Document created: 5 December 03
Air University Review, March-April
1973
Major General
Jonas L. Blank, USAF
Living dangerously is an inherent part of every military man’s life. We accept personal risk when we accept our commissions. We may have to face danger dramatically in combat or, more subtly, in suggesting that logistics must be considered on an equal plane with tactics and strategy.
I shall begin my defense of this premise with a general discussion of the role logistics plays in military planning and operations, support that with some lessons learned in World War II and Korea, then review our logistics experiences in Southeast Asia, and conclude with some observations about logistics discipline.
I have no intention of downgrading strategy and tactics. Militarily, I consider those two and logistics to be very much like the legs of a three-legged stool. But that part of the stool supported by the logistics leg gets sat upon the most heavily and has to struggle the hardest for recognition. However, that only applies to peacetime planning and the early stages of a conflict. When the war gets hot and heavy and logistics needs become urgent, no one has to be reminded of their importance. If there is time, frantic efforts by hastily trained support personnel can make up the shortages. They have in the past, although sometimes at a fearful cost. At worst, military disaster may be the price of logistics neglect.
We in the military have the reputation of learning too much from history. We are accused of always preparing to fight the last war—only better next time around. Risking the charge of perpetuating that reputation, I shall cite some factual accounts of the cost of logistic oversights in recent wars. Perhaps a historical perspective might encourage military planners to give logistics a fair share of their attention.
World War II
Probably, there can never again be a war similar to World War II, but that one merits special attention, not only because it was the last major conflict that ended with a decisive military victory but also because of the magnitude of its logistics. Looking back, one finds it difficult to realize that the losing side had such early momentum that it seemed assured of victory. No other conqueror ever gained control over so much of Europe as did the Germans, nor over so vast an area of the Pacific as that taken by the Japanese. What turned these early victories into a military collapse?
Clashing tank armadas and infantry, spectacular sea and air battles, courage and determination, brilliant and awesome strategic planning and tactical execution—all played their part. But it was no coincidence that victory went to the nations that organized an overwhelming superiority in materiel. This recurring theme is echoed by many World War II historians.
Materiel superiority is obviously not the whole story. Economic potential and effective military strength are not synonymous. Campaigns and wars are won or lost on the basis of military strength in existence and effectively used at the time of conflict. Germany proved that lesser resources effectively organized for war can produce impressive victories. As World War II started, the combined armies of France, England, Holland, and Belgium were numerically larger than that of the Germans but were defeated by newer weapons imaginatively applied. They could not cope with the blitzkrieg led by Stuka dive bombers, fast maneuverable tanks, and motorized infantry. Germany then turned east and plunged a thousand miles into Russia, and Rommel swept across North Africa, but final victory continued to elude the Germans.
At this point in 1942, three years after the start of the war, Germany finally totally mobilized her industry for a sustained war effort. Her leaders had gambled against a prolonged war. Had they started sooner, one wonders if the Allies could ever have caught up.
In North Africa the Germans frittered away their early gains after coming within an eyelash of making the Mediterranean a German lake. Again, brilliant tactical execution was undone by inadequate logistic support. Only about 10 percent of Rommel’s fuel requirements for his tanks was delivered during the critical days when the fate of North Africa hung in the balance. What he needed could have been delivered. This was proved the next year when German equipment and supplies poured into Tunisia in response to the American landings in Africa, but by then it was too late. Field Marshal Kesselring, the German commander in chief in Italy, and Rommel disagreed on many aspects of the North African campaign. They did agree, however, after it was over, that it was primarily a logistics battle and that their promising opportunity for decisive victory evaporated because transportation had been badly planned and clear organizational channels for logistics support had never been established.
Certainly neither side had a monopoly on logistics mistakes. Let’s examine just a few of ours, but of course there were many others.
