nominate his best two men, one of whom was selected by Somervell and Lee for SOS headquarters, while the other remained in Washington. Somervell was disturbed by the proposed troop basis of the European Theater of Operations (ETO), which provided for just 277,000 personnel. This represented about 26 percent of the proposed theater strength, which Somervell felt was insufficient to unload, transport and store the flow of Bolero supplies. He was overruled by the Operations Division (OPD) of the WDGS, which prioritized combat and air units for deployment to the UK. Its 1942 troop basis for the Army as a whole provided for only 11.8 percent of the Army's strength to be service troops. USASOS was unable to raise units without personnel, but by June 1942 every theater commander was calling for more. They then accepted partially trained units with the idea that they could learn on the job, but this did not work out well. In September, OPD slowed the activation of ground units and raised the proportion of service troops to 35 percent. That month, the War Production Board sent Somervell a report by the economist Simon Kuznets, which concluded that the purchasing agencies had been so preoccupied with placing contracts and expediting production of military goods that in the process they had exceeded the ability of the economy to produce them. The result of the uncontrolled purchasing would be widespread shortages of raw materials. Somervell and Patterson were skeptical, but agreed that setting unrealistic production targets was counterproductive. The matter was referred to the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who cut the military spending by $13 billion to $80 billion (equivalent to cutting by $ billion to $ billion in ). The planned strength of the Army was reduced by 300,000 and there practice of issuing only 50 percent of the equipment allowance of units in training was extended. North Africa The increase in service troops in ETOUSA came too late. The flow of Bolero supplies overwhelmed the service units in the UK, and were stored in depots without proper markings, and without records being kept of what was in each depot. The result was that equipment required for Torch could not be located in time, and on 8 September Lee had to ask for it to be shipped from the United States. USASOS was unable to ship the requested of supplies in time, but with frantic efforts