Chapter 4: Pacific Bases
The OCQM in the Southwest Pacific and corresponding offices in the other areas planned, coordinated, and supervised Quartermaster activities, but base sections set up throughout the Pacific as need developed actually carried out most of these activities. They were the agencies that received, stored, and distributed supplies, reclaimed discarded and worn-out articles, and cleaned and laundered clothing.
Ordinarily, base sections covered specific geographical areas. According to their location in the communications zone, they were classified as rear, intermediate, and advance installations. Generally speaking, rear bases obtained their stocks direct from local industry and agriculture or from the United States. Since they supplied intermediate and sometimes advance bases as well, they normally maintained larger stores than the other bases. Intermediate bases, located nearer the combat zone, served in the main as suppliers for advance bases. The latter installations kept only limited stocks, which they employed to provide needed items to the truckheads and navigation heads of combat zones. All bases, regardless of classification, supplied the military units within their own geographical areas.
The mission of the bases varied in detail with shifting strategic requirements, availability of shipping, and changing locations of troops concentrations and combat zones. Until late 1943, for instance, each base in Australia was charged with buying perishable foods and furnishing these items to the base in New Guinea for whose supply it was responsible, but the insufficiency of reefer shipping and the increased number of troops in New Guinea made it difficult for the mainland installations to carry out their assigned responsibilities. This system was accordingly modified so as to permit shipments from any base that had reefers.1 As fighting spread northwest along the New Guinea coast and finally reached the Philippines, more fundamental changes occurred. Rear bases in Australia were either abandoned or operated on a much smaller scale, and advance bases in New Guinea became intermediate or even rear bases. A similar evolution occurred in the South and Central Pacific.
Bases conducted their activities through technical service sections that handled the supplies and equipment furnished by their particular service. Quartermaster Sections operated mainly through storage and distribution depots located at strategic points within the base area. Administratively, these installations might be either general depots handling supplies of all services or
technical service depots handling the supplies of a single service. Functionally, they might be in-transit depots, receiving and classifying inbound and outbound shipments; issue depots, storing stocks for units within the base area; or reserve depots, serving as sources of replacement supply for issue depots, other bases, and operational forces.
Southwest Pacific
During most of the war the Australian bases functioned as semipermanent rear installations supporting the New Guinea forces. They were indispensable to Quartermaster supply, for they handled not only the vast quantities of food, clothing, footwear, and general supplies procured in Australia but also all shipments made from the United States before August 1943. Despite the shortage of labor and materials-handling equipment the Australian bases were the most efficient ones in the Southwest Pacific, for they had the best ports and most warehouses.2
Since Australia at the start of hostilities had become the communications zone of the Southwest Pacific, the first bases in that area had been set up there. By April 1942 seven were in operation, five of which approximately followed state boundaries. The leading commercial center in each base area was designated as headquarters. Base Section 1 (Darwin) comprised the Northern Territory; Base Section 2 (Townsville), northern Queensland; Base Section 3 (Brisbane), southern Queensland; Base Section 4 (Melbourne), Victoria; Base Section 5 (Adelaide), South Australia; Base Section 6, (Perth), Western Australia; and Base Section 7 (Sydney), New South Wales.3
Until late 1942 the danger of Japanese invasion was the major factor in determining the location and mission of these bases. It forced the wide dispersion of supplies, which in turn for some months necessitated the continued operation of the seven original bases, even after available facilities in some of them proved unsatisfactory. Defense against possible attack from New Guinea and the Netherlands Indies largely motivated the establishment of bases at Darwin and Perth, and as that danger receded, these installations became less significant. Adelaide was set up chiefly because its location on the south-central coast presumably rendered it safe from attack. Its principal task was the supply of the 32nd Division, staged from May to July 1942 at camps about 120 miles from Adelaide. After this mission had been completed, its importance rapidly diminished. Since Melbourne and Sydney were the leading industrial and commercial centers and were remote from probable enemy landing points, they became the largest receivers and forwarders of military shipments. In the early months Melbourne served as the main supplier of other base areas. Intermediate depots, stocking advance installations to the north and northeast, where danger of hostile landings was greatest, were established in the Sydney and Brisbane base areas, at relatively safe sites, 100 to 150 miles from the coast. Advance depots were located mostly in the Townsville base section along highways running west from Rockhampton, Townsville, and Cairns and at change-of-gauge points in this region. The principal depots were set up at
