Pacific Express: The Critical Role of Military Logistics in World War II (Amphibious Operations in the South Pacific in WWII)

a book to be devoured

Really great story of how the US assault in the Pacific in WW II was supplied and supported. Some of the chapters are summaries from other books. The book is a combination of anecdotal stories of what happened, detailed statistics of production and transportation, and a history of organizations such as the Seabees, the Navy service squadrons, the War Shipping Administration, the Maritime Commission, and the Army Transportation Corps. The US industrial and shipping effort in WW II was (and in my opinion, still is) simply mind boggling by any standard. I doubt that we have the industrial capacity to perform a similar experience today. Well worth reading! I suspect that the Japanese generals and admirals (and certainly the poor soldiers and sailors on the ground or on the water) simply had no conception of how the US would fight its war.

Great service good read

Really great series.

This is a very good summary of logistics in the Pacific Theater during WW2. For me, it was almost all new information since logistics is seldom mentioned in books (of which I have read many) dealing with the combat in the pacific war. On the con side it is very dry and difficult to read in places and is sometimes a little hard to follow. It is, however, a solid contribution to understanding an absolutely crucial component of our victory in WW2 and is certainly worth the read.

Before, during and after the battle, logistics maybe the most important non-combat activity that is not well covered. I suspect that this book could easily be used to get a feel for the logistics activity in both the Pacific and Europe.

Very informative in understanding the strength of logistics behind the Pacific campaigns.

I was hoping to read a narrative of how problems were solved but it's mainly a collection of reports of the day designed to impress superiors at the time. Not enough about the woeful designs of the Liberty ships and the massive wastage of materials. For every US soldier who was landed ashore in the Pacific Campaign, it took 10,000 tons of materials , not including shipping tonnage. I read that was 20 times the total actually required.