The Color of War Episode 8 Fuelling the Fire
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00:00During the Second World War, an entire generation recorded their personal experiences for posterity.
00:20Combat cameramen braved enemy fire to send home moving images, many of them in color.
00:27They captured history, and in the process they captured ordinary people caught up in
00:32extraordinary events, bearing witness to the color of war.
01:00It's been said that war is a hungry beast that devours everything in its path.
01:06In order to feed that beast in World War II, the leaders of the United States military
01:11challenged themselves to create the most advanced supply system in the history of warfare, equipping
01:17their forces across two oceans separated by 12,000 miles.
01:23The servicemen who fought the supply war played a critical and underappreciated role in achieving
01:29victory.
01:31Whether they were the crews of the naval fleet trains moving men and supplies to invade far-flung
01:36islands in the Pacific, or the merchant sailors on liberty ships transporting the vital equipment
01:42to sustain the war effort in Europe, or the men on cargo planes airdropping food and ammunition
01:49to isolated jungle outposts in Burma, they were the key to maintaining the fighting forces
01:56in the field.
01:57Without them, the Allied war machine would have ground to a halt.
02:15American soldiers arrived on a remote island in the Pacific.
02:19Each man was equipped with a rifle, ammo belt, grenades, and a shovel.
02:24In his pack were flares, rations for three days, and a letter from home.
02:31That soldier relied on having in his hands what he needed when he needed it.
02:36Such was the thin line between life and death.
02:41The soldier was not alone.
02:43There were a million others just like him on the front lines of Europe and North Africa.
02:49The amount of supplies required to keep these men in the field was staggering.
02:54Just to support a single combat infantryman for one year, the army needed to deliver seven
02:59to fifteen tons of supplies.
03:04Due to this voracious need for materiel, the front line soldiers in World War II belonged
03:09to a shrinking minority.
03:11Only one in six servicemen ever experienced combat.
03:17In the Pacific theater, where the vast distances necessitated vastly long and well-staffed
03:23supply lines, one U.S. government source calculated that eighteen men were needed
03:28in the supply chain to keep one rifleman firing.
03:34In the U.S. Army, the job of supporting the troops belonged to the Quartermaster Corps.
03:40At the height of the war, quartermasters delivered more than 70,000 different supply items and
03:46more than 24 million meals to servicemen every day.
03:52The Corps viewed itself as an extension of the front line soldiers wherever they might be.
03:58They called themselves the Fighting Quartermasters and their motto was,
04:02Keep the Army Rolling.
04:05Largely unknown to the public at the time,
04:0847 percent of the personnel in the Quartermaster Corps were African-Americans.
04:15After the Fifth Army's rapid advance through Italy in 1944,
04:20U.S. Commander General Mark Clark paid his respects to the men and women of the Quartermaster Corps.
04:27We in the Fifth Army have come to think of you who give us the food and guns to fight
04:32with as real and essential members of our fighting team.
04:37As we crossed the Volterno and established the beachhead at Anzio, soldiers of supply
04:42were on duty behind us day and night.
04:45I can assure you that every officer and man in the Fifth Army understands your contribution.
04:51You have kept us rolling.
05:16The line of supply for U.S. forces stretched from each and every battleground all the way back to America,
05:30where a civilian army of workers operated supply ships, ports, arsenals and factories.
05:37They were ultimately responsible for manufacturing every one of the 900,000 different military
05:42items procured for Army ground forces alone.
05:48As a result, the American G.I. could usually rely on getting everything he needed, as expressed
05:54by Corporal Albert Brown in a poem to his wife.
05:59Sitting on my G.I. bed, my G.I. hat upon my head, my G.I. pants, my G.I. shoes,
06:06G.I. razor, G.I. comb, it's G.I. this and G.I. that, G.I. haircut, G.I. hat.
06:15Everything here is government issue. G.I. wish that I could kiss you. Love, Al.
06:22Historically, the primary element necessary to keep an army in the field was food rations
06:27for the troops. An army of 50,000 men consumed 4,500 tons of food every month.
06:35But in World War II, with mechanization and the advent of air power, fuel displaced food
06:40as the principal component of supply, accounting for approximately 50 percent of deliveries
06:46to U.S. forces.
06:50How supplies were moved to the front depended on the theater of operations.
06:58In Europe, most supplies moved by rail and by truck. Trains delivered supplies to railheads.
