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Show Fleet Off japan Has Floating Base Distance Problem Is Being Solved by 400 Units. A FLOATING NAVAL BASE, SOMEWHERE IN THE PACIFIC The United States navy took its own supply base along with it for the attacks on Iwo Jima and the Tokyo area. The American answer to the most gigantic logistics problem in naval history that of supplying provisions, pro-visions, fuel and ammunition for warships in action far from island bases or docking facilities is a "secret weapon" which has upset Japanese strategy. The answer is simply that all naval installations in this most advanced ad-vanced area are floating. Everything, Every-thing, from drydocks . to Quonset huts, bobs right along in the wake of the fleet itself. Installations include floating cranes, hotels, repair units, bakeries, baker-ies, offices, refrigerated warehouses, ware-houses, wells, drydocks and repair ships. The base has more than 12,-000 12,-000 workers, many of whom live in a floating hotel called the Ritz-Carlton. Ritz-Carlton. More than 400 pieces of floating equipment include electrical equipment equip-ment repair ships, tugboats, 3 fresh-water tankers, an evaporation evapora-tion ship capable of making 120 gallons gal-lons of water daily and a ship which does nothing but supply bakery goods. , For the current operation, enough food was loaded on task force vessels ves-sels to feed Columbus, Ohio, for 30 j days; enough spare clothing to clothe 1,500,000 persons, and enough candy, shaving cream, tooth paste and miscellaneous items -to stock 6,000 drug stores. In addition, the force carried 100,000,000 cigarettes. No naval base anywhere ever was required to service in such limited lim-ited time so many ships as were handled here before this operation, involving the largest concentration of warships in naval history. , m |