Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) committee

Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) committee, principal US inter-service body which formed the Combined Chiefs of Staff (CCS) committee with its UK counterpart, the British Chiefs of Staff (COS). Under the American president, it was responsible for operational strategy in the Pacific war, for co-ordinating operations in China with Allied strategy in the Far East, and, as part of CCS, with operational strategy elsewhere.

At the time of the Washington conference in December 1941 (see ARCADIA) the principal US inter-service committee was the Joint Board, comprising the service chiefs, their deputies, and the heads of the War Plans Division and air arms of the two services. However, with the formation of the CCS it became necessary to form an American body that matched that of the COS. This was formally constituted in February 1942 as the JCS committee. On it sat the Army Chief of Staff, General Marshall, Admirals Stark and King, and Lt-General Arnold, the commanding general of the US Army Air Forces. When Stark departed the following month for London as C-in-C US naval forces in Europe, his position as Chief of Naval Operations, the US Navy's senior post, was merged with that of King as C-in-C of the US Fleet.

In July 1942 Roosevelt, after it was pointed out to him that there was no American equivalent of Lt-General Ismay— Churchill's representative on the COS committee and his chief of staff in Churchill's capacity as minister of defence—appointed Admiral Leahy the committee's chairman and his chief of staff, an appointment unprecedented in American history. However, Leahy's functions were different from Ismay's, who was not a COS committee member, and his influence within the committee, dominated by Marshall and King, was limited. Under Leahy's chairmanship the committee remained unchanged throughout the war, and it became the apex of the US executive command structure below which lay numerous joint committees which dealt with every aspect of waging the war. Unlike the COS committee, which was integrated into the British cabinet committee system (see UK, 3), it was responsible directly to the president in his capacity as C-in-C US armed forces. Because of this it was given more scope—and in turn tended to give more to its field commanders—than its British counterpart; but it was occasionally overruled by its political master which the COS committee never was. See also USA, 5, andGrand Alliance.

Bibliography

Hayes, G. P. , The History of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in World War II: The War Against Japan (Annapolis, Md., 1982).