06-01-2009, 09:34 AM
Brakie Wrote:Russ Bellinis Wrote:I think it is interesting that sometime during the 1960's or 1970's, I think when LBJ was president, but I'm not sure, the government decided that we did not need ships to transport war materials any longer. We could fly everything in with jumbo jets. Then we needed to resupply Israel after one of their wars in the mid 1980's. It took over 60 days, if I remember correctly, to do the job. The problem was not that we couldn't fly everything in, it was that we could not get the planes on the ground, unloaded, and back in the air quickly enough. We ended up with a backlog of planes "flying the pattern" waiting for landing space. Sea Land was replacing their steam powered SL-7 ships with more economical but slower diesel ships. The government bought the SL-7's, retrofitted them with ramps to convert them into roll-on/roll-off operation and put them in service with the Navy. One SL-7 could haul as much tonnage as all of the aircraft flew into Israel in 60 days in one load and get it anywhere in the world and unloaded in less the 20 days! You would have thought we would have learned something from the Berlin Air lift in the early 1950's!
Russ,Troop ships no longer fit into the military plans.The word now and has been air mobile...You can deploy air bourne and the air cav divisions faster in any area in a matter of a few days complete with air and armor support.
Then why did we need a fleet of ships for up to six months to prepare for Desert Storm I? The actual truth is that aircraft can deploy troops, but not the armor and enormous logistical requirements necessary to support a modern military force, nor can they move anything into a hostile air zone. For example, there aren't enough aircraft in the world to provide the fuel requirements for our forces in the Middle East - tankers are required on a constant schedule. The same goes for ammunition and any other high density bulk supply.