Chapter XVI:
STRATEGIC INVENTORY
December 1942
By December 1942, a year after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor,
the tide of war was beginning to turn in favor of the Allies. The
strategic initiative was slipping away from both Germany and Japan. The
Red Army- had not only held the invading German armies but also
inflicted mortal losses on them. In North Africa, Guadalcanal, and New
Guinea the offensive power of the western Allies was beginning to make
itself felt. After a Near of crises, the danger of losing the war had
become remote, but the prospect of winning it was also remote. The
specific problem of applying the growing American strength to the defeat
of Germany seemed more complicated, if not more difficult, than it had a
year earlier.
When the Army planners came to survey the world-wide
strategic: situation a year after Pearl Harbor,
they could look back on a year of unprecedented
expansion of the Army. Fluctuations in British-American
military plans and changing operational needs
had greatly affected the programs for expanding
the U. S. Army in 1942-in total growth and in
internal distribution of strength, as well as
in overseas deployment. From a total strength
of 1,686,403 (including 37 active divisions and
67 air combat groups) on 31 December 1941, the
Army had grown to 5,397,674 (including 73 active
divisions and 167 air combat groups) by the close
of 1942.1
This expansion in total strength
exceeded original War Department estimates of
strengths for 31 December 1942, those in the
Victory Program Troop Basis of late 1941, and
those in the War Department Troop Basis of January
1942.2
The Victory Program Troop Basis,
circulated in late December 1941, had projected
total Army, strength as 3,973,205 commissioned
officers and enlisted men (to include 59 divisions
and an air force of
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804,439) by 31 December 1942.3 The approved War Department Troop Basis
of January 1942 had projected total Army strength as 3,600,000 enlisted
men ( to include 73 divisions arid an air force of 998,000) by the same
date.4 These early blueprints for building, equipping, and supplying the
wartime Army, had been drawn before the defensive strength of the
Soviet Union, the influence of British strategy, arid the extent of
American commitments in the Pacific had become fully evident.
Additions to the total strength in the Troop Basis for 1942 had been
made mainly to meet modifications in British-American war plans arid
changing operational requirements of that year. One important revision
of the 1942 goal of 3,600,000 men had been made in flay 1942, when the
President authorized an increase of 750.000 men, chiefly to support
the new plan for the build-up of strength in the United Kingdom
(BOLERO). Another important addition had been made in September 1942,
when the armed forces were faced with expanding requirements for the
Pacific and North African offensives. At that time the President and
the JCS approved another increase for the Army, this time of 650,000,
raising the authorized enlisted strength of the Army by the end of 1942 to
5,000,000.5 These additions were necessary to cover overdrafts on the
1942 Troop Basis already made or planned.
Distribution of strength within the Army shifted greatly in 1942.
Both the air forces and service forces grew more rapidly than estimated
in the January 1942 Troop Basis. During 1942 the ground arms more than
doubled, but the service branches and the Air Corps increased over
fourfold.6 Among the ground forces themselves, moreover, III the early
defensive phase of the war, antiaircraft units were authorized over and
above the numbers at first planned, arid the Coast Artillery Corps (mainly antiaircraft) actually expanded more rapidly in 1942 than tire,
other ground arms. Antiaircraft units were sent to the defense commands
and to the several overseas theaters. Finally, the dispersion of Army
forces on defensive arid supply missions and the requirements of the
first offensive operations raised the proportion of service and air
units more arid more above the proportion given in the Troop Basis of
January 1942.
Changes in the military situation and in military plans affected not
only the way ill which the Army grew in 1942, but also expectations of
the growth of the Army there after and calculations of the total number
of divisions, the "cutting edge" needed to will World War II.
The assumption in com-
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mon use in the War Department throughout most of 1942 had been that it
would ultimately be necessary to support at least two hundred divisions.
The official estimates in the Victor- Program Troop Basis of late 1941
had projected an Army at peak strength of approximately 217 divisions.
