Piercing the Fog 

Intelligence and Army Air Forces 

Operations in World War I1 

John F. Kreis 

General Editor 

with contributions by 

Alexander S. Cochran, Jr. 

Robert C. Ehrhart 

Thomas A. Fabyanic 

Robert F. Futrell 

John F. Kreis 

Williamson Murray 

Air Force History and Museums Program 

Bolling Air Force Base 

Washington, D.C., 1996 
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data 

Piercing the fog: intelligence and Army Air Forces operations in World War I1 

I John F. Kreis, general editor; with contributions by Alexander S. Cochran 

. . . [et al.]. 

cm. - (Special studies I AF History and Museums Program) 

Includes bibliographical references and index. 

1. World War, 1939-1945-Military intelligence-United States. 2. 

United States. Army Air Forces-History-World War, 1939-1945. 3. 

World War, 1939-1945-Aerial operations, American. I. Kreis, John F., 

1940- . 11. Series: Special studies (Air Force History and Museums 

Program (U.S.)) 

D810.S7P49 1995 

p. 

940.54'49734~20 95-1 1550 

CIP 

~~ ~~ ~ 

For sale by the Superintendent of Documents, U.S.Government Printing Office, 

Washington, D.C. 20402 

ii 
FOREWORD 

WHEN JAPAN ATTACKED PEARL, HARBOR on December 7,1941, and 

Germany and Italy joined Japan four days later in declaring war against the 

United States, intelligence essential for the Army Air Forces to conduct 

effective warfare in the European and Pacific theaters did not exist. Piercing the 

Fog tells the intriguing story of how airmen built intelligence organizations to 

collect and process information about the enemy and to produce and disseminate intelligence to decisionmakers and warfighters in the bloody, horrific 

crucible of war. Because the problems confronting and confounding air 

intelligence officers, planners, and operators fifty years ago still resonate, 

Piercing the Fog is particularly valuable for intelligence officers, planners, and 

operators today and for anyone concerned with acquiring and exploiting 

intelligence for successful air warfare. More than organizational history, this 

book reveals the indispensable and necessarily secret role intelligence plays in 

effectively waging war. It examines how World War I1 was a watershed period 

for Air Force Intelligence and for the acquisition and use of signals intelligence, 

photo reconnaissance intelligence, human resources intelligence, and scientific 

and technical intelligence. 

Piercing the Fog discusses the development of new sources and methods 

of intelligence collection; requirements for intelligence at the strategic, 

operational, and tactical levels of warfare; intelligence to support missions for 

air superiority, interdiction, strategic bombardment, and air defense; the sharing 

of intelligence in a coalition and joint service environment; the acquisition of 

intelligence to assess bomb damage on a target-by-target basis and to measure 

progress in achieving campaign and war objectives; and the ability of military 

leaders to understand the intentions and capabilities of the enemy and to 

appreciate the pressures on intelligence officers to sometimes tell commanders 

what they think the commanders want to hear instead of what the intelligence 

discloses. The complex problems associated with intelligence to support 

strategic bombardment in the 1940s will strike some readers as uncannily 

prescient to global Air Force operations in the 1990s. 

A half century ago, accurate, timely intelligence contributed significantly 

to victory and hastened the end of World War 11. Such a legacy is worth reading 

and thinking about by all those responsible for building, maintaining, and 

employing air power. How well intelligence is integrated with air operations is 

... 

111 
Foreword 

even more important today than it was in the past. It will continue to prove as 

critical in the next century as it has been in this one. 

RICHARD P. HALLION 

Air Force Historian 

iv 
PREFACE 

THE MILITARY CALAMITY IN EUROPE in mid- 1940 called into serious 

question the ability of Great Britain to survive before the Geman onslaught. 

The near collapse of the Soviet Union in late 1941 after Germany’s invasion 

prompted President Franklin D. Roosevelt to conclude he would eventually 

have no choice but to take up active, declared participation in the conflict. 

Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, followed by Hitler’s declaration 

of war on the United States, decided the how and when. The Japanese attack not 

only plunged America into the war; the surprise of that attack underscored the 

woeful state of American military intelligence. Unable to meet the demands of 

field commanders and planners, military intelligence deficiencies imperiled 

efforts of the Army and Navy to defeat the enemies ranged against them 

worldwide. 

The Army Air Forces (AAF) were particularly deficient in information 

about enemy air forces and targets, a situation prompted by the AAF’s 

subsidiary position within the Army and by the limited understanding of the 

new art of air warfare. Improvements in that understanding and in the 

relationships between intelligence analysis and the use of its product in 

preparing first-rate offensive and defensive air and joint air-land-sea operations 

are the subject of this history. 

This volume treats the wartime period between 1941 and 1945, although 

preliminary discussion explores the interwar era, a time when the U.S. Army 

Air Corps developed an air doctrine that would place such strenuous demands 

on air intelligence during World War 11. For the wartime period, the study 

weighs the impact of air intelligence on doctrine, planning, strategy, tactics, 

resources, and joint and combined operations. This history addresses the various 

tools of intelligence including ULTRA, MAGIC, photointelligence, and Y 

intelligence. Human intelligence, the information from agents knowledgeable 

about enemy areas, is addressed in those geographical regions where it 

influenced air operations. In recounting events of the Pacific war, place names 

are spelled as they were at the time, and Japanese personal names are presented 

with the family name preceding the given name. 

Works of this nature and magnitude are possible only with the generous 

assistance of a variety of institutions and individuals. The authors are indebted 

to the Yale University Library for permission to cite and quote from the Henry 

L. Stimson Diaries and to the helpful staffs at the Library of Congress, 

V 
Preface 

Manuscript Division; the National Archives, Military Reference Branch, and the 

Washington National Records Center; The U.S. Army Military History 

Institute; the Air Force Historical Research Center; Air University Library; and 

the Reference Branch at the Air Force History Support Office. A special thanks 

is offered to those historians at the Air Force History Support Office who 

diligently read and critiqued the numerous early drafts and the publication 

division for turning draft work into final form. 

Eagle Aviation Services and Technology, Inc. (EAST, Inc.), of Chantilly, 

Virginia, researched and wrote this book while under contract to the U.S. Air 

Force. The Office of the Assistant Chief of Staff, Intelligence, Headquarters, 

USAF, provided the funding, while the Air Force History and Museums Program served as executive agent for project oversight. 

Special thanks are owed Maj. Gen. James C. Pfautz (USAF, Ret.), who 

sponsored and fully supported this project while serving as Assistant Chief of 

Air Staff, Intelligence, and to Richard H. Kohn, former Air Force Historian, 

who saw the work undertaken. It fell to the members of the final review panel 

to read the manuscript in its entirety, and to these people the authors owe 

special appreciation for their insights and advice. Richard G. Davis, Diane T. 

Putney, Herman Wolk, R. Cargill Hall, Eduard Mark, and Col. David Tretler 

represented the Office of Air Force History on the panel, while Richard Wolf 

participated from the Air Force Intelligence Agency. The panel’s outside 

scholars included General Pfautz, who long believed that a historical analysis 

of this nature would be of interest to the informed public, B. Franklin Cooling 

of the Department of Energy, Ray Cline, formerly of the Office of Strategic 

Serviczs and the Central Intelligence Agency, Capt. Roger Pineau (USN, Ret.), 

who served as an intelligence officer in the Pacific during World War 11, 

Kenneth McDonald of the Central Intelligence Agency, and Edward J. Drea of 

the U.S. Army Center for Military History. The suggestions and perspective 

offered by the outside scholars were especially helpful. 

The authors are indebted to Frank W. Anderson, former NASA deputy 

historian and an Air Force intelligence officer during World War 11, for the 

substantive editorial support he brought to this project and to Barbara Wittig, 

project editor for this volume. 

vi 
AUTHORS 

ALEXANDER S. COCHRAN, Jr., teaches military history and strategy as a 

Professor of Military History at the Air War College, Maxwell Air Force Base, 

Alabama. He received a B.A. in history from Yale University and a Ph.D. in 

history from the University of Kansas. His publications include The MAGIC 

Diplomatic Summaries and Lemnitzer: His Life and Times, as well as numerous 

book chapters and articles on World War I1 strategy and intelligence. 

Professor ROBERT C. EHRHART is editor and principal author of Modern 

Warfare and Society, coeditor of Air Power and Warfare, and author of several 

articles on military history and airpower doctrine. A twenty-year veteran of the 

U.S. Air Force, he holds a Ph.D. in history from the University of Texas at 

Austin and an M.S. in ForestryIRange Management from the University of 

Montana. He serves as a Visiting Assistant Professor at the University of 

Montana’s School of Forestry. 

THOMAS A. FABYANIC is President of Eagle Aviation Services and 

Technology (EAST), Inc. He is the author of Strategic Air Attack in the United 

States Air Force: A Case Study and of various chapters and articles on war, air 

doctrine, and military professionalism. He earned an M.A. and a Ph.D. in 

history at St. Louis University. 

ROBERT FRANK FUTRELL holds a B.A. and an M.A. from the 

University of Mississippi and a Ph.D. from Vanderbilt University. During 

World War 11, he served as a historian with the U.S. Army Air Forces at the 

AAF Tactical School and with the Far East Air Forces in the Philippines. He is 

the author of The United States Air Force in Korea, 1950-1953; The United 

States Air Force in Southeast Asia, The Advisory Years to 1965; and Ideas, 

Concepts, Doctrine: A History of Basic Thinking in the United States Air Force. 

He is also the author of numerous articles related to air power history. Before 

retirement, Futrell served for many years as aprofessor of military history at the 

Air University, Maxwell AFB, Alabama. 

JOHN F. KREIS, a retired U.S. Air Force officer, is a historian and military 

and defense analyst as well as a Senior Fellow of the Air Force Historical 

Foundation. He holds a B.A. in economics from Willamette University, Salem, 

Oregon, and an M.A. in medieval history from the University of Delaware. He 

is the author of Air Warjiare and Air Base Air Defense, 1914-1973, as well as 

numerous articles on air power history and operations. 

vii 
Authors 

WILLIAMSON MURRAY is Professor of History at The Ohio State 

University and an Intelligence Officer in the U.S. Air Force Reserve. Among 

his publications are Military Effectiveness (which he coauthored in three 

volumes); Strategy for Defeat: The Lufhyaffe, 1933-1945, and the previous 

edition, Lufhyaffe; and The Change in the European Balance of Power, 

1938-1939: The Path to Ruin. He holds a B.A., an M.A., and a Ph.D. in history 

from Yale University. 

... 

Vlll 
TABLE OF CONTENTS 

Page 

FOREWORD ................................................ iii 

PREFACE ................................................... v 

AUTHORS .................................................. vii 

Introduction 

John F . Kreis ................................ 1 

Chapter 1 Early Intelligence Organization in the Army Air Corps 

....... 11 

American Air Intelligence in World War I ........... 12 

Air Intelligence in the 1920s ...................... 17 

Air Intelligence in the Early 1930s ................. 20 

The Air Corps Tactical School and Air Intelligence .... 24 

Acquisition and Evaluation of Air Intelligence: 

Developments in Europe and Asia .............. 28 

AWPD- 1 : Planning an Air War .................... 46 

Air Intelligence on the Eve of Pearl Harbor ........... 51 

A Tentative Assessment .......................... 54 

Thomas A . Fabyanic and Robert F . Futrell 

The Approach of War ............................ 39 

Chapter 2 The Tools of Air Intelligence: ULTRA. MAGIC. 

Photographic Assessment. and the Y -Service 

Alexander S . Cochran. Jr., Robert C . Ehrhart. and 

John F . Kreis ............................. 57 

ULTRA ........................................ 59 

The Importance of ULTRA in the European Theater ..... 74 

Photointelligence ............................... 80 

Y Intelligence .................................. 94 

ULTRA and MAGIC in the Pacific and CBI ............ 99 

B Section .................................... 105 

Operational SIGINT and the Far East .............. 106 

ix 
Contents 

Chapter 3 Building an Air Intelligence Organization and the 

Robert C . Ehrhart. Thomas A . Fabyanic. and 

European Theater 

Robert F . Futrell ......................... 111 

Pearl Harbor and Implications for Air Intelligence .... i13 

Creating the Office of the Assistant Chief of Air Staff. 

Intelligence ............................... 116 

Air Intelligence Training ........................ 126 

The Air War in Europe: Organizing Eighth Air Force's 

Intelligence ............................... 132 

Eighth Air Force: Early Operations ................ 140 

Countering the German Air Force ................. 146 

Intelligence Implications for the Strategic Air Campaign in Europe ............................ 150 

TORCH and Northwest Africa ..................... 157 

Chapter 4 The European Theater of Operations. 1943-1945 

Robert C . Ehrhart .......................... 171 

Mediterranean Theater: 1943-1945 ................ 173 

Strategic Air Operations in Europe: Spring 1943 to 

OVERLORD and Tactical Air Operations in Western 

Strategic Air Operations: Summer 1944 to Spring 

Spring1944 ............................... 190 

Europe: 1944-1 945 ......................... 224 

1945 ..................................... 237 

Chapter 5 The Pacific and Far East. 1942-1945 

John F . Kreis .............................. 247 

The South and Southwest Pacific .................. 249 

Assessing the Watchers: The Allied View of Japanese 

Air Intelligence ............................ 292 

Chapter 6 Taking the Offensive: From China-Burma-India to the 

B-29 Campaign 

John F . Kreis .............................. 297 

China and the Fourteenth Air Force ................ 312 

The Central Pacific ............................. 324 

B-29 Operations Against Japan ................... 329 
Contents 

Chapter 7 Planning the Defeat of Japan: The A-2 in Washington. 

John F . Kreis .............................. 349 

Organization and Interservice Relationships ......... 355 

Army Air Forces’ Y-Service ..................... 361 

Far East Target Analysis ........................ 364 

German and Japanese Interchanges and Implications 

for the War on Japan ........................ 371 

Army Air Forces Intelligence and the Atomic Bomb . . 380 

The Reorganization of 1945 ...................... 389 

1943-1945 

Chapter 8 Retrospection 

Williamson Murray ......................... 393 

Doctrine. Intelligence. and Air Power: The Prewar . 

Preparations ............................... 395 

Intelligence and the Air War in Europe ............. 401 

Intelligence and the War in the Pacific ............. 413 

Conclusion ................................... 421 

NOTES .................................................... 425 

GLOSSARY ............................................... 465 

BIBLIOGRAPHICNOTE ..................................... 469 

SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY ................................... 476 

INDEX .................................................... 483 

PHOTOGRAPHS 

Maj . Gen . Mason M . Patrick. Brig . Gen . William Mitchell 

Brig . Gen . Haywood Hansell. Jr., Col . Grover C . Brown .............. 49 

Maj . Gen . Henry H . “Hap” Arnold 

............ 19 

............................... 50 

An Enigma machine ........................................... 62 

Lt . Gen . Elwood R . Quesada. Brig . Gen . Orvil A . Anderson, Maj . Gen . 

Frederick L . Anderson, Lt . Gen . 0 . P . Weyland .................. 71 

Maj . Gen . Hoyt S . Vandenberg. Maj . Gen . James H . Doolittle .......... 72 

Medmenham ................................................ 86 

Wing Commander Douglas Kendall, Lt . Col . William J . O’Connor; 

Aerial photo plotting ....................................... 88 

xi 
Contents 

Brig . Gen . Ira C . Eaker. Capt . Elliot Roosevelt ...................... 91 

Brig . Gen . George C . McDonald ................................. 93 

Walter R . Weaver, Maj . Gen . George E . Stratemeyer ............ 123 

Col . Harris B . Hull ........................................... 144 

Lt . Gen . John K . Cannon, Col . Karl L . Polifka ..................... 179 

Operation STRANGLE ......................................... 186 

Lt . Gen . Earle E . Partridge ..................................... 187 

The Combined Bomber Offensive ........................... 196-197 

Oil campaign in Romania ................................. 21621 1 

Bombing offensive against the German rail system ........... - . 214-215 

The German V-l-V-2 effort .............................. 218-219 

Lt . Gen . George C . Kenney, General Nathan F . Twining ............. 254 

Lt . Gen . Millard F . Harmon, Lieutenant Ennis C . Whitehead .......... 258 

Battle of the Bismarck Sea ..................................... 266 

Air attacks on Rabaul ......................................... 273 

Maj . Gen . Victor Bertrandais ................................... 282 

Maj . Gen . Clayton L . Bissell ................................... 302 

Air attacks on Japanese supply lines ............................. 316 

Brig . Gen . Clinton D . Vincent; Bombing in China .................. 319 

Maj . Gen . Claire Chennault, Lt . Gen . Albert C . Wedemeyer .......... 321 

Maj . Gen . Willis H . Hale, Maj . Gen . Robert W . Douglass, Jr .......... 327 

Maj . Gen . Laurence S . Kuter ................................... 330 

Maj . Gen . Kenneth B . Wolfe, Brig . Gen . Curtis E . LeMay ............ 336 

Brig . Gen . Lauris Norstad ..................................... 341 

Col . Paul W . Tibbetts and the crew of the Enolu Guy ................ 345 

Nagasaki mushroom cloud ..................................... 347 

General Thomas D . White, Maj . Gen . James P . Hodges .............. 351 

Maj . Gen . Howard C . Davidson ................................. 362 

Maj . Gen . Richard C . Lindsay .................................. 379 

Maj.Gen.CarlA.Spaatz ....................................... 92 

Maj . Gen . Muir S . Fairchild, Brig . Gen . Edgar P . Sorenson, Maj . Gen . 

OperationOVERLO RD ......................................... 225 

Tokyofire-bombraid ......................................... 343 

P-38, F-13 ................................................. 419 

MAPS 

Western Mediterranean ....................................... 159 

German Air Industry Targets ................................... 193 

Italy ...................................................... 185 

P47EscortRanges .......................................... 198 

xii 
Contents 

P-38andP-51EscortRanges .................................. 199 

German Synthetic Oil Plants ................................... 200 

CROSSBOW ................................................. 217 

Normandy ................................................. 227 

Pacific Ocean Areas .......................................... 255 

Southwest Pacific Battle Area .................................. 264 

China-Bunna-India .......................................... 299 

B-29Bases ................................................. 337 

CHARTS 

G.2. Southwest Pacific Area ................................... 260 

Directorate of Intelligence. Fifth Air Force ........................ 262 

Relationship of Combined Photographic Interpretation Units to Eastern 

Aircommand ........................................... 309 

A-2. U.S. Army Air Forces .................................... 356 

Comparative Air Intelligence Functions in China-Burma-India ....... 303 

xiii 

INTRODUCTION 

CREATING THE ARMY AIR FORCES’ (AAF’s) intelligence organization 

in World War I1 proved a complicated undertaking, requiring new skills and 

technologies to meet a host of demands. Fashioned and completed within four 

years, the novel enterprise helped shape the conduct and outcome of that 

conflict. Beginning the war with a handful of people pursuing information in 

Washington, air intelligence ended the war with thousands of men and women 

processing enormous amounts of data and analyzing millions of photographs for 

what would soon become America’s newest and most technically oriented 

armed service. 

Finding that his service had an inadequate understanding of potential enemy 

air forces, in May 1939 Maj. Gen. Henry H. “Hap” Arnold, Chief of the U.S. 

Army Air Corps,* began establishing personal contacts with those who might 

help provide it. That month Arnold met unobtrusively at West Point with 

Charles A. Lindbergh, the first man to fly solo across the Atlantic and recently 

returned from a celebrated tour of Germany. During the meeting, Arnold later 

noted, Lindbergh provided more information about the German Air Force’s 

“equipment, apparent plans, leaders, training methods and present defects” than 

Arnold had as yet received from any other source.’ The Army Air Corps began 

studying its intelligence requirements that summer, but it had hardly defined 

them before Americaentered World War 11. Once in the conflict, in conjunction 

with other services and in different regions of the world, the AAF greatly 

increased its ability to collect, analyze, and disseminate the information and 

material that came to be called air intelligence. 

Defining intelligence as it affected air operations was one of the first steps 

in creating an intelligence system. Air intelligence included all the information 

about an opponent and his military, air, and naval forces that could reduce risk 

or uncertainty in planning and conducting air combat operations. Commanders 

have always sought such information, but for the AAF the demands of 

intelligence gathering and analysis in World War I1 were beyond the ken of 

most of the officers who had served between the wars. When America formally 

*The Army Air Corps became the AAF with an Air Staff in June 1941. With 

reorganization of the Army on March 9, 1942, the AAF became coequal with the 

Army Ground Forces and Army Services of Supply (later the Army Service Forces). 
Piercing the Fog 

entered the war, air intelligence was needed for two types of air warfare: tactical 

and strategic. Tactical, or operational, air intelligence analysts working in the 

war theaters had to locate opposing enemy forces and attempt to define their 

size, combat capability, technology, and tactics. Analysts had to locate targets 

for the tactical air units that would support the plans of the joint air-ground or 

air-sea operations commander. 

Strategic intelligence, similar in principle to its tactical counterpart, also 

required seeking, analyzing, and disseminating information beyond that needed 

to support the direct clash of opposing forces. In pursuing the Allies’ World 

War I1 military aims, strategic air intelligence analysts attempted to identify 

German, Italian, and Japanese national war-making resources that could most 

effectively be attacked by a limited strategic bomber force. These intelligence 

studies also attempted to establish priorities to guide destruction of target 

groups as diverse as petroleum refining and distribution, transportation, aircraft 

assembly, and steel production. Despite the substantial and growing effort that 

airmen applied to this problem, target categories and priorities could not always 

be clearly defined, or agreed upon; uncertainty over what was critical to the 

enemy’s wartime economy could never be completely eliminated. 

Once the analytical process was reasonably complete, the information had 

to be imparted to commanding officers so that they might decide how best to 

concentrate and use the available air power. Air commanders, for a variety of 

reasons, might or might not be willing to accept an intelligence assessment. The 

intelligence officers identified the targets they believed should and could be 

attacked. But the capabilities of opposing air defenses could not always be 

determined precisely, and evidence to support any assessment had to be 

convincing. Many commanders exhibited a natural reluctance to accept 

another’s suggestions or recommendations because a decision that proved 

wrong in combat could be disastrous to their command and career. Ego 

sometimes intervened, making it difficult for a commander to accept ideas 

counter to his preconceived notions. For intelligence officers, whether stationed 

in Washington, Europe, or the Far East, the first important task usually involved 

gaining the trust of the senior officer they served. Only then could their work 

begin to influence planning and operations. 

To be effective, intelligence analysts had to produce information that was 

timely and useful to a commander. No matter how perceptively drawn the 

intelligence officers’ observations might be, delay in preparation or dissemination could mean that an operations planning staff received the information too 

late. Adjusting to new demands for intelligence and learning to use intelligence 

products to best advantage did not always come quickly or easily to the AAF’s 

officer corps. 

Adding to the challenge, on December 7, 1941, the United States armed 

forces had no effective central intelligence organization responsible for 

collecting, analyzing, and disseminating data about enemies or potential 

2 
Introduction 

enemies. The Army (War Department) and Navy (Navy Department) each 

provided for its own intelligence needs; the War Department’s General Staff 

G-2, or Army Intelligence, also fulfilled AAF intelligence needs. The G-2 

office had expanded from 22 people in 1939 to 500 in December 1941. With 

such rapid growth, few on the G-2 staff were proficient in intelligence work.2 

Before the war, the Air Staff had but a small office, the Information Division, 

only a part of which attempted to establish contacts with federal agencies able 

to provide facts and reports about foreign air power. Fewer than a dozen people 

formed this rudimentary air intelligence ~ffice.~ 

A good example of the inadequacy of the ramshackle prewar intelligence 

structure of the AAF can be seen in the preparation of the air requirements 

annex to the War Department’s Victory Program, generally called AWPD-1. 

That air plan, drawn up by a small group of officers during the summer of 1941, 

was the initial AAF blueprint for air warfare during World War 11. AWD-1 ’s 

basic premise was to secure victory in Europe by the application of enough 

high-altitude aerial bombardment to break down the industrial and economic 

structure of Germany while holding the Japanese at bay in the Far East. The 

plan envisioned destroying Germany’s electric power production, her 

transportation system, and her ability to process petroleum and manufacture 

synthetic oil products. AWPD-1 was not an operations plan that laid out such 

things as logistics, command arrangements, and base assignments; rather, it 

stated the overall purposes of the air offensive and estimated the numbers and 

types of aircraft, the amount of bombs needed, the trained people and the overall 

time required, and the general target categories and numbers of installations to 

be attacked. After the war, Haywood S. Hansell, Jr., one of the plan’s authors 

and an officer who had worked in Arnold’s prewar air intelligence office, noted 

that not only was strategic intelligence sparse, but the planners had not realized 

what immense demands their air plan would make upon the wholly inexperienced air intelligence office. AWPD-1 itself made no provision for gathering 

target information, organizing photointerpretation to support the reconnaissance 

aircraft, or determining whether targets selected were the correct ones and 

whether attacks on them had actually achieved the hoped-for result^.^ In tactical 

air warfare, air intelligence specialists had to deal with a wide range of tactical 

problems. 

The absence of a central, coordinated intelligence operation doubtless 

contributed to the disaster at Pearl Harbor and in the Philippine Islands, where 

in one day the Japanese destroyed virtually the whole of the AAF’s strategic and 

tactical air capability in the Far East. Throughout the war, no central intelligence activity served either the armed forces or national policy. Prewar creation 

of the office of the Coordinator of Information (later called the Office of 

Strategic Services [OSS]) and the Joint Intelligence Committee of the Joint 

Army-Navy Board (later the Joint Chiefs of Staff [JCS]) were too little and far 

too late to solve the problem in the early years of fighting. The OSS was itself 

3 
Piercing the Fog 

prevented from developing to its full potential. At no time during the war did 

any OSS office, including that of the director, receive deciphered code (ULTRA) 

material, except for a small amount from British sources. The full effects of the 

disparate and for the most part uncoordinated intelligence efforts varied greatly. 

Sometimes the services acted together, as in early 1944 when the U.S. Army, 

Navy, and AAF, in conjunction with the Royal Air Force (RAF), divided 

worldwide responsibilities for combined air intelligence. This division of labor 

essentially recognized existing activities and, by reducing duplication of effort 

and increasing the speed of work, partially solved a number of problems. 

Although the respective services gained the intelligence tasks they most 

preferred, the agreement did not address the core issue of central control of the 

collective work, nor did it solve the interservice or organizational problems 

faced by the air intelligence specialists in the various war theaters. Perhaps the 

extraordinary pressures of total war, the personalities of the leaders involved, 

and the conduct of certain sensitive activities-such as the highly secret 

cryptanalytical projects of the Army, Navy, Federal Bureau of Investigation, 

and Coast Guard-precluded any overarching, centrally controlled intelligence 

organization. 

After the attack on Pearl Harbor and the Philippines, the need for adequate, 

reliable information about the enemy became at times desperate. Between 

December 1941 and May 1942, Japanese forces swept throughout Southeast 

Asia and threatened Australia and New Zealand. Having occupied the continent 

of Europe, German forces advanced on Moscow, while U-boats savaged Allied 

shipping in the Atlantic. Allied leaders clamored for an immediate air offensive 

against Germany. Responding to these conditions, the AAF’s wartime 

intelligence effort, like the air arm itself, grew rapidly. 

Early wartime conditions, to be sure, multiplied pressures on the young air 

intelligence officers, most of whom had no previous experience in this arcane 

business. They had to respond to demands for intelligence about combat 

conditions in almost a dozen theaters of war. Responses to the demands for 

intelligence in each region of conflict, as one might imagine, varied greatly. No 

theater air force was the equivalent of any other in terms of its size, mission, 

organization, personnel, fighting experience, or in its allocation of aircraft and 

weapons. So no air intelligence office in any theater working for a major air 

commander was quite like any other. 

The Assistant Chief of Air Staff (AC/AS), Intelligence, or A-2, supervised 

all of the field intelligence operations, though exercising no direct control over 

units in the field. This office did have specific duties in support of General 

Arnold, of the Twentieth Air Force, and of other Air Staff office^.^ For the field, 

the A-2 provided such things as target folders, area studies, maps, and related 

materials. The A-2 also coordinated the assignments of trained intelligence 

specialists, directed the operation of stateside intelligence training programs, 

4 
Introduction 

and dealt with the other services or agencies that supported air intelligence 

around the world. 

Two numbered air forces far removed from one another illustrate the 

differences that far-flung air intelligence officers experienced. Facing the 

Lufhyafse, the Eighth Air Force in Great Britain could draw on the RAF’s years 

of air intelligence experience and on the products of ULTRA’S penetration of the 

German Enigma encryption device. From the earliest days of American air 

operations in Europe, the Eighth’s intelligence office (and then that of the U.S. 

Strategic Air Forces in Europe [USSTAF]) possessed advantages unknown to 

airmen in the same line of work in other theaters. Across the Pacific Ocean, 

facing Japan’s army and naval air forces, the Fifth Air Force in Australia and 

New Guinea had built its air intelligence on the slim base of trained Australian 

specialists and the experience of some American airmen who had escaped from 

the Philippines and the Netherlands East Indies. The Japanese encryption 

methods, particularly those of the Japanese Army, proved extremely difficult 

to penetrate, and ULTRA sources in that region were for many months limited 

to extracts from the MAGIC diplomatic summaries and to the fruits of US. Navy 

intelligence efforts in Honolulu, where direction finding, traffic analysis, and 

entry into some of the Japanese Navy’s encryption systems shed light on some 

of the enemy’s important capabilities and intentions. The size and tasks of air 

intelligence in Alaska, China, India, Egypt, or the Central Pacific had to be 

tailored to fit the needs of the local Allied command structure and the enemy 

situation. 

Nor did the number of people assigned in one locale reflect the extent of the 

problems addressed or accomplishments made by air intelligence elsewhere. 

Differences in enemy forces, climate and terrain, commander’s priorities, chain 

of command, availability of information, and the application of new technology-all created different circumstances that affected the local A-2’s 

involvement in planning, strategy, and tactics. For example, the RAF’s practical 

experience in aerial photography operations, its excellent cameras and 

reconnaissance aircraft, and, above all, the skilled photointerpreters at RAF 

Medmenham (the main British photoreconnaissance center) strongly influenced 

creation of a similar and highly productive AAF effort in the British Isles. 

Interwar American photographic experimentation had resulted in development 

of the wide-angle strip camera excellent for terrain mapping, the long-distance 

oblique camera, and high-altitude cameras plus a wide variety of film. The RAF 

and the AAF were ideally suited in the advantages each brought to the 

Alliance.6 Photoreconnaissance and photointerpretation became extremely 

important tools for air and ground intelligence everywhere, but, until 1944, in 

no other theater were its practitioners as proficient as the American and British 

Allies in the United Kingdom. 

When American air officers in Great Britain realized the importance of 

photointelligence to tactical and strategic bombardment, they were convinced 

5 
Piercing the Fog 

that no modern air force could operate without it. That meant the AAF needed 

its own photoreconnaissance organization, if for no other reason than to avoid 

dependence on another service or country for this critical intelligence. That 

conviction grew among Eighth Air Force leaders, a conviction later conveyed 

to Washington: the service had to develop its own photointelligence resources 

to support an eventual, separate air force. 

In Washington, the air intelligence function had its first reorganization in 

March 1943. To focus and concentrate intelligence under a single officer, the 

AAF disbanded the Air Staff intelligence operations unit-the Air Forces 

Intelligence Service-subsuming much of their work in an expanded A-2. 

General Arnold soon changed the direction of air operations intelligence studies 

and air operations planning when he created the Committee of Operations 

Analysts (COA). The COA, as it became known, drew on intelligence 

information from many sources, including A-2, to determine target priorities 

for Germany and, later, for Japan. That these priorities, in hindsight, were not 

always the most appropriate ones does not gainsay the times when they were 

correct nor the importance of a focused attempt to seek the most effective 

answers to the most difficult questions involving the employment of strategic 

air power. 

The COA, although independent of A-2, became one of the primary users 

of air intelligence material as it drew up target category recommendations aimed 

at destroying German industry and Hitler’s military. Despite the efforts of the 

COA and the OSS’s Enemy Objectives Unit (EOU) in London, unforeseen 

technical difficulties associated with high-altitude precision daylight bombardment and German air defenses forced changes in the strategic bombardment 

planning. In 1944 the COA turned its attention to a similar effort directed at 

Japan. In the Orient, persistently inclement weather and high winds aloft (i.e., 

the jet stream) over the Japanese home islands likewise prompted changes in 

strategic bombing tactics.’ These unanticipated problems only intensified air 

intelligence efforts; among many AAF leaders, strategic bombing doctrine 

remained virtually an article of faith. 

General Arnold’s decision to organize the COA marked a significant 

change in the AAF’s recognition and acceptance of air intelligence. The AAF’s 

commanding general realized the importance of a target plan that would ensure 

the best use of American strategic bombers to destroy an enemy’s capacity to 

wage war. Creation of the strategic bombardment forces had, after all, rivaled 

or exceeded the investment in thg Manhattan Project. Arnold drove his people 

relentlessly throughout the war; he knew that the fortunes of a postwar air force 

rested on how well he and his service met the war’s demands, and on demonstrating air power’s importance in ending the war as rapidly as possible. 

Enlisting experts from outside the AAF-using businessmen, scholars, and 

engineers to analyze prospective target systems-was typical of Arnold. He did 

much the same thing for AAF scientific research, enlisting scientists first under 

6 
Introduction 

the direction of Edward L. Bowles, head of the communications division of the 

department of electrical engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and later the aerodynamics expert, Theodore von KfirmAn, of the California 

Institute of Technology.’ But the existence of COA, independent of the Air 

Staff, was to many air intelligence officers an indictment of their work, showing 

that Arnold did not trust his own A-2 to undertake the targeting assignment-at 

least that was the impression of Brig. Gen. Edgar Sorenson, chief of A-2 at that 

time. 

If the hesitancy of the commanding general to place full faith and trust in 

his intelligence specialists meant that he judged the young air force to be short 

of all the skills needed for independence, it surely implied that A-2 lacked 

public and professional stature. Perhaps this accounted for the frequent changes 

in the wartime officers assigned as AC/AS, Intelligence. It may also have kept 

A-2 from competing effectively with the other service intelligencechiefs for the 

resources available, thus leaving the AAF at an operational and political 

disadvantage. 

Air intelligence within the AAF did compete with other service intelligence 

agencies. Turf scraps over roles, missions, and prerogatives continued 

throughout World War I1 and into the postwar period. The most prominent 

among the A-2’s rivals, and the organization most reluctant to give the Air 

Staff‘s intelligence office an unfettered hand, was the War Department General 

Staff, G-2. The G-2 served as the main intelligence agency for the U.S. Army,’ 

setting policy and controlling subordinate offices’ activities and relationships 

with other agencies. Since the AAF was a branch of .the Army, one or another 

of the G-2’s components could be quick to perceive a future diminution of its 

own operation and, in classic bureaucratic fashion, refuse to affirm the need for 

an independent A-2, or even the need of the A-2 to conduct what easily might 

be recognized as pressing air intelligence duties. The enormous undertaking of 

the war eventually forced some bureaucratic moderation and increased 

autonomy for the A-2; the Army’s main intelligence office, even with its own 

internal air intelligence unit, simply could not meet all of the demands for 

intelligence information. 

Although G-2 staff offices gave up some of their control and allowed 

increased latitude of action for A-2 during the war, they always did so 

informally. The G-2 chief retained formal authority and responsibility for all 

Army intelligence matters, including those of the AAF. By war’s end, the A-2 

still existed rather ambiguously as a temporary wartime expedient. The 

frustrations of those who worked for air intelligence around the world, but most 

especially in Washington, reflected the general frustrations of many in the AAF 

who sought recognition as a separate and equal service. 

Some in the AAF (and its A-2 office) unquestionably viewed the Army’s 

ground officers (and its G-2) as a malevolent force intent on suppressing the air 

arm (and its intelligence function), but that perception was unfair. In some 

7 
Piercing the Fog 

areas, the G-2 had good reason for refusing the A-2 freedom of action. The 

G-2’s Military Intelligence Service never divulged to more than afew of A-2’s 

most senior people (who were themselves prohibited from disclosing their 

knowledge) the nature and extent of the ULTRA interception and decryption 

system. That effort, pursued in conjunction with the British Government Code 

and Cypher School, was too important to risk compromising. Unfortunately for 

all concerned, the G-2’s refusal to be open about its activities left feelings of 

uneasiness, deep frustration, and confusion among A-2 officers throughout the 

war.” 

Such conflicts were not limited to the Army; serious interservice difficulties 

existed as well. For much of the war’s early years, the rival Navy and Army 

cryptographers took potshots at one another. In March 1943, E. E. Stone of 

Naval Intelligence (OP-20-G, the Navy decrypting agency) wrote to the 

Director of Naval Communications, opposing the Army G-2’s suggestion to 

merge Army and Navy radio intelligence. Stone remarked on the Army’s 

frequent complaints that the Navy was not disclosing vital information by 

pointing out that it was information from Navy decrypts of Japanese messages 

that made possible the devastating success of General MacArthur’s Fifth Air 

Force B-25s and Seventh Fleet PT boats at the battle of the Bismarck Sea. 

Stone went on to state, “As for General Strong’s lMaj. Gen. George V. Strong, 

G-21 remarks concerning the fact that allocation agreement prevents the Army 

from working on material which is vital to it, the fact is the Army has 

accomplished practically nothing whatsoever in obtaining operational radio 

intelligence.” To support his case, Stone claimed that the Navy had just taken 

over from the Army responsibility for a Japanese Army-Navy liaison 

cryptographic system used in the Southwest Pacific that the Army had been 

unable to solve in a year. Within a week, Stone said, “we made more advance 

than the Army [had] in twelve months.”” 

Making matters the more sensitive, soon after Pearl Harbor and the Battle 

of Midway, British officials had become uneasy; they did not believe Americans could be trusted with full knowledge of the ULTRA effort and the 

information it produced. The U.S. services were just too lax with security, the 

British believed. British distress increased when the U.S. Navy staged the 

“Yamamoto Mission” in April 1943; Great Britain temporarily broke off 

negotiations with American officials for sharing ULTRA and MAGIC information.” Not until the late spring of 1943 did a G-2 representative travel to 

London to be initiated into the closed world of the operational use of ULTRA. 

It was months later, perhaps not until early 1944, before General Arnold and his 

A-2 gained access to British ULTRA information sent to the G-2 from England. 

Arnold learned about the MAGIC Diplomatic Summaries shortly after the 

attack on Pearl Harbor, but his formal knowledge of both the European and Far 

East versions of ULTRA, the Allies’ most valuable World War I1 secret, came 

much later. In England, the staff of the Eighth Air Force, which planned and 

8 
Introduction 

conducted the daylight strategic bombardment of Germany and occupied 

Europe, received information from the British cipher accomplishments at a 

much earlier date. Sworn to secrecy, those in the Eighth who knew could 

discuss the information with very few others engaged in the same tasks. In 

Washington, the Air Staff could claim no such need to know and it remained 

largely isolated from ULTRA information. Arnold seems to have learned about 

the secret independently, probably from a number of sources, including Maj. 

Gen. George C. Kenney home from the Southwest Pacific in March 1943, and 

from some of his Eighth Air Force officers in London. Many years after the war, 

General George C. Marshall’s biographer recalled that Marshall told him that 

he never gave Arnold access “. . . to any of that [ULTRA] material. He found out 

on his own.’’’3 Ever the shrewd politician, Arnold knew that the information 

from ULTRA could advance the success of combat operations, and he used it to 

the advantage of his service. 

At other times, U.S. Navy leaders conducting military operations in the 

Pacific sometimes seemed reluctant to release intelligence information to the 

AAF. But the Navy-dominated Joint Intelligence Center, Pacific Ocean Area, 

headquartered with the Commander-in-Chief Pacific, at Pearl Harbor, normally 

maintained harmonious relations with the largely U.S. Army-staffed Southwest 

Pacific Area Central Bureau in Brisbane, Australia. In early 1944, Great Britain 

and the United States divided air intelligence responsibilities between London 

(for the Axis powers in Europe) and Washington (for Japan). The American 

military services, in turn, subdivided responsibility for differing aspects of 

intelligence operations among the Navy, Army, and the AAF. Although still a 

combat arm of the Army, the AAF had considerable autonomy because of 

Arnold’s status as a member of the JCS. The AAF became a recognized junior 

partner in the worldwide intelligence analysis enterprise. 

The division of responsibilities in Washington worked to the AAF’s longterm advantage, especially when the JCS created the Joint Target Group (JTG) 

in September 1944. Directing its attention primarily to target systems in Japan, 

but with a continuing side interest in Germany, the JTG functioned as a jointservice office within and under the auspices of the A-2. Having a predominant 

influence in the JTG gave the AAF an advantage after the war, when the B-29 

bomber force became the nucleus of a Strategic Air Command. The position of 

the AAF as executive agent for joint strategic target planning matched well the 

postwar responsibilities that devolved to strategic air power. 

By the time of Japan’s surrender in September 1945, the various intelligence organizations of the AAF worldwide exhibited a breadth of abilities and 

competence surprising for the short period in which they had existed. That 

achievement resulted from appointing well-qualified people from civilian life 

to key assignments; associating closely with British and Commonwealth 

intelligence agencies; and receiving unstinting support from the nation’s 

colleges, universities, and businesses. Many intelligence issues remained to be 

9 
Piercing the Fog 

addressed at war’s end, and others would soon surface in the postwar era, when 

the United States faced an increasingly truculent and most-secretive former 

wartime ally, the Soviet Union. 
CHAPTER 1

Early Intelligence Organization in the 

Army Air Corps 

INSTITUTIONALIZING MILITARY INTELLIGENCE in the United States 

began only in the last years of the nineteenth century, and air intelligence has 

been a distinctly twentieth-century phenomenon. The evolution of American air 

intelligence-in the decades preceding World War I1 was marked by contention. 

Compounding the problems of establishing and then of implementing the new 

air intelligence organizations and functions was the relationship between these 

issues of air intelligence and the broader questions of the role and position of 

the American air forces. 

An air force intended primarily to provide direct support to ground forces 

would require intelligence different from that required by an air force that had 

expanded, “independent” missions. Determining the most effective organization 

for the collection, evaluation, and dissemination of air intelligence depended on 

both the purpose of the air arm and its position within the military establishment. Given the lack of consensus throughout this period on either the role or 

the position of American air forces, the Army’s uncertainty regarding air 

intelligence was inevitable. 

As late as one month before its entry into World War I, the U.S. Army 

lacked any form of air intelligence organization. In the course of that war, the 

development of the U.S. Army’s Air Service spawned several organizations, 

both in Washington and with the American Expeditionary Force (AEF) in 

France, concerned with air intelligence or air information, as it was variously 

called. Despite the broad application of air power during that conflict, most 

American Army officers came away convinced the Air Service would remain 

subordinate to the dominant ground forces. To the extent they thought about it, 

air intelligence (by whatever title) involved primarily the use of airplanes and 

balloons to obtain information regarding enemy military forces to support an 

Army commander’s decisions. At times, it also included the collection and 

evaluation of information regarding the air forces of real or potential enemies: 

on this information British, French, and, later, American flyers planned their 

earliest counterair missions in attacks on German airfields. 

11 
Piercing the Fog 

Events in the war and visions of future aviation developments convinced 

some airmen that air power had a role beyond immediate support for ground 

forces. If so, air intelligence had to include a much wider scope and had to be 

the responsibility of individuals and agencies able to understand and best use 

it. 

In the years between the world wars, issues of air intelligence in the United 

States were closely linked with the more fundamental questions of the role of 

air power and its place in the military establishment. The air intelligence 

struggles of this period centered on two axes, organizational and functional. 

Organizational disputes involved questions of the importance of air intelligence 

and the determination of which offices within the War Department should be 

responsible for the relevant information. Initially addressed within the context 

of the War Department General Staff (WDGS) structure, enactment of the Air 

Corps Act of 1926 initiated debates among elements of the Air Corps as well. 

Functional arguments involved more conceptual questions of what 

constituted air intelligence. In the 1920s airmen agreed that the collection and 

evaluation of data necessary to compile the air order of battle (OB) and the 

gathering of other data relevant to foreign air forces were the main tasks of air 

intelligence. By the mid- 1930s, airmen were developing the concept of strategic 

air warfare; they argued it was no longer sufficient to know the enemy’s 

immediate military capability either in the air or on the ground. Despite their 

efforts to promote the doctrine of strategic bombardment, even they failed to 

fully grasp the true extent of the collection and analysis tasks such a doctrine 

implied. 

The revolutionary nature of the strategic bombing doctrine developed at the 

Air Corps Tactical School (ACTS) at Maxwell Field, Alabama, required a 

comprehensive understanding of an enemy’s economic system, with special 

emphasis on war production and its underlying support factors. No American 

air war theorist fully understood this, although some like Muir S. Fairchild 

developed an early appreciation for the task. The failure, perhaps inevitable, to 

resolve basic issues regarding American air power before World War I1 made 

the development of an adequate air intelligence capability almost impossible. 

Moreover, the neglect the Army and the Army Air Corps as institutions 

demonstrated toward intelligence compounded these inherent problems. When 

Japanese bombs fell on Pearl Harbor and Clark Field, the U.S. Amy and its 

AAF still lacked a complete grasp of what air intelligence entailed, what it was 

supposed to accomplish, and how it should be organized. 

American Air Intelligence in World War I 

When the United States declared war on the Central Powers in April 1917, 

military intelligence reflected the general state of unpreparedness in which the 

12 
Early Intelligence Organization 

Army found itself. Maj. Gen. Peyton C. March, wartime Chief of Staff, recalled 

that when the United States went to war, the Army intelligence organization 

consisted of two officers and two clerks. On May 23, 1917, in the General 

Staff‘s War College Division, a Military Intelligence Section opened, and in 

February 19 18, a separate Military Intelligence Division (MID) replaced the 

section. Finally, on August 26, 1918, the Army indicated its appreciation of 

military intelligence by elevating it to one of the four coordinate divisions of the 

General Staff, under the Assistant Chief of Staff, Intelligence, or G-2. The MID 

became the operating agency supporting the policy-making G-2; by the end of 

the war, the MID consisted of 282 officers, 29 noncommissioned officers, and 

948 civilian employees.’ With the wartime growth of the Army’s intelligence 

service, a specialized study of similar needs of air commanders became clear. 

The genesis of American air intelligence occurred with the reorganization 

of the Army’s air arm, the Signal Corps’ Aeronautical Division, on March 19, 

19 17. This reorganization created an Air Intelligence Section in Washington to 

collect and file foreign aeronautical data (primarily of a technical nature, e.g., 

engine performance, aircraft characteristics, armament developments). This 

office, which was soon renamed the Information Section, would distribute this 

information as digests to Army aviation units.’ 

The American declaration of war made the work of the Intelligence Section 

markedly easier. As long as the United States was a nonbelligerent, military 

observers found it difficult to obtain information on the European air forces. 

When theunited States joined the Allies in April 1917, British, French, Italian, 

and Russian missions hurried to Washington, bringing technical information on 

friendly and enemy air forces and seeking American material assistance.* When 

President Woodrow Wilson transferred aviation from the Signal Corps to the 

new Air Service in May 1918, this section became the Air Service’s Aeronautical Information Branch. For the most part, the branch received its information 

through the MID, but in August 1918 the General Staff authorized the Air 

Service to send about twenty officers to Europe to keep it informed of activities 

and developments of the Air Service, AEF.3 

In organizing his intelligence function within the AEF after his arrival in 

June 1917, General John J. Pershing adhered to the existing doctrine that a 

theater army commander was responsible for combat intelligence in his area of 

operations. Pershing established an Intelligence Section and classified it as the 

Second Section (G-2) General Headquarters (GHQ) AEF.4 The GHQ Intelligence Section (G-2) included the MID (G-2-A), whose subfunctions included 

Air Intelligence (G-2-A-7). At HQ AEF in Paris, different sections of G-2-A-7 

worked on interrogation of captured airmen, enemy air OB, bombing targets, 

technical information, and enemy air activity. 

*For a time in the summer of 1917, Maj Henry H. Arnold, later Commanding 

General of the AAF, was the officer in charge of this section. 

13 
Piercing the Fog 

The G-2-A-7 people also supervised branch intelligence officers (BIOs) 

attached to each army headquarters and each army observation and bombing 

group at a ratio of one per corps observation group and one per observation or 

bombing squadron operating independently at the front lines. The BIOs were 

neither pilots nor aerial observers; they were frequently strangers to the flying 

units for which they were expected to perform briefing and interrogation work. 

The BIOs were attached rather than assigned to the flying units because G-2 

GHQ AEF insisted on having an integrated intelligence organization? The 

importance of the G-2-A-7 organization stemmed from the command 

relationships between air and ground forces within the AEF. In France, the Air 

Service AEF did not have operational control over flying units. It existed to 

provide logistical, administrative, training, and personnel support for the 

conduct of air combat operations. Operational air units were attached to and 

were under the control of divisions, corps, and armies. Information relating to 

air operations largely flowed through ground army channels: 

Its supporting role did not prevent the Air Service AEF from developing its 

own internal air intelligence capability. Inspired by the Air Information Section 

in Washington, Lt. Col. Thomas D. Milling succeeded in establishing an 

Intelligence Section, Training Department, Air Service AEF under the guise of 

the Air Service’s responsibility to train American aviation personnel and units. 

When it opened in December 1917, the unit’s initial purpose was to serve as an 

acquisition and distribution point for aeronautical information useful for 

training. The section soon moved to Tours, France, and was redesignated the 

Information Section, Air Service (ISAS), AEF? 

The G-2 of Pershing’s GHQ AEF assumed responsibility for acquiring and 

distributing intelligence information about the enemy’s intentions. The ISAS 

was to collect and pass on information needed for education in the latest 

developments in aerial activity. In March 1918, the Information Section, 

together with radio, photography, and balloon activities, became a group headed 

by Col. Charles DeForest Chandler. The scope of the Information Section’s 

mission broadened to encompass the collecting, filing, editing, compiling, and 

distributing of all military and technical aeronautical information received from 

any source. Additional responsibilities were the collection and publishing of 

instructional material on airplanes and engines. The functions of the Information Section complemented those of G-2-A-7 in that the latter concentrated 

primarily on current intelligence, while the former addressed information less 

immediately critical.’ 

During the war, the ISAS AEF issued over 300 bulletins relative to 

American, Allied, and enemy aviation, including, by directive, “Tactical and 

strategical lessons learned at the front . . . [and] technical information of enemy 

inventions and enemy usages of their air service.” After the war, the Air Service 

retyped many of these bulletins on its own stencils in Washington, issuing them 

as circulars to influence tactical thinking. In the last months of hostilities, the 

14 
Early Intelligence Organization 

Information Section received the additional task of preparing an elaborate Air 

Service AEF history, a function thought necessary to capture all the lessons 

learned during the war.’ 

“Before our entry into the war,” General Pershing wrote, “European 

experience had shown that military operations can be carried out successfully 

and without unnecessary loss only in the light of complete and reliable 

information of the enemy.”” The invention of the aeroplane provided another 

means by which to obtain this information. In preparing for war, European 

armies had expected to use observation balloons, dirigibles, and airplanes for 

aerial scouting, The conflict was only weeks old when events proved the value 

of the new machine in this capacity. 

Reconnaissance by the British Royal Flying Corps in August 1914 provided 

timely and accurate reports of German dispositions. These, according to the 

British field commander, “proved of great value” and helped “to avert danger 

and disaster” in the Battle of Mons.” In September, the Royal Flying Corps’ 

discovery of a gap between German armies and the exposed right flank of the 

advancing forces set the stage for the Battle of the Marne, which prevented an 

early German victory. According to the official British historian of World War 

I, the senior Allied commander, Marshal J. J. Joffre, owed British aviators “the 

certainty which had enabled him to make his plans in good time.”’* 

Nor were French or German aviators less active. French flyers flew more 

than 10,000 reconnaissance missions in the first months of the war, especially 

to provide aerial fire adjustment for the mobile French 75-mm field guns. Aerial 

observation became a specialty of the French Air Force. According to Field 

Marshal Erich Ludendorff, German artillery also achieved “better shooting by 

means of aerial ob~ervation.”’~ 

During the period of trench warfare between the winter of 1914 and the 

German spring offensive of 191 8, aerial observation became increasingly 

sophisticated, to include aerial photography of enemy trench systems and troop 

concentrations. To blind the enemy’s reconnaissance while preventing him from 

doing the same to one’s own capability led to the rapid evolution of aerial 

combat. In the last phase of the war Allied aviation again provided timely 

information on German troop dispositions and movements as they retreated. It 

also supported ground offensives, including tank operations, with fire support 

and immediate reconnaissance. Recalling this experience in a lecture in 1930, 

the future commander of the Allied Expeditionary Air Force (AEAF) during the 

Normandy invasion, Air Marshal (then Wing Commander) Trafford L. LeighMallory, observed, “The vital importance to an armored force commander of air 

information cannot be emphasized too highly. . . .”14 

Senior U.S. Army leaders recognized the vital role aerial observation had 

played in the war. Referring to intelligence in his posthostilities report, General 

Pershing noted that “warfare with battle lines separated by short distances only, 

makes possible the early acquirement of information. . . .” While there were 

15 
Piercing the Fog 

many means to obtain this information, he went on, “With us the simple 

methods, such as observation from the air [emphasis added] and ground and the 

exploitation of prisoners and documents, have proved more effective than the 

less direct means.”15 

For ground commanders, the World War I experience contributed to a 

perspective that defined air intelligence largely as the use of aircraft to collect 

information usable by ground commanders. This stemmed from the fact that 

most of the activity of Air Service units (which were in combat only seven 

months) was directly tied to ground operations, either in observation or artillery 

spotting or in direct combat support through strafing and bombing of enemy 

positions. World War I, including the limited Air Service AEF experience, 

showed that aviation had more than one role and therefore required more than 

one form of air intelligence. 

The report of the Chief of G-2-A-7 (Office of Air Intelligence) at GHQ 

AEF illustrated clearly that most of the work done by his office involved 

information not immediately related to either observation or direct support. 

Rather, it dealt with the collection, evaluation, and dissemination of information 

necessary to conduct air operations apart from support. The Air Order of Battle 

Section obtained and kept current information on “enemy air and balloon units, 

enemy airdromes, and the organization of the enemy’s Air Service” for 

inclusion in the daily Summary of Air Information. Recognizing the effects that 

individual leaders can have on an air unit, G-2-A-7 kept a file on “prominent 

German airmen . . . with a view to determining what might be expected of any 

new unit to which these flyers were assigned . . . and to determine which 

German air units were the most prominent. . . .” Each month the G-2-A-7 office 

distributed a map and list of airdromes showing the location, size in hangars, 

sheds, estimated capacity, and units present. Much of this information came 

from photographs, and reports always distinguished between visual reportage 

and photographic confirmation. Changes in enemy dispositions were relayed in 

the daily Summary of Air Information.16 

The Enemy Activity Section concentrated on air rather than on ground 

forces. The office sought to determine where the enemy was most active 

(seeking thereby to ascertain his intentions), to monitor developments in enemy 

tactics, and to understand the German system of training as a means of 

evaluating strengths and weaknesses. Information came from observers at 

antiaircraft (AA) batteries, postmission interviews (in modem terminology, 

debriefings), prisoners, and captured documents. The report referred, for 

example, to “two captured German documents, showing how pursuit and battle 

planes were to operate over the lines, [which] proved to be of great value to 

Allied airmen.” Officers from G-2-A-7 met weekly with Allied counterparts to 

exchange information.” 

Even less immediately related to the support of ground forces were the 

duties of the Bomb Target Section. Although the war ended before plans for 

16 
Early Intelligence Organization 

extensive offensive air strikes could be implemented, by November 1918 the 

AEF had developed target folders on such systems as railroad stations and 

switching yards, manufacturing plants, and billeting areas and supply dumps in 

Germany. Compilation and distribution of this information was primarily the 

responsibility of the Bomb Target Section, which also monitored the results of 

Allied and American bombing attacks and the location of enemy barrage 

balloons, AA batteries, and searchlights. Some of the section’s work was quite 

sophisticated. Referring to an analysis of railroad systems behind enemy lines, 

for example, its report noted: “Narrow-gauge roads, main lines and railway 

centers were observed, to determine at which points [the] most damage could 

be done. Photographs were taken, maps made and statistics compiled on the 

amount and importance of traffic going through various centers. When 

complete, this information was sent to operations officers . . . and after they had 

made their decisions, maps and photographs of the targets decided upon were 

sent to the bombing squadrons which were to carry out the raids.”lX In sum, by 

the end of the war airmen could see a requirement for intelligence to contribute 

to the effective preparation and conduct of air operations that might or might 

not be immediately tied to ground force activities. 

Air Intelligence in the 1920s 

For the postwar Air Service, the organizational struggles over responsibility for 

air intelligence began with the Army Reorganization Act of 1920. This 

legislation generally reflected the desire of General Pershing, who had become 

Chief of Staff in 1919, to organize U.S. Army headquarters in Washington 

along the lines of the wartime AEF. The WDGS now included five divisions: 

Personnel (G-l), Military Intelligence (G-2), Operations and Training (G-3), 

Supply (G-4), and War Plans. Theoretically coequal, the chiefs of all the offices 

were brigadier generals, except for the G-2 who was generally a colonel. 

The duties of the Assistant Chief of Staff, Intelligence (G-2), included the 

requirement to support the War Plans Division (WPD) in strategic planning and 

to provide War Department intelligence to field commanders at the outbreak of 

hostilities. In postwar reductions, the MID of G-2 was cut to 25 officers and 52 

civilians by 1924, where it would remain until modestly increased in 1940. The 

number of military and assistant military attaches dropped drastically from a 

high of 94 in November 1918. In spite of the rapid expansion and growth of 

aviation, the War Department usually authorized Air Service officers as 

assistant military attach& only in London, Paris, and Rome.” 

The Air Corps Act of 1926 provided additional representation for air 

matters on the WDGS. A new G-2 Air Section (shortly elevated to the more 

important status of a branch) was responsible for policy matters and questions 

pertaining to the use of Air Corps personnel in combat intelligence, aerial 

17 
Piercing the Fog 

photography and mapping, codes and communications between air and ground, 

and advice on special studies. The first head of the Air Section was an 

experienced Air Corps officer, Maj. Joseph T. McNarney. As specified by the 

Air Corps Act, in 1930 the G-2 Intelligence Branch absorbed the separate Air 

Branch.2o 

Within the Air Service, air intelligence organizations and functions also 

changed in the immediate postwar years. In January 1919, Maj. Gen. Mason M. 

Patrick, Chief of the Air Service, approved a plan to phase out the Information 

Section, Air Service, AEF, and transfer its key personnel and printing 

equipment to Washington to join a new Information Group, the Office of 

Director of Air Service. In May 19 19, Air Service orders specified the principal 

function of this Information Group as “the gathering and dissemination of all 

information of value to the Air Service.” The Air Service reorganization 

required that the new Information Group maintain a library, and the Air Service 

declared it “essential that copies of all reports, manuals, pamphlets, and 

publications of a tactical, technical, or engineering nature received in the Air 

Service be furnished that Group in order that its library may be kept up to 

date.”” 

Maj. Horace Hickam, the first Information Group Chief, divided his office 

into collection, dissemination, and library divisions, plus a special division 

charged with responsibility for preparing congressional correspondence and 

distributing information to the public press. Hickam also believed the 

Information Group should be “the central publishing office of the Air Service, 

whether the output be rigging charts, handbooks, folders, tactical bulletins, 

curricula, technical reports, organizational diagrams, or the like.” Such 

freewheeling notions drew protests from others within the Air Service. One 

charge stated the Information Group was “attempting altogether too much and 

a good part of the work being undertaken is of little or no value to the service 

in general.”22 

The Information Group also specified that all assistant military attachts for 

air (in Paris, London, Rome, and The Hague) should be conversant with new 

aeronautical developments in the United States and the countries to which they 

were accredited. Toward this end, the Air Service Engineering Division in 

January 1920 prepared a questionnaire for London and Paris specifying 

technical information wanted in the fields of electrical equipment, instruments, 

parachutes, radios, and aerial photography. From London, the air attache 

remonstrated that it was no simple matter to secure technical information (the 

individual had to be versed in aviation developmental programs). Regardless 

that the British Air Ministry was quite reluctant to release technical information, 

the questionnaire technique persisted ne~ertheless.’~ 

Despite the activities of the attachts, in 1920 Brig. Gen. Billy Mitchell 

complained about a lack of aeronautical information from overseas. Allegedly 

to get the flamboyant Mitchell off the scene while the Washington Naval 

18 
Early Intelligence Organization 

Two of the early leaders of the air component of the U.S. Army, Maj. Gen. Mason M. 

Patrick (left), Chief of the Air Service in the 1920s, and, standing beside him, his gifted 

and troublesome subordinate, Brig. Gen. William Mitchell. General Mitchell’s court 

martial in 1925 became a national showcase for the new, progressive ideas of the 

Army’s air arm. As Col. Carl A. Spaatz said of his own testimony at the trial, “They 

can’t do anything to you when you’re under oath and tell them answers to their 

question.” 

Disarmament negotiations were in progress, General Patrick sent Mitchell, with 

his aide, Lt. Clayton Bissell, and aeronautical engineer Alfred Verville, on an 

inspection trip to France, Italy, Germany, Holland, and England during the 

winter of 1921-1922. Mitchell was apparently pleasantly received on his trip, 

but soon after his visit to Paris and London, the British and French governments 

began to pose demands for technical information in exchange for what they had 

given him. Some of the questions went beyond limited technical matters. The 

French, for example, wanted to know American military opinion regarding 

“giant or very powerful” military aircraft and multiengine planes.” 

By 1925 the duty tours of the Air Service air attaches assigned to postwar 

European capitals at the end of the war were close to completion. At this 

juncture, the Air Service Engineering Division recommended that all air 

attach& be graduates of the Air Service Engineering School and that they be 

brought back to the United States at least once a year to remain current on 

19 
Piercing the Fog 

aeronautical developments in progress. This proposition had merit, but the Air 

Service did not think its appropriations would stand the expense of so much 

foreign travel. The Engineering Division dismissed a countersuggestion that it 

send development engineers on temporary duty to European capitals, perhaps 

on a yearly basis. Too few commissioned air engineering officers were left in 

the postwar Air Service to allow such a dispersion of effort.” The Air Service 

and its successor, the Air Corps, nevertheless looked with favor upon overseas 

travel by air officers on leave time. In 1928, for example, one active-duty 

engineering officer, Lt. Victor E. Bertrandais, visited Great Britain and France 

and filed a very astute report on aviation factories he had visited. Bertrandais 

concluded that “the United States surpasses England and France in production 

methods and as a whole our workmanship and aircraft practices are far superior 

to anything observed in England and France.”’6 (In World War 11, Bertrandais 

would be an effective chief of supply and maintenance for General Kenney in 

the Southwest Pacific.) 

The creation of the Air Corps in 1926 had little immediate impact on air 

intelligence in a functional sense, although it did result in the inevitable 

restructuring in Washington. An Air Corps Information Division, Office of the 

Chief of Air Corps (OCAC), replaced the Air Service Information Group. 

Divided into four sections-air intelligence, photography, publications, and 

press relations-the Information Division was charged to collect “essential 

aeronautical information from all possible sources.” This information would 

include “the uses of aircraft in war, including the organization of the various air 

forces of the world, tactical doctrines, types of aircraft used, and organization 

of the personnel operating and maintaining aircraft.”” Except for the responsibility of the intelligence section to support War Department strategic planning, 

the Information Division of OCAC remained a collection agency. The 

intelligence section routinely received foreign intelligence through the MID and 

maintained liaison with the Air Branch. A magazine and book library was 

begun. The intelligence section also tried to compile digests of foreign aviation 

information and compare foreign air forces. This potential workload far 

exceeded the Intelligence Section’s capabilities, since for many years it was 

manned by only one officer and two to five civilians.” 

Air Intelligence in the Early 1930s 

While the assistant military attaches in the major European capitals remained 

the principal source of information on foreign aviation developments, the Air 

Corps detailed an officer once each year to visit Japan and compile a report on 

aircraft developments there. These efforts notwithstanding, the Air Corps by no 

means considered itself fully informed about aircraft development overseas, 

primarily because foreign nations now imposed restrictions on information of 

20 
Early Intelligence Organization 

potential military value. Italy, France, and England all had far more stringent 

secrecy measures than did the United States. The Japanese imposed particularly 

severe constraints on the acquisition of military and naval information, and they 

limited access strictly to what they wanted foreign representatives to see. One 

reason for this militant secrecy may have been their knowledge that in the 1920s 

the United States had been intercepting and translating Japanese messages to 

their negotiators at the Washington Naval Disarmament Conference. In 1929, 

when the new Secretary of State, Henry L. Stimson, learned of this accomplishment, he reputedly reacted strongly. Such interceptions of foreign governmental 

communications, he was said to have decried, were “highly unethical.” In 

reaction to the secretary’s order that such activity cease, Herbert 0. Yardley, 

former head of the War-State Cipher Bureau, published a book in 1931 that 

revealed the extent of U.S. code breaking. The Japanese quickly changed their 

cipher system and reacted coldly to American requests for air information.” 

While the State Department no longer participated in cryptanalysis, the War 

and Navy Departments continued to do so, each on its own. In the War 

Department, however, code interception was handled as a communications 

function within the Signal Intelligence Service of the Chief Signal Officer, and 

was thus outside the purview of the MID and other military intelligence 

 channel^.^" 

Developments concerning accessibility to military information from other 

nations occurred at the same time other modifications of relevance to air 

intelligence were happening within the United States itself. One of the most 

important of these was a shift in thinking about strategic war plans, the results 

of which had clear implications for air planning and intelligence. When the 

United States began to prepare strategic war plans in 1904, they were color 

coded by nation: RED for Great Britain, BLACK for Germany, GREEN for 

Mexico, and ORANGE for Japan. The development of Japanese militancy in the 

1920s engendered an ongoing review of ORANGE plans and a continuing 

estimate that Japan was the most likely future adversary for the United States. 

Although a combined British-Japanese (RED-ORANGE) attack on the United 

States was not likely, it did assume an important role in American war planning 

in the 1930s as a worst-case situation. 

The Army Reorganization Act of 1920 had confirmed the U.S. Army’s 

traditional mission of defense of the coasts and sea frontiers of the United 

States. Several years later the Air Corps Act made a distinction between air 

service aviation (observation) and a GHQ Air Force that would probably be 

committed against an enemy before the surface forces engaged. Responsibility 

for coastal defense and the potential requirement for GHQ Air Force to strike 

before ground forces were employed assumed additional significance in 1922. 

In that year the Washington Naval Treaty imposed a quota upon American, 

British, and Japanese capital ships that would have given the latter two nations 

21 
Piercing the Fog 

naval superiority over the U.S. Navy in the rather unlikely event of a REDORANGE attack. 

It was under these circumstances that Army Chief of Staff General Douglas 

MacArthur and the Chief of Naval Operations, Admiral W. V. Pratt, reached an 

agreement concerning coastal defense. As described by MacArthur, “Under it 

the Naval air forces will be based on the fleet and move with it as an important 

element in performing the essential missions of the fleet afloat. The Army air 

forces will be land based and employed as an element of the Army in carrying 

out its missions of defending the coasts, both in the homeland and in overseas 

p~ssessions.”~~ The Army Air Corps took seriously its responsibility to defend 

the United States and its territories from naval or air attack. One of the 

considerations in its efforts to develop a long-range bomber (the B-17 and later 

the B-29) was the militarily sound principle of locating and defeating an enemy 

as far from one’s shores as possible. The issue of the air forces’ strategic 

defensive role would become entangled in doctrinal and bureaucratic struggles 

with the U.S. Navy and in debates over strategic offensive operations. In March 

1938 the Air Corps identified its primary task as defense of the United States 

against air attack, to be achieved by “destruction of enemy aviation at its 

bases.’’32 

The strategic focus of RED-ORANGE planning marked a change from earlier 

War Department emphasis on intelligence training for field combat to training 

and preparation for hemispheric defense. In 1926, War Department Training 

Regulation (TR) 210-5 had focused wholly on intelligence support for Army 

surface combat. By 1932, the Command and General Staff School (C&GSS) at 

Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, responsible for the Army’s principal intelligence 

training, began to advance a tentative doctrine more suited to strategic 

intelligence. This approach argued intelligence estimates had to be determined 

by enemy capabilities existing at a given time and projected into the future.33 

Such an approach called for an analysis of the enemy’s potential as well as his 

current capability; this, in turn, required greater insight into his industrial 

structure. The requirement for air forces to strike the enemy at a distance from 

the United States called for a more detailed knowledge of areas at least within 

the Western Hemisphere and, as technology progressed, perhaps even farther 

afield. At any rate, the 1938 objective of achieving air defense of the United 

States by destroying the enemy at his bases clearly called for a broader scope 

of intelligence requirements than was needed simply to support ground forces. 

The thrust of strategic thinking toward hemispheric defense also caused 

subtle changes in the status of the Information Division, OCAC, even though 

no changes were made in its official charter. According to War Department 

regulation, the OCAC Plans Division provided information for the General 

Staff‘s strategic planning. The office could not meet the demands placed on it, 

so others moved to fill the void. In July 1933, Lt. Col. Walter R. Weaver, chief 

of the Information Division, complained to the acting executive officer of the 

22 
Early Intelligence Organization 

OCAC that the Plans Division was exceeding its authority by collecting and 

evaluating intelligence on foreign military forces. Plans Division responded by 

pointing out that the Information Division had failed to provide the necessary 

data. Weaver then used the ensuing dispute to urge that his division be manned 

adequately to accomplish its data-collection tasks.34 

Maj. Gen. Benjamin D. Foulois, Chief of the Air Corps, supported the 

argument that the Information Division was, in Weaver’s words, “G-2 for the 

Air Corps.”35 In the depths of the depression, the division could not be enlarged, 

and it continued to perform this function with the insufficient manpower then 

available.36 This controversy between Plans and Information in mid- 1933 was 

to a certain extent only a small paper storm, but it reflected the buffeting 

institutional air intelligence would take in debates that would arise later in the 

decade as a result of strategic air planning. 

A more significant problem arose with the creation of the GHQ Air Force 

in March 1935. Because the GHQ Air Force was a mobilization day (M-day) 

force (i.e., it had to be prepared to conduct combat operations at the outset of 

hostilities), it was directly responsible to the Chief of Staff, In terms of 

intelligence, airmen recognized this requirement would preclude the WDGS 

from making information available to an operational commander on the 

outbreak of hostilities. GHQ Air Force argued that its status demanded 

additional autonomy in air intelligence, both for following foreign technical 

developments and for planning air operations beyond the lines of, and before the 

employment of, Army surface forces. The WDGS G-2 rebutted that such a 

duplication of intelligence systems was an unnecessary expense hardly likely 

to be funded by an economy-minded Congress. GHQ Air Force was authorized 

an intelligence section, and in August 1935 a GHQ Air Force memorandum 

declared, “This headquarters, in cooperation with the Office of the Chief of the 

Air Corps and the WDGS, is responsible for duties pertaining to War Department ~ntelligence.”~’ 

While the Army MID fretted that the activation of the GHQ Air Force 

would threaten its status as the hub of military intelligence, more immediate 

problems arose within the Air Corps itself from uncertain and somewhat 

contentious relations between the OCAC Information Division and GHQ Air 

Force Intelligence. The OCAC wanted to handle all air intelligence functions 

except those applicable to GHQ Air Force maneuvers and exercises or 

specifically required as contributions to U.S. war plans in which GHQ Air Force 

might be involved. The OCAC argued the general mission of collecting, 

evaluating, and disseminating air intelligence was an OCAC information 

function. GHQ Air Force wished to have the Information Division transfer 

material from the MID and to develop and supply maps. The GHQ staff 

maintained that all combat air intelligence in war and intelligence training 

within assigned units in peacetime were inherent functions of its commanding 

general. When a joint Army-Navy war plan was approved, for example, the 

23 
Piercing the Fog 

GHQ Air Force commander would be required to submit his detailed plan of 

operations, whether the plan was for independent air action or operations in 

connection with surface force warfare.38 

The GHQ Air Force had clearjurisdiction over the instruction, training, and 

tactical employment of its combat units and personnel, including intelligence 

personnel. Not enough Air Corps intelligence officers were available to perform 

the required intelligence activities in the operating units. Since such people were 

thought to be chiefly useful in times of combat, intelligence sections (called S-2 

in lower-level units) in each of the three GHQ Air Force combat wings were 

usually first to experience staff reductions. S-2 sections were called upon to 

give most of their time to public relations, considered an intelligence function 

because it involved release of military information to the public, counterpropaganda, and, in time of war, cen~orship.~’Some time was required to work out 

these contentious issues, and remnants of disputes among combat air forces, the 

central air establishment, and the G-2 would linger throughout World War 11. 

The Air Corps Tactical School and Air Intelligence 

The different interpretations regarding responsibility for air intelligence that 

existed within the Air Corps in the 1930s would shortly be overshadowed by 

even more serious disagreements between soldiers and airmen. At the center of 

these disputes were the fundamental issues of the role of air power and an air 

force’s position in the national defense establishment. These larger issues 

affected basic questions of air intelligence, including what constituted air 

intelligence, and which groups were best able to obtain, evaluate, and 

disseminate this material. These questions would not be resolved .before the 

United States entered the next world war, but the center for much of the Air 

Corps’ prewar air warfare thinking was the ACTS at Maxwell Field. Most of the 

AAF’s World War I1 combat leaders spent one or more assignments at ACTS, 

and its influence on plans, doctrine, and the personal relationships of these men 

should not be overlooked. 

Differences regarding the employment of air power were clearly evident in 

1934 when General MacArthur called upon the WPD, WDGS, to prepare an 

Army position on air warfare to be published as TR 440-15, Employment ofthe 

Air Forces of the Army. The initial draft by WPD asserted that the “land 

campaign” was “the decisive factor in war.” While air operations would be 

intensive at the beginning of a war, the advantages of “‘alluring’ air mission at 

such a time should be weighed against the requirement to keep superior air 

forces in being to support operations which would take place after the ground 

armies made contact. The greatest part of the [draft] paper dealt with the 

employment of air forces in continental defen~e.”~’ 

24 
Early Intelligence Organization 

In a strongly worded critique of the WD draft, the ACTS proclaimed that 

the regulation was too narrowly predicated on the geographic isolation of the 

United States and focused too tightly on ground operations. In reality, the ACTS 

paper rejoined, “The principal and all important missions of air power, when its 

equipment permits, is the attack of those vital objectives in a nation’s economic 

structure [emphasis added] which will tend to paralyze that nation’s ability to 

wage war and thus contribute to the attainment of the ultimate objective of war, 

namely, the disintegration of the will to resist.” Very little of the thought in the 

ACTS critique appeared in the regulation as officially published on October 15, 

1935. The regulation recognized “that a phase of air operations would probably 

precede the contact of the surface forces and that the outcome of this phase 

would exert a potent influence upon subsequent operations. . . . [Tlhe effect 

which air forces were capable of producing and the extent to which they would 

influence warfare [were] still ~ndetermined.”~’ Despite its limited impact on TR 

440-1 5, the ACTS’S critique was of great significance, for it expounded clearly 

and forcefully the fundamental differences in soldiers’ and airmen’s concepts 

on the employment of air power. While not ignoring the role of air power in 

support of the land campaign and continental and hemispheric air defense, the 

ACTS developed and taught what can be described most accurately as 

revolutionary concepts about the employment of air power in strategic 

offensive--concepts that had broad implications for air intelligence, but 

implications that were not fully recognized, even by airmen. 

Broadly defined, officers at the ACTS argued that strategic air power, as 

manifested primarily by the B-17 aircraft, could be decisive by bringing about 

the collapse of both the means and the will of an adversary to conduct war. The 

ACTS maintained that identification and destruction of so-called vital targets 

within an industrial nation’s economic structure would be decisive, i.e., would 

win the war. It does not appear that the school’s proponents of this concept for 

strategic bombardment fully grasped the significance of the interrelationship 

between strategic targeting of an industrial state and the need, let alone the 

difficulties, of acquiring and then analyzing vast amounts of economic data. 

Indeed, a central figure in all air planning in the 1930s, and for much of World 

War 11 as well, Maj. Gen. Haywood S. Hansell, Jr., admitted that to the best of 

his knowledge nobody seems to have recognized, as late as 1939, the critical 

need to conduct indusrrial analysis if the concept of strategic air attack was to 

be translated into pra~tice.~’ This lack of understanding by proponents of 

strategic air attack led to conditions wherein civilian analysts assumed 

responsibility for key intelligence tasks. In the area of economic analysis and 

industrial targeting, civilians eventually took the lead from the uniformed 

military in World War 11. 

Although the ACTS people recognized that U.S. military policy was 

defensive, they reasoned that only offensive actions could win a war. The same 

group also rationalized that in a war against a major adversary in Europe, allied 

25 
Piercing the Fog 

bases would be available for land-based U.S. aviation.43 In the school year 

1933-1934, Maj. Donald Wilson was instructor in charge of the Air Force 

course. In this course, Wilson visualized future wars for survival between 

industrial nations that depended upon a closely knit and interdependent 

industrial fabric to support their war efforts. He maintained that precision air 

attacks against essential elements could collapse the industrial fabric of a 

nation; as few as three main systems--e.g., transportation, electric power, and 

steel manufacture-would suffice.44 As air power thinkers struggled with 

defining the role of an air force, they began to glimpse the implications of 

intelligence for expanded air operations. In planning the school year 1935- 

1936, Lt. Col. H. A. Dargue, the school’s assistant commandant, stated that 

military intelligence had always been approached from a ground warfare point 

of view; at best, air intelligence had been considered to involve the enemy’s air 

combat forces. The ACTS, he now declared, must pay more attention to an 

expanded view of air intelligence, which included studies of each of the major 

powers, their military and economic policies, economic and political structures, 

raw materials, geography, and known and potential air ba~es.4~ 

In 1935-1936, intelligence data of major nations provided by the MID did 

not include the depth of information required by Dargue’s view of air operations 

against an opponent’s industrial fabric. The War Department went so far as to 

forbid independent school examination of the economies of foreign countries, 

arguing that such was the responsibility of the Almost immediately, the 

ACTS staff sought a way around the restriction that they saw as hampering their 

analysis of air power. One method of addressing such issues as the identification of appropriate economic target systems and how best to destroy or cripple 

them through air operations without violating War Department prohibitions was 

to study the industrial fabric of the United States as a concomitant of a 

defensive military policy. 

In the spring of 1936, a group of ACTS students, including Majors Byron 

E. Gates and Robert M. Webster, launched a study of potential attack against 

the northeastern United States. The scenario called for aRED (British) offensive 

to take the form of a sustained strategic air offensive, surprise raids against vital 

points in the U.S. industrial system, or establishment and defense of advanced 

naval and air bases in Canada. The study concluded that little prospect existed 

for RED to invade and establish bases in Canada because of the tremendous 

shipping tonnage required to move it into the area in the face of determined U.S. 

opposition. Without forward bases, a sustained land-based strategic air 

offensive with relatively short-range aircraft would be impossible. But RED had 

aircraft carriers, and the committee warned that surprise air attacks or sabotage 

could disrupt “certain key points” in the northeastern United States “upon which 

the capacity of the United States to produce the munitions of war depend^."^' 

Out of this initial study, the ACTS officers continued an analysis of the 

organic economic systems that, if neutralized, would paralyze a modern state. 

26 
Early Intelligence Organization 

The RED attack scenario identified the U.S. electric power system as the heart 

of its industrial system, followed, in order of priority, by transportation (chiefly 

rai1roads);fuel refining and distribution, food distribution and preservation, and 

steel manufacturing. Destruction of a number of highly concentrated factories 

would add a crippling blow; these included electric generator, transformer, 

switch gear, and motor manufacturing plants; locomotive manufacturing; and 

aluminum and magnesium producers. To strike these targets effectively would 

mean defeating the air defense forces. The best method of defeating the air 

defense would entail attack on air bases, aircraft and engine factories, sources 

of aviation fuel, and attrition through air combat attendant to these missions.48 

On the basis of these preliminary studies, the ACTS study concluded that 

the ideal objective for air attack would be an undefended vital element of an 

enemy's national structure that consisted of only a few individual targets 

concentrated within a relatively small area. Since G-2 was responsible for War 

Department intelligence, the ACTS wanted G-2 to determine the three most 

important vital elements in foreign countries against which war plans were 

being prepared. This effort would be followed by the collection of detailed 

information on the individual targets within each of the vital elements. The 

detailed information then would be used to prepare objective folders that would 

permit air commanders to plan and execute aerial attacks on the various targets 

comprising each of the three vital elements. The school staff further asked that 

all intelligence work be coordinated in terms of the most likely operations to be 

undertaken on M-day. 

In accordance with the projected strategic air concept, ACTS officers 

considered the priority of operations, and hence of intelligence collection, to be 

defense of the continental U.S.; defense of the Western Hemisphere; and 

offensive operations against Japan, Germany, Italy, Great Britain, France, or 

Russia."' However valuable such a study might have been as an educational 

tool, or however potentially useful it might be in the event of war, in the middle 

to late 1930s the work far exceeded the limited analytical capability of the MID. 

In addition, neither the G-2 nor the War Department as a whole was committed 

to the projected ofSeensive employment of aviation envisioned at ACTS. 

Even with their collective efforts, it is doubtful that the attachts, G-2, and 

the War Department could have satisfied the intelligence demands generated by 

the concept of strategic air attack developed at the ACTS. To move from the 

conceptual to the planning phase required a comprehensive yet detailed analysis 

of the economic infrastructure of a potential adversary. Targets were, as always, 

the central issue. Determining them first required identification and analysis of 

the crucial target systems representing the adversary's economic structure. 

Specific targets within the broader target system categories then could be 

identified. Selection of targets for attack would require further analysis to 

determine their degree of residual capability or cushion, their recuperative 

capability, a country's dispersal potential, and a host of other factors. In short, 

27 
Piercing the Fog 

target determination would require the skills of thoroughly competent 

intelligence officers aided by economists, statisticians, and technical experts. 

Acquisition and Evaluation of Air Intelligence: 

Developments in Europe and Asia 

As the world moved toward war in the late 1930s, the number of officers 

serving abroad as military attaches or assistant military attaches increased to 

thirty-two as the realization of air warfare potential grew. Reports from these 

men continued to be the principal sources of intelligence data available to G-2. 

When assigned, each military attach6 received a copy of the Index Guide for 

Procurement of Military Intelligence. This booklet contained 1,000 or more 

subject headings, called topics or subtopics that were leads to their enquiries, 

and also a coding system used by the G-2 office in the War Department to 

assemble and file information. In addition to numbered reports, the attaches 

were responsible to submit annual summary reports (largely statistical) on 

subjects such as the host nation’s aviation industry. If the Army in the United 

States needed particular information, the G-2 undertook to get it from the 

military attaches in the field. When G-2 received information, they classified 

and evaluated it before drawing deductions and conclusions. The information 

was then said to have been “digested” and ready for dis~emination.’~ 

Although G-2 recognized the value of disseminating intelligence 

immediately, personnel limitations frequently resulted in delays. Nor did G-2 

always receive new data expeditiously. For example, reports from the U.S. 

military attach6 in Tokyo required three weeks to reach G-2. In the dissemination of intelligence information in the United States, OCAC Information 

Division published the less sensitive items in a serial monograph for official use 

only entitled “G-2 Information Prepared by Information Division, 1934-1 938.” 

The MID circulated some items of classified information with time limits on 

user retention and a provision prohibiting their reproduction. This procedure 

caused GHQ Air Force to complain that air groups and squadrons received only 

a small number of intelligence summaries which were often to be kept for short 

periods, the supposed security of classified information considered more 

important than the instruction of recipient units. In 1938, not even General 

Arnold, Chief of the Air Corps, was on distribution for G-2 information 

believed to be very sensitive. Such information, Arnold learned from Brig. Gen. 

Sherman Miles, Acting G-2 WDGS, was restricted to members of the General 

Staff.” Arnold was irritated, but for the moment, he could do little. 

Throughout much of the 1930s, U.S. Army and Army Air Corps intelligence focused on developments in Europe rather than in the Far East. Military 

planners believed a war in the Pacific would be primarily a Navy affair and 

would not require a major Army commitment. They also considered Japan too 

28 
Early Intelligence Organization 

dependent on trade with the United States to risk a war that would jeopardize 

her gains in Manchuria. The reports that did come from Japan in the early years 

of the decade tended to reinforce the widely held opinion that Japan lacked a 

real military capability. The July 1935 annual aviation report for Japan filed by 

the U.S. military attach6 in Tokyo described Japan’s Army Air Force as being 

filled with large numbers of obsolete aircraft: “The unwise policy of some years 

ago of storing up an immense amount of spare planes in depots and the apparent 

failure to note the rapid changes which occur in aeronautical developments has 

been impressed upon the Japanese, but it is doubtful if they will deliberately 

scrap planes which have some use, even if ~bsolete.”~’ 

Maj. James F. Phillips, a graduate of the Air Corps Engineering School, 

made the annual U.S. military inspection of Japanese Army aviation in May 

1936. Phillips filed both an official report through the Military Attach6 in 

Tokyo and an informal letter to the Air MatCriel Division at Wright Field. 

“Superficial treatment,” he wrote, “was very courteous-including much 

bowing, hissing, and gallons of tea being drunk-but verbal information was 

often exaggerated or misleading.” Phillips was an early, though not sole, 

practitioner of an error that came to be common prior to World War 11: 

underestimating or belittling Japanese ability. In that year’s report, Phillips 

noted that the morale of Japanese air personnel was extremely high, but that 

practically all Japanese Army air mattriel was copied from American or English 

standard types, and was therefore about four to six years out of date. Phillips 

saw, he noted, “no really modern airplane^."^^ He was seeing only what the 

Japanese wanted him to see. 

In November 1936, Japan signed the Anti-Comintern Pact with Germany 

and Italy, and in July 1937 Japanese military forces marched into northern 

China. Upon the passage of a military secrets act, the task of U.S. military and 

naval attach& in Japan became almost fruitless. Discussions of service aircraft 

or of the aviation industry were drastically curtailed. Even the attach& of 

powers ostensibly associated with Japan complained that their connections were 

inadequate to ensure a reasonable exchange of inf~rmation.~~ In view of the 

extreme difficulty in obtaining information in Japan itself, Lt. Cmdr. Ralph A. 

Ofstie, who became Assistant U.S. Naval Attach6 for Air in Tokyo in 1935, 

thought Japan’s attack in China provided “a golden opportunity to see how and 

with what material Japan carries on a war.” After a visit to Shanghai, Ofstie 

came away unimpressed with the aerial prowess of either the Chinese or 

Japanese. Capt. HaroldM. Bemis, theU.S. Navy attach6, reported the substance 

of Ofstie’s observations: “The Japanese have been bold and courageous, but 

they have exhibited a mediocrity in operations and in material which mark them 

as distinctly inferior to other major powers in this vitally important element of 

war.”55 In a briefing conducted later in Washington, Ofstie doubted that Japan 

would use her fleet at any considerable distance from her own waters, even 

though Japanese aviation in China was principally naval, since the bulk of 

29 
Piercing the Fog 

Japanese Army aviation remained in Manchuria as a counter to the ever-present 

Soviet threat. 

“Originality,” Ofstie went on, “is certainly not a trait of the Japanese and 

this quite evidently applies to their aviation equipment. Everything is basically 

of foreign origin-planes, engines, and instruments. They do build well, 

however, and the results are creditable, but being copied from foreign 

developments their equipment must necessarily be at least a couple of years 

behind that of the leading occidental powers.” Ofstie concluded: “I believe that 

there is no doubt that we are markedly superior to the Japanese in the air-in 

piloting skills, in material, and in ability to employ our aircraft effectively on 

the offense and the defen~e.”~‘In reviewing reports from China, Air Corps Capt. 

Patrick W. Timberlake noted inadequate armament on bombers, a general lack 

of bombing accuracy, and lack of serious damage to bomber targets caused in 

part by instantaneous fuzes and light case bombs. “There is no question 

concerning the courage of either Chinese or Japanese pilots,” he added, “but it 

is felt . . . so far as operations have progressed, the personnel, the individual 

tactics, and the operations are distinctly inferior to those of major powers in this 

vitally important element of war.”57 

The early intelligence reports that emphasized the obsolescence of Japanese 

aircraft appear to have been correct, at least to the extent that the true facts were 

kept hidden from prying foreign eyes. By 1938, however, more ominous 

assessments arrived in Washington. In China as a civilian advisor to the Chinese 

Air Force, Claire Chennault considered it to be his duty as a retired Air Corps 

officer to send intelligence back to Washington. In January 1938, he sent the 

U.S. Army Adjutant General a confidential report on a Japanese single-seater 

pursuit plane, type 1-96, which he described as “the most maneuverable 

monoplane which has appeared in China.” It was also employed regularly to 

support bomber penetrations as deep as 250 miles. Chennault originally thought 

that this plane was a copy of a French fighter, but by May 1938 he reported that 

it was an original Japanese design. It would later be identified as the Type 96 

Mitsubishi fighter nicknamed “Claude.” Chennault wrote: “Japan is selfsupporting and independent of foreign supplies in building airplane^."^^ 

In the first year after the Japanese invasion of China, the MID and the 

Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI) harbored the view that “the economic and 

material structure of Japan would c~llapse.”~~ By September 1938, there were 

few indications that such a collapse was in the offing. As a student at the ACTS 

in 1938, Capt. Thomas D. White-later to distinguish himself as an air 

intelligence officer, air commander, and chief of staff, United States Air 

Force-prepared a thesis on “Japan as an Objective for Air Attack, 1937-1938.” 

He noted that the U.S. war objective against Japan would be to force “political 

acquiescence; and that this would not necessarily require occupation of enemy 

territory.” According to his thesis, Japan’s economic structure was so highly 

integrated that the destruction of one vital link might bring “a succession of 

30 
Early Intelligence Organization 

collapses in allied spheres of industry or finance until the entire nation is 

prostrate or a disheartened population forces its government to sue for peace.” 

White recommended that railroad destruction, blockade of sea lanes, and air 

attack against hydroelectric installations deserved highest priority as objectives 

of attack in Japan.” 

The major problem in planning such an air strategy, White observed, was 

a lack of intelligence information for air targeting. Reporting forms used by 

attach& in making aeronautical assessments emphasized military matters, such 

as OBs, numbers and types of aircraft, and aircraft specifications. White 

recommended that U.S. military attachts abroad be required to submit reports 

including data needed for targeting for an air bombardment strategy. He wanted 

more active cooperation in peacetime to establish relations between U.S. 

intelligence agencies and such international corporations as Standard Oil, 

General Electric, and General Motors. Company representatives residing abroad 

could possibly obtain detailed information on vital elements of hostile societies. 

White also recommended that Air Corps officers who understood air strategy 

should be assigned to G-2 to begin analyses of all major nations.“’ 

In 1939 the Chinese captured intact a Japanese Nakajima Type 97 (Nate) 

fighter and brought it to Chengtu where Chennault flew it in extensive service 

and combat tests. Chennault brought a dossier on this plane to Washington later 

in 1939. Of this visit, he recalled that most of the staff officers in the Munitions 

Building were “flying swivel chairs and puttering with war plans. . . . The plans 

were all for Europe.” When Arnold asked Chennault to lecture his staff on the 

Sino-Japanese war, Chennault recalled that it was only with great difficulty that 

someone finally managed to find a map of China, and then it had very little 

detail on it. (Chennault claimed in his memoirs that the Air Corps never got a 

copy of his dossier on the Nate, but later search of files in Washington revealed 

that the report received a usual distribution, including a copy to the MID.) After 

returning to China, Chennault recalled getting a letter from the War Department 

thanlung him for his data, which had been turned over to “aeronautical experts” 

who had stated that it was impossible to build an aircraft with the performance 

Chennault had submitted in his specifications.“’ 

Substantial technical data did become available for evaluation at Air 

Mattriel Division, Wright Field, Ohio, but the Intelligence Branch of the 

Information Division, OCAC, did not always make full use of it. General 

Hansell, who for a time held responsibility for foreign air force matters within 

the Intelligence Branch, admitted after the war, “We maintained a close liaison 

with Wright Field, where there was a section called ‘Technical Air Intelligence’ 

. . . that did make engineering analyses of foreign aircraft. We used their 

estimates fairly extensively . . . but the distance between the two offices was 

considerable, and we didn’t make as much use of that technical intelligence as 

we might have.”63 

31 
Piercing the Fog 

On the other side of the globe, military attaches reported diligently, if not 

always accurately, aviation developments in Europe. Over the course of two 

tours as an assistant military attache, Brig. Gen. Martin F. Scanlon, Air Corps, 

spent most of the 1930s in London. His personal diaries were replete with an 

active social life, and his dispatches revealed an initial British aloofness that 

warmed to friendship and confidentiality with the rise of the German Lujhuffe. 

