Perhaps the most serious obstacles that lay ahead in the
war against Japan were the logistical difficulties that threatened to slow
the pace. The need for a solution of the service troop shortage and the
perennial danger of shipping and landing craft deficits might prove more
balky questions to resolve than the strategic and tactical problems. Until
these hurdles could be surmounted, it might be necessary for the progress of
the war and the selection of objectives to hinge on logistics rather than
strategy.
Until OVERLORD was completed and the outcome of the
European conflict became clear, no far-reaching relief could be expected.
The final resolution of problems of logistics and strategy would have to
wait. As always, unexpected and competitive demands had arisen in the first
five months of 1944 for available U.S. manpower, aircraft, shipping, and
landing craft. To mount OVERLORD and at the same time satisfy the British in
the Mediterranean, MacArthur and the Navy in the Pacific, and Chiang in
China, delicate adjustments had been made and calculated risks taken in the
wars against Germany and Japan. By early June all had come to hinge on the
fate of OVERLORD. For the strategic planners in Washington the past, the
present, and the future had come to focus on the cross-Channel assault.
After more than three years of planning, General Marshall and his advisers
could only sit back and wait. In the predawn hours of 5 June, despite
forecasts of unfavorable winds and choppy seas, General Eisenhower made his
historic decision to go ahead with the invasion. On 6 June the ships and
craft of the mightiest armada ever gathered headed through the rough waters
of the Channel toward the beaches of Normandy. With them rode the hopes of
the free world.
[465]
Endnotes
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