Charters Towers, Cloncurry, Mount Isa, and Tennant Creek between Townsville and the Darwin—Alice Springs railway.4
As danger of invasion waned and New Guinea emerged as the center of Allied offensive operations, base activities underwent substantial modification. Those bases which had satisfactory ports and lay comparatively close both to New Guinea and to industrial and agricultural centers handled more and more supplies while other bases dwindled in importance. Perth and Adelaide were discontinued in January 1943, and though Darwin functioned until July 1944, its activities were increasingly confined to supply of the Air Forces. Despite excellent port and warehouse facilities at Melbourne, the distance of that base from the center of combat operations caused gradual curtailment of its activities, and it was finally abandoned in June 1944. As Melbourne declined, Brisbane and Townsville, 1,100 and 1,875 miles nearer New Guinea, expanded and, together with Sydney, emerged as the principal bases. From September 1943 to February 1944 Cairns in northeast Queensland, 225 miles nearer New Guinea than Townsville, served as headquarters of the temporarily reconstituted Base Section 5, formerly at Adelaide, but owing to its inferior docks and warehouses, it handled comparatively few New Guinea-bound supplies.5
Quartermaster sections of Southwest Pacific bases were organized in various ways, the particular form being determined by their missions, but there was always a base quartermaster who exercised technical supervision over all the base activities of the Corps. He usually had certain assistants, of whom the Quartermaster depot officer was possibly the most important. This officer stored and distributed reserve stocks earmarked for other bases and for advance areas. His work was supplemented by that of the base supply officer who issued items destined for military units stationed in the base area. There were also purchasing and contracting officers, whose primary function was the procurement of the few supplies that bases were allowed to buy locally for these units, and subsistence officers—actually, perishable subsistence officers who stored and issued fresh provisions and controlled the refrigeration cars and trucks used for delivery of perishables to units in outlying areas. Finally, there were service center officers, who looked after the miscellaneous activities of the Corps.6
All Quartermaster operations were carried out under the general direction of the base commander. The OCQM could issue technical instructions and its representatives could discuss technical problems with base quartermasters, but neither the OCQM nor the base quartermasters could determine exactly where supplies for troops within a base would be stored or how they would be distributed. These questions involved command functions, for which base commanders alone were responsible. To give them authority in these matters was a necessity if limited labor, transportation, and storage
resources were to be pooled in the common interests of all services and all military units operating within the base area.7 But base commanders had no power to determine just where, within their territorial jurisdiction, supplies reserved for other bases or for operational forces in other base areas would be stored or how they would be distributed. These operations were controlled by distribution instructions from the OCQM which, in turn, was governed by logistical instructions from higher authority.
The question of ultimate control over supplies held for distribution to other bases and operational forces was solved only after prolonged discussion between the base commanders and the OCQM. Throughout 1942 that office fought for Quartermaster reserve depots under its control rather than under that of the base commanders. Only by gaining this authority, the OCQM believed, could it really control Quartermaster reserve stocks. Early experience supported its position, for, in the rush to supply troops from the scanty stores, materials that theoretically constituted reserve stocks for other bases were not segregated from those held to fill the needs of the particular base in which they were located. Hence they could not be controlled effectively. To correct this situation, Headquarters, USASOS, ordered the establishment of Quartermaster reserve depots in the Sydney, Melbourne, and Brisbane base sections. These installations would be under the direction of the Chief Quartermaster, who would recommend the officers to be assigned by the Commanding General, USASOS, as depot commanders and who would determine where and in what quantities reserve stocks would be held and when and where they would be delivered to other installations.8
