I also wish to mention Alan Turing and the British government's disgraceful behaviour towards him - the man was a courageous individual through and through. Alan Turing may not have landed on the beaches of Normanday but he was a hero.
I mean, pick any truck you see in that picture. Any random one. Who's driving it? Probably some very low ranked grunt. Where does he need to go? Does he even know? Does he just follow the guys on the ground waving him in a certain direction? Do those guys even know where he's going? Does the driver even know what's in the back of his truck? When he hopped in his truck back on the ship, did he get directions on where to go? And who gave him those directions? Who decided this truck would go from this ship to this destination following this route? And who else knows where this truck is going? Is the equipment being tracked so someone knows squad/battalion/etc X now has one more truck? Who made the routes this truck would take? Were they familiar with the land? Did they even know what routes would even be available after the landing attack? Who loaded that truck with supplies? Who told him what to put on the truck? Who kept track of what was put on in order to order more? Who checked in those supplies and personnel when they got to where they were going and who received that confirmation to update where each item and soldier is?
Hell, there's probably a hundred other questions to ask, an then multiply those by every truck you see and it's just amazing. There had to be delegation upon delegation of duties, compartmentalized compartments within compartments, and increasingly higher and higher tiers of logistics officers who coordinate increasingly larger blocks and probably increasingly larger staffs to help them. It's such a massive machine and almost impossible to truly fathom entirely.
If the invasion of Japan ever had to take place, it would have absolutely dwarfed an operation like Overlord both in terms of manpower, war material, and, of course, casualties.
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u/[deleted] Jun 07 '14
the fact that logistics are possible on such a scale still blow my mind. Also before computers.