07:04Trucks moved those supplies as close to the front line as possible without exposing them
07:09to the enemy.
07:10The workhorse of this endeavor was the two-and-a-half-ton truck, so named because of its capacity to
07:16carry that amount of supplies. 800,000 of them were produced during the war, more than
07:22any other vehicle on either side. It was so successful that it remains in production
07:27to this day.
07:35The importance of these unglamorous vehicles to the waging of modern warfare cannot be
07:39overestimated. General George Patton, commander of the U.S. Third Army, while in the midst
07:45of his drive across Europe, wrote to the commander of the 514th Quartermaster Group.
07:52The two-and-a-half-ton truck is our most valuable weapon. The rifle's the infantryman's weapon.
07:59The two-and-a-half-ton truck is your weapon. In the past, that weapon has served us well.
08:07Keep up the good work.
08:09In the Pacific theater, the primary mode of transport was by ship. There was constant
08:15danger of attack by Japanese submarines and aircraft. For protection, ships traveled in
08:21groups of up to 20 or more, called convoys, escorted by warships.
08:29For three miles all around us, everything the Navy owned hovered around our ships, because
08:34inside was our 306th Supply Depot. We had all parts for the B-29 bombers, all the backup
08:41supply for everything else that had gone on ahead of us. The Navy said, the Japs may get
08:48it, but it's going to cost them.
08:54Three task forces, totaling 80 ships, were required to launch the invasion of Guadalcanal
09:00in August 1942. The first problem in loading these vessels had been what should go where
09:07and how. Using cardboard cutouts to represent the various supply loads, naval logistical
09:13planners jigsawed the pieces on blueprints of cargo vessels to determine how to fit as
09:19much as possible in the limited space. Supplies needed first were put on last, so they could
09:25be unloaded first. Highest priority was given to combat vehicles, gasoline and ammunition.
09:33Once loaded, the Marine assault troops were supplied for 60 days of action. But the battle
09:40for Guadalcanal didn't last 60 days. The fighting raged for six months.
09:48American forces fought through a gauntlet of Japanese naval and air attacks, clearing
09:52the way for the cargo vessels that kept the Marines and the Army supplied and reinforced.
09:57At the same time, they effectively strangled Japan's desperate efforts to sustain their
10:03forces on the island.
10:10Ultimately the Japanese simply could not win the War of Supply, and U.S. forces triumphed
10:15in the grinding battle of attrition on Guadalcanal. It wasn't the first or last time supply
10:22would make the difference in a campaign. Three years prior to Guadalcanal, another island
10:28was in jeopardy, its ability to sustain itself very much in doubt. It was 1939. The island
10:36was England, and German forces threatened to seal it off from the outside world. If
10:42they succeeded, the entire war could be lost.
10:50I'd just come out of a film in Leicester Square, and a newsboy was writing the headline
10:54on a blackboard. He wrote, France, and people gathered around immediately. Then underneath
11:00he wrote, has, and beneath that, fallen. There was a great sigh from the whole crowd, because
11:09they realized that we were alone.
11:20In June of 1940, Great Britain stood on the brink of disaster.
11:28The Battle of France is over. The Battle of Britain is about to begin. Hitler knows that
11:37he will have to break up in this island or lose the war. If we can stand up to him, all
11:44Europe may be freed. But if we fail, then the whole world will sink into the abyss of
11:52a new dark age.
11:58Of all the dangers that threatened England in this, her darkest hour, the most ominous
12:03was in the frigid waters of the North Atlantic, where German submarines, known as U-boats,
12:09attacked British ships from the outset. The campaign was called the Battle of the Atlantic,
12:15and it was all about supply. It focused on convoys of merchant vessels, without whose
12:22provisions the island nation of Great Britain would have been starved into submission. The
12:27opening phases of the battle did not go well for English seamen.
12:33In the spring of 1941, a 22-ship convoy of merchant vessels carrying vital supplies
12:39from Canada to Great Britain entered the U-boat infested waters of the Mid-Atlantic Gap. This
12:46was the stretch of sea where they were out of range of their air cover from both North
12:50America and Europe. British merchant seaman William Borner wrote about what happened next.
12:58The U-boat attacks started at about 10.30 in the evening. The first to be sunk was Tanker,
13:05the British Reliance. Then a Belgian ship with a cargo of iron ore was almost a beam
13:10of us when it was torpedoed and sank instantly. From then on, ships were sunk at the rate
13:17of roughly one an hour.
