General Lesley J. McNair: Unsung Architect of the U. S. Army by Mark Calhoun

General Lesley J. McNair: Unsung Architect of the U. S. Army by Mark Calhoun

Author:Mark Calhoun [Calhoun, Mark]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: University Press of Kansas
Published: 2015-06-14T23:00:00+00:00


Building on his experience reorganizing the infantry division in the late 1930s with the lessons of the large-scale maneuvers that he oversaw in the early 1940s, McNair continued his efforts to persuade his fellow officers of the need to economize in anticipation of shipping shortages—an effort that enjoyed little success in the early years of the war.

It seems strange that McNair appears to have had little support from his peers at AAF and ASF. As early as April, 1942 the War Department ordered all three functional commands to minimize excess by eliminating all unnecessary equipment from their organizations, in part by pooling all equipment that divisions did not need on a daily basis in separate units. Evidence of the origin in the War Department of efficiency-focused initiatives to minimize the burden on limited shipping capacity exists in many sources, including the records of the War Department’s Operations Division. A memorandum for record prepared on April 20, 1942, by the Operations Division captured the key points of a conference held with the War Department G-3 and G-4, with the subject: “Reduce equipment of all organizations in order to minimize demands on shipping.” The memo lists as present at the conference the G-3, the G-4, and the Operations Division chief, Eisenhower. Significantly, after noting the requirement to eliminate unnecessary equipment and pool occasionally utilized equipment wherever possible, the memo includes the observation, “It is understood that all three of the Commanders mentioned are already working on the subject: the purpose of a directive is to assure immediate results and complete cooperation in the effort.”107 It does not appear that this complete cooperation happened, requiring further effort by the War Department to enforce efficiency-related policy.

Shortages of transport shipping had led Roosevelt to order Malin Craig as early as January 4, 1941, to monitor carefully lend-lease shipments and maintain a balance between space devoted to TNT and ammunition versus weapons systems. Roosevelt ordered Craig to reallocate shipping space to the latter whenever stocks of the former reached thirty days’ supply, illustrating the overall shortage of shipping and the careful management it required.108 A year later, on January 8, 1942, shipping remained in short supply, requiring Great Britain to loan ships of the Queen Mary class to America for transport of combat units to Australia. Meanwhile, Roosevelt directed Rear Admiral Emory S. Land, chairman of the US Maritime Commission, to step up transport vessel production to eight million tons in 1942 and at least ten million tons in 1943.109 Even if the Maritime Commission could reach these goals, it remained anybody’s guess whether the requested tonnages would prove adequate for the military’s shipping requirements, because of military planners’ inability to provide accurate requirements to civilian industrialists.

As Jim Lacey argued, “Although by early 1941 the United States had cast a new strategic conception of how it would fight a future global war, the planners had yet to match that strategy against national resources and capabilities.”110 When in July 1941 President Roosevelt finally requested information regarding the



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