and other agricultural supplies.

Industrial rehabilitation items would

still be excluded. Military procurement, as opposed to planning, would

be limited to relief items already included in the ASP, and to transport equipment and public utility repair items to

be furnished from military stocks. FEA

would continue to procure other items

in the programs, with the War Department to support procurement on military priority of all items included on

approved military programs. Military

planning would also be limited to the

military period, still estimated at six

months. Both planning and procurement

for the postmilitary period would have

34

 (1) Memo, Maj Edward M. Conklin, Jr., QMC,

for Gen Wood, 6 Sep 43, sub: Relative Reqmts for

Occupied and Liberated Territories. (2) Memo, Gen

Clay for Gen Lee, 31 Aug 43. Both in ID CSB Basic

Pol File Aug-Dec 43. (3) Ltr, Maj Palmer, ID, to

Mr. Abbot Low Moffat, State Dept, 11 Oct 43, ID

014 Civ Sup, II. 35

 ID, Civilian Supply, Text, I, 137-45.
754 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

to proceed on civilian priority ratings.

The military authorities would also, regardless of the extent of advance procurement, have to determine what items

could be brought into overseas areas in

the light of transportation limitations.36

To provide a working organization

to carry out these decisions, the United

States Procurement Committee (USPC)

was set up in early February 1944. According to its own official definition of

function—arrived at months later—it was

"a forum for reaching agreements . . .

with respect to civilian supply, requirements and procurement problems during the military period."37

 Its purpose

was thus to provide a meeting place for

the principal operating personnel in

War, State, and FEA, and a point of contact for other interested agencies such

as the War Food Administration, Treasury, WSA, and WPB. In the USPC the

American viewpoint was normally agreed

upon before presentation to the British

in CCAC (S). The USPC was also the

American vehicle for communication

with the Combined Boards in accordance with agreed procedures for determining sources of supply. It supplanted

the Combined Supply Committee as the

agency responsible for processing theater requests for unprogramed items

during the military period (subject, of

course, to British agreement within the

CCAC (S)).

The USPC was, nonetheless, only a

forum, and it had no power to bind

constituent agencies by its decisions.

Moreover, because the committee's consideration was limited to the military

period, the civilian agencies could do

little more than make suggestions on

which the Army had to take final action

in the light of its own evaluation of the

shipping and supply situation. The committee's sphere of activity was limited,

and it did not provide for any effective

planning for the transition from the

military to the civilian period of control.38

All these arrangements were still based

on the uncertain assumption that civilian agencies could prepare and implement an over-all rehabilitation plan that

would take up where military planning

and operations left off. The civilian agencies, whose planning apparently had

been set back by the President's directive, were by no means in a position

to do so. There remained for some time

afterward a void in the area of planning

for the long pull into which the War

Department showed no inclination to

move. In January 1944, in reply to the

representations of the Secretary of State

that the military should take steps very

soon to restore transport, agriculture,

fishing, and industrial production in liberated areas, Stimson reminded Hull

that the War Department had been appropriated no funds and "accorded no

congressional or executive authority to

procure civilian supplies other than

those which are deemed necessary or desirable in support of military operations."39 36(1) Ltr, CPRB, CFB, CRMB, CSAB to J. J.

McCloy, Chmn, CCAC, 13 Dec 43, ID CSB Basic

Pol File Aug-Dec 43. (2) Memo, Gen Wright, sub:

Memo Re Conf ... in Gen Clay's Office, 14 Dec 43,

Dir Materiel File Lend-Lease 1942-44. (3) ID,

Civilian Supply, Text, I, 154-59. 37

 USPC 25 (revised), 12 Sep 44, in ID, Civilian

Supply, Doc Suppl, 166; see also Text, I, 184.

38

 ID, Civilian Supply, Text, I, 176-87. 39

 Ltr, Secy War to Secy State, 29 Jan 44; Ltr,

Secy State to Secy War, 1 Jan 44. Tabs B and C to

ASF Plng Div Strat Log Study 53.
THE ARMY AND CIVILIAN SUPPLY-I 755

This was intended as a reminder that

long-term plans for rehabilitation must

be formulated by State and FEA working with British civilian agencies, but

it was not until mid-May 1944 that a

civilian agency was to be formed by the

State Department for this purpose (the

Liberated Areas Committee). In the

meantime, all plans developed were

based on the military conception of the

task, shaped largely in terms of the

disease and unrest formula. Be the fault

where it may, the effects of this failure

to provide for an early start of rehabilitation were to be serious in both Italy

and northwest Europe.

The First Phase in Sicily

and Italy

Sicily and Italy provided the first testing ground for the policies and procedures taking shape in Washington. The

invasion of Sicily was the first Allied

operation for which there was a definite

civilian supply plan prepared in advance. The plan, to cover a 90-day military period, was based on the assumption

that once the dust of battle settled, Sicily

would be self-sufficient except for coal

and oil. For such immediate relief needs

as arose, AFHQ hoped to rely mainly

on stockpiles in North Africa. Only

12,100 tons of food were requested from

the United States, and some thought

even that quantity excessive.

The Allied Military Government of

Occupied Territory (AMGOT) instituted in Sicily soon found this optimism

entirely unwarranted. Whether there

was enough grain to provide bread for

all the people was a debatable proposition, but. for the moment quantity was

irrelevant, since the lack of transport,

the colossal black market, farm hoarding, and the ravages of battle kept grain

out of the cities. Two months after the

invasion, cities such as Palermo were

still living "hand to mouth" with "not

even 24 hours reserves of breadstuffs in

the town."40

The situation the Allies found on the

Italian mainland was even worse. The

appearance of economic order, prosperity, and self-sufficiency that Mussolini's

fascist government had been able to create was in reality only a facade that

cloaked Italy's long-standing economic

ills. The country was almost entirely dependent upon the outside world for coal

and oil, and much more so for essential

raw materials and even foodstuffs than

the Fascists admitted. The minor wars

in Ethiopia, Spain, and Albania had

placed a severe strain on the Italian

economy; three years of World War II

as a German ally pushed it to the brink

of collapse. Italy entered the war in 1940

unprepared and was never able to mobilize her economy in efficient fashion.

Though nominally an ally, Italy was

forced into an economic as well as political and military dependence on Germany that left her at the mercy of the

Nazi overlords of Europe. The country

did not prosper under the German

hegemony. Shortages of raw materials

and agricultural supplies, military demands on the labor force, and demor40

 (1) Rpt of CCAO, AMGOT for Aug 43, CAD

319.1 AMG (8-17-43), Sec 1. (2) Memo, Palmer for

Clay, 14 May 43, sub: Problem of Civilian Supply

Raised by JCS 302. (3) Memo, Palmer for Clay, 25

May 43, sub: Civilian Supply for HUSKY. (4) Draft

msg, Marshall for Eisenhower, 26 May 43. (2), (3),

and (4) in ID CSB Basic Pol File Gen 1942-43. (5)

CCS 247/5/D, 28 Jun 43, title: Directive on Civil

Affairs for HUSKY.
756 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

ITALIANS AT AN ALLIED SOUP KITCHEN

alization of the population led to a decline in agricultural and industrial production. Reserves of foodstuffs, clothing,

and other consumer commodities sank

to perilously low levels with prospects

of replacement remote. In early 1942 the

daily bread ration, already the lowest

in western Europe, had to be cut from

200 to 150 grams per person. The transportation and communication system,

subjected to excessive wear and tear, began to show signs of deterioration. Price,

marketing, production, and rationing

controls broke down, giving rise to a

flourishing black market.

The Allied invasion gave the final impetus to economic collapse in the areas

taken over. These areas in the south, the

poorest section of Italy, were cut off

from their normal exchange with the

north where the main Italian industrial

plant was centered. Bombing, demolition by the retreating Germans, and the

ravages of land battles left thousands

homeless, further curtailed agricultural

production, disrupted an already weak

transport system, and created new scarcities for black market operators to exploit. The demands of Allied and Italian

military forces absorbed much of the
THE ARMY AND CIVILIAN SUPPLY-I 757

output of what was left of the productive

plant. The Allies thus faced a formidable

economic problem in southern Italy and

soon came to realize that a considerable

volume of relief supplies would be required if chaos was to be averted.41

That supporting the Italian economy

would impose a burden on Allied supply lines had not been entirely unforeseen. At the TRIDENT Conference in May

1943 one of the main American arguments against British plans for invasion

of Italy was that it would involve furnishing immense quantities of supplies

to support a "crippled economy."42 Yet

even the Americans thought coal and

oil would be the principal Italian deficiencies, and that the country would

be able to feed itself. They estimated

that about 200,000 tons of coal and 45,-

000 tons of oil per month would be the

minimum required to sustain the industries necessary for production and distribution of the essentials of life. When

the invasion of Italy was finally agreed

at QUADRANT, the plans for civilian supply were shaped largely in terms of coal;

oil was to be supplied over the short

route from the eastern Mediterranean

and entirely through military channels.

The British accepted the responsibility

for furnishing 100,000 tons of coal per

month for the first three months following invasion (the lowered estimate was

based on the limited area in Italy it was

anticipated would be occupied during

that period). The Americans in turn

agreed to provide two ships monthly to

carry such other dry cargo as the theater

commander should consider necessary

and that could not be carried in Italian

ships. This arrangement was to be a

temporary expedient; there was little expectation that the British could continue

to furnish and haul coal to Italy after

the first three-month period. The longrange civilian supply plan the CCS directed at QUADRANT was to cover Italy

as well as northwest Europe. But since

this plan was not finally placed in effect

until June 1944, civilian supply needs

for Italy were handled in the interim

on an emergency basis, "going forward

from crisis to crisis in a prevailing atmosphere of urgency."43

On the assumption that the only food

problem in Italy would be supplying

deficits in cities, initial estimates envisaged import of foodstuffs for only 10

percent of the population. On this basis,

CCAC (S) on 9 November 1943 approved a program calling for shipment

of 271,000 metric tons of grain or flour

and 72,790 metric tons of other subsistence to cover the first six months

south of Rome and the first three months

north of Rome.44 There was, understandably, consternation when, early in December, AFHQ informed the CCS that

imported grain would be required for

50 percent of the people south of Rome

and 70 percent of those in the north,

and requested shipment of 882,000 met41

 Economic Sec, Allied Control Comm, Rpt, 1

Sep 44, ch. I, ACC files, 10000/154/328. 42

 (1) Memo, Col James K. Woolnough for Gen

Wedemeyer, n.d., sub: Relative Supplies for Occupied and Liberated Territories, ABC 337 TRIDENT.

(2) See also above, ch. III, and Memo, Somervell for

Marshall, 14 May 43, sub: Study of Opns for Italy

and Turkey, folder Agenda, Hq ASF file.

43(1)ID, Civilian Supply, Text, I, 229. (2) Memo,

Clay for CG ASF, 18 May 43, sub: Coal Reqmts Ref

CCS 227, folder CSofS Jt and Comb 1942-44, Hq ASF

File. (3) Memo, Somervell for Marshall, 14 May 43.

(4) See also above, ch. III. (5) CCS 324/1, 22 Aug 43.

44(1)CCAC(S) 1, 16 Sep 43, CCAC(S) 1/3, 17 Sep

43, and CCAC(S) 1/5, 14 Oct 43, titles: Agreed Italian

Civilian Reqmts. (2) Min, CCAC(S) 10th mtg, 9 Nov

43, Item 4. (3) ID, Civilian Supply, Text, I, 229-30.
758 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

ric tons of grain and 240,000 tons of

other subsistence during the first six

months of 1944. AFHQ urged that shipments be speeded since theater stocks

in both Italy and North Africa were at

a very low level.

The reasoning behind the AFHQ request was compelling. Civilian supply

had previously been neglected, Eisenhower explained, while port and inland

transport facilities were absorbed in handling military cargo. By the end of November 1943, the new Allied Control

Commission working with the Italian

Government45 was at the end of its rope.

The 1943 harvest had fallen 25 to 30

percent below normal; amassing grain

under the old unpopular Fascist system

completely broke down and the major

portion of the short harvest found its

way into the black market. Even the low

150-gram bread ration could not be

maintained, and the only way to prevent

mass starvation in urban centers such

as Naples seemed to be a crash program

of imports. Eisenhower stressed the military urgency behind the requests:

It should be understood that our requisitions for food . . . are not based on con- siderations of humanitarianism or any

other factor except that of military neces- sity. The conditions in Southern Italy are

such that unless reasonable quantities of

food are supplied very promptly we will

experience sabotage, unrest, and a complete

cessation in all those activities necessary to

our advance.46

CCAC(S) approved the stated theater

requirements through March 1944 and

shipments from the United States were

started immediately to meet the emergency. The requirements for the second

three months were subjected to a closer

scrutiny since the advance had been

much slower than anticipated. A theater

request for a 134,000-ton stockpile for

operations north of Rome was turned

down and other reductions were made

with the net result that the AFHQ

total was cut from 882,000 to 609,000

metric tons of grain and flour, and from

240,000 to 150,000 tons of other subsistence.47

Even with the reductions the new

Italian food program, when added to a

continuing demand for nearly 100,000

tons of coal monthly, posed a heavy demand on Allied supplies and shipping.

The Italian ships the QUADRANT planners had so hopefully postulated turned

out to be few in number and best suited

to short voyages within the Mediterranean; the burden of transoceanic transport of Italian relief supplies therefore

fell on British and American shipping.

In arranging the enlarged Italian program the Allied authorities got their first

exercise in developing the global availability of relief supplies and adjusting it

to the availability of shipping and convoys. If the development of these ar45 In Sicily and in the early stages in Italy, Allied

Military Government of Occupied Territory handled

civil affairs. In an effort to sustain the Badoglio

government in its role as cobelligerent, an Allied

Control Commission was set up on 10 November

1943 to work with it in governing the country. The

Control Commission was assigned responsibility for

rear areas, absorbing in most cases AMGOT personnel there; AMGOT continued to be responsible for

forward areas. The Allied Control Commission was

military in character and under the Allied theater

commander who was nominally its president.

46

 (1) Msg CM-IN 9014, 14 Dec 43, AFHQ to CCS.

(2) Ltr, MGS AFHQ to CCS, 26 Nov 43, in Coles

and Weinberg, Civil Affairs: Soldiers Become Governors, pp. 314-15. (3) Msgs, LAC 32, CM-IN 3851,

6 Dec 43; and LAC 71, CM-IN 18299, 30 Dec 53,

AFHQ to CCS. 47

 ID, Civilian Supply, Text, I, 231-34.
THE ARMY AND CIVILIAN SUPPLY-I 759

rangements generated a good deal of

friction on both the national and international level, it also served to clarify

the problems involved and to point the

way to smoother operations in the

future.

Until December 1943 all wheat and

flour shipped to Italy came from North

Africa, part of it on loans from the

French that had to be repaid as the 1943

North African harvest was also short and

famine conditions threatened there in

the winter of 1943-44. The U.S. members of CCAC(S) agreed that December

and January shipments to Italy might

be met from the United States but after

that, they found, American wheat

would not be available in sufficient

quantity. CCAC(S) therefore decided

that wheat should be obtained from

Argentina beginning with 65,000 tons

in February 1944. Lewis Douglas of

WSA protested this arrangement, stating

flatly that U.S. bottoms would not be

available for the purpose. Douglas argued that American shipping should not

be used over the long haul from Argentina to the Mediterranean as long as

British bottoms hauled wheat over the

much shorter route from the United

States to the British Isles. "This is another example," Douglas wrote, ". . .

of the confusion that can be created

when the C.C.A.C. of the C.C.S. designates sources."48

Douglas' caustic comments were inspired by circumstances over which the

War Department had no control and of

which it was apparently unaware. The

British were diligently seeking to shift

responsibility for furnishing coal to Italy

to the United States, and Douglas

thought he detected in that effort a part

of a general trend to increase the load on

American shipping while British bottoms were diverted to commercial

trades. WSA-BMWT relations, normally

smooth, reached a nadir at the time of

the SEXTANT Conference in December

1943.49

At SEXTANT and in the following

weeks the specific issues of coal and

wheat for Italy were ironed out, and a

general framework of procedure agreed

that re-established smooth relations between WSA and the War Department

on the national level and between WSA

and BMWT on the international level.

The plan for any sizable shipments of

wheat from Argentina was abandoned,

not only because of shipping considerations, but also because of political objections from the State Department.

Wheat and flour shipments to the Mediterranean continued through March almost entirely from the United States

with a small supplement from Canada.

For the period beginning in April 1944

arrangements were made for Australia

to serve as the main source for wheat

and flour, with the United States, Canada, and Argentina (as a last resort)

to make up any deficits. Also, arrangements for coal provided that Italian

needs should be met from India and

South Africa as far as possible, with

48

 (1) Ltr, Douglas to McCloy, 7 Dec 43, ID CSB

Policy file Genl 1944. (2) Min, 10th mtg CCAC(S),

9 Nov 43. (3) TAG Ltr to QMG and CofT, 10 Dec

43, sub: Supplies for AMG, NATO, in ID 014 Civ

Sup, IV.

49 (1) Ltr, Douglas to Lord Leathers, 18 Oct 43.

(2) Memo, James A. McCulloch for Philip Reed,

Mission Economic Affairs, London, 17 Nov 43. (3)

Ltr, Douglas to Leathers, 7 Jan 44. All in Folder

BMSM Misc, WSA Douglas File. (4) See also above,

ch. XII.
760 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

deficits to be made up from Great Britain or the United States. For other

subsistence, and for sanitary and miscellaneous supplies, the United States

was designated as the sole source. WSA

and BMWT agreed to divide shipping

responsibility on as nearly a 50-50 basis

as circumstances would permit, and on

other combined procedures for pooling

cargo space in moving civilian supplies.

These arrangements promised to make

better use of U.S. and British shipping,

returning from the Far East in ballast,

and to reduce the inroads on the grain

supplies of the United States and on the

coal stockpile of England. The War

Department's main objection was that

these agreements left its supply agencies

subject to unexpected demands to make

up deficits that could not be met from

preferred sources. This was a cause of

some continuing friction, but for the

most part the arrangements adopted

worked satisfactorily during the ensuing

months.

Tentative agreements were also

reached on co-ordination between military and shipping authorities for handling civilian supply programs. WSA

and BMWT agreed between themselves

that they would screen military civil

supply programs but would reserve their

position when "long term requirements

of a speculative nature" were presented

and "await firm shipping programs before undertaking commitments."50

 Approval of monthly shipping requirements for each theater would be subject

to evaluation of port and inland clearance capacity by shipping and transportation representatives on the spot. Civilian supplies during the military period

would be handled through theater channels and consigned to the theater commander for distribution. British vessels

in the program would be chartered by

BMWT to the War Office, American

vessels by WSA to the Army. Shipments

from the United States were to be handled in the usual Army fashion as military cargo; vessels carrying cargo loaded

outside the United States would be

loaded by WSA agents but still chartered

to the Army.

The War Department agreed in general to this system, but made certain

stipulations to protect the military interest and to preserve the integrity of

procedures agreed in the CCAC. Military programs formulated in CCAC(S)

would be presented immediately by the

Army Transportation Corps to WSA,

not directly through combined channels

to the CSAB; the shipping agencies

would have no authority over determination of requirements and the CCAC

would treat recommendations on sources

of supply as advisory only; a combined

military-WSA-BMWT shipping committee in the Mediterranean would make

the necessary decisions on port and inland clearance capacities in that theater;

agreement would be reached among all

U.S. agencies concerned before any matters were presented to the British.51

To return to the Italian problem

that occasioned these decisions, the relief

50

 Quoted from Memorandum Covering Combined Shipping Employment Policy of WSA and

BMWT, 28 Jan 44, ID 014 Basic Policy file Genl

1944.

51

 (1)Ltr, McCloy to Douglas, 6 Jan 44. (2) Notes

of Army-WSA Discussions, 25 Jan 44. (3) Memorandum Covering Combined Shipping Employment

Policy of WSA and BMWT, 28 Jan 44. (4) Memo,

Palmer for Dir, ID, 3 Feb 44. (5) Ltr, Douglas to

McCloy, 7 Mar 44. (6) Memo, Gen Wright for ASW,

12 Mar 44, sub: Comments re Proposed Agreement
THE ARMY AND CIVILIAN SUPPLY-I 761

program carried out during the first part

of 1944 successfully met the immediate

crisis. Because the advance up the Italian

peninsula moved much more slowly

than had been planned, General Wilson

was able to accumulate a substantial reserve while raising the daily bread ration

from 150 to 200 grams. Yet the portents

remained ominous, as the Italian economy continued in a state of chaos and

a prospective speed-up in the pace of

Allied advance promised to bring new

and heavier relief demands.

The real problem was rehabilitation.

On 29 June General Hilldring remonstrated vigorously with G-5, AFHQ:

"Our authority to carry through our

relief obligations in the next year in

Europe is in jeopardy at the moment

because of the disinclination or the inability of the Allied Control Commission to get into the business of making

Italy self-sustaining, and to get into

the business with vigor and efficiency.

. . ."52 General Hilldring was more successful in diagnosing the disease than in

identifying its cause. The Control Commission had been allotted too few means

to accomplish an almost insuperable

task, and its initial planning had been

for relief only, on the assumption that

the task of rehabilitation would fall to

civilian agencies. Except for bare relief,

first priority on supplies and on transport and productive facilities in Italy

had always gone to the Allied military

machine; without necessary rehabilitation supplies, and in the existing state

of economic disruption and demoralization of the people, it was difficult to even

make a start on restoration of production

facilities.53

By mid-March military control of civil

affairs in Italy had lasted for the six

months that, in theory, was to be the

period of military responsibility. The

War Department began negotiations for

transfer of rear areas to civilian authority at that time but made little progress.

Even aside from the fact that the civilian

agencies did not have the plans or personnel, Italian relief presented formidable legal and financial problems.

UNRRA as yet had no funds, and in any

case, by the terms of its charter could

not operate in an ex-enemy country.

Italy had never been declared eligible

for lend-lease, and therefore FEA had

no authority to spend its funds for

Italian relief. Negotiations dragged out

interminably with no satisfactory solution in sight. In reality, although the

theater was willing to accept civilian

infiltration into the Allied Control Commission, it was not ready to relinquish

control over areas that still served as

military bases. This attitude in the theater made most of the sound and fury in

Washington meaningless. The prospect

in the summer of 1944, therefore, was

that relief for Italy would continue for

some time to pose a heavy drain on

Allied military resources in competition

between WSA and BMWT. (7) Memo, unsigned,

sub: Opinion on Memo Covering Combined Shpg

Employment. . . . All in ID 014 Basic Policy file

Genl 1944. (8) Ltr, CPRB to CSAB, 11 Feb 44, ID

014 Civ Sup, V. (9) For materials on the whole broad

shipping question at issue between WSA and BMWT

during this period see the Douglas files, Med Relief,

U.K. and BMSM.

52 Ltr, Gen Hilldring to Brig Gen Charles M.

Spofford, ACofS, G-5, AFHQ, 29 Jun 44, CAD 380

Reconstruction (4-30-44).

53

 See documents in Coles and Weinberg, Civil

Affairs: Soldiers Become Governors, pp. 319-22,

364-69.
762 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

with the requirements for support of the

main campaign that was getting under

way in northwest Europe.54

office 9 Mar 44, and other materials in ID CSB Basic

Policy file Genl 1944. (3) Memo, Palmer for Dir ID,

20 Jun 44, sub: Proposed Transfer to FEA of Responsibilities for Provision of Civilian Supply for Italy as

of 1 Jul 44, and other materials in ID 014 Civilian

Supply series, vol. XIV ff. (4) For a judicious selection

of documents see Coles and Weinberg, Civil Affairs:

Soldiers Become Governors, pp. 487-91.

54

 (1) Ltr, Lauchlin Currie, Dep Admin FEA to

Gen Clay, 3 Mar 44, Dir Materiel file Lend-Lease

1942-44. (2) Notes of discussion held in Gen Clay's
CHAPTER XXXI

The Army and Civilian Supply —II

The Combined Plan

Planning for civilian supply for the

campaigns in North Africa, Sicily, and

Italy was, in the main, impromptu,

shaped by immediate emergencies. The

CCS action at QUADRANT in directing

the CCAC to prepare an over-all civilian

supply plan for the period of military

responsibility in all combined theaters

aimed at avoiding the haste and waste

of emergency action once the main campaign in Europe got under way in 1944.

The President's directive of 10 November 1943, asking for a plan specifically

shaped in terms of German collapse,

gave this planning a new direction. The

War Department decided to draw up

a plan conforming to the President's

desires in co-operation with interested

U.S. civilian agencies, and then to submit it to the British in the CCAC(S) as

the over-all plan in fulfillment of the

CCS directive.

Two sets of plans, it was agreed,

should be prepared, the first set based

on the assumption of German collapse

without scorching early (1 February

1944) and late in the year (1 September 1944), the second set on collapse

with limited scorching on the same

dates. Both sets were to cover all countries of Europe for a six-month period

with the exception of the neutrals and

the USSR.1 The no-scorching plans were

to be predicated on optimum conditions, with no destruction by the retreating Germans, battle damage, or disruption of trade.

Intensive work was devoted to reconciling War Department and FEA approaches and to welding all previous

calculations into one unified whole, and

by the end of December agreement had

been reached on a set of requirements

covering the assumption of collapse

without scorching early in the year.

These estimates were designated Plan A.

Other plans were developed later—a variant of Plan A based on collapse without

scorching late in the year; Plan B (in

two parts) based on collapse with limited scorching early and late in the year;

and Plan C, an estimate of civilian needs

for areas in the wake of assault operations leading to collapse by 1 October

1944.2

The first variant of Plan A, based on

early collapse under optimum condi1

 Estimates for Germany and Austria, with the

exception of medical and sanitary supplies, soap,

and agricultural rehabilitation items, were based

solely on caring for displaced persons from other

nations found within their borders.

2 ID, Civilian Supply, Text, I, 152-54, 160-64.
764 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

tions, became the primary basis for

civilian supply planning in the CCAC(S).

The assumption behind the plan was

clearly outdated long before it had been

agreed; only the most sanguine in early

1944 hoped for a German collapse at

any date without a campaign on the

Continent. Plan A became the basis of

calculations simply because it was prepared first and because it provided a more

convenient means than any of the others

for calculating minimum requirements

of an area for a six-month period. With

total area requirements determined and

sources of supply tentatively designated,

actual procurement and shipment could

be phased in keeping with the develop

ment of requirements by theater commanders.

Plan A was presented to the British

in CCAC(S) on 4 January 1944, and, after

adjustments, estimates of requirements

were agreed to by both sides of that committee early the next month. Estimates

for countries in eastern Europe—Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Finland, Hungary,

Poland, and Rumania—were included

only for informational purposes and, it

was agreed, they would not serve as a

basis for supply procurement. The total

requirement for the other areas—northwest Europe, Italy, and the Balkans—

came to approximately 9,135,000 metric

tons: 4,869,000 tons of coal, 2,866,000

tons of food, 668,000 tons of petroleum,

569,000 tons of agricultural supplies,

79,000 tons of soap, 71,000 tons of clothing, shoes, and textiles, and 16,000 tons

of sanitary supplies. In approving the

massive program CCAC (S) emphasized

that it was for planning purposes only

and did not involve any commitment by

either the War Department or the War

Office to furnish any of the supplies

listed. The CCAC approved on the same

terms on 17 February 1944.3

Having agreed on the needs of the

various areas, the CCAC then submitted

the Plan A estimates to the civilian supply and shipping authorities for review

through national channels in accordance

with the procedures established in late

1943. Based on advice from the civilian

agencies, between mid-February and the

end of April 1944, CCAC(S) drew up a

tentative division of responsibility between the United States and United

Kingdom for meeting Plan A estimates

and a tentative designation of the source

of supply for each item.4

The proposed arrangements, extremely complicated in nature, were predicated on the European transport system

remaining intact, making possible the

shipment of surpluses from one area to

meet shortages in another. Europe, it

was assumed, would be able to meet

most of its own coal needs from fields in

the Ruhr, the Saar, and Silesia; any balance would come from British sources

in the United Kingdom, India, and

South Africa. Europe would also be able

to furnish small quantities of other

items, the planners estimated, leaving an

import requirement of only about 4,000,-

000 metric tons out of the 8,791,000

tons to which Plan A in its final combined version was reduced. Food, the

3

 (1)CCAC(S) 12 (Rev), 18 Feb 44, title: Estimated

Needs of Europe in the Event of Unconditional

Surrender Without Scorching. (2) Min, 22d mtg

CCAC, 17 Feb 44. (3) ID, Civilian Supply, Text, I,

187-97. (4) The area breakdown was as follows:

northwest Europe—5,101,000 tons; Italy—2,636,000

tons; Balkans—1,397,200 tons. Estimates for eastern

Europe, not considered for procurement purposes,

totaled 1,299,400 tons. 4

 See ID, Civilian Supply, Text, I, 198-203 for

details.
THE ARMY AND CIVILIAN SUPPLY-II 765

major item involved, would come primarily from the United States, Australia,

Canada, and the United Kingdom

stockpile, and from subsidiary sources in

North Africa, Argentina, the West Indies, and Madagascar; other supplies,

with the exception of phosphates from

North Africa and pyrites from Spain,

would come primarily from the United

States and the United Kingdom. The

supply of petroleum was left to the combined military petroleum authorities

since it was to be imported in bulk for

military and civilian needs. Sources of

supply for seeds and veterinary materials

were not determined.

Disagreement between British and

Americans over terms of financial responsibility delayed final approval of

the plan. To allow procurement to proceed, in June a modus vivendi was

reached while the question of ultimate

financial settlement was postponed. The

United States would pay for all supplies

drawn from this country, the United

Kingdom for all those drawn from the

British Isles and British colonies and

dominions with the exception of Canada. Payment for supplies drawn from

other sources was to be divided 50-50.

Based on this arrangement, the final

version of Plan A provided that the

British should accept procurement responsibility for 1,892,000 tons of supplies, the Americans for 946,600, the

Canadians tentatively for 13,100, and

the source for the rest (petroleum, seeds,

and veterinary supplies) was left undetermined. (Map 7)

In the CCAC(S), the Americans sought

a firm commitment only for the first

ninety days, for which the division was

1,179,600 tons from U.K. sources, 300,-

600 from U.S. sources, and 8,500 from

Canadian. The division reflected a heavy

reliance on the U.K. stockpile of foodstuffs to conserve shipping. This stockpile had, by the end of 1943, grown to

over 6.5 million tons, a greater reserve

than Americans thought necessary now

that the danger of submarine blockade

of the British Isles had receded. The

British food authorities, nonetheless,

sought zealously to safeguard their levels. They agreed to make 700,000 tons

of food available from the stockpile in

the first three months in case of collapse,

but limited the offer to 200,000 tons in

case of assault, and that only on condition that the stock be replaced in ninety

days.

Both sides of CCAC (S) approved the

first three-months' plans on these terms

on 9 June 1944, the CCAC on 22 June.

In mid-July the British agreed finally to

the division for the entire plan. The

final step, approval by the CCS, did not

come until September 1944 but the

delay in no way affected implementation. In the meantime, Plan A served as

a basis for revisions in Section VI of the

Army Supply Program for 1944 and for

the presentation of a joint War Department-FEA relief budget to Congress,

totaling $536,556,990, for the fiscal year

1945. This budget was necessarily based

on the general assumption that military

responsibility would continue for only

six months in western Europe and north

Italy, and on the unrealistic target dates

of 1 July 1944 in Sicily and 1 October

1944 in southern Italy for FEA assumption of responsibility in those areas. FEA

presented the budget estimates for U.S.

participation in Balkan relief for the

initial period. This agreement on financial responsibility in no way affected the

earlier FEA-War Department agreement

THE ARMY AND CIVILIAN SUPPLY-II 767

on the commodity basis for procurement.5

Meanwhile work continued on Plans

B and C and on the variant of Plan A

that assumed collapse late rather than

early in the year. The total tonnage requirements (in metric tons) estimated

under these alternate plans were: Plan A

(collapse late in year without scorching), 15,142,500; Plan B (collapse early

in year with scorching), 18,675,600; Plan

B (collapse late in year with scorching),

26,623,000; Plan C (assault operations

leading to late year collapse),"31,324,000.

Coal requirements in all these variants

were vastly increased over the original

Plan A, both because of higher fuel consumption in winter (under late in year

collapse estimates) and the probability

of scorching of the mines. Requirements

for food and other supplies were also

increased in the scorched plans though

in lesser proportion. Import requirements in the scorched plans were necessarily much greater.

Of the alternate plans, only the first

variant of Plan B received consideration

in the CCAC (S). Plan B estimates were

approved by the committee in mid-July

and submitted to the supply authorities

for advice. But the approval of supply

sources for the quantities in Plan B progressed very slowly. The crux of the matter was the U.K. food stockpile. The

JCS coupled their approval of Plan A

with an admonition to WSA and the

War Food Administration that "maximum use be made of stockpiles in areas

adjacent to those requiring relief before

any allocation of tankers or cargo ships

be made for supplies from more distant

sources," and recommended "special

scrutiny" of stockpiles of U.S. lend-lease,

"the military necessity for which disappeared with the improvement of the

strategic situation."6 The Joint Chiefs

thought that the British should be willing to accept a 2- or 3-million-ton reduction in their 6.5-million-ton food stockpile, in return for a guarantee of the

stockpile at a reduced level, thus making

food available for northwest Europe at

a minimum cost in shipping. Marvin

Jones of the War Food Administration

was at first sympathetic and agreed to

negotiate with the British for such a release against Plan B estimates. To the

surprise and consternation of the military officials, however, the combined supply authorities seemingly ignored the

logic of the argument, and in their recommendations on Plan B provided for

only 585,000 tons of food—the remaining

portion of the British offer of 700,000

tons in case of collapse—to be withdrawn

from the U.K. stockpile. The rest of the

food was to come from more distant

sources such as the United States, Canada, Australia, and Argentina.

Thus, while in theory an over-all supply plan came into being with the quan5

 (1) ID, Civilian Supply, Text, I, 166-69, 196-219.

and app. D-4. (2) CCAC(S) 12/4 (Rev), 14 Jul 44,

title: Plan "A"—Initial U.S.-U.K. Procurement Responsibility. (3) ID Rpts, Essential Civilian Supplies

for Occupied and Liberated Areas During Period of

Military Responsibility, 28 Apr and 8 Sep 44. (4)

Min, 34th mtg CCAC(S), 9 Jun 44, Item 2. (5) Hammond, Food: The Growth of Policy, pp. 278-81, 397.

(6) The final terms of financial settlement agreed

to between the British and Americans in February

1945 provided that payment for military relief was

to be requested from all governments of liberated

or conquered areas. Any amounts not recoverable

were to be shared 67 percent by the United States,

25 percent by the United Kingdom, and 8 percent

by Canada up to a limit of $400,000,000. Canada

agreed to these terms conditionally.

6

 Ltr, JCS to Marvin Jones, WFA, app. C, JCS

957, 15 Jul 44, title: Civilian Supply Reqmts for

Europe.
768 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

tities in Plan A the lower limit and those

in Plan B the upper, actually by September the Plan A figures had been expanded by less than a million tons. It

was the Plan A estimates then that, in

the main, were to serve as the guide to

procurement and as limits to the pool

of civilian supplies on which theater

commanders could draw during most of

the year 1944.7

Neither Plan A nor Plan B estimates,

divorced as they were from any valid

prediction of the course of the war in

Europe, were of much value in planning

the allocation of shipping. The combined shipping authorities stuck to their

decision not to make positive commitments on "long term requirements of

a speculative nature," in which category

they placed both plans. WSA kept in

very close touch with the planning and

indicated Plan A requirements could

be met should collapse actually occur as

postulated, but pointed out that should

the Allies have to invade northwest Europe the situation would be entirely different.8

Plan C was developed by the ASF

largely in an effort to provide some

phased guide to shipping requirements;

Plan C estimates were phased over a

period of one year on the assumption

of assault operations leading to collapse.

ASF Plans Division made extensive

studies of shipping requirements based

on the plan but in the end it proved

only an academic exercise. The British

refused even to consider Plan C in the

CCAC (S), and WSA as before insisted

that firm agreed requirements were necessary before it could make commitments.9

The development and phasing of concrete requirements for liberation of occupied Europe after the Allied invasion

therefore rested largely on theater commanders and their staffs. Theater planning for civilian supply went on simultaneously with the broad planning in

Washington, and was normally co-ordinated with it. The role of the

CCAC (S) was to evaluate theater plans

in relation to one another and to fit

them into the over-all limits on availability of supplies established in Plan A

and the supplementary quantities approved in Plan B. Shipping then had

to be arranged within the total military

allocation to any theater. Three areas

of combined operations need to be distinguished: (1) the Mediterranean under SACMED, including Sicily, Italy,

and, for a limited period, southern

France; (2) the Balkans—Greece, Yugoslavia, and Albania—also under SACMED; (3) northwest Europe—northern

France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, Denmark, and Norway—under

SHAEF.

In the case of Italy, Plan A estimates

were, in the first instance, based on theater forecasts of need developed out of

the experience of the previous year. Beginning in July 1944 Italian requirements were no longer processed on an

7 (1) JCS 957, 15 Jul 44. (2) ID Rpts. (3) ID, Civilian

Supply, Text, I, 227. (4) Min 37th mtg CCAC(S), 23

Jun 44, Item 2. (5) Memo, Palmer for Dir ID, 11

Jul 44, ID 014 Civ Sup, XVI. (6) Memo, Palmer for

OCofT and OQMG, 10 Oct 44, sub: Civilian Supplies

for Europe, ID 014 Civ Sup, XXIV. (7) Diary Entry,

15 Nov 44, Strat Log Br, Plng Div, ASF. 8

 (1) Ltr, Capt Conway, WSA, to Col N. M. Coe,

OCofT, 27 Mar 44, WSA Conway File, Reading File

Jan-Mar 44, Box 122891. (2) See also ltr of 6 Apr 44

in Reading File Apr-May 44, Box 122893, and Ltr,

R. M. Bissell, Div of Ship Reqmts, WSA, to Col

Dixon, OCofT, 6 Jun 44, ID 014 Civ Sup, XIII. 9

 See Incls in ASF Plng Div, Strat Log Study 53.
THE ARMY AND CIVILIAN SUPPLY-II 769

emergency basis but charged against

over-all requirements established in Plan

A. SACMED also prepared both operational and collapse plans for southern

France, though these had to be fitted

into the over-all planning done by

SHAEF since southern France was expected to revert eventually to SHAEF

control. Definite commitments were

made only against requirements for the

assault phase—48,900 tons of foodstuffs,

1,200 tons of soap, and 23,000 tons of

coal for the first 45 days. Many of these

supplies were loaded on the flatted ships

and forwarded directly by the New York

POE as part of the military supplies for

ANVIL.10

Establishing any firm requirements

for the Balkans was more difficult because no approved combined operations

were scheduled there, and the Americans

were loath to contemplate military relief activity in the area in case of German collapse. The British Middle East

Command, however, had long been engaged in planning for Balkan relief, and

the British had established at Cairo in

1943 an Administration of Territories

(Balkans) Committee (AT (B)) as a

counterpart of the AT (E) in London.