In compliance with the directions of Headquarters, USASOS, Quartermaster reserve depots were established at Brisbane and Melbourne, but the Sydney base commander, maintaining that he should control reserve installations within his territory, delayed setting up the prescribed depot. This situation caused Headquarters, USASOS, to reconsider its policy. In November it adopted a compromise solution whereby base commanders were empowered to set up general rather than technical service depots for reserve stocks and to appoint the commanding officers of these installations. The OCQM, however, was to issue distribution instructions indicating how Quartermaster reserve stocks would be distributed.9
Storage facilities at the Australian bases varied appreciably in serviceability. During 1942 commercial space of all sorts was employed. Quartermaster requirements for storage space were then much smaller than they later became, but at this time suitable warehouses were so scarce that supplies were even kept in empty shops, garages, social centers—in fact, in almost any available space. During 1943 an extensive leasing and construction program provided substantial quantities of Quartermaster covered space in the Melbourne, Sydney, and Brisbane base areas. In January 1944, when storage operations in Australia were at their peak, the Corps utilized more warehouse space than any other branch of the Army, occupying 3,175,000 square feet, or 43.7 percent of the 8,506,000 square feet employed by the Air Forces and the technical services.10
Map 2: New Guinea
In mid-1944 the growing practice of shipping direct from San Francisco to advance installations brought about a rapid shrinkage in activities at all Australian bases, and the bases in the huge undeveloped island of New Guinea became increasingly important. In 1942 this island had not a single mile of railroad and only a few small stretches of surfaced roads. There were but three ports with any modern means for handling shipments. These ports were Milne Bay, at the eastern tip of the island, with a daily handling capacity of 2,500 tons; Port Moresby, on the south side of the narrow Papuan peninsula, with 1,500 tons; and Buna, on the north side, with 1,000 tons. Minor ports at Morobe, Salamaua, and Madang handled together only 450 tons. At most coastal points lighters provided the sole means of bringing supplies ashore. In the interior high mountains, steaming jungles, impassable swamps, and kunai grass growing to a height of 6 or 7 feet covered the island and made transportation difficult except by native porters.
Because the means of moving materials on land were so inadequate, 95 percent of Army supply movements in New Guinea were made by ship. This dependence on water transportation brought about an extensive development of ports and bases.11 Since construction of storage facilities could not start until the dense jungle had been cleared and airstrips, docks, and roads built, bases were seldom able to handle Quartermaster supplies efficiently in their early months. With suitable means of storage thus at a minimum, stocks were often held in the open or in tents, shacks, and other improvised structures. During this period logistical support of tactical forces of necessity came principally from the older and more distant bases, although these installations could not satisfactorily support large bodies of advance troops.12
The first base in New Guinea was started at Port Moresby in April 1942 during the desperate Allied attempt to hold eastern New Guinea, the primary Japanese steppingstone to Australia, whose Cape York Peninsula lay less than 100 miles across the Torres Strait. (Map 2) In August the base was activated as U.S. Advance Base, New Guinea. At this time another advance station, supervised from Port Moresby, was set up at Milne Bay and designated Sub-Base A. On establishment both these bases already had several small wharves, but neither possessed warehouses, the matter of chief Quartermaster concern, and supplies were stored mostly in improvised shelters or open dumps. At Port Moresby, because of the danger of air raids and flooding waters, the dumps were dispersed for greater safety in the hills, three to twenty-five miles inland. In the Milne Bay area they were several miles from the main port at Ahioma and the sub-ports at Waga Waga and Gili Gili. Throughout most of 1943 the Milne Bay area served as the major receiving and transshipment center in New Guinea. In August, with Allied possession of Papua apparently secure, it replaced Port Moresby as Headquarters, U.S. Advance Base, New Guinea.13
In December 1942, meanwhile, Sub-Base B had been started along the still primitive shores of Oro Bay, about 18 miles south of
Buna Village and 225 miles northwest of Milne Bay. Its initial mission was better support for the troops fighting in this area than could be furnished by the fishing boats and other small craft that made the long trip from Milne Bay and discharged their cargo on unsheltered beaches. Following the successful termination of the Buna—Gona campaign, Oro Bay developed into a staging area and a supply base for advance forces and for the nearby airfields at Dobodura. As at Port Moresby, storage installations were dispersed at points five to twenty miles inland.