When the Japanese attacked the Philippines, the defenders of Bataan fought on half rations, critical shortages of munitions, and a scarcity of medical supplies in a malaria-infested area. In the words of the division commander whose outfit was the last to stop fighting:
By March 1942, every officer,
enlisted man and civilian on Bataan was logistics conscious, and realized that
in 26 years of planning for this campaign, its logistics side had not been as
thoroughly nor as carefully planned as its strategic and tactical side.1
Later in the war, the strategic plan for the invasion of Europe listed four requirements on which its success depended. One of them was an adequate number of landing craft. And yet, despite prolonged planning and a compelling need for an earlier date, D-Day had to be postponed for thirty days because of a shortage of landing craft. Bad weather encountered because of the delay added greatly to the problem of crossing the English Channel. Furthermore, the invasion of southern France, which was originally scheduled to occur simultaneously with the Normandy landing, had to be postponed for two months until the landing craft used in Normandy could be sailed to the Mediterranean and assembled for that assault.
In general, planning for logistics immediately preceding World War II, in both the United States Army and Navy, was grossly inadequate. The only reason it was not grossly inadequate in the United States Air Force was that a separate Air Force did not exist at that time.
As we started to mobilize for World War II, only 11 percent of the Army consisted of service troops, compared to 34 percent at the end of World War I. Instead, we needed more support forces than ever before, basically because mechanization of combat equipment of our armed forces had leaped forward between the two World Wars.
The unrealistically low ratio of service troops to combat troops made itself felt almost at once. In the spring of 1942, few trained service troops were available for overseas duty; and service troops, beyond all others, were required in the early phases of the war. It was imperative that they prepare depots, receive equipment and supplies, and establish the essential services for the combat troops.
By any yardstick the invasion of Europe was the largest amphibious operation ever attempted. Despite its success, it may also have been, at least in retrospect, the most chaotic from a logistics standpoint.
In analyzing transportation during the Normandy invasion, an Army study concluded that gross failures in marshaling and moving forces through the British ports threatened the collapse of the operation. It stated flatly:
There was an almost universal
lack of logistical discipline on the part of units to be moved. There was a
marked tendency for commanders at all levels to disregard logistical orders. In
many cases, these units failed to comply with published directives and brought
excesses of both personnel and equipment into the marshaling areas in direct
violation of instructions. The resultant congestion within these areas created
a bottleneck that was a major factor in the threatened collapse of the
operation.2
Six days after D-Day, the English ports were so badly scrambled that troops could not be sorted into the landing craft to which they were assigned. The situation because so disorganized that even available ships could not be loaded. Only extraordinary measures, such as indiscriminate shipment of troops without regard to craft-loading plans, plus an absence of enemy interference, allowed us to straighten out the chaos.
Many vessels arrived in France with contents completely unknown to shore personnel. One consequence was a frantic search for 81-millimeter mortar shells, needed in the hedgerow fighting, because shore troops did not know which ships carried what cargoes. They called forward a large additional quantity of these shells from England. Even when the special shipments were made, a ship-by-ship search was required to find the desperately needed munitions.
Huge quantities of supplies were unloaded from ships and piled up in such disarray that they could not be identified and issued to combat forces. Ports became so cluttered that identifiable supplies in the holds of other ships could not be moved ashore.
Eyewitness accounts verify the confusion, which in a sense is understandable in the midst of a massive invasion. The point is that most of it was unnecessary. It was not that we did not know better, but that we did not apply what we knew. And it could have spelled the difference between victory and defeat if the defenders had had the wisdom and ability to concentrate their defenses quickly. Fortunately, the Germans believed, as we hoped they would, that the main thrust would come later directly across the English Channel, so they did not commit their reserves to stop the Normandy landings until it was too late.