They had also begun to accumulate a

stockpile of relief supplies for the Balkans. The President, acting on State Department advice, in January 1944 approved U.S. participation in Balkan relief on the understanding that only a

small American military staff should be

employed in a supervisory role and that

UNRRA should, as far as possible, undertake the actual distribution of relief

supplies. Estimates for the Balkans were,

as noted, included in Plan A. These estimates were revised upward in July to

conform more closely with the estimates

developed by the British AT (B) in

Cairo, the excess over Plan A being regarded as tentative and dependent upon

action to be taken on Plan B. To meet

emergency needs should the Allies occupy any part of the Balkans, the existing Balkan stockpile in the Middle East

was augmented by small shipments from

the United States; at the same time, however, it lost its completely separate identity and was placed under SACMED to

form part of the total resources in his

theater to meet civilian supply needs in

all areas under his command.11

In the SHAEF area in northwest Europe, the area of the main Allied effort,

civilian supply planning by combined

military staffs in London had begun in

mid-1943. On 6 January 1944 the newly

constituted SHAEF staff was able to

present two six-month plans based, respectively, on collapse (RANKIN C) and

assault (OVERLORD) conditions, the former calling for 1,270,000 tons of supplies, the latter for 532,000 tons. There

was originally a considerable discrepancy between the basis of SHAEF planning and that of CCAC (S). Until May

1944, when the CCS finally ruled other10

 (1)ID, Civilian Supply, Text, I, 237-38. (2) ID

Rpt, Essential Civilian Supplies . . . , 28 Apr 44.

(3) On planning for southern France, see Robert W.

Komer, Civil Affairs and Military Government in

the Mediterranean Theater, MS, OCMH, ch. XXI,

pp. 21-34.

11

 (1) ID, Civilian Supply, Text, I, 238-43. (2)

Memo, McCloy, approved by Roosevelt, 31 Jan 44,

Ibid., Doc Suppl 180. (3)CCAC(S) 7/20 (Revised),

5 Jul 44, title: Estimated Import Needs for Civilian

Relief in Albania, Greece, and Yugoslavia. The revised tonnage for the Balkans was 1,504,661 as

opposed to 1,397,200 in the original Plan A. Variations in quantities of individual items were considerably greater. (4) Komer, Civil Affairs in the Mediterranean, ch. XXII.
770 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

wise, SHAEF planning followed an

original British conception that did not

provide for military responsibility for

so-called hiatus areas such as Denmark,

Norway, and the Bordeaux region of

France, which military forces would enter, if at all, only as a result of a general German withdrawal or collapse.

SHAEF plans also included industrial

rehabilitation items specifically excluded from Plan A. By D-day, however,

SHAEF collapse planning had been

brought in line with Plan A premises,

though the operational relief plans still

had not been. In any case, firm commitments were made against only the first

90 days of assault. The requirements—

34,000 tons of food, 23,000 tons of coal,

2,700 tons of soap and miscellaneous

other supplies—were to be met, in the

main, from United Kingdom stockpiles.

The U.K. stockpile, moreover, was conceived as the main reserve from which

SHAEF emergency demands could be

met, though, as has been noted, the

British insisted on limiting withdrawals

and on early replacement from outside

sources in the case of assault.12

The structure of civilian relief plans

in existence when the Normandy invasion got under way on 6 June 1944 was

thus a complicated and imposing edifice

but one that would require extensive

adaptation to the war situation. Other

than the firm commitments for the assault phases in both northern and southern France, the Balkan stockpile, and

the arrangements agreed as a result of

the emergency in Italy, plans were tentative and shaped in terms of an early

German collapse. The pools of supplies

provided in Plans A and B from sources

around the globe could not be translated into reality unless ships were available to transport them at the time they

were needed. Apart from shipping, there

were other questions left unanswered.

Plan A did not provide for the heavy

imports of coal that would undoubtedly

be necessary once the assault was under

way; there was a supposition that the

British would furnish coal, but no

definite agreement. Similarly, the assumption that the U.K. stockpile would

be a principal source for food was valid

only for collapse conditions, not for assault. In general, also, theater operational planning based on assault, when

carefully analyzed, showed estimates of

requirements by area considerably in

excess of quantities included in the overall supply plan; only by drawing on the

bank provided for a much wider area,

and thereby exhausting the reserve for

collapse, could they be met. The provision of rehabilitation supplies for the

military period was hardly adequate, and

procedures for requisitioning unprogramed demands were extremely complicated. No plan at all had been made

for the postmilitary period, or for the

transition from military to civilian control.

By its very nature, however, civilian

supply planning could not be as exact

as planning the supply of military forces.

Conditions to be encountered, numbers

of persons to be fed or clothed, and the

12

 (1) ID, Civilian Supply, Text, I, 166-69, 196-97,

244-47. (2) Ltr, Hq COSSAC, CAD, to Secretariat

CCS, 6 Jan 44, sub: Civilian Supply Reqmts, Opns

RANKIN C and OVERLORD, ID CSB Basic Pol File

Genl 1944. (3) Min, 17th Mtg CCAC(S), 11 Feb 44.

(4) ID Rpt, Essential Civilian Supplies . . . , 28 Apr

44. (5)CCAC(S) 11, 31 Jan 41, title: Civilian Supply

—Opnl Reqmts for Europe. (6) CCAC(S) 9/1, 15

Feb 44, title: U.K. Stockpiles for Initial Relief

Reqmts. (7) Min, 18th mtg CCAC(S), 25 Feb 44,

Item 6.
THE ARMY AND CIVILIAN SUPPLY-II 771

relative need for rehabilitation as opposed to relief supplies were all unpredictable and far more dependent than

supply of troops on the rate of military

advance. The need for combined agreement on financial responsibility and on

sources of supply spread round the globe

made planning an extremely complicated process. Uncertainty as to the duration of the period of military responsibility posed further difficulties. The

agreements reached on an over-all combined plan represented as solid an

achievement as was possible under the

circumstances.

Operational Procedures

Beginning about June 1944 the emphasis in civilian relief activities shifted

from planning to operations. During the

summer of 1944 theater needs did not

assume large proportions and posed few

logistical problems. In northern France,

the Allied beachhead remained small

for some time and lay in an area relatively rich in agricultural produce. Even

in Italy the advance north of Rome was

slow, and stockpiles built up during the

first half of 1944 permitted a slowdown

in shipments. The arrangements already

made for civilian supply in the assault

phases of operations therefore sufficed.

Not until fall, by which time much larger areas had been liberated, was the need

for such quantities of supplies as set up

in Plans A and B to be felt.

That need, nevertheless, was always

in the background. During the summer

of 1944 the agencies concerned did what

they could to adapt the over-all combined plan to the situation as it was developing, to render the procurement and

shipment of supplies as responsive as

possible to theater needs, and to make

the requisitioning of supplies for civilian relief as simple and direct as that

of supplies for troops.

The quantities for each area and the

sources of supply approved in Plans A

and B were accepted as the ceiling on

procurement subject to shipping and

supply limitations. Theater operational

plans were automatically approved as

long as they fell within these ceilings.

The theater commanders were also required to set up the necessary shipping

within their over-all military allocations

and to indicate the phasing of their requirements. On the basis of this phasing,

CCAC (S) designated specific sources and

the theater then requisitioned directly

against them.

Originally each individual theater requisition on the United States had to be

forwarded to the International Division

for submission to the CCAC (S) before

shipping instructions were issued to the

port. But once approved and phased theater programs had been established, the

ASF moved to simplify the system. The

formal procedure finally established on

3 November 1944 provided that upon

allocation of supply responsibility to the

United States by the CCAC (S) for a

stated quantity of supplies, the International Division would forward a supply program through the Office of the

Chief of Transportation to the responsible port of embarkation for the theater

concerned. When requisitions against

this program were submitted to the port

by the theater, the port would, after

screening, ship the supplies requested.

Theater requirements not falling within

the over-all combined program, however, still had to be submitted for an

item-by-item review by the CCAC(S),
772 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

with the exception of certain requests

from SHAEF.13

A fundamental problem arose out of

the variation between the area estimates

in Plan A and those made by SHAEF.

Very soon after D-day, SHAEF took the

position that it could not confine its

operational requirements within the

limits of a plan prepared on totally different assumptions from the conditions

under which it was operating, and, in

particular, that it could not insure its

requirements for any given area would

fall within the amounts allotted for that

area in Plan A. As a matter of fact, once

SHAEF planning had been extended to

cover hiatus areas, requirements began

to burgeon beyond these approved limits. An International Division officer in

mid-August found them three times those

in Plan A and double those in Plan B

for the areas then under SHAEF control.

There was little the CCAC could do to

reconcile the discrepancies except to

warn SHAEF that the ceilings in the

current supply plan (Plan A and approved supplementary quantities in Plan

B) were based on actual supply and shipping limitations and to exceed them

might be simply to postpone a day of

reckoning. The initiative was left in the

hands of the theater commander, and

the net effect was to transform the Plan

A pool into a bank of operational supplies with the initial area estimates on

which it had been based practically obliterated.14

In developing special procedures for

handling technical stores — equipment

needed to restore public utilities, transport, and communications systems—differences between British and Americans

had to be ironed out. It had been agreed

that standard military items would be

used for these purposes, but the British

wanted to place technical supplies for

civil affairs purposes in a special pool

and to requisition them through civil

affairs channels. The Americans wanted

simply to draw on stocks pooled under

theater control for civilian and military

use. In the end, the Americans prevailed.

The procedure finally agreed to in September 1944 provided, in brief, that theater commanders should use military

stocks for civilian supply purposes and

requisition for replacement through service channels, these replacement requisitions to be subject to approval of

CCAC (S) .15

A final problem was the old one of

filling the void in organizational arrangements for eventual transition to civilian

control and for handling supplementary

rehabilitation programs in the interim.

In May 1944 the State Department and

FEA established for this purpose the

Liberated Areas Committee (LAC) under the chairmanship of Dean Acheson

of State. A combined counterpart, the

Combined Liberated Areas Committee

(CLAC) was established in Washington

at the end of July with a subsidiary in

London, the London Coordinating Committee. Both the LAC and the CLAC

set up operating subcommittees for sup- 13

 (1) ID, Civilian Supply, Text, I, 247-52, 271-75;

and Doc Suppl, 120. (2) ASF Cir 154, 24 May 44.

(3) ASF Cir 363, 3 Nov 44. 14 (1) Msgs, MEL 89, SHAEF to CCS, CM-IN 9116,

12 Jul 44, and LEM 103, CCS to SHAEF, CM-OUT

66385, 17 Jul 44. (2) Memo, Gen Wood, Dir P&O,

ASF, for Dir Materiel, 23 Jul 44, sub: Consumption

of Civilian Relief Supplies in Europe, ID 014 Civ Sup

XVIII. (3) Memo, Capt Ed Jenison, CSB, ID, for

Maj Palmer, 16 Aug 44, ID, Civilian Supply, Doc

Suppl, 280. 15

 (1)ID, Civilian Supply, Text, I, 265-71. (2)

CCAC(S) 8/6, 29 Sep 44, title: Supply of Technical

Stores for Civil Affairs.
THE ARMY AND CIVILIAN SUPPLY-II 773

ply. The War Department was represented on the LAC by the Civil Affairs

Division and on its supply subcommittee

by the Civilian Supply Branch, International Division, but was permitted only

observers on the combined committees.16

The formation of these civilian committees completed the structure of civil

affairs organization. Though their principal function was planning for the transition from military to civilian control,

they also served a useful purpose during

the military period as points for processing requirements from theaters for supplementary supplies disapproved in the

CCAC (S) on grounds of lack of military

necessity. For the most part, however,

the role of the combined civilian committees was a limited one as long as

the military authorities retained control.

The Food Crisis in Italy

In the rapid advances of August and

September 1944, the Allies liberated

most of France, Luxembourg, and Belgium, and part of the Netherlands, thus

vastly increasing the areas for which they

were responsible and bringing under

their control large urban populations.

In Italy they advanced rapidly north of

Rome, and in the Balkans the British

prepared to enter Greece in force and

to send an Allied relief mission to Yugoslavia. The full impact of the demand

for civilian relief supplies was finally

being felt, and at precisely the same time

an acute shipping and port discharge

crisis threatened to preclude meeting it.

By the end of October the outlines of

crises both in Italy and in northwest

Europe were taking shape.

It was in Italy that the matter came

to a head first. By September 1944 the

Allies had been in Italy for a year; still

the country continued in a state of semistarvation and chaos, with no real amelioration in sight. Press reports painted

such black conditions as a mortality rate

of 50 percent among infants, 200,000

deaths annually from tuberculosis, and

an average food consumption of 664

calories daily. Although these figures

were erroneous, the real ones were sufficiently alarming. On 8 September the

President sent a special directive to the

Secretary of War citing the "critical supply situation in Italy" and instructing

the War Department to "take immediate

action to make available the additional

essential civilian supplies and shipping

to remedy this condition."17 This directive was only one indication of a general

reorientation of policy toward Italy that

found further expression in a joint statement of the President and the Prime

Minister at Quebec on 26 September.

On the political side, Roosevelt and

Churchill declared that the Italians

should have more responsibility for their

own government, and decreed that responsibility should be gradually shifted

from the Allied Control Commission, to

be renamed the Allied Commission, to

the Italian Government. On the economic side, "first steps should be taken

toward the reconstruction of an Italian

economy—an economy laid low under

the years of misrule of Mussolini and

ravished by the German policy of venge16 ID, Civilian Supply, Text, I, 299-315.

17

 (1) Memo, President for Secy War, 8 Sep 44,

OPD 014.1, Case 128. (2) Msg, WARX 27877, CCAC

to AFHQ, U.K. Base, Hq COMZ ETOUSA, and

SHAEF, 9 Sep 44. (3) Msg, AFHQ to WD, FX 27517,

LAC 700, 19 Sep 44. Last two in Folder Lend-Lease,

Hq ASF.
774 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

ful destruction."18 Following an AngloAmerican suggestion, the UNRRA General Council agreed that it would provide relief for displaced persons and

refugees in Italy. On 10 October the

President relaxed restrictions on Italian

exports and announced that funds available from this source, from dollar remittances of individuals in the United States

to friends in Italy, and from the dollar

equivalent of lire paid out to American

troops would be available to enable the

Italians to obtain essential civilian supplies in the United States to supplement

the military relief program.19

The new approach called for both an

accelerated measure of relief and a beginning on the long-term problem of

rehabilitation. General Wilson, Supreme

Allied Commander in the Mediterranean, was already convinced of the urgency of both lines of action. On 13 September he told the CCS that the old

disease and unrest formula had outlived

its usefulness in Italy and asked for a

new directive on economic rehabilitation. "If the two governments at this

stage," he predicted, "consider only what

is required in the interest of the war

effort, they may lose the opportunity

of ensuring one of their own long term

interests, i.e., the establishment of a reasonably prosperous and contented Italy

after the war." On 24 September he forwarded a request for a considerable increase in grain shipments to Italy, a

request that had disturbing implications.20

The genesis of Wilson's request for

increased grain supplies goes back to

July 1944, when at the behest of the

Allied Control Commission he agreed

to raise the daily bread ration in Italy

from 200 to 300 grams. The Control

Commission had argued at the time that

this would not make necessary any increased imports. The existing consumption of bread, it estimated, was probably

around 300 grams daily but much of the

bread was in black market channels. Announcement of a 300-gram bread ration

was conceived as a psychological measure

to dispel fears that led to hoarding and

black marketing and to bring into government warehouses grain that was being diverted into illegal channels. Accepting these premises, and reasoning

that the action could be rescinded if

necessary, Wilson went ahead with the

announcement of the increased ration

despite a warning from the CCAC that

it might require up to 700,000 tons of

increased imports and that they could

positively not be furnished.

The action did indeed have salutary

effects. It brought a larger proportion

of the crop into government warehouses,

thus helping to curb inflation and weaken the black market; but the Allied Control Commission soon found that these

improvements were not enough. A study

of the requirements for the next harvest

year, extended to include areas at the

time still under German control, indicated clearly that the import program

would have to be heavily augmented if

the 300-gram ration was to be established throughout all Italy and not mere- 18

 Joint Statement of President Roosevelt and

Prime Minister Churchill on Post-War Europe,

26 Sep 44, OPD 014.1, Case 128. 19

 Statement by President, 10 Oct 44, Dept State

Bulletin, 15 Oct 44, p. 403. 20

 (1) Quote from Msg, NAF 778, AFHQ to

AGWAR for CCS, 13 Sep 44, ID 014 Civ Sup, XXIV.

(2) Ltr, SACMED to Secys, CCS, 24 Sep 44, sub:

Bread Ration for Italy, Incl, CMT 64/M, 11 Oct 44,

title: Provision of Additional Civilian Supply Shpg

for Italy.
THE ARMY AND CIVILIAN SUPPLY-II 775

ly confined to the south. Even with efficient amassment, it was calculated the

1944 harvest would provide only 160

grams daily for all Italy. To provide

supplementary quantities necessary to

raise it to 300 grams would require imports of 1,536,000 tons, about 50 percent

more than had been scheduled. Yet the

Control Commission now felt that the

300-gram ration was a must if the new

approach in Italy was to mean anything

at all. Wilson urged the CCS to approve

the increased imports, pointing out that

only in this way could Italian food consumption be brought to the approved

minimum 2,000-calorie-a-day level:

There is among sections of the urban

population, I am advised, a condition of

under-nourishment which is the cumulative

result of the war years, the mis-management

of the Fascist government and oppression

by the Germans. While we are in no way

responsible for this condition, and have, in

fact, in some measure, arrested its growth

during the year in which we have had

responsibility, we cannot on that account

overlook the consequences of prolonging

the condition. . . . Under the proposed program there will be involved a lower per

capita import of wheat than was the case

during the first year of the occupation.. . . It should not be lost sight of that Italy

normally imported substantial quantities

of wheat in peace years when conditions in

respect to cultivation, fertilizer, agricultural

equipment, labor and transport, were not

subject to present difficulties. . . .

21

Wilson's requests were clearly in line

with the new approach publicly announced by the President and the Prime

Minister, but War Department officials

could only look upon the situation with

considerable apprehension. The time

had long passed when they had expected

to be rid of the responsibility of Italian

relief; now they were being asked to

assume an additional burden in that area

in the face of a shipping shortage to meet

military needs in all theaters of war.

They were less inclined to accept the

Allied Control Commission's view of the

situation than that of their own commanders, who emphasized that the problem was more one of equitable distribution than one of shortage of supplies.

"Black market operations continue,"

reported Brig. Gen. Carter B. Magruder,

MTOUSA SOS commander, on 30 September, "and the increased ration is

largely for the purpose of cutting out

the black market and thus releasing reserves held by the Italians hoping for an

increase in prices. Little is done in the

way of enforcing rationing by police

power, and the Allied Control Commission feel little responsibility along this

line."22

In his reply to the President's directive of 8 September, made before the

receipt of General Wilson's enlarged requirements, Secretary Stimson emphasized that the War Department was only

an agent of the CCS in the civilian supply field, and that it was completely fulfilling its obligations under CCS plans.

He went on to say that the Department

would, however, take appropriate action

to provide its share of any additional

requirements received from the theater

commander, and in this way incurred at

21

 (1)Ibid. (2). (2) Komer, Civil Affairs and Military Government in Mediterranean Theater, ch. XI, pp. 2-14.

22 (1) Memo, Gen Lutes for Dir Materiel, 30 Sep

44, sub: Rpt by Gen . . . Magruder on General

Conditions in AFHQ, ID 014 Civ Sup, XXIII. (2)

Memo, Somervell for DCofS, 25 Sep 44, sub: Essential Civilian Supplies for Italy ..., ID 014 Civ Sup,

XXII.
776 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

least some obligation to meet Wilson's

requests. The President's interpretation

of that obligation was indicated by his

public announcement on 4 October that

steps were being taken to "increase the

bread ration in those areas of Italy where

food supplies are below the standard

necessary to maintain full health and

efficiency," a statement that was given

wide circulation in the Italian press and

generally interpreted as a public commitment to the 300-gram ration for all

occupied Italy.23

The President's announcement was

clearly premature in the view of the

military authorities. As the dimensions

of the problem were outlined in the CCS

committees, there seemed no means of

providing the necessary shipping. It appeared that no further stocks of wheat

would be available from Australia, the

previous source for the Mediterranean,

since all surplus Australian wheat was

being diverted to India to meet famine

conditions, and that therefore all grain

or flour would have to be shipped from

North America. The existing civilian

supply program for Italy, which covered the year period from July 1944

through June 1945 and was based on a

240-gram ration for all Italy, called for

shipments of 1,010,000 tons of grain.

Of this, 170,000 tons had been shipped

by October and 200,000 tons were scheduled for shipment during the remainder of 1944. The balance of 640,000 tons,

to be shipped during the first six months

of 1945, would have to be increased to

1,166,000 tons if the 300-gram ration

scale were approved, requiring an additional ten sailings per month from the

United States. The American military

transportation authorities could see no

way of making U.S. bottoms available

for the purpose, and WSA would sanction no further requests on the British

since their Import Program had already

been cut to provide ships to support

U.S. military operations. The Combined

Military Transportation Committee

wrestled with the problem to no avail,

and finally the American members merely forwarded their own recommendations to the U.S. member of the CCAC

urging that no commitment be made to

establish the 300-gram ration. "Since the

requirements for military cargoes now

exceed available shipping," they noted,

"it is probable that the present program

will have to accept deficits and there is

no reason to expect an increase in shipping allocations."24

Nothing deterred, the President once

again entered the lists. Accepting the

shipping difficulties but noting that

SACMED had been able to accumulate

a grain reserve for northern Italy, he

pointed out that that area might not

fall to the Allies until Germany collapsed, an event probably to be long

delayed. So he assumed to himself the

responsibility "for asking General Wilson to increase the ration to 300 grams

throughout all Italy that our forces oc23 (1) OWI Press Release 1827, 4 Oct 44. (2) Memo,

Secy War for President, 15 Sep 44, ID 014 Civ Sup,

XXII. (3) Komer, Civil Affairs in the Mediterranean,

ch. XI, p. 15.

24

 (1) Memo, J. E. Killough, Secy JMTC, for Directors, ID ASF and CAD WDGS, 26 Oct 44, sub: Shpg

Provisions for Italian Wheat, folder JCS 144, Box

122894, WSA Conway File. (2) Min, 86th mtg JMTC,

19 Oct 44. (3) Memo, Lt Col A. E. Palmer for CofT,

16 Oct 44, sub: Shpg Provisions for Italian Wheat,

ID 014 Civ Sup, XXV. (4) Ltr, Harry L. Hopkins to

Adm Land, 10 Oct 44, folder Reading File Aug-Nov

44, Box 122893, WSA Conway File. (5) Ltr, Land to

Hopkins, 13 Oct 44, folder Harry L. Hopkins, Box

122891, WSA Conway File.
THE ARMY AND CIVILIAN SUPPLY-II 777

cupy."

 25

 In pursuance of the President's

instructions, the U.S. War Department

recommended to the British War Office

that instructions be issued in the name

of the CCS to General Wilson approving an increase in the bread ration to

300 grams throughout Italy. In a very

real sense, however, the President had

gotten the cart before the horse. The

British would agree to the 300-gram

ration only if the United States furnished

the shipping. "In your instructions . . .

to your Secretary of War," Churchill informed the President on 12 November,

"you have jumped a good many fences.

. . . Commitments of this kind are bound

to tie up shipping, and for this reason

you will understand that I am rather

concerned. Great Britain cannot provide

the additional tonnage required and I

trust your War Department will adopt

measures to take care of the increase in

supplies."26

The War Department was in no position to do what the Prime Minister

asked. The fall shipping crisis had

reached its height, and the JCS were

about to recommend cutbacks in sailings to the Mediterranean in the months

following for military purposes as well

as for civilian relief.27 In November and

December 1944 Wilson was forced to

take cuts in civilian supply shipments.

The result, in the light of the public

promises of the President, was to place

the theater commander in an impossible

position. To add to the complications,

UNRRA now proposed to commence its

supplementary program for feeding displaced persons in Italy and asked for an

allocation of ships in December. On 17

November Wilson bitterly complained

to the CCS, presenting for the first time

an unequivocal demand for more shipping. Once again, however, the CCS

could only come up with a negative reply, informing Wilson that no commitment should be made to the 300-gram

ration or to the UNRRA supplementary

program unless he could provide shipping for these purposes by shifting priorities on allocations already made to

his theater.28

The Allied Commission refused to retreat from its position, arguing that the

300-gram ration had now become a military as well as a political necessity. "We

must expect disease arising from malnutrition," wrote the chief commissioner, "and acceleration in inflation and the

activities in the black market, a decrease

in morale leading to an increase in crime

and prostitution, disorders and food riots

. . ."—conditions that might well interfere with military operations.29

 On 21

December Field Marshal Alexander,

Wilson's successor as SACMED, renewed

the appeal to the CCS in stronger terms:

I am aware in general terms of the shipping situation and alive to the effect of

conflicting claims of many operations in

many Theaters of war. It is my duty, however, to point out to you in terms which

allow of no misunderstanding that I cannot

25 Ltr, President to Secy War, 31 Oct 44, Hq ASF

folder Lend-Lease. This letter was also made public

and published in the Italian press.

26 (1) Paraphrase of Msg, Churchill to Roosevelt,

12 Nov 44, CAD 400.38 (2-20-43) Sec 11. (2) Ltr, Secy

War to President, 7 Nov 44, OPD 014.1, Case 128. 27

 See above, ch. XXII.

28

 (1) Msg NAF 814, CG AFHQ to CCS, 17 Nov 44,

app. B to CMT 64/1, 20 Nov 44, title: Provision of

Additional Civilian Supply Shpg for Italy. (2) CMT

64/2, 29 Nov 44, same title. (3) Msg FAN 465, CCS

to AFHQ, 8 Dec 44, in Coles and Weinberg, Civil

Affairs: Soldiers Become Governors, p. 504.

29 Memo, Chief Commissioner, AC, for AFHQ, 12

Dec 44, in Coles and Weinberg, Civil Affairs: Soldiers Become Governors, p. 504.
778 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

administer those parts of Italy under my

control in accordance with the policies

quoted above and which are known to the

Italians unless I am regularly provided

with the means to do so. The alternative is

an Italy embittered by unfulfilled promises,

by hunger and distress. This I believe

would be a grave handicap to our immediate war effort and a lamentable example

to other nations of the injustice of Allied

dealings.30

Alexander indicated that he was willing

to import wheat if necessary "at the expense of military requirements if operationally possible to do so."31

The impasse could not be resolved

until the shipping crisis itself ended. It

will be recalled that in early December

1944, under pressure from WSA, the

JCS took action to break up shipping

congestion in the various theaters and

thus free more ships for outward sailings

from the United States.32 They then entered with the British Chiefs, at the latter's request, into an over-all survey of

the shipping situation. While awaiting

the results of this study, the CCS delayed a reply to Alexander. Finally, however, on 18 January they cabled him

authorization to establish within the liberated sections of Italy "the maximum

basic ration you decide is practicable in

the light of the currently approved shipping programme up to a maximum of

300 grams of bread . . . per person per

day."33 This, as an OPD officer noted,

"may or may not comply with the President's desire to increase the ration to

300 grams but it is the best compromise

possible in view of the shipping situation."34

Alexander at first felt that his stocks

and prospective deliveries would not permit any action, but in February he was

notified of an increase in his shipping

allocations for the following months and

with the high priority he now placed on

civilian supply he was able to foresee

for the first time the minimum stocks

necessary for the 300-gram ration. On

16 February 1945 he made the long-delayed announcement of the establishment of this ration for all Italy under

Allied control.35

There were similar delays in instituting an economic rehabilitation program

in Italy along the lines promised by the

President and Prime Minister at Quebec. Wilson's cable of 13 September 1944

requesting a new directive remained unanswered for three months. General Somervell argued that the War Department

should not depart from its basic premise

that civilian supplies should be furnished

only on the basis of military necessity.

The trouble now was that, even accepting this premise, there was undoubtedly

an element of military necessity in the

Italian rehabilitation program, and the

President evidently looked to the War

Department and not to the civilian agencies to take the initial steps to fulfill his

general plan for aid to the Italian economy. Moreover, in view of the over-all

shortage, the military showed little inclination to relinquish control of even

the smallest quantities of shipping to

other agencies. Small wonder, then, that

30

 Msg, Alexander to CCS, 1 Dec 44, Ibid., p. 504. 31

 Ibid. 32

 See above, ch. XXII. 33

 Msg, FAN 478, CCS to AFHQ, 18 Jan 45, in

Coles and Weinberg, Civil Affairs: Soldiers Become

Governors, pp. 518-19.

3* Memo, Gen Lincoln, Chief S&P Gp, OPD, for

Asst Secy, WDGS, 16 Jan 45, ABC 430, Sec 1. 35

 (1) Msgs, Alexander to CCS, 26 Jan and 16 Feb

45, in Coles and Weinberg, Civil Affairs: Soldiers

Become Governors, p. 519. (2) Komer, Civil Affairs

in the Mediterranean, ch. XI, pp. 24-27.
THE ARMY AND CIVILIAN SUPPLY-II 779

the economic program was delayed.

Meanwhile, however, the Allied Commission in Italy went ahead with its

studies of Italian agriculture and industry and drew up a program of import

requirements for rehabilitation, dividing them into two groups, the first to be

provided by the military under a more

liberal interpretation of the disease and

unrest formula, the second to be a supplementary program of industrial firstaid to be financed by the Italians using

the resources indicated in the President's

10 October announcement.

The CCS early in January finally authorized the launching of the program,

directing Alexander to accomplish the

maximum rehabilitation possible, consistent with the discharge of his military

mission, using Italian resources and such

supplies as he should be authorized to

import. The imports to be carried in

the military program were designated

Category A, those to be paid for by the

Italian Government Category B. The

distinction between the two categories

was, of course, hardly a real one, as the

two parts were interdependent and

equally necessary in the task of economic

rehabilitation. However, under the terms

of the CCS directive, the Allied Commission worked out with AFHQ an arbitrary division into the two categories

for purposes of requisitioning. Category

A items were to be requisitioned through

military channels by AFHQ to the

CCAC with the supply subcommittee to

render a final decision as to whether

they could be included in the category

of military necessity or relegated to Category B. Category B items were to be

passed directly from the Allied Commission to CCAC, which would forward

them to the civilian authorities for action. In actual fact, the CCAC did not

receive the first Category A program

until May 1945, after the hostilities in

Europe were ended. Italian rehabilitation therefore became, in the main, a

postwar problem.36

Northwest Europe and the National

Import Programs

The civilian supply problem in northwest Europe never reached quite the

crisis point it did in Italy. Except in

areas in the northern part of the Netherlands, held by the Germans until V-E

Day, there was never the same amount

of civilian distress or economic dislocation and chaos. The German withdrawal

from France was so rapid that any considerable destruction of crops was impossible; sufficient indigenous stocks remained to prevent immediate widespread disease and unrest. SHAEF was

able, until well toward the end of 1944,

to get along with considerably less civilian relief supplies than it had anticipated.

Yet the slow rate of civilian supply

imports during 1944 was less a matter

of lack of need than lack of means. There

was widespread malnutrition and even

starvation in areas occupied by the Allies in northwest Europe, even if it did

not assume dangerous proportions. Because of inadequate port capacity,

SHAEF simply found it impossible to

36 (1) Msgs, NAF 810, SACMED to CCS, 1 Nov 44,

and FAN 450, CCS to SACMED, 13 Nov 44, in Coles

and Weinberg, Civil Affairs: Soldiers Become Governors, p. 505. (2) Memo, Somervell for Dir CAD,

17 Nov 44, sub: Non-concurrence in Proposed Economic Policy for Italy, ID 014 Civ Sup, XXVIII.

(3) Komer, Civil Affairs in the Mediterranean, covers

these matters in some detail. (4) ID, Civilian Supply,

Text, I, 447-50.
780 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

FRENCHMEN RECEIVING THEIR BREAD RATION

call forward appreciable civilian supply

tonnages.

Only 21 percent of SHAEF estimates

were imported into northern France during 1944; in the south, more of a grain

deficit area, the rate was higher—75 percent of advance estimates—but the sum

of civilian supply imports was still small.

These shortfalls had the effect of postponing the day of reckoning. Indigenous stocks were rapidly exhausted and

food shortages began to appear. Even

more serious, the completely disorganized state of the French transportation

system, the scarcity of coal, raw materials, seeds, fertilizer, and industrial rehabilitation items, combined with the

excessive demands of the Allied military

machine on the French economy, threatened to increase the relief burden immensely unless steps were taken soon

to provide rehabilitation supplies. Belgium had always been heavily dependent

upon imported foodstuffs, and the areas

of the Netherlands as yet not taken were

known to be reduced to a state of semistarvation.37

By the end of 1944 a large backlog of

demand for civilian supplies in northwest Europe had built up. Stated SHAEF

requirements for relief supplies for the

first six months of 1945 threatened by

themselves to place an exceptionally

37

 (1) USFET Gen Bd Study 33, Procedures Followed by CA and MG in the Restoration, Reorganization and Supervision of Indigenous Civil Administration, pp. 110-17. (2) ID, Civilian Supply, Text,

1, 331-33, 406-07.
THE ARMY AND CIVILIAN SUPPLY-II 781

heavy strain on supplies and shipping

from North America. In addition, the

French Government, which was anxious

to make an early start on rehabilitation

and to assume a larger role in the war

against Germany, developed its own national import program and vigorously

pressed for an independent allocation

of shipping to carry it out. Within this

national import program the French

wished eventually to absorb the shipping and supplies previously allocated

as military relief.

As in Italy, shipping was the key factor. But for the shipping shortage, the

War Department would have been quite

willing to agree to turn over the civilian

supply programs in northwest Europe

to the respective national authorities. In

fact, military officials took the lead in

August and September 1944, when an

early end of the war in Europe seemed

probable, in developing plans for a turnover with 1 January 1945 as the target

date.

SHAEF took even more positive steps

in co-operation with the French Provisional Government. The French, on the

basis of a 1 January 1945 target date,

drew up an import program for the first

six months of 1945 totaling almost 7

million tons, mostly coal, raw materials,

and industrial rehabilitation items. To

co-ordinate this national import program

with the military relief program, SHAEF

established in Paris the Four-Party Committee consisting of French officials, U.S.

and British economic advisers, and the

SHAEF mission to France. The Belgians

also drew up a similar program, and

a similar Four-Party Committee was

formed in Brussels. Anticipating an improvement in the port situation after

the capture of Antwerp, SHAEF agreed

that in all probability it could release

5,000 tons daily capacity in Mediterranean ports, 5,000 in Seine ports, 4,000

in Pas de Calais ports, and the entire

capacity of Bordeaux when that port

was taken, to the French. In informing

the CCS of these developments, SHAEF

proposed that no definite transfer date

be set but that "the military program of

direct relief items . . . continue concurrently with [the national import] program . . . but gradually diminish in

scope until there is complete termination of military responsibility."38 For

the time being, the military program

would be confined generally to minimum relief supplies for forward areas

while the French Government would

import all else. SHAEF candidly admitted that in the situation existing in

France, many of the items in the French

national program would serve a more

useful purpose than the Plan A items

scheduled for import as military relief.39

SHAEF's proposals were framed without reference to the developing shipping crisis, and their receipt in Washington early in November found the

atmosphere in the War Department considerably changed from that of September. There was no longer any illusion

that the war in Europe would soon be

over, and the acute shipping shortage

had given rise to some sober second

thoughts on the question of relinquishing control of civilian supply. The initial

War Department proposals had been

made on the assumption that as long

38

 (1) Msg, SCAEF 122, SHAEF MAIN to AGWAR,

3 Nov 44 (Paraphrase) CCAC 400 France (3-14-44)

Sec 1. (2) ID, Civilian Supply, Text, I, 393-98.

39 Memo, Palmer for Dir ID, 22 Nov 44, sub:

Summary of Temporary Duty with SHAEF Hq . . . ,

ID 014 Civ Sup, XXVIII.
782 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

as military operations continued theater

commanders would continue to control

all shipping priorities, including within

their purview the allocation of shipping

for the national import programs. The

civilian agencies, and particularly WSA,

it now appeared, wanted to make the

independent assignment of shipping for

the national import programs their own

prerogative, subject only to theater certification of port and inland clearance

capacities. Faced with possible loss of control over an important segment of available shipping, and belatedly realizing

the complications that national import

programs would introduce, the military

authorities retreated to their original

position and insisted that civilian supply shipments be limited to items of

military necessity and be kept entirely

under military control until the shipping

situation eased. On 27 November the

CCAC informed SHAEF that no additional shipping space could be allotted

for national import programs and that

SHAEF would have to decide whether

materials in the French program should

be substituted in military shipments for

those included in Plan A.40

The War Department soon found itself at odds with WSA and with the

British on this issue. Captain Conway

presented the WSA position to Harry

Hopkins on 4 December 1944, arguing

that European national governments

should be treated as claimants for shipping "in their own right," subject only

to prior clearance with theater commanders to insure that port and inland clearance capacity would be adequate. To

present these claims as part of the military shipping program, he argued,

"would place the military authorities,

who are themselves the principal claimants for shipping, in a position to make

the final allocation of shipping as between themselves and another important

group of claimants." These governments

had, after all, contributed substantial

numbers of ships to the United Nations

pool and placed them under the control

of BMWT and WSA-French, Belgian,

Dutch, Polish, Norwegian, Greek, and

Yugoslav ships, to a total of 4,627,000

dead-weight tons. "It is not unnatural

for them to feel," Conway wrote, "that

they should have the right to at least

ask the WSA and the MWT to allocate

shipping for their minimum essential

imports." And he proposed that neither

WSA nor BMWT nor the CCS were

really in a position to make allocations,

that it must be done by some designated

"civilian body or individual in a position

of high authority."41

The purpose of Conway's move was

to place the matter before the President,

but there is no record that this was done.