In April 1943 Sub-Base C was activated at Beli Beli Bay on Goodenough Island, off the north coast of southeastern New Guinea, midway between Milne Bay and Oro Bay, but it never attained much importance as a general distributing base. In May, Port Moresby, which had declined somewhat in relative importance, was redesignated Sub-Base D. Three months later all the sub-bases became full bases operating under the supervision of Advance Section (ADSEC), USASOS, as the U.S. Advance Base at Milne Bay was then designated. After the capture of Lae in September, this area, in spite of its small unsheltered harbor on Huon Gulf, was developed as Base E. Its major task was not the supply of forward forces but of the huge Army Air Forces installations thirty miles inland at Nadzab, the western terminus of the Air Transport Command flights across the Pacific.14
Base F, situated at Finschhafen on the eastern end of Huon Peninsula, was begun in November 1943, shortly after the Japanese had been driven out. With a fairly good natural harbor, Finschhafen was developed as the major base in New Guinea. It replaced Milne Bay as the largest handler of supplies in the Southwest Pacific just as shipments direct from the United States to New Guinea were beginning. From April 1944 to February 1945, the period of maximum activity at New Guinea bases, it loaded and discharged a third of the tonnage passing through these installations. Between June and January, months that included the logistical build-up for the Leyte and the Luzon Campaigns, Finschhafen handled 25 to 35 percent more tonnage than did all the Australian bases. Yet it never possessed buildings and equipment of the high quality demanded by the magnitude of its mission.15
The difficulties besetting the development of Base F typified those generally encountered at New Guinea supply centers. Near-impenetrable mountainous jungle rose abruptly only a short distance from shore, and buildings and roads were necessarily strung out along the coast for miles. Because of the unfavorable hydrographic conditions dumps could not be placed just behind the docks, a location that would have made possible the most economical handling of supplies. Instead these installations were usually situated at distances that required considerable hauling to and from the waterfront. Storage conditions were rendered still less satisfactory by the lack of men and equipment, shortages that delayed building activities and made it almost impossible to put up sturdy storage places.16
Clothing and equipage building of Base H Quartermaster Depot at Biak.
The victorious conclusion of the Hollandia campaign early in June 1944 opened the way for the establishment of Base G.17 Originally designed to replace Finschhafen as the chief supply center in New Guinea, the new base had too shallow a harbor to permit realization of this plan. Nevertheless, it was developed on a large scale and late in the year shipped a vast volume of supplies to the forces liberating the Philippines. During this period it ranked second only to Finschhafen in tonnage handled. Base H, activated in August 1944 after the successful Biak Island operation, was located partly on that island, off the northwest coast of New Guinea, and partly on adjacent islets. Biak had a flat terrain that better fitted it for development as a supply and staging area than any other New Guinea base. As the USASOS installation closest to the Philippines, Biak shared with Hollandia in the mounting and supply of the forces invading Leyte and Luzon, and until the spring of 1945 sent large quantities of replacement stocks to the Philippines. During March and April it handled more tonnage than any other New Guinea base since Finschhafen then lay too far to the rear to be utilized effectively.18
During the first three years of the war bases in New Guinea in general were begun only after operations undertaken in part for the purpose of winning desirable base sites had been substantially concluded. This procedure had retarded the development of forward installations and rendered the supply of tactical forces dependent on bases located several hundred miles away. But it was a procedure necessitated by the lack of ships for accumulating stocks at forward bases, by the scarcity of building materials, and by the existence of still formidable Japanese air and naval forces. After the reconquest of the Philippines got under way, greater resources were available. At the same time the employment of the largest U.S. forces yet seen in the Pacific demanded bases closer to the combat zones. The Army Service Command (ASCOM) was accordingly set up in July 1944 under the Commanding General, Sixth Army, to plan the logistical support of tactical forces and provide for the prompt construction of bases. Though chiefly Engineer in composition, it contained Quartermaster and other technical service sections. It pooled building materials, made plans for major bases to be started in the Philippines immediately after the landings scheduled for the fall and winter, and gathered men for the erection and operation of these bases. In the future, therefore, bases were started as soon as possible after the landings and used initially as supply installations for troops fighting in their vicinity.19
Since combat operations before late 1944 had been carried out almost entirely within distinct areas by troops of each area, Southwest, South, and Central Pacific Area bases up to that time had supplied mainly their own organizations. But the reconquest of the Philippines and the projected invasion of Japan called for the participation of Army, Marine Corps, and Navy forces from all areas and necessitated the development of bases capable of maintaining these forces. An inter-area conference, assembled at Hollandia in November 1944 to discuss this problem, agreed that the Philippine bases planned by ASCOM would help support all troops who participated in future operations, regardless of the area from which they came.20 As the Philippine bases would also have extensive responsibilities for the supply of offensive movements against nearby objectives, for the rehabilitation of the archipelago itself, and for the logistical support of the invasion of Japan, they would be set up by ASCOM as semipermanent installations. The establishment of such bases was now possible, for ships and building materials were at last available in fairly large quantities.
Base K, the first of the Philippine bases set up by ASCOM, was located on San Pedro Bay at Tacloban in northeastern Leyte, where its installations extended along the shore for some twenty-five miles. Established in October 1944, only two days after the first landings, it supported the Leyte campaign from the beginning. Until Base M was activated at San Fabian on Lingayen Gulf in January, it was the only sizable base in the Southwest Pacific Area north of Biak. Base M, whose activities were eventually scattered for fifty miles along the shore, constituted a highly important source of supplies in the early Luzon operations despite its shallow port, which compelled the discharge of cargoes direct into landing
craft and lighters. As the Lingayen Gulf campaign progressed, sub-bases were set up. They supported operations until the region was cleared of hostile troops. San Fernando, La Union, 30 miles north of San Fabian, then became the permanent headquarters of Base M.21
Early in April 1945 another base, R, was established at Batangas, 60 miles south of Manila. A month later Base S was started at Cebu City, site of a Quartermaster depot in 1941–42, and became supply headquarters for the southern Philippines, where stubborn fighting was still in progress. Despite the fact that engineers were obliged to remove great piles of wreckage to clear the way for these two new bases, supplies in the thousands of tons were flowing in by June and continued to arrive until the termination of hostilities caused a sharp drop in receipts. In October, Batangas was redesignated Sub-Base R under Base X, the huge Manila installation. The following month Cebu became Sub-Base S.22
Base X, by far the largest supply installation in the SWPA, served as principal supporting point for operations in the Philippines, Borneo, and other East Indies islands and for the planned assault against the Japanese home island of Kyushu. It was not formally activated until early April 1945, but rehabilitation and construction of docks, warehouses, and open storage areas had started soon after the recapture of Manila in January. From April 1945 to January 1946 it handled more supplies than any other SWPA base ever had, receiving and discharging a monthly average of 380,000 long tons. Of this tremendous tonnage 25 to 30 percent was Quartermaster.23
During the Okinawa campaign the tasks of executing the base development plan and of supplying the Tenth Army were delegated to the Island Command, a joint organization, which operated under that Army. Late in July 1945, following the completion of mopping-up activities, the Island Command, now redesignated Army Service Command I, was placed directly under General MacArthur and charged with the further development of the base, whose major function was to be the logistical support of the assault on Kyushu. The heavy damage sustained by the harbor facilities at the island’s only developed port, Naha, on the southwest coast, required considerable repair work, which was still incomplete when V- J Day rendered unnecessary the construction of a large base.24
South Pacific
While the continental dimensions of Australia and the long coast lines of New Guinea and the Philippines allowed a good deal of freedom in selecting sites for supply bases in the Southwest Pacific, the land masses of the South Pacific outside New Zealand were so few, so small, and so undeveloped that the choice of sites was confined to a handful of island groups for the most part without permanent structures of any sort. Supply bases had to be built hurriedly under adverse conditions not unlike those in New Guinea.
During the first half of 1942, when it was feared that Japanese forces would seize New Caledonia, the Fijis, and Samoa, the Army envisaged Auckland and Wellington, the principal distribution centers of New Zealand, as major supply bases that would serve as rear depots in much the same way as the leading Australian ports did. But inability of the Japanese to carry offensive warfare into the South Pacific and the inauguration in August 1942 of the American attack on Guadalcanal, 2,000 miles from New Zealand, altered the original conception of that country’s role and brought about the development of New Caledonia, 1,000 miles nearer the combat zone, as the chief South Pacific base. Yet as far as local procurement of Quartermaster supplies and the distribution of food were concerned, New Zealand became the principal rear base.
From the Quartermaster standpoint the ration storage centers, established in April 1943 at Auckland and Wellington, constituted the most important installations in New Zealand. Operating under the Joint Purchasing Board, they stored both locally procured foods and those received from Australia and San Francisco. They shipped perishable provisions to all South Pacific bases and nonperishables to all bases except Bora Bora, Aitutaki, and Tongareva.25 Before the establishment of these centers the provision of balanced rations had been a difficult task. Since the zone of interior and the Southwest Pacific Area had furnished only ration components unprocurable elsewhere and their deliveries, made direct to the scattered bases, had seldom synchronized with those from New Zealand, it had rarely been possible to combine the components from the three supply sources into a varied menu. The absence of central food depots, furthermore, had caused an uneconomical utilization of limited shipping facilities, for vessels from both Australia and the West Coast were often obliged to stop at several bases in order to deliver their cargoes. Finally, the lack of such installations had at times forced the Southwest Pacific Area to hold food bought in Australia for the South Pacific Area in warehouses already strained to handle Southwest Pacific Area stocks. The ration depots furnished, at least in part, a solution to all these problems. They relieved the Southwest Pacific Area of storing most purchases made for the South Pacific Area and both the Southwest Pacific Area and the San Francisco Port of Embarkation of deliveries at widely scattered points. Above all, they facilitated the assembly of ration components in one place as well as their shipment to advance bases as fully balanced rations.
The choice of Auckland and Wellington as ration storage centers was almost inevitable, for, though these ports were not centrally situated with respect to other bases, they had modern means of handling sizable cargoes. With few exceptions specially built temporary structures were used to hold non-perishables. Cold-storage space for perishables was leased from commercial firms. At the peak of their activities the ration depots stocked approximately a ninety-day supply of provisions.26
In addition to distributing subsistence to other South Pacific islands, New Zealand served till the end of 1943 as a mounting out and rehabilitation area for thousands of soldiers and marines. The 1st Marine
Division and part of the 37th Infantry Division stopped there in June and July 1942, and the 2nd and 3rd Marine Divisions were there for some months in the following year. On the termination of the New Georgia operation, the 25th and 43rd Infantry Divisions came to New Zealand for rehabilitation. The New Zealand Service Command supplied all these forces.27
The French dependency of New Caledonia, rich in nickel mines, was developed as the main receiving, storage, and transshipment base in the South Pacific not only because it lay 1,000 miles nearer the combat zone in the Solomons than did New Zealand but also because, except for Auckland and for Suva and Lautoka in the Fijis, it had at the outset the only satisfactory docking facilities in the entire area. Even these facilities, located at the capital, Nouméa, were inadequate for wartime needs since they consisted of but two piers capable of handling together only four ocean-going vessels. Warehouses were similarly inadequate, and civilian labor was limited in quantity. An extensive construction program was undertaken to provide badly needed warehouses, but shortages of workers and building materials retarded its execution, and New Caledonia never acquired storage facilities commensurate with its extensive supply responsibilities.28
In the New Caledonia Service Command the South Pacific General Depot, organized in May 1943 under the supervision of the Quartermaster Section, was the installation that had the most to do with Quartermaster items. Set up as a major agency of the central supply system then being created to replace the chaotic system of autonomous bases, this depot maintained reserve stocks for the entire South Pacific Area as well as items for the current supply of troops in New Caledonia. Before its establishment few supplies had been readily available to fill operational needs or even for ordinary replenishment needs. During this period many items could be obtained only by requisitioning them from the United States, a time-consuming process that took three or four months. In emergencies bases and even combat units were combed for required articles. When located, these supplies often had to be shipped from several different points to meet requirements in full. After the President Coolidge sank off the New Hebrides in October 1942, leaving a regimental combat team and a Coast Artillery unit without equipment, it took four months of scouring base and unit stocks to re-outfit these organizations.29
The South Pacific General Depot at first tried to maintain a 30-day reserve of nonperishable food for 300,000 men, a 30-day reserve of other supplies for 150,000 men, and stocks sufficient for the complete re-equipment of selected types of combat units. Once the ration depot in New Zealand came into full operation, the General Depot was relieved of responsibility for storing large food reserves, and in October 1943 its mission underwent further modification. Three categories of stocks were then established—stocks, both current and reserve, for troops in New Caledonia; reserve supplies for other bases; and special stockpiles of organizational equipment for the whole area. Stocks for other bases included a 30-day supply of clothing and equipage and stores of petroleum products and general supplies in
quantities set from time to time by Headquarters, SOS SPA.30 The General Depot also furnished a substantial part of the supplies and equipment for combat operations and for the rehabilitation of combat units.