1n keeping with the assumption that the Red Army might collapse and the
United States and Great Britain might have to defeat Germany unaided
(and in accordance with the War Department determination to ignore the
possibility of a dispersion of effort requiring large service forces),
this initial Victor Program projected an Army consisting primarily of
air, armored, and motorized forces capable of defeating the huge armies
of Germany and its allies.7 The projected number of divisions grew in
1942, partly because estimated requirements for defeating Japan were
superimposed on the original estimates of requirements for defeating
Germany. In September G-3 reached its peak estimate of about "350
divisions necessary to win the war."
8
Late in 1942 the War Department long-range estimates were finally
called into question by the JCS. In November the Joint Staff Planners
projected an Army strength of over ten million men by 31 December 1944
and ultimately-by 31 December 1948-of over thirteen million. The
thirteen million-man Army would contain 334 divisions. The JCS rejected
these estimates as excessive. 9 By the close of 1942 the planners were beginning to take account of experience and to
recalculate long-range requirements to fit the expectation that large
service forces and air forces would often precede and always accompany
the movement of ground ,forces. The approved goal for air groups which
had been set in January1942 at 115 and changed in July to 224,was
raised in September to 273.10 Given the anticipated limitations in
shipping, it was apparent that the projected deployment of a huge air
and service force overseas by the end of 1944 would greatly restrict the
number of combat divisions which could be sent overseas by that time. In
late 1942, moreover, procurement plans for the armed services for 1943,
particularly for the Army ground program, were revised downward by the JCS-in conformity with a War Production Board recommendation. It was
clearly undesirable to withdraw men from industry and agriculture too
long before they could actually be employed in military operations.
Given one year to train a division, the mobilization of much more than a
hundred divisions by the end of 1943 appeared to be premature. All these
indications pointed to the need for scaling down previous long-range
calculations, as well as for economizing in the use of manpower within
the Army.11
The result was the distribution in January
1943 by G-3 of an approved Army Troop Basis authorizing
a total Army strength of 8,208,000 by the end
of 1943, and setting the mobilization program
for
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1943 at one hundred divisions.12 This Troop Basis marked a
turning point in War Department and Joint Staff calculations, though it
was still too early to say to what extent the various cause, of
mobilizing more slowly would operate to limit the final size of the Army
and the number of divisions it would contain.13
The disposition of Army forces, like the rate of growth and the
composition of the wartime Army, was actually quite different from what
the military planner had projected. Army forces outside the
continental limits of the United States had risen from about 192,000
men in December 1941 to approximately 1,065,000 men in December 1942.14 The ratio of overseas troops to total Army strength had risen
from about 11 percent in December 1941 to about 19 to 20 percent from
August through December 1942. Progressively larger numbers of troops
were sent abroad in each of the latter months of 1942, but the rapid
growth of the Army through new inductions held the overseas ratio in
this period at a fairly stable rate.15 Included in this overseas
deployment a year after Pearl Harbor were 17 divisions and 66 air
combat groups.16
Deployment to the United Kingdom
Largely as a result of successive commitments in the Pacific and
Mediterranean, for which the War Department had not allowed, the
distribution of troops was also at variance with the Army's plans. The
chief effect had been to retard the growth of Army forces in the British
Isles. The Bolero plan had had scarcely more to do with the actual
movement of Army forces overseas than the tentative schedules drawn up in 1941 under
RAINBOW 5.17
By July 1942 Army troops already present in
or en route to areas other than the British Isles
had exceeded the War Department objectives for
deployment to those areas for December 1942.18
By December 1942
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other commitments had repeatedly been exceeded, but forces for the
British Isles had not attained the strength projected in early BOLERO
planning. Instead of a strength of about 500,000 troops planned for
December 1942, the actual figures for the United Kingdom showed as
present and en route, by early December 1942, slightly more than 170,000
(including about 123,000 ground and 47,000 air troops.)19 Only one
division (29th Infantry) and the approximate equivalent of sixteen air
combat groups were then present in the British Isles.
In effect, the American forces that became available in 1942 had served
as a pool upon which all theaters and operations had laid claims since
British-American war plans had changed and immediate operational needs and
demands in the Middle East, North Africa, and the Pacific had required their
deployment. The collapse of the whole project of preparing a cross Channel
invasion for 1943 and the heavy withdrawals already made and projected from.
