Introduction
The very magnitude of transportation in this war amazes us as we view it in retrospect. No war was ever before fought at such great distances. Never before were such incredible numbers of men and such stupendous quantities of material transported. The solution of the logistics involved no less a problem than those encountered in establishing sound policies of tactics and strategy.”*
After World War II had broken out in Europe the world witnessed the frantic efforts of the United States to arm itself; it saw the mushrooming of war plants and military establishments; it saw the building of ships with incredible rapidity. From these facilities and into these ships in the years that followed, it saw seemingly endless quantities of men and materials moved in an ever increasing flood to feed the maw of war. From procurement to combat, transportation constituted vital links in the chain of logistics that made victory possible.
Unlike some strategic war materials, transportation cannot be stockpiled. The effect of any disruption in transportation is dire and immediate. This has been demonstrated in peace as well as in war.-Planning in times of peace for the needs of transportation in war is therefore of the utmost importance.
The purpose of this article is to focus attention on this essential phase of logistics; to review briefly the scope, magnitude, and history of transportation in World War II; to consider transportation requirements and procedures of individual branches of the national military establishment—particularly in the light of unification of the services; to explore and recommend means by which the Navy, in time of war, may assure itself of transportation effectively responsive to its operational requirements.
Transportation of Things
The history of the transportation of Navy property during World War II is the story of how the generators from Pittsfield, the flour from Minneapolis, the oil from Texas, the canvas from Georgia, the engines from Detroit, the clothing from Brooklyn, the radar from Cincinnati, aviation material from Philadelphia, the paint from Mare Island, the lumber from Oregon, the landing craft from Muskegon, ammunition from Indiana, Alabama, Nevada, the grapefruit from Florida, the bacon and eggs from Iowa, the peaches from California, the beer from Milwaukee, and the carbon paper from Rochester, were moved to the thousands of Navy ships and advance bases all over the world, not to mention the transportation of things to and from the more than 700 wartime Navy shore establishments within the continental limits of the United States.
At the peak of World War II there were over 12,000 such shipments a day. They ranged in size from individual compass needles to ocean going tugs. Some were worth much less than the cost of transportation, others were so valuable as to give the carrier’s insurance agent nightmares. Some were as commonplace as inkwells, others were so secret that they required a Marine guard armed to the teeth to stand watch over every foot of their journey.
In many cases the risk to the carrier was no greater than in handling pig iron, but in the case of others ten pounds carelessly handled would have wrecked a ship or a whole train. Many shipments could be as openly addressed as “Navy Yard, Brooklyn, New York,” in the case of others a coded address might indicate a supersecret base under the very nose of Tojo. Urgency ranged from stock items that would not be needed for a year to such items as the one that kept a capital ship immobilized in the very heart of the Pacific war zone until its arrival.
Shipments moved by freight, by express, by mail, by ship, by motor truck, by air, by hand and by various combinations of these carriers.
The problems involved in the transportation of things and of people differ in several respects. Human beings at least come in fairly uniform dimensions, however much they may differ otherwise. That is much more than can be said for things, and makes the planning for the transportation of people simpler than for battleship propellers and such like. But the greatest difference lies in the fact that things are deaf and inarticulate. The thousands of items necessary to support the mighty U. S. fleets in World War II could not, like passengers, speak out for themselves if they were sidetracked, delayed or placed aboard the wrong carrier. They could not search and fight for taxis to make close connections. It was not enough for a procurement or requisitioning agency, or a logistics planning staff simply to request that a vital item be moved from here to there and to arrive at a specified time. Someone who knew transportation had to perform the function of a “travel agency” and had to arrange for the journeys of these hundreds of thousands of items.
There is a name and a well established place for this job in American industry. Its name is “Traffic Management.” It is recognized in the transportation world as a highly specialized profession. It takes the better part of a lifetime to become an expert in this profession and to get on terms of familiarity with such mysteries as the tens of thousands of freight tariffs governing the charges and movements of the nation’s commerce, comparative schedules, switching and other terminal services, general average, dunnage, pick up and delivery rules and regulations, transit privileges, clearances, accessorial services and charges, cargo stowage and loading practices, export declarations, embargoes, weight and measurement tons, sidetrack agreements, routing restrictions, carrier and port capacity, cargo banks, packaging requirements for various types of transportation, weight and dimension restrictions, air waybills, freight forwarder service, freight rate adjustment procedures, etc., etc. Long experience with these and many other factors in the business of transportation constitute the base for the informed judgment of the .qualified traffic manager. The average person in the United States takes transportation for granted. Accustomed to it in time of peace, he assumes its unrestricted availability and unimpaired quality in time of war. Indeed, he finds it difficult to believe that there is no fast and easy way to acquire the knowledge and understanding upon which sound judgment and hence sound decisions must rest.
