And that is true. The area of special concern are oilers. Naval oilers are equipped to refuel warships alongside. This does require special equipment and those ships with this equipment are tracked.
Oilers can also refuel astern, this doesn't require any special equipment, after all, you simply pass a hose along a rope line. But it is slow and is often prone to breakage. Again, a naval oiler has the additional equipment needed to refuel in all three positions (abeam and astern).
Its the amount of time needed to convert that seems to be most up in the air. If the hull of the merchantman was strengthed to support derricks, then the equipment can be mounted in as little as four days. If it doesn't have the support structure in place, then it can take longer, as much as two weeks, to complete the conversion.
Undersea replinishment is a bit more complex than simply pulling alongside and opening up the cargo hatches. A lot of modern merchantmen simply don't have the derricks to unload themselves any more, being little more than carriers of bulk material or container ships.
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The reason that the American Army does so well in wartime, is that war is chaos, and the American Army practices chaos on a daily basis.
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