In response to a G-2 letter requesting information about the RAF, the military 

attache in London replied in April 1929 that all efforts to obtain official 

information on air tactics, warplans, operations, and so on had been “practically 

fruitless.”64 In November 1930, then-Major Scanlon informed G-2 that “the Air 

Ministry declines to give any information on the Air Defenses of London as it 

considers that the defensive measures are too vital and confidential to 

disclose.”65 As the RAF expanded after 1935, the U.S. military attache, Col. 

Raymond E. Lee, reported that “bits of information picked up in odd conversations, here and there, or from newspaper cuttings, are not sufficiently complete 

or accurate to give more than a very sketchy and inaccurate skeleton” of the 

scope of the expansion program. In September 1938, Lee nevertheless 

forwarded some data that he had obtained from the Air Ministry with the 

understanding that it must be treated as “completely confidential.” About this 

same time, Scanlon, now a lieutenant colonel, pointed out that if the United 

States intended to get information from the Air Ministry, it would be necessary 

to exchange equivalent U.S. data on both Army and Navy aviationF6 

Perhaps because of increased tensions in Europe during 1938-1939, the 

British began to demonstrate greater openness. In 1939, when G-2 asked for a 

description of British air defense systems, Washington received complete 

details about the RAF, along with relevant concepts for its employment. In the 

event of war with Germany, the report stated, London and other cities would be 

defended by day fighters held on the ground until the ground observer corps, 

ships at sea, and general reconnaissance aircraft provided warning of an 

approaching attack. In view of the experiences gained in Spain and China, the 

attache remarked, the British gave “considerable thought” to furnishing fighter 

escort for bombers, thus permitting bomber crews to perform their duties more 

efficiently, without having to devote all their time to their own protection. 

Bomber units would probably be sent abroad, not for the purpose of supporting 

field forces but simply for the reason that bases in France would increase their 

effective range. The primary objectives of these units would be enemy 

munitions factories, aircraft factories, air bases, foundries, supply dumps for 

ammunition and petrol, important railroads, bridges, and other lines of 

comrn~nication.“~ 

In his endorsement to Scanlon’s report, Colonel Lee noted that Great 

Britain was extremely vulnerable to attack by air. Until the United Kingdom 

could be made reasonably secure against air attack, Lee wrote, the government 

would sacrifice the initiative, both diplomatically and militarily. The increase 

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Early Intelligence Organization 

in fighter squadrons over the number of bomber squadrons, as well as the 

emphasis placed on AA artillery, offered evidence of the concern for defense 

against aerial bombardment. Lee added that most of those principally concerned 

with defense believed Great Britain would undergo a severe ordeal, with much 

damage and many casualties, for two to six months, after which initial enemy 

efforts toward paralyzing the country would have been successfully withstood, 

and the military and air initiatives would begin to pass to Britain.68 

British concern rightly focused upon the newly recreated German Air Force 

(GAF). By the late 192Os, even though German pilots were secretly training in 

the Soviet Union, the Germans were apprehensive of the air disarmament 

enforced upon their country by the Versailles treaty and by the fact that they 

were surrounded by other nations with air forces. When Adolf Hitler came to 

power in Berlin, the Lu..u#e commenced a remarkable rebuilding effort. Quite 

soon, fifteen modern factories were reportedly devoting all their time to 

building aircraft, and eight factories were said to be concentrating on aircraft 

engines. At a social dinner given in his honor by the Foreign Press Union on 

May 2,1935, General of Aviators Herman Goering, Reich Minister of Aviation, 

surprised the world with a supposedly frank report on Germany’s aviation 

program. Goering said that Germany had had no aerial weapons at the time 

Hitler took over the government; a completely new and modem air force had 

been built almost overnight by developing “technical and industrial possibilities 

to their utmost.” “I am not telling you anything surprising,” Goering said, 

“when I emphasize that the German aerial forces are so strong that whoever 

attacks Germany will have a very difficult stand in the air. For the German 

fighting forces do not include a single old motor. What is possessed today by 

the aerial fighting forces in the way of airplanes and motors is the most modern 

product in existence.”69 

During the crucial years of Hitler’s aggregation of power, then-Major 

Truman Smith served as U.S. military attache in Berlin. One of his two 

assistants was an Air Corps officer, Capt. Theodore Koenig. Koenig an able 

pilot, but he lacked a technical and an intelligence background. On May 6, 

1935, Koenig forwarded to Washington a report of Goering’s remarks with the 

conclusion that the Minister’s statements were apparently correct. “It is not 

believed, however,” Koenig continued, “that the air fighting force which he 

referred to is now organized and equipped for immediate action but it is 

believed that the organization and equipment is well underway and that upon 

the completion of the construction of airdromes and necessary quarters and 

hangars, the picture of the German air force as painted by General Goering will 

be a reality. It is further believed that this force will be equal to that of 

France.”70 

In the autumn of 1935, Captain Koenig’s reports of information regarding 

the GAF were prefaced with a caveat: “Events are changing very rapidly in 

Germany and what may be considered good information today may be 

33 
Piercing the Fog 

completely changed tomorrow.” Koenig expressed an inability to provide an 

index report because of a lack of definite details. He could not understand why 

the Air Ministry was manufacturing Ju 52 aircraft in such large numbers.* He 

considered these planes to be excellent commercial transport aircraft, but they 

were in no way first-class bombers. He expected “to soon witness the production of very modern types of military aircraft which had either been secretly 

designed and tested, or possibly manufactured.”” Although Major Smith asked 

that Captain Koenig be replaced by a technically qualified officer early in 1936, 

Maj. Arthur W. Vanaman, Air Corps, did not arrive in Berlin until July 1937. 

In May 1937, when Charles Lindbergh traveled to Europe, it occurred to 

Smith that a Lindbergh visit to Germany might open contacts beyond Koenig’s 

reach. Lindbergh and his wife began a ten-day visit to Germany on July 22, 

when they were warmly received by Goering and other high-ranking Lujbvaffe 

officials. On a tour of Lu.uffe stations and aircraft factories, Lindbergh missed 

seeing new Messerschmitt fighters still in prototype, but he was told of their 

operational specifications. At the Heinkel factories, Lindbergh and Smith saw 

the new He 11 1 bomber; at Dessau they had a preview of the Ju 87 Stuka dive 

bomber. Lindbergh was not greatly impressed by the quality of most of the 

German aircraft types he saw, but he was tremendously impressed by the 

vitality that infused the German aviation effort. In September and October 1937, 

Lindbergh again visited Germany, and in these months he and Major Vanaman 

saw most of the aircraft that the Lujbvafle would use in World War 11. 

Later in October, Lindbergh worked with the military attach& preparing a 

“General Estimate as of November 1,1937,” which Major Smith transmitted to 

Washington over his signature, admitting the views he expressed were 

influenced by Lindbergh. Smith later said the report was deliberately written in 

dramatic style to attract high-level attention. The report noted the “astounding 

growth” of German air power from a zero level in just four years. “It is difficult 

to express in a few words the literally amazing size of the German air industry. 

. . . Behind this industry stands a formidable group of air scientists, with large 

and well equipped laboratories and test fields, constantly pushing forward the 

German scientific advance. . . . The actual November 1 st strength of the G Air 

Force is probably from 175 to 225 squadron^."'^ 

In March 1938, Major Vanaman used equally overblown language in 

describing the use of the GAF in the Anschluss between Germany and Austria: 

“Each cog and wheel functioned efficiently. Heavy bombers and swift fighters 

accomplished their mission by demonstration, troops were landed by airplane 

to initiate the attack, and the motorized troops arrived to complete the task and 

annihilate any resistance. . . . Thus the Air Force has made history as an 

instrument adapted to quick decisive movements so necessary in modern 

*Although widely used by the Germans as a transport, the Ju 52 was originally 

viewed as a bomber. 

34 
Early Intelligence Organization 

warfare.”73 In August and early September 1938, Lindbergh visited Russia and 

Czechoslovakia. In his return through Paris on September 9, he expressed 

pessimism’in an interview with Col. H. H. Fuller, the U.S. military and air 

attach& Fuller reported: “Col. Lindbergh believes that Germany has the 

outstanding air force of the world today and that it exceeds in power those of 

Russia, France, and England combined. German equipment, machinery and 

factories he considered the best in the 

Well after the Second World War Col. Truman Smith prepared a memoir 

on his air intelligence activities in Berlin during the 1930s which generally 

revealed that he had taken upon himself the task of awakening America to the 

danger of the Nazi menace. Although in retrospect he believed that the 

conclusion of the general air estimate of November 1, 1937, had stood up 

extremely well, Smith noted some important lacunae. “The most significant 

omission is the report’s failure to state that the Luftwuffe was not a long-range 

air force, built around heavy bombers with the primary mission of destroying 

cities and factories far behind the enemy’s lines, but rather an air force designed 

to operate in close support of Germany’s ground armies.” Another shortcoming 

dealt with personnel of the GAF: “While the report took note of the great 

personnel difficulties which the Luftwuffe was encountering, it failed to mention 

the inexperience and inefficiency of many generals of the Lufnyuffe. . . . Most 

of these were infantry and artillery generals transferred into the Luftwuffe at the 

commencement of the rearmament in 1933. This lack of able and experienced 

air generals was to become a more appreciable factor in causing the Lufnyuffe’s 

destruction when the Second World War drew to its con~lusion.”~~ For all his 

technical expertise, Lindbergh, the Lone Eagle, apparently had missed a crucial 

point about the GAF: by organization, training, and aircraft selection it was not 

an instrument for conducting independent strategic air warfare by heavy 

bombardment. “This failure to grasp the essential character of the Luftwuffe,” 

wrote General Telford Taylor, “goes far to explain the exaggerated predictions 

of destruction which Lindbergh was soon spreading far and wide.”76 

On July 24, 1936-two days after Lindbergh’s first visit to Berlin-emissaries of General Francisco Franco arrived in Germany to request 

Hitler’s assistance in a fascist overthrow of Spain’s republican government. In 

the dock at the Allied war crimes trial at Nuremberg, Goering remembered the 

buildup of the Lufnyuffe and the Spanish Civil War. When Franco asked the 

Fuhrer for support, particularly in the air, Goering recalled, ‘‘I urged him to give 

support under all circumstances, firstly, to prevent the further spread of 

Communism; secondly, to test my young Lufnyaffe in this or that technical 

respect.”77 In Spain, the German Condor Legion tested new equipment and 

perfected the tactics and techniques of air-ground support to be used in Europe. 

Aided by German and Italian air units, nationalist forces under General Franco 

were victorious against Spanish government forces until November 1936. At 

that point, the republicans, aided by an International Brigade and Russian 

35 
Piercing the Fog 

aircraft, successfully defended Madrid:’ The Spanish Civil War would drag on 

for three more years. 

Six months into the war, the U.S. military attach6 in Spain, Col. Stephen D. 

Fuqua, Infantry, and his assistant for air, Capt. Townsend Griffiss, Air Corps, 

submitted a summary report on lessons of the air war based on sources in the 

Spanish Air Ministry and official and unofficial personal contacts. The report, 

sent in February 1937, stated bluntly: “The flying fortress [concept] died in 

Spain.” It then continued: 

The peacetime theory of the complete invulnerability of the modem type 

bombardment airplane no longer holds. The increased speeds and modem 

armament of both the bombardment and pursuit plane have worked in 

favor of the pursuit. . . . Pursuit must be employed to protect bombardment 

or, it is better to say bombardment must rely upon pursuit for its protection. Bombardment must consist of two types of airplanes; the large, heavy 

weight-lifter for night and the very fast plane for day. The day bombardment must sacrifice all for speed and a reasonable bomb load, but first of 

all it must be fast.. . . The old formula of high altitude bombing is 

exploded. Pursuit with its tactics of attack operates better at high altitudes. 

It is easier for friendly pursuit to protect a bombardment formation when 

that formation is at low altitude. . . . The day bombardment of the future 

will be done at an extremely low altitude-say 500 feet-using delayed 

fuzed bombs. . . . The proportion of pursuit planes to bombardment should 

be in the ratio of two for one.” 

Subsequent reports from Captain Griffiss took a more judicious theme that air 

strength on both sides was so small that aviation could be used only for 

battlefield support, but Griffiss’s report had badly damaged U.S. Air Corps 

positions by the middle of 1937. 

A course in the Army War College conducted during September 1937 used 

a text entitled “Air Forces and War,” which argued that air power had limited 

value when employed independently and was chiefly useful in support of 

surface troops. The text cited the air attach&’ report from Spain, repeating that 

“high-altitude bombing was ineffectual, that the ‘Flying Fortress’ concept had 

‘died in Spain,’ and that small bombers and fighters, which could operate from 

cow-pasture facilities, were of the utmost utility.” Adding to the force of the 

text, Col. Bryon Q. Jones, a senior Air Corps officer serving on the staff of the 

Army War College, completely endorsed it in a lecture on September 9, 1937. 

Jones, who was so astute that he transfered to the Cavalry in 1939, stated that 

“the Spanish Civil War had demonstrated that. . . air power had not progressed 

markedly from . . . World War I.” He advocated the “employment of GHQ 

aviation in close support of ground forces,” with “attachment of attack and 

bombardment [units] to lower echelons . . . in the same manner as artillery.”80 

Seeking to counteract the reports from Spain, Maj. Gen. James Fechet, the 

retired Chief of Air Corps, put out a pamphlet saying air operations in Spain 

were “sporadic attempts by light bombers and other types dropping light bombs 

36 
Early Intelligence Organization 

and firing machine guns. . . . These not by the wildest stretches of the 

imagination are air force operations.”” Rebutting the Jones lecture, two Air 

Corps officers assigned to the G-3 WDGS prepared a paper pointing out that 

Jones was inconsistent with approved Army doctrine laid out in TR 440-15. 

Maj. Gen. Stanley D. Embick, the G-3, refused the finding. “Aviation,” Embick 

wrote in October 1937, “is a new arm. Our present War Department doctrine 

has had to be based necessarily on theory and assumption rather than on factual 

evidence. Now we are getting evidence of that character. No doctrine is sacrosanct, and of all military doctrines that of our Air Corps should be the last to be 

so regarded.”” 

General Arnold became Chief of the Army Air Corps in late 1938, and he 

later recalled that the U.S. military attach6 reports from Spain “were not only 

weak but ~nimaginative.”~~ In 1938, however, Maj. Gen. Malin Craig, Army 

Chief of Staff, accepted the arguments of those who believed that operations in 

Spain and China illustrated the fact that new defensive weapons-particularly 

AA armaments and antitank weapons-had met the challenge of the notable 

innovations in offensive weapons-the airplane and the tank. The greatly 

increased power of the new defensive weapons, Craig noted, had “restored to 

the defense the superiority it seemed to lose with the advent of the new 

offensive arms. . . . It is largely because of these new defensive weapons that we 

find current operations confirming anew the testimony of history that the 

Infantry is the core and the essential substance of an army. It alone of all the 

arms approximates a military entity. It alone can win a decision. Each of the 

other arms is but an auxiliary-its utility measured by the aid that it can bring 

to the 1nfant1-y.”~~ In the summer of 1938, General Craig indicated that he 

wanted to turn over the coastal defense role for long-range bombers to the Navy 

by refusing to authorize the purchase of additional B-17s. On August 6, 1938, 

the Chief of Air Corps was informed that developmental expenditures for fiscal 

years 1939 and 1940 would be “restricted to that class of aviation designed for 

the close support of ground troops and the protection of that type of aircraft.”” 

Despite the intelligence indications that Germany was building a tactical air 

force, both the U.S. Army Air Corps and the RAF appeared reluctant to accept 

the fact that any emerging air force would deviate from the strategic bombing 

doctrine of Giulio Douhet. In the case of Great Britain, Maj. Gen. Kenneth 

Strong, who would later become General Dwight D. Eisenhower’s A-2 at 

Supreme Headquarters, Allied Expeditionary Force, would remember that in 

Imperial Defense College lectures he had described the GAF as “basically 

ancillary arms” to the operations of the German Army. It seemed to him this 

description did not suit those who were concerned with strategic air operations 

and an independent mission for the RAF. In any event, he was forbidden to 

include in his lectures any comments on the employment of the Lufiuffe in 

war.“ 

37 
Piercing the Fog 

During 1934-1935, the British government accepted the theory that in a 

future war Germany might try to score a quick victory by a large-scale 

devastating air attack. The Air Staff estimated that casualties on the order of 

20,000 might be expected in London within the first 24 hours of aerial 

bombardment; within a week these might rise to 150,000. A seeming British 

fear of aerial bombing had been apparent to authorities in Nazi Germany as 

early as 1934, and it became the substance for a diplomacy that might be 

characterized as Lufpolitik. Paralyzed by the prospect of German war, Great 

Britain and France abandoned Czechoslovakia to Adolf Hitler in the Munich 

appeasement pact on September 30, 193KB7 In General Arnold’s words, 

“Without firing a shot, dropping a bomb, or even starting an engine, Hitler’s 

Luftwaffe and his armored forces won for him his first major victory of World 

war II.”Rx 

Some historians have believed that the Munich agreement saved Great 

Britain by providing a year in which to prepare for the Luftwufse. More recent 

scholars argue that British military intelligence failed the government at a 

critical juncture. The Luftwaffe, they stress, was grossly unprepared for a twofront war in September 1938, and preparations for an air offensive against Great 

Britain were “totally inadequate” because the GAF had “tied its plans for both 

1938 and 1939 closely to the operations of the army’’ rather than planning for 

strategic operations.89 

In the United States, President Franklin D. Roosevelt had listened to men, 

such as Ambassadors Hugh Wilson in Berlin and William C. Bullitt in Paris, 

who agreed that Hitler’s power rested on an already large air force capable of 

rapid expansion from existing airplane factories. Ruminating on the inadequate 

reports from Wilson and Bullitt, Roosevelt reached a conclusion that immediately benefited the Air Corps. At a meeting on November 14, 1938, the 

President “issued instructions which General Arnold described as the ‘Magna 

Carta’ of the Air Force. Roosevelt announced that airplanes-not ground 

forces-were the implements of war which would have an influence on Hitler’s 

actions.” He wanted vastly increased U.S. aircraft production and preparations 

“to resist [an Axis] assault on the Western Hemisphere ‘from the North to the 

South Pole.”” 

Increased support for the Air Corps within the War Department found 

manifestation in many ways, not the least of which was the appointment of Brig. 

Gen. George C. Marshall as Deputy Chief of Staff in the summer of 1938. 

Subsequently, Marshall, who became Acting Chief of Staff in July of 1939 and 

Chief of Staff the following September, foresaw a much broader use for air 

power than his predecessor did. When the question of the Army Air Corps’ 

mission was raised again, it was resolved in a definitive statement approved on 

September 15, 1939. This War Department Air Board report declared, “Air 

Power is indispensable to our national defense, especially in the early stages of 

war. Our aviation in peacetime, both its organization and its equipment, must 

38 
Early Intelligence Organization 

be designed primarily for the application of Air Power in the early days of war. 

The basis of Air Power is the bombardment plane.”” 

The Approach of War 

The Air Board’s conclusion marked an important step in the evolution of 

American air forces. Having gained recognition for a role independent of 

ground operations, the Army’s airmen now had to acquire an air intelligence 

capability to plan for and execute such operations. 

Capt. Robert C. Oliver graduated from the Army C&GSS in the mid-1930s 

and became instructor in military intelligence at the ACTS. His lectures 

revealed the deficiencies of existing intelligence organizations to support an air 

power strategy predicated on neutralizing the basic vital elements of an enemy 

nation. Oliver explained the two schools of thought in regard to intelligence: 

one the method of “intentions,” the other the method of “capabilities.” The 

method of intentions had long been used in the American Army; it involved a 

knowledge of hostile dispositions to project an enemy’s intentions. The method 

of capabilities had been used, among others, by Napoleon; it involved 

determinating an enemy’s ability to perform any number of actions. These 

abilities would dictate which actions were more likely to be used than others, 

while some actions would be seen as highly unlikely.’* 

The air power strategy, Oliver argued, required a close scrutiny of aspects 

of an enemy’s capabilities not traditionally included in the scope of military 

intelligence. The prevailing surface strategy, on the other hand, involved a 

normal intelligence collection of the mere strength, dispositions, and fighting 

efficiency of an enemy’s armed forces. Three types of intelligence estimates 

were commonly made by the G-2 section and used by the WPD: combat, 

political, and economic appraisals. Oliver urged that a fourth estimate-the 

study of an enemy nation from the standpoint of its vulnerability to air 

attack-was required to permit the WPD to revise existing war plans to include 

the application of air power. In April 1939, Captain Oliver noted that the old 

Index Guide for attachts did not contain instructions for collecting information 

required for this fourth estimate. He recommended that the Guide be amended 

and that G-2 provide three to six weeks of instruction on intelligence collection 

to all new military attach& This instruction would focus on identification of 

possible air force objectives. After identifying vital areas and gathering data on 

them through military attach&, the G-2 could then prepare objective folders on 

targets in the countries under c~nsideration.’~ 

In the spring of 1939, Captain Oliver, with the C&GSS’s assistance, 

prepared a study to be forwarded to the Chief of Air Corps and thence to the 

Chief of Staff, U.S. Army, recommending changes in the military intelligence 

procedure. To assist the G-2 in making intelligence estimates for offensive air 

39 
Piercing the Fog 

operations, the study recommended that several Air Corps officers recently 

graduated from ACTS should be detailed to G-2 for the sole purpose of 

initiating and carrying out air estimate studies. The study recommended that 

data from the G-2 information collection agencies (military attaches, foreign 

missions, and other nonpublicized agencies) should be arranged and compiled 

into objective folders by the OCAC, with the OCAC Plans Section required to 

initiate, build, and serve as custodian of these files. Since a need to gather 

detailed information concerning hostile air forces was present in peace and war, 

the study also recommended that the Air Corps establish an effective intelligence section to obtain information from new sources. This section would 

provide information to operational Air Corps units in an appropriate form.’4 

The Air Corps was not represented on the Joint Army-Navy Board which 

began in 1939 to draw up the series of RAINBOW war plans, and the joint 

planners in the WPD rarely called for Air Corps assistance. The result was a 

tendency to create plans that called for air force employment only in direct 

support of ground arms. Moreover, wrote Lt. Col. Carl A. Spaatz, Chief of the 

OCAC Plans Division, to General Arnold in August 1939, air intelligence 

required to support air operations under any of the several U.S. strategic plans 

was not being maintained ready for use.” Arnold convened on August 23 a 

board of officers under the presidency of Maj. James P. Hodges which included 

Maj. Thomas D. White, Capt. Robert C. Oliver, and Capt. Gordon P. Saville.’6 

After six days of meetings, the board filed the most comprehensive analysis 

of Air Corps intelligence requirements to that time. It concluded that the 

expansion of the Air Corps and the War Department’s acceptance of the concept 

of possible strategic employment of Army air power necessitated a consideration of the effects of air power in all war planning. This, in turn, imposed on 

information collection and processing agencies an additional, and perhaps 

major, task. The Air Corps needed intelligence that would permit the Chief of 

Air Corps to make recommendations relative to strategic planning and other 

defense projects and would permit technical planning in aircraft development. 

The report agreed that War Department intelligence responsibilities should be 

located where means and facilities were available. G-2 could continue to 

maintain general, nontechnical information about foreign air forces. The Chief 

of Air Corps should be responsible for gathering technical information on 

foreign aviation and for processing all information on the use of aircraft for AA 

defense. The OCAC already processed information on potential landing fields, 

airdromes, and air bases, and this should remain an Air Carps function.” 

The Air Corps Intelligence Board’s report was not formally submitted to 

the General Staff; instead, Brig. Gen. George V. Strong, Assistant Chief of 

Staff, WPD, a member of the earlier War Department Air Board, handled it. In 

a memo to Arnold on October 5, 1939, Strong completely accepted all the 

requirements specified as necessary for intelligence support for air matters. 

Observing that the G-2 was reestablishing a separate Air Section to coordinate 

40 
Early Intelligence Organization 

all aviation intelligence activities in G-2, Strong believed that the Assistant 

Chief of Staff G-2 should continue to obtain and assimilate all War Department 

air intelligence and maintain a current summary of air operations in the 

European war that had begun with Germany’s attack on Poland on September 

1, 1939. The Air Corps would prepare airway (route) and objective (target) 

cards as information became available, and would process information of a 

technical nature pertaining to foreign aviation?8 

Coming so soon after the outbreak of war in Europe, the Air Corps 

Intelligence Board’s findings generated interest in the activities of G-2. Even 

President Roosevelt became involved in military observation abroad, asking 

General Marshall on September 9, 1939, “[Wlhat are we doing about it?’w In 

the OCAC, the Information Division’s Intelligence Section maintained 

connection with G-2 on matters of foreign intelligence. On December 1, 1939, 

the OCAC directed the Information Division to implement the recommendations of the Air Corps Intelligence Board and to organize and operate the 

Intelligence Section accordingly. This instruction was to remain in effect until 

Air Corps intelligence procedures had been “exhaustively studied.”’00 Under 

this mandate, the OCAC Information Division started to collect information 

outside MID channels when it considered intelligence produced by MID to be 

inadequate. In May 1940, a representative of the G-2 orally and informally 

consented to this practice, with the proviso that MID remain the official contact 

with the Navy and State Departments. G-2 could hardly do otherwise, inasmuch 

as General Miles lacked the staff to carry out all that was expected of his 

people. The practice of informal approval with express reservations came to be 

used more and more as the war progressed and the bureaucratic competition 

became more complex. 

In part because of attention focused on technical intelligence by the Air 

Corps Intelligence Board, the War Department on September 6,1940, officially 

directed the chiefs of all arms and services to establish and maintain intelligence 

sections as part of their respective organizations.”’ On October 23, Arnold 

further directed the OCAC Information Division to establish an Evaluation 

Section that would assess foreign information received from all sources and 

prepare an air bulletin each week summarizing foreign trends and developments 

of interest to senior Air Corps commanders and staffs.’” 

In November 1940, the Air Corps changed the name of its Information 

Division to the Intelligence Division. At this time, the Intelligence Division’s 

Foreign Intelligence Section consisted of a Current Intelligence Branch (Capt. 

J. F. Olive, Jr.), Operations Planning Branch (Capt. Haywood S. Hansell), and 

Foreign Liaison Branch (Capt. Elwood R. Quesada). For the expansion of Air 

Corps intelligence, additional Air Corps Reserve officers and some civilian 

experts were available. Two notable civilians turned military were Dr. James T. 

Lowe, a specialist in diplomatic history and international relations, and Capt. 

Malcolm W. Moss, a man broadly experienced in international business who 

41 
Piercing the Fog 

headed an Air Estimates and Objective Folders Unit under the Operations 

Planning Branch.Io3 

The OCAC Intelligence Division assumed a broad interpretation of what 

was meant by technical evaluation. Air intelligence considered General Strong’s 

October 5,1939, memo a War Department directive; the G-2 regarded it as only 

a suggestion. Early in 1941, Brig. Gen. Sherman Miles, the G-2, objected to a 

ten-page paper that Hansell had written, “Basis for Intelligence for an Air 

Estimate of the Situation-Europe.’’ Miles claimed that the MID was responsible for evaluating comprehensive intelligence information; the intelligence 

section of an arm or service was authorized only to make technical evaluations 

of information pertinent to that arm or service. Refereeing the difference, the 

head of the WD, Brig. Gen. Joseph T. McNarney, himself an air officer, ruled 

that the Air Corps study was a technical evaluation. He added that air objective 

folders prepared by Air Corps intelligence were also technical evaluations, even 

though they might be filled with considerations of the economic or political 

value of a target.lw McNarney’s opinion favoring the Air Corps’ intelligence 

office seems to have been a very broadly based decision. It may have been 

rendered out of loyalty to his colleagues, but it certainly pointed out the wide 

rift between air intelligence in the Air Corps and the G-2. 

When the G-2 asked the Chief of Staff to overturn McNarney’s ruling, the 

Air Corps rebuttal demanded that “not only should all information possessed by 

the MID be made available, but that no hindrance should exist to the collection 

of additional information by the personnel of the Intelligence Division, Office, 

Chief of Air Corps, from sources within the United States.” Upon seeing these 

demands signed by Maj. Gen. George H. Brett, Acting Chief of Air Corps, 

General Miles notified the Chief of Staff on June 12, 1941, that serious 

duplication existed in practically all phases of military intelligence and that the 

Air Corps’ actions would continue such duplication unless intelligence 

responsibilities were promptly delineated. A quick decision was necessary 

because a major reorganization of the Air Corps was in process and specific 

intelligence functions ought to be cleared up before a new HQ AAF was 

e~tab1ished.l’~ 

As Chief of Air Corps and Acting Deputy Chief of Staff for Air after 

October 1940, Arnold was already aware of the muddle in air intelligence when 

he became commanding general of the newly established AAF on June 20, 

1941. According to Hansell, Truman Smith, after his return from Germany in 

1940, informed Arnold of many details regarding the Luftwafle and German 

aircraft production, information about which Arnold was unaware but which the 

G-2 already knew. Arnold, surprised and unhappy with news that he considered 

important to Air Corps planning and operations, went to see General Miles. 

Miles informed him that since the Chief of Air Corps was not a member of the 

WDGS, he was not eligible to see such sensitive information. That was too 

much for Hap Arnold, who went to see General Marshall to get added authority 

42 
Early Intelligence Organization 

for air intelligence information gathering by the air staff. Marshall seems to 

have seen the lack of logic in having an air force that did not understand its 

potential enemies; he approved an expanded air attache role with limited 

participation by Captain Hansell and Major White, who laid out the information 

gathering requirements.’“ 

Hansell also recalled Arnold’s earlier involvement in the complex 

bureaucratic wrangling over intelligence responsibilities that arose from apaper 

Hansell had prepared in 1940 proposing U.S. Army engineers be sent to survey 

the Burma Road leading into China. When the paper got into the hands of 

General Miles, he sent it to the Deputy Chief of Staff, Maj. Gen. William 

Bryden, with the complaint that the OCAC had no business intruding in such 

matters. The Deputy Chief passed the complaint to Arnold, noting stiffly that 

if the officers of the OCAC Information Division had no more useful occupation than this, he was prepared to disband the division and transfer its personnel 

to G-2, where their talents could be directed to some useful purpose. General 

Arnold was miffed, most probably because he had not known about Hansell’s 

original paper. He sent the correspondence back to the Information Division 

with the laconic comment, “I am inclined to agree with Gen. Bryden.”’” 

The staff officers in the OCAC, and then in the new AAF, pushed hard for 

greater autonomy from G-2. Two weeks before establishment of the AAF, the 

Chief of the Intelligence Division, Col. Robert C. Candee, prepared a critique 

of his division’s relations with G-2 for General Brett. He recalled the G-2’s 

resentment about the informal Burma Road proposal and said that Arnold’s 

chief of staff had refused to pay for Air Corps proposals to send air observers 

abroad and to collect technical intelligence information from New York 

industrial concerns. A week before General Arnold assumed his new position 

as head of the AAF, Brett told him that if all intelligence for air force operations 

had to come from G-2, the Air Corps Intelligence Division would be practically 

eliminated and air force operations would be at a standstill. A month later, on 

July 5, 1941, Colonel Candee made a detailed comparison of intelligence 

functions of MID and the AAF for Arnold. His report concluded, “The AAF 

desperately needs freedom to prepare for war. Therefore, its intelligence 

functions should not be restricted by the views and routine channels and 

practices of the MID.”’o8 

With the establishment of the AAF, Arnold brought Brig. Gen. Martin 

Scanlon back from his post as military air attach6 in London to become the first 

AC/AS, Intelligence (A-2). Both Scanlon, and Lt. Col. Harold L. George, 

AC/AS, WPD, considered the AAF to be virtually autonomous. George argued 

that the Air War Plans Division (AWPD) was the proper agency to formulate 

all plans for employment of air power. General Scanlon believed A-2 should 

provide all the air intelligence upon which to base the plans. “It is apparent,” he 

wrote, “that all restrictions which tend to limit the reliability and efficiency of 

the Air Intelligence Division should be removed.” According to Scanlon, air 

43 
Piercing the Fog 

intelligence comprised evaluated information necessary for the effective 

conduct of air operations beyond the sphere of influence of surface forces, or in 

lieu of surface forces, or in support of ground or sea forces, or in AA defense. 

Preparation of such evaluations required information upon which strategic and 

tactical objectives could be selected for air offensives, to include air route 

guides, target analyses, objective folders, navigation charts, enemy OBs, and 

performance characteristics of enemy aircraft.'@ 

General Arnold wanted a quick solution to the delineation of responsibilities; at the end of July 1941 he sent Scanlon to discuss the matter informally 

with General Miles. As in the past, Miles vigorously and unequivocally 

declared that the function of collecting intelligence information was the 

exclusive responsibility of MID, and he denied A-2 the privilege of establishing 

channels outside of MID. On July 28, 1941, Arnold decided to place the entire 

problem before General Marshall, sending him a memo on the subject of 

responsibility for air intelligence. After noting recommendations and justifications he had made previously as Chief of Air Corps, Arnold put forward new 

arguments based on his new responsibilities as Commanding General of the 

AAF, charged by Army regulations with control of both the OCAC and the 

former GHQ Air Force, now designated the Air Force Combat Command. He 

wrote that in his new job he had to have nearly complete freedom of action from 

G-2 in intelligence matters. To prevent unnecessary duplication, and no doubt 

to try to make the suggestion more palatable to the G-2, he suggested that G-2 

and A-2 coordinate and cooperate by exchanging available intelligence and 

checking with each other to see whether information newly desired had not 

already been collected. He also suggested that G-2's air section remain in MID 

to handle requirements for air intelligence in the employment of ground or 

combined forces."' 

In the same July 28 memorandum to General Marshall, Arnold put in a bid 

for responsibility over the burgeoning number of Air Corps officers being sent 

on missions overseas or assigned as assistant military attaches. In November 

1940, the Joint Army-Navy Board had taken note of threatened German aerial 

penetration into Latin America and had declared that the War and Navy 

Departments would support establishment of U.S. missions in all republics of 

the Western Hemisphere, with priorities to countries north of Brazil and 

Ecuador. A number of Air Corps officers had already been sent to Latin 

American capitals."' 

Less than a week after the declaration of war by England and France in 

September 1939, the U.S. War Department had asked those governments if 

temporary-duty U.S. Army observers could accompany their armies in the field. 

Approval led to a steady stream of observer reports to the War Department. 

From Paris, Lt. Col. George C. Kenney reported that captive balloons were 

completely impractical for observation, as were slow and vulnerable observation planes. Serving in London as a special observer from May to September 

44 
Early Intelligence Organization 

1940, Carl Spaatz, now a full colonel, had a first-hand view of some of the 

heaviest fighting of the Lu@affe blitz against England. He quickly concluded 

“that the Germans had developed ‘a mass of air geared to the Army’ which was 

not going to . . . prevail against the ‘real air power’ developed by the British.” 

Unfortunately, Spaatz noted, the British had committed themselves to shortrange planes only to find they needed long-range bombers.”’ By December 

1940, the number of U.S. Army special observers sent abroad on various tasks 

had reached twenty officers, half of them from the Air More followed 

the next year. 

In the face of these extensive activities, Arnold proposed in July 1941 that 

Air Corps officers on attach6 or mission duty be designated military air 

attach&, to be appointed through G-2 but to act as collectors of air intelligence. 

Special intelligence missions were to be assigned only after it was ascertained 

whether G-2 might have the desired intelligence. In cases of military necessity, 

the commander of the AAF would have the right to collect necessary air 

intelligence without consulting G-2. Arnold also requested that A-2 maintain 

direct liaison with foreign air attach& in the United States and that all cables 

concerning air matters be forwarded by G-2 to AAF Headquarters as soon as 

decoded and before being processed.114 

In response to General Arnold’s paper, General Miles complained to the 

Chief of Staff that work being done by A-2 was contrary to Amy regulations. 

Miles’s memo of August 11, 1941, said that Arnold’s contentions presented “a 

perfect picture of dual intelligence, a picture of two offices, largely duplicating 

each other’s work and yet independent as to the results obtained-a picture of 

parallel lines, meeting nowhere.” In rebuttal, Arnold denied that duplication and 

divergent studies and estimates would result from his proposals, which were not 

intended to take away G-2’s prerogatives, but were meant to speed up obtaining 

timely and adequate information necessary for technical, tactical, and strategic 

planning in the AAF. Early in September, General Scanlon had studied 

applicable Army regulations and pointed out that while MID was charged with 

general intelligence duties and supervision of intelligence, nothing appeared to 

prevent other agencies performing the same duties under MID supervision.l15 

The War Department issued its command decision delineating intelligence 

responsibilities on September 10,1941. The decision stated that the responsibility imposed on MID for collecting, evaluating, and disseminating military 

information pertained to the AAF as well as to other arms. The MID was 

charged with compiling information for comprehensive military studies and 

with preparing such studies and estimates. AAF intelligence agencies were to 

compile and evaluate technical and tactical information received from MID and 

other sources, plus collect technical air intelligence from sources abroad 

through cooperation with MID. All of these types of information were required 

by the AAF for their development and for such operations as they might be 

directed to perform.116 The War Department delineation disappointed Scanlon, 

45 
Piercing the Fog 

as it left the AAF with too little authority for what he saw as its needs. A few 

days after the War Department decision was issued, and hoping to fight the 

decision, Scanlon sent Arnold evidence of an unsound MID evaluation relative 

to the Luftwufse’s attacks on vital points in Britain’s national structure. Arnold 

decided he could not then press the issue any further. He sent Scanlon’s paper 

back with a cryptic remark: “We are getting what we want and we will simply 

try out the whole scheme.””’ 

Scanlon, at an air staff meeting on September 11, 1941, put the best 

possible face on the problem, stating “that G-2 had agreed to practically 

everything we had asked for. Much of it will not be written but is understood.” 

According to the agreement, A-2 had to check with G-2 for availability of 

information on a given topic. If none were available, A-2 officers, working 

through G-2 organizations, could obtain it. In addition, G-2 agreed to provide 

complete reports from their sources so the Air Staff could prepare their own 

studies. Finally, A-2 was authorized direct contact with other government 

departments as well as with foreign military attaches on duty in this country.”’ 

The jurisdictional paper contained a rnodus vivendi that more or less settled the 

political wrangling and set a pattern for continuing G-2/A-2 relations. It 

appeared that as long as the G-2 was oficiully responsible for intelligence 

collection and dissemination, Miles would be willing to delegate much of the 

air intelligence operation to the A-2, the organization most vitally concerned 

and having the qualified people and desire to do the work. The A-2 continued 

to be chafed by MID restraints, and the AAF would periodically request 

severance of its A-2 from G-2’s control. 

AWPD-1: Planning an Air War 

Early in 1941, Anglo-American military staff conferences in Washington began 

to consider “principles of cooperation ‘should the United States be compelled 

to resort to war.”’ The three aviation experts involved were Air Vice Marshal 

John C. Slessor, RAF; Col. 3. T. McNarney, the Air Corps officer assigned to 

WPD; and Capt. DeWitt C. Ramsey, U.S. Navy. On March 27 the AngloAmerican representatives issued a document to be known as American-British 

Conversations-1 (or ABC-1). Since Germany was the most powerful Axis 

partner, the main Allied effort would be conducted in Europe, and the 

democracies would depend largely on the U.S. Pacific Fleet to maintain a 

defense against Japan. “The Allied offensive in Europe was to include economic 

pressure through blockade, a ‘sustained air offensive’ against German military 

power, early defeat of Italy, and the buildup of forces for an eventual land 

offensive against Germany. As rapidly as possible, the Allies would achieve 

‘superiority of air strength over that of the enemy, particularly in long-range 

striking forces. ”’I ” 

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Early Intelligence Organization 

McNarney doubtless knew Air Corps viewpoints, but he represented the 

WPD. The U.S. Army Air Corps as such had no representation at the AmericanBritish Conversations. On March 22,1941, however, Colonel Candee (OCAC, 

Intelligence) and Brig. Gen. Carl A. Spaatz (OCAC, Plans) jointly signed an air 

estimate of the situation. The two concluded: 

While heavy air attacks on England will continue, there will be no serious 

attempt at a land invasion. The Axis can strangle Britain-slowly, 

methodically. Time is in favor of the Axis for the next year. It must be 

expected that the Axis will obtain complete domination over Continental 

Europe this summer, including the Balkans and possibly Turkey and Asia 

Minor. . . . Britain must hold until aid from America can bring her air 

forces to a parity with the Axis. Until then she cannot hope to take the 

offensive. The war must be fought on a basis of attrition of items critical 

to the Axis-oil, steel, and foodstuffs, of which we have a superiority. 

Any active participation by the United States in the European war will 

probably result in swift, aggressive action by the Japanese against the East 

Indies and Malaya. If it becomes apparent that the U.S. will become an 

active belligerent, the Axis powers will seek to have us commit our efforts 

simultaneousIy in Europe and in the Far East. This is the worst situation 

in which we could possibly place ourselves.”” 

In the aftermath of ABC-1, the U.S. War and Navy Departments established closer relations with Great Britain. The Navy sent an observer group to 

London under Rear Adm. Robert L. Ghormley, and on May 8,1941, Maj. Gen. 

James E. Chaney, Air Corps, was ordered to England as a special army observer 

to carry out secret instructions of the Secretary of War. His real mission was to 

“work out joint plans of operation and, in the event of war, to assume command 

functions for such forces as may be employed.” The secretary had authorized 

for Chaney a complete general staff, including a G-2. Establishment of this 

Special Observers Group in London raised the question of its relationship to 

Brig. Gen. Raymond E. Lee, the military attache to Great Britain. From 

Washington, General Miles informed General Lee that he and the Special 

Observers Group were mutually independent. Lee was under the supervision of 

MID, but he was to provide the observers with copies of all his reports.’*’ 

The Candee-Spaatz estimate of the situation prepared on March 22, 1941, 

had posed many intelligence questions relative to the work RAF intelligence 

might have accomplished against Germany. It had recommended that one or 

more U.S. Army Air Corps officers be attached to the RAF intelligence 

directorate with free access to gather intelligence required for employment of 

American air forces if the United States went to war. In the summer of 1941 

Haywood Hansell, now a major, arrived in England and received a generous 

welcome from RAF intelligence. In regard to air target materials, Hansell found 

on balance that the AAF was better informed on German electric power, 

petroleum, and synthetic product resources. The RAF knew more about German 

aircraft and engine production, the GAF, and German transportation. By the end 

of his visit he had acquired nearly a ton of documents, mostly classified target 

47 
Piercing the Fog 

folders. It was with some relief that he got the cargo hauled back to Washington 

in a bomber.“’ 

On July 9, 1941, some two weeks after Hitler attacked Russia, President 

Roosevelt asked the Secretaries of War and Navy to prepare an estimate of the 

overall production requirements required to defeat America’s potential enemies. 

After some delay, the AWPD, headed by Colonel George, was brought into the 

problem to determine the maximum number of air squadrons the AAF would 

ultimately require to garrison a great number of geographic sites and to hold 

what the officers termed reserves of opportunity. George assigned this task to 

Lt. Col. Kenneth Walker, head of the War Plans Group of the AWPD. Walker 

brought together a small task force including Hansell, now back from Great 

Britain and assigned to the War Plans Group, Lt. Col. Max F. Schneider, an able 

logistician, Lt. Col. Arthur W. Vanaman from A-2, and Lt. Col. Laurence S. 

Kuter from G-3. The group conceived their task as being to determine air 

requirements to accomplish the strategy laid out in ABC-1, which had been 

incorporated into the U.S. strategic war plan RAINBOW 5. A thick study known 

as AWPD-1, “Munitions Requirements of the AAF,” was bound on August 12, 

1941, after only seven working days.123 

The air mission outlined in AWPD-1 followed that defined in the earlier 

ABC-1. It called for a sustained air offensive against Germany pending a land 

offensive if an invasion of the continent became necessary. The air planners 

thought it improbable that a surface invasion could be mounted against 

Germany for at least three years. If the air offensive was successful, a land 

offensive might not even be necessary. Three lines of air action were open 

against a Getman economy and society supposedly already strained to support 

the military campaign in Russia. The first, which would accomplish the broad 

air mission in Europe, required disruption of Germany’s electric power and 

transportation systems, destruction of her oil and petroleum resources, and the 

undermining of the morale of her people by air attack against civilian concentrations. The second possible line of air action, representing intermediate 

objectives that might be essential to accomplishing the principal effort, required 

neutralizing German air power by attacks against air bases, aircraft factories, 

and aluminum and magnesium production centers. A third line of action, which 

might be necessary to protect the operating base in England, included attacks 

against submarine bases, surface seacraft, and possible invasion p~rts.’’~ 

AWPD-1 called for neutralizing the following target systems and targets: 

electric power, 50 generating plants and switching systems; transportation, 47 

marshaling yards, bridges, and canal locks; and synthetic petroleum, 27 

production plants. The GAF targets included 18 airplane assembly plants, 6 

aluminum plants, and 6 magnesium plants. The air offensive against Germany 

would precede any operations against Japan. Destruction of the GAF thus 

became the intermediate objective in the European war. The plan envisioned 

B-17 and B-24 strikes from England and the use of bases in Egypt and 

48 
Early Intelligence Organization 

Brig. Gen. Haywood Hansell, Jr. Col. Grover C. Brown 

Northern Ireland to accommodate B-29 and B-32 bombers that would be built. 

Still larger B-36 bombers would have to be designed and built to fly from 

Newfoundland across Europe, to the Middle East. This contingency would be 

needed if the British Isles were lost. Based upon the plan of operations they 

outlined, planners made what would prove to be a very accurate determination 

of the force requirements of the AAF for World War II.Iz5 

Although AWPD-1 became a landmark American air force document, its 

authors strayed from intelligence doctrinal procedures expressed in US. Army 

Basic Field Manual, Military Intelligence (printed in 1938 as the revision to TR 

210-5, Military Intelligence, 1926). Looking back years later, General Hansell 

noted that he and his associates were never fully abreast of air technical 

intelligence from abroad. The basic intelligence doctrine explicitly provided that 

operational command decisions were to be based upon the desired mission 

objective as affected by the enemy, the means available, and the environment. 

In retrospect, an experienced air intelligence officer, Col. Grover Brown, would 

point out in 195 1 that the U.S. air strategy for Europe did not properly consider 

the effect of enemy capabilities. The air planners had not intended to consider 

enemy capability; as entering arguments, they projected maximum acceptable 

attrition and the range limitations of Axis bombing aircraft.’” The lack of 

sufficiently detailed data about German industry left U.S. planners ignorant of 

the excess capacity that existed during the early war years. 

During the completion of AWPD-1, Major Hansell prepared and mailed to 

Chaney and Arnold a memo entitled “An Air Estimate of the Situztion for the 

Employment of the Air Striking Force in Europe (ABC-l).” The estimate, 

which doubled as Hansell’s report of his trip to the United Kingdom, was quite 

similar to AWPD-I, but it was more candid. In contrast to the British belief that 

49 
Piercing the Fog 

Maj. Gen. Henry H. “Hap” Arnold 

air bombardment would break the morale of the German people, Hansell argued 

for precision attacks, at least injtially. Then, “as German morale begins to crack, 

area bombing of civil concentrations may be effective.” Which of the preferred 

AWPD-1 target systems might be attacked would depend upon the size of the 

available striking force. Bomber attacks would have to penetrate into Germany 

for great distances, and escort fighters-as yet undeveloped-would need to 

accompany the heavily armed bombers. Finally, Hansell argued against 

piecemeal force employment, urging that an air force of significant size be 

organized and trained in the United States before deploying to England.’” 

Hansell apparently assumed that adequate intelligence existed for the AWD-1 

targets and that precise target intelligence would not be necessary for attacks 

against what he had termed “civil concentrations.” 

The completed AWPD-1 reached the WPD of the WDGS before Arnold 

returned from Argentia, Newfoundland, where he had gone with Marshall for 

the conversations between President Roosevelt and Prime Minister Winston 

Churchill. The plan had been checked and tacitly approved by Robert A. Lovett, 

Assistant Secretary of War for Air. By September 1, both Marshall and 

Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson had been told of the plan. They liked its 

concept. 

The development of AWPD-1, and its almost immediate acceptance by the 

Secretary of War and chief of staff of the Army, finally presented air intelligence with the challenge that had been unfolding since the mid-1930s when the 

ACTS began to articulate its belief in the decisiveness of strategic air attack 

when employed against the industrial web of an adversary. What previously had 

been conceptual and notional about targeting now became operational and 

specific. To execute AWPD-1, AAF leaders had to determine which targets in 

Germany were both vital to her industrial war machine and vulnerable to 

strategic air attack. The answers would come from air intelligence, which 

50 
Early Intelligence Organization 

existed only superficially. A great shortcoming existed in RAF intelligence: The 

target folders contained little analysis of the targets as elements within the 

German industrial fabric.’” The earliest strategic air plan, AWPD-1, suffered 

from the same shortcomings that affected earlier conceptual thinking and which 

would later plague early U.S. air operations in Europe: the lack of information 

on enemy economic and industrial systems sufficiently comprehensive and 

detailed to permit accurate determination of the vital systems and selection of 

critical nodes within any one system. Only the experience of war would reveal 

the full ramifications of the relation between strategic bombing doctrine and the 

collection and evaluation of intelligence-and would prove just how difficult 

were the collection and assessment of such information in the midst of conflict. 

Air Intelligence on the Eve of Pearl Harbor 

The gaps in strategic air intelligence notwithstanding, U.S. military intelligence 

was, in general, better prepared to support a war in Europe than to serve the 

defense of the Pacific theater of operations. The anomaly of this situation is 

particularly striking in view of long-standing American interests in the Pacific 

and the fact that the Army’s Signal Intelligence Service was reading lowergrade Japanese codes and ciphers by early 1939, while Navy code breakers had 

tapped into the Japanese secret diplomatic code that they called MAGIC. 

When the Japanese attacked China in 1938, the US. Joint Army-Navy 

Board called for a revised ORANGE plan based upon a new international 

situation, but still providing for a position of readiness in the strategic triangle 

of Alaska-Hawaii-Panama. The recognition by late 1939 that the United States 

was much likelier to become involved against several powers rather than against 

Japan alone led to the development of a series of RAINBOW plans to replace the 

old single-color plans. RAINBOW 4, which was approved by the Secretaries of 

War and Navy and tacitly accepted by Roosevelt in June 1941, assumed the 

United States would be allied with Great Britain and France against Germany, 

Italy, and Japan. RAINBOW 5 called for the adoption of a strategic defensive 

position in the Pacific until victory over the European Axis would allow transfer 

of resources adequate for an offensive against Japan. 

Even before the adoption of RAINBOW 5 in the summer of 1941, the AAF 

had started to build up strength in the Pacific. In mid-February 1941, the AAF 

began to send more modem fighters to Hawaii. In early April, General Arnold 

committed twenty-one B-17 bombers to Honolulu, the delivery flight being 

completed the next month. With the transfer of part of the U.S. Pacific Fleet to 

the Atlantic in the summer of 1941, War Department planners suggested 

sending four additional groups of B-17s to the Pacific-two each to Hawaii and 

the Philippines-where their presence might act as a threat to keep the Japanese 

at bay. Even though the AAF had a total of only 109 B-17s, and with bombers 

51 
Piercing the Fog 

already promised to Great Britain, Arnold agreed to this recommendation. 

Arnold hoped, perhaps wished, that enough new, heavy bombers would block 

any Japanese plan to attack the Philippines.'*'This decision, as well as all others 

regarding the Pacific, had to be made on the basis of very limited knowledge 

about the potential enemy. A veil of nearly complete secrecy had all but negated 

normal functions of Army and Navy attach& in the collection of military 

intelligence in Japan. 

In the Central Pacific, the Japanese held amarked advantage in maintaining 

secrecy. Establishing absolute control over the islands mandated to her by the 

League of Nations, the Japanese were able to build important naval bases in the 

Marianas, Carolines, and Marshalls and to conduct naval maneuvers in this vast 

area, unseen by Western eyes. This area was known to Americans as the Vacant 

Sea because few commercial vessels and no U.S. naval vessels moved through 

the area. These seas lay between the great southern trade routes that went from 

Hawaii to the coasts of Japan and China and the great northern circle routes that 

skirted the Aleutians. General Mitchell had toured the perimeters of the 

mandates in the fall of 1923, gathering as much information as possible, and in 

1924 he predicted the Japanese would probably use the islands eventually as a 

springboard for an attack on Pearl Harbor, the Hawaiian Islands, and the United 

States.'30 

There are those who argue the disappearance of Amelia Earhart was related 

to Japanese efforts to cover up their activities. In July 1937, during their 

transworld flight, Earhart and her navigator Fred Noonan disappeared at sea 

after a flight from Lae, New Guinea, on a 2,556-mile flight to Howland Island. 

No one has ever found their bodies or plane, and it has been alleged, but never 

substantiated, that they were on a spy mission for the United States. According 

to this supposition, they went down, were picked up by the Japanese somewhere 

off the Marshall Islands, and were taken to Saipan, where they eventually died.* 

U.S. researchers and writers who have examined theEarhart disappearance have 

split opinions on the issue, but those who suggest Japanese involvement have 

offered little substantive evidence to support their al1egati0ns.I~' 

Japanese sources deny both the spying charge and the existence of any 

rationale for spying. As recently as February 1987, Comdr. Chihaya Masataka, 

a Japanese naval officer who served during World War 11, disputed the spy 

assertion and, moreover, claimed that the Japanese engaged in no abnormal 

buildup of defensive fortifications on the mandated island^.'^' His views are 

consistent with those offered at the Eleven Nation Military Tribunal in 1946 

*In March 1992, The International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery 

claimed to have found evidence that Earhart and Noonan landed on Nikumaroro 

Island (formerly Gardiner Island) about two hours' flying time from Howland. 

Nikumaroro is one of the Phoenix Islands, at that time controlled by the United 

States and Great Britain. 

52 
Early Intelligence Organization 

when 3 10 Japanese witnesses also denied charges that Japan had rearmed the 

mandated islands before the war, although Japan did deepen the harbors and 

built airfields and roads there.’33 Amelia Earhart aside, the mandated islands 

remained a blind spot in American military and naval intelligence prior to Pearl 

Harbor. Intercepted radio traffic, however, alerted the Pacific Fleet to extensive 

activities there, and the United States eventually determined that Japan’s Fourth 

Fleet and part of the Sixth Fleet’s submarines were based at Truk and Kwajalein 

In the summer of 1941, General Arnold found Adm. Harold R. Stark, the 

Chief of Naval Operations, very much worried about what the Japanese were 

doing at Truk and Rabaul. Arnold arranged for some of the B-17s going to the 

Philippines to fly off course and take photographs of the two islands. In the 

confusion that attended the Japanese attack on the Philippines in December, the 

photographs were lost without having contributed to war preparation^.'^' In late 

November the AAF ordered B-24 bombers equipped with photographic 

capability and fully armed to be sent over Truk and Rabaul to take pictures from 

high altitude. The first such B-24 arrived in theater without guns, and it was not 

possible to switch armament from the B-17s already there. Before the proper 

weapons could be sent, the Japanese attack on Clark Field had destroyed the 

B-24~.‘~~ 

Explaining the inadequacy of the estimates of likely Japanese actions in late 

1941, Miles pointed out that at the time MID had been heavily concerned with 

Europe. “We were still primarily concerned, up to November 1941 ,” he said, 

“with the European war, the outcome of that war. We were still feverishly 

preparing for what we called hemispheric defense. The success of German arms 

was the most obvious threat to the Western Hemisphere.” In early December, 

General Miles thought that a Japanese line of action against the south was “very 

probable” and that southern expansion would involve the Philippines. If the 

United States went to war with Japan, Hawaii and Panama might very well be 

attacked, but not immediately. Miles knew that the Japanese were capable of 

making an attack on Hawaii. “I did not believe, up to a very late date, that it was 

probable that they would make that attack at the outbreak of war, for the reason 

that . . . such an attack . . . had to result from two separate decisions of the 

Japanese: one to take on a war with a great naval power, and presumably with 

two great naval powers. . . and second, to start that war, or at least make this 

attack on a great fortress and fleet, which inherently jeopardized the Japanese 

ships making the attack to some extent, and which rested almost solely for 

success on the unpredictable circumstances that they would find that fortress 

and that fleet unprepared to meet that 

Arnold offered a similar estimate, although with less elaborate explanations: “Looking back on it, I am convinced now that we all assumed that the 

Japs would attack the Philippines. We were fairly sure that they would cut our 

air line, because they had to cut our line to stop our heavy bombers from getting 

53 
Piercing the Fog 

to the Philippines. We were pretty sure that they would attack Wake and 

Midway when they did attack. . . . So I think that there was a general acceptance 

of the possibilities of Japanese aggression, certainly against the Philippines and 

against Wake and Midway, and possibly, against Hawaii.”’3R 

Evaluations of the intelligence failure at Pearl Harbor would reveal 

deficiencies not only in organization but also in interpretation. Miles himself 

stated: “In estimating the situation . . . there are two principles that should be 

followed: One is never to lose sight of or ignore anything that the enemy may 

do that is within its capabilities whether you think it is wise for him to do that 

or not . . . . The second is to concede to your enemy the highest form of good 

sense and good judgment.”13’ There are those who argue that the U.S. 

government somehow had advance warning of the Pearl Harbor attack which 

it chose to ignore. The most exacting examination of the story of Pearl Harbor, 

however, concludes that the United States was genuinely ~urprised.’~’ That 

surprise resulted in no small way from the intelligence analysis failure that 

accepted estimates of probable enemy intentions rather than accepting broadrange assessments of enemy capability for alternate actions. 

A Tentative Assessment 

Had Pearl Harbor represented an isolated failure of prewar intelligence, it 

would have been difficult enough to explain. As the United States found itself 

at war, the attacks on Pearl Harbor and the Philippines were examples of what 

Arnold later referred to as “one of the most wasteful weaknesses in our whole 

setup . . . our lack of a proper Air Intelligence Organi~ation.”’~‘ 

To a large extent, the problems with air intelligence in the years before 

1942 reflected the broader issues of the role of air power and its place in the 

national defense establishment. In an era when honest differences of opinion 

and inevitable bureaucratic infighting were exaggerated by tight budgets and 

crippling manpower limitations, struggles over where to place air intelligence 

functions within the War Department and the Air Corps were inevitable. The 

uncertain and often confusing responsibilities of General Staff and Air 

Corps/Air Forces intelligence organizations reflected a search for organizational 

identity in the development of the Air Corps. As with any evolutionary process, 

progress proceeded by fits and starts, with false offshoots and inappropriate 

adaptations occurring along the way. 

Compounding organizational issues were the broader, and ultimately more 

critical, conceptual ones of defining what constituted air intelligence and 

determining how it should be acquired, interpreted, and disseminated. Those 

airmen who developed the theory of strategic bombing at the ACTS in the 

1930s recognized that it demanded far more than traditional intelligence 

information such as enemy OBs and combat capabilities. Their grasp did not 

54 
Early Intelligence Organization 

include the breadth and depth of information required, nor the ramifications of 

obtaining and evaluating it; this became obvious once strategic bombing 

operations begah in 1942. 

At the very least, the prewar American military intelligence apparatus was 

clearly inadequate. The intelligence structure could not acquire the type of 

infomation required for the theories of strategic air operations that airmen had 

advanced and planned for in such key documents as AWPD-1. Obtaining 

relevant data became even more difficult once hostilities commenced. 

Moreover, as the war years would demonstrate, the question of who was best 

qualified to evaluate that information, and thus be in a position to affect both 

planning and operations, was not nearly so simple as airmen had believed in the 

1930s. 

Finally, any assessment of the American Amy’s air intelligence prior to 

Pearl Harbor, and the effect of that intelligence on plans and preparations, must 

confront obvious flaws in the assessment of soon-to-be enemies. Because they 

assumed that potential foes would develop forces for the same purposes and 

employ them in the same manner as they themselves, military and civilian 

observers misread capabilities and intentions of both the Japanese and the 

German Air Forces. How successfully and how quickly these problems in 

intelligence-whether organizational, procedural, or interpretive-could be 

corrected would directly affect the ability of the AAF to conduct the air war 

after Pearl Harbor. 

55 

CHAPTER 2 

The Tools of Air Intelligence: 

ULTRA, MAGIC, Photographic Assessment 

and the Y-service 

THE REVELATION IN 1974 that the western Allies had been reading the 

most secret German messages throughout the Second World War has led to a 

new interest in the relationship of intelligence to the planning and conduct of 

operations in that conflict. Unfortunately, the tendency in some quarters has 

been to overemphasize the role of what has come to be called ULTRAinformation from high-grade signals intercepts-while neglecting other 

elements of intelligence. American air leaders and their staffs drew upon a full 

range of intelligence sources and methods of collection and analysis to gain the 

most complete picture of the enemy, including his tactics and technology, his 

strengths and weaknesses, and his capabilities and objectivm. These methods 

included photointelligence, economic studies based on prewar statistics and 

extrapolated wartime production levels, elaborate networks of informants, wellplaced observers, resistance groups, and analyses of aircraft components and 

designs by aviation technicians thousands of miles from a combat theater. 

Although signals intelligence (SIGINT) in Europe and the Far East eventually 

became a primary source of air intelligence, it attained this position only 

gradually, and it succeeded then because SIGINT could reach into the most 

sensitive of the enemies’ activities. For much of the war, more of the intelligence that went into the planning and execution of strategic and tactical air 

operations came from other sources. 

ULTRA and diplomatic cryptography (MAGIC) were not the only elements 

within the field of SIGINT. SIGINT included interception, deciphering, 

translation, and analysis of enemy low-grade ciphers; interception of unencoded 

enemy radio transmissions; analysis of radio and wireless traffic patterns (traffic 

analysis); and efforts to locate and catalog enemy electronic emissions. 

Direction finding (DF), the process of determining the location of enemy 

transmitters through a process of triangulation based on the angle at which 

transmission signals were received by two or more receivers, was primarily of 

57 
Piercing the Fog 

tactical value and generally had greater applicability to ground and naval 

operations. This was so because enemy army headquarters were more likely 

than air corps headquarters to relocate frequently, and fleets at sea were often 

moving or preparing to move. For airmen, DF also came to be used to determine 

the location and signal characteristics of radar, which allowed commanders to 

judge AA defenses and fighter control capabilities and then to adapt mission 

planning. The primary purpose of traffic analysis (TA) was to secure at least 

some information about the enemy’s presence and possible organization when 

deciphering the messages was not possible. This method of intelligence 

involved analyses of communications frequencies and message patterns (length, 

volume, and direction), and it could provide information on the location and 

size of an enemy headquarters and the level of potential activity by forces under 

its command. SIGINT was the method for tracking and analyzing enemy aircraft 

navigational beams and for analyzing enemy radar development and employment. 

SIGINT reflected a modern adaptation to a traditional objective of military 

intelligence-trying to intercept the enemy’s communications. In the same 

sense, aerial photography represented a modern application of the traditional 

intelligence role of the cavalry, marking as it did the effort to find a higher hill 

from which to observe the enemy. More precisely, photographic intelligence 

consisted of two distinct but intimately related tasks, each requiring unique 

skills, equipment, and organization. The first-photoreconnaissance-consisted 

of the operational missions to take the photographs. The second-photointerpretation-involved making military sense from the photos’ 

content.’ Despite the lack of emphasis placed on this method of intelligence 

collection in the U.S. Army between the wars, photointelligence would prove 

essential to the planning, conduct, and evaluation of nearly all aspects of air 

combat operations. In the strategic air war in Europe, accurate and current 

photographs were so essential for target folders that, for much of the war, 

missions were not flown unless they were available.* 

The most closely guarded secret of the war was ULTRA. Despite the number 

of individuals who dealt with or knew about this intelligence tool, not until 

almost three decades after Germany’s surrender did it become public knowledge. The breaking of the Enigma encryption machine and the use of intelligence thus acquired represented one of the greatest coups in the history of 

military intelligence. A certain irony lies in the fact that the supposedly ndive 

and soft democracies of the West were the most successful in one of the most 

subtle but most difficult aspects of the war-cryptanalysis. 

Yet this success did not come overnight, nor was its impact uniform in time 

or place. Not until mid-1943 did it begin to influence the strategic air war 

against Germany, and almost another year passed before it made amajor impact 

on strategic planning decisions in that campaign. In the tactical air arenas, 

ULTRA would be useful in North Africa and subsequent operations in Sicily and 

58 
Tools of Air Intelligence 

Italy, but it reached its zenith in the battle for Northwest Europe, two and a half 

years after the United States entered the war. During the same period, the 

Japanese messages the American cryptanalysts had been reading since 1941 

contained both diplomatic and military information. Although the Navy began 

its Japanese code-breaking efforts as early as 1927, and it had a fairly good 

grounding in the analysis of Japanese naval message traffic, regular breaking 

of the Japanese Navy and Army ciphers continued to be a long and laborious 

process. The most valuable Japanese Army codes would not begin to be broken 

until early in 1943. 

The methodologies and characteristics of ULTRA, photointelligence, 

MAGIC, and the form of tactical SIGINT known as Y intelligence collectively 

became the major fundamental components of air intelligence. An understanding of what they were, how they operated, and how they were incorporated into 

the AAF’s planning and operations is essential for understanding the role of 

intelligence in air operations. 

ULTRA 

Secretary of State Henry L. Stimson’s perhaps apocryphal admonition that 

“gentlemen do not read other gentlemen’s mail” notwithstanding, nations 

traditionally have done so, and World War I1 was no exception. As impressive 

as the American effort was against the Japanese diplomatic and military highgrade ciphers in the Pacific, the British had made even greater strides against 

the European Axis. Assisted initially by the Poles and the French, they had 

succeeded in breaking many of the German and Italian top-secret military 

ciphers long before the United States became a belligerent. By the time 

American forces began combat operations, the British had established extensive 

facilities in England and throughout the Mediterranean to intercept German and 

Italian radio signals. The nerve center of this far-flung effort was the innocuously named Government Code and Cypher School located at Bletchley Park 

(BP), a former country estate some fifty miles northwest of London.*3 

Intercepting electronically transmitted signals is a simple process. For this 

reason those who do not wish their signals to be read resort to ciphers-the use 

of numbers, symbols, and letters to represent other symbols and letters. It was 

BP’s role to decipher the enemy’s messages, then to translate them, and finally 

*The Germans were, of course, doing the same thing, often very effectively. 

During early operations in the Western Desert, for example, they routinely read 

messages describing British intentions and capabilities sent by the American 

military attach6 in Cairo. Similarly, the German Navy’s B-Diem radio intelligence 

unit intercepted and skillfully used Allied naval messages to attack convoys until 

the summer of 1943. 

59 
Piercing the Fog 

to assess their potential intelligence value and pass this information to 

appropriate government sections and commanders. 

By far the most difficult of these tasks was the first. Given the complexity 

of the ciphering device the German military used for most high-grade 

messages-the Enigma machine-deciphering was a daunting job. Each of the 

German services used Enigma machines, but with differing keys. The British 

and later the Allied teams at BP worked on all of the varied keys, only some of 

which they succeeded in breaking. Not all keys that were read could be read 

consistently. The German Army’s signals were most difficult for the Allied 

code breakers, and those of the Lufrwuffe, the most lucrative. Ironically, it was 

the seeming impossibility of breaking into the Enigma that made it such a 

unique and unprecedented source of intelligence. Convinced that the system was 

impenetrable, the Germans made extensive use of Enigmamachines throughout 

the war, relying almost exclusively on them for the overwhelming majority of 

their high-grade enciphering. Even had the Germans wanted to do so, replacing 

Enigma with new machines would have been very difficult, given the large 

number in use.4 

The Enigma was indeed a formidable machine. Originally adapted by the 

German armed forces from a commercial machine in the late 1920s and 

modified several times thereafter, it operated somewhat along the lines of a 

typewriter. The keys were attached to a complex system of wires, rotary wheels 

(initially numbering three, with more added later), electric lights, and plugboard 

connectors. As each letter was typed on the keyboard, it sent an impulse through 

the machine which set rotary wheels into motion and, based on apredetermined 

setting, caused a different letter to light up. To decipher the message, the 

recipient had to have an identical machine, set to the proper master setting, on 

which an operator would type the enciphered message in groups of five letters. 

The machine would reverse the process and light up, letter by letter, with the 

original message. 

Although Polish cryptanalysts had begun to read Enigma messages as early 

as 1933, subsequent German modifications and the variety of possible settings 

meant that, as one American historian has summarized, “The breaking of the 

Enigma was not a one-time feat, but an extraordinary, continuous proces~.”~ 

Because of the number of interchangeable wheels, the potential settings for each 

one, the possible plug connections, and the variety of master settings, it has 

been estimated the number of possible settings on an Enigma could have been 

as high as 2.69 X loz3 for each key.6 During the war, different elements of the 

German military used more than 50 separate master keys or ciphers (e.g., Red 

was the general-purpose GAF code, while Garlic was the GAF weather key).’ 

The first decipherments were carried out painstakingly by hand with the 

assistance of cribs-clues that might be revealed by the repetitious use of 

certain words or phrases, or even by the style of specific operators. This 

approach meant extensive delays between transmission of the original German 

60 
Tools of Air Intelligence 

message and its decipherment and subsequent translation by BP. In the summer 

of 1939, the Poles offered the British an Enigma they had themselves built, and 

which they had used to read German traffic for some years.* The following 

spring, the British developed the Bombe, an electromechanical calculating 

machine that could determine daily Enigma settings much more quickly than 

could manual analysis. With the production of additional Bombes, the speed 

with which Enigma messages could be deciphered improved significantly? 

In February 1944, the British introduced an even more sophisticated 

machine, the Colossus, capable of handling up to 25,000 bits per second. Ten 

of these were in operation by the spring of 1945. Colossus was aimed not at the 

Enigma but at an even more complex machine, the Geheimschreiber (literally, 

secret writer), an on-line teleprinter, penetration of whose signals required the 

construction of an early programmable electronic digital computer. Geheimschreiber, called Fish by the Allied analysts, transmitted messages of the 

highest command. Enigma encrypted for transmission the more operationally 

and tactically oriented military traffic. Fish decryption was rarely current, from 

three to seven days behind, once the machine's design was understood and its 

signals were broken in 1943." The lack of quick transcription of Fish traffic 

was not necessarily a drawback; the nature of the information transmitted was 

not as perishable as that sent by Enigma. 

Deciphering of Enigma messages took place in Hut 6, one of several 

temporary buildings that soon dotted the grounds at BP. From there, German 

Army and Air Force messages went to Hut 3, while naval messages were 

handled in Hut 8. At Hut 3, watch officers were responsible for translating the 

messages and establishing an initial priority for handling before passing them 

to Army (3-M) or Air (3-A) intelligence sections. Army and Air Force officers 

evaluated and analyzed each message, determined which operational command 

had a need to know, and prepared a signal for transmission to the appropriate 

headquarters (including agencies such as the Air Ministry), sometimes with 

annotations from previous UL~A intercepts to assist the recipients in their 

evaluation. Between January 1944 and the end of the war, BP sent almost 

50,000 messages with intercepted signals information to Supreme Headquarters, 

the Air Ministry, and other addressees. 

The outgoing traffic, however, represented but a small part of the total 

volume of intercepted German military and civil messages. Most messages 

contained annotated comments from other ULTRA decrypts intended to help the 

recipient put the data into reasonable context." To aid in this process, Hut 3 

maintained an air index which consisted of hundreds of thousands of cards on 

which was recorded information on everything relating to the GAF, from unit 

designations and locations, to weapons and equipment, to scientific terms, and 

even including phrases or words whose meaning had not yet been determined." 

The special communications channels established to provide this supersensitive material to operational field headquarters consisted of a special 

61 
Piercing the Fog 

An Enigma machine captured 

from the German Army in 

France in August 1944. 

communications unit (SCU), which operated the radio equipment for receiving 

and sending signals, and a special liaison unit (SLU) responsible for deciphering, physically controlling, and destroying ULTRA material. SCU and SLU 

members served with every senior field commander who received ULTRA 

information. Dissemination of Enigma-generated intelligence-and especially 

its source-was tightly restricted, particularly in the early years, to a very small 

number of senior commanders and staff officers. Accordingly, a new security 

classification designator was created: TOP SECRET ULTRA. Over time, the 

designation ULTRA came to be applied to that intelligence derived from the 

German Enigma machine traffic and to decrypted Japanese traffic as well. 

Early in 1941, a small delegation of experts working for the U.S. Army's 

Signal Intelligence Service went to London for conferences with the British on 

cryptographic technology. The meetings were an outgrowth of the October 1940 

visit to the United States by Sir Henry Tizard, one of the guiding mentors of the 

British radar defense system, and several others. The Tizard Mission brought 

to America a number of new scientific-military developments including the 

cavity magnetron, essential to generating microwave radar signals. Following 

the American visit to London, the British received copies of the American 

PURPLE and RED machines for use in decrypting Japanese diplomatic and naval 

radio traffic. In return, although after some delay, the British sent one of their 

copies of the German Enigma machines to Wa~hingt0n.l~ 

American involvement in the operational aspects of Great Britain's ULTRA 

system evolved only slowly after December 1941. This growth was in marked 

contrast to the previously concluded extensive Anglo-American exchanges of 

62 
Tools of Air Intelligence 

cryptographic technology in early 1941 and to the rapid development of 

otherwise remarkably integrated Anglo-American intelligence operations and 

organizations. During the first eighteen months, American military commanders 

in Europe and their superiors in Washington received only limited distribution 

of decrypted ULTRA and did not understand, except for a very few technical 

experts like the cryptologist William F. Friedman* of the Army’s Signal 

Intelligence Service, how the British handled the deciphering, distribution, or 

analysis of this inte1ligen~e.l~ For strategic air operations over Europe as well 

as during Operation TORCH and the subsequent struggle for North Africa, the 

British maintained complete control over the interception, decryption, 

evaluation, and distribution of Enigma-generated intelligence. 

By the spring of 1943 the United States sought a greater role in SIGN 

activities in Europe. The British remained extremely reluctant to relinquish their 

monopoly over the Axis codes and ciphers, in part because the United States 

already had a blemished record when it came to keeping military secrets. Just 

days before Pearl Harbor the isolationist Chicago Herald Tribune had published 

the text of the War Department’s so-called Victory Program for the development of American military capabilities necessary to defeat the Axis in the event 

of war. The Tribune’s source for this document was almost certainly an officer 

within the War Department. In addition, from the fall of 1941 to the summer of 

1942 the Germans had broken the code used by the American military attache 

in Cairo, and they used the information thus gained in operations against the 

British in the Western Desert. By 1943, however, the Americans could offer an 

important bargaining chip, after recently breaking several of the major Japanese 

high-level military ~iphers.’~ 

Despite an obvious wariness on both sides, the two governments signed an 

agreement on sharing information on May 17, 1943. According to this 

document, the British would continue their efforts against the German and 

Italian high-grade ciphers (ULTRA) as well as lower-grade signals and radio 

traffic sent in the clear (unencoded).? The Americans would continue their 

assault against Japanese military, air, naval, and diplomatic ciphers.16 The 

partners agreed to continue exchanging intelligence so gained and to establish 

special procedures to ensure its secure handling and to prevent it from being 

inadvertently commingled with intelligence from other sources. These 

*William F. Friedman (1891-1969), a cryptanalyst of great ability, began to 

appear prominently in Army SIGINT during World War I. After the war, Friedman 

worked as the Army’s chief cryptanalyst in a very small office directed more to 

developing new codes and ciphers than to penetrating those of foreign powers. He 

was instrumental in training Army officers in cryptography and cryptanalysis and 

in leading the team that broke the PURPLE cipher. 

tlow-grade and high-grade in this context refer to the complexity of 

encipherment, not to the inherent value of the intelligence that might be derived 

from intercepted signals. 

63 
Piercing the Fog 

procedures basically followed those the British were already practicing. Signals 

containing ULTRA material could be sent over only the most secure communications channels and handled solely by the SCUs with secure, mostly one-time, 

cipher pads. Access to raw (undisguised) ULTRA would be restricted to 

individuals who had been indoctrinated in its special value and who had a 

definite need to know. Finally, the agreement provided for liaison officers who 

would handle ULTRA to be assigned to all major Allied air and land commanders." 

While these negotiations were underway in Washington, Col. Alfred 

McCormack,* Deputy Chief of Special Branch, Military Intelligence Service 

(MIS); Maj. Telford Taylor,? General Counsel of the Federal Communication 

Commission, recently brought into the MIS Special Branch; and William 

Freidman, who had been instrumental in breaking the Japanese diplomatic 

codes, were in the United Kingdom to study the SIGINT organization and 

procedures at BP. With the formal agreement between the two nations, Taylor, 

promoted to lieutenant colonel, remained in the United Kingdom to serve as the 

senior American MIS representative for ULTRA.'* 

*Col. Alfred McCormack (1901-1956) was Deputy Chief of the Special Branch 

of the MIS from May 1942 to June 1944 before becoming Chief of the Directorate 

of Intelligence, MIS. In January 1942, Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson 

appointed McCormack as his special assistant, assigning him to study the way the 

War Department handled SIGINT and to recommend improvements. McCormack, 

a lawyer in civilian life, entered the Army commissioned as a lieutenant colonel. He 

eventually attained the rank of colonel. It was his recommendation that led to the 

establishment of the Special Branch within MIS in May 1942. Special Branch was 

a unit staffed, in part, by lawyers and highly educated civilians who received 

commissions as Army officers and whose job it was to analyze, evaluate, interpret, 

process, and disseminate SIGINT systematically for the War Department. Upon his 

discharge from the Army in 1945, McCormack worked with the State Department 

on intelligence matters until April 1946, when he returned to his private law 

practice. For an account of Colonel McCormack's wartime experiences and for his 

personal War Department files see SRH-185 and SRH-141, pts 1,2, NA, RG 457. 

+Col. Telford Taylor (1908- ) was in charge of the London Branch of MIS, 

headquartered at the American Embassy at Grosvenor Square. He entered the Army 

as a major in 1942 after attending Harvard Law School and serving as a lawyer from 

1933 to 1942 for federal agencies and congressional committees. From 1945 to 

1955 he served as a prosecutor in the Nuremberg war crimes trials. He was 

promoted to brigadier general in 1946 and remained with the Army for three more 

years. He later practiced law in New York City and became a professor of law at 

Columbia University. Among his books are Sword and Swastika: Generals and 

Nazis in the Third Reich (New York, 1952), Nuremberg and Vietnam: An American 

Tragedy (New York, 1970), and Courts of Terror: Soviet Criminal Justice and 

Jewish Emigration (New York, 1976). His most important book was Munich: The 

Price of Peace (New York, 1979). 

64 
Tools of Air Intelligence 

Despite the signed agreement, according to the official history of MIS 

activities in London, the early months of this new relationship were marked by 

“a lack of confidence on both sides.” Not until September did the British permit 

Taylor rather than their own officers to determine what to forward to Washington. It would take another year before virtually all signals went across the 

Atlantic without having to be cleared through London.” Until January 1944, the 

bulk of the material Washington received through Taylor’s office dealt with the 

German Army rather than the Luftwafe. With the arrival at BP of an AAF 

officer in January 1944, the amount of air intelligence increased significantly. 

By June 1944, ULTRA material, which expanded considerably from January to 

June, was sent to the United States by air three times weekly, in addition to 

material deemed sufficiently time-sensitive to be transmitted by radio.” In the 

late summer of 1943, Colonel Taylor had moved his office from London to BP. 

That fall, the first American cryptanalysts and translators began to work in Hut 

6 and perform as watch officers in Hut 3. By spring 1944, some fifty American 

officers and enlisted men were serving as cryptanalysts and translators at BP.” 

By June 1944, two USAAF officers were functioning with the air intelligence 

section of Hut 3 as well. 

In January 1944, Taylor established an organization known as 3-US to 

handle the analysis and dissemination aspects of ULTRA intelligence. The 

members of 3-US selected messages and summaries to be sent to Washington. 

Its officers were also incorporated into the existing Hut 3 Army and Air Force 

intelligence sections that evaluated decrypted messages and sent appropriate 

signals to field commands throughout Europe and the Mediterranean. In 

addition, Taylor’s organization served as the parent headquarters for the 

American liaison officers assigned to operational commanders-designated 

special security officers (SSOs) and special security representatives.* At its 

peak, 3-US contained sixty-eight people. Ten performed liaison duties between 

BP and Washington; twelve served as intelligence officers in Hut 3, and three 

handled various administrative duties in London. Nineteen American technicians had been incorporated into the British SCU/SLU communication system, 

and twenty-four officers served as special security liaison officers at operational 

headquarters.” 

The SSOs were the conduits through which American commanders 

received ULTRA. For air forces in Europe and the Mediterranean, tactical air 

commands were the lowest headquarters to which SSOs were sent. (For a 

variety of reasons, the situation was more complicated in the Pacific theaters; 

that is addressed later in this chapter.) These individuals, only twenty-eight of 

whom served in Europe during the war, were all personally selected by Colonel 

*The term “Special Security Representative” was the designation for the senior 

liaison officers. Since most American air headquarters had only one liaison officer, 

the term “Special Security Officer,” or SSO, will be used throughout this study. 

65 
Piercing the Fog 

McCormack. They remained MIS representatives under the command of 

Colonel Taylor and were attached rather than permanently assigned to 

operational headq~arters.2~ 

In March 1944, the U.S. Army Chief of Staff personally delineated the 

responsibilities of these officers, whose ranks ranged from lieutenants to 

lieutenant colonels. In a letter to General Eisenhower, the senior American 

officer in Europe, General Marshall wrote of the SSOs, “Their primary 

responsibilities will be to evaluate ULTRA intelligence, present it in useable 

form to the commanding officer and to such of his senior staff officers as are 

authorized ULTRA recipients, assist in fusing ULTRA intelligence with 

intelligence derived from other sources, and give advice in connection with 

making operational use of ULTRA intelligence in such fashion that the security 

of the source is not endangered.”24 This was a heavy burden. In the words of one 

junior officer, it was a great compliment that his commanding general entrusted 

him to evaluate signals rather than reading them himself, but it was also one that 

“produced gray hairs.”25 

The SSOs were not the only individuals indoctrinated into or authorized to 

handle ULTRA. By the fall of 1944, in fact, the number of indoctrinated officers 

had expanded well beyond commanders and senior staff officers. General 

Spaatz’s personal intelligence officer at HQ USSTAF (Adv.) handled ULTRA 

along with other intelligence sources. At least four USSTAF officers on duty in 

the Air Ministry had access to ULTRA.^^ By the end of the war, some twentyfive to thirty officers in HQ Eighth Air Force were cleared to receive ULTRA.” 

The circle of indoctrinated individuals remained quite small. At HQ Ninth 

Air Force, it included only the commanding general, the director of intelligence, 

and a few others, including the director of operations, but none of his subordinates.28 In the Southwest Pacific, the Fifth Air Force director of operations was 

not cleared for ULTRA until late in 1944, and his deputy Lt. Col. Francis C. 

Gideon knew only that Capt. Phil Graham, who was serving as the SSO, “was 

in that kind [special intelligence] of business.”*” The Chief of Staff of XIX 

Tactical Air Command (TAC), which supported Third Army in Europe, was not 

cleared for ULTRA until October 1944, more than four months after D-da~.~’ 

Regardless of the scope of his clientele, it remained the SSO’s responsibility to shepherd ULTRA, ensure its secure handling, and prevent operational 

decisions that might jeopardize its continuance. The delicate situations in which 

this placed junior officers somewhat explains their special status outside the 

normal headquarters command structure. Their position allowed them greater 

freedom to remind senior officers of the restrictions on the handling, discussion, 

*Gideon, later the Fifth’s deputy for operations and subsequently a lieutenant 

general, also noted he could not “recall a single instance when Phil Graham’s 

information was particularly valuable to me.” Intvw, Dr. Robert C. Ehrhart with Lt 

Gen Francis Gideon, May 18, 1988, p. 22. 

66 
Tools of Air Intelligence 

and use of ULTRA. Since not everyone within a headquarters was indoctrinated 

for ULTRA, even within intelligence sections this detached position also made 

it easier, though it was still delicate, to bypass such individuals. 

This approach also could be used to circumvent those few individuals who, 

although indoctrinated, did not accept the importance of ULTRA. For example, 

for a period of time at Ninth Air Force, the director of intelligence ordered the 

SSO not to discuss ULTRA with his nominal superior, the chief of operations 

intelligence, because the latter refused to integrate it into the intelligence 

process. The SSO instead dealt directly with the directors of intelligence and 

 operation^.^' The Eighth Air Force SSO reported “suspicion and apparent 

jealousy existed,” and noted the chief of target section was “outspoken” in his 

distrust of ULTRA and preference for photointelligence and prisoner of war 

(POW) interrogation^.^' 

To explain their presence, their special insights, and their access to the 

commanding general, SSOs had to invent appropriate titles. These included 

titles such as GAF expert, Russian liaison officer, evaluations and appreciations 

officer, air OB expert, and general liaison and special reports officer.33 

Maintenance of this cover often required a great deal of time and effort. For 

example, as the “GAF expert” at XXIX TAC, Capt. Langdon Van Norden also 

received all non-ULTRA intelligence on OB, airfields, and aircraft, and he 

prepared reports in addition to handling all ULTRA traffic.34 Despite a certain 

degree of curiosity among nonindoctrinated intelligence officers, none of the 

SSOs assigned to air headquarters identified the issue of suitable cover as a 

major problem. These officers agreed they had little trouble keeping separate 

in their own minds what was ULTRA and what had come from other sources.35 

Rigid compartmentalization also necessitated physically separating ULTRA 

from other intelligence material, sometimes creating administrative and logistics 

difficulties. The SSO with IX TAC reported that when he landed on “the Far 

Shore” after D-day, his first “office” was a log in an apple orchard, and his only 

support material, a portable map case.36 Another SSO noted sharing a trailer 

with the director of intelligence had the advantage of constant access, but the 

many nonindoctrinated visitors made it difficult to work with ULTRA 

 material^.^' More demanding on the individuals involved were limitations on 

the number of SSOs, which placed heavy demands on these individuals and 

sometimes reduced the availability of ULTRA, particularly among tactical air 

forces. This was especially evident at air headquarters, probably due to their 

smaller size compared to their ground counterparts. At most air headquarters the 

single SSO was on call twenty-four hours a day. When a tactical air command 

headquarters was physically separated from its army coheadquarters-as 

happened during fast-moving operations in the summer of 1944-the appropriate special communications unit went with the army headquarters. During these 

periods, some SSOs spent up to nine hours daily traveling between headquarters 

and the SCU. Not surprisingly, service during these periods was limited.38 

67 
Piercing the Fog 

The most serious limitation caused by the compartmentalization of ULTRA 

was that it made more difficult the primary task of the SSOs-the interpretation 

of ULTRA and its fusion with other sources. To do these tasks properly required 

the SSO not only to keep abreast of all ULTRA intelligence, but also to read, 

digest, and correlate other sources as well. The interpretation of intelligence 

from other sources and the use of ULTRA-derived insights to guide interpretations of this other material were complicated and delicate processes which often 

had to be accomplished indirectly. One ULTRA liaison officer commented not 

only on the time and effort required to deal with ULTRA and nOn-ULTRA 

sources, but also on the loneliness of having no one at his level with whom he 

could discuss possible interpretations and ideas.39 

The reluctance to clear individuals in key intelligence positions contributed 

to the difficulties of using ULTRA most effectively. At Ninth Air Force (Adv.), 

for example, the chief of the operational target intelligence branch was not 

indoctrinated until late in the winter of 1944-1945, despite ULTRA’S primary 

role in the targeting process. Until that individual was cleared, the integration 

of ULTRA into the selection and evaluation of Ninth Air Force bomber targets 

was done primarily by Capt. Charles Kindleberger, who was actually assigned 

to the adjacent 12th Army An immediate postwar study by MIS on the 

handling of ULTRA noted that burdening a single individual with sole responsibility for ULTRA sometimes resulted in that officer’s becoming so busy handling 

and caring for signals that he had little time left for reflection and analysis. 

Cautioning against the tendency to turn intelligence officers into administrative 

clerks, the report observed, “The heart of intelligence is not busy work.”41 

To most effectively use the insights ULTRA offered, which often came in 

seemingly disjointed fragments, SSOs developed organizational and presentational techniques which contributed to their grasp of the intelligence picture and 

enabled commanders and staff officers to integrate this intelligence into their 

decisions. Almost all kept files of some type arranged into categories. The 

extensiveness of these files varied with the amount of information received, its 

relevance to a unit’s operations, and the extent of friendly and enemy activity. 

At Ninth Air Force the SSO records included air OB files on enemy units-location, personnel and equipment strengths, state of training, and prospective 

movements-as well as information on the status and operational use of enemy 

airfields by aircraft type?’ The XIX TAC SSO divided his files into GAF 

intentions, capabilities, and operations; potential targets and damage reports; air 

OB; special information, e.g., jet developments; and enemy ground force 

inf~rmation?~ Less systematized was the arrangement of the XI1 TAC SSO in 

Italy, who kept an annotated notebook while returning messages to the SCU for 

de~truction.~~ 

Most officers tried to maintain maps and charts to present ULTRA 

intelligence in an easily understood manner. The burden of segregating ULTRA 

was illustrated by the comment of one SSO that he kept two sets of maps: one 

68 
Tools of Air Intelligence 

that included ULTRA intelligence for briefing the commander and indoctrinated 

staff officers; the other, without ULTRA information, was for visitor^."^^ At the 

other extreme was the A-2 at XI1 Tactical Air Force in Italy. According to one 

cleared officer, “Maj. Corning operates out of his shirt pocket, merges all 

sources in his mind and is not given to pat statements about what part of his 

total knowledge is supplied by special intelligen~e.”~~ 

Few American air commanders read the signals from BP on a regular basis, 

preferring to rely on the SSO or senior intelligence officer. Maj. Gen. Elwood 

R. Quesada, commander of the IX TAC, for example, expected his SSO to 

compare ULTRA with other sources and to evaluate it in the light of their 

mission at the commander’s evening intelligence briefing.47 Similarly, while the 

commander of XXIX TAC and his directors of operations and intelligence 

readily accepted and used ULTRA, they rarely read the raw The 

commander of Eighth Air Force, Maj. Gen. James H. Doolittle, and his deputy 

for operations, Brig. Gen. Orvil A. Anderson, were such avid adherents of 

ULTRA that they insisted on maintaining an SLU at headquarters. The SSO 

presented ULTRA at the morning briefing, and he attended the evening targeting 

meeting as well. Both Doolittle and Anderson frequently asked what ULTRA had 

to offer on subjects under discussion!’ 

The SSO’s most frequent contact was not always with the commanding 

general. As SSO at HQ USSTAF, Lt. Col. (later Colonel) Lewis F. Powell, Jr., 

saw Spaatz only occasionally, but he discussed ULTRA daily with the deputy 

commander for operations, Maj. Gen. Frederick Anderson.” While the SSO of 

XIX TAC maintained an excellent relationship with Maj. Gen. 0. P. Weyland, 

he briefed the general only periodically. His routine contacts were with the A-2, 

who fused ULTRA with other sources and briefed Weyland and Third Army 

commander Lt. Gen. George Patton.” Even within a single headquarters, 

procedures differed over time. At Ninth Air Force, one director of intelligence 

instructed the SSO to prepare written summaries and appreciations. His 

successor, Col. Richard Hughes, preferred that the SSO annotate the signals and 

then discuss them personally with him. Both directors of intelligence briefed 

Maj. Gen. Hoyt Vandenberg, the Ninth Air Force commander?2 

At most headquarters, SSOs presented ULTRA at a daily briefing to the 

commanding general and indoctrinated officers, most often in the morning. 

These daily briefings generally lasted fifteen to thirty minutes and covered the 

past twenty-four hours’ activities and signals, as well as offered reports on 

special topics such as jet aircraft de~elopment.5~ At HQ USSTAF, the chief of 

operational intelligence blended ULTRA into his overall intelligence situation 

briefing without indicating the source of any piece of inf~rmation?~ At the 

TACs, the daily briefing was often conducted jointly with the commander and 

staff of the supported army, and included both air- and ground-oriented ULTRA. 

An SSO briefed Weyland and Patton together almost every morning.55 

69 
Piercing the Fog 

To supplement these formal briefings, many SSOs prepared frequent 

written reports on special topics such as V-weapons, jet fighter developments, 

and enemy ground reinforcement^.'^ All routinely delivered priority incoming 

signals or discussed their contents with the commanding general or other senior 

officers several times a day. No standard operating procedure existed overall. 