The traffic management function may be defined as the determination of the means of transportation to be used, and the dissemination of necessary instructions to move a thing or a person from one place to another in conformity with considerations of cost, time, security, and other requirements. It must be based upon knowledge of, and regard for, aggregate transportation capacity available and on the requirements of other users of transportation. To be effective it must be exercised on a comprehensive scale and can leave no step to chance. It includes the important responsibility of buying or utilizing the most economical form of transportation available consistent with whatever requirement as to special handling, urgency, or security may be imposed. It goes without saying that in times of peace economy is of paramount importance, but the urgencies of war often make cost a secondary consideration. Centralized control by no means precludes decentralized administration, contrary to statements that are frequently heard.
Principal Wartime Carriers
A carrier may be a commercial civilian organization, a strictly military organization, or an indistinguishable combination of the two, such as the War Shipping Administration during World War II.
By long odds the most important domestic carrier during World War II was the American railroad system, which handled well over 90% of the military traffic. Other important land carriers were the commercial motor carriers and pipe lines. The military services operated many motor vehicles on their own —mostly for local service, occasionally for over-the-road traffic.
A very considerable domestic tonnage was carried by the shipping on the Great Lakes and to a smaller extent by craft on the inland waterways. Overseas and coastal water transportation was provided by WSA vessels generally under allocation to the Army or Navy, foreign flag vessels, principally British, vessels of the Army Transport Service and of the much smaller Naval Transportation Service. In forward and advance base areas amphibious and other local commands provided much of the water-borne carrier service.
The principal air carriers, domestic and foreign, were the ATC (Air Transport Command) and NATS (Naval Air Transport Service). Commercial air lines provided considerable airborne capacity particularly in the early stages of the war before ATC and NATS became substantial organizations. In combat areas other military air commands generally took over and filled air transport needs. Commercial air carriers and their personnel under government contract provided much of the carrier capacity of ATC and some of NATS.
Wartime National Transportation Organizations, Civilian and Military
ODT (Office of Defense Transportation). Created by executive order, ODT’s function was: “to assure maximum utilization of the domestic transportation facilities of the nation for the successful prosecution of the war.”
Because the Army and Navy expressed a desire for it, and because they proved able to avoid congestion of their own facilities and to keep their aggregate traffic volume within the capacity of the national transportation system, ODT saw fit to delegate to the Army and Navy much of ODT’s authority in the management and control of overseas traffic.
WSA. The War Shipping Administration nominally possessed virtually supreme authority in the field of wartime ocean shipping. An Executive Order of December 8, 1942, directed that it allocate to the Army and Navy, for loading by them, or for their exclusive use, only such vessels as were required for combat loading in special task or assault forces and such vessels as could be truly classified as fleet auxiliaries. Had this directive been given full effect, or had WSA exercised all of the vast authority given it under the Executive Order, Army and Navy merchant shipping functions would have been greatly reduced.
In practice, WSA allocated sufficient vessels (supplementing those under direct Army or Navy ownership or control) to the Army and Navy to make it possible for each service to load and control the movement of the larger part of its own ocean shipping. Many such allocations were relatively long term bare boat charters, others were single voyage allocations. Actually the Army and Navy operated an estimated 50% of the nation’s wartime merchant type tonnage. WSA nevertheless remained an extremely important agency in the field of wartime ocean shipping.
AAR (Association of American Railroads). This nation-wide Association of American Railroads is of importance in this discussion because under it was established a subsidiary unit known as the Military Transportation Section, whose primary mission was to receive and to take action on all manner of requests, special and routine, from the traffic control units of the Army and Navy. This unit was housed with the War Department in Washington; a sub-unit in the latter months of the war was established in the office of the Navy District Property Transportation Office in San Francisco. Such requests as tracers, diversions, special train service orders, troop movements, and the like were all channeled through the Military Transportation Section, which executed them for all railroads which might be involved. This organization was of the greatest importance and value to the military service. It enabled them to deal to a large extent with the American railroads as an integrated system rather than with hundreds of individual carriers. Similarly other subsidiary units of the AAR enabled the armed services to deal with the railroads as a unit in the matter of rate adjustments, Section 22 reduced rate quotations, and the like.