BOLERO forces in the United States and the United Kingdom had led the War
Department in the late summer and fall of 1942 to revise downward its
estimated Army deployment objectives to be attained in the United Kingdom by
the spring of 1943. Under the Bolero plan of the spring of 1942, the United
States was to furnish approximately 1,000,000 men (including 30 divisions)
for an invasion from the United Kingdom by 1 April 1943. By the end of 1942
the War Department had scaled down the objective to a balanced ground force
of 150,000 by the spring of 1943- for supporting, defensive, and emergency
offensive operations-and, at an indeterminate date, to a force which would
reach a total of approximately 427,000.20
Deployment to North Africa
The demands of the North African campaign, their in progress,
continued to constitute a first claim on American forces and resources.21 As a result of the failure to forestall the German defense
of Tunisia and the determination of the German High Command to reinforce
the position there, the British and American staffs faced the problem of
building up, over a much longer line of sea communications and a much
less developed line of land communications, a decisive superiority over
the forces the Germans chose to commit to Tunisia. The cost of the
effort was compounded by haste and waste. The primary effects were felt
in the ports of Great Britain, the United States, and North Africa, and
the secondary effects on all the active fronts, in the capitals, and
throughout the training camps, factories, and shipyards of the United
States and Great Britain.
Deployment to this area-which had followed from the TORCH
decision-was still in progress as American forces sought in the closing weeks of 1942 to consolidate their holdings and prepare for the
decisive fight for Tunisia. At the beginning of December 1942 all or
parts of six divisions (the 1st, 3d, 9th, and 34th Infantry Divisions,
and the 1st and 2d Armored Divisions) were present, along with eleven
air combat
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groups. The ground troops, estimated at 128,000, were slightly more
numerous than those in the United Kingdom. The air troops were
calculated at somewhat under 13,000. However, the air forces in the
United Kingdom constituted a reserve which could be and was heavily
drawn upon for North Africa. The effect of the deviation from BOLERO
became even more strikingly apparent by 21 December 1942 when the total
U. S. Army forces in French North Africa slightly exceeded those in the
British Isles. By that time the number of ground combat troops in French
North Africa was almost double the total strength of ground combat
troops in the British Isles. The trend was also projected, in Army
planning estimates at the close of 1942, for troop movements in the near
future. The projected total U. S. troop strength for North Africa was
then estimated at 450,000, somewhat more than the total projected for
the United Kingdom.
Deployment to Iceland
A year after Pearl Harbor, Iceland, which had been included in the
European Theater of Operations as set up in June 1942, had been
garrisoned with a fairly large Army force. Over 40,000 troops were
present in early December 1942, including the 5th Infantry Division, two
fighter squadrons, and a number of antiaircraft and coast artillery
units. Another 12,000 American troops were projected for Iceland
according to current War Department planning. American troops had begun
to arrive in Iceland in late 1941, even before the United States entered
the war. The major objectives of deployment to Iceland were the
protection of the transatlantic air ferry routes and sea lanes and the
relief of the British garrison.
Deployment to the Middle East
In the Middle Last, events of 1942 had forced successive
modifications in the Army's policy toward that area of British strategic
responsibility. At the beginning of December 1942 about 25,000 American
troops were present in or en route to the Middle East-primarily
service and air troops, including seven air combat groups. The enlarged
Middle East commitments by the close of the year reflected, in part, the
increased operational air activities by United States forces in support
of British-American offensive action in the Mediterranean. In part, it
reflected the greater need for service units required to construct,
operate, and maintain the Persian Gulf supply route for shipments to the
Soviet Union.
Besides the troops belonging to U . S. Army Forces in the Middle East
(USAFIME) , there were those of U. S. Army Forces in Central Africa
(USAFICA) , which had been set up in June 1942 to control U. S. Army
forces across equatorial Africa. USAFICA was to unify air. transport
activities along the trans-African air routes-dispatching American
aircraft to the Middle East, the USSR, India, and China. By early
December 1942 Army personnel in the Central Africa area, mostly air and
service troops required for the operation of the Central Africa air
ferry route, numbered about 5,000.