The next move came from the British

Chiefs of Staff who, when they proposed

in December 1944 an over-all study of

the shipping situation by the CCS, insisted that it include the prospective

civilian supply requirements not only

for military relief but also for the na40

 (1)Ibid. (2) Ltr, Col Palmer to Maj Gen Frank

Scowden, Chief Sup and Economics Br, G-5, SHAEF,

24 Nov 44, ID 014 Civ Sup, XXVIII. (3) Msg, LEM

327, CCAC to SHAEF MAIN, 27 Nov 44, CCAC 400

France (3-14-44) Sec 1. (4) Notes of Discussion in

Mr. McCloy's Office 27 Nov 44, ID 014 Civ Sup,

XXVIII. (5) Memo, Somervell for Director, CAD,

7 Nov 44, sub: Termination of Civilian Supply

Responsibility for France . . . , ID 014 Civ Sup

XXVII. (6) Draft note, 17 Nov 44, sub: Note on Shpg

for Liberated Areas, folder Msc 1944, Box 122870,

WSA Conway File.

41

 Ltr, Granville Conway to Harry L. Hopkins,

4 Dec 44, Harry L. Hopkins, Box 122891, WSA

Conway File.
THE ARMY AND CIVILIAN SUPPLY-II 783

tional import programs. The JCS agreed,

but in drafting the directive for the

study successfully blocked a British attempt to label the national import programs as "agreed and inescapable commitments."42

Nevertheless, while the negotiations

on the over-all shipping review were still

going on the British again stole a march

by dispatching Sir Richard Law to the

United States to negotiate directly with

Harry Hopkins on the issue. The British position, as Law defined it, was that

unless liberated countries were "sustained in taking up their share of the

burden, the progress of the war and the

peaceful development of Europe in the

future are both likely to be gravely

prejudiced." He insisted that national

import requirements must not be regarded as "merely the marginal element"

in any study of supply and shipping.43

Both the State Department and WSA

supported the British position against

the American military contention that

the best formula for helping the liberated areas of Europe was to win the war

as quickly as possible.44 The real issue

was, of course, the relative emphasis to

be given to pursuit of the war against

Japan as opposed to rehabilitation in

Europe once Germany was defeated.

On 14 January 1945 Hopkins and Law

reached an agreement providing for commencement of the national import programs on a limited scale:

The French import program and other

import programs when received are endorsed for planning purposes and the US

and UK agencies concerned should as

necessary facilitate, through the established

procedures, procurement against these programs so that supplies will be readily available for shipment.45

"Subject to military necessity," preliminary shipping allocations were set up as

follows: 6 ships for France from the

United States in January, 10 in February, and 10 in March; one for Belgium

in January, 2 in February, and 2 in

March; one UNRRA ship for Italy in

February and one in March. Pending

final decision, these allocations were not

to be reduced "except in the face of

military necessity and not without prior

discussion with Mr. Harry Hopkins."

A final, controversial clause provided

that the agreement was not "to alter any

present procedures whereby the availability of shipping tonnages shall be

determined by the appropriate shipping

authorities after clearance with the appropriate Chiefs of Staff."46

This controversial provision caused

trouble. The War Department claimed

for the CCS the right to veto any allocations for civilian purposes; WSA insisted that "present procedures" did not

provide any such veto power for the

42

 (1) CCS 746, 10 Dec 44; CCS 746/1, 13 Dec 44;

CCS 746/2, 15 Dec 44; CCS 746/3, 22 Dec 44; CCS

746/4, 22 Dec 44; CCS 746/5, 28 Dec 44; CPS

150/1/D, 30 Dec 44; all titled: Overall Review of

Cargo Shpg. (2) Min, 180th mtg CCS, 26 Dec 44,

Item 6; Min, 181st mtg, 30 Dec 44, Item 1. 43

 (1) Memo by Sir Richard Law, MP, with covering Ltr, Hopkins to Gen Handy, 4 Jan 45, ABC 560

(26 Feb 43) Sec 1B. (2) The War Department learned

of Law's visit from the New York Times; see draft

Ltr, Secy War to Secy State, no date, ABC 560 (26

Feb 43) Sec lA.

44 (1) Memo by Dept State, 26 Dec 44. (2) Min of

Mtg in White House, 5 Jan 45, concerning shipment of supplies for liberated areas of northwest

Europe. (3) Draft memo, JCS for President, no date.

All in ABC 560 (26 Feb 43) Sec 1B.

45 Memo of Agreement, Dept State Washington,

signed by Harry Hopkins, Dean Acheson, Richard

Law, 14 Jan 45, Incl A, CCS 746/8, 31 Jan 45, title:

Shipping Agreement.

46 Ibid.
784 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

CCS over allocations outside the military sphere.47

 In the last analysis, the

basic issue was the priority to be assigned

the national import programs vis-a-vis

military requirements, regardless of who

should make the allocations. The shipping studies revealed that there would

be a continuing shortage of cargo shipping for military purposes during the

first six months of 1945, assuming the

war with Germany continued, and the

JCS resisted any effort to expand the

civilian programs. The whole argument

was carried over into the ARGONAUT Conference at Malta and Yalta in early February, where the British made a determined fight to give civilian rehabilitation in Europe an equal place with the

war against Japan on the priority scale.

On 30 January the JCS had presented

their position in a strong memorandum

to the President, expressing serious concern "over the present determined effort to divert resources to non-military

uses, with resulting effect on our military operations, and over the implied

willingness of the British to consider

qualifying our objective of ending the

war at the earliest possible date." They

reminded him that the price would be

"paid directly in the unnecessary loss of

lives of many more American fighting

men."48 They then recommended an absolute and exclusive first priority on

military requirements vital to the conduct of the war including therein only

such civilian relief requirements as were

essential to that purpose and to maintaining the war-making capacity of the

United Nations. They would allocate

shipping for postwar rehabilitation purposes only when these military needs had

been fulfilled. As long as military requirements could not be met in full,

shipping for civilian programs should

not be allocated without prior consultation with the CCS.

The military arguments were evidently persuasive, for the conference went

on to agree that first priority should be

given to "basic undertakings" and within that category included supplies for

liberated areas only to the extent that

they would "effectively contribute to the

war-making capacity of the United Nations against Germany and Japan."49

The British effort to secure a larger place

for civilian rehabilitation in Europe as

opposed to the pursuit of the war in the

Pacific thus failed. Nevertheless, the

Hopkins-Law Agreement was tacitly confirmed by inclusion of these allocations

in the shipping budget, and the national

import programs were begun generally

in accordance with its terms. There was

no real decision as to whether the military or civilian shipping authorities were

to have the final say on allocations, and

the question continued to be argued for

some time afterward. In effect then, the

ARGONAUT decisions provided that both

the military relief and the national import programs should proceed with the

major emphasis, at least theoretically, to

continue on military relief.

In the actual implementation of the

military program, shipments of relief

supplies to Europe reached their peak

during the first six months of 1945 and

continued at a high level for some three

months longer. Shipments to northwest

47

 (1) Ltr, R. M. Bissell, WSA, to J. J. McCloy, 13

Jan 45. (2) Ltr, McCloy to Bissell, 22 Jan 45. Both

in ABC 560 (26 Feb 43) Sec 1B.

48 Memo, JCS for President, 20 Jan 45, Incl, JCS

1205/3, title: Overall Review of Cargo Shpg.

49 CCS 776/3, 9 Feb 15, title: Rpt to President and

Prime Minister.
THE ARMY AND CIVILIAN SUPPLY-II 785

Europe from all sources during the last

three months of 1944 totaled 589,000

tons; those to the Mediterranean 563,-

000 tons; in the first three months of

1945 they rose to 1,359,000 and 1,418,-

ooo tons, respectively; in the second

quarter they reached 2,336,000 and

1,559,000 tons.50 The elaborate arrangements of sources in Plans A and B in

general broke down, as had already been

foreshadowed in the fall of 1944, and a

much heavier burden of shipment fell

on the United States than had originally

been contemplated. This held true particularly for foodstuffs, though the United States also shipped substantial quantities of coal.

In January 1945, in view of the military shipping deficit and future relief

demands, the American members of

CCAC (S) renewed their bid for two million or more tons of food from the U.K.

stockpile to meet relief needs in northwest Europe and the Balkans. There was

justice in the American demands, for

the U.K. stockpile was without doubt

inflated. But the British food authorities

were tenacious in their insistence on

maintaining high levels, and the matter

was taken out of the hands of the CCAC

to intergovernmental levels and became

one of the issues in the combined shipping studies at the end of 1944. The

Combined Shipping Adjustment Board

took the position that, instead of reducing the U.K. stockpile directly by withdrawals, it should be reduced by cutting

the U.K. Import Program thus avoiding

the necessity of transshipment. This solution was adopted in general as part of a

series of complex arrangements growing

out of the shipping negotiations at the

turn of the year. The U.K. stockpile was

eventually cut by about one million tons.

The general easing of the shipping

situation that followed these negotiations made possible the tremendous upsurge in civilian supply shipments in

1945. The release of ships from the British Import Program, the break-up of the

stagnant pools of shipping under military control in overseas theaters, and other measures, combined to overcome the

much-heralded military deficit even before V-E Day. The victory over Germany freed many ships scheduled to

carry military cargo to Europe and permitted a considerable surge in civilian

supply shipments immediately following V-E Day. The expected competition

between redeployment and civilian relief in Europe never fully developed because of the rapidity with which the

surrender of Japan followed the surrender of Germany.51

The result was, nevertheless, a very

heavy drain on available supplies of foodstuffs in the United States. Fortunately,

some Canadian supplies were available

to fill part of the breach. Procedural difficulties also arose, since the Combined

Food Board refused to give priorities

to military relief requirements over

those in the national import programs,

and something of a crisis developed in

transportation to ports because of heavy

50

 See Table below, Appendix H-2.

51

 (1)CCAC(S) 93, 3 Jan 45, title: Source of Subsistence Supply. (2) Memo, Shingler for Dir, CAD,

26 Jan 45, sub: U.K. Stockpiles as Source of Supply

for Civilians in Liberated Areas . . . , ID 014 Civ Sup,

XXXII. (3) ID, Civilian Supply, Text, I, 334-37.

(4) Hammond, Food: The Growth of Policy, pp. 271-

82, deals with the rationale behind the British stock

levels. (5) Draft CSAB paper in folder U.K. Msc

1945, Box 122891, WSA Conway File.
786 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

movements in the period April through

July. But all these difficulties were

ironed out, and shipments to the SHAEF

area in the first six months of 1945

proved sufficient not only to meet stated

needs in liberated areas but to establish

a stockpile against the future needs of

occupied areas in Germany and Austria

when military responsibility in France

and the other liberated countries should

be terminated. Shipments to the Mediterranean were sufficient to maintain the

300-gram bread ration. In the Balkans

military relief operations were hampered

by civil war in Greece and the political

complications of dealing with Communists in Yugoslavia and Albania more

than by scarcity of supplies or shipping.52

Termination of Military

Responsibility

The easing of the shipping situation

during the early months of 1945, followed by the final victory over Germany

in May, paved the way for the long-delayed transition from military to civilian

control of relief and rehabilitation in

liberated areas. The Liberated Areas

Committees had, since their establishment, been working out their plans for

this eventuality. As recounted in the

previous section, plans and procedures

were developed during August, September, and October 1944 for termination

of military responsibility in northwest

Europe and the Balkans; plans for termination in Italy had been under discussion for some time longer. On 26

October the CLAC formally endorsed

the principle that "military responsibility for civilian supplies in liberated areas

of northwest Europe should be terminated at the earliest possible date," and

outlined a procedure whereby the CCS

should, on the advice of SHAEF, determine a target date for the transition, provide guidance on the problems to be

inherited from the military period, and

indicate the extent to which supplies

and allocations under military control

could be made available.53 The action

taken by SHAEF in early November to

prepare for the inception of national

import programs in France and Belgium

was in keeping with the CLAC design,

but that design soon became obscured

by the prolongation of the war with

Germany and the acute shipping crisis.

The position outlined by the U.S.

military staffs on 30 January was taken

not only as the result of the shipping

shortage but also because of a realization

that the theater commanders could hardly relinquish control of any part of their

supply lines as long as large-scale military operations continued. The experience in France, where Eisenhower turned

over control of certain areas of the country to the French, was not a happy one.

French operation of the railways was

quite unsatisfactory and some had to be

returned to U.S. military control. Somervell, who became the most outspoken

advocate of continued military control,

put his finger on the basic issue: "Since

the transportation system of France involves complex relationships between

railways, port facilities, and highway

52

 (1) For fuller discussion see ID, Civilian Supply,

Text, I, 337-46. (2) On the Balkans see Komer, Civil

Affairs in the Mediterranean, Chapter XXIII.

53

 (1) CLAC 8/1, 26 Oct 44, title: Termination of

Military Responsibility for Civilian Supply in Northwest Europe, ID, Civilian Supply, Doc Suppl, 332.

(2) ID, Civilian Supply, Text, I, 393-98.
THE ARMY AND CIVILIAN SUPPLY-II 787

transport, the further complications introduced by the independent handling

and movement of supplies inland by the

French might well produce disastrous

consequences to logistical arrangements

of our Army and delay the termination

of the war."54 This objection applied

with even greater force to Italy where

the Italian Government had less effective

control over the country than the French

Provisional Government had over France.

Under the circumstances Somervell's

arguments were sound. There were,

without question, dangers in dividing

control of the supply line between the

military and new national governments

that had little experience in handling the

general transportation and supply problems of modern war. Yet it was equally

clear by early 1945 that a military

relief formula based on preventing

disease and unrest was outdated, both

in northwest Europe and in Italy, and

that the long-term national interest of

the United States would be best served

by early steps toward rehabilitation of

agricultural and industrial production.

The situation had reached a point where

the War Department was no longer in

a position to carry out an adequate civilian supply program, but still could not

relinquish control for fear of adverse

effects on the progress of the war. The

basic fault perhaps lay in the unrealistic

distinction established in 1943, in the

very early stages of planning, between

the military and civilian periods. What

was needed by early 1945 was clearly a

single program embracing both relief

and rehabilitation regardless of who

should administer it.

Many of the ends of a unified program were finally achieved, though more

awkwardly and with greater friction.

Under the Hopkins-Law Agreement the

national import programs for France

and Belgium got under way in January

1945 and gradually gained momentum.

The UNRRA program, begun in February, and the incipient Category B

program provided the germ of a national import program for Italy. Jean Monnet, the celebrated French economic

planner, exerted an unremitting pressure on the U.S. State Department for

consolidation of the French national import program and the military relief

program into one entity under French

control. WSA supported his position

wholeheartedly. The civilian supply authorities and the combined boards tended to treat the French national program

as one having equal priority with military relief since it was forwarded after

consideration by the SHAEF Four-Party

Committee. In sum, the civilian agencies

began to anticipate the termination of

military responsibility without the announcement of a target date by the CCS

as had been provided in the CLAC procedure of the preceding October. Finally, on 6 March, SHAEF itself recommended that military responsibility for

import of relief supplies to France, with

the exception of coal and POL, be terminated at the end of that month.

With the shipping situation considerably

eased, the War Department approved,

but moved the date forward to the end

of April in order to assure a smooth transition. The date for termination of military responsibility for coal and POL was

postponed until 1 September because

the military imported those supplies in

bulk for military and civilian consum54

 Msg, Somervell, ARGONAUT, to Under Secy War

Patterson, CM-IN 30109, 31 Jan 45.
788 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

ers and rearrangement of that system

would take more time.55

Termination arrangements for the

other countries of Europe followed rapidly. On 21 May 1945 President Truman

pointed out that the time had come to

release the War Department from its

obligations under his predecessor's 1943

directive. "No responsibility for civilian

supply in any liberated country in Europe should continue to rest upon the

Army," he wrote, "except as may be

dictated by the actual necessities of the

military situation. On the other hand,

no liberated country should be prejudiced by termination of this responsibility. The date and conditions of termination in each case should be subject,

of course, to the recommendation of the

military commander in the field."56

Under the terms of this directive, termination was arranged for Belgium, the

Netherlands, Denmark, Norway, and

Luxembourg for food on 1 September

and for coal and POL on 1 October, the

burden to be assumed by the national

governments concerned. The same termination dates were finally arranged for

Italy except for the Venezia Giulia section in the north, the area of YugoslavItalian dispute. The old problem of a

successor agency in Italy was finally

solved by UNRRA, on 22 August 1945,

including Italy in its program for the

coming months. In the Balkans UNRRA

assumed responsibility on 1 June 1945

for food for Greece and Yugoslavia, on

1 July for all supplies for Albania, on

1 August for coal for Greece and Yugoslavia, and on 1 September and 1 October, respectively, for POL to the last

two countries.57

By the time combined military responsibility in all these areas had been

finally terminated, the United States,

United Kingdom, and Canada had

shipped a total of 13,507,940 long tons

of civil relief supplies to Europe—6,788,-

765 from American sources, 6,098,902

from British, and 620,273 from Canadian—as a part of the military relief program. Of this, all except 470,243 tons

was made up of coal and food, almost

equally divided between the two items.

The volume of these imports was more

than threefold that initially provided

for in Plan A and even more than that

included in Plan B. The increase is, of

course, partially explained by the fact

that the military period endured far

longer than the six months provided for

in the planning phase. But it was also

true that needs proved to be greater,

and indigenous supplies, notably coal,

far less adequate than had been assumed

in planning based on collapse rather

than an 11-month military campaign.58

The major impact of these shipments

had come later than expected, in the

first half of 1945 rather than the last

half of 1944, though this was, in itself,

partially a result of postponement of 55

 (1) Materials in folders French Misc (1945) and

ARGONAUT, Box 122890, WSA Conway File. (2) Memo,

Somervell for McCloy, 18 Feb 45, ID, 014 Civ Sup,

XXX. (3) Msgs, SCAEF 221, SHAEF Fwd to AGWAR,

6 Mar 45; FACS 169, CCS to SHAEF Fwd, 31 Mar

45; in CCAC 400 France (3-14-44) Sec 2. (4) Memo,

Capt T. L. Marsh for Director, ID, no date, sub:

Rpt... of Visit to SHAEF. (5) ID, Civilian Supply,

Text, I, 413-20.

56 Ltr, President to Secy War, 21 May 45, ID,

Civilian Supply, Doc Suppl, 360.

57 ID, Civilian Supply, Text, I, 420-61. 58

 (1) See table appendix H-2. (2) The table in

General Appendix D-7 to ID, Civilian Supply, Text,

I, shows actual quantities shipped as falling somewhere between Plans A and B, but is in error in

that it compares the actual shipments to the total

quantities in those plans, not to estimated import

requirements.
THE ARMY AND CIVILIAN SUPPLY-II 789

shipments because of the acute shipping

shortage. By the time the military shipments had been terminated, the flow of

supplies under the national import programs was well established; by June 1945

it already exceeded the volume of military relief.

As President Truman noted in directing termination of military responsibility, the Army had, despite all the difficulties encountered, discharged its obligations with regard to civilian supply in

Europe well. "Vast military operations"

had been carried to a successful conclusion "without disease and unrest in liberated areas."59

 The flood of supplies

shipped during the first nine months

of 1945 compensated for earlier deficiencies. The major weakness in the military

program, of course, lay in its entire concentration on mere relief and its lack of

any balanced economic program that

would permit an early start on rehabilitation. This omission had serious consequences in Italy, a country forced to

endure some 20 months of Allied campaigning. Consequences were less serious in northwest Europe where the early

commencement of national import programs and the end of the war with Germany after 11 months of campaigning

served to mitigate the effects of economic

dislocation.

Civilian Supply in the Pacific

Civilian supply problems in the Pacific never assumed the proportions they

did in Europe. Military operations were,

for the most part, carried on in island

areas inhabited by numerically small

primitive populations whose economies

could hardly be completely disrupted

even by the impact of modern war.

Nevertheless, a considerable problem

was foreseen once U.S. forces reached the

densely populated areas off the Asiatic

coast and those on the mainland of Asia

itself, and Army supply agencies devoted

a considerable effort to planning for civilian supply in these areas. Procedures for

the Pacific were far simpler than those in

Europe. There was unilateral, not combined responsibility, with the United

States assuming the burden in its theaters in the Pacific, the British that in

southeast Asia. Within the Pacific theaters, too, the Navy assumed responsibility

for the scattered islands within Nimitz'

command. This made it possible for

planning for the areas of Army responsibility in the Pacific and Far East to be

centered entirely in the Civil Affairs

Division and the ASF.

The basic assumptions behind Army

planning for the Pacific were generally

the same as those for Europe—a sixmonth period of military responsibility

after which civilian authority would take

over. There was, however, this difference

in the division of functions with the civilian agencies—military responsibility was

to be limited to areas of actual military

operations and in those areas include

clothing, shoes, and textiles as well as

food, fuel, soap, and sanitary supplies.

It was anticipated that since Asiatic and

island peoples had always been dependent on outside sources for their clothing, it would necessarily be a primary

item in preventing disease and unrest.60

59 Ltr, President to Secy War, 21 May 45.

60

 (1) ID Rpt, Essential Civilian Supplies for Occupied and Liberated Areas during Period of Military

Responsibility, 8 Sep 44, Incl J. (2) ID, Civilian

Supply, Text, I, 346-47. (3) Ltr, Sidney A. Mitchess,

Chief, Liberated Areas Div, Dept State, to Gen

Hilklring, 8 Jun 44. (4) Hilldring to Mitchell, 1 Jul

44. Last two in ID 014 Civ Sup, XIII.
790 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

Despite this delimitation of Army responsibility, it was decided that the International Division should develop general plans for a much wider area on the

basis of which specific plans for the areas

of military operations could later be

developed. It was recognized that the

division of area responsibility between

the Army and Navy might well be

changed, and the need for civilian supplies to support U.S. Army operations

in parts of the British Southeast Asia

Command or in China was always a

possibility.

The exact division of responsibility

in SEAC and SWPA caused occasional

trouble since some of the territories in

SWPA were former British colonies and

American forces in the Far East were

operating on supply lines within SEAC.

The JCS insisted that any policies the

British might wish to put into effect in

territories in SWPA over which they had

exercised authority before enemy occupation should be communicated to the

U.S. Chiefs of Staff for consideration by

MacArthur and be subject to his approval. The JCS also said that in SEAC

the United States would not assume authority over civil affairs except when

U.S. forces were employed in areas "other

than those over which His Majesty's

Government exercised authority prior

to enemy occupation," as China, Indochina, and Thailand, and that in those

countries the extent of U.S. civil affairs

administration would be a matter of

recommendation to the CCS by the U.S.

Joint Chiefs. The British would have to

requisition civilian supplies for SEAC

through normal lend-lease channels, not

military ones. Despite British fears that

this system would make no provision for

SWPA areas such as Borneo and Hong

Kong, the Americans insisted on it.61

Accordingly, the general plan developed covered China, Burma, Thailand,

French Indochina, Malaya, the Netherlands Indies, the Philippines, Manchuria,

Japan, Korea, Formosa, and scattered

Pacific islands, an area with a total estimated population of 731,500,000 people.

Import requirements for maintaining a

1,800-calorie standard of consumption

for the six-month military period were

conservatively estimated at 3,455,000

metric tons, with other necessities

making up an additional 345,500 tons.62

This plan was, however, a totally theoretical one. For operational purposes,

for Section VI of the Army Supply Program, and for budgeting, more detailed

plans were drawn up covering the areas

to become the probable scene of actual

operations—the Philippines, Netherlands

Indies, Formosa, the China coast from

Swatow to Ningpo, and Kyushu in the

Japanese home islands. These plans were

meshed as closely as possible with strategic and operational planning through the

Joint Logistics Committee. Prospective

needs for technical equipment were handled as operational projects through normal military channels. Estimates solely

for relief for these areas, with a total

dollar value of $132,000,000, were placed

in Section VI in the Army Supply Program and in the War Department relief

budget for fiscal year 1945.63

61

 See exchange of correspondence between Gen

Macready and Mr. McCloy, 13 Jul-9 Nov 44, ID 014

Civ Sup, XVI. 62

 (1)ID, Civilian Supply, Text, I, 358-59. (2) ID

Rpt, Essential Civilian Supplies ... . 8 Sep 44,

Incl J. 63

 (1) Memo, Gen Edgerton, Dir ID, for CAD

WDGS, 19 Oct 44, sub: Additions to Section VI of

ASP, ID CSB Basic Policy File Genl 1944. (2) ID,

Civilian Supply, Text, I, 350-58, 360-64.
THE ARMY AND CIVILIAN SUPPLY-II 791

The only Pacific areas in which the

Army actually undertook relief operations before the surrender of Japan, however, were the Philippines and those

parts of the Netherlands Indies originally

included in the Southwest Pacific Area.

Under pressure from Dutch officials in

Washington and at MacArthur's headquarters, planning for civilian supply in

the Netherlands Indies began as early

as December 1943. The Netherlands

Government presented its own estimate

of requirements in detail in February

1944, a program that went far beyond

the War Department's conception of

military necessity. Accordingly, it was

sent to MacArthur for review and he reduced it extensively, applying the military necessity formula. It still, however,

included articles outside the realm of

military procurement and therefore was

unacceptable in Washington. Finally, in

September, a formula was worked out

with theater officials and representatives

of the Dutch whereby the Netherlands

Government would itself procure and

finance all supplies for the area west of

the Macassar Strait (Java, Bali, Lombok,

Borneo, Soemba, and Soembawa; Sumatra was excluded from the agreement as

falling within SEAC), and all those supplies not falling within the military formula for the area east of Macassar (the

Moluccas, New Guinea, Timor Island,

Flores, and the Celebes); the War Department would furnish supplies considered necessary from the military viewpoint for the area east of Macassar. The

War Department would also support the

Netherlands Purchasing Commission in

its procurement by certifying the military necessity of supplies after receiving

recommendations from MacArthur and

screening requisitions. This system was

generally put into effect, though not, it

is true, without some disagreement between Washington and the theater over

the size of the requisitions and some

disappointment to the Dutch over the

limited quantities the War Department

was willing to certify for procurement

on military priority. Little of the program was actually completed, since in

July 1945 all of the Netherlands Indies

were transferred to SEAC, and though

previous certifications were confirmed no

new ones were made. Shipments to the

Netherlands Indies through U.S. military channels continued until September

1945 but only reached a total of 16,000

tons.64

The Philippines were consequently

the only area in the Pacific in which the

Army became involved in extensive civilian supply activities, but even there the

transition to civilian control was rapid.

Advance planning for the Philippines began in June 1944, based on the supposition of invasion toward the end of the

year or early in 1945. It was carried out

in close co-ordination with officials of

the Philippine Commonwealth Government in Washington. Available in the

United States for financing procurement

of relief supplies for the Philippines

were the Sugar Tax Funds, which were

the proceeds of duties collected on sugar

imported from the Philippines since the

passage of the Philippine Independence

Act in 1937. However, it was agreed that

the Army would undertake the initial

burden of relief from its own relief funds

insofar as supplies were necessary for

military purposes, leaving the tax funds

64

 (1) JCS Memo for Info 315, 27 Sep 44, title:

Civilian Relief Supplies for Netherlands East Indies.

(2) ID, Civilian Supply, Text, I, 375-84.
792 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

for use in the postmilitary period. A

program was worked out in August 1944

and approved by MacArthur for the assumed six-month period. It included

some 325,000 metric tons of supplies—

224,000 of food, 47,000 of POL, and

20,000 of coal, with the rest made up of

soap, veterinary, medical and sanitary

supplies, clothing, textiles, and miscellaneous items.

As the Leyte operation was undertaken earlier than expected, there was

no time to build up a stock of civil relief

supplies in advance, and MacArthur at

first had to rely on materials originally

intended for the Netherlands Indies.

When requisitions from MacArthur began to come in, they raised a now familiar problem in civilian supply. Many

were for rehabilitation items outside the

approved program—motor and marine

transportation equipment, construction

materials, farm tools, and fishing equipment. The War Department tried to

meet these requests, but a new issue soon

arose when MacArthur requested trade

goods such as combs, brushes, cosmetics,

pocket knives, and flashlights, comfort

articles designed to lure laborers back to

the abaca plantations. Abaca was one of

the principal sources of fiber for manufacture of manila hemp rope, an article

in very short supply in the United States.

Nevertheless, the War Department could

not agree to step so far outside what it

considered to be its field of operations,

and in the end it was agreed that FEA

should handle the trade goods through

its subsidiary, the U.S. Commercial Company. This expedient in turn very quickly raised the question of termination of

military responsibility and the inauguration of a Philippine import program with

the Sugar Tax Funds.

Termination and transition to civilian

control were arranged much more easily

in the Philippines than they had been

in any country in Europe. It was simply

a matter of gradually transferring the

entire burden from the Army to the

U.S. Commercial Company and the reinstituted Philippine Government. The

termination date was finally set at 1 September 1945. By that time some 191,000

metric tons of relief supplies had been

shipped by the Army to the Philippines.65

65

 ID, Civilian Supply, Text, I, 364-75.
PART EIGHT

CONCLUSION

CHAPTER XXXII

Logistics and Strategy in World War II

World War II was the first war fought

by the United States on a truly global

scale. The American war effort involved

establishment and support of many fighting fronts stretched around the globe

and of allies, great and small, engaged

in a common struggle against the Axis

Powers. Both the fighting fronts and the

Allies had to be supported over long sea

lines of communications. Sea transport,

in all its varied forms, became the most

important single element in logistics. In

the existing state of transportation technology, it was the only means of mass

movement of either troops or supplies

overseas and, in more specialized forms,

the only means of landing large numbers of troops on hostile coasts. Demands

of Allied civilian economies competed

with strictly military requirements for

both supplies and shipping.

Such a war imposed upon the central

directing staffs the task of carefully balancing the allocation of forces and supplies, and the shipping necessary to

transport them, among many fronts and

many nations, a task that contrasted

markedly with the simpler one in World

War I of directing a maximum effort in

support of one front. If logistics were

not, perhaps, of greater importance than

in previous wars, logistical problems

were more complex and necessitated a

greater degree of central control and

direction. Only these central planning

staffs, taking an over-all view of the

worldwide availability of all resources,

could effectively plan their division in a

multifront war. Since they could make

these allocations intelligently only in the

light of a strategic design, the result was

an unprecedented emphasis on the relationship of logistics and strategy.

The complexity of this relationship,

as well as of the logistical processes themselves, was accentuated by the need for

international agreement on almost every

phase of the conduct of the war, for it

was fought in a partnership with the

British that ran the gamut of military

activity from strategic direction to the

framing and execution of operational

plans. Despite the success achieved in

conducting the war as a genuinely combined effort, national interests had to be

continually reconciled. Involved combined arrangements for conducting and

supporting a coalition war could not

give to the whole Anglo-American supporting structure the same cohesiveness

that normally exists within a national

organization under a single direction.

Even within the American national

organization, there was considerable

diffusion of authority and responsibility,

and the extent of conflicts of points of

view and interests cannot be ignored.

In the military sphere, the War and

Navy Departments retained a high degree

of autonomy in controlling require-
796 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

ments planning, production, and distribution of materiel for their respective

forces, the unifying mechanisms within

the Joint Chiefs of Staff organization

notwithstanding. Within the JCS organization many issues were settled by a

process not too different from that used

in negotiating with the British. The

War Shipping Administration spoke

with a potent voice in determining the

allocation of critical merchant shipping,

and other civilian agencies, especially

the War Production Board, were influential in shaping and impelling the war

economy, whose capacity ultimately controlled the range and magnitude of military plans.

The Lead Time Factor

The availability of means establishes

the limits within which strategists may

realistically plot the course of military

action. Land campaigns cannot be conducted without trained and equipped

armies; bombing campaigns without

planes and trained crews; naval warfare

cannot be conducted without ships and

men, amphibious landings without assault shipping and trained amphibious

troops; nor can any type of overseas

campaign take place without extensive

means of overseas transport. Within the

limits of the national economy, choices

must be made far in advance of the

actual initiation of combat operations as

to the amounts of these and other ingredients needed in the military machine, and training and production programs begun to provide them. Planning

for the balance within and among all

the elements in the machine is an intricate affair. Experience indicates that the

lead time required for the production

of materiel is ordinarily longer than that

for organization and training of combat

formations. Thus logistical choices affecting the nature of the production

program, if made in the absence of a

strategic plan, may turn out to be strategic decisions in disguise; at the very

least they will, at a later date, narrow

the range of strategic choice. Inadequate

provision of any single ingredient may

become of decisive importance at the

critical moment, when final strategic

decisions must be made and operational

plans drawn up. Winston Churchill, for

instance, was to wonder in mid-1944

how history would ever understand why

the "plans of two great empires like

Britain and the United States should be

so hamstrung and limited" by an "absurd shortage of ... L.S.T.s."1

These earliest decisions on the general balance within the military machine

and the production programs required

to achieve it must be followed by decisions on deployment of troops to specific

areas and arrangements and preparations

for the support of specific military operations. These processes, in World War

II, also required a considerable lead

time. The earlier decisions could be

made on the scope of deployment and

the nature of operations in each specific

area, the more economical and efficient

preparations were likely to be. And,

under conditions where sea transport

could never be so plentiful as to permit

its prodigal use, movements begun in

any one direction were impossible to

reverse without a prohibitive amount of

waste motion; once sizable ground resources were committed in an area, the

1

 Churchill, Closing the Ring, p. 514.
LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY IN WORLD WAR II 797

strategy makers had only limited flexibility in planning their use elsewhere.

In this light, strategic and logistical

planning in World War II were two

sides of the same coin. Logistical decisions made on production programs well

in advance had a vital effect in determining the range of choice open to the

strategists. Choices the strategists made,

sometimes dictated by emergencies

rather than long-range plans, in turn

determined the direction ponderous

logistical machinery would take; once

oriented in that direction the range of

choice further narrowed. The shorter the

lead time for logistical preparations, the

narrower that range of choice was likely

to be. All in all, planning was an extremely complex process of first adapting

strategy to logistical possibilities, then,

in turn, of executing the detailed logistical preparations to fulfill the strategic

design. The first task had to be performed at the highest Allied levels, the

second largely by national military and

civilian organizations working independently in pursuit of presumably common

goals. Lines of authority and channels of

responsibility, however, were never quite

so clearly defined.

In an age of atomic weapons, intercontinental ballistic missiles, and rapid air

movement, choices as to the nature of

ingredients in the military machine may

well have to be made before war breaks

out. Indeed, the range of strategic choice

and the actual outcome of any war may

be determined by the forces and materiel

in being at its beginning. This has, in

fact, been the norm rather than the exception throughout history. It was only

in the nineteenth century, with mass

armies and relatively gradual mobilization of a nation's manpower and economy, that the character of the military

machine began to take shape after the

eruption of hostilities. Yet, even in

World War I, European nations found

their range of choice narrowly bound by

the nature of their mass armies and by

plans for mobilization and subsequent

military movements over existing lines

of communication, plans mostly determined in advance as part of the military

arrangements surrounding elaborate alliance systems.

The United States was fortunate in

not being so narrowly bound when it

entered World War II. The military

machine was still in process of formation. There seemed to be ample time to

adjust production programs to strategy

after the outbreak of war. The only

strategic commitment already made was

a tentative agreement with the British

that Germany should be defeated first;

actual deployments planned in support

of that principle covered only the immediate future. The period of maximum

military effort lay one or two years ahead,

and the lack of any immediate threat to

the American base itself permitted this

time to be used for careful planning and

preparation. Strategic planning, for some

time after Pearl Harbor, was to involve

allocation of resources in prospect as

well as those in being.

Grand Design or Pool

Given this set of circumstances, an

approach having immense appeal was to

begin with a long-range strategic design

—a master plan to govern the whole

paraphernalia of logistical preparations.

This plan would form the basis, subject

of course to inevitable adjustments in

the infinitely complex processes of exe-
798 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

cution, for a detailed requirements program for training of men and production

of materiel, for long-range deployment

plans, and ultimately for allocation of

resources and their deployment to the

various theaters of war.

A logical sequence of this kind was the

ideal to which both the Army staff and

American civilian administrators aspired

in the early stages of World War II. To

logisticians in particular it had a great

attraction, for it would permit an orderly

plan of action and eliminate much waste

motion. This concept of a grand design,

at least ostensibly, lay behind the Army's

calculations in the Victory Program of

1941, and it dominated the Army's planning in the months immediately following Pearl Harbor, the ultimate product

being the BOLERO-ROUNDUP plan for

striking a concentrated blow across the

English Channel against Germany in

spring 1943.

There were inherent difficulties and

dangers in the "grand design" approach,

even apart from those of securing agreement with the British. American organization for directing the war effort was

still in a state of flux, the art of requirements determination quite imperfect,

and the calculations of both manpower

availability and productive capacity imprecise. The supply of merchant shipping, on which the whole scale of overseas deployment depended, could not be

predicted very far into the future. In any

case, the grand design of 1942 proved

ephemeral; perhaps it was too simple a

concept to meet the situation in World

War II. Emergencies dictated deployments in 1942 far more effectively than

did long-range plans. Before the end of

that year the decisions to invade North

Africa and to undertake limited offensives in the Pacific produced a multifront pattern of strategy for waging the

war in 1943 rather than a strategy of

concentration.

