In the 73 years since the end of World War ?, the U.S. Navy has not faced serious and sustained battle damage in the face of combat operations. During that conflict in the Pacific it was the ability to quickly repair battle damage - forward - that kept force levels sufficient to drive the enemy back. Without facilities and personnel positioned forward, a large part of the fighting force would have been wasted in transit between the battle lines and repair yards in Pearl Harbor, some 3000+ miles to the East, or the West Coast, 5000+ miles to the East. Many of the ships were so heavily damaged that they never would have survived such a voyage. Figure 1 below shows the location of Allied and Axis bases in the early days of the Pacific war.
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