Читать книгу Our Navy at war онлайн

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The decisions to establish bases at Brest, at Gibraltar and in the Azores were made by the Navy Department in Washington after conference with Allied powers. The result of their establishment justified the action taken. Routing of ships called for joint action between Allied and American naval agencies working together on both sides of the Atlantic. The movement of vessels carrying troops and supplies was necessarily dependent upon daily conference with War Department officials in Washington. Admiral William V. Pratt, who was Assistant Chief of Operations during the war, thus stated the main naval duty: "Our total naval effort in this war consisted less in the operation of forces at the front than in a logistic effort in the rear, in which the greatest problems we had to contend with originated and had to be solved, here at home. It must be noted that in this war the main united naval effort was one of logistics."

Building ships by the hundred; training men by the hundred thousand to operate them; producing munitions, materials and supplies by millions of tons; providing vessels to carry troops and men-of-war to protect them—all these problems of production and transportation were necessarily settled in Washington. It was this vast effort in America, directed from the Navy Department, which made possible all our activities in Europe, all the assistance we were able to render to the Allies and the general cause.