The Fifteenth Air Force ~JLTRA representative, for example, annotated signals 

he deemed significant, and he hand carried them to the senior officers, but he 

did not prepare written summaries or rep0rts.5~ 

At most headquarters, indoctrinated officers stopped by the SSO’s office 

at least daily, often several times a day, to read signals or review appropriate 

maps and charts.” The Ninth Air Force director of operations routinely 

reviewed ULTRA-based charts on enemy airfields and bridges while considering 

missions for the 9th Bombardment Division’s tactical bomber^.^' In southern 

France the A-2 and A-3 consulted the XI1 TAC SSO before preparing 

intelligence summaries or operations orders6’ 

In their decision to identify and segregate a single SSO to handle ULTRA 

material, the American forces differed from their British allies. By the summer 

of 1943, the latter had adopted a more integrated system in which selected 

members of the regular intelligence staff processed ULTRA signals. In contrast 

to the American SSOs, these individuals did not receive special training at BP 

but were indoctrinated in place, as deemed necessary for the effective 

performance of their intelligence responsibilities.61 The greater willingness of 

the British to indoctrinate intelligence officers was reflected in joint intelligence 

organizations such as the various headquarters under Mediterranean Allied Air 

Command, most of which included several ULTRA-cleared RAF officers but no, 

or at best one or two, indoctrinated Americans.62 

One benefit of the British procedure was that it integrated ULTRA into the 

larger intelligence picture at a lower level, a step several American SSOs 

strongly recommended in their postwar reports.63 As evaluated by one American 

SSO, such an arrangement allowed ULTRA to assume “its proper dimension of 

another source of intelligence . . . rather than the conjuring act seen in some 

subordinate American headquarters.” On the other hand, this individual also 

observed that in the area of providing “special training in use and interpretation 

of ULTRA [at BPI . . . the American system is superior.”64 Through the fall of 

1944, in fact, the American system evolved into a modified version of this asneeded arrangement, with subsequent improvements in ULTRA’S immediate 

operational value. The Ninth Air Force SSO, for example, commented that the 

indoctrination of the chief of the targets branch significantly enhanced ULTRA’S 

usefulness in the targeting process. Unfortunately, this step did not occur until 

March 1945.65 

70 
Tools of Air Intelligence 

Lt. Gen. Elwood R. Quesada Brig. Gen. Orvil A. Anderson 

Maj. Gen. Frederick L. Anderson Lt. Gen. 0. P. Weyland 

A problem of particular significance to air headquarters was the strict 

prohibition laid down against placing indoctrinated officers in positions that 

might result in their capture. Since for airmen this meant no combat missions, 

it was certainly a reason to limit access among operations staffs. Even so, this 

rigid rule was violated on several occasions, including once by an AAF general 

who bailed out of a crippled aircraft and became a prisoner of the Lujiwuftie in 

June 1944. Fortunately, the Germans never interrogated him to the point of his 

revealing the unique information.6h 

Maintaining the absolute secrecy of this unique source was not the only 

problem SSOs and their superiors faced. Determining the significance of any 

given message required ingenuity and the ability to extrapolate from often 

incomplete clues. For one thing, ULTRA was only as good as the information the 

71 
Piercing the Fog 

Maj. Gen. Hoyt S. Vandenberg Maj. Gen. James H. Doolittle 

original German sender put into an Enigma message. If the latter was inaccurate 

or incomplete, so too was ULTRA. Sometimes originators were deliberately 

inaccurate; more often intercepted messages were incomplete either in their 

content or in their assessment of a situation!’ 

ULTRA was incomplete in the sense that BP, for all its excellence, could not 

intercept every German Enigma signal, and many of the signals that it did 

intercept were incomplete or could be only partially deciphered. While the 

number of signals BP sent to the field rose significantly between 1943 and 

1944, what it presented often resembled a jigsaw puzzle with at least some 

pieces missing. Sometimes the available pieces were sufficient by themselves 

to recreate the total picture. More often, the blanks could be filled in only by 

other sources or extrapolated on the basis of what was available. Increasing the 

difficulty of this exploitation, particularly with regard to the enemy’s intentions, 

was the fact that BP only rarely intercepted communications between senior 

enemy headquarters and among senior commanders. Most Enigma signals 

contained information that related to activities or orders representing only 

portions of an overall operation or reorganization. 

The role of the intelligence officers in Hut 3 was crucial, for they 

determined the initial value of a given message and prepared the signals to 

operational commands. Not every message was forwarded to all headquarters. 

The typical message leaving Hut 3 contained the English translation of the 

German text (with emendations explaining missing words or sections) for a 

field commander’s consideration. Also on the message would be, whenever 

possible, notations putting the text into the context of previous intercepts, such 

as the state of the known German command organization, supply arrangement, 

or the like. Not all of the SSOs assigned to air headquarters agreed about the 

sufficiency of what their headquarters received. Some SSOs appear to have 

72 
Tools of Air Intelligence 

believed they should have been sent more than they got, either more signals or 

at least more frequent and annotated summaries from a more fully informed 

higher headquarters. At least one SSO argued that BP or at least someone above 

his level should have provided more extensive interpretations, rather than their 

simply forwarding raw messages.68 BP’s intelligence officers argued that they 

were not in a position to provide such commentary because they deliberately 

knew nothing about friendly dispositions or intentions, and thus lacked the 

broad context that the SSOs supposed.6’ On the other hand, at least one SSO 

recalled that “higher headquarters” (which he did not identify) had done a good 

job of summarizing material that, while not necessary in an immediate 

operational sense, provided useful background.” Analysts at BP’s Hut 3 added 

only comments derived from other ULTRA material. This segregation of 

information served both to keep other Allied plans and intentions secure and to 

avoid any incorrect interpretations of policy from creeping into BP’s prime 

product: intelligence data. Field commanders bore the responsibility for using 

the special intelligence; it would not have been fair or militarily wise to lay 

upon them extraneous information or possibly spurious suggestions. 

The question of how much material was received seemed most critical at 

the tactical air commands, which appear to have gotten relatively little 

intelligence of events and developments outside their immediate area of 

operations. The SSO for XXIX TAC noted after the war that his commanding 

general constantly sought a broader perspective than was provided, believing 

the flexibility of air power meant his force’s mission or even location might be 

changed quickly under the press of ~ombat.~’ 

The issue of context was crucial. Despite its uniqueness, ULTRA material 

was like any other piece of intelligence in that it was less apt to be misinterpreted if placed in the larger picture; it was more effective when fused with 

other intelligence. Virtually to a man, the SSOs, despite their privileged 

positions as the keepers of this unique asset, reiterated both the necessity for 

integrating ULTRA with other sources and the related danger of relying solely 

on what they referred to as Source. Recognizing the struggle of intelligence 

officers to meet the incessant demands of commanders for information while 

maintaining the security of ULTRA, the SSO at IX TAC spoke for many when 

he admitted, “The two easy errors, isolation from other sources and the 

conviction that ULTRA will provide all the needed intelligence, are indeed the 

Scylla and Charybdis of the representative. ULTRA must be looked on as one of 

a number of sources.”72 

Finally, even after it became nearly comprehensi-;e in its presentation of 

quantifiable data such as OB, fuel shortages, and unit locations, ULTRA did not 

relieve intelligence officers or their commanders from maintaining an open 

mind in drawing conclusions from this plethora of data. Even the most famous 

surprise of the war in Europe-the German offensive in the Ardennes in 

73 
Piercing the Fog 

December 1944-resulted not from a lack of evidence, but from a failure to 

interpret that evidence correctly. 

The Importance of ULTRA in the European Theater 

The importance of ULTRA in the air war against the European Axis became 

very complex. In the first place, there were several air wars in Europe and the 

Mediterranean, some of which occurred simultaneously, each having its own 

character. ULTRA’S role differed at least slightly among all. ULTRA’S influence 

changed significantly through the course of the war. Not until the spring and 

summer of 1943, for example, did it affect strategic air planning and operations 

to any important degree.‘3 Finally, the very procedures established to shield its 

existence increased the normal problems of establishing direct linkages among 

intelligence, planning, and operations. 

ULTRA’S influence in American strategic air operations against Germany 

fell into three broad categories: target selection, damage assessment, and 

information about the primary opponent: the Lujbvufle. Until 1944 ULTRA 

provided only limited assistance to the selection of target systems or individual 

targets. None of the strategic air plans prepared through 1943-AWPD-1, 

AWPD-42, the Casablanca Directive, the Eaker Plan, or even Operation 

ARGUMENT (the concentrated campaign against the German aircraft industry 

and GAF)-was based primarily on ULTRA. The USSTAF recommendation of 

March 1944 that the GAF was sufficiently weakened to permit a refocusing of 

effort was supported in large part by ULTRA. At the same time, the targets 

recommended for next attention, the German oil industry, had long been 

considered a critical objective which awaited only the capability for the mass 

attacks that Eighth Air Force finally acquired that winter. 

Because information regarding industrial capacity and conditions only 

occasionally went through German military communications channels, Enigma 

transmissions rarely provided the kind of information upon which strategic 

planners depended. The basis for selection of broad target systems was the 

economic analysis developed by such groups as the COA and the EOU, 

interpreted and adjusted by operational considerations such as distance, 

weather, and size of the available bomber force. A USSTAF study on the use 

of ULTRA material and the strategic air war concluded in 1945 that “on the 

whole it seems fair to say the major decisions on the employment of strategic 

air power would have been the same had ULTRA not been a~ailable.”’~ This 

assessment was supported by others intimately connected with intelligence and 

the planning of strategic air operations. Looking back thirty years later, Lewis 

Powell came to a similar assessment: “I think even if there had been no ULTRA, 

that with aerial reconnaissance, primarily, plus the work of scholars and 

economists, we would have identified the target systems in Germany. It may 

74 
Tools of Air Intelligence 

have taken us longer-in fact, I know it would have taken us much longer-but 

in the end we would have destroyed the German economy.”75 

In the areaof targeting, ULTRA’S contribution lay not in the initial selection 

of target systems but in the “absolutely un-arguable proof’ it provided that the 

policies and target systems American airmen had selected were indeed correct.76 

This unique insight largely overrode the normal tendency in the face of the 

unknown to hedge one’s bets by spreading resources across a spectrum of 

targets in the hope of getting parts of many, if it was not possible to get them 

all. It enabled American airmen to press the strategic bombing offensive against 

selected targets-first the Lujbvafle and aircraft industry, and then oil-with a 

degree of assurance they otherwise would have lacked. Perhaps more importantly, it enabled them to convince others of the validity of their arguments. 

A second responsibility of intelligence in the strategic air war was to assess 

the damage inflicted on targets, its impact on the enemy’s industrial production, 

and, ultimately, its effect on his military capability. Here, too, Enigma provided 

only occasional glimpses, since much of this information did not ordinarily flow 

through military channels. According to the USSTAF analysis, throughout most 

of 1943 many ULTRA reports were “too vague and general to be of importance 

operationally.” They were, for much of this period, too sporadic or incomplete 

to provide the basis for evaluation or, more importantly, future targeting 

decisions. Aerial photography remained the best way to assess bomb damage.77 

Even in this period, ULTRA reports that identified specific structural damage 

enhanced photointerpretation by enabling interpreters to correlate visual 

evidence with German reports of structural damage. The result was an improved 

method for estimating impact and blast damage.78 

During 1944 the volume and accuracy of damage reportage carried by 

Enigma increased to the point that the enemy provided “a considerable amount 

of information on [bombing] result~.”~’ By that fall, USSTAF received ULTRA 

signals of target damage the day after a raid, which were followed up the next 

day with aerial reconnaissance to confirm and clarify the Enigma intelligence.*’ 

Since 1944 was also the year the American strategic bomber force grew to 

significant size and possessed at least a limited capability to engage in radar 

bombing, the impact of this more detailed intelligence was magnified beyond 

what it would have been in previous years. 

While photointerpretation remained a fundamental part of the process of 

assessing the damage to a facility’s productive capability, ULTRA provided a 

special perspective. As skilled as the Allied photointerpreters at Medmenham 

had become, only ULTRA could advise intelligence officers and operational 

planners that a damaged facility expected “resumption of production in 

approximately 8 days ” Reports indicating no interruption to production 

provided an invaluable counterbalance to the tendency to assume that physical 

damage to a plant automatically reduced or halted production!’ By the last year 

of the war, ULTRA was not only providing a better glimpse of the enemy’s 

75 
Piercing the Fog 

industrial condition, it was also influencing operational decisions on when to 

bomb and toward what targets to shift bombing’s focus. 

When .the Allied landing at Normandy compounded the pressures the 

German military already faced on the eastern front, in Italy, and in the skies 

over Germany, Enigma increasingly began to reveal shortages of supplies, 

equipment, and personnel. This information influenced operational decisions in 

the land war in western Europe. It also affected strategic air operations. Such 

intelligence, particularly as it related to oil and fuel, confirmed the direction of 

the strategic air campaign. By the fall of 1944, such insights had an even more 

direct impact on that campaign. To a large extent, it was ULTRA that provided 

the basis for several changes in target system priorities and the addition and 

elimination of different target systems from strategic bombing priority lists. 

ULTRA most fully encompassed the numerous aspects of the air war in 

Europe through the insight it provided into the GAF. While stressing the 

interrelated nature of air intelligence, the Eighth Air Force SSO added that the 

reports ULTRA provided “of the strength, dispositions, composition, production, 

wastage, reserves, and serviceability of the GAF . . . were the raw materials of 

knowledge that produced most of our picture of the institution . . . [which] was 

our major strategic target until April of 1944.”82 Through 1943, ULTRA 

monitored the buildup of the German fighter defenses and the decision to 

concentrate resources on the air defense of the Reich. While the aircrews who 

engaged this expanding force could have offered some cogent observations 

along these lines, ULTRA provided a more accurate monitoring of this buildup 

as well as the command structure under which it was organized. It enabled the 

Allies to trace at least some of the steps the enemy was prepared to take to 

prevent Allied air attack, and it offered some insight into the enemy’s 

perspective of the struggle for the skies over Germany. 

It is not true that ULTRA enabled Allied intelligence to eavesdrop on every 

decision of the German high command, for the Geheimschreiber remained a 

difficult system to penetrate, and many reports and decisions went out in ways 

other than radio messages. It must have been reassuring in the fall of 1943, as 

the Eighth and Fifteenth Air Forces were suffering heavy casualties, to read the 

following admission of the Air Officer for Fighters in Berlin: “The fighter and 

heavy fighter formations have not been able to secure decisive success in our 

defense against American four-engine formation^."^^ By the spring of 1944 it 

was both ULTRA and photographic evidence that gave Spaatz an understanding 

of the damage wrought by the AAF’s campaign against the German fighter 

force. This Allied campaign, code named ARGUMENT, had been repeatedly 

postponed since November 1943 because of poor weather. ARGUMENT’S 

objective was a series of aerial assaults on German fighter production (from 

ball-bearing manufacture to engine and airframe assembly) and on airfields and 

aircraft storage areas. The Allied air commanders hoped to break German air 

defenses to relieve pressure on the Combined Bomber Offensive (CBO) and to 

76 
Tools of Air Intelligence 

cripple the Lufhyaffe before the planned Allied landings in France. For six days 

in February (the 20th to the 25tb), Allied bombers struck repeatedly in what has 

since been labeled “Big Week.” But it was only with an understanding of the 

German losses in the air battles and from bombardment that Spaatz could 

recommend with confidence a shift away from the German aircraft industry and 

a focus on strategic air power’s ultimate objective: destruction of the enemy’s 

capability to conduct military operations through the dislocation of his 

industrial capability and economic resources.84 

In establishing this picture, Allied air intelligence received invaluable 

assistance from the GAF. From the beginning of the war, the Lufhyaffe was 

notoriously lax in communications ~ecurity.’~ The British broke the primary 

GAF ULTRA key early in the war, and the Lufhyaffe’s message traffic continued 

to be one of the most prolific sources of intelligence. Most helpful in this regard 

was the Lufhyaffe’s daily report. As Lewis Powell recalled, “Literally almost 

every day, every combat unit of the German Air Force would report on the 

number of airplanes that were serviceable, on the number of crews who were 

ready and fit to fly, and, if there had been combat the day before, on the 

casualties, and the wins claimed.”R6 Moreover, because German air liaison 

officers assigned to Army commands used certain GAF keys on their Enigma 

machines, BP routinely used their knowledge of the GAF keys as cribs or clues 

for breaking into the more difficult German Army ciphers. 

The information Enigma provided on the Luftwaffe could be almost 

encyclopedic in its scope. Without exhausting the full range, it included orders 

establishing commands, including chain of command structures, areas of 

responsibility, missions, functions, and commanders; unit strengths, training 

programs, and status; locations and impending moves; airfield status, support 

requirements, supply status, and status and movements of ground support 

elements; number of serviceable aircraft, losses, requirements for replacements, 

and allocations of new aircraft; and operations orders, missions scheduled and 

flown, and result^.^' 

Even without intercepting every GAF message, using the air index at BP 

and the more mission-specific files the SSOs maintained at air headquarters, it 

was possible to develop over time a nearly complete picture of the Lufhyaffe. 

This flow of intelligence was so great that, according to Lewis Powell, “The 

intelligence officers in Hut 3 probably knew more about it [the Lufhyaffe] than 

[did] high-ranking German officers.””Within the context of the overall war, the 

real value of ULTRA regarding the GAF may not have lain so much in the 

information it offered on enemy operations as in what it revealed about the 

GAF’s deteriorating logistical base. It was this look into the German supply 

system that revealed long-term trends and thus allowed for the application of the 

most effective pressure on all elements of the Lufiaffe as well as other 

segments of the Wehrmacht.” 

77 
Piercing the Fog 

ULTRA’S relationship to Allied tactical air operations in Europe and the 

Mediterranean differed in several respects from its influence on the strategic air 

war. In contrast to the perspective of American strategic air forces, the 

Lufnyuffe’s fighter force was not the Allied tactical air forces’ primary opponent 

in either Italy or western Europe after the autumn of 1943. The primary 

contribution of ULTRA was in the targeting process. Most of the ULTRA signals 

relevant to tactical air operations contained information on German land rather 

than air forces. While ULTRA was distributed only down to the strategic 

numbered air forces, in the tactical air chain of command it went one level 

lower, to the tactical air commands. 

The decline of the Lufnyuffe as a threat to Allied tactical air operations was 

strikingly evident. Despite preinvasion concerns by airmen in the United 

Kingdom and in Washington, the Luftwuffe put up insignificant resistance to 

Operation OVERLORD. Enigma did provide information that contributed directly 

to successful Allied air operations in the weeks immediately after D-day. 

Looking back on the war, however, General Robert M. Lee, who became 

director of operations for Ninth Air Force in September, 1944, maintained he 

did not “recall getting an awful lot on . . . [enemy] air operations, because it 

didn’t have much of an impact on US.''^ Special security officers properly 

maintained files and charts on the status and condition of GAF units, but they 

and their superiors recognized, as the SSO with the First Tactical Air Force 

(Prov.) recorded, that “Allied air superiority was too overwhelming to be 

affected by anything the GAF might do.’’91 

More than one SSO complained that BP continued to overemphasize the 

GAF long after it had ceased to be a dominant factor. The special advisor on 

targeting for Ninth Air Force, Maj. Lucius Buck, referred to a “Battle of 

Britain” mentality in the RAF and the resultant emphasis on air OB at the 

expense of targeting intelligence as “inconsistent with American concepts of 

offensive air power.”” Lt. Col. Leslie L. Rood, at XI1 TAC, also commented on 

BP’s concern with the Luftwuffe, noting his command’s staff “were completely 

uninterested in its [GAF’s] grandiose plans and ineffective operation^."'^ 

ULTRA’S contribution to tactical air planning and operations depended to 

a large extent on the level of command. At the numbered air forces and above, 

its value was the background information it provided which became the 

backdrop on which policy and broad operational decisions were made. From the 

perspective of the Ninth Air Force director of operations, it was “the accumulation of information” rather than specific target intelligence that constituted 

ULTRA’S greatest c~ntribution.’~ Similarly, for Twelfth Air Force’s tactical 

bombers, ULTRA’S contribution was assessed not in terms of providing targeting 

(which came from a variety of sources) but in the cumulative evidence that the 

interdiction campaign in Italy was adversely affecting the enemy’s supply 

channels .y5 

78 
Tools of Air Intelligence 

At the tactical air command level, ULTRA did offer frequent inputs for 

mission planning. This proved especially valuable because higher headquarters 

generally provided only broad guidance, while leaving the TACs to determine, 

plan, and execute their own missions in conjunction with the appropriate Army 

headquarters. Some of this intelligence pertained to the GAF. Enigma messages 

enabled Allied night fighters to conduct very effective intercepts against 

German transports attempting to resupply the beleaguered fortresses along the 

Atlantic coast in the summer of 1944.’6 ULTRA provided extensive intelligence 

on the primary target of tactical air forces-the German Army. This information 

ranged from the specific-the location of enemy units, fuel and supply depots, 

and movements-to more general insights into losses and shortages of 

equipment and manpower. Close coordination between army and tactical air 

command staffs frequently allowed such intelligence to provide the basis for air 

interdiction missions. 

In contrast to strategic air operations, ULTRA provided the tactical forces 

with greater assistance in target selection than in damage assessment. For XI1 

TAC in Italy the SSO reported, “The occasional damage reports on specific 

targets are of doubtful value because [XII] TAC attacks vast numbers of small 

targets every day.”” According to one postwar report on ULTRA’S use, in 

general there was “a scarcity of immediate intelligence” on fighter-bomber 

damage in western Europe.’8 The SSO at Ninth Air Force noted that photoreconnaissance and interpretation were generally more useful in damage assessment 

than was ULTRA. The same individual added, however, that ULTRA’S damage 

assessment contribution was particularly important in the winter of 1944 when 

weather often prevented effective aerial reconnaissance.w 

ULTRA’S overriding contribution for both tactical and strategic air 

operations was the guidance it provided in evaluating other sources, in 

interpreting otherwise unclear information, and in directing more effective 

employment of other intelligence capabilities and resources. Certainly the SSOs 

who were responsible for ULTRA and for blending it with other sources of 

intelligence clearly viewed this as its primary contribution: “The greatest value 

which the special intelligence officer can be to the headquarters which he is 

serving is to be constantly developing and exploiting in a legitimate manner 

[i.e., with proper cover] the general intelligence which he knows has been 

confirmed by source. . . [and] in guiding the employment of other intelligence 

sources in order to build up the general intelligence picture. . . .’’loo In short, 

ULTRA substantiated intelligence from other sources. It also suggested where 

to look and for what to search in other sources. Lt. Col. James Fellers expressed 

the objective toward which all SSOs strove in this regard: “The ultimate aim of 

every intelligence section is to build the ordinary intelligence picture up to the 

level of the very special intelligence picture.”’” At Fifteenth Air Force, for 

example, the ULTRA SSO contributed his “superior wisdom” to the interpretation of aerial photographs for the targets branch.”* According to the Y 

79 
Piercing the Fog 

intelligence officer at Ninth Air Force, “During the past year few days passed 

during which ULTRA did not insert itself into the estimates and opinions of the 

‘Y’ staff. . . . ULTRA is the guide and censor for ‘Y,’ and at the same time the 

latter is a secure vehicle by which ULTRA may be disseminated under co~er.”’’~ 

Equally important, ULTRA acted as a censor, weeding out incorrect 

intelligence interpretations, assessments, and assumptions. At Fifteenth Air 

Force, for example, ULTRA’S primary role was assessed as one of negative 

influence: “Special intelligence tells Murphy [the SSO] and his superiors what 

not to rely on [from other sources]. Rarely does he get anything of pure 

operational value, something which causes him to rush in to A-3 demanding 

that a mission be laid on.”’04 At every headquarters where they were attached, 

SSOs ensured that intelligence documents such as weekly air intelligence 

summaries and daily intelligence bulletins were based on ULTRA or at least 

contained no incorrect inf~rmation.’’~ In his discussion of the relative merits of 

the different sources of intelligence, one SSO cautioned against leaving “out of 

the weighing the very important guiding influence” ULTRA exerted through 

appreciations sent from higher to subordinate headquarters, based on ULTRA 

material of which the recipients were unaware.lW 

Photointelligence 

To a large extent photointelligence-photoreconnaissance and photointerpretation collectively-was the backbone of air intelligence in World War 11, 

especially in strategic air operations. In the air war against Japan, for example, 

Maj. Gen. Haywood Hansel1 considered the first B-29 photoreconnaissance 

flight over Japan on November 1, 1944, “probably the greatest . . . single 

contribution . . . in the air war with Japan.”’” In its after-action report on the air 

war over Germany, the EOU in London expressed a similar view by noting that, 

because of the shifting nature of the German aircraft industry, “only photographic interpretation could confirm precisely many important changes.”’08 

Even officers who dealt extensively with ULTRA were emphatic in their 

evaluation of photoreconnaissance and interpretation. An ULTRA-indoctrinated 

observer in the Mediterranean theater in 1944, for example, noted that with the 

decline of the GAF and the subsequently greater importance of targeting as 

intelligence’s primary function, “Probably the most valuable source [of 

intelligence] is photography.”’@’ In January 1945, while serving as both SSO at 

HQ USSTAF and chief of operational intelligence with responsibility for the 

integration of all intelligence, Col. Lewis Powell stated that “perhaps the most 

important . . . [intelligence source] is Photo Reconnaissance.””’ Powell could 

not then [1945] reveal his knowledge of ULTRA, but he knew that without 

photoreconnaissance the AAF would have lacked not only maps but a wide 

80 
Tools of Air Intelligence 

variety of methods to pinpoint specific targets. The same situation obtained in 

the Far East. 

That photointelligence played such a critical role reflected tremendous 

progress in the development and employment of this analytical tool by the AAF 

after December 1941. Although the American Air Service had done a great deal 

of aerial photography in the last year of the Great War, this function and 

training for the skills it demanded were reduced drastically in the financially 

bleak interwar years. The Air Corps established an aerial photography school 

at Lowry Field, Colorado, in 1938, but it taught only the mechanics of aerial 

photography rather than its uses. Despite the technical work of several 

individuals on camera developments, most notably Lt. (later Brig. Gen.) Robert 

Goddard, the Army Air Corps did not have separate photoreconnaissance units; 

the Corps incorporated this function into its bombardment groups. Not until the 

spring of 1942 would the AAF establish separate photoreconnaissance units 

using F-7s (B-24s) and F-9s (B-l7s)."' 

None of the eventual belligerents in World War 11 could be considered 

advanced in using aerial photography for intelligence by the late 1930s. When 

the Americans got into the war, the British had had more than two years to work 

out many of the technical and organizational problems. The United States drew 

heavily on this experience even before December 1941. American observers in 

the United Kingdom between the spring of 1940 and the winter of 1941 noted 

the importance of photoreconnaissance in their reports to Washington. One of 

them, Capt. Harold Brown, was instrumental in determining the emphasis that 

the Harrisburg Intelligence School (located in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania) placed 

on photointelligence. Although it would continue to make great strides in the 

development of equipment-including lenses, mounting techniques, and film 

development processes-during the war, the AAF did not develop an aircraft 

designed specifically for reconnaissance. Squadrons used existing aircraft types 

converted in various degrees for photoreconnaissance, depending on the 

characteristics of each theater and the stage of the war. 

Early experiences in North Africa quickly demonstrated the unsuitability 

of the slow and unmaneuverable F-7s and F-9s when matched against German 

air defenses. Some 25 percent of the original force sent to support TORCH were 

shot down in the first three months of operations."' As a result, in the 

Mediterranean and European theaters-where speed, maneuverability, and 

constant vigilance were the reconnaissance pilot's best defenses-the F-4 

(P-38E) and variations of the F-5 (P-38GIH) became the primary American 

reconnaissance aircraft. Despite improvements made in later versions of the 

F-5, they remained less capable than the British Mosquito or Spitfires IX and 

XII, the latter being the premier reconnaissance craft of this theater. Although 

American airmen considered using the Mosquito and actually operated Spitfire 

IXs in 1943, in early 1944 the commander of the 8th Photo Reconnaissance 

81 
Piercing the Fog 

Wing (Prov.), Col. Elliot Roosevelt, son of the American president, decided to 

stick with American-made F-5s supplemented by F-6s (P-5 1 s). 

In the Pacific, aerial photography of enemy-held areas routinely required 

aircraft with greater range than any converted fighter could provide. On the 

night of March 26/27,1944, two F-7s flew a 20-hour, 2,500-mile night mission 

to photograph Japanese installations in the Palau island^."^ The F-7 and F-10 

(B-25) dominated aerial photography in the Southwest Pacific and were used 

extensively in the China-Burma-India (CBI) Theater to reach into southern 

Burma and to overfly the east China coast and islands to the south. Because 

these planes could not rely on speed and maneuverability and because distances 

were too great for fighter escort, long-range reconnaissance aircraft were almost 

always armed. American forces did use field-modified fighters where 

appropriate, including P-~OS, P-39s, P-38s, and eventually P-5 1 s. 

Another difference between the European and Pacific theaters was that most 

of the enemy-held territory in western and central Europe was accessible to 

some degree of aerial photography relatively early in the war, whereas the 

Japanese home islands remained out of reach much longer. Early B-29 missions 

flown against Japan from China lacked current photographs of their targets. Not 

until November 1, 1944, did the AAF fly the first reconnaissance mission over 

Tokyo and Nagoya from Saipan. Each of the seventeen photomissions flown 

between November 1 and the first B-29 attack of November 24, 1944, as well 

as those that followed, involved a 1,500-mile flight to the target area, a one-hour 

run (period of active photography), and a 1,500-mile return leg. Initially flown 

with field-modified B-29s, these missions were later conducted by factoryconverted F-13s (B-29s) which carried an exceptional array of different 

 camera^."^ 

Photoreconnaissance missions were flown for various reasons, which can 

be grouped into a few categories: area (overview) coverage, point (static) 

objectives, coverage of enemy activities (movements), damage assessment, and 

photographic support for land operations. Each required specific equipment, 

mission profiles, and photographic coverage. Overview coverage of an area 

provided a basic knowledge of what targets, activities, or other intelligence 

clues might be available in a designated area. In the Pacific and CBI theaters, 

where maps were often outdated or nonexistent, many of the early missions 

involved photomapping. In all theaters, broad-sweep coverage provided the 

background upon which to build more detailed pictures when necessary. In the 

fall of 1943, Col. George C. McDonald, then chief intelligence officer for 

Northwest African Air Forces (NAAF), ordered coverage of some 60,000 

square miles in southern Germany, Hungary, and the Balkans when it appeared 

the Germans were beginning to shift or develop industry in these region^."^ 

Photointerpreters would review the initial overviews to identify the existence 

and location of a broad range of possible targets or key facilities including 

airfields, transportation centers, troop concentrations, supply dumps, gun 

82 
Tools of Air Intelligence 

emplacements, and factories. Area coverage might provide the basis for 

searches for very specific targets. This was the approach used in the search for 

the German V-1 and V-2 launching sites in northern France, Belgium, and 

Holland in 1943 and 1944. 

Point missions flown against specific, and usually static, objectives almost 

always resulted in large-scale photography for detailed analysis of specific 

targets. Such missions provided the photographic basis for target selection for 

strategic air operations, including identification of aiming points, location and 

nature of defensive systems, and changes and modifications of installations over 

time. It was thephotointerpreters’ analysis of the region around Marienburg that 

elicited the strong suspicion that the airfield was a factory producing FockeWulf fighters. Once technical analysis of the maker’s plates of several crashed 

FW 190s established Marienburg as a good target, the Eighth Air Force 

launched a highly successful attack on the aircraft manufacturing complex in 

early October 1943.Ii6 The results of these types of missions provided the 

framework and core of strategic, and sometimes tactical, mission target folders 

in all theaters. Coverage of specific targets also provided the basis for the bomb 

damage assessments (BDAs) essential not only to understand the accuracy of 

an attack but also to evaluate the impact of the damage on a facility’s productivity. Evaluation played a critical role in decisions regarding the need for and 

timing of reattacks. Photointerpretation was an art that demanded great skill in 

assessing photographs and an ability to reason and deduce facts from images. 

The presence of camouflage indicated some enemy interest in preventing 

observation; it caught an evaluator’s eye. Photointerpretation depended upon 

aerial photography’s producing good-quality images, something not always 

possible in the European weather. Serendipity also mattered. If the reconnaissance pilot chanced to see an interesting sight, he might turn on his camera, as 

in May 1942 when a British pilot photographed Peenemunde’s airfield and new 

construction. 

Just how important air commanders considered this information to be was 

reflected in a February 8, 1944, message from Spaatz to Lt. Gen. Ira C. Eaker, 

while the latter was commanding the Mediterranean Allied Air Forces (MAAF). 

It was, declared Spaatz, “of utmost importance” that first-phase interpretation 

reports (based on recce misfons flown within two hours of a strike) of a 

projected Fifteenth Air Force raid on February 9 be furnished to him immediately. Because the “determination of [follow-up] operations depends on PRU 

[Photographic Reconnaissance Unit] reports,” the acquisition and interpretation 

of the necessary photographs were “of the highest priority, over all other 

a~tivity.””~ 

Where land force operations were planned or underway, a great deal of 

aerial photography as well as visual reconnaissance supported such activity. In 

Italy, close air support to the US. Fifth Army was based on “extensive use of 

annotated photographs. . . .”“8 Between May 6 and 20,1944, the American 10th 

83 
Piercing the Fog 

Reconnaissance Group flew 232 missions along the Channel coast to record the 

German defenses. Some of these missions were flown as low as 15 feet above 

the sea.l”‘Nor was this support limited to the European Theater. When AAF 

aerial photos revealed the size and shape of the proposed landing zones on 

Bougainville to be considerably different from those on existing charts, the 

amphibious assault at Empress Augusta Bay was redirected in November 

1943.”’ Just as photo and tactical (visual) reconnaissance groups supported 

Allied ground advances in Europe, the 7 1 st Reconnaissance Group operated 

over the Philippine Islands in 1945, providing intelligence on enemy troop 

deployments and dispositions, movements and bivouac areas, road and bridge 

construction, and even the weather that was developing behind enemy lines.’” 

A basic characteristic of photographic reconnaissance was its repetitive nature. 

On certain occasions one-time coverage was adequate. For the most part, 

however, a fundamental element of the interpretation process was the 

comparison of activity over time: repairs to plants, the buildup of flak* units, 

new road construction, or changes in the numbers or types of aircraft at an 

airfield. 

Analysis of the results of aerial reconnaissance flights-photointerpretation-occurred at three levels. First-phase interpretation was carried out at the 

recovery base of flying units to provide operational commanders and their staffs 

a quick initial evaluation, especially in assessing the results of air strikes. In the 

first months of Eighth Air Force operations, the development and analysis of 

aerial photographs took two days, with both steps occurring at Medmenham. In 

March 1943, Eaker directed that a photographic processing facility be 

established at the American reconnaissance base at Mount Farm near RAF 

Benson and that photointerpretation officers be assigned to his headquarters to 

provide immediate prints so he could more quickly judge the results of a given 

strike.‘” 

With the growing requirements for tactical air forces to support land 

operations in all theaters and the subsequent emphasis on targets more fleeting 

than those subjected to strategic air bombardment, the demands made on rapid 

first-phase interpretation increased. By the middle of 1943, first-phase 

interpretation was accomplished within two to three hours after a reconnaissance plane landed. To increase still further the availability of first-phase 

interpretation during the effort against the German V-1 flying bomb sites in 

1944, the HQ USSTAF Directorate of Intelligence established special 

procedures under the so-called Dilly Project, whereby a courier hand carried 

photos from the AAF’s photointerpretation center at Mount Farm to General 

spaatz.123 

*Flak, short for the German Fliegerubwehrkunone, became the commonly used 

term for AA gunfire. 

84 
Tools of Air Intelligence 

Second-phase interpretation, often accomplished by the same individuals, 

or at least the same units, as those responsible for the first-phase work, 

consisted of a more detailed analysis of photographs to find anything that might 

have immediate operational value. This still rapid but more detailed assessment 

allowed photointerpreters to look for and determine links between what might 

at first glance be overlooked or be thought to be unconnected activities, if seen 

in isolation. This phase lasted approximately 24 hours, until the next day’s batch 

of material arrived.’24 

While photointerpreters assigned to the operational units usually conducted 

the first and second phases, personnel assigned to specific subjects or areas of 

expertise did third-phase interpretations at a central facility. Thus the Central 

Interpretation Unit (CIU) at Medmenham contained one section that concentrated on airfields, another that focused on aircraft, and a third that dealt with 

aircraft factories. These central facilities performed the detailed and often longterm analyses that influenced not so much daily operations, but longer term 

strategic and policy decisions. Even before the American strategic bombers 

began to concentrate on Axis oil production, Medmenham had seven photointerpreters focusing on this Concentration of resources (both human and 

materiel) at central locations provided the capability to review old photographs 

in the light of new clues, to concentrate assets on high-priority projects, and to 

have sections interact for new perspectives. 

The organization of both photoreconnaissance and photointerpretation 

assets underwent several changes as the war progressed. Early in the war, 

limited resources necessitated centralizing the control of British reconnaissance 

and interpretation functions. By the time the United States began air operations 

in England, RAF photointerpretation had been largely concentrated at the CIU 

at Medmenham, while reconnaissance units flew from RAF Benson. Eighth Air 

Force assigned American photointerpreters to the CIU and established its flying 

organizations (eventually evolving into the 7th Photo Reconnaissance Group, 

and later into the 8th Reconnaissance Wing) at Mount Farm. At Medmenham, 

the RAF had an extensive photointerpretation operation divided into several 

sections. Film from regular reconnaissance flights over established enemy 

facilities came to the CIU, where interpreters examined it in detail to discern 

significant changes or other indications of suspicious enemy intent. For 

example, one section at the CIU used reconnaissance photography to prepare 

target folders, and another analyzed AA facilities. Each section prepared special 

reports on its area of specialization. As another example, the AA analysts’ work 

led to flak studies that allowed attacking aircraft to avoid some dangerous areas 

on their runs to and from targets. In contrast, the AAF’s photointerpretation 

capability was very limited early in the war. Photographic specialists who had 

trained at the AAF’s Harrisburg Intelligence School worked at Medmenham for 

some time before the Eighth Air Force established its own photographic 

interpretation capability. 

85 
Piercing the Fog 

Medmenham. The RAF Central Interpretation Unit (later the Allied Central 

Interpretation Unit) was located on a commandeered estate called Danesfield, high on 

a wooded bluff overlooking the Thames River some 30 miles north of London and three 

miles upstream from Henley-on-Thames (of Regatta fame). Most of the offices were in 

the main house, whose crenelated towers show in the center of the photo. On the back 

and far sides of the house, the long, low extensions were Nissen huts containing the 

large photo-processing labs and the enlisted quarters. The officers mess and quarters 

were off the top edge of the photo in the woods across the Henley-to-Marlow road. For 

a landing field, Medmenham used RAF Benson, some seven miles away. A training 

center as well as an operational unit, at one time or another the cast of characters at 

Medmenham included officers from all British and American services plus officers from 

the far comers of the British Empire as well as Free French, Danes, Norwegians, 

Czechs, Poles, Belgians, and Dutch. Women outnumbered men. An adjunct activity was 

the modeling section, which used aerial photos to make remarkably accurate, detailed 

three-dimensional models of vital targets. With few regular officers and a three-shift 

schedule, the monthly “parades” that straggled past the reviewing stand brought a look 

of pure horror to the face of the regular RAF Group Captain who had to take the salute. 

During Operation TORCH, American and British photoreconnaissance and 

photointerpretation units were not located near each other, nor, in the case of the 

Americans, were the intelligence units located near their strike units, and 

initially, little coordination took place among them. Because U.S. reconnaissance units were located too far to the rear, it took as much as forty-eight hours 

to get mission results to the attack units. Geographic and electronic communica86 
Tools of Air Intelligence 

tions difficulties were resolved with the gradual advance of Allied armies 

eastward and by the development of additional fields. Centralization of 

direction for both photoreconnaissance and photointelligence came with the 

creation of the Northwest African Photographic Reconnaissance Wing 

(NAPRW) under Lt. Col. Elliot Roosevelt. This arrangement allowed more 

effective assignment of priorities to the innumerable requests for support, 

reduced overlap of reconnaissance units on the basis of requests from different 

ground units, and allowed third-phase interpretation at a CIU established in 

Algiers. When NAAF became MAAF in December 1943, the NAPRW became 

the Mediterranean Allied Photographic Reconnaissance Wing (MAPRW).’” 

When war came to the Pacific in December 1941, the United States had no 

designated or properly equipped reconnaissance aircraft, no field laboratory 

capability, and no qualified U.S. photointerpreter in the entire region. *’* In the 

Southwest Pacific and South Pacific theaters, this scarcity of assets forced the 

evolution, largely on an ad hoc basis, of joint photoreconnaissance and 

photointerpretation organizations. Such amalgamations as Navy cameras, 

Marine photography technicians, and AAF aircraft were common through many 

of the early island campaigns.’” In contrast to Europe, the vast size of these 

Pacific theaters and the limited facilities at any one location resulted in a more 

decentralized structure of command and control and allocation of photointelligence units. At one time, the 17th Reconnaissance Squadron (AAF) headquartered at Guadalcanal maintained detachments at Bougainville, Munda (New 

Georgia), and Green Island in the northern Solomons to provide immediate 

response to Allied forces operating in these widely separated areas.’3o 

The situation in the remote CBI regions was even more elementary. The 

first American photoreconnaissance units did not begin operations in either the 

China or India-Burma regions until the closing months of 1942-nearly a year 

after air operations had begun. Until that time General Chennault’s American 

Volunteer Group and China Air Task Force had to rely on jury-rigged 

equipment. The India Air Task Force operating in Burma at least had the 

advantage of RAF capabilities in India, and American photointerpreters 

received training at the RAF school in Karachi.131 A true combined organization 

in India came with the creation of the Eastern Air Command’s Photo Reconnaissance Force in December 1943. This organization, commanded in its first 

year by the veteran RAF Group Capt. S. C. Wise, Served the same role as 

Roosevelt’s NAPRW. The Combined Photographic Interpretation Centre at 

Calcutta performed third-phase interpretation and photographic production.’32 

As the war progressed, the initial trend toward centralization of photoreconnaissance and interpretation assets and units was, to an extent, reversed. In large 

part, this shift stemmed from the need to provide timely support for tactical air 

and land operations as well as the increasing number of units available by the 

spring of 1944. In Europe and the Mediterranean it reflected two other factors. 

The first was adifference in American and British philosophies, with the former 

87 
Wing Commander Douglas Kendall, RAF (above left), was in overall charge of 

intelligence activities at Medmenham and the only person there cleared for ULTRA 

information. To his right is his U.S. Air Force counterpart, Lt. Col. William J. 

O’Connor. As aerial photos arrived, they were roughly plotted by the map area 

covered (below) and sent to the appropriate section for more precise location and 

detailed analysis. 

88 
Tools of Air Intelligence 

more inclined to allocate reconnaissance units to operational subcommands than 

the latter was. The second involved the concern of American airmen to establish 

an independent capability, not just in photoreconnaissance and photointelligence, but in all aspects of air intelligence as well. 

Decentralization occurred particularly in the assignment of photoreconnaissance units and the execution of second-phase interpretation. In the Mediterranean, HQ MAAF established reconnaissance policy and retained control of the 

MAPRW and Mediterranean Photo Interpretation Centre (which continued 

third-phase interpretation). In the spring of 1944, HQ Mediterranean Allied 

Tactical Air Force and Twelfth Air Force acquired their own photoreconnaissance and interpretation ~apabi1ity.l~~ Mediterranean Allied Strategic Air Force 

and Fifteenth Air Force did the same that fall.’34 

The most dramatic effort to decentralize photointelligence occurred in the 

early months of 1944. Throughout 1943, the American 7th Photo Reconnaissance Group at Mount Farm had been under the operational control of the Air 

Ministry’s assistant director of intelligence for photography, while American 

photointerpreters had been integrated into the CIU at Medmenham. Neither 

Spaatz nor his director of intelligence in the new USSTAF, McDonald, fully 

approved of this arrangement. They took steps in early 1944 to establish “direct 

control of a fully-functioning [American] reconnaissance and intelligence 

organization. . . Spaatz’s chief concern was clearly focused on the future and predicated on 

the potential requirement to uncouple American photoreconnaissance and 

interpretation capabilities in the event elements of USSTAF were sent to 

another theater (i.e., the Pacific). Spaatz was also concerned with the development of an American air intelligence organization able to continue after the war, 

and the close alliance with the British, was over.’36 Evidence is strong also that 

Colonels McDonald and Roosevelt, the latter serving as Spaatz’s reconnaissance advisor, sought a complete break from the existing Anglo-American 

organization and the establishment of a wholly American capability and 

organization under HQ USSTAF. They intended to pull American personnel out 

of Medmenham and to establish a full interpretation capability at HQ 

USSTAF.’37 

The initial outcome of this American effort-which the British vehemently 

opposed-was the credtion in February 1944 of the 8th Photo Reconnaissance 

Wing (Prov.) to ensure continued reconnaissance support for strategic air 

operations preceding and subsequent to Operation After months 

of memoranda, proposals, counterproposals, and meetings (including at least 

one chaired by Spaatz), first- and second-phase photointerpretation for daylight 

bombing missions were shifted in May 1944 to HQ USSTAF. British and 

American interpreters at Medmenham, redesignated as the Allied CIU, 

continued to perform third-phase interpretation. For more effective coordination 

and to reduce duplication of effort, the Allies established a Joint Photo 

89 
Piercing the Fog 

Reconnaissance Committee with American and British Army, Air Force, and 

Navy representative^.'^' In August 1944, the 8th Photographic Reconnaissance 

Wing (Prov.) was redesignated the 325th Reconnaissance Wing. Roosevelt 

retained his dual responsibilities as commander, 325th Reconnaissance Wing, 

and photoreconnaissance advisor to Spaatz.""' 

Photographic interpretation was a fundamental element of air intelligence, 

but, like the other tools of air intelligence, it was not without problems. While 

the limited number of photoreconnaissance units was most obvious in the first 

eighteen months of the war, especially in the Pacific theaters, the constant 

expansion of air operations always placed correspondingly increasing demands 

on new photoreconnaissance and interpretation units. As late as January 1945, 

at the HQ USSTAF-hosted American air intelligence officers' conference, 

Elliot Roosevelt noted that requests for reconnaissance support continued to 

exceed resources despite the presence of twenty-nine American and fifteen RAF 

squadrons in western Europe and Italy.14' 

In a more directly operational sense, timing of photographic missions 

caused problems, particularly in strategic poststrike damage assessment. To 

provide the almost immediate review air commanders sought, a portion of every 

American bomber force carried cameras to record strikes in progress. The 

resulting pictures were often unduly gratifying. With fires blazing, buildings 

collapsing, and smoke obscuring the target, they often suggested greater than 

actual damage. Throughout the war, those immediately involved in photoreconnaissance and photointelligence processes, including Roosevelt, argued against 

putting too much stock in these first pictures. They were equally emphatic in 

their opposition to sending reconnaissance aircraft over a target within hours of 

an attack because the results, again due to obstructions, were still not worth the 

effort or the danger.14' One of the leading British photointerpreters noted it often 

took several weeks to obtain truly accurate photographs for analyzing bomb 

damage since the enemy first had to raze damaged buildings and clear away 

debris.'43 

Even more difficult than assessing physical destruction to the exterior of a 

target were accurate assessments of the interior damage and the impact of such 

damage on a facility's output. Postwar analysis by the United States Strategic 

Bombing Survey (USSBS) would reveal that destruction of essential machinery 

at aircraft production and repair facilities 'was almost always much less than 

even the most conservative photointerpreters, let alone the operators, judged. 

For other industries, damage assessment could be better. Photointerpretation of 

damage at the synthetic oil production facility at Leuna, for example, showed 

fewer discrepancies in the USSBS's postwar analysis. This was owing to the 

nature of the plant that had more areas exposed to overhead observation and to 

direct bomb damage. The USSBS specialists made their assessments by 

comparing wartime photography and interpretation reports with on-the-spot 

surveys and interviews of managers and employees. The ability of factory 

90 
Tools of Air Intelligence 

Brig. Gen. Ira C. Eaker Capt. Elliot Roosevelt 

personnel to make repairs locally, and often unobserved, complicated the task 

of damage assessment.’” 

Reflective of the mental framework that predominated during the war was 

the observation of Col. Guido Perera of the COA. In a memorandum to Maj. 

Gen. Laurence S. Kuter, HQ USAAF AC/AS, Plans on the effects of strategic 

air operations against the German aircraft industry, Perera accurately pointed 

out the difficulties of damage evaluations based on “high altitude photographs 

varying widely in quality.” But he arrived at the wrong conclusion when he 

stressed, “The industrial damage just listed [in the memorandum] is the absolute 

minimum statement of accomplishment. Greater damage is a practical 

~ertainty.”’~’ 

Just finding the target in an aerial photograph could be extremely difficult. 

Unless the photointerpreters knew what to look for, even the best among them 

might overlook crucial evidence. A structure that proved to be a launching pad 

for the early tests of the German V-2 rocket at Peenemunde had been dismissed 

for several months as merely part of a group of unknown, mysterious rings 

before additional clues led interpreters to pull out their old photographs and take 

another l00k.l~~ Misled by scientific intelligence into concentrating their 

attention along rail lines, photointerpreters missed the construction of buzzbomb launch sites in northern France until a report from a French underground 

agent suggested they broaden their search. Photographs previously taken of the 

area around Bois Cam5 were then reexamined by an Anglo-American team 

which located a total of ninety-six suspected V-1 launch sites.’47 

91 
Piercing the Fog 

Maj. Gen. Carl A. Spaatz 

As the Germans increased the dispersal of their production facilities 

throughout 1944, the task of photointerpretation demanded increasing ingenuity. 

Constance Babington-Smith, one of the most skilled British photointerpreters, 

wrote after the war that by 1944 she and her colleagues found themselves 

searching out “the most unimaginable hiding places: to lunatic asylums and 

chocolate factories, to vast fantastic underground workshops, to firebreaks in 

pine forests and tunnels on autobahns.” In fact, she summarized, “one’s usual 

standards of what was possible or impossible had to go by the board.”’48 

As with all the tools of intelligence, photoreconnaissance and photointerpretation were most effective when employed in conjunction with one or more 

of the other forms. The guidance provided by a POW interrogation, the clue 

passed under cover by SIGINT, or the comments offered by an agent on the 

ground were often indispensable. Such clues suggested where to concentrate 

reconnaissance efforts, or they might focus the attention of interpreters on given 

photographs as well as providing suggestions on how to make sense of what 

they saw. Such guidance might come from almost any source. Advertisements 

appearing in German technical journals in 1942 for oil engineers provided the 

first clues that led eventually to the reconnaissance mission that revealed the 

nearly complete construction of the first part of a huge refinery at Brux, 

Czechoslovakia. When completed in 1944, Brux would be one of Germany’s 

largest oil cornpIe~es.’~~ 

Both the British Secret Intelligence Service and the American OSS 

maintained close contacts with photointelligence agencies. Agent reports often 

provided initial tips on German activity in occupied temtories. This proved to 

92 
Tools of Air Intelligence 

Brig. Gen. George C. McDonald (Courtesy, Nutionul ArchivesJ 

be especially the case in the development of the German V-1 and V-2 weapons. 

Conversely, aerial photographs served as an effective means of evaluating the 

reliability of agent reports. Although few photointerpreters were aware of 

activities at BP, a close link always existed between it and the CIU at Medmenham.”’ 

Links with less directly operational organizations were also important. 

Economic analysis agencies such as the COA and the EOU were extremely 

useful to photointerpreters as they tried to understand where they might look for 

factories and industrial installations in Europe and to interpret the degree of 

damage inflicted by an attack. The chief of Medmenharn’s enemy airfields 

section credited the American EOU with providing a clearer focus and direction 

to the photographic reconnaissance and analysis of aircraft factories. As a result 

of the American analysts’ insistence on greater emphasis in this area and their 

suggestions on what to look for, in 1943 CIU added some fifty aircraft 

production facilities to their reconnaissance pr~grarn.’~~ Information derived 

from this expansion played a role in targeting for the February 20-25, 1944, 

campaign against the German aircraft industry. 

Even when other sources identified a potential target, air. planners and 

operators relied on photointelligence in the preparation and execution of air 

operations. Aerial photography contributed to the setting of target priorities by 

providing evidence of the status of newly built or repaired factories. It also 

formed the basis of target folders and was used for determining approaches and 

egress routes, aiming points, anticipated flak locations, and even types of 

bombs. Accurate interpretation of photographs also prevented unnecessary 

93 
Piercing the Fog 

attacks, freeing resources for more important targets. Based on ground reports 

in 1943 that indicated that a Junkers factory at Schonebeck was producing 

aircraft engines, Eighth Air Force scheduled an attack with what were still 

scarce resources. The astute observations of CIU photointerpreters of the 

absence of test beds in any photographs of this facility led to a reevaluation and 

subsequent cancellation of what would have been a wasted mi~sion.”~ 

Y Intelligence 

In Europe and North Africa the greatest role of SIGINT after ULTRA was the 

interception and application of low-grade signals traffic and transmissions made 

in the clear (i.e., unencrypted). The latter occurred mainly between aircraft or 

between aircraft and ground control stations. While precise terminology and 

technical definitions changed during the course of the war, British and 

American airmen in both operations and intelligence commonly used the term 

“Y intelligence” to refer to the interception and handling of low-grade Axis 

codes as well as plain-language radio traffic.* The British organization 

responsible for radio interception of both low- and high-grade enemy ciphers, 

the “Yorker Service,” was commonly referred to as Y-Servi~e.’~~ In addition to 

monitoring tactical and strategic radio message and voice traffic, the British YService recorded radar, navigation, and other enemy electronic transmissions. 

All of the recorded information became intelligence data when forwarded to the 

appropriate commanders. 

In these other SIGINT areas, as in ULTRA, the British had both extensive 

experience and an elaborate organization in place when the initial Eighth Air 

Force cadre arrived in Great Britain in early 1942. The American air forces in 

Europe developed some capability to handle German low-grade cipher traffic 

and to translate uncoded radio messages, but they relied heavily on their ally in 

all aspects of SIGINT. American understanding of the British interception, 

evaluation, and dissemination of enemy information grew slowly. Only after the 

April 1943 visit of Colonels McCormack and Taylor and William Friedman did 

Americans provide substantial staffing of various parts of BP’s operation. The 

British system for transmitting special intelligence to the field remained the one 

in use in Europe and the Mediterranean throughout the war. Additionally, 

several American army and air signals units received training from British 

forces.’54 Although the British dominated Allied SIGINT in Europe and the 

Mediterranean throughout the war, their exclusive role was modified as the war 

*Technically, the American term for these activities was “Radio Intelligence,” 

but because most documents prepared at AAF headquarters within the European 

theaters commonly used the term “Y intelligence,” we will adhere to this 

convention as well. 

94 
Tools of Air Intelligence 

continued. American SIGINT units operated in North Africa and during Allied 

operations in Sicily and Italy. As the strategic air war evolved, American 

airborne Y intercept operations began in the fall of 1943 to give long-range 

bomber formation commanders in the Mediterranean the benefit of immediate 

intercepts of fighter pilots’ and controllers’ transmissions. By the winter of 

1943-1944, under the press of the intensified Allied bombing campaign, a large 

portion of German air defense operations occurred beyond the range of U.K.- 

based signals intercept stations. In January 1944 Eighth Air Force began 

experiments with airborne radio intercept operations conducted by Britishtrained American aircrew members. (American bomber forces striking German 

targets from bases in the Mediterranean had begun limited airborne signals 

interception the previous fall.) When American tactical air forces moved to the 

continent in June 1944, they established mobile intercept facilities that were 

linked to American fighter control centers.”’ 

Although ULTRA did not play a significant role in the planning and conduct 

of American air operations over Europe proper until the late spring of 1943, Y 

intelligence had immediate operational application from the very beginning of 

Eighth Air Force operations. Strategic air operations relied on Y intelligence in 

three areas: employment of fighter escorts, postmission analysis, and planning 

for future missions. In the actual conduct of operational missions, SIGINT was 

more important in the employment of escorting fighters than of the bomber 

forces. Y intelligence enabled Eighth Air Force and VIII Bomber and Fighter 

Command headquarters to monitor enemy reactions to bomber raids. Since the 

attacking bombers maintained radio silence, commanders could follow their 

forces by listening to the transmissions of the enemy’s air defense network. The 

RAF’s Y-Service, responsible for collating all plain-language transmissions 

intercepted by a fan of receiver sites located along the coast, passed pertinent 

enemy voice radio traffic and call sign data to the American headquarters over 

secure telephone lines. Stations at RAF Cheadle intercepted German Morse 

code transmissions, decoded them, and forwarded information pertaining to 

GAF intentions and actual interceptions of bomber formations. This information 

often included enemy alert notices and takeoff orders. Intelligence from these 

sources was usually received at AJAX-VIII Fighter Command-within five to 

twenty minutes of the original enemy transmi~sion.’’~ While the bomber force 

was out of escort range (which occurred frequently until the arrival of the P-5 1 s 

in January 1944), little could be done with this situational intelligence during 

the inbound portion of a raid. When limited navigational skills often caused 

significant deviations from planned flight routes, the information gained from 

the enemy via Y enabled more effective and accurate escort rendezvous with the 

returning bombers. During late 1942 and 1943, when German fighters could 

harass the bomber force all the way to the Channel coast, a successful 

rendezvous could significantly reduce bomber losses. 

95 
Piercing the Fog 

Y intelligence contributed as well to the detailed enemy reaction reports 

Eighth Air Force A-2 and A-3 prepared jointly after each mission. The 

purposes of these studies were to determine what aspects of an operation had 

been conducted smoothly, identify problem areas, spot trends in enemy 

defenses, analyze enemy tactics, and assess the probable benefits of different 

defensive formations. To assist in report preparation, RAF Canterbury 

forwarded to Eighth Air Force a detailed analysis, known as the Canterbury 

Digest, of SIGINT acquired during each mission. In addition, Air Ministry 

Intelligence (A.I.4) prepared and forwarded to the Americans longer term 

studies on the GAF’s OB, tactics, and radio identification methods and 

 procedure^.'^' 

Y intercepts contributed to the enemy reaction studies in several ways. By 

monitoring aircraft transmissions, they provided comments on the enemy’s 

running assessment of the course of the air battle and, more importantly, offered 

insight into German aerial tactics. By identifying the German fighter control 

locations, Y contributed to the picture of the enemy’s air defense organization 

and areas of responsibilities. By linking call signs with the times and places that 

the enemy aircraft checked in with ground fighter controllers, SIGINT enabled 

Allied intelligence to determine more accurately the most likely locations of 

primary fighter bases and the probable zones of concentrated attack. 

By listening to initial German warnings of incoming American raids, 

SIGN operators could determine the range of enemy radar equipment, 

especially since ground controllers often indicated which site provided 

information. Occasionally, SIGINT could pick up intelligence on the results of 

American strikes against enemy airdromes. When a ground controller advised 

a fighter he could not return to his normal base because of damage, Allied 

intelligence knew they had damaged that field; it also confirmed which units 

were stationed there. Directives to defensive interceptors low on fuel to land at 

secondary recovery bases sometimes allowed operators to identify previously 

unknown fields. The enemy also revealed flak locations in his transmissions. 

Such revelations came either in the form of the identification of specific 

locations to fighters or, more frequently, instructions to break off attacks at a 

certain point. Radio interceptions helped to confirm the downing of enemy 

fighters by aerial gunners and sometimes revealed the fate of friendly bombers 

that had dropped behind the main force.”’ 

The information thus provided influenced both bomber and fighter 

operations. With regard to bomber operations, Y intelligence was more valuable 

in operational planning than in targeting. The insights it provided rarely affected 

decisions on which targets to attack. Brig. Gen. Hams B. Hull, Eaker’s A-2 in 

Eighth Air Force, recalled that they basically knew where the targets were in 

those days. If the weather and available force permitted, Hull remarked that 

“you were gonna go” regardless of the locations of defensive fighter force^.'^' 

Y intelligence’s role was to assist the operational mission planners to determine 

96 
Tools of Air Intelligence 

the most effective approaches and tactics. By identifying the most likely 

locations of defensive fighter units, Y information affected the selection of 

optimum ingress and egress routes.’@’ 

A second critical contribution of Y intelligence to mission planning was 

information on rendezvous points for enemy interceptors and the locations 

where enemy mass attacks were most likely to occur. This information allowed 

American planners to select optimum rendezvous points for friendly escorts. 

During the period when the heavy bombers had to rely on relays of fighters even 

to escort them as far as the German border, this reduced the possibility that one 

set of escorts would depart before replacements arrived or, worse, that this 

would happen right where the Germans were massing.’6’ 

Finally, the ability, depending on meteorological and technological 

conditions, to intercept enemy weather reports from as far east as the Balkans 

and Russia enabled Y-Service to contribute to strategic mission planning a 

better, if still incomplete, picture of weather systems likely to develop over 

projected target areas. Given the American reliance on visual bombing, this 

knowledge was important for selecting primary and secondary targets for 

specific missions. On the other hand, atmospheric conditions could themselves 

handicap Y intelligence by reducing the range of the original German 

transmissions or by affecting the intelligibility of messages received.16’ 

Efforts to extend the range and value of Y intelligence by including 

airborne operators in bomber formations proved of limited tactical value in both 

Eighth and Fifteenth Air Forces, but they contributed information for postmission analysis. Limited airborne operations began in the Mediterranean theater 

in October 1943. By March 1944, the Americans had trained eleven operators 

and allocated them to Fifteenth Air Force units. The results remained modest by 

the end of that year. Operators were present on only a few bombers. They could 

provide immediate warning information only to their own crew, since radio 

silence precluded broadcasting over radio frequencies. To have done $0 would 

have revealed their presence to the enemy and made their aircraft immediate 

priority targets.’63 

According to a report prepared by the HQ AAF Air Communications 

Office, many combat groups failed to grasp the potential value of this airborne 

Y-Service. Some even refused to install British-loaned equipment in unit 

aircraft. The personnel system’s failure to allocate slots to this task compounded 

the commanders’ reluctance to withdraw men from other positions within their 

organizations. An additional limiting factor in Italy was the lack of airborne 

tape recorders through the fall of 1944. This meant operators could monitor only 

one frequency at a time and simultaneously had to take detailed notes. Not 

surprisingly, only five of the eleven trained individuals developed “a working 

method of gaining valuable inf~rmation.”’~~ 

In a meeting of senior air intelligence officers in Europe in January 1945, 

an extended discussion on Y intelligence concluded, while ground-based Y 

97 
Piercing the Fog 

intelligence used by tactical air forces was in good shape, “Airborne ‘Y’ 

problems have been long and painful.” Problems included lack of equipment 

rugged enough for air operations, limited numbers of qualified individuals, and 

conflicts between signals and intelligence over organizational responsibilities 

for maintenance and operations. Despite an Air Ministry report that indicated 

Eighth Air Force’s use of airborne operators rose from six per mission in July 

1944 to twelve per mission in October of that year, the Eighth Air Force 

Director of Intelligence reported in January 1945 that the Eighth was sometimes 

lucky to get two Y operators airborne per mission.I6’ 

Even with these problems, airborne Y operators contributed in both Europe 

and the Mediterranean to the accumulation of intelligence for postmission 

analysis, particularly before ULTRA became prolific. In fact, an Eighth Air Force 

report stated the airborne input, which was incorporated into the RAF’s 

Canterbury Digests, was “the only basic source material of signals air 

intelligence originated by Eighth Air Force.”166 In Italy, the role of the airborne 

Y interceptors in postmission analysis was further enhanced because the 

mountainous terrain in northern Italy took offensive bombers beyond effective 

Allied radar and radio range much more quickly than the terrain in western 

Europe did. 

Y intelligence for American tactical air operations began in North Africa 

and continued through the course of the war. In contrast to strategic air 

operations from the United Kingdom, American tactical air forces developed 

independent SIGINT service units. The first of these arrived in the United 

Kingdom in the fall of 1942 to participate in Operation TORCH. During the 

North African campaign, American SIGIT detachments remained under 

British tutelage, with RAF Y-Service maint*g overall responsibility for all 

SIGINT in the theater. Detachments of the Ainerican 849th SIGINT Company 

supported the Allied invasions of Sicily and the Italian mainland. According to 

the senior American intelligence officer in the theater, even in this period the 

Americans continued to “rely on R.A.F. channels for information and general 

 direction^."'^' By early 1944, the decline of the GAF in Italy resulted in a 

corresponding decrease in useful tactical air intelligence from radio interception.I6’ 

During preinvasion tactical air operations against Occupied Europe in the 

spring of 1944, British Y-Service passed SIGINT to the Control Centre at RAF 

1 1 Group, which acted as the operations center for the RAF units and IX Fighter 

Command. The IX Fighter Command SIGINT officer was an integral member 

of the Y staff at the center. In June, the advanced echelon of Detachment 3,3d 

Radio Squadron (Mobile), began radio intercept operations with IX TAC on the 

continent only three days after the initial landings at Normandy.16’ While this 

detachment and follow-on units assigned to the other tactical air commands 

maintained operational links with their British counterparts, their primary ties 

98 
Tools of Air Intelligence 

were into the American fighter control centers. At each fighter control center, 

the Y officer sat beside the chief controller. This arrangement allowed for the 

immediate operational application of time-sensitive Y information, since the 

chief controller was in direct contact with airborne aircraft as well as with the 

appropriate tactical air control headquarter^.'^' 

Y intelligence's contributions to tactical air operations were particularly 

important during the campaign in North Africa, the invasions of Sicily and Italy, 

and the period surrounding the landing at Normandy. In North Africa, it 

provided initial warning of incoming air raids before Allied radar was 

operational or while the enemy was still beyond radar range.I7' Correlating radio 

intercepts with sources such as radar and ULTRA, SIGINT also collected 

information on enemy tactics and the disposition of his forces. By linking 

enemy call signs with locations, Y intercepts often yielded clues on enemy 

operating bases and provided the initial basis for attack planning. As with 

strategic air operations, Y intercepts were essential to Allied efforts to 

determine the location, organization, capabilities, and structure of the enemy's 

air defense networks in these tactical campaigns. Y intercepts provided Allied 

forces with timely intelligence on what enemy units were airborne and often 

what their objectives were and what the specific rendezvous points were for 

units coming from different bases.'72 Y intelligence was particularly effective 

when properly fused with ULTRA. Decrypted German messages might indicate 

the time and location of projected enemy missions, but Y intercepts provided 

real-time, concrete information which confirmed German activities. It was, in 

that sense, the most accurate and current intelligence available. 

ULTRA and MAGIC in the Pacific and CBI 

SIGINT in the war against Japan had an origin and prosecution unlike that 

found in Europe. While European ULTRA began as a joint Polish-French-British 

effort in the late 1930s, it became wholly British after the June 1940 fall of 

France. The reading of German signals then became a bilateral Anglo-American 

operation when the Americans joined as full partners in mid-1943. SIGINT that 

concentrated on Japan began prewar as a largely American endeavor, and it 

remained so throughout the war except for the CBI and Australian participation 

in the Southwest Pacific. Both its development as a tool of air intelligence and 

its use in strategic and tactical operations in the Pacific war were peculiarly 

American. The term MAGIC has come to be applied indiscriminately to this 

American scrutiny of Japanese radio traffic. In fact, MAGIC was a very specific 

subdivision, correctly applied to the decryption of Japanese diplomatic 

messages. Such information circulated through the hands of very few senior 

civilian officials and military and naval commanders in Washington, D.C. Only 

at times did it have a direct military application. In all theaters of the Pacific and 

99 
Piercing the Fog 

CBI, ULTRA intercepts, done in Washington, Honolulu, India, or Brisbane, 

Australia, came to play a significant role in the AAF’s planning and operations. 

The specific importance of this source in the war against Japan varied greatly 

from theater to theater and from numbered air force to numbered air 

The American effort against Japan began in the 1920s, continuing at 

various levels up to and throughout the war. Initially, its focus was unlike that 

of the Allies in Europe. During the late 1930% the bulk of German message 

traffic intercepted and decrypted by the British dealt with military topics, in part 

because of the covert German efforts to conceal their own remilitarization 

efforts which were specifically prohibited by the Versailles treaty.174 Fearing 

German military efforts most, the British directed decrypting efforts toward 

these areas; inasmuch as the Americans were most concerned with Japanese 

economic expansionism, their priorities concentrated on this threat.’75 The bulk 

of Japanese message traffic intercepted and decrypted by the Americans in the 

1930s concerned Japanese naval operations and diplomatic and political matters 

directly related to Japan’s expansionist foreign policy. 

With respect to encrypting messages, the Japanese during the 1930s relied 

on a system similar to the Germans’: machine-enciphered messages. The 

Japanese systems were more formidable than those of the Third Reich, for the 

Japanese language is extremely difficult for Westerners to master. To 

Americans, the logic of the German language (its sentence structure and thought 

progression) came relatively easily because of common cultural and linguistic 

traditions. Asian conceptualization in both thought process and sentence 

structure was dramatically different for all but those few Americans who had 

studied and understood Asian culture. The shortage of American linguists 

comfortable in the Japanese language and perceptive to Japanese culture limited 

Pacific ULTRA operations from their inception during the 1930s until well into 

the war.176 

American code breakers during the 1930s focused their efforts on Japanese 

naval and diplomatic traffic because they had been able to break those 

encryptions, whereas they could not penetrate the Japanese Army’s cipher 

system. The Japanese were in the process of establishing an overseas empire 

and understandably had to rely upon wireless communications rather than land 

lines for diplomatic discussions. Although most Americans were unfamiliar 

with the internal functioning of Japanese society, Washington’s analysts felt 

more comfortable with Japanese diplomatic efforts because these tended to 

follow Western logic. As a consequence, American code breaking efforts 

against the Japanese were better developed in a diplomatic rather than in a 

military context. 

There existed a limited American appreciation of Japanese military affairs 

in general and air operations in particular. Most analysis of Japanese military 

and aviation matters in the 1930s was secondhand. It came from Japanese 

diplomatic appreciations of the military situation sent between the Tokyo 

100 
Tools of Air Intelligence 

foreign office and its overseas embassies or from military reports sent by 

overseas Japanese military attach& on diplomatic situations. The result was an 

imperfect reading from a military standpoint. For example, whatever military 

warnings concerning Japanese planning for the attacks on Pearl Harbor and the 

Philippines that American intelligence analysts might have gleaned from MAGIC 

intercepts in November and early December 1941, they were funneled through 

a diplomatic prism. Little wonder they were badly interpreted, for diplomatic 

noise overrode military intention.17’ 

Although the Japanese cipher and code systems, particularly the diplomatic 

system embodied in the PURPLE machine, had weaknesses, and although the 

Japanese were aware that their communications were under attack, they 

remained confident in the overall security of their systems. The Japanese 

military instituted several improvements intended to defeat attempts to decipher 

messages, to discourage direction finding, and to make more difficult long-term 

traffic analysis. Immediately before the attack on Pearl Harbor, naval ciphers 

changed (more than one month before they would normally have done so). In 

late May 1942, naval ciphers changed again as the battle of Midway drew near, 

but American naval communication specialists had already learned enough to 

give Admiral Chester W. Nimitz the insight he so badly needed. In August 

1942, with the furor in America that accompanied disclosure in the Chicago 

Tribune of the Midway knowledge (and as disclosed by radio commentator 

Walter Winchell at about the same time), Japanese naval authorities devised a 

new cipher that began a different key each day at midnight. The Japanese 

apparently did not understand what the Americans had done, but their change 

meant that the Navy’s experts had to begin the process of learning and cracking 

the new cipher every twenty-four hours. Their change slowed, but did not stop, 

the success of American cryptanaly~is.’~~ 

Responsibility for SIGINT support to the AAF rested in Washington with 

the US. Army Signal Corps’ SIGINT Service (SIS, later called the Signal 

Security Agency). SIS listening-post operators copied Japanese Army 

transmissions and forwarded them to Washington where they were decrypted 

and translated at Arlington Hall Station. During the war, the AAF organized 

several radio squadrons that also intercepted and transcribed Japanese message 

traffic, sending much of the material to Arlington Hall for decryption. The 

messages were then passed to the MIS. Special Branch of the MIS analyzed the 

material, preparing from it useful data to be made available to War Department 

planners. The secretary of war had established Special Branoh in 1942 to 

resolve the problem of inadequate analysis of radio intercepts made apparent in 

the Pearl Harbor attack. In fact, Special Branch was a direct descendant of the 

Army-Navy intelligence sections established to handle Japanese radio traffic 

analysis in the 1920s. In the early 1930s, Secretary of State Stimson had ended 

State Department funding of the code breaking effort against the Japanese 

diplomatic traffic; that effort subsequently fell to the military departments. 

101 
Piercing the Fog 

Given the overall shortage of funds within both the Navy and War Departments 

during the middle and late 1930s, it is not surprising that precious few dollars 

and resources were made available to support the code breakers’ efforts to 

attack the Japanese codes and ciphers. That the effort survived as it did until 

1941 was most fortunate.”’ 

The two military departments insisted upon operating their own collection 

and decryption efforts. In an apparent prewar economy effort, they alternated 

submitting their analyses and reportage to Washington’s senior decision makers. 

Given the compartmentalization inherent in all SIGINT, this splintering of 

analytical resources complicated a difficult situation. The geography and 

environment of the Pacific area further aggravated the situation in the years 

before Pearl Harbor. Given the maritime character of the Pacific region, the 

Navy Department viewed this area as its own. The Office of Naval Intelligence 

(ONI) concentrated on diplomatic traffic with naval implications. The MIS of 

the War Department concerned itself primarily with the Army’s lonely fortress 

in the Philippines as well as the forces in Hawaii. The Army’s interests lay in 

the land war in China and potential Japanese ground operations elsewhere. Air 

intelligence tended to get lost between these two elements. 

Also important in understanding the working of Special Branch were 

intraservice bureaucratic interests. Within the War and Navy Departments, 

responsibilities for SIGINT were divided. The signal departments of each 

service became responsible for interception and decryption of enemy messages. 

Detailed analysis and subsequent dissemination was the responsibility of the 

services’ intelligence chiefs-the War Department’s G-2 and the Navy’s ONI. 

Presumably, the two individuals heading these specific organizations were to 

prescribe priorities for interception and decryption; left unresolved was overall 

responsibility. The Pearl Harbor disaster served as mute evidence of unsettled 

priorities and divided responsibilities. 

Shortly after Pearl Harbor, Henry L. Stimson, now Secretary of War, and 

probably with the support of President Roosevelt, concluded that Japanese 

diplomatic traffic was not being given sufficiently close attention. Stimson set 

about finding a better method, and in doing so he decided that the problem 

could best be solved by a person with an executive background and experienced 

in handling and presenting large cases involving complicated facts.’*’ The 

Secretary of War turned to a New York lawyer and former colleague, Alfred 

McCormack, and charged him with recommending overall improvements to the 

signals analysis task. McCormack, commissioned for the purpose, joined Col. 

Carter W. Clarke in Washington. The two soon formed what would become 

Special Branch, responsible within the War Department for analysis and 

dissemination of intercepted SIGINT. An agreement with the Navy Department 

and the Federal Bureau of Investigation consolidated the diplomatic effort in 

Special Branch. Special Branch also handled review and interpretation of 

Japanese Army signals while the Navy concentrated on Japanese naval traffic. lX1 

102 
Tools of Air Intelligence 

Part of this arrangement was the implicit agreement that, at least in the early 

days of fighting, the Department of the Navy would be concerned with the 

Pacific. 

McCormack quickly realized that he needed to get important SIGINT in a 

usable format and in a timely fashion to Washington's decision makers. He 

decided to use a periodic intelligence summary based upon the latest MAGIC 

intercepts integrated with previous MAGIC information. Started in March 1942 

and initially called The MAGIC Summary, these reports quickly proved a distinct 

improvement over the pre-Pearl Harbor practice, whereby the services merely 

forwarded portions of intercepted messages with little or no analysis. By the end 

of 1942, these summaries, having been redesignated The MAGIC Diplomatic 

Summaries, were issued daily, integrating both diplomatic and military analysis 

gleaned from other intelligence sources. The Secretaries of War and the Navy; 

the Chief of Staff, US. Army; the Commander-in-Chief, U.S. Fleet; and the 

Chief of Naval Operations and key staff officers of the service departments saw 

the daily synopses. Although Arnold and his AC/AS, Intelligence saw the 

MAGIC summaries, not until late 1943 or early 1944 did they receive ULTRA 

access. A copy of the MAGIC summaries reached the White House map room, 

and by late 1942 the President's naval aide was reading the digest to Roosevelt 

during his daily physical therapy sessions. Presidential confidant Harry Hopkins 

and senior military advisor Admiral William Leahy checked the summaries 

each morning. During presidential absences from Washington, Roosevelt 

received daily MAGIC information in the form of disguised intelligence 

briefings. At least at the highest level, SIGINT based upon MAGIC was having 

an impact.'" 

The degree and significance of the impact of MAGIC on national war policy 

remains difficult to assess, primarily because all copies of the MAGIC Summaries, except the record copy, were destroyed by the recipient after reading, and 

few of the key participants referred to them in diaries or correspondence. 

Wartime security measures strictly forbade mentioning any linkage of signals 

decryption and the source.1x3 Itis likewise difficult to link the specifics of highlevel decisions on strategic use of airpower in the Pacific to MAGIC. Most of 

these decisions resulted from deliberations of the JCS or the war strategy of the 

president and his advisors. Again, strict security provisions prohibited explicit 

mention of MAGIC or ULTRA and its relationship to such decisions that appeared 

in the JCS papers. MAGIC regularly provided Japanese attach6 reports from 

places such as Hanoi and occupied China on the specific results of AAF 

bombing attacks as well as long-term analysis of economic problems. To these 

MAGIC assessments, air intelligence experts often added other SIGINT data and 

their own analyses that stressed what impact the air campaign was having upon 

future Japanese war-waging capabilitie~."~ Such firsthand bomb damage 

assessments bolstered the AAF's demands for operations targeted on the seizure 

of forward air bases. As these MAGIC reports were going directly to major 

103 
Piercing the Fog 

decision makers, one must assume a degree of influence. During the last twelve 

months of the war in the Pacific, analyses in the MAGIC Summaries on the 

economic impact of the AAF' s strategic bombing campaign increased, attesting 

to the devastating impact that the American air attacks were having upon both 

the civilian economy and domestic opinion.'85 

Such influence by air intelligence specialists grew slowly until late 1943. 

MAGIC analysts themselves recognized that much of the intelligence with air 

implications derived from diplomatic sources was, in fact, secondhand. 

Examples of such information that became available to the Allies were the 

delicate Japanese-Russian negotiations over neutrality, the sporadic and 

unsuccessful attempts by the Axis to break the Allied sea blockade with the use 

of German and Japanese submarines, the shifting diplomatic and political 

situations in Indochina and Thailand, the anti-British activities of the Indian and 

Burmese puppet governments, and the Japanese attempts at peace negotiations 

with Chungking. In mid-1943, the MAGIC summaries included several major 

studies on Japanese military budget expenditures in Thailand and Indochina 

which provided evidence of military initiative there as well as detailed analyses 

on various aspects of the Japanese war economy, including rice, pig iron, and 

aluminum production and rail transportation. But these had little immediate 

tactical application in the Pacific air war.186 

Another reason for the lack of high-level air intelligence in 1943 lay in the 

periodic inability of American code breakers to decrypt Japanese Army or Navy 

codes. * Unlike the Japanese MAGIC diplomatic messages, which were 

enciphered by an Enigma-type machine and could be deciphered by the 

American PURPLE device, the Japanese Army and Navy high-level codes were 

enciphered by use of conventional but very difficult code books. The U.S. Navy 

broke the Japanese JN-25 naval code first, in part because there were more navy 

than army messages available for study. The Japanese Navy codes could be 

deciphered by early 1942, although portions of many messages were often 

unclear. For a time after January 1943, when a submarine loaded with code 

books was captured, most naval codes could be deciphered. Japanese Army 

codes began to yield in the spring of 1943, but they could not be broken 

consistently until early 1944, when Allied forces captured a truckload of code 

books. Even when coded messages could not be read, however, SIGINT gained 

valuable information from traffic analysis by establishing locations of enemy 

transmitters with radio direction finders and noting their signals activity. 

Because the Japanese naval air forces were more security minded, American 

SIGN was more successful against army air units, gradually establishing air 

OBs, patterns of flight, types of aircraft, airfields in use, and eventually tracking 

tail numbers of aircraft moving in and out of the forward area.18' 

*The Japanese had no independent air force; the Japanese Army and the 

Japanese Navy maintained their own air forces. 

1 04 
Tools of Air Intelligence 

The results of the Navy’s efforts to penetrate Japanese naval ciphers were 

the information on Japanese intentions that led to the standoff in the Coral Sea, 

blocking Japan’s advance on Port Moresby and ensuring the victory at Midway, 

which crippled Japan’s carrier operations. In March 1943, the Army opened the 

Wireless Experimental Center in New Delhi-a cooperative effort with the 

British ULTRA operation. Code breakers there soon broke a Japanese military 

code-the water transport code.188 As a result, throughout the remainder of the 

war SIGINT contributed to attacks on critical Japanese shipping, initially 

through monitoring of actual shipping schedules and eventually through 

directing specific attacks by American submarines.’” An example of this 

occurred in April 1944 when analysts learned of a major Japanese resupply 

convoy of 9 merchant vessels and 12 escorts moving from Chinese ports to 

Hollandia bases with over 20,000 troops and supplies. American naval 

submarines sank at least 4 of these vessels with a loss of over 4,000 troops.1w 

B Section 

By mid- 1943, determined that SIS continue in breaking a fairly representative 

flow of Japanese military ciphers and having obtained sufficient manpower to 

conduct a comprehensive analytical program, Colonel McCormack established 

a section dedicated to studying Japanese military messages and disseminating 

the results-the B Section.’” Initial efforts by the new organization proved 

frustrating as the code breakers encountered a bewildering array of codes being 

used by the Japanese services, often with only fragmentary intercepts. They 

lacked background data; as the official history notes, there were “difficulties of 

translation and possibilities of erroneous interpretation. . . . It had become 

evident that the potential of intelligence to be derived from Japanese military 

traffic could be derived only by employing a very large number of personnel of 

the highest quality.” Addressing the need for qualified analysts, in early January 

1944 McCormack agreed to an authorized strength in B Section of 280 officers 

and 120 enlisted members. Recruiting proved difficult, and by the middle of that 

year the Army had assigned only 79 officers and 65 enlisted.’’’ 

Though few in number, the air members of the new section began from its 

inception to accumulate information about the Japanese Army Air Force. Using 

AAF officers trained at the AAF’s air intelligence school as well as other flying 

officers, this OB section became the primary source of intelligence on the 

organization of the Japanese Army Air Force by March 1944.Iy3 From message 

intercepts, B Section constructed a detailed air OB as well as unit dispositions 

and strength estimates. In April 1944, section members began to prepare weekly 

estimates of Japanese air strength that were issued separately from the MAGIC 

Diplomatic Summaries and other analytical products. These reports were part 

of the larger Japanese Order of Battle Bulletins that also began to appear in 

105 
Piercing the Fog 

weekly format for use both in Washington and the Far East.“ By July, the 

analysts had amassed sufficient data to organize a Pacific OB conference. Such 

conferences met on an irregular basis until August 1945.1Y5 

Air members of B Section also cooperated with air members of F-22, the 

ON1 branch responsible for signal intelligence, which also produced estimates 

on the Japanese Naval Air Force. The B Section and F-22 consultation 

eventually led to a joint estimate of Japanese air strength. The formation and 

evolution of B Section thus represented a critical step in the operational use of 

SIGINT for AAF operations in the Pacific. By the end of the war, the Americans shared this information with the British Air Ministry.lY6 

Operational SIGINT and the Far East 

As B Section began to produce operational intelligence concerning the Pacific, 

Col. McCormack now faced the same dissemination problem there as he had in 

Europe: how to transmit this analysis securely and then how to monitor its use 

to ensure that the priceless source was not compromised. As with the Germans 

in Europe, the Japanese still appeared unaware that some of the keys to their 

cryptography had been broken. Operational exploitation had to be measured 

against possible compromise. This required tough measures. 

A complicating factor for Special Branch in implementing such measures 

was the relationship of the American Navy and Army SIGINT organizations in 

the Pacific. These units provided Pacific commanders with operational 

intelligence that they had intercepted, decrypted, and analyzed; in some 

instances they contributed to major operational successes, among which were 

the battles of the Coral Sea, Midway, and the Bismarck Sea.”’ Hardened by 

these operational successes, neither service was about to be told by Washington 

how to use or even how to handle locally derived SIGINT. 

The Navy and Army SIGINT organizations in the Pacific in early 1942 

grew from the field operations set up in the pre-Pearl Harbor days. Both 

services, mirroring Washington, had attempted to maintain their own intercept 

and translation capabilities while sharing the information they obtained. 

Evidence suggests that this split responsibility at MacArthur’s Far East 

headquarters contributed in December 1941 to the destruction on the ground at 

Clark and Iba Air Fields of the B-17s and P-40~ that constituted the air force 

which the general had counted on so heavily for the defense of the Philippines. 

In a 1945 memoir, the Army commander of the SIGINT unit in the Philippines 

later claimed that the Navy decoders were not working on weekends, so critical 

information in the Navy’s possession did not reach MacArthur and his key 

staff.‘98 

By early 1942, the Army and Navy had established separate SIGINT 

operations in the Pacific. Each group was producing, without consultating with 

106 
Tools of Air Intelligence 

Washington or Special Branch, SIGINT that had immediate operational use. 

From a technological point of view, each organization possessed the same 

ability as Washington for rapidly decrypting the intercepted messages once the 

ciphers had been broken. In Brisbane and especially in Honolulu, intelligence 

operations were integrated into the planning process. Each Pacific headquarters 

saw itself as fully operational and largely self-sufficient with regard to SIGINT. 

The March 1942 decision by the JCS to split the Pacific Theater into two 

areas-the Navy-oriented Pacific Ocean Area (POA) under the command of 

Admiral Chester W. Nimitz, and MacArthur’ s Army-oriented Southwest Pacific 

Area (SWPA)-served to complement the two services’ emerging regional 

signal intelligence organizations. Moreover, SIGINT in the CBI region was 

entirely separate from the other two Pacific war theaters. 

The POA (Navy) SIGINT operation centered on Fleet Radio Unit, Pacific 

(FRUPac), which functioned as the radio intelligence section of the Intelligence 

Center, Pacific Ocean Area.Iw Critical to the operational influence of FRUPac 

had been its ability in early 1942 to intercept, decrypt, analyze, and disseminate 

the critical SIGINT that facilitated the naval standoff in the battle of the Coral 

Sea, and then to provide the key analyses that led to the dramatic victory at the 

Battle of Midway.200 These experiences validated the operational use of 

SIGINT. Furthermore, both battles showed the new role of carrier-based 

aviation in the war. Although not recognized at the time, the loss of Japanese 

carriers at Midway would limit the employment of Japanese airpower largely 

to land-based assets. The air superiority mission in the theaters became more 

focused than it would have been had Japan retained a strong carrier arm. 

The SWPA organization providing SIGINT for operational use in 1942 

grew from roots transplanted from Corregidor along with MacArthur in March 

of that year. During those desperate days in the Philippines, the U.S. Army 

detachment responsible for intercept and decryption of Japanese signals-the 

2d Signal Company-had functioned under the direction of MacArthur’s signal 

officer, Col. Spencer B. Akin?01 These specialists were among the few 

evacuated from the Philippines to Australia by submarine. After arrival in 

Melbourne, the 2d Signal Company was reinforced by the 837th Signal Service 

Detachment to form the American nucleus of the SWPA SIGINT organization-what became known as Central Bureau (CB).202 

MacArthur’s operational concern in early 1942 was to blunt the Japanese 

offensive and the anticipated invasion of Australia; he was allocated precious 

few resources for this task. Until the war assumed a more stable character, 

concern for the use of intercept intelligence was not one of the general’s highest 

prioritie~.~~ Thus it was his land deputy, Australian General Thomas Blamey, 

who provided the genesis for CB. In mid-1942, Blamey asked the SWPA 

commander to form “a combined bureau . . . [responsible for] the receipt, 

collation, examination, and distribution of information obtained by intercept 

organization.” MacArthur approved this suggestion, noting the potential 

107 
Piercing the Fog 

benefits to the bureau from the “recent receipt from the War Department of 

labor saving machinery [punch-card tabulating equipment] .” To this the 

Australians added ULTRA experience in the form of the Australian Special 

Wireless Group, which had seen considerable experience against the Germans 

in North Africa and the Near East. The group included some British personnel 

who had escaped from Singapore. Thus from its inception, CB was multinationa1.’04 

The personnel in CB greatly outnumbered those in Special Branch; CB 

grew from 1,000 in 1943 to more than 4,000 by war’s end. Special Branch never 

exceeded more than a few hundred. Americans comprised 50 percent of CB’s 

personnel. At MacArthur’s insistence, the U.S. Navy was excluded from the 

regular work. The presence of aU.S. Navy Liaison Officer with SWPA, Captain 

Arthur H. McCollum, allowed the regular interchange of information between 

FRUPac and CB, intelligence that went directly to MacArthur and his G-2.’05 

Given the Allies’ rather desperate and chaotic state in the SWPA in 1942, it is 

not surprising that CB at first operated without a formal charter. Its code 

breakers initially produced data from low-level message traffic. From this and 

rudimentary traffic analysis came what was known at SWPA as RABID 

intelligence. In light of the essentially defensive SWPA mission during 1942, 

RABID offered little tactical information for MacArthur. The general did, 

however, become concerned with its casual handling by the Australians, 

warning his Australian land commander that “the Australian agencies normally 

disseminate information to echelons that have no immediate use there~f.”’~ 

Concerned at a possible compromise of RABID, and therefore of CB, MacArthur 

placed the organization and the function under the supervision of his G-2, Maj. 

Gen. Charles A. Willoughby, and charged him with future control and content 

of the intelligence gleaned from Akin’s effort. This arrangement remained in 

force throughout the war. What the SWPA commander had done, of course, was 

to take the same steps that were being taken in Washington with the establishment of Special Branch under Col. McCormack. 

To control this form of intelligence, MacArthur’ s G-2 decided initially to 

use a special daily report based upon CB-generated intelligence known at 

SWPA as the BJ Report. Given his own passion for centralization, Willoughby 

soon replaced this with a daily Special Intelligence Bulletin which became 

known in SWPA as the Willoughby Bulletin.”” He severely limited dbtribution 

within SWPA to MacArthur, Sutherland, and the G-3. Initially excluded from 

regular review of the Willoughby Bulletin was MacArthur’s SWPA air deputy 

and Fifth Air Force commander, Maj. Gen. George C. Kenney. 

Willoughby could not ignore SIGINT for the simple reason that he lacked 

other conventional intelligence sources. In 1942 and through 1943, most of the 

Allies’ other data on the enemy came from the Allied Intelligence Bureau, 

which oversaw the coast-watching activities, and the Allied Translator and 

Interpreter Section, which sought to exploit captured documents and POW 

108 
Tools of Air Intelligence 

interrogations and such photointelligence as became available. As the official 

histories for these activities make clear, these sources did not produce sufficient 

intelligence by themselves. Coast watching was hampered because combat 

intelligence staffs distrusted, as one war history put it, the “cloak and dagger” 

type of agent, which produced reluctant coordination, while a dearth of qualified 

linguists hampered the interpreters.”’ Photographic and visual aerial intelligence depended upon good weather (notably hard to find in some parts of the 

SWPA) and having aircraft in the right place at the right time. If MacArthur and 

his subordinates were to rely upon intelligence sources for operational planning, 

much of it would have to be from radio intercepts and traffic analysis. At 

approximately the same time as Kenney prepared his Allied Air Force for a 

campaign against the Japanese, the SIGINT Service at Arlington Hall and the 

B Section of MIS began to break the Japanese military codes. McCormack’s 

desire to integrate all signals-derived intelligence entailed closer coordination 

with all field interception operations and the passage of SIGINT data through 

a special and highly secure, centrally controlled system of SSOs. 

It also meant establishment of policy. As General Marshall stated to 

General MacArthur in a letter of May 1943, “a uniform policy . . . with respect 

to the handling and use of Japanese ULTRA in theaters of operation” is 

necessary. Apparently, MacArthur interpreted this as Washington’s interfering 

in the SWPA SIGINT operation. The SWPA commander balked and did not 

answer his superior for two months. At issue was B Section’s insistence upon 

direct communications between Washington and their SSOs. What McCormack 

wanted in the SWPA was an arrangement similar to that already in place in 

Europe for the handling of ULTRA. MacArthur saw this as an unwarranted 

intrusion and told Washington that it was “a violation of all sound military 

organization. . . . If this view [that the theater commander must retain control 

of all forces in his theater] is not accepted,” he announced, ‘‘I would prefer not 

having the organization proposed established in this theater.” It took a personal 

visit by Colonel McCormack’s assistant two months later to convince the 

SWPA commander otherwise; even then MacArthur insisted that SSOs “be 

under my control for administration and dis~ipline.”~~ MacArthur’s attitude 

long influenced his use of Washington-derived SIGINT. 

