Source DA Circular 64, 10 Mar 48.

should be given control over the means to perform it. This was, of course, the very reason the ZI Army commanders wished control over Class II installations. Unity of command was not the clear-cut principle envisaged by the Patch-Simpson Board, but rather a misleading expression which simply fueled factional disputes.

The Third Army commander considered the test a success and recommended that Class II installations remain under his control. General Wade H. Haislip, as the new Vice Chief of Staff, decided in favor of the technical services and directed that the test be discontinued on 1 November 1949. The only changes made were to assign a few additional administrative or housekeeping duties to the Army commanders. 16

Planning for a Logistics Command

Operation TACT was a minor skirmish in the continuing battle over the role of the technical and administrative services as independent commands. At the time Operation TACT was first being considered, a more important battle took place over a proposal to resurrect Army Service Forces in some form as an Army logistics command. This conflict had begun on 15 February 1947 when General Eisenhower appointed General Haislip president of a Board of Officers to Review War Department Policies and Programs, a board composed of representatives from the Army staff, the Air Forces, and the Ground Forces. The Haislip Board, as it was known, made two reportsa preliminary one on 25 April 1947 and a final one on 11 August 1947. Like the Chief of Staff's Advisory Board the Haislip Board was interested in attaining greater unity within the Army and greater efficiency and economy of operation. This policy meant greater executive control over the department's operations than the Eisenhower reorganization had provided. As one means of accomplishing this goal, both boards recom

16 (1) Raymond J. Snodgrass. Organization and Management of the Ordnance Corps, 1945-1958, Monograph, Office, Chief of Ordnance, Jul 58, pp. 31-34. (2) Harry B. Yoshpe, Pre-Korean Role and Operations of the Transportation Corps, 1946–1950. Monograph, Office, Chief of Transportation, 30 Jun 55, pp. 27-33. (3) Conference Memo, Minutes of Conference on Army Reorganization Plan, 5 Oct 49, pp. 6-8, incl. in draft Recommendations of the Vice Chief of Staff to the Chief of Staff and the Secretary of the Army on the Organization of the Department of the Army. C/S 320. 1949 files, RG 110, NARS. Hereafter cited as Minutes of Conference on Army Reorganization Plan, 5 Oct 49.

mended limiting the number of staff agencies reporting to the Chief of Staff directly. This recommendation was one factor in eliminating the Research and Development Division in December 1947. The Haislip Board suggested expanding the Office of the Deputy Chief of Staff by adding an assistant for planning and another for operations in order to keep these functions separate. The Cook report suggested a deputy for ZI administration and one for field operations. Once these agencies were operational "authority to issue orders to the field [should] be withdrawn from levels below the Deputy Chiefs of Staff." 17

An obvious means of limiting the number of agencies reporting directly to the Chief of Staff was to resurrect ASF. General Eisenhower had kept the issue alive after the demise of ASF in a hurried penciled note in December 1946 to the Deputy Chief of Staff, stating: "My own belief is that if war should come, ASF should be immediately reestablished. Should not our plans so state?" 18

Sometime later he directed General Lutes, the Director of Service, Supply, and Procurement, to develop an organization capable of expansion as the headquarters for such a matériel command. General Lutes himself believed the best solution was to create a matériel command similar to that of the newly created Department of the Air Force in peacetime, if only to train its personnel to operate as a team in war.

The subject came up at a meeting attended by General Eisenhower, General Omar N. Bradley, who was shortly to succeed him as Chief of Staff, General Collins, the Deputy Chief of Staff, and Lt. Gen. Henry S. Aurand, General Lutes' successor as Director of Service, Supply, and Procurement, on 21 January 1948. General Eisenhower said the Directorate of Service, Supply, and Procurement should remain as a staff division in peace "under the concept of Circular 138, but provide the nuclear organization for an ASF as an operating command in war." This command would also absorb the lo

17 (1) Memo, Gen Haislip for the D/CS, 29 Dec 47, sub: Army Organization. Cook Report file. (2) Final Report of the War Department Policies and Programs Review Board, 11 Aug 47, p. 54. Hereafter cited as Haislip Board Report.

18 Photostat of handwritten order, General Eisenhower to DCofS, Dec 46. Tab A-2, Planning for a Logistics Command-1948, OCMH.

gistic functions of the Army staff but not the administrative services as ASF had done in World War II.19

General Collins then instructed General Aurand on 2 February 1948 to develop an "outline plan for a wartime ASF” in co-operation with the other General Staff directorates. An informal ad hoc committee headed by an officer from General Aurand's office considered several alternative methods. The committee considered first three parallel commands, personnel, training, and logistics, each under a General Staff director. The training command would include the training of technical and administrative service personnel. These three commands would function under a "Deputy Chief of Staff for Mobilization" and ZI administration. A "Deputy Chief of Staff for Operations" would be responsible for overseas commands and any ZI combat operations. Within the continental United States the Army commanders would control housekeeping functions in their areas along the lines suggested in Operation TACT.

Such a plan would have stripped the technical and administrative services of their training and personnel functions, subordinating them to the Deputy Chief of Staff for Mobilization. In the field the services would be subordinate to the Army commanders. Those services performing such unique functions as medicine, communications, construction, and transportation would become Army staff directorates. The Chemical Warfare Service would be eliminated.

A less drastic alternative proposed to adopt the ASF PostWar Organization Plan of 1944, retaining the technical and administrative services as such. The final proposal suggested a Logistics Command similar to that recommended in the Somervell Plan of 1943. Under a "Director of Logistics" and five functional directorates, plans, requirements and resources, operations, administration, and control, the technical services would be reorganized into functional groups-research and

10

1o (1) DF, Lutes to DCofS, 30 Sep 47. Cook Report file. (2) Memo, General Collins for General Aurand, Dir, SS&P, 2 Feb 48, sub: Role of the Service, Supply, & Procurement Division, summarizing General Eisenhower's views at the meeting on 21 January. Tab A-4, Briefing Book, Dir Log, 29 Mar 48, sub: The Pros and Cons of a Logistics Command, OCMH.

development, procurement, supply, fiscal, construction, communications, medical, and transportation.20

General Aurand wanted to present these proposals to the General Staff for comment first and, after obtaining agreement within the General Staff on what position to take, to consult the technical services. Learning that General Aurand was to brief the Assistant Secretary of the Army, Gordon Gray, on The Pros and Cons of a Logistics Command, the Chief of Engineers, General Wheeler, acting as spokesman for all the technical service chiefs, requested permission to present their case to Mr. Gray at the same time. At this point General Eisenhower revised his earlier position. In a letter to General Bradley written after he had resigned as Chief of Staff and retired he said his 1946 note did not "imply any thought that the technical and procurement services should be abolished." To this he was "violently" opposed. He simply meant that "in war, a single command, responsible only to the Chief of Staff should

(1) Memo for Record, 6 Feb 48, sub: ASF Type Organization. Tab 5, Right, Planning for a Logistics Command-1948. (2) Staff Study, c. Feb 48, sub: Organization of a Logistic Command. Tab 1, Left, Planning for a Logistics Command-1948, OCMH files. (3) Staff Study, Lt Col Bernard S. Waterman, Ch, Projects Br, Control Office, Log Div. 18 Mar 48, sub: Organization for Logistic Functions. Tab 2, Left, Planning for a Logistics Command-1948. (4) Organization chart of Logistics Command. Tab B-lla, The Pros and Cons of a Logistics Command.