The Invisible Army - Part 9: The Logistics of Victory After Victory

The One-Front War

On May 8, 1945, Germany surrendered. The European war was over. The Pacific war continued.

The United States suddenly faced a logistics challenge more complex than anything it had yet attempted: consolidate forces from two hemispheres, redeploy them to the Pacific, and prepare for the invasion of Japan—the largest amphibious operation ever planned.

This wasn’t simply “shipping troops across the Pacific.” It required:

• Identifying which units to redeploy and which to demobilize
• Moving equipment and supplies from European depots to Pacific theaters
• Converting European-theater equipment for Pacific conditions
• Training units for different combat environments
• Building the staging bases for invasion
• Maintaining morale in units facing another year (or more) of combat

And all of this while the Pacific war continued, with its own unrelenting logistics demands.

The Redeployment Plan

Operation Magic Carpet

The War Department’s redeployment plan, eventually called Operation Magic Carpet, was staggering in scope:

Personnel movements:

• 3.5 million soldiers to be processed through redeployment system
• 1.4 million to be transferred to the Pacific
• 2.1 million to be returned to the U.S. (for discharge or training)

Equipment movements:

• 200,000 vehicles to be shipped from Europe
• Millions of tons of weapons, ammunition, and supplies
• Specialized Pacific equipment (landing craft, amphibious vehicles) to be built or converted

Timeline: Germany surrendered in May. The invasion of Kyushu (southern Japan) was scheduled for November 1. Six months to move everything.

The Point System

Not everyone would go to the Pacific. The Army established the Adjusted Service Rating Score—the famous “point system”—to determine who went home and who continued fighting.

Points were awarded for:

• Months of service
• Months overseas
• Combat decorations
• Number of dependent children

High-point veterans would be discharged. Low-point soldiers would continue to the Pacific. The system was designed for fairness, but its logistics implications were enormous:

Experienced soldiers left first. Units deploying to the Pacific were reconstituted with newer replacements. Training requirements multiplied. Unit cohesion suffered.

The Army chose fairness over efficiency—a defensible choice, but one with logistics consequences.

Operation Downfall

The Two Invasions

The invasion of Japan was planned in two phases:

Operation Olympic (November 1, 1945): Invasion of Kyushu, the southernmost main island. Objective: Establish air bases for the second phase.

• 14 divisions, 650,000 combat troops
• Largest amphibious operation ever attempted

Operation Coronet (March 1, 1946): Invasion of the Tokyo Plain on Honshu. Objective: Decisive defeat of Japan.

• 22+ divisions, possibly 1 million combat troops
• Even larger than Olympic

The Logistics Requirements

The logistics for Downfall dwarfed anything previously attempted:

Shipping requirements:

• 2,500 ships for Olympic alone
• More than twice the shipping used at Normandy

Pre-positioned supplies:

• 4 million tons of equipment and supplies in forward areas
• 30-day supply levels for all assault forces
• Follow-on supplies scheduled in continuous convoys

Construction:

• Port facilities in Kyushu to be built from scratch
• Airfields for thousands of aircraft
• Hospitals for anticipated casualties

The Casualty Estimates

Military planners grimly calculated expected casualties:

• Olympic: 250,000-500,000 American casualties in the first 90 days
• Coronet: Unknown, but potentially higher
• Total campaign: Estimates ranged from 500,000 to over 1 million American casualties

Every casualty meant medical evacuation, hospital capacity, replacement personnel, casualty notification—a separate logistics stream of human tragedy.

The logistics of casualties extended back to the United States:

• Hospital ships to transport wounded
• Hospital beds in Pacific bases and the continental U.S.
• Blood plasma, surgical supplies, rehabilitation equipment
• Prosthetics (the War Department ordered 180,000 prosthetic limbs)

The Logistics Empire

Bases in the Pacific

The Downfall logistics plan required expanding the Pacific base network to unprecedented levels:

Okinawa: The captured island became the primary staging base—hundreds of thousands of troops, thousands of aircraft, massive supply dumps.

Philippines: Liberated and transformed into a major rear-area base complex. Manila became a logistics hub rivaling anything in Europe.

Marianas: B-29 bombers continued the strategic bombing campaign while the islands supported fleet operations.

Hawaii: The rear-area center, processing troops and supplies moving westward.