The breakout from the Normandy beachhead was followed by an amazingly rapid pursuit across France despite logistic difficulties that mounted as our armies outraced their supplies. This period has been the subject of bitter controversy over shortages experienced by the combat troops, but perhaps a more impartial overall evaluation was made by leaders of the Russian army. General Eisenhower commented on this in his book, Crusade in Europe. In the months following the conclusion of hostilities, he had many conversations with Russian leaders, including Generalissimo Stalin. Without exception, the Russian officers asked him to explain the supply methods that enabled the Allied armies to cover all of France, Belgium, and Luxembourg in one rush.
They suggested that of all
spectacular feats of the war, even including their own, the Allied success in
the supply of the pursuit across France would go down in history as the
most astonishing.3
Despite this high praise by an ally from whom compliments came grudgingly, there was tremendous room for improvement.
The supply of the armies racing across France was made possible by improvised but effective measures that temporarily overcame a shortage of transportation facilities. The Red Ball Express was created by simply clearing the narrow French roads of local traffic and making half of them one-way roads leading to forward supply dumps and the other half one-way roads returning to the Normandy staging area. Supply trucks rolled over these roads around the clock. As French railroads were repaired, the same idea was used, with trains moving almost nose to tail. Bombers were converted to cargo planes and helped fly 2000 tons of supplies a day to the lead columns.
When the advance finally ground to a halt, it was not because of enemy opposition but a lack of logistics support at the front. We had ample supplies, but they were in Normandy, 300 miles away. We simply ran out of transportation capability to continue supplying the lengthening pipeline, and fuel trucks became more important than tanks.
An Army historian, R. G. Ruppenthal, in discussing the shortage of gasoline during this period, made this observation:
The Third Army even resorted to
commandeering the extra gasoline which the Red Ball trucks carried for their
return trips to the base areas. As a result of this shortsighted practice some
convoys were stranded and available transportation facilities were consequently
reduced. . . . at least one division, the 5th Armored, admitted resorting to
hijacking gasoline, a practice of which other units were also guilty.4
Here we have an extreme example of a breakdown in logistics discipline and its painful consequences.
Ruppenthal was referring to this halt in the advance toward Germany when he wrote:
For the next two months, supply
limitations were to dominate operational plans and the Allies were now to learn
the real meaning of the “tyranny of logistics.’’5
After the war General Eisenhower made the broad statement: “You will not find it difficult to prove that battles, campaigns and even wars, have been won or lost primarily because of logistics.”6 About the same time, Field Marshal Sir Archibald Percival Wavell wrote: “I have soldiered for more than 42 years, and the more I have seen of war, the more I realize how much it all depends on administration and transportation, which our American friends call logistics.”7 Hopefully, it will not take everyone 42 years to learn that lesson.
As our needs became clearer from 1940 through 1945, we increased the U.S. Navy’s combat ships to eight times the number in the peacetime fleet. But, significantly, logistics vessels increased to 28 times the prewar number, and vessels with a combined combat and logistics capability surged to more than 200 times the number in existence before the war. Stated another way, before the war 75 percent of all our naval vessels were combat ships; as the war ended, this ratio was almost reversed: fewer than 30 percent were combat craft. It was this mix of combat and logistics vessels that cleared the Pacific all the way to the Japanese mainland.
This is not to say that our conduct of the war in the Pacific was logistically superior to our performance in Europe. Repeatedly, Army and Navy supplies were landed in such excess tonnage over capabilities of local logistics organizations that soon things could not be found at all. Special shiploads of some items that were “somewhere around but lost” had to be rushed to the combat theater, and at a time when ships were worth their weight in gold.
Ammunition specialists have estimated that only 30 percent of the ammunition sent to the Pacific was ever used. And while no planning can hope to kill the last enemy with the last bullet, the abrupt end of the war does not fully explain such a low percentage of consumption. Most of it was in the piles of equipment and supplies that were lost in island depots and left behind as the U.S. pushed its combat operations ever closer to Japan.
It was not until the last battle of the war, at Okinawa, that we properly coordinated the landing of men and materiel on a defended enemy beachhead. The ship from which directions were issued for the landing of materiel remained alongside the commander’s flagship. Close communication among operations and logistics officers was maintained throughout the landings, and a relatively orderly flow of men and materiel onto the shores of Okinawa resulted.
