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Milestones on Victory Road
THE UNITED STATES has set her foot upon the road of war. No American doubts that at its end lies victory. But every one of the 133,000,000 persons in this country is vitally concerned in knowing how far we have gone along the road to victory, how much of it still remains to be trodden.
Like a conscientious corporation which makes regular reports to its stockholders on the states of the business which they own, the United States Government has issued a report on the length of the road we have traveled towards victory, and the plans which have been made for covering the rest of it - a report for the stockholders in the great corporation of the United States, its citizens.
Issued by the Office of Facts and Figures under the title, "Report to the Nation," this 62-page booklet is not likely to be read by as many of our busy population as SHOULD read it. The World Behind the Headlines therefore presents on this page and the next a digest of the most important facts from this report.
They cover every field of defense endeavor - our fighting forces, the secret police who guard us from attack within, the efforts of the men who sit behind desks and stand before lathes, the battles of leaden bullets and of golden bullets.
Read carefully the figures on these pages. They are the record of what we have done already, and the chart of what we still have to do. They are milestones on the road to victory.
Our Fleet When Japan Struck
Built Building Total
Battleships ............ 17 15 32
Aircraft Carriers ...... 7 11 18
Cruisers ............... 37 54 91
Destroyers ............. 171 193 364
Submarines ............. 131 73 186
IN 1941, the Navy: 1. Commissioned 25 new fighting ships, was building 345 fighting ships, 96 auxiliary vessels, 243 mine ships, 225 patrol boats, and various other small craft; 86 Navy yards and 133 private shipyards, as compared with 72 private yards, were handling Navy orders in January.
2. Enrolled 5,000 new officers and more than 60,000 new men.
3. Spent half a million dollars developing bases.
AVIATION: In 1941, the Navy added 2,000 new planes to its force. Its complement of 15,000 planes is being increased-how much is a military secret. Thousands of pilots are in training to reinforce the 5,000 the Navy now has. Rate of enlistment in the Navy's air force was eight times as great in July, 1941, as in May, 1940.
Moving Men and Material
THE MEN
It'S NOT ENOUGH to raise a large army to fight a distant enemy, or to increase production of war supplies. Transports must be available to put those men on the battlefields where they are needed, freighters must be on hand to take them munitions and supplies. The problem of ocean transportation is twofold: it means not only of supply ships, but also the men to sail them.
On the 1,200 ships the United States now has in deep-sea trade are 40,000 seamen, 10,000 officers. Plans call for twice that number of ships to be afloat by the end of this year. That means another 40,000 sailors, another 10,000 officers.
Some of the new ships will be handled by Army and Navy personnel. Foreign crews can be found for some of the others. But the Government estimates that this country will have to supply 28,000 seamen, 6,400 officers.
A training program has been drawn up to product 25,000 seamen, 6,300 officers in TWO years. This is nearly enough men, but only half enough speed. Here further effort must be made, or we risk turning out ships for which we have no crews.
THE SHIPS
In September, 1939, the United States had 8,000,000 tons of merchant shipping. Here's what has happened since then:
Transferred to foreign registry......1,100,000 tons
Turned over to Army or Navy..........1,500,000 "
Transferred under Lease-Lend to nations resisting Axis.................................2,000,000 "
Leaving .............................3,400,000 tons
But the U.S. has seized idle foreign ships in U.S. ports of ............................550,000"
Latin-American nations have seized ships which will help relieve pressure on U.S. shipping of...................................360,000 "
Making available.....................4,310,000 tons
But while America's fleet has been cut in half, demands are increasing. In 1938, American ships moved 19,500,000 cargo tons of goods; in 1941, American ships moved 26,400,000 cargo tons; in 1942 those figures will jump, as war production increases the flow of goods to the battlefields. That means more ships.
On Dec. 1, 1941, contracts had been signed for 999 ships, 123 had been put in service, 154 launched, and keels had been laid for 123. Schedules called for 517 more ships to be built in 1942, 651 in 1943. But the new program has upped that to: 1,200 new ships in 1942, 600 more in 1943, when the U.S. will have 3,000 ships in service - minus losses.
In 1937, the U.S. had 10 shipyards with 46 shipways capable of building vessels 400 feet long or larger. Today, she has 40 yards with 275 shipways, of which 202 are building ocean-going ships.
Already shipbuilding for this war equals the peak of last war's effort, when 350,000 men were working in the shipyards. That number is working on shipbuilding today - and eventually 750,000 will be thus employed.
"The dollar is one yardstick by which we can measure what we have done." Here the dollar measures, not the AMOUNT of our war effort, but the SPEED of our effort; not HOW MUCH we are spending, but HOW FAST we are spending it. The SPEED of spending is more important than the AMOUNT of money available, for dollars strike no blows until they have been converted into the weapons of war.
Fighting the Fifth Column
The United States was much better prepared against the enemy within our gates in 1941 than in 1914. On teh first day of the last war, what we have now, only 63 aliens were arrested. This time, more than 1,000 had been picked up by midnight Dec. 8.
The Voorhis Act of 1940 made it possible for the Department fo Justice to check up on organizations under foreign control before war broke out. Registration of more than 5,000,000 aliens had been completed a year before. The FBI's 28,000 agents had investigated thousands of individuals and organizations.
Here Are Army Achievements
TANKS: Light and medium tanks are now being produced in quantity; the first heavy tank was delivered on the day of the declaration of war against Japan.
GUNS: Artillery of all types is being produced five times as fast as a year ago. Ammunition is being produced nine times as fast. The new Garand rifles are being turned out at the rate of 1,000 per day. Twenty-three new munitions plants are in operation.
CONSTRUCTION: The Army has built 50,000 buildings of 450 projects in 250 localities.
AVIATION: the Army now possesses four combat types better than any planes known to be flying abroad. In 1940, 7,000 flying officers were trained; in 1941, 12,000. This year, 20,000 aviation cadets will be put into training MONTHLY. By the middle of the year, the air force will include more than 750,000 men, while revision of requirements will make 2,000,000 eligible.
Economic Warfare
BEHIND THE SOLDIERS in the trenches stands the industry which furnishes them with weapons. Behind industry is the whole economy of the nation. The United States, economically the most powerful country in the world, has engaged battle on the economic front. Already our government has:
1 - Freed beryllium, optical instruments, magnesium, tungsten carbide, pharmaceutical products, hormones, dye-stuffs, etc. from foreign control through patents and cartels.
2 - Frozen $7,000,000,000 in assets of 33 foreign countries.
3 - Made trade accords with Latin American countries which prevent the Axis from getting copper from Chile, Mexico or Peru, tin or tungsten from Bolivia, platinum from Colombia, sugar from Cuba, any exports at all from Brazil, Mexico or Peru.
4 - Eliminated Axis-controlled airlines from Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador and Peru.
5 - Struck at Axis commercial strength by blacklisting 5,600 companies with which Americans must not trade.
6 - Seized thousands of tons of tin, aluminum, iron, steel, etc. held in U.S. warehouses for Axis nations and countries dominated by them.
7 - Built up home sources of supplies of strategic materials now cut off by war, by such means as building synthetic rubber plants and devising new processes to recover strategic metals from low-grade ores available to home, now that high-yield ores cannot be obtained from abroad.
8 - Loaned $290,000,000 to Latin-American countries to develop sources of raw materials in the western hemisphere - a steel plant in Brazil, urbber plantations in Hati, etc.
THE WORLD BEHIND THE HEADLINES
Sunday, February 8, 1942 Page 24
