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spidge · 07-10-2007, 04:18 PM

From: http://www.usmm.org/ww2.html

U.S. Merchant Marine in World War II
One way to understand the Second World War is to appreciate the critical role of merchant shipping... the availability or non-availability of merchant shipping determined what the Allies could or could not do militarily.... when sinkings of Allied merchant vessels exceeded production, when slow turnarounds, convoy delays, roundabout routing, and long voyages taxed transport severely, or when the cross-Channel invasion planned for 1942 had to be postponed for many months for reasons which included insufficient shipping....
Had these ships not been produced, the war would have been in all likelihood prolonged many months, if not years. Some argue the Allies would have lost as there would not have existed the means to carry the personnel, supplies, and equipment needed by the combined Allies to defeat the Axis powers. [It took 7 to 15 tons of supplies to support one soldier for one year.] The U.S. wartime merchant fleet. . . constituted one of the most significant contributions made by any nation to the eventual winning of the Second World War....
In the final assessment, the huge US merchant fleet... provided critical logistical support to the war effort... The Oxford Companion to WORLD WAR II

07-10-2007, 04:18 PM	#5 (permalink)
spidge Super Moderator Join Date: Sep 2007 Location: Melbourne Australia Posts: 3,317 You're Top Poster: #3 Awards Showcase Total Awards: 6	The US Merchant Marine From: http://www.usmm.org/ww2.html U.S. Merchant Marine in World War II One way to understand the Second World War is to appreciate the critical role of merchant shipping... the availability or non-availability of merchant shipping determined what the Allies could or could not do militarily.... when sinkings of Allied merchant vessels exceeded production, when slow turnarounds, convoy delays, roundabout routing, and long voyages taxed transport severely, or when the cross-Channel invasion planned for 1942 had to be postponed for many months for reasons which included insufficient shipping.... Had these ships not been produced, the war would have been in all likelihood prolonged many months, if not years. Some argue the Allies would have lost as there would not have existed the means to carry the personnel, supplies, and equipment needed by the combined Allies to defeat the Axis powers. [It took 7 to 15 tons of supplies to support one soldier for one year.] The U.S. wartime merchant fleet. . . constituted one of the most significant contributions made by any nation to the eventual winning of the Second World War.... In the final assessment, the huge US merchant fleet... provided critical logistical support to the war effort... The Oxford Companion to WORLD WAR II __________________ Spidge, ------------------------------------------------------- My Avatar is the memorial to the 22 Commonwealth Coastwatchers at the Temakin Cemetery on Betio (Tarawa Atoll) who were beheaded by the Japanese on 15th October 1942. http://www.dva.gov.au/media/publicat...mem_beito.html "You were given the choice between war and dishonor. You chose dishonor and you will have war." (Winston Churchill made this prophetic pronouncement in a House of Commons speech in 1938, just after Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain signed the Munich agreement with Hitler. Chamberlain returned from Germany with the signed agreement in hand, proclaiming that "peace in our time" had been achieved. Churchill attacked Chamberlain's "politics of appeasement" in this and many other speeches.) What did the Australians do in ww2 and other conflicts? Check out this site: http://www.diggerhistory.info/00-pag...ster-index.htm