Korean War
The lessons we learned at so great a cost in World War II were soon forgotten. Five years later in Korea we had to learn many of them over again.
Within three weeks after the start of the Korean War, the backlog of top-priority shipments had built up to more than could be airlifted in two months. More than half the requisitions received from Korea were listed as top priority and designated for air transportation. Yet our air cargo capability could accommodate only a small fraction of that amount. Flooding the supply system with top-priority requisitions was self-defeating. Cargo jammed aerial ports of embarkation and sat there for months, although it could easily have been delivered in less time by surface transportation.
Two years after the start of the Korean War, an Army general inspected the port of Pusan. He reported that, despite prolonged hard work, one-fourth of the supply tonnage stored there had still not been sorted out. As supply personnel did not know what these supplies were, obviously they could not be issued.
Ironically, some of our logistical ineptitude in World War II paid an unexpected bonus during the Korean War: some of the equipment and supplies abandoned on the Pacific islands were gathered up, renovated, and put to use. That sometimes happens in our unpredictable business. An anecdote by a British officer about the Boxer Rebellion in China described the advantage they enjoyed through lack of communications: He told of the desperate plight of their scattered forces, who were unaware of how ghastly everything was and so fought on to a happy conclusion. In his opinion, half a dozen radio transmitters would have brought about a catastrophe.
Logistics discipline, a perennial problem, also left much to be desired in Korea. Lieutenant General W. B. Palmer, who served there and witnessed waste at close hand, wrote in exasperation:
It appalls me to think how many
failures occur in the very last link of the logistic chain. Equipment is manufactured
at great expense, shipped 5,000 miles by train, ship and truck. It is issued to
troops and, eventually, with great labor, carried to the top of a mountain in
Korea. How many times, at that last point, has this whole enormous effort been
thrown away, as carelessly as a burnt match, by the happy-go-lucky negligence
of the very people whose lives depend upon keeping the stuff in shape.8
How many times have we all seen similar incidents of callous disregard for the products of a carefully conceived and executed system?
Vietnam
Before drawing any profound conclusions based on the incidents here presented, let’s take a look at our experience in supporting operations in Southeast Asia, particularly Vietnam. For brevity’s sake, I will skip a detailed description of our materiel support organizations and procedures, relying on the reader’s general familiarity with the logistic support structure of the Department of Defense and the individual services.
At the outset, let me say that we have tried very hard to record honestly our logistic experiences—good and bad—as well as lessons learned from Southeast Asia. Some judgments have already been made by independent study groups. This is great and, hopefully, will pay important dividends. But, personally, I am inclined to believe it is premature to draw any performance comparisons with prior military operations. It must be recognized, however, that logistics systems had improved dramatically by the time of our big buildup in 1965. Much of our system was computerized and oriented toward sophisticated communication hookups unknown during World War II or Korea. However, early in Southeast Asia we did not have established bases with computers and advanced communication hookups to take advantage of the latest in logistic technology. We had to revert to manual operations, using messages and mail service to requisition supplies.
Except for the early stages, there was no massive push of equipment and supplies into the combat zone. By “push” I mean the process of shipping items without waiting for requisitions from the combat forces. The principal exceptions were one-time shipments to provision new bases that were being built. Generally, from that point on, requirements were requisitioned as needed. Asset visibility and stock control were better than ever before in past conflicts. Despite some scandalous exceptions, we generally knew what we had, where it was, and the stock levels required to prevent shortages. The principal difference this time was that trained personnel handled logistics operations. It is true that the Army had difficulty in maintaining an even flow of trained logistics personnel to Vietnam for their one-year tours. Their problem was that, in their wholesale supply depots in the United States, the Army employed large numbers of civilians, who were not generally available for employment in depots which they set up in Vietnam. The Air Force does not use overseas depots; we supply bases directly from stateside depots and so did not encounter this problem.
