World War II history of NSD Clearfield, Utah

Navy Supply Corps Newsletter, March-April, 2003 by Greg R. Johnson

Logisticians are the unsung heroes of the military service. At the beginning of U.S. involvement ADM Ernest J. King, then Chief of Naval Operations, stated, "I don't know what the hell this logistics is ... but I want some of it!" If the United States was to be successful in prosecuting its Pacific campaign against Japan, it would need to sustain a mammoth logistical pipeline to naval forces operating in the Pacific theater of operations.

With the stinging Japanese blows at Pearl Harbor fresh in mind the Navy was determined to protect its material stockpiles and logistical treasures from the reach of enemy attack. The site at Clearfield, Utah, was highly desired as it was beyond the reach of Japanese carrier aircraft. In addition the Clearfield site was strategically located in that it was roughly equidistant from every major seaport on the West Coast. In the event that a major port an the West Coast were to come under Japanese attack it could be resupplied within one day by rail or by air within a matter of hours.

The Navy's strategy to retake the Pacific was to build forward operating bases as it occupied island after island. The Japanese Navy in its early efforts to challenge the United States had moved quickly to take Wake Island, Guam, and the Philippines and to cripple the U.S. Fleet at Pearl Harbor. The outcome of the war would be determined by who controlled strategic island chains. The war in the Pacific would focus on control of islands previously unknown to the average American household. These island chains would be the forward receiving points for rear staging areas such as NSD Clearfield.

Naval doctrine called for setting up Advanced Base Functional Components (ABFCs) at forward-operating bases in the Pacific. These forward-operating bases would have different requirements depending on the type of operating forces that would be located at these locations. ABFCs were as diverse as Mobile Optical Repair Units to Gardening Units. Each ABFC was conceived with a specific table of equipment designed to enable an ABFC to fulfill its intended mission.

One of the principal taskings of NSD Clearfield was to assemble this table of equipment for the various ABFCs in the Pacific theater of operations. Assembling this equipment was an incredible challenge. NSD Clearfield was sandwiched between the production schedules of contractors tasked with producing the urgently required material and the operational schedules of the Pacific Fleet. Juggling the minutia of these competing schedules was a logistical feat of the first order.

Shipping material from NSD Clearfield to the fleet required coordination worthy of a Broadway production. The Transportation Section of NSD Clearfield maintained a very close relationship with the railroads so as to maximize its effectiveness in speeding its shipments to the West Coast for onward shipment. This group had its own railway service, which serviced the sprawling NSD Clearfield complex. This railway service brought incoming shipments to Clearfield and shipped outgoing requirements to the fleet.