Roads
for
National
Defense
The Pershing Map
Shortly before the passage of the Federal Highway Act of 1921, Chief MacDonald asked the War Plans Division of the Army General Staff to designate the most important roads for national defense, and he supplied maps on which to show these roads. In 1922 the Army produced the “Pershing Map,” showing for the first time the main roads of prime importance in time of war. For the most part, these coincided with the principal roads selected by the States for their 7 percent systems, and, in fact, the War Department’s general position was that a system of highways that was adequate to serve the industrial and commercial demands of the Nation would adequately serve the military requirements also.[N 1] All of the routes on the Pershing Map were incorporated into the Federal-aid system.
In 1935 the BPR and the War Department restudied the military highway needs to establish priorities for improvement. These priorities were then passed on to the States for use in planning their own highway programs. These needs were a principal factor in selecting the 26,700-mile system of interregional highways recommended by the BPR in its 1939 report, Toll Roads and Free Roads.
In the postwar years, the United States had allowed its military forces to sink into the same unprepared condition that had prevailed before World War I. The rude awakening came in 1939 when the Germans seized Czechoslovakia and prepared to invade Poland. In August 1939, Congress hastily appropriated $2 billion for defense, and the country began rearming.
The War Department again reviewed its strategic highway map, adding more routes which brought the total up to some 74,600 miles, of which 29,000 miles were considered of immediate importance to the defense effort. The Public Roads Administration (PRA) (successor to the BPR in a governmental reorganization plan) and the State highway departments immediately began an inventory of the strategic network roads which disclosed that thousands of miles of the network failed to meet adequate standards for either military or civilian traffic. Worst of all, the survey revealed that there were 2,400 bridges that were unable to safely sustain the H-15 loading of the American Association of State Highway Officials, which was then the standard for bridges on the Federal-aid system.[N 2]
- ↑ In 1921 General Pershing had testified before Congress that what the United States needed for defense was not wide transcontinental superhighways, but a network of good roads blanketing the country.
- ↑ Since 1935 the Army had designed military equipment to stay within the limits of AASHO bridge loadings. Bridges designed for H-15 loading would readily carry all classes of military equipment except 50-ton tanks. These could safely pass under special speed and spacing restrictions.
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