By all odds, the major logistics problem was inadequate port facilities and/or a shortage of self-sustaining vessels that carry their own unloading equipment on board. During the early years of the escalation, before we made large-scale improvements to fixed port facilities, an average of 100 oceangoing ships a day were either in the harbors or anchored off the coast. At the same time, other ships en route to Vietnam were held up at the Philippines, Okinawa, and Japan, to avoid further congestion. Sixty percent of the supplies flowed through Saigon, where the average wait for a ship to unload was 22 days. The average waiting times at two other major ports were 31 and 40 days.
Understandably, inadequate unloading of the sealift added to the strain on airlift. Congestion and clogged harbors forced our cargo planes to carry items normally supplied by vessel. Repair parts were used at an excessive rate because of greatly increased flying hours, and as a result some critical shortages of aircraft parts developed. Airlift transported only four percent of the tonnage delivered to Vietnam, but that four percent consisted of critical items, either munitions or parts urgently needed to keep weapon systems and equipment operational. Also, most personnel were transported to the combat theater by air, and practically all wounded were evacuated by air as soon as they could be moved. Internally, within Vietnam, in 1970 alone we airlifted close to three quarters of a million tons of cargo and over four million passengers. No other air force in the world has anything approaching this capacity.
The Army made extensive use of prepackaged shipments, which were “pushed” to build up initial stocks of supplies for deploying troops. These were discontinued in 1966. The Army also used special “super-high” priorities but limited their use to requisitioning parts required to return critical equipment to operational status. They set up focal points for individual weapon systems and funneled all requisitions for parts needed on those weapon systems through the focal point. A third special system was used to track items closely through each step of a repair cycle and insure priority transportation and repair scheduling so as to guarantee rapid return of repaired items.
The Navy did not use “push” packages or vary their system, but they instituted a number of special projects to insure expedited supply support and used several special codes to get preferential treatment for their requisitions from Vietnam.
The Air Force’s experiences in Southeast Asia vividly illustrate the interdependence of military operations and logistics support. An air force fights from fixed bases. In the beginning of the buildup in Vietnam, the number and quality of bases required to support flying operations just plain did not exist. We decided to build six new bases and upgrade thirteen others. Construction on that large a scale would take two to three years to complete.
As Air Force tactical units are deployed, they carry kits of spares and repair parts for 30 days of operations, by which time we hope to establish normal supply channels to support them. This presumes deployment to an operating base that can provide fuel, ammunition, living quarters, and personal necessities.
To provide temporary quarters and support the deployed squadrons at inadequate bases, we shipped portable kits designed to provide temporary housing and operational accommodations for increments of 1100 men. These are called “Harvest Eagle” kits. They contain tents and equipment for food services, materiel handling, power generation, and field maintenance. We delivered twelve of these sets to Vietnam to support our deployed units until more permanent structures could be built. They did the job, but we found that some were in terrible condition, a result of the lack of attention which often afflicts war readiness materiel during peacetime.
To further equip these bases, we established a group at Hq Air Force Logistics Command to assemble packages of equipment and supplies tailored to the special needs of each of the bases in the combat zone. There were 234 different kinds of packages, each one for a specific purpose, such as support of a particular kind of aircraft, a maintenance shop, an office, or any other function performed on an air base. Each group of packages was assembled for a specific base and forwarded in one shipment as construction neared completion.
This group also monitored deployment of mobile civil engineer repair squadrons to bases requiring their services.
Then, to assist in making a base operational after construction was completed, we brought in teams of supply, maintenance, and transportation specialists to assist base personnel. These teams stayed at the base as long as required to get their part of the operation functioning smoothly. They were also available to return when base personnel required assistance because of peak workloads.
