Operation Transit (ii)

'Transit' (ii) was the US plan for the movement of large numbers of men and considerable quantities of matériel from Europe to the Pacific theatre, by sea via the Panama Canal, following the end of the war against Germany (1945).

The object of the undertaking, of which only the earliest steps had been completed before the surrender of Japan brought World War II to an end, was to strengthen the US Army forces already in the Pacific theatre (Lieutenant General Walter C. Krueger’s 6th Army Lieutenant General Robert L. Eichelberger’s 8th Army) with Lieutenant General Courtney H. Hodges’s 1st Army and thereby increase the chances of swift and therefore less bloody success in the the proposed 'Olympic' and 'Coronet' invasions of the Japanese home islands.