The Need for Centralized Traffic Control
The need for centralized traffic management or control became apparent within a matter of days after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. The President of the Association of American Railroads addressed a joint letter to the Chief of Staff of the Army and to the Chief of Naval Operations, pointing out that individual railroads had received, since the outbreak of war, many requests for special service from a great variety of 5. NATS—Operation aircraft in passenger and military personnel; that some of these requests were reasonable and some were not; that each request was represented to be the “most important”; that some were completely contradictory to others; that in some cases compliance with one precluded compliance with others; and that the net result of blind compliance would be wasteful and inefficient utilization of limited and vital carrier capacity. The request was made that the Army and Navy each designate one office or officer through whom all requests for special railroad service would be channeled, this office to be by-passed only in the direst emergency.
This request revived memories of the virtual breakdown of railroad transportation in World War I, particularly in the port areas where failure to coordinate the flow of traffic into the ports with the capacity to unload, store, and/or lift resulted in miles of loaded freight cars backed up behind the nation’s ports.
The fact that the railroads found it necessary to make such an appeal was itself evidence of lack of appreciation among the higher echelons of the need for effective traffic control. Even less clear was the understanding of just what mechanism and organization would be required to bring about such effective control and just how such traffic control should mesh in with other logistic functions of the service. Under the circumstances the military heads of the two services had little choice but to designate those units in each service which had the principal peace time contacts with the railroads. These were the Traffic Control Division of the Army’s Quartermaster Corps and the Transportation Division of the Navy’s Bureau of Supplies and Accounts.
Navy Transportation Units
Within the Navy itself there were eight wartime transportation organizations:
1. BuPers*—traffic control—personnel
2. BuSandA*—traffic control—property
3. NTS—ship requirements; operation NTS ships in the Atlantic
4. CNO—OP-O5P—Tanker Control
5. NATS—Operation aircraft in passenger freight service
6. Marine Corps—traffic control—personnel and freight transportation to port of loading
7. Coast Guard—traffic control—personnel and freight transportation
8. EXOS—Transportation Branch—Motor transportation (Navy owned equipment) procurement, maintenance, local passenger transportation operations
This transportation Topsy functioned in spite of an organizational setup which no one could logically defend. It worked because the operating heads of the various units knew that it must be made to work. The coordination and integration of related functions which should have been provided by a competent single directing head, with real authority, were in part achieved through the willingness of those in charge of these various units to cooperate. The great bond was wartime urgency.
What were some of the wartime difficulties and disabilities inherent in this hodgepodge of independent units?
1. The multiplicity of organizations resulted in an overlap in the scope and authority which each organization claimed for itself based largely on its own interpretation of its officially assigned functions. The multiplicity of organizations and the vagueness of the boundary lines between them provided fertile fields for the individuals whose interest lay mainly in “empire building.” The evils springing from the hydra-headed transportation organization in the Navy Department were all reflected in the field offices. They were in fact intensified.
2. Liaison with transportation organizations outside the Navy was thereby rendered complicated and confused.
3. Split cognizance among various bureaus and offices—partly because of “staff”-' “line” distinctions—complicated the assignment of technically qualified transportation personnel to billets of functionally sound authority and responsibility.
4. In a field as fast and fluid as transportation, it is important that policy making and operating direction stem from the same source. Policy making moreover involves professional know-how. This was lacking in the higher echelons of authority. In the absence of clear cut policies, made at the top, the decisions of the various traffic control organizations and the practices of the carriers themselves came necessarily to be accepted as policies. The mere naming of a regular line officer as Assistant Chief of Naval Operations for Transportation was not effective. Lack of professional experience, lack of skilled and experienced officers on his staff, lack of direct authority and control over the various organizations listed, combined to make effective policy direction impossible.
5. Those in immediate charge of individual units frequently did not have ready access to needed records and data available in other units. This inevitably meant reduced efficiency and economy. The physical as well as the jurisdictional separation of various units militated against the economical utilization of manpower, facilities and money.
6. Transportation in the forward areas suffered particularly from the lack of professionally trained transportation personnel.