Deployment in the Western Hemisphere
Similarly reflecting changing needs and plans
of the critical first year of United States participation
.in the war was the state of deployment in the
Western Hemisphere (excluding the continental
United States) at the end of 1942. In early December
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1942 approximately 237,000 U.S. troops were present in or en route to
bases in the Western Hemisphere, including Latin America, Alaska, and
the rest of North America.22 This total included about 185,000
ground troops and 50,000 air troops (nine combat groups) actually
present. The total U.S. Army strength in these Western Hemisphere bases
exceeded by a substantial margin the total U.S. Army strengths in either
the United Kingdom or North Africa. It also exceeded-by over 100,000-the
ceilings, envisaged as part of the original BOLERO planning, on
strategic deployment for the area by December 1942. The heavy outlay-in
antiaircraft, air, and scattered infantry units-represented in part a
carry-over from the early defensive phases of the, war for garrison
forces to meet threats of invasion, naval bombardment, and sabotage in
the North American and Latin American theaters. Fluctuations in plans
for the European offensive, the long-continued threat to the security of
the South Atlantic area from French West Africa, combined with the
continued critical shipping shortage and the demands of antisubmarine
warfare, had as yet precluded an extensive "squeezing out"
process to shift Army strength to more active theaters outside the
Western Hemisphere. On the other hand, as American forces were committed
to limited offensives, American overseas theaters were built up, and
Allied demands for American planes increased, further allocations to the
Western Hemisphere of U.S. troops-especially service, air, antiaircraft,
and sundry infantry units-were made in 1942 for the extension, operation, and protection of North and South
Atlantic air ferry routes.
The main operational development in the Western Hemisphere was the
heavy allocations for Alaska. A year after Pearl Harbor there were over
87,000 troops (present or en route) including about 72,000 ground and
14,000 air troops (2 air combat groups) actually in the area. This total
was more than twice the number envisaged for the area by the close of
1942.
During 1942, additional troops were also dispatched for the
construction and operation of the Alcan Highway (opened in November
1942) in western Canada. This project, authorized by a joint agreement
between Canada and the United States, was originally planned and
initiated to improve transportation links between Canada, United States,
and Alaska and thereby to reduce threats to Alaskan installations.
The increase in Army strength in Alaska reflected the changing
situation in and plans for the northern Pacific in the year following
the United States entry into war. Japanese landings in the western
Aleutians in June 1942 had made it politically urgent to dispatch some
reinforcements to Alaska and to develop Alaska as an advance base.
Critical needs for trained combat divisions, ships, and planes elsewhere
in the Pacific, and in the European theater, in strategically more
decisive areas, precluded immediate action to recapture Kiska and Attu.
The build-up in sundry categories of Army personnel, nevertheless,
continued to grow in this secondary theater. The first countermeasures
were taken in the summer of 1942. American troops landed at Adak on 31
August. Advance airfields were developed and air strikes undertaken
against Japanese installations in the Kiska region. In addi-
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tion to providing for defensive-offensive needs for Alaska, the
increased allocations at the end of 1942 also included personnel for
servicing the Alaska- Siberia air ferry route for delivery of lend-lease
aircraft to the USSR (opened in September 1942) . At the close of the
year, as pressure became stronger upon the War Department for dislodging
the Japanese from the Aleutians, a further increase to about 100,000
troops was projected for Alaska.
