1. An Enormous and Enormously Successful Feat
In one round trip, the aircraft carrier USS Wasp transported 1200 Italian POWs from the US to Naples. The following day, it sailed back to the US, with 4000 American servicemen. US occupation forces were also ferried to Germany, Japan, Korea, and China. Simultaneously, Chinese troops were sealifted from southern to northern China to disarm the Japanese, as well as oppose Chinese communists in the region. Hundreds of thousands of disarmed Japanese were also shipped from all over eastern and southern Asia, as well as numerous Pacific islands, back to Japan. It had taken nearly four years for America to deploy over 8 million servicemen overseas. It took only 14 months to reverse the torrent, and return most of them back home. In short, Operation Magic Carpet was an enormous, and enormously successful, feat of logistics, planning, and execution.
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Where Did We Find This Stuff? Some Sources and Further Reading
History Collection – D-Day’s Black Barrage Balloon Operators, and Other Lesser Known WWII Facts
National Naval Aviation Museum – Magic Carpet Ride
National WWII Museum – Home Alive by ’45: Operation Magic Carpet
US Army Center of Military History – Mobilization: The US Army in World War II