13:22Five hours later, Borner's own ship was torpedoed. He escaped on a lifeboat with 20 others. Only
13:2912 ships survived the assault.
13:34Once the U.S. entered the war in December 1941, Nazi U-boats began to attack American
13:41cargo vessels as well.
13:47By the summer of 1942, the cargo fleet lost 150 ships. The U-boats were sinking more merchant
13:56ships than the Allies could build. President Roosevelt challenged American industry to
14:01come to her country's defense.
14:04We must raise our sights all along the production line. Let no man say it cannot be done. It
14:14must be done, and we have undertaken to do it.
14:23The U.S. shipbuilding industry responded with the new Liberty ship. Modified from a standard
14:29pre-war merchant design, Liberty ships were about twice the size of the average pre-war
14:34merchant ship. The first Liberty ship was built in 35 weeks. Using prefabrication techniques,
14:43adapted from the automotive industry, the builders reduced the construction time to
14:47an average of three weeks.
14:51By late 1942, the Allies finally launched more ships than the U-boats could sink. The
14:58tide of war had turned.
15:02The primary mover of war cargoes from American ports was the U.S. Merchant Marine. These
15:09men provided the greatest sea lift in history between the production army at home and fighting
15:14forces scattered around the globe. The pre-war total of 55,000 experienced mariners increased
15:22to over 250,000 through U.S. Maritime Service training programs.
15:29Yet losses continued to be extremely high. One in 29 mariners serving aboard merchant
15:36ships died in the line of duty. The casualties were so heavy that Navy enlisted men often
15:42referred to their brethren serving as gunners aboard merchant ships as shark bait.
15:48Those on the cargo ships well understood they were a prime target, not only for U-boats,
15:53but also for German long-range aircraft.
16:00The military stationed the tankers and ammunition-carrying ships in the center of the convoy, as if the
16:05Germans didn't know that. We were the ships the planes came after. Number one hold was
16:10filled with army cans of gasoline. Number two, three, four, and five holds were loaded with
16:15ammunition, from .30-caliber bullets to artillery shells of all calibers, plus 500-pound bombs
16:21and depth charges. We were a floating armory.
16:25Convoys could only move as fast as their slowest ship, and every merchant seaman knew that if his
16:31ship was disabled or sunk, other ships were forbidden to stop.
16:36A ship just ahead of us got hit. There was a tremendous explosion, and the ship disintegrated in one loud roar.
16:44I could hear men screaming in the water. I shall carry that sound with me until my dying day.
16:50We felt so horrified as we could do nothing for them.
16:56It was a great relief when a convoy reached safe harbor in the ports of the British Isles.
17:02As mariners supervised the unloading of their precious war cargos, they knew their work was appreciated.
17:09The people of Great Britain held merchant seamen in the highest degree. As an island people, their life's
17:15blood was their shipping, and they realized the sacrifices we were making for them and treated us accordingly.
17:24The men of the wartime merchant fleet made contributions as vital as any combat soldier to the eventual winning of the war.
17:32In the Battle of the Atlantic, the U.S. merchant fleet lost 833 ships and 8,651 men.
17:41The British merchant navy lost 2,177 ships and over 30,000 men.
17:51But their sacrifice made possible the delivery of supplies necessary to undertake the largest invasion in history, Operation Overboard.
18:07Men, supplies, and motorized equipment of every description were slowly making their way across the loading platforms
18:14in a steady stream and finding places aboard the ships.
18:17Assault craft, boats, and ships rode anchor in one solid mass as far as we could see.
18:34The Normandy invasion of June 1944, codenamed Operation Overlord, would have been in grave jeopardy if ventured even a few months earlier.
18:44The vital supplies weren't yet in place. Army logisticians began to plan Overlord as early as 1942.
18:53Colonel Andrew McNamara, chief quartermaster for the U.S. First Army, used his experience in previous invasions as a training ground for Normandy.
19:05The two sea rations alone that a soldier carried weighed 10 pounds.
19:09The bandoliers of ammunition, clothing, gas masks, weapon, and other incidentals that the combat troops carried on the persons weighed an additional 122 pounds,
19:20totaling 132 pounds per man.
19:24This simply represents about 110 pounds too many for a combat soldier to carry and enough to make anyone else utterly useless.