While these decisions were being

made the patterns of manpower mobilization and of industrial production

were taking shape without the guidance

of a long-range strategic blueprint. Even

in the initial stages of these processes in

1941 and 1942, despite much talk of

strategic requirements, the practical

goals almost had to be the creation of

the largest possible military forces and

the production of the maximum amount

of military materiel. By the fall of 1942,

when the time came to readjust production plans for the next year, the major

considerations were feasibility and balance rather than detailed strategic requirements. The goals in almost every

area—ground divisions, planes, combat

ships, lend-lease to allies—had been set

beyond the realistic bounds of economic

feasibility. In the adjustment of these

programs, a process extending well into

1943, no more than the most general of

strategic considerations entered. Decisions emerged that established roughly

the proportionate claims that air, sea,

and ground forces, construction and

manning of the merchant marine, and

support of allies would have against

U.S. manpower and production. These

proportions, once established, were to

be subject to only minor adjustments

as the specific courses of action for waging the war unfolded. In effect, a pool

of multipurpose resources was created

that could be drawn on flexibly for

whatever courses of action the strategists should decide upon.

The Army's own troop basis and

supply program reflected this "pooling"
LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY IN WORLD WAR II 799

approach. The over-all troop basis—the

foundation on which supply programs

were computed—was shaped largely by

the limits of manpower available for the

Army after the demands of war industry

and of the Navy had been met. Internal

composition of that troop basis was determined less by projections of requirements of the various theaters than by

those of a balanced air, ground, and

service establishment. Demands of an

air force adequate to assure overwhelming supremacy over the Axis cut heavily

into the Army's manpower pool. Experience revealed a need for a far greater

number of service troops than prewar

planners had dreamed of. In the end the

practical limit of expansion of ground

combat forces was set at 90 divisions

instead of the 215 divisions contemplated in the 1941 Victory Program.

Changed conditions, with the USSR

engaging the main bulk of the Wehrmacht and prospects of overwhelming

Allied air power and of creating a substantial number of French divisions in

North Africa, made the reduction a reasonable gamble. Of necessity, however,

strategic concepts had to be adapted to

the scale set for American ground force

effort.

The supply program took shape generally in terms of the troop basis, though

it provided for a sizable reserve that was

not to be reduced to realistic proportions until early 1944. Until well into

1944, specific theater requirements

hardly entered into the calculations of

either initial troop equipment or of

replacement and maintenance supplies.

Weighted averages were used for all

overseas theaters rather than specific

factors for each one, for there was no

reliable forecast of specific theater deployments and little valid experience

data on which to base a scale of variations. Strategic forecasts of some sort

had perforce to be used in calculating

needs for special types of operational

equipment, but for the most part they

were educated guesses. The main virtue

of the Army Supply Program was its

generous provision for as many contingencies as possible.

The distribution system, too, was

shaped as a general system, with no substantial differentiation of method among

the several overseas areas. Emphasis was

on wholesale supply pushed forward on

an automatic or semiautomatic basis,

with all the implications this carried for

over supply or under supply of specific

items in specific areas.

The pool of U.S. military resources in

prospect in early 1943, then, was one

based largely on a concept of mass production of various items for mass distribution without the selectivity that only

calculations of specific requirements for

specific operations could provide. Herein lay the principal disadvantage of the

pool approach.

Conflicting Pulls

Despite the essentially multipurpose

nature of the military machine being

created, certain built-in features predisposed its use in certain areas. If the

main rationale for the basic Allied strategic principle that Germany should be

defeated first was simply that Germany

was the stronger enemy against whom

the main forces of our strongest allies

were already engaged in deadly struggle,

it also had a logistical raison d'être. The

latent human and industrial power of

the United States, the principal reserve
800 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

available to the Allied camp, could be

brought to bear more quickly and effectively against Germany than against

Japan. The centers of American industrial production were closer to the east

coast, ports along that coast and the

transportation network far more ample

than those in the west; the Atlantic shipping lanes (to the Mediterranean areas

as well as to the United Kingdom) were

shorter than those in the Pacific, and

reception capacity, real and potential,

far greater at the receiving end. Areas

in Europe, once a foothold was secured,

were far more suitable to the employment of substantial ground and air

forces than primitive islands of the

Pacific or the populous but undeveloped countries of southeast Asia.

Indeed, if the United States were to

create and utilize a mass ground army

within any reasonable period of time, it

would have to be in Europe against

Germany. Army planners went further

to postulate that a mass ground army

could be economically deployed and

supported only in a direct blow across

the English Channel against northwest

Europe. And the 90-division force taking

shape, with all its supporting establishment, was still a mass army; its creation

inevitably predisposed Army strategists

toward a concentration of effort against

Germany in northwest Europe. The

emerging limitations on the size of the

ground army merely reinforced the

belief that it must be used quickly and

decisively in a concentrated effort.

At the same time, the design for a

two-ocean Navy, set in train in 1940 and

1941 and confirmed in detail by early

1943, made sense only in terms of a

strong American effort in the Pacific

against Japan, for by 1944 the major part

of the strong battle fleet in prospect

could find little profitable employment

in Atlantic or Mediterranean waters. A

powerful fleet in the Pacific would inevitably act as a magnet to draw other

resources — merchant and amphibious

shipping, Army combat and service

troops, and air power—into the Pacific

battle. There were thus two conflicting

pulls inherent in the nature of the American military machine. They augured a

reasonably equal balance in the allocation of total Army and Navy resources

between Europe and the Pacific.

The pulls were exerted in 1943-44

within the framework of deployment

patterns already established in 1942 and

that necessarily had powerful influence

on those to follow. Theaters or bases,

once established, as General Marshall so

frequently insisted, generated their own

rationale for offensive strategies in given

areas. Forces deployed to one area could

not be transferred to another except at

prohibitive logistical cost. The pressures

to reinforce and to launch offensives

along several lines rather than to revise

the pattern and concentrate on one line

were, therefore, well-nigh irresistible.

This logic applied as much to the war

with Japan, in which the South and

Southwest Pacific Areas developed quite

independently of any preconceived strategy for their use, as it did to the war in

Europe, in which the decision to invade

North Africa in 1942 created an opportunity for a later invasion of Germanheld Europe from the south as an adjunct to, or a possible substitute for, a

direct attack across the English Channel.

The war assumed its multifront character as a product of circumstances, then,

rather than of long-range strategic design. Five main areas—the United King-
LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY IN WORLD WAR II 801

dom, the Mediterranean, the South and

Southwest Pacific, the Central Pacific,

and China, Burma, and India, as well as

a number of minor ones, emerged to

compete for their share of American

military resources. Adjustment of resources allocations among these competing areas became, in 1943 and 1944, the

central problem of strategic logistics.

The Adjustment of Means and Ends

Allocations had to take place within

the framework of still another process—

a general adjustment of strategic plans

to the means prospectively available.

Strategic designs in 1942, like counterpart production plans, were generally

too ambitious, at least in the timing of

operations. In retrospect, SLEDGEHAMMER, the plan for an invasion of Europe

in 1942, could not have succeeded except against incredibly weak German

defenses. Feasibility of ROUNDUP in

spring 1943, the center of the Army

planners' original grand design, will

perhaps forever remain a subject of

debate. But there is strong evidence that,

with the shortage of merchant shipping

in 1942, the forces and supplies simply

could not have been deployed to England in time even without the diversions

to the Middle East, North Africa and the

Pacific. Moreover, the administrative

machinery in both the United States and

the United Kingdom was still immature

and U.S. combat commanders and troops

alike still were inexperienced and unblooded in battle. In July 1943 as many

divisions landed in Sicily as might have

been required for the initial stages of a

1943 ROUNDUP, but this is not to say

that the same types of amphibious shipping that sufficed for the Sicily landings

would have been best suited to a crossChannel assault.2

 Then HUSKY was, in

the last analysis, an attack on a peripheral

island that the Germans could supply

and reinforce only by water or air;

whereas ROUNDUP would have been an

attack directly into the center of German

strength, not as yet diminished by the

effects of an intense strategic bombing

campaign or the bleeding and battering

of another year's war in Russia and the

Mediterranean.

On the other side of the world, the

American plan for a full-scale attack on

Burma (ANAKIM) in 1943, before the

line of communications through India

had been developed, was also clearly

premature; the three-step advance on

Rabaul projected as the main preliminary line of attack in the Pacific in mid1942 had to be retailored early in 1943

to the availability of resources in the

Pacific. In fact, the rapidity with which

the strategic program agreed to at Casablanca generally receded into the realm

of the improbable in the months following that conference was ample evidence

of the extent to which, in early 1943,

strategic planning had not yet been

aligned with a realistic appraisal of the

means of execution.

The first year after Pearl Harbor was

a year of shortages in all areas—in equipment, supplies, trained troops, and ship2

 Some 148 LST's, 235 LCI(L)'s, 239 LCTs, and 64

attack personnel and cargo transports were used in

HUSKY; OVERLORD a year later involved the use of

229 LST's, 209 LCI(L)'s, 923 LCT's, 3 LSD's, and 34

attack personnel and cargo transports. The much

greater use of combat loaders in HUSKY is to be

noted, for they were far more suitable for employment in the Mediterranean than in the English

Channel. The larger numbers of LST's and LCT's

in OVERLORD shows the much greater need for a large

vehicle lift in that operation.
802 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

ping. The most stringent limiting factor,

hampering the Allied war effort at every

turn, was the shortage of merchant shipping to carry troops and supplies overseas. For this reason, decisions on American production programs made late in

1942 provided perhaps more generously

for construction of merchant shipping

than for any other commodity, and the

highest strategic priority at Casablanca

went to the war against the submarine.

These actions bore fruit. Victory over

the submarine and the high volume of

new construction of merchant shipping

by the summer of 1943 had effectively

reduced the restrictive influence of the

merchant shipping factor. Over-all supply from mid-1943 on, if not sufficient to

meet every military and civilian demand,

was adequate for most legitimate needs.

At about the same time, the supply

situation also began to ease as American

industry reached peak rates of mass production. The logistical bottlenecks after

mid-1943 were apt to be more specialized

than general as the requirements of

various specific operations came to be

more precisely defined. The most serious

bottleneck was to appear in the shortage of amphibious shipping. In general,

after mid-1943, the problems were no

longer in mass production but in selective production of items for which the

planning of mass production programs

had inadequately provided. They were

the almost inevitable consequences of

planning in terms of a pool rather than

of a strategic design.

By the time of the TRIDENT Conference in May 1943, the prospective availability of resources was far more predictable than it had been a year earlier, and

requirements of proposed operations

could be anticipated in far more concrete terms. At TRIDENT, and at the two

succeeding conferences—QUADRANT and

SEXTANT—the American and British

staffs sought to make a more realistic

appraisal of means prospectively available and to adjust strategic designs to

logistical possibilities. At each conference the assembled logisticians drew up

a careful balance sheet of requirements

and resources reflecting an effort to provide, for a shorter range, a substitute

for the abortive attempts in 1942 to

arrive at a grand design and calculate

logistical requirements in its terms. But

this kind of planning was a different sort

of process. At short range, production

plans could be adjusted only in detail,

and then only through the respective

national machineries. Resources planning at the conferences was largely concerned with weighing the feasibility of

strategic courses of action, of adjusting

them in terms of the availability of

means already in prospect, of tentatively

allocating resources for the execution of

operations agreed upon, and of providing guide lines along which the respective national logistical organizations

should move in deploying and supporting forces in various theaters.

These processes proved to be something less than the pure exercise in the

strategy-requirements-feasibility formula

they purported to be. Evaluation of

alternative courses of action was not always completely objective. Preconceived

notions strongly influenced calculations

of the relation of means and ends; American and British planners tended to inflate advantages and to deflate prospective costs of the respective courses of

action they proposed to pursue. National

and service proprietary interests frequently carried inordinate influence in
LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY IN WORLD WAR II 803

determining the allocation of the most

scarce and most critical resources. Once

agreements had been reached by the CCS

and ratified by the heads of state, the

lengthy and detailed resources papers

almost invariably simply proved that the

operations agreed upon were logistically

feasible, subject to certain contingencies.

What was perhaps the central problem

of allocation of resources—their division

between the war against Japan and the

war against Germany—was never debated

in anything more than general terms.

Under the general formula agreed to at

TRIDENT, of giving first priority to the

war against Germany while maintaining

and extending unremitting pressure

against Japan, American military leaders

effectively asserted their right to decide

unilaterally on the division of American

resources between the two main spheres

of the war. Allocations to the American

sphere in the Pacific were, in a sense,

ratified by the conferences since they

were included in outline in the resources

papers, but they were the product of

American decision and not of bilateral

debate. The Anglo-American debates

centered on the division of resources

among the theaters where the effort was

combined—the Mediterranean, northwest Europe, and southeast Asia. This

situation gave free play to the "pull toward the Pacific" inherent in American

psychology and in its geographic position and made manifest in the shaping

of the U.S. naval establishment. It had

its effect in constricting the availability

of resources, particularly assault shipping, for the pursuit of the war in

Europe on several fronts simultaneously.

The conferences did not, at any rate,

produce the sort of stability in strategic

designs that the logisticians desired,

however much the situation improved

over that of 1942. There was a marked

tendency to delay firm and irrevocable

agreements on specific operations until

shortening logistical lead time forced

decision. During 1943 the build-up of

American forces and matériel in the

British Isles for a 1944 cross-Channel

invasion proceeded hesitantly, subject to

a first priority for the demands of going

theaters in the Mediterranean and the

Pacific; delays and changes in plan

plagued operations in southeast Asia

from beginning to end; the invasion of

southern France was not finally and

irrevocably agreed on until a few days

before it was to be launched.

Somehow, nonetheless, in the conferences and other Anglo-American negotiations, ends were tailored to means.

For all their imperfections, the conference discussions and evaluations made

signal contributions to that outcome. At

TRIDENT the concept of a large-scale

cross-Channel assault in 1944 was abandoned for one on a medium scale because

the Americans and British both came to

realize that this was all that was within

the realm of possibility. At QUADRANT

the ambitious plans for an offensive in

the CBI were adjusted and based upon

a far more realistic appraisal of logistical

requirements. At SEXTANT and after, amphibious operations in southeast Asia

and the eastern Mediterranean were

eliminated to make way for higher priority operations in northwest Europe,

Italy and southern France. Later, the

southern France operation was postponed to permit an adequate scale of

assault lift for OVERLORD and the more

effective prosecution of the drive up the

Italian peninsula. In turn, the drive in

Italy was weakened, once the Pisa-
804 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

Rimini line was reached, to permit execution of the southern France invasion.

The result was a return to concentration

in Europe; but a concentration balanced

by a far greater commitment in the

Pacific than had been envisaged in any

of the plans of 1942.

The processes by which these adjustments were achieved were not uncomplicated processes of adjusting means to

ends. They had to proceed within the

political and psychological framework of

the stresses and strains within the AngloAmerican coalition, within the British

and American Governments themselves,

and the necessities of working with a

Soviet ally waging what was in effect a

separate war on its own front. Seen in

terms of concrete questions of resources

allocation raised before the CCS, the

fundamental issue involved in the long

Anglo-American strategic debate was the

degree of flexibility to be allowed in

disposing of combined resources between the Mediterranean, northwest

Europe and southeast Asia. The British

insisted on a high degree of flexibility,

regarding the campaigns in the two

European theaters as interdependent,

and the campaign in southeast Asia as

an affair that could await the defeat of

Germany. They did not believe, in 1943,

that preparations for either the crossChannel assault on a fixed date or for

the American-sponsored offensive in

Burma should be allowed to interfere

with full exploitation of opportunities

in the Mediterranean area. The Americans, on the contrary, started from the

premise that a decisive victory over Germany could be won only by a maximum

concentration of resources on one front

—the direct blow against northwest Europe—and continuously fought against

both additional allocations of resources

to the Mediterranean after HUSKY and

any modification of agreements made at

TRIDENT on transfers from that area to

the United Kingdom and India.

What the British proposed ostensibly

as diversionary operations to the east of

Italy, the Americans regarded as an

effort to carry out a significant shift of

strategic emphasis. They came to regard

British designs in the eastern Mediterranean as the very apotheosis of a British peripheral strategy, to be resisted at

all costs. By mid-1943 the American

staffs, adjusting to the reality of a sizable permanent commitment of resources

in the Mediterranean, developed a Mediterranean strategy of their own, with a

westward orientation, involving an advance in Italy at least as far north as

Rome, followed by either an overland

or amphibious invasion of southern

France. At the same time, they clung to

their earlier position on allocation of

resources and denied the necessity for

new adjustments among European theaters to carry out the two-pronged advance. The American espousal of the

southern France scheme set the stage for

the final phase of the debate in the first

six months of 1944, which found the

British espousing the priorities for OVERLORD and the advance in Italy against

the requirements of ANVIL.

Whether the desire for flexibility

actually cloaked a devotion of Winston

Churchill or other British leaders to

a Mediterranean-oriented strategy or

whether, as General Marshall frequently

insisted, pursuit of this sort of opportunism would have sucked so many resources into the Mediterranean as to

inadvertently produce such a strategy,

must remain unanswered questions. The
LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY IN WORLD WAR II 805

Americans did, at the time, so interpret

British intentions and this interpretation vitally influenced their whole approach to the allocation of resources in

a multi-front war. It acted to reinforce

existing pressures for a greater commitment to the Pacific, and it led to a certain

rigidity in allocations for the presumed

first-priority war in Europe, even to a

reluctance to face up to the true requirements of the very cross-Channel operation they championed.

Landing Craft and Strategy

These American doubts and fears

played perhaps the most important part

in producing the hesitancy with which

the BOLERO build-up progressed in 1943.

They played at least some part in generating the landing craft shortage for

European operations. The landing craft

shortage stands as the most conspicuous

example of the influence of logistical

factors in narrowing the range of strategic choice in 1943 and 1944.

The emergence of assault shipping as

a critical factor resulted from a failure

in prewar planning to anticipate requirements for amphibious landings

and, later, a seeming lack of flexibility

in adapting production plans to developing need. Curiously enough, the first

large-scale landing craft program did

take shape in 1942 in terms of a specific

strategy—the ROUNDUP plan for the invasion of Europe in 1943. The program

was almost unique in this respect. To

meet the presumed needs of ROUNDUP

a large pool of landing ships and craft

was produced in a crash program in the

fall of 1942 and spring of 1943. With the

demise of the ROUNDUP strategy the pool

was dissipated. Some craft were diverted

to the Pacific, though most of them were

employed in the invasion of Sicily. The

U.S. Navy, meanwhile, disturbed by the

dislocations the crash program had produced, cut back landing craft production drastically. The JCS simply did not

face up to the problem of determining

strategic requirements for the year

ahead. The Americans, for whatever

reasons, came to assume that the pool

created, along with limited new production scheduled, would suffice to meet

requirements of a 1944 ROUNDUP as well

as of all other operations that might be

scheduled in the interim in the Mediterranean, the Pacific, and southeast Asia.

At TRIDENT, the British and Americans

agreed that there would be a demonstrable deficit for a large-scale ROUNDUP

in 1944—a primary reason for the decision on a medium-scale ROUNDHAMMER. Setting requirements for ROUNDHAMMER, however, was a curious exercise

in which the usual processes were reversed. Craft in the existing pool expected to survive amphibious operations

in the Mediterranean and in southeast

Asia in 1943 were to be returned to the

United Kingdom for ROUNDHAMMER.

To these would be added something like

half of a now limited American production of LST's, LCI(L)'s, and LCT's

planned in 1943, plus some British production of LCT's and gun support craft.

These estimates of availability were

simply transformed into requirements,

and this scale of requirements became

the fixed pivot on which American thinking concerning a cross-Channel invasion

turned until well toward the end of

1943. OVERLORD, on the scale it was

eventually mounted, was to require almost double this amount of assault lift.

During the last half of 1943 the size
806 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

of the pool available for combined use

in the Mediterranean and southeast

Asia, with the need to preserve even

these inadequate allocations for OVER- LORD always in the background, nar- rowed the range of strategic choice at

every turn. Losses in HUSKY proved less

than TRIDENT predictions but, in the

absence of ports, landing craft had to be

used long after the assault landings to

bring in supplies over the beaches. Lack

of readily available craft was a critical

factor in preventing immediate follow- up of the Sicilian victory by an assault

on the Italian mainland. The Americans, having added the invasion of

southern France to their strategic

agenda, found themselves arguing at

QUADRANT, in contradiction of their own

"overriding priority" formula, that the

"surplus" landing craft made available

by the unexpected small losses in Sicily

should remain in the Mediterranean for

ANVIL—despite clear evidence in the

OVERLORD plan that additional assault

lift would be required to insure the suc- cess of a cross-Channel attack. After QUADRANT, Eisenhower found

that he needed to retain craft in Italy

well beyond their scheduled departure

dates for OVERLORD to speed his supply

build-up and to launch an amphibious

turning movement along the Italian

coast. The British, desirous of invading

Rhodes and bringing Turkey into the

war, found themselves balked by a lack

of assault shipping for the operation. In

the midst of this general shortage in

Europe, at American insistence a sizable

fleet of amphibious shipping departed

for India to take part in an amphibious

operation in the Bay of Bengal sched- uled at QUADRANT for February 1944, too late to permit the return of the craft

for either an OVERLORD or an ANVIL in

May.

Adjustment of American landing craft

production to meet the developing crisis

was almost unbelievably slow. And when

the adjustment did start in fall 1943 it

was seemingly unrelated to the area in

which the compelling shortage existed.

By mid-1943 the Americans had determined to accelerate the pace of the war

against Japan, and at QUADRANT pro- posed as a goal the defeat of Japan with- in a year of the defeat of Germany. Though no specific plan was advanced, and the British refused to accept the

goal, it became the practical guide for

the U.S. Navy in planning the production of assault shipping. That the Navy

was spurred on by the developing shortage in European waters there can be

little doubt, but the new plans it developed for expanding both the construction of combat loaders and landing

craft in the fall of 1943 were conceived

almost exclusively in terms of the needs

of the later stages of the Pacific war.

Promised increases in the over-all program were substantial but, because of

production lead time, they would become effective too late to provide more

than a small increment for an OVERLORD

scheduled for 1 May 1944 or any accompanying amphibious operations along

the southern fringes of Europe. Even

this small increment was not immediately allotted to European operations.

Admiral King did agree in November

1943, however, to the diversion of a

limited number of craft from prospective Pacific allocations.

Despite this small additional increment, limitations on the supply of land- ing craft for European operations

hedged in military planners and states-
LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY IN WORLD WAR II 807

men on every side at the SEXTANT Conference. At Cairo, British and American

staffs wrestled valiantly with the problem of how to stretch the available supply to fit in a flanking operation in Italy

in December 1943, an assault on the

Andaman Islands in the Bay of Bengal

(BUCCANEER) in February 1944, an assault on Rhodes also in February, and

still carry out OVERLORD on 1 May 1944.

The invasion of southern France was,

at this stage, simply left off the conference agenda. The British proposed to

accommodate Rhodes either at the cost

of one or two months' postponement of

OVERLORD or by canceling BUCCANEER

and returning the necessary assault shipping from India. The Americans,

though opposed in principle to the

Rhodes invasion, had been committed

by the President to support of Chiang

Kai-shek, and they seemed more amenable to the postponement of OVERLORD

than to the cancellation of the Andamans assault. Roosevelt, apparently belatedly aware of the landing craft shortage, inquired of Washington whether

the supply for OVERLORD could be substantially increased by a crash production program in the first five months of

1944. Then at Tehran Stalin insisted on

OVERLORD and suggested a southern

France invasion in advance. The Americans, welcoming this Russian support

of their own strategic concepts, were

soon faced with the problem of also

fitting in ANVIL, if not in advance of

OVERLORD, at least near the same date.

Production authorities in Washington

had meanwhile reported that while a

crash effort might substantially increase

the supply of landing craft for European

operations by July, few additional craft

could be supplied for a May OVERLORD.

The President consequently decided

against it. In a somewhat frantic effort

to provide for ANVIL, Admiral King

made a second offer of diversions from

future Pacific allocations, and the Americans then agreed that BUCCANEER

should be canceled and assault shipping

returned from India to the Mediterranean. The shipping thus returned, the

British figured, could be used seriatim

for Rhodes and ANVIL. Only the amphibious operation in southeast Asia

had to be immediately canceled. The

target date for OVERLORD (and a simultaneous ANVIL) was adjusted to a fuzzy

"in May," which in the event was to

mean a postponement to early June.

Admiral King's promise of additional

landing craft for ANVIL was at least partially conditioned on this delay.

In the SEXTANT deliberations, the

fundamental fact in the whole equation

—that the supply of landing craft in

being and in prospect for Europe, even

with the additions promised, was still

inadequate for a simultaneous OVERLORD and ANVIL—was almost ignored.

No sooner had the OVERLORD high command arrived in England than they demanded an increase in the scale of the

assault. While the production authorities had decided, despite Roosevelt's

second thoughts, to go ahead with the

new crash landing craft program, its

products would come off the line too late

and therefore mainly benefit the Pacific

war. Additional craft to strengthen the

OVERLORD assault, it appeared, could

only be had from the Mediterranean

increment earmarked for ANVIL.

Meanwhile, new complications arose

when it developed that the turning

movement in Italy could not be exe-
808 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

cuted in December 1943. Then, at

Churchill's behest, new delays were arranged in LST movement schedules so

that a 2-division landing at Anzio could

take place in January. Perhaps fortunately, the Turks refused to move toward

intervention in the war and the Rhodes

operation disappeared from the agenda;

in view of the demands for Anzio, amphibious shipping could not have been

made available for it.

Whatever the delays and complications introduced by the Anzio landings,

the basic competition now narrowed to

OVERLORD and ANVIL. The OVERLORD

planners in London, like those at TRIDENT, once again engaged in a curious

reversal of the usual procedures, and

built the "requirements" for OVERLORD

around a scale of assault lift that included their SEXTANT allotments plus

what they thought could be brought

from the Mediterranean should ANVIL

be canceled. A long technical debate

ensued over what would or would not

be sufficient to provide the requisite

OVERLORD lift. Despite a belief in Washington that enough lift was on hand to

execute both OVERLORD and ANVIL, the

upshot was the postponement of the

southern France invasion and the transfer of the major portion of its allotted

assault lift to OVERLORD. Granted that

the postponement of ANVIL grew more

immediately out of the continuing stalemate in Italy, without it OVERLORD almost certainly would not have received

the assault lift it evidently required.

ANVIL was actually to be executed two

months after OVERLORD, using the residual lift in the Mediterranean supplemented by a third diversion from Pacific

allocations by Admiral King and craft

released by General Eisenhower.

Strategic designs, then, were aligned

with the supply of landing craft as much

as the supply of landing craft was

brought into consonance with strategy.

The whole controversy over landing

craft was hardly an object lesson either

in anticipating strategic requirements

or in planning the division of a critical

resource among several theaters. Nevertheless, the effect of the landing craft

shortage on the course of the war was

probably less than all the sound and

fury surrounding it would indicate. The

major casualties were operations that

might well have fallen by the wayside

for other reasons—the invasion of the

Andamans (and with it the offensive

in Burma early in 1944), Rhodes, and

a southern France operation simultaneous with OVERLORD. Its greatest effect

was in curbing British opportunism in

the Mediterranean and the American

design for an early offensive in Burma.

OVERLORD was not affected, nor were

operations in the Pacific—by mid-1944

the two centerpieces of American strategy. It would be difficult, however, to

prove that the outcome was the result

of any conscious design.

After the launching of OVERLORD,

assault shipping ceased to be the great

arbiter of strategic decision. The new

construction program assured a sufficient

quantity for Pacific operations in the

fall of 1944, despite the continued tieup of craft in logistical operations in

Europe. In what might be designated

the third logistical phase of the war,

limitations in more conventional areas,

—port and inland clearance capacity,

supply of military manpower, specific

types of supplies, and, once again, merchant shipping—succeeded assault shipping as the principal bottlenecks.
LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY IN WORLD WAR II 809

Factors in the War Against Japan

In the peculiarly American sphere of

the Pacific theaters it would be hard to

pinpoint any single factor that exerted

the same influence the landing craft

shortage did in shaping the course of

operations in the combined theaters in

Europe and southeast Asia. The Pacific

Fleet, rather than the ground army, was

the decisive force. The fast naval air

carrier task force may be said to have

been the most important single element,

though in the Southwest Pacific landbased aircraft fulfilled much the same

role. No significant strategic controversies developed around the allocation of

carrier task forces among the main

Pacific areas.

Although fleet strength and air power

were the decisive factors, they required

many adjuncts. After tailoring objectives

to resources in early 1943, the general

tendency was to accelerate the Pacific

advance, pacing it to the growth of the

power of the Pacific Fleet. This acceleration generated numerous shortages of

resources for a balanced effort, the impact of which fell most heavily on the

Army, certainly in part because it sought

to give first priority to the war in Europe.

In theaters in which all routes of advance and most internal supply lines

were over water, means of water transport were necessarily the primary elements of logistics. The most compelling

shortages in the Pacific were of all types

of floating equipment—not only the

ocean-going ships required to bring in

men and supplies and the amphibious

shipping required to land them on Japanese-held islands, but the small boats,

barges, and other types useful for short

voyages and in the operation of ports

with primitive facilities. The shortage of

all kinds of shipping was compounded

by a shortage of facilities for unloading,

which promoted the wasteful use of

shipping.

Given the geography of the Pacific war

fronts, a shortage of facilities and supplies was endemic, the problems of

equitable distribution to widely scattered

island bases almost insoluble. Demands

inevitably arose for a higher ratio of

service to combat troops than could be

satisfied within the existing troop basis,

and for all kinds of special operational

supplies on relatively short notice.

Amphibious operations until well toward the middle of 1944 required a

generous measure of improvisation, particularly in the Southwest Pacific. If the

rationale of an accelerated Pacific advance is accepted, the solicitude with

which Admiral King guarded Pacific allocations of assault shipping had considerable justification. Some British writers in the postwar period have asserted

that as high as eleven-twelfths of American amphibious shipping was sent to the

Pacific during the critical period in European operations.3

 The proportion, in

fact, was never nearly so high, though

any exact calculation is difficult to make.

The division between the two areas of

larger types of landing craft was relatively even; the Pacific did have, after

mid-1943, a heavy preponderance of combat loaders. In contrast to early Navy

plans for a relatively even division of

these vessels between Atlantic and Pacific, by June 1944 approximately threefourths of all American combat loaders

3

 See particularly Chester Wilmot, The Struggle

for Europe (London: Collins, 1952), pp. 176-78, and

Bryant, Turn of the Tide, p. 587.
810 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

were in the Pacific. The shift began with

the movements from the Mediterranean

after HUSKY to flesh out the lift for the

Gilberts-Marshalls campaign. Afterwards,

almost all new APA's and AKA's were

assigned to the Pacific. Without doubt

there was much logic in this distribution. Combat loaders were better suited

to the ship-to-shore operations in the

Pacific than to operations in the English

Channel where the primary need was

for large shore-to-shore landing craft and

ships. Yet, British combat loaders

(LSI (L)'s) did play an important part

in OVERLORD, and combat loaders were

used extensively in Mediterranean operations.

A more serious flaw in the Navy's handling of the amphibious shipping problem than this distribution lay in its insistence, from TRIDENT onward, in planning boosts in production almost exclusively in terms of Pacific needs on the

assumption that TRIDENT allocations

would suffice for the European war. The

general boosts in production begun in

the fall of 1943 did, in the end, benefit

OVERLORD and ANVIL, but only as a result of Admiral King's unilateral decisions to accept some sacrifice in allocations made earlier to the Pacific. And

King's three separate offers were all

timed to influence strategic decision

along lines favored by the American JCS.

The most curious facet of the entire

landing craft situation is the extent to

which these decisions on redistribution

of a critical resource were not determined by the CCS in the light of over-all

strategy, or even by the JCS as a body,

but by the U.S. Chief of Naval Operations. There is little evidence that the

diversions King sanctioned actually deprived Pacific commanders of their essential needs or affected the course of

operations against Japan.

The supply of ordinary merchant shipping in the Pacific, indeed, appears to

have been a more critical factor than

the supply of amphibious types. At least

the various shipping crises in the area

centered on it. In terms of plans for an

accelerated advance in a predominantly

ocean theater, the Pacific areas were

stinted in the allocation of merchant

shipping at the conferences held in 1943,

much as the Atlantic theaters were stinted

in allocations of shipping capable of

landing troops on hostile shores. Once

operational plans were firmly drawn and

their shipping implications became apparent, emergencies developed that required transfers from the Atlantic to the

Pacific pool. In the most ironic instance,

in April 1943 the temporary demise of

ANVIL, the operation on which the Americans had been most insistent and for

which they promised landing craft at a

presumed sacrifice to the Pacific, produced a windfall in ordinary cargo shipping that enabled the Pacific theaters to

weather a major shipping crisis. The

several transfers of merchant shipping

from Atlantic to Pacific had no more

effect on the course of European operations than the transfers of assault shipping from Pacific allocations to the Atlantic had on operations against Japan.

The speed-up in ship turnarounds in the

Atlantic and Mediterranean in the spring

and summer of 1944, and the relaxation

of convoy restrictions, played no small

part in producing this result. But the

conclusion is inevitable that the initial

allocations in each instance were unrealistic.

In all the juggling of resources in

1943 and 1944, OVERLORD, the western
LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY IN WORLD WAR II 811

Mediterranean, and the two main Pacific

theaters received favored treatment,

while the Anglo-American effort in the

eastern Mediterranean and in southeast

Asia languished for lack of resources.

The reasons were rather different in the

two cases. In contrast to American aversion to all Mediterranean operations east

of Italy, the approach to Japan by way

of the difficult terrain and undeveloped

facilities of India, Burma, and China at

first had great appeal to the American

staffs. As late as the fall of 1943 they

were insistent on sending amphibious

resources needed in the western Mediterranean to India, and to the very end of

the war vital transport planes useful in

either Europe or the Pacific were sent

to India to operate on the air supply line

to China or to support forces in India

and Burma that could be supplied in no

other way. Beyond this the Americans

insisted on keeping their commitment

on the Asiatic mainland small, and hoped

to obtain the great objectives they desired by persuading the British and

Chinese to act. The logistical cost of an

American ground effort in the CBI in

terms of shipping and other resources

promised to be higher than in any other

theater, and the American staffs shied

away from it. The British military and

naval commitment in the area was sizable, but was restricted by the British

desire to concentrate on the war in Europe until Germany was defeated, and

apparently was not enough. The British,

indeed, felt that the more desirable strategic goals were not in Burma and China,

but to the south and east of India in

Malaya and the Netherlands Indies.

Chiang Kai-shek's China was simply not

capable of any considerable effort without the extensive American supply support that, because of the lack of a land

supply line, could not be given him. The

resources that meanwhile poured into

the Pacific resulted in an accelerated advance, and by the end of 1943 it was

apparent to the American and British

staffs alike that the China coast could

be invaded from the Pacific much earlier

than it could be reached either by overland advance through Burma and China

or along the sea route via Malaya and

the Indies.

The importance of the CBI was consequently further downgraded on the

American strategic scale. American staffs

sought first to nourish the air forces in

China to support the Pacific advance;

that failing, they finally hoped simply to

realize as much from the previous investment of resources in the area as possible

with no further substantial commitments.

Since this was also the principal area of

British participation in the war against

Japan, the new strategic outlook had

its effect in diminishing American lendlease support to British forces in southeast Asia. At the same time, the prospective Soviet effort on the Asian mainland

took on added importance as means of

preventing withdrawal of sizable Japanese ground forces to their home islands

to oppose an American assault.

Logistical Adjustments

As the specific direction of the Allied

effort unfolded, the logistical processes

were adapted, as far as they could be,

to the developing situation. Production

planning for 1944 and 1945 evidenced

a transition from emphasis on mass production of standardized articles toward

concentration on more specialized areas.

In the field of shipping the turn was
812 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

toward specialized military types at the

expense of mass production of Liberty

ships—a shift of which the new landing

craft and combat loader programs were

the most important evidence. In Army

production, the shift was toward heavier

equipment of all types and toward greater quantities of artillery and artillery

ammunition at the expense of lighter

items such as 37-mm. guns, small arms,

and ammunition.4

These adjustments were not easily or

readily made, and the necessity for them

was seldom appreciated far in advance.

The McCoy Board and the Richards

Committee, studying the entire Army

supply system late in 1943, identified its

major weaknesses—its too generous provision of reserves and its lack of differentiation in requirements of various theaters—but neither of these groups really

foresaw the need for adjustments rather

than simply economy. Their efforts resulted in what was very probably a premature reduction in military production

early in 1944 in an atmosphere of optimism about an early end to the war

with Germany. Over-all Army production requirements for 1944 and 1945

were cut back to finally conform to the

prospective limits of manpower mobilization for the Army and to eliminate

what seemed to be excessive reserve,

maintenance, and pipeline allowances.

Within the framework of these reductions, the ASF meanwhile proceeded with

its effort to make the whole logistical

system more responsive to developing

operational requirements, as well as

more economical. The adaptation took

several forms. The system evolved toward

supply by requisition rather than automatic or semiautomatic supply, and toward adjustment of production requirements either on the basis of theater

projections of specific need or on the

basis of supply and demand studies of

actual rates of consumption. The keyed

projects system was initiated as a means

of anticipating needs in each theater for

special operational supplies. By the fall

of 1944 special replacement factors had

been calculated for each of the main

areas of the war, and these were to be

later refined by the development of special factors for each major theater.

All these developments, however, came

late in the war, and none could be considered to have been outstandingly successful in application. The keyed projects

system never worked as it was supposed

to because of the difficulty, particularly

in the Pacific, of predicting the future

course of operations far enough in advance. And the problem, as it developed

in 1944, of meeting an increased need

for new types of equipment, for heavier

equipment, and for larger amounts of

artillery ammunition, required longer

lead time than was usually available. All

too frequently, belated production adjustments could only partially meet a

demand. In any case, the trend in the

Army Supply Program, after the cutbacks

of early 1944, was constantly upward,

thus reversing the verdict of the McCoy

Board and Richards Committee.