The Fleet Train Expansion

The Navy’s fleet train, already the largest logistics fleet in history, would have to grow further:

• More oilers for fuel-hungry ships
• More ammunition ships for prolonged bombardment
• More hospital ships for mass casualties
• More repair ships for kamikaze damage

The invasion fleet would need to stay at sea for extended periods, requiring continuous underway replenishment while conducting the largest amphibious operation in history.

The Atomic Alternative

On August 6, 1945, an atomic bomb destroyed Hiroshima. On August 9, a second bomb destroyed Nagasaki. On August 15, Japan surrendered.

Operation Downfall was never executed. The redeployment continued—but now its purpose reversed. Instead of staging for invasion, the military began the even more complex process of demobilization.

The Logistics Pivot

In a matter of days, the logistics mission transformed:

Before August 15:

• Move forces west
• Build up supplies in forward areas
• Prepare for massive casualties
• Sustain combat operations indefinitely

After August 15:

• Move forces home
• Draw down supplies
• Occupy Japan (with minimal forces)
• Transition to peacetime economy

The entire logistics apparatus had to pivot 180 degrees.

Demobilization: The Final Logistics Challenge

The Pressure

American soldiers and their families had one overwhelming demand: Bring the boys home.

The point system accelerated. Pressure from Congress, from families, from the soldiers themselves was intense. The military faced a logistics problem it had never planned for: rapid, massive, simultaneous demobilization.

The Scale

By V-J Day, the U.S. had approximately 12 million men and women in uniform—spread across Europe, the Pacific, and the continental United States.

The demobilization plan:

• September 1945: 500,000 discharges per month
• October 1945: 800,000 per month
• Early 1946: Over 1 million per month at peak

The Shipping Crunch

The constraint was shipping. There were only so many ships, and they could only move so fast.

Every ship that could carry troops was pressed into service:

• Troopships designed for the purpose
• Liberty ships converted with bunks
• Aircraft carriers with flight decks covered in temporary housing
• Even captured enemy vessels

At peak, Operation Magic Carpet moved 435,000 troops per month from the Pacific and 350,000 from Europe.

The Infrastructure Reversal

Demobilization required infrastructure for processing:

• Separation centers: Where soldiers received final pay, records, and discharge papers
• Medical screening: Final health evaluations
• Civilian clothing: The Army provided “ruptured duck” discharge pins and civilian suits

The system processed 8 million discharges in the first year after V-J Day—an average of nearly 22,000 per day.

Lessons of the End

Plans Change—Logistics Must Adapt

The military planned exhaustively for Operation Downfall. Then, in August 1945, everything changed. The logistics system had to adapt to a completely different mission in days.

This flexibility proved possible because the underlying capabilities were strong. Ships could carry troops either direction. Depots could issue supplies or receive them. The system was robust enough to handle a fundamental mission change.

Victory Has Costs

Both continuing the war (Downfall) and ending it (demobilization) imposed massive logistics demands. There was no “easy” option.

Winning wars is expensive. But so is ending them. The logistics of transitioning from war to peace consumed more resources than many peacetime years would require.

Speed Has Tradeoffs

The rapid demobilization satisfied immediate political demands. But it also created problems:

• Units in occupation forces lost experienced personnel too quickly
• Equipment maintenance suffered as personnel discharged
• Training expertise vanished as instructors went home
• Five years later, the Korean War revealed an ill-prepared military

The logistics of demobilization optimized for speed. The consequences lasted years.

Part II Conclusion: The Industrial War

World War II was the largest logistics operation in human history. The statistics stagger:

Behind every battle, behind every victory, behind every casualty statistic, was a logistics system that made industrial war possible.

The lessons of this system shaped American military thinking for generations:

• Quantity has a quality of its own: Overwhelming logistics capacity can compensate for tactical disadvantages
• Integration matters: Unified logistics commands outperform fragmented organizations
• Prepare for the long war: Industrial capacity takes years to build; it must exist before you need it
• Flexibility is resilience: Systems that can adapt to changing missions survive; rigid systems fail

In Part III, we’ll see what happens when these lessons meet a different kind of war—where the enemy doesn’t play by industrial rules, where more isn’t always better, and where the logistics that won World War II prove inadequate for the jungles of Southeast Asia.