19:36To correct this problem at Normandy, McNamara ordered the amount of equipment the assault troops would carry slashed by more than half to 60 pounds per man.
19:46These forces began to arrive in England in large numbers in the fall of 1943.
19:52With 39 divisions slated to participate in Overlord, the number of U.S. fighting men based in Britain more than doubled in the first six months of 1944,
20:03hitting a peak of one and a half million troops in the week preceding the invasion.
20:11But troops were only one element of the supply equation.
20:15Beginning in 1943, British ports were in perpetual motion, handling the massive influx of supplies and equipment.
20:24Soon the south of England was a bulging warehouse, crammed with 16 million tons of supplies, a weight equal to 160 fully loaded modern aircraft carriers.
20:36Practically anywhere you would look, behind a hedgerow, field, whatnot, there was stacks of materiel or something of some kind.
20:44Whether it was ammunition or not, I don't know, because most of it was covered up to keep it dry.
20:51In addition to the troops and supplies, there were 13,000 planes, 5,000 ships, including 4,000 landing craft and 900 warships.
21:02Over 54,000 men were needed just to maintain the installations required for mounting the seaborne assault forces on D-Day.
21:14Pundits quipped that if it hadn't been for the barrage balloons protecting British cities against low-flying enemy aircraft, the whole island would have sunk.
21:23Although weather conditions were not ideal, General Dwight D. Eisenhower, the Supreme Allied Commander, gave the go-ahead for the 6th of June.
21:33Shortly after midnight, the war convoys sailed from a dozen English ports.
21:43At first light, the troops stormed the Normandy beaches.
21:53If a landing craft made it to the shore, the engineers' special brigades, which included men from the Quartermaster Corps, scrambled to offload its supplies amidst a hailstorm of artillery fire.
22:10Back in the English ports, units of the Quartermaster Corps had a double assignment.
22:15Loading the outgoing ships while unloading the wounded as they returned from the battle zone.
22:21Private Clarence Innes remembered this heart-rending experience.
22:26The idea that men don't cry would certainly be out of the window, because you were just too full to hold it.
22:34There were some instances where we unloaded landing barges that no one had been able to get out of.
22:41Everybody was dead.
22:44By the third day, the heaviest fighting was over, and the Normandy beaches resembled a gigantic garbage dump.
22:52Tons of debris covered the rocks and sand along the water's edge.
22:58The wreckage needed to be cleared before more troops and supplies could hit the beach.
23:04Our LCT was circling in the rough water.
23:08Suddenly, there was a blinking of bright signal lights.
23:10Suddenly, there was a blinking of bright signal lights directly at us.
23:14The message was to proceed to the nearest point on shore and prepare for unloading.
23:19We had a bulldozer, and bulldozers were desperately needed to open pathways and boat lanes.
23:25Once the pathways were cleared, engineers showed the incoming landing craft where to unload.
23:31There was a beachmaster at each landing zone, whose job was to coordinate the combat needs of the advancing infantry,
23:38with ships at sea still waiting to unload.
23:43Over the following days, the Germans were pushed farther inland, beyond striking range of the beaches,
23:50making the landing of men and supplies far less difficult.
23:53By the second week of the invasion, activities at Omaha Beach resembled the operations of a major port.
24:00The daily volume of supplies coming off the ships averaged 9,000 tons.
24:0611,000 men and 2,000 vehicles were crossing the beach every day.
24:12Utah and the British beaches to the south hosted similar numbers.
24:17As the American and British armies advanced inland,
24:20truck convoys bound for the front continued to be stocked from the Normandy supply dumps.
24:26The most urgent need was fuel.
24:2915,000 gallons was the minimum daily requirement needed to propel a single infantry division,
24:35enough gasoline to send the average automobile around the world over 12 times.
24:42Total fuel consumption for all the American forces peaked at over 800,000 gallons.
24:48Peaked at over 800,000 gallons per day, every drop of it delivered by the Quartermaster Corps.
24:57Behind the advancing armies grew the vast rear area administrative zone.
25:03There were gasoline storage areas, munitions and ration depots,
25:07reinforcement troop quarters, railway yards, and repair shops to keep all the vehicles running.
25:13These facilities stocked the trucks that moved the vital supplies of war to the front lines.
25:21The challenge for the Quartermaster Corps was keeping this immense system functioning smoothly.
25:27The army's answer was paperwork, mountains of it.