The SWPA commander, and some of his senior staff, continued to view the 

SSOs from Washington with great suspicion throughout the war. MacArthur 

directed that Willoughby exclude them from the CB, and his G-2 consciously 

snubbed them.210 It is tempting to conclude that MacArthur’s apparent dismissal 

of SIGINT from Washington lay in his egotism. It was more likely based on his 

perception that he was already well served by his own SIGINT, and additional 

material would not be worth the price of interference that might come with it. 

109 

CHAPTER 3

Building an Intelligence Organization 

THE JAPANESE ATTACKS ON AMERICAN FORCES and Hitler’s subsequent declaration of war thrust the United States into a conflict she had long 

hoped to avoid. Nevertheless, within three weeks, President Roosevelt, Prime 

Minister Churchill, and their military advisors met in Washington to lay the 

framework that would underlie their plans and actions for the next three years. 

The most important decision of that conference (designated “ARCADIA”) 

was that the two nations would fight the war as allies in the fullest sense of that 

word. Unlike the previous world war, the United States would be a full partner, 

not merely an associated power. While the Grand Alliance eventually consisted 

of a host of nations including the Soviet Union, the fundamental cement of that 

alliance was the Anglo-American union. Despite the blows the Japanese were 

inflicting on both the United States and Great Britain in the Pacific and Far East, 

ARCADIA reaffirmed the Europe-first strategy laid down the previous year in the 

ABC-1 Agreement that came from the Anglo-American connections. The 

British, at war with Germany and Italy for more than two years, would, at least 

for the near term, be the senior partner in that theater. The United States, with 

interests throughout the western Pacific and having greater resources, would 

predominate in the Pacific. 

For American airmen, the second major decision at ARCADIA was the 

commitment to a major strategic role for air power. Within the American 

military, the question of air power had been, and would be, vigorously debated. 

Within the Alliance, discussions over air power’s contribution to the defeat of 

the Axis in Europe, or at least how best to make that contribution, continued 

until the summer of 1944. The earlier British commitment to strategic air 

operations and the inability in the immediate future to strike Germany with any 

other means led to an agreement to build up American air forces toward this 

end. Regarding the related issue of maintaining a defensive position in the 

Pacific pending the defeat of Germany, the press of events would weaken this 

decision. 

By the spring of 1943 American air forces were conducting a full range of 

air operations around the world. From the United Kingdom, Eighth Air Force 

111 
Piercing the Fog 

slowly and with several diversions began the air campaign that would ultimately 

contribute decisively to the defeat of Germany. In North Africa, from November 

1942 to May 1943, American air forces not only supported Allied armies 

directly through close air support, but they engaged in counterair, interdiction, 

and air transport operations. In the Southwest Pacific, General Kenney’s Fifth 

Air Force pioneered innovative employment of land-based air power in support 

of both land and sea forces. At the end of a logistics train more than halfway 

around the globe, Maj. Gen. Claire Chennault’s Fourteenth Air Force and its 

predecessors would constitute almost the entire American force in China, while 

Tenth Air Force operated from India against the Japanese in remote Burma. 

As the AAF prepared for and then went into combat, it had to build, train, 

equip, and employ units simultaneously. In the case of air intelligence, the AAF 

lacked not only resources and experience but also clear ideas of what intelligence was supposed to do and how best to do it. The months from January 1942 

through the spring of 1943 marked the real birth of American AAF air 

intelligence. During this period, the development of intelligence organizations 

occurred at all levels, from HQ AAF in Washington to the combat squadrons in 

the field, and it saw the introduction of the first air intelligence training 

program. As in other aspects of the air war, U.S. airmen benefited from the 

experience and guidance of their British counterparts in air intelligence. 

Circumstances precluded simply adopting RAF organizations and procedures 

as such, even in Europe. The variety of demands and conditions confronted in 

the global war meant that all aspects of intelligence had to be adapted to the 

unique circumstances of each theater. The requirements as well as the resources 

Generals Spaatz and Eaker found in Europe were in many respects quite 

different from those Generals Nathan Twining, Kenney, Chennault, or Clayton 

Bissell faced in the Pacific and in Asia. 

The evolution and use of intelligence reflected the strains and potential 

benefits of joint and combined operations. Not surprisingly, debate over force 

structure, resource allocation, and operational responsibilities among the U.S. 

services did not cease with the declaration of war. Often, coordination and 

agreement on issues was easier between similar services within the AngloAmerican alliance than it was among the services of a single nation, particularly 

the United States. This was as true with respect to intelligence as it was to the 

allocation of resources or to the conduct of operations. 

Under the constant pressures of planning, executing, and evaluating air 

operations, the weaknesses of prewar air intelligence within the AAF quickly 

became obvious. In its opening phase, for example, the daylight, precision 

bombing campaign over occupied Europe revealed the enormity of the demands 

this doctrine would make on intelligence. A greater awareness of the importance 

of intelligence drove the development of new organizations, new approaches, 

and new capabilities. Indicative of the revolution in air intelligence was the 

increase in the types of sources, including those such as ULTRA, unknown to 

112 
Building an Air Intelligence Organization 

American airmen before their entry into the war, and those like aerial photoreconnaissance, whose operational applications had received little attention before 

the war. New uses for standard peacetime procedures found application in 

technical analysis of downed enemy aircraft or captured equipment. 

Pearl Harbor and Implications for Air Intelligence 

Perhaps no single event in American history has been the subject of as much 

analysis and hindsight judgment than has the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. 

The apparent failure to interpret the content of Japanese diplomatic messages 

(MAGIC) seems to make Pearl Harbor a classic case of the failure of intelligence. But to focus exclusively on MAGIC is to ignore other factors equal to, if 

not more important than, the events that led to December 7th. For at its core, 

Pearl Harbor was not a failure of intelligence so much as it was a failure of 

command. The circumstances surrounding the surprise attack on American 

forces at Hawaii and the Philippines offer an almost endless detailing of how 

not to prepare for war. In implications for air intelligence, and for planning and 

operations, these insights can be considered within two broad categories: 

organization (including the structure of intelligence agencies and the collection 

and dissemination of intelligence) and evaluation. 

Neither the War nor the Navy Department was organized to take advantage 

of the information MAGIC and other sources provided. By tradition and practice, 

intelligence was a junior, and neglected, branch of the services. Neither service 

had a central organization for evaluating such intelligence as was available. 

Within the WDGS, the chief of the MID, Brig. Gen. (then Col.) Hayes A. 

Kroner, admitted that development of a central evaluation capability was still 

in “the planning stage” in 1941 .’ Any coordination that did occur was at best 

informal. Although a Joint Intelligence Board had been created in the fall, it had 

met only once by December 7, and that was late in November. The lack of a 

central analysis capability meant that no group had the responsibility or the time 

to reflect on bits of intelligence nor to ponder the possible links among 

seemingly disparate fragments of information. Consequently, the several critical 

and potentially decisive signals that flowed into infant intelligence analysis 

channels were subjected only to fragmented, often isolated, review. 

The most obvious instance of this fragmentation was the excessive control 

imposed on access to intercepted high-level Japanese message traffic. Rightly 

concerned with the consequences of losing this unique look into Japanese 

decision making, senior American military leaders imposed rigid controls not 

only on the source, but on the information itself. This well-intentioned restraint 

was achieved at the expense of exploiting what that information might offer. A 

number of people in key positions did not have access to this essential 

113 
Piercing the Fog 

information and the clues it provided. As an astonishing example, the chief of 

the Intelligence Branch of MID, responsible for intelligence estimates for the 

G-2 and the Chief of Staff, did not have access to Japanese intercepts.’ 

Reflecting both the excessive security surrounding signals intelligence and 

the perceived value of intelligence was the decision to withhold such information from senior commanders in Hawaii. Whether any of them would have acted 

differently is open to debate. The Commander, Pacific Fleet, Admiral Husband 

Kimmel, did get the gist of critical information in long, personal letters from the 

Chief of Naval Operations, while Lt. Gen. Walter C. Short, Commanding 

General of the Army’s Hawaiian Department, demonstrated a general apathy 

toward intelligence. His narrowly focused interpretation of the war-warning 

message he received on November 27 as referring strictly to sabotage suggests 

that direct access would not have had any significant effect. The failure to 

implement a secure means of passing appropriate information to commanders 

likely to be in the line of fire was both an organizational failure and a reflection 

of the lack of appreciation of the potential role of intelligence in the preparation 

and conduct of military operations. 

Even without SIGINT, it did not take much imagination to recognize the 

general deterioration of Japanese-American relations. Daily receipt of decrypted 

messages in Honolulu could have provided no stronger warning than the War 

Department’s message of November 27: “Negotiations with Japan appear to be 

terminated to all practical purposes. . . . Japanese future action unpredictable but 

hostile action possible at any moment.” The Navy message sent the same day 

was even more explicit: “This dispatch is to be considered a war ~arning.”~ 

After the event, individuals would point to qualifiers in these messages to 

explain why neither the Pacific Fleet nor the Hawaiian Department was 

prepared for the attack that occurred ten days later. The very fact that so much 

attention was paid to the supposed qualifiers highlights the fundamental failure 

of the commanders at Oahu: they simply did not believe an attack would happen 

there.4 During one of the Army’s investigations, Brig. Gen. Sherman Miles, 

WDGS G-2 in December 1941, stated, “The primary responsibility of military 

intelligence [is] . . . to advise the Command what the enemy may do and 

possibly do or more probably It was in the execution of this responsibility 

that the collective American intelligence community most signally let down. 

The fundamental intelligence failures leading to Pearl Harbor lay neither in 

process nor organization; they lay in attitudes and outlooks. 

Not only did the intelligence agencies not question the implicit assumption 

that a serious attack on Hawaii was not a possibility, they contributed to its 

happening. Colonel Kroner, Chief of the Intelligence Branch of MID, testified 

he did not recall any MID estimates prepared for the G-2 and the Chief of Staff 

that addressed this as a probability.6 Asked why the final estimate preceding the 

attack had focused solely on Europe, General Miles explained he had wanted 

to counter the “defeatist attitude” about Nazi Germany he saw within the 

114 
Building an Air Intelligence Organization 

General Staff. Moreover, he continued, there was no need to address an attack 

on Hawaii because, having been studied for twenty years, “it was so obvio~s.”~ 

In contrast, Col. Rufus Bratton, Chief, Far East Section, MID, recalled they had 

not included a possible Japanese attack on Hawaii because they believed the 

Navy to be on the alert, and “we therefore relegated such an attack to the realm 

of remote possibility.”’ While MID apparently considered the possibility of a 

covering raid somewhere in the Pacific, it saw this as the Navy’s concern, 

despite the fact the Army’s purpose for being in Hawaii was to defend the 

islands and the fleet.’ 

MID estimates on the Far East in the year leading up to the attack focused 

almost exclusively on possible Japanese moves into Southeast Asia and the 

Netherlands East Indies (NEI). Even an ON1 report that the Japanese had 

apparently created a new task force did not influence this emphasis. Only in the 

estimate of January 1941-eleven months before the attack-was there a 

reference to the possibility of “raids and surprise attacks against Pacific ports 

on the mainland as well as against Alaska.”” Naval officials were no more 

perceptive. No ON1 estimate addressed the Japanese capability of air attack 

against Pearl Harbor.” In the Navy Department’s November 27th message, the 

impact of the arresting first sentence was lessened by the explicit assessment 

that “the number and equipment of Japanese troops and the organization of 

naval task forces indicates [sic] an amphibious expedition against either the 

Philippines [,I Thai or Kra Peninsula [sic] or possibly Borneo.” While 

“Continental districts [,] Guam [,] Samoa [are] directed [to] take appropriate 

measures against sabotage,” Oahu was not even mentioned.” 

In the months before December 1941, American intelligence officers and 

their superiors focused on what they saw as Japanese intentions at the expense 

of understanding their ~apabi1ities.l~ Intelligence officers fell into the trap of 

assessing Japan’s intentions within the framework of American logic and 

interpretation of what the Japanese should do, rather than what the Japanese 

might think they should do. This tendency to discount Japanese decision making 

was to return to dog American air commanders at other times, but not with such 

catastrophic results as it did in December 1941. 

As General Miles admitted, “We underestimated Japanese military power.” 

According to Miles, authorities had evaluated the opponent on his “past record,” 

which they believed was “not impre~sive.”’~ The difficulty of obtaining accurate 

intelligence made assessment difficult, but evidence of Japan’s strengths as well 

as weaknesses was available. By overlooking or ignoring this evidence, 

authorities assumed a level of capability that encouraged an incorrect assessment of intentions. Admiral Kimmel spoke for many when he admitted off the 

record, “I never thought those little sons-of-bitches could pull off such an 

attack, so far from Japan.”Is 

115 
Creating the Office of the Assistant Chief of Air Staff, 

Intelligence 

In the years preceding World War 11, the U.S. Army Air Corps and then the 

AAF had undergone a series of reorganizations as the nation searched for the 

proper roles for air power and the means to accomplish them. As an essential 

element in the planning and execution of air operations, air intelligence within 

the Air Corps and AAF had been affected each time a change occurred. The 

onset of war did not eliminate organizational issues or questions of responsibility regarding air intelligence functions; if anything, the crises the United States 

now faced exacerbated the dilemma while underscoring the urgency of a 

resolution. One of the major themes in the evolution of air intelligence and its 

impact on planning and operations in the first part of the war was the ongoing 

effort to develop the most effective air intelligence structure within AAF 

headquarters in Washington and to determine its relationships with its Army 

and Navy counterparts. 

Pearl Harbor demonstrated the ineffectiveness of American military and 

naval intelligence and revealed that at least part of the problem stemmed from 

the lack of Army-Navy cooperation regarding intelligence. To secure cooperation and coordination on all matters involving joint action of the U.S. Army and 

Navy, on January 23, 1942, the Secretaries of War and Navy directed a 

reorganization of the Joint Army-Navy Board plus the creation of a Joint ArmyNavy Planning Committee and Joint Strategic Committee to supplement the 

Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC). The duties of the JIC were to prepare daily 

joint summaries of military and other directly related intelligence for the 

president and other high officials, and such other special information and 

intelligence studies as the joint board required. The JIC was to have full access 

to MID and Naval Intelligence Division files. When the JCS organization 

replaced the Joint Army-Navy Board in February 1942, the committees 

established to support the joint board continued under the JCS. Like other JCS 

committees, the JIC prepared papers concerning agenda items for the JCS ’s 

meetings. l6 

In March 1942, a War Department reorganization created three autonomous 

and coordinate commands under the Chief of Staff: Army Ground Forces, AAF, 

and Services of Supply (later the Army Service Forces). The implementing 

directive reaffirmed the overall planning, coordination, and supervisory role of 

the WDGS, but it prohibited the General Staff from involvement in administrative details and operating activities of these commands. Although the directive 

authorized Air Corps officers to comprise 50 percent of the General Staff, that 

goal would not be reached because of the scarcity of qualified Air Corps 

officers. With respect to intelligence, the reorganization authorized G-2 to 

enlarge his Air Section, and it buttressed his responsibility for collecting all 

intelligence, both air and ground.” The March 1942 reorganization amalgam116 
Building an Air Intelligence Organization 

ated the old OCAC and the Air Force Combat Command into HQ AAF. 

Accordingly, the intelligence functions of both these groups were transferred to 

the office of the AC/AS, Intelligence, also referred to as A-2.*’* To perform his 

responsibilities to collect, evaluate, and disseminate air intelligence, the AC/AS 

was provided an A-2 staff and a subordinate Air Intelligence Service (AIS) 

which reported to the AC/AS through its director. The A-2 staff was to 

establish policy and provide overall guidance on air intelligence functions 

within the AAF. AIS would serve as the operating agency to collect, evaluate, 

and disseminate tactical and other air intelligence, develop training programs 

for air intelligence people, and operate air security services. By June 1942,210 

officers were assigned to air intelligence duties under the AC/AS, Intelligence.” 

Despite pressures on all agencies to reduce the number of people in the 

Washington area, AC/AS, Intelligence continued to expand. Upon his 

assignment as the A-2 in June 1942, Col. Edgar P. Sorenson argued for an 

additional 58 people. It was not enough, he explained, for his organization to 

depend upon intelligence sent to it; his staff also had to seek out information 

from the many agencies in Washington that had useful data. In the summer of 

1942, A-2 officers made a weekly average of 437 contacts with 25 different 

Washington agencies. In the Informational Intelligence Division, for example, 

only 25 percent of the products it prepared came from information automatically 

sent to it. At the same time, Sorenson noted, manpower shortages prevented the 

accomplishment of tasks vital to the operating commands. The Operational 

Intelligence Division had completed only half of a schedule calling for 361 

objective folders for all theaters. Under the threat of a severe impairment in 

targeting at acritical juncture, Sorenson got the 58 additional officers (including 

4 officers for an AAF Historical Section added to A-2 in June 1942).” 

The division of responsibilities between the A-2 staff and AIS reflected the 

then-current AAF approach of separating policy and operating functions. This 

philosophy proved more appropriate in theory than in practice, and shortly the 

decentralized structure evolved into a much more centralized one. The division 

proved especially burdensome for air intelligence; the A-2’s office was with the 

Air Staff in the Munitions Building, and the AIS was at Gravelly Point, near the 

Washington, D.C., municipal airport. As part of yet another AAF reorganization, in March 1943 all air intelligence functions were telescoped into the office 

of the AC/AS, Intelligence, where they fell into five principal divisions: 

Operational Intelligence, Informational Intelligence, Counter Intelligence, 

Combat Training and Liaison, and Historical.” The March 1943 reorganization 

also established a Special Projects section supposedly to focus on the development of amore professional and realistic intelligence staff operation. Under the 

*During the four years of war there would be eight different Assistant Chiefs 

of Air Staff for Intelligence. 

117 
Piercing the Fog 

press of daily activities, however, the special staff became a catchall for 

unrelated activities not properly chargeable to any of the other divisions.” 

Parallel to AAF efforts to clarify the responsibilities of intelligence within 

its own organizations was the continuing effort to establish the proper 

relationship between the Air Staff A-2 and the WDGS G-2. Airmen were 

convinced the former had to control the whole cycle of collection, analysis, and 

dissemination of air intelligence because the entire process was necessary to 

prepare target folders, enemy air OBs, air route guides, pilot manuals, and other 

materials required to support air forces in contemplated theaters of operations. 

Moreover, as a member of the JCS and the Combined Chiefs of Staff (CCS) and 

as de fact0 Army air advisor to the President of the United States, the Commanding General AAF required a completely integrated and uninhibited 

intelligence staff supporting him.23 

In fact, for more than a year A-2’s relations with G-2 continued to be 

defined primarily by the War Department letter of September 10,1941. A-2 had 

no primary collection agents and received practically all its information 

secondhand from G-2, the ONI, and such agencies as the OSS and the Foreign 

Economic Administration (FEA).” Some air intelligence officers were at least 

slightly bitter that they received rather than collected intelligence. One 

remarked, “It is up to us to take the information we get and to holler like stuck 

pigs for more when we feel short-changed. . . . By request to MIS [Military 

Intelligence Service, G-21 for information on a particular subject, cables to 

MAS [Military Attach&] and theater commanders are sent out, and in the course 

of time it returns to us.” Still, the time required to get desired information 

through channels resulted in “considerable delay,” and information was often 

“summarized or evaluated in transit so that the original picture is not presented 

in detail to Headquarters, Army Air Forces.”25 

Both the MIS Air Group and the A-2 Intelligence Service often examined 

the same problems, with unnecessary duplication and the danger of expressing 

confusing divergences. In March 1942, a British Air Ministry delegation 

pointed out that the two American and one British intelligence evaluation 

groups were having difficulty arriving at the same estimate of the enemy’s air 

OB.26 In view of these British criticisms and reports of delays in getting 

information from the United Kingdom, the War Department authorized General 

Arnold to detail officers through the Commanding General, European Theater, 

to temporary duty with the British Air Ministry to facilitate procurement of 

bombardment target information, technical aviation data, and other theater 

combat intelligence.*’ 

Because control of all forces in a theater of operations remained under each 

theater commander, responsible to the JCS, HQ AAF initially could not even 

deal directly with air units outside the continental United States. One incident, 

however, especially raised the ire of General Arnold and resulted in a modification to this restriction. On September 18, 1942, Arnold requested Brig. Gen. 

118 
Building an Air Intelligence Organization 

William D. Butler, Commanding General, Eleventh Air Force, Alaska, to send 

a comprehensive story immediately by airmail on the September 14 action at 

Kiska. On September 20th, Butler responded: “Am required by existing 

agreement Chief of Staff and Cinch [Commander-in-Chief, U.S. Navy] to 

submit to Comtask [Commander Task] Force Eight for approval prior to send 

msg. Will try to get it thro~gh.”’~ 

Two weeks later the Chief of the Air Staff, Maj. Gen. George E. Stratemeyer, forwarded directly to General Marshall a very strong memorandum stressing 

the necessity for the Commanding General, AAF, to receive promptly full and 

accurate information of the needs and requirements for training and equipment 

of Air Forces units so these experiences could be assimilated and disseminated 

to other commands throughout the world as quickly as possible. “Lessons 

learned from combat experience with Japanese forces in Alaska today might 

save pilots and planes in Australia tomorrow,” the memorandum intoned, and 

“the most appropriate medium for evaluating and disseminating this vital 

information . . . is the Headquarters of the Army Air Forces in Washington.” In 

response to the Air Forces’ concerns, the War Department authorized overseas 

Air Force units to send copies of technical and tactical information, operational 

reports, and intelligence data directly to HQ AAF, in addition to sending the 

same material upward through command channels.” 

In July 1943 the AC/AS, Intelligence formally requested the creation of an 

A-2/G-2 committee to study the relations of the two in air matters. Col. T. J. 

Betts, Deputy G-2, and Col. W. M. Burgess, Chief, Informational Intelligence 

in A-2, headed the joint committee. In its report, the committee pointed out that 

while the MID had overall responsibility for the collection, evaluation, and 

dissemination of military information, including that pertaining to the AAF, in 

practice something of a division of labor had developed. While the G-2’s air 

unit accomplished the detailed preliminary work for estimating enemy and 

neutral air orders of battle, A-2 performed the detailed work on tactical and 

technical air intelligence, airdromes, and related information. The committee 

concluded that while there appeared to be “an appreciable duplication of work,” 

it was in fact the minimum possible since the two units reported to different 

masters, either to the Army G-2 and through him the Chief of Staff, or to the 

Commanding General, AAF.30 

In the midst of these ongoing organizational struggles, the officers and men 

of AC/AS, Intelligence strove to fulfill the dual functions of that office: service 

to the Commanding General, AAF, and support to the combat commands. In 

executing these responsibilities, the Informational and Operational Intelligence 

Divisions played the critical roles. 

The Informational Intelligence Division’s general functions included 

collecting, evaluating, and disseminating information about both enemy and 

friendly air activities. It furnished the commanding general with situation 

reports, prepared special studies on probable developments in tactical and 

119 
Piercing the Fog 

technical intelligence, published bulletins, maintained the Air Intelligence 

Library, and operated the Air Room.31 Management studies of this division in 

1942 and 1943 were often critical, noting that form was emphasized too much 

over substance. Instead of innocuous briefings and glossy magazine-style 

publications, the management surveys stressed the need for timely, decisionoriented presentations to the commanding general and his senior staff and 

bulletins to provide useful information to operational commands.32 Given 

Arnold’s insatiable demands for information on every aspect of the AAF, it is 

not surprising that significant improvements were made in the Air Room 

presentations. To support air forces worldwide, MID eventually produced and 

distributed the Air Force General Information Bulletin, disseminating technical 

and tactical intelligence much as Stratemeyer had argued for in his memorandum to Marshall. 

The primary burden for providing operational intelligence to combat 

commands resided with the Operational Intelligence Division. Under the 

direction of Lt. Col. Malcolm Moss, the target information portion of this 

division was charged to prepare air estimates for strategic planning, assemble 

information relative to actual and potential objectives for air attack (especially 

industrial and economic targets), and develop air objective folders and target 

charts for operational use.*33 Despite initial efforts in the late 1930s and 

analyses prepared in the development of AWPD-1, this office faced a 

formidable task. An example is Lt. Gen. Ira C. Eaker’s final report as Commanding General, Eighth Air Force, when he reflected that, on arriving in the 

United Kingdom in early 1942, “Almost no information regarding targets in 

Germany, strength and disposition of G.A.F., etc. or target material, pictures, 

maps, etc. was available in the United States. In effect, we had no intelligence 

information and material about Germany and her occupied territ~ries.”~~ 

Accurate and detailed information regarding the Japanese Empire was even 

sparser. 

In Europe, rather than starting from scratch, American airmen agreed to rely 

primarily on British intelligence resources and organizations. By tacit 

agreement, Eighth Air Force, working through the British Air Ministry, 

assumed primary responsibility for intelligence regarding Germany, while AAF 

A-2 concentrated on other theaters, including the Mediterranean and Pacific. 

*Air estimates were broad studies of the nature and vulnerabilities of economic 

and industrial systems important to an enemy’s potential to sustain military 

operations. Objective folders were compilations of factual data, including aerial 

photographs and maps when available, on actual and potential industrial-military 

targets within specific geographical areas. Folders were intended for use by 

commanders and operations and intelligence officers for mission planning and air 

crew briefings. Target charts, for use by individual bomber crews, showed specific 

information regarding the exact location of enemy objectives and highlighted terrain 

features and other landmarks to aid pilots and bombardiers in locating their targets. 

120 
Building an Air Intelligence Organization 

Moss’s target section did undertake a series of air intelligence estimates of 

western Axis industries in late 1942 which were incorporated into the later 

Report of the COA.35 

While Eighth Air Force could rely on major British assistance, AAF forces 

in North Africa depended more on A-2. Of 364 target charts completed by the 

end of October 1942,213 addressed potential targets in Africa or Spain, while 

113 more in final preparation covered targets in Italy.3h Special studies 

completed in 1942 in support of pending operations in North Africa included 

“Airfield and Topographic Information’’ on Spain, North Africa, and the 

Casablanca area (February 1942); “Information for TORCH” (September 1942); 

“Target Information on Italy, Sardinia, and Balearic Islands” (September 1942); 

and “RRTargets: Italy, Sicily, and Sardinia” (June 1943)?7 References to Spain 

were based upon the uncertain reaction of that country to the Northwest African 

landings. Should Spain join the Axis alliance, knowledge of that country would 

prove essential. 

Colonel McDonald-an old-line Air Corps intelligence officer and A-2 of 

Twelfth Air Force, NAAF and MAAF, in 1942 and 1943-judged HQ AAF 

A-2 estimates of enemy industries and transportation systems in North Africa 

definitely useful for combat planning. He was more critical of the time and 

expense spent in Washington to make the folders attractive. “The most useful 

contribution from Washington could have been simple folders on individual 

targets, including mimeographed and photographic and photostat material . . . sent forward promptly as soon as the information could have been prepared.” 

Charts and folders for Italy that came from Washington were of little help 

because they were based on outdated inf~rmation.~~ By early 1943 the NAAF 

had facilities in Algiers to provide all charts needed for the Mediterranean. The 

NAAF, like the Eighth and Twelfth Air Forces, indicated it no longer needed 

HQ AAF chart^.^' 

At the same time, A-2 sections were addressing items of interest in the 

Pacific as well. Even before the outbreak of war, A-2 had undertaken the 

preliminary “Survey of Japanese Iron and Steel Industry.” In 1942 special 

studies included those on flying conditions in Japan; Japanese aircraft, copper, 

and steel industries, air defenses, and shipping; and target priorities. Of the 105 

objective folders published between October 1942 and May 1943,69 focused 

on targets under Japanese contr01.~’ Because of the scarcity of current 

information on conditions in Japan (the result of Japanese efforts to prevent 

intelligence collection in the 1930s) much of this material would prove of 

limited value. Nevertheless, it was illustrative of ongoing efforts in the early 

months of the war. 

Technical air intelligence in the early 1940s experienced the same 

fluctuations and evolutions as those affecting other aspects of air intelligence. 

The U.S. Army Air Corps had gathered some technical data in China in the late 

1930s regarding the Japanese Army Air Force. Although not revealed at the 

121 
Piercing the Fog 

time, the U.S.S. Punuy had been loaded with remnants of Japanese equipment 

when the Japanese sank her in the Yangtze River. The emphasis of Air Materiel 

Command’s Technical Data Laboratory on testing and improving American 

designs provided little time or experience for analyzing captured material. On 

the other hand, since 1939 the British had acquired considerable expertise in 

this area. The Air Ministry included a technical intelligence section that 

contained both a technical staff and crash officers, the latter being individually 

responsible for a given area of the British Isles. When an enemy plane crashed, 

the crash officer went immediately to the scene, assessed what technical aspects 

he could, and immediately questioned any downed enemy airmen. 

In October 1942, Maj. Gen. Muir S. Fairchild, AAF Director of Military 

Requirements, had asked intelligence to focus on likely German counterstrikes 

to allow the AAF to change equipment and tactics before such enemy actions 

could take their toll. “It appears obvious,” Fairchild said, “that the success or 

failure of our European offensive may depend to a large degree upon the ability 

of our intelligence services, both in Great Britain and in the United States to 

anticipate well in advance any changes in the German strategy, tactics, and 

eq~ipment.”~~ To assist in implementing a program to address Fairchild’s 

concerns, Squadron Leader A. W. Colley, an experienced RAF technical 

intelligence officer on detached duty to HQ AAF, arrived in 1942 at Air 

MatCriel Command at Wright Field to help organize an air technical intelligence 

(ATI) course. This course taught candidates how to prepare initial pro formu 

evaluation reports and how to determine what captured material should be 

forwarded for more detailed analysis within the theater or at Wright Field. By 

the end of March 1943, thirty-three Air Forces officers and ten Navy officers 

had graduated from the AT1 course. Upon graduation, the officers went to 

Washington for ten days of indoctrination in A-2 before going to overseas 

theaters. Meanwhile, the British continued to carry the burden of crash 

intelligence in both the European and Pacific theater^.^' 

In the Southwest Pacific, AAFSWPA initiated active crash intelligence in 

Australia, although few Japanese aircraft were available for study because most 

had fallen into the ocean. The pro formu report worked out by the Allied Air 

Forces was eventually adopted by AC/AS, Intelligence for standard use 

throughout the AAF. One Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) officer with 

practical engineering experience maintained a roving crash inspection 

headquarters in New Guinea. On one occasion, three Type 99 Val fighters 

located after the Japanese abandoned them were dismantled and shipped to 

Brisbane for examination. The Fifth Air Force also tried to obtain intelligence 

from nameplates on equipment, but since initially no American air officer or 

enlisted man was capable of translating Japanese, RAAF and British Army 

personnel had to perform this function.43 

To improve both the value of technical intelligence and the attention paid 

to it, in June 1943 Sorenson wrote to the commanding general of each USAAF 

122 
Maj. Gen. Muir S. Fairchild 

Maj. Gen. Walter R. Weaver 

Brig. Gen. Edgar P. Sorenson 

Maj. Gen. George E. Stratemeyer 

123 
Piercing the Fog 

numbered air force. He emphasized the importance of technical intelligence but 

noted the mission was not being handled well. AT1 was not coming in from 

Alaska, Hawaii, India, or China. Although a workable system of technical 

intelligence was in effect in the SWPA, only a fraction of captured Japanese 

equipment was available for scrutiny there. To alleviate the lack of capability 

to provide acceptable analysis of matbriel, the A-2 recommended that Sorenson 

be authorized to establish a captured air equipment center at a location where 

most required facilities were available or easily procurable.” 

While the AAF attempted to improve crash intelligence, the U.S. Navy 

conducted a similar activity at a captured enemy equipment unit set up in early 

1943 at the AnacostiaNaval Aircraft Factory outside Washington D.C. The JIC 

proposed a joint technical air intelligence activity in which the Anacostia unit 

would handle a major portion of the work. The proposal was shelved because 

neither service was prepared to work with the other. In June 1943 the Navy 

resurrected the proposal, suggesting the Army be in charge of a “test section” 

at Nashville, Tennessee, while the Navy supervised a “development section” in 

Washington to produce and disseminate timely technical aviation data.45 At this 

point, another matter impinged upon the proposal for joint crash intelligence. 

In North Africa, General Eisenhower had sponsored a Joint Intelligence 

Collection Agency (JICA) under his G-2. Sorenson initially thought the JICA 

would merely collect information and forward it to the United States. When the 

JICA requested assignment of an experienced air technical officer, however, 

Sorenson provided Lt. Col. Byron R. Switzer from his own 

Soon afterward, AAF Intelligence requested information from JICA on the 

use of laminated methyl methacrylate in the canopy of the German FW 190. 

From North Africa, McDonald rebuked Sorenson for going to an “outside 

ground agency” with his request for the Focke-Wulf canopy. McDonald 

informed Sorenson that he was sending a Messerschmitt 109G and a FW 190, 

both flyable, to Wright Field for testing. “In closing,” he wrote, “I may add that 

the type of Intelligence which has contributed most to the air, sea, and ground 

operational successes in the Libyan and Tunisian Campaigns is Air Intelligence 

developed and applied by personnel who have an appreciation of air values. . . . It therefore behooves the Air Force to maintain a high degree of control over 

all matters pertinent to air intelligence and not pass it on to personnel who are 

not particularly qualified to do justice to it.” Sorenson defended himself by 

explaining that JICA had a courier aircraft to and from the United States and 

therefore was thought best able to get a canopy to Wright Field quickly. “I agree 

with you,” Sorenson wrote, “that Air Intelligence is the most important 

intelligence yet developed in North Africa. Further, that the old conventional 

G-2-ON1 [organization] is out of date. However, since we are not going to be 

able to do away with the latter in one fell swoop, the best solution is to 

impregnate it with those who are Air Intelligence minded.”47 

124 
Building an Air Intelligence Organization 

When Maj. Gen. 0. P. Echols, the AC/AS, MatCriel, Maintenance, and 

Distribution, was asked to comment on Sorenson’s proposal that AC/AS, 

Intelligence have its own technical engineering evaluation capability, he did not 

agree that this was needed or that it would necessarily be advantageous. Divided 

responsibilities between engineering and intelligence agencies had little to do 

with the problems involved in crash intelligence, he insisted. The Air Materiel 

Command at Wright Field had never had facilities or requisite personnel to 

handle crash intelligence. If adequate facilities and people could be obtained, 

the status quo in crash intelligence ought not be changed.4R Within AC/AS, 

Intelligence, Colonel Burgess, chief of Informational Division, continued to 

press the importance of field technical intelligence, but he admitted that the 

difficulties of obtaining enemy equipment could be attributed largely to 

shipping congestion, the press of other activities, and souvenir hunters who 

often looted crash sites. In the summer of 1943 two Japanese fighters and a Bf 

109 arrived in the United States, received minor repairs at Wright Field, and 

were turned over to the AAF Proving Ground Command at Eglin Field, Florida, 

for flight te~ting.~’ 

In the autumn of 1943 Squadron Leader Colley was asked to comment on 

AAF technical intelligence. He reported that the AAF’s Air Intelligence Section 

at Wright Field was, in effect, “buried,” while the Navy’s Air Technical Section 

at Anacostia was well set up. Combining or more closely coordinating AM and 

Navy AT1 functions, he suggested, would eliminate duplication and enhance 

overall technical intelligen~e.~’ Colonel Burgess was inclined to believe the 

best solution was to place all technical intelligence pertaining to air, whether 

from Army or Navy sources, under one coordinating head. In a memo dated 

November 10,1943, he noted that assignment of responsibility for Japanese air 

intelligence was under consideration by the JCS. He recommended that the 

existing arrangement for technical air intelligence continue until the major 

decision of how to handle Japanese air intelligence in the aggregate was made?l 

Two years into the war, it was obvious that questions on the role and 

structure of air intelligence organizations, at least at the HQ AAF level, had not 

been fully resolved. A detailed study of HQ AAF Air Intelligence by AAF 

Management Control in September 1943 observed that “the Intelligence Office 

tends to become an end in itself, rather than a means to an end which is really 

the intelligence role.” The survey team argued for a creative intelligence 

structure to procure, produce, and distribute early and advance intelligence 

rather one that overzealously guarded and withheld information. Intelligence, 

they concluded, was really a service (i.e., support) activity with many customers 

for its products.52 

125 
Air Intelligence Training 

One of the most serious obstacles to the development of effective air 

intelligence in the AAF when war came was an almost total absence of 

qualified officers and the lack of even a basic training program. In the 1930s, 

a few Air Corps officers had secured some intelligence orientation in the 

course at the C&GSS at Fort Leavenworth, and there was a quota for Air Corps 

officers in the photographic interpreter course at the Engineer School at Fort 

Belvoir, Virginia. The ACTS at Maxwell Field had also included a block of 

intelligence instruction. The Leavenworth intelligence course emphasized 

ground warfare, and, after the ACTS closed in June 1940, no instruction was 

available for air intelligence. In July 1941, Maj. Gen. George H. Brett, Chief 

of Air Corps- now that Arnold had become Chief, AAF- pointed out that the 

Air Force Combat Command did not have more than twenty-five officers 

assigned to intelligence duties who could be considered even partially qualified 

for their jobs. Brett urged that the AAF proceed with plans to establish a basic 

intelligence school.53 

In reviewing proposals for air intelligence instruction in September 1941, 

the War Department G-2’s office stated all arms and services had the same 

intelligence requirements: to determine the location, strength, composition, and 

probable lines of enemy action. Therefore, “all instruction along military 

intelligence lines should be unified and presented in one school To 

buttress this argument, the MID referred to the War Department letter of 

September 10, 1941, to assert that G-2’s responsibilities for all military 

intelligence operations also applied to intelligence instruction. Interestingly, 

Brig. Gen. Harry L. Twaddle, WDGS G-3 (Operations) agreed with the AAF’s 

position that independent air missions and operations required a special type of 

air intelligence instruction that was essentially a study of the economic and 

industrial systems of potentially hostile nation^.^' Despite the MID argument, 

the AAF requested, and the Army Chief of Staff approved, a budget item to 

expand facilities at Bolling Field, Washington, D.C., for an air intelligence 

school. Congress quickly voted necessary funds in December 1941. 

AAF planning for air intelligence had been strongly influenced by the 

amount of information the British were reportedly obtaining from interpretation 

of aerial photographs. General Brett’s memorandum of July had noted, “One of 

the more prolific sources of intelligence is that secured by photographic means. 

The value cannot be overemphasized.”s6 In the United States the Air Corps was 

developing aerial photographic equipment but had made no provision for either 

operating units or photographic analysts. Capt. Harvey C. Brown, a key figure 

in the development of American wartime photo intelligence, completed an RAF 

photointerpretation course in August 1941 and received practical training at the 

RAF CIU. In recalling his experience in Britain, Brown remembered the 

“British had developed their photointerpretation organizations to an amazing 

126 
Building an Air Intelligence Organization 

degree. . . . It was generally accepted that CIU provided at least 80 percent of 

the total information on German activities and installations.” Brown returned 

to Washington in December 1941 to organize the AAF photointelligence 

program. He also advised on the selection of personnel for training in the new 

Air Intelligence School, favoring the British philosophy that people with 

backgrounds in science and research were best suited for ph~tointerpretation.~’ 

Formal AAF air intelligence training began quite precipitously. On 

December 8, 1941, a ten-day photointerpreter course began in makeshift 

facilities at Bolling Field. Many of the students, newly commissioned AAF 

Combat Command officers, had been pilots in World War I. The AAF Air 

Intelligence School was formally established at Bolling on January 13, 1942, 

with the first class scheduled to arrive two weeks later. Fortunately, the 

president of the University of Maryland in College Park offered the necessary 

facilities for the first class. The acceptance of this offer delayed the school’s 

opening until February 16, 1942.58 

Air Force leaders recognized that the facilities at College Park would not 

be adequate for the expansion due to come. Even before the first class of 33 

officers had graduated from the college course, the AAF paid $300,000 to 

purchase the Harrisburg Academy in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, for the new site 

of air intelligence training. Officially designated the Army Air Forces Air 

Intelligence School, the Harrisburg school was better known as the photointerpretation school, since that was two-thirds of its original curriculum; the 

additional one-third was combat intelligence training. At first, photointerpretation training was considered the responsibility of the OCAC Intelligence 

Division, but in the evolving AAF, training became the responsibility of the 

newly created AAF Technical Training Command?’ 

The evolution of the Air Intelligence School reflected the confusion and 

often conflicting demands characteristic of all aspects of the American war 

effort in these months. Its first commandant, Col. Egmont F. Koenig, was the 

only Regular Army officer assigned to the school, and the only officers who had 

any military experience were former national guardsmen with some flying 

background or officers drawn into military service from civilian life before 

America entered the war. Koenig originally intended to copy the RAF system 

in which older, successful businessmen were selected for intelligence duties at 

the squadron, group, and command levels. The first class of sixty-eight students 

which began training in April 1942 were “all men of affairs, intensely patriotic, 

and unfailing in their devotion to duty.” They included lawyers, bankers, 

businessmen, and even mayors. All were commissioned directly from civilian 

life and required some military indoctrination during their six-week course. 

Most of the 183 students in the second Harrisburg class also came straight from 

civil life, but the AAF then decided future intelligence officers had to be 

graduates of the AAF Officer Candidate School (OCS). Most of the 293 officers 

in the third class, which began in August, had received indoctrination at OCS. 

127 
Piercing the Fog 

The average age of the men in the third class was about forty, and Koenig 

described this class as “outstanding in every possible way.”6o In England, the 

Assistant A-2, VIII Bomber Command, Lt. Col. Carl H. Norcross, observed that 

the reputation of graduates of the first three Harrisburg classes was excellent. 

The men were surprisingly well trained by a faculty that recognizably had no 

opportunity for work or experience in the field.61 

The dearth of experienced officers and the urgent need to staff operational 

commands with these scarce individuals affected the composition of the 

Harrisburg faculty and, to some extent, its curriculum as well. Except for the 

officers who opened the school, practically all faculty incumbents during 1942 

came from the school’s graduates. Colonel Koenig recognized that this policy 

necessarily led to an increasingly parochial instruction-many faculty members 

had fewer than three months’ service and had never been in an airplane, making 

them questionable as instructors for the combat intelligence course expected to 

qualify group and squadron intelligence officers who would work closely with 

combat airmen. Additionally, the more energetic and valuable an instructor, the 

more anxious he was to leave Harrisburg for combat service. To maintain 

morale, Koenig tried to reward effective service at the school with transfer to 

an operational assignment after completion of six months or more as an 

instructor. In his end-of-tour report in September 1942, Koenig recommended 

instructors be “restricted largely to disabled front line fighters and men with 

actual combat experience and that less than half of the new instructors should 

be taken from the student body.”62 Months would pass before fluctuations in the 

AAF personnel system would permit such discrimination. 

The rapid expansion of the AAF in the summer of 1942 resulted in 

significant changes in the composition and caliber of the intelligence school’s 

student body. The Koenig approach of selecting only men of exceptional 

backgrounds became impossible to maintain. Even before his departure, Koenig 

noted that the 277 students of the fourth class reflected more quantity than 

quality. “Many students,” he observed, “turned in blank papers as solutions to 

their problems, others plainly indicated that they were neither interested nor 

cared about subjects which had little relation to the practicalities of their next 

assignment.” Ten percent of this class failed to graduate and were sent to a 

replacement center for other assignment^.^^ In October 1942, the new commandant, Col. Harvey N. Holland, confronted a whirlwind as enrollment leaped 

from fewer than 300 to more than 900 students per class. Many students in the 

expanded classes were poorly qualified for intelligence work and had poor 

attitudes, as reflected in a lack of interest, tardiness, poor work, cheating, and 

sleeping in class. Norcross, who visited the school in January 1942, observed, 

“The quality of the students is the poorest in history. They are younger-in 

many cases too young to serve satisfactorily in the field as intelligence 

officers.9’bl 

128 
Building an Air Intelligence Organization 

Norcross reported that the faculty was in near revolt, with very low morale. 

The faculty particularly resented the fact that the school was under the 

Technical Training Command. “They all feel,” wrote Norcross, “that T.T.C. 

knows nothing about intelligence, cares nothing about it, and actually is doing 

them much harm. . . . They feel that the School is declining rapidly and 

inevitably.” Norcross recommended that the commandant be an intelligence 

officer (Holland was not), that the school be placed directly under A-2 in 

Washington, and that faculty morale be built up by more rapid promotions, a 

promise of assignment to combat duties after at most nine months, and other 

recognitions. Everything possible should be done as well to improve the 

selection of students and give them incentives for good work.65 

In the aftermath of Norcross’s visit, the air inspector of the First District, 

Technical Training Command, spent a month at Harrisburg before filing a 

report in March 1943. He concluded that the Norcross report was exaggerated, 

although he agreed that morale was low, the quality of students in the seventh 

class the lowest ever, and the instructional staff not of the highest caliber. While 

selection of faculty members from the school’s graduates had provided for 

excellent specialized instruction from an academic perspective, “it has resulted 

. . . in producing a faculty with very little military training, experience, or 

background.” The result was “a rather in-bred, closely knit organization 

resentful of any imposition of supervision or restraint from outside their 

immediate circle.” In spite of these observations, the inspector could not agree 

with Norcross’s views that the school was on a decline.66 

The faculty were not alone in expressing dissatisfaction with subordination 

to the AAF Technical Training Command. In October 1942, Colonel Sorenson 

had expressed his opposition, even though this arrangement satisfied the AAF’ s 

efforts to separate policy and operating functions. Sorenson objected to the 

prohibition against direct communication between the school and his A-2 staff 

and the inability of the school commander to get undesirable students 

transferred elsewhere. “It has not been shown,” he said, “that the Technical 

Training Command has performed any extensive essential function for the Air 

Intelligence School, nor that it has given that school any material assistance.” 

Maj. Gen. Walter R. Weaver, commanding Technical Training Command, not 

unnaturally objected to any change thar would violate AAF policies on 

organization and decentralization. At the time, the Air Staff agreed with 

Weaver:’ Within five months, however, the A-2 would assume responsibility 

for the Hamsburg program. 

When the AAF reorganization in March 1943 modified the principle of 

separating planning and operating agencies, the air intelligence school moved 

from the Technical Training Command to the immediate supervision and 

jurisdiction of AC/AS, Intelligence. This reorganization ensured closer contact 

between the school and agencies responsible for air intelligence, provided a 

direct channel for getting action on school problems, and made the school more 

129 
Piercing the Fog 

responsive to changes in combat theaters. It also allowed for the strengthening 

of the types and methods of air intelligence training and made easier the 

elimination of officers unsuited for intelligence duties. The assignment of Col. 

Lewis A. Dayton, a former Texas Ranger, as commandant at Harrisburg 

contributed to a restoration of school spirit. The school history noted that at his 

first staff meeting Dayton had “immediately won the wholehearted cooperation 

of the staff’ with his forthright and engaging willingness to meet head-on the 

problems everyone knew existed.68 During 1943 the school benefited from an 

increased flow from overseas of combat intelligence material useful for teaching 

purposes. An influx of instructors with overseas experience, reflecting Colonel 

Koenig’s recommendation of the previous fall, added realism to the curriculum 

as 

Just as the AAF was working out the organizational and administrative bugs 

affecting the intelligence school, another shift in AAFpersonnel planning raised 

new challenges. After greatly expanded classes in the winter of 1942, OCS 

quotas were reduced tenfold in January 1943, from 3,000 to 300 candidates 

monthly. This reduced the number of potential new officers available to go to 

Harrisburg to a more manageable level, but it also meant the school did not 

receive the 350 to 400 students needed every six weeks to meet overseas 

manning requirements. The VIII Bomber Command, for example, was 

expanding combat operations early in 1943 and made frequent calls for 

intelligence officers, even if untrained. In the same period, Fifth Air Force in the 

SWPA sought Harrisburg graduates to staff their expanding intelligence 

 function^.^' To help meet these demands, the AAF selected newly commissioned officers with apparent intelligence qualifications and shipped them 

directly to the theaters for training at the unit level. In addition, officers 

identified for or already with continental air forces, commands, and other 

activities were rea~signed.~’ Finally, senior intelligence officers urged 

operational commands to ensure that trained intelligence officers were not 

wasted. Colonel Koenig was not the only individual to note that “too many of 

our graduates finished as mess officers, counterintelligence officers, or simple 

clerks in the Headquarters to which they were as~igned.”’~ 

Over the course of the war, the air intelligence school graduated slightly 

more than 9,000 officers. This figure includes individuals who attended the 

school after it moved to Orlando, Florida, in the spring of 1944, when it became 

the Intelligence Division of the School of Applied Tactics. More than half the 

graduates received specialized training in combat intelligence. This course, 

which focused on the group and squadron levels, addressed briefing preparation, 

debriefing of combat crews, aircraft recognition training, preparation and use 

of objective folders, target charts and maps, report preparation for higher 

headquarters, and use of intelligence data such as enemy air OB, tactics, and 

targets. 
Building an Air Intelligence Organization 

Another 28 percent took the photointerpretation course, while the rest were 

assigned to base intelligence (economic analysis), POW interrogation (language 

training), or, in Orlando only, radar mapping and analysis. Until March 1943, 

all students began with three weeks of general air intelligence. Specialist 

training then consisted of three additional weeks for combat intelligence and 

photointerpretation, six for POW interrogation, and four for base intelligence. 

Beginning with the ninth class in March 1943 the combat and photointerpretation courses were extended two weeks. When the school moved to Florida in 

1944, the radar mapping and analysis course ran six weeks, while language 

preparation (by this time only in Japanese) was reduced to three.73 

Even with the training they had received, graduates of the AAF Air 

Intelligence School were qualified only as basic intelligence officers. Whenever 

possible, the operational commands to which they were assigned provided 

theater-specific qualification training. In Europe, where AAF units performing 

daylight operations needed more combat intelligence and photointerpretation 

officers than their RAF counterparts operating at night, the VIII Bomber 

Command intelligence school gave a capsule introduction to American and 

RAF intelligence organizations and procedures. This program, initiated in May 

1942 under the direction of the VIII Bomber Command A-2, Maj. Harris B. 

Hull, included a visit to an FUF or AAF airdrome for two to three weeks and 

concluded with such specialized training as might be required. 

In the South Pacific Area (SPA) and the SWPA, environmental factors 

imposed additional requirements for intelligence officers. The A-2 of the 

advanced echelon of Fifth Air Force on New Guinea concluded that many of the 

early Harrisburg graduates were too old for work in a difficult climate. He 

admitted that a great deal depended upon the individuals themselves: If they had 

energy, brains, and a good personality, they could sell themselves to the 

aircrews and their commanding officers. Another old hand in the Southwest 

Pacific theater reported, even “Harrisburg-trained combat intelligence officers 

are not worth their salt until they have at least a month’s experience in the 

combat 

Obviously, trained intelligence officers were better than ones untrained, and 

had an air intelligence training program been organized before 1941, it would 

have functioned more effectively once war broke out. The Harrisburg Air 

Intelligence School-begun with little advance planning, staffed with 

instructors with no combat experience, enrolled with students unaccustomed to 

military affairs, and subject to the whims of a personnel system straining to 

respond to a host of demands-did surprisingly well. In December 1943, the 

Commanding General of Eighth Air Force, Ira Eaker, stated in his report at the 

conclusion of his assignment, “Graduates of the Intelligence School at 

Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, had received excellent basic training.”75 

131 
The Air War in Europe: Organizing Eighth Air Force’s 

Intelligence 

At the Washington Conference of January 1941, American and British military 

leaders had agreed that in the event of a wartime alliance, success would depend 

on the close collaboration of intelligence agencies.76 Despite differences in 

operational doctrine, experience, and requirements, the integration achieved 

during the war was unique in the history of military intelligence. Immediately 

after Pearl Harbor, the RAF’s Assistant Chief of Air Staff, Intelligence (ACAS 

[I]), Air Vice Marshal C. E. H. Medhurst, flew to the United States to lay the 

groundwork for this cooperation. 

Integration of air intelligence functions in the United Kingdom began with 

the arrival of Brig. Gen. Ira Eaker and the advance contingent of Eighth Air 

Force in February 1942. Eaker decreed that in establishing its intelligence 

structure, Eighth Air Force would complement rather than compete with 

existing RAF and Air Ministry intelligence agen~ies.7~ As an initial step, the 

RAF invited Major Hull and one of the five men who accompanied Eaker to the 

United Kingdom, to attend the RAF Intelligence In May, ACAS (I) 

agreed that RAF Bomber Command would supply its American counterparts 

with “all requisite intelligence . . . on a parallel with R.A.F. Commanders” until 

the U.S. intelligence functions were fully e~tablished.~~ The Air Ministry even 

established a new section specifically to link its air intelligence with the 

American Air Forces.80 The thread of RAF support ran throughout the early 

period of activation and establishment. Looking back, General Charles Cabell, 

who held critical positions both at HQ AAF and in Eighth Air Force, reflected, 

“Their contributions to us. . . have been tremendous in giving us an intelligence 

organization which we were entirely lacking.”’l 

The crude state of American military intelligence prior to 1942 was 

reflected in the tables of organization (TOs) of the initial air units to arrive in 

the United Kingdom. They contained no full-time intelligence positions below 

the level of VIII Bomber and Fighter Commands. Consequently, in March 1942 

Eaker followed up a personal letter to Maj. Gen. Carl “Tooey” Spaatz, 

Commanding General, Eighth Air Force, still in the United States, with a 

message requesting fifty intelligence officers “as soon as possible.” So great 

was the need that Eaker suggested commissioning selected individuals directly 

from civilian life and sending them overseas.*2 Several of these individuals were 

personally selected either by Major Hull or by highly placed Air Staff officers 

and were “taught how to salute and put on to a plane.”83 More formally, fifty 

new officers went directly to the United Kingdom from Officer Training 

School. Nine graduates of the Harrisburg Intelligence School and one 

experienced Air Staff officer also arrived in the fall.84 In spite of this influx, 

Eighth Air Force requested an additional ninety intelligence officers in April 

1943.8’ 

132 
Building an Air Intelligence Organization 

As American intelligence personnel arrived in the United Kingdom, some 

took positions with either the RAF or Air Ministry intelligence organizations; 

others attended training programs within British units.’6 RAF officers joined 

A-2 sections within HQ Eighth Air Force and VIII Bomber and Fighter 

Commands. The original intent of this exchange had been to allow the 

newcomers to learn British procedures, but it quickly developed into a true 

combined (allied) arrangement. So effectively did this integration evolve that, 

according to the official British history of wartime intelligence, several sections 

within the Air Ministry’s Air Intelligence, including groups responsible for OB, 

operational intelligence, and tactical and technical intelligence, were “virtually 

Anglo-American organization^."^' 

Nor was this integration confined to staff levels. Recognizing the 

elaborateness of signals intelligence and the sophistication the British had 

already achieved, Eighth Air Force did not establish an equivalent to their ally’s 

radio intercept branch, the famous Y-Service, but it received signals intelligence 

from that organization.*” Similarly, rather than build a photointerpretation 

capability from scratch, American officers and enlisted men were assigned to 

the existing British organization at Medmenham, the CIU. In fact, as early as 

June 1941, before the United States had entered the war, Americans had begun 

photointerpretation training with the British, with eleven officers completing the 

course by October of that year.” By June 1943, thirty personnel from the AAF 

would be at Medmenham as well as thirty from the U.S. Army and eleven from 

the U.S. Navy.w 

American airmen had already recognized the value of aerial photography 

through their observations of British air operations. Although they had largely 

ignored aerial photography in the 1930s, when it had threatened to divert 

aviation resources to civilian mapping projects, they knew, in the words of a 

member of the original Eighth Air Force contingent, that photoreconnaissance 

and interpretation were “essential to the preparation of target material and for 

briefing combat crews; the maintenance of systematic checks on enemy airfield 

activity, shipping and troop movements; the acquisition of information on 

enemy aircraft production; the location of enemy ground defense installations; 

and for the assessment of damage from Allied bombing of enemy targets.”” 

While Eighth Air Force eventually established its own photoreconnaissance 

units, the war in North Africa siphoned away two of them before they could 

begin operations from the United Kingdom. Until March 1943, the Eighth 

depended on RAF support; as of the end of that month, RAF photorecce aircraft 

had flown 117 sorties specifically for Eighth Air Force requirements.’* Even 

after American photographic flying units became established, all photographic 

interpretation in the United Kingdom remained the province of CIU (eventually 

redesignated the Allied CIU). 

*See Chapter 2 for discussion of the organization of signals intelligence. 

133 
Piercing the Fog 

The exception to the integration of Anglo-American intelligence involved 

the handling of ULTRA. Until May 1943, the interception, translation, evaluation, and dissemination of ULTRA remained solely a British responsibility, and 

at that, it occurred only in England and North Africa. Even at American 

headquarters such as WIDE WING (Eighth Air Force) and FWE TREE (VIII 

Bomber Command), British-manned special liaison units controlled ULTRA 

material. Knowledge that ULTRA even existed was limited to a mere handful of 

individuals consisting of senior commanders and key staff officers.* 

While Eighth Air Force and the RAF worked closely in the acquisition and 

evaluation of intelligence, differences in operational objectives and methods 

precluded the mere imitation of British information, analysis, procedures, or 

organizations. These differences, the requirements which arose from them, and 

the responses by American commanders and their staffs reflected the intimate 

relationship among strategic objectives, intelligence, and operational planning 

and execution. 

As originally configured, the office of the Eighth Air Force A-2 was an 

umbrella agency whose responsibilities included intelligence about enemy OB, 

capabilities, and potential targets. To eliminate an overlap in the targeting 

process between A-2 and A-5 (the Assistant Chief of Staff for Plans), in 

December 1942, Lt. Col. Richard Hughes and his Target Branch were moved 

from A-2 to A-5.Y3 With this reorganization, Eighth Air Force A-2 retained two 

primary responsibilities. The first was to keep the commanding general and 

operations officer up to date through the collection and collation of intelligence 

regarding the enemy. This included OB and technical data on enemy aircraft, 

matkriel, tactics, and vulnerabilities. The A-2 evaluated this intelligence to 

assess its accuracy and significance in explaining enemy capabilities and the 

relative importance of enemy activities and objectives. 

A-2’s second principal task was to disseminate appropriate intelligence 

material throughout the staff and to higher, adjacent, and lower air units through 

estimates of the situation, map updates, periodic and special intelligence reports, 

and regular intelligence summaries. A-2 also prepared and distributed maps, 

aircraft and ship recognition material, and weather data.y4 Sources for this 

information included the British Army, Royal Navy, and Air Ministry 

Intelligence and various War Department agencies in Washington, the OSS, 

Office of Naval Intelligence, G-2 of the U.S. Army’s European Theater of 

Operations, intelligence agencies of other Allied nations (including the Free 

French and the Polish government-in-exile), photointerpretation reports, POW 

interrogation reports, and combat crew observation^.'^ In the fall of 1942, 

*Chapter 2 contains a more detailed discussion of the organizational structures, 

technical aspects, and handling of ULTRA penetration of German and later Japanese 

cryptology, as well as the MAGIC intelligence derived from American intercepts of 

Japanese high-level diplomatic codes. 

134 
Building an Air Intelligence Organization 

intelligence officers flew on both British and American bomber missions to 

study better ways to identify targets and to determine what combat intelligence 

aircrews needed to reach their targets and to return in the face of enemy 

defenses.’6 Their experiences contributed to the development of operationally 

oriented maps and charts, and modifications to mission briefings and debriefings. 

One area in which British experience and support proved inadequate was 

that of mapping. The reason for this gap lay in fundamental differences in 

doctrine for the employment of strategic air Because RAF Bomber 

Command operated at night against area targets, detailed maps of flight routes 

and target areas and accurate photographs of targets were unnecessary. The 

daylight, precision bombing that lay at the heart of American strategic air 

doctrine required a much higher degree of exactness of position as well as a 

detailed knowledge of the target and the approaches to it. Eighth Air Force 

intelligence responded to these needs with a series of innovative measures in the 

fall of 1942. 

One of the most significant innovations was the development of perspective 

target maps, called Geerlings maps, named for Captain Gerald K. Geerlings, the 

skilled architect and draftsman turned intelligence officer who devised them. 

Early missions had demonstrated that standard flat maps offering only a 

straight-down view did not provide the ever-changing perspective aircrews 

experienced as they approached the target. Existing maps and photographs 

tended to be so cluttered with detail as to mask critical landmarks that might 

provide the proper sense of position in the midst of an ongoing air battle. As 

described in the Eighth Air Force history, 

The perspective target map is printed in four colors on a sheet 32” square. 

In the center there is a circular map of the target area including only such 

details and features as can be recognized from the air, covering a radius of 

seven miles around the target itself, with a scale just under one inch to the 

mile. The center map is surrounded by perspective drawings of the target 

area as seen from six different approaches. Two drawings are devoted to 

each approach. The outer drawing which is intended for the navigator 

shows the target as it appears from a distance of 15 miles at an altitude of 

26,000 feet. The inner drawing, for the bombardier, shows the target in 

larger scale as it appears from seven miles and at an altitude of 26,000 

feet.” 

Printed so they could be folded and taken in the air, Geerlings maps greatly 

improved situation awareness and bombing accuracy. In the spirit of AngloAmerican cooperation, both American and British draftsmen helped prepare 

these maps, which eventually covered all priority targets. The British Army 

Ordnance center did the printing and made distribution to all VIII Bomber 

Command and RAF stations.99 

Complementing the Geerlings maps were landfall identification maps, also 

developed by Eighth Air Force A-2. By providing aviators an accurate 

135 
Piercing the Fog 

perspective of where they reached the coast as they turned east from the North 

Sea toward the continent, these maps significantly reduced the tendency to stray 

far from the intended route due to weather, enemy action, or simply inexperience in navigation. As German defenses became more complex in response to 

the bombing campaign, Eighth's A-2 worked closely with other agencies, 

including the British War Office's Anti-Aircraft Artillery Department, to 

produce flak maps.* These maps provided the known locations of AA artillery 

batteries, searchlights, balloons, smoke screens, decoys, and search and control 

radars. O0 

So valuable were these products, especially the perspective target and 

landfall identification maps, that General Arnold not only congratulated the 

Eighth, but asked Eaker's opinion on the feasibility of London or Washington's 

preparing similar maps for other theaters, where units could then impose the 

most current local data. A draft response prepared for the commanding general 

suggested theater differences were such that it was neither feasible nor desirable 

to undertake such a project. It was, in fact, never done, but airmen elsewhere 

made similar devices, particularly in the CBI region."' 

Another critical area in which differences in American and British 

operational procedures directly affected intelligence requirements lay in the 

realm of target development and analysis of specific target data. Here also the 

contrasting strategies of night area bombing and daylight precision bombing 

necessitated the development of American air intelligence and planning 

capabilities oriented differently from those of the British. Because the British 

emphasized night bombing of large industrial and urban areas as the means to 

force a general collapse of the German economy and morale, the extensive 

information compiled by the British Ministry of Economic Warfare (MEW) and 

Air Ministry Air Intelligence tended to address the enemy's economic and 

industrial capabilities from a perspective devoid of technical detail."* 

In contrast, American daylight precision bombing depended upon a 

determination of the critical systems within the enemy's industrial and military 

structure, evaluation of specific targets within these broad categories, and the 

ability to destroy these precise targets most effectively and efficiently. This 

required detailed information and analyses not only pinpointing the critical 

targets within broad industries but also addressing the vulnerabilities of specific 

targets such that operational planners could focus on the most critical elements 

of any given target.lo3 

After the December 1942 shift of Colonel Hughes and his target branch, the 

Eighth's Assistant Chief of Staff for Plans, A-5, became a critical link between 

intelligence and operations with primary responsibility for coordinating target 

matters and operational planning with the British as well as within the Eighth 

*A separate air intelligence specialty, flak intelligence, dealt with mapping and 

studying the layout of AA defenses. 

136 
Building an Air Intelligence Organization 

Air Force. His responsibilities included refining target priorities, target analysis 

and tactical planning (including coordination of tactical planning with 

operational capabilities and current intelligence), preparing target maps and 

objective folders, coordinating with American and British economic warfare 

units, and operational analysis.lM Because of the industrial-economic nature of 

strategic air targets, the A-5 Target Section routinely dealt with the British 

MEW, the U.S. Board of Economic Warfare (BEW), and the Research and 

Analysis Branch of the American OSS, in addition to more conventional 

military intelligence groups. The two economic warfare agencies had been 

created by their respective governments to provide direction to possible 

economic measures against the Axis powers. Each agency had an extensive staff 

whose functions included monitoring and analyzing the enemy’s actual and 

potential economic condition. The Research and Analysis Branch, OSS, 

provided much the same function with somewhat more emphasis on the 

implications for military operations. 

Although the amount and accuracy of target information became increasingly sophisticated as the air war developed, some early missions had the 

advantage of extensive data. For VIII Bomber Command’s highly successful 

raid on the Billancourt Renault military transport factory on April 7, 1943, the 

MEW secured from Lloyd’s of London, who held the insurance policy on the 

factory, “detailed plans.. . [including] every factory building, vehicle assembly 

and engine shop, every forge, foundry, and paint~hop.”’~~ 

As early as July 1942, Hughes, at the time still working in Eighth Air Force 

A-2, began to search for a way to obtain the specific data upon which to base 

target recommendations and to plan attacks. The OSS Research and Analysis 

Branch and the Economic Warfare Division of the BEW each agreed to provide 

two or three individuals to staff a new organization, the EOU.IM Operating in 

the American Embassy in London, administered by the BEW, and initially 

composed of civilians (many of whom were commissioned shortly thereafter), 

EOU worked directly for the Target Section of HQ Eighth Air Force, first in 

A-2 and then in A-5.Im 

The EOU filled the gap between the policy of precision bombing and the 

lack of precise data. To accomplish this task, Hughes directed EOU in 

September to provide detailed analyses of designated targets. These studies 

were to include the “importance of [a particular] plant within [an] industry, 

functions of buildings, vulnerability of processes, probable rate of recovery after 

successful attack, and the sections of the target which should constitute the 

proper objective of attack.””’ Out of this guidance eyolved the aiming-point 

reports, one of EOU’s principal contributions to the CBO. Beginning with ball 

bearings, synthetic rubber, tires, and oil, the EOU broadened its scope in the 

new year to include the aircraft industry against which Eighth Air Force would 

expend so much effort in the next 18 months. As of May 1944, EOU personnel 

they had produced 285 aiming-point reports.’Og At war’s end, the Eighth Air 

137 
Piercing the Fog 

Force history credited the EOU with “the minutely detailed research into the 

operation, design and construction of every individual target which the Eighth 

Air Force decided to destroy by bombing.””’ 

The basis for these reports included the full range of MEW and BEW data 

as well as Eighth Air Force operations research studies on bomb loading and 

fuzing. The members of EOU eventually gained complete access as well to Air 

Ministry operational intelligence, including ground reports and photointerpretation reports. The comment in the unit’s own history that one of its members had 

to use “ineffable tact” in acquiring information from “the somewhat reluctant 

Air Ministry Intelligence” suggests, however, that such openness did not come 

immediately.”’ EOU personnel visited representative plants within the United 

Kingdom, spoke with industrialists of appropriate industries, and attempted to 

extrapolate lessons on target destruction from the results of earlier Luftwuffe 

attacks.”’ The aiming-point reports provided an essential link between 

intelligence and operations by offering a framework for organizing information 

and a way to think about the precision bombardment of specific target^."^ More 

specifically, the reports constituted much of the material that went into the 

development of individual target folders, and they provided the information 

upon which VIII Bomber Command selected not only precise aiming points for 

bomb release, but also the types of bombs and fuzes for each target.’14 

Feedback on the effects of an attack was as important as selecting the 

proper target and the means by which to attack it. This broad issue of damage 

assessment actually involved three related aspects: the extent of the physical 

damage to the target, the effect of this destruction on that target’s output, and 

the impact of this reduced production or repair capability on the total German 

war effort. At the initiative of Colonel Hughes, now Eighth Air Force Assistant 

Chief of Staff for Plans (A-5), one approach to this problem was the evolution 

of yet another Anglo-American agency capable of supporting the intelligence 

and analysis requirements of American bombing operation^."^ 

The British Ministry of Home Security had formed the Research and 

Experiment (R.E.) Department in 1940 to reduce the effects of the Lufhyuffe’s 

bombing on British industrial production by studying plant construction and 

layout. In July 1942 a new section, R.E.8, had begun scientific analysis of the 

vulnerability of German industrial targets and the impact of RAF Bomber 

Command’s attacks. To meet the growing demands of an expanding war, in the 

spring of 1943 R.E.8 became an Allied agency, with Americans incorporated 

into it and EOU providing the link with Eighth Air Force and VIII Bomber 

Command targeteers. By August 1943, fifteen Americans were assigned to 

R.E.8.Il6 Relying primarily on aerial photography and interpretation, R.E.8 

analyzed the number and distribution of bombs on the target; the damage to 

structures, facilities, and production capabilities; the effectiveness of weapons 

to determine suitability of specific bombs against particular types of targets; and 

the probable recovery time and estimated production lost.’I7 EOU took this 

138 
Building an Air Intelligence Organization 

analysis and, correlating it with economic data from such agencies as MEW and 

BEW, attempted to determine the impact of the lost production or repair 

capability on the German war effort. 

Damage assessment was fundamental to the conduct of precision bombing 

since it influenced decisions on which targets to strike, at what intervals, and 

with what forces. The entire process was fraught with difficulty and uncertainty. 

In the first place, it depended on prior intelligence about the nature and overall 

condition of the German economy, which was itself incomplete and in some 

fundamental ways inaccurate. It involved assumptions, derived from macroeconomic analysis, about the relative importance of individual targets within broad 

target categories. In a more technical sense, postattack analysis, often limited 

to aerial photographs taken tens of thousands of feet above the target, had to 

differentiate between the more apparent physical damage done to the structures 

themselves and the real impact of such damage on the capabilities of the target 

(i.e., production output and repair capability). Additionally, the amount of time 

required for the enemy to repair any given facility was at best an educated 

guess. 

In time, ULTRA would contribute significantly to the Allied analytical 

capability by supplementing photographic evidence, suggesting new perspectives on such evidence, or offering information unobtainable from the air. 

Although few of the photointerpreters at Medmenham were aware of it because 

of the tight compartmentalization of ULTRA, data regularly flowed between the 

code breakers and intelligence officers at BP and the CIU.1’8 In early American 

bombing operations, ULTRA did not contribute greatly to damage assessments 

because the Germans sent most of the information necessary to evaluate the 

effect of bombing by land lines and through civilian channels. Reports subject 

to ULTRA interception were often based on first impressions, when the rubble 

had not yet been cleared and actual damage not fully determined. Too, 

individuals sending postattack reports had reasons for either exaggerating or 

downplaying the extent of the damage.’” 

Damage assessment became increasingly proficient over time. Interpreting 

physical damage was always easier than extrapolating the impact of the damage 

on the target’s output or the effect of that result on the enemy’s overall 

industrial production, and thus military capability. Two examples from this 

early period of operations illustrate the difficulties involved. On March 22, 

1943,73 B-17s of the 91st, 303d, and 305th Bomb Groups dropped 536 1,000- 

pound bombs on the submarine construction yard at Vegesack. Eaker wrote 

jubilantly to Arnold that RAF postattack evaluation had determined, in Eaker’ s 

words, “the Vegesack yard has been put out for a year by one raid of less than 

100 heavy bombers.”’20 Supporting the RAF assessment was a Royal Naval 

Intelligence Division (NID) report that noted severe damage to several 

submarines as well. A follow-on NID evaluation the next month revealed that 

139 
Piercing the Fog 

these earlier estimates had been too optimistic and that repairs to the yard had 

progressed more rapidly than projected.’” 

A more tragic example of the difficulties in the collection and assessment 

of air intelligence was the VIII Bomber Command strike against a Focke-Wulf 

factory at Bremen on April 17, 1943. Motive for the attack was an assessment 

that this facility was producing 80 FW 190s and 35 FW 135s a month, 

supposedly 34 percent of Germany’s total Focke-Wulf output. The 107 B-17 

attackers met the stiffest opposition to date; 159 men and 15 aircraft were lost, 

twice the total of any previous day. Alleviating the pain of these losses was the 

initial assessment that the force had destroyed or damaged half of the factory.’” 

When the CIU studied poststrike photographs over a period of several weeks, 

it became obvious the Germans had not taken steps to repair the supposedly 

valuable plant. This warning flag led to an extensive analysis that provided, 

according to the EOU history, “incontrovertible evidence” that the primary FW 

190 production facility was at Marienburg, far to the east, and that whatever 

capability had existed at Bremen had been moved several months before the 

raid.lZ3 

Eighth Air Force: Early Operations 

What made the development of air intelligence organizations and capabilities 

at once so demanding and so critical was the fact that it was occurring in the 

midst of combat operations. As a result, the relationship between intelligence, 

planning, and operations was reciprocal from the start. While intelligence 

contributed to the planning and successful execution of air operations, the 

demands of the air war affected the organization of intelligence, defined the 

types of intelligence required, and shaped the manner in which it was employed. 

In his instructions to the commanding general of Eighth Air Force, 

European theater commander Maj. Gen. Dwight Eisenhower stated, “The 

mission of the Eighth Air Force, in collaboration with the Royal Air Force, is 

to initiate immediately the maximum degree of air operations with a view to 

obtaining and maintaining domination of the air over Western France by 1 April 

1943, and [to] be prepared to furnish the maximum support to the forward 

movement of U.S. Ground Forces by late summer 1943.”’” Spaatz’s directive 

to Ira Eaker was more comprehensive, and presumptuous: “The Eighth Air 

Force bomber effort will be aimed at the destruction of the enemy’s will to fight 

and to eliminate his means of continuing the str~ggle.”’~~ 

Recognizing the requirement for a break-in period for the fledgling force, 

in the summer of 1942 American and British air leaders identified an initial 

group of twenty-nine targets in occupied territory. These were selected 

primarily because they were “within short range and consistent with the 

requirement of remoteness from built up areas and freedom from excessive 

140 
Building an Air Intelligence Organization 

flak.” They included aircraft repair facilities, airfields, marshaling yards, 

shipyards, and power stations.’26 According to Eaker, targets for specific 

missions would be chosen by a conference of British and American commanders and would depend on “the target’s relation to the conditions of the war and 

the necessity of destroying them . . . [and] on practicality of attacks as regards 

defense, loss of bombers, operating radii of bombers and weather.”’” Since 

Eaker’s A-2 and A-5 had only begun the process of collating detailed target 

information, it is not surprising that Eaker observed in his report that in these 

early missions “the Bomber Commander picked the day’s targets based solely 

on two considerations: first, the weather both in the United Kingdom and over 

possible target areas, and secondly, the size of the force available.”12* 

American air planners in the United Kingdom were not long in developing 

more sophisticated criteria and looking at a broader range of targets. In midAugust 1942, Col. Henry Berliner, Spaatz’s Chief of Plans, recommended that 

the command’s general objective should be the German transportation system 

in Europe, since the very extent of this system would ensure available targets 

regardless of weather. More precise objectives should be fighter assembly 

plants, the Ruhr power plants, and submarine installations.’2Y Both the plans and 

intelligence staffs had already begun studies on German air bases and 

production facilities in western Europe, and shortly EOU would turn to ball 

bearings, oil, and rubber. To the dismay of all American airmen, effective 

implementation of any offensive air plan was suddenly delayed by the decisions 

to invade North Africa, i.e., Operation TORCH, and to attack German U-boat 

bases with any means possible, including the use of strategic air forces. 

The condition of American military forces in the late summer of 1942 

meant that TORCH would dramatically affect Eighth Air Force’s organization 

and operation. In addition to the reallocation of units already in the United 

Kingdom, U.S.-based units earmarked for the Eighth were absorbed into a 

newly created Twelfth Air Force. All elements of Eighth Air Force and 

subordinate commands provided maximum support to Twelfth. Although this 

would prove most burdensome on VIII Fighter and Support Commands, it 

meant the loss of the only two experienced bomb groups.’3o In addition to 

planes, equipment, and time, the Eighth sacrificed people. Eighth Air Force 

intelligence contributed its chief, Colonel McDonald, as well as officers and 

airmen skilled in operations intelligence, war-room procedures, counterintelligence, and photointerpretation. In the words of the command’s historian, these 

losses left “gaps that could not easily be filled for some time to come.” The VIII 

Bomber Command’s A-2 gave up key individuals and also organized an 

intelligence school for 65 new officers assigned to Twelfth.’-)’ In all, Twelfth 

took 27,000 men and 1,072 aircraft, with the result that by December 1 the 

Eighth had only 27,000 men and 248 heavy bombers and had flown only 23 

missions in 3 1/2 months.’32 

141 
Piercing the Fog 

Even before the Northwest African invasion, but closely associated with it, 

the Eighth attacked German submarine bases. The battle for the Atlantic had 

been a seesaw struggle from the beginning of the war, a struggle that throughout 

much of 1942 had gone against the Allies. The decision to launch TORCH only 

increased the dire necessity to gain the upper hand. On October 13, 1942, 

having just been appointed commander of the Allied invasion force, General 

Eisenhower put into written form instructions he had discussed previously with 

General Spaatz. Eisenhower’s directive admitted what Spaatz must have 

expressed forcefully in previous discussions: “The German Air Force must be 

constantly pounded [to gain air superiority].” Nevertheless, no other objective 

“should rank above the effort to defeat the German submarine . . . [which] I 

consider. . . to be one of the two basic requirements to the winning of the war.” 

Accordingly, Spaatz was to initiate “effective action against the submarine ports 

in the Bay of Bi~cay.”’~~ Spaatz, in turn, directed VIII Bomber Command to 

concentrate its efforts against the German submarine operating bases at Brest, 

Saint Nazaire, Lorient, Bordeaux, and La Palli~e.’~~ 

Eaker had already outlined what he called Plans for Anti-Submarine 

Bombing and forwarded them to Spaatz in mid-October. “Without a basic force 

of 10 heavy bomber groups,” he wrote, “it would not be possible to deny these 

ports to the enemy.”’35 His staff had made an extensive analysis of communications systems, shed construction, power units, living quarters and other auxiliary 

functions which indicated that it would be possible to disrupt critical activities 

at these bases to deny the enemy their effective use. According to this study, 

since the heavily reinforced concrete pens could not be destroyed, attacks 

should concentrate on vital work and support activities located outside the 

shelters as well as the locks that controlled movement to and from the protected 

pens.’36 The bomber commander admitted these operations had to be considered 

an “experiment,” but, he stated, they were ones “we are anxious to undertake.”I3’ 

In undertaking this campaign, the Eighth’s planners relied heavily on their 

Allies for intelligence. Specific target information came primarily from RAF 

and Royal Navy photographs and photointerpretation reports as well as reports 

from on the scene observers, including pictures smuggled out by the French 

~nderground.’~’ Operational intelligence personnel met with representatives of 

the Interservice Topographical Section at Oxford for details on geographical 

features and with Admiralty officials on building construction within the U-boat 

bases, including the super-reinforced concrete ~he1ters.l~’ American planners 

also referred to several British studies. The first was a MEW report of July 21, 

1942. Based on RAF experiences, this study focused primarily on submarine 

construction yards and factories producing submarine component parts, neither 

of which it considered particularly attractive targets. The report was similarly 

discouraging with regard to U-boat operating bases in western Europe, 

estimating that vital activities were or could be protected and that redundant 

142 
Building an Air Intelligence Organization 

systems would make permanent damage difficult. “When these factors are 

considered in combination,” it concluded, “the prospects of causing major 

disruptions to submarine operations by aerial bombardment of bases would not 

seem to be especially good, though some harassing action is no doubt possible 

and effective within limits.”’40 

Less than two weeks later, on the basis of a similar study of RAF operations 

against submarine yards in 1941 and port-area attacks in 1942, Bomber 

Operations, Air Ministry, concluded that even if successful, attacks on 

construction facilities would take a minimum of nine months to affect the war 

at sea because of the number of submarines already undergoing sea trials. 

Expressing more hope than studied assessment, the Bomber Operations report 

concluded, “It appears that by far the most profitable method of countering 

submarines at the present is by harrying them at sea or attacking their operating 

bases.”14’ 

By the end of November, after VIII Bomber Command had flown ten 

missions against the Biscay targets, intelligence assessments remained mixed. 

From the beginning, the Royal Navy had provided the thrust behind the 

campaign. Thus, it was not surprising that an Admiralty Intelligence Board 

report of November 20 referred to the “disorganization” that had resulted from 

the eight attacks to that date, or that it concluded, “It seems probable that this 

fine series of actions, if sustained, will have a considerable influence on the 

enemy’s U-boat effort.”142 Several days later another naval intelligence report 

reviewing the recent attacks on Lorient and Saint Nazaire, on November 22 and 

23, respectively, concluded that they had been “important successes” and 

predicted that “these ports will be completely dislocated in time provided that 

the attacks can be kept up.”143 

Airmen, both British and American, were less positive. In January, Lt. Col. 

Harris B. Hull, still VIII Bomber Command A-2 and himself a veteran of 

missions over the submarine pens, was in Washington telling the Air Staff and 

the Joint Staff, “These g- d- submarine pens are killing us.’’lU The 

obvious emphasis being placed on these five bases, in fact, had allowed the 

Germans to concentrate dense and increasingly effective defenses. By the end 

of 1942, VIII Bomber Command losses averaged about 8 percent per raid.’45 

Based on photointerpretation reports and other sources (including ULTRA), 

British air intelligence offered a much more guarded assessment than the Royal 

Navy of the impact of the ten raids conducted between November 7 and 23. 

Five attacks on Saint Nazaire had resulted in delays and shifts in repair work. 

The facilities appeared to be at full capacity by December 9, and there had been 

“no noticeable reduction” in the number of operating U-boats. Pointing out the 

difficulties of permanently closing ports, as evidenced by German failures 

against Malta and the RAF’s own problems against Bengazi, the report stated 

such operations could have a significant impact only if the attacks were far 

heavier and “sustained over a long period” and if the number of U-boats sunk 

143 
Piercing the Fog 

at sea increased. Until this last condition was met, the effort to strike either 

construction yards or bases “will be quite disproportionate to the results.”’46 

In response to a request from Arnold for an assessment of all aspects of 

antisubmarine operations by air, in January 1943 Eighth Air Force’s A-5 

produced the most extensive analysis to date. The report recommended against 

attacks on component parts factories (because of locations and redundancies) 

and construction yards (because of the lag in operational impact). Although 

complete destruction was not possible, planners concluded that the five 

operating bases “appear to be by far the most profitable targets.” By seriously 

crippling “vulnerable points. . . continuous and frequent attacks on these bases” 

could keep them “dislocated and greatly increase the turn-around time of the Uboats,” which would decrease the number of boats operating at any given 

time. 147 

The report then analyzed the potential value of attacking submarines 

transiting the Bay of Biscay and the demonstrated value of defensive and 

offensive air patrols in support of convoys. It would be impossible, the planners 

concluded, to destroy the U-boat threat in the next twelve months regardless of 

the method of air operations. Therefore, the problem was one of keeping losses 

to an acceptable level. “The problem . . . becomes one of control.” For this, 

primary emphasis should be on “convoy air protection, supplemented by air 

attacks on submarines in transit and regular air attacks on the operating bases.” 

Sorties of 50 bombers per week against each operating base, a total weekly 

Col. Harris B. Hull 

144 
Building an Air Intelligence Organization 

effort of 250 sorties, would be “ample to secure a very material decrease in the 

operating efficiency of these installations within a reasonable time.”’4x 

Whether this assessment reflected the views of senior commanders is an 

interesting question. According to several individuals working with him, Spaatz 

was “absolutely livid” over the diversion of resources to this mission.’4Y In a 

long letter on the subject to Edward Mason of the OSS, Chandler Morse, head 

of the EOU in London, observed, “The 8th Air Force is extremely unhappy over 

its directive to attack submarines . . . ” since, despite heavy losses and diversion 

from its primary mission against targets in Germany, the campaign did not 

appear to be having any effect. Referring specifically to the January 16 report 

to Arnold, Morse offered his opinion that this memo “tends to make attacks on 

bases appear to be more successful than the officers at WIDE WING [HQ Eighth 

Air Force] really believe they are.”1so At the same time, however, Eaker was 

writing to Arnold that he believed the campaign “has had a material effect” on 

the reduction in shipping losses.”’ 

By the middle of January, then, assessments of the value of heavy-bomber 

attacks on the Biscay operating bases varied widely. The only near consensus 

was that construction yards were not worthwhile targets, at least in the short run 

(less than a year). Nevertheless, in the Casablanca Directive of January 21, 

1943, the Anglo-American CCS made submarine construction yards the first 

priority for the Allied bomber offensive. Although not specifically listed, the 

chiefs clearly considered the operating bases in France within the category of 

targets that merited concentrated efforts because of “great importance either 

from the political or military” point of view.’” The MF’s ACAS, Operations 

urged Eighth Air Force to focus future attacks on Biscay bases when weather 

prevented attacks on submarine construction yards in northern Germany.lS3 In 

all, submarine facilities were the target for 63 percent of the total tonnage that 

VIII Bomber Command dropped in the first quarter of 1943 and 52 percent of 

the total expended during the second quarter.IS4 

In the six months after the Casablanca conference in January 1943, the 

Allies gained the upper hand in the Atlantic. A variety of measures contributed 

to what proved the decisive swing in a pendulum that had moved back and forth 

for several years. The breaking of the German Navy’s Enigma code, the 

introduction of improved tactics and technical equipment (including extensive 

defensive and offensive air patrols), and the sheer expansion of resources led to 

a dramatic reduction in shipping losses by the late spring of 1943. Evidence on 

the impact of air strikes against U-boat bases in France remained inconclusive, 

but at best they slowed down the turnaround times of operating boats and, to 

that extent, had some effect on the trend of events. German records indicate the 

attacks on the construction yards by either VIII or RAF Bomber Commands 

only negligibly affected the production of U-boats.’” 

The Allied air campaign against German U-boats illustrates several points 

about air intelligence. In the first, basic policy decisions, especially with regard 

145 
Piercing the Fog 

to construction yards, were not taken primarily on intelligence assessments. The 

seriousness of the crisis, perhaps the most serious of the war for the western 

Allies, provided the justification for these diversions. Assessments made before 

and after the attacks demonstrated the uncertain nature of intelligence and the 

problems of evaluating what one sees, let alone of projecting what might 

happen. Clearly, there was no consensus on the impact, actual or potential, of 

these attacks. In no small way, this was a problem that affected strategic air 

operations throughout the war: inherent difficulties involved not only assessing 

physical damage but also interpreting the impact this damage had on the 

capability of the target. Finally, the submarine campaign, especially during its 

early months, proved once again that intelligence, even when correct, could not 

fully compensate for the lack of adequate operational capability. All of the 

studies suggested that the level of air attacks needed was simply impossible 

with the resources available to VIII Bomber Command. 

Countering the German Air Force 

While U-boats remained the top air priority for the Combined Chiefs until the 

spring of 1943, they never had that status for American airmen, either in 

Washington or in England. For Americans, the objective of strategic air power 

was to destroy German industrial and military capability through daylight, highaltitude, precision attacks on the German homeland. Since the chief obstacle to 

accomplishing this objective was the GAF, it stood at the top of every AAF 

target priority list.* According to the Director of Intelligence, USSTAF, “it was 

always the first duty of Air Intelligence to know accurately the strength, 

disposition and capabilities of the G.A.F.”’56 Reflecting this importance, Eighth 

Air Force intelligence (later USSTAF) published a weekly special report 

focused solely on Axis air forces. As they set out to prove their doctrine of 

strategic air power, American airmen seriously misjudged the capabilities and 

potential strength of their opponents. 

In an August 1942 report to General Spaatz summarizing the first four 

B-17 missions-all shallow penetrations into France-Eaker confidently 

asserted, “I am now thoroughly convinced . . . successful bombing operations 

can be conducted beyond the range of fighter pr~tection.”’~’ Four months later, 

Eaker, now Commanding General, Eighth Air Force, forwarded to Arnold a 

study on the GAF compiled by his intelligence section. Thisereport, he declared, 

“shows . . . quite clearly, that this all-conquering, all-powerful monster, the 

G.A.F., has passed its peak and is now on the way downhill.” Responding to 

Arnold’s concern that the Germans might mass 1,200 aircraft in North Africa 

*Although Lujiwaffe was the official name for the German Air Force during the 

war, Allied documents generally referred to it by the acronym “GAF” or “G.A.F.” 

146 
Building an Air Intelligence Organization 

and simply overwhelm Allied air forces there, Eaker added, “there is no 

probability of that. . . . The simple truth of the matter is that we now have the 

German Air Force licked.”’58 Beyond the naturally positive attitude characteristic of most commanders, Eaker and his subordinates based such assertions upon 

a series of intelligence estimates, not all of them of impeccable origin. 

The EOU history is probably correct that “in the course of the war, no 

aspect of intelligence received wider, more continuous, and more devoted 

attention than the German Air Force.”’5y But the winter of 1942-1943 was only 

a midway point in the evolution of air intelligence. In these early months of 

operations, the Americans depended on a British air intelligence structure that 

was still refining its capabilities. Before the outbreak of war in 1939, Hitler had 

convinced the democracies that the Lujlwuffe was much larger in number and 

capability than was actually the case. Early in 1942, when British air intelligence determined that the 1940-1941 estimates had badly overstated German 

aircraft production, British intelligence officers established new methods of 

analysis. Then the pendulum actually swung the other way, and from the spring 

of 1942 until early 1943, GAF fighter production was underestimated.lm 

Contributing to this tendency to underestimate was the flawed assumption 

that the German economy had been operating at full capacity from the outset of 

the war. Not until 1943 did the MEW shift from its long-held position that the 

German armaments industry was already in decline.161 It would also be mid1943 before the Allies discovered the reorganization of the German aircraft 

industry that Albert Speer and Erhard Milch had undertaken in 1942. Compounding the difficulties of assessing the potential strength of the Lujbvuffe was 

the division of responsibilities within the British intelligence community. The 

MEW was responsible for estimates on the capacity of the German aircraft 

industry while the Air Ministry Air Intelligence evaluated the actual output and 

the operational state of the GAF (including OB, disposition, and wastage).I6’ 

ULTRA could prove a comprehensive source of accurate intelligence on the 

GAF, but it was of limited value through 1942. Because of the location of 

enemy fighter units and the level of air activity, most message traffic went by 

land lines rather than airwaves as it did in other theaters.’63 British intelligence 

followed the movement of Lufhyaffe units from other theaters into western 

Europe. Once they were in position, the amount of strategic information 

dropped considerably. Only in the summer of 1943, when the collection and 

evaluation of all signals intelligence permitted radiotelegraph (IUT) intercepts 

to be correlated with ULTRA messages, were intelligence officers able to 

produce consistently reliable results.’@ 

Until then, the low estimates of GAF strength produced in the fall of 1942 

and in early 1943 seemingly were supported by several sources. As early as the 

spring of 1942, ULTRA had revealed a growing manpower shortage in the GAF. 

In the fall of 1942, ULTRA and other sources accurately assessed a decline in 

German single-engine fighters on the western front as Berlin shifted resources 

147 
Piercing the Fog 

to the Mediterranean and Soviet Union. Having risen from just under 300 

fighters in early 1942 to more than 500 by fall, the Luftwuffe ended the year 

with 435 fighter aircraft in the west.165 

Another reason for the optimism that characterized early Eighth Air Force 

operations was the exaggerated claims of enemy aircraft shot down during 

bomber missions. Air-to-air combat between multiengine bombers and swarms 

of fighters was a new phenomenon. The British had only limited experience 

with it before they turned to night operations. The Americans had little to refer 

to when they established procedures to review, record, and report the results of 

these air battles. It was impossible to reconstruct completely events that 

occurred in the swirling melee of aerial combat with numerous gunners firing 

at fast-moving, dangerous fighters. By any standards, the figures from the early 

missions should have raised eyebrows. Even Carl Spaatz, less inclined to false 

optimism than many, wrote to his former A-5, Colonel Berliner, that American 

air forces in Europe had destroyed 1,200 German aircraft by March 1943.’66 

In December, Hap Arnold suggested that Eaker take a closer look at the 

numbers and methods for recording claims, reminding the latter there was “too 

much at stake” to be ina~curate.’~~ The increase in intelligence officers qualified 

to debrief returning aircrews, the greater experience of the crews themselves, 

and the implementation of stricter parameters for determining verified fighter 

kills reduced the discrepancies between claims and actual losses, but the latter 

remained well below the former. Eaker, fully aware of the confusion of combat 

and also the importance of morale among the men he had to send day after day 

into those air battles, never seemed as concerned with this issue as others did.’@ 

In a letter to General Stratemeyer, then Chief of Air Staff, on the latest criteria 

for kills, he could relate the tongue-in-cheek story of the gunner who refused to 

claim a German fighter which exploded in front of his gunsights because “I 

didn’t see the s.0.b. hit the ground.”16Y With better ULTRA information, the 

importance of aircrew claims would become less significant in an intelligence 

sense. The importance of morale would not. 