Deployment to tire CBI
In the China-Burma-India theater early limitations on Army deployment
had been maintained far more successfully during 1942 than either in the
Middle East or in the Western Hemisphere. In the Asiatic theater, as in
the Middle Fast, the circumstances of world war had plunged the American
troops into an area of highly complicated jurisdictional, strategic, and
logistical problems for the Allies. Basic strategic considerations, as
well as limited Allied resources for mounting major attacks on the
Asiatic mainland and pressing immediate needs of other theaters,
combined to keep the CBI theater, throughout 1942, low on the list of
priorities set by the CCS for overseas deployment. For the United
States, one objective of strategic policy since the very beginnings of
the international conflict had been to keep China actively in the war
without a major investment of American forces. In accord with American
policy, General Stilwell's mission to China had been directed in
February 1942 toward increasing both the effectiveness of American
assistance to the Chinese Government and the combat efficiency of the
Chinese Army. After the Burma Road was cut by the Japanese, American
policies and Stilwell's mission had remained the same. The problems had become far more difficult-supporting the Chinese, getting
their cooperation, arid exercising pressure through China on Japanese
strategic policy. But for the U. S. Army the area remained a secondary
air and ,supply theater. From the summer of 1942 onward, the technical
and tactical instruction of Chinese forces in India became an
increasingly important activity. A year after Pearl Harbor about 17,000
American troops were present in or en route to the China-Burma India
area. This total included about 10,000 air troops (4 air combat groups)
and about 5,000 service troops actually in the theater. The total
strength was close to early wartime Army and joint planning estimates
for the end of 1942, only slightly exceeding the total commitments for
the area projected in the JCS 23 study of mid-March 1942.
Deployment to the Pacific
The great divergence from early American planning for the war against
Japan in 1942 was in the scale of Army strength reached in the Pacific
by the. end of that year. The character and extent of deployment in the
Pacific were shaped by the requirements of a largely oceanic theater
with its main bases lacking in railroads, docks, and warehouses;
separated by vast stretches of water; arid situated thousands of miles
from the west coast of the United States. The Pacific war provided,
therefore, a formidable exercise in the science of logistics. For every
combat division of 15,000 ground troops sent to the Pacific, for
example, twice as many service troops were required for transport and
supply. The first year of the war in the Pacific was largely spent by
the United States armed forces in establishing arid protecting supply
lines and bases from
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which offensives might later be undertaken against Japan.
The trend in excess of allocations over commitments for the
Pacific during 1942 had fallen into two major phases, roughly
divided by the Battle of Midway of Jane 1942. During the earl- months
of the war in the Pacific, the War Department had tried to keep the
forces and means allotted to the minimum consistent with the agreed
objectives of defending Australia, New Zealand, and the lines of
communication from the United States to the Southwest Pacific. Strategic
deployment planning had riot kept abreast of operational planning to
meet the requirements of this defensive phase. The critical need of
reinforcements and readjustments for delaying and containing the
Japanese advance led to successive ad hoc increases in allotments of
Army troops to the Pacific. Adjusting the requirements in ground forces
was largely a matter of overcoming shipping limitations. Pacific air
deployment, however, was the subject of a great deal of controversy
among the American planners, complicated by the commitments of planes
to the Allies and by the determination of the AAF to initiate large scale
daylight bombardment of Western Europe. 1n executing the
build-up and holding policy in the Pacific, the War Department did not
fully anticipate the great creed for air arid ground service-type unit
for Australia and Pacific island bases. By the beginning of June 1942
about 245,000 U. S. Army troops -nearly half of those stationed outside
the United States (about 505,000), or over three quarters of those
stationed outside the Western Hemisphere (about 320,000)- had been sent
to defend the line Hawaii -Australia.23 They included seven of the ten divisions outside the united States and nearly all
the air combat units outside the Western Hemisphere.24
The rebuff to the Japanese forces in the Coral Sea (May 1942) and Midway
battles June 1942 by no means slowed down Army deployment to
the Pacific. That deployment, in the new phase of the Pacific Near, Was no loner calculated in terms of garrisoning a "line" of
bases to support a harassing naval defensive, but in terms of tactical
offensive moves beyond that line. Until August 1942 the actual
numbers deployed each month in the Pacific continued to be greater than
those deployed in the Atlantic.25 A Series of limited offensive
operations, beginning with the Marine landings on Guadalcanal in August
1942, was plotted and inaugurated. Emergency reinforcements were
dispatched in the fall of 1942 for both the Guadalcanal and Papua
