AMERICA ILL PREPARED TO FIGHT FULL SCALE WAR IF CHALLENGED TO-MORROW

Otago Daily Times, Issue 26413, 18 March 1947, Page 5

AMERICA ILL PREPARED TO FIGHT FULL SCALE WAR IF CHALLENGED TO-MORROW

Rec. 9.30 p.m. WASHINGTON, Mar. 16. A correspondent of the Associated Press, after questioning military planners, says that if the United States should be challenged to-morrow it could not fight a full-scale war before 1948. It would take at least three months to mobilise men from the pool of 5,000,000 trained ex-servicemen which the army estimated are available. It would take another six months from the time the first combat division was re-formed until it could be organised, equipped, re-trained, and put into action. The number of divisions which could be used immediately could be counted on the fingers of one hand. Officials said the equipment and supplies remaining from the last war probably would be sufficient to outfit and reconstitute the army at the start, but they expressed a doubt about the prospect of getting plants back into quick production of war goods. They recalled that by Pearl Harbour day there was a nucleus for war production due to foreign orders, but now virtually all plants have thrown out tools for such production.

The Associated Press correspondent adds, however, that the air forces and navy are in a better position than the army.