The early miscalculations of the GAF and aircraft industry, and their 

significance, would not become obvious until the summer and fall of 1943. 

From the beginning, these errors influenced the way in which the AAF sought 

to achieve its objectives in Europe. In December 1942, Arnold wrote to Spaatz 

that evidence of a decline in the GAF indicated “the necessity of forcing 

Germany if it is possible into an air war of e~termination.”’~~ Senior intelligence 

officers in the theater contributed to this focus on “extexmination.” In a special 

report on German and Italian air OBs, Colonel McDonald, still Eighth Air Force 

A-2, noted it was becoming increasingly evident that the GAF was conserving 

fighters while it built up its strength. “The above confirms,” he concluded, “that 

our policy during the winter months should more and more be directed to force 

the enemy into combat in order to continue our policy of attrition of the 

G.A.F.”17’ 

148 
Building an Air Intelligence Organization 

In these statements lies the resolution of the apparent discrepancy between 

assertions that the GAF was “on the way downhill” and constant emphasis on 

German air power as the first target for strategic air operations. In the fall of 

1942, American airmen sought to ensure that the GAF remained in decline. If 

allowed to recuperate from the blows Americans thought they were inflicting, 

the Lujbvufle might become a formidable opponent. By the spring of 1943 

Allied intelligence had begun to detect the rise in actual fighter strength in 

western Europe and to glimpse the increases in single-engine fighter production. 

In January they received agent reports of a meeting of fighter group commanders that clearly indicated an expansion of the German fighter force. These 

reports also provided the first indication of the development of the Me 262, Me 

163, He 280, and the 30mm ~ann0n.I~’ In March, ULTRA revealed fighter units 

moving to the west from Russia; the next month came information of similar 

moves from the Medite~~anean.’~~ 

Precise figures were not necessary to realize that Eighth Air Force’s 

daylight bombing offensive had captured Germany’s attention. Casualty figures 

from each mission provided a clear enough indication. The result was not only 

continued emphasis on the GAF but a realization that extermination through 

aerial combat would not suffice. From this realization would come a renewed 

emphasis on attacking single-engine fighter production. Even with this new 

awareness, intelligence estimates continued to lag behind German production 

and disposition. While Allied estimates for the first half of 1943 stood at 595 

units per month, German factories were producing an average of 753. This 

disparity increased throughout the year. Thus, when intelligence projected a 

German monthly production of single-engine fighters in the second half of 1943 

at 645, the enemy actually produced 85 1, over 200 more than the estimate.174 

How an earlier understanding of the real production capabilities of the 

German aircraft industry and a more realistic appraisal of enemy losses in the 

daylight bombing campaign would have influenced that campaign is a moot 

point. American air leaders were committed to a daylight, precision bombing 

campaign, and it is unlikely they would have flinched even had they had a more 

accurate picture. Such insight would almost certainly have prompted an even 

stronger focus on the aircraft industry and a livelier appreciation of the need to 

revisit supposedly destroyed factories more freq~ently.’~’ It might have hastened 

the development of a long-range escort fighter. A more difficult question is 

whether political and military leaders other than airmen would have supported 

the strategic air offensive had they known what it would entail. Given the 

continued opposition to strategic air operations within the U.S. Army and Navy, 

it is conceivable that more accurate air intelligence would have resulted in less 

extensive air operations. 

149 
Intelligence Implications for the Strategic Air 

Campaign in Europe 

According to AWPD-1, American air power in the European Theater would 

“wage a sustained air offensive against German military power, supplemented 

by air offensives against other regions under enemy control which contribute 

toward that Whether that objective still obtained in the summer of 

1942 was open to debate, for harsh reality had replaced theoretical assumptions. 

The United States was not only at war, but the early months of that war had 

gone quite differently than had been anticipated, with the Axis powers 

seemingly dominant in every theater. In the midst of these military, political, 

and economic pressures, the AAF had to rearticulate the role of air power and 

identify the resources necessary for this role. 

In August 1942, President Roosevelt requested the AAF, through General 

George C. Marshall, Army Chief of Staff, to advise him of the total number and 

types of combat aircraft required to gain “complete air ascendancy over the 

enemy.” These calculations would be part of a larger reassessment of “the 

proper relationship of air power to the Navy and our ground forces.”177 

Accordingly, Marshall and Arnold directed Brig. Gen. Haywood S. Hansell, a 

principal in the drafting of AWPD-1, to return from England “within 48 hours” 

to determine the “objectives[,] the destruction of which will guarantee air 

ascendancy over [the] Hansell, accompanied by Major Hull (VIII 

Bomber Command A-2), Lt. Col. Richard Hughes (Eighth Air Force Assistant 

A-2), and RAF Group Captain A. C. Sharp (RAF liaison with HQ Eighth Air 

Force), landed in the United States in late August, and in eleven days they 

hammered out what became AWPD-42.I7’ 

AWPD-42 was, like its predecessor, primarily a requirements document 

intended to determine the aircraft, manpower, and matkriel needed to defeat the 

Axis. Its planners identified a total of 177 targets in Europe that, if attacked with 

a fully mature force in 66,045 bomber sorties over a six-month period, would 

produce destruction of the GAF, depletion of the Geniian submarine force, and 

disruption of the German war economy. Where AWPD-1 had suggested that 

strategic air operations might themselves bring about Germany’s collapse, 

AWPD-42 accepted the air offensive as a prelude to an ultimate ground assault 

that could come only after the enemy had been sufficiently weakened through 

air bombardment. Accordingly, American strategic air forces were to concentrate on the “systematic destruction of selected vital elements of the German 

military and industrial machine through precision bombing in daylight,” while 

the RAF continued its “mass air attacks of industrial areas at night. . . .’’lXO 

In addition to conceding an eventual amphibious assault on Fortress 

Europe, AWPD-42 differed somewhat from the earlier plan in its selection of 

vital elements of the German war effort. According to AWPD-I, the priority 

assigned targets in Europe was the GAF, the electric power system, transporta150 
Building an Air Intelligence Organization 

tion systems (rail, road, water), refineries and synthetic oil plants, and, more 

generally, the morale of the German people. AWPD-42 identified as “overriding intermediate objectives” aircraft assembly plants and engine factories, 

followed by submarine construction yards, transportation, electric power, oil, 

aluminum, and synthetic rubber, collectively grouped as primary targets. A brief 

comparison of the two lists confirms that, with the exception of the submarine 

yards, the changes were not significant. The flip-flopping of electric power and 

transportation merely reversed their previous order, and oil retained its position 

relative to both. In AWPD-I, aluminum had appeared as a subset of targets 

selected to “neutralize” the Lufhvuffe. In the new plan aluminum was now one 

of “three of the major commodities required by Germany in the prosecution of 

her war effort.” The addition of synthetic rubber reflected current thinking in the 

British MEW that this was a bottleneck industry. With the RAF now concentrating on German morale, that target priority disappeared from AWPD42.’” 

The most significant difference between the two plans-the inclusion in 

AWPD-42 of submarine construction yards-reflected broad strategic 

considerations rather than intelligence analyses. The major air intelligence 

studies available at the time had stressed both the difficulty of permanently 

damaging submarine yards and the nine- to twelve-month period that would 

elapse before such attacks would impact significantly on the battle in the 

Atlantic.’” According to Hansell, inclusion of the U-boat yards was “testimony 

to the terrible toll of Allied shipping by German submarines in 1942. It also 

recognized the concern, interest, and power of the naval leaders whose authority 

would influence the adoption of the plan by the Joint chief^.""^ In view of the 

opposition of senior air leaders to the diversion of heavy bombers to the 

antisubmarine campaign, it is fair to suggest the yards’ inclusion as priority 

targets stemmed from an awareness that any plan that did not include them was 

doomed from the start. 

The operational assumptions that underlay AWPD-42 reflected the still 

incomplete intelligence available to air planners as well as their still limited 

base of experience. The prevailing interpretation of the German economy as 

already strained to the breaking point and incapable of further expansion-and 

the inability to foresee the steps a nation engaged in a total war might take to 

continue that struggle-is at least implicit throughout. In addressing transportation, for example, the planners concluded this “vital link” was “at present taxed 

to its maximum ~apacity.”~’~ Within six months, several more complete 

analyses of the German rail system would indicate that some 30 percent of the 

traffic it carried was “not essential” to the war eff~rt.’’~ Both the operational 

assumptions and their strategic conclusions were predicated, moreover, on a 

schedule of force development and operations that did not occur. Despite the 

efforts of Hansell and others, AWPD-42 failed to resolve the issue of what 

strategic air power could and should do in the fight against the Axis powers. 

Within the new organizations supporting the JCS, the other services questioned 

151 
Piercing the Fog 

both the data and the assumptions upon which airmen based strategic bombing 

plans, and AWPD42 never became a joint document.lX6 

To counter skepticism expressed in the several joint committees and to 

prevent it from reaching higher, General Fairchild suggested to General Arnold 

the creation of a group that, through detailed, quantitative analysis of the most 

current and comprehensive intelligence available, would provide convincing 

rationale for the selection of strategic air targets.lX7 On December 9, 1942, 

Arnold directed Col. Byron E. Gates, Director of Management Control, HQ 

AAF, to convene a board of select individuals for the purpose of “analyzing the 

rate of progressive deterioration” that sustained offensive air operations might 

impose upon the German war effort. Specifically, the group was to provide him 

with an estimate “as to the date when this deterioration will have progressed to 

a point to permit a successful invasion of Western Europe.”’88 Thus was born 

the Advisory Committee on Bombardment, later renamed the COA. 

To many, including Hansel1 (now back in England), Arnold’s decision to 

make management control rather than A-2 or A-5 responsible for this task 

came “to the surprise and dismay of all concerned, including Fairchild.”’xY 

Apparently, however, Fairchild not only conceived the committee, but he 

influenced its position within the Air Staff. According to Col. Guido Perera, 

Gates’s executive officer, Fairchild had first raised the subject in Gates’s office 

informally on December 3, 1942.ly0 Logical reasons existed for such an 

arrangement. The military had recently become aware of the new technique of 

operations research, and the assignment of several analysts to the Office of 

Management Control provided personnel with some of the skills the study 

would require. The inclusion of civilians was in line with the prevailing idea 

that military officers had neither the training nor the time to devote to such 

economic analysis.”’ Also, some indication exists that Fairchild had not been 

impressed with the quality of the intelligence papers submitted to the JIG."' He 

and Arnold may have believed the establishment of a group outside the normal 

intelligence and plans organizations, especially one including prominent 

civilians, would carry greater weight with the other services and with political 

leaders such as the Secretary of War and the President. 

Regardless of the motives, Gates and Perera, who would play key roles, set 

to their task with a will. Even before receiving Arnold’s official directive, they 

had contacted Elihu Root, Jr., a respected and well-placed New York lawyer, 

to ask his participation. Learning that Colonel Moss of the HQ AAF A-2 staff 

had already been discussing targeting with Dr. Edward Mead Earle, a military 

historian at Princeton University, they invited Earle to sit on the ~ommittee.”~ 

In addition to Earle and Root, the civilian members were Fowler Hamilton, 

chief of the BEW; Edward S. Mason, head of the OSS Research and Analysis 

section; and Thomas W. Lamont, an influential member of New York’s banking 

community. Joining Gates and Perera as military representatives were Colonel 

Sorenson, AC/AS, Intelligence; Colonel Moss, chief of the Targets Information 

152 
Building an Air Intelligence Organization 

section of HQ AAF A-2; Lt. Col. Thomas G. Lanphier of the Air Unit in G-2’s 

MID; and Maj. W. Barton Leach, a lawyer serving as an operations analyst 

under Gates.IY4 

The committee cast a broad net in its search for information. Within two 

weeks, its members had divided potential enemy target systems into three 

priorities according to their importance to the German war effort, their 

vulnerability, and the timeliness of impact, and it formed subcommittees to 

work on detailed studies of the German aircraft, oil, transportation, electric 

power, coke, and rubber industries, as well as on an overall interpretation of the 

western Axis economy. Eventually, committee members would address 

nineteen German industries. In addition, a force requirements subcommittee was 

to evaluate the resources necessary to achieve the destruction of whichever 

targets the committee recommended. 

In areas in which HQ AAF A-2 had already done considerable work, most 

notably in electric power, oil, transportation, and rubber, the committee drew 

heavily upon these sources. Other agencies and organizations that provided 

material included the BEW, the Army’s G-2, the OSS, the Departments of 

Commerce and State, the American Institute of Mining and Metallurgical 

Engineers, and the Administrator of Export Control. Reports from the MEW 

and the Air Ministry, already being sent to the British Embassy in Washington, 

were made available to the subcommittees. In addition to already completed 

studies and collected materials, the subcommittees called upon industrialists, 

economists, and financiers from America and abroad with expertise in key 

industries. In several instances, these men had actually operated factories in the 

targeted industries in Europe and Africa.”’ For example, information on the 

ball-bearing factories at Schweinfurt came from individuals who had worked for 

SKF, the Swedish firm that had owned these plants prior to their takeover by the 

German govemment.lY6 

To acquire additional data and gain an operational perspective, Perera, 

Leach, Hamilton, and Root flew to England in late January 1943. They were 

greeted with frosty suspicion and concerns that their task involved potential 

security breaches, duplication of effort, and would impose an undue burden on 

the British, with whom Eighth Air Force had established close ties. American 

planners and intelligence officers in the United Kingdom also feared Washington was trying to assume a function-the collection and assessment of 

intelligence-which was better performed in the United Kingdom. It appeared 

that this group, especially through the force requirements subcommittee, was 

attempting to make operational judgments that were the prerogative of operators 

and planners.’” To resolve some of the apprehensions, committee representatives agreed that their final report would not address specific force requirements 

or “operational factors which were particularly in the province of the Eighth Air 

Force. . . 

153 
Piercing the Fog 

The visitors received full access to Eighth Air Force data and could talk 

directly and frankly with British officials. The history of the COA implies that 

these meetings eventually achieved agreement on both the principal targets and 

the priority assigned to them. All agreed “for security reasons” that the list as 

finally presented to General Arnold would not be in priority order. This 

statement was simply a way of agreeing to disagree, since Eighth Air Force and 

the COA could not reach any consensus on target priorities. It was common 

knowledge at the time that the list reflected the committee’s order of priority.’w 

The committee submitted its report to the commanding general on March 

8, 1943. In the jointly signed memorandum that accompanied it, committee 

members admitted that the limited combat experience of Eighth Air Force and 

the uncertainty of future resource allocations precluded an answer to Arnold’s 

question as to the date by which air bombardment would permit a successful 

invasion. They stressed the importance of attacking with “relentless determination” a few “really essential industries or Services” rather than trying to cover 

everything, and they reviewed the criteria upon which the committee members 

had based their target recommendations: indispensability of a system to the 

enemy’s war effort; current production, capacity to increase production, and 

stocks on hand: requirements for the specific product for various degrees of 

military activity; number, distribution, and vulnerability of vital installations; 

recuperative possibilities of the industry: and time lag between destruction of 

installations and desired impact on the enemy’s military efforts. The memorandum stressed the need for a closely coordinated British and American target 

selection process, and it emphasized the latitude required “with respect to 

operational factors such as weather, diversion of attention, and concealment of 

bombing design.” Accordingly, the selection of specific targets should “be left 

to the responsible authorities in England, subject only to such directives as may 

be called for by broad strategic considerations.”200 

The report itself consisted of a general discussion of the identified nineteen 

systems, an explanation of the process of evaluation and selection, and 

summaries of the subcommittee reports. The emphasis on careful selection of 

a few systems and the comments that accompanied each target system indicate 

that the following was the committee’s priority, ranked from highest to lowest: 

single-engine fighter aircraft, ball bearings, petroleum products, grinding 

wheels and abrasives, nonferrous metals, synthetic rubber and rubber tires, 

submarine construction plants and bases, militarytransport vehicles, transportation, coking plants, iron and steel, machine tools, electric power, electrical 

equipment, optical precision instruments, chemicals, food, nitrogen, and AA 

and antitank artillery. 

A comparison of the COA report and AWPD-42 completed only six 

months earlier reveals significant differences. Most notably, the committee put 

ball bearings in second priority, while it downgraded submarine yards and bases 

to seventh position, and transportation and electric power to ninth and thirteenth 

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Building an Air Intelligence Organization 

places respectively. Of greatest interest was the removal of transportation and 

electric power from the COA’s top group. Both targets had been prominently 

identified in AWPD-1 and AWPD-42, and postwar analysis showed them to 

have been potential bottleneck systems. In his response to Arnold’s request for 

an assessment of the report, Spaatz reiterated his long-standing conviction that 

the German transportation system should be the single, most important target 

after the GAF.”’ After the war, General Hansell revealed he had had serious 

reservations about the COA report in these areas, calling the failure to press for 

attacks on electric power “a cardinal mistake.”202 Despite the committee’s 

promise not to dabble in matters more appropriately the concern of cperators, 

the COA’s recommendations regarding electric power and transportation were 

predicated on assumed operational capabilities rather than on the intrinsic value 

of either system. 

With regard to electric power, the committee agreed with AWPD-42’s 

assessment of Germany’s dependency on electric power. Its members observed, 

however, “in almost no instance is any single industry dependent upon one 

generating plant but rather upon a network which pools the greater part of the 

electrical energy within an area.” From this they concluded that even within the 

two most important industrial areas (Rhine-Ruhr and central Germany) too 

many targets precluded bombing’s having acontinuous impact. Similarly, while 

admitting transportation was “a vital industry, serious disruption of which 

would cause ultimate economic and military collapse,” the report concluded “at 

no point did the transportation system appear to offer a field of objectives 

within the scope of any projected operating air force.”m3 Nor was the committee 

alone in these assessments. In February 1943, the British MEW concluded both 

systems were too widely dispersed to be effective targets.2”” In a special report 

dated January 5, 1943, the American EOU noted, “Basic industries like steel, 

power, and transport are not desirable targets because the available air strength 

does not permit penetration through their very extensive protective zones.”205 

One explanation for the differences between the recommendations of the 

COA and AWPD-42 lies simply in the time each group had to complete its 

task. In eleven days the AWPD-42 team could not undertake the detailed 

studies upon which the COA’s report drew, few of which had even been 

completed by August 1942. While Hansell and his colleagues had encompassed 

the global struggle, the COA focused specifically on the strategic air war 

against Germany. There were differences in approach as well. Committee 

analysts believed they were to determine target systems that would allow an 

invasion of western Europe in the shortest time. In at least two specific areas, 

this framework definitely affected their conclusions. The committee relegated 

transportation to a low priority on the basis that air bombardment would lack 

decisive impact in 1943. According to the transportation subcommittee report, 

if invasion were delayed into 1944, “the general attack [on transportation] might 

offer real opportunities to achieve a state of imminent collapse within the Axis 

155 
Piercing the Fog 

economy. . . .”2wI The COA also accepted submarine yards as a suitable target 

over the long haul, but it placed the yards in seventh position because it 

believed an operational impact on the yards would require at least a year’s 

worth of substantial attacks. In these areas, then, the COA report reflected the 

demands of operations affecting intelligence assessments, rather than the other 

way around. 

Perhaps most important in assessing differences between AWPD-42 and 

the COA report was the inherent uncertainty of the whole intelligence process, 

especially at the strategic level. Charles Webster and Noble Frankland, authors 

of the official British history of the strategic air war against Germany, 

underscored precisely this point in their own discussion of the committee’s 

recommendations and its critics: “Those criticisms show how much of the 

economic planning always depended on assumptions which could not be 

verified in the circumstances of the time.”’” 

Although the committee had been unable to provide Arnold the date by 

which a strategic air campaign would make possible an invasion of Europe, it 

nonetheless played an important role in the development of that campaign. 

While the subcommittees had struggled to identify the proper objectives for air 

operations against Germany, Allied military and political leaders meeting at 

Casablanca in January had addressed the broader issue of the place of that 

campaign within the Grand Alliance’s overall strategy. As a result of the 

persuasive arguments of Ira Eaker, the conferees agreed that Eighth Air Force 

should continue its daylight bombing program in conjunction with RAF night 

operations. VIII Bomber Command would operate independently of, but in 

close coordination with, RAF Bomber Command. The CCS would themselves 

determine the overall priority of targets, with the RAF Chief of Staff acting as 

their executive agent. 

The combined policy paper that these decisions produced, the Casablanca 

Directive, defined the objective of strategic air operations in Europe as “the 

progressive destruction and dislocation of the German military, industrial, and 

economic system, and the undermining of the morale of the German people to 

a point where their capacity for armed resistance is fatally weakened.” The 

directive called for a comprehensive plan to accomplish these objectives. In the 

interim, it established the following target priorities, ranked as before: German 

submarine construction yards, German aircraft industry, transportation, oil, and 

other elements of the German war industry.”’ 

For air power, the decision to continue the American experiment with 

daylight precision bombing was the most significant aspect of Casablanca. In 

planning the execution of such operations, however, the Casablanca Directive 

provided only general guidance. Translation of this broad direction into 

operational objectives and plans would, especially on the American side, come 

through Eaker’s plan for the CBO prepared in the spring of 1943 (see Chapter 

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Building an Air Intelligence Organization 

4). The Report of the Committee of Operations Analysts featured mightily in 

the development of this plan. 

TORCH and Northwest Africa 

The hopes of American airmen for the rapid development of a strategic air 

offensive against Nazi Germany had been set back even before VIII Bomber 

Command dropped its first bomb on occupied Europe. AWPD-1 and 

AWPD-42 had assumed that up to two and a half years would elapse before 

Allied land forces would be ready to move against the Wehnnachr. In contrast, 

air planners argued they could begin building a force immediately and have it 

at full strength in eighteen to twenty-one months. Whatever the economic and 

military strengths of these assumptions, however, they failed to include relevant 

political considerations. For it was political rather than military concerns that 

led President Roosevelt and Prime Minister Churchill to ovemde their military 

advisors and order an amphibious assault into North Africa in the fall of 1942. 

North Africa provided a testing ground from which would come invaluable 

lessons for the larger battles on and over the European continent. The TORCH 

decision, by irrevocably committing the United States to the defeat of Germany 

first, also controlled the drain of air resources to the Pacific. In this sense, it 

offered airmen greater freedom to send American air assets across the Atlantic: 

they thought the buildup was to conduct a strategic air offensive against 

Germany. By taking resources and emphasis from Eighth Air Force, TORCH 

delayed the execution of this offensive. Air power would prove essential to 

success in North Africa, but in a much lesser role than the one propounded for 

it by instructors in the Air Corps Tactical School. Air intelligence would take 

on new forms and be used in different ways. It would be no less central to the 

resulting victory. 

The value of intelligence in the early phases of TORCH was mixed. Even 

before TORCH had been ordered, both the Air Staff and the Army MID had 

considered possible German moves into Spain.m In September 1942, Twelfth 

Air Force's A-2 estimated the Germans could put 250 combat aircraft into 

Spain for operations against Gibraltar or convoys moving through the straits. If 

the Spanish consented, which A-2 considered a good possibility, the GAF could 

begin operations from Spanish bases as early as five days after the landings?" 

The British Joint Planning Staff argued on August 5,1942, that Germany could 

not move forces into Spain until she had stabilized the situation on the eastern 

front. There would be no threat of German air attacks from either Spain or the 

Balearic Islands for at least a month after the invasion forces landed.'" On 

October 6, the British JIC reaffirmed the assessments that Franc0 would not 

permit the Germans free access to Spain and the Germans were not prepared to 

force entry.'" In the weeks before the invasion, information from both ULTRA 

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Piercing the Fog 

and Y intercepts allowed Allied intelligence to track the shift of short-range 

fighters and antishipping air units from the eastern Mediterranean, Germany, 

and Norway into Sicily and Sardinia. Such information reinforced Allied 

confidence that Berlin, while aware that Allied troops were preparing to move, 

assumed they were headed farther east, to Malta or possibly into Trip~litania.’’~ 

The immediate threat was not the GAF, but the Vichy French forces who 

still controlled North Africa. Despite several sensitive and sometimes dangerous 

meetings with French leaders in Africa to convince them not to resist the 

landings, Allied commanders had to assume military opposition. Twelfth Air 

Force included the French in Africa under the heading of enemy strength in the 

TORCH operations plan. The intelligence annex to Field Order No. 1 identified 

some 560 French aircraft in north and west Africa, with about 90 in the target 

area around Oran. While the anticipated level of effort was thought by some to 

be in the range of 60 to 90 sorties per day from D-day to D+4 and to decline 

rapidly thereafter, Twelfth Air Force intelligence officers considered these 

figures conservative and believed the French capable of doubling that number. 

Because, as the annex noted, “no indications [are] that token resistance only will 

be encountered,” the intelligence specialists stressed that all planning should be 

based on the “assumption that our assault will be bitterly conte~ted.””~ (In the 

event, the Royal Navy’s Fleet Air Arm destroyed a large part of the French Air 

Force in the initial attacks, and French air activity had virtually ended by D+2.) 

Success in correctly assessing the lack of German opposition during the 

landings on November 7 was offset by the failure to predict the enemy’s 

reaction. Assuming the Germans would not reduce their strength in other 

theaters, the British JIC had concluded a month before the invasion that no 

substantial buildup of Axis air forces would occur in North Africa. In October, 

British Air Ministry Intelligence predicted the enemy would not put more than 

515 fighter aircraft against Allied forces. As of December 12th, by drawing 

resources from the eastern front, the Lujiwufle had more than 850 aircraft 

operating in the region. Many were based in Tunisia itself, which gave them 

decided advantages because of the limited number of airfields in eastern Algeria 

for Allied fighters and fighter-bornber~.’~~ 

Once operations began, the Allies had “prompt, full and completely reliable 

intelligence of the rate of the Axis buildup. . . .’r216 Within two days of the initial 

landings, French sources in North Africa as well as ULTRA intercepts revealed 

the German decision to move ground troops, close air support, and fighter units 

into Tunisia. By the middle of the month, the Allies knew the Germans were 

moving the technologically superior FW 190 into the theater. Complementing 

ULTRA in the acquisition of this information were photoreconnaissance flights 

over Sicily and Sardinia, Y intercepts, and agent report^.^" The early weeks of 

TORCH illustrate that intelligence by itself is rarely sufficient to determine the 

outcome of battle. Despite the accurate picture ULTRA provided on the GAF, 

Allied air forces were unable to take full advantage of this tool. The small 

158 
159 
Piercing the Fog 

number of airfields and the lack of logistical support limited the number of 

Allied aircraft in the forward combat area. Compounding this numerical 

disadvantage was a command structure that, by fragmenting available air assets, 

allowed the Lufhyuffe to maintain air superiority. 

Operational and logistical planning for TORCH had been predicated on a 

quick rush into Tunisia and an early end to the campaign. By November 28 the 

drive into Tunisia had stalled, and Allied forces withdrew to Algeria to regroup. 

Many factors contributed to the failure to take Tunisia. From an intelligence 

perspective, certainly the most significant was the failure to foresee the extent 

and rapidity of the GAF’s response. According to Lt. Gen. Kenneth Anderson, 

commander of the British First Army which had spearheaded the move 

eastward, it was the GAF that had been the decisive factor in bogging down the 

advance.”’ 

Although they would attempt several abortive offensives in December, for 

all practical purposes the Allied forces would spend from December 1942 

through the end of January 1943 establishing the logistical infrastructure 

necessary for sustained operations and implementing a series of reorganizations 

that would eventually provide the framework for success in North Africa and 

subsequently in western Europe. From these exertions came two milestones in 

the history of air power: the development of organizational structures to permit 

the effective employment of air assets within a theater as well as the more 

specific control of air-ground operations, and an expanded role for air power, 

particularly strategic air forces. 

The evolution of Allied air organization in the Mediterranean theater was 

a convoluted process that extended over a period of several months, and itself 

the subject of many studies. During the execution of TORCH, Allied air forces 

operated as two separate organizations with geographically determined 

responsibilities: the British Eastern Air Command in eastern Algeria and the 

American Twelfth Air Force in Morocco and in western Algiers. With the shift 

of Twelfth Air Force eastward to support ground operations, this arrangement 

became increasingly unwieldy. Through a series of gradual steps in the winter 

of 1942-1943, Air Marshal Arthur Tedder emerged as the theater air commander in charge of Mediterranean Air Command (MAC). Subordinate to MAC 

were NAAF, Malta Air Force, and Eastern Air Command (Cairo). From the 

standpoint of air operations in North Africa in 1942-1943, the pivotal step was 

the creation of the NAAF under command of Maj. Gen. Carl Spaatz in February 

1943. Under this arrangement, the subordinate Northwest African Strategic Air 

Force (NASAF), Northwest African Tactical Air Force (NATAF), and 

Northwest African Coastal Air Force (NACAF) focused on functional rather 

than on geographically oriented missions.* Responsibility for the air defense of 

*NATAF, composed of RAF 242 Group and U.S. XI1 Air Support Command, 

was committed to the direct support of Allied land forces. NASAF, commanded by 

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Building an Air Intelligence Organization 

North Africa, antisubmarine operations, and protection of friendly shipping 

rested with NACAF, which contained RAF and USAAF fighter units. At the 

same time, centralized direction from NAAF could adjust and redirect each 

force’s efforts as necessary. NAAF also took direct control of the new Allied air 

reconnaissance organization, the Northwest African Photographic Reconnaissance Wing (NAPRW).~’~ 

The establishment of NAAF resulted in a marked change in the handling 

and use of air intelligence in North Africa. Before its creation, the focal point 

of all intelligence, including air, had been the G-2 of Allied Forces Headquarters (AFHQ). Until late December, both targets and forces to be employed 

against them had been determined at a daily meeting at AFHQ.’m At the 

insistence of Spaatz and his chief American intelligence officer, McDonald, 

these functions now shifted to HQ NAAF. Spaatz himself recorded in his diary 

the stand they took to ensure that NAAF became the operating air headquarters 

in Northwest Africa. Referring to a meeting on February 18, 1943, to discuss 

the responsibilities of MAC and NAAF, Spaatz recorded, “[the] position was 

taken that Northwest African Air Forces had to have all the intelligence 

functions that were essential for the control of operations. . . .”’21 McDonald 

established a full intelligence section incorporating combat intelligence, target 

intelligence, POW interrogations, counterintelligence, Y-Service, and ULTRA.’” 

To this organization went the responsibilities for monitoring the condition and 

activities of enemy air forces, providing intelligence inputs to target selection, 

preparing and disseminating intelligence summaries and reports, handling 

capture intelligence (POW reports), and coordinating photoreconnaissance 

requests and result^."^ NAAF undertook to produce its own target materials. 

Before the invasion, HQ AAF A-2 had compiled a “considerable volume of 

target information’’ judged “of the highest practical usefulness.”224 The airmen 

now found that objective folders and target charts from Washington were “of 

little value for they are too broad and general” or arrived too late because 

emphasis had been placed on appearance at the expense of information and 

tirnelines~.~’~ 

The Allies intended the Intelligence Division of NAAF to be the centerpiece of air intelligence in the theater. It maintained liaison with G-2, AFHQ, 

for signals intelligence on enemy air signals traffic and the Air Interrogation 

Center in Algiers for POW-generated intelligence. The division also coordiMaj. Gen. James Doolittle, despite its designation as a “strategic air force,” in 

actuality conducted interdiction and counterair operations through attacks on enemy 

shipping and port facilities and airfields in Tunisia, Sicily, Sardinia, and the Italian 

mainland. While the RAF contributed two Wellington squadrons, the core of 

NASAF was XII Bomber Command. In the course of these reorganizations, Twelfth 

Air Force was relegated to an appendage of NAAF; most of its people were 

absorbed into the latter’s staff. 

161 
Piercing the Fog 

nated photoreconnaissance requests and operations with the NAPRW. While 

dissemination of intelligence to subordinate commands was an essential 

function of NAAF A-2, inadequate quantities of materials, poor communications, and perhaps an overriding orientation toward providing information up 

the chain resulted in significant problems. Reports from operational groups and 

squadrons in February and March contained frequent complaints that the units 

were receiving neither specific target information nor general intelligence on 

enemy forces. On at least one occasion, the 97th Bomb Group had embarked on 

a mission with no intelligence other than target coordinates.226 Of particular 

importance to fighter units was the lack of materials for aircraft recognition 

training, a weakness on which more than one observer commented as late as 

May .”’ 

Reinforcing the perception that A-2’s attention was focused on its internal 

responsibilities within NAAF headquarters were the observations of Lt. Col. P. 

M. Barr, chief of the HQ AAF A-2 Operational Intelligence Division. Barr 

spent from mid-February to early April 1943 on an extensive inspection of 

American and Allied air intelligence units from AFHQ to AAF squadrons in the 

field. His report was a model of clarity, comprehensiveness, and lessons to be 

learned. According to Barr, the potential usefulness of the NAAF Intelligence 

Division “was reduced by distance from the front, preoccupation with 

administrative detail, lack of personal contact with the forward groups, [and] 

poor communications. . . .”228 Although his recommendations that the number 

of operational intelligence personnel be significantly reduced and that they be 

moved to forward positions were not acted upon at the time (perhaps because 

the campaign ended shortly thereafter), subsequent observers noted qualitative 

improvements in the dissemination of air intelligence.* Referring to the last 

weeks of the campaign, several U.S. Navy intelligence officers reported “a well 

integrated round circle system is apparent [lower echelons to headquarters and 

back]. . . no lower echelon can function without 

Two vehicles that NAAF employed to improve intelligence dissemination 

were the Daily Intelligence Summary and the Weekly Intelligence Report. The 

first of these presented very condensed summaries of enemy air and ground 

situations and activities, but their primary focus was on updating objective 

folder data based on visual observations and photointerpretation reports. The 

weekly report addressed the enemy situation in greater detail, including OB, 

airdrome status, and losses, as well as reviewing Allied air operations. 

Particularly useful was the technical and tactical intelligence in these reports.23o 

Providing a detailed description of the new FW 190, the report of March 15, 

1943, described it as “a major technical advance over earlier radial-engined 

*Barr’s suggestions corresponded very closely with the arrangement Spaatz and 

McDonald would establish for Advanced Headquarters, United States Strategic Air 

Forces in Europe, when they moved to France in the fall of 1944. 

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Building an Air Intelligence Organization 

fighters.” Two weeks later, the report gave a description of the He 177, 

including photos and data on wing configuration and loading, armament, fuel 

capacity, and speed. The Me 323 transport, which would become a primary 

target in the later stages of the campaign, was introduced in a weekly report on 

February 23 as “really a glider with engines.” Equally valuable was the 

information on trends in enemy tactics. As early as December 5, 1942, the 

Weekly Intelligence Summary for Twelfth Air Force warned that enemy fighters 

in France were reported to be engaging B-17s in frontal attacks. Later NAAF 

reports included comments from Lufiaffe POWs on tactics debates within 

German fighter 

In contrast to the inefficiencies found at A-2, NAAF, Colonel Barr judged 

intelligence at NASAF to be “very thoroughly organized, [and] in close touch 

with subordinate groups. . . .” While administrative and reporting duties were 

not neglected, they were not allowed to interfere with “the essential and primary 

duty” of providing Maj. Gen. James H. Doolittle, his staff, and his group 

commanders “up-to-date evaluated information on the disposition, defenses, 

tactics, and targets of the enemy.””’ (Doolittle’s appreciation of intelligence 

would be further reflected in 1944 when he would insist on having an ULTRA 

representative assigned to Eighth Air Force.) 

The period from January 1943 until the final surrender of Axis forces in 

North Africa reflected the versatility and flexibility of air power. Within the 

broad objectives assigned by higher headquarters, Spaatz and his subordinate 

commanders switched their focus to meet the changing theater situation by 

striking airfields and ports in Tunisia, ships at sea, and ports and airfields in 

Sicily, Sardinia, and Italy. Weather, force size, developments in the ground war, 

and logistics all influenced the expanding air activity, but essential to its success 

was timely, accurate, and comprehensive intelligence. To obtain this intelligence, air commanders called upon a wide range of capabilities that included 

photoreconnaissance, agent reports, POW interrogations, aircrew reports, radio 

intercepts, and ULTRA. 

Combat experience quickly revealed that the command’s basic need in 

planning and operations was regular aerial photography of proposed targets. 

Urged on by Spaatz and Air Vice Marshal Arthur Coningham, commander of 

NATAF, General Eisenhower pleaded with the British Chiefs in January 1943 

for additional photoreconnaissance capability, asserting that high-performance 

reconnaissance was “absolutely essential” in the effort to reduce enemy lines of 

communication into At an air commanders’ conference two months 

later, Spaatz stressed that regular reconnaissance over the Sicilian straits and the 

Tyrrhenian Sea was key to an effective antishipping campaign, whereby the 

Allies would deny supplies and reinforcements to Axis forces in North Africa. 

Noting that photoreconnaissance missions were already being flown over the 

Italian port cities of Genoa, Leghorn, Taranto, Bari, and Naples, Doolittle said 

he was prepared to launch heavy bombers within six hours when photographs 

163 
Piercing the Fog 

identified appropriate targets.234 At a similar meeting on February 19, 

Coningham linked photoreconnaissance to the allocation of scarce resources; 

he argued for preattack reconnaissance to avoid launching missions against 

airfields that no longer held enemy 

The initial period of growing pains caused by inexperienced operators, 

inadequate equipment, and poor staff arrangements soon passed. Intercepted 

GAF radio transmissions sent in the clear (i.e., uncoded) or via low-grade code 

or cryptography soon became the Because the Allies had not properly 

planned a defensive radar-warning net in North Africa, such interceptions 

provided the only tactical warning of incoming Luftwufle raids for some time.237 

Y-Service correlation of IUT intercepts with other sources such as radar and 

ULTRA not only warned of attack but also gave valuable information on enemy 

tactics, disposition of air patrols, and even morale. Axis radio transmissions 

studied over extended periods increased knowledge of the enemy. Because the 

importance of radio interception had not been adequately appreciated in 

American air intelligence planning, British Y-Service detachments served 

American headquarters such as XI1 Air Support Command.238 

POW interrogations yielded a wealth of information. Interrogation of 

POWs and investigation of their downed aircraft provided maps and charts 

depicting projected Axis attacks, locations of active airfields, maintenance and 

repair capabilities, status of the Luftwuffe’s training programs, technical 

capabilities of its equipment, tactical developments, and the condition of Axis 

morale. In one case, Allied intelligence acquired an instruction manual for the 

He 177, complete with photograph^.^^' Captured documents also revealed that 

the German high command and the GAF had increased the training of fighter 

pilots.240 

In contrast to western Europe, ULTRA played a crucial role in the air war in 

North Africa from the very beginning because it was the best developed of all 

sources and methods from the time of the Allies’ initial landings. It was largely 

ULTRA that indicated the enemy had misread the invasion force’s destination. 

This source became no less important once the opposing forces were engaged. 

In terms of air warfare, ULTRA offered a treasure house of information. “We 

had,” admitted Group Captain R. H. Humphreys, the senior ULTRA officer at 

NAAF, “advance timing of every intention and move of the German Air Force 

in Africa and Italy, and as many moves and intentions of Italian forces as fell 

into joint Italo-German programmes.’”’ ULTRA’S insights matched to YService reports allowed Allied commanders to eavesdrop on damage reports 

from enemy airdromes. This led to a full understanding of the effectiveness of 

their attacks and to suggestions of when and where to repeat 

The picture ULTRA provided on Axis shipping was at least as valuable as 

its dissection of the GAF. So effective had BP become by this third winter of 

the war that, together with SIS reports and photoreconnaissance, Eisenhower, 

Tedder, and their staffs had a virtually complete record of the shipping between 

164 
Building an Air Intelligence Organization 

Tunis, Bizerta, Italy, and Sicily, often down to the cargoes of individual 

vessels.243 ULTRA’S reports on the daily supply situation of German ground and 

air forces gave commanders like Doolittle an almost unparalleled luxury in 

selecting air interdiction targets. 

Considering the apparently all-pervasive nature of ULTRA, one must resist 

the temptation to ascribe Allied victory in North Africa to this source alone. 

ULTRA was a unique means of looking inside the enemy’s command structure 

and his logistical apparatus. But this capability, invaluable as it was, did not 

itself guarantee the outcome. ULTRA was most useful when it could be 

combined with one of the many other sources of intelligence to corroborate, 

confirm, explain, or establish a link between seemingly disparate pieces of a 

puzzle. Group Captain Humphreys stressed in his postwar evaluation that the 

basis of Allied intelligence success had been “the comprehensive fusion of 

Intelligence from all sources, clarified by the powerful light cast upon the whole 

situation by ‘U.”’244 

As the lack of Allied progress from November through February demonstrated, even the best intelligence could not replace inadequate planning and 

force employment. The very uniqueness of this source limited its immediate 

tactical value, especially in the antishipping campaign. To prevent the enemy 

from realizing that his high-level messages were being read, commanders 

approved no mission unless it could be explained by a solidly plausible second 

source of which the enemy should have been reasonably aware. No ship could 

be attacked unless the enemy would be able to understand the attack on some 

basis other than the possible compromise of encrypted messages. One of the 

values of reconnaissance was that it provided this second alternative source. 

Even so, commanders with access to ULTRA information could not send too 

many reconnaissance flights directly to specific locations identified by ULTRA. 

Most ULTRA targets were covered with general missions not limited to these 

specific locations. Naval surface forces and fighter sweeps operated within the 

same parameters.245 

Despite these elaborate precautionary deceptions, the increasing effectiveness of the interdiction campaign eventually raised serious questions in the 

minds of some enemy commanders. In March 1943, Field Marshal Albrecht 

Kesselring charged recent convoys had been “betrayed to the enemy.” As 

evidence, he pointed out that Allied heavy bombers had recently appeared north 

of Bizerta just as a convoy was transiting that area, and an Allied surface force 

turned up where no enemy activity had been observed “for weeks.”246 

Fortunately for the Allies, the Germans were so confident of the security of their 

Enigma machine that they concluded after investigation that Italian forces had 

inadvertently leaked information. Rommel especially seems to have been 

predisposed to accuse the Italians of duplicity. His and similar attitudes very 

possibly hampered any attempt at hardheaded countermeasure^?^^ Shortly 

before his death, in his notes of his campaigns, Rommel speculated on the 

165 
Piercing the Fog 

source of British knowledge of German plans to attack in Egypt on or about 

August 25, 1942. Neither Rommel nor anyone else followed the question 

forcefully. 

As with any source of intelligence, ULTRA was only as good as those who 

used it. Possession of ULTRA material did not necessarily result in its proper 

interpretation. For example, knowledge of the opposing air and ground OB 

convinced Allied commanders that the enemy would remain on the defensive 

as the new year opened. Having thus attributed to the Germans a course of 

action which stemmed from their own interpretation of the right thing to do, 

ULTRA possessors were ill prepared for the series of offensive thrusts that began 

in late January and culminated in the near disaster at Kasserine Pass.248 In this 

instance, concurrent changes in the Axis command structure had muddied the 

intelligence picture. It reflected once more the danger of neglecting the 

possibility that the enemy’s analysis of his capability and of the overall situation 

might lead him to courses of action wholly different from those anticipated. 

Consequently, developments in January-February 1943 illustrate the important 

point that throughout the war ULTRA almost always provided better information 

on the German enemy’s quantitative status rather than providing insight into 

German enemy commanders’ intentions. 

In the early weeks of TORCH, the primary contribution of the Allied air 

forces was close air support for advancing ground forces and airfield attacks to 

reduce the enemy’s buildup. Doolittle’s American Twelfth Air Force had played 

only a small part in the TORCH invasion. Subsequently concentrated in western 

Algeria and Morocco in anticipation of possible Axis operations from Spain, the 

Twelfth had not been heavily involved in the initial eastward thrust. The rapid 

German buildup and the shift of American ground forces to the southern flank 

of the Allied line pulled American air units east. 

The need to slow the insertion of Axis units and supplies into Tunisia led 

to attacks on enemy ports in Africa. Through the winter of 1942 and spring of 

1943 these initial efforts at interdiction evolved into one of air power’s major 

roles in North Africa. With NATAF concentrating on defensive and offensive 

support for ground operations, the heavy and medium bombers and their escorts 

of the NASAF pursued their responsibility for interdiction of Axis sea, land, and 

air lines of communication and supply to and from T~nisia.’~’ Heavy and 

medium bombers as well as A-20s, DB-7s, and P-38s hit Tunisian ports in 

December, but the increasing density of enemy defenses drove the attackers to 

higher altitudes and eventually limited these strikes to the. B-17s and B-24s. 

Although the heavies were not used exclusively in this role, they tended to focus 

on port facilities and vessels in port, whereas the medium bombers and their 

escorts sought out ships at sea. 

Despite the advantages ULTRA provided, the antishipping campaign started 

slowly. Throughout the winter, bad weather made it difficult to launch the force, 

let alone to see and hit a target. Ships at sea proved difficult targets even when 

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Building an Air Intelligence Organization 

located. The initial Allied attacks compelled Kesselring to use convoys heavily 

protected by air cover and Siebel ferries which had been adapted to carry 

batteries of AA artillery. Just as Allied aircrews began to master air-to-sea 

operations, the Axis benefited from two developments that temporarily swung 

the advantage to their side: German occupation of Vichy France provided 

450,000 additional tons of shipping, including desperately needed oil tankers, 

and Rommel’s withdrawal from Tripolitania allowed the Axis to close the 

vulnerable run to Tripoli, which freed bottoms for the shorter, safer Sicily-toTunisia 0peration.2~’ 

The B-25s of NASAF initiated the aerial portion of the antishipping 

campaign on January 11, 1943, followed by the B-26s several days later. The 

first sinking did not occur until January 20. After several successful attacks, the 

medium bombers went from January 29 to February 9 without sinking an enemy 

merchant vessel. Another dry spell lasted from February 10th to 2l~t.’~’ 

Improvements in the weather and an increasing skill at correlating intelligence 

and operational capability produced marked improvements. In March, the Axis 

stepped up the number of sailings, but the Allies destroyed, in port or at sea, 50 

percent of these ships, this in contrast to the less than 20 percent rate of the 

previous month. American air forces were not solely responsible for these 

results; the extensive naval activity included two-thirds of the Royal Navy’s 

submarines.252 

Incorporating supply specialists into the targeting process allowed Doolittle 

to focus more specifically on critical cargoes, thus enhancing overall results. 

Here ULTRA was at its best. The sinking of the tanker Thorsheirner in late 

February, based on ULTRA guidance, accounted for 70 percent of the known 

Axis fuel shipment to Tunisia that month. The next month, again thanks to 

ULTRA, the Axis delivered only about one-third of the fuel requirements to the 

energy-starved German and Italian ground and air forces.253 

While the medium bombers took to sea, B-17s and B-24s concentrated on 

the ports, attacking ships and destroying unloading equipment and storage 

facilities. Through January and February, the focus of these attacks was Tunis 

and Bizerta. By mid-March, having begun to drive the Axis to shallower vessels 

at smaller ports and eventually to over-the-beach operations, NASAF reached 

into Sicily and Sardinia. In the meantime, B-24s of the Ninth Air Force 

operating from Tripoli bombed targets in Italy and Sicily, including ferry slips 

and equipment, submarine bases, and port facilities.254 Apparently tipped off by 

an RAF reconnaissance report, Ninth launched three attacks against Catania. 

Demonstrating the relative and at times quixotic nature of precision bombing, 

the attackers severely damaged port facilities, but they failed to sink the tanker 

that was their principal target.255 

In addition to their interdiction role against enemy shipping, Allied air 

forces continued to operate against enemy air capabilities with both the NASAF 

and the NATAF. Using ULTRA as well as visual means and photoreconnais167 
Piercing the Fog 

sance, they concentrated on offensive strikes against Axis airfields as the most 

effective means to achieve air supremacy. When RAF Middle East passed on 

intelligence that the Lujlwaffe was concentrating aircraft at a single field at 

Caste1 Benito, XI1 Bomber Command struck with thirteen B-17s and a heavy 

P-38 escort and claimed 14 enemy aircraft destroyed, 3 probably destroyed, and 

1 damaged. A similar attack on El Aouina four days later resulted in 12 aircraft 

destroyed, 19 damaged, and an ammunition dump exploded.z6 

During Eighth Army’s attack on the German-held Mareth Line in southern 

Tunisia, NATAF focused its entire effort on Axis airfields to free the Western 

Desert Air Force (the British component of NATAF), allowing it to concentrate 

on ground support missions.z7 When visual reconnaissance showed the enemy 

in full daytime retreat, the Allied tactical air forces quickly shifted focus. On 

April 7 fighters destroyed more than 200 motor vehicles; a similar effort 

followed the next day, before bad weather provided the retreating forces with 

natural cover. By the middle of March, the enemy offered little air opposition. 

Axis fighters that remained in Tunisia were increasingly dedicated to sporadic 

attacks on Allied ground forces.258 

While NATAF concentrated on Tunisian airfields, the NASAF’S heavy 

bombers were at work against enemy airfields outside Tunisia. Based largely 

on information from ULTRA, supplemented by photoreconnaissance and agent 

reports, Doolittle’s men raided airfields around Palermo and elsewhere in Sicily. 

By April, NASAF shifted its attention primarily to bases in Sicily, Sardinia, and 

Italy.25Y In part, these effoits were preparations for Operation HUSKY, the 

upcoming amphibious assault on Sicily. They had another purpose as well. With 

Allied air and surface forces strangling the movement of supplies by sea, the 

Axis turned increasingly to air transport. German airlift became a new priority 

for air operations. On April 4th, for example, a large-scale attack by B-17s 

against Capodichino airdrome destroyed or damaged 25 of the 50 transport 

aircraft caught on the ground.260 

The most spectacular single strike against the air shuttle effort occurred in 

early April. In mid-March, in preparation for a massive operation designed to 

destroy transports and their escorts in the air and on the ground, NASAF 

intelligence began monitoring Axis air transport movements across the Straits 

of Sicily to Tunis. ULTRA provided information on cargo, routes, timing, 

departure and arrival airfields, and defensivemeasures. Y intercepts contributed 

details on tactical control and procedures. These were supplemented by weather 

and photoreconnaissance missions, reports from bomber and fighter crews, and 

POW interrogations. Routine strikes continued, but the Allied commanders 

made special efforts not to tip off the enemy to the impending blow. 

NASAF launched Operation FLAX on April 5th. Throughout the day, 287 

sorties by B-l7s, B-26s, and P-38s attackedenemy transports and theirescorts, 

dropped fragmentation bombs on airfields in Sicily and Tunisia, and even 

damaged a merchant convoy. At a cost of 6 aircraft, NASAF claimed 201 

168 
Building an Air Intelligence Organization 

enemy aircraft, 161 of them caught on the ground.261 Although German records 

identify about half that number, even this lower figure would represent a major 

blow to an air force already reeling. Nor was this the only coordinated strike of 

its kind. NASAF executed smaller versions of FLAX the next week. Meanwhile, 

the Western Desert Air Force had established a radar net over the Cape Bon 

Peninsula and relied on it to vector fighters against Axis air transports, which 

suffered heavy losses several days’ running. When the tactical air forces 

downed all 21 Me 323s in a single convoy on April 22d, the Germans ceased 

daylight air transport operations.262 

Air power had been a decisive factor in the Allied victory in North Africa, and 

intelligence, in its several forms, had been critical to that success. At command 

levels, ULTRA offered insights into the enemy’s perspective of the invasion and 

then enabled Allied leaders to monitor enemy responses. Throughout the 

campaign it provided information of enemy capabilities and vulnerabilities 

attainable in no other way, and it was instrumental in guiding the interdiction 

and counterair campaigns of the NASAF and the NATAF. 

While ULTRA was indispensable to command decisions, in tactical 

execution, other forms of intelligence came into their own and, as the campaign 

progressed, were used more effectively. Among these, photoreconnaissance was 

the most obvious; its development illustrates the interrelatedness of ULTRA with 

other sources. Intercepted messages might reveal movement times and general 

locations of targets, but mission planners and operators needed precise 

configurations of target facilities and exact locations (e.g., of ships in harbor) 

if they were to achieve maximum results with each mission. Similarly, the 

tactical and technical information on enemy tactics and capabilities provided by 

crash investigation and POW interrogation were essential to effective air-to-air 

combat. 

One of the most overlooked but important evolutionary steps in air 

intelligence in North Africa involved the mechanics of the collection, 

evaluation, and dissemination processes. The shift in targeting from AFHQ to 

NAAF and its commands, like improvements in the dissemination of intelligence to combat groups and squadrons, reflected growing awareness of the 

importance of intelligence in air operations at all levels. How this new 

understanding would translate into operations over the Continent remained to 

be seen. 

169 

CHAPTER 4 

The European Theater of 

Operations, 1943-1945 

BY THE SPRING OF 1943, the war in Europe had changed considerably 

since the Eighth Bomber Command cadre had landed in England. The twopronged Allied offensive from the Western Desert and the Atlantic Ocean had 

cleared the Axis from North Africa and prepared the way for the invasion of 

Sicily. The German Sixth Army had surrendered at Stalingrad, and the Red 

Army had begun what would be its inexorable push westward. At sea, the battle 

for the Atlantic had turned in favor of the Allies. 

That the winter of 1942-1943 had marked the turning was not so obvious 

at the time as it has become in hindsight. Control of the Atlantic, for instance, 

had already changed hands several times, and there was no guarantee it would 

not do so again. Despite the Red Army’s victory at Stalingrad, its offensive 

capability and the intentions of the Soviet dictator, Joseph Stalin, remained 

unknown. Nowhere did the Grand Alliance have as much as a toehold on the 

European continent. Not until August, with Italy showing signs of dropping out 

of the war, would the Americans agree to postpone the cross-channel invasion 

in favor of continued Mediterranean operations. The decision to invade the 

Italian mainland after Sicily ensured that Allied forces would remain engaged 

in the Mediterranean beyond the summer of 1943. Moreover, the western Allies, 

particularly the United States, could not focus their full attention and resources 

on Europe, for they were engaged in an equally desperate and undecided 

struggle throughout the Pacific and Asia. 

American airmen would enter the second half of the war with extensive 

experience in both strategic and tactical operations. Deficiencies in tactical 

command and control arrangements had been corrected in North Africa, and the 

new system for air-ground cooperation would prove its worth first in the 

Mediterranean and later in northwest Europe. In the Mediterranean area, the 

success of the intensive counterair campaign led to German withdrawal of 

fighter units from southern and then central Italy in the fall of 1943. From this 

time forward, Allied tactical air forces concentrated primarily on interdiction 

and close air support. Even the American Fifteenth Air Force, established in 

171 
Piercing the Fog 

November 1943 to provide another arm of the strategic air campaign against the 

Third Reich, flew 53 percent of its missions against German lines of communication.’ The combined air commands established in North Africa would 

continue throughout the war, only changing their names from Northwest 

African to Mediterranean when they moved to Italy. They would continue to 

provide policy and overall guidance, while each nation’s tactical air forces 

generally provided direct support to their own ground armies. 

In the strategic air war against Germany, the spring of 1943 saw the 

initiation of the CBO. Based in the first instance on the report of the COA as 

amended by the Eaker Plan, in practice the American daylight strategic 

bombing campaign would continue to be influenced by operational considerations such as force size, weather, and the unanticipated strengthening of the 

German air defenses. The most important organizational development in the 

strategic air war was the creation in December 1943 of the USSTAF. Under the 

command of Lt. Gen. Carl A. Spaatz, HQ USSTAF was to provide coordination 

and centralized control to both Eighth and Fifteenth Air Forces. Despite this 

reorganization, Anglo-American political and military leaders clearly viewed 

the strategic bombing campaign as an adjunct to land force operations against 

Germany. This relationship was underscored in the spring of 1944 when the 

CCS placed strategic as well as tactical air forces under the operational control 

of the Supreme Allied Commander for Operation OVERLOR-the amphibious 

assault on the continent. 

Technologically, the most important event in this period was the arrival of 

the long-range P-5 1 escort fighter. The impact was magnified by the simultaneous arrival of enough heavy bombers to inflict serious damage on German 

targets day after day instead of only several days amonth. The first result of this 

combination was the reduction of the Lujiwuffe from being capable of 

preventing effective attacks on selected targets to being a serious nuisance. In 

the same period the oil industry was finally recognized by Allied decision 

makers as the most critical element of the enemy’s industrial and military 

potential. 

The full impact of this recognition and these new operational capabilities 

would be delayed by two diversions imposed from above. The first was General 

Eisenhower’s decision directing the strategic bombers to focus on German 

transportation networks in France and the Low Countries in support of 

OVERLORD. The second was the emphasis placed on destruction of the German 

V-weapons. While some strategic missions continued to be flown against 

targets in Germany, it was not until the autumn of 1944 that the full weight of 

American daylight bombing would fall upon the German oil industry. Even 

then, a large percentage of strategic missions were directed against targets 

selected for their near-term impact on the ground situation. The introduction of 

German jet aircraft, although raising serious concern when American airmen 

172 
The European Theater of Operations 

realized the war would not end in 1944, came too late to have any practical 

effect. 

The Allied landing on the coast of France had opened a new phase in the air 

war in northwest Europe. Despite concerns regarding the capability of the 

Lufiufle, preinvasion identification of airfields and monitoring of enemy air 

movements nullified this threat. By summer, the GAF presence facing the 

western Allies was greatly diminished; much of the GAF was committed to the 

air defense of the Reich or to operations on the eastern front. Allied tactical air 

forces could concentrate on interdiction and close air support virtually 

unopposed in the air. 

For air intelligence, what was perhaps most significant about the European 

theater was that there were several distinct air wars being waged there. Initially, 

these consisted of a tactical one in the Mediterranean and a strategic one from 

the United Kingdom. With the implementation of Operation OVERLORD, and 

especially after the breakout in July 1944, there developed yet a third air war. 

This was also an air-to-ground war, but one that called for support of fastmoving armored units in contrast to the grinding push up the Italian peninsula. 

The importance of these distinctions is that the intelligence requirements and, 

therefore, the intelligence organizations differed significantly. The range of 

demands made on air intelligence directly paralleled the types and complexity 

of operations the several air forces were called upon to execute. The sources 

upon which intelligence drew varied as well. The last two years of the war 

witnessed a maturation of intelligence analysis and application in a process 

initiated before the summer of 1943, which matched the evolution of the 

command structures. The most noticeable change in American air intelligence 

in this period was the incorporation of Americans into the ULTRA system. 

Coincidental with this was the growing role of ULTRA in overall air intelligence. 

With or without ULTRA, successful air intelligence depended upon the fusion 

of the full array of potential sources. 

Mediterranean Theater: 1943-1945 

For a year after the victory in North Africa, air operations in the Mediterranean 

theater and the demands made on air intelligence remained significantly 

different from those in the United Kingdom. During most of the first two years 

of USAAF operations, American airmen in England focused almost solely on 

strategic air operations without having to concern themselves with tactical 

support for land forces. In contrast, from the beginning of Operation TORCH, 

support for ground operations remained the principal function of Allied air 

forces in the Mediterranean. 

When the Allied high command decided to invade Sicily (Operation 

HUSKY, begun July 9, 1943), Allied air forces, especially the NASAF, were 

173 
Piercing the Fog 

heavily involved in the neutralization of Axis air power and in interdiction. 

NASAF was already directing its full attention across the Mediterranean when 

the Axis forces in Tunisia surrendered in May 1943. Since operations in support 

of HUSKY involved targets long since made familiar in repeated attacks, the role 

of intelligence was to focus on those targets most directly related to the coming 

invasion.’ 

On June 4, 1943, the air intelligence section of Force 141 (the planning 

organization for HUSKY) prepared a paper for NAAF‘s A-2 entitled “Bombing 

of Communications-(In Support of Army Operations).” The paper focused on 

the vulnerable points in Sicily’s road and railway systems, whose destruction 

would delay enemy movements during the assault phase. It contained a detailed 

discussion of individual targets with maps and annotated photograph^.^ Using 

this information, updated primarily by photoreconnaissance and Y intercepts, 

NASAF and Ninth Air Force flew between June 18 and 30 almost 1,000 sorties 

against supply areas, terminal ports, and marshaling yards in Sicily and along 

the west coast of Italy, as well as in Sardinia and Cor~ica.~ 

Allied commanders and their planners believed command of the air was a 

prerequisite to a successful assault on Sicily. Air intelligence had not only to 

determine the strength and capability of the opposing force, but also to suggest 

how best to defeat it. Estimates of Axis air strength fluctuated in the week3 

preceding the invasion. The original plan for HUSKY, prepared in March 1943, 

assumed a total Lufbvufle force of 1,200 aircraft in the theater by the end of 

April, of which some 840 would be in the Sicily-Sardinia-Pantelleriaregion. By 

May, estimates stood at 695 in the central Mediterranean area. A week before 

the landing, the air intelligence staff of the British JIC, using ULTRA-provided 

figures, arrived at an estimate of 990 German aircraft when, in fact, there were 

960. Based primarily on low-grade SIGINT, the British accurately assessed an 

Italian strength of approximately 700 aircraft of all types5 To assist in the 

reduction of this threat, NAAF intelligence in May identified “the principal 

targets (i.e., airfields, assembly points, and factories) which, if destroyed, would 

contribute to the neutralization of the enemy air force operating in Italy, 

Sardinia, and Sicily.”6 The targets NASAF bombers and fighter-bombers struck 

over the next three months coincided with those laid out in the intelligence 

study, modified daily throughout the course of Operation HUSKY as new 

information became available. 

To prepare for HUSKY, the Allies established a small combat intelligence 

staff to handle only the most critical intelligence aspects at a combined 

MAC-NAAF command post at La Marsa. The monitoring of the Axis air forces 

during HUSKY provides an excellent example of how an intelligence picture can 

be built up through a coordination of its constituent parts. According to Group 

Captain Humphreys, the chief intelligence officer of MAC, who headed the 

command post intelligence unit, “‘U’ kept us very fully informed of. . . [the] 

frequent re-dispersal of G.A.F. units.” At the same time, he stressed, “the very 

174 
The European Theater of Operations 

closest . . . coordination of ‘U,’ ‘Y,’ and Photo Recce sources was necessary. . 371 

British and American flyers photographed daily, sometimes twice a day, 

airfields on Sicily and Italy, with the results of their efforts used to confirm 

information acquired by ULTRA or Y. For example, while ULTRA picked up the 

order for GAF units to withdraw from Sicily and move up the lower part of Italy 

under pressure of Allied air strikes, it was the Y-Service that tracked virtually 

every aircraft movement. This information guided photoreconnaissance 

missions that, by confirming the arrival of enemy units at rear bases, provided 

the information necessary to direct attacks on these installations.“ Y-Service 

intercepts discovered at least one airfield. 

Of particular importance for operational planning was the analysis 

intelligence provided on the enemy’s air defense systems. Information on the 

German radar network and flak defenses came from aircraft called ferrets 

designed to carry equipment analyze radar capabilities. The AAF’s first ferret 

aircraft in the Mediterranean were B-17s modified to be electronic intelligence 

collection aircraft, as based on extensive work being done at the Naval Research 

Laboratory in Washington, D.C., and at the AAF’s Aircraft Radio Laboratory 

at Wright Field, Ohio. By the fall of 1943, three such aircraft were on station in 

the region. Each carried directional antennas and a series of receiver sets that 

allowed it to monitor the frequencies used by a variety of German early warning 

and gun control radars. With this equipment, the aircrews could plot thelocation 

of radars associated with enemy air defenses. The intelligence staff also used the 

results of Y-Service monitoring of radio transmissions, of pilot debriefings, and 

of photointerpretation? By June 1943, according to the chief Y officer, the 

Allies were “fully conversant with all the activities of the enemy’s early 

warning system, its extent and efficiency, and the strength and location of any 

opposition likely to be encountered. . . .”lo This knowledge allowed intelligence 

to recommend to operations the best routes to and from targets to avoid enemy 

defenses. It was also used to knock out elements of that defensive system, 

including AA batteries and fighters as well as radar. It also allowed for effective 

jamming on the proper frequencies, while concurrent Y intercepts indicated the 

success of such jamming.” 

Even allowing for the fact that the Germans by this point in the war 

considered the Mediterranean a secondary war front, the wide-ranging Allied 

knowledge of Axis air operations and air defenses was remarkable. This 

understanding allowed a range of military options that theAllies could use to 

their distinct advantage. The influence of intelligence on planning could clearly 

be seen as HUSKY drew near. Between June 15 and July 7, 1943, Allied air 

forces conducted fourteen different raids against portions of the German air 

defense network. As a result of these attacks, Colonel McDonald concluded in 

his after-action report, “The enemy’s radar defenses in Sicily were crippled to 

175 
Piercing the Fog 

the extent that the south and southwest sections of the island [from which 

direction the assault forces came] were virtually unprotected.”” 

SIGN continued to play an important role during the invasion. Beginning 

on July 10, Y-Service broadcast reports every half hour on enemy aircraft 

movements to new fields, the arrival of reinforcements, enemy sightings of 

Allied ships, forecasts of likely targets, airfield serviceability, and unit status 

reports. By monitoring enemy fighter frequencies, Y-Service not only provided 

alerts to attacking aircraft but often included the number of attackers, direction 

of attack, and a1tit~de.I~ 

As in most campaigns, the contribution of air intelligence in the invasion 

of Sicily cannot be measured precisely, particularly since the degree of theater 

air superiority the Allies now held would, at the least, have insured against 

defeat. Group Captain Humphreys was essentially correct when he suggested 

after the war that the “extremely close co-operation between Operations and 

Intelligence” certainly contributed to the withdrawal of the Lujhvuffe “at an 

early date, in the hope of living to fight the battle of Italy.”I4 

The Allied decision to continue operations in the Mediterranean after 

HUSKY-to engage in a battle for Italy-represented a significant shift in 

strategy. Although the British had contemplated for some time the strategic 

value of continued activity in this theater, the JCS had opposed such proposals 

as serving only to delay what they considered the decisive European operation: 

a cross-channel invasion into the heart of Fortress Europe. During the spring of 

1943, however, the Chief of Naval Operations had accepted further Mediterranean operation^.'^ In the summer, new intelligence regarding the German 

aircraft industry persuaded a reluctant General Arnold to shift his position as 

well. 

Arnold had opposed any, let alone more, operations in the Mediterranean 

because he feared they would draw resources from the United Kingdom and his 

CB0.I6 Not surprisingly, his RAF counterpart, Air Marshal Charles Portal, had 

been only halfhearted in his support of this issue for the same reasons. 

Increasing evidence, first provided through ULTRA, of German decisions to 

increase production of single-engine fighters (which actually began in March 

1943) led both airmen to reevaluate their positions. Most of these aircraft 

factories lay in southern Germany, out of reach of bombers based in the United 

Kingdom but well within range of airfields in northern Italy. 

In late July 1943, Portal directed his liaison officer in Washington to point 

out to Arnold ULTRA evidence that suggested factories at Regensburg and 

Wiener-Neustadt “are now producing about 55% of all German single-engine 

fighters and further expansion is to be expected. . . .”I7 By early August the RAF 

representative in Washington could report: “Arnold . . . aware of the German 

fighter expansion . . . and of the locality of targets in Eastern Europe out of 

range of bombers based in England. His views are peculiarly like yours. . . . By 

using a bomber force from northern Italy, we will more easily be able to attack 

176 
The European Theater of Operations 

the vital fighter aircraft factories.”’8 By this time, the overthrow of Mussolini, 

on July 24, 1943, had made such an operation almost inevitable. Within days 

of Mussolini’s fall, the Combined Chiefs approved General Eisenhower’s plan 

for the invasion of Italy, Operation AVALANCHE, setfor September 8-9.’’ 

AVALANCHE marked no major break in an already established pattern for 

the employment of air forces and the intelligence necessary to support them. As 

with the step from North Africa to Sicily, the move to the mainland represented 

a continuation of what Allied air forces were already doing: maintaining 

command of the air and interdicting German efforts to resupply and reinforce 

ground combat units in central and southern Italy. One significant difference 

distinguished AVALANCHE from its predecessors: the counterair battle Allied air 

forces had been waging against the Axis for nearly a year was overwhelmingly 

successful. During the week prior to AVALANCHE, NASAF flew fifty missions; 

on only sixteen did it find GAF opposition.” 

Instead of the intense counterairfield operations characteristic of the preHUSKY period, in late August and early September the Allies relied on SIGINT 

(both Y and ULTRA) and photoreconnaissance for guidance on hitting key 

airfields. Following reports of a GAF buildup around Salerno on September 14, 

B-l7s, B-24s, and A-20s flew 700 sorties against fields identified by SIGINT 

and confirmed by photoreconnaissance. Five days later, Y-Service intercepts 

revealed an overcrowding of GAF bombers on fields around Foggia because of 

bad weather. Ninety-one P-38s backed by RAF Wellington bombers attacked 

the next morning, destroying 45 and seriously damaging another 17 enemy 

bombers.” 

While providing positive intelligence by monitoring the buildup of enemy 

air forces at certain bases, SIGINT and photoreconnaissance combined to 

indicate areas that did not need to be attacked. Guided by SIGINT cues, 

photoreconnaissance missions over airfields in Sardinia in late August 

confirmed the evacuation of GAF units. Such knowledge allowed air planners 

to reallocate resources against more useful targets. In addition to the role of 

SIGN in locating and monitoring enemy air units, ULTRA continued to 

indicate the effectiveness of the ongoing interdiction program as it created 

localized shortages that hampered GAF operations.” 

The result of this aggressive and highly effective cooperation between 

operations and intelligence was the demise of the GAF in Italy. After Salerno, 

the German Tenth Army would demonstrate a tenacity on the defensive that 

made a mockery of early Allied expectations for Italy, but they would do so 

with virtually no air support. With the German high command’s decision in 

October to transfer fighter forces to the eastern front (a decision picked up by 

ULTRA), the character of the air war in Italy changed dramati~ally.’~ So great 

was Allied command of the air over Italy that an American special security 

officer visiting Fifteenth Air Force in January 1944 could comment cavalierly 

177 
Piercing the Fog 

that the Lufnyaffe was so weak “[our] raids are naturally planned with little 

regard for the possible opp~sition.”~~ 

With the decline of the Lufnyaffe and the slow advance of the Allied armies 

in Italy up the peninsula, “the story of air operations,” as the official USAAF 

history observed, “tends to assume the aspect of a repetitious and monotonous 

ro~tine.”’~ Inaddition to providing close air support coordinated with ground 

force headquarters, Allied Tactical Air Force fighters and fighter-bombers 

concentrated on gun positions, road and rail bridges, vehicles, and bivouac areas 

along and close to the battle line, while fighter-bombers and medium bombers 

reached out to strike lines of communication and transportation networks. 

For their part, the strategic air force’s support for land operations would 

largely involve attacks against railways in central and northern Italy. Occasionally in the fall of 1943 and more so the following year, American heavy 

bombers participated in the CBO against Germany, primarily through attacks 

on aircraft factories and oil refineries. Although the Balkan Air Force would be 

largely a British organization, by the middle of 1944 American bombers flew 

numerous missions into the Balkans and southeastern Europe in support of the 

Soviet Army. To carry out this last type of operation more effectively, the 

Americans set up a base at Poltava, Russia, to and from which they conducted 

what was known as Operation FRANTIC. Despite the hopes of those who 

initiated it, FRANTIC remained a limited shuttle-bombing effort whose primary 

significance was to demonstrate how difficult it was to deal with the Soviets, 

even as allies. 

In January 1944, now that Carl Spaatz was back in England to oversee both 

Eighth Air Force and Fifteenth Air Force as commander of USSTAF, Arnold 

sent Lt. Gen. Ira C. Eaker to command the MAAF, which had been established 

the previous month, As the theater air arm under the Supreme Allied Commander, Mediterranean Theater of Operations, MAAF, absorbed the old 

Northwest African Strategic, Tactical, and Coastal Air Forces, whose names 

were changed by the substitution of “Mediterranean” for “Northwest African.” 

The commanders of Mediterranean Allied Tactical Air Force (MATAF) and 

Mediterranean Allied Strategic Air Force (MASAF) were Americans who 

doubled as the commanders of the dominant American organization within their 

respective air force. Maj. Gen. John K. (Jack) Cannon commanded MATAF and 

Twelfth Air Force, while Maj. Gen. Nathan Twining served as the commanding 

general of Fifteenth Air Force and of MASAF. Mediterranean Allied Coastal 

Air Force (MACAF) remained under the command of RAF Air Vice Marshal 

Hugh P. Lloyd.26 

The most significant organizational changes occurred within the American 

air forces. Twelfth Air Force gave up its heavy bombers and became a tactical 

air force under MATAF. The recipient of these bomber units as well as others 

subsequently sent to the theater was Fifteenth Air Force. Fifteenth Air Force 

was to strike those targets beyond the reach of U.K.-based forces or those 

178 
The European Theater of Operations 

Lt. Gen. John K. Cannon Col. Karl L. Politka 

shielded by the poor flying weather that prevailed over much of northern and 

central Europe each winter. 

Within MAAF, all operational units retained their national identity and 

received administrative and logistics support through national channels, with 

operational tasks coming from the respective Allied Air Force headquarters. The 

combined elements of HQ MAAF were limited to the operations and intelligence section and the signals section, whose relatively small staffs provided the 

operational ties between MAAF and the subordinate Allied air forces. The latter 

also consisted of small Anglo-American staffs superimposed upon national 

combat and support units.*’ 

The intelligence section of MAAF may have been a combined organization, 

but it had a distinctly British flavor. The chief intelligence officer was British, 

as was the chief signals officer, while the deputy chief intelligence officer was 

the American Hams Hull, whom Eaker had brought with him from Eighth Air 

Force. As of the autumn of 1944, most intelligence officers were British, with 

the exception of the target subsection. Permanently assigned personnel were 

supplemented by individuals temporarily assigned to Italy from the Air Ministry 

Air Intelligence (Enemy Aircraft Production section), the MEW., and the 

American EOU for strategic targeting.28 Primarily a policy and directive 

organization, HQ MAAF intelligence also retained control of elements that 

179 
Piercing the Fog 

spanned the spectrum of air operations including photoreconnaissance and 

photointerpretation, technical intelligence, and interrogation of air POWs. The 

British influence within MAAF intelligence was reflected in the arrangements 

for handling ULTRA. Until the summer of 1944, Hull was the only American 

officer in A-2 cleared for ULTRA. In May 1944, the target subsection at HQ 

MAAF (Adv.) had no American officers indoctrinated to receive and handle 

ULTRA.” 

In general, the MAAF intelligence office was primarily concerned with 

information accumulation and dissemination in the form of digests, appreciations, and special reports, rather than with analyzing intelligence for operational 

decision making, which was primarily done at the next lower level.30 

Given the emphasis on targeting, particularly in relation to the interdiction 

campaign, it is not surprising that photoreconnaissance and photointerpretation 

assumed a high priority at all levels of Mediterranean air commands. An ULTRA 

observer in the summer of 1944 evaluated photoreconnaissance as “probably the 

most valuable source” of intelligence in this theater because it could advise on 

what targets to hit and assess the effectiveness of subsequent strikes. ULTRA not 

only could provide assistance on where to take aerial photographs, but often it 

could “enable one to exercise superior wisdom” in reading photos?l 

The MAPRW, composed of Allied photoreconnaissance units and 

commanded by American Col. Karl Polifka, performed reconnaissance missions 

for all operational commands at the beginning of 1944. Before he departed the 

theater in January 1944, George McDonald, NAAF’s A-2, had also established 

the Mediterranean Photo Interpretation Centre. Under HQ MAAF intelligence, 

the center contained land and air representatives who met regularly to establish 

policy and determine priorities for photoreconnaissance. As an indication of the 

expanded demands imposed by both air and land forces on photoreconnaissance 

and photointerpretation, the Mediterranean Photo Interpretation Centre 

eventually serviced as many as 120 distinct organization^.^' 

The SIGINT section at HQ MAAF had been formed originally as part of the 

MAC in March 1943 to control and direct all air organizations engaged in 

intercepting, processing, and distributing intelligence gathered from enemy lowgrade SIGINT, radar, and navigational aids. American SIGINT units in the 

Mediterranean by spring 1944 included the 849th Company, Signal Intelligence 

Service, U.S. Army, and the 16th Reconnaissance Squadron, USAAF, whose 

mission was to fly the ferret aircraft to locate and intercept enemy radar and 

navigation aids for Allied exploitation. Operational flying units received 

SIGINT directly from a nearby signals unit or from the central MAAF signal 

intelligence section, which directly transmitted low-grade intelligence to a 

specific unit and issued periodic general and special reports.33 

The air headquarters most intimately involved in the overall planning of 

interdiction operations was the MATAF. Because the tactical commands-XI1 

TAC and Desert Air Force-worked directly with their respective land 

180 
The European Theater of Operations 

components (U.S. Fifth Army and British Eighth Army), MATAF’s primary 

operational responsibility on a day-to-day basis was control of the medium 

bomber force which, by the summer of 1944, was almost entirely American. 

Because of this arrangement, the relationship between the intelligence sections 

in MATAF and Twelfth Air Force was highly ~omplementary,’~ with MATAF 

intelligence responsible for providing current (combat) intelligence and target 

selection data. Although the organization was manned primarily by Americans, 

the deputy to the chief intelligence officer was the only American cleared to 

handle ULTRA in the summer of 1944. 

Reflecting the importance of photoreconnaissance in the targeting process 

and the need for responsiveness in the execution and interpretation of tactical 

reconnaissance missions, the 3d Photo Reconnaissance Group (U.S. AAF) and 

the XI1 Air Force Photo Center came under the direct control of the chief 

intelligence officer of the MATAF in the spring of 1944.35 By October 1944, 

Fifteenth Air Force and the MASAF had direct control over the U.S. AAF 15th 

Photo Group, reflecting a decentralization of photoreconnaissance and 

interpretation that mirrored the American rather than the British approach to the 

two functions.’6 

By summer 1944, the 3d Photo Reconnaissance Group had developed 

mosaics of all Italy east of 3.5 degrees longitude, and of practically every 

important railway and road. Coverage included annotated photos of principal 

lines of communication (including marshaling yards and bridges), ports, 

airfields, troop emplacements, gun positions, and ammunition dumps.37 This 

extensive coverage would provide the basic intelligence upon which to plan and 

execute specific missions, augmented by SIGINT and human intelligence 

(HUMINT) reports. This complete target coverage would become increasingly 

important because MATAF would assume responsibility for all interdiction 

operations within Italy by the fall of 1944. 

While MATAF carried out current intelligence and target selection and 

evaluation, Twelfth Air Force A-2 provided support in personnel and 

intelligence materials.*38 The Twelfth Air Force A-2 served also as the deputy 

chief intelligence officer, MATAF, and spent much of his time at headquarters 

there.39 

Through 1944, Twelfth Air Force headquarters had an operational 

intelligence section that focused on analysis and long-term studies and 

published intelligence summaries and special reports. A detailed study by this 

office of the Italian railway system and the alternative road network was 

incorporated into the planning for Operation STRANGLE two months later. In 

*Indicative of how closely MATAF and Twelfth Air Force Intelligence were 

linked, the Twelfth Air Force history contains a section on “HQ, M.A.T.A.F., 

Intelligence Function” and consistently refers to MATAF Intelligence as “Advanced 

Headquarters” or “Advanced Operating Headquarters.” 

181 
Piercing the Fog 

November 1944, Twelfth Air Force intelligence officers interviewed Italian 

railway officials to obtain information on the location of transformer stations 

and the use of ‘electric locomotives on the critical Brenner Pass line into 

Germany. This intelligence was incorporated into MATAF planning for 

Operation BOLERO, the American plan to build up forces in Great Britain for an 

early invasion of the C~ntinent.~’ 

An additional source for tactical air forces was the air section at HQ, Allied 

Armies in Italy (AAI). Using ULTRA, which was exceptionally comprehensive 

in monitoring German Army units, this section compiled lists of the enemy’s 

land OB as well as assessed his supply and communications situations. The air 

section maintained photointerpretation reports; materials on airdromes and radar 

installations; flak reports; and card indexes on roads, railroads, bridges, and 

ports. OSS reports to the air section headquarters as well as to the tactical and 

strategic air forces headquarters proved especially valuable for air operations 

into the Balkans. Based on this intelligence, the HQ AAI air section recommended priorities of target systems and specific targets such as ammunition 

dumps, supply depots, and rail sections:’ 

In contrast to the organization of the tactical air forces, in which the Allied 

air headquarters played the dominant intelligence role, the American Fifteenth 

Air Force headquarters was the focal point for heavy bomber operations. This 

arrangement reflected the overwhelming preponderance of American bomber 

forces in the theater. Because of the commitment to the CBO, knowledge of the 

GAF OB and its capabilities was of greater significance for Fifteenth Air Force 

than it was for the tactical forces. Most intelligence work related to targeting: 

analyzing photographs, collating agent reports, studying the economic value of 

possible objectives, and evaluating bomb damage:’ As a result of the 

Fifteenth’s broad responsibilities, targets for the bombers ranged from bridges 

to marshaling yards, from oil refineries to aircraft factories, and from airfields 

to ammunition dumps. Compounding the normal difficulties of intelligence 

were conditions that made the Mediterranean theater unique. These included the 

number of different countries in the area of responsibility, the mix of Allied 

units involved in air operations, and the variety and number of sources of 

intelligence, which made correlation and analysis particularly challenging. 

Considering that Fifteenth Air Force intelligence received reports and 

information from some sixty-five agencies and staffs just within the theater, 

ULTRA’S greatest use was in the winnowing of information from other sources!3 

The U.S. ULTRA representative at HQ Fifteenth Air Force evaluated his 

source’s primary contribution as one of “negative influence.” Most of the 

information received through ULTRA channels, he observed, was available in 

other sources (e.g., aerial photography, agent reports, or Y intercepts). The 

difference was that ULTRA lacked much of the incorrect information which the 

others contained. What ULTRA provided to the local liaison officer was the 

ability to advise his superiors “what nof to rely on” from these other sources.“I 

182 
The European Theater of Operations 

Despite ULTRA’S key role, in the spring of 1944 no one in the target section of 

Fifteenth Air Force headquarters was cleared to handle it. The special security 

officer, whose primary purpose was to monitor the enemy’s air OB and handle 

ULTRA for the commanding general, frequently assisted headquarters personnel 

with his special wisdom, obtained as a result of his special access to sensitive 

material.4s Later that summer, an indoctrinated officer joined the target section 

with responsibility to coordinate and blend ULTRA into other intelligence. 

General strategic targeting guidance for Fifteenth Air Force was provided 

in directives from the Commanding General, USSTAF. Except for joint Eighth 

Air Force-Fifteenth Air Force operations, each air force commander had 

considerable leeway in selecting specific targets within the overall parameters. 

The heart of the intelligence assessment-planning-operations process at 

Fifteenth Air Force was the daily planning meeting (also called the targeting 

meeting) attended at 11 o’clock each morning by some thirty officers. Earlier 

in the day, the A-2 had met with members of his section to assess developments 

over the past twenty-four hours, review damage resulting from previous strikes, 

and select recommended targets in coordination with weather and operations. 

The A-3 generally chaired the 11 o’clock meeting in the capacity of a deputy 

for operations. After the weather officer outlined the areas available for 

operations, intelligence presented the recommended list of targets and the 

rationale for their selection. The ULTRA officer projected the probable GAF 

reaction under the guise of an enemy OB expert, and the flak officer addressed 

known concentrations of AA batteries. After detailed questions and answers, the 

A-3 made his decision and dictated an operations order. According to the 

Fifteenth Air Force’s history, “In general, .whenever there were reasonable 

prospects of success, the recommendations of A-2 were accepted.”46 

With the German decision to contend the length of the peninsula rather than 

to retreat northward and the Allied decision to focus on western Europe in 1944, 

the war in Italy became a slugging contest marked by skillful German defenses 

and slow Allied advances. Even before the first Allied infantryman came ashore 

at Salerno, airmen had recognized that the primary role of air power in this 

theater-after the GAF’s defeat-would be interdiction. Bombing the lines of 

communication in Italy had been ongoing since the previous spring in support 

first of the North Africa campaign and then of Operation HUSKY. In June 1943, 

NAAF intelligence officers concluded, “Railroad targets as a category assume 

an importance second only to targets affecting the neutralization of the enemy 

air potential.” The officers reasoned that if the Axis rail net was destroyed, “a 

collapse would be ine~itable.”~’ Between June 1943 and the end of the year, 

numerous diversions sidetracked the development of a systematic interdiction 

campaign. In a special intelligence report published the day before Christmas, 

Colonel McDonald provided what would be the thrust of air operations in Italy 

for the rest of the war. McDonald concluded that interdiction efforts to date had 

been relatively ineffective because they had lacked focus and thus a concentra183 
Piercing the Fog 

tion of effort. Limited results underscored the need for “complete, simultaneous 

and continuous interdiction of rail traffic supplying the enemy forces in central 

Italy.” Not content simply to suggest the need for a directed interdiction effort, 

McDonald identified six specific targets south of the La Spezia-Rimini line and 

recommended a schedule for attack based on his intelligence analysis?8 

McDonald called the area south of the La Spezia-Rimini line the key to 

reducing the enemy’s ground capability. The region had relatively few rail lines, 

and these contained vulnerable targets and potential bottlenecks. It was located 

at just the right distance from the combat zone to force the enemy to use 

military trucks, thereby reducing his logistic flow and forcing an increased 

consumption of valuable fuel. The region’s relatively short distance from 

American air bases would allow the use of medium as well as heavy bombers 

for interdiction. Thus, McDonald concluded, this region should be the 

overriding objective of Allied interdiction efforts even if it meant neglecting 

other communication systems farther north in the Po Valley and across the Alps. 

The creation of MAAF and the reassignment of Spaatz and McDonald to 

England in January 1944 did not alter the direction McDonald’s paper had laid 

out. Operation STRANGLE, initiated in mid-March 1944, followed his recommendations closely. Subsequent interdiction campaigns, while gradually 

shifting ever northward, adhered to the same principles. Precisely how to 

conduct this interdiction campaign would prove contentious. It was also one in 

which intelligence-in the form of recommendations of methods and of 

postattack analysis leading to modifications of operational techniques-would 

play an important role. 

The question of how best to attack the enemy’s transportation network in 

Italy centered on whether it was more effective to concentrate on saturation 

bombing of marshaling yards or to focus more precise attacks on bottlenecks 

such as bridges and viaducts. The central figure in this debate was British 

professor Solly Zuckerman, a special advisor to Air Marshal Tedder who had 

acquired a reputation as a bombing genius because of somewhat fortuitous 

circumstances surrounding the Italian surrender of the island of Pantelleria in 

June 1943. In December 1943, Zuckerman prepared a paper advocating 

marshaling yards as the best targets within the Italian railway system. The basis 

for this position was his analysis of air operations in Si~ily.4~ Shortly after he 

submitted this report, Zuckerman returned with Tedder to England, where the 

air marshal became Deputy Supreme Allied Commander for Operation 

OVERLORD. Zuckerman’s ideas lingered. 

In February 1944, Brig. Gen. Lauris Norstad, Eaker’s director of operations 

at MAAF, forwarded to the deputy air commander-in-chief intelligence reports 

indicating that the Germans were getting some 85 percent of their supplies by 

rail. Citing the Zuckerman paper, Norstad pointed out that MAAF operations 

research studies concurred that bridges were not economical targets and 

supported Zuckerman’s thesis that rail centers (i.e., marshaling yards) were 

184 
GERMANY 

- Railroads 

185 
The aerial interdiction campaign known as 

Operation STRANGLE was waged the length of the 

Italian boot ahead of the slogging ground war. 

This railroad bridge (above) on the outskirts of 

Bologna became inoperative after being bombed. 

Four spans are down, with two more sagging. Lest 

the enemy air force be forgotten, a stick of bombs 

cratered the runway at Pisa. Completely destroyed 

was this railroad viaduct at Arezzo, where only a 

few stubs of supports remain. 

186 
The European Theater of Operations 

Lt. Gen. Earle E. Partridge 

more appropriate.” General Norstad was not listening to his intelligence 

analysts. Against the Zuckerman thesis were ranged not only Norstad’s own 

target section at HQ MAAF but also the intelligence sections of Twelfth Air 

ForceMATAF and of AFHQ. One month before Norstad sent his letter, a 

Twelfth Air Force A-2 study of operations since the Sicily campaign (which it 

considered a special situation) had concluded, “Marshalling yards must now be 

conceded to be poor targets for the ends sought in the Italian Theater of 

 operation^."^' In early February adetailed OSS report on air operations between 

October and December 1943 reinforced the value of attacks on bridges: “The 

efficiency of bridge attacks in creating total blockage is . . . six to seven times 

greater than that of yard attacks.”’’ 

Nor were Allied assessments the only source for such conclusions. In midNovember, a captured member of the German General Staff in Italy stated 

during interrogation, “Bombing of communications in northern ITALY has had 

little effect on the supply situation.” According to the report on this interrogation, except for two specific key yards “source does NOT believe that rail traffic 

in ITALY could be paralyzed by the bombing of selected marshalling yards” 

since trains were formed up in Germany and sent directly to Tenth Army units, 

without the need to be reformed or marshaled in Italy. Even after heavy attacks 

at rail centers, one or two military lines were generally reopened quite rapidly. 

187 
Piercing the Fog 

In place of marshaling yards, the captured officer listed six targets (four bridges, 

one rail junction, and one main station) for attack.*53 

The interdiction principles McDonald had suggested in December 1943 

were employed in a very limited geographical area in January and February 

1944 in support of the Allied landing at Anzio. They were incorporated into a 

broader interdiction program with the initiation of Operation STRANGLE in

March 1944. The extent of the employment of all elements of MAAF against 

German lines of communication were reflected in assessments of this network 

by the intelligence sections of each of the major Allied air headquarters as well 

as by the major operational units. Even before these plans, senior airmen had 

suggested what intelligence had to provide to plan and execute an effective 

interdiction campaign. As early as October 1943, Brig. Gen. Earle Partridge, 

Chief of Staff, XI1 Bomber Command, “urgently recommended” the accumulation of intelligence on the German supply situation in Italy as it related to rail 

facilities. He suggested such questions as Where did military traffic originate? 

What were the principal routes by which enemy supplies and reinforcements 

flowed into central Italy? and Where were the major railheads and depots?54 

In response, HQ Twelfth Air Force A-2 prepared a “Suggested Plan for 

Making Impossible the Military Utilization of Italian Railways by the Enemy” 

dated January 15, 1944.55 More limited analyses of lines of communication 

vulnerabilities flowed from HQ MAAF in weekly rail traffic assessments and 

from the 42d Wing (U.S. AAF) intelligence section.56 In the preoperation 

planning for STRANGLE, the principal sources of information were photoreconnaissance, studies of the Italian railway system, and analyses of previous 

missions conducted against identified portions of the rail and road nets. These 

included Inter-Service Topographical Department reports on segments of the 

Italian railway, Photoreconnaissance Centre interpretation reports, conferences 

with officials of the Italian State Railway, economic analyses by EOU, and 

operational mission ~ummaries.5~ 

Despite the array of opposition, the initial STRANGLE directive adhered to 

the priority of marshaling yards over bridges. As the campaign progressed, the 

weight of assessed evidence, as reflected in periodic analyses compiled by 

intelligence and operations staffs, fell more and more on the side of the bridge 

theory.58 By April 1, Eaker had concluded that bridges and viaducts had been 

found to be more useful targets than marshaling yards because they were more 

difficult to repair and presented more effective obstacles to movement when 

By the last stages of STRANGLE, an OSS study concluded, “Even very 

effective attack on enemy supply lines will not produce results until the issue 

Air assault by itself could not achieve complete interdiction. 

*It seems likely Colonel McDonald had seen the results of this interrogation in 

December, since the prisoner’s recommendations for an interdiction campaign in 

central Italy were mirrored in McDonald’s special report of December 24, 1943. 

188 
The European Theater of Operations 

is forced by assault.” While air interdiction could not totally cut off lines of 

communication, the disruption caused by forcing the enemy to use improvised 

methods for moving his supplies appeared to put him in the position of being 

unable to respond adequately to increased pressures on the ground. The OSS 

report concluded: “Until the capacity of the enemy to supply and reinforce his 

troops in Italy has been tested . . . it can only be said that a vulnerability of 

unknown intensity has been established. . . .’760 

Although Operation DIADEM-amajor Allied land offensive launched May 

1 1, 1944-succeeded in reaching Rome on June 2, the Germans were able to 

establish yet another defensive position across the peninsula. The process of air 

interdiction and slow, methodical land operations continued in Italy until the 

last weeks of the war. The pattern of air intelligence evidenced in STRANGLE 

remained largely unchanged. Intelligence determined the key nodes in the 

transportation networks within and leading into Italy, estimated the impact of 

their destruction or damage, and evaluated the effectiveness of operations 

conducted against them. 