7. With the end of hostilities the transportation specialists in the Naval Reserve could see little prospect of applying their professional experience in the postwar Navy. As a result practically none of them applied for transfer to the regular Navy. As a result the Navy is at the moment little if any better prepared to cope with the transportation problems of the next emergency that it was in 1941.
Navy Department Study in 1945
In 1945 a Navy committee was formed, comprised of officers from transportation units in BuPers, BuSandA and CNO (NTS). This committee was directed to examine and study the organizations, methods, and procedures involved in the transportation of Navy personnel and property with a view to determining its efficiency and adequacy and to submit appropriate recommendations to the Office of the Chief of Naval Operations. Among this ad hoc committee’s recommendations were the following:
No change to be made for the duration of the war.
Under postwar reorganization: all traffic management functions (involving air, sea, highway, rail, inland waterway) can best be performed if assigned to a single agency.
Carrier or operating functions can best be accomplished if assigned to separate operating units (air transport, merchant type shipping, motor carrier, etc.).
That a specialist officer classification be established to provide highly trained and specialized personnel needed for traffic management functions. (It was hoped that this would encourage qualified Reserve Officers to remain in the Naval service.)
That further study be given to the personnel requirements of carrier activities.
That all measures to increase an active reserve corps in the transportation field should be undertaken, with senior reserves on inactive duty in the shipping industry used periodically as a board of transportation consultants.
Personnel for military carrier organizations is important. Happily, it appears that the Navy will always have officers and men trained for the job and capable of operating its ships, merchant type and otherwise, and the same appears to be the case with its air transportation vehicles. Such skills are to a large extent a product of basic Navy training. Not so, in the case of traffic management—hence the emphasis on this point in the findings of the 1945 committee.
While the committee did not specifically so recommend, there was agreement among most of its members that both the traffic management and Navy carrier units should report directly to a common superior who would be the Navy’s transportation “boss.” That in any event is the view of this writer.
War Department Transportation Developments
The Army saw the need, and attempted extensive reorganization of its transportation system during the war. Its principal pre-war transportation control unit had been in the Quartermaster Corps, which included its alert and substantial Army Transport Service, operator of hundreds of merchant type ships. This and other Army units were merged into a separate Army Transportation Corps in 1942. Nominally this Transportation Corps was the “traffic manager” of the Army. Actually its wartime transportation control proved something less than complete.
The important point is that during and since the war the Army has seen fit steadily to increase the authority, functions, personnel, and prestige of its Transportation Corps. The Transportation Corps has taken over maintenance and operation of Army motor vehicles, Army railroad battalions, and ports of embarkation. It will be recalled that when the Federal Government recently took possession of the railroads the Army Transportation Corps was designated 'to operate them. Its traffic control functions extended to both personnel and property. To what extent it will exercise traffic control functions for the Army’s traffic on MATS (Military Air Transport Service) remains to be seen—as also remains to be seen in the case of the Navy.
The Army has actively recruited and trained specialized transportation personnel. Its so called “affiliation program” with industry, for developing and maintaining a large reserve of trained transportation specialists from civilian life, is being aggressively pursued. The following brief excerpts from a 1948 address by the Assistant Secretary of the Army are indicative:
“The Transportation Corps, by whatever name it may be known, has a permanent place in the military establishment. . . . Without doubt, a great many of the transportation problems of World War II—and our failure to solve them quickly—grew out of faulty organization. . . . There were duplicate Army and Navy transports, air transport systems, inland transportation divisions, and other such installations, equipment and operations.”
Transportation in the Future
No one can make more than an educated guess as to the position of transportation in the next emergency. The writer ventures the following:
1. The capacity of the nation’s transportation system will be strained even more than during World War II. This strain will be greatly aggravated if enemy action results in physical damage to our continental transportation facilities.
2. There will be counterparts of ODT and WSA, with substantially similar functions, and both may be expected to assert and exercise their functions more vigorously than in World War II.
3. There will be widespread agitation for “unified” functions.
4. The Army, possessing by far the most comprehensive and extensive military transportation organization and reserve, may well contend that it is in position to perform the function of Traffic Manager for all branches of the military services. Unified traffic control will be represented as in keeping with the ideal and purpose of service unification.
Conclusions
In planning an operation the ideal, from the standpoint of the military planner, is absolute control over all phases of logistic support. But with modern war becoming more and more a contest of technical skill and industrial might, traditional military principles have had to be adapted to changing conditions. In World War II the major portion of research, production, and distribution became the responsibility of civilians, either in or outside of the services, rather than of professional soldiers, sailors, and airmen. This trend will certainly not be reversed in the future.
