14. The European Phase of Magic Carpet was completed by February, 1946
By February of 1946, the European part of Operation Magic Carpet was complete. The harbors of the American East Coast were clogged with ships which had participated in the operation, many of them awaiting the opportunity to enter the breakers’ yards, manned by skeleton crews. The harbors of New York, Baltimore, and Norfolk, and the river bases in Philadelphia and Charleston bustled with floating cranes and service vessels as the reusable equipment on ships was dismantled and placed on trucks and railroad flat cars for shipment to storage warehouses. Rather than a fighting Navy, by early 1946 the United States had a cargo and construction fleet for the most part.
The Pacific Magic Carpet faced difficulties which weren’t present in Europe. The veterans returning from Europe had been moved by rail or army truck to the cigarette camps to await processing and a ship to take them home. In the Pacific, men were scattered across the vast ocean, in garrisons on small islands, advanced air bases, and at fleet anchorages. From the Aleutians to Australia, men had to be picked up and delivered to assembly points, from whence they were shipped home, either to the West Coast, or via the Panama Canal to Norfolk, New York, and other Navy facilities. The role of collecting the isolated units in the Pacific fell in large part to the Navy’s workhorse of World War II, the destroyer.
