Logistics are vital to naval operations. As the US Navy’s Admiral Hyman Rickover put it, ‘The art of war is the art of the logistically feasible.’
HMAS Sydney conducts a Replenishment at Sea with German Navy Ship Frankfurt Am Main during Exercise Rim of the Pacific (RIMPAC) 2024.
Even before the Greek trireme (an oar-powered war galley), ships needed to carry food and fresh water for the crew, parts and weapons. This aspect of logistics obviously continues. Naval vessels need fuel, ammunition and maintenance parts, and those aboard need food and fresh water. Navies were reliant on bases for supply, repairs and replenishment.
Modern navies add scale and complexity to logistics requirements. At the same time, those needs have led to the creation of specialist supply and support vessels. Supply ships enable fleets, and often air and ground forces, to operate in theatre for longer periods of time. Navies continued to be reliant on bases. Nations with strong sea power tended to have bases and coaling stations around their area of operations, sometimes extending to the whole world.
Two significant developments in naval replenishment took place during the Second World War: replenishment while underway, and the fleet train. Although replenishment of oil while underway had been trialled during the First World War—by, allegedly, Chester Nimitz—it became established practice in the Second World War. The fleet train was less a fleet of freight and escort ships, and more a logistics system that displayed superb supply-chain management skills.
By 1945 the fleet train and replenishment while underway were a highly effective combination. In the ten-week Battle of Okinawa, the US Navy was able to replenish naval vessels while underway with 1.6 trillion litres of fuel oil, 57 million litres of aviation gasoline, 998 aircraft, 15,000 tonnes of bombs and ammunition, and large quantities of other materiel and food.
Some examples of RAN logistics operations include transporting the Australian Military and Naval Expeditionary Force to capture Rabaul in 1914, and the destroyers that formed the ‘Tobruk Ferry’ to replenish the Australian troops besieged in Tobruk in 1941. The RAN supported, supplied and transported Australian and Allied land and air forces in the Pacific in 1942 to 1945, the Vietnam War (in which HMAS Sydney (III) earned the nickname ‘Vung Tao ferry’), East Timor and both Gulf Wars.
Learn more:
Presence, Power Projection and Sea Control: the RAN in the Gulf 1990-2009
Strength through diversity: The combined naval role In operation stabilise
Sea Power: Challenges Old and New, Proceedings of the RAN, Sea Power Conference 2006
The RAN makes its Australian Maritime Logistics Doctrine public. The doctrine is available at the link below.