Photoreconnaissance remained the backbone of target folders and the 

primary basis for the initial selection of targets and for reattacks. Agent reports 

continued to suggest the frequency of rail and road movement and thus guided 

the selection of the most significant bottlenecks. ULTRA provided some 

guidance for specific attacks, primarily through indications of shortages or 

difficulties in getting supplies through. Given the nature of the numerous small 

targets that were the objectives of Twelfth Air ForceNATAF, many of these 

attacks were never reported through ULTRA channels. According to one ULTRAindoctrinated observer, the real role of ULTRA lay at the policy rather than the 

operating level: ULTRA’S most important contribution was in providing Allied 

commanders with the sense of how well air interdiction was accomplishing the 

task of cutting the enemy’s supply lines.6’ 

The organization and roles of air intelligence in the Mediterranean theater 

reflected both the structure of air commands in that theater and the evolving 

emphasis of air operations. The Allies made greater use of combined air 

commands in North Africa and Italy than they did when operating from the 

United Kingdom or in western Europe after June 1944. Air intelligence 

reflected this. The initial reliance on British experience continued to be evident 

in the composition of intelligence sections within Allied air headquarters; 

however, the growing preponderance of American forces made itself felt in 

several ways, such as in the prominence of Fifteenth Air Force over MASAF 

and in the number of American intelligence officers assigned to targeting 

sections in Allied air commands. At the tactical level, Twelfth Air Force not 

only remained responsible for the planning and conduct of operations by its 

subordinate units, but its intelligence staff was increasingly integrated with that 

of MATAF. 

189 
Piercing the Fog 

Air intelligence during operations in Sicily and Italy reflected experience 

in the acquisition and dissemination of intelligence gained during the campaign 

for North Africa. Operations from July 1943 onward demonstrated an 

integration of intelligence and a breadth of dissemination far superior to 

activities during TORCH and in the early months of 1943. In contrast to 

observations on the mishandling of air intelligence in North Africa, by the 

spring of 1944 observers reported smoothly functioning intelligence sections 

ranging from single individuals to elaborate organizations akin to small air 

ministries. 

With the demise of the GAF in Italy, air intelligence focused almost 

entirely on interdiction and close air support. The major exception was the 

strategic role of the Fifteenth Air Force, much of whose intelligence came from 

BP and USSTAF, although A-2 did develop independent sources and conducted 

analyses based on their own requirements and perceptions. Intelligence for 

ground support missions continued to come from multiple sources. Twelfth Air 

Force’s direct support for Fifth Army relied heavily on ground force information and photoreconnaissance in addition to ULTRA, which was extremely 

complete regarding the condition and location of the German Army in Italy. 

Interdiction missions were based on an ever-growing store of photographic 

intelligence (both for mission planning and poststrike analysis), Army and Air 

Force SIGINT, and ground observations (agent reports). ULTRA provided an 

appreciation of the overall effectiveness of the interdiction campaign and thus 

the impetus to continue the attacks. 

Perhaps the most striking aspect of air intelligence and air operations in 

Italy was their limited impact. Despite the increasing sophistication and sheer 

size of intelligence organizations and their smooth functioning, air power was 

not in itself sufficient to secure victory in what was essentially a land war. Air 

intelligence may have been an integral part of the intelligence planning-operations process, but the overriding fact was that contemporary air 

power by itself could not win the dogged, dug-in type of war the enemy fought 

in Italy after the fall of 1943. 

Strategic Air Operations in Europe: 

Spring 1943 to Spring 1944 

The Casablanca Directive for Anglo-American strategic air operations in 

Europe had called for a complete reconsideration of the employment of Allied 

strategic air power. The report the COA submitted to Arnold on March 8,1943, 

served as the catalyst for this reconsideration and the subsequent broad basis for 

the CBO. General Arnold instructed General Eaker, then commanding the 

Eighth Air Force, to evaluate the report and, modifying it as necessary, to 

develop aplan for implementing a strategic air campaign to so weaken Germany 

190 
The European Theater of Operations 

that an invasion of Europe would become possible. Eaker appointed a board of 

Eighth Air Force and RAF officers chaired by Brig. Gen. Haywood S. Hansell, 

Jr., now Commander, 1st Bombardment Wing, to execute this task.62 In addition 

to Hansell, the board included Brig. Gen. Frederick L. Anderson (Commander, 

4th Bombardment Wing), Air Commodore Sidney Bufton (Air Ministry 

Director of Bomber Operations), Col. Charles Cabell (Arnold’s special assistant 

who had carried the report to England), Col. Richard Hughes (Eighth Air Force 

Chief of Plans and Targeting), two other Americans, and a British wing 

~ornmander.~~ 

The result of this group’s deliberations, officially designated “The 

Combined Bomber Offensive from the United Kingdom” but commonly 

referred to as the Eaker Plan, was an amalgam of previous recommendations 

and plans modified by the perspective gained from operational exposure. Well 

aware of the strength of the Lujhuffe as an obstacle to any strategic bombing 

campaign, the planners inserted German fighter strength as an intermediate 

objective to be attacked previous to or simultaneously with operations against 

the primary objectives: i.e., German submarine yards and operating bases, the 

remainder of the German aircraft industry, ball-bearing plants, and oil fields 

(contingent upon the ability to attack the refineries at Ploesti, Romania). As 

secondary objectives, chosen because their locations outside Germany made 

them suitable for weather alternates and as break-in missions for new bomber 

crews, the board selected tire and rubber production facilities.@ On the basis of 

these priorities, the experience gained since the fall of 1942, and the assumption 

(subsequently proved erroneous) that American and British bomber forces 

would conduct a complementary and coordinated offensive, Eaker’s board 

identified seventy-six specific targets and laid out a program for force 

development and employment from April 1943 to the invasion of western 

Europe, which it projected for May 1944. 

The influence of the COA report on the Eaker board’s recommendations, 

and thus on Eighth Air Force operations, reflected not so much the force of its 

logic as it reflected two other factors: the predisposition of board members to 

certain COA recommendations and, more subtly but equally important, 

perceptions of the COA’s role. The recommendation to make ball bearings a 

priority target, for example, was readily accepted because both British and 

American intelligence analysts and planners in England had themselves 

identified this industry as a critical component system?’ On two other COA 

recommendations, transportation and electric power systems, opinion appears 

to have differed. For at least one individual, Haywood Hansell, it was the 

committee’s function rather than its arguments that was persuasive; for Hansell, 

the low priority the COA accorded these systems had “come as a shock.” He 

acceded to this prioritization because he was “reluctant . . . to challenge the 

intelligence structure which bore such wide and vital support.” Open disagreement, he feared, would undermine the confidence General Arnold was 

191 
Piercing the Fog 

attempting to create in the “scientific” objectivity of the strategic bombing 

process.66 He was willing to accept recommendations with which he did not 

fully agree in order to support the soundness of the selection method. 

The inclusion of oil as a hedged priority target contingent on Ploesti raids 

reflected the current assessment of the importance of oil (which was correct) 

and the estimated critical levels of German reserves (which were still not nearly 

so severe as the Allies thought). The Ploesti consideration was a reminder the 

Allies were as yet incapable of seriously affecting the enemy’s oil industry from 

bases in the United Kingdom. The recognition of Ploesti’s crucial position 

within the German oil industry would prompt not only the spectacular raid by 

American B-24s from North Africa in August 1943, but also what eventually 

would almost amount to a campaign in itself against this complex, beginning in 

late 1943. 

One aspect of strategic air operations receiving unanimous agreement was 

the need to destroy the GAF as quickly as possible. This operational goal and 

others that followed greatly influenced the shape and the substance of air 

intelligence. In their letter transmitting the Eaker Plan to the CCS, the JCS 

noted, “If the growth of the German fighter strength is not arrested quickly, it 

may become literally impossible to carry out the destruction planned and thus 

to create the conditions necessary for ultimate decisive action by our combined 

forces on the C~ntinent.”~’ According to the American chiefs, intelligence 

indicated that while German bomber strength over the past nine months had 

declined from 1,760 to 1,450, fighters had increased from 1,690 to 1,7 10, in 

spite of heavy losses in Russia and North Africa. Production over the past four 

months had risen from 720 to 810 fighters per month, and the GAF had 

increased its fighter strength by 44 percent since December 1941. At Casablanca, Arnold’s background book had contained an intelligence assessment 

that “no increase in I.E. [the effective unit] strength [of the GAF] is to be 

expected.”68 Now, just four months later, the JCS noted that the enemy was 

producing on average 108 fighters beyond his monthly losses. If this trend 

continued, the Allies might face a total fighter force numbering 3,000 by spring 

1944. 

In addition to numerical growth, Allied intelligence had detected a 

significant redisposition of the enemy fighter force. The number of fighters 

opposing Allied bombers flying from England had doubled (from 420 to 830) 

in the past 18 months. The impact, the Americans pointed out, was being felt 

not just in the number of casualties taken by the daylight bomber force, but 

“especially in terms of reduced tactical effectiveness.” The bombs simply were 

not hitting the target often enough. While these figures were not entirely 

accurate, they represented the parameters within which Allied leaders made 

their decisions. Their overall significance was obvious enough for the 

Combined Chiefs to declare, “German fighter strength must be considered as an 

Intermediate objective second to none in prior it^."^^ 

192 
193 
Piercing the Fog 

The Combined Chiefs approved the CBO, designated “Operation 

POINTBLANK,” on May 18,1943, and appointed the Chief of Air Staff, RAF, as 

their executive agent to direct both British and American bomber forces. 

Although POINTBLANK was not directed solely against the GAF and related 

industries, these would be the primary objective for Eighth Air Force over the 

next year. Intelligence analyses of the enemy had illuminated the primary 

objectives, yet weather, operational limitations, and diversions from this 

objective restricted what the AAF could accomplish. Between July and October 

1943, Eighth Air Force mounted only seven effective strikes against the German 

aircraft industry and a handful more against closely related industries such as 

ball bearings. 

To coordinate the effort against the Lufhvuffe, the Allies established the 

Jockey Committee in June 1943. Initially chaired by the RAF Director of 

Intelligence and later by the senior American intelligence officer assigned to the 

Air Ministry, Col. Kingman Douglass, this committee included officers from 

RAF Director of Bomber Operations and Director of Intelligence; Americans 

assigned to the Air Ministry; and representatives of the operational commands, 

beginning with VIII Bomber Command and RAF Bomber Command and 

expanding eventually to include intelligence and operations officers from 

Eighth Air Force, USSTAF, Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force 

(SHAEF), Fifteenth Air Force, and Ninth Air Force.70 

The purpose of the Jockey Committee was to monitor via intelligence 

analyses the German aircraft industry and GAF operations and to recommend 

appropriate targets within the framework of the POINTBLANK directive. The 

group blended operational and intelligence perspectives and concerns by 

combining representatives of the operational commands with specialists who 

analyzed the enemy’s aircraft industry. Between June 1943 and April 1945 the 

committee met every Tuesday morning to review the past week’s attacks and 

the latest intelligence from all sources regarding new targets, GAF supply 

problems, training, and tactical developments and trends.’l Based on this 

review, the committee distributed target schedules on the German aircraft 

industry (broken out by component, engine, and airframe assembly facilities), 

towns associated with this industry (for RAF Bomber Command), the ballbearing industry, repair facilities, and enemy airfields in the occupied territories 

and in Germany. The original objective had been to limit each list to 30 targets. 

By September 1944, each contained up to 100 targets as the enemy expanded 

his force and dispersed his installations and the Allied bomber forces expanded 

and achieved the capability to strike deeper into Germany.72 

As with all intelligence organizations, the Jockey Committee was to 

provide information upon which commanders could make the most appropriate 

operational decisions. The schedules the committee provided were only one 

important factor. In December 1944, Maj. Gen. Frederick Anderson, Deputy for 

Operations, USSTAF, reminded his Eighth Air Force commander, Maj. Gen. 

194 
The European Theater of Operations 

James Doolittle, “These ‘JOCKEYS’ are not adirective. They are issued weekly 

by the Air Ministry for information only . . .” to give commanders an idea of 

“Air Ministry opinion on the relative importance of G.A.F. targets.”73 Through 

the summer of 1943 the gap between what intelligence indicated should be done 

and the operational limitations that restricted what was possibleremained broad. 

Three months before the POWTBLANK directive, Colonel Hughes had advised 

Eaker, “Our primary target should be the German Fighter Force in the air, and 

on the ground, and the industry which supports it.”74 To effectively attack 

enemy fighters required an offensive capability that did not exist; Eighth Air 

Force could reach only 43 percent of the fighter assembly plants and 25 percent 

of the fighter-engine production plants.75 

While British and American economic analysts correctly recommended 

fighter engines as the key target in the aircraft industry, intelligence information 

regarding the location of engine factories was vaguer than that which indicated 

aircraft assembly plants. Analysts believed that the German authorities had 

concentrated engine factories around Berlin and Vienna, thus putting them out 

of range of Great Britain-based forces. Intelligence officers estimated some 60 

percent of single-engine fighter airframe production was concentrated in eight 

plants located within striking distance of East Anglia?6 The critical need to gain 

air superiority also dictated an emphasis on airframe assembly rather than on 

engines because analysts believed effective strikes against this subsystem would 

hurt the GAF’s combat effectiveness within a month, as opposed to a two- to 

three-month lag in the case of engines.77 

Lacking fighter escort, long-range capability, and experienced crews in the 

summer of 1943, Eaker sent his force primarily against targets in occupied 

Europe rather than over Germany. The Eighth Air Force’s heavy bombers flew 

only nine effective missions into Germany in June and July, four of which had 

as primary targets submarine yards and shipyards and port areas. Despite these 

rather meager statistics, Eaker could take heart in the fact that his air force hit 

targets in Germany on five of the last seven days of July, including major 

assaults on aircraft assembly concentrations?8 

One of the disturbing trends intelligence monitored in the summer of 1943 

was the change in location of German aircraft production, especially fighters. 

In mid-August, McDonald received a report from the OSS research and analysis 

branch warning him that over the past two years aircraft production “has shifted 

markedly eastward.” Only 12 percent of single-engine fighter production was 

now occurring within 500 miles of London. The enemy was now building 80 

percent of his air force within 400 miles of northern Italy. The Allies could 

expect this trend to continue, since the potential benefits of the manufacturing 

layout to the Axis outweighed the temporary disruption^?^ 

195 
196 
The Combined Bomber Offensive began in spring 1943. By August this Eighth Air 

Force briefing chart shows the Lujmafle pulling back fighter units from the hard-pressed 

Russian and Italian fronts to defend the Fatherland. From an airman’s standpoint, the 

first target set was the enemy’s air power. Airfields were bombed-Avord, France 

(center lef), a fighter-bomber base (lower lef), and the airfield at Otopeni, Italy. So 

effective were these raids that this photo in May 1945 (above) shows a collection of 

wrecked German aircraft stretching almost to the horizon. The other prong of the attack 

on the Lfmaffe centered on aircraft production. Below, the aircraft engine factory at 

Strasbourg was flattened. The Fieseler plant near Kassel produced parts for FW 190s 

until it was destroyed. The huge Fallersleben Works (bottom lef) made wings for Ju 88s 

until it was damaged. And there were scores of bomb hits on the Focke Wulf assembly 

plant at Hanover. 

197 
I’ I 

198 
199 
200 
The European Theater of Operations 

Coincidentally, on the day this report was released, American bombers 

struck major targets identified in it. On July 14, 1943, Eaker had written to 

Spaatz and Brereton (Ninth Air Force commander in North Africa) proposing 

a joint attack by both Eighth and Ninth Air Forces against German aircraft 

factories in southern Germany. Referring to an Air Ministry intelligence report 

passed to him by Portal, Eaker noted Messerschmitt factories in this area were 

producing 48 percent of the monthly German single-engine fighters (1 60 Bf 

109s per month at Wiener Neustadt and 170 at Regensburg). Eaker believed that 

a successful double strike would have “a decisive effect on German single 

engine fighter production” and would result in a “drastic strategic redistribution” of Lufiaffe defenses at the expense of capabilities on either the 

Mediterranean or eastern fronts. Finally, the Eighth Air Force commander 

noted, RAF A.I.3 studies of the target factories, their defenses, and vulnerabilities reported both locations “virtually undefended.”*’ Eaker’s suggested joint 

attack found favor, but as events transpired, the two forces did not conduct their 

attacks on the same day. Ninth Air Force struck Wiener Neustadt on 13 August. 

Four days later nearly 125 B-17s from England hit the Messerschmitt factory 

at Regensburg and flew on to land in North Africa, while some 200 more 

attacked the ball-bearing factories at Schweinfurt. The decision to combine 

these targets stemmed from operational considerations, but the reasons for 

including ball-bearing factories at all was based on considerable intelligence 

analysis of German aircraft production. 

The COA report of March 1943 had placed ball bearings immediately 

below fighter production as a strategic air target system. Planners and 

intelligence analysts in the United Kingdom had come to the same conclusion. 

Assessing possible targets within the total German aircraft production system, 

Eaker’ s chief of plans, Colonel Hughes, had advised the commanding general 

in early March, “A curtailment of bearing production would seriously interrupt 

the output of aircraft.”” According to an EOU analysis, “The European ballbearing industry probably represents the optimum target for an attack against 

[German] war production as a whole.”” Intelligence also estimated that 73 

percent of the enemy’s ball bearings came from six easily identified and 

relatively vulnerable areas, with 42 percent of the total produced at the 

Schweinfurt fa~tories.’~ Because of the nature of the machine tools required for 

this process, the EOU analysts argued, recuperation and repair of factories 

would take a long time. The impact of these delays would be enhanced because 

of the supposedly limited stocks in reser~e.8~ 

Despite serious losses in the August raids that called into question the 

intelligence pronouncement of virtually defenseless targets, two months later 

Eaker sent the heavy bombers back to Schweinfurt on what would be the 

costliest battle for the American strategic bombing forces during the war.* This 

*On August 17, Eaker dispatched 367 B-17s and lost 60, or 16 percent, of the 

201 
Piercing the Fog 

October 14th attack has been considered by many the nadir of the American 

strategic bombing campaign against Germany. Looking back in May 1945, the 

staff of the Eighth Air Force directorate of intelligence concluded, “On 14 

October 1943, the Eighth temporarily lost air superiority in the major target 

areas of Germany.”” Four years later the official Air Force history of the war 

concurred in almost the same words.86 Senior leaders at the time certainly did 

not see it that way. In a cable to Arnold the day after the battle, Eaker admitted 

losses had been heavy, but he said, “there is no discouragement here. We are 

convinced that when the totals are drawn yesterday’s losses will be far 

outweighed by the value of the enemy material destroyed.” As to the day being 

a defeat in the air, Eaker argued that the mission “does not represent disaster. 

It does indicate that the air battle has reached its climax. . . . We must continue 

the battle with unrelenting fury.”” Eaker was not alone in his assessment. 

Arnold cabled back his belief the GAF had been backed into a corner. George 

Marshall, a man not given to easy praise, wired Eaker, “I like the tone of your 

message. No great battle is won without heavy fighting and inevitable 

Eaker and the other senior leaders based their optimism on a variety of 

intelligence indicators. The first-strike analysis of photographs taken during the 

attack led the Eighth Air Force staff to conclude that 75 percent of the target had 

been destroyed.” Eaker wrote another letter to Arnold declaring that unless the 

photographs “are very deceiving, we shall find the three ballbearing factories 

at Schweinfurt are out of business for a long, long time.’’w The initial CIU 

analysis, also based on strike photos, noted that the brunt of the attack “fell 

solidly on the target area,” with at least 100 hits in the main complex. Smoke 

and fires, however, prevented analysts from making overall damage assessments.” Following a reconnaissance flight over the target area five days after 

the attack, a second CIU report identified “very heavy and concentrated 

damage” within all three factories and assorted other buildings, as well as heavy 

damage to adjacent marshaling yards.” More conservative than the American 

analysts, who believed overall German ball-bearing production had been cut by 

40 percent, a JIC report concluded the attacks on Schweinfurt would probably 

result in a 15 to 20 percent decline in supplies over the next six month^.'^ 

The Allied failure to reattack quickly enough (in this case, the result of a 

long stretch of bad weather, overly optimistic assessments of damage, and 

operational limitations) allowed the Germans to recover. The Allies had 

misinterpreted the reserves available to the Germans and their ability to draw 

upon alternative sources in Sweden and Switzerland. Despite the massive 

external damage, only some 10 percent of the critical machine tools within were 

severely damaged. The survival of the enemy’s equipment and the respite 

force. On October 14, Eighth Air Force lost another 60 bombers with 128 others 

damaged from an initial force of 320. Some 640 crewmen were killed, seriously 

wounded, or missing. 

202 
The European Theater of Operations 

before the Allies’ next attack allowed the Germans to disperse their ball-bearing 

industry to the extent they would not suffer severe shortages until the last, 

collapsing weeks of the war.y4 

While American air leaders may have believed, as Eaker wrote to Arnold 

in October, “We now have our teeth in the Hun Air Force’s neck,” at least those 

stationed in England were well aware the enemy still had plenty of bite of his 

In seven days in October, Eighth Air Force lost 160 bombers. While the 

GAF suffered as well, it clearly had greater strength and resiliency than past 

estimates had credited to it. The very day of the Schweinfurt battle Arnold had 

written to Eaker suggesting the GAF was on the verge of collapse. Despite his 

optimistic assertions of the 15th, Eaker responded to this misperception by 

declaring there were “no definite indications” of an imminent collapse of the 

GAF, although there was evidence of “severe strain and some signs of eventual 

collapse.”’6 A month later McDonald felt compelled to write to Maj. Gen. 

Clayton Bissell, the AAF’s A-2, to correct what McDonald sensed to be 

Washington’s misguided belief the Lufiufe was about to “crack up.” The 

GAF’s situation, he wrote, “is undoubtedly serious, but cannot at the moment 

be said to be disastro~s.”~’ McDonald’s comments may well have been inspired 

by a report issued by Bissell’s office on October 18 declaring boldly that “aerial 

supremacy on a continental scale had been 

What made the assessment of German air strength difficult was the 

incomplete nature of intelligence as well as the conflicting interpretations made 

of it. The most useful source for strategic air intelligence in this period, 

photoreconnaissance and photointerpretation, rarely yielded complete 

information. Despite the best efforts of the interpreters, there remained a 

tendency to overestimate the actual impact of damage on a target’s productive 

capability, even when evaluations of structural damage were correct. Efforts to 

determine production levels through alternative means such as analysis of serial 

numbers, by estimating production by plant size, and agent reports became 

increasingly difficult with the dispersal of production facilities from the prewar 

locations.” In this area, ULTRA could play only a limited role, since German 

aircraft and associated production information was rarely passed through the 

military channels from which BP garnered most of its intercepts.’00 

Complaints by two individuals intimately involved in the intelligence 

targeting process underscored the difficulties the dispersal of the German 

fighter-aircraft industry presented to the bomber commanders. In an after-action 

report on Operation ARGUMENT prepared early in 1944, both Colonel Hughes, 

chief targeteer for Eighth Air Force and then for USSTAF, and the Air Ministry 

Director of Intelligence (Research) commented on “the decline in the quality of 

intelligence on German fighter production since the middle part of 1943.” 

Hughes admitted that information on the Focke-Wulf plants in eastern Germany 

and Poland prior to Big Week had been “most tentative.””’ 

203 
Piercing the Fog 

Compounding the problem was the fact that British Air Ministry Intelligence, upon which Eighth Air Force and then USSTAF largely depended, still 

could not always agree among its own divisions on how to interpret data that 

came to them. While ULTRA provided reliable figures on unit strengths, the 

Allies had no equally reliable method for comparing these figures with actual 

or planned production. It was important to know the strength of the enemy, but 

it was equally necessary to reduce that strength by a combination of attrition 

and destruction of production facilities. The American position on this issue was 

succinctly summarized by McDonald in a letter to HQ AAF in July 1944: “Our 

only concern is to find out how much of the German Air Force is left to fight 

and where we can bomb the production that sustains it.” Then, echoing similar 

comments by Hughes, he expressed the opinion of USSTAF that “there is 

actually more production than they [Air Ministry] have yet been able to find.”’” 

What ULTRA did provide was extremely accurate data on unit strength, on 

the German decision to reduce their bomber forces in favor of fighters, and on 

the enemy’s efforts to strengthen their home air defenses at the expense of 

Lufhvuffe operations in the Mediterranean region and in the USSR. By 

November 1943, Allied intelligence counted some 1,700 single-engine fighters 

confronting them in western Europe, including the German homeland. 

Considering the August 1943 monthly production rate of 800, the Lufhvuffe 

could replace itself every two months. By returning to the July production rate 

of 1,050, it could lose fighters at October’s rate and still increase its force.Io3 

This calculation reinforced the necessity to continue to attack production rather 

than to simply seek attrition through aerial combat. The most forceful evidence 

that the GAF would rebuild, given the opportunity, came not from SIGINT but 

from HUMINT. In September 1943, the former Italian representative with the 

German Ministry of Aircraft Production informed the Allies in great detail of 

German efforts to increase fighter production. Through the implementation of 

assembly lines, their goal was to go from the 500 fighters produced in January 

1943 to 2,000 a month by late 1944 and to 3,000 monthly by April 1945.’04 In 

light of the costs the GAF had imposed on the heavy bombers with a production 

rate of 800-1,000 per month in 1943, such figures must have been truly 

frightening. 

In the last weekof 1943, McDonald’s intelligence staff in the newly formed 

MAAF summarized Allied interpretations of the Lufhvuffe’s current status and 

what Allied heavy bombers might face in the coming year. According to this 

analysis, the air offensive against the German fighter industry had reached a 

critical phase. The attacks in July, August, and October had, McDonald’s staff 

believed, “seriously upset” German aircraft production. The difference between 

the planned monthly output for November of 1,000 and the estimated actual 

production of 650, or a total of some 1,500 fighters not produced over a fourmonth period, demonstrated this. Equally significant, these attacks had 

“thoroughly disrupted” the enemy’s intended program of expansion. Although 

204 
The European Theater of Operations 

the enemy was “staggering from the blows received to date,” it would recover 

if the Allies failed to pursue the offensive relentlessly. Precise estimates were 

difficult to project since “less is known in detail about current FW 190 

production due to . . . plant movements and the lack of photo coverage.” 

Without continued pressure, the report concluded, the enemy would probably 

be producing 900 fighters per month by February 1944. The cushion of excess 

capacity and new machinery that had given the enemy “remarkable powers of 

recuperation” had been badly damaged; future recovery would be inevitably 

slower. “It appears well within the capabilities of Allied air power to deliver a 

fatal blow to the German fighter force through additional attacks on the aircraft 

ind~stry.””~ 

McDonald soon had the opportunity to argue this case closer to the real 

centers of power than he had in Tunisia. In January 1944 he accompanied 

General Spaatz to the United Kingdom where he became Director of Intelligence, USSTAF. This resulted from American airmen’s efforts to get a single 

air commander responsible for all American strategic air forces in the European 

and Mediterranean theaters. The arrangement gave Spaatz operational direction 

over the Eighth and Fifteenth Air Forces and administrative control over the 

Eighth and Ninth. The Ninth had just moved to England to become a tactical 

force in support of the approaching Operation OVERLORD. 

In the USSTAF, the director of intelligence came under the deputy 

commanding general for operations, as did the directors of plans, operations, 

and weather services. Targeting (still headed by Colonel Hughes) was now part 

of the directorate of intelligence rather than of plans. Key personnel adjustments 

that attended this reorganization include General Anderson’s appointment as 

Deputy Commanding General for Operations. Maj. Gen. James Doolittle 

became Commanding General, Eighth Air Force, replacing Eaker, the new 

Commanding General, MAAF. USSTAF was established effective January I, 

1 944.*’06 

That Spaatz intended to continue the effort against the German fighter force 

and its production sources was clear from his initial directives. On January 11, 

1944, he advised the commanders of Eighth and Fifteenth Air Forces that the 

priorities of his strategic air forces would be, in rank order, the destruction of 

fighter airframe and component factories, German fighters “in the air and on the 

ground,” and the ball-bearing industry.L07 In the United Kingdom, planning for 

operations against the GAF and its supporting industries had never stopped. By 

mid-November, an Anglo-American committee coordinating mission planning 

had identified seven priority targets for attack at the earliest moment. All but 

one involved aircraft production.’08 By November 23, VIII Bomber Command 

in A-2 had prepared a list of nine priority targets (each with an alternate) within 

the framework of a major counterair campaign, now code named Operation 

~ ~~~~ 

*After a brief period as USSAFE, the official abbreviation became USSTAJ?. 

205 
Piercing the Fog 

ARGUMENT. The list consisted of twelve different target complexes for heavy 

bombers flying from England. Of these, ten were component or airframe 

assembly plants; one was a ball-bearing complex, and the last, a major rubber 

production complex.'@ Before leaving the Mediterranean, McDonald had 

identified ten priority targets based on intelligence and distance from air bases 

in Italy. Nine of the ten were aircraft or ball-bearing facilities; the tenth was the 

massive oil refining complex at Ploesti."' 

Execution of an operation of the magnitude that airmen now contemplated 

required a reasonable period of good weather both over the targets and at the 

operating bases. Persistently bad weather prevailed over Europe from midOctober 1943 until mid-February 1944. While this delayed ARGUMENT, it 

provided time for the arrival of new bomber groups and the introduction of the 

long-range P-51s, capable of escorting the B-17s and B-24s deep into 

Germany and back. 

When the weather broke in the third week of February, American bomber 

forces possessed what they had previously lacked: weapons in sufficient number 

to strike targets that needed to be attacked. On February 20, they began to 

exercise their capability. On five of the next six days, Eighth Air Force heavy 

bombers, in formations of up to 600 aircraft with hundreds of escort fighters, hit 

all 12 of the major target complexes identified the previous fall, as well as 2 of 

the 10 McDonald had highlighted. Operating under the same directives from 

Spaatz, Fifteenth Air Force struck the Messerschmitt complexes at Regensburg 

and Wiener Neustadt and the aircraft component and ball-bearing plants at 

Steyr, all on McDonald's list. In addition, RAF bombers conducted major night 

attacks against five cities close to several of these complexes.*"' From the 

standpoint of intelligence, the February period that came to be called Big Week 

represented a crucial point. American strategic air forces could now hit the 

targets identified as critical to victory in the air war and thus to Allied victory 

in Europe. In another, although not wholly correct sense, it marked a new 

beginning, for the assessed impact of these attacks on the GAF and German 

aircraft production would condition to a large extent what Eighth and Fifteenth 

Air Forces did in the future. 

The first USSTAF intelligence assessment of Operation ARGUMENT was 

completed on February 26, 1944. "The fighting value of these units [Lufiufle 

fighter units in western Europe and Germany] has been substantially reduced 

. . ." with serviceability down to 50 percent."' This emphasis on fighting value 

rather than simple numerical strength, although difficult to define, would 

become an increasingly important measure in how the American air command- 

*Senior commanders had been prepared to take losses of as many as 200 

bombers in a single mission, but losses for the week totaled 226 bombers and 28 

fighters, with approximately 2,600 crew members killed, seriously wounded, or 

missing in action. 

206 
The European Theater of Operations 

ers evaluated the Lufnyufse. It necessitated a subjective weighing of a variety of 

factors, such as combat experience, training levels, serviceability, and morale. 

This increasingly sophisticated approach explained in part why senior airmen 

such as Spaatz and Anderson would watch GAF fighter strength increase in the 

summer and fall of 1944 without diverting their primary attention from the oil 

campaign. 

In a teletype conference between HQ USSTAF and HQ AAF on February 

27, General Anderson, repeating almost verbatim a paper prepared by the 

directorate of intelligence, suggested Big Week had cost the Germans 60 

percent of their single-engine and 80 percent of their twin-engine fighter 

production. The German high command had only two choices: either defend 

high-value targets and watch combat losses rise even higher, or withhold forces 

to reduce wastage and suffer the destruction of industrial capacity and hence 

military capability. Allied objectives could best be attained by continuing to 

assault the enemy's vital production centers to draw defensive fighters into the 

air.113 

Within a week a more detailed USSTAF intelligence analysis not only 

confirmed this assessment, but it provided further impetus for a new approach 

to strategic air operations. The air intelligence summary for March 5, 1944, 

concluded that Big Week had cost the enemy 50 percent of his replacements. An 

EOU study completed at the same time concluded that Big Week had reduced 

the production of single-engine fighters from 950 to 250 per month and that of 

twin-engine fighters from 225 to 50 a month; ball-bearing production was at 45 

percent of the pre-Big Week 1e~el.l'~ The GAF had lost some 300 fighters in 

combat, estimated to represent a tenth of the Luftwufle's fighter strength. The 

recognition that the GAF was suffering heavy attrition in the air produced in 

March a fundamental shift in operational planning. Instead of seeking routes to 

avoid German defenses, operational planners deliberately set out to directly 

engage them. On the basis of these intelligence assessments, Spaatz and his 

chief staff officers also turned to other targets, most notably oil. 

Ironically, while the decision to shift from the German aircraft industry to 

oil proved correct, it was based on intelligence assessments that were too 

optimistic. The Big Week assaults had destroyed 75 percent of the buildings in 

the target areas. As in the previous October, however, significant portions of the 

critical machinery proved salvageable. Big Week accelerated the dispersal of 

industrial facilities begun some six months earlier. As a result of salvage 

operations, previous dispersal, and failure to reattack the dmaged factories, the 

massive assault in February actually delayed German production less than the 

lighter and more sporadic raids of August and October had."5 The decision to 

draw the GAF into combat in the spring of 1944 proved strikingly successful. 

Luftflotte Reich, responsible for the air defense of the Fatherland, lost 225 

aircraft in February, 236 in March, and 343 in April, to which must be added an 

207 
Piercing the Fog 

additional 338 German fighters lost in France and Belgium between February 

and May.116 

Although ULTRA provided little evidence of the impact of Big Week on 

aircraft production, the reallocation of fighter units indicated Germany’s 

concern. On February 26, the Germans withdrew JG-27 from the Balkans for 

homeland air defense.’” A week later, Luftjlotte 2 on the eastern front was 

advised it would be losing two of its gruppen to Luftjlotte Reich as 

Throughout the spring, ULTRA provided indications that Lufhyuffe units were 

losing 15-30 percent of their engaging forces.’” On March 19, amessage from 

the Air Officer for Fighters referred to “the strained manpower situation in units 

operating in defence of the Reich” and called for experienced volunteers from 

other units, especially those with skill in ground attack and with bombers.’”The 

next month, Fliegerkorps I, hard-pressed by the Red Air Force on the eastern 

front, was ordered to send fourteen pilots, “including 2 to 4 aces,” to Luftjlotte 

Reich, in return for newly qualified replacements.”’ 

The dispersal of aircraft factories, now in full effect, went largely, though 

not totally, unannounced by ULTRA. A message from the Japanese naval attache 

in Germany not only confirmed the attrition being suffered by the fighter force, 

but it referred to the “transfer of plant carried out in expectation of intensification of enemy air raids. . . .”I2’ In terms of SIGINT, Berlin remained a most 

productive center for American MAGIC throughout the war. The Japanese 

Ambassador to Germany from February 1941 to May 1945 was Lt. Gen. Hiroshi 

Oshima. Oshima regularly sent messages to Tokyo detailing his discussions 

with high-ranking Germans and his observations made in the field. He sent his 

reports encrypted by the PURPLE machine, and just as regularly, the Americans 

in Washington read his rernark~.’’~ The Allies also became aware, through 

reports of GAF unit strengths, that production of fighter aircraft was again on 

the rise. This fact continued to be weighed against the tentative opposition the 

bomber raids now faced. Taken together, the evidence provided justification for 

Spaatz to relegate strategic air operations against the German aircraft industry 

to a level necessary to keep the GAF at its current state. 

Allied airmen had never intended the defeat of the Lufiuffe to be an end 

in itself, only a necessary step to opening the German economic and industrial 

bases to the full weight of strategic air power. Even before the implementation 

of Operation ARGUMENT, USSTAF leaders had initiated steps to determine 

“subsequent operations [necessary] to complete the breakdown of German 

power and will to resist.” On February 12, 1944, General Anderson, Deputy 

Commander for Operations, directed a special planning committee of senior 

officers from operations (Brig. Gen. Charles Cabell), plans (Col. C. G. 

Williams), and intelligence (Colonel Hughes) to define new objectives for the 

CBO, including the role of strategic air forces in the invasion of northwest 

Europe.’” 
The European Theater of Operations 

In preparing their report, the committee members relied heavily on a 

detailed study by the EOU. Prepared primarily by Capt. Harold J. Barnett, this 

report pointed out that operational constraints had previously limited effective 

attacks on target systems. With the increasing size, escort capability, and 

extended range of the American bomber force and the concomitant decline of 

the GAF, target systems that contained as many as fifty or sixty individual 

targets now had become feasible. For this reason, oil, which had always been 

considered an important target but one too dispersed and beyond range to have 

been assigned a top priority, now assumed new importance. After reviewing in 

detail the ten primary target systems, Barnett concluded oil had moved 

conclusively to the forefront. “No other target system,” he asserted, “holds such 

great promise for hastening German defeat.”Iz5 A successful oil campaign would 

have a decisive impact on the enemy’s industrial and military capabilities. It 

would reduce industrial production across the board, decrease strategic mobility 

of the German Army (and thus support OVERLORD), hamper air operations, and 

in general reduce the Wehrmacht’s tactical air-ground combat capability. The 

destruction of twenty-three synthetic plants and thirty-two refineries, an 

objective now within the Eighth’s and Fifteenth’s capabilities, would result in 

“virtually zero” production within six months.Iz6 

Accepting the basic premises, conclusions, and even much of the language 

of Barnett’s study, the committee placed the petroleum industry (with special 

emphasis on gasoline) as first priority, arguing that the projected objective of 

a 50-percent reduction within six months would provide the “maximum 

opportunity” for strategic bomber forces to affect the German ground forces. 

Continued policing of the enemy’s fighter and ball-bearing industries would 

provide Allied air superiority and deny the GAF an effective air-ground 

capability. According to the planners, the strategic forces would shift to attacks 

against the German transportation networks in occupied Europe in the three 

weeks immediately preceding D-day as they continued to keep the Lujbva#e on 

the defensive in the skies over Germany.’” 

Intelligence sources outside USSTAF agreed with the committee’s 

conclusions. At the request of the Air Ministry, the MEW evaluated the 

USSTAF plan. While differing in some statistical data and suggesting a slightly 

different timing, MEW replied, “Our final conclusion differs little from that of 

[USSTAF] . . . . We fully endorse their expectations of the strategic results 

which would follow [from concentrating on the oil industry]. . . .”128 As 

evidence of the state of German petroleum, in a report on the MEW position, 

EOU included the text of a German order signed by the quartermaster general 

of the high command of the German Army. Stressing the need to avoid a crisis 

in motor fuel, the message concluded, “The Order of the Hour for motor fuel . . . is: Economize now wheneverpossible.” According to EOU, both the urgency 

of the message and its origin “make it one of the most striking evidences of the 

German oil position which we have thus far received.”’2Y Shortly thereafter, 

209 
The oil fields in Romania and adjacent refineries made up 

the richest single oil complex in Nazi-held Europe. Only 

heavy bombers based in Italy could attack the complex. The 

Concordia Vega refinery at Ploesti is shown above after 

being bombed by B-24s from the Fifteenth Air Force. The 

other major source of German oil was the series of synthetic 

oil plants built deep in Germany. On this page are the 

synthetic oil plants at Magdeburg (above left) and Misburg 

on the canal near Hanover. On the opposite page are the two 

synthetic oil refineries in the area of Gelsenkirchen (top). 

Only the bullet-shaped bomb shelter (center left) is 

unmarked at Scholven Buer (left). and the oil tank farm at 

Bottrop is flattened. At bottom is a photo taken on the 

ground at Merseburg-Leuna refinery after the area was 

taken, showing its maze of broken pipes. 

210 
I 

21 1 
Piercing the Fog 

Spaatz used this same example to make the identical point to General Eisenhower when he sent Eisenhower the plan for the completion of the CBO. 

Unanimity did not mark this shift in priorities among either operators or 

intelligence analysts. In a draft paper for the Chief of Air Staff, RAF, the 

director of bomber operations argued that it was better to continue to focus on 

the GAF with the aim of “achieving an overwhelming degree of air superiority.” 

Plants not yet attacked, repair depots, fighter airfields, and GAF facilities and 

personnel in occupied territories should remain priority targets. Still, the paper 

conceded, “Oil is the best additional target system” since destroying it would 

“gravely impair the mobility of the German Armed Forces on all fr~nts.”’~’ The 

COA had argued as recently as midJanuary against revising the priority of oil 

because production was so much in excess in Axis-dominated Europe that its 

destruction would not affect the enemy’s general combat capability for more 

than six months, and attacking the oil industry would not markedly reduce his 

aviation gasoline supplies for ten to eleven month^.'^' 

The question of when an oil campaign would affect German combat 

capability was crucial. With the Combined Chiefs’ decision to place all Allied 

air forces, strategic as well as tactical, under the Supreme Allied Commander 

in March 1944, the overriding issue was how best to use strategic air power in 

support of Operation OVERLORD. USSTAF commanders and staff officers were 

well aware that OVERLORD had taken center stage, with General Eisenhower 

now controlling the employment of their force. Both the plan for the completion 

of the CBO and Spaatz’s letter sending it to Eisenhower stressed the impact of 

an oil campaign (as well as other targets included in the plan) on the Germans’ 

overall military capability. Spaatz emphasized that the purpose of the proposed 

plan was to provide “maximum support for OVERLORD. . . .’’I3’ The plan itself, 

after offering what it considered a “conservative assessment” of the requirements for policing the enemy’s fighter aircraft capability, stressed, “Oil offers 

the most promising system of attack. . . to bring the German armies to the point 

where their defeat in the field will be assured. . . ,”133 

Unfortunately for American airmen, the oil plan was not the only proposal 

for the employment of strategic air forces before the Supreme Allied Commander in February and March of 1944. Air Marshal Leigh-Mallory, commander of the AEAF, had already forwarded a plan to concentrate all Allied air 

forces against the Axis transportation network in western Europe for the three 

months preceding D-day. (USSTAF was not opposed to attacks on lines of 

communication; it thought three weeks of concentrated assault would suffice.) 

The urgency with which USSTAF prepared their oil plan undoubtedly stemmed 

in part from their strong opposition to the AEAF proposal. The debate over 

Leigh-Mallory’s transportation plan had been ongoing since January, weeks 

before the oil plan was completed. 

What might have been the decisive issue of this debate-the question of 

whether to concentrate on marshaling yards (as the AEAF proposed, now 

212 
The European Theater of Operations 

supported by Professor Zuckerman) or to concentrate on bridges and other 

bottleneck targets (as advocated most strongly by E0U)-was not an issue at 

the highest levels. The preponderance of current intelligence by this time 

favored the latter, which would have released the heavy bombers, since they 

were not suited for such precision attacks. Spaatz chose not to contest the 

issue;’34 rather he elected to stress that attacks on oil represented the most 

effective application of strategic air forces to support OVERLORD in the belief 

that three weeks would be sufficient to retard a German buildup in Normandy.* 

Once the issue became broadly one of transportation versus oil, it was 

almost inevitable that Eisenhower would opt against the USSTAF proposal. In 

the first place, Tedder, his own deputy, as well as Leigh-Mallory (both senior 

RAF officers) strongly favored the transportation strategy. These individuals 

emphasized the gamble involved in the USSTAF approach: if three weeks were 

not sufficient to block the German lines of communication, there would be no 

time to recover, and the mighty endeavor would be lost. In contrast, by 

marshaling all their air forces for three months, the Allies might at the very least 

be assured they had not wasted any resources. 

Another contentious issue was timing. None of the senior proponents of the 

oil campaign talked in terms of fewer than six months for it to have an effect. 

In his own presentation to Eisenhower, Spaatz essentially admitted the real 

impact would not be on the immediate tactical capability of the German 

defenders in the invasion area; it would be the campaign’s effect on German 

mobility-strategic and tactical-in the critical period after D-day. Perhaps 

more than any other event, this debate reflected the fundamental differences in 

perspective between strategic airmen and tactical (ground and air) commanders. 

When the former focused on the period after D-day, they were missing the 

point. Eisenhower, as the supreme commander, focused on what was acknowledged would be the decisive event of the war in Europe, a successful foothold 

on the continent, not on the sequence of events thereafter. 

Eisenhower made his decision on March 25: strategic and tactical air forces 

would attack the German transportation network in western Europe. Spaatz 

accepted his superior’s decision. Yet, within weeks of the successful Allied 

invasion, oil would again become the primary target of American strategic air 

forces. Operation OVERLORD was not the only diversion to American efforts to 

prosecute the CBO. By the spring of 1944, threats from the German V-1 flying 

bomb and V-2 rocket had imposed serious demands on American and British 

air resources as well. 

*In his book Pre-Invasion Bombing Strategy (Austin, Tex., 1981), Professor 

Walter Rostow, who was intimately involved in this debate, presents a cogent, 

though not unbiased, argument against the whole Zuckerman thesis. He favors the 

plan his own EOU organization prepared for the employment of tactical forces 

against bridges. 

213 
The bombing offensive against the German rail system was ordered by General 

Eisenhower. Its main purpose was to deny supplies to the German army. At 

Celle (above lef) and Fulda (above right) and Ulm (below), railroad marshaling 

yards were hit. The railroad bridges at Celle were dropped by Ninth Air Force 

medium bombers. The marshaling yards at Muhldorf (right) in southern 

Germany were punished by the Fifteenth Air Force. Cologne (below right) and 

Berlin marshaling yards were hit by the Eighth Air Force and the RAF. 

214 
I AI 

215 
Piercing the Fog 

Rumors of German efforts to develop revolutionary long-range air weapons 

had surfaced occasionally since the beginning of the war. By late 1942, they had 

begun to filter into British intelligence channels in numbers too great to be 

ignored. Despite the creation of a high-level committee and the mobilization of 

extensive intelligence resources, by the summer of 1943 the British possessed 

only limited knowledge about the characteristics, capabilities, or production of 

these weapons. They knew that Peenemunde, an installation on the Baltic Sea, 

was the center of German research activity for these V-weapons. They had 

reason to believe (though without consensus until November 1943) that at least 

two different systems were in development. The identification of unusual 

installations under construction in northern France gave probable, but indefinite, 

evidence for the program at Peenem~nde.’~’ 

The intelligence the British had acquired to this point came overwhelmingly 

from ground reports (agents in Germany, France, Switzerland, and Poland) and 

photoreconnaissance and photointerpretation. The popular misconception that 

Allied intelligence, through ULTRA, had a direct tap into every facet of the Axis 

war effort falls apart when it comes to the V-1 and V-2 developments. Not only 

did the Allies never acquire a complete picture of these weapons (if one 

includes production aspects), but SIGINT played a distinctly secondary role. 

HUMINT from ground observers offered many of the initial tips that alerted 

intelligence officers and scientists to focus in a certain direction, but photoreconnaissance and photointerpretation provided the incontrovertible visual 

evidence. In the course of the V-weapon campaign, British and American 

photoreconnaissance completely blanketed a 7,500-square-mile portion of 

France four times, photographed more than 100 selected locations weekly, 

overflew Peenemunde 50 times, and took 1,250,OOO photograph^.'^^ 

Still uncertain as to precisely what was occurring either at Peenemunde or 

in France, the British decided in mid-August 1943 to attack both locations. RAF 

Bomber Command launched a major assault on Peenemunde the night of 

August 17/18, inflicting severe damage and heavy casualties. At the request of 

the British, Eighth Air Force attacked a large construction site near Watten, 

France, on August 27. When poststrike coverage showed little damage, the 

heavy bombers returned on September 7.13’ While the Allies would continue to 

monitor Watten and similar sites (which were to have been launch facilities for 

the V-2 rocket), their attacks convinced the enemy to abandon these sites in 

favor of ones less obvious. This represented a major change in launching plans, 

and the Germans experienced serious technical difficulties, so that the V-2 

program fell increasingly behind schedule. 

How much the Americans knew about the development of the German 

rocket and flying bomb programs through the summer of 1943 is moot. In its 

extensive discussion of the V-weapons, the official British history suggested 

that not until October 1943 did the Americans receive information on these 

developments “apart from what had appeared in general intelligence reports and 

216 
217 
The German secret weapon program was of deep concern to Allied military and 

civilian leaders. Particularly worried were the British, since they were the targets. One 

of the most extensive photointelligence efforts of the war sought information about the 

research, production, and sites for these weapons. Above, American officers can be 

seen inspecting the assembly line for V-1 s in an underground factory at Nordhausen. 

Below is one of the hundreds of “ski” launch ramps for the V-I. The light-colored 

building at the bottom was the control room where the missile was armed and given 

guidance instructions. About three-quarters of an inch above the building is a dark strip 

which is a heavily camouflaged ski launch ramp. On the oppositc page is a photo of 

the German research and testing site at Peenemunde on the Baltic coast, where the V-l 

and V-2 were born. The V-2 missile is seen at A, launch towers are at B, and the 

assembly building is C. In the middle of the page, the same site is shown after being 

bombed. At the lower right is the V-l depot at Watten, France, still under construction 

when overrun in August 1944. 

21 8 
219 
Piercing the Fog 

prisoner of war interrogations. . . .7’138 Lt. Gen. Ira Eaker, in his report covering 

Eighth Air Force activities from February 1942 through December 1943, noted 

only that the Eighth had been asked to draw up and execute plans for the August 

and September operation^.'^' On August 11,1943, Col. Richard Hughes, then 

the Eighth Air Force chief of plans, but an officer with extensive intelligence 

experience with Eaker, attended a meeting in the office of the RAF’s ACAS, 

Operations, at which an attack was specifically discussed. According to the 

minutes of that meeting, Hughes reported that “by arrangement” no directive 

had been or would be issued to the commanding general, but that “General 

Anderson” (presumably Brig. Gen. Orvil A. Anderson, then chairman of the 

Anglo-American committee to coordinate air operations) was “conversant with 

the whole position in regard to BODYLINE,” the code name for the British 

attempt to define the existence of and the threat posed by the V-2.140 

In October 1943 Prime Minister Churchill informed President Roosevelt by 

message of the intelligence gathered on the V-weapons, and the British Chiefs 

of Staff agreed to pass intelligence to senior American leaders in Washington 

and England. Several days later the MEW was authorized to discuss the subject 

with the EOU and other appropriate American agencies. An Anglo-American 

committee, now operating under the code name CROSSBOW, was organized in 

November. 14’ 

New surprises awaited the Allies. Through October and early November, 

CIU interpreters, advised that the size of the V-weapons required rail transport, 

pored over photographs of northern France, looking for activity around railroad 

tracks. The first week in November, a French construction supervisor passed 

along the location of eight unusual sites on which he was working. Photoreconnaissance flown on the basis of this tip revealed all eight sites, each including 

several long buildings with an upward curving end, from which they collectively produced the name ski sites. None was near a rail line. With the 

characteristic buildings to alert them and the knowledge that they needed to 

expand their search away from railheads, the interpreters went back to previous 

photographs. Within 48 hours they identified 26 additional ski sites. By midDecember, more than 75 sites had been di~covered.’~’ 

Although these sites might be related to the pilotless aircraft or flying 

bomb, this was not confirmed until the end of November 1943 when CIU made 

a dual discovery, the first link between buildings at Peenemunde and those at 

the ski sites. Alerted to look for “a very small aircraft, smaller than a fighter,” 

keen-eyed British interpreter Constance Babington-Smith went back to 

photographs of Peenemunde taken the previous June and picked out a small, 

winged projectile leaning against a wall. Several days later another was seen on 

a launch ramp.143 

Having determined the flying bomb represented the more immediate threat, 

the Allies decided in early December to strike 26 ski sites judged to be at least 

220 
The European Theater of Operations 

half complete.* The opening move of operations, which would continue until 

the end of August 1944, came the day before Christmas when 724 USAAF 

heavy bombers and 600 fighter-bombers and escorts attacked 24 sites in 

northwest France.’44 American medium bombers and fighter-bombers of Ninth 

and Eighth Air Forces and British tactical air forces conducted continual 

operations against these facilities, while Eighth Air Force heavy bombers went 

against them when weather prevented POINTBLANK missions. Guidance for 

these operations came from target lists sent out by the RAF ACAS, 

Operations.’” By the end of May, the Allies considered 82 of 96 identified sites 

“neutralized.” Of these, Ninth Air Force had taken out 39; Eighth Air Force, 35; 

and the British tactical air forces, the remaining 33.’46 

What the Allies did not know was that the initial attacks in December had 

convinced the Germans to abandon the ski sites as active locations and to 

undertake repairs only for deception. As had been the case after the earlier 

destruction of the V-2 rocket site at Watten, the enemy shifted to modified, 

prefabricated installations, much more difficult to detect and destroy. Not until 

late April 1944 did photointerpreters at CIU stumble upon the first of these 

modified sites. Although agent reports had mentioned them as early as 

February, the mistaken belief that the V-1s could be launched only from the 

relatively complex ski sites had led scientists and photointerpreters to overlook 

alternate sites. Once again, the trap of assuming the enemy will do what the 

observer wants, not what the enemy himself wants, had hindered the correct 

interpretion. Now provided with some idea of what the needle looked like, 

photointerpreters went back to the haystack. By D-day they had positively 

identified 61 modified sites. By this time, agent reports mentioned more than 

100 such installations. 147 The Germans opened their flying bomb offensive from 

the modified sites on the night of June 13, 1944, one week after D-day. 

Attempts to blunt the German offensive by attacking the modified sites met 

with only limited success and resulted in increasing frustration as it became 

obvious that the enemy could prepare launch facilities faster than the Allies 

could identify and destroy them. This frustration was accentuated by the timing 

of events. Every sortie flown against the V-1 sites was a sortie not available to 

support Allied forces struggling for a foothold on the continent. American 

airmen had particularly opposed employment of strategic air forces against V-1 

and V-2 sites. To the extent that heavy bombers had to be used against the Vweapons, storage and construction locations were more appropriate 

Unfortunately, intelligence regarding the locations of such installations was 

extremely limited. On the basis primarily of agent reports and POW informa- 

*To assist in determining how to attack these sites most effectively, the USAAF 

constructed in twelve days and at a cost of $1 million a complete replica of one 

facility at Eglin Army Airfield, Florida, on the basis of photographs and structural 

estimates. 

22 1 
Piercing the Fog 

tion, along with some ULTRA guidance, Eighth Air Force bombers attacked 

suspected supply depots at Nucourt and Saint Leu-d’Esserent in France in late 

June, with RAF Bomber Command following up several nights later. Such was 

the paucity of intelligence that several other missions, flown mostly by Bomber 

Command, turned out to have gone against inactive 10cations.’~~ 

On the basis of EOUMEW analysis derived from American OSS and 

British Special Intelligence Service agents, Polish intelligence, British sources 

in Switzerland, and estimates of reduced output of goods formerly produced in 

suspected plants, Eighth Air Force and RAF Bomber Command also flew 

several missions into Germany itself. Most combined British and American 

tactical air forces missions continued to be against the modified launch sites as 

they were dis~overed.’~’ 

Throughout this period, the British had controlled the intelligence-gathering 

and analysis processes and the operational decisions on targeting. When the Air 

Ministry sought to modify the CROSSBOW arrangements in mid-July, the 

Americans took the opportunity to initiate a fundamental reorganization. The 

British suggested that CROSSBOW come under their Assistant Director of 

Intelligence (Science), Dr. R. V. Jones, with an American scientist as his 

deputy.I5’ The Americans insisted on a combined British-American committee 

composed of uniformed operational and intelligence representatives from the 

Air Ministry and HQ USSTAF. 

In a personal memorandum to Maj. Gen. Frederick Anderson, McDonald 

poured out his exasperation over the handling of the V-weapon situation. 

Referring to the “impractical applications of security” which had always 

pervaded BODYLINE and CROSSBOW, McDonald enumerated examples of a 

persistent failure by the British to keep their American counterparts involved or 

even informed. These included “inadequate dissemination of intelligence,” 

“misapplication of forces,” the “lag over damage assessment . . . [which] 

resulted in unnecessary duplication of attack and wasteful bombing effort,” and 

“too little voice by this headquarters in matters of CROSSBOW policy.”’52 After 

a series of memoranda and, undoubtedly, personal discussions among 

McDonald, Anderson, and Spaatz and between HQ USSTAF and the RAF (as 

well as Tedder in his role as Deputy Supreme Allied Commander), McDonald 

summarized the American position in a letter to his Air Ministry counterpart, 

the ACAS (I): “Frankly, I da not believe that anything less than a joint and 

balanced Anglo-American CROSSBOW Committee, formed exclusively from 

representatives of the Air Staff and USSTAF . . . will answer the 

requirement .r’153 

The new CROSSBOW committee, organized along the lines the Americans 

had suggested, held its first meeting on July 21,1944. Out of this session came 

a reordering of priorities. The weight of evidence was now clearly against 

efforts to knock out the modified sites. A USSTAF intelligence paper dated July 

16, 1944, admitted they were as yet unable to fully evaluate the impact of air 

222 
The European Theater of Operations 

strikes against handling and storage areas, but it suggested that “strategic attacks 

on the basic industries producing components” appeared more effective than 

attacks on the launch Later that month, a combined operations planning 

committee suggested that even extensive attacks of these sites were neither 

efficient nor effective and could not prevent the enemy from launching at least 

thirty missiles a day from as yet unidentified locations. This committee 

reiterated that supply depots in France and Belgium and factories in Germany 

were better targets.”’ 

During the last week in July the joint CROSSBOW committee concluded, 

“The attack by large formations [against launch sites] was wasteful and unlikely 

to bring about any marked reduction in the enemy’s scale of atta~k.””~ Seeking 

to limit operations against launch sites to harassing attacks primarily by tactical 

forces, the committee recommended as first priority a series of supply depots, 

followed by two special fuel dumps linked to the V-1 supply system, and then 

five assumed factories in Germany and eastern Fran~e.’’~ As it turned out, the 

question of control over CROSSBOW operations and intelligence became largely 

a dead issue within six weeks after the new committee was formed. The ground 

advance into northern France and the Low Countries in August and September 

forced the Germans to withdraw their remaining V-Is. Eighth Air Force flew 

its last CROSSBOW mission on August 30, 1944.’58 

Although Allied attention had focused primarily on the flying bomb in the 

spring and summer of 1944, the V-2 rocket remained ominously in the 

shadows. The V-2 had been discovered first, but accurate information remained 

scarce. Alerted by Polish underground sources of German flight testing at 

Blizna, the Allies flew the first reconnaissance mission over that target in April 

1944.15’ Reports from the Poles, some ULTRA decrypts of an infrequently 

broken German Army code, and POW interrogations finally gave the Allies by 

June 1944 a fairly accurate picture of the characteristics, performance, and 

development of the V-2.’” When the first V-2 rocket hit England on September 

8, 1944, however, the Germans had developed, as the director of the V-2 

program later admitted, the capability to fire the weapon from “a bit of planking 

on a forest track, or the overgrown track itself.”I6’ An attempt to ferret out 

launching positions and attack them from the air, especially with bombers, was 

obviously futile. 

Although Eighth and Ninth Air Force bombers were directed against 

several V-2-related targets, including production centers and liquid oxygen 

plants in Germany and France, their impact was negligible.I6’ Despite the 

enormous effort that had gone into comprehending the V-2, intelligence had 

provided only a limited guidance to its operations, and air attacks had only 

limited impact on the enemy’s program. That the V-2 had so little effect on the 

war turned out to be the result of German technical problems, the inherent 

limitations of the weapon itself, and the advance of the Allied ground armies. 

223 
Piercing the Fog 

Emphasis on the V-weapons in the winter of 1943-1 944 stemmed from two 

concerns. The first was the social and political issue of the effect of large-scale, 

even if inaccurate, air attacks on London. The second involved the potential 

impact of these weapons on the massive land, naval, and air forces being 

assembled for the assault on Fortress Europe which was scheduled for late 

spring. The precise roles of air power in this mighty endeavor were the subject 

of extensive and sometimes acrimonious debate. That air power would be 

crucial to Allied success. no one doubted. 

OVERLORD and Tactical Air Operations in Western 

Europe: 1944-1945 

Air support for the invasion of France began long before the first Allied 

soldiers came ashore at Normandy on June 6, 1944. In the broadest sense, the 

objective of the CBO was the progressive destruction of Germany’s capability 

and will to wage war so as to, in the words of the plan guiding the CBO, “permit 

initiation of final combined operations on the ~ontinent.”’~~ Debilitating the 

GAF via Operation POINTBLANK served this purpose by allowing the strategic 

air forces to attack other elements of the enemy’s war industries and economy 

and by providing command of the air for Allied land and tactical air operations. 

More directly, in the months preceding D-day, Allied strategic and tactical air 

forces engaged primarily in operations that prepared northwest France for the 

invasion. 

Planning for tactical air operations imposed new requirements on air 

intelligence organizations in the United Kingdom. Until the spring of 1944, 

RAF and USAAF intelligence agencies were overwhelmingly concerned either 

with the Lujhuffe as a defensive force or with the identification and evaluation 

of strategic air targets. Now, support for OVERLORD required information not 

only on the GAF in its offensive and ground support roles but also on the 

German ground forces and their logistical system. While continuing to fulfill 

strategic functions, air intelligence now assumed three additional responsibilities: assessing the response of the GAF to the invasion; identifying and 

monitoring targets for tactical air operations; and providing information, 

primarily through photoreconnaissance, for Allied ground forces. 

What made the air activity before OVERLORD/NEPTUNE different from 

previous amphibious operations was the magnitude of the effort.*’@ American 

*OVERLORD was the code name for all the activities involved in the invasion 

of western Europe; NEPTUNE referred more narrowly to the crossing of the English 

Channel and the landings at Normandy. Allied commands in England tended to use 

the term “NEPTUNE” more frequently than the now-common “OVERLORD.” 

224 
After the ground breakout from the Normandy invasion beaches, the Allies had 

tactical air superiority. This photo of wrecked German equipment at the Falaise 

Gap shows the punch of tactical air power in support of ground forces. Below, 

the German fighter field at Frankfurt was peppered by the Ninth Air Force. 

Meanwhile, the aerial interdiction campaign continued to play havoc with 

German attempts to reinforce and supply their troops. This railroad bridge at 

Blois, France, is one of hundreds of highway and railroad bridges destroyed. 

225 
Piercing the Fog 

Eighth and Ninth Air Forces were heavily involved in these operations, the 

latter almost exclusively so. While their B-17s and B-24s continued to attack 

German aircraft factories through much of April, in May their attention turned 

to marshaling yards and airfields in France, Belgium, and the western part of 

Germany. Beginning on May 21, VIII Fighter Command's P-47~ and P-5 1 s 

joined the Ninth Air Force in extensive attacks on rail bridges. As part of 

Operation FORTITUDE, the deception plan to convince the defenders that the real 

attack would come in the Pas de Calais region, twice as many bombs were 

dropped on targets north of the Seine as were dropped to the south. Obviously, 

this increased the burden on intelligence as much as it did on operation^.'^^ 

Despite participation by the heavy bombers and their escorts, Ninth Air 

Force made the principal American air contribution to OVERLORD before and 

after D-day. As directed by Eisenhower, the Ninth's primary objective was the 

German transportation network in France and Belgium. In the two months 

before D-day, medium bombers, fighter-bombers, and strafing fighters also 

struck more than sixty airfields and sought to neutralize German coastal 

batteries. Reconnaissance elements flew more than 400 sorties against gun 

emplacements, beach defenses, transportation points, airfields, and other 

targets.lM Once the forces were ashore at Normandy, Ninth Air Force became 

deeply involved in the collection and analysis of intelligence, including the 

establishment of a SIGINT capability and mobile photoreconnaissance and 

analysis facilities to meet the demands for immediate responses to fluid combat 

situations. During preinvasion operations, however, both the Eighth and Ninth 

relied on previously established intelligence organization^.'^^ 

Photographic reconnaissance remained the primary source for monitoring 

static targets such as bridges, marshaling yards, and airfields. Hundreds of 

reconnaissance missions had pinpointed virtually every useful target within the 

German transportation system. As these targets became the focus of air attack, 

aerial reconnaissance and agent reports were the main sources of information 

on specific attacks and constituted the means to determine when reattacks were 

necessary. ULTRA provided some details on individual targets, but it was more 

valuable for its insight on the German assessment of conditions.'68 

The location of almost all airfields in northwest Europe had been identified 

by a combined Anglo-American section within Air Ministry Intelligence, and 

a watch was maintained on them by the airfield section of the CIU as well as by 

the French underground. By the spring of 1944, these organizations provided 

not only locations but capacities, facilities, and even designations of appropriate 

aiming points. At the same time, SIGN followed the movement of enemy 

flying units. In the first week of May, ULTRA revealed the installations to which 

units from Germany and other regions would move in the event of an invasion. 

Two weeks later, it provided intelligence on the distribution of fuel, ammunition, and Results of the ongoing campaign against German airfields 

were revealed by all these sources. 

226 
227 
Piercing the Fog 

Evaluations of the Lujbvuffe prior to June reflected different perceptions 

within Allied intelligence agencies regarding the intentions of the German high 

command. Given the mobility of air forces, the question of intent had a direct 

bearing on overall capability. If Hitler intended to contest the invasion, he 

would be more likely to move fighter units into the combat zone and thus 

significantly increase the level of operations. Should he decide to contain the 

Allies within a small beachhead rather than trying to prevent their achieving a 

foothold, this might call for a smaller air reaction. A larger percentage of the 

already hard-pressed fighter force could then be retained for air defense of the 

Reich. 

An Air Ministry (A.I.3[b]) appreciation in mid-March noted that “no final 

forecast [of GAF strength] can at this stage be attempted.” It appeared the 

enemy would not commit more than 50-60 percent of its single-engine fighter 

force against the initial landing so that it might “attempt to preserve [a] 

reasonably effective fighter force for the air defence of Germany at a later date.” 

Even a major effort in conjunction with a ground counterattack “could not be 

maintained in the face of Allied air superiority and heavy casual tie^."'^^ One 

month later, the AEAF’s plan for the Normandy landing concluded that the 

enemy would withhold most of his day and night fighters for defense of the 

Reich and protection of his bases and lines of communication. Recognizing that 

fighting value rather than numerical strength was the critical determinant, the 

AEAF looked at the Lufhyuffe’s “stamina, reserves and recent close-support 

exposure” and concluded, “This value is certain to be far less than that of an 

equivalent Allied force.”171 

The Ninth Air Force’s plan for NEPTUNE issued in late April argued that the 

GAF fighter force had not recovered from the blows dealt it in February. The 

enemy would face the invasion with a “dangerously depleted bomber force,” 

with an unimpressive ground attack capability, and with most of his fighterbomber units already heavily engaged on the eastern front. Unlike the Air 

Ministry and AEAF assessments, American intelligence believed Germany 

“will strip her defenses to a bare minimum,” including day fighters from 

Germany, to prevent an Allied 10dgrnent.’~’ A week before the landings, IX 

TAC pointed to recent GAF messages regarding redeployment to unused 

airfields and defensive construction in support of assessment that the GAF 

intended to contest the issue.’73 

Estimates of the Lujbvuffe’s first-line strength also fluctuated between 

February and May 1944. In early March, British air intelligence assumed 850 

operational aircraft in the region at D-day, the drop from an earlier estimate of 

1,450 due to the successes of Big Week. By the end of April, with the GAF 

conserving its numbers by avoiding combat, the JIC expected 750 aircraft to be 

available by early June, with the capability to augment this by an additional 450 

228 
The European Theater of Operations 

within four days. Finally, piecing together information from photoreconnaissance, ULTRA, low-grade SIGN, and agents, Allied intelligence the day before 

the attack provided a final estimate of 1,015 aircraft immediately available. The 

listed strength of Lumotte 3 in France and the Low Countries at the end of May 

was 891, with an increase to 1,300 by D+10.’74 According to a USSTAF study 

on ULTRA during the war, the greatest contribution of this source in the months 

before D-day was the picture it gradually built up regarding the GAF’s logistical 

difficulties, training problems, and command arrangement^.'^' It was this insight 

that allowed Allied intelligence to assess the weaknesses of the Lufhyaffe that 

lay behind the numbers. More recently, an excellent study of ULTRA and the 

campaign in western Europe by a former intelligence officer in BP’s Hut 3 

during this period also concluded, “The most striking evidence in German Air 

Force [messages] during the later spring was on shortages of all kinds.”’76 

Most senior American airmen approached D-day not at all confident that 

the GAF would play the negligible role it did. In late April, ArnoM admitted to 

Spaatz that “my feeling [is] that a great air battle will take place during the first 

three or four days of OVERLORD."'^^ At a weekly air commanders-in-chief 

meeting less than two weeks before NEPTUNE, and the same week intelligence 

suggested the Lufhyaffe would not be fully committed, Spaatz thought the 

enemy “might well be prepared to uncover occupied Europe altogether and 

bring all his fighters . . . to the Western Front.”178 The Lufhyuffe’s actual 

performance against NEPTUNE was weaker than even the most optimistic Allied 

predictions. This was a consequence of Big Week and the subsequent air 

combat during attacks against German industry. The extensive operations 

against German air bases in France and the Low Countries by Allied air forces 

in April and May also contributed to the disorganization that afflicted the 

Lufnyaffe. 

Another contribution was the assistance intelligence provided tactical air 

operations against the GAF fighter and bomber forces beginning on June 6. The 

successful monitoring of the location, status, and intentions of the opposing air 

force paid handsome dividends. Knowing where GAF units earmarked for the 

combat zone were to go, and sometimes even when they would arrive, Allied 

air forces could discombobulate their opponents before they could mount an 

effective engagement. On June 8, Fliegerkorps ZZ informed Berlin that it had 

received nine new fighter units, and it reported their strengths and locations. 

The next day, the same headquarters reported “serious losses in personnel and 

equipment due to attacks on airfield^."'^^ The ability to blend ULTRA with Y 

intercepts enabled the Allies to determine, often precisely, the arrival times of 

GAF units, and thus to determine when to attack them just as they were landing 

at their receiving bases.’” Throughout the month of June, Allied air headquarters were able to read, according to an ULm-indoctrinated intelligence officer, 

“innumerable commands for movement and operations. . . .’”*’ These did not 

provide a total picture of the enemy because some messages were not received 

229 
Piercing the Fog 

or decrypted, and because, in the confusion of combat, enemy units sometimes 

failed to send reports, or they sent incomplete or inaccurate data. Within 36 

hours of the invasion, Allied intelligence had identified some 300 of the 

400-450 aircraft the Germans would move into the Normandy region by June 

Domination of the GAF that had been established in the opening days of 

NEPTUNE continued through the summer, although the ability to monitor 

frequently, often instantaneously, active airfields and their condition was not 

always possible. When it was, it allowed commanders and intelligence officers 

an unprecedented look at the enemy’s intentions and his ability to execute them, 

his losses, and the status of his aircraft and equipment.Is3 These effects were felt 

in several ways. First, if a decrypted message was seen in time and evaluated 

correctly, it could provide guidance for mission planning. Messages such as the 

one sent to subordinate units by Jugdkorps ZZon August 26 directing operations 

for the next day contained not only the type of missions and the areas of 

operation, but the location and altitude of rendezvous points as well.ls4 

Similarly, the approval from an unidentified headquarters of Melsbroek and 

Chievres airfields in Belgium as collection points for FW 190s and Bf 109s 

provided the appropriate Allied target officers with invaluable inf~rmation.’~~ 

Often such messages were received too late to provide immediate operational 

direction. 

For this reason, ULTRA’S more valuable contribution continued to be 

confirmation of and insight into the effects of operations against the GAF. On 

July 9, BP decrypted a message from Goering decreeing that “because of the 

intolerable loss in unit commanders” these officers would fly only “when the 

significance of the operation and number of aircraft employed make it 

ne~essary.”’~~ In early August, just as the Allied armies began their breakout 

from Normandy, Jugdkorps ZZ (responsible for close support to the German 

Army) advised Berlin it was pulling back four of its best gruppen for rest and 

refit.”’ Considering the desperate situation confronting the German Army, such 

a move must have been seen by Allied air commanders as a clear indication of 

the Luhufe’s battered condition. Two weeks later, this same headquarters 

advised its superiors that it could not participate effectively in the battle at 

Falaise because units were repeatedly attacked as they tried to take off. Two 

groups had lost twenty-two planes in this way in one day.’” 

Tactical SIGINT proved especially valuable in operations against the 

already weakened GAF. With the establishment of Detachment 3, 3d Radio 

Squadron (Mobile), on the continent only three days after the initial landings, 

USAAF tactical air forces began independent signals interception, although they 

continued to maintain links with British units. The focal point for this 

undertaking, much of which was time-sensitive, was the SIGINT officer located 

at IX TAC fighter control, who was in direct contact with airborne aircraft and 

HQ IX TAC.Is9 

230 
The European Theater of Operations 

Intelligence gained through radio intercepts could often contribute to 

immediate air action. According to the IX TAC history, intercepted SIGINT 

passed to aircraft already in the air resulted in the claimed destruction of 180 

enemy planes between June 1944 and March 1945. This figure does not include 

the results of missions planned specifically to take advantage of a second 

benefit of SIGINT: the analyses of enemy operational patterns. Such analyses 

enabled intelligence officers to predict enemy actions. On October 6,1944, for 

example, the IX TAC SIGINT officer advised fighter control that enemy aircraft 

operating around Aachen would most probably return to base by flying directly 

from Aachen to Bonn. Scrambled fighters, directed to intercept the enemy en 

route when the latter were low on fuel and out of ammunition, shot down 

twenty.lgO 

By mid-August the condition of the opposing air force was obvious. At the 

highest theater air level, General McDonald wrote, “It does not appear to be an 

overconfident statement that the German Air Force is at present time powerless 

to influence our Allied ground armies’ operations.’”’’ At the cutting edge of air 

operations, the special security officer assigned to First Tactical Air Force 

operating with the Sixth Army Group observed, “Allied air operations almost 

completely disregarded the GAF.’”’* 

During the first days of NEPTUNE, in addition to neutralizing enemy air 

power, Allied air forces provided direct support to troops on the beach and 

focused on isolating the battle areas through interdiction. In the fluid situation 

that prevailed, intelligence arrived from several sources. The photoreconnaissance that had covered all of northern France in the preceding months now 

guided fighter-bombers and medium bombers against bridges that had not been 

destroyed for deception purposes, including the important spans across the 

Loire River. Visual reconnaissance proved the most important source for the 

transient intelligence needed to discover and attack troops on the move. At the 

same time, ULTRA decrypts and intercepts of German Army low-grade radio 

signals both eased the task of tracking enemy formations. Most accommodating 

in this regard was a German army inspector general’s report only two weeks 

before D-day that provided the location of every major German armor unit in 

France and the Low C~untries.”~ 

On June 16, Captain Kindleberger, a member of the EOU and at the time 

working as an ULTRA handler with 21st Army Group, prepared an interim 

assessment of German reserve movement by rail, listing the location of virtually 

all enemy units then moving toward Normandy. The information contained in 

this document came from photointelligence, tactical air reconnaissance, air 

liaison officers assigned to U.S. Army units, and visual reports by Eighth Air 

Force fighters on escort duty with bombers, as well as from SIGINT.’’4 

The successful landing of Allied ground troops in Normandy on June 6, 

1944, opened a new dimension to the air war in western Europe and thus placed 

new demands on air intelligence. The nature of air intelligence in support of 

23 1 
Piercing the Fog 

ground operations differed considerably from that required for strategic air 

operations. The intimate relationship between air and ground action, and the 

transient nature of tactical targets, necessitated an intelligence organization 

structured for the rapid collection, evaluation, and distribution of information. 

In contrast to the strategic air forces, for whom the Luftwuffe remained a 

serious-if weakened-adversary, tactical airmen and the armies they supported 

went about their tasks largely unconcerned with attack from the air.lY5 

The principle of colocated air and ground equivalent headquarters 

contributed significantly to the effective application of air intelligence to the 

land war. Except for brief periods of rapid movement, General Hoyt Vandenberg’s Ninth Air Force remained with General Omar Bradley’s 12th Army 

Group, while IX TAC and later XIX and XXIX TAC were colocated with First, 

Third, and Ninth Armies, respectively. For the invasion of southern France in 

August (Operation DRAGOON), XI1 TAC was shifted from Italy to support the 

American Seventh Army and later the Allied Sixth Army Group as part of First 

Tactical Air Force (Prov.). Because of the relationship between the tactical air 

commands and the armies they supported, much of the day-to-day decision 

making, including targeting, took place between the headquarters of those 

organizations. Ninth Air Force was responsible for providing overall policy and 

direction and for reallocating subordinate units to meet special operational 

requirements. Unless directed specifically by SHAEF, the Ninth Air Force 

commander or his representative (usually the director of operations) made air 

operations decisions at the morning meeting held with 12th Army Group. These 

decisions routinely were based on the intel1igence.report and Bradley’s plan of 

attack.’96 

Ninth Air Force made simultaneous daily mission decisions, since it 

controlled the IX Bomber Command’s eleven medium-bomber groups. Until 

September, much of the intelligence guidance for the employment of the 

medium bombers came from a special security officer assigned to the target 

section of AEAF’s advanced headquarters. From this position Maj. Lucius Buck 

coordinated with 12th Army Group Targets, Ninth Air Force A-2 and A-3, 

SHAEF G-2 Targets, and the Air Ministry to blend ULTRA, tactical photointerpretation reports, ground reports, and POW interrogations into tactical target 

lists. With the disbandment of HQ AEAF and the incorporation of its intelligence section into the new Air Staff, SHAEF, Buck was assigned to Ninth Air 

Force, but he operated from the Air Ministry where he performed the same 

functions. By September the focus of his efforts, and those of the IX Bomber 

Command, was petroleum, oil, and lubricants (POL) depots; ammunition 

dumps; and military transport parks. At the beginning of December, USSTAF 

and SHAEF as well as Ninth Air Force and the tactical air commands received 

Buck’s target lists.1y7 

From the time IX TAC landed at Normandy on D+2, the first tactical air 

command to do so, intelligence was fully integrated into air-ground operations. 

232 
The European Theater of Operations 

A-2 and A-3 occupied the same tent, which also included First Army’s G-2 

(Air) and G-3 (Air).lY8 The IX TAC’s A-2 office consisted of sections handling 

operational intelligence, air OB, targets, reconnaissance, signals, flak, 

counterintelligence, and administration.’w Operational intelligence dealt with 

reports of enemy ground formations. Muchof this information came from visual 

reconnaissance transmitted by radio from aircraft in flight, and it then passed 

immediately to G-2 (Air) and G-3 (Air) and thence through the Army’s 

communications net as well as to appropriate IX TAC units. Operational 

intelligence officers briefed the commander and his staff each evening on the 

day’s operations to provide the basis for the next day’s mission planning.m 

Tactical reconnaissance, already important in the preinvasion period, 

assumed even greater significance once land operations began. Through the 

summer of 1944, most current reconnaissance for the employment of air forces 

derived from visual tactical air reports. This emphasis resulted from two 

conditions. Static targets (gun positions, airfields, bridges, and key rail 

segments) had been thoroughly covered in the months prior to D-day, and 

existing tactical target dossiers included photographs. Periodic checks assessed 

the current status of these targets and their condition after being attacked. Most 

targets during NEPTUNE and the subsequent breakout and race across France 

were enemy troops and vehicles on the move. Visual reconnaissance passed 

through interlinked Allied army-air forces communications nets enabled the 

most timely reaction to these fleeting targets. 

This is not to say photoreconnaissance could be or was ignored, particularly 

in the weeks before the breakout. In his report of German rail movements 

approaching Normandy, Kindleberger had stressed the value of poststrike 

photoreconnaissance to confirm pilot visual reports. By verifying claims of 

damage, he advised, reconnaissance could enable operations to cancel 

preplanned missions against already destroyed lines and permit a more 

concentrated effort against those the enemy was still using or was about to 

repair.201 The Army had an ever-expanding requirement for photoreconnaissance to assist in the planning of land operations. So great was this demand that 

within a month of D-day, IX TAC and First Army had jointly designated a fulltime Army reconnaissance officer assigned to A-3 to coordinate reconnaissance 

requests among the IX TAC A-2 and A-3,67th Tactical Reconnaissance Group 

(TRG), and First Army.202 In addition, the Army maintained a ground liaison 

officer with the 67th TRG to assist in detailed mission planning. Because the 

various tactical air command headquarters relied on their Army counterparts for 

intelligence on the German Army, air intelligence officers kept only limited 

files on this subject.203 

When stiffening resistance slowed the Allied advances along the German 

border in early fall, photoreconnaissance increased in importance. Joint air-land 

operations required complete coverage to permit detailed planning. Fighterbombers and medium bombers needed photographs of assigned targets to 

233 
Piercing the Fog 

execute their missions effectively. Because they were now beyond the regions 

covered extensively before June, the IX TAC reconnaissance section’s primary 

task became the preparation of photomosaics, maps, and annotated target photos 

for the target section. In addition, this section evaluated bomb damage, 

analyzed, in cooperation with A-3, the effects of special bombing techniques, 

and prepared, in conjunction with the target section, target dossiers and mission 

folders.204 

Unless 12th Army Group or Ninth Air Force directed a specific operation 

or the reallocation of forces from one tactical air command to another, the army 

and tactical air commanders and their key staff officers made the daily target 

 decision^.^" Major Buck’s list served as the basic compilation for selecting 

targets. As with other such lists, the source of any specific bit of information 

was often difficult to ascertain. In his postwar report, Buck admitted that while 

ULTRA provided “the basic and most reliable material,” he blended this with 

other sources before he forwarded his recommendations to Ninth Air Force and 

the tactical air commands.% SHAEF G-2 also published periodic revisions to 

a master interdiction handbook, which identified bridges and viaducts by 

location, indicated their structural characteristics, previous damage, and flak 

defenses, and included other appropriate assessments.m Not surprisingly, 

because the overwhelming portion of targets involved the German Amy, most 

of the ULTRA intelligence came through army channels and was presented by 

the army SSO assigned to the appropriate headquarters. 

While photoreconnaissance and other sources focused on static locations, 

ULTRA provided glimpses of more fleeting targets. In one of its most spectacular offerings, ULTRA revealed the location of the German headquarters 

responsible for controlling all panzer divisions sent against the Allies in the 

opening days of NEPTUNE. Based on this intelligence, an especially effective air 

strike caused such damage and casualties as to remove that critical command 

center for two weeks.”’ Similarly, a decrypt pinpointing a concentration of 

military vehicles camouflaged in a wooded area in eastern France two months 

later was passed to the XIX TAC A-2. After the original source was protected 

by an air reconnaissance mission, the subsequent air attack destroyed an 

estimated 400 vehicles.2w 

Among the most significant insights ULTRA offered were the locations of 

fuel and ammunition dumps. These installations, often difficult to detect from 

the air, provided the lifeblood of the German forces. Even here, mission 

planners still needed photographs to pinpoint precise locations since decrypts 

generally identified only an area. For example, a series of messages in late 

August 1944 referred to a fuel depot at Givet, France, without providing an 

exact location in the village or surrounding area.’” ULTRA could be more 

precise on occasion. On August 26, BP signaled the decrypt of a request for a 

locomotive and tank cars to move oil from Pont sec de Passy, near Lezinnes, 

234 
The European Theater of Operations 

France, to Dijon.2ii Since the commands received this signal three days after the 

original German transmission, it may or may not have provided a useful target. 

Because of the German need to communicate hurriedly in what was at times 

a chaotic retreat and the nature of German radio traffic being passed, those who 

read ULTRA saw much disarray. This led to mistaken impressions that the 

German military was about to collapse. The Allies could not tap into the 

landline communications within Germany by which the high command was 

beginning, by early September, to reorganize and rebuild its forces. Ironically, 

while trying to reconstitute themselves, the German Army and GAF provided 

intelligence contributing to their continued destruction. As the Germans 

identified their locations and unit strengths, they enabled Allied planners to 

focus their air strikes and then to assess the resulting courses of action. 

Although the battle for Germany would last almost eight more months, with 

only two exceptions, air intelligence had found its niche. These two instances 

were the Ardennes counteroffensive in mid-December and the Lumuffe’ s dawn 

attack against Allied air bases on January 1, 1945. 

The German offensive in December represented not just an air intelligence 

failure but a failure of Allied intelligence overall. Taken together, the ULTRA 

decrypts available on German air and land movements provided enough clues 

to suggest the possibility of a German offensive. In late October, in fact, British 

air intelligence, keying on the precision of the German language in several 

messages and on more general evidence of an air buildup, concluded the enemy 

was preparing a spoiling attack rather than, as almost universally believed, 

simply strengthening his defensive positions or organizing for an attempted 

counteroffensive after the Allies crossed the Roer River.’” Six weeks later, in 

the face of continued Lufiuffe emphasis on Reich air defense, air intelligence 

concluded on December 6, “The original plan for [a] ‘lightening [sic] blow’ 

and sudden attack in the west may with some certainty be said to have lapsed. 

The problem was not a lack of evidence that something was afoot. Of this 

there was plenty, not only in ULTRA but in the hundreds of visual and 

photoreconnaissance reports of extensive ground forces activities and rail 

movements within Germany.214 The problem was an alternative explanation 

toward which Allied intelligence was too easily lulled. Convinced the enemy 

was too weak for offensive action, both air and ground intelligence officers 

chose to believe he was merely strengthening his defenses in the hope of 

holding off the western Allies through the winter.”’ 

That the GAF intended to engage in extensive ground support in this region 

was evident from late October, and increasingly so by the end of November. An 

extensive reorganization established a command structure geared for such 

operations. In the last week of October ULTRA advised the Allies that the GAF 

was stocking airfields north of Aachen with fuel and ammunition.216 In 

contradistinction to earlier dispositions of fighter units to enhance home air 

,7213 ... 

235 
Piercing the Fog 

defense, by mid-November it became clear that fighters, perhaps as many as 

850, were being shifted or prepared for movement to the west.’17 Units were 

directed to ensure the capability to equip fighters for ground attack on short 

notice. One such directive even referred to a “special project” as the reason for 

these steps.’l* 

What made these messages difficult to assess properly, or made them too 

easy to misinterpret, was the fact that virtually all the steps being taken or 

ordered were consistent with the employment of the Luftwuffe in support of 

defensive ground operations. Given any rational evaluation of the probabilities 

of success and the consequences of failure of a spoiling attack, a major German 

offensive made no sense. The failure was not one of not recognizing signs of the 

impending thrust; rather, the culprit was the wish that the enemy would do as 

the analysts and commanders thought he should, not as the enemy himself 

wanted. Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery was right when he stated 

(ironically, on the day the attack began) that the German Army “has not the 

transport or the petrol that would be necessary for [extensive] mobile operations. . . .”’” He was wrong in assuming Hitler would operate under such an 

assessment. 

In the initial days of the German offensive, the biggest problem air 

intelligence faced was determining the relative positions of the opposing troops. 

Terrible weather (which prevented aerial reconnaissance), the rapidity of enemy 

movement, and the loss of contact with forward troops in the confusion of the 

first days made close support of American forces difficult. Once the weather 

broke, just before Christmas, the task of air intelligence, and air operations, 

became easier. Tactical photographic and visual reconnaissance of marshaling 

yards in Germany provided targets for heavy and medium bombers. For close 

support and interdiction in the immediate battle area, the most valuable source 

was visual reconnaissance since, as General Lee recalled, “It was Ijust] a 

question of what you could see on the ground.”220 

The last major German air attack-a dawn strike of some 700 aircraft 

against Allied bases in Holland and Belgium--came the morning of January 1, 

1945. According to a history of the war, the attack, which destroyed about 150 

aircraft and damaged more than 100 others, caught Allied intelligence off 

guard.”’ The British history of the war stated simply, “The GAF achieved 

surprise in a major attack on Allied airfields on 1 January. . . .””’ Whether this 

strike could have been, or indeed was, foreseen remains unanswered. Several 

ULTRA messages referred to GAF units practicing for low-level strikes against 

airfields in De~ember.”~ One of the ULTRA special security officers assigned to 

Ninth Air Force wrote in his after-action report that he had used ULTRA 

decrypts to convince the commanding general of an impending strike, and 

American fighters were in the air that morning. The director of operations for 

Ninth Air Force recalled he had gotten no indication of such an operation, and 

that it caught everyone off g~ard.”~ At any rate, the German New Year’s assault 

236 
The European Theater of Operations 

had a very limited effect on the now massive Allied air superiority, while quick 

reactions by Allied pilots cost the Luffwufle some 300 planes. 

Strategic Air Operations: Summer 1944 to Spring 1945 

By September 1944, the Allied ground offensive had progressed far beyond 

expectations. The prevailing opinion in the Allied camp was that the war with 

Germany would be over by the end of the year. In the middle of the month, the 

CCS removed the strategic air forces from Eisenhower’s control and placed 

them under the Chiefs of Staff, RAF and AAF. The Deputy Chief of Air Staff 

and the Commanding General, USSTAF, were to serve as their executive 

agents. In practical terms, this shift had little impact either on operations or on 

the collection, evaluation, and dissemination of strategic air intelligence. Within 

weeks of securing a foothold in France, Eisenhower had given Spaatz a virtual 

free hand to employ his strategic air By August the primary objective 

of that employment clearly was the destruction of the enemy’s petroleum 

industry and its reserve capacity. 

Although he had implemented Eisenhower’s instructions to employ Eighth 

Air Force against the German transportation network in western Europe in 

support Of OVERLORD, the USSTAF commander and his staff continued to focus 

on the German oil industry. In opposing the AEAF transportation program in 

the early months of 1944, USSTAF leaders had argued that only by threatening 

a system vitally important to Germany would the GAF be drawn into continued 

air combat. Failure to so challenge the Lufnyuffe would negate the impact of Big 

Week by providing the enemy an opportunity to rebuild. Such rebuilding 

appeared to be underway by the spring of 1944. In a memorandum to the deputy 

commanding general for operations on April 9, McDonald noted the losses of 

the enemy fighter force in the first three months of 1944 had been 11 percent 

higher than in the previous year because of the expanded American daylight 

bombing campaign. The German high command realized this and had begun to 

withhold fighters for homeland defense, even when this meant that strikes 

against peripheral targets went unmolested. “Only maximum scale operations 

deep in Gemany,” warned the director of intelligence, “assure us the excess of 

wastage over production which is indispensable to the reduction of the German 

Air Force.”226 

Spaatz was absolutely convinced of the need to keep the GAF in a 

weakened state lest his bombers face a revitalized foe after OVERLORD. He 

threatened to resign unless he received authorization to conduct sufficient 

strikes to draw the enemy into battle and further weaken his industrial base.227 

Eisenhower consented; on May 12, 28, and 29, Eighth Air Force struck oil 

complexes in Germany. In the same period, Fifteenth Air Force hit the refineries 

at Ploesti. The German reaction to these raids, revealed through photoreconnais237 
Piercing the Fog 

sance and ULTRA, provided incontestable evidence of the validity of concentrating on the petroleum industry. The decrypt of a GAF operations staff message 

the day after the‘May 12 attack on the refinery at Leuna revealed the transfer of 

flak batteries from aircraft production facilities at Oschersleben, Wiener 

Neustadt, and Leipzig-Erla to various synthetic oil plants. That the enemy was 

willing to reduce protection of his aircraft factories provided the clearest 

possible indication of the importance he attached to oil.ZZR 

By June 10,1944, USSTAF had prepared its plan for the employment of the 

strategic air forces, which Spaatz personally carried to Eisenhower and Tedder 

on the 13th. The drafters of this plan, among them operations and intelligence 

officers, argued that events of the past sixty days had demonstrated tactical air 

forces could effectively support operations in France. Spaatz’ s people stated, 

“the German Air Force is no longer able to prevent the destruction by our air 

forces of any system of targets which we may now select.” The key now was to 

determine on which system to concentrate. After reviewing the list of possible 

target systems, the planners concluded that attacks on the petroleum industry, 

with emphasis on gasoline, would most dramatically affect the enemy’s combat 

capability across the board.’” 

Within weeks of the May attacks on oil targets, intelligence organizations 

outside USSTAF supported Spaatz in redirecting American strategic air efforts. 

As part of an analysis of the Allied interdiction program and recommendations 

for future operations, Eisenhower’s own SHAEF G-2 identified oil as the 

strategic target that would most decisively affect the enemy’s combat capability. 