25:31For a time I was typing the requisitions and I had to provide the original in 10 copies.
25:37We decided some of the copies were going to people who were only trying to maintain their ego.
25:41So, each week we dropped a copy.
25:45We got down to six before we heard yells.
25:48We stopped, but we had gained something.
25:53In Europe, the U.S. supplied its troops 5,000 miles from home.
25:59They had used the ports, railroads, and roads of England and France to facilitate the delivery of supplies.
26:06But in the Pacific, the U.S. Navy was fighting across a vast ocean.
26:11Dotted with islands that possessed none of these assets.
26:15To succeed, they would have to transform the sea itself into their supply line.
26:28The Pacific Theater was a Navy war, and the Navy ran on its fuel supply.
26:34Fuel greased the wheels of war in that vast ocean.
26:42The Battle of Guadalcanal
26:49Logistics for the U.S. Navy's campaign in the Pacific began with the fact that it had to supply its ships across vast expanses of ocean to an ever-moving battlefront.
27:01Guadalcanal, for example, was over 5,000 miles away from the United States, a 26-day journey by sea.
27:11The Navy's solution was to create mobile armadas of supply ships, called fleet trains.
27:17Organized in the same fashion as the warships, in task forces.
27:23Each supply ship would provide a single vital need, such as fuel, ammunition, or food.
27:32By 1944, some fleet trains totaled as many as 450 vessels.
27:38They were called service squadrons, or servrons.
27:42As the war progressed, the servrons traveled to the far reaches of the combat zones, where the warships used them as floating logistic warehouses.
27:50They often refueled and restocked with supplies and ammunition from the cargo ships while underway.
27:57An operation that required a high level of expertise and excellent seamanship to prevent accidents and collisions.
28:04When a servron's cargo was exhausted, another supply task force was ready to take its place.
28:10In this way, the war fleets could remain at sea for indefinite periods of time.
28:19The Pacific supply line stretched to its farthest limit, 14,000 miles from U.S. shores, in the CBI, the China-Burma-India Theater of Operations.
28:28There, the ancient Burma Road represented the only overland route to supply American-trained and equipped Chinese troops fighting the Japanese in South China.
28:40If the American assault ultimately failed in the Pacific, some military planners believed the Burma Road was the next best option.
28:49U.S. forces would use it to funnel into China, and there wage the ultimate battle against Japan.
28:55The only problem was that Japanese troops controlled all of Burma, including the Burma Road, and were poised to invade India.
29:09To counter this well-entrenched enemy and retake the Burma Road, the Allies decided to airdrop troops behind enemy lines and supply them entirely by air.
29:20After being towed by C-47s, they dropped their gliders into two fields in Burma.
29:25It was successful. We finally had a force in there.
29:29Immediately, Japan got organized to defend themselves.
29:32They were undoubtedly very much disturbed about this thing, because it placed forces behind them.
29:40To get the supplies they needed, these troops depended on aircraft.
29:45It all came by airdrop for us.
29:48Simply make a request on a little hand-crank machine, set the coordinates and put out the panels to mark the drop.
29:54And in a matter of hours, here comes the planes.
30:04Aerial resupply wasn't always this simple.
30:07Bad weather often made airdrops impossible.
30:09And by marking their position for the planes, ground troops risked revealing their location to Japanese forces.
30:15But it was a chance they had to take.
30:22The supply operation was run by the Army Air Force's Combat Cargo Command, from its supply dumps based in Assam, India.
30:31The mainstay of its effort was the legendary Burma Road.
30:34A transport plane which could carry a payload of three tons for 300 miles, with a top speed of 212 miles per hour.
30:43Army quartermasters rode in the back of these aircraft, ready to drop supplies to troops who otherwise had no contact with the outside world.
30:53We always looked for the peach-colored parachute, because that had the mail.
30:57That's the only one we had.
30:59We always looked for the peach-colored parachute, because that had the mail.
31:04That's the only one we had.
31:06Then some medicine, then food, and then ammunition.
31:14The supply planes generally flew their missions without protection from Allied fighter aircraft.
31:21I was plenty scared, and I spent a lot of time trying to watch out for Japanese fighter planes.
31:26But I soon realized, if I found one, I wouldn't be able to outrun it, so why bother looking for them?
31:32We flew at treetop level so they couldn't skylight us and dive right past us.
31:39We did a lot of praying.
