Talk:SS President Coolidge

Immediate military consequences of ship's loss

Text from United States Army In World War II — The War Department — Global Logistics And Strategy 1940-1943:

(p. 393-394) In October the effort to tip the precarious balance in the South Pacific reached a climax. Ghormley and Harmon decided to shift the Americal Division from New Caledonia to Guadalcanal, where the marines were being depleted by climate, disease, battle weariness, and battle casualties. The 43d Division, originally destined for New Zealand, had to be sent to New Caledonia to replace the Americal, and the War Department decided to send the 25th Division from Hawaii to either the South or the Southwest Pacific. Most of the 43d Division was transshipped from New Zealand, but the first regimental combat team and a harbor defense unit were shipped on the President Coolidge late in September directly to Noumea and thence to Espiritu Santo, primarily to protect the new airfield from which the forces on Guadalcanal received their bomber support. Off Espiritu Santo the Coolidge ran into an American mine field and sank. Personnel losses were slight, but all equipment was lost. Six 155-mm. Howitzers were hastily removed from a vessel at Noumea en route to Australia; remaining losses were made up from reserves of the 43d and Americal Divisions, which in turn had to be replenished from the United States, at additional cost in cargo shipping. The untimely sinking of the Coolidge also delayed the movement of the 25th Division from Hawaii.

(p. 395) Late in October, when the Japanese made their final great effort to crush the American forces on Guadalcanal, the President asked the Joint Chiefs to commit all available weapons and resources to the fight. General Marshall in reply pointed out that there were already sufficient forces in the area and that the main problem was “to distribute and maintain them by transport in critical combat areas.” The shortage of cargo shipping in the Pacific, for both services, was estimated at twenty-five ships a month during the next three months; this shortage was strangling the flow of maintenance supplies and backlogged equipment to forces already in or on their way to the scene of action. About the same time War Shipping Administration officials were warning of the general shrinkage of merchant shipping and the drying up of the commercial trades as sources for further accretions to the military pool. In their opinion it would not be possible to sustain the current operations in the Pacific along with the larger undertakings in the Atlantic, except by diversions from lend-lease services or from support of the Middle East and India.

Hulls were desperately short at the time. Loss of one of the largest, faster transports complicated buildup in the entire South/Southwest Pacific. Palmeira (talk) 02:45, 7 May 2013 (UTC)