The brief review earlier in this article of wartime carriers and other transportation agencies should make it clear that the armed services cannot in the next emergency, individually or collectively, take over the country’s transportation business or exercise complete control over it. While each branch of the national military establishment must of necessity provide some of its own carrier service as an integral part of military operations in combat areas, the largest part of transportation in time of war must be provided by men not in uniform. Mergers of military carrier units will of course be effected. Witness the recent merger of the Air Transport Command and Naval Air Transport Service into the Military Air Transport Service, whose mission it is to provide major scheduled air lift for all of the armed services.
War plans prior to World War II called for the taking over and operation by the Navy in time of war of the Army Transport Service. When, after Pearl Harbor the Army made the gesture of offering to turn its large merchant fleet over to the Navy, the Navy had to confess that it was not prepared to man and to operate it. When, later, the Navy indicated that it was prepared to begin to take over this responsibility, the Army said, “No, thank you.” In passing, it may be observed that the Army Transport Service, the water branch, was the strongest unit of the Army’s Transportation Corps. At its peak it operated 1,756 vessels manned by 70,000 seamen; currently it operates 353 cargo and passenger vessels. The Army steadfastly contended that operation of its own transport was essential to the effective maintenance of its forces. (In 1948 the Secretary of Defense by directive transferred the Army Transport Service to the Navy.)
The fact that no branch of the military establishment will ever have absolute control over all of the carrier agencies serving it increases rather than diminishes the importance of its transportation problems. Every branch of the armed services must be provided with transportation measuring up to its operational needs. This calls for planning in two directions. Transportation requirements must be planned to meet estimated operational needs, and strategic and tactical military plans must be made with due regard to available or prospective transportation capacities.
Within the field of its military mission the Navy must not only plan its transportation needs, it must also have control over the execution of those plans. Only by including in its own organization personnel that is experienced and competent in traffic management can the Navy be certain that transportation will be responsive to its operational needs. This phase of logistic support is so closely and immediately related to combat commitments and operations as to make it unthinkable that any military service would tolerate the exclusion of this control from its own chain of command.
The definition of traffic management is worth repeating at this point in order to make quite clear what is and what is not included under the term. Traffic management is the art of determining the means of transporting people and things from place to place and of disseminating appropriate instructions to bring this about in such a way as to meet the considerations of time, cost, security, and other requirements that may be involved. It will be noted that it has nothing to do with providing or operating the carrier facilities. The merger of such facilities whether on the sea, in the air, or on the land does not therefore alter the logic of the argument for Navy control of Navy traffic. It will not alter the principle that the carrier cannot be allowed to make arbitrary rules as what to carry and in what priority. The carrier must accept the shipments offered within the limits of its capacity and provided safety precautions are not violated.
The argument has been advanced that with joint procurement for the armed services joint traffic control must follow because traffic management is a link in the chain of procurement. It is true that transportation is the working partner of procurement. There can be no question that traffic control personnel should be thoroughly conversant with procurement procedures and, equally, that procurement agencies should carefully observe the shipping procedures developed by traffic management.
Navy procurement was scattered among many offices during World War II. The Navy’s reasonably well centralized freight traffic control more than once provided the means of achieving some measure of stock and inventory control that proved baffling when attacked through stock and procurement channels. To the extent that procurement becomes centralized and unified it will present an opportunity for increased efficiency, economy, and standardization in traffic control. If traffic management is the working partner of procurement, it bears repeating that it is even more the handmaiden of Operations. So long as each service is to be responsible for its own operations, the planning and direction of transportation logistics is a function which it cannot safely allow to be excluded from its own chain of command.
If those responsible for the Navy’s logistic planning concur in the view that the traffic management function is one which the Navy must retain and be prepared to exercise efficiently, then some action towards setting the Navy’s house in order is long overdue. Early consideration and action on the ad hoc Committee’s report of 1945 would be a good starting point. The item of specialized personnel is of particular importance. Mention has been made that strategic and tactical planning must include consideration of transportation requirements. For such planning, up to the highest level, professional traffic experience is essential. The Navy can ill afford the risk of entrusting such functions to amateurs.
*From Foreword, Civilian War Transport, Government Printing Office, 1948.
*So called Certification-Disbursing functions were under separate administrative control in S&A.