While not totally ignoring the interdiction campaign, this report, based on an 

earlier EOU study, recommended that American heavy bombers also be directed 

against refineries, synthetic oil plants, and fuel dumps throughout western 

In Washington, the COA was more emphatic. Directed by the 

AC/AS, Plans, to reassess their original March 1943 report in the light of the 

changed situation in Europe, the committee opined in June 1944, “Oil is clearly 

the most important strategic target after the policing of air~raft.”’~’ 

Although Eisenhower issued no formal directive, he and Spaatz obviously 

had reached an agreement by the middle of June. Eighth Air Force conducted 

four major attacks in both June and July against the German oil industry. In 

August, it increased this number to nine assaults on refineries and other 

facilities in addition to extensive fighter-bomber attacks by Ninth Air Force 

against fuel depots in Germany, France, and Belgi~m.*’~’ To provide targeting 

recommendations and to monitor the effectiveness of this expanding oil 

*Between May 1,1944, and March 31,1945, Eighth and Fifteenth Air Forces 

and RAF Bomber Command conducted 555 separate attacks on 133 oil industry 

targets, plus numerous raids on reserve oil depots and POL dumps. Nevertheless, 

Eighth Air Force’s 222 oil-related attacks constituted only 13 percent of its total 

tonnage dropped in this period. 

238 
The European Theater of Operations 

campaign, the Allies created a Joint Oil Targets Committee in July. In early 

August, General McDonald forwarded to the USSTAF deputy for operations the 

first comprehensive assessment of this group. Assuming a base level of 100 

percent production in April 1944, the oil targets committee estimated this had 

been cut to 80 percent in May, to 58 percent in June (revised to 50 percent the 

next month), and to 49.5 percent in July (with an anticipated downward revision 

as more complete data became available). The committee also suggested that 

failure to continue operations at the same level would enable the enemy’s 

production to rise as high as 68.5 percent by the end of August.U3 

Given the difficulties of assessing physical damage, let alone the impact of 

any given strike on production, the precision with which analysts rendered their 

estimates was questionable. Just two months earlier, in a message prepared by 

his director of intelligence, Spaatz had admitted to General Arnold his 

continuing difficulties in evaluating the damage being done to production 

capacities, in assessing the impact on the enemy’s combat capabilities, and in 

estimating repair times. Moreover, he pointed out, such analysis was never 

instantaneous because weather often delayed poststrike reconnaissance 

missions. Referring specifically to the oil attacks in May, he observed the 

targets struck on May 12 had not been photographed until twelve days later.234 

Postwar analysis would reveal that the Allies’ estimates of German oil 

production, consumption, and reserves were all too high, although the various 

errors tended to cancel out one another.235 While the statistics were not always 

correct, the general trend was clear enough. More to the point, Allied intelligence was now beginning to obtain authoritative evidence of the operational 

impact of the oil campaign. 

While indications of the effectiveness of these operations came through a 

variety of channels, Enigma was by far the dominant source. As early as June 

5, 1944, the GAF operations staff advised subordinate units that because of 

“encroachment into the production of a/c fuel by enemy action . . . it has been 

necessary to break into the strategic reserves.”236 While this reserve was larger 

and the actual consumption of oil less than the Allies had estimated, such a step 

was seen as indicative of the potential the oil campaign offered. A month later, 

Reichsmarshall Herman Goering, decreed, “Drastic economy [in fuel use] is 

absolutely That samemonth, becauseof fuel shortages and directly 

contradicting previously standard procedures, the Germans ordered aircraft not 

to fly away from bases where attacks were expected.238 Nor were combat units 

engaged against Allied forces in France exempt. In midJuly Luftflotte 3 

announced its intention to remove fuel stored at inactive bases, a measure that 

would severely restrict operational fle~ibility.’~’ A month later, that same 

headquarters announced, “Damage to fuel production demands a further 

considerably greater reduction of all flying activities . . . [only] fighter 

operations in the course of air defense remain ~nrestricted.”~ 

239 
Piercing the Fog 

By autumn, it was becoming increasingly obvious that a shortage of fuel 

rather than a lack of either pilots or airplanes was the primary factor in 

restricting the Lufhyuffe’s operations. On September 2, Jugdkorps ZZ, which 

supported German armies in the west, reported 285 serviceable aircraft, but it 

added that two groups could not fly that day “owing to lack of fuel.” That these 

units were now operating on airfields in Germany suggested that fuel shortages 

were systemwide and not merely the result of transportation dislocations in 

forward area^.'^' Supporting functions suffered even more drastically. The 

director of one of the GAF’s technical armament branches announced in 

October, “All aircraft dry and no testing or ferrying possible.””’ According to 

a USSTAF-directed study on ULTRA and American air operations, from 

September onward “the files . . . become an almost continuous chronicle of oil 

shortage e~erywhere.”’~~ Still, it must have been particularly satisfying for those 

who put forward the oil plan to read a message of November 18 announcing 

orders, probably from Goering: “Operations are to be ruthlessly cut down, i.e., 

operations must only take place when the weather situation and other prerequisites guarantee promise of success.”’u In the face of such evidence, there could 

be little doubt in the air commanders’ minds of oil’s continued priority. 

Well before ULTRA began to provide information on the effects of oil 

shortages on the Lufhyuffe, Spaatz had shifted the focus of American strategic 

bombing from the German aircraft industry and the GAF itself. In response to 

those who had cautioned against too hasty a de-emphasis on the GAF, the 

commanding general declared in April 1944, “The requisite intensity of 

Counter-Air Force actions . . . must now be judged by the principal Air 

Commanders Relying largely on ULTRA decrypts, Spaatz advised his 

Air Force commanders on September 1 that, except for jet production 

installations, the German aircraft industry was not a priority target because the 

lack of fuel and qualified pilots, not airframes, was what was hindering German 

air operation^."^ ULTRA and other sources certainly supported this confidence, 

but the condition of the GAF was evident from its relative inactivity as well. 

Spaatz and his senior officers did not need special intelligence to tell them a 

force that refused to seriously contest attacks on its homeland was a force in 

trouble. In a letter to Arnold a month after OVERLORD, Spaatz commented on 

“the latent weakness of the German Air Force,” observing, “It even appears that 

the effectiveness of POINTBLANK was greater than we had anti~ipated.”~~’ 

Intelligence assessments from a variety of agencies through the fall of 1944 

continued to confirm this assessment. In October, the EOU noted an increase in 

the production of single-engine fighters from between 500 and 600 a month 

earlier in the year to 1,400 a month. The economic analysts argued that neither 

production nor first-line strength was critical. Because petroleum shortages 

affected both operations and training, without which the expanding fleet would 

be impotent, the heavy bombers should continue to concentrate on oil. Fighter 

and fighter-bomber attacks on training bases continued to contribute to the 

240 
The European Theater of Operations 

already serious delays in the Luftwuffe’s training program.”’ Also in October, 

a detailed study by the Air Ministry’s A.I.3(b) section suggested even a 

projected increase from 2,000 to 2,600 single-engine fighters would not 

represent a serious problem for Allied operations overall. Recognizing that the 

introduction of jet aircraft would increase “the enemy’s ability on occasion to 

inflict loss,” A.I.3(b) concluded that jets would probably be used for ground 

attack and therefore they constituted “no appreciable threat to daylight raids” 

through the end of December.”’ 

The USSTAF director of operations incorporated the evaluations of both 

EOU and A.I.3(b) into a report to the deputy commander for operations in early 

November. He argued that the threat to deep penetration attacks would certainly 

be no more and probably be less serious than it had been in the previous year. 

That the enemy fighter force was not operating to capacity dictated unrelenting 

efforts against Contributing further to the reluctance to attack the aircraft 

industry was the recognition that its dispersal was the most successful defensive 

measure the enemy had ~ndertaken.’~’ 

Although USSTAF succeeded after the summer of 1944 in maintaining the 

German oil industry and all its components as the number one priority, the last 

phase of the strategic air war in Europe was marked by an expanding and often 

shifting array of target categories. The selection of these targets and their 

varying priorities, determined largely by developments in the land war, 

increased the demands on all aspects of intelligence. These demands included 

recommending priorities among and within target systems, preparing vastly 

increased amounts of materials to support individual operations, and the everexpanding requirements to analyze bomb damage and monitor the condition of 

previously hit areas. 

When ordnance depots became a priority for the strategic air bombers, for 

example, the Allied CIU at Medmenham developed more than a hundred new 

objective folders (in hundreds of copies each). Between early December 1944 

and February 1945, emphasis on the German transportation system resulted in 

almost 200 new targets, from bridges to marshaling yards to stations.252 In 

January 1945 the Eighth Air Force A-2 advised USSTAF it would need four 

times the already prodigious photoreconnaissance support it had received over 

the past few months.253 

To identify the most significant targets and recommend priorities for them, 

the Allies created the Combined Strategic Targets Committee (CSTC) in 

October 1944. The CSTC incorporated as “working committees” the Joint Oil 

Targets and Jockey Committees, as well as several new groups that emerged 

and sometimes rather quickly disbanded to meet the changing situation in the 

winter of 1944-1945: POL depots, army equipment, armored fighting vehicles 

(AFVs), and communications (e.g., transportation). Composed of intelligence 

and operations representatives of those commands involved in conducting 

strategic air operations (including SHAEF), the CSTC was charged to provide 

24 1 
Piercing the Fog 

“advice as to priorities between the different systems of strategic objectives, and 

the priorities of targets within these systems.”z4 On behalf of the RAF Deputy 

Chief of Air Staff and the Commanding General, USSTAF, the committee 

published a weekly priority list similar to the original Jockey schedules. 

Between September and November, ordnance, military transportation, and AFV 

production followed oil on the strategic target priority list. These three were 

taken off the list on November 1 with the decision to concentrate on the German 

transportation system. In February, when intelligence indicated a rise in 

production of AFVs, they were reinstated, and a specific working committee 

was created to monitor armored vehicles. 

Intelligence on these systems came from now well-established sources. 

USSTAF relied on the EOU’s general intelligence unit to analyze German 

military equipment production.255 Photoreconnaissance and photointerpretation 

agencies increased their work still further. In contrast to earlier periods, ULTRA 

provided extensive quantitative and qualitative information on attacks against 

individual targets, which contributed to accurate assessments. Much of this 

information derived from decrypted police messages and codes now used by 

military-industrial agencies created to coordinate production with military 

requiremenkZ6 Cross-checking ULTRA information with photointerpretation 

resulted in more accurate assessments and more effective subsequent targeting 

 decision^.^' The insight ULTRA now provided on the overall state of German 

production and resources had strategic implications as well. Messages such as 

the one from Oberkommando der Wehrmucht (the German high command) on 

January 10, 1945, advising that because of critical shortages of ammunition it 

would be possible only to supply active sectors while economizing elsewhere, 

surely contributed to the CSTC recommendation that month to reinstate 

ammunition to priority status.258 

In response to the broadening target base, in January 1945 the USSTAF 

director of intelligence expanded the daily briefing to the commanding general 

to include considerable target intelligence, and he instituted special weekly 

briefings to inform key staff officers of the status of target systems and 

important individual targets. Although USSTAF was not responsible for 

selection of ground-support targets, the operational intelligence section 

established a special tactical targets subsection to keep Spaatz and his senior 

officers informed of the ground situation and of important ground targets. This 

group worked closely with the target committees in London and at SHAEF. 

USSTAF intelligence also expanded the distribution of information to 

subordinate commands, both strategic and tactical, to assist them in targeting. 

American officers assigned to the Air Ministry were already sending a daily OB 

to the tactical air forces and commands; it provided enemy units’ strength, 

locations, and type of aircraft as well as a daily airfield activity report. In the 

winter of 1944-1945, the USSTAF Air Ministry section sent daily signals on 

the status of important ammunition dumps, ordnance, and POL depots; military 

242 
The European Theater of Operations 

training and barracks areas; panzer reequipment depots; headquarters; and 

traffic concentrations and routes.=’ 

In November 1944, the question of transportation as a valid strategic target 

surfaced again. Largely at the insistence of Tedder, the entire German 

transportation network assumed second priority for American strategic air 

operations. Spaatz issued a new directive to his air forces commanders to this 

effect, but USSTAF intelligence vehemently opposed SHAEF’s insistence on 

transportation, which continued into the new year?60 The issue was not whether 

the transportation system was critical, but whether strategic air forces could 

achieve measurable results by attacking it. An overwhelming portion of those 

agencies that provided data to USSTAF intelligence agreed that the transportation system simply was too big and had too much excess capacity and reserves 

to be attacked effectively.26’ The minutes of a meeting of civilian and military 

railroad experts in late October concluded, “No railroad expert present offered 

any system of rail transportation targets which he considered, if attacked, would 

produce the effect desired by the Deputy Supreme Commander, i.e., the 

isolation of the armies from their sources of supply.” In January 1945 the 

communications working committee of CSTC determined even heavy attacks 

on a limited portion of Germany would not be profitable.262 

Earlier that month, McDonald had forwarded a memorandum to General 

Anderson offering “an Intelligence appraisal of the immediate Strategic Air 

aims of the U.S. Air Forces.” According to McDonald, the direction that the 

SHAEF staff was providing American strategic air power “is not showing the 

results which might be expected of the expenditure of such a huge force,” 

rather, it was detracting from the more important oil program. Asserting “the 

Air Forces are faced currently with deciding the length of this war,” McDonald 

“strongly” recommended “overriding priority” be given immediately to 

successful attacks on active gasoline producers and jet engine manufacturing 

The urgency that McDonald placed on jet aircraft production reflected the 

most serious concern of American airmen in the winter of 1944-1945. The 

imponderable factor in the assessments of the GAF in the fall of 1944 was the 

impact that large numbers of jet fighters might have on the enemy’s potency. 

The Allies had long been aware of German efforts to develop revolutionary new 

aircraft. British intelligence reports from agents in Germany as early as the 

summer of 1940 referred to work on gas-turbine engines. By late 1942 the 

British knew from POW interrogations and agent reports forwarded by the air 

attache in Berne, Switzerland, that both Messerschmitt and Heinkel were trying 

to develop jet- or rocket-powered aircraft. Photointerpreters at Medmenham had 

discovered an aircraft matching the description of a prototype at a Heinkel 

factory?M In June 1943, advised to be on the lookout for “something queer,” a 

photointerpreter had spotted four small tailless aircraft at Peenemunde which 

243 
Piercing the Fog 

turned out to be Me 163s. The first Me 262 was discovered by photointerpreters 

early in 1944.265 

Through the rest of 1943 and into 1944, Allied intelligence continued to 

receive reports of a variety of jet aircraft, several of which they expected to 

appear in limited service during 1944. These included the He 280 (which never 

reached production), the Arado Ar 234 (which came into service primarily in 

a reconnaissance version in the summer of 1944), the Me 163 (a short-range, 

rocket-powered interceptor that proved of limited value), and the Me 262 

(potentially the most serious threat). The bulk of the information on these 

aircraft came from HUMINT sources (often confirmed by photoreconnaissance) 

and captured documents (including notes of a lecture by General Adolph 

Galland given in Caen, France, in 1943). By early 1944 the Allies had firm 

information on the Me 262’s engines, airframe, armament, and flight characteristics as well as extensive data on the Me 163.266 Because none of these 

machines was yet operational, ULTRA provided few insights. But by the middle 

of July, with both the Me 163 and Me 262 operational (although not yet in 

service with combat squadrons), Air Ministry Intelligence warned, “The 

development of jet-propulsion in Germany is assuming important 

proportions.”267 Y intercepts in early October 1944 gave advanced warning that 

the Me 262 was going into combat units in both its fighter-bomber and its 

interceptor roles. American daylight bomber formations experienced their first 

assault by Me 262s on November 1 .268 

While Hitler had intended to employ the Me 262 (and the Ar 234) as 

ground-attack weapons, American airmen focused on its potential as a fighterinterceptor. In July, Spaatz wrote to Arnold advising that the employment of 

large numbers of jets in this role would give the initiative in the strategic air war 

back to the Lufhyuffe.26y By September, the USSTAF commander deemed the 

potential danger sufficiently acute to advise his superior of the measures he 

intended to take, should the situation “reach the point where losses become 

intolerable.”270 For the moment, the primary threat was to Allied reconnaissance. Of ten MAAF reconnaissance missions flown in the Munich area the 

week preceding Spaatz’s letter, Me 262s had succeeded in shooting down three 

of the six they attacked. 

One way to reduce the looming threat was to attack the sources of these 

new weapons. In his directive to the commanders of Eighth and Fifteenth Air 

Forces on September 1, Spaatz had given jet production installations a priority 

second only to By the end of the month, it was obvious that dispersal and 

the movement to underground production centers (for which jets were given top 

priority) limited the effectiveness of such attacks, and these installations were 

dropped from their original priority.272 Under the prevailing assumption that the 

war would be over by the end of the year, in the first week of November 

Spaatz’s director of operations agreed with an assessment by A.I.3(b) that there 

appeared to be “no appreciable threat to daylight raids by 1st January 1945.”273 

244 
The European Theater of Operations 

Even the knowledge gained in early December that Hitler had approved 

conversion of ground-attack Me 262s to the fighter mode initially caused little 

concern, since this was assumed to be a slow process.274 

The stunning psychological shock of the Ardennes offensive and the 

surprise aerial attack on Allied airfields the morning of January 1,1945, caused 

a dramatic reassessment of the air situation by Allied intelligence. With the end 

of the war no longer just over the horizon, developments that had seemed 

unlikely now took on a different cast. The conversion of Me 262 ground-attack 

aircraft to interceptors armed with four cannon was in itself cause forcon~ern.~~~ 

Even more disconcerting were reports from workers and officials at the jet 

production facilities at Strasbourg and a long decrypt from the Japanese naval 

attach6 on the intended scope of Me 262 The impact of this new 

perspective was felt almost immediately. Before the end of December, the first 

sixteen targets on the weekly Jockey list related to jet production, while the 

daily airfield attack list emphasized facilities used for jet operations or 

training.277 On December 29, McDonald forwarded to the deputy commander 

for operations an Air Ministry estimate that the GAF possessed 100-125 Me 

262s and the potential for 325-400 by April, with possible production of 250 

per month from April through June.27g 

In a memorandum to the commanding general, USSTAF, as the new year 

opened, McDonald warned that jet fighters now constituted “a serious threat” 

since “a staggering proportion” of German effort was being funneled into this 

project. McDonald believed that if the war continued until summer, jet 

interceptors could “completely upset the present balance of aerial power.” To 

preclude this, the Allies had to initiate immediate countermeasures, even at the 

expense of other target systems. These steps, a worried McDonald urged, should 

include continued emphasis on oil (especially jet aviation fuel), attacks on jet 

production facilities wherever they were suspected, and (in contrast to his own 

opposition to attacks on airfields generally) operations against German airfields 

used for jet testing, training, and operations. The Eighth and Fifteenth Air 

Forces, the intelligence chief concluded, must “be given unequivocal directive 

to place German jet targets on a priority second only to 

Responding to the threat, one week later General Spaatz made jet fighters 

“primary objectives for attack.” Writing to Arnold, he noted that while his 

January 16 directive addressed several target systems, the primary change was 

“the restoration of the G.A.F. and primarily that of its jet aircraft production, 

training and operational establishments. . . .” As justification for his decision, 

with which the Air Staff apparently did not agree, Spaatz repeated the figures 

McDonald had provided on the potential growth of the German jet fighter force 

by summer.28o Despite the flurry of concern, actual operations against jet 

facilities did not increase significantly; two-thirds of the heavy bomber attacks 

in January continued in direct support of land operations (principally against rail 

targets and ammunition depots). The following month, as part of a massive 

245 
Piercing the Fog 

bombardment of targets throughout Germany, Allied air forces effectively 

reduced jet fighter production to negligible proportions.281 

The impact of these mortal blows appeared in a recommendation by 

McDonald to General Anderson in mid-March 1945. Reviewing the GAF’s 

response to daylight bombing since the first of the year, the intelligence director 

noted that of 55 heavy bomber missions, only 13 had met any reaction; 33 

bombers were confirmed as lost to enemy fighters, either conventional or jet. 

The latest reports suggested that the Germans, who had moved more than half 

their conventional fighters to the eastern front in January, could devote no more 

than 125 Me 262s to defensive operations before the end of April. Even those 

would be unable to concentrate because of fuel shortages and installation 

damages.282 In marked contrast to his previous emphasis on the requirement for 

strong escort support, which he had argued only a few months before was the 

only reason American bombers could continue deep raids, McDonald now 

recommended Eighth Air Force fighters could be better employed for “more 

direct cooperation with the ground forces.”283 

Shortly thereafter, the Jockey Committee in its final meeting concluded the 

GAF was no longer a worthwhile target.284 On April 16, 1945, Spaatz directed 

that in the absence of appropriate strategic targets, American strategic air forces 

would operate in support of the advancing Allied armies. Three weeks later 

Germany surrendered. 

246 
CHAPTER 5 

The Pacific and Far East, 1942-1945 

BEFOE THE WAR, the American and Allied understanding of Japanese air 

warfare capabilities was woefully incomplete, seemingly hampered by a 

tendency to overlook Japanese accomplishments and ignore available facts. A 

Zero (Zeke) fighter shot down in China in May 1941 yielded valuable data on 

its range, speed, armament, and oxygen system. This information came 

originally from Claire L. Chennault, serving in China as Chiang Kai-shek’s air 

advisor, and had gone, in turn, to the Army, U.S. Navy, and British government, 

reaching British air headquarters in Singapore before the war. Yet when war 

broke out, the Zero’s performance surprised the RAF’s fighter pilots in Malaya. 

Taxed heavily in Europe and Africa, the RAF had no squadron intelligence 

officers in Malaya, and the small headquarters staff in Singapore could not cope 

with all the demands forced upon it by the growing possibility of war in the Far 

East. Nobody briefed the pilots, who were first to suffer. 

At about the same time, the American air intelligence operation in the 

Philippines had its own troubles. The dichotomy between the Army’s and 

Navy’s intelligence operations in Manila that may have hampered the defense 

of the islands in the face of the Japanese attack also contributed to the 

destruction at Clark Field. Yet despite the confusion, and in the face of the 

advancing Japanese, radio intercept services of the Army and Navy continued 

to operate in the Philippines until late March 1942. The Army unit on 

Corregidor sent Y intercepts to the Army ground forces on Bataan and to the 

remnants of AAF units there and on Mindanao.’ 

Throughout the Pacific and Asian war, intelligence information was 

paramount in guiding the various commanders’ decisions on air operations. The 

destruction of a Japanese convoy off New Guinea in the March 1943 battle of 

the Bismarck Sea had its origin in the U.S. Navy’s interception of Japanese 

messages, as did the successful ambush of Admiral Yamamoto Isoroku, 

commander-in-chief of the Japanese Combined Fleet. The air defense of 

Guadalcanal, largely a Navy-Marine effort but with AAF participation, 

depended in part on intercepts of Japanese radio messages and on information 

sent from Australian coast watchers hiding on Japanese-controlled islands. In 

247 
Piercing the Fog 

the central and southwest Pacific, the US. Navy and Army, with Allied forces’ 

participation, created SIGINT organizations charged with watching Japanese 

activity across a huge expanse of ocean and land areas. 

The United States, the British Commonwealth, and the NEI all entered the 

war against Japan within hours in December 1941. Japanese air forces attacked 

Hawaii on December 7 and the Philippines and Malaya a few hours later (on 

December 8, Singapore time). On the 8th, Japan’s Army landed in Malaya; a 

few days later her soldiers came ashore in the Philippines. Simultaneously, the 

Japanese began moving along the Chinese coast toward Hong Kong. By 

Christmas, the Allies’ situation had deteriorated markedly, with General 

MacArthur’s forces abandoning Manila. Shortly thereafter, Hong Kong and 

Wake Island fell, and Japanese troops pushed south through Malaya toward 

Singapore. To stem Japanese advances and pull together the Allies, General 

Marshall recommended creation of a single unified command for the SPA and 

the SWPA. Shortly thereafter, the American-British-Dutch-Australian (ABDA) 

Command came into existence; its commander was the British general 

Archibald P. Wavell. Wavell’s staff officers from all services in the four nations 

hurried to set up a coherent command structure, but these patchwork solutions 

were far too late. Retreat in the Philippines led to eventual surrender, as it did 

in Malaya. Even before the fall of Singapore, the Japanese had set out to seize 

the oil-rich NEI. The Japanese Army took the oil refinery at Palembang, 

Sumatra, by air assault on February 16,1942. On March 2, the Allies evacuated 

Java, bringing to an end the ABDA Command.’ 

Japanese military and naval forces now threatened to cut the lines of 

communication between North America and Australia-New Zealand by an 

advance through the Solomon Islands to Fiji. Japan also threatened Australia 

directly, organizing an invasion force to take Port Moresby, New Guinea. Many 

in Australia feared that if Port Moresby was lost, the Australian Northern 

Territory town of Darwin would be next. The Allies discerned the Japanese 

intent through a series of messages decrypted at Pearl Harbor and Washington, 

and they blocked the Port Moresby invasion force’s advance at the battle of the 

Coral Sea in May 1942.3 

The rapid Japanese expansion surprised even Japan’s senior admirals and 

generals; their outward push slowed as the military took stock of the situation 

and of the effects of both the battle of the Coral Sea-May 7 and 8,1942-and 

then the battle of Midway-June 4 and 5, 1942. The war in the Pacific and in 

the CBI area now assumed its long-term shape: successful prosecution by either 

side depended on the adroit use of land-based and naval air power. The 

destruction at Pearl Harbor, followed on December 10, 1941, by the Japanese 

sinking of the Royal Navy’s battleships Prince of Wales and Repulse off the 

Malayan coast, graphically demonstrated the key role of aircraft to the 

remaining doubters. 

248 
The Pacific and Far East 

In the Pacific and the Far East, the AAF fought a conflict very unlike the 

one in Europe and the Mediterranean. The war against Japan was many wars in 

four or more different theaters (depending upon how one defines the term 

“theater”), with differing commanders, administrative and logistic systems, and 

varying enemy capabilities. Reflecting the mixture of sea, terrain, weather, 

friendly and enemy units, and the distances over which airmen of all services 

waged war, the air intelligence structures that supported the fighting came to be 

as diverse as the theaters. To carry the fighting to the Japanese, the AAF created 

a number of commands throughout the Pacific-Asian region. First priority went 

to the defense of the sea lines of communication to New Zealand and Australia. 

To cover part of this responsibility, the Allies created the SWPA, commanded 

by General MacArthur, on April 18, 1942. MacArthur’s responsibilities 

included operations in Australia and the East Indies. To the east and north of 

MacArthur’s command stretched the SPA and the POA, commanded by 

Admiral Chester W. Nimitz. Unlike the SWPA and CBI theaters, where the 

AAF operated as integrated air commands, Nimitz and the Navy often 

subordinated the AAF’s numbered air forces to naval commanders who usually 

broke them into group or squadron components more amenable to the Navy’s 

style of fighting with various task forces! 

The South and Southwest Pacific 

Throughout most of the 1930s, American military and naval planning for the 

Pacific assumed that Japan’s geographic location and regional strength of 

numbers would allow her initially to overrun American outposts in the 

Philippines and islands of the central Pacific. By the summer of 1941, however, 

thinking in Washington had shifted to the idea of successfully defending at least 

the Philippines. At the heart of this revised strategy was air power, particularly 

the assumed capabilities of the B-17s just beginning to roll off production line. 

By the end of 1941 the United States lacked not only sufficient numbers of 

B-17s but also the command and intelligence structure to properly employ what 

was available. 

The air power projected for the Philippines was an issue of considerable 

debate throughout 1941. American airmen believed that, in the event of war 

with Japan, they should operate within the context of the overall strategic 

defensive dictated by the Europe-first policy. Discussions in Washington had 

considered Japanese naval and air bases on and around Formosa and the 

mandated islands as possible targets. Col. Harold L. George, already sent to the 

Philippines to assist in air planning, decided the one hope for the islands’ 

defense lay in hitting the Japanese before they could land. The Americans 

possessed virtually no information to execute either of these ideas. In May 

1941, for example, the sum total of air intelligence about Formosa was an empty 

249 
Piercing the Fog 

file marked Objective Folder No. 1. Existing air intelligence in Manila consisted 

of a few oblique and vertical photographs of the sod airfields in the Philippines 

and some file coverage of districts of supposedly military importance. The 

Office of the Chief of Air Corps had already begun trying to prepare industrial 

target reports covering the Japanese home islands in the fall of 1941 .’ 

In contrast to photographic or economic intelligence, SIGINT had been 

active in the Philippines, albeit with only limited success. When Japanese 

military operations began in the Shanghai area in 1932, the U.S. Army Signal 

Corps began operating a radio-intercept station at Fort Santiago, Manila. In the 

mid-1930s a detachment of the 2d Signal Service Company handled radio 

interceptions at Fort McKinley, near Manila. The beginning of a successful era 

of radio intelligence dated from the arrival of Maj. Joe R. Sherr as chief of the 

detachment in July 1940. Sherr’s station forwarded raw radio intercepts to 

Washington; it also discovered and plotted the locations of Japanese radio nets 

that were significant to the defense of the Philippines: 

The U.S. Navy also operated a signal intelligence unit, code named CAST, 

on Corregidor. Under Lt. Comdr. Rudolph J. Fabian, this organization 

concentrated on breaking Japanese diplomatic radio traffic, since it possessed 

a PURPLE machine. By an agreement of May 1941, Sherr’s Army detachment 

did the interceptions while CAST concentrated on decoding or decrypting. With 

the establishment of HQ USAF Far East, Lt. Harold W. Brown customarily 

carried intercepted messages to MacArthur’s Chief of Staff, Brig. Gen. Richard 

K. Sutherland, who scanned them and, if he saw anything that would interest 

General MacArthur, directed that they be taken to him. Time proved the 

limiting factor in this system. A message intercepted on one day went to 

Corregidor on a second; a translation came back from the Navy on a third day, 

if it was decodable. Sundays and holidays often delayed deliveries another day, 

since the Navy usually took these days off.’ 

Even before Scherr’s detachment noted a sharp increase in Japanese 

diplomatic traffic in early December, American commanders in the Philippines 

had become aware of increased Japanese military and naval activity. On the 

evening of November 27, G-2 in Manila reported a formation of Japanese 

planes flying at high altitude over Central Luzon, presumably detected by one 

of the two radar sets operating at Iba (northwest of Clark Field) and at Manila. 

Serious defense readiness began on November 28, including sea patrols by 

B-17s over waters off Northern Luzon. Unidentified high-flying aircraft were 

over Clark Field before dawn on the mornings of December 2 and 3, and early 

in the morning hours of December 3 the Iba station plotted radar tracks off the 

Luzon coast. It was not definite that the aerial intruders were Japanese, but 

American offshore aerial patrols revealed large numbers of Japanese transports 

and cargo ships in harbors and at sea, confirming the general assumption that 

something impended.* 

250 
The Pacific and Far East 

On the evening of December 7, Manila time, the Army signal detachment 

intercepted a Tokyo instruction message identifiable as relevant to an earlier 

message of particular concern to American intelligence in Washington. Sherr 

sent the instruction message to Washington and also to the Navy SIGINT unit 

on Corregidor for translation. When Lieutenant Brown got the translated 

message on the morning of December 8 at Manila, he read a notification that 

Japan was going to war. By the time Brown reached Sutherland’s office, the 

Philippines were already under attack. Sutherland sarcastically told Brown to 

take his explanation to MacArthur, who was even then on the telephone hearing 

a report of the bombing of Clark Field. Brown explained that even though he 

had not gotten timely translations from Corregidor, Washington had the 

untranslated messages well before the Japanese attack at Pearl Harbor. ‘‘I made 

my explanation to the General,” Brown reminisced, “He said: ‘Thank you, Son,’ 

and I left. He never moved a muscle or changed his expression during my 

explanation.”’ 

In the Philippines it was December 8, shortly after 0300 (0830 on 

December 7 in Hawaii), when a commercial radio station picked up a report of 

the Japanese attack at Pearl Harbor. On Formosa, inclement flying weather had 

delayed Japanese plans for execution of before-dawn strikes against the 

Philippines. The American Far East Air Force (FEAF) could attack against 

Formosa, and FEAF’s chief of staff took objective target folders to MacArthur’s 

headquarters at Fort Santiago in Manila. Maj. Gen. Lewis H. Brereton, FEAF 

Commander, arrived about five in the morning and, according to his recollection, asked Sutherland to get MacArthur’s authority to carry out offensive action 

as soon as possible. What then happened has long remained controversial and 

subject to conflicting recollections. Sutherland remembered that Brereton had 

not wanted to attack without first having photographs, which the initial 

objective folders lacked. The American bomber commander, Col. Eugene L. 

Eubank, would later recall that the folders were “definitely poor.”” 

It was Brereton’s recollection that the gist of advice he received from 

Sutherland was this: “We can’t attack till we’re fired upon.” General MacArthur 

stated much later he had not been told of any desire on Brereton’s part to launch 

an immediate air strike, but he would have disapproved it in any event. “My 

orders,” MacArthur stated, “were explicit not to initiate hostilities against the 

Japanese. . . . Instructions from Washington were very definite to wait until the 

Japanese made the first ‘overt’ move.” At midday on December 8, while the 

Americans deliberated, a Japanese attack destroyed half of their air force on the 

ground at Clark Field in one disastrous strike.” 

At about noon on December 8, the Iba radar picked up two flights of 

Japanese aircraft bearing down on it from across the China Sea. Despite the 

early warning, American fighter reaction was quite tardy. A flight of Japanese 

medium bombers flew directly over the radar station, reducing it to scrap with 

clusters of daisy-cutter bombs. With radar thus blinded, the 2d Signal Service 

25 1 
Piercing the Fog 

Company detachment became the sole early-warning capability as American 

forces withdrew into Bataan and Corregidor. Lieutenant Brown could not 

translate what he heard, but by monitoring Japanese voice nets and learning to 

identify call signs, he could often calculate when and where a raid was pending. 

He also became expert in predicting the appearance of Japanese air reconnaissance planes over Corregidor, enabling AA gunners to shoot down at least six 

of them. Capture of Japanese air-ground code books on Bataan allowed the 

small radio intelligence office on Corregidor to monitor the signal nets of the 

enemy in the Philippines and provide early warnings which sometimes caused 

enemy losses. In April 1942 Brown and his detachment left the Philippines for 

Australia.” 

The stunning Japanese victories in the opening weeks of the war led to a 

major reorganization of American forces in the Pacific in the spring of 1942. On 

April 18, MacArthur assumed command of the SWPA with headquarters in 

Melbourne (later, in Brisbane), Australia. The first problem in Australia was to 

provide coordination with the Australian armed forces, most of whom had been 

fighting in the Mediterranean since 1940; the remnants of a few Dutch units 

which had escaped the NEiI; and the bedraggled American AAF flying units that 

had avoided destruction in the Philippines and Java. Lt. Gen. George H. Brett 

assumed command of Allied Air Forces SWPA (AAFSWPA) on April 20, with 

command over all American AAF units in Australia and operational control 

over all Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) and NEI Army Air Force combat 

units.I3 

In the early months of combat, the Americans could contribute very little 

to air intelligence. It was natural that an Australian, Air Commodore Joseph E. 

Hewitt, RAAF, became Director of Intelligence for AAFSWPA, with Lt. Col. 

Reginald F. Vance of the American AAF as his assistant director. Within the 

American air units, intelligence officers were flyers who spent time on combat 

intelligence duties between missions or while grounded. The RAAF had a 

nucleus of air combat intelligence officers who had served with the RAF in 

England and the Middle East. American air combat intelligence officers who 

had trained in the United States began to arrive in July 1942, and more came 

during the late summer and fall.I4 

Early in 1942, Allied offensive air activity consisted of scattered raids, not 

to destroy the enemy but to deceive him as to Allied strength. Defensive actions 

sought to turn back the enemy before he could do too much damage. The 

scattered offensive raids were against better-known strong points, but the effects 

were largely uncorroborated by photography. Intelligence consisted of pilot 

observations pinpointed on makeshift maps. Port Moresby, on the southeastern 

New Guinea coast, became the main base of air operations. A staff of intelligence officers there performed all briefings and interrogations of crews flying 

from or through the forward field. Reports flowed back to the AAFSWPA 

Directorate of Intelligence, which began in May 1942 to publish them in a 

252 
The Pacific and Far East 

semiweekly serial, The Allied Air Forces SWPA Intelligence Summary, that 

included general-situation reviews plus reports of Allied and enemy air 

a~tivities.’~ 

While Allied airmen sought to keep the Japanese at bay in the spring of 

1942, MacArthur and his staff set about putting GHQ SWPA in order. The G-2, 

Brig. Gen. Charles A. Willoughby, had accompanied MacArthur from 

Corregidor. Willoughby had been commissioned in 1915 and had seen service 

on the Mexican border and in World War I. He had attracted MacArthur’s 

attention as a lecturer in military history at the C&GSS during the years when 

MacArthur had emphasized the value of historical analysis. Rising in rank to 

major general, Willoughby remained MacArthur’s intelligence officer through 

World War I1 and the Korean conflict. In his own words, he was dedicated to 

“strenuous efforts to maintain and defend basic staff principles, particularly the 

absolute centralization of intelligence and the operational control of all GHQ 

intelligence agencies.” Willoughby organized the Allied intelligence resources 

within G-2 into the Allied Geographical Section, which prepared maps, 

guidebooks, and terrain profiles; the Allied Translator and Interpreter Section, 

which worked mainly on captured documents; the Allied Intelligence Bureau, 

which handled general intelligence, coast watchers, and clandestine guerrilla 

activities; and the CB, which handled SIGINT.I6 

MacArthur was convinced of the value of SIGINT. On April 1, ten days 

after reaching Melbourne, he radioed Washington: “Investigation discloses that 

a central allied signal intelligence section is required for the interception and 

cryptoanalyzing [sic] of Japanese intelligence. The time delay and transmission 

uncertainties incident to sending intercepted material to Washington and 

elsewhere dictate that this work be handled locally. Allied forces here are 

organizing such a bureau.” Even before the establishment of GHQ SWPA, 

MacArthur had both Dutch and Australian SIGINT analysts plus two American 

special intelligence organizations in action. Survivors of Sherr’s 2d Signal 

Service Company detachment accompanied MacArthur’s party in the escape 

from the Philippines. Commander Fabian brought seventy-five men of CAST to 

Australia by submarine and established them in Melbourne with their PURPLE 

machine. The Navy unit, now called BELCONNEN, was primarily responsible to 

the FRUPac in Pearl Harbor and to Washington, but it also translated for 

SWPA, as it had done in Manila.” 

In August 1942, General Kenney became General MacArthur’s air 

commander in the Southwest Pacific. MacArthur had not, so Kenney believed, 

fully understood and appreciated the potential of air power. To make matters 

worse, MacArthur and his previous air commander, General Brett, were 

estranged, hardly ever speaking. The Allied ground and air units in Australia 

and New Guinea were tired from the fighting and retreats of early 1942. Kenney 

believed that he could reverse the dispirited state of the airmen; he was a 

confident, experienced flyer who sought subordinates that he called “operators.” 

253 
Piercing the Fog 

General George C. Kenney General Nathan F. Twining 

By that term he meant a flyer who understood airplanes, who would take risks, 

break the rules when an advantage was to be gained by doing so, and would not 

ignore the opportunity if some modest thievery would benefit the man’s 

squadron or group. Kenney greatly appreciated someone who could use air 

power in bold, unexpected, and successful, ways. Within days of assuming 

command of the AAFSWA, Kenney promised MacArthur he would bomb 

Rabaul’s airfields with his ramshackle collection of B-17s on the day of the 

Allied landing at Lunga Point, Guadalcanal (to keep Japanese aviators away 

from the 1st Marine Division and its supporting ships as the men moved 

ashore). Kenney carried out his promise, much to MacArthur’s joy and surprise. 

That attack on Rabaul marked the first, and rather insignificant, use by Kenney 

of intercepted Japanese message traffic. After the raid, Kenney read with 

satisfaction the reply of the Japanese commander at Rabaul to a request for help 

from the Japanese on Guadalcanal and neighboring Tulagi: the American attack 

caused too much disruption at the airfields; there could be no air strikes on the 

landing force for some days.’’ 

George Kenney soon became the dominant AAF commander in the region 

(his public stature approached only by that of Maj. Gen. Claire L. Chennault), 

and he remained so throughout the war. General Hansell, one of Arnold’s 

closest advisors in planning the war’s operations and immensely influential in 

organizing the B-29 force, said of Kenney: “He did things with air forces that 

left airmen gasping. MacArthur owed much of his brilliant success in the 

Southwest Pacific to General Kenney’s imaginative performance.” Kenney, 

although he became very close to MacArthur, was not a member of the inner 

254 \ 
255 
Piercing the Fog 

circle that surrounded the general and played endlessly on MacArthur’s 

weaknesses. Kenney’s well-known clash with Sutherland within hours of 

assuming command of AAF not only caused Sutherland to stop what Kenney 

believed was his meddling in air operations, but it also left Kenney free to 

employ information to its best combat advantage, both within his theater and in 

joint operations with the neighboring South Pacific (SOPAC).” 

Although Vice Adm. William F. Halsey commanded the SOPAC as part of 

Admiral Nimitz’s POA, the geographic proximity of the SPA and SWPA made 

them interdependent. Air and naval forces from the two commands participated 

in joint efforts to destroy the Japanese. Despite the fact that the AAF’s 

commanders in the two areas enjoyed a close relationship, the operational and 

command structures and the intelligence offices serving in each demonstrated 

distinct differences. The Thirteenth Air Force, activated in the Solomons in 

January 1943, was operationally subordinate to the regional naval air commander, COMAIRSOPAC, as had been all the AAF units in the area. The 

Thirteenth was less an integral, operating air force than the Fifth or those in 

Europe. Immediately upon assuming command of the Thirteenth, General 

Twining established a small intelligence office on his staff.m 

In the SOPAC the AAF had little to do with combat intelligence, since 

virtually all such material for the Solomons came from the Commander, South 

Pacific (COMSOPAC), Air Combat Intelligence Center at Noumea, New 

Caledonia. This office received and disseminated all combat intelligence, and 

it prepared maps, target charts, and objective folders for both Navy air and the 

AAF, to include the 5th and 1 lth Bombardment Groups (H) operating from 

Espiritu Santo before they moved to Guadalcanal in January 1943. The Air 

Combat Intelligence Center was, to a great extent, a joint intelligence center, 

with the COMAIRSOPAC Intelligence Officer serving as the 5-2. In this 

arrangement, Col. L. C. Sherman, who was G-2 of the U.S. Army Forces in the 

South Pacific Area (USAFISPA), became a member of the 5-2 committee. The 

Americans created an interrogation and interpretation section as a theater 

language pool; it too belonged to the Air Combat Intelligence Center. The 

Marine air wing at Guadalcanal ran combat intelligence operations, with Army, 

AAF, and Australian liaison officers attached, to which the AAF contributed the 

12th Photo Interpretation Detachment. The Thirteenth Air Force A-2 staff did 

produce tactical target intelligence, based largely on its own and Navy aerial 

reconnaissance. One of the primary sources of operational air intelligence for 

the Thirteenth came from the G-2 of Lt. Gen. Millard Harmon’s headquarters, 

USAFISPA, as a result of a close and continuing relationship?’ 

Harmon commanded all Army forces in the region and was himself an air 

officer. It was through his efforts to centralize control of AAF air resources in 

the theater that the War Department had created the Thirteenth. Harmon felt an 

affinity for the flying units, and he encouraged Sherman, his G-2, to do all that 

he could for the airmen. Sherman greatly expanded the intelligence support 

25 6 
The Pacific and Far East 

throughout the area, spending considerable time at Thirteenth headquarters 

whenever he was needed. Sherman’s staff prepared air OB and other operational 

air intelligence for both Harmon and Twining. Because Admiral Halsey’s 

intelligence officer would not provide Harmon’s staff with a regular flow of 

ULTRA, early in 1943 and over the objections of Halsey’s intelligence officer, 

Sherman arranged with General Willoughby to receive locally derived and 

Washington SIGINT information from Brisbane. Sherman sent as much of this 

material as possible to Twining and the Thirteenth Air Force A-2.2’ 

In 1942 and 1943, the SPA and SWPA commands maintained operational 

and intelligence liaison to obtain mutual support. Especially in the early 

operations on Guadalcanal, the services of SWPA’s Australian coast watchers, 

who used battery-powered or crude pedal-driven radio transmitters to send their 

observations down the Solomons chain, were of great utility. Although the 

watchers were under SWPA’s Allied Intelligence Bureau, the Australians 

stationed an officer with COMSOPAC as coast-watcher coordinator. Despite 

the command liaison, reports continued to describe problems in intelligence and 

operational liaison between forward echelons in each theater. In Brisbane, Col. 

Benjamin Cain, who eventually became Fifth Air Force A-2, asserted that 

SWPA gave the U.S. Navy all the intelligence it obtained but said the Navy 

frequently held up distribution when it did not think SWPA needed to know. 

Cain was not willing to lay any blame on old Army-Navy rivalries. “The trouble 

actually was,” he reminisced, “the fact that it took so long to realize how much 

each one of the services needed the other.” Such benevolent views as Cain’s 

were not universal. Given his proclivity for centralized control, it was not 

surprising that Willoughby had stronger feelings. “The Navy” he complained 

in 1945, “has shrouded the whole enterprise [SIGINT] in mystery, excluding 

other services and rigidly centralizing the whole enterprise. . . . the Melbourne 

station is under direct orders of Washington, is not bound by local responsibilities, forwards what they select, and when it suits them. The possibility of 

erroneous or incomplete selection is as evident now as it was in 1941.”” 

After the June 1944 reorganization that brought Thirteenth Air Force into 

General Kenney ’s new FEAF, Thirteenth’s intelligence office drew upon the 

resources of the AAF Directorate of Intelligence. The Thirteenth’s A-2 

throughout World War I1 lacked functions peculiar to other A-2 organizations. 

The Thirteenth’s staff was well suited to using technical data to aid the flying 

groups in drawing up tactical air operations plans and to aid them in avoiding 

Japanese defenses while attacking. 

The American Fifth Air Force also had an intelligence section, but unlike 

his appreciation for the work of Hewitt and the Australians, Kenney often 

groused about the Fifth A-2’s lack of ability. As late as May 5,1943, he noted 

that he needed a Fifth Air Force intelligence officer to give him “more 

intelligence and imagination than I have now.” He appointed Cain, a trusted 

257 
Piercing the Fog 

Lt. Gen. Millard F. Harmon Lieutenant Ennis C. Whitehead 

acquaintance and Hewitt’s American deputy, to the job. Cain now filled both 

jobs simultaneously. The Fifth Air Force A-2 office was in most respects a part 

of the Fifth’s staff, but in practical terms it functioned more as a go-between, 

channeling information rather than creating new analytical studies, target 

folders, and directives. Located in Brisbane near GHQ SWPA’s G-2, Hewitt’s 

office, and the intelligence office of the RAAF, the Fifth’s A-2 gathered 

information from the two higher echelons and passed it to the Fifth Air Force 

Advanced Echelon (ADVON) at Port Moresby. In New Guinea, Brig. Gen. 

Ennis C. Whitehead’s ADVON had another A-2 section that worked with 

operational airmen in the Fifth Bomber and Fifth Fighter Commands (later with 

the lst, 2d, and 3d Air Task Forces when Kenney reorganized his operation). 

Unlike the main Fifth Air Force’s A-2 operation, much original analytical work 

came from the ADVON’s A-2. A radio intelligence unit listened to Japanese air 

operations radio transmissions, A-2 staff members processed reconnaissance 

and strike photography and made target charts, and other ADVON personnel 

kept an enemy air OB up to date using much locally derived data. Over time, the 

ADVON’s staff came to handle all immediate operational and tactical air 

intelligence, while Hewitt’s staff concentrated more on long-range planning, 

analyses, and administration. The Allies handled special intelligence from 

decrypted radio intercepts and radio traffic analysis more freely than in any 

other war theater. For example, Fifth Air Force ADVON’s daily summary of 

principal activities often carried an appendix summarizing all types of CB and 

AAF radio intercept data on Japanese air movements. Often the summaries 

contained airfield-by-airfield tallies of Japanese Army and Navy Air Force 

258 
The Pacific and Far East 

strengths. Whitehead and his men found the information invaluable in planning 

their daily flying a~tivities.2~ 

The G-2 office at GHQ SWPA was far more comprehensive, collecting 

information within the theater and from outside sources. After the June 15, 

1944, amalgamation of Thirteenth Air Force into the new FEAF, the Fifth and 

Thirteenth A-2s operated in the same associated and subordinated fa~hion.’~ 

In the SWPA, the main responsibility for escape and evasion lay with the 

GHQ’s G-2, MIS-X, a covert Australian-American group in Brisbane that 

trained selected AAF personnel in escape methods. The organization also aided 

in POW escapes and assisted in the recovery of airmen downed in neutral or 

friendly but hard-to-reach territory. At every opportunity, MIS-X agents also 

collected and reported intelligence data. Escape and evasion training given by 

MIS-X or the Fifth Air Force staff included distributing escape and evasion kits 

and establishing how evaders could reach one of the prepositioned, presupplied 

locations. Working with coast watchers, MIS-X activities returned several 

hundred flyers left afoot in the jungles of New Guinea.26 The chart on the next 

page depicts the organization of the office of the G-2 SWPA. 

In the Philippines, MIS-X joined with local guerrilla units to recover 

stranded flyers and rescue inmates of some of the more isolated Japanese prison 

camps. As the Allies moved into the Philippine Islands, General Kenney’s men 

began to operate adjacent to and at times in coordination with the Fourteenth 

Air Force in China. With those operations came the prospect of aircraft being 

lost over China and coastal Chinese waters. A MIS-X annex to an AAF 

intelligence summary noted the cooperation between the commands and the fact 

that the strong anti-Japanese attitude among the Chinese made evading capture 

in China avery good possibility. Airmen had been rescued from such seemingly 

unlikely places as downtown Hong Kong. Many such rescues were effected 

through agents or teams of the U.S. Naval Group China, the Fourteenth Air 

Force, or a British unit formed from Hong Kong escapees and operating in 

south China. Although some bandit chiefs in China caused trouble for 

Americans who were forced down, communist and nationalist guemllas were 

prepared to aid Americans afoot in the country. Most of the operators of small 

sailing boats in the waters off China’s coast were friendly. The rather spotty 

control by the Japanese of Chinese lands meant that Allied escape and evasion 

efforts throughout most of the area near the SWPA and China Theater junction 

stood a good chance of success.” 

One of Kenney’s most important early sources of information was the 

coast-watcher section of the Allied Intelligence Bureau. Although well known 

for their work in the Solomons and islands as far north as New Britain, coast 

watchers also patrolled New Guinea and reported regularly on Japanese air 

movements. An invaluable resource early in the war, the coast watchers 

supplemented radar, often providing information for areas where radar sets did 

not exist or long before radar could pick up a Japanese raid. Radar’s improve259 
Organization: G-2, Southwest Pacific Area 

(Melbourne - Brisbane) 

May-September 1942 

Chief of Staff 

I I 

I ExecutiveSection Allied Translator and Inte~preter 

I Administrative Section 

I OperationsSection 

Section 

- Allied Geographical Section 

I Allied Intelligence Bureau 

Intelligence Summaries 

Ground Section 

Navy Section Section 

Air Section Northeast Regional Section 

(Dutch New Guinea) 

Special Operations (British) 

Secret Intelligence (British) 

Philippine Regional Section 

Netherlands East lndies Regional 

I BatHeOrderSection 

I Plans and Estimate Section 

I DraftingSection 

I Publication Section 

- Liaison, Miscellaneous Agencies 

Political Warfare Committee 

I Liaison with Allied Intelligence Office of War Information 

Assistant Chief of Staff 

G-2 

260 
The Pacific and Far East 

ments over visual and aural detection had become evident during the Battle of 

Britain in 1940, but the radar sets of World War I1 had limited range, were 

bulky and heavy, and experienced interference from ground reflection and 

atmospheric phenomena. Coast watchers observed Japanese airfields from 

nearby positions or from semipermanent posts along commonly used Japanese 

air routes. These men often reported flights of Japanese aircraft in ample time 

for radar sets to make contact and allow the takeoff of defending fighters. This 

HUMINT source remained important until supplanted by a growing skill at YService interception early in 1944. The increasing ability to use radio intelligence became particularly important in the campaign against Rabaul and 

Kavieng, for coast watchers could not provide the constant flow of information 

from those Japanese-held regions.28 The chart on the next page shows the 

organization of the Fifth Air Force’s A-2 office. 

Despite Kenney’s early dissatisfaction with his American air intelligence 

staff, the Fifth Air Force A-2 served as an important intelligence agency, 

providing primarily visual and photoreconnaissance, plus weather reporting and 

forecasting. The Fifth’s intelligence capabilities grew so that by 1944 the 

organization was highly proficient at intercepting low-level radio traffic. Fifth 

Air Force intelligence specialists had created an excellent air OB file, as well 

as analyses of patterns of operation and airfields used by their enemy. A card 

file developed over two years’ time recorded by aircraft serial number some 

4,000 Japanese planes in the New Guinea-NEI-New Britain region. When a 

Japanese pilot took off, intercept specialists listened to his radio call, recorded 

his aircraft’s number, checked the aircraft’s type and history of normal use (for 

example, it might be a transport that ordinarily flew between Rabaul and New 

Guinea), and predicted with good accuracy its probable destination and time of 

arrival. If the Japanese aircraft were combat types, the intelligence files revealed 

what targets they had previously hit, and when. This information then went to 

the operations staff, who could, in turn, prepare Allied fighters to meet an 

attack. Reports from coast watchers of Japanese air movements frequently 

served to confirm the intelligence specialists’ predictions and increase the 

chances for a successful interception?’ The air commanders in the region 

became avid users of air intelligence and used the disparate sources of 

information to plan the continuing air campaigns. 

In Whitehead, Fifth Air Force ADVON commander in New Guinea, and 

Paul B. Wurtsmith, initial commander of V Fighter Command, Kenney found 

two excellent men in whom he trusted and to whom he delegated a great deal 

of authority. Kenney had the ability to pick good subordinates, then exercise the 

good sense to let them do the best job they could while he supported them fully. 

Supremely confident, Kenney was also very opinionated; those who got on his 

wrong side could have great difficulty getting back into favor. 

Throughout the war, Kenney kept a daily diary supplemented when he was 

away by comments from his aide or secretary, and which in 1945 he expanded 

26 1 
Organization: Directorate of Intelligence, Fifth Air Force 

Director of Senior 

Intelligence - intelligence 

AAFSWPA Officer 

RAAF Command I 

Assistant Director of 

Executive - intelligence - Executive 

us. AAFSWPA RAAF 

A-2, 

Frfth Air Force '...I I 

I 

I 

: 'Graphic 

= I Representation I 

I 

I 

: PhotoSection 

: Public 

I Relations 

: Section 

Historical 

: Section 

I 

I 

I 

I 

I 

I 

: Isecunty 

I 

I 

I 

I 

I 

I 

I 

I 

I 

3.1 A-2, 

Frfth Air Force 

Advanced 

Echelon 

I Allied Air 

lntelli 

center 

EMY 

Appreciaton 

section 

Message MIS-X 

Air 

intelligence 

Technical Evaluation 

Center t 

Air indusby Section 

Central 

Interpretation 

Unit 

Photointerpretation 

Section 

Intelligence Map 

Section 

Report Section 

Flak Intelligence 

Section 

Map Officer 

Collation and File 

Section 

262 
The Pacific and Far East 

to include information from Japanese or USSBS records of air attacks made by 

his men. This collection held copies of correspondence and messages, plus 

assorted items such as orders and memoranda. Kenney sometimes noted the 

source of his information about the enemy: that from Japanese messages he 

referred to as “hot information” or “the latest dope.” Sometimes he used the 

word “ultra,” referring to what the local Allied code breakers had delivered or 

to decrypted information from the Navy at Pearl Harbor or from MIS in 

Washington. In this regard Kenney was unique among AAF commanders, 

although he reflected the generally lax security procedures in the command. 

Intelligence leads from several sources prompted Kenney and Whitehead to 

make some important decisions. Kenney’s November 1942 proposal to fly 

troops to Dobodura and then supply them by air as they attacked Buna was 

based on his knowledge that no Japanese were within fifteen miles of the 

proposed landing ground. Heavy aerial fighting in the Solomon Islands meant 

that Japanese air forces would be limited in their ability to support their army 

in the Buna-Dobodura area. Fifth Air Force attacks on Rabaul, 450 miles from 

Port Moresby, further hampered Japanese air opposition?’ 

The Papuan campaign followed the successful ground defenses of the Port 

Moresby-Milne Bay area in September 1942. The feasibility of carrying out a 

concerted effort to take Buna and Gona was questioned by some at GHQ in 

Australia because of logistics difficulties and the lack of roads in the area. 

Kenney ’s limited troop carriers could move only about half the needed supplies, 

with the remainder going by sea to landing areas south of Buna. Despite the 

problems and weeks of vicious, bloody fighting, the Allied campaign culminated in late January 1943 with the capture of Buna and Gona by American 32d 

Division and Australian 7th Division infant~ymen.~’ 

In 1942, Japanese attention centered primarily on the Solomon Islands; they 

had few combat aircraft on New Guinea. Some days they had no more than 

sixteen on the island; rarely were there more than twice that number. Aerial 

reconnaissance by Fifth Air Force B-17s or B-24s tracked the airfields along 

the Japanese-held coast and at New Britain’s bases as well. When in 1943 the 

number of Japanese$ aircraft listed in the Fifth’s Daily Summary of Principal 

Activities increased to the point that the enemy presented a danger, the wellstocked Japanese airfields became the target of Whitehead’s bombers-if not 

at Kenney’s direct insistence, then as a result of his well-understood policy of 

destroying opposing air forces before they could strike Allied airfields. The 

intelligence information supporting such operations normally came from theater 

sources such as aerial observation and photography supplemented by radio 

traffic analysis. As the war progressed and as American skills in decrypting 

Japanese message traffic increased, important information appeared from 

outside the Southwest Pacific theater. One such series of reports came originally 

from the U.S. Navy and was to have a significant impact on Fifth Air Force for 

the remainder of the war.32 

263 
264 
The Pacific and Far East 

On January 3,1943, Kenney saw a message that inspired him to try to cut 

the Japanese supply lines between Rabaul and New Guinea. The Japanese 

commander intended to run a convoy to Lae from Rabaul, and Kenney 

suspected that it was the beginning of an attempt to push the Allies out of New 

Guinea. Kenney believed that such a heavy blow could force the Allies out of 

the Pacific war. Directing a reduced bombing effort to allow time to restore his 

B-17 force, Kenney increased reconnaissance flights while sending all of the 

operational bombers he could muster to attack Rabaul harbor with, so he 

thought, the destruction of one ship and damage to six others on January 5. The 

next day, P-38s with 1,000-pound bombs attacked a convoy of five transports 

and five destroyers. No ship was hit. This disappointment was soon overcome.33 

In late February 1943, Fifth Air Force reconnaissance of Rabaul harbor 

showed increasing numbers of ships; on the 22d, airmen photographed seventynine craft of assorted sizes. General Kenney badly wanted to attack them using 

his newly modified B-25C-1 commerce raiders. His aircraft specialist, Maj. 

Paul I. Gunn, affectionately called Pappy because he was likely in his midforties, had installed eight forward-firing, SO-caliber machine guns in the noses 

of the aircraft. Kenney itched to try out his new weapon; using both the machine 

guns and low-altitude skip-bombing tactics, he intended to hit Rabaul as soon 

as bad weather abated. In MacArthur’s office on the 25th, however, Kenney 

read a Japanese message, intercepted and forwarded by the U.S. Navy, that 

completely altered his plans. The Japanese intended to move some 6,900 

soldiers to Lae to bolster the existing garrison of 3,500, using the prospect of 

stormy weather to cover the convoy. The possibility of so many fresh troops 

facing the tired and depleted American and Australian divisions caused General 

MacArthur serious c0ncern.3~ 

Following an afternoon session in Brisbane with MacArthur on the 25th, 

Kenney sent a courier to Port Moresby with a letter for Whitehead, telling him 

about the intended convoy and its possible sailing date (between March 5 and 

12). Kenney went on to tell his subordinate to postpone the Rabaul raid, prepare 

for the customary preconvoy Japanese air attack by as many as 100 planes, step 

up reconnaissance of and attacks on all Japanese airfields on New Guinea and 

New Britain usable by Japanese fighters, and scale back flying as much as 

possible to allow preparation of as many B-l7s, B-25s, and P-38s as possible 

at the advanced Dobodura airfield. Flying the B-25s and P-38s to Dobodura 

was a precaution Kenney took to ensure that unpredictable heavy weather over 

the Owen Stanley Mountains did not interfere with the strike at the convoy. 

Because of weather fronts that could cover ships, Kenney thought the Japanese 

might move before the 5th. Having missed most of the January convoy to Lae 

and knowing of the new Japanese intentions, Kenney did not want this chance 

to slip a~ay.3~ 

265 
Piercing the Fog 

One of the burning ships from the Japanese convoy that Generals Kenney and 

Whitehead caught off Finschhaven, which they bombed. All eight transports carrying 

a division of reinforcements sunk, as did four of the eight destroyer escorts. The Battle 

of the Bismarck Sea was the first major air victory in the Southwest Pacific. 

On February 26, Kenney flew to Port Moresby. There he and Whitehead 

traced the routes of all previous Japanese convoys from Rabaul to New Guinea. 

Comparing the tracks of earlier convoys, the range of Allied aircraft, and the 

expected weather, the two men decided to hit the ships as they passed 

Finschhaven, New Guinea, probably at 10:30 AM one day during the first week 

of March. PA0 and A-20 aircraft that could not reach the convoy would beat 

down Japanese air operations at Lae to protect the attack. Kenney directed that 

crews and squadron commanders practice tactics and run a full dress rehearsal 

on February 28.36 

Kenney was pleased as he watched crews practice on the afternoon of the 

27th. That same day a reconnaissance aircraft found a break in the clouds 

through which the observers counted seven vessels thirty miles southeast of St. 

Mathias Island. Kenney speculated that the ships could be the ones for which 

he and his men waited, but the weather was still too bad for anything more than 

continued ~urveillance.~~ 

On the 28th, Kenney's men briefed him on Japanese air strength: 115 on 

New Britain, 51 on New Ireland, 177 in the Solomon Islands, 206 in the NEI, 

and 35 in New Guinea. The low figure for New Guinea was normal; on January 

31 only 16 enemy aircraft had been reported on the huge island. That was one 

of the things that worried Kenney. He viewed Japan's air forces as immensely 

flexible, able to shift quickly from base to base, to come through his sketchy air 

warning system and hit him with great effect, given the the chance and an able 

commander. Japanese airmen commonly attacked Allied positions on New 

266 
The Pacific and Far East 

Guinea from Rabaul, and Kenney’s worry about Japanese air power potential 

made him closely watch air intelligence reports that he could use to best 

advantage. Telling Whitehead to continue with preparations, Kenney returned 

to Brisbane to prepare for a trip to Washington where he and Sutherland were 

to meet with the JCS and the representatives of other Pacific commands to 

discuss Pacific strategy. While preparing for the trip, Kenney told MacArthur 

of the state of preparations for the attack; he also worried about the weather, 

which had blocked any reconnaissance sightings that day.38 

On March 1, the convoy passed out of the heavy weather. Late in the 

afternoon, a B-24’s crew once again saw it. The next day, a series of high- and 

low-level attacks by the Americans and Australians, followed by Navy PT 

boats, destroyed the Japanese ships. Kenney and Whitehead had hit the convoy 

exactly where they had planned, off Finschhaven. They sent their men in under 

the expected Japanese air cover and achieved complete surprise. All eight of the 

cargo ships burned and sank in the two days of fighting. By the time Navy PT 

boats mopped up, four of the original eight destroyer escorts had escaped. 

Subsequent Japanese messages indicated that they may have rescued as many 

as 4,500 soldiers, most landing in New Guinea. Those who survived reached 

Lae without food or equipment, where they faced eventual tarv vat ion.^' 

Kenney and MacArthur claimed a much higher toll of Japanese ships based 

on the conflicting report of the aircrews. The original Fifth Air Force estimate 

was that as many as fourteen merchantmen had been destroyed with troop losses 

exceeding 12,000. Continued scrutiny of enemy radio messages and translations 

of documents captured later in the year at Lae reduced the total in both 

categories, but the full information remained secret for some time. In March 

1943 MacArthur and Kenney were exultant. MacArthur, flush with the adroit 

use of intelligence analysis, made the very most of the victory in his communique. Japan’s military leaders were shocked, for they expected at worst that half 

of the convoy would get through. Although the Japanese lost most of an infantry 

division, the battle itself was far more significant for its long-term effects on 

American air operations in the region. Kenney left for the Washington meeting 

at dawn on March 4. When he arrived there he was no longer a minor air 

commander in an isolated and neglected theater; he was the most important 

AAF hero since the Doolittle raid on Japan the year before. On landing, 

Generals Marshall and Arnold met and congratulated him. Later that month his 

picture appeared on the cover of Life magazine:’ The outcome of Kenney’s 

reading of the Japanese messages was to go well beyond congratulations, 

greatly affecting the size and prestige of the AAF in the SPA and SWPA. 

Called to the White House on March 17, Kenney told President Roosevelt 

about the Southwest Pacific Theater. Answering Roosevelt’s questions, Kenney 

said he needed more airplanes, crews, and supplies if he were to continue the 

war at the present pace. A few days before, Kenney had made such a pitch to 

Arnold. “No,” said the commanding general and his staff; virtually the entire 

267 
Piercing the Fog 

aircraft production was needed for Europe, for Allies, and for flight training in 

the States. None could be found for MacArthur’s area. The day after Kenney 

visited Roosevelt, the president invited Arnold to the White House. After that 

visit, things changed; aircraft became available. Roosevelt, so taken with 

Kenney’ s success, made the pitch for reinforcements more effectively than 

could the airman. He did so in such a way that he evidently convinced Arnold 

that Kenney had not gone over his head. Neither Kenney’s notes nor correspondence from the AAF’s chief showed bitterness or anger by Arnold at being 

urged to change aircraft allocations. Arnold seems to have been sympathetic to 

Kenney’s position and to have believed it important to remain on Roosevelt’s 

good side, where he had not always been in the past. Arnold needed air 

commanders like Kenney who could use air power; thus far in the war Army air 

power had had few conspicous successes. Arnold knew that Kenney’s success 

at divining the Japanese plans that led to the Bismarck Sea battle changed 

Kenney’s position radically, and as aconsequence, the fortunes of the American 

air forces grew not only in the SWPA, but in the adjoining SPA as well.41 

On March 22, Arnold met Kenney and told him he would get the 380th 

Bomb Group (B-24s) previously scheduled for England. In addition, two 

medium-bomber groups, two fighter groups, and the 375th Troop Carrier Group 

would come to him. At that time, nobody wanted the new P-47~. Kenney, 

starved for planes and anxious to increase his force, gladly took them as the first 

of his new fighter groups. Twining’s Thirteenth Air Force in the SOPAC got 

additional units, too, “to keep peace in the family,” Kenney said.* By the end 

of 1943, Kenney expected to have new authorizations for about 500 planes. 

Supplies and crews would follow, as would greater opportunities for himself, 

and for General Twining in the neighboring SOPAC, to carry the war to the 

Japanese:’ 

In the months following the Bismarck Sea battle, the Allies maintained their 

surveillance of Japanese shipping. Half a dozen B-24s and B-17s made daily 

flights, checking ports along the New Guinea coast and the coast of New Britain 

as well. Reconnaissance, radio traffic analysis, and interception led to 

antishipping attacks on April 6,12, and 15 and again in May. The strain on the 

aircraft was great; in-commission strength declined steadily, which compelled 

Whitehead to restrict flying to attacks on targets that intelligence sources had 

confirmed. The pressure on the Japanese told; in mid-May they altered their 

logistics strategy. Intercepted radio traffic indicated that the Japanese were 

changing their policy of sending supplies and reinforcements by ship to apolicy 

of using small barges with fighter cover. In response, the Allies changed too, 

*. Aircraft bound for Australia first reached South Pacific bases where they were 

often redirected to the Thirteenth Air Force, with consequent friction and 

complaints. Kenney’s and Arnold’s agreement that included Twining’s force was 

an adept political move as well as an operationally important one. 

268 
The Pacific and Far East 

altering their tactics to barge hunting. Finding and sinking small boats can be 

uneconomical, especially when fighters are needed to protect the B-25s. The 

Allies therefore followed a campaign of attacking both Japanese airfields and 

barges. This forced the Japanese to again change their pattern for supplying 

their army in New Guinea. Supplies to Lae arrived more frequently by 

submarine and were unloaded at night when Allied air patrols were ineffective. 

Convoys sailed from Palau and landed farther west, at Wewak, the location of 

a major collection of Japanese airfields. Sensing an increasing Allied threat, the 

Japanese began reinforcing their main Army garrisons, primarily in the Wewak 

area!3 The Allied pressure on Japan’s New Guinea positions, and Japanese 

unwillingness to be forced into retreat, set the stage for major air, land, and sea 

fighting in New Guinea and adjacent islands through the latter part of 1943 and 

the first six months of 1944. 

In the SOPAC theater during 1942, Navy domination of the interservice 

command structure meant that AAF squadrons supported amphibious 

operations, such as the fighting on Guadalcanal and later on New Georgia, as 

pieces of a Navy task force. Later, the same task force organization continued 

to pit AAF airmen against the Japanese in the Solomons, but under Navy 

control, not as an integral Thirteenth Air Force.“ So different from the AAF’s 

doctrine on air employment were the Navy’s ideas that Twining, as Thirteenth 

Air Force commander, could not work like his counterpart Kenney. Twining felt 

frustrated for some time, although he and Harmon worked diligently as good 

team players. Relations between the AAF and the Navy remained good with the 

AAF officers having a strong voice in decision making.45 

During the summer of 1942, few AAF units were in the SOPAC. Those 

present were stationed and organized in various fashions depending entirely on 

the needs of the moment. A squadron of AAF P-39s and P-4OOs* moved to 

Guadalcanal on August 22, once the Marines had secured and restored the 

airfield. These aircraft lacked the performance needed to contest the skies with 

the Japanese Zeros, so they assumed instead a largely ground-support role in the 

fighting for the island.46 

Beginning late in 1942, occasional intelligence information reached 

Guadalcanal from the Navy in Pearl Harbor; much of it referred to Japanese 

naval movements or air traffic into Rabaul as opposed to air operations 

information having direct combat application. Air OB intelligence when 

matched to aerial reconnaissance of the Japanese airfield complex on New 

Britain allowed for continuing bomber attacks on Rabaul’s airdromes. Bombers 

from both the SPA and SWPA attacked as part of an intertheater effort to beat 

down the threatening Japanese air forces!’ On November 22, 1942, after 

*An export version of the early model P-39, originally intended for Great 

Britain. 

269 
Piercing the Fog 

considerable delay caused by the loss of equipment in an air crash, the Navy 

opened an intercept and direction-finding station on Guadalcanal?’ Both the 

intercept station’and coast watchers supplemented radar to warn of approaching 

enemy formations. 

Air defense of the southern Solomons was crucial to preventing the 

Japanese from retaking Guadalcanal, and it depended to a great extent on the 

adept use of radar to identify approaching threats, supplemented by operational 

intelligence from coast watchers hiding all along the Solomons chain. These 

men observed and counted Japanese bomber and fighter flights going south, 

then radioed operations officers on Guadalcanal. Interceptors, primarily Navy 

and Marine, rose to make a single pass at the bombers before diving to safety. 

After an attack, as the Japanese pilots flew home, the coast watchers again 

counted formations and aircraft, radioing Guadalcanal with information that 

helped confirm or deny the pilots’ and AA gunners’ reports of enemy aircraft 

shot down?’ 

Recording of the patterns of Japanese flights by the intelligence officers on 

Guadalcanal had significant operational implications. Because of the distance 

from Rabaul, Japanese strikes usually arrived over the island’s Henderson Field 

between 1 1 AM and 1 PM. This knowledge, coupled to coast-watcher reports and 

radar confirmation, gave the air commanders time to alert the pilots and crews 

for the coming fights.50 

Pilots’ observations and reconnaissance data were always important in 

governing the ways in which Air Commander Solomons (COMAIRSOLS) 

officers directed the use of U.S. Army air power in the Solomons. On December 

5, 1942, two AAF P-39 pilots sighted the partially camouflaged construction 

at a new Japanese airfield at Munda, New Georgia, confirming coast-watcher 

reports of activity there. That confirmation brought heavy and continuing 

bombardment and strafing of the field. Soon after the Japanese began to use 

Munda, they found their position untenable. By the end of the year, Munda only 

serviced aircraft; none could be stationed there and survive the air attacks.51 

One of the most adept and controversial interservice uses of intelligence 

resulted in the ambush and death of the Japanese Combined Fleet’s 

Commander-in-Chief, Admiral Yamamoto. On April 14,1943, American radio 

intercept operators picked up a Japanese message that, when decoded, revealed 

Yamamoto’s plans for a visit to his forces in the northern Solomons; also 

included was his travel itinerary. In Honolulu, Admiral Nimitz weighed the 

risks and possibilities of air interception with his intelligence chief, Cmdr. 

Edwin T. Layton. Seeing a golden opportunity to dispose of his enemy 

counterpart, to kill the man who planned the attack on Pearl Harbor, and deal 

the Japanese Navy’s morale a heavy blow, Nimitz ordered commanders in the 

Solomons to ambush Yamamoto if they thought they could make the long flight. 

The only fighter aircraft capable of such an extended overwater run were the 

AAF’s P-38s at Guadalcanal. Immediately, planning began. At dawn on April 

270 
The Pacific and Far East 

18, the pilots took off, flying northward at extremely low altitude and carrying 

external fuel tanks on their planes to give them the needed range.52 

By 9:34 AM, sixteen P-38 Lightning fighters intercepted two Japanese 

Mitsubishi Betty bombers and six Zero fighters over Bougainville Island. In the 

ensuing swirl of aerial fighting, the Americans destroyed both bombers. Killed 

in the first bomber as it crashed into Bougainville’s jungles was Admiral 

Yamamoto. The successful ambush of Yamamoto later became one of the most 

highly publicized incidents of the Pacific war. This action also endangered 

America’s ability to read Japan’s encrypted message traffic. Virtually everyone 

involved in the killing of Yamamoto, including the P-38’s ground crews, came 

to know the source of the information. The British were aghast that American 

policy permitted such a risk. As it was, officials at BP withheld full disclosure 

of their operation for several months. Had the story reached Japan from any 

source, and had the Japanese realized its significance, they could have altered 

their radio transmission practices and foreclosed an extremely valuable Allied 

insight into their planning. Fortunately, the Japanese failed to understand the 

true nature of the attack. Ambushes such as the one that killed Yamamato were 

unusual events, not central to the war effort. Over time, a more methodical use 

of technical information came to expand on the reports obtained from ULTRA. 

Electronic intelligence gathering efforts began in the Pacific war only after 

the capture of some Japanese equipment in August 1942 at Guadalcanal. A 

badly damaged Mark 1 Model 1 radar set found at Henderson Field was quickly 

packed and sent to the Naval Research Laboratory at Anacostia, in Washington, 

D.C. Soon, the Navy sent a team with airborne radar intercept equipment to the 

SOPAC. This team made the first ferret flight in search of Japanese installations 

in the region, flying an AAF B-17 from Espiritu Santo to Guadalcanal, 

Bougainville, and returning on October 31, 1942. Other flights in November 

carried Allied crews but found no enemy radar signals. Since the teams 

collected no evidence of Japanese radar, operational interest in the Pacific 

temporarily waned. Development of more effective electronic search aircraft 

continued in the United States, and they subsequently deployed to North Africa. 

At about the same time that the airborne searches were underway in the 

Solomons, a Navy submarine carrying similar radio-receiving equipment picked 

up radar signals while on patrol off Japan. The earlier absence of radar reception 

by the airborne teams resulted in much uncertainty over whether the Japanese 

in the area lacked extensive radar equipment or if the early detection sets simply 

would not pick up the signals. The ferret aircraft, generally B-24s or Catalina 

flying boats, carried radar frequency analyzers plus equipment to determine the 

relative bearing of the radar set and to measure its pulse width and pulse 

repetition frequency. Not until late 1943 did the subject receive much attention 

in SPA and SWPA. Then, seeing the potential importance of mapping enemy 

radar as a way to avoid AA gun defenses, G-2 SWPA formed its Section 22 to 

control and coordinate all Allied airborne radar and radio intelligence gathering 

27 1 
Piercing the Fog 

in the theater. In addition to local use by AAF intelligence and operations 

officers, Section 22 sent information it collected to Washington, to the Radio 

Research Laboratory in Massachusetts, and to neighboring theaters, particularly 

to the CBI. In January 1944, two ferret B-24s arrived in New Guinea for service 

with Section 22. By early 1944, the Allies had located radar installations on 

New Britain (especially near Rabaul), New Ireland, Bougainville, and the north 

coast of New Guinea. The map, however, showed few stations, most with the 

same type of early warning equipment. 

Not until the capture of Kwajalein Island in February 1944 did the Allies 

realize the full range of Japanese radar production and employment. Even then, 

their comprehension of Japan’s technical advances came only with the 

discovery of a large pile of documents and a few pieces of equipment. In the 

SWPA, aircrews and commanders showed little concern for the potential danger 

of radar to them or to their aircraft. Their view was colored by the relatively few 

numbers and types of enemy sets scattered across a very extensive geographic 

area?3 Wide use of radar locations and incorporation of this fact in flight 

planning awaited the advent of very-heavy bomber operations in China and 

India. 

The Thirteenth Air Force’s participation in the war in the Solomons 

continued under COMSOPAC’s auspices until mid-1944. Until then, the 

Thirteenth flew with Navy and Marine Corps squadrons of the SOPAC and with 

AAF from the Southwest Pacific to strike progressively harder blows at Rabaul. 

Rabaul, the major Japanese air and naval installation, occupied a harbor and 

airdrome facilities at the eastern end of New Britain. Also on the island, 

Japanese forces had constructed airfields at Gasmata, Arawe, Cape Gloucester, 

and elsewhere. Destruction of these installations became Halsey’s goal as his 

SOPAC forces moved north through the Solomon Islands. Virtually daily, SPA 

and SWPA crews reconnoitered the bases, recording shipping at sea and in 

harbors as well as any activity at the shore sites. Allied radio intercept 

specialists noted communications of planes and ships to and from Rabaul, Truk, 

and other areas. Each day, the Special Intelligence Bulletin (SIB) at MacArthur’ s headquarters reported the activity and commented on important 

changes .54 

On July 25, 1943, Nathan Twining became COMAIRSOLS under an 

arrangement that gave each service a chance to have one of its own in charge for 

a few months at a time. Twining’s assignment cemented the close relations that 

had developed between the Thirteenth Air Force and the SOPAC command. By 

the following September, Twining had observed that daytime attacks on 

Japanese shipping in the Solomons had prompted the enemy to shift the bulk of 

his transport operations to nighttime. To counter this and make the ocean areas 

as dangerous as possible for the enemy, Brig. Gen. Ray L. Owens, commander 

of the Thirteenth while Twining filled the COMAIRSOLS job, added more 

272 
Two of the coordinated air attacks on Rabaul in late 1943 by aircraft from the 

Southwest Pacific Theater and the South Pacific Theater. Above, the ship in the 

foreground in a Nachi-class heavy cruiser. It is pictured just getting underway. A 

few minutes later, as it was steaming toward the mouth of the harbor, a 1,000- 

pound bomb hit it amidship and turned the ship on its side. Below, the whole 

shoreline of Simpson Bay on which the Rabaul airfields were located seems to be 

ablaze after it was bombed and strafed. The all-important airfields are under the 

smoke at the left side of the photo. 

273 
Piercing the Fog 

radar-equipped B-24 low-altitude bombers to the task of searching out and 

destroying this shipping.55 

Late in 1943, a series of coordinated air strikes made by South and 

Southwest Pacific bombers and fighters hit Rabaul in an effort to close or 

greatly reduce this most threatening Japanese position. Daily Allied radio and 

teletype exchanges, meetings of the theaters’ senior staff members, and 

communications between Halsey and MacArthur ensured that target information 

and attack plans were coordinated, with little conflict between the air groups 

sent on the raids. Especially toward year’s end, defense of Rabaul became a 

battle of attrition for the Japanese naval air force. Allied intelligence judged 

quantitatively and type of aircraft at Rabaul’s airdromes and the flow of 

reinforcements by air and sea. Kenney, Twining, Whitehead, and Rear Adm. 

Aubrey Fitch, Halsey’s air commander, contemplated the abilities of the new 

Japanese pilots relative to those of the pilots who had been in the region earlier 

in an effort to determine the true state of Japanese combat capability. The 

leaders concluded that across the board the new Japanese flyers could not match 

those of early 1942, the result of heavy losses incurred by a small group of elite 

pilots. In October, Admiral Halsey mounted an amphibious assault on 

Bougainville Island, landing at Empress Augusta Bay on November 1. A 

smaller landing in the Treasury Islands on October 27, 1943, had preceded the 

Bougainville operation. MacArthur had agreed with Halsey that SWPA air 

forces would reduce the threat of Japanese air reaction from Rabaul, Kavieng, 

Buka Island, and other associated airfields, while Halsey’s airmen, including 

those from the Thirteenth, protected the landing sites and troops going ashore. 

Progressively harder attacks on the Japanese positions began on October 15. On 

November 2, fighters and bombers from both SPA and SWPA staged the 

heaviest strike to date on Rabaul’s airfields and harbor?6 

In preparing their plans for Bougainville and Rabaul, the Allies had access 

to considerable information on newly developed Japanese aircraft and the 

organization and operating locations of Japan’s air forces. The recent Allied 

capture of Lae, Salamaua, and Finschhafen had driven the Japanese Army Air 

Force in New Guinea to the west. Successful AAF efforts to render useless the 

Japanese airfield at Cape Gloucester on New Britain’s western tip (lying 

between Rabaul and the Allies’ New Guinea airfields) had largely succeeded. 

Kenney, on November 2, summed up Japan’s projected air strength in a letter 

to Whitehead at Port Moresby. Kenney surmised, based on air OB estimates 

(derived largely from ULTRA) and Y intercepts, that as of November 3, Japan 

would have 200 to 215 operational fighters and 60 to 70 bombers, most 

stationed at Rabaul but a substantial number also located at Kavieng on nearby 

New Ireland. Kenney added, “There is constant evidence picked up by Y 

Intelligence and by DF [direction finding] that heavy reinforcements are on the 

way or projected for an early date to move into the area from the Empire.” To 

keep the Japanese on the defensive, Admiral Fitch used Thirteenth Air Force 

274 
The Pacific and Far East 

plus Navy and Marine squadrons to bomb Rabaul as well as to attack radar 

warning sites on its approaches as often as possible. AAF joined in the attack 

from New Guinea, catching many newly arrived Japanese ships in the harbor 

on November 5. The timing was not coincidental; Allied intelligence analysts 

had forecast the Japanese naval force’s arrival from radio intercepts. 

Thirteenth Air Force received its intelligence material from several sources, 

depending on the particular mission to be undertaken. For example, Halsey 

ordered the November 11, 1943, raid on Rabaul by the Thirteenth’s heavy 

bombers and naval carrier aircraft to support the force operating at Empress 

Augusta Bay. He decided on the time and composition of the attacking force 

based on his understanding from ULTRA of the Japanese presence. Responding 

to Halsey, the Thirteenth’s planners picked their target aiming points from 

recent photography of Rabaul and surrounding airfields. This was important, 

for, as heavy bombers were to go in first to reduce opposition, their strikes had 

to be as accurate as possible. Carrier aircraft were to follow and work over 

shipping and other targets. So detailed was the intelligence and so effective the 

planning for these air strikes that by the end of the month, Rabaul ceased to be 

a major threat, although the Thirteenth and other SOPAC air units made 

periodic reconnaissance attacks. The Japanese now tried to counter Allied gains 

by shifting the focus of their operations to western New Guinea, Truk, and the 

mandated Pacific islands?’ 

As it became apparent that Rabaul’s garrison was increasingly isolated and 

less able to present a major threat, the Thirteenth’s aircraft turned to the 

Caroline Islands. On March 29, B-24s made the first daylight bomb run over 

Truk Atoll, littering the airfield on Eten Island with aircraft destroyed on the 

ground. On June 15,1944, control of the Thirteenth Air Force passed to Kenney 

and the new FEAF, but the force continued to support Navy operations in the 

Carolines, Saipan, and Yap Islands. The new AAF organization gave the 

Thirteenth’s A-2 a greater influence in combat operations planning?* 

As the Thirteenth cooperated in multiservice operations in the Solomons, the 

AAF continued to fight successfully in New Guinea. By May 1943, intelligence 

collection and assessment became so well developed that Whitehead regularly 

received a flow of reports of Japanese air activity almost as quickly as the 

Japanese moved. On May 14, at dusk, the general knew that a few hours earlier 

Japanese aircraft had landed at Lae. That night he sent a squadron from 

Dobodura to attempt to destroy the newly arrived enemy. Bad weather 

precluded any success, however. The next morning, Whitehead tried again, this 

time with a flight of A-20s. Once more bad weather interfered. On the 15th, the 

intelligence staff passed Whitehead another report (probably based on coastwatcher observations and the interception of Japanese air traffic control radio 

transmissions) of nine bombers refueling at Lae, followed by their departure to 

the southeast at 4:21 PM. Such a flow of intelligence data made the jobs of air 

275 
Piercing the Fog 

commanders in the SWPA easier, and it certainly gave them an invaluable edge 

in the air war. As Whitehead sought a chance to bomb his enemy during those 

days, he, at the same time, saw to it that Japanese attacks on Allied positions 

often met airborne Allied fighters guided by Y intercepts, as happened at Oro 

Bay on May 14th. Many times these interceptions took a heavy toll of enemy 

bombers.” 

Throughout 1943 and into May 1944 the pattern continued. Coast watchers 

in the Solomon Islands and on New Guinea reported air movements; radio 

interception and radar confirmed them and supplied additional information. 

Allied airmen rose to the attack or struck at Japanese airfields to preempt other 

attacks. Coast watchers, men who risked their lives hiding in the jungles, sent 

a steady flow of increasingly valuable information. Years later, Francis Gideon, 

who had served as Kenney’s deputy A-3, commended the coast watchers as a 

superb source of warning of Japanese air movements or impending attacks. 

Often these men hid on hills or mountains above Japanese airfields and reported 

their observations by radio. The Japanese knew of their presence and sought to 

catch them at every opportunity. When search teams or natives loyal to the 

Japanese captured a coast watcher, he was invariably killed.@ The high-risk 

coast-watching jobs, however, were not to last forever. By the spring of 1944, 

radio intercept had supplanted coast watchers as the primary source of 

information. Electronic eavesdropping had many advantages, not the least of 

which was its ability to reach far behind the lines to collect information from 

places denied to coast watchers or where too few lookouts could be effective for 

long periods. This became readily apparent as the Japanese pulled back from 

some of their forward positions. 

In 1943, as the Allied land forces moved west along New Guinea’s coast 

toward Salamaua and Lae, the focus of Japanese air activity shifted to Wewak. 

There, a complex of four airdromes-Wewak, But, Dagua, and Boram-supported the bulk of Japanese air operations in New Guinea. Radio intercepts had 

plotted Japanese flying patterns, OB studies had listed probable numbers and 

types of aircraft at the fields, and visual and photoreconnaissance had confirmed 

the count: 225 aircraft populated the airdromes on April 15, 1943. For the next 

several months, the Japanese and Allied air forces fought each other in a 

struggle for air superiority. The outcome was by no means preordained, for 

Kenney did not waver in his fear that an adept Japanese air commander could 

strike his bases a mortal blow. Kenney had his engineers rush construction of 

a new airfield at Marilinan, close enough to Wewak that he could use it to 

support the major operation needed to destroy the extensive Japanese aviation 

there.61 The Allies planned the attacks on Wewak’s airfields with a full 

understanding of Japanese flying habits drawn from careful study of air traffic 

control radio conversations and extensive study of Japanese aerial practices. 

In the predawn hours of August 17,1943, forty-eight Allied heavy bombers 

hit the Wewak airfields. In midmorning, with fighters flying from Marilinan for 

216 
The Pacifrc and Far East 

protection, the Allies returned with B-25s and P-38s. On the 18th an even 

larger raid hit the airfields in what General Whitehead described as the 

culmination of months of watching. The Wewak attacks were preemptive strikes 

to reduce the growing Japanese threat to Marilinan and to the Allied ground 

offensive aimed at the capture of Lae. When, after several days of pounding, the 

Japanese commander at Wewak called Rabaul for help, Whitehead’s people 

listened in. That night, Whitehead assured Kenney that whatever the Japanese 

attempted, he and his men would be 

In the ground war and at sea, the situation was similar. Radio traffic 

analysis led the Allies to watch out for Japanese barge traffic supplying and 

reinforcing Lae from Rabaul. Barge-hunting aircrews promptly shot up 

whatever seaborne traffic they encountered. When he read a Japanese message 

mentioning a land evacuation of Lae, Kenney quickly wrote a note to Whitehead, telling him to watch the area and attack at every opportunity. The notes 

that General Kenney made in his daily jottings and frequent letters to Whitehead 

leave clear the impression that these two men knew a great deal of what the 

Japanese intended. Armed with that knowledge, they pursued their enemy 

relentlessly across central and western New Guinea.63 

By mid-February 1944, MacArthur was ready to drive west to retake the 

remainder of New Guinea. At the same time, Halsey’s SOPAC forces occupied 

Green Island and then Emirau, in quick succession. In the process of judging the 

needs of the war’s coming months, Kenney concluded that the Japanese-held 

Admiralty Islands, principally Manus and Los Negros, could be an Allied air 

base that would control Kavieng and Rabaul, ending serious Japanese attempts 

to use those locations in any important fashion. From Lorengau and Momote 

airfields in the Admiralties heavy bombers could reach Truk, Woleai, and other 

Japanese strongholds. Kenney also believed that taking Los Negros would 

obviate the need for a difficult amphibious attack on Kavieng. From Manus, 

Allied aircraft could reach Tadji and Hollandia, so Kenney concluded there 

would be no need to take the Hansa Bay area of New Guinea either. With so 

much success at exploiting intelligence on the Japanese, Kenney ’s confidence 

set him up for a rude shock. 

Contemplating the Admiralty idea, Kenney turned to two widely used 

intelligence sources. Extensive aerial surveillance of Los Negros on February 

23 and 24 reported little Japanese activity. In low flights over the island for long 

periods, aircrews saw no signs of Japanese activity. Based on aerial reports, 

Whitehead estimated Japanese strength at about 300. The SIBS had mentioned 

the Admiralties only sparingly for weeks, so Kenney doubted there was a 

substantial enemy force there. On the 24th, he approached MacArthur with the 

idea of sending a small force by destroyer to Los Negros, landing the troops 

with close air support and, if they found little Japanese opposition, taking the 

island quickly. Kenney added that if the Japanese there appeared in strength, the 

reconnaissance in force could be recalled with little lost. Willoughby, however, 

277 
Piercing the Fog 

disagreed with Whitehead’s low estimate of Japanese forces, offering instead 

his opinion of some 4,050 troops on Los Negros. After an hour and a half‘s 

discussion by MacArthur, Kenney, Vice Adm. Thomas D. Kinkaid (MacArthur’s naval commander), and Chamberlin, MacArthur accepted Kenney’s 

proposal, and set the action for February 29. With little time available, planning 

and force preparation began immediately.64 

To obtain additional information, a scouting party from Lt. Gen. Walter 

Krueger’s Sixth Army went ashore on Los Negros on February 27. Picked up 

the next morning by a Catalina flying boat, the men returned to report that, in 

Kenney’ s phrase, “the place is lousy with Japs.” Kenney discounted the possible 

danger, quieting the fears of Whitehead and Whitehead’s chief of staff, Col. 

Merian C. Cooper, by pointing out that any soldiers on the island would 

naturally have been where the patrol encountered them just to avoid the 

bombing attacks around Momote airdrome. Kenney also believed that the area 

the scouts checked was far too small to reflect the true enemy situation. 

Moreover, aerial reconnaissance of Wewak and Tadji airfields revealed no 

aircraft staging forward from Hollandia that could hazard the landing force. 

