of heavy blows; it is not entirely clear, therefore, how often operational art
actually equates to art, rather than something more akin to elementary math.
Fortunately, the sheer weight of this amount of material production, combined
with war stuffs produced by the Soviet Union, made it possible for the Allies—of
which the American formations provided an ever-increasing percentage—to
engage and destroy large portions of Axis forces in major land, sea, and air
battles. However, pre-war planning and training exercises had not prepared
commanders and staffs to handle such large numbers of personnel under arms.
As one historian explained, ‘by 1939, the Army had virtually forgotten how to
conduct training on a broad scale. Very few officers could handle organizations
larger than a battalion’. 41 In other words, when the war began, American opera-
tional art existed more in theory than in practice.
The ability to mobilize and deploy vast resources helped compensate for early
operational blunders and setbacks. The first such setback was the Japanese dual
attack on Pearl Harbor and the Philippines on 7 December 1941; American forces
lost 8 battleships sunk or badly damaged, and over 300 aircraft were destroyed or
damaged, crippling the striking power of the US Pacific Fleet and the US Far East
Air Force. 42 This audacious attack left US territorial possessions in the Pacific
isolated, and they fell in rapid succession to Japanese assaults. These were focused
assaults, concentrating combat power on the capture of key airfields, road junc-
tions, and the neutralization of critical fighting formations. Japanese operational
art was thus an application of modern manoeuvre principles in a theatre that was
characterized by vast expanses of water and scattered island groupings, rather
than European road and rail networks. American operational art would learn
from and copy this approach, and turn it against the Japanese. It was not until the
Battle of Midway in June 1942, however, that the Japanese advance would be
decisively halted, losing four of their six carriers and hundreds of trained pilots
and air crewmen; in a single day, the Japanese navy lost more experienced men
than she could generate in a year. Although the Japanese would continue to
advance in other areas, they had lost the initiative, and began to consider transi-
tioning to a strategy of attrition with the aim of achieving a negotiated settlement.
The outcome of the battle enabled the Allies to launch a tentative counter-offensive
against the Solomon Islands and Guadalcanal two months later.
At the outbreak of the war, the United States had some seventeen army
divisions rated as combat ready, along with another twenty or so in various states
of mobilization; however, as noted above, the commanders and staffs lacked the
training necessary to employ these combat-ready divisions as corps and armies. 43
As tautological as it may sound, operational art is nothing without operational
capability. The lack of operational-level experience was a significant shortcoming
that plagued US forces for the first few years of the war. There were also critical
shortages in ammunition and other supplies and a tendency to send forces
overseas in an ad hoc, stopgap manner to respond to crises, all of which greatly
hampered the coherent articulation of US operational grammar.
A notable setback took place at Kasserine Pass in February 1943, where the US
2nd Corps clashed with a portion of Rommel’s Panzer Army Africa. American
146 The Evolution of Operational Art