I've read stories of the naval battles of WWII and it always amazes me how many shells were fired and how far away they engaged. Seems like often there were several hundred firings during a naval battle in order to land a killing blow on the enemy. Imagine the magazine hold on the ship that had to hold all the ammo that ship could fire in a tour at sea . Did they have to return to port to restock or did they restock at sea?
We didn't really do much underway replenishment during WW-II. In the Pacific, as we took islands back, they would start moving supplies forward to these advanced bases so stocks of shells, bombs and fuel could be picked up in places like Espiritu Santo and not have a trip back to Pearl. The SeeBees did a tremendous job building those bases in rapid fashion as we beat Japan back.