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Campaigns, tactically offensive moves against advanced enemy positions
in the South and Southwest Pacific: area. The allocation and movement of
service units, filler replacements, and air units to the Pacific
commands remained unsettled problems. The growth of air, ground, and
service forces in the South and Southwest Pacific: was accompanied by a
multiplication of higher echelons of Army branch and island commands
within these areas-particularly in the South Pacific, where a separate
Army command, U. S. Army Forces in South Pacific Area (USAFISPA), had
bear established in July 1942. Among the added activities of the Army in
that area was the assumption in early December 1942 of responsibility on
Guadalcanal, involving the employment of several Army and Marine ground
combat forces.26
The cumulative results of the piecemeal process by which the Pacific
theater had been built tip to meet the changing needs during the year
after Pearl Harbor were indicated in ,the division of Army strength
among the Pacific areas at the close of 1942. By 3 December 1942 a total
of about 141,000 air and ground troops was in the Central Pacific Area (including 4 divisions and 4 air combat groups). Totals for the South
Pacific Area then numbered about 91,000 (3 divisions and 5 air combat
groups), and for the Southwest Pacific Area about 110.000 (2 divisions
and 10 air combat groups).27
In each of these sections of the Pacific the limitations on Army
deployment set its part of the original BOLERO planning had been
substantially exceeded. Though the Central Pacific then contained the
greatest number of Army troops, events of 1942 had considerable reduced
the threat of Japanese invasion and capture of island bases in this
sector that had appeared so imminent early in the war. Before the close
of the year some of the garrison strength was being transferred to aid
offensive action in the South and Southwest Pacific.28 No similar
slackening off in Army build-up appeared in in prospect for the South
and Southwest Pacific Areas. On the contrary, the trend toward continued
increases of Army forces for these areas seemed stronger than ever.29
For the Pacific: theater as a whole, the total of Army forces deployed
a year after Pearl Harbor (about 346,000) was about equal to the total
Army forces deployed in the United Kingdom and North Africa (about
347,000) . The Pacific build-up exceeded by about 150,000 the total
number projected for the area by the end of 1942 in the original Bolero planning. Nine of the 17 divisions overseas and 19 of the 66
air combat groups overseas were ire the Pacific.
In effect, by 31 December 1942 slightly over one half of the divisions
overseas and about one third of the air combat groups
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overseas were deployed in the war against Japan. All the remaining
overseas divisions, and slightly over one half of the overseas air
combat groups were deployed in the war against Germany. The rest of the
overseas air combat groups were distributed among Latin American and
South Atlantic bases. The total U. S. Army forces then deployed in the
war against Japan exceeded by about 50,000 the total U. S. Army forces
deployed in the war against Germany.30 (Sec Chart 3.)
The cumulative effects of the successive diversions of 1942 were also
shown in the relative distribution of aircraft in the overseas theaters
at the end of the year. Of the total Army Air Forces planes (5,626) on
hand overseas at the close of December 1942, less than half (2,065) were
deployed against Germany. The total number of planes deployed against
Germany only slightly exceeded the total (1,910) deployed against
Japan.31 Allocations of aircraft had exceeded commitments by the end of 1942, particularly in the Pacific
and Alaska.32 In addition, a good many planes had been sent to meet the
special operational and Supporting needs that had developed during 1942
in both of the essentially supply and air theaters-the Middle East and China Burma-India. Within the European theater itself, the requirements
of the North African campaign were draining the United Kingdom of U. S.
aircraft. Barely one half of all the U. S. combat planes envisaged in
the Marshall Memorandum of the spring of 1942 for the cross-Channel
invasion on 1 April 1943 (3,250) were on hand in theaters across the
Atlantic at the end of 1942. Less than one third of these combat planes
projected for 1 April 1943 were actually in the United Kingdom at the
end of 1942. In effect, as the Army planners emphasized, strength and
resources originally earmarked for the main effort, BOLERO-ROUNDUP, had
served in 1942 as a pool from which aircraft, as well as air units, had
been diverted to secondary efforts.33 The accepted British-American,
view of strategy called for the main effort to be made against Germany.
The trend, however, as Army planners observed at the close of the year,
was toward the continued diversion of planes to the Pacific, the
secondary theater, rather than toward a concentration of air forces
against Germany, the main enemy.34
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The costs of maintaining the widely dispersed air forces were heavy. To furnish planes and many items needed
on short notice to keep the overseas combat units in operation, the AAF
had had to expand its air ferry and transportation service. General
Arnold described the problem as one of making "too little go twice
as far as would be necessary tinder normal operating conditions."
