Abstract/Summary

By the winter of 1943, Britain’s war industry had reached a saturation point. The nation’s factories and plant, which had been resurrected from the Great Depression, were close to exhaustion. Whilst Britain and its Empire were well endowed with natural resources, vital global sea lines of communication immediately became a target for a potent Kreigsmarine, threatening access to strategic materials and finished goods. Contrary to some popular interpretations, Britain’s war production effort was, from 1940, not one of general plenty. Shortfalls in war materiel and strategic resources were only satisfied with imports from the Empire and the United States. The Allies eventually developed a mastery in matching resources with demands, yet, from the initiation of hostilities, the British Government, initially under the direction of Neville Chamberlain and then Winston Churchill, recognised that Britain’s ability to arm its forces and support her Empire depended on applying resources judiciously. The First World War had laid bare the enormous costs of modern global warfare, but the demands and consumption of materials and labour in World War 2 (WW2) were of a different magnitude entirely from 1914-1918. In order to confront the Axis powers, Britain and her allies had to recalibrate their warfighting techniques. This transition in doctrine and economics required the concurrent accumulation of experience on operations and the expansion of the national war industries. With the Axis powers entrenched on the European continent, immediately following Dunkirk the Allied planning staffs realised that to defeat National Socialism any re-entry into Europe would require the development of a substantial amphibious capability. Owing to inter-war financial restrictions and a general neglect of the study of amphibious techniques, Anglo-American forces, despite some significant WWI experience, had only a weak grasp of the demands of this specialist and seemingly elusive niche area of warfare. The result was that they were compelled to undertake a number of high risk global operations to acquire a proficiency in forcing and sustaining an opposed land entry from the sea. From these operations however, the 1 The British had demonstrated their ability to plan and execute complex amphibious operations in WWI. In 1917, Operation HUSH was the first detailed planning for a combined formation level amphibious assault force, including armoured vehicles, to be landed on the Belgian coast, see Fuller, J.F.C, Memoirs of an Unconventional Soldier, London: Ivor Nicholson & Watson, 1936, p.117. Allied planning staffs quickly learnt on-the-job and incrementally gained the necessary knowledge to execute large scale multinational amphibious landings. During the course of this accelerated learning experience, the combined staffs determined that to sustain their mechanised forces, specialist logistic solutions would have to be rapidly developed. From the broad range of developed solutions of prefabricated (artificial) mobile ports and robust undersea fuel pipelines that could be deployed immediately after the conclusion of any break-in battle provide case studies which help exemplify the potency of the Allied amphibious capability. Inspiring leadership, sound management, radical technical innovation, resource allocation, multinational diplomacy and interoperability and harnessing of national industrial bases all played a critical part in sustaining an assault force into North West Europe. Identifying metrics which allow performance to be judged remains challenging but by analyzing a broad set of technical and operational criteria a more nuanced and accurate appraisal can be conducted. Yet behind such large and complex projects, there inevitably existed inter-service rivalries and friction between individuals. Added to this were the wartime constraints of limited access to suitable construction sites, labour and materials, Additionally, constricted schedules placed significant pressure on the civil-military partnerships which left limited the ability to adequately trial equipment before its operational deployment. This theses will illustrate that there existed a subtle contest, one bitterly fought in the corridors of power between competing government departments, where service chiefs defended their self-proclaimed fiefdoms and to a lesser extent amongst the industrialists who were compelled to jockey for position in their endeavors to secure resources.