31:42In January of 1945, the American 2nd Battalion of the 475th Infantry Division fought to cut off the retreating Japanese,
31:51and so make possible the retaking of the Burma Road.
31:56Company Commander Albert Matting wrote about the difficulties of their mission.
32:02We were using old 1912 British maps that were so outdated, it was difficult to spot our actual position,
32:09and to predict three days ahead of time where we'd be on the airdrop scheduled day.
32:14The mountains to be crossed went upward to 7,000 feet, which meant up 7,000 feet with a heavy pack.
32:22The 2nd Battalion had missed their last airdrop of supplies.
32:26For a week, they had nothing but rain, cold, and empty stomachs.
32:32On January 14th, we finally received a plentiful drop of rations, and everyone gorged themselves.
32:39But as the food arrived, so did our orders to move.
32:43The battalion commander declared everything expendable, except food and ammunition.
32:47It was a matter of considerable conjecture as to when the next drop would be and where.
32:58On January 28th, 1945, after two weeks of savage fighting, the 2nd Battalion accomplished their objective,
33:06the taking of Loikang Hill in northern Burma.
33:08This victory allowed the first convoy in over three years to pass successfully into China on the Burma Road.
33:16In that convoy were 113 two-and-a-half-ton trucks carrying weapons, ammunition, jeeps, ambulances,
33:25and artillery pieces, all to support the Chinese army.
33:28Air supply of ground forces was used in every theater during World War II.
33:34But Burma was the only place where it was the primary means of supplying troops.
33:40Nowhere else was its success proved more conclusively.
33:48The 2nd Battalion was the last of its kind.
33:50Nowhere else was its success proved more conclusively.
33:58While the fighting in Burma and China continued,
34:01the American supply network in the Pacific was gearing up for its final assault against the Japanese homeland.
34:08The way to victory is long.
34:11The going will be hard.
34:14We will do the best we can with what we've got.
34:17We must have more planes and ships.
34:20At once.
34:22Then it will be our turn to strike.
34:38The Battle of Japan
34:46Admiral King spoke those prophetic words upon assuming office as commander-in-chief of the U.S. fleet in December 1941.
34:55Prophetic words in that the defeat of Japan was in large part a triumph of airplane and ship production.
35:02This challenge rested on the legions of American civilians who labored in war-related industries.
35:09Between 1941 and 1945, the U.S. workforce rose by over 6 million, many of them women.
35:18Indeed, by 1944, women comprised nearly 10% of the workers in American shipyards.
35:24For the duration of the war, these facilities operated on a 24-hour, 7 days a week, no holidays basis.
35:33In terms of aircraft carrier production alone, the U.S. built 122 vessels compared to Japan's 20.
35:43U.S. workers could build a carrier on average 7 months faster than their Japanese counterparts.
35:49As for aircraft, the U.S. built 304,000 planes, Japan only 76,000.
35:57Once the manufacturing pump was primed, the U.S. flooded the Pacific theater with superior new equipment.
36:06What was awaiting us at our new base was unbelievable.
36:09What was awaiting us at our new base was unbelievable.
36:13Large new carriers, huge fast new battleships bristling with weapons, new aircraft, new destroyers, cruisers, supply ships.
36:23The older hands who had fought so hard with so little were amazed to see so many ships.
36:28Wow! Now, you bunch of little yellow sons of bitches, we're gonna kick your asses all the way back to Tokyo!
36:39The general pattern in the Pacific island hopping campaign was for the Navy Supply Corps and the Army's Quartermaster Corps
36:46to amass a mountain of provisions for each new island assault.
36:51Each conquered island became another stepping stone in the supply chain.
36:56As the American juggernaut swept across the Pacific, the monumental efforts to sustain the troops sometimes amazed even those who were involved in it.
37:06As we walked past the towering stacks of ammunition and supplies, in a sense, it was awe-inspiring.
37:15In less than two weeks, an enemy stronghold had been all but secured,
37:20and thousands of tons of supplies had been landed to stock future aerial assaults and naval attacks on key Japanese positions.
37:28It made the war look too easy.
37:31We moved in, pulverized the beach, brought in the supplies, and repeated the chore a thousand miles down the pike.
37:42One of the most striking examples of the American logistics system at its height was the battle for Iwo Jima in 1945.
37:51In late January, a convoy of 500 ships set out from Pearl Harbor.
37:56It was spread over 70 miles and carried 100,000 men from the U.S. Marines, Navy, and Coast Guard.