Adjustments in distribution techniques

were more successful in coping with special situations, but more as a result of a

superior adaptability within the system

than any general revamping of it. The

move toward requisition supply was not

to be fully consummated until very near

4

 For evidence of these trends, see below, appendixes C-1 and C-2.
LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY IN WORLD WAR II 813

the end of the war. The instability of

strategic plans prevented the full realization of economies possible through bulk

preshipment of supplies to the United

Kingdom for OVERLORD. At the height

of the war in 1944, however, such special

techniques as the use of commodity loaders and of the Red List procedure in

Europe, and of block-loaded ships and

other specially tailored loads in the Pacific were successful expedients. Meanwhile, in many thousands of details, the

whole massive mechanism of wholesale

distribution was made more efficient and

responsive.

The Climactic Phase

By the fall of 1944 the American war

effort had reached its climax in both

main spheres. In Europe, as a result of

the convergence of the OVERLORD and

ANVIL-DRAGOON forces, it involved one

main, excessively broad, front, and a subsidiary one in Italy. In the war against

Japan, there were two main fronts in the

Pacific, and a subsidiary front in southeast Asia. The direction of the main

efforts was irrevocably fixed, and the

competition for resources among theaters to some degree narrowed, but the

worldwide extent of the entire American

commitment imposed a strain on what

was now a mature war economy and war

machine. The newly liberated nations of

western Europe emerged as competitors

for both supplies and shipping to resuscitate their war-torn economies.

There was no longer any real doubt

of eventual victory on both main fronts;

the only questions were time and cost.

The dashing of optimistic hopes for victory over Germany before the end of

1944 forced the Army to practically exhaust its manpower resources in support

of the European war and to cut back,

after June 1944, the relative pace of deployment to the Pacific. The net result

was a shortage of Army manpower resources, particularly service troops, in

the Pacific for the campaigns in early

1945. This shortage exerted some influence on the decision to invade Luzon

rather than Formosa, and, combined with

geographic factors, it delayed Philippine

base development and other preparations

for the final phase of the war against

Japan.

In Europe, meanwhile, the shortage of

both port facilities and inland clearance

capacity, the result of a change of pace

and direction in the military advance

contrary to the best-laid logistical plans,

played its part in producing the fall and

winter stalemate along the Siegfried

Line. In the bitter winter war, supply

shortages did develop—most acutely in

the areas of artillery ammunition and

winter clothing—due in part to failure to

anticipate requirements and in part to

difficulties of distribution. The armies

in Europe, too, suffered shortages of both

combat and service troops. Rear establishments had to be combed for infantry

replacements; a new program for organizing and arming liberated manpower

took shape. On the supply side, production programs that had been cut back in

the belief that the war in Europe would

soon be over had to be hastily reaccelerated. Lend-lease to the Russians continued at its previous high levels, but

the British began to suffer serious disappointments.

If the supply of manpower seemed

likely to be the ultimate limitation on

the American war effort, the more immediate crisis in fall 1944 came to center
814 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

primarily on the distribution process.

Cargo shipping once more became the

most critical logistical factor, affecting

the whole range of Allied plans.

The cargo shipping crisis of late 1944

was not, however, like the crises of 1942.

The number of ships by now was gigantic, despite some slackening in the rate of

construction, and the loss rate to enemy

action was no longer a serious factor.

The shortage of cargo shipping for outward movement from the United States

resulted largely from the retention of

great numbers of ships in overseas pools

to serve as floating warehouses or to be

used for intratheater movements. Shipping congestion of this sort reached its

greatest heights in Europe and the Southwest Pacific simultaneously. In Europe

it resulted from failure to seize and develop ports rapidly enough to support

the advance to the German border; in

the Southwest Pacific from the decision

to invade Leyte two months ahead of

schedule. In both areas congestion was

in large part a product of decisions of

theater commanders to push ahead to

seize the tactical advantage without regard to the logistical dislocations that

would follow. It led, however, to uneconomic use of shipping and to partial loss

of control by the central shipping authorities over allocations.

The mounting shortage for overseas

movement of military supplies coincided

with the emergence of large civilian relief demands in Europe and of a requirement for merchant shipping in the Pacific to carry supplies for a Soviet stockpile in Siberia against the day the USSR

would enter the war against Japan. To

meet the crisis the JCS demanded drastic

curtailment of American assistance to

British shipping programs, of Soviet Protocol shipments via the Atlantic, postponement of any large-scale civilian relief

shipments from North America, and

a reacceleration of the lagging ship

construction program. These measures

seemed less essential to civilian shipping authorities than the break-up of the

idle pools of shipping in military service,

and in the end their view prevailed.

Neither the British shipping program nor

the Soviet Protocol shipments suffered

appreciably, though the institution of a

large civilian relief and rehabilitation

program in Europe was delayed by some

months. Efforts to boost ship construction mainly came too late. Institution

of closer control over overseas shipping

pools was the basic solution to the shipping crisis of late 1944.

The juggling of ship allocations in the

crisis once again resulted in augmenting

the Pacific pool at the expense of the

Atlantic. The augmentation served to

provide amply for Nimitz' Okinawa operation, which by March 1945 was absorbing shipping from SWPA as well as

from the Atlantic. Outward sailings to,

and retentions within, MacArthur's theater were severely curtailed in the early

months of 1945. Although the effects of

these restrictions are difficult to judge

because of limited reception capacity in

the Philippines, in all probability they

slowed the roll-up of rear areas in SWPA

and base development in the Philippines;

they definitely curbed MacArthur's ambitions to extend his campaign rapidly into

the Netherlands Indies. In the end, however, the shortage of Army resources in

Nimitz' theater served to curb just as

effectively the POA commander's designs

for subsidiary operations on the China

coast. The net effect of the logistical

situation in the Pacific in early 1945 was
LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY IN WORLD WAR II 815

to channel the effort toward concentrated

preparations for the final assault on

Japan.

The One-Front War

In the last phase of the war, after

Germany's defeat, the over-all problem

of limitation on resources virtually disappeared in all categories save only oceangoing shipping. Air, sea, and ground

forces were abundant, needing only to

be moved into their new positions. The

amphibious equipment was at hand,

ready to land the largest force yet engaged in any such operation. The production machine, only recently reaccelerated to near peak capacity, was pouring

out an overabundance of supplies. All

this being so, the only real logistical

problem was the time required to move

selected portions of the military machine

into position for a final massive assault

on Japan.

The supply of troop and cargo shipping and of reception capacity in the

Pacific were the logistical factors controlling the timing of the final assault.

In their eagerness to bring the war to an

end in the shortest possible time, the

American staffs insisted that the military

requirements of the war with Japan

should have first priority on Allied merchant shipping despite the increased demands for European civilian relief, and

they finally overrode British objections

on this point at the Malta-Yalta Conference.

To a very great extent, American planning for this last stage of the war was

dominated by an overestimation of Japanese ability and will to resist. The Army

insisted on mass invasion, and its scheduled ground force deployments were reasonable in terms of such a strategy, but

the scale of the reserve it planned to

maintain in the United States was more

questionable. The scale of both Army

and Navy air deployments and of naval

fleets seems to have been calculated more

in terms of a strategy of blockade and

bombardment. To almost the very end,

as well, the American staffs considered

Soviet entrance into the war desirable if

not absolutely essential. Also, the effort

to give some substance to the Chinese

war effort continued, though it no longer

held a place of much importance.

There did remain little place for the

British. Without much enthusiasm or

sense of any great need on the part of

the Americans, plans were finally approved at the Potsdam Conference for

a further drive in southeast Asia toward

Singapore and the Netherlands Indies

and for a British ground force to participate in the invasion of Japan. The scale

of military lend-lease to the British continued its downward trend.

What the Americans did need from

the British was assistance in lifting personnel in their large ocean liners. This

was finally promised, though not in quite

so large a measure as desired. And the

military priority on cargo shipping

proved less overriding in the application

than in the Malta-Yalta statement. The

civilian relief programs gathered momentum in the spring of 1944 and

mounted to new heights after the defeat

of Germany, profiting from a temporary

easing of the military demand for cargo

shipping in the Atlantic. Before the full

force of the competition of the redeployment movement could be felt, the war

had come to an end.

The end came in an unexpected manner, nullifying all the elaborate plans
816 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

and calculations for the movement of

the military machine into position for

the final blow. The invasion of Japan

did not have to be executed. And the

way in which the final blow was struck

promised to alter the whole complex

pattern of relationships between logistics

and strategy in the future.

International Supply

The supply of military matériel under

lend-lease in World War II also involved

a close relationship to the development

of coalition strategy. When the concept

of lend-lease was first advanced by the

President late in 1940, it was proclaimed

as a method whereby America could become the "arsenal of democracy" without

itself becoming actively engaged in the

war. This seems, in retrospect, to have

been wishful thinking. The idea that

the United States could add to the overall striking power of the anti-Axis coalition by extending part of the fruits of

its production to Allied nations nonetheless survived. Lend-lease became an

extremely effective instrument of coalition warfare. It did what Roosevelt proposed it should do in the first instance:

remove the dollar sign from inter-Allied

supply transfers. When combined with

its counterpart, reciprocal aid, it gave

the directing Anglo-American military

staffs unprecedented flexibility in allocating supplies and equipment among

national forces without regard to their

origin and without cumbersome financial accounting.

The whole concept of lend-lease and

reciprocal aid found its most perfect

expression in the announcement of Roosevelt and Churchill in early 1942 that

military supplies and equipment of the

two countries should be regarded as a

common pool out of which allocations

should be made in accordance with strategic necessity by combined munitions

assignments boards in Washington and

London, operating under the jurisdiction

of the CCS.

Allocations among nations on the basis

of strategy proved to be even more difficult than allocations among theaters.

During 1942 the effort to plan the division of the common pool between British

and Americans on the basis of a longrange strategy came to nought. Actual

assignments were made at short range

and were dictated to no small degree by

the emergencies of that year. The whole

problem was one of "dividing a deficiency." National interest intruded on

the perfect theory of the common pool

with irritating frequency.

In effect, the Weeks-Somervell Agreement, negotiated by the British and

American military authorities at the end

of 1942, recognized that strict adherence

to the doctrine of strategic necessity, in

a situation in which strategy could not

be fixed, was impossible. It substituted

the principle that requirements calculated separately by national organizations

based on the projected size of forces to

be equipped and supplied should be the

guide to long-range planning. The Americans agreed to meet the marginal requirements for British ground forces,

that is, those that British industry could

not supply, in the same proportion that

they met the requirements of their own

ground forces. Within the munitions assignments machinery, adjustments continued to be made as specific strategic

and operational plans unfolded, but

agreements reached in the production

planning stage, largely in the absence of
LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY IN WORLD WAR II 817

detailed strategic concepts, became the

principal guide to assignments.

Under this arrangement the munitions assignments machinery worked

much more smoothly than it had in

1942. During 1943 and the first half of

1944, British marginal needs were satisfied roughly in the same proportion as

American. This enabled the British Commonwealth of Nations to maintain far

larger forces in the field than it could

otherwise have done, to the mutual benefit of both Great Britain and the United

States.

It represented, nevertheless, a serious

modification of the original idealistic

common pool concept. In terms of finished military equipment, the common

pool was largely a one-way street, however much the British may have contributed to the American war effort in

the form of services, installations, and

maintenance supplies. This situation inevitably led Americans to modify the

common pool concept in practice, and

to insist on determining the allocations

of American equipment in terms of

American national interest. In the later

war years, British participation in the

allocation of American production

through the munitions assignments machinery became more nominal than real.

In the last year of the war, the Americans returned to the principle of strategic

necessity in making assignments, and applied it to the detriment of the British.

The principles of the Weeks-Somervell

Agreement were not renewed for either

1944 or 1945. By the fall of 1944, American forces had become predominant in

the main theater in Europe; the Mediterranean theater, where British forces

predominated, was no longer considered

of great importance; and the British

effort in the war against Japan had been

relegated to a subsidiary position. The

British began to find strategic justification difficult, and their share in American production fell sharply. Once the

war in Europe was over, the American

staffs, reluctant to consider any of the

postwar implications of continuing a

generous scale of military aid to Britain,

determined to limit that aid to proven

needs for the war with Japan based on

strategy agreed within the CCS. Since

the CCS did not agree until Potsdam on

any program for participation of British

ground forces in the final stages, assignments came virtually to a standstill.

In sum then, lend-lease to Britain

served as an admirable and effective instrument for furthering the aims of coalition strategy in the middle war years; its

diminution was almost directly proportionate to the waning of British influence in strategic councils and to the

increasing preponderance of American

forces in the overseas theaters that the

JCS considered decisive.

The lend-lease program for the USSR

constituted a separate case, for it was not

controlled by the CCS, JCS, or MAB,

but by the President's Soviet Protocol

Committee. The strategic justification

for the Soviet aid program was a general

one; it was not tied to specific Soviet

strategic or operational plans, for the

American staffs had no knowledge of

them. The general justification was compelling enough. The Soviet Union was

exerting a maximum effort against the

common German enemy, and it therefore

seemed but natural to aid the USSR in

any way possible to speed the ultimate

military victory.

In 1943 and 1944 the increase in the

availability of American supplies and
818 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

shipping, and the conquest of the obstacles to forwarding these supplies over the

routes of delivery, made it possible to

increase the volume of aid substantially

over the level of 1942 without any real

sacrifice to the effort of the western Allies

on other fronts. Strategic conditions were

changed; the Red Army was no longer

reeling backwards but was on the offensive

on all fronts. Some voices were raised in

the wilderness demanding a closer scrutiny of Soviet needs for supplies, but

these voices were largely ignored by the

Protocol Committee. Until the war in

Europe was over, the flow of aid to the

USSR continued as a maximum effort

simply to meet all possible Soviet requests, on the premise that the Soviet

contribution to military victory was

sufficiently important to warrant it.

Meanwhile, late in 1944 the MILEPOST

program was added to provide a stockpile of supplies in Siberia against the day

the USSR should enter the lists against

Japan. This program, which involved a

transfer of American shipping to the

Soviet flag in the Pacific, was carried out

despite a threatened shortage of cargo

shipping for the support of the American

military effort in that area, and without

any diminution of the flow of supplies

under the existing protocol.

With victory in Europe, the situation

changed. Further protocol shipments via

the Atlantic routes were abruptly canceled, and an attempt made to limit the

Soviet aid program to the USSR's proven

needs for the war with Japan, on the

assumption that it would make good its

promises to enter that war. Yet, there

were, in fact, no real means of determining whether Soviet requests really reflected those needs, and a fairly generous

program of shipments to Vladivostok

continued until August 1945, based

largely on Soviet requests taken in good

faith. The trend toward curtailment in

the light of a declining need for further

Soviet participation in the war was evident, nonetheless, and the period of

disillusionment with the USSR was,

belatedly, about to set in.

A common denominator in the trends

in the British and Russian programs lay

in adherence to the principle that lendlease allocations should be governed

entirely by the requirements for complete military victory over the Axis

Powers to the exclusion of any postwar

political considerations. Other and less

extensive lend-lease programs were similarly shaped almost exclusively in terms

of the contribution the recipients could

be expected to make toward winning

the war. The French North African

Rearmament Program provided a force

of eight divisions, relieving the Americans of the necessity of forming, shipping, and supporting that many more

U.S. divisions for the European campaigns of 1944 and 1945. A program for

rearming eight more French divisions

in Metropolitan France took shape only

after the strain on American manpower

began to show in the fall of 1944, and

it was canceled when the war in Europe

had been won. Lend-lease to China,

initially projected on a large scale, was

eventually closely restricted to materials

that could be moved into China and

effectively used there to support 39

American-sponsored divisions. Only in

the case of the very small Latin American programs was the political motive

dominant; and even here the bulk of

wartime aid was concentrated on Brazil

and Mexico, governments that contributed some forces to overseas theaters.
LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY IN WORLD WAR II 819

The military supply programs for

civilian relief had much the same

leitmotif—military necessity. American

military staffs sought constantly to confine their responsibilities in this area

to the minimum necessary to prevent

disease and unrest or disorders and dislocations that would interfere with military operations. At first they also tried

to confine their responsibility to a limited time period and to transfer it to

civilian agencies once the military necessity for control of civilian supply in any

given area had past. Military necessity

did prove in some degree to be selfperpetuating, and theater commanders

found themselves forced to shoulder

greater burdens than they had initially

contemplated. The President, too, in

November 1943, recognizing the unreadiness of civilian agencies to handle

the task, imposed on the Army the major

responsibility for an indefinite period.

Yet, even after the President's directive

the main rationale for the elaborate

Army programs for the liberated countries of Europe continued to be military

necessity, and the whole problem of rehabilitation of war-torn economies was

still presumed to be beyond the purview of military planning.

In terms strictly of military necessity,

as President Truman recognized in 1945,

the War Department exercised its responsibilities well. But the emphasis on

restricting civilian supply almost entirely

to relief items did have a considerable

impact in delaying economic rehabilitation, particularly in Italy where military responsibility continued for twenty

months instead of the six months originally planned. The inauguration both

of large-scale military relief shipments

and of national import programs was

delayed by the priorities the Americans

insisted on giving to strictly military

needs. This policy in turn was a product

of the over-all philosophy that all available resources, American and Allied,

must be used first to bring a quick end

to the war; postwar problems—political,

economic, and military—would have to

wait.

The alignment of means and ends,

of logistics and strategy, in World War II

was, then, a complex and never-ending

process. To say that logistical factors

were the sole determinants of strategic

decision would be as erroneous as to

say that the makers of strategy were not

constantly limited and bound by the

realities of the logistical processes. In

the first stage of the war scarcities of

both matériel and shipping hamstrung

Allied planners at every turn. In the

last phase almost every article in the

catalogue was in plentiful supply for

a one-front war, but the timing of the

final blow was still controlled by the

logistical processes involved in moving

selected portions of the military machine

into place. Sometimes singly, sometimes

in combination, critical elements succeeded one another as limiting factors.

First it was merchant shipping, then

assault shipping; and in the final stage

it was military manpower and reception

and clearance capacity within overseas

theaters.

On the surface it appears that, for

all the controversies and byways into

which planners and statesmen were led

or wandered, what emerged was a balanced strategy fundamentally in line

with the resources available for its pursuit, and that the logistical effort was
820 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

consequently channeled in the right

direction and was reasonably economic

and efficient despite the waste that must

inevitably attend war. All that can

really be said with any certainty, however, is that complete military victory

was achieved, and that it is difficult to

see how it could have been achieved in

much less time and at much less cost.

The processes by which victory was

gained were not the product of any

grand design determined in advance

but of a series of decisions made under

conditions of stress and uncertainty.

Flexibility in adjusting to circumstances

and in making allocations among many

theaters and nations in a multifront

coalition was was one of the principal

keys to victory. From another vantage

point, the American absorption in the

pursuit of the goal of complete military

victory to the exclusion of postwar political aims is attested in the whole story

of resources allocation. Not in the

strictly national sphere, or in the partnership with the British, or in the

broader international field of lend-lease

to other members of the embryo United

Nations, did other than military considerations often govern.
Appendix A

SHIPPING TERMINOLOGY AND PLANNING DATA: 1943-45

APPENDIX A-1—WEIGHT, SPACE, AND DISTANCE MEASUREMENTS

WEIGHT MEASUREMENTS
822 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

APPENDIX A-2—CONVERSION FACTORS—SHORT TONS TO MEASUREMENT TONS

Source: ASF Manual M-409, 1 Mar 46, Logistic Data for Staff Planners, p. 13.

824 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

APPENDIX A-4—INITIAL SUPPLY REQUIREMENTS BY THEATERa

(IN MEASUREMENT AND SHORT TONS PER MAN)

a

 These figures were compiled by ASF officers shortly after the war, based on a study of actual monthly shipments from U.S. ports to

each theater over a representative period of operations as reflected in MPR-3, Transportation, to be used as a general guide. The data do

not include bulk petroleum products shipped by tanker or initial equipment that might have been acquired in the theater from Army stockpiles or local procurement. The figures for measurement tonnage, moreover, do not include an allowance for a stowage factor.

Source: Draft, Logistical Data for Staff Planners, prepared by Command and Staff College, Fort Leavenworth, Kans., Sep 46, p. 33.
APPENDIX A 825

APPENDIX A-5—MAINTENANCE REQUIREMENTS,a EUROPEAN AND PACIFIC AREAS,

WORLD WAR II

a

 The term maintenance requirements as used here may be construed to mean all shipments to the theater for use by the Army except

for initial equipment. b

 This figure is computed by converting short tons into measurement tons through use of the appropriate conversion factor for each item

and the addition of 15 percent for stowage loss. Figures on short tonnage and conversion factors in source omitted. c

 Minor discrepancies in totals due to rounding. d

 Assumes 90 percent of quantities shown shipped by tanker and 10 percent in packaged containers.

Source: FM 101-10, Aug 49 ed., pp. 303-04.



APPENDIX B 829

APPENDIX B-2—U.S. PRODUCTION OF MAJOR TYPES OF LANDING SHIPS AND CRAFT

1940-45

Source: CPA, Official Munitions Production of the United States, May 1, 1947, pp. 99-104.


832 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

APPENDIX C-2—DELIVERIES OF SELECTED ITEMS OF MUNITIONS TO THE ARMY

1942-45
APPENDIX C 833

APPENDIX C-2—DELIVERIES OF SELECTED ITEMS OF MUNITIONS TO THE ARMY

1942-45—Continued

a

 Includes data for period 1 January through 30 August 1945 only.

Source: Crawford and Cook, Statistics: Procurement, 9 Apr 52.




838 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

APPENDIX D-5—TROOP AND CARGO FLOW TO THE UNITED KINGDOM FOR OVERLORD

JANUARY 1943-JULY 1944

a

 Includes arrivals from Mediterranean and Iceland, mainly in November 1943. b

 Data not available before May 1943. c

 For months of May, June, and July 1943 inclusive. d

 Preshipment continued through August and September 1944, totaling in those months 561,963 measurement tons, or 13.6 percent of

total shipments.

Source: Richard M. Leighton, The Problem of Troop and Cargo Flow in Preparing the European Invasion, MS, OCMH, Appendix.
Appendix E

THE DIVISION AND AIR GROUP SLICE

APPENDIX E-1—DIVISIONAL FORCE ANALYSIS OF ACTUAL ARMY STRENGTH ON 30 JUNE 1945

a

 Estimate based on proportion among hospitalized battle casualties. Inclusion of nonbattle casualties would increase the proportion

of hospitalized members of the Air Forces and reduce the above divisional force portion.

Source: Figures furnished by Office, Comptroller of the Army, February 1951.
840 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

APPENDIX E-2—DIVISION SLICES FOR THEATERS

(BASED ON TROOP DEPLOYMENT, 30 JUNE 1945)

a

 Those units or organizations whose primary mission is destruction of enemy forces and/or installations. b

 Those units or organizations whose primary mission is to furnish operational assistance for the combat elements. c

 Those units or organizations whose primary mission is that of service in support of the combat and combat support elements. d Those units or organizations whose primary mission is that of service in support of the combat and combat support elements, and

which normally operate in the communications zone. e

 Number of divisions in basis: 61. f

 Number of divisions in basis: 7. g

 Number of divisions in basis: 15. h

 Number of divisions in basis: 6. The relatively high support strengths for the Central Pacific Base Command are explained in part by

the Army support rendered to 6 Marine divisions also present in the theater. The Marine divisions are not included in the combat strength

shown because the extent of support rendered these divisions by Navy and Marine sources is not known.

Source: ASF Manual M-409, 1 Mar 46, Logistic Data for Staff Planners, pp. 15-16.

Appendix F

MERCHANT SHIPPING

APPENDIX F-1—UNITED NATIONS MERCHANT SHIPPING

DRY CARGO GAINS, LOSSES, AND CONSTRUCTION: 1941-45a

(IN THOUSANDS OF DEAD-WEIGHT TONS)

a

 Data include all ships 1,600 gross tons and over excluding vessels in Black and Baltic Seas and on the Great Lakes. b

 Figures do not include gains through additions to pool of neutral or captured shipping. c

 Losses on an occurrence basis. d

 Data not available before this date.

Source: ASF Statistical Review World War II, app. G, p. 144.
APPENDIX F 843

APPENDIX F-2—GROWTH OF THE U.S.-CONTROLLED TANKER FLEET

DECEMBER 1941-OCTOBER 1945

(IN THOUSANDS OF DEAD-WEIGHT TONS)a

a

 Includes vessels 1,600 gross tons and over; data as of the first day of each month. b

 Includes naval auxiliaries converted to aircraft carriers. c

 WSA assumed control of American shipping between April and July 1942.

Source: WSA Shipping Summary, Dec 45, p. 106.


846 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

APPENDIX G-2—VALUE OF WAR DEPARTMENT LEND-LEASE SHIPMENTS TO THE UNITED

KINGDOM, USSR, AND OTHERS BY SIX-MONTH PERIODS: 1941-49a

(IN THOUSANDS OF DOLLARS)

a

 Data represent amounts that were tabulated in time to meet reporting due dates; corrections have not been made for any reporting

lags. Includes commanding general shipments but excludes theater transfers. b

 Theater transfers would increase the figures for others by $3,593,848, while it would not affect totals for the United Kingdom and

USSR appreciably. c

 Negative figure resulting from adjustments.

Source: Whiting, Tod and Craft, Statistics; Lend-Lease, 15 Dec 52, Tables LL-5, LL-10, LL-12.


Appendix H

CIVILIAN SUPPLY

APPENDIX H-1—U.S. SHIPMENTS OF CIVILIAN SUPPLIES

1 JULY 1943-30 SEPTEMBER 1945a

(LONG TONS)

a

 Does not include petroleum products shipped in bulk for combined military and civilian relief use. b

 Less than 0.5.

Source: International Div, ASF, Civilian Supply, MS, OCMH, general app. D-15.

Bibliographical Note

and Guide to Footnotes

Global Logistics and Strategy, 1943-

1945, like its predecessor volume covering

the period 1940-43, is based largely, though

far from exclusively, upon the records

of the various agencies of the War Department. The nature and composition

of these records have been described generally in the bibliographical note to the

earlier volume and those to other volumes in the War Department subseries

of the UNITED STATES ARMY IN

WORLD WAR II. They are described

in more detail in Federal Records of

World War II, 2 vols, prepared by the

General Services Administration's National Archives and Records Service,

(Washington, 1951).

Physical custody of these Army records

has been transferred, since the earlier

volume was published in 1955, from the

Departmental Records Branch, Adjutant

General's Office, Department of the

Army, to the National Archives and Records Service. Their arrangement, however, has not been fundamentally

changed. Information in the footnote citations to original record material has

been designed to identify each document

sufficiently so that it can be located

through the National Archives and Records Service. In most cases this has involved citation of the specific file in

which the document was located at the

time it was used by the authors. Major

exceptions are papers that can be more

readily located by the researcher by master serial numbers. Included in this category are the formal papers of the Joint

and Combined Chiefs of Staff (JCS and

CCS) and of the committees forming

part of those organizations, the Munitions Assignments Board in Washington

(MAB) and the Munitions Assignments

Committee (Ground) (MAC(G)), certain letters and directives issued by the

Adjutant General's office (TAG), general orders and memoranda of the

various headquarters (Army, joint, and

combined), and certain messages identified by War Department CM-IN and

CM-OUT numbers and dates. The alphabetical symbols used in identifying

both files and serials are to be found in

the accompanying List of Abbreviations.

In sifting the masses of material on

logistics and strategy in World War II

contained in War Department files, the

authors have had to practice a high degree of selectivity. The volume of paper

generated in the conduct of logistics

business in the last two years of the war

is indeed of mountainous proportions.

JCS and CCS papers and the files of the

Operations Division (OPD), War Department General Staff, have been relied

on in this volume to a greater degree

than in its predecessor, as even a cursory

examination of the footnotes will reveal.

This course was imperative both in the

interests of economy of effort and in

order to place the whole story of the

relation of logistics and strategy in its

proper perspective. The Joint Chiefs and

Combined Chiefs made the basic deci-
852 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

sions on wartime strategy, and it was in

the joint and combined committees that

all of the logistical factors affecting these

decisions were apt to emerge in reasonably clear and succinct outline. OPD was

the Army staff agency principally responsible for advising the Army Chief of Staff

on policy and strategy, the principal link

of that staff with the joint and combined

organization, and the principal recordkeeper for the War Department of joint

and combined papers. The joint and

combined papers used so extensively in

the preparation of this volume were

mainly consulted in the excellent file of

these and related Army papers kept by

OPD's Strategy and Policy Group (ABC

file) rather than in the JCS and CGS files

themselves. These latter files, unique

among the wartime military records of

World War II, remain under control of

the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

The groups of OPD records have been

succinctly described by Maurice Matloff

in the bibliographical note to Strategic

Planning for Coalition Warfare, 1943-

1944, UNITED STATES ARMY IN

WORLD WAR II, (Washington, 1959).

The most important groups for the purposes of this volume have been the ABC

files and the informal policy files of

Executive Office, OPD, identified as

OPD Exec.

Despite this heavy reliance on CCS,

JCS and OPD records, the files of the

Army Service Forces agencies are the

most important source for reconstructing

the record of the Army's own logistical

activities and of its relationships with

civilian agencies in the detailed execution of production and other programs.

Moreover, the ASF materials shed added,

and sometimes different, light on the relationship of logistics and strategy, for

ASF headquarters had its own links with

the logistical agencies serving the Joint

Chiefs. ASF headquarters records have

therefore also been extensively used. ASF

files most frequently consulted have been

those of the Directorate of Plans and

Operations, the International Division,

the Control Division, the Transportation

Corps (both the regular Office, Chief of

Transportation file, identified as OCT,

and the special collections made by its

historical branch, identified as OCT

HB), and General Somervell's personal

file, identified in the footnotes as Hq

ASF, with the appropriate folder title.

In addition to the ASF records in

National Archives, Lt. Gen. Leroy S.

Lutes, wartime director of Plans and Operations, ASF, at various times during

the war and afterward, kindly granted

access to his personal file, which remains

in his custody. Footnote references to

folders in this file follow the arrangement at the time they were consulted.

The classification "Misc Notes, Lutes

File" covers certain notes taken by researchers during the war from these files

for which no folder reference could be

given.

The whole body of ASF records is far

more voluminous and unorganized than

are the files of OPD. They confront the

historian with many problems in reconstructing a logical and sequential account

of events and actions. For this reason,

the monographs and organizational histories produced by wartime ASF historians based on preliminary sifting of

these records, and the collections of selected documents that frequently accompany them, have been a considerable aid

to the authors. A list of the more important of these wartime monographs and

agency histories can be found in the
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE AND GUIDE TO FOOTNOTES 853

bibliographical note to the authors'

Global Logistics and Strategy, 1940-1943

(Washington, 1955). These studies, together with others produced in the wartime Army historical program and individually cited in the footnotes, are in the

custody of the General Reference Section, Office, Chief of Military History

(OCMH).

Collections of documents and notes

maintained in OCMH have also been of

some importance. In these collections,

many made by wartime historians, some

documents are preserved that are unavailable, or at least extremely difficult

to locate, elsewhere. For instance, a collection of notes taken by members of the

historical unit of the Control Division,

ASF, during or shortly after the war,

(identified in the footnotes as Log File,

OCMH), have been a convenient source

of information.

Some special note is required on the

records of the wartime international conferences. The official U.S. military record

of these conferences was maintained in a

set of bound books for each conference.

A set of these bound volumes is in the

OCMH collections. The State Department has published documents pertaining to three of the conferences in the

series Foreign Relations of the United

States, Diplomatic Papers:—The Conferences at Malta and Yalta, Department of

State Publication No. 6199 (Washington, 1955); The Conferences of Berlin

(The Potsdam Conference), 2 Vols., Publication No. 7015 (Washington, 1960);

and The Conferences at Cairo and Tehran, 1943, Publication No. 7187 (Washington, 1961). The published documents

include some but not all of the military

papers contained in the bound volumes,

as well as a large number of background

papers relating to the conferences. In

some cases they have been useful to supplement the military record, but in general they do not contain the detailed

logistical papers that have been the authors' principal concern.

Of somewhat less utility, but still of

value in the preparation of this volume,

have been the files of the Office of the

Secretary of the Army, the Office of the

Chief of Staff (OCS), the Supply Division

of the General Staff (G-4), and The Adjutant General of the Army. The TAG

records, however, are of far less import

for the war years than for the prewar

period, since after early 1942 the Office

of The Adjutant General really ceased

to be a War Department central file for

anything other than formal directives

and backup papers pertaining to them

and for the papers generated by TAG

business.

Records of overseas theaters have not

been extensively consulted, though manuscript monographs and published works

relating to operations in these theaters

have been the basis for many sections of

this book. A single exception has been

the selected use of Secretary General

Staff files of Supreme Headquarters,

Allied Expeditionary Force, identified as

SHAEF SGS, for material on the development of European strategy and the

requirements for landing craft. The originals of the SHAEF files are with other

wartime military records in National Archives. For a full description of these records see the bibliographical note in Forrest C. Pogue, The Supreme Command,

THE UNITED STATES ARMY IN

WORLD WAR II (Washington, 1953).

Of manuscript histories prepared outside the Army's program, those forming

part of the history of the wartime activi-
854 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

ties of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, prepared

by the historical section of that organization, have been most valuable. When

used as a primary source of information,

these studies have been cited in detail

in the footnotes. The most useful of

them have been Vernon Davis' account

of the development of JCS organization

and that of Grace Hayes on strategy in

the war against Japan.

Outside the strictly military records of

World War II, the files of the War Shipping Administration (WSA) have been of

greatest assistance. WSA, as the principal

agency responsible for operation of U.S.

merchant shipping, was vitally concerned

in problems relating to overseas movements of both troops and supplies. WSA

officials frequently looked at shipping

problems from a different vantage point

from military authorities, and consultation of the WSA records has enabled the

authors to add balance to their story.

Most important for this purpose have

been the files of the two successive directors of WSA, Lewis Douglas and Capt.

Granville Conway, identified in the footnotes as WSA Douglas and WSA Conway

files. The WSA records form part of the

collections now under the control of the

Federal Records Center, Region 3, Suitland, Maryland.

We have not similarly consulted the

files of the War Production Board in the

preparation of this volume. Use has been

made, however, of the War Production

Board study prepared by the Civilian

Production Administration, Industrial

Mobilization for War: Program and Administration (Washington, 1947) and of

the unpublished War Production Board

historical monographs. Of these monographs, Special Study 11, Landing Craft

and the War Production Board, April

1942 to May 1944, prepared by George E.

Mowry, has been of particular value.

The volume of published material on

various aspects of World War II—memoirs, official and unofficial histories, collections of documents, monographs and

syntheses—has proliferated since publication of the earlier volume on global

logistics in 1955. These works have been

used selectively whenever material contained in them could supplement or clarify the official record available, or when

these accounts were sufficiently complete

and reliable to obviate the necessity for

detailed research in the records. Certainly most important in this category have

been the works of our colleagues in the

UNITED STATES ARMY IN WORLD

WAR II Series. The volumes in the theater subseries and Technical Service volumes on overseas operations have been

the principal reliance for information on

logistical and tactical developments within the various theaters. Roland G. Ruppenthal, Logistical Support of the Armies,

Volume I: May 1941-September 1944

(Washington, 1953) and Logistical Support of the Armies, Volume II: September

1944-May 1945 (Washington, 1959), for

instance, have been a principal source on

the logistical problems of the European

theater. Two volumes on the CBI, both

by Charles F. Romanus and Riley Sunderland, Stilwell's Command Problems

(Washington, 1956) and Time Runs Out

in CBI (Washington, 1959) have been

our principal source for material on operations and logistics in the Far East. No

companion volume covers logistical and

administrative problems in the Pacific;

however, the tactical volumes and the

Technical Service histories, notably Alvin P. Stauffer's The Quartermaster

Corps: Operations in the War Against
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE AND GUIDE TO FOOTNOTES 855

Japan (Washington, 1956), have been

invaluable. Manuscript histories in the

OCMH collection contain adequate accounts of theater logistical problems in

the South and Central Pacific; Engineers

in the Southwest Pacific, 8 vols. (Washington, 1947-53), prepared by Corps of

Engineers historians, is a source of much

detailed information on logistics in General MacArthur's theater.

For material at the Washington level

the authors, needless to say, owe a great

debt to Maurice Matloff's Strategic Planning for Coalition Warfare, 1943-1944,

which, from a different vantage point,

surveys much of the ground covered

here, and to Ray S. Cline, Washington

Command Post: The Operations Division (Washington, 1951) for its coverage

of difficult organizational and procedural

problems at the highest Army levels. The

Technical Service histories of zone of

interior operations and two companion

logistical volumes in the War Department subseries, R. Elberton Smith, The

Army and Economic Mobilization (Washington, 1959) and John D. Millett, The

Organization and Role of the Army Service Forces (Washington, 1954), are authoritative in the fields they cover. Harry

L. Coles and Albert K. Weinberg, Civil

Affairs: Soldiers Become Governors

(Washington, 1964) has provided a principal documentary source for the chapters on the Army and civilian supply.

Marcel Vigneras, Rearming the French

(Washington, 1957) has been the principal source for the story of lend-lease to

France; and Stetson Conn, Rose E. Engleman, and Byron Fairchild, Guarding the

United States and Its Outposts (Washington, 1964) has been the principal

reliance for the account of lend-lease to

Latin America.

