"An excellent nuts-and-bolts examination of how the United States Navy and the Royal Navy learned to keep their fleets supplied (and fighting) on station. A key to understanding not how fleets fought but how they kept on fighting."--James P. Levy, Hofstra University

"Examines the unheralded area of mobile logistics support and aptly demonstrates its key role in military/naval planning and why this ability allowed the American and Royal navies to dominate the seas during and after the Second World War."--Salvatore R. Mercogliano, University of North Carolina

Though completely unsung and commonly left out of battle histories, nothing is more important than the details of logistics and support operations during a military campaign. Without fuel, food, transport, communications, and medical facilities, modern military engagement would be impossible.

Peter Nash compares the methods the British and American navies developed to supply their ships across the vast reaches of the Pacific Ocean during the first part of the twentieth century. He argues that the logistics challenges faced by the navies during World War II were so profound and required such innovative solutions that the outcome was the most radical turning point in the history of mobile logistics support. He shows how the lessons learned during the final campaign against Japan were successfully implemented during the Korean War and transformed the way naval expeditionary force is projected to this day.

Peter V. Nash retired from Barclays Bank International to study naval history. An independent scholar holding a number of advanced degrees, he served for a year as the Edward S. Miller Research Fellow in Naval History at the U.S. Naval War College. A resident of London, he holds several honors and memberships, including the Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures & Commerce.

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"Nash has provided a solid work that at least gets people talking about naval logistics from an historical perspective and undoubtedly should encourage further research and writing."
--International Journal of Maritime History

"Much as a civil engineer might regard the layers of urban infrastructure in assessing the city design and function, Nash reminds us of the absolute necessity this dutifully learned and refined maritime art constitutes in naval logistics and strategy. The heretofore unfamiliar reader might well regard this collaboration born of necessity with something approaching a sense of wonder: the willingness of these naval commands to find the common tools, language, and procedures needed to maintain and improve a pivotal logistical feature that sustains international naval operations to this day."
--The Journal of Military History

"Nash's study, a tour de force which draws on archives and private papers in Britain and the USA, is therefore all the more valuable. . . . Nash has satisfied, in a way that other recent books which celebrate the centenary of the Royal Fleet Auxiliary do not, the need to set down our coporate memory of how we reached our current standard of excellence at mobile logistics. . . . This book is the first of its kind on logistics, and it is an important book which deserves to become a standard work of reference on the subject, and one which will hopefully inspire others to investigate the subject."
--The Naval Review UK

An Erudite Volume
--Naval Historical Review