TheMarcksPlan wrote: ↑13 Nov 2021, 03:17
Difficulty with reading comprehension?
Build more shells and tanks, fewer bombers and cruisers.
Looking again at the "Ammunition Crisis" suffered by US ground forces in North West Europe in late autumn 1944, I found that I had misremembered. I'd said that it was all to do with an argument between theater and War Department in Washington, but in fact it was more complicated than that. I found on re-reading the pertinent chapter in Ruppenthal's Vol. 2 that in fact there were actually multiple reasons for the ammunition crisis...
http://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/USA/USA ... cs2-9.html
The calculated risk of crossing the Seine and pursuing the German army across France and Belgium with a recognised short-fall in logistic capability:
Ammunition supply prospects appeared favorable for a short time early in September, and the 12th Army Group, although increasingly skeptical of the Communications Zone's optimistic forecasts, made relatively liberal allocations to the armies in the hope of crashing through the West Wall on the momentum of the pursuit.
With my deep apologies, some mis-management by ComZ and 12 US Army Group:
The First Army ammunition officer showed [on 3 Oct 44] that the allocation was completely unrealistic, for the ammunition which the army had been authorized to expend did not exist in army depots and could not be obtained from the Communications Zone. Both the army group and the armies had long doubted the reliability of the Communications Zone's availability forecasts. [...] The October crisis had precipitated a long overdue reform in the system of control over ammunition issues and expenditures.
The well-known shortage of unloading facilities in Europe which left much needed ammunition afloat and using up valuable bottoms:
COMZ officials had recognized the seriousness of the unloading situation earlier, and in the last days of September the G-4 and ordnance officials had worked out a plan calling for the unloading of eight Liberties at a time, six of them at Cherbourg and the remainder at the beaches.
The contention with the War Department (which was what I had remembered):
Theater officials, while attempting to solve the immediate crisis by accelerating the unloading of ships, realized that the ammunition problem had another side. A more ominous shortage threatened, particularly in the heavier calibers and in mortar ammunition, because of inadequate shipments from the United States. [...] The SHAEF G-4 estimated that all ammunition then afloat would be ashore by 3 November, but that there still would be shortages in all categories at that time. On that date, in other words, the immediate cause of the deficit would shift from inadequate discharges to shortages in the theater. In a memorandum for record General Crawford noted that the theater had begun to warn the War Department of expected shortages in 81-mm. mortar and medium artillery ammunition as early as January 1944, and expressed the opinion that the War Department should by this time have taken action to increase production. Most exasperating of all from the point of view of the theater was the War Department's repeated reference to the fact that past expenditures had been below the day of supply rate, which ignored the theater's argument that past expenditures had been restricted and should not be used as a measure of future needs
Production shortages in the US, although apparently caused by decisions made within the War Department rather than in allocating priorities across the different forces (air, land and sea):
The War Department's challenging questions were inspired in part by its knowledge of production shortages in the United States and in part by the suspicion that the theater's requests were not fully justified. [...] The War Department's steps to boost the production of field artillery ammunition actually antedated the theater's most recent appeal by several months. In the fall of 1943 the War Department had ordered a cutback in production under the pressure of criticism from a Congressional committee because of excess accumulations of stocks, particularly in the North African theater. The excess in North Africa had resulted from the automatic shipment of ammunition on the basis of empirical day of supply data which failed to reflect the relatively inactive status of weapons over long periods of time. Early in 1944 the demands for ammunition rose precipitately as the result of the increased tempo of fighting on all fronts, and particularly as the result of unexpectedly high expenditures in Italy and ETOUSA's upward revisions of its requirements for the coming invasion. These developments led the Planning Division of the ASF, after a thorough survey of the ammunition situation, to predict a critical shortage in mortar and medium and heavy artillery ammunition by November.
On this forecast the War Department in April began allocating ammunition on the basis of the number of active weapons in each theater. Within another month, after additional studies and recommendations from the various ASF divisions, the War Department General Staff assigned the highest priority to the construction of additional production facilities for ammunition, and also for guns. The War Production Board immediately issued the required directives to make basic materials and machine tools available. Tooling up for ammunition production was a complicated precision job, however, the manufacture of the 155-mm. shell alone requiring about forty separate operations. Even experienced manufacturers ran into trouble on such jobs, as the lag in production of 8-inch ammunition had shown. Meanwhile the War Department pressed for the maximum output with existing facilities, making the necessary manpower deferments and even furloughing men from the service to work in munitions plants.
These measures were only beginning to be reflected in production increases when the theater made its urgent appeals in November
It's worth noting that as soon as the War Department identified a need for more production capacity for artillery ammunition, the "War Production Board
immediately" set about making it available. Obviously that record of events may be hiding bitter debate and challenge, but I don't have a deep understanding of how the US War Production Board was organised or whether it left adequate records.
Do any of the more recent secondary sources challenge Ruppenthal's basic narrative?
Regards
Tom