In this work, the authors have sought

to present a scrupulously balanced account of the British view in the controversies — strategic and logistical — which

characterized the Anglo-American partnership. Information on British points

of view and actions has been gleaned

from CCS papers, from British papers

included in U.S. Army records, from

the memoirs of various British participants, and from the published volumes

in the British series, History of the Second World War. Of British memoir

literature, incomparably the most important items are the last three volumes

of Winston Churchill's memoirs, The

Hinge of Fate (Boston: Houghton Mifflin

Company, 1950), Closing the Ring (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1951)

and Triumph and Tragedy (Boston:

Houghton Mifflin Company, 1953), and

the two volumes of Arthur Bryant based

on Lord Alanbrooke's diary and memory, Turn of the Tide (New York:

Doubleday & Co., 1957) and Triumph

in the West (New York: Doubleday &

Co., 1958). Of the British official histories

the two volumes of John Ehrman, Grand

Strategy, Volumes V and VI (London:

Her Majesty's Stationery Office, 1956)

provide a well-balanced story of development of worldwide strategy and the considerations behind it from the British

point of view covering the period from

August 1943 through August 1945. In

the United Kingdom Civil Series H.

Duncan Hall, North American Supply

(London: HMSO, 1955) and Hall and

C. C. Wrigley, Studies in Overseas Supply (London: HMSO, 1956) present a

detailed and interesting account of lendlease from the British vantage point.

C. B. A. Behrens, Merchant Shipping

and the Demands of War (London:
856 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

HMSO, 1955) is equally important in

the field of merchant shipping and the

operations of the British Ministry of

War Transport. The work of W. K.

Hancock and M. M. Gowing, British

War Economy (London: HMSO, 1949)

was of considerable value in the preparation of this as well as the previous volume.

Similarly, for information on the U.S.

Navy's views and actions, we have relied

mainly on the papers and minutes of the

JCS and the many committees that

served them, on Navy papers to be found

in Army records, on memoirs, and on

published histories, official and unofficial, based on naval records. Information

on naval operations has been drawn

largely from the series of volumes written by Samuel Eliot Morison. For naval

logistics, Duncan Ballantine's U.S. Naval

Logistics in the Second World War

(Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University

Press, 1947) is the best summary. Two

works, one by Rear Adm. Worrall Reed

Carter, Beans, Bullets and Black Oil

(Washington, 1953), the other by Admiral Carter and Rear Adm. Elmer Ellsworth Duvall, Ships, Salvage and Sinews

of War (Washington, 1954), shed light on

operational naval logistics in the Pacific

and the Atlantic, respectively. A number

of agency administrative histories were

produced as part of the Navy's wartime

historical program. These have been synthesized and related to a larger whole by

Rear Adm. Julius Fuhrer in Administration of the Navy Department in World

War II (Washington, 1960). Still lacking, on the Navy side, is any work comparable to Matloff's Strategic Planning

for Coalition Warfare, 1943-1944, that

reflects the role and thinking of the

Navy's war planners in the development

of the strategy of the war.

The main source of information on

Army Air Forces operations, and incidentally on Army Air Forces logistics,

has been the volumes of The Army Air

Forces in World War II edited by Wesley

Frank Craven and James Lea Cate.

The statistics in this volume are largely

of two kinds—data on planning and allocation, and records of accomplishment.

The first type predominates in the text

and the accompanying tables; the second

in the statistical appendixes. The statistics in the text and accompanying tables,

for the most part, reflect contemporary

calculations, sometimes hastily compiled

to meet deadlines, and they were drawn

largely from the same sorts of sources as

the text of the volume itself. The tables

in the appendixes were drawn up from

compilations made after the war and

represent more refined statistics covering longer periods of time. A primary

source for the appendix tables has been

the drafts prepared under the direction

of Theodore E. Whiting of the Office of

the Comptroller of the Army and intended for eventual publication in a

statistical volume in the UNITED

STATES ARMY IN WORLD WAR II

Series. Work on the volume was suspended during the Korean War and has

not been resumed; drafts of completed

portions are in OCMH files. In areas not

covered by the drafts, statistics on Army

matters have been drawn from various

sources such as Strength of the Army

(STM-30) published monthly by The

Adjutant General, Department of the

Army, The Army Service Forces' Statistical Review, World War II, prepared

by the Control Division, ASF, in 1946,

and drafts and editions of ASF Manual

M-409, Logistical Data for Staff Planners, and FM 101-10, Staff Officers Field
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE AND GUIDE TO FOOTNOTES 857

Manual, Organization, Technical and

Logistical Data, which contain statistical

averages based on World War II experience. Some statistics relating to shipping

have been drawn from the late 1945 editions of the War Shipping Administration's monthly Shipping Summary, and

those on landing craft production from

Official Munitions Production of the

United States by Months, July 1, 1940-

August 31, 1945, prepared by the Civilian Production Administration in 1947.

These and other statistical sources less

frequently used are cited in footnotes

and notes on sources appended to each

statistical table.
List of Abbreviations

A & N Army and Navy

AAF Army Air Forces

ABC American-British Conversations (January-March 1941)

ACNO Assistant Chief of Naval Operations

ACofS Assistant Chief of Staff

ACofT Assistant Chief of Transportation

Actg Acting

Admin Administration

AFHQ Allied Force Headquarters

AFPAC Army Forces, Pacific

AFMIDPAC Army Forces, Middle Pacific

AFWESPAC Army Forces, Western Pacific

AG Adjutant General

AGC Amphibious headquarters ship

AGF Army Ground Forces

AGWAR Adjutant General, War Department

AK Cargo ship, auxiliary (cargo ship of any type

operated by the Navy)

AKA Cargo ship, attack

AMG Allied Military Government

AMGOT Allied Military Government of Occupied Territory

AMMDEL American Military Mission, Delhi

AMMISCA American Military Mission to China

ANMB Army-Navy Munitions Board

ANPB Army-Navy Petroleum Board

ANZAC Australia-New Zealand Army Corps

AP Transport (operated by the Navy)

APA Transport, attack

APD Old destroyer used as transport, attack (high-speed)

ARL Landing craft, repair ship

ASF Army Service Forces

ASN Assistant Secretary of the Navy

ASP Army Supply Program

Asst Assistant

ASW Assistant Secretary of War

AT(B) Administration of Territories Committee (Balkans)

ATC Air Transport Command

AT(E) Administration of Territories Committee (Europe)

BAS British Army Staff

Bd Board

BEW Board of Economic Warfare

BMSM British Military Supply Mission
LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS 859

BMWT British Ministry of War Transport

Br British; branch

C-type vessel Standard cargo vessel

CA Civil Affairs

CAD Civil Affairs Division, War Department

CAdC Combined Administrative Committee

CBI China, Burma, India

CBIT China, Burma, India theater

CCAC Combined Civil Affairs Committee

CCAC(S) Combined Civil Affairs Subcommittee for Supply

CCAO Chief Civil Affairs Officer

CCNA Combined Committee for North Africa

CCS Combined Chiefs of Staff

CDS China Defense Supplies, Inc.

CESF Commander, Eastern Sea Frontier

CFB Combined Food Board

Cft Craft

CG Commanding General

Chmn Chairman

CinC Commander in Chief

CINCAFPAC Commander in Chief, U.S. Army Forces, Pacific

CINCJAPA Commander in Chief, Japan Area

CINCMED Commander in Chief, Mediterranean

CINCPAC Commander in Chief, U.S. Pacific Fleet

CINCPOA Commander in Chief, Pacific Ocean Area

CINCSWPA Commander in Chief, SWPA

CLAC Combined Liberated Areas Committee

Class I Supplies consumed at an approximately uniform daily rate

under all conditions, and that are automatically issued

Class II Supplies for which allowances are fixed by table of allowances and table of basic allowances

Class III Fuels and lubricants other than aviation

Class III-A Aviation fuels and lubricants

Class IV Supplies and equipment for which allowances are not prescribed or which require special control measures and are

not otherwise classified

Class V Ammunition, explosives, and chemical agents

CM-IN Classified message, incoming

CM-OUT Classified message, outgoing

CMP Controlled Materials Plan

CMTC(CMT) Combined Military Transportation Committee

CNAC Chinese National Airways Corporation

CNO Chief of Naval Operations

CO Commanding Officer

COB Committee of Combined Boards

CofS Chief of Staff

CofT Chief of Transportation

Com Committee
860 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

Comb Combined

Comd Command

Comdr Commander

COMGENSOPAC Commanding General, South Pacific

COMINCH Commander in Chief, U.S. Fleet

Comm Commission

COMNAVEU Commander U.S. Naval Forces, Europe

COMNAVNAW Commander U.S. Naval Forces, Northwest African Waters

Conf Conference

Conv Conversation

Corresp Correspondence

COS Chiefs of Staff (British)

COSMED Chiefs of Staff, Mediterranean

COSSAC Chief of Staff to the Supreme Allied Commander (Designate)

COS(W) Chiefs of Staff, Washington

CPA Civilian Production Administration; Central Pacific Area

CPBC Central Pacific Base Command

CPRB Combined Production and Resources Board

CPS Combined Staff Planners

CREGO Chief Regulating Officer, SWPA

CRMB Combined Raw Materials Board

CSAB Combined Shipping Adjustment Board

CSB Civilian Supply Branch, International Division, ASF

CT China theater

CTO China Theater of Operations

D-day Beginning of operation OVERLORD, 6 June 1944

DCofS Deputy Chief of Staff

Dep Deputy

DF Disposition Form

Div Division

DUKW 21⁄2-ton amphibious truck

ELOC Eastern Line of Communication

Equip Equipment

ETO European Theater of Operations

ETOUSA European Theater of Operations, U.S. Army

ExO Executive officer

FAN Symbol for messages from Commander in Chief,

Allied Expeditionary Force to the CCS

FCNL French Committee of National Liberation

FDR Franklin D. Roosevelt

FEA Foreign Economic Administration

FFI French Forces of the Interior

FILBAS Philippine Base

G-1 Personnel section of divisional or higher staff

G-2 Intelligence section of divisional or higher staff

G-3 Operations and training section of divisional or higher staff

G-4 Logistics section of divisional or higher staff

G-5 Civil affairs section of divisional or higher staff
LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS 861

GAL General George A. Lincoln

GCM General George C. Marshall

Gp Group

HMSO Her Majesty's Stationery Office

Hq Headquarters

IBT India-Burma theater

ICAF Industrial College of the Armed Forces

ID International Division, ASF

Ind Indorsement

ISC International Supply Committee

J-4 Joint Staff logistics section

JAdC Joint Administrative Committee

JCS Joint Chiefs of Staff

JDCS Joint Deputy Chiefs of Staff

JLC Joint Logistics Committee

JLPC Joint Logistics Plans Committee

JMAC Joint Munitions Allocation Committee

JMTC(JMT) Joint Military Transportation Committee

JOSCO Joint Overseas Shipping Control Office

JPS Joint Staff Planners

JPSC Joint Production Survey Committee

JSM Joint Staff Mission (British)

JSSC Joint Strategic Survey Committee

Jt Joint

JWPC Joint War Plans Committee

KMF British troop convoy from the U.K. to Gibraltar

KMS British cargo convoy from the U.K. to Gibraltar

LAC Liberated Areas Committee

LCA Landing craft, assault

LCA(H) Landing craft, assault (hedgerow)

LCP Landing craft, flak

LCG(L) Landing craft, gun (large)

LCG(M) Landing craft, gun (medium)

LCI Landing craft, infantry

LCI(L) Landing craft, infantry (large)

LCM Landing craft, mechanized

LCP Landing craft, personnel

LCP(L) Landing craft, personnel (large)

LCP(R) Landing craft, personnel (ramp)

LCS Landing craft, support

LCS(L) Landing craft, support (large)

LCS(M) Landing craft, support (medium)

LCS(S) Landing craft, support (small)

LCT Landing craft, tank

LCT(5) Landing craft, tank (Mark V)

LCT(6) Landing craft, tank (Mark VI)

LCT(7) Original designation for LSM

LCT(R) Landing craft, tank (rocket)
862 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

LCV Landing craft, vehicle

LCVP Landing craft, vehicle and personnel

Ldg Landing

LMAB Munitions Assignments Board, London

LOC Line of Communication

Log Logistics

LSD Landing ship, dock

LSE Landing ship, emergency repair

LSG Landing ship, gantry

LSH Landing ship, headquarters

LSI Landing ship, infantry

LSI(L) Landing ship, infantry (large)

LSI(M) Landing ship, infantry (medium)

LSI(S) Landing ship, infantry (small)

LSM Landing ship, medium

LST Landing ship, tank

LST(1) Landing ship, tank (long-range, British)

LST(2) Landing ship, tank (U.S.-built; British designation)

LVT Landing vehicle, tracked

MAB Munitions Assignments Board, Washington

MAC(A) Munitions Assignments Committee (Air)

MAC(G) Munitions Assignments Committee (Ground)

MAC(N) Munitions Assignments Committee (Navy)

MBW Munitions Assignments Board, Washington

Med Mediterranean

MEDCOS Chiefs of Staff, Mediterranean (British)

MEE Minimum essential housekeeping equipment

MFR Memo for Record

MG Military Government

MIDPAC Middle Pacific

MMSR Monthly Materiel Status Report

MPR Monthly Progress Report

MS Manuscript

MSR Monthly Status Report

MT Motor transport ship

MTO Mediterranean Theater of Operations

MTOUSA Mediterranean Theater of Operations, U.S. Army

NAEB North African Economic Board

NAF Symbol for messages from the CCS to the

Commander in Chief, Allied Expeditionary Force

NASBO North African Shipping Board

NATOUSA North African Theater of Operations, U.S. Army

NEI Netherlands East Indies

NTS Naval Transportation Service

NYPOE New York Port of Embarkation

OCMH Office, Chief of Military History

OCofT Office, Chief of Transportation

OCOrd Office, Chief of Ordnance
LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS 863

OCS Office, Chief of Staff

OCT HB Historical Branch, Office, Chief of Transportation

OFEC Office of Foreign Economic Coordination

OFRRO Office of Foreign Relief and Rehabilitation

OLLA Office of Lend-Lease Administration

ONI Office of Naval Intelligence

OPD Operations Division, War Department

Opn Operation

OSS Office of Strategic Services

OWI Office of War Information

OWM Office of War Mobilization

OWMR Office of War Mobilization and Reconversion

P&O Plans and Operations Division, OPD

PAC-AID Air mission from China in support of Pacific operations

Pam Pamphlet

PGSC Persian Gulf Service Command

Plng Planning

PM Prime Minister

POA Pacific Ocean Areas

POE Port of Embarkation

POL Petroleum, Oil, and Lubricants

POM Preparation for Overseas Movement

POR Preparation for Overseas Movement of

Individual Replacements

POW Prisoner of war

PSPC President's Soviet Protocol Committee

PTO Pacific Theater of Operations

Pub Publication

QMC Quartermaster Corps

RAF Royal Air Force

Recmn Recommendation

Reqmt Requirement

Rev Revised; revision

S&P Strategy and Policy Group, OPD

SACMED Supreme Allied Commander, Mediterranean theater

SCAEF Supreme Commander, Allied Expeditionary Force

SCAMA Service Central des Approvisionnements et Materiels

Américains (Central Office of American Supplies

and Equipment)

SEAC Southeast Asia Command

SFPOE San Francisco Port of Embarkation

SGPC Soviet Government Purchasing Commission

SGS Secretary, General Staff

SHAEF Supreme Headquarters, Allied Expeditionary Force

Shpg Shipping

Sit Situation

SLOE Special Lists of Equipment

SOE Special Operations Executive (British)
864 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

SOPAC South Pacific Area

SOS Services of Supply

SOWESPAC Southwest Pacific

SPA South Pacific Area

SPBC South Pacific Base Command

SS Strategic Study

Sup Supply

Suppl Supplement

Svc Service

SWPA Southwest Pacific Area

TAG The Adjutant General

TBA Table of Basic Allowances

TC Transportation Corps

T/E Table of Equipment

Tech Technical

Tel Telephone

TOE Table of Organization and Equipment

Trans Transportation

Trng Training

UGF U.S. troop convoy from New York to Gibraltar

UGS U.S. cargo convoy from New York to Gibraltar

U.K. United Kingdom

U.N. United Nations

UNRRA United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration

USAF U.S. Army Forces

USAFCBI U.S. Army Forces, China, Burma, India

USAFCBIT U.S. Army Forces, CBI theater

USAFFE U.S. Army Forces in the Far East

USAFIME U.S. Army Forces in the Middle East

USAFISPA U.S. Army Forces in the South Pacific Area

USASOS U.S. Army Services of Supply

USFET U.S. Forces, European theater

USN Under Secretary of the Navy

USPC United States Procurement Committee

U.S. Reps MAB U.S. Representatives, MAB

USSR Union of Soviet Socialist Republics

USW Under Secretary of War

VCNO Vice Chief of Naval Operations

V-E Day Victory in Europe

VHB Very heavy bomber

V-J Day Victory in Japan

VLR Very long range

WAR War Department

WD War Department

WDCSA War Department, CofS, Army

WDGS War Department General Staff

WFA War Food Administration

WMC War Manpower Commission
LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS 865

WPB War Production Board

WPD War Plans Division

WSA War Shipping Administration

WSC Winston S. Churchill

XAP Troop transport, attack, modified

ZI Zone of Interior
Glossary of Code Names

ALAMO

ALPHA

ANAKIM

ANVIL

ARCADIA

ARGONAUT

AVALANCHE

BAYTOWN

BETA

BOLERO

BOSCO

BUCCANEER

BUTTRESS

CALIPH

CAPITAL

CARTWHEEL

CHAMPION

CORONET

CULVERIN

DRACULA

EUREKA

FORAGER

FOREARM

FREEDOM

GRANITE

HERCULES

HUSKY

ICEBERG

LONGTOM

MANHATTAN

MATTERHORN

MERCANTILE

MILEPOST

Code name for U.S. Sixth Army while operating as a special

ground task force under GHQ SWPA.

Plan for defense of Kunming and Chungking in eastern

China.

Plan for recapture of Burma.

Early plan for invasion of southern France.

U.S.-British conference held in Washington,

December 1941-January 1942.

International conference held at Malta and Yalta,

January-February 1945.

Invasion of Italy at Salerno.

British invasion of Italy on Calabrian coast.

Plan for opening the port of Fort Bayard on the China coast.

Build-up of U.S. forces and supplies in the United Kingdom

for cross-Channel attack.

Communications code name for QUADRANT.

Plan for amphibious operation in Andaman Islands.

Plan for British operation against northern Calabria in case

BAYTOWN plan failed.

Plan for invasion of Bordeaux region of western France as

alternate to landing in southern France.

Offensive to capture north Burma, 1944.

Converging drives on Rabaul by South Pacific and

SWPA forces.

Plan for general offensive in Burma, 1943.

Plan for operation against Honshu, Japan.

Plan for assault on Sumatra.

Plan for attack on Rangoon, 1944.

International conference at Tehran, November 1943.

Operation for the capture of the Mariana Islands, 1944.

Kavieng, New Ireland.

Cable designation for Algiers messages.

Plan for operations in POA in 1944.

Plan for assault on Rhodes, early 1944.

Allied invasion of Sicily, July 1943.

Allied invasion of the Ryukyu Islands, 1945.

Plan for Allied occupation of Chusan Archipelago, 1945.

Code name for atomic energy project which developed the

atomic bomb, August 1942-August 1946.

Plan for bombing Japan from bases in Cheng-tu, China.

Manus Island, Bismarck Archipelago.

U.S. supply program for Soviet forces in Siberia in preparation for Russian entry into war with Japan.
GLOSSARY OF CODE NAMES 867

NEPTUNE

OCTAGON

OLYMPIC

ORANGE

OVERLORD

PIGSTICK

POINTBLANK

QUADRANT

RANKIN

RASHNESS

RECKLESS

RENO

ROUNDHAMMER

ROUNDUP

SEXTANT

SHINGLE

SICKLE

SKYSCRAPER

SLEDGEHAMMER

SYMBOL

TARZAN

TERMINAL

TIGAR 26-A

TIGAR 26-B

TORCH

TRIDENT

X-RAY Force

Y-Force

YOKE Force

Z-Force

ZEBRA Force

Code word for cross-Channel operation, naming specific assault area and target date, for which a special security

procedure was developed.

U.S.-British conference at Quebec, September 1944.

Plan for invasion of Kyushu, March 1946.

Pre-war plan for advance through Central Pacific.

Allied cross-Channel invasion of northwest Europe,

June 1944.

Plan for limited operation on south Mayu Peninsula,

Burma.

Combined bomber offensive against Germany.

U.S.-British conference held at Quebec, August 1943.

Plan for Allied return to Europe in case of deterioration of

German position.

Revised BETA plan.

Assault force for Hollandia operation, 22 April-25 August

1944. SWPA plans for operation in the Bismarck Archipelago

along northern coast of New Guinea and on to Mindanao.

Cross-Channel invasion plan presented as a compromise

between SLEDGEHAMMER and ROUNDUP.

Plan for a major U.S.-British cross-Channel operation in

1943. International conference at Cairo, November-December

1943. Amphibious operation at Anzio, Italy.

Build-up of U.S. Eighth Air Force in the U.K. for bomber

offensive against Germany.

Early cross-Channel attack plan which bore close

resemblance to OVERLORD plan.

Plan for limited cross-Channel attack in 1942.

Code name for international conference at Casablanca,

14-23 January 1943.

India-based portion of general offensive in Burma.

International conference at Potsdam, Germany,

16 July-2 August 1945.

Project to move trucks into China by air for use in supporting Fourteenth Air Force over the Eastern Line of Communications.

Project for overland delivery of vehicles to China by way of

Soviet Turkestan.

Allied invasion of northwest Africa, November 1943.

U.S.-British conference held in Washington, May 1943.

Chinese Army in India. YOKE Force.

American-sponsored Chinese divisions in Yunnan Province.

ZEBRA Force.

American-sponsored Chinese divisions in east China.
UNITED STATES ARMY IN WORLD WAR II

The following volumes have been published or are in press:

The War Department

Chief of Staff: Prewar Plans and Preparations

Washington Command Post: The Operations Division

Strategic Planning for Coalition Warfare: 1941-1942

Strategic Planning for Coalition Warfare: 1943-1944

Global Logistics and Strategy: 1940-1943

Global Logistics and Strategy: 1943-1945

The Army and Economic Mobilization

The Army and Industrial Manpower

The Army Ground Forces

The Organization of Ground Combat Troops

The Procurement and Training of Ground Combat Troops

The Army Service Forces

The Organization and Role of the Army Service Forces

The Western Hemisphere

The Framework of Hemisphere Defense

Guarding the United States and Its Outposts

The War in the Pacific

The Fall of the Philippines

Guadalcanal: The First Offensive

Victory in Papua

CARTWHEEL: The Reduction of Rabaul

Seizure of the Gilberts and Marshalls

Campaign in the Marianas

The Approach to the Philippines

Leyte: The Return to the Philippines

Triumph in the Philippines

Okinawa: The Last Battle

Strategy and Command: The First Two Years

The Mediterranean Theater of Operations

Northwest Africa: Seizing the Initiative in the West

Sicily and the Surrender of Italy

Salerno to Cassino

Cassino to the Alps

The European Theater of Operations

Cross-Channel Attack

Breakout and Pursuit

The Lorraine Campaign

The Siegfried Line Campaign

The Ardennes: Battle of the Bulge

The Last Offensive
The Supreme Command

Logistical Support of the Armies, Volume I

Logistical Support of the Armies, Volume II

The Middle East Theater

The Persian Corridor and Aid to Russia

The China-Burma-India Theater

Stilwell's Mission to China

Stilwell's Command Problems

Time Runs Out in CBI

The Technical Services

The Chemical Warfare Service: Organizing for War

The Chemical Warfare Service: From Laboratory to Field

The Chemical Warfare Service: Chemicals in Combat

The Corps of Engineers: Troops and Equipment

The Corps of Engineers: The War Against Japan

The Corps of Engineers: The War Against Germany

The Corps of Engineers: Military Construction in the United States

The Medical Department: Hospitalization and Evacuation; Zone of Interior

The Medical Department: Medical Service in the Mediterranean and Minor Theaters

The Ordnance Department: Planning Munitions for War

The Ordnance Department: Procurement and Supply

The Ordnance Department: On Beachhead and Battlefront

The Quartermaster Corps: Organization, Supply, and Services, Volume I

The Quartermaster Corps: Organization, Supply, and Services, Volume II

The Quartermaster Corps: Operations in the War Against Japan

The Quartermaster Corps: Operations in the War Against Germany

The Signal Corps: The Emergency

The Signal Corps: The Test

The Signal Corps: The Outcome

The Transportation Corps: Responsibilities, Organization, and Operations

The Transportation Corps: Movements, Training, and Supply

The Transportation Corps: Operations Overseas

Special Studies

Chronology: 1941-1945

Military Relations Between the United States and Canada: 1939-1945

Rearming the French

Three Battles: Arnaville, Altuzzo, and Schmidt

The Women's Army Corps

Civil Affairs: Soldiers Become Governors

Buying Aircraft: Materiel Procurement for the Army Air Forces

The Employment of Negro Troops

Manhattan: The U.S. Army and the Atomic Bomb

Pictorial Record

The War Against Germany and Italy: Mediterranean and Adjacent Areas

The War Against Germany: Europe and Adjacent Areas

The War Against Japan

Index

Abadan, 681

Acheson, Dean, 746, 772

Administration of Territories (Balkans) Committee,

769

Administration of Territories (Europe) Committee,

747-49

Admiralty, British, 328, 333, 334

Admiralty Islands, 405, 406

Aegean operations, 226-29, 237, 278, 289-91

Afrika Korps, 9

Agriculture Department, 671, 739

Air bases. See B-29's; Siberian air bases.

Air Forces, U.S. See also Army Air Forces.

Tenth, 622

Thirteenth, 409, 565

Fourteenth, 80, 502, 519, 521, 526-27, 622

Twentieth, 521, 579, 607

Air Service Command, 136, 152

Air Transport Command, 522, 525, 587, 622, 727

Airborne Division, 82d, 33, 35, 42, 45, 241

Aircraft, 116, 393, 657, 664

for aid to USSR, 675, 679, 679n, 691

Aircraft Resources Control Office, 111

Airlift

of supplies. See Hump air line.

of troops, 613

Akyab, 71, 80, 211, 503, 509

ALAMO Force, 435, 436

Albania, 786, 788

Aleutian Islands, 396, 398

Alexander, Field Marshal Sir Harold R. L. G., 39,

229-30, 234, 312, 315, 321, 331, 336, 338-40, 345, 363, 374-80, 384, 534, 777-79. See also Supreme

Allied Commander, Mediterranean.

Algiers, 37, 237, 239, 240

Allied Air Forces, 435

Allied Commission, 777, 779

Allied Control Commission, 758, 758n, 761, 773,

774-75

Allied Force Headquarters, 176, 331, 356, 701-04,

707, 740, 755, 757-58, 761, 779

Allied Land Forces, 435, 436

Allied Military Government of Occupied Territory,

755, 758n

Allied Naval Forces, 435, 436

Ammunition, artillery, 550

Ammunition Supply Report, 148-49, 153-54, 473

Amphibious equipment, procurement of, 11, 23, 439,

489

Amphibious Force, Atlantic Fleet, 47

Amphibious lift. See Assault shipping.

Amur River, 689-90, 698

ANAKIM, 7, 62, 80, 84, 86, 501-03, 509, 510, 801

Andaman Islands, 281, 509, 516, 807, 808. See also

BUCCANEER.

Anders, Lt. Gen. Wladyslaw A., 720

Andes, 35

Angaur, 448

Antwerp, 382, 387, 553, 557, 596, 781

ANVIL, 204, 234-36, 284-85, 381-84, 464, 704. See also

DRAGOON.

assault shipping for, 288, 290-92, 307, 310-15, 317,

323-29, 331, 335-50, 357, 375n, 375-76, 376n, 381,

807-08

and HERCULES, 311, 314

and Italian campaign, 331, 336-38, 350, 359-65,

374-81

logistical preparations for, 355-65, 376, 705

and OVERLORD debate, 284-92, 296, 311, 313, 321-

50, 357

Anzio, 310-17, 331, 336, 338-39, 340, 366, 808

Aparri, 412

Apulia, 224

Aquitania, 36, 298, 588

Arakan, 524

Arawe, 399

ARCADIA, 6

Ardennes, 548, 713. See also Battle of the Bulge.

Argentina, 721-22, 759

ARGONAUT, 573-74, 584, 587-89, 613, 688, 691, 784,

815

Armies, U.S.

Second, 47

Third, 383

Fifth, 192, 224-25, 231, 312, 369, 378, 384, 387, 534,

705, 707-08, 723

Sixth, 435, 436

Seventh, 40, 176

Tenth, 412

Armored Divisions

2d, 241

7th, 370

Army, U.S.

build-up in British Isles (BOLERO), 194-95, 219,

240, 242-43, 298, 353-54, 370-71, 374, 380, 383,

392

build-up in Pacific, 59-61, 74, 298, 392, 403

strength, 412, 471, 515, 547-48, 578. See also

Troop basis; Troop deployment.

Army Air Forces, 100-03, 116, 123, 526, 657, 691

distribution of supplies, 136, 144, 149, 152, 168,

604

redeployment, 544, 585, 589-91, 600

VLR bombing, 404-06, 415, 513-15
872 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

Army Forces, Middle Pacific, 608, 610

Army Forces, Western Pacific, 608

Army Ground Forces, 44, 47, 55, 100, 141, 144, 196,

547

Army Groups

6th, 709

21st, 333-35

Army-Navy Munitions Board, 89

Army-Navy Petroleum Board, 43, 92, 93, 96, 97, 125,

149, 425

Army-Navy Shipping and Supply Conference, 599-

604, 615

Army Regulation 10-15, 103

Army resources in POA, operational control of,

607-10

Army Service Forces, 24, 76, 108n, 113, 115, 127, 131,

351, 812. See also Somervell, Lt. Gen. Brehon B.

ANVIL preparations, 352, 359, 362, 364-65

civilian supply, 739, 741, 744, 748, 751, 768, 771,

789

Civilian Supply Branch, 744, 749, 773

Control Division, 153-55, 164-65, 477-80, 616

Directorate of Materiel, 105, 106, 111

Directorate of Plans and Operations, 104-08, 114,

129, 130, 147, 162

Directorate of Supply, 106

Distribution Division, 138

distribution of supplies, 136, 157, 159-60, 167, 168

French rearmament, 702, 713, 714

HUSKY planning, 44, 45, 47, 51-56

India Committee, 510, 512

International Division, 632-34, 637, 641, 648, 654,

657, 672, 728, 741, 749, 771, 790

lend-lease, 633, 636, 638-40, 652, 656, 660-62, 663,

728, 730, 734

logistical organization, 91-93, 95, 97-98, 100-104

logistical planning for CBI, 507, 509-14, 518, 621,

622

logistical planning for Pacific operations, 407-08,

422, 423, 425, 445

Mobilization Division, 106, 144, 160

Monthly Progress Report, 133

Movements Branch, 47

Pacific supply, 473, 476, 477, 479, 484-87, 495, 498,

569-70, 580, 583, 608, 610, 616-18

Planning Division, 106, 108, 155-56, 160, 166-67,

169, 465, 482, 702, 768

preshipment, 193, 195-97, 221, 241-44

production, 131, 133, 549-51

redeployment planning, 539-45, 595, 597-98

Requirements Division, 111

Requirements and Stock Control Division, 106

Richards Committee recommendations, 122-23

shipbuilding program of 1944, 254-57

shipping allocations, 303, 306, 352, 368, 386, 452,

458, 464, 552, 557, 592

Soviet Protocol shipments, 682, 684, 691-92, 697

Stock Control Division, 161, 243

Army Service Forces—Continued

Strategic Logistics Branch, 106

Theater Branch, 106

Zone of Interior Branch, 108

Army Specialized Training Program, 547

Army Supply Program, 102, 103, 106, 109-16, 118-19,

121-23, 128, 130-34, 167, 241, 351, 423, 487, 488-

89, 549, 799, 812

and CBI, 510

civilian supply in, 744, 751, 753, 765, 790

and lend-lease, 630-32, 637-44, 656, 660, 665, 727-

29

for redeployment, 595

Richards Committee report, 124-27

Soviet Protocol shipments, 682

Army Transport Service, 163

Arnold, Lt. Gen. Henry H., 36, 116, 201, 284n, 376,

665, 675

and CBI, 514, 519, 524-26

and Pacific operations, 408, 536, 656, 657

Arundel Islands, 399

Assam Line of Communication, 80, 501, 504-12, 515,

522-24

Assault shipping, 10-24, 33, 183n, 392-93, 401-03.

See also Combat loaders; Landing craft and

ships; Landing vehicles.

for ANVIL, 288, 290-92, 307, 310-15, 317, 323, 335-

36, 375-76, 376n, 381

Atlantic versus Pacific, 342, 392

for Burma, 280, 283, 293, 294, 509

deficits for ANVIL and OVERLORD, 321-22, 329-30,

331n, 335-36, 357

ferry service, 333-34

for HERCULES, 310-11

for HUSKY, 33-34, 40, 44, 46, 48-49, 189-92

for Italian campaign, 175-77, 189-92, 224, 230-35,

279-80, 280n, 288-89, 338-39, 346

as limitation on strategy, 10, 321-51, 393, 805, 808

for OVERLORD, 182-84, 186-88, 205-07, 212-13,

212n, 213n, 229-34, 262-70, 279, 283, 288-90,

292, 296, 307, 312-16, 322-23, 335-36, 338-46,

350, 393

in Pacific, 207-09, 211-13, 212n, 221, 252-58, 268,

342-43, 343n, 402, 403, 405, 407, 411-12, 414-16,

418, 439, 443, 462, 575-77, 587, 602, 604-05, 619

for ROUNDHAMMER, 71-74

for ROUNDUP, 67-71

after SEXTANT, 306-10

for SHINGLE, 312-17

Atherton, Warren H., 499

Atlantic Convoy Conference, 8

Attlee, Clement, 668

Auchinleck, General Sir Claude J. E., 506, 509-12

Augusta, Sicily, 39, 41

Australia, 759, 776

bases in, 396, 474, 483, 493, 619

lend-lease to, 645, 656

ship procurement from 488-89
INDEX 873

Australian Munitions Assignments Committee, 725

Austria, 763n, 786

Automatic Supply Report, 148-49

AVALANCHE, 178, 189-92

Azores, 84, 175

B-29's, 116n, 208, 294, 393, 403-06, 415, 465, 552

in CBI, 509, 513-15, 520-22, 528, 622

Pacific bases, 294, 404, 406, 520, 567, 571

Badger, Rear Adm. Oscar C., 96, 255

Badoglio, Marshal Pietro, 176, 717, 758n

Bailey, Frazier, 461

Balkan relief, 765, 768-69, 769n, 786, 788

Balkans, 185-86, 200, 204, 222-23, 225, 227, 273, 275-

77, 279, 290, 347, 377-78, 534-35

Bangkok, 520

Bari, 239

Barker, Maj. Gen. Ray W., 180, 184, 187, 207, 266

Base Logistic Plan for the South Pacific Area, 442

Bases in Pacific

establishment of, 406-08, 416, 418, 474, 485-87,

487n, 593. See also Philippine base development.

roll-up of, 565-70, 604-05, 609, 619-20

Basic Logistical Plan. See Logistics in Pacific area.

Battle of the Bulge, 643. See also Ardennes.

Bay of Bengal, 280, 282, 293, 404, 806, 807

Bay of Biscay, 375-76, 382

BAYTOWN, 190

Belgium, 780-81, 788

Bengal and Assam Railway, 505-06, 512, 522

Bessell, Col. William W., Jr., 178

Biak, 410

Bieri, Rear Adm. Bernhard H., 253

Billo, Col. J. J., 256n

Black market, 756, 774, 775, 777

Black Sea, 278, 680-81, 683

Blakelock, Col. David H., 446

Board of Economic Warfare, 739, 746

BOLERO, 28, 32, 36, 48, 50, 51, 55, 56, 76, 193-97, 273

shipping budgets for, 215, 219, 240-45, 303, 354,

360, 367-68

Bomber Command, XX, 521, 526-57, 731

Bône, 37, 237

Bonin Islands, 400, 415, 563

Bordeaux, 346, 375-76, 382-83, 781

Borneo, 582, 790

Boston Port of Embarkation, 161

Bougainville, 399, 402, 460, 565

Bougie, 37, 238

Bradley, Lt. Gen. Omar N., 643

Brahmaputra River, 506

Brazil, 721-24, 818

Breene, Maj. Gen. Robert G., 442, 443, 460, 476, 496

Brest, 372-73, 382

Breton ports, 372-73, 379, 381-82, 383, 386

Brisbane, 471, 474

British Command in India, 509, 511-12, 652

British export trade, 659, 662, 670

British import program. See United Kingdom Import Program.

British Ministry of War Transport, 143, 238, 302,

358, 366, 759-60, 782

British role in Pacific theater, 536-38, 588, 656, 667,

815

British units

Airborne Division, 1st, 191

Army, Eighth, 40, 191-92, 224-25, 231, 369, 384

Division, 10th Indian, 226

Division, 78th, 192

British war economy, 628, 641, 658-59, 670

Brittany, 372-73, 381-82

Brooke, Field Marshal Sir Alan

and aid to USSR, 690

and Cairo-Tehran Conference, 271, 279, 283, 286-

87, 289, 294-95 and OVERLORD, 185, 343-44

and QUADRANT, 200, 201, 205, 210

and TRIDENT, 57-58, 63n, 64, 70-73, 78-79, 81

BUCCANEER, 280-84, 288, 289-94, 516, 807

Bureau of the Budget, 745-46

Burma campaign, 621, 652-53, 664, 726-27, 731, 733.

See also ANAKIM; BUCCANEER; CAPITAL; DRACULA; Mountbatten, Vice Adm. Lord Louis;

TARZAN.

Burns, Maj. Gen. James H., 685

BUTTRESS, 190

Byrnes, James F., 91, 94, 97, 102, 561-62, 590

and shipbuilding program, 251-52, 283, 287, 308,

556, 559-60

Cairns, 490

Cairo Conference. See SEXTANT.

