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BOLERO

One immediate outcome was the establishment of machinery to concentrate U. S. troops in England. The build-up operation, called BOLERO, was to provide a force of about one million men specifically equipped to carry out an air offensive in 1942, a major invasion of the Continent in 1943, and if agreed on, a continental operation in conjunction with the British in 1942. The establishment of BOLERO planning formalized and intensified the process of preparing United Kingdom bases for American troops, but the process had begun long before. As a result of the ABC-1 decisions of early 1941 the War Department had drawn up deployment plans to be put into effect if and when America came into the war.

The big issue to be decided, General Marshall argued in August 1942, was whether the main US effort should be in the Pacific or in the Europe-Middle East area. By the agreement of July 1942 the US Chiefs of Staff withdrew fifteen groups of aircraft from allotment to BOLERO with the avowed intention of using them in the Pacific. Although the Joint Chiefs did not agree on how far the BOLERO strategy had been or should be modified to step up the war in the Pacific, they were clearly pressing for some modification. Even before the TORCH decision, the concept of the "strategic defensive" in the Pacific had been defined to include "limited offensive operations." Before TORCH swept the larder, US forces by the end of September 1942 had built up in the United Kingdom to about 188,000 men, including one armored and three infantry divisions. In the course of the next five months, TORCH took three of the four divisions, and a total of over 150,000 troops. The North African invasion, launched on 8 November 1942, met almost immediate success and raised with new urgency the question which the July decisions had left unanswered: What next?

Although partially replenished by shipments from the United States, net US strength in Britain had fallen to 107,801 by the end of February 1943. This was the low point. The build-up thereafter began to recover slowly. However, the one division passed over by TORCH, the 29th, remained the only division in the United Kingdom until the fall of l943.