He went on to explain
Dispersed as they arc in seven active theaters totaling thirteen
operational areas, our air forces require many more planes on the spot
as reserve and in transit to replace attrition losses than if we had
the same number concentrated in one theater.
The distances between the United States arid the theaters of
operations were so great that it was necessary to maintain in each
theater front 20 to 50 percent reserve, and to begin delivery of
planes to make rip operational losses as much as three months before
they would actually be placed in combat service. As a result, American
production capacities were being strained to the utmost and American
training units were not up to strength.35
The scattering of men and planes among the theaters of operations was
paralleled by the parceling out of shipping to move and maintain troops
overseas. Throughout 1942, shortages-especially of escort vessels and
landing craft- imbalances between available troop and cargo shipping,
and the heavy rate of sinkings had made "shipping" the
"limiting factor" in Army overseas deployment. During 1942 shipping ire the service of the Army
had grown from 871,368 dead-weight tons (31 December 1941) to 3,940,791 dead-weight tons
(31 December 1942) -an
increase of over 350 percent.
36 The distribution of shipping
between the Atlantic and the Pacific during 1942 showed how great an
effort it was to move, establish, and support forces in the South and
Southwest Pacific-the voyage was long, the unloading was often slow, and
the forces were dependent for many of their supplies upon the United
States. Since turnaround time in the Atlantic was much shorter, the
shift in the distribution of tonnage in favor of the Atlantic in the
latter part of the year was far less pronounced than the shift in the
ratio of troops and munitions moved. Through mid-1942 the total troop
and cargo tonnage tinder Army control engaged in the Pacific area
(including Alaska) had each month actually exceeded total troop and
cargo tonnage for the Atlantic (including the Caribbean). Beginning With
July, monthly dead-weight cargo tonnage engaged in the Atlantic
exceeded that engaged ire the Pacific, reversing the trend of the
previous half year. Until December 1942 troop tonnage in Army service in
the Pacific (with the exception of February and July) continued to
exceed troop tonnage in the Atlantic for each month of that year. In
December 1942 the total of almost four million cargo and troop
dead-weight tons under Army control was, as it had been since July ,
divided in favor of the Atlantic-a deadweight tonnage of 1,520,677
was engaged in the Pacific area, and 2,420,114 engaged in the Atlantic
area. The sharp increase in tonnage in the Atlantic theaters of
operations err that month over November 1942
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reflected largely the increase in shipping activity in the
-Atlantic-Mediterranean area attendant on and resulting from the North
African campaign.
Shipping limitations continued to affect planning for future overseas
deployment of United States troops. In December 1942, SOS planners
calculated that, on the basis of prospective increases in American
shipping capabilities, a total of almost one million U.S. Army troops
might be moved arid maintained overseas in 1943, in addition to the one
million already overseas at the end of 1942.37 Current commitments to
move troops during 1943, including replacements arid reinforcements for
troops already overseas, were expected by the SOS planners to absorb the
larger part (a total of 628,000) of the approximately one million
troops that might be moved overseas in 1943. The shipping capacity left
for overseas deployment arid maintenance of United States troops might
be further reduced if additional commitments for the United Kingdom
economy or the Russian Protocol were made. In accord with current United
States shipping estimates, increases of approximately 210,000 in the
first quarter of 1943, arid another 240,000 in the second quarter, arid
about 265,000 in each of the remaining quarters, might be made in the
number of U.S. Army-troops deployed overseas.38 War Department planners estimated that a
total of thirty seven additional American-equipped combat divisions would
become available for task forces by the end of 1943-seven at the end
of the first quarter, twelve at the end of the second, eight at the end
of the third, and ten at the end of the fourth.39 Supporting
combat arid service units, air and ground, they expected, would be
available for such task forces as might be organized, given the availability
of divisions arid shipping. By shifting air-strength, they
concluded, the United States and its associates could support am, y
ground operation that they were capable of undertaking. :Available:
shipping-including escorts, combat loaders, and landing craft-stood out,
in their calculations, as "the controlling factor" in American
planning for 1943.40
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Page created 10 January 2002
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