US Marine Corps - The Black Vault

Piannzng fo~ War, 1940–1941 165
planners continued, the basic concept of the future war which the United
States would wage was close to being a Jointly agreed upon one. This con-
currence permitted an agreed upon draft of Rainbow Five to be hammered
out in five months.
Admiral Ingersoll, the #2 in Naval Operations in 1940–41, and later
Commander in Chief, Atlantic Fleet, told this author:
One thing you should mention is that Kelly Turner wrote Ruirrbow Three
and the first supporting draft for Rait~bow Five. zl
Rairlbow Five, the famous and quite excellent War Plan placed in effect
on 7 December 1941, immediately following the Pearl Harbor attack, was
approved initially by the Joint Board on 14 May 1941. A revised draft was
approved only four weeks before the United States was fully in World
War II.
Vice Admiral Turner testified in regard to Rainbow Five on 3 April 1944:
While the Navy Department believed that our major military effort, considered
as a whole, should initially be against Germany—that view, I may
add, was also held by the War Department--we were all in agreement that
the principal naval effort should be in the Pacific . our strongest naval
concentration and naval effort ought to be in the Central Pacific.zz
THE PRE-WORLD WAR II PLANNING EFFORT
During the period of two and a half years from June 1939 to December
1941, the Navy published and promulgated three major War Plans in detail
—Rainbow One, Rainbow Three, and Rai?~bow Five. The Army published
and distributed only one, Rainbow Five, but certainly the essential one. It
was a tremendous Service-wide planning effort.
The War Department had planning problems in connection with the
Rainbow Plans. Mark S. Watson in his official Army history of this effort
says:
But in the case of the undermanned and underequipped Army, these plans
were far from realistic, and hence were little more than Staff studies. This
theoretical approach was inescapable, in view of the weakness of forces which
would be available on war’s sudden arrival. Most of the plans defined ultimate
offensives, but with awareness that they would require forces that would be
available only long after war should start. This meant that comprehensive
planning, which is the only planning of importance, had made far less head-
“ Ingersoll.
“ Pearl Harbor Hearings, part 26, p. 266.