Kenney continued his belief in the value of taking Los Negros and then Manus, 

writing in his notes that he was certain that his scheme would succeed. Plans 

had advanced so far, with troops of the 1 st Cavalry and Seabees embarked, that 

MacArthur, aboard the cruiser Phoenix to observe the operation, was reluctant 

to change at that late date based on the patrol’s report.65 

In fact, Col. Ezaki Yoshio, the Japanese commander on Los Negros, had 

hidden his 4,000 or so men in the jungle, forbidding both AA fire or movement 

during daylight and prohibiting any repairs to trails, roads, or structures 

damaged by bombardment. The island appeared largely deserted by the 

Japanese, with much of the apparent evidence favoring Kenney’s suggested 

course of action. The Allied force of about 1,000 men landed shortly after 8 AM 

on the 29th, quickly quieted the initial opposition with help from naval gunfire, 

and took Momote airdrome and the surrounding area. At that point, MacArthur 

decided to move ahead with the Admiralties’ seizure, sending for the backup 

reinforcements. Because of bad weather with low clouds, Whitehead’s B-25s 

and fighters could give only limited support. That night, the Japanese began a 

series of heavy but uncoordinated attacks, with enemy soldiers recapturing part 

of the airfield. The following day, clearing weather allowed bombing and 

strafing in support of the 1 st Cavalry Division’s men on the ground. Forced onto 

the defensive by the more numerous enemy, the Allies dug in at positions 

around a reduced perimeter, where grim and desperate fighting blunted the force 

of the Japanese reaction. Reinforcements arrived on March 2, but the stubborn 

enemy resistance continued as the Japanese fought to the last. Air operations 

from Momote began with light aircraft using the field as early as the 6th. By 

March 8, most of the struggle for Los Negros was over. The focus of fighting 

then shifted to neighboring Manus Island. The main struggle for Manus lasted 

278 
The Pacific and Far East 

from the 15th to the 18th of March, with continued but diminishing fighting 

across the island until May 18. Total Japanese losses probably exceeded 4,300, 

with only 75 taken prisoner.66 

The fight for the Admiralties had been heavier than expected, with poor 

weather initially delaying the air support promised by Fifth Air Force. 

Casualties in the taking of Los Negros reached 61 Americans of the 1 st Cavalry 

Division and Navy Seabees dead, and 244 wounded. Overall losses in the 

Admiralties operation reached 326 dead 1,189 wounded, with 4 missing. The 

Japanese defense, doomed in any event because the Allies had cut off hope of 

support or reinforcements, failed at Los Negros when Colonel Ezaki could not 

coordinate his units and mass his force. Because of his reputation and 

confidence, Kenney’s suggestion of the 24th prevailed in the planning council 

and again at the time of final decision on the 28th, but the cost was higher and 

the struggle longer than either Kenney or MacArthur had anticipated. The 

decision to proceed with the Los Negros landing seems to have been a case of 

discounting many of the unknowns with insufficient attention paid to an 

analytical scrutiny of OB tables. The OB calculations, made over time from a 

variety of sources-including ULTRA, captured document examination, radio 

direction finding, and traffic analysis-were less clearly visible, although they 

were strongly supported by the patrol’s report. Kenney’s February 28th 

conclusion and MacArthur’s concurrence seem to have stemmed from a desire 

not to divert themselves from a course of action already in motion, rather than 

from a hard weighing of data followed by force planning and ~reparation.~’ 

Although the force assembled for the Los Negros landing could have been 

stronger, thus giving the Allies a greater advantage, from Kenney’s perspective, 

and from the course of the war as seen at the time, the taking of the islands was 

well worth the risk and effort. The use of the Admiralties allowed SOPAC 

planners, with the support of the JCS in Washington, to prepare a landing at 

Hollandia for mid-April and an assault on Mindanao in the Philippines by midNovember. Seizure of Kavieng was canceled, averting a costly fight there, and 

the Admiralty Islands’ Seeadler Harbor became a major Allied naval support 

base. Planning for Hollandia, already well underway by March 6, dispensed 

with the intended landings at Wewak and Hansa Bay. As soon as the Admiralty 

airfields were ready, Kenney based the Thirteenth Air Task Force there. (The 

Thirteenth Air Task Force was a temporary designation for the Thirteenth Air 

Force units Kenney employed before he acquired the whole air force in the 

major reorganization of mid- 1944.) From the Admiralties, the Thirteenth flew 

missions against Japanese-held bases to the north. Kenney’s original proposal 

obtained MacArthur’s agreement because of Kenney’s prestige in MacArthur’s 

eyes, yet Kenney ’s decision, made without full recognition of Japanese strength 

and with initially too few forces, became painful in light of the heavier than 

expected losses and the time required for its completion. 

279 
Piercing the Fog 

The Allied landing at Hollandia followed soon after the capture of Manus, 

occumng on April 22, 1944. For this operation, Kenney’s AAF staff planned 

much differently. Hollandia, as a result of recent Japanese retreats westward, 

had become the major forward Japanese Army Air Force base facing MacArthur’s men. Although the object of repeated aerial attacks early in 1944, the 

enemy’s base remained a substantial threat. Allied intelligence assessed its 

ground defense strength at about 8,654 general troops and 7,650 airmen, of 

which the analysts described 2,250 as air duty personnel. As of April 7, Allied 

commanders believed that Japan’s Eighteenth Army headquarters was moving 

to Hollandia from Wewak. The Japanese base operation structure at Wewak 

appeared rather resilient, retaining the ability to quickly repair some forms of 

damage to the dirt-surfaced landing areas. A B-24 strike the morning of March 

31 had left two of three runways unusable, but all returned to service by that 

afternoon. To buttress their air capability, the Japanese could draw from 

airfields at Sarmi and Wakde, the four airdromes near Wewak, the airdrome at 

Tadji, and the one in the Vogelkop area. SIGINT also indicated that the 

Japanese were surveying other airfield sites in western New Guinea as 

Kenney and Whitehead focused their concern not so much on Hollandia 

itself, which they believed they could control via air attack, but rather on the 

base and air support structure to the rear that the Japanese seemed to be 

strengthening. Kenney womed about Japanese efforts to improve their combat 

aircraft and the rate at which they could assemble reinforcements from the NEI, 

the Philippines, and the home islands, and direct them against the Allies. 

Knowledge of the rather weak strength of the ground garrison at Hollandia and 

the tactical dispositions that would necessarily disperse that strength when 

fighting began promised victory for the Army. Signals intercepts indicated, but 

did not confirm, a possible shortage of aviation gasoline on the Davao-GalelaAmbon-Hollandia route. Such a shortage, the product of Allied air and naval 

antishipping efforts, also promised to delay air reinforcement in western New 

Guinea. Unfortunately, the reported shortage could not be confirmed. Experience had shown, however, that the enemy could marshal considerable air power 

when necessary. 

On March 8, Whitehead advised Kenney that the Japanese were keeping 

about 100 fighters at Hollandia and he reminded his commander that the 

previous October replacements had come to Rabaul at about 200 per week. At 

that rate, Whitehead’s 150 P-38s had been worn down during the space of about 

three weeks. For the projected Hollandia campaign, Whitehead calculated that 

just 50 new fighters a week would be very dangerous because he had only 32 

long-range P-38s and 177 operational B-24s available. To find the most recent 

information on Japanese air capability, Kenney asked his A-2, Colonel Cain, 

to make a special air OB study. The study took some preparation, and, in the 

meantime, Admiral Nimitz, meeting with MacArthur in Brisbane on March 27, 

expressed grave fears of a possible Japanese air force reaction to the Hollandia 

280 
The Pacific and Far East 

landing. Nimitz’s carriers would be supporting the Hollandia effort, and he did 

not want to send them into an area dominated by Japanese land-bases air power. 

Nimitz also pointed out that his fast carriers, upon which the Sixth Army would 

depend for air cover, would have to leave on D+2 for refueling, and could not 

be back until D+8.69 

Responding to Nimitz’s fears, Kenney promised air superiority at Hollandia 

by April 5th. This promise drew some skepticism, as AAF bases were too far 

away to permit effective fighter cover. In making the promise, Kenney also 

noted that to maintain that superiority in the face of possible retaliation, he 

needed to have ready for operational use airdromes seized at Hollandia, Aitape, 

or Tadji by D+2. Kenney had not spoken rashly, for by the day of the meeting 

he and Whitehead had already begun the process of reducing Japanese air 

power. First, Kenney had directed his air depot expert, Col. Victor Bertrandais, 

to make extra wing tanks for at least 75 of the older P-38s. This work was 

nearing completion on the 27th. He had also instructed Whitehead to let the 

fighters fly no farther than Tadji and to let them remain over Tadji for no more 

than fifteen minutes for any reason, even if it meant quitting combat. By this he 

hoped to deceive the Japanese into thinking his aircraft lacked sufficient range 

to threaten Hollandia, and thereby allow the enemy to feel safe enough to keep 

large numbers of their airplanes there. The airmen moved the P38s to Nadzab, 

as close to Hollandia as they could be based. The Australians moved P40s to 

Momote in the Admiralties to block attacks from Rabaul and Kavieng. From 

March 11 to 25 the Allies once again repeatedly bombed the four Wewak bases 

that lay between Nadzab and Hollandia. During that period, 2,666 sorties 

destroyed an estimated 88 enemy aircraft and, more importantly, ended the 

usefulness of Wewak to the Japanese. Lt. Gen. Teramoto Kunachi, commanding 

the Fourth Air Army at Wewak, seeing the futility of trying to keep Wewak 

open, abandoned the area and moved his headquarters to Hollandia on March 

25th. Allied losses over Wewak totaled only 4 bombers and 2 fighters for the 

15 days. 

On March 30, when GHQ AAF learned from ULTRA of Japanese expectations of an attack along the New Guineacoast between Madang and Wewak, the 

Allies decided to foster this notion with some deception. Without letting up on 

the air suppression campaign, the Australians and Americans began making 

superfluous attacks in the region, encouraging the Japanese to believe what they 

were already predisposed to accept. The deception also involved dropping 

parachute dummies and simulating night photography with illumination or flash 

bombs. The Navy increased PT boat activity and left rubber boats ashore in 

selected spots to create the impression that scouting parties had landed. 

Sporadic and seemingly ill-conceived single-plane night attacks on Hollandia 

(with intentionally inaccurate bombing) brought some derisive remarks from 

Radio Tokyo, to Kenney’s delight. Daylight aerial photography of Hollandia 

airfields indicated the Japanese were going for the bait, increasing their aircraft 

28 1 
Piercing the Fog 

at the fields there and parking them in the unprotected open, even closely 

together. For good measure, on the 18th and 19th of March, Allied airmen 

destroyed most of a convoy bound from Hollandia to Wewak.” 

On the morning of March 30th the air offensive against Hollandia, 

preparatory to Allied seizure of the area, began. The first waves of heavy 

bombers took out the newly emplaced and rather threatening AA gun positions 

surrounding the Hollandia airfields. Photoanalysis had just recently revealed the 

presence of the guns, and Kenney promptly made them first priority. Next to be 

hit were the fuel storage areas and parked aircraft. Poststrike aerial photography 

showed 11 8 aircraft destroyed or badly damaged on the first day. By the end of 

the second day of heavy attacks, the score had risen to 21 9. At the same time, 

Kenney received ULTRA information that the Japanese had already begun 

moving replacements toward Hollandia. Previously arranged carrier-based air 

attacks by Nimitz’s fleet on Palau, Yap, Ulithi, and Woleai, plus Thirteenth Air 

Task Force B-24 bombardment of Woleai, restrained some of the flow of 

aircraft by forcing the Japanese to hold many air units in either the NEI or the 

Philippines, ready to ward off a possible major thrust in the Central Pacific. 

Allied Air Forces Y-Service monitoring Japanese transmissions from the 

Hollandia area learned that on March 30 the base had just 18 minutes’ warning 

of the approaching raid, allowing commanders to send 40 interceptors into the 

air. The defending aircraft appeared disorganized. On the second day, warning 

increased to 70 minutes. Despite the added time, only 30 fighters rose to 

Maj. Gen. Victor Bertrandais 

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The Pacific and Far East 

intercept, and AA fire was generally inaccurate. Against an attack on April 4, 

the Japanese commander sent up 30 fighters, but he mustered only slight AA 

fire. The April 4th strike was so conclusive that Hollandia no longer presented 

a threat. Continued raids preceding the April 22 landing by Sixth Army kept the 

airfields from any but the lightest and most occasional use.’l 

On April 18, Cain brought Kenney the report on regional enemy air 

strength. The data confirmed Kenney’s previous opinion of the potential danger 

and Whitehead’s fears, leaving Kenney feeling uneasy. Cain advised him that 

given adequate organization and using the western New Guinea bases, the 

Japanese could put 50 fighters and 50 bombers over Tanamerah and Hollandia 

on the morning of D+3, when the carriers had gone but possibly before the 

engineers had readied the Japanese fields for Allied use. Three enemy cruisers 

at Manokwari indicated to Kenney the possibility that they might be preparing 

for the Allied advance. The location of Japanese supply dumps and AA fire 

from the Tanamerah Bay areas also left him apprehensive of the reception the 

Army would receive on coming ashore. After reviewing the material, Kenney 

spoke to Sutherland to recommend bringing the escort carriers from Aitape on 

D+2 to cover the area when the fast carriers left in the evening. Kenney judged 

that if Lt. Gen. Robert Eichelberger’s men failed to clear the beaches and reach 

the Hollandia airfields by D+3 and if the Tadji or Tami airdromes could not be 

taken and put to use by D+2, the Japanese air forces had a chance to inflict a 

substantial disaster on the Allies. Worse yet, Kenney would have few 

alternatives since most of his bases lay too far to the rear for an effective 

reaction.” For the moment, however, he and Whitehead had done all they could. 

The only thing left was to await events, and watch the landing. 

The actual taking of Aitape, Hollandia, and the three airfields inland from 

Hollandia near Lake Sentani proved anticlimactic. General Teramoto had 

already moved, this time to Menado in the Celebes, where he hoped to rally a 

counterattack. He could not. Japanese ground resistance at Hollandia collapsed, 

with logistics the most serious problem for the Allies. The beaches were 

difficult to use, and roads to the inland airfields were no more than long, narrow 

morasses that did not allow even jeep travel. Although the airfields fell on April 

26, most supplies had to be hand carried or airlifted for some days while Army 

engineers constructed an acceptable road. The former Japanese airfield at 

Aitape, meanwhile, had been repaired by RAAF engineers and was ready for 

use by fighters on April 24. Restoration of the Hollandia fields took longer, 

their first use coming on May 3. Overall, the Hollandia airdromes disappointed 

the airmen; none could serve adequately as a major airfield because of the 

swampy terrain and poor roads. Even the two harbors, at Tanamerah and 

Hollandia proper, were only marginally useful. The Allied commanders soon 

forgot these disappointments as they continued moving west. By mid-August, 

MacArthur controlled virtually all of New Guinea, with the Philippines the next 

major target for the combined Southwest Pacific and Thirteenth Air force^.'^ 

283 
Piercing the Fog 

Once secure in New Guinea and then the Halmahera Islands, Allied 

commanders drew up formal plans for the assault on the Philippines, Formosa, 

and China. As part of this process, the planners reviewed the continuing ULTRA 

disclosures and other information, learning a number of key factors in Japan’s 

regional defense planning. By mid-September 1944, continuing Allied guerrilla 

raids on Japanese garrisons in the Philippines allowed greater opportunity for 

intelligence gathering that might supplement the more detached analyses from 

Brisbane. Assessments drawn from ULTRA led the Allies to believe that Japan 

was carrying out a strategic withdrawal of air units to Formosa, Luzon, and the 

home islands, with a consequent reduction in air defenses south of Luzon, 

especially the Visayan Islands in the central Philippines. The Japanese air 

reaction to carrier air strikes on Yap, Palau, and elsewhere, as reflected in 

intercepted messages, seemed one of semiparalysis. Japanese commanders 

seemed unable to mount any significant air operations. Despite the fact that 

Japanese naval intelligence had located an Allied carrier task force within 300 

miles of Leyte, they made no response. The opposite seemed to be true, with a 

strengthening of the Formosa-home islands defense line. 

The absence of substantial message traffic to Balikpapan in eastern Borneo 

indicated a reduction of air defenses around the major oil production and 

refinery complex there. Direct evidence from ULTRA illustrated some regional 

oil, aviation gasoline, and naval fuel stockpiles. For example, the Japanese 

Army Air Force aviation gasoline storage capacity in the Philippines stood at 

6.6 million gallons in the Manila area (enough to fuel 166 medium bombers for 

30 days), 5.8 million gallons at Hondagua in southeastern Luzon, 3.2 million 

gallons at Iloilo, and 2.4 million gallons at Cebu. The Japanese Navy’s air arm 

also had storage at Manila, Cebu, and Davao. The Allies surmised correctly that 

this storage pattern reflected the relative importance of these areas in Japanese 

air operations planning. Balikpapan itself held stocks of an extremely large 

amount of aviation gasoline-9.9 million gallons-plus 67,894 tons of fuel oil. 

The amounts stored in Borneo, however, were not there for operational use. 

This materiel represented a shipping backlog, a result of the constantly 

constricting hold that the Allied air and submarine forces had on Japanese 

logistics lines.74 

Japan’s difficulties in moving fuel to various places along her outer Empire 

defense perimeter, and her growing and very serious problems in troop transport 

and general shipping, prove the efficacy of Allied aerial and submarine attacks 

on her merchant fleet as it moved through the Pacific. From this information 

and long experience in the area, Kenney saw achance to make Japan’s problems 

even more severe. He believed that the RAAF’s April 1944 mining raids on 

Balikpapan’s harbor had badly disrupted transfer of fuel supplies, and he 

pleaded unsuccessfully for two groups of B-29s to be based temporarily in 

Australia for an attack on Borneo’s oil production. To facilitate acceptance in 

Washington of his B-29 suggestion, Kenney had even gone so far as to build 

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The Pacific and Far East 

a suitable base in northern Australia and to offer it as an operating site until 

better locations could be had. Kenney wanted to get hold of the superbombers 

and put them to use in his theater, and he saw oil as the best target to promote 

the idea. In Washington, Arnold had refused the request, fearing that once a 

theater commander controlled the new bombers he would not release them. That 

would be the end of the strategic bombing command just then beginning 

operations, and perhaps the end of an independent postwar air force as well.’5 

Failing to get B-29s, Kenney decided to use his own B-24s flying from 

newly captured Sansapor Island, off the northern shore of the westernmost part 

of New Guinea. The first two of these raids on Balikpapan-n September 30 

and October 3,1944-badly damaged refining plants and storage capacity, but 

they encountered heavier than expected aerial opposition. The Japanese were 

not as impotent in the area as Kenney had thought. Reliance on the absence of 

radio intercepts as an indicator of lack of opposition had misled Kenney into a 

belief that the project would be easier than it was. Intercepted messages on 

October 5 revealed that the Japanese Naval Air Force’s 381 Group had gone so 

far as to establish an airborne fighter patrol on the approaches to the refinery, 

with links to outlying radar stations. On October 8, ULTRA revealed the 

presence of the 341 Group near Balikpapan as well. Not wishing to risk 

bombers and crews unnecessarily, Fifth and Thirteenth Air Force B-24 group 

commanders altered flight formations to tighten the assembly of aircraft and 

give greater mutual protection for the October 10th and 14th attacks.* Longrange P-38s andP-47~ hastily moved to forward airdromes and flew as escorts. 

Despite intense aerial combat, the bombers inflicted additional severe damage 

on Balikpapan’s refinery and storage areas. Overall, the raids cost twenty-two 

B-24s and nine accompanying fighters, a stiff price for the SWPA but light in 

terms of some loss rates in Europe. The attacks proved their worth, crippling 

production at the Borneo facility and setting the stage for the assault on the 

phi lip pine^.^^ 

Shortly after Nimitz’s forces captured Guam and Saipan and had moved on to 

bombarding Iwo Jima and the Bonin Islands, MacArthur was ready to land in 

the Philippines. Promoted by intelligence indicating Japanese weakness on 

Leyte and by the interplay between the major Allied commands in the Pacific, 

the landing came a month earlier than first planned-n October 20, 1944. In 

mid-September, Admiral Halsey’s men, in rescuing a pilot shot down over 

Leyte, heard from natives that no Japanese were on the island. On the basis of 

this and other information, Halsey suggested to Nimitz that they forego landings 

on Yap and Ulithi and move instead to Leyte. Nimitz deferred to MacArthur, 

*In support of the raid, air-sea rescue including submarines and Catalina flying 

boats kept station well inside Japanese-held territory to recover downed airmen. 

Those craft rescued most of the crewmen shot down on the two final attacks. 

285 
Piercing the Fog 

as Leyte was within the SWPA, and in a complicated discussion between the 

Joint Staff, Nimitz’s staff, and MacArthur’s people, Leyte became the place of 

first landing during the American return to the Philippines. MacArthur had long 

intended to retake the archipelago, but two of his subordinates made the 

decision while he was at sea and the crew of the ship was observing radio 

silence. Kenney and Sutherland, prompted by the possibility that Nimitz would 

seek approval if the SWPA commander seemed reluctant, took it upon 

themselves to decide on the Leyte operation and to so inform the JCS on 

September 16. MacArthur quickly agreed on his return the next day.” 

Kenney decided the Leyte question in the belief that he would have the 

upper hand in any air campaign. He seems to have done so based on the ULTRA 

indications of Japan’s strategic withdrawal to the northern PhilippinesFormosa-home islands, Japan’s decidedly defensive air dispositions and types 

of aircraft in the Philippines that would limit offensive reactions, and her rate 

of aircraft loss and diminishing pilot and aircraft replacement capability. The 

FEAF commander had concluded that Japanese air power in the Philippines 

“was shot,” although he could not rule out a successful Japanese reaction to the 

projected landings. Of most concern to Kenney was the need to quickly seize 

and expand airfields on Leyte to provide land-based air cover to the men ashore. 

Until bases were in use, the Navy’s aircraft-limited in number, range, and 

firepower and flying from carriers vulnerable to air, surface, and submarine 

attack-would have to bear the load of protection, for Fifth and Thirteenth Air 

Forces had too few airfields within operational range of Leyte. Preparatory air 

attacks by Halsey’s carriers against Japanese bases on Luzon had resulted in 

reportedly large losses of enemy aircraft. Although the Allies knew the Japanese 

defensive dispositions and their air, land, and sea OB, they were uncertain of the 

way the Japanese would use those forces when they responded to the direction 

of Allied moves. Moreover, Allied intelligence estimated that by October 20 the 

Japanese had 27,000 soldiers on Leyte and adjacent Samar. This number of 

Japanese, far more than Halsey’s information, was not in itself a major danger 

to the projected landings. The risk to the Allies was from naval and air 

counterstrikes?8 

Allied landing forces initially had little trouble on Leyte, seizing Tacloban 

on October 20th and Dulag on the 21st. Immediately, work began on airfields 

at both sites. Confusion ashore, with equipment and supplies piled on the 

beaches, delayed construction of the vital bases. On the 23d, Seventh Fleet 

intelligence officers discerned a major Japanese fleet seemingly headed toward 

Leyte, partly from Brunei, with the remainder coming through the Surigao 

Strait. The ensuing battle for Leyte Gulf forced American naval aircraft from 

four small escort carriers into a desperate fight. The success of the Navy flyers, 

and Japanese misperceptions of the American fleet’s locations, resulted in an 

Allied victory that fended off a potentially highly destructive Japanese foray 

into the center of the vulnerable landing force. Finally, on October 26, thirty286 
The Pacific and Far East 

four P-38s of the Fifth Air Force arrived at Tacloban. Shortly thereafter, heavy 

seasonal rains set in, bringing airfield expansion and construction almost to a 

halt for several weeks.’’ 

With the conclusion of the major naval engagements, the air war, marked 

by fierce Japanese assaults on the uncompleted landing grounds, assumed a 

tempo not fully anticipated by the Allies. Japanese attacks and horrible airfield 

conditions quickly left but eight P-38s. Reacting to the danger, Fifth and 

Thirteenth Air Force bombers and fighters flying from Morotai turned against 

Japanese airfields in the Visayan Islands near Leyte. In addition, on November 

5 and 6, Admiral Halsey’s replenished heavy carrier force struck Luzon bases 

to wear down the Japanese reaction and reduce pressure on the Allied airmen 

and infantry on Leyte.8’ The Japanese bent every effort to reinforce their Leyte 

garrison under cover of the bad weather and in the face of still weak Allied air 

forces on the islands. Kenney and his commanders, realizing the difficulty in 

which Lt. Gen. Walter Krueger’s Sixth Army found itself, used every available 

combat airplane that they could move to Leyte. ULTRA reported the sailings, and 

repeated air strikes sank much of the shipping. At this point, Allied ULTRA 

intervened again, detailing a new Japanese weapon, the organized suicide 

squadrons (kamikaze) of the Japanese Naval Air Force. A single pilot flying one 

of these planes could badly damage or disable even the heaviest ship. The 

Japanese suicide aircraft, however, were just part of what ULTRA indicated was 

a much more impressive air power effort. 

To contend with the danger that the Allied operation presented, the 

Japanese hastily organized what they called the TAttuck Force. That group was 

a collection of largely naval air squadrons supplemented by Army air units and 

commanded in Philippine operations by a Japanese naval air officer, whom the 

Allies thought to be Rear Adm. Tsunoda Koshiro. The offensive nature of the 

T Attack Force became apparent from ULTRA intercepts about October 23. 

Subsequently, the Allies estimated the air task force to consist of about 604 

fighters and 624 bombers; it was the aerial counterpart of the Japanese Navy 

surface task force that had tried to disrupt the amphibious landing fleet in the 

battle of the Philippine Sea. By late October, the Japanese had impressed Allied 

air intelligence officers and commanders alike with the deftness and tenacity of 

their employment of offensive air power; the SWPA SIB for October 3 l/November 1 carried the cautionary note, “The gravity of the threat requires the 

most stringent counter-measures.”*’ Despite Japan’s diminishing strength, the 

Japanese had rallied a sizable air task group within 48 hours of the main Allied 

landing. 

The TAttuck Force struck hard at the precarious Allied lodgment, and the 

Japanese believed their air onslaught and continued combat over Allied airfields 

on Leyte had damaged the invasion; this belief spurred them to added efforts. 

So effective were the Japanese and so difficult the weather and airfield 

conditions that on October 28 Kenney characterized the situation as critical. He 

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Piercing the Fog 

and Halsey directed every available AAF and Navy fighter toward the intense 

air battle. ULTRA had made clear by November that the Japanese were taking 

aircraft from every source remaining to them for Philippine defense. Moreover, 

the Allies could track three separate fleet striking forces with one heavy and 

three light carriers plus three hybrid or transport carriers the Japanese had 

converted from battleships and cruisers. Only repeated air attacks on these fleets 

kept them at a distance.82 

One consistent characteristic noted by Allied intercept analysts was the 

Japanese proclivity to strongly overstate Allied losses, understate their own, and 

to act on these mistaken beliefs. This tendency and the continued ability of 

Kenney to read enemy reactions allowed him a clear picture of the battle’s 

progress. It also allowed Halsey, Kenney, and their subordinates to hit hard at 

the Japanese and continue to drain aircraft and pilots from Japan’s defense 

resources. By November 11, the improving landing fields led the FEAF 

commander to assume a more favorable outlook. Once the Allies could base a 

substantial air capability on Leyte, they brought the main Japanese threat under 

control.83 

The bloody struggle for Leyte became an Allied victory largely because 

ULTRA’S insights allowed the better armed, largely American, land-sea-air force 

to be massed against the depleted Japanese capability to react. The T Attack 

Force, heavily damaged in the air war and with diminishing fervor for battle, 

began to withhold units on Formosa and Japan. On November 11, the 

Americans intercepted and decrypted a MAGIC diplomatic message from 

Japanese Foreign Minister Shigemitsu Namoru to his ambassador in Moscow, 

Sat0 Naotake. In that message, Shigemitsu acknowledged most pessimistically 

Japan’s declining power in the face of growing Allied strength. In fact, Japanese 

air capability in the Visayas had peaked in early November, about the time that 

Kenney noted the improved airfield situation on Leyte. Although Kenney did 

not see the MAGIC decrypt for some days, it must have given him considerable 

satisfaction that his perception of the tactical situation matched the beliefs of the 

Japanese Foreign Minister.84 

The TAttack Force, that instrument of Japanese air power that had seemed 

such a threat, apparently retreated from the Philippines after its commitment and 

subsequent heavy losses in the battle for Leyte. A paucity of references to it in 

Japanese message traffic coincided with a lessening of enemy aircraft seen aloft 

by Allied pilots. By December 15, Japanese radio traffic to the unit had almost 

ceased, to be replaced by messages directed to the H-3 Attack Force, and to the 

KAttuck Force. The H-3 Attack Force had not been committed to battle, but the 

Allies took it to be another air task force of undetermined size and composition, 

probably made up of navy and army squadrons with kamikaze units. From 

operational assessments and intelligence analysis of downed enemy aircraft, 

Allied airmen noted the arrival of new types of Japanese fighters. These aircraft 

were too few and their pilots too inexperienced to affect the trend of the war. 

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The Pacific and Far East 

Allied leaders assessed Japan as losing the struggle for air superiority over the 

Philippines as a whole. In this period, ULTRA picked up information that three 

Japanese Army divisions were moving to or had arrived in Luzon from 

Manchuria or the home islands. Not only were the Japanese reinforcing Luzon, 

until well into November they had continued to send troops to Leyte by sea 

routes very vulnerable to Allied air and naval attack. It was against this 

diminished but most determined Japanese opposition that MacArthur’s 

headquarters made final plans for the capture of Mindoro, to be quickly 

followed by that of L~zon.’~ 

The Mindoro landing preceded the Luzon invasion partly to secure landing 

fields closer to the main Japanese bases near Manila and Clark Field. Mindoro 

showed that the Japanese were far from ready to give up. Renewed Japanese air 

retaliation, in Kenney’s words, “fooled everyone,” as the Japanese “came to 

Mindoro” to disrupt Allied shipping. Once again, Allied commanders misread 

their enemy who, they assumed, would do what the Allies thought best, not 

what the Japanese believed they must do. The Japanese counterblows failed in 

the main because of desperate Allied aerial opposition and superb Army 

engineer construction efforts at building airfields. The first Allied fighter group 

landed on Mindoro on December 20, 1944; others followed as quickly as 

landing fields could be prepared. Japanese air attacks continued to threaten the 

island position, but bad weather gave some cover, and airfield expansion finally 

created enough landing areas to fend off the Japanese and provide an adequate 

base for the Luzon seizure. By year’s end, Marine 12th Air Group Corsairs 

flying from Samar Island joined AAF aircraft on Leyte and Mindoro. On 

December 17 and 18, General Yamashita Tomoyuki’s Fourteenth Area Army 

headquarters in Manila transmitted a long message in several parts, conceding 

Allied success in Leyte. Yamashita cited as the final blow the taking of Ormoc 

by the American 77th Division. In the same transmission, Yamashita noted the 

impending success of the Mindoro operation. The way to Luzon via an 

amphibious landing at Lingayen was now open.86 

As Allied forces assembled for the convoy to Lingayen, the intelligence 

staff estimated Japanese air strength on Formosa and in the Ryukyu Islands at 

about 400 aircraft. Another 500 were probably in China, mostly around 

Hangkow and Canton. References in Japanese message traffic to several 

addresses such as the K Attack Force and the T-I Attack Force indicated 

continued movement of planes and men as well as plans to use air task forces, 

but the sizes and compositions of the forces remained in doubt. Except for some 

of the planes needed to cope with Chennault’s Foxteenth Air Force, the 

collection of Japanese striking strength represented a substantial threat to the 

convoy and the landing operation. The Japanese had anticipated an Allied 

landing at Lingayen. They had themselves used the bay when they took the 

Philippines in 1941. Unfortunately for the Japanese commanders, however, they 

had to consider the possibility of other, at least limited, landings where 

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Piercing the Fog 

geography permitted, as there could be no assurance that any location was the 

main point of attack. Japanese warning messages in mid-November had, in fact, 

pointed out a number of possibilities, which the Allies at least briefly considered using. Lingayen, however, was the place best suited for the landing. The 

main Allied force consisting of two corps reached Lingayen on January 7. 

Ground resistance was light; air retaliation was not-it began several days 

before the beach assault as the main body of Allied vessels moved west of 

Luzon and minesweepers cleared the channels and approaches to Lingayen Bay. 

Japanese suicide pilots tried to destroy as much of the invading amphibious fleet 

as possible, while Yamashita completed his defensive preparations. Overall, 

kamikaze pilots, joined this time by fast, 20-foot-long suicide boats, sank seven 

Allied ships, including an escort carrier. Three battleships, four more escort 

carriers, two American heavy cruisers, and an Australian cruiser suffered 

damage, as did several other vessels. Despite the losses, Allied shipping was not 

deterred, and Allied troops and support units quickly came ashore.” 

The desperate suicide attacks prior to and during the landings at Lingayen 

were the last organized Japanese air opposition on Luzon. Although Japanese 

airmen based on Formosa remained a threat, the air war for the Philippines soon 

ended. Allied capture of airdromes, first at Mangaladan and Lingayen, then at 

Clark Field on January 28, coincided with the Fifth Air Force’s first B-24 day 

attack on Formosa, on January 21. Gathering his thoughts as he looked back 

over the fighting, Kenney noted that when the Army reached Clark, a quick 

count found some 500 wrecked Japanese aircraft. Later a more formal survey 

of Clark, Nichols, and Nielson Fields reported 1,505 nonflyable or destroyed 

airplanes. The combined AAF-Navy counterair campaign not only destroyed 

hundreds of aircraft, it had left many more partly flyable but missing vital parts, 

and no opportunity for ground crews to repair them.88 

Consolidation of American power in the Philippines was the final wartime 

campaign for the FEAF, save for a continuing series of strikes on an ever 

smaller array of Japanese shipping and on Japanese positions along the coast of 

China. FEAF attacks on Japanese land targets continued until Japan surrendered 

in the summer of 1945; attacks on both land and sea targets were coordinated 

with the Navy and the Fourteenth Air Force. Kenney, now a full general, 

participated in the preparations for the final assault on Japan proper, once 

Okinawa had been secured by Nimitz’s POA forces. Preparations for taking 

Japan included a reorganization of United States forces, with all AAF in the 

Pacific except the Twentieth slated for transfer to FEAF. Acrimonious 

infighting between the Army and Navy, much of it centering on the two strongwilled leaders, Nimitz and MacArthur, delayed the reorganization. Despite the 

arguments, FEAF’s bombers moved to Okinawa to carry out limited attacks on 

Kyushu before the Japanese surrender. 

290 
The Pacific and Far East 

Throughout the almost four years of conflict in the SPA and SWPA, the AAF 

demonstrated a growing skill in collecting air intelligence information from a 

wide variety of sources, analyzing the data, and using it in the relentless pursuit 

of Japan. In retrospect, much more remains in terms of knowledge of day-to-day 

planning and decision-making factors for the Fifth and Thirteenth Air Forces 

than can be seen for any other AAF segment of the Pacific and Far East theaters. 

In good measure, this resulted from the combined effects of George Kenney’s 

note taking and correspondence with Ennis Whitehead, his longtime, trusted 

subordinate. Throughout the fighting, the interplay between air operations and 

intelligence was helped by the flow of ULTRA information appearing in the 

special intelligence bulletins from GHQ, which highlighted the trends that 

seemed either most promising or most dangerous. Application of intelligence 

to air planning and to coordinated, joint-force Allied undertakings became 

highly sophisticated, able to rapidly consume information on Japanese forces 

and quickly apply it. Nonetheless, as shown by Japan’s unexpectedly strong 

defense of the Philippines, intelligence could not provide the final answers to 

war planning and execution; that could come only from an understanding of 

combat and of the enemy, and an awareness of and willingness to take risks. 

Risk taking is the essence of warfare, and risk taking was standard practice 

in the Southwest Pacific, often promoted by Kenney’s personality. Generally, 

Kenney decided his course of action after considerable thought, based on 

substantial current operational intelligence data. Beginning in 1943, for 

example, Kenney and Whitehead often had a good knowledge of Japanese air 

strengths and locations. As a result, when they drew up plans, the chances for 

success usually favored the Allied airmen. Success was not always foreordained, however. Neither Kenney nor Whitehead predicted the difficult situation 

in the Admiralties that almost backfired on them or the unexpected Japanese 

aerial defense at Balikpapan that surprised them. Another surprise was the 

Japanese reaction to the Leyte and Mindoro landings as exemplified by the T 

Attack Force’s rapid formation and deployment to battle. One of the few times 

that George Kenney seems to have had after-the-fact misgivings, as reflected in 

his private notes, was over the perhaps too hasty assault on the Admiralties, 

although the prize was clearly worth the action. The heavy defense of 

Balikpapan caused Kenney concern, and he personally went to talk to and 

reassure the bomber aircrews before the final two attacks. In the case of 

Balikpapan, the refinery was a worthwhile target, but in going after it he had 

judged the absence of radio traffic to be the indicator of weak defenses-it was 

not. 

The Japanese reaction to the invasion of the Philippines came, as Kenney 

said, as a surprise to everyone. Indications from intelligence could not provide 

information from an absent source; in this case, the Japanese T Attack Force 

formed at the last minute. A hastily cobbled-together fighting unit, the TAttack 

Force reacted quickly from a base on Formosa to give the Japanese a strong 

29 1 
Piercing the Fog 

capability for a concentrated thrust. By that time in the war, however, Allied 

strength was such that Japan’s defeat was virtually certain. The Allies, 

understanding that they were in a hard fight nevertheless, were bolstered by the 

fact that the potential consequences arising from a miscalculation were far less 

than would have been the case in 1943. 

Assessing the Watchers: The Allied View of Japanese 

Air Intelligence 

Allied intelligence specialists were not alone in scrutinizing their enemy, 

although the Japanese did it much differently and with less emphasis. One of the 

tasks for Allied air intelligence was to watch this enemy effort and remain alert 

to both its imperfections and the implications of its successes. Air commanders 

could then assess the threat that Japanese intelligence presented to their own 

operations. Fortunately for the Allies, the Japanese, especially the Imperial 

Japanese Army, had traditionally discounted the value of intelligence analyses, 

its officers preferring the show of bravado associated with offensive warfare. 

The tendency of Japanese Army leaders was to dismiss intelligence as having 

negligible importance. The thinking of these men was colored by admiration of 

German military tactics, their own arrogance, and a general disdain for military 

forces of all Western nations except Germany.89 

An example of the state of Japan’s air intelligence at the beginning of the 

Pacific War was her lack of knowledge of Great Britain’s military posture in the 

prized colony of Malaya. On November 22, 1941, sixteen days before the 

beginning of hostilities, Lt. Col. Tsuji Masanobu, chief of Lt. Gen. Yamashita 

Tomoyuki’s Operations Planning Staff, personally overflew British installations 

in Northern Malaya. Tsuji had to make the trip because he lacked adequate 

maps to plan the campaign. The size and development of the bases he saw on 

his flight caused him to recommend substantial changes to the Twenty-fijih 

Army’s plans. As a result, the Japanese reinforced their Army Air Force units 

intended for the attack. They then quickly captured Kota Bharu and Alor Star 

once hostilities began in order to deprive the RAF of major operating sites. One 

can only commend Tsuji’s initiative and accomplishments, but the very fact that 

Yamashita’s senior planner had to make the flight himself spoke poorly of the 

Japanese Army’s grasp of the importance of air and ground intelligence 

organization. After the initial Japanese victories, its army had learned little. In 

early 1942, Southern Army headquarters, then in Singapore, saw little reason to 

keep the capability it had, merging the intelligence section into and making it 

a minor part of the operations staff.w 

The AAF in the Pacific and Far East did not, however, face an entirely 

inadequate enemy intelligence structure. The Japanese used sources and 

methods similar to those used by the Allied organizations, including coast 

292 
The Pacific and Far East 

watchers, photoreconnaissance, agent reports, and radio intelligence units, using 

radio methods throughout the war zone. Japanese deception involved quite good 

attempts at using English speakers on tactical radio nets to confuse or mislead 

Allied pilots and ground forces. In addition, skilled Japanese interrogators 

extracted valuable data from POWs, many of whom, because of the widespread 

aerial fighting, were airmen. Although some Japanese units, like the Southern 

Army, could dismiss intelligence studies, others pursued it. Even Southern Army 

realized its error and recreated an intelligence section early in 1944. By then, 

however, it was too late for such a move to influence the war’s direction.” 

For radio intercept work, each major Japanese army headquarters had 

assigned to it their version of a Y-Service unit that dealt with coded or 

encrypted British, American, or Chinese message traffic. The larger and more 

important the headquarters, the larger and better equipped the intercept section 

was. These field units proliferated, but they were by no means as successful as 

were the comparable Allied organizations. Allied ULTRA could occasionally 

trace Japan’s sources and use of radio intercept data. An early March 1944 

decryption of Japanese radio messages confirmed that their surveillance and 

study of Allied air operations involved direction finding and traffic analysis 

done as CB did in Brisbane and as the radio intercept squadron did at Fifth Air 

Force ADVON’s operational headquarters in New Guinea. Allied interpreters 

who studied the messages concluded, however, that no evidence suggested the 

Japanese were successful in breaking important, high-level codes or ciphers.‘* 

This meant that the Japanese, despite some monumental American blunders in 

keeping secrets, remained unaware of the true nature and extent of Allied 

ULTRA operations. Many of Japan’s most valuable intelligence accomplishments came from their efforts to counter Allied air power. Japanese cryptographers often broke low-level air operations codes. For example, they were able 

to predict B-29 actions in China by reading messages directing the turning on 

of aircraft homing beacons. 

In the SWPA, reports of Japanese intelligence activities unearthed by 

ULTRA appeared in Willoughby’s daily SIBS. As much as possible, the Allies 

tracked the location of Japanese radio intercept units, noting that the removal 

of one from Rabaul to Truk early in 1944 possibly indicated the decline in the 

Rabaul unit’s relative importance in Japanese plans and the perception that 

Nimitz’s carrier and amphibious forces posed the greater threat to the Pacific 

islands. On the other hand, the move could have resulted simply from Japan’s 

wish to avoid risking the valuable unit to the heavy and continuing air attacks 

by Admiral Halsey’s carrier aircraft and by Kenney’s bombers and fighters. 

Despite the apparent move of the radio intelligence unit, some capability 

remained at Rabaul, for it was there that the Japanese gained some of their best 

radio intercept data on B-29 operations from the Marianas. Throughout the war, 

knowledge of Japanese radio intelligence activities remained fragmentary, with 

293 
Piercing the Fog 

Allied understanding of enemy Y-Services dependent on not only interception 

of Japanese messages, but also the ability to decrypt the system in use?3 

The Japanese at times gained valuable and specific air information from 

captured flyers, as could be seen in the February 1944 report to Tokyo on Allied 

air strength in North Australia. That Japanese report, based upon interrogation 

of a first lieutenant copilot of a B-24, identified the AAF’s 380th Group 

commanded by a Colonel Miller (the 380th Bombardment Group commanded 

by Col. William A. Miller) with assigned 528, 529, 530, and 531 squadrons 

(actually, the 328, 329, 330, and 331 squadrons) at RAAF Long and RAAF 

Fenton, near Darwin. The Japanese also understood that fifty planes were in the 

group. To that, Allied analysts commented in the SIB synopsis, “The enemy’s 

information is high grade.” The knowledge that the Japanese had of the 380th’~ 

home station triggered from Allied analysts warnings of a possible Japanese 

parachute assault on the airfields. Both Long and Fenton were in range of 

Japanese transport aircraft, and available fragmentary evidence indicated the 

presence of the Zst and 2d Raider Groups, both parachute units, in New Guinea. 

(The 1st Raider Group, also known as the 1st Parachute Brigade, had captured 

Palembang airfield on Sumatra in February 1942.) The Japanese made no 

parachute attack on the Australian airfields, but Darwin was the subject of aerial 

bombardment on a number of occasions at about the same time.’4 POW 

interrogations yielded other data as well. 

At about the same time that they captured the lieutenant copilot of the 

B-24, the Japanese got hold of another American, a colonel, commander of a 

heavy bomber group in the Thirteenth Air Force. This unfortunate man faced 

questioning first at Rabaul, then possibly in New Guinea, before Tokyo directed 

his transfer there. In the process of interrogation, the Japanese gained information on aircraft loss rates, personnel, flying accidents, air-sea rescue procedures, 

and the development and possible use in the Pacific of B-29s. Willoughby’s SZB 

for February 24, 1944, cited the information Japan had gained from the 

American officer regarding AAF strength in the SOPAC theater as of about 

December 30, 1943: 

Aircraft Types Japanese Information Actual Strength 

P-38, P-39, P-40, and 200 190 

B-25 60 74 

B-24 96 146 

B-24, 8 radar equipped* - 

Total 364 418 

Spitfire 

8 - 

*Bombers equipped for low-level sea search and attack of Japanese merchant 

shipping. 

294 
The Pacific and Far East 

The information gained by the Japanese was very good and probably represented operational strengths, with the differences between their estimates and 

the actual strengths possibly being airplanes in depot maintenance or reserve. 

Little wonder in light of this information that Kenney had been concerned a year 

previously when the Japanese shot down Brig. Gen. Kenneth Walker’s B-17 

after a raid on Rabaul on January 5, 1943. Walker probably had limited if any 

knowledge of the growing but as yet not fully developed radio-intercept 

intelligence activity in the Pacific. Despite that, his capture might have had 

serious consequences as even then the secrecy surrounding the subject was 

rather loosely handled. Fortunately for the Allies (and unfortunately for the 

general), Walker was never found, apparently having died in the ~rash.’~ 

Although the Japanese had disregarded the creation of strategic intelligence 

organizations to the detriment of their long-term plans and operations, they 

remained capable of tactical accomplishments that gave them insights into 

Allied air operations. Kenney’s knowledge of his enemy’s understanding of 

Allied capabilities certainly played a part, although probably minor, in his own 

plan formulation. 

Moreover, the Japanese were not so arrogant as to completely disregard the 

dangers of Allied intelligence successes. After the March 10, 1944, sinking of 

a small Japanese freighter, the Japanese sought out one of the ship’s officers and 

queried him about the code books the ship carried. They then reminded all 

concerned of the dangers to shipping and troops in transit should code 

information fall into the wrong hands. Later in March, after the destruction of 

a convoy to Wewak and the coincident loss of its cryptographic materials, the 

Japanese changed their sea transport cryptographic system, reducing temporarily the Allied use of this source. They still did not realize the true ability of 

the Allies to read their enciphered messages.” 

Intelligence specialists at CB and Fifth Air Force headquarters lacked a 

complete understanding of Japanese information, but they continued to learn of 

enemy capabilities and tactics as they read his radio signals. The Allies 

determined, for example, that the Japanese had ascertained from the lieutenant 

who had flown the B-24 that Allied airmen changed radio frequencies and call 

signs on each mission. Routine Japanese Y-Service work indicated that the Fifth 

and Thirteenth Air Forces coordinated operations, and that Japanese forces 

should be on the alert against large-scale operations in New Guinea and the 

Solomons after mid-March 1944. The Japanese discerned the direction of Allied 

intentions correctly, although they were unable to anticiRate precisely what 

would happen or to deflect the Allied campaign. On March 20, Admiral 

Halsey’s SOPAC units landed on Emirau Island near the major Japanese base 

at Kavieng. In a March 25-27 conference in Brisbane, MacArthur, Nimitz, 

Halsey, Kenney, and other senior officers discussed major upcoming operations. 

On April 22, MacArthur landed his Sixth Army at Hollandia and nearby 

locations. The Hollandia effort had been preceded by a major Allied Air Forces 

295 
Piercing the Fog 

attack on the airfields in the vicinity, and it required substantial support from 

Halsey and Nimitz in the way of shipping and naval protection, much of which 

was directed by radio. Partly to cover MacArthur, Nimitz’s Central Pacific 

carrier task forces, supported by the Seventh and Thirteenth Air Forces, struck 

Japanese-held islands including Truk, Guam, Woleai, and Yap. Late in March, 

the Japanese reported by radio that they had learned (probably again from their 

colonel captive) about American fighter and bomber tactics and of the functions 

of the radar analysis aircraft known as ferrets?’ 

The full extent of Japan’s military intelligence capability and accomplishments remains obscured in the wreckage of her defeat and the large-scale 

destruction of records at the time of her surrender in 1945. Yet, the Japanese 

were not without an understanding of the AAF’s operations in the Pacific, and 

one should not assume they were uncertain of Allied capability. Although less 

sophisticated than the Allied SIGINT system, Japan’s radio intercept teams 

accurately predicted and followed American attacks directed against their 

homeland. Hampered by the general lack of regard, even disdain, for intelligence as a field of military endeavor, some adroit Japanese analysts nevertheless reached surprising conclusions as to their enemy’s intentions. At least one 

such conclusion probably could not have been more correct had the Japanese 

had an ULTRA of their own equal to the SWPA’s CB. As the Allies drew up 

their plans for the projected November 1945 landing on Kyushu, Maj. Hori 

Eizo, who served on the Imperial Army’s General Staff and was an accepted 

expert on MacArthur’ s planning tendencies, predicted the landing beaches with 

uncanny, even unsettling, accuracy, based upon his thorough studies of past 

Allied campaigns. Working in smaller groups and with fewer resources than 

their Allied counterparts, Japanese air intelligence officers kept a close watch 

on AAF combat operations, all the while the Allies’ ULTRA system was 

allowing Kenney’s senior staff to watch over the shoulders of the Japanese 

analysts at work.’8 
CHAPTER 6

Taking the Offensive: From 

China-Burma-India to the 

B-29 Campaign 

AS WAS THE CASE IN THE SWPA, intelligence gathering and interpretation played a large role in turning the tide against the Japanese in the POA and 

in the Far East. In the CBI Theater and in the Central Pacific Area, intelligence 

was crucial to successful Allied air operations. Although intelligence contributed to target planning in the B-29 strategic air campaign against Japan, 

intelligence was lacking in regard to the location of specific industry in the 

home islands. With the switch to low-level, night incendiary attacks, detailed 

intelligence gathering became much less crucial. 

In the CBI Theater, the AAF’s operations came to be divided initially 

between the Tenth Air Force’s China Air Task Force (CATF) and the India Air 

Task Force (IATF). In time, the CATF became the Fourteenth Air Force under 

Maj. Gen. Claire L. Chennault. The IATF and its parent Tenth became part of 

the region’s very complex Anglo-American command structure. These two air 

forces operated at the end of the longest logistics line of the war. Together the 

Tenth and the Fourteenth comprised the bulk of the American commitment to 

the theater, yet they remained small when compared to the AAF combat 

commands in Europe. As the two air forces and men struggled to improvise 

flying operations, their intelligence gathering and application struggled also, 

adapting innovative and unique practices. In fact, unusual methods of gathering 

and using intelligence were to become hallmarks of the AAF in the CBI region. 

In China, the application of tactical air power could be effective in that vast 

land only if valid target information was available. Some of that information, 

and damage assessment as well, came from special teams sent to infiltrate 

Japanese-held territory and report by radio on enemy activity. More sophisticated intelligence gathering later came to be used in China and Burma as AAF 

ferret aircraft scouted and mapped Japanese radar stations, giving the aircraft 

crews the opportunity to escape or minimize the damage incurred after 

interception or from AA fire. By August 1945, the AAF’s commanders had 

297 
Piercing the Fog 

extensive knowledge of their enemy. That flow of information had been 

increasing for several years. 

For the Americans, CBI was a wartime theater at the bottom of the priority list. 

Faced in early 1942 with a crumbling battle structure in North Africa and 

Japanese advances in the Pacific, the Allies could spare little for India and 

China. The matkriel and manpower that did arrive came to a region so far 

distant from Europe and the United States that whatever arrived had traveled the 

longest supply line of any in the war. Logistics problems were matched by a 

command structure so complex and so beset with military and political 

difficulties and personal conflicts that commanding it could only be a protean 

task. American air involvement in the CBI began with one U.S. Army air force, 

the Tenth. In 1942, the Tenth Air Force’s commander organized two branches: 

the CATF under Brig. Gen. Claire Chennault and the IATF under Brig. Gen. 

Clayton Bissell. Chennault was an abrasive character, very much disliked by 

many in the old Army Air Corps. Bissell too had numerous detractors, Kenney 

among them. When, in August of 1942, Bissell became commanding general of 

the Tenth, problems arose between him and Chennault. The American theater 

commander, Lt. Gen. Joseph W. Stilwell, no amateur when it came to making 

caustic remarks and holding sharp opinions, maintained a prickly (at times 

bitter) relationship with Chennault. Stilwell also despised and distrusted China’s 

leader, Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek and was suspicious of the relationship 

between Chiang and Chennault. Chennault reciprocated the bitterness in his 

feelings toward Stilwell. Stilwell was also impatient with the British military 

authorities in India, while Chiang suspected the British had designs on China; 

Chiang rarely cooperated with British officials.’ 

Stilwell affords an example of the extreme complexity that afflicted the CBI 

Theater’s command structure and the various ways intelligence could be 

interpreted under differing circumstances. He was, for instance, both the 

commanding general of all American forces in the CBI Theater and the chief of 

staff to Generalissimo Chiang in China. As Commander, Northern Combat Area 

Command (which consisted of Chinese divisions), Stilwell was subordinate to 

the British commander of all Allied land forces in Burma, over whom he 

(Stilwell) was simultaneously superior in his role as Deputy Supreme Allied 

Commander, South East Asia. 

This command jumble extended to air forces as well. Created in February 

1942, the American Tenth Air Force, headquartered in India, was responsible 

for all American air units in the theater until March 1943, when the Americans 

created Fourteenth Air Force in China at Chiang’s insistence. The attempt in 

August 1942 to resolve what were essentially personality difficulties among 

senior American commanders by subdividing air into the India-Burma (Tenth 

Air Force) and China (Fourteenth Air Force) sectors under the overall direction 

of Maj. Gen. George E. Stratemeyer had been only partially successful. 

298 
China-Burma-India 

= Enerny-Held Areas May 1944 

0 250 5W Mjler 

SOVIET UNION 

299 
Piercing the Fog 

Chennault, commanding the Fourteenth Air Force, retained direct access to both 

Chiang Kai-shek and President Roosevelt. By the end of 1943, a new Eastern 

Air Command (EAC), the air component of Allied Command, South East Asia, 

would be superimposed on this already complex structure. 

The convoluted command and vituperative relationships among the 

numbered air force commanders during this period appear to have had relatively 

little impact on the relationship between intelligence and air operations. It is 

possible to address air intelligence, planning, and operations through 1943 by 

adopting the AM’S own India-BurmdChina approach. Certainly, overlaps 

occurred. Both Tenth and Fourteenth Air Forces defended the air transport route 

over the Himalayas. Different interpretations of Japanese activities and 

subsequent differences over where to employ limited resources marked the real 

break between Chennault and Bissell. The realities of geography and the nature 

of the tasks assigned make the India-BurmdChina separation useful. 

Early air intelligence operations in India and China were handicapped by 

both the hasty organization of the American air forces and their lack of trained 

personnel. Chennault’s first A-2 in the CAW was Col. Merian C. Cooper. 

Cooper, highly respected by many in the AAF, was a man of great energy and 

varied talents who had served in France with the Air Service during World War 

I and who fought in Poland during that country’s war with the Soviet Union. 

Later Cooper went to Hollywood, where he produced and directed motion 

pictures (among his best remembered were The Four Feathers and King Kong). 

Cooper was a prodigious worker who served simultaneously as Chennault’s 

A-2, his chief of staff, and A-3. Cooper’s abilities were greatly admired by 

George Kenney who later arranged with Washington for Cooper’s assignment 

to SWPA. As intelligence officer, Cooper for some time had only two assistants, 

2d Lt. Martin Hubler and 2d Lt. John Birch. The latter was a resident missionary 

who had helped some of the Doolittle raiders to safety and then had been 

commissioned in the AAF. In China, the A4F lacked photointelligence; had few 

target folders, which were poor; and depended almost entirely on Chinese forces 

for target and threat data. Matters began in India in a similar fashion, with few 

trained intelligence specialists and little growth in the number of people 

available for such work. By early 1943, HQ IATF had only three intelligence 

officers assigned, matching the general poverty of the field in China. Subordinate bomber and fighter groups had a few intelligence officers on their staffs 

and in squadrons, and most were untrained in the specialty. In India the 

Americans relied initially on British and Indian intelligence resources.2 

In 1942, the threadbare air intelligence arrangement did not adversely affect 

the small American air operations in the CBI Theater, as the Japanese Amy 

ground forces and shipping targets were rather plentiful and the CATF’s 

mission was not an offensive one. But the limited number of trained people kept 

a strain on the A-2 staffs, especially in China. At the time, the Tenth Air 

Force’s primary task was defensive: protect the India-China air ferry route and 
Taking the Offensive 

defend the air bases in Assam. The force was quite small in comparison to that 

in Europe or North Africa, with but a handful of bomber and fighter groups (105 

fighters, 12 medium bombers, and 4 reconnaissance planes authorized for China 

in September 1942). The inadequate staff size became a bone of contention 

between Chennault and Bissell. Chennault’s isolated position made it difficult 

for him to find alternative intelligence sources, and he was vulnerable to 

Japanese offensives. He was also acutely sensitive to any perceived attempt to 

keep his organization in a secondary role. Chennault pressed his need for 

additional intelligence officers into 1943. Bissell, for his part, endorsed 

Chennault’s requests to Washington, but approval came slowly. Not until the 

end of 1942 did AAF headquarters authorize a basic A-2 staff for the CATF, 

and then it remained small.3 

The commanders’ individual personalities played an important role in 

intelligence application and air operations in the CBI. Bissell, for instance, did 

not want to have a technical intelligence office in Tenth Air Force, and for 

reasons that remain unclear, he was not warm to the idea of strong technical 

intelligence liaison with the RAF. The results impeded the flow of knowledge 

gained from captured Japanese equipment or crashed aircraft. Bissell operated 

his air force in a predominantly British theater, and he returned to Washington 

in August 1943. Thus the foibles of his personality had little lasting influence 

on the command. Chennault, in his determination to run his show his way and 

to maintain as much pressure on the Japanese as he could, seemed to misjudge 

Japan’s capability and intent to react to the successful depredations of his 

minuscule air force in 1943. Late in that year he found his eastern bases 

threatened by a Japanese army offensive that reduced his ability to continue the 

air campaign: 

Intelligence operations also reflected the theater’s command arrangements. 

Chennault’s CATF and Fourteenth Air Force developed a far-flung informationgathering service in China that drew upon Chinese military and civilian sources, 

its own reconnaissance capability, and the unusual but highly effective Air 

Ground Forces Resources and Technical Staff (AGFRTS) organization.* In 

India and Burma, duplication between the various Allied air forces became 

common, aconcern for General Stratemeyer who succeeded Bissell at Tenth Air 

Force and thought the arrangement could be much more efficient. In June 1944, 

Stratemeyer remarked in a letter to the local OSS commander that “. . . there 

have been several [air] intelligence agencies working in the same area under 

independent direction, covering the same general subject.” At times, five 

different offices sought help from Stratemeyer’s headquarters for the same 

intelligence job. The wasteful and inefficient situation that Stratemeyer wanted 

*The AGFRTS was ajoint Fourteenth Air Force-OSS operation. AGFRTS sent 

agents far afield to acquire intelligence for the Allies, including target data for the 

Fourteenth Air Force. 

301 
Piercing the Fog 

Maj. Gen. Clayton L. Bissell 

to streamline resulted from the numerous Allied air forces; each was seeking to 

complete its mission without much c~ordination.~ The chart on the facing page 

illustrates the extent of the complicated air intelligence fuctions that grew over 

time in the CBI. 

Signal intelligence played a growing part in the CBI fighting, especially 

from 1943 on. As in other theaters, SIGINT came in several forms and found 

varying uses. MAGIC diplomatic decrypts told the Allies of Japanese intentions 

to expand Burma’s railroad system, of the changes in Japanese command, and 

of the scheduled movements of divisions to reinforce the front. Knowing the 

enemy’s plans was one thing; finding appropriate targets in the jungle and 

elsewhere suitable for air attack was a vastly different issue. Regarding target 

location, SIGINT was less valuable, so the airmen turned first to HUMINT in 

the form of agents able to provide precise data on target locations and types, and 

then to follow up with damage assessments. Low-level radio intercepts and 

reading of commercial wireless telegraph traffic also indicated how effective air 

raids were, not only in and around Rangoon and Bangkok but in the major 

Japanese-occupied cities of China as we11.6 

Despite the use of SIGINT, operational and tactical air intelligence 

collection in the CBI area depended largely upon photoreconnaissance, flight 

reports from air crews, and POW interrogations. Agents or contacts in Japaneseoccupied areas occasionally provided supplemental data, but this source was not 

substantial until later in the war. SIGINT assumed greater importance when the 

first ULTRA representative, Maj. J.F.B. Runnalls, amved in New Delhi from 

Washington on December 19,1943. In Delhi, Runnalls joined a British theater 

intelligence organization already engaged in deciphering enemy transmissions, 

and he was heavily influenced by England’s experience in Europe and North 

302 
Comparative Air Intelligence Functions in China=Burma=lndia * 

1944 

* The comparisons on this chart were drawn by the Joint Intelligence Collection Agency 

(JICA), CBI, in early 1944. JICAs operation served to streamline somewhat the flow of 

data between the welter of air intelligence offices. Prior to JICA's presence there was, for 

example, no exchange of nonoperational intelligence between India and China. Thus, the 

several A-2 staffs lacked a full understanding of the enemy's capabilities in the adjoining 

theaters. This figure illustrates the numbers and types of offices that applied intelligence 

data to operational needs. To fully understand the complexity of intelligence operations 

in the CBI, one must also consider the various informationsatherina oraanizations such 

as the Office of Strategic Services and the Special Operatihs Ex&uti<e as well as the 

joint cryptanalysis center in Delhi with its subordinate listening posts near Burma and 

China. 

t Used the same A-2 staff at Eastern Air Command. 

tt GHQ India, South East Asia Command, G-2 Rear and G2 Forward Echelons, U.S. Forces, 

Chinese 6-2 

303 
Piercing the Fog 

Africa. Interception and decoding of Japanese low-level radio messages played 

a part in determining the AAF’s planning and tactics in the CBI from as early 

as May 1942. At that time, the Americans learned of Japanese plans to move air 

units north from Malaya and the NEI. They launched attacks on airfields in 

Japanese territory. On October 25,1942, Chennault’s B-25s raided Hong Kong 

in one of the heaviest strikes that the CATF had yet made. The MAGIC 

Diplomatic Summary in Washington had reported ample Japanese shipping in 

the harbor, and such information could have been sent to Chennault via the 

United States’ military mission in China. An equally likely source was the 

Chinese military. The precise origin of information was almost irrelevant, 

because Japanese targets in Hong Kong, Canton, and Hanoi, French Indochina, 

were plentiful. Hanoi had been the target for B-25s and P-40~ on September 25, 

when CATF intelligence estimates warned of substantial Japanese fighter 

defenses. On that attack, Chennault’s operations planners sent along extra 

fighters for protection. The precaution proved wise when ten Japanese 

interceptors had to be driven off; the Americans suffered no losses that day.’ 

While carrying the aerial campaign against Japanese shipping and airfields 

in southeastern China and French Indochina, Chennault also pursued the 

primary mission assigned him: defense of the aerial route from Assam, India, 

to Kunming, China. Acting under instructions from Tenth Air Force, Chennault’s air reconnaissance crews photographed and observed Japanese airfields 

in northern Burma. That information, supplemented by the RAF in India, 

allowed Chennault and Colonel Cooper to assess Japanese regional air 

capabilities late in 1942. Based on these studies, Chennault and Bissell both 

believed the Japanese threat to be increasingly dangerous, with Japan able to 

operate as many as 350 aircraft in the area. Bissell reported his understanding 

of the growing threat to Stilwell, who was engaged in trying to obtain British 

approval and support for the training of 45,000Chinese troops in India. Stilwell 

hoped to use these Chinese divisions for an offensive in conjunction with 

British Indian forces beginning in February 1943. Bissell warned Stilwell on 

October 8, 1942, that the AAF’s air reconnaissance fleet was too small in size 

and too limited in range to be able to prevent a surprise should the Japanese 

decide to move forcefully into the area. Despite the problems, the airmen kept 

watch on Japanese troop increases west of the Salween River in November.’ 

To plan, execute, and evaluate these and other early missions in the CBI, 

American air commanders relied on a variety of intelligence sources. Among 

them, the most important during the first year of the war were British. The 

official relationship between American and British airmen in the India-Burma 

Campaign differed from the one that existed in North Africa and the United 

Kingdom. No Allied air command such as NAAF existed until the creation of 

EAC in December 1943. Nor were personnel integrated in the manner of the 

British Air Ministry and HQ Eighth Air Force. From the opening stages of the 

Japanese attack into Burma, Allied airmen operating from India engaged in 

304 
Taking the Offensive 

extensive coordination and cooperation. At Barrackpore, representatives of the 

operating commands-IZAF Bengal Command and Tenth Air Force’s 

IATF-met daily to coordinate their efforts and plan air operations. 

The two commands routinely exchanged intelligence. India and Burma had 

long been part of the Empire, and the British had maintained an extensive 

presence throughout Asia for decades. It was logical that they would be 

responsible for maps; exceptions to this agreement were Manchuria, northern 

China, and Siberia, the responsibilities of the U.S. War Department.’ Before the 

American forces achieved their own photoreconnaissance capability, they relied 

heavily on the British product. Later, Allied units shared photoreconnaissance 

and photointerpretation responsibilities and resources. In early 1942, the British 

photointerpretation school at Karachi provided training for AAF personnel 

before the first Harrisburg-trained intelligence officers arrived.” IATF 

headquarters informed subordinate units that, until the AAF Intelligence Service 

could prepare and distribute air objective and target folders, the RAF would 

perform this task. The folders would be supplemented by a weekly Target 

Znformation Summary compiled jointly from American and British sources.’’ 

By the summer of 1942, Tenth Air Force reported some success in preparing 

objective folders by having an AAF officer visit RAF headquarters each 

morning, with the RAF reciprocating in the afternoon.” 

The lack of planning and operational materials such as target folders and 

charts became obvious with the effort to mount offensive operations in the fall 

of 1942. In November, the 436th Bomb Squadron highlighted the poverty of 

information by requesting all the photographs of Burma that Tenth Air Force 

could spare, since “this item is sadly lacking in this department.”13 In December 

1942, the IATF intelligence officer wrote to HQ Tenth Air Force that he and 

subordinate units urgently needed target folders for Burma, French Indochina, 

and Thailand.I4 Six months showed no improvement; the intelligence officer of 

the 7th Bomb Group (H) complained that his unit had recently been sent against 

three oil fields and three towns for which “in no case were adequate photographs or target maps a~ailable.”’~ 

Part of this problem reflected the difficult logistics in the region. At a 

Washington conference for Pacific Air Forces intelligence officers, an HQ AAF 

A-2 representative noted that material they had forwarded in December 1942 

had not been available for an attack on Japanese-controlled mines in Thailand 

in April 1943. The Tenth Air Force representative responded that the information was still not available when he had left India for the conference in 

September.I6 At the same conference, CBI intelligence officers argued that in 

general their units had material on targets in Japan that were out of reach, but 

they experienced a severe shortage of materials on targets their forces could 

strike. This paucity of Washington-generated target intelligence and the 

subsequent requirement to develop in-theater resources placed even heavier 

demands on photoreconnaissance and photointerpretation. 

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Piercing the Fog 

To facilitate identification of and successful attacks on Japanese airdromes, 

Tenth Air Force daily intelligence extracts and weekly intelligence summaries 

kept units advised of the pattern of enemy airfield construction and methods of 

camouflage and dispersal. A February 1943 annex to the weekly summary 

described in detail the enemy’s standard pattern for laying out major airdromes 

and satellite fields and advised on which areas the attackers should focus.17 In 

March 1943 the summary noted that the Japanese had begun to shift their 

aircraft parking from revetments to wide dispersal and to conceal them using 

villages and natural features as cover.’’ 

Intelligence on technical capabilities and tactics of the Japanese air forces 

enabled friendly forces to devise effective methods to combat them. The best 

source for such information was Chennault’s American Volunteer Group 

(AVG). Although few AVG pilots remained in the theater after that organization ceased operation, summaries and evaluations of their experiences circulated 

widely. In August 1942, the Director of Intelligence Service, HQ AAF, 

distributed an extensive report, “Information on Tactics of A.V.G.,” which 

contained interviews with pilots, extracts of combat debriefs, and a report on 

AVG experiences and activities previously compiled by Tenth Air Force.” 

Technical data also provided tactical information useful for combating 

Japanese flyers. Analysis of the location of pieces of destroyed aircraft 

suggested structural weaknesses in Japanese bombers, most notably the absence 

of self-sealing fuel tanks and inadequate wing-fuselage joinings. This 

information led to suggestions that fighter pilots and gunners should aim for the 

inner wing tanks since, even if they missed the fuel, they might hit the joints 

and cause the plane to come apart in midair.m The results of flight tests on a 

captured Japanese Mitsubishi A6M Zero fighter conducted in the United States 

late in 1942 revealed that the aircraft’s excellent roll capability at low speeds 

decreased significantly as speed increased.” 

The aerial mining of the Rangoon River afforded an example of the use of 

alternative sources of intelligence. This operation, using the Royal Navy’s 

mines and enthusiastic British support, significantly retarded river traffic and 

the movement of Japanese supplies. The Allies based the raid on little more than 

the thoughtful use of readily available information. In January, while considering mining the river, planners first analyzed Burma’s available lines of 

communication. Alternate port facilities were few, and there was but a single 

railroad north from Rangoon that forwarded supplies sent by ship. The ocean 

approaches to Rangoon were open, with ships difficult to intercept by bomber 

patrols; thus the Gulf of Thailand was not amenable to an aerial blockade. The 

planners quickly realized that the relatively shallow Rangoon River was a 

natural funnel; closing it held great promise of cutting supply traffic to Japanese 

forces in the north. Within days, B-24s flying up the river under a full moon at 

low tide dropped forty mines, set to delay arming for from two to twelve days, 

into the river channel, The results were hard to judge in terms of ships 

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Taking the Offensive 

destroyed, but photoreconnaissance noted a sharp diminution of river traffic. 

The Allied authorities judged the effort so successful that similar flights 

renewed the mines periodically.” 

Elsewhere in Burma and Thailand, visual aerial reconnaissance and aerial 

photography provided the bulk of information needed for mission planning 

through 1943. Analysis of the Burmese transportation system (with which the 

British were thoroughly familiar as the country’s colonial masters) revealed that 

a handful of roads and railways carried most of the Japanese supplies from 

Rangoon to the Burma front. Few alternatives existed to the limited network, 

and the AAF made specific points of interest, such as bridges and railroad 

tunnels, the object of frequent surveillance. From analysis and comparison of 

operations and intelligence reports, the Allies noted that cutting the railroad’s 

single main line north from Rangoon virtually stopped traffic for the time that 

it took repairs to be made. Recognizing the opportunity to hamper Japanese 

logistics efforts, the Allies decided on a campaign to destroy key railway repair 

facilities, locomotives, and rolling stock. The effort capitalized initially on both 

the isolation of the Burmese railway system from the systems of neighboring 

countries and the few alternatives available to the Japanese. In March 1944, Col. 

John R. Sutherland, the Tenth Air Force’s A-3, proposed an ambitious bombing 

of bridges and long stretches of single-line track with well-spaced bombs 

delivered from low level. Sutherland intended to use all of his P-51s, P-38s, 

B-25s, and B-24s to cut the railway in at least 329 places along 41 1 miles of 

track. Sutherland estimated that such an effort would require the Japanese to 

move 312 tons of rails to make repairs. Simultaneously, attacks on railway 

repair facilities and rolling stock would otherwise diminish the ability of the 

railroad to function. Sutherland’s plan depended upon accurate and frequent 

photoreconnaissance that the AAF supplied in ab~ndance.’~ 

The Tenth Air Force commander did not carry out Sutherland’s plan as 

originally conceived-a single concerted effort with sustained follow-ups to 

prevent the Japanese from reopening the vital supply link. The railroad, 

however, became and remained through 1944 and 1945 a prime attack target for 

the very reasons that first attracted Sutherland: its vulnerability due to its singletrack layout and a lack of alternate routes. The continued pursuit of the railroad 

campaign did not mean that Allied operations in India and Burma were overly 

harmonious. The differing goals of the British and the Americans in the region 

created frequent problems that detracted from a united application of intelligence in the air war. 

For some time, the Allied war effort in India and Burma had suffered from 

friction between the British, interested in defending India and recovering lost 

territory, and the Americans, who had interests in China, the Philippines, and 

elsewhere and who saw the local fighting as part of a greater Pacific war. 

Almost as troublesome were overlapping military functions, intelligence among 

them. To reduce the overlap and generally improve air efforts against the 

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Piercing the Fog 

Japanese in India and Burma, the Allies created EAC as part of and subordinate 

to Air Command South East Asia. Stratemeyer assumed command of EAC on 

December 15, 1943, bringing the operational portions of RAF Bengal 

Command and Tenth Air Force into one organization. This new alignment 

created a more effective air campaign against the Japanese, but it also demanded 

increased efficiency from the supporting intelligence offices, several of which 

Stratemeyer combined as the Intelligence Section, HQ EAC, under the Office 

of the Assistant Chief of Staff, Operations, Plans, Training and Intelligence. The 

intelligence chief was Wing Comdr. A. T. Richardson, RAF; his deputy, Lt. 

Col. Wilkes D. Kelly of the AAF.” 

Within a short time after creation of EAC, a number of plans were well 

underway to increase the effectiveness of the intelligence functions serving the 

Allied air forces. A CombinedPhotographic Interpretation Centre (CPIC) South 

East Asia came into being on May 1, 1944. That center collected the talents of 

photoanalysts from the AAF, the RAF, the Royal Navy’s Eastern Fleet, and the 

British Army. Detachments from the center served the bomber forces at EAC’s 

strategic and tactical air forces headquarters. Smaller photointerpretation 

detachments at times worked with individual groups and squadrons as the need 

arose. The XX Bomber Command, because of its special mission and its control 

by General Arnold in Washington, retained its own photointerpretation 

capability. In many ways, the CPIC was the Southeast Asia equivalent of the 

CIU at Medmenham, England, and was inspired in its origin by the accomplishments of the CIU in the United Kingd~m.’~ The chart on the facing page shows 

how the CPIC related to the Air Command South East Asia. 

Even before EAC’s existence, local efforts by the RAF’s and AAF’s 

technical intelligence officers had sought to enlarge the scope and accomplishments of their field of endeavor. At a technical intelligence conference held in 

New Delhi in August of 1943, several lower-ranking British and American 

officers agreed upon a number of initiatives to speed and improve each others’ 

knowledge of Japanese aircraft and air operations equipment. The meeting 

produced much closer liaison between the two services and a routing of RAF 

technical analysis reports to Tenth Air Force. After Bissell’s departure for 

Washington, the technical side of intelligence continued to grow. The example 

of the CPIC led to a similar organization designed to improve the handling of 

technical intelligence. Proposed by Air Command South East Asia in the spring 

of 1944, the Allies set up the Technical Air Intelligence Centre with headquarters in New Delhi. The center was patterned on the parent organization at the 

Air Ministry in London, but the command hoped it would duplicate the success 

of similar Allied organizations in the Southwest Pacific and Central Pacific 

commands. The technical intelligence organization had an RAF chief with a 

deputy from the AAF and another deputy from the U.S. Navy. The field 

headquarters located at Calcutta, with a varying number of field units covering 
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the territory east of the Bramaputra River and other locations that might, from 

time to time, prove 

As the Allies became more proficient in organizing intelligence gathering 

and analysis in the theater, they made increasingly greater use of agents in 

Burma as a source of information. The British Special Operations Executive ran 

Force 136, incorporating within it aspects of agent infiltration, a long-range 

patrol unit, and political intelligence operations throughout the region. In 

September 1942, the American OSS sent about twenty agents to eastern India 

as its Detachment 101. That was to be the beginning of an increasingly 

important OSS operation that became a locus of AAF air intelligence collection 

both in India-Burma and in China. By informal and formal agreements between 

the OSS commander William J. Donovan and the British, as well as due to the 

course of events, most of the OSS’s work occurred in northern Burma, China, 

and Indochina. From mid-1 944 on, the two clandestine organizations became 

prime AAF sources, although they did not work as a combined unit. OSS and 

the British covert intelligence organizations in Southeast Asia and China often 

collided over questions that arose from differences between American and 

British postwar intentions for Asia and the European colonial empires. By mid1944, OSS had in Burma more than 400 Americans supervising some 6,000 

Kachin tribesmen. Reports from this widespread organization came by radio 

detailing targets with such refinement (so many feet or yards in a given 

direction from a specific landmark) that pilots carrying photographs of the area 

could spot the intended target with ease. Agent reports had exceptional value: 

they pinpointed the location of equipment and supplies camouflaged in villages, 

jungles, or fields, hidden from aerial observation and photography.” 

In September 1944, Lt. Col. Emile 2. Berman, the Tenth Air Force’s 

assistant chief of staff for intelligence estimated that “at least 80 percent of all 

[our] information on Japanese Camps, dumps, movements, etc., came from 

Detachment 101 .” The only other sources Berman had for tactical ground target 

intelligence were aerial observation and photography; neither could be as 

accurate regarding a target’s contents and importance. Agents could at times 

reenter an area after an attack and send back precise damage reports?’ That 

level of assessment equaled or exceeded the follow-up reports from resistance 

teams in the highly developed photoreconnaissance operation in Europe. 

HUMINT from agents on the ground in Japanese temtory was not the only area 

where Allied operations excelled. 

Like the escape and evasion operations in the SWPA, the Allies cooperated 

closely in similar functions in the CBI Theater, despite their other differences. 

In Burma, the AAF set up an escape and evasion training program soon after the 

Tenth Air Force arrived on the scene. Almost from the beginning, the sheer 

numbers of British and American agents in Burma and the large areas of 

northern Burma inhabited by friendly Kachin and Karen tribes helped in the 

rescue and recovery of downed pilots. Detachment 101 provided regular 

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Taking the Offensive 

information on towns and regions that were pro-Allies or proJapanese, the 

locations of OSS agent teams and covert OSS airstrips, and other places where 

rescue would be likely or possible. Once an aircrew was known to be down, 

their commander sent their general location to detachment headquarters, which 

in turn alerted its agents in the vicinity to begin a search. Occasionally, trained 

OSS people parachuted into the jungle to guide lost airmen to safety. By midSeptember 1944, Detachment 101 teams had aided more than 180 Tenth Air 

Force airmen in 

To better coordinate rescues in Burma and Thailand, in April 1944 the 

Allies combined their escape and evasion functions in the India and Southeast 

Asia commands into what they called the E Group. E Group had roots in the 

area going back to men who had escaped from Hong Kong in 1942. The unit 

subsumed the MIS-X and M.I.9 work of the Southeast Asia, India, East, and 

South Africa commands and the Eastern Fleet, but it worked primarily in the 

Southeast Asia regions, where the fighting gave it the most opportunity to show 

its combined skills. The new organization was similar to one used in Europe; 

it kept close liaison with Detachment 101, Force 136, and air-sea rescue, and it 

was responsible for all escape and evasion training of ground, sea, and air 

forces. In addition, E Group organized and implemented all arrangements for 

contacting or effecting the release of POWs or evaders in enemy territ~ry.~' 

E Group's commander was a British officer; his deputy was an American. 

The small staff totaled but thirteen officers, about equally drawn from the 

armies and air forces in the area, with a number of enlisted radio operators and 

administrative workers. As the size of E Group indicated, the organization did 

not itself operate large numbers of rescue teams or stations. Primarily, E Group, 

in addition to its extensive training efforts, took reports of lost aircraft and 

arranged with the most appropriate Allied force to complete the rescue or 

recovery of the men d~wned.~' 

As the Allied airmen fashioned their ground target selection process, they 

also paid a great deal of attention to the enemy's air defenses. From crew 

reports, photography, and agent reports, officers plotted the locations of gun 

sites. Suspected radar locations were collected into a similar listing. Radar 

station plots became more accurate as the XX Bomber Command began flying 

ferret missions in the summer of 1944. By October 1944, the AFF had elaborate 

networks that intercepted Japanese air traffic control radio messages, analyzed 

their source and content, and reported to British and American commanders the 

activities of the Japanese Army Air Force. By tracking Japanese air operations 

and aircraft strength at various places, General Stratemeyer at EAC headquarters and his subordinate air commanders could readily anticipate Japanese 

reactions to Allied operations?' 

Y-Service radio intercept collection for the air forces in India-Burma was 

primarily an RAF responsibility, done by wireless telegraph units at Comilla, 

Chittagong, and Imphal. The AAF's 5th Radio Squadron (Mobile) was a 

31 1 
Piercing the Fog 

latecomer, initially lacking the experience and resources of the RAF in India, 

but by late in the war it had built a sizable SIGINT analysis center in Delhi. 

Each of the British units worked independently, covering all of central Burma, 

an obvious and wasteful duplication of effort. In October 1944, the Director of 

Signals Intelligence, Air Command South East Asia, created the Tactical Air 

Intelligence Centre (TAIC), a cover name for a radio intercept central operation 

along much the same lines as the theater’s central photographic and technical 

intelligence units. The TAIC had a CB at Comilla (probably inspired by the Far 

East CB that intercepted high-grade ULTRA traffic) for cryptanalysis, evaluation, and collation. The units at Imphal and Chittagong, relieved from other 

responsibilities, performed aircraft search and frequency monitoring. Comilla 

also became the center for direction finding. Daily and weekly reports of 

Japanese Army Air Force operations went from the CB to Air Command South 

East Asia, to EAC, to the Strategic Air Force, and to the 3d Tactical Air Force. 

The overall effect of this organizational change, even though late in the war, 

was to concentrate work by specialty area, increase the effectiveness of the 

Allied air forces’ radio intercept intelligence capability, and raise the general 

understanding of the Japanese air OB and Japanese Army Air Force operations 

and capabilities in Burma.33 

The constant Allied air attacks in Burma, supported by a well-honed 

intelligence-gathering and analysis structure, placed mounting pressure on the 

Japanese defense line and reduced enemy air operations. By May 1945, 

Stratemeyer could write to Arnold that so far into the year there had been “. . . no escorted daylight [Japanese] bomber missions” against Allied targets and 

that “. . . attacks on our forward fields and positions have steadily decreased 

both in strength and effect.” Because Stratemeyer could not watch every 

Japanese airfield nor read the minds of enemy air commanders, he remained 

cautious as to the overall abilities of the Japanese to strike at his own bases and 

other Allied positions.34 

China and the Fourteenth Air Force 

North and east of the Himalayas, the Allies fought a different war in China. 

Mostly an air operation, the U.S. Navy also had a substantial presence in the 

form of guerrilla teams and a far-flung intelligence organization. The Fourteenth 

Air Force kept an intelligence operation that usually complemented the Navy’s. 

In China, as opposed to India-Burma, air intelligence was not fragmented; all 

of it, Chinese and American alike, flowed to General Chennault, as his was the 

major air command in the country. From the very beginning of AAF operations 

in China, Chennault faced two problems that always dictated his use of 

intelligence: his air force was and remained very small, and logistics were such 

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Taking the Offensive 

a problem that he often could not have ordered his men to fly no matter how 

lucrative a target the intelligence people f0und.3~ 

The enormous Japanese presence on the Chinese mainland offered a 

plethora of tactical and strategic strike opportunities. The Japanese military had 

operated in China for years; they had airfields in abundance, and as they laid out 

new ones, word of their locations filtered back to Kunming through various 

channels. Harbors and shipping facilities were always available to strike, as 

were Japanese troop dispositions, supply columns, and barracks. In the last half 

of 1942 and in early 1943, Chennault’s problem lay in sorting out the best 

targets. The old AVG, which formed the small cadre that became the Fourteenth, had been an air defense force, using P-40~ largely to shoot down 

Japanese aircraft. In the fall of 1942, the newly formed AAF contingent began 

to receive B-25 medium bombers and increase the use of P-40~ as dive 

bombers. Both of its new activites required better and faster intelligence 

analysis, but enhancing support services in this far comer of the world took 

time. Chennault’s staff grew slowly, and his A-2 office suffered from severe 

shortages of qualified specialist^.^^ 

Late in 1942, Chennault’s A-2, Colonel Cooper, left China for home and 

medical treatment. At about the same time, Cooper’s assistant, Lieutenant 

Hubler, departed also. Only Lieutenant Birch was left to fill target and combat 

intelligence tasks. One other officer, 1st Lt. Gerald E. Reed, worked in security 

and counterintelligence, at that time a normal part of an A-2 office in the AAF. 

These two officers constituted the entire CATF intelligence staff until a new 

contingent arrived from the United States to form a team that would operate 

Fourteenth Air Force’s intelligence section for most of the remainder of the war. 

At year’s end, Lt. Col. Jesse C. Williams became Assistant Chief of Staff, A-2, 

and Capt. Wilfred J. Smith assisted Williams and worked on operational 

intelligence and objective folders. (Smith later commanded the AGFRTS, the 

unit that gathered information in the field, directed close air support and air 

attacks deep into Japanese-held territory, rescued downed airmen, and carried 

out demolitions and radio direction finding.) Capt. Richard Taylor prepared 

situation maps and wrote intelligence summaries and extracts. Capt. Morgan B. 

O’Connor began the AAF photointerpretation work in China, relying on 

pictures taken by four F-4 aircraft that had arrived in November 1942.* In 

1943, 1st Lt. Carl G. Nelson arrived from Washington as a qualified technical 

intelligence officer to track down enemy war equipment. Four enlisted 

men-corporals Nelson, Okerberg, and Varey, and Private Amegard-typed, 

drafted reports, and created charts and graphs. In January 1943, Chennault 

sought formal authorizations for his existing intelligence staff plus two more 

intelligence officers for each fighter group and bomber group; two for each 

combat flying squadron to perform briefing, interrogation, and liaison; and two 

*The F-4 was a P-38 stripped of guns and modified for photography. 

313 
Piercing the Fog 

for the photo squadron. For the photointerpreters, Chennault noted an especial 

need, as “photo interpretation is particularly valuable in this area as it is the only 

unbiased source of available inf~rmation.”~’ 

When Chennault’s organization joined the AAF in July 1942, there came 

with it a widespread, unsophisticated but very effective intelligence function, 

the air-raid warning net. Devised by Chennault when he served as Chiang’s air 

advisor between 1937 and 1941, it was patterned on the British observer corps 

system used during and after World War I. The Chinese air warning net 

comprised hundreds of people across thousands of miles of territory facing 

Japanese-occupied China who, when they heard aircraft overhead, called in by 

radio or telephone with their reports. By plotting the locations of the calls, the 

Americans tracked the enemy’s approach. If the aircraft had been sighted and 

counted, so much the better. The warning notice was the important fact, 

however, for it gave immediately useful tactical intelligence and allowed the 

pilots to scramble their aircraft to meet the incoming attack in time to break up 

the formation and reduce bombing accuracy. Bissell considered the warning 

system so important that on September 25,1942, he wrote Chennault from India 

telling him to keep it operating “without interruption or decrease in efficiency.” 

With Tenth Air Force approval, the warning net became a special fighter control 

squadron and a formal, integral part of the CATF.38 Despite having formal 

status, the air warning service aided only air defense; it could do little to 

influence the Fourteenth’s offensive mission. 

Early in 1943, Chennault’s chief of intelligence, Colonel Williams, noted 

that much work had yet to be done to make the Fourteenth’s intelligence 

analysis information truly supportive of air operations. Aerial photography 

continued as the primary source, but Williams wanted trained U.S. Army 

intelligence officers assigned to Chinese forces along the Burma and Indochina 

borders to sort out good reports before requesting air support. He wanted to 

strengthen his technical intelligence ability to correctly assess recovered 

Japanese aircraft and equipment. At the same time, Williams asked once again 

for authorization and assignment of group and squadron air intelligence officers 

so that they could prepare adequate target objective material and properly 

prepare aircrews for combat mission^.^' 

Some of the problems that Chennault and his commanders faced in China 

were simply not amenable to solution. Air technical intelligence always suffered 

because many of the areas where Japanese airplanes crashed were distant, 

isolated, and hard for the few recovery teams to reach. The local natives prized 

the aircraft metal and would carry it away almost as soon as it was cool enough 

to touch. Even by the end of 1943, with at least the formal support of the 

Chinese government, air technical intelligence teams still had difficulty 

recovering parts of downed airplanes.40 

Japanese military authorities had been aware from as early as the April 

1942 Doolittle raid that Allied airfields in China were a threat not only to their 

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Taking the Offensive 

field armies, but to Japan itself. Shortly after Doolittle’s attack alarmed the 

Japanese homeland, the Japanese Army decided to clean out bases in Chekiang 

and Szechwan that could be used by the Americans and to capture railway 

equipment that they needed elsewhere in China. The operation, mounted mostly 

in Chekiang Province, reached the railroad objectives and took airfields at 

Yushan, Chuhsien, and Lishui by the end of August. The Japanese withdrew to 

conserve strength in the face of fighting in the Solomons and New Guinea. 

Renewed Japanese advances began again in February 1943, this time to capture 

Yangtse River shipping that they could use to alleviate shortages of water 

transport elsewhere. During both campaigns, Chennault’ s men fought with 

interdiction and counterair missions whenever the air transport pilots hauled in 

enough gasoline and spare parts to support flying. At the end of May 1943, the 

Japanese once again withdrew to more defensible positions. In both the 1942 

and 1943 efforts, the Japanese did not intend to hold all the territory they took. 

China was far too vast for the Japanese Army Air Force to offer a stiff defense 

everywhere. Chennault’s men, then, had the advantage of being able to pick the 

place of attack:l Selecting the points of attack depended, in turn, on the 

employment of a widespread intelligence network and first-rate analysis and 

interpretation. In Chennault’s eyes, better use of air intelligence would come 

with a separate Army Air Force in China. 

In the spring of 1943, Chennault heard that his operation was to be a 

separate command. He would become amajor general, no longer under Bissell’ s 

control. In July 1943, when Washington split the CBI Theater into the distinct 

sectors of India-Burma and China, much of the reason for doing so resided in 

satisfying Chiang’s insistence on independence for Chennault. When Bissell 

returned to Washington, Strateineyer became the India-Burma air commander, 

with advisory authority over Chennault’s operations, but he had no real power 

to directly influence the Fourteenth Air Chennault now began to make 

increasing use of the growing interservice intelligence capability in China, a 

capability that ultimately benefited both the AAF and the Navy. 

Chennault had long sought to strike enemy shipping and had in fact done 

so since 1942, but his small air force had been hampered by constant supply 

problems. The Fourteenth was so hard pressed for fuel, tires, spare engines, and 

parts that its squadrons could not fly patrols seeking randomly located ships in 

the open waters off China. Search techniques for finding random targets in a 

given region of the ocean had been developed by the Allies in Atlantic 

operations and were ideal for use in China. To make the best use of available 

aircraft, the Fourteenth’s B-24 and B-25 patrol bombers needed to be directed 

to an area where the probability of success was reasonably high. The tactics 

were well understood, but success required sophisticated, methodical imylementation, something Chennault had been unable to afford on a large scale. The 

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Piercing the Fog 

The seas off the southern and central coast 

of China were the logistics pathway of the 

Japanese Empire, connecting the home 

islands with the indispensable raw materials 

that an industrial power must have-oil, 

rubber, minerals, and food. This richness of 

targets attracted Allied aircraft from several 

theaters. At lef, the Fifth Air Force attacks 

a Japanese ship off the China coast; below, 

B-25s from the Fourteenth Air Force bomb 

a Japanese frigate. 

Fourteenth’s A-2 office and Commodore Milton E. Miles’s U.S. Naval Group 

China, gave Chennault much of the answer to his 

*Adrn. Ernest J. King had sent Miles to China in 1942 to organize a guerrilla 

warfare operation to obtain information on the Chinacoast and support any eventual 

landing in China by the Navy. Miles organized the Sino-American Cooperative 

316 
Taking the Offensive 

The cooperation between Miles’s naval group and Chennault’s airmen 

began early in 1943 with the detailing by Miles of two naval officers to the 

Fourteenth Air Force staff to perform photointerpretation work. In return, the 

Fourteenth seeded harbors and waters along the coast of Japanese-occupied 

China and northern Indochina with Navy mines flown in over the Hump from 

India. In October 1943, a Navy-AAF mining raid (Miles’s mine experts were 

aboard the bombers) closed Haiphong harbor by sinking a fleeing ship in the 

entrance channel. The harbor remained at least partially closed for the 

remainder of the war. By May 1944, Miles had ninety-eight men working in 

what he called his “14th Naval unit” doing jobs that included photointelligence 

(in conjunction with the Army’s 18th Photointerpretation Unit); planning the 

delivery of and charting minefields; providing radio intelligence, air combat 

intelligence, and air technical intelligence; and rescuing downed or imprisoned 

flyers. The last-mentioned operation was done with the Chinese under the 

auspices of the Sino-American Cooperative Organization (SACO) teams. Some 

of the information that Miles’s people developed from this working arrangement, they passed to Navy agencies to support submarine attacks on Japanese 

shipping and the battles incident to the Allied campaign in the Philippines.44 

Chennault’s planning staff in Kunming derived their information about 

merchant shipping from the use of aerial reconnaissance, from Commodore 

Miles’s SACO coast watchers, and from the intercept and direction-finding 

teams of Fleet Radio Unit, China, at Kunming. Proximity to Chennault’s 

headquarters (and the close relationship that grew between the Fourteenth’s A-2 

and the Navy) created an ideal situation. Coast-watcher reports sent by radio or 

telephone correