The Transportation Corps: Operations Overseas
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Introduction
The entrance of the United States into World War II created transportation problems of unprecedented scope and complexity. Requirements for the deployment of military forces and materiel to overseas commands and their intratheater movement dwarfed those of World War I, in which men and supplies were moved over a relatively short sea line of communications to well-established, protected ports for action on a single major front. In World War II much larger forces were employed overseas on far-flung active and inactive fronts. Their deployment and support, as well as the provision of considerable assistance to our Allies, made it necessary to spread shipping over sea lanes encircling the globe. The reception and distribution of cargoes and personnel in the theaters were rendered more difficult by the lack of port, storage, and other base facilities in many areas of the Pacific, the North Atlantic, and Alaska; by extensive destruction of ports and railroads in France and Italy; and by unsatisfactory lines of communication in such backward areas as North Africa, Iran, and India. Furthermore, amphibious operations on a scale hitherto undreamed of had to be undertaken in both the transatlantic and the transpacific theaters in order to come to grips with the Axis powers and to advance on their homelands. The movement of assault forces and their equipment to and across beaches alone constituted transportation tasks of great magnitude.
From the outset transportation, particularly ocean shipping, proved vital in the conduct of the war. Initially, no other logistical factor exercised a more direct limiting effect on strategic planning. Even before Pearl Harbor, the problem of securing shipping to service overseas areas and the necessity of developing overseas ports had arisen in connection with the strengthening of defenses of Panama, Puerto Rico, and Alaska, and the establishment of Army garrisons in the North Atlantic and the Caribbean, foreshadowing the greater problems to be encountered after the nation became involved in a global war.1
Before Pearl Harbor U.S. and British planners had decided to place the major emphasis on the defeat of Germany in the event that the United States and Japan should enter the war. The decision was reaffirmed at the ARCADIA Conference of December 1941–January 1942. Initial action in the Pacific was to be limited to strategic defense. Among the basic underlying assumptions were such logistical factors as the shorter Atlantic route and the availability of developed ports in Europe.
The execution of this strategic design was deferred when other and more urgent tasks developed. Aside from defending the east and west coasts of the United States, it was necessary immediately to reinforce Hawaii, the Panama Canal, Alaska, and other outposts. Although the strategic plans called for checking the Japanese advance into the South and Southwest Pacific and safeguarding the air and sea lanes of communication with those areas, the execution required far more men and materiel than was originally thought adequate. At the same time lend-lease aid to Great Britain, the Soviet Union, and China was essential if those nations were to continue their resistance to the enemy powers. With shipping in critically short supply and losses through submarine action exceeding new production, implementation of the long-range strategic plan suffered while planners sought to meet the more immediate requirements to the extent that transportation would permit.
Far more troops were deployed to the Pacific in the first six months of 1942 than to Britain under the plan to build up a striking force there (BOLERO). Although effective reinforcement of the Philippines proved impossible, American forces were landed in Australia and on South Pacific islands lying athwart the air and sea lanes to the Southwest Pacific. Considerable attention was given to the strengthening of Hawaiian defenses until the Battle of Midway eliminated the threat to that area. The longer sea voyages, the lack of port and storage facilities west of Hawaii and north of Australia, and the consequent delay in the turnaround of vessels resulted in the delivery of fewer troops and less materiel to the Pacific than could have been moved to Europe with the same amount of shipping.
Other important areas required and received support during this period. Troops, supplies, and construction materials were shipped to garrison and expand Alaskan stations and to undertake new projects in western Canada, including the Canol and Alcan undertakings for the development of local oil resources and the construction of the Alaska Highway. In the Atlantic, reinforcements were rushed to Caribbean and South American bases and to Iceland. Small forces were also sent to India, halfway around the world, to conduct air activities and to expedite the delivery of lend-lease materials to China.
Developments during the summer of 1942 continued to exercise an adverse effect on BOLERO. Desiring, for psychological as well as military reasons, to get American forces into action against Germany, the British and American chiefs of state decided on an invasion of North Africa. The requirements for this operation made it necessary to restrict greatly the flow of men and materials to the United Kingdom in the fall and winter of 1942–43, and in fact placed a drain on those already provided under the buildup program. During the course of the North African campaign the longer sea voyages, the shortage of escort vessels, and inadequate port capacities added to the great burden already placed on shipping.
Meanwhile, the hazards to convoys on the Murmansk route and the possibility of Japanese interference on the Pacific route had caused Allied leaders to decide to develop a supply line to the USSR through the Persian Gulf as an alternative. This necessitated the provision of American troops and equipment to take over and expand the operation of Iranian port and railway facilities and to establish a trucking service. In large measure, the men and
materials, as well as shipping, were made available by diversions from BOLERO.
Furthermore, although the Pacific was assigned the mission of strategic defense, the limited offensive beginning with the Guadalcanal assault in August 1942 required substantial shipping. Port facilities at Nouméa and other South Pacific island bases proved incapable of handling the shipping directed to the area. By late fall a large number of vessels had become immobilized awaiting discharge, a development that not only endangered the success of the Guadalcanal Campaign but also contributed to the general shortage of shipping, then being strained to the utmost by the North African invasion.
It was not until the late spring of 1943 that increased vessel production and reduced submarine losses tended to make ocean shipping a less restrictive factor in strategic planning. At the TRIDENT and QUADRANT Conferences, the Allied planners decided not only to go ahead with the build-up of U.S. forces in the United Kingdom for the invasion of the European continent but also to implement a program of “unremitting pressure” against Japan. By August the movement of men and materials to Great Britain had attained major proportions, even as Sicily was being overrun and preparations were being made for landings in Italy. Meanwhile, South and Southwest Pacific forces had begun a steady advance up the Solomons–New Guinea ladder. In the Central Pacific, the Hawaiian area was converted into a huge base for mounting and supporting assaults on the Gilberts and Marshalls—preliminary campaigns to a general westward advance. Following decisions to undertake a north Burma campaign and to accelerate air deliveries over the Hump, the China–Burma–India theater was provided the service troops and the equipment necessary to break the bottlenecks on the line of communications supporting those operations. Shipping and assault forces were provided also for the expulsion of the Japanese from the Aleutians.
No longer the predominant consideration in strategic planning after mid-1943, shipping remained a conditioning factor throughout the war. The necessity of maintaining secondary and inactive areas such as China–Burma–India, Alaska, the Persian Corridor, and the North Atlantic and Caribbean bases, and of meeting lend-lease and other commitments to Allies had a bearing on the timing and scope of operations on active fronts. The effort to meet lend-lease commitments to the Soviet Union, for example, provided constant competition for vessels also needed to maintain American military operations. In addition, during the latter part of 1943 increased U.S. commitments to the United Kingdom import program placed a serious drain on available shipping.2
Moreover, requirements for vessels for intratheater movements consistently exceeded the amount of shipping the planners in Washington provided for the purpose, causing theater commanders to retain a considerable number of transoceanic vessels for use in their own areas. Theater commanders encouraged the practice because of the lack of suitable port and storage facilities, a deficiency that led to the use of vessels as floating warehouses. Naturally more concerned with the success of operations in their own
areas than with the world-wide shipping situation, overseas commands tended to direct more vessels to advance bases than could be unloaded and to discharge only the cargoes immediately needed, keeping the remainder aboard the vessels in port. In late 1944 vessel retentions, particularly in the European Theater of Operations and the Southwest Pacific Area, reached such proportions that they interfered with the movement of essential materials from U.S. ports. As a result, presidential intervention through the Joint Chiefs of Staff3 was required. Theater commanders were made directly responsible for the economical utilization of shipping in their respective areas. They were directed to match shipping with the discharge capacity at destination ports, ban the use of vessels for storage purposes, and severely restrict the practice of selective discharge.4
While ocean shipping gradually declined in relative importance as a factor shaping strategy, the availability of landing craft persisted as a major consideration. The decision to assault Sicily and Italy adversely affected plans for amphibious operations in Burma. Later, the shortage of suitable craft caused the postponement of landings in southern France that were originally scheduled to be undertaken simultaneously with the Normandy invasion.5 In the Pacific, where amphibious warfare prevailed, plans for campaigns hinged on whether or not there would be sufficient assault vessels.
Deployment overseas, involving the movement by the Army of 7,293,354 passengers and 126,787,875 measurement tons in the period from December 1941 through August 1945, was a gigantic transportation task, but by no means the only one.6 Intratheater movement was essential and often involved large-scale Army transportation operations. In all overseas commands, existing port, rail, motor, and inland water transport facilities were insufficient to handle wartime traffic, and in some areas they were nonexistent. Consequently, it proved necessary to provide American troops and equipment to supplement, augment, or take over transportation facilities and greatly expand their operations.
During the course of the war American soldiers were called upon to perform transportation jobs under every conceivable operating condition and on every continent but Antarctica. They worked vessels at ports and off the beaches in the windswept and barren Aleutians, in the debilitating heat of Iran, India, and North Africa, in subarctic Greenland and Iceland, on isolated and sometimes unhealthy Pacific islands, in the United Kingdom, and in war devastated areas of Sicily, Italy, France, and Belgium. They ran trains over reconstructed lines on the European continent, across deserts and mountains in Iran and North Africa, through the monsoon rains in Assam in India, and over ice-coated track and in sub-zero temperatures in Alaska and western Canada. They drove trucks on the Ledo Road over the hill and jungle country of Burma, negotiated dusty desert and high mountain passes in Iran, hauled an entire Army corps across the length of Tunisia, and provided flexible support for American forces advancing from the
Normandy beachhead. They operated amphibian vehicles in landings in Sicily, Italy, and France, and in every Pacific assault from the Marshalls campaign onward. They also operated river craft on the Brahmaputra River in India and the Leopold Canal, the Rhine, and the Danube in Europe. Often the jobs were done under great pressure, sometimes under fire, and usually with an initial shortage of men, supplies, and equipment.
Transportation operations within the overseas commands naturally varied greatly in nature and extent, depending on the mission of the theater, the size of the forces employed, the lines of communications that could be utilized, the availability of local facilities and manpower, the American transportation equipment and personnel provided, the climate, the terrain, and other factors. The organizations established in the theaters to direct transportation operations were equally diverse. The Army Transportation Corps, a new technical service created in July 1942, made rapid headway in establishing itself as an effective central agency in the zone of interior. In the theaters, however, it was initially almost unknown, and regulations defining its place in the theater structure were lacking. As a result, Army transportation organizations overseas tended to vary in authority and functions with local conditions and the desires of theater commanders. A selling job was necessary before the importance of centralizing and coordinating transportation was understood and carried into practice. The Transportation Corps started out as a small service struggling to gain control over transportation functions exercised by established agencies, notably G-4, the Quartermaster Corps, and the Corps of Engineers, so that it could fulfill its mission. Many problems were raised in determining the role of the Transportation Corps in commands where authority was decentralized to territorial base sections and in areas under Allied or unified command. By an evolutionary process the Transportation Corps gradually grew in stature as the war progressed. In some theaters it eventually approximated the organization that had been developed in the zone of interior, and, while differing in the manner of organization, it ultimately assumed a position of considerable importance in most commands.