Calabria, 175, 189, 190, 224

Calcutta, 505, 507, 512-15, 520-23, 621-22

Calhoun, Admiral William L., 445-46

CALIPH, 347

Camp Edwards, 45

Camp Kilmer, 45

Camp Patrick Henry, 47

Camp Pickett, 47

Campbell, Sir Ronald, 662

Canada, 759, 765

Canada Mutual Aid Program, 725

Canton, 445, 452, 622-23

Cape Gloucester, 399

CAPITAL, 535-36

Cargo distribution charts, 163, 165

Caribia, 613

Caroline Islands, 400-401, 405-06

CARTWHEEL, 207, 399-402, 458

Casablanca, 37, 38, 702-04, 707

Casablanca Conference

and BOLERO build-up, 49-50

and civilian supply, 741

and French rearmament, 700-701, 703
874 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

Casablanca Conference—Continued

and lend-lease, 646, 673

and strategy, 6, 10, 21, 26, 78, 273, 396, 801-02

Casey, Brig. Gen. Hugh J., 483-84, 497

Cassino, 336, 340

Cavalry Division, 2d, 356, 547

Central Pacific Area, 396, 398

joint logistics in, 444-53

offensive operations in, planning for, 399-406, 410,

412

supply of, 476, 481, 498, 561

CHAMPION, 280-82, 515-16

Channel ports, 379, 382

Charleston, South Carolina, 161

Chemical Warfare Service, 425

Cheng-tu, 514, 520-21

Chennault, Maj. Gen. Claire L., 7, 79-80, 513, 528

and logistical support of air operations, 502-04,

511, 521, 526-27, 727, 729, 731

Cherbourg, 182, 241, 369, 372, 373, 385

Cheves, Maj, Gen. Gilbert X., 734, 735

Chiang Kai-shek, Generalissimo, 271n, 314-15

and CBI operations, 500-502, 511, 514-16, 518, 526,

528-29

and equipping Chinese forces, 726-27, 729-31, 733,

735-36

at SEXTANT, 280-83, 292-93, 515, 807

Chief Regulating Officer, SWPA, 440-41, 469, 618

Chief of Staff, U.S. Army. See Marshall, General

George C.

Chief of Staff to Supreme Allied Commander (designate), 182-83, 187, 204, 207, 210, 233. See also

Morgan, Lt. Gen. Sir Frederick.

Chiefs of Staff, British, 177, 178, 191, 545, 647, 667

and CBI operations, 281, 506, 508, 517, 535

and Italian campaign, 223, 224, 226, 231, 233, 338-

39, 379, 384

and lend-lease, 675, 703, 723

and OVERLORD, 205, 229, 262-63, 265-66, 276, 280,

288, 295, 322-23, 327, 330

and OVERLORD-ANVIL debate, 236, 331-32, 336-37,

343, 345-48, 377-78, 380-81

and SHINGLE, 313-15

and shipping quotas, 7, 357, 360, 365, 375, 778, 782

and strategy, 64, 67, 70, 271, 396, 534

Chiefs of Staff, U.S. See Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Chihchiang, 623

Chile, 721

China-Burma-India theater, 80, 395, 397-98, 404,

467n, 500-504

logistical planning for, 504-29, 621-24

shipments to, 456, 459, 465, 790

China coast assault, 396, 400, 406, 563, 572, 581, 583,

607, 609

China Defense Supplies, Inc., 728, 731

Chindwin River, 516

Chinese Army in China, 622, 726, 733, 735. See also

YOKE Force; ZEBRA Force.

Chinese Army in India, 515, 725-27, 733, 735. See

also X-RAY Force.

Chinese Communists, 736

Chinese National Airways Corporation, 727

Chittagong, 622, 623

Choiseul, 565

Christmas Island, 445, 452

Chungking, 727, 731

Churchill, Winston S., 32, 34, 57, 63, 85, 192, 538,

796

and CBI operations, 7, 80, 280-82, 292, 293, 514,

515, 522-23, 535-36 and civilian relief, 574, 773, 775, 777-78

and lend-lease, 628, 642, 646, 659, 661-62, 664-68,

816

and Mediterranean strategy, 29, 175-78, 185, 201,

222-23, 225-31, 233-34, 271, 278, 310-17, 379-81,

534, 804, 808

and OVERLORD, 200, 262, 272, 274, 295, 295n, 296,

323-24, 367 and OVERLORD-ANVIL debate, 330, 332, 338, 345-46,

378, 381-82

and QUADRANT, 200, 201, 206-07

and Soviet Protocol shipments, 677-78, 690

and Tehran Conference, 271n, 284-90

Chusan-Ningpo, 563, 582, 593

Civil affairs, 737-38, 743, 747-49, 761, 772-73, 790

Civilian relief, 541, 552, 554, 559, 561, 562, 573-74,

589. See also Civilian supply.

Civilian supply, 737-38, 819

British-American co-ordination of, 747-52

financial responsibility for, 765, 767n

military responsibility for, 743-47, 786-89

national import programs, 779-86, 787, 789

in North Africa, 739-43

operational procedures, 771-73

over-all plan, 763-71

in the Pacific, 789-92

rehabilitation problem, 752-55, 770, 774-79, 781,

784, 789

shipping requirements, 573-74, 741, 750, 758-60,

768, 776-78, 782-83

in Sicily and Italy, 755-61, 768-69, 773-79

theater planning, 768-70

Clark, Lt. Gen. Mark W., 312, 315, 331

Clay, Maj. Gen. Lucius D., 105, 106, 639, 682

Combat loaders, 10, 11, 16, 23-24, 33-34, 175, 252-58,

393, 401-03, 407-08, 462, 551, 577, 801n, 809-10.

See also Assault shipping.

Combined Administrative Committee, 95, 297, 538,

588, 713, 715, 718-19

Combined Bomber Offensive (SICKLE), 32, 36, 48, 50,

55

Combined Chiefs of Staff, 4, 27, 28, 92, 142-43, 190,

192, 803, 804, 810

at Cairo-Tehran Conference, 290, 292-97

and CBI operations, 282, 314, 503, 506, 508, 511-

12, 514, 519-20, 524, 536, 538, 621
INDEX 875

Combined Chiefs of Staff—Continued

and civilian supply, 739-41, 743, 747-51, 757, 763,

765, 769, 774-79, 782-84, 786-87, 790

and French rearmament, 700-703, 705-07, 709-11,

713-16

and HUSKY planning, 35-36, 39-40, 49-50

and Italian campaign, 222, 224, 226, 228, 231

and landing craft production, 206, 267, 306-07

and lend-lease, 627-32, 635, 652-55, 664, 666, 816

and Mediterranean operations, 277, 310-11, 311n

and military supply to Italians and Yugoslavs,

717-21

and OVERLORD-ANVIL planning, 322-23, 330, 332,

338, 346-47, 355, 357, 359-60, 364-65, 375, 377, 381

and Pacific operations, 208, 405, 493, 538, 817

and QUADRANT, 202-04, 211

and redeployment, 538, 544, 546, 584, 587, 588

and shipping deficits, 573, 606

and Soviet Protocol shipments, 673, 676

and TRIDENT, 64-65, 70-71, 78, 80, 84, 92

Combined Civil Affairs Committee, 748-49, 751, 760,

763-65, 772, 774, 776, 779, 782, 785

Combined Civil Affairs Committee (Supply), 749-51,

753-54, 757-60, 763-69, 771-73, 785

Combined Committee for North Africa, 740-41

Combined Food Board, 89, 740, 785

Combined Liberated Areas Committee, 772, 786-87

Combined Military Transportation Committee, 361,

365, 539, 606, 776

Combined Munitions Assignments Board, 92-93, 97,

725

Combined Production and Resources Board, 89, 629,

632, 740

Combined Raw Materials Board, 89, 740

Combined Shipbuilding Committee, 248

Combined Shipping Adjustment Board, 89, 606, 740,

785

Combined Staff Planners, 24, 207, 208, 210, 332, 358,

396, 509, 584, 588

and redeployment plans, 538, 541

Combined Supply Committee, 753, 754

Commander in Chief, Pacific Fleet, 419, 446-47, 581-

82, 603, 605-06. See also Nimitz, Admiral Chester W.

Commander in Chief, Pacific Ocean Areas, 419, 446-

49, 575, 580, 582, 600, 608, 610. See also Nimitz,

Admiral Chester W.; Pacific Ocean Areas.

Commander in Chief, U.S. Army Forces, Pacific,

581-82, 603, 605-07, 610-12. See also MacArthur, General Douglas.

Committee of Combined Boards, 740-41, 743, 747

Commodity loaders, 355, 368, 371, 385-87, 553

Connolly, Brig. Gen. Donald H., 676

Controlled Materials Plan, 110

Convoy Cycle and Shipping Period Charts, 163

Convoys, cargo

in Atlantic, 366

for civilian relief, 741-42

Convoys—Continued

for HUSKY, 33n, 37, 38, 43-46

to Mediterranean, 236-40

to USSR, 672, 677-80, 698

Convoys, scheduling of, 45-46, 162-63

Convoys, troop, 33, 33n, 35, 40-42, 45-46

Convoys to North Africa, 33, 35, 37-39, 41-48, 54,

236-38, 302

Conway, Capt. Granville, 468, 552-53, 555, 558, 782

Cooke, Rear Adm. Charles M., Jr., 22, 68-69, 81, 96

and OVERLORD, 187, 206, 333-35, 333n

CORONET, 563-64, 568, 570, 573, 578, 584-88, 591,

594, 599, 611, 617-18

Corps, XXIV, 414, 469, 566, 591

Corsica, 222-23, 315, 359, 704, 707

Covell, Maj. Gen. William E. R., 523, 655

Critical Items Report, 155

Crotone, 71

Crowley, Leo, 636, 647, 662, 686, 695, 697, 746

CULVERIN, 280-81

Cunningham, Admiral of the Fleet Sir Andrew B.,

191, 333

Cushing, John A., 429

Czechoslovakian Armored Brigade, 720

Darlan, Admiral François, 717

Davidson, Maj. Gen. F. H. N., 664

Days of supply, 113, 122, 125, 137, 549

Deane, Maj. Gen. John R., 267, 275, 295, 685-91,

693-95, 697-98, 721

Denmark, 788

Depots, 136-37, 561, 597

Devers, Lt. Gen. Jacob L., 363, 365, 376, 546, 711,

715, 718

Dibrugarh, 507, 512, 523

Dijon, 383

Dill, Field Marshal Sir John, 234, 234n, 344, 360

Disease and unrest formula, 744-45, 755, 787

Distribution allowance, 111-13, 112n, 125-26

Division slice, 380, 496, 496n, 565, 714

Dodecanese, 201, 222-23, 226, 228, 273

Dollar reserves, British, 660, 666, 670

Dollar value

of procurement, 115, 119, 119n, 134n, 550, 597, 662

of production, 115, 116, 116n, 131, 549, 597, 639,

641, 664, 722, 724

Douglas, Lewis W., 8, 8n, 38, 53-54, 251, 759

and Mediterranean shipments, 239, 302

and QUADRANT, 213, 217

and ROUNDHAMMER, 82-84

and shipping crisis, 457, 459, 462-63

DRACULA, 535, 538, 545, 621

DRAGOON, 381-84. See also ANVIL.

DUKW's. See Landing vehicles.

Duncan, Rear Adm. Donald B., 572

Durazzo, 200

Eaker, Maj. Gen. Ira C., 58-59, 70
876 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

Eastern Line of Communication, 527-28, 623

Eastwood, Brig. Gen. Harold, 600

Eden, Anthony, 8, 185, 229, 230

Edgerton, Maj. Gen. Glen E., 642, 661

Edwards, Vice Adm. Richard S., 188

Eisenhower, General Dwight D., 546, 717, 718

and ANVIL, 204, 234-35, 310-11, 321, 323, 332-33,

337, 375-79, 381-82, 808 and civilian supply, 739-41, 743, 758, 786

and French rearmament, 701-05, 708, 711-16 and HUSKY planning, 33-35, 37, 46, 49, 50

and Italian campaign, 71, 175-78, 189-92, 223,

224, 227-28, 231-36, 279-80, 288-89, 310, 312,

378, 806

and OVERLORD, 186, 292n, 316, 321-23, 325-27, 333,

336, 339, 341-44, 346, 355, 357, 362, 367, 374, 380, 383

Embick, Lt. Gen. Stanley D., 181

Emirau Island, 399, 409

Empress Augusta Bay, 402

Empress of Scotland, 35

Engineer Special Brigades

2d, 402, 491

4th, 491

Engineers, Corps of, 425

Eniwetok, 405, 406, 450, 462, 468, 567, 575

Escort vessels, 19

Espíritu Santo, 460, 575

EUREKA. See Tehran Conference.

Europa, 613

European Advisory Commission, 589

European Theater of Operations, 51-52, 243, 708,

714, 716, 749, 752

Fanning Island, 445, 452

Farouk, King, 648

Faymonville, Col. Philip, 685

Ferris, Brig. Gen. Benjamin G., 730

Fiji Islands, 475

FILBAS Agreement. See Philippine base development.

Finschhafen, 339, 461, 468, 474

Fleet, British, 537-38

Fleet service squadrons, 422-23

Fleets, U.S. See also Navy, U.S.

Pacific, 392-95, 399-400, 403, 405, 408, 411-12, 419, 445, 449, 569, 587, 809

Seventh, 402, 409, 419-20, 436-38, 439, 441, 493-94,

569, 577, 580, 604, 608

Fletcher, Vice Adm. Frank J., 419

Floating equipment, 438, 488-89, 809

Floating warehouses and bases, 355, 407-08, 553, 562

Foggia, 223, 230

FORAGER, 394

Foreign Economic Administration, 636, 641, 649,

651, 653, 658, 660, 668-69, 735, 746, 753-55, 761,

763, 765, 772, 792

and aid to USSR, 671, 694

Foreign Ministers Conference

October 1943, 228, 267, 295, 678

October 1944, 552, 690

Formosa, 396, 400, 406-15, 470, 498, 538, 571, 790

Fort Bayard, 622, 623

Fort Dix, 45

Fort Herz Line, 507, 512, 622

Fort Lewis, 587-88

Free French Forces, 700, 701, 703

French Committee of National Liberation, 701,

703-05, 710, 712

French Forces of the Interior, 711, 712

French Forces in North Africa, 701

French Frigate Shoal, 445

French Provisional Government, 715, 781, 787

French rearmament, 241-42, 640, 645, 711, 818

Metropolitan Program, 701n, 713-16

North African Rearmament Program, 700-710,

701n

French units

Air Force, 701

Armored Division, 2d, 370, 374

Army, 1st, 709, 714

Frosinone, 279

Gailey, Brig. Gen. Charles K., Jr., 600

Gaud, Col. William S., Jr., 731

Gaulle, General Charles de, 700, 701, 703-05

General Headquarters, Southwest Pacific Area,

435-37, 440-41, 584

General Purchasing Board (Australia), 436

George, Senator Walter F., 667

Gibbs, William F., 248

Gilbert Islands, 400-401, 448, 474, 477, 619

Gilbreath, Maj. Gen. Frederick W., 429, 567

Giraud, General Henri, 700-705, 741

Godfrey, Brigadier J. M., 642

Goodman, Brig. Gen. William M., 154, 164, 478, 616

Gothic Line. See Pisa-Rimini Line.

GRANITE, 405

Greece, 786, 788. See also Lend-lease, to Greece.

Greely Mission, 685

Greenslade, Vice Adm. J. W., 429, 430

Grew, Joseph, 695

Groninger, Maj. Gen. Homer M., 616

Gross, Maj. Gen. Charles P., 38, 53, 54n, 83, 147,

254, 256

and boat procurement, 426, 438

and Pacific shipping, 464, 600, 602-03

Guadalcanal, 396, 402, 442, 460, 575

Guam, 450, 462, 575, 617

Gulf of Genoa, 347

Gulf of Lions, 347, 348

Guns, tank, 643, 644. See also Tanks.

Halsey, Admiral William F., 399, 402, 414, 419-20

and joint logistics in SOPAC, 431-32, 442-43, 445

Hampton Roads, 47, 161
INDEX 877

Handy, Maj. Gen. Thomas T., 197, 203, 232, 730

and OVERLORD planning, 265, 314, 316, 324, 328-30,

332-33, 346

Harmon, Lt. Gen. Millard F., 420, 442, 495

Harriman, Averell, 685-87, 689, 690, 694, 696, 698

Hawaii, 444-46, 448, 468, 474, 498, 575, 588, 619

Heileman, Brig. Gen. Frank A., 106

Henning, Col. Frank A., 243

HERCULES. See Rhodes operation (HERCULES).

Hilldring, Maj. Gen. John H., 743, 745, 761

Hiroshima, 624, 698

Hitler, Adolf, 192, 222, 225

Ho Ying-chin, General, 734

Hokkaido, 563, 676

Hollandia, 401, 408, 410, 461, 465, 469-70, 474, 481,

551, 566

Hong Kong, 621, 667, 790

Honshu, 415, 563-64, 578, 585, 618. See also CORONET.

Hopkins, Harry, 8, 83, 292, 382, 555, 558

and aid to USSR, 672, 686

and civilian supply, 782-83

and lend-lease, 643, 647, 661

Hopkins-Law Agreement, 783-84, 787

Horne, Admiral Frederick J., 96, 255, 430, 445

Hull, Cordell, 229, 353, 754

Hull, Brig. Gen. John E., 55, 178, 333, 333n, 334

Hump air line, 80, 501-07, 510-11, 515, 518, 521,

524-28, 535, 622, 726-27, 729, 733-34

HUSKY, 31-56, 702, 801, 801n

Ibn Saud, King, 648

ICEBERG, 563-64, 572-73, 575, 584, 607, 609

Ile de France, 298

Imphal, 504, 506, 510

Indaw-Katha, 516

India, 396, 759. See also China-Burma-India theater.

Indian Munitions Assignments Committee, 725

Indochina, 716, 790

Infantry Divisions

1st, 241

5th, 59, 241

9th, 241

27th, 401

29th, 59, 194

36th, 33, 35, 42, 45

45th, 33, 35, 42, 45-47

80th, 370

81st, 566-67

85th, 242

86th, 572

88th, 242

91st, 347, 370, 384

92d, 384

97th, 572

Ingersoll, Admiral Royal E., 600, 603

International Supply Committee, 632-33

Inventory control, 475-76, 479. See also Supply control, lack of in Pacific.

Iran, 679-81. See also Lend-lease, to Iran.

Ismay, Lt. Gen. Sir Hastings L., 284, 338

Istria, 534, 535

Italian campaign, 223-25, 229-34, 311

and ANVIL debate, 331, 336-38, 340-41, 344-50,

359-62, 363-65, 374-81, 384

and assault shipping for, 175-77, 189-92, 224,

230-35, 279-80, 280n, 288-89, 338-39, 346

and Cairo-Tehran Conference, 273, 278-80, 284,

289

Italian military forces, supplying of, 716-20

Italy

policy toward after OCTAGON, 773-74

war economy of, 755-57

Iwo Jima, 498, 561, 563-64, 571, 601

Japan, logistical planning for invasion of, 578-79,

582, 593, 607, 609, 615-19, 624. See also CORONET; OLYMPIC; Strategy for war against Japan.

Japen Island, 401

Java, 80, 667

Johnston Island, 445

Joint Administrative Committee, 92-95, 250-51, 253,

259-61, 264-65

Joint Aircraft Committee, 632

Joint Army-Navy Advisory Board on American

Republics, 722, 723

Joint Army-Navy Standardization Committee for

Vehicles and Construction Materials, 426

Joint Army-Navy Surface Personnel Transportation

Committee, 431

Joint Army-Navy-WSA Ship Operations Committee,

429-30

Joint Base Planning Board (SOPAC) , 444

Joint Chiefs of Staff, 16, 18, 24, 28, 29, 36, 48, 51,

142, 143, 632, 796, 805, 810

and Burma operations, 7, 281-83, 291-93, 315

and CBI operations, 500-502, 509, 511, 517, 524-26,

535-38, 623

and civilian supply, 743-44, 747, 767, 784, 790

directive on Pacific Command, 581-83, 602, 603,

607

and French rearmament, 700, 703, 705, 710-11,

715-16

and joint logistics planning, 89, 91-98, 424-26, 433

and lend-lease, 635, 646, 650, 656-58, 661, 663,

665-68, 670, 717, 721, 723, 729

and OVERLORD planning, 211, 295-96, 314, 324,

327, 360, 368, 370

and OVERLORD-ANVIL debate, 330-32, 336-41, 343-

46, 348, 348n, 361-62, 376-78, 380-81

and Pacific operations, 208, 342, 397, 399-401,

405-06, 408-11, 413-14, 419, 498, 559, 563, 565-

66, 571-72, 592, 607, 609, 618

and Pacific shipping, 402, 437-39, 452, 454, 456,

457, 462, 467, 468n, 470, 576-77, 604-05, 617

and Philippine Base Development Plan, 591, 592

and QUADRANT, 198-200, 203-04, 206-08, 212, 397
878 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

Joint Chiefs of Staff—Continued

and redeployment, 539-40, 545, 577-79, 588, 590- 91, 598-99, 611, 613

reorganization of, 92-93

and shipbuilding program of 1944, 248-57, 256n,

260-61, 266-67, 352, 551

and shipping deficits in 1944, 544-59, 562, 573-74,

777-78, 783 and Soviet Protocol shipments, 672, 674, 676, 679,

686-87, 689-94, 696-98

and strategy in Europe and Mediterranean, 177-

78, 180-81, 184-85, 188, 197, 223, 227-28, 232-34,

236, 274, 276-77, 279, 288-89, 291, 365, 535

and TRIDENT, 57-63, 65, 68-71, 78-80 and war production, 110, 116, 117

Joint committee system, 91-99, 424-25

Joint Communications Board, 129

Joint Deputy Chiefs of Staff, 260

Joint Logistics Board (CENPAC), 445-47

Joint Logistics Board (SOPAC), 442, 444

Joint Logistics Committee, 95-98, 106, 365, 567-68

and lend-lease, 635, 657-58, 665, 668, 690-92, 694

and Pacific operations, 405, 408, 414-15, 424, 426,

546, 583, 790

and Pacific shipping, 576, 605

and redeployment, 544, 546, 591-92 and shipbuilding program of 1944, 254-55

Joint Logistics Plans Committee, 94, 95, 97-98, 106,

168

Joint Military Transportation Committee, 92, 93,

96-97, 162, 434 and redeployment needs, 541, 544, 613, 616

and shipbuilding program of 1944, 248, 253-55

and shipping allocations, 218, 360-61, 424, 426,

437, 452-53, 456, 463-69, 468n, 605, 689, 692 and shipping deficits, 414-15, 555, 556

Joint Munitions Allocation Committee, 97, 102, 138, 635-36, 648, 651, 668, 670

Joint Overseas Shipping Control Office, 449

Joint Personnel Priorities Committee, 430

Joint Priority List, 431-33

Joint Production Survey Committee, 97, 98, 251, 257,

590

Joint Purchasing Board (SOPAC), 441

Joint Rearmament Committee, 701, 704, 706, 707, 710

Joint Screening Board (SOPAC), 444

Joint Ship Operations Committee, 162, 431-32, 449

Joint Ship Repair Committee, 430

Joint Staff Planners, 92, 93, 95, 96, 98, 177, 734, 750

and landing craft production, 253, 260-61, 266

and OVERLORD, 180, 187, 280, 347

and Pacific operations, 402, 408, 411, 425, 465, 517,

537

and redeployment planning, 540, 542, 544, 577,

584, 588-89, 591-92

Joint Strategic Survey Committee, 8, 36, 38, 95-97,

179-81, 400, 406

Joint Transfer Committee (Cairo), 649

Joint Traveling Inventory Board (SOPAC) , 444

Joint War Aid Committee, 725

Joint War Plans Committee, 60, 67, 93-94, 98, 218 and European strategy, 178-81, 187-88

and Pacific operations, 425, 544

and shipbuilding program of 1944, 253-54, 256,

261-63, 265-67

Joint Working Board (CINCPAC), 445, 447

Joint Working Board (SOPAC), 442

Jones, Marvin, 767

Juin, General Alphonse, 712

Kamchatka, 676, 688-90

Kavieng Island, 405, 408, 462

Kesselring, Field Marshal Albert, 192

Keyed projects system, 125, 129-30, 166-69, 241, 812

in Pacific, 482, 485-87

Keynes, Lord John Maynard, 662

King, Admiral Ernest J., 16, 18, 26, 29, 58, 96, 181,

184, 500, 600

and ANVIL, 291, 347-48

and Burma operations, 281, 283, 290, 292

and HUSKY planning, 34, 35, 37

and joint logistics in Pacific, 433, 447 and Mediterranean operations, 175-76, 222, 234,

236, 279, 290, 363, 535, 806-08, 810 and Pacific operations, 391, 396, 400, 404, 405, 581,

591, 593, 607, 624, 656, 698, 809

and Pacific shipping requirements, 462, 491, 554,

556, 577, 604-06

and QUADRANT, 203, 205-06, 209-10

and redeployment, 579, 590, 592

and shipbuilding program of 1944, 253, 255, 259-

60, 267-70, 307, 309, 551

and strategic plan for Pacific, 406-08, 411, 413-15,

536, 538

and TRIDENT, 65-66, 66n, 68-71, 73, 79, 81, 84

Kinkaid, Admiral Thomas C., 419-20

Kiriwana, 399

Komsomolsk, 690

Kos, 226, 227

Kowloon, 622, 623

Krueger, Lt. Gen. Walter, 436

Kunming, 501, 507-08, 512, 518, 526-28, 621-23, 733

Kurile Islands, 396, 398, 563

Kuter, Brig. Gen. Laurence S., 180, 513

Kwajalein, 406, 448, 475

Kweilin, 729

Kyushu, 411, 415, 563-64, 578, 585, 598, 618. See

also OLYMPIC.

La Perouse Strait, 676, 693

Labor, local, 414, 497

Labor, troop. See Service and supporting troops.

Lae, 399, 460

Land, Rear Adm. Emory S., 8n, 457

and shipbuilding program of 1944, 251-52, 257, 353

and shipping deficits in 1944, 462, 555-56, 558-59
INDEX 879

Landing craft and ships, 10-11, 67, 73-74, 327n,

333n, 393, 438-39, 490-94, 801n, 805-08. See also

Assault shipping.

LST's 229-36, 247, 259, 261, 263-65, 268, 270, 314,

316-17, 576-77, 796, 805

production program, 17-20, 22-24, 67-68, 206, 209-

10, 259-70, 283, 307-10, 327n, 335, 342, 343n, 490-94

Landing vehicles, 11, 24, 41, 206, 308-09, 393, 403,

482, 489, 638. See also Assault shipping.

Landis, James, M., 649

Law, Sir Richard, 783, 783n

Leahy, Admiral William D., 34, 234, 250, 624

and Cairo-Tehran Conference, 283, 289

and lend-lease, 658, 666, 686, 697

and strategy in Europe, 179, 185, 202

and TRIDENT, 62n, 66, 66n, 78, 81

Leathers, Lord Frederick, 82, 84, 217, 239, 545

Leavey, Brig. Gen. Edmond H., 446-48

Ledo Road, 80, 503-08, 510-12, 516-17, 519-20, 522, 535, 621-23, 729, 731-32, 734-35

Lee, Lt. Gen. John C. H., 386

Le Havre, 382, 387, 553, 596

Lehman, Herbert, 739, 743-46

Lend-Lease. See also Army Supply Program, lendlease; French rearmament; Liberated Manpower

Program; Soviet Protocols; United Kingdom

Import Program.

administration of, 628-37, 652, 816-17

British requirements and assignments, 550, 637-

44, 642n

British Stage II planning, 656, 659-58

to China, 506, 507, 518, 526, 656, 725-36, 818

civilian requirements, 640-41, 659, 662

conversion, 656n, 666, 667

to Czechoslovakia, 720, 721

diversions, 648-51

to Egypt, 646, 646n, 651

to Ethiopia, 646, 646n, 651

to Greece, 647, 700, 720-21

to independent nations, 644-52

to India and Southeast Asia, 652-56

to Iran, 646, 646n, 651, 660

to Iraq, 646, 646n, 651

JCS "corollary principle," 657-61

to Latin America, 721-24, 818

to Poland, 720, 720n, 721

policy on, 627, 631, 635, 637, 646, 649-51, 655, 720,

772-73, 725, 727-29, 731

policy on after defeat of Germany, 656-58, 661-70,

695, 699

principle of strategic necessity, 629, 631, 664

repossession, 634-35, 664, 684

residual theory, 630, 641

retransfers, 644-48, 717, 721

return of munitions, 658, 658n

reverse, 656n

to Saudi Arabia, 646, 646n, 649, 651, 660

Lend Lease—Continued

screening of requirements, 640-41, 651, 654-55

"similar goods" doctrine, 649-50

support of occupation armies, 658, 664-68

to Turkey, 646, 648, 651

and U.S. production, 627-30, 638, 657, 664

to Yugoslavia, 720-21

Lend-Lease Act of 1941, 631, 663, 666, 667

Leros, 226-28

Levels of supply, 47, 121-22, 125, 135-36, 156-60, 595

in Pacific, 449, 465, 473-74, 476-80

Leyte

bases on, 474, 568, 575, 591

offensive operation, planning for, 411-14, 469-70,

486, 551, 563, 566

shipping for, 553, 557

supply of, 561, 569

Liberated Areas Committee, 755, 772-73, 786

Liberated Manpower Program, 710, 713-15

Lincoln, Brig. Gen. George A., 265-66, 333n, 334,

555, 578-79, 606-07

Lincoln, Col. Rush B., 600

Lindsay, Col. Richard C., 179

Lines of communication

in Europe, 382-83, 387, 546

in Pacific, 407, 410, 437, 440

Lingayen Gulf, 412

Liri Valley, 312

Liverpool, 596

Ljubljana Gap, 374, 376-77, 379

Loading and unloading operations

in Europe, 38, 316-17, 385-87, 555, 557, 560-61, 742

methods, 144-46, 472, 481-82

in Pacific, 451, 460-62, 557

in U.S., 47-48, 53, 615

Local procurement, 436, 482

Logistics in Pacific area, 417-21

Army versus Navy systems, 421-24, 580, 582-84

Basic Logistical Plan, 427-29, 431, 435, 439-40, 442,

444, 454, 582-83, 603

control of shipping, 445, 449-54, 583, 600, 602-07

co-ordination of, 403, 429-31, 435-53

for final phase, 600, 602-04, 607-10

joint planning and procurement attempts, 424-27

Joint Priority List, 431-33

limiting factors, 617, 619

support of forces, 593, 600-604

London Coordinating Committee, 772

LONGTOM, 563, 593

Lorient, 372, 382

Los Angeles Port of Embarkation, 160, 429-30, 539,

597, 601, 733

Los Negros Islands, 406

Lubin, Isadore, 353, 635n, 686

Lucca, 384

Lutes, Maj. Gen. LeRoy, 55, 56, 255, 510, 661

and joint Army-Navy logistics, 421, 424, 428, 430,

445, 446
880 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

Lutes, Maj. Gen. LeRoy—Continued

and logistical planning, 105-08, 147, 154-55

and Pacific supply, 475-76, 489, 495-96, 610, 617

and preshipment, 195-96

Luxembourg, 788

Luzon, 396, 406-15, 470, 498, 538, 557, 561, 563-64,

566, 568H59, 571

LVT's. See Landing vehicles.

MacArthur, General Douglas, 294, 685

and civilian supply, 790-92

and joint logistics, 432, 435, 439-40

and local fleet, 410, 437-38, 455, 457-58, 461, 488

and operational control of Army resources in

POA, 607-10

and operations and strategy for 1944, 406, 408-14

and Pacific command problem, 419, 579-81, 602-03

and Philippine base development, 568-70, 591-93

and redeployment, 565-66, 579, 598-99, 611-12,

613, 619

and RENO IV, 405-06

and RENO V, 411

and ship retentions, 217, 554, 557

and shipping requirements, 208, 464-65, 469, 491-

93, 565, 574, 576-77, 583-84, 604-06, 617, 814

and SWPA operations, 398-402, 498, 536-37, 561,

563, 582

Macassar Strait, 791

McCloy, John J., 741, 749

McCoy, Maj. Gen. Frank R., 120

McCoy Board, 102, 120-21, 124, 127, 131, 133, 152,

549, 640, 812

McNair, Lt. Gen. Lesley J., 55, 196, 495, 547

McNarney, Lt. Gen. Joseph T., 101-03, 117, 121,

124, 128

McNarney directive, 123-24, 152, 157-59, 479

Macready, Lt. Gen. George N., 633, 647-49, 654-55,

660, 662

Maddocks, Col. Ray T., 117-18

Maddocks Committee, 117-18

Magruder, Brig. Gen. Carter B., 243, 702, 775

Maintenance and maintenance factor, 111, 111n, 113

Makin, 403, 448

Malaya, 80, 517, 535-37, 655, 790

Malta-Yalta Conference. See ARGONAUT.

Mandalay, 516

MANHATTAN Project, 564

Manila, 474, 568-69, 598, 609, 617

Manipore State, 505-06

Manokwari, 401

Manus Island, 399, 401, 406, 619

Mariana Islands

operations against, 400, 405-08, 410-11, 462, 465

proposed B-29 bases, 294, 404, 406, 520, 567, 571

supply bases, 474-75, 601, 620

Marine Corps, U.S., 392, 423, 425, 429, 436

Marine Divisions

1st, 400, 401

Marine Divisions—Continued

2d, 308, 400, 401

Mariposa, 35n

Maritime Commission, 16, 91

and shipbuilding program, 246-57, 259, 352, 402,

408, 463, 488, 551, 554, 559

Marseille, 375-76, 383, 596

Marshall, General George C., 3, 34, 58, 94, 101, 181,

196, 284n, 554, 800, 804

and CBI operations, 282, 291, 510-11, 518-19, 522

and civilian supply, 743

and French rearmament, 703-05, 712

and lend-lease, 661, 687, 694, 729-30

and Mediterranean strategy, 175-77, 185, 275-76,

278

and OVERLORD, 185-86, 283

and OVERLORD-ANVIL, 331-32, 342, 352, 376-77

and Pacific operations, 400-401, 404, 413, 415, 447,

498, 567, 581

and Pacific shipping, 461, 464, 576-77, 604-05

and Philippine base development, 591-92

and QUADRANT, 203, 206-07, 210

and redeployment, 579, 590, 592, 594, 600, 613

and shipbuilding program, 255, 265-66

and TRIDENT, 64, 66, 70-71, 78-79

Marshall Islands, 400-401, 405, 448, 474, 477, 619

Marshall Plan, 670

MATTERHORN, 514-15, 519-21, 526-27

Mauretania, 36, 298

Maxwell, Maj. Gen. Russell L., 103-04, 123

Mayu Peninsula, 314

Merrill's Marauders, 522

Messina, 40, 190-92

Metropolitan Program. See French rearmament.

Mexico, 721-24, 818

Middle East, 644, 646, 648-52

Middle East Command, 769

Midway, 445

Mihailovic, Col. Draza, 720

Mikoyan, A. I., 686

MILEPOST, 690-93, 696, 698, 818

Milne Bay, 460-61, 468, 474-75, 490

Milwaukee, 613

Mindanao, 408, 411, 413-14, 465, 469

Mindoro, 412

Minimum essential equipment, 595

Missouri, USS, 624

Monnet, Jean, 787

Montgomery, General Sir Bernard L., 40, 190, 192

and OVERLORD, 316, 321-23, 332, 334, 336

Monthly Materiel Status Report, 148-49, 153-55,

161, 165-66, 473, 479, 708

Moore, Maj. Gen. Richard C., 590

Morgan, Lt. Gen. Sir Frederick, 29, 67, 74

and OVERLORD, 182-84, 188, 204-06, 236, 262-63,

265-66, 270-71, 321-22

Morgenthau, Henry, 660, 662, 664-65

Morotai, 410, 619
INDEX 881

Morrissey, Brig. Gen. William J., 733n

Mountbatten, Vice Admiral Lord Louis

Burma offensive, 290, 292-93, 508-12, 515-17, 519,

524, 621, 652

Operation PIGSTICK, 314-15, 516

Munitions

and lend-lease, 628-31, 645-47, 651, 657

and production goals, 116-17

Munitions Assignments Board, 24, 27, 92-94, 96-97,

102, 138, 700, 702

and lend-lease, 628, 630, 632-37, 636n, 640, 642-43,

645-49, 647n, 655, 657, 663-64, 666, 668-69, 708,

725, 727, 732-35 and Soviet Protocol shipments, 684, 696

Munitions Assignments Board, London, 628-29, 645-

48, 650-52, 702, 725

Munitions Assignments Committee, Air, 632

Munitions Assignments Committee, Ground, 138,

425-26

and lend-lease, 632-37, 642, 649, 654-55, 664, 706-

08, 723, 727, 732, 734

and Pacific allocations, 484, 489

Munitions Assignments Committee, Navy, 24, 632

Mussolini, Benito, 176, 178, 190, 755, 773

Mutual Security Program, 670

Myitkyina, 503, 515-18, 527, 621-23, 733

Nagasaki, 624

Naples, 189, 223-24, 239, 366, 596, 723, 758

Nassau Bay, 399

Nauru, 400

Naval Districts

Twelfth, 428

Thirteenth, 429

Fourteenth, 445

Naval Operations, Chief of. See King, Admiral

Ernest J.