In 1965 we lacked munition storage facilities in SEA and suffered from inadequate munition unloading facilities at the ports. We solved both by a “special express” system, consisting of a fleet of ships chartered exclusively to transport munitions to Vietnam. Upon arrival there, these ships served as floating warehouses. Twenty percent of their cargo space was devoted to aisles, so they could be selectively unloaded. Shore personnel had manifests of their contents, to enable them to call for specific quantities of particular munition items. The ships remained in the area until their cargoes were exhausted and then returned to the United States for reloading. After two years, as munition storage facilities were built and port capacities enlarged, we phased out the “special express” system and began a normal resupply of munitions.
From 1965 to 1968 our monthly requirement for aviation fuel grew from three million to 180 million gallons per month. A great deal of improvising was required to handle that large an increase. We had neither the time nor resources to build permanent storage facilities, so we had to rely heavily on air-transportable refueling systems, aerial bulk delivery, and collapsible bladder storage tanks at the bases. Some of the bladder tanks had a capacity as high as 420,000 gallons. Air-transportable fuel systems have almost unlimited mobility. During the Pueblo crisis, we dispatched enough of these systems to Korea in a matter of hours to support aircraft deployed there.
Where we could, in protected areas, we built some underground and overland pipelines, but these served only to transport fuel over short distances. Special piers for unloading ocean-going fuel tankers were built. Where we did not have deep-water ports, we built a device resembling a buoy, which was used to unload tankers in 200 feet of water as much as two miles offshore.
Our vehicle fleet in Southeast Asia grew to about 10,000 units, of two principal kinds: (1) those built to military specifications and obtained through the Army, which furnishes follow-on supply support; and (2) commercial vehicles. Prior to Vietnam we had removed repair parts for the latter category from our supply network and instead supported commercial vehicles through purchase of parts from local vendors. There being no vendors in Vietnam, we experienced rising out-of-commission rates on the commercial vehicles in the combat zone and had to bring parts for them back into the Air Force supply inventory. The point is that we had to relearn a lesson learned many times before: that the system we develop in peacetime in the CONUS must be workable in a wartime environment overseas.
In 1965, at our CONUS bases, we were implementing a standard base supply system, designed to operate from identical computers installed at our bases. Programs for the computers were designed at Headquarters USAF, assuring uniformity of operations. It was the most advanced retail supply system in existence at the time. Although nothing that sophisticated had ever been employed in a combat environment before, we decided to install the system, with its advanced computers, at our major bases in Vietnam.
One advantage of standardization is that our supply personnel all use the same system. Once trained, they are able to transfer to any of our worldwide bases and start functioning immediately. This gave us an ample reservoir of trained personnel to manage our base supply accounts in the combat area.
By 1969, we had installed the last of seventeen computers at Southeast Asian bases, and they have served us well. We use a NORS (not operationally ready supply) rate as a key indicator of the effectiveness of supply support to our operating units. This rate in the combat area has consistently been better than has our average worldwide rate since we installed the computers.
To guard against the possibility that one of the base supply computers might become inoperative through enemy action, natural disaster, or maintenance breakdown, we designed a mobile computer that could be quickly transported to replace a computer that was out of commission. We built it in three vans; it is air-transportable and can be hauled by rail or road. Completely self-sufficient, with its own power plant and environmental controls, it can be in operation six hours after delivery. It has been deployed a number of times to replace computers that were temporarily out of commission or to precede the installation of a permanent computer, and each time it proved that the principle of a mobile replacement computer was sound.
The decision to put computers in the SEA bases has paid big dividends. Early in 1968, at the beginning of the Tet offensive, direct hits from mortar shells destroyed a supply warehouse at the Da Nang Air Base in Vietnam. Sixteen thousand line items of supply went up in smoke. Later that day, we assigned a special project code to the Da Nang base supply operation, to guarantee top-priority replacement of those supplies. Asset records for the destroyed supplies were reduced to zero; consequently, the base computer automatically printed out stock replenishment requisitions, which were transmitted to CONUS depots that afternoon. Five days later, 78 percent of the requisitioned stock was in the supply-receiving line at Da Nang. Without the standard base supply computer, coupled with rapid communications and airlift of high-priority requirements, the prompt resupply of the destroyed items to Da Nang would not have been possible.