Next to the base in New Caledonia, the one in Guadalcanal was the largest in the South Pacific. After the victorious termination of the protracted campaign for Guadalcanal in February 1943 that island was fashioned into a vast mounting out, training, and rest area and the major supply base in the Solomons. In October it became the headquarters of the newly established Forward Area, whose principal function was the logistical support of combat operations. Although the boundaries of the Forward Area varied with the shifting tactical situation, they always included the bases on Guadalcanal, Tulagi, the Russells, and, except at the very beginning, those in the New Georgia group. As the largest of these bases, Guadalcanal was the main supplier of the operations that won New Georgia, Vella Lavella, Arundel, Bougainville, the Green Islands, and Emirau. In January 1944 at the height of the Bougainville offensive the Forward Area was supporting nearly 200,000 Army, Navy, and Marine Corps troops in the northern Solomons.31
After the combat mission of the South Pacific Area had been completed, the Forward Area bases gave logistical support to the Central Pacific campaigns in the Marianas and the Palaus. These installations were assigned this role because Central Pacific Area bases were too few, too small, and too remote from the combat zones to shoulder the. whole burden of supporting these offensives. In the operations against Saipan, Guam, and Tinian in the Marianas in the summer of 1944, the forward bases mounted approximately 40,000 marines, provided them on their departure with supplies for 30 days, and maintained a 30-day reserve supply for emergency shipment. In the Palaus operation the Guadalcanal base, besides supporting Army units, furnished the 1st Marine Division with gasoline and oil and maintained reserves of these products to meet any emergencies that might arise.32
Aside from New Caledonia, New Zealand, and the Forward Area bases, the most active bases in the South Pacific were those in the New Hebrides. This archipelago lay 550 to 750 miles southeast of Guadalcanal, directly astride the routes to Rabaul and Australia. For this reason Efate and Espiritu Santo, the southernmost and the northernmost of the larger islands, were fashioned into advance bases early in 1942. Both installations attained considerable importance as stations for air groups that provided land-based support during the Guadalcanal offensive. Efate remained primarily an air station. Quartermaster operations there were confined chiefly to the supply of gasoline and the reconditioning of 55-gallon drums. In the last half of 1943, Espiritu Santo developed into a major source of logistical
support for operations to the north and northwest.33
The Fijis constituted a sizable supply base only in the first year of the war. Because of their strategical location on the air and shipping routes between the United States and Australia, American troops were sent there shortly after Pearl Harbor. Since the islands were too remote from the scene of fighting to become a transshipment point, the main function of the archipelago’s Service Command became the supply of local forces. This task grew steadily less important as the number of troops dwindled from about 30,000 in 1942 to 7,000 in April 1944.34
Central Pacific
Except for Hawaii, land areas in the Central Pacific in general consisted of irregular formations of narrow coral reefs enclosing large lagoons. These formations, called atolls, were few in number, were separated from each other by formidable distances, and were too diminutive for development as large supply bases. At best most of them could support only a limited number of troops. Owing to these handicaps, few islands could be employed to supply forward forces.35
Even Hawaii was not truly well fitted to serve as a supporting base for combat troops. Between it and the nearest areas of possible American offensive operations in the Gilberts and Marshalls lay two thousand miles of ocean. It was not only remote from operational areas; it was also crowded with scores of thousands of troops in training for amphibious warfare, and its depots had little space for operational supplies. Its chief port, Honolulu, was nearly always congested. These unfavorable conditions did not materially hamper supply activities as long as the command was a staging and training rather than an operational area, and most Central Pacific troops were stationed in Hawaii. But the Gilberts offensive of the winter of 1943–44 disclosed the inadequacies of Hawaii as a supporting base. The strain placed upon its storage facilities at that time indeed forced the hurried completion of a program for building additional warehouses. Even then the long distances that separated Hawaii from the Marianas and the Philippines precluded its employment as the area’s chief supporting installation for operations against these objectives. For this reason its main function gradually became the transshipment of cargoes to more advantageously located bases.36
When the southern Marianas were occupied in mid-1944, the Central Pacific Area came into possession of two islands, Saipan and Guam, well suited for development as major supply bases. Saipan, approximately 3,500 miles west of Honolulu and 1,400 miles east of Manila, measured only 12½ by 5¼ miles, but about two thirds of its area could be utilized for supply or staging purposes. Lying within bomber range of Japan, it became both an air and supply base. By September 1945 nearly 1,800,000 square feet of warehouse space had been built, and Saipan had become one of the largest supporting bases in the western Pacific. From late 1944 until the Japanese
surrender it ranked not far behind Hawaii in the volume of Quartermaster tonnage. It stored a sizable proportion of the supplies for the Okinawa operation, and, after becoming the headquarters of the Western Pacific Base Command in April 1945, it maintained much of the reserve stockage built up for the OLYMPIC operation.37 In the year following the seizure of Guam, airstrips were built there; Apra Harbor was developed for medium-sized cargo ships; and extensive storage facilities were constructed. By V-J Day Guam, too, had developed into a major base.
The development and operation of Southwest, South, and Central Pacific Area bases illustrate the differences between supply in the Pacific and in Europe. In the Pacific there was always the problem inherent in the vast distances that separated bases from one another—distances recorded not in scores or hundreds of miles, as in the European Theater of Operations, but in thousands of miles. In the Southwest Pacific Area 2,200 miles lay between Sydney and Finschhafen and 2,000 miles between Finschhafen and Manila. The two most distant bases in the South Pacific Area were separated by 3,000 miles, and 5,000 miles lay between Honolulu and Manila. Whereas New York, the chief port for the shipment of supplies to Europe, was only slightly more than 3,000 miles from the United Kingdom and France, San Francisco, occupying a similar position with reference to the Pacific areas, was 6,300 miles from Manila; 6,200 miles from Brisbane, main Australian port for the receipt and shipment of Quartermaster supplies; and 5,800 miles from Milne Bay, for many months the center of logistical operations in New Guinea. Goods moved from San Francisco to Australia and thence to bases in the north were carried 8,000 or more miles before they reached points of issue. In terms of shipping time a trip from San Francisco to Brisbane and return often required as much as four or five months. A trip from New York to Liverpool and return, on the other hand, took only about fifty-five or sixty days. The time required to deliver goods in Australia was thus two or three times that for delivering the same quantity to the United Kingdom.
Bases in a highly industrialized continental theater like the European Theater of Operations could from the outset utilize already developed port, storage, railroad, highway, river, and communication systems and tap local sources of building materials and technical equipment; Pacific bases on the other hand, if located outside Australia, New Zealand, and Hawaii, had at the start virtually no man-made facilities. After first hewing sites out of the jungle, these bases had to construct such facilities from whatever materials were at hand. All this meant protracted delays in the receipt, storage, and distribution of supplies and in the end facilities not fully adequate to the demands made upon them, inefficient handling of supplies, and excessive deterioration of insufficiently protected subsistence, textile, and leather items.
In France, once the landings had been consolidated and the port of Antwerp had been put into full operation—and to some extent even before—new advances required only the extension of already available supply lines. Across the relatively narrow expanse of the Atlantic, war materials were funneled onto the European mainland and
moved forward over a pre-existing network of railroads, navigable rivers, and highways. Thus supply in Europe “was like a single rubber hose growing larger in diameter as the immensity of operations increased.” But in the Pacific each major advance was an amphibious assault on a primitive shore and each fresh landing “a completely new supply operation.” Pacific supply was “like a lawn sprayer with a new stream of supply for every new patch of land occupied.”38 Logistical activities in the American drive across France to the Rhine were confined almost entirely to the maintenance of combat troops, but similar activities in the Pacific were only intermittently carried out for this purpose. More frequently, they aimed at building up the materiel for another amphibious landing. This meant that supplies were handled more frequently than in the European Theater of Operations, that their movement was less smooth, and that more man-hours were expended in getting them into the hands of fighting forces.39