Naval Transportation Service, 429-30, 452-53, 600

Navy, U.S., 487, 800. See also Fleets, U.S.; Logistics

in Pacific area.

assault lift for OVERLORD-ANVIL, 340-42, 348, 350

combat loader production, 252-57

deployment of forces to Pacific, 78, 81, 81n, 589

landing craft production, 11, 16-18, 24, 68, 209-10,

259-61, 335, 490-94, 805, 806, 810

and personnel strength, 392, 547, 590-91

Navy Department, 436, 439, 463, 671, 722, 743, 795

Bureau of Ships, 259, 260, 267, 491

Material Distribution Committee, 599-600

Nelson, Donald, 263, 266-67

Netherlands, 780, 788

Netherlands Indies, 561, 563, 574, 577, 618, 655, 791

Netherlands Purchasing Commission, 791

New Caledonia, 442-43, 483

New Georgia, 399, 460, 565

New Guinea, 399, 405, 407-08, 483, 493, 619

New Orleans Port of Embarkation, 160-61

New York Port of Embarkation, 160-65, 478, 616, 769

New Zealand, 645, 656

Nicaragua, 722

Nieuw Amsterdam, 298

Nikolaevsk, 688

Nimitz, Admiral Chester W., 207, 342, 579

and GRANITE Plan, 405-06

and joint logistics, 432, 442, 444-48

and operational control of Army resources in

POA, 607-10

and operations and strategy, 408-13, 537, 563, 572-

73, 582-83, 609

and Pacific shipping, 452-53, 455, 462, 464-65, 468,

554, 576-77, 583-84, 604-06, 608, 617, 619, 814

and Pacific supply, 474, 498

and Philippine base development, 568, 570, 591-93

and POA command problem, 398, 419-20, 579-80,

581, 602

and SOPAC bases, 566-67

Noemfoor Island, 410

Norfolk House Conferences, 333, 339, 350

Normandy, 182, 369, 372, 377-78

North African Economic Board, 740-42

North African Rearmament Program. See French

rearmament.

North African Shipping Board, 237

North Pacific Area, 419-20, 568, 573, 584, 597, 693, 698

Norway, 788

"Notional" vessels and sailings, 54n, 82n, 242, 242n,

470

Nouméa, 421, 429, 442-43, 460, 474

OCTAGON, 387, 415, 559

and British role in Pacific, 534, 537-39, 544-45

and lend-lease to British, 661-62, 664

and policy towards Italy, 773, 778

Odessa, 681

Oerlikon light antiaircraft cannon, 639

Office of Defense Transportation, 89

Office of Economic Warfare, 636

Office of Foreign Economic Coordination, 746

Office of Foreign Relief and Rehabilitation Operations, 636, 739, 743-46, 750

Office of Lend-Lease Administration, 636, 739, 741-

42, 745-46

Office of Price Administration, 89

Office of Strategic Services, 711, 720-21, 736

Office of War Mobilization, 91, 251, 257

Office of War Mobilization and Reconversion, 663

Okinawa, 498, 563-64, 571-73, 575, 577, 610. See also

ICEBERG.

bases on, 591, 601, 604-05, 609, 618, 620

Olmstead, Col. George, 733n

OLYMPIC, 563-64, 568, 570, 573, 578, 584-88, 591-95,

598-99, 604-05, 609-11, 617-18

OMAHA Beach, 372

Operational projects, 618, 638, 652-55, 790

Operations Division. See War Department General

Staff, Operations Division.
882 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

Oran, 37, 38, 238

Oro Bay, 460

Osborn, Capt. Donald R., Jr., 333n

OVERLORD

and ANVIL debate, 235-36, 284-92, 296, 311, 313,

321-50, 357, 383 and assault shipping, 182-84, 187, 205-07, 212-14,

213n, 262-70, 279, 283, 288-90, 292, 296, 307-08,

312-16, 321-29, 327n, 328n, 331, 333-50, 801n,

805-08

and cargo shipping, 303-04, 355-57, 359, 385-87

and Mediterranean strategy, 230-34, 271-78, 284-

90, 294-95 and moves to strengthen, 321-29

opposition to, 178-81

plan for, 70, 181-86, 276, 316, 321, 371-72

priority of, 188, 198-205, 370

resources and requirements for, 186-89

and SHINGLE, 313, 315

and Soviet reactions to, 275, 277n, 284-88, 295-96

and supply build-up, 353-55, 371-74, 383, 385, 769

and troop build-up, 297-98, 353-54, 370-71, 374, 383-84

and troop shipping for, 298, 352-54

and U.S.-British relations, 184-86, 198-204, 271-90,

294-95, 321-50

Overseas supply system. See supply, overseas system

of.

PAC-AID, 518-20, 526-27

Pacific command problem, 399, 409-10, 419-20, 579-

84, 607-10

and redeployment, 599, 602-04

Pacific Military Conference, 7, 399

Pacific Ocean Areas, 398, 407, 410-20, 447-53, 480,

565-66, 570, 572, 577, 580. See also Central

Pacific Area; Commander in Chief, Pacific

Ocean Areas; Nimitz, Admiral Chester W.;

South Pacific Area.

control of shipping in, 600

friction with SWPA, 408-10

roll-up of bases, 619-20

supply of, 471-99, 599-601, 616

Pacific Service Force, Subordinate Command, 428-30

Pacific Shipping Conference, 362, 464-67

Palau Islands, 343n, 400-401, 405-06, 408, 410-11, 485

proposed bases on, 407, 474-75, 567, 571, 601

Palermo, 176, 755

Palmyra, 445

Panama, 722

Paraguay, 722

Parbatipur, 505-06, 522

Pasteur, 35, 35n

Patria, 613

Patterson, Robert, 663

Patton, Lt. Gen. George S., Jr., 176

Persian Gulf, 672-74, 676-78, 680-81, 683

Persian Gulf Command, 681

Petroleum Administrator for War, 89, 92, 425, 672

Petropavlovsk, 676, 688, 690

Philippine base development, 486, 561, 566-71, 574,

576, 579, 588, 591-92, 598, 618

Philippine campaign, 494, 577, 582

Philippine Commonwealth Government, 791

Philippine Islands, 396, 400-401, 405, 481, 486, 620

bases, 588, 601, 604-05, 613, 617

civilian supply for, 790-92

strategic and logistical planning for, 406-16, 563

Philippeville, 37, 238

PIGSTICK, 314-15, 516

Pipelines in CBI, 507-08, 510, 512, 520, 522, 622-23

Pisa-Rimini line, 278-79, 289, 336, 341, 346, 350,

374-75, 380, 384, 534, 803-04

Po Valley, 279, 374, 384

Point system, 542-43, 594, 612, 615. See also Redeployment of forces and supplies.

POINTBLANK, 233, 233n

Polish Army Corps, 700, 720

Port Hueneme, 429, 599

Port Moresby, 460, 474-75

Port operations

in British Isles, 193, 243-44, 306, 355, 366-68

capacity of ports in Europe, 224, 232, 236-40, 369,

372-74, 379, 382-83, 385-87, 551-53, 557, 560, 760, 779

capacity of ports in Pacific, 440, 480, 568, 570,

577, 598, 601-02, 615-17, 815

congestion, 371, 459-62, 468-70, 521, 523, 555, 559,

561-62, 599, 617, 814

distribution process, 160-65, 474-81

Initial Troop Equipment Divisions, 146

as limitation on strategy, 370, 382, 617, 619

in North Africa, 37, 236-39, 702-03

overseas supply divisions at, 147-48, 161-63

in Pacific, 460-62, 474

on West Coast, 428-29, 477-82, 539, 541, 599-601,

615-16

Port surveys, 163-64, 477-79

Portland, Oregon, 429, 539, 597, 601

Ports of Embarkation. See by individual name. Potsdam, 613

Potsdam Conference, 613-14, 621, 666-68, 670, 698,

716, 815, 817

Pound, Admiral of the Fleet Sir Dudley, 81

Power, Capt. M. L., 313, 316

Preparation for Overseas Movement, 47, 143-44, 146,

193

Preshipment, 76, 146, 472

for BOLERO, 51-56, 193-97, 240-44, 306, 354

for OVERLORD follow-up, 371-72

Prestowage, 355, 371

Pretoria, 613

Prince Rupert, 429, 597

Priorities. See Supply priorities.

Procurement, operations and planning, 119-20, 130,

618, 658, 682
INDEX 883

Procurement—Continued

for civilian supply, 742, 744-45, 752-54, 764n,

764-68, 771, 791

joint Army-Navy, 425-27

for 1944 and 1945, 550, 597

Production

Army program, 114-19, 115n, 116n, 130-31, 479,

546, 549-51, 811-12

and lend-lease, 627-30, 638, 657, 664, 682-83

QUADRANT, 95, 190, 198-221, 802

and CBI operations, 506-10, 523, 623, 652, 803, 806

and civilian supply, 750-51, 753, 757-58, 763 and French rearmament, 701, 103, 710

and Pacific strategy, 396-97, 401, 404

and shipping allocations, 211-21, 213n, 237, 239,

241-42, 242n, 261-62, 267-69, 269n, 300-301,

303, 305, 307, 309, 326, 328, 354, 395, 457, 459-

60, 806

and troop estimates, 240-41, 243, 253, 298

Quartermaster, U.S. Army, 113, 149, 425

Quebec Conference, First. See QUADRANT.

Quebec Conference, Second. See OCTAGON.

Queen Elizabeth, 59, 74, 219, 298, 540-41, 544, 588,

612-13

Queen Mary, 35, 59, 74, 219, 298, 540-41, 544, 588,

612-13

Rabaul, 207, 399-401, 403, 406, 801

Railroads, 597, 616

Ramgarh, 726, 728-29, 731-32, 735-36

Ramree Island, 71, 80, 211, 503, 509

Rangoon, 80, 501, 503, 509, 535-36, 621

RANKIN, 204, 274, 277, 769

RASHNESS, 622-23, 733

Reciprocal aid, 629, 631, 659-60, 816

Redeployment of forces and supplies, 610-15, 815

British role, 536, 538, 541, 544-45, 588-89

joint planning for, 539-46, 578-79, 584-99

within Pacific theater, 565-70

Red List procedure, 371-72

Reed, Philip, 239

Reeves, Admiral Joseph M., 636n, 647, 649

Reggio, 71

Rehabilitation, postwar, 658, 680, 779

Relief and rehabilitation supplies. See Civilian supply, rehabilitation problem.

RENO IV, 405

RENO V, 411

Repatriation, 585, 587, 589

Replacement factors, 111-13, 111n, 112n, 122, 126,

127n, 128, 131

Requirements, military

calculations of, 109-15, 123-34, 137-38

and production, 114-19, 115n, 127, 130-31

Requisitioning, 138, 148-56. See also Supply.

for CBI, 728, 733, 735

for civilian relief, 740, 745, 770-72

Requisitioning—Continued

editing, 148, 154-55, 161, 476-77

for overseas theaters, 161-68

for Pacific, 441, 445, 448-50, 453, 478-83, 596

Reserves, 121-23, 135, 159

strategic for manpower, 370, 383, 572, 578, 585,

589, 591, 595

strategic for supplies, 112, 112n, 124, 159

unpublished, 457, 459

Resources allocation. See also Lend-Lease.

between Army and Navy, 443, 451, 578-79, 800

between Pacific areas, 408-10, 434, 524

between theaters, 330, 332, 391-97, 400, 405, 451,

512-13, 546, 801, 803-05, 820

Rhodes operation (HERCULES), 201, 226-29, 278, 280-

81, 285, 288-91, 310-11, 314, 806-08

Rhone Valley, 331, 375-77, 383

Richards, Brig. Gen. George J., 121

Richards Committee, 102-03, 121-25, 124n, 131, 133,

152, 157-59, 159n, 549, 640, 812

Richardson, Lt. Gen. Robert C., 420, 445, 452, 571,

579-80, 608, 619

and Pacific supply, 474, 476-77

Riddell-Webster, Lt. Gen. Sir Thomas, 507, 509

Riviera, 347-48

Roberts, Brig. Gen. Frank N., 516-17

Rome, 279, 285, 290, 340-41, 365, 369

Rommel, Field Marshal Erwin, 7

Roosevelt, Franklin D., 3, 6-9, 32, 34-35, 38, 89,

91, 94

and ANVIL, 337-38, 378-82

and CBI, 503-04, 508, 511, 514, 518, 522, 526, 528

and civilian supply, 737, 739, 743, 745, 747, 752,

763, 769, 773-78, 819 and French rearmament, 700-701, 704

and lend-lease, 628, 645-46, 650, 658, 661-63, 670,

720n, 729-30, 816

and Mediterranean operations, 222, 227-30, 310,

314, 315

and OVERLORD, 185-86, 203, 207, 272, 313, 324, 807 and Pacific operations, 411, 470, 538

and SEXTANT, 282n, 282-83, 292-93, 515, 727

and shipbuilding program, 251-52, 257, 308, 559

and shipping deficits in 1944, 554-56, 558, 573-74

and Soviet Protocol shipments, 675, 678, 686,

692, 694

and Tehran Conference, 271n, 284-88

and TRIDENT, 62-63, 79-81

ROUNDHAMMER, 70-71, 73-74, 86, 173, 197, 805

ROUNDUP, 17, 58, 61-70, 67n, 86, 272, 801, 805

Royal Air Force, 538

Ruffner, Maj. Gen. Clark, 413

Russell Islands, 460, 575

Ryuku Islands, 400, 415-16, 563, 572, 582, 609

proposed bases in, 415, 567, 571, 588, 604, 610

Saidor, 399

"Sailings," 82n
884 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

Saint-Didier, Brig. Gen. Auguste Brossin de, 713

Saint-Malo, 373, 382, 386

Saint-Nazaire, 372, 382

Saipan, 448, 450, 462, 485, 521, 575, 588, 591, 598

Salamaua, 399

Salerno, 189, 192, 223-24

Salter, Sir Arthur, 83

Salween River, 515, 727, 730

Samos, 226

San Diego, 429

San Francisco Port of Embarkation, 160-61, 164,

428-29, 472-73, 475-82, 485, 539, 597, 601, 616

San Francisco Ship Operations Committee, 430-32,

437, 457, 459, 461-62, 467

San Pedro, 429

Sansapor, 410

Santahar, 505-06

Sarangani Bay, 411-12

Sardinia, 222-23

Sarmi, 410

Schage, Herbert, 441

Sea of Okhotsk, 688

Searls, Fred, 97

Seattle Port of Embarkation, 160, 429-30, 539, 597,

601

Secretary of Navy, 647, 649

Secretary of War. See Stimson, Henry L.

Selected Items Report, 149, 153, 473

Service Central des Approvisionnements et Matériels

Américains, 707

Service Squadron Ten, 567

Service and supporting troops

in CBI, 510-11, 521-22, 621

in ETO, 356, 380, 548, 598, 714, 717-20

in Pacific, 405, 418, 540-41, 565-68, 579-80

shortages of, 395, 410, 412-14, 494-98, 496n, 544,

570-73

Services of Supply, 108, 108n. See also Army Service

Forces.

CBI, 508, 621, 653, 725, 727-28

ETOUSA, 194, 243, 374

NATOUSA, 707-08

SWPA, 435-38, 440-41, 461, 493, 608

Sète, 375-76

SEXTANT, 271n, 277-84, 290-96, 310, 705, 720, 759,

802, 803, 807

and CBI, 515-16, 519, 522, 653, 688, 727, 729-30

and Pacific timetable, 403-05, 536

and shipping negotiations, 302-03, 305-06, 309

and shipping schedules, 354-55, 357, 359, 366, 459

and strategy, 391, 394, 397

SHINGLE, 310-17

Shipbuilding Precedence List, U.S. Navy, 18, 19

Shipbuilding program. See also Landing craft and

ships, production program; Shipping, conversion to troop carriers.

in 1943, 246-47, 393

in 1944, 247-58, 352, 463, 551-52, 559-60

Shipment procedures, 162-66, 617-18

Shipments

bulk, 146, 595

direct, 480-82, 580, 617

Shipping

British controlled, 298, 298n, 300, 556

captured, 587-89, 606

control of in Pacific, 445, 449-54, 583, 600, 602-10

conversion to troop carriers, 214, 252-54, 402, 457,

462-63, 589, 613-14

diversion from Atlantic to Pacific, 362, 395, 402,

410, 456, 464, 467, 512, 553, 810

garrison, 450-52

local fleets in Pacific, 410, 418, 437-38, 455, 457-

58, 467, 487-88

maintenance, 450-51, 453, 468

operational, 356-63, 366, 401, 468

Pacific pool, 418, 455-56, 459, 467

requirements for Pacific operations, 457-68, 599-

602, 604-07

serviceability factor, 326, 327n, 328, 335-36

transfer to Soviet flag, 455, 457, 674, 676, 689, 691-

92, 818

U.S.-controlled, 298n, 298-300, 363-64

Shipping, assault. See Assault shipping.

Shipping, cargo, 6, 7, 9, 76, 387, 393, 395

for BOLERO, 193, 195, 195n, 241-44, 303-05, 367-68

for CBI, 520-21

for civilian relief, 573-74, 741, 750, 758-60, 768,

776-78, 782-83

deficits in 1944, 551-62, 694, 778, 781, 786, 814

deficits in 1945, 606-07

deficits for Europe, 352-53

deficits for Pacific, 410, 415-16, 456-70, 478, 570,

573-76, 689, 691, 802, 809-10

estimates after SEXTANT, 297-306

for HUSKY, 36-39, 42-44, 49-56

for Italian campaign, 359-61, 363

to Mediterranean, 236-40

for OVERLORD, 303-04, 355-57, 359, 385-87

for OVERLORD-ANVIL, 352, 357-65

for Pacific, 303, 305, 343, 401-03, 429-31, 436-38,

440-45, 449-53, 459-62, 601, 604-06, 618, 815

QUADRANT budgets, 214-18

for redeployment, 541, 544-45, 587, 589, 614-15

U.S. assistance to British, 558-59

volume increases in 1944, 365-68

Shipping, retentions and turnarounds, 552, 555-56,

814

in Atlantic and Mediterranean, 353, 358-59,

366-67

in Pacific, 353, 458, 460-62, 464-70, 557, 574

Shipping, troop, 50, 59, 74, 815

for BOLERO, 242-44

budgets, 218-21

for Italian campaign, 175-76, 185, 361, 363

for OVERLORD, 298, 352-54

for Pacific, 401-02, 429-33, 443
INDEX 885

Shipping, troop—Continued

for redeployment, 541, 544-45, 586-89, 612-14

shortages, 431, 456-57, 459, 495, 612, 809

Shipping budgets, British, 81-86, 82n, 219, 300-504,

300n, 302n

Shipping budgets, U.S., 81-86, 82n, 214-18, 302-03,

302n, 305

Shipping crises in Pacific, 455-56

in 1943, 456-60

in 1944, 460-70

Shipping quotas, U.S. versus British, 360-453

Shipping of troop equipment, 143-46, 195, 242,

371-72

Ships. See also Combat loaders; Commodity loaders; Landing craft and ships.

cargo, 247-50, 462

coasters, 385

manning of, 437-39, 445

procurement of, 438-39

resupply, 481-82, 575

SHOESTRING No. 2, 402

Short, Livingston, 649

Shortages, 297, 801, 813

of equipment, 134, 141, 144, 243, 483, 561

of labor, 410, 551-52, 554, 568

of manpower, 351-52, 395, 410, 412-13, 483, 546-

48, 572 of materials, 410, 477-78, 548-50, 560-61

Siam, 667

Siberian air bases, 688-90, 693

SICKLE, 32, 36, 48, 50, 55

Siegfried Line, 383, 533, 545, 548-49, 813

Sinclair, Sir Robert, 747

Singapore, 621, 654

Sirajganj Ghat, 512

SKYSCRAPER, 67, 67n, 68

SLEDGEHAMMER, 17, 58, 61, 63, 63n, 66n, 801

Smith, Ben, 662

Smith, Maj. Gen. Walter B., 232-33, 705

and OVERLORD, 322, 324, 328-29, 332-33, 335

Smuts, Field Marshal Jan Christian, 178, 317, 378

Solid Fuels Administrator for War, 89

Solomons, 399, 444, 482, 619

Somervell, Lt. Gen. Brehon B., 44, 49, 50, 52-54,

156, 206, 278, 352. See also Army Service Forces.

and BOLERO, 195-97

and CBI operations, 507-13, 515, 519, 522, 623

and civilian supply, 739, 743, 778, 786-87

and French rearmament, 703, 714

and joint Army-Navy logistics, 421-24, 428, 430,

445, 447, 583

and lend-lease, 633, 638, 642, 647, 649, 651, 653-

55, 658, 660, 662, 664, 666

and logistical organization, 93-95, 100-101, 103-05

and Pacific operations, 401, 407, 470, 574, 577,

604-05, 608-09

and Pacific supply, 471-72, 475, 477, 479, 483,

494, 497

Somervell, Lt. Gen. Brehon B.—Continued

and redeployment, 545, 584, 592-93, 597-98

and shipbuilding program of 1944, 255, 341-42

and shipping crisis of 1944, 552-55, 557-59

and Soviet Protocol shipments, 672, 692

and TRIDENT, 70, 73, 83-84

Soong, Dr. T.V., 504, 511

South Africa, 759

South Pacific Area, 396, 403, 409-10, 413, 419-20.

See also Halsey, Admiral William F.

and joint logistics, 441-44

offensive operations in, planning for, 398-99,

401-02, 406, 408

roll-up of bases in, 565-70, 619-20

supply of, 476-77, 496-98

South Pacific Base Command, 619

Southeast Asia, 397-98, 404

Southeast Asia Command, 293, 315, 315n, 508, 511,

516-17, 520, 524-25, 536, 538. See also Mountbatten, Vice Adm. Lord Louis; Stilwell, Lt.

Gen. Joseph W.

lend-lease supplies to, 652-55, 664, 716, 790-91

Southwest Pacific Area, 396, 398, 407, 419-20. See

also MacArthur, General Douglas.

British role in, 536-37

civilian supply to, 790

and Engineers, 482-87, 493, 497

offensive operations in, planning for, 398-407, 410

roll-up of bases in, 567, 576-77, 601-02, 604-05, 609, 619

and shipping, 410, 437-38, 440-41, 487-94, 557, 561

and supply, 435-41, 471, 475, 477, 480-81, 497,

568-70

transfer of SOPAC resources to, 565-66

Sovereignty Forces, 707, 709

Soviet-American collaboration against Japan, 687-99

Soviet Government Purchasing Commission, 687, 696

Soviet Protocol Committee, President's, 671-76, 680,

682, 684-86, 690-91, 695-96, 699, 817-18

Soviet Protocols, 367, 386-87, 552-56, 558, 573, 640,

642, 644, 817-18

Third, 656, 671-78, 681-84

Fourth, 671-72, 678-84, 689-91, 693, 695-97

Fifth, 663, 671, 694-96

administration of, 671-72

military policy on, 672, 694-99

Spalding, Maj. Gen. Sidney P., 678-79, 685, 687, 689,

697

Special Lists of Equipment, 144, 166

Special Operations Executive, British, 711, 720-21

Staging, mounting and rehabilitation facilities, 566-

69, 587-88, 591-92

Stalin, Marshal Josef, 285n, 720n, 721

and OVERLORD, 230-31, 287n, 324, 807

and Soviet Protocol shipments, 675, 678, 690

and Tehran Conference and OVERLORD-ANVIL,

271n, 284-88, 295-96, 330, 380-81

and war against Japan, 290-91, 687
886 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

Standley, Admiral William H., 685

State Department

and aid to USSR, 671, 674, 680, 694, 698

and civilian supply, 739, 743, 746-47, 753-55, 759,

772, 783, 787 and lend-lease, 646, 649-50, 658, 661, 665-66, 669,

721-22

Steel allocations, 250-52, 254-55, 257, 259, 309

Stettinius, Edward R., Jr., 645, 662, 686

Stevedores, 430, 597, 616

Stilwell, Lt. Gen. Joseph W., 7, 79-80, 280, 282

and CBI operations and logistics, 501-04, 507-08,

510-11, 514-15, 518-19, 521, 525-26, 528-29, 685 and lend-lease to Chinese forces, 726-30, 732-34, 736

Stimson, Henry L., 3, 25

and civilian supply, 747, 754, 775

and lend-lease, 647, 649, 665 and OVERLORD, 185-86, 200

Stock control, 131, 152-56, 160-61, 476. See also

Supply control, lack of in Pacific.

Stockpiles

in India, 727-29, 731-32

postwar, 641-42

Soviet, 674, 679, 684, 689

in U.K., 52, 765, 767, 770, 785

Storage facilities, 369, 475, 539, 598, 601

Strait of Tartary, 676, 693

Strategy, divergencies between U.K. and U.S., 25-30,

57-58

over CBI, 281-84, 502, 515

Italy versus ANVIL, 374-82

over Japan, 26-27, 396

in Mediterranean, 175, 344-46

on OVERLORD, 185, 198-204, 271-90, 294-95

on OVERLORD-ANVIL, 324-25, 330-32

Strategy for CBI, 79-81, 177, 211, 500-503, 508-09,

516-18, 528, 620-21, 811 and British position, 502, 535-36

at SEXTANT, 280-84, 290-94, 515-16, 653

Strategy for Europe, 58-63, 178, 370-71, 377, 534

ANVIL-OVERLORD, 324-25, 330-32, 344, 393

at Cairo-Tehran Conference, 271-72, 277

cross-Channel, 70-73, 179-86, 188-89, 196

at QUADRANT, 198-207

Strategy for Mediterranean, British, 28-29, 63-67,

69-71, 175, 200-203, 222-23, 229, 231, 271-77, 535, 804

and ANVIL, 330-32, 336-38, 344-46

at Cairo-Tehran Conference, 277-80, 284-88, 290,

310

Strategy for Mediterranean, U.S., 60-63, 71, 173-81,

186, 188, 232, 234, 271-77, 535, 804

and ANVIL, 330-32, 337-38, 344-46

at Cairo-Tehran Conference, 284-90

at QUADRANT, 199-200, 204

Strategy for Pacific, 207-08, 210-11, 294, 391-401,

404-45, 517-18, 536, 564

Strategy for Pacific—Continued

Formosa versus Luzon, 406-16

Strategy for war against Japan, 76-81, 253, 518-19,

621, 811

and British role, 415, 534-39, 544-45

lines of advance, 396-401, 403-04, 410

in November 1944, 563-64

at SEXTANT, 294

at TRIDENT, 391-92, 395-96, 400

Stratemeyer, Maj. Gen. George E., 36, 514

Strength Accounting and Reporting Office, 160

Strength of forces, Allied, 205, 369-70

Stuttgart, 715

Styer, Lt. Gen. Wilhelm D., 600, 608, 617

Sugar Tax Funds, 791-92

Sultan, Lt. Gen. Daniel I., 523, 529, 654, 731-32, 734

Sumatra, 80, 210, 281, 517, 621, 654-55, 667

Supplies

Engineer, 482-87

hoarding of, 648

operational, 128-31, 306

redeployment of. See Redeployment of forces and

supplies.

special operational, 166-69, 485-86

surplus, 567, 595-96, 619-20, 648-49

Supply, 41, 812-13. See also Days of supply; Keyed

projects system; Levels of supply; Lines of

communication; Requisitioning.

Class I, 111, 147-49, 156-58

Class II, 111, 147-49, 156-58, 548

Class III, 111, 147-49, 156-58, 442, 548

Class IV, 111, 147-49, 156-58, 548

Class V, 111, 149, 548, 550

controlled items of, 114n, 138-41, 140n, 148

credit items of, 141

critical items of, 114, 114n

essential items of, 114

initial issue of, 111-12, 112n, 140, 159

marrying up of troops and equipment, 145, 471-

72, 597 overseas system of, 146-60, 616

prospects for 1944, 351-53

turnaround cycle, 165-66

Supply control, lack of in Pacific, 475-77

Supply Control System, 106, 127, 131-33, 154, 159

Supply distribution, 135-69, 546, 560, 799, 812-13.

See also Port operations.

automatic, 147-49, 155-56, 450-51, 473, 575

cargo planning, 478-79

Date-line system of, 163, 165, 478

in Pacific, 474-75

and redeployment, 595, 597, 601

semiautomatic, 149, 152-53, 473, 476

Supply priorities, 55, 138-42

for ETO, 241, 243-44, 303-06, 351

for Pacific, 435, 440-41, 465, 480-81

between Pacific theaters, 433-34

for Soviet Protocol shipments, 691
INDEX 887

Supply priorities—Continued

theater, 141-42, 162, 193-94, 479

between theaters, 391-95

Supreme Allied Commander, Mediterranean Theater, 525, 651, 711, 768-69, 776-77. See also

Alexander, Field Marshal Sir Harold R. L. G.;

Wilson, General Sir Henry Maitland.

Supreme Commander, Allied Expeditionary Force,

711, See also Eisenhower, General Dwight D. Supreme Headquarters, Allied Expeditionary Force,

322, 325, 327, 333-34, 341, 355, 375, 380, 382. See also Eisenhower, General Dwight D.

and civilian supply, 768-70, 772, 779-82, 786-87

and French rearmament, 713, 715-16

SHAEF Mission (France), 710, 781

Survey of Supply of Pacific Areas, 477-78, 488

Sutherland, Lt. Gen. Richard K., 607

Sweden, 277n

Sydney, 474

Syracuse, Sicily, 39, 41

Table of Basic Allowances, 449-50, 477, 483-84

Tacoma, 429

Talaud Islands, 411, 414, 469

Tanks, 111, 642-44, 674-75

Tansey, Brig. Gen. Patrick H., 101, 168, 636, 641, 732

Taranto, 71, 190-92, 237, 239

Tarawa, 403

TARZAN, 516, 524

Tehran Conference (EUREKA), 271n, 284-90, 316,

324, 330, 350, 683, 687, 730

TERMINAL. See Potsdam Conference.

Territorial Forces, 707, 709

Thailand, 790

Theater stores, British, 638, 653

TIGAR 26-A, 527

TIGAR 26-B, 527

Timberman, Col. Thomas S., 730

Tinian, 450, 575

Tito, Marshal Josif, 720

TORCH, 31

Toulon, 375-76, 383

"Trade goods," 739

Trans-Iranian Railway, 676, 680

Trans-Siberian Railway, 677, 688-90, 696

Transportation, Office of the Chief of, 108, 147,

452, 771

Movements Division, 143

Ocean Traffic Branch, 162

Water Division, 162

Transportation Corps, 56, 136, 140, 149, 164, 197,

358, 401, 431, 459, 470

and civilian supply, 741-42, 760

and lend-lease, 661, 672

and redeployment, 597-98

and ship manning in SWPA, 437-38

and ship procurement program, 488-89

Treasury Department, 671, 739, 746-47, 754

Treasury Islands, 399, 565

TRIDENT, 10, 29, 57-86, 173-75, 193, 198-99, 201, 296,

651, 702, 757, 802-04

and assault shipping allocations, 175, 182-83,

186-87, 205, 208, 212, 214, 262, 296, 307, 805-06 and cargo shipping budgets, 195, 215-19

and CBI operations, 502-05, 726

and formula for Japan, 391-92, 395-96, 400

Troop basis, 117-18, 122, 124-25, 128, 130, 160, 495,

498, 547, 595, 799. See also Victory Program Troop Basis,

for ETOUSA, 193-94, 196-97, 221, 240, 243, 298,

351-52, 354

for MTOUSA, 298

for Pacific, 579, 585, 590, 611-12

Troop deployment, 297n, 395

for BOLERO, 74-76, 193-94, 218-20, 241-42

forecasts of, 128, 299

for HUSKY, 35-36, 41-42, 45, 47, 49-52

for OVERLORD, 297-98, 370-71, 383-84

for Pacific, 298, 402, 432, 456, 459, 565-66

systematized procedures of, 143-46

Troop List for Operations and Supply, 106, 128n,

160

Troop Schedule for Army Supply Program, 128

Truk, 400-401, 404, 406-08, 410

Truman, Harry S.

and civilian supply, 788-89, 819

and lend-lease, 663-64, 666-68, 670, 695, 699, 735

Truman Committee, 656n

Tsushima Strait, 698

Tura Caves, 648

Turkey, 201, 204, 222, 226, 228-29, 273, 277-78, 290, 310, 311n, 806, 808. See also Lend-lease, to

Turkey.

TWILIGHT, 514

Ulithi, 567, 575, 609, 618

Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, 540, 624. See

also Siberian air bases; Soviet Protocols.

Unit costs, 115, 115n, 119

United Kingdom Commercial Corporation, 648

United Kingdom Import Program, 50, 55, 300-302,

302n, 367, 386-87, 553-54, 556, 558-59, 562, 692,

776, 785

United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration, 746, 761, 769, 774, 777, 787-88

U. S. Army Forces in the Far East, 435-36, 440, 608

U. S. Army Forces in Middle East, 648-49, 651

U. S. Commercial Company, 792

U. S. Military Mission to Moscow, 685-87, 689, 696

U. S. Procurement Committee, 754

Vargas, Getulip, 723

Vella Lavella, 399, 565

Venezia Giulia, 535, 788

Venning, Sir Walter, 660-61

Vessel Allocation and Cargo Subcommittee, 430
888 GLOBAL LOGISTICS AND STRATEGY: 1943-1945

Victory Program of 1941, 10, 798, 799

Victory Program Troop Basis, 102, 109, 111-12, 114,

118-19, 121-22, 124-25, 160

Vienna, 534, 535

Vinson, Fred M., 663, 665

Vladivostok, 672, 680, 683, 688-89, 693, 818

Vogelkop Peninsula, 294, 401, 404

Voroshiloff, Marshal Klementy, 287

Vulcania, 613

Wakde, 401, 410

War Department, 100, 386, 548, 718, 795

and CBI, 514-15

and civilian supply, 739-41, 743-45, 747-49, 751-

54, 759-61, 763-65, 773, 775, 777-78, 781-83,

783n, 787-88, 790-92, 819

and deployment of troops, 240, 369-70, 380, 383,

472 and French rearmament, 702-03, 706, 708, 710,

712, 716 and lend-lease, 633-34, 636, 640-41, 646, 649, 651,

653-54, 661-63, 665, 667, 722, 724-25, 727, 730-

32, 734

and overseas supply, 129-30, 146, 148, 152, 157,

160, 162, 167-68, 363, 371-72, 476-77, 550, 618-19

and Pacific bases, 565-66, 570-71

and Pacific command problem, 436, 603, 607

and production, 131, 133

and redeployment, 543, 596, 610, 612

and shipping in Pacific, 436, 439, 458, 460-61, 463,

491, 556, 560, 574-76, 605

and Soviet Protocol shipments, 671, 675, 679,

681-86

War Department Basic Plan for Period I, 594

War Department-FEA Screening Committee

(Chungking), 731

War Department General Staff

Civil Affairs Division, 743-44, 747-49, 773, 789

G-1, 100-101

G-3, 100-101, 111, 123, 138, 495

G-4, 100-104, 122-24, 128, 138, 600, 636, 729-31

Operations Division, 59, 123-24, 128, 178, 199,

253, 303

ANVIL-OVERLORD planning, 342, 346, 362-63

CBI operations, 513, 516-17, 519, 522, 621

civilian supply, 741, 778

deployment of troops, 143, 149, 166-67, 495-

97, 566

and HUSKY, 44, 50-56

lend-lease, 631-32, 636, 656, 691, 723, 728-30,

732

logistical organization, 91, 94-95, 100-104, 108

Logistics Group, 101-04, 111, 138, 142, 160,

576

and Pacific operations, 412-13, 438, 458, 572,

574, 604, 618

and Pacific supply, 473, 492

and preshipment, 193, 196-97, 242-44

War Department General Staff—Continued

Operations Division—Continued

and redeployment, 542-43, 584, 594-95, 597-

98, 611

Six Months' Forecast, 141, 143, 160

Theater Group, 101, 108

Troop Movements Section, 47

War Department Personnel Readjustment Plan,

542, 577

War Department Procurement Review Board. See

McCoy Board.

War Department Shipping Documents, 165

War Department Troop Deployment, 128

War Food Administration, 89, 746, 754, 767

War Manpower Commission, 89, 117

War Office, 650, 654, 714, 748, 760, 764, 777

War Production Board, 89-90, 110, 115-16, 488, 746,

754, 796

and aid to USSR, 671

and shipbuilding program of 1944, 247-50, 255,

257, 263, 309

War Shipping Administration, 16, 82-83, 89-90, 92,

386, 559, 613, 636, 796

and aid to USSR, 671-74, 676, 678-79, 692-93

and civilian supply, 741-42, 746, 754, 759-60, 767-

68, 776, 778, 782-83, 787

and HUSKY, 37-38, 53-54, 56

and Pacific shipping, 437-38, 457, 459, 461-62, 464,

467-68, 470, 488, 576, 601, 606, 615-16

and sailings, 360-61, 366, 555-56, 558

and shipment procedures, 162, 238-39, 562

and shipping budgets, 195, 214, 302, 358-59

Water transportation equipment, 487-89

Wedemeyer, Maj. Gen. Albert C., 180, 528-29, 622-

23, 733-34, 736

Weeks-Somervell Agreement, 630, 638-42, 816-17

Western Task Force, 47

Wheeler, Maj. Gen. Raymond A., 513, 653

White Paper, British, on lend-lease, 645, 649, 662

Williamson, Col. Raymond E. S., 442

Wilson, Charles E., 248, 263

Wilson, General Sir Henry Maitland. See also

Supreme Allied Commander, Mediterranean.

and ANVIL, 316, 321-22, 331, 336, 346-50, 362-65,

375-78, 381

and assault shipping, 337-39

and civilian relief, 761, 774-78

and Italian campaign, 226, 340-41, 344-46, 359-

61, 384, 535

and rearmament, 711, 718-19

Winant, John G., 266, 278

Wingate, Brigadier Orde Charles, 506, 652

Wolfe, Brig. Gen. Kenneth B., 514, 521

Wood, Maj. Gen. Walter A., Jr., 256, 407, 499, 566

Woodlark Island, 399

Woods, Maj. Robert C., 640

Wright, Brig. Gen. Boykin C., 633-34, 684, 752

Wylie, Brig. Gen. Robert H., 441, 469
INDEX 889

X-RAY Force, 501, 503, 726. See also Chinese Army

in India.

Yalta Conference. See ARGONAUT. Yap, 410, 414

YOKE Force, 501, 503-04, 510-11, 515-16, 526, 726-27, 729-31. See also Chinese Army in China.

York, Maj. Gen. John Y., 664, 672, 694-95, 697

Young, Sir Hubert, 747

Young-Sinclair estimates, 747-49

Yount, Col. Paul, 512

Yugoslavia, 786, 788. See also Lend-lease, to Yugoslavia. Yunnan, 80, 501-03, 516, 518, 526, 726

ZEBRA Force, 726, 729. See also Chinese Army in

China.

U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE: 1988 203-040/80005

PIN : 038756-000