Records of logistical support to Vietnam are undoubtedly the most thorough ever kept in a wartime environment. For a full year, a high-level Joint Logistics Review Board intensively studied these records, spanning from 1965 through 1969. They came up with many conclusions concerning lessons that we can profit by in the future. From my standpoint, perhaps the most important conclusion reached was: “that the standard logistics systems functioned satisfactorily in their first exposure to a combat test.”
Andrew Wilson, an English writer familiar with the computer simulation for
war-gaming used in designing some of our logistics systems, made this unbiased
assessment in his book The Bomb and the Computer:
I was seeing, not for the first
time, the lessons of war games applied in action—and some, I had to admit, had
been well and profitably learned. The logistic apparatus in Vietnam was
superlative.9
Earlier in this article I compared strategy, tactics, and logistics to a three-legged stool. I think evidence adequately supports the thesis that, unless the logistics leg of the stool is carefully conceived, developed, and implemented, success of the military operation it supports is in jeopardy.
From World War I to World War II, our forces became more mechanized and sophisticated. Between World War II and the present, that trend has accelerated. The more complicated the implements of war become, the more professional support they require. As a consequence, we must gear our thinking to accepting a higher ratio of support forces to combat forces, commensurate with advances in modern weapon systems.
Finally, as commanders and future commanders, you would do well to ponder the examples of breakdown in logistics or supply discipline that I have cited. Poor supply discipline can cancel out the best logistics system. Supply discipline, logistics discipline—whichever you choose to call it—is everybody’s business, particularly the business of the operational commanders who are dependent upon this discipline for the quality of their support.
Hq United States Air Force
Notes
1. Brigadier General Clifford Bluemel, “Bataan,” Logistics, April 1947, p. 6, quoted in Logistics in Strategic Warfare, “The Engineer School, Fort Belvoir, Virginia, 1 August 1950.
2. Operation Overload, a historical analysis by the United States Army Transportation School, Monograph No. 3, p. 2.
3. Dwight D. Eisenhower, Crusade in Europe (New York: Doubleday, 1948), p. 309.
4. Roland G. Ruppenthal, United States Army World War II, The European Theater of Operations, Logistical Support of the Armies, 2 vols., Office of the Chief of Military History, Department of the Army, Vol. I (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1953), pp. 505-6.
5. Ibid., p. 583.
6. Hawthorne Daniel, For Want of a Nail: The Influence of Logistics on War (New York: Whittlesey House, McGraw-Hill, 1948), p. XII.
7. Ibid., p. 239.
8. Lieutenant General W. B. Palmer, “Commanders Must Know Logistics,” The
Quartermaster Review, July-August 1953, reprinted from the April 1953 issue
of the Army Information Digest.
9. Andrew Wilson, The Bomb and the Computer (New York: Delacorte Press, 1968), p. 210.
Major General Jonas L. Blank (USMA; M.B.A., Harvard Business School) is Assistant Deputy Chief of Staff, Systems and Logistics, Hq USAF. During World War II he flew 48 combat missions in Europe as B-17 pilot, went down Yugoslavia, and was a POW until V-E Day. His subsequent assignments have been mainly in the field of resources, material, and logistics, in Hq Air Material Command, Hq SHAPE, and Hq USAF. General Blank is a graduate of Air Command and Staff College and Industrial College of the Armed Forces and has been Commandant of both Squadron Officer School and Air Command and Staff College.
Disclaimer
The conclusions and opinions expressed in this
document are those of the author cultivated in the freedom of expression,
academic environment of Air University. They do not reflect the official
position of the U.S. Government, Department of Defense, the United States Air
Force or the Air University.
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