38:05The massive fleet transported enough supplies for a movable city,
38:10everything from shoelaces and light bulbs to holy water and canisters of disinfectant to spray on corpses.
38:16For each of the 70,000 Marine assault troops, there were over 1,300 pounds of military equipment.
38:24The ships also carried 6,000 five-gallon cans of water, rations to feed the Marines for two months,
38:32and 100 million cigarettes, enough to supply 13,000 men with a pack a day for over a year.
38:39The convoy converged with a second fleet traveling northward from Saipan.
38:44At the rendezvous, the U.S. amassed an invasion armada of some 900 ships,
38:50over ten times the number that attacked Guadalcanal just two and a half years before.
38:56One of the ships in the invasion fleet was the destroyer mine-layer USS Henry Wiley.
39:02She participated in the invasion of Guadalcanal,
39:06She participated in the pre-landing naval bombardment.
39:10Quartermaster Bill Zinzow kept a journal that described the action.
39:15The island is but a mass of smoke as our forces are sending in a terrific barrage.
39:21Large columns of smoke continue to rise from the island throughout the day,
39:25which are believed to be hits on ammunition dumps or oil supplies.
39:31The bombardment was sorely needed.
39:33On the eight-square-mile island, the Japanese had dug in 21,000 troops with 22 million rounds of ammunition.
39:42Two days and over 20,000 naval shells later, the invasion commenced.
39:48Marine Technical Sergeant Art King made a radio report from his landing craft 100 yards off the beach.
39:54We can see this terrific maze of ships, the greatest assemblage of ships these eyes have ever seen.
40:02Battleships to the rear of us are blasting over our heads.
40:06It certainly didn't do the Japanese any good by coming out here today.
40:13Resistance was savage.
40:16But the U.S. Navy resupplied its invasion force without cease.
40:20Yesterday afternoon, we moved out and loaded ammunition until late evening.
40:24Within 24 hours, we expended 1,600 rounds of 5-inch projectiles and over 30,000 rounds of 20 and 40 millimeters.
40:32This leaves us with practically no 5-inch left,
40:35which was a bit embarrassing tonight when we had our first air raid.
40:39The battle for Iwo Jima lasted 39 days.
40:43Navy aircraft were still in the air.
40:45The battle for Iwo Jima lasted 39 days.
40:49Navy landing craft ran supplies ship to shore on each and every one of them.
40:55But due to the overwhelming U.S. naval presence, the Japanese couldn't resupply their forces.
41:02As a result, they lost the island.
41:05Just under five months later, they lost the war.
41:09The most conspicuous phenomenon of supply in World War II was the enormous consumption of materiel.
41:17Now that countless tons of unused bombs needed to be retrieved,
41:22the hidden mines diffused and the unused supplies reallocated.
41:31The great bulk of the war's debris was either dumped, burned, buried or abandoned where it lay.
41:38But for those who served, the disposal of the physical traces of war could never erase the memory of Pacific battlefields.
41:53Sanitation troops did their best to tidy up the areas.
41:57But the odor of death, mingled with the smoking remains of fortifications, supplies and ammunition,
42:03left a penetrating, almost physical presence which permeated everything from our laundry to our chow.
42:11The smells became part of the fabric of the field, along with the heat, bright glare and the scenery of shattered palms,
42:19shapeless blasted hulks of buildings, surrounded by a placid blue sea.
42:25As always, the one element of supply that could never be replenished or replaced was the individual soldier.
42:33War's end now brought the grueling task of recovering the remains of the men who were left behind.
42:43In the Southwest Pacific alone, there were 40,000 American graves.
42:47Another 30,000 lay in temporary cemeteries reaching from Tarawa in the Central Pacific
42:53to the island of Zamami-Shima off the coast of Okinawa.
42:58For the Army, soldiers from the Quartermaster Corps searched every battlefield to retrieve their fallen comrades.
43:06All efforts were made to identify each man and ensure a dignified and respectful burial,
43:12in permanent cemeteries around the globe.
43:17It wasn't until the close of 1951, more than six years after the war had ended,
43:23that the last of America's fallen soldiers reached their final resting place.
43:29For the men and women who had sustained the war effort, it was the last act in a distinguished record of achievement.
43:36During the conflict, they accomplished one of the most monumental tasks in history,
43:42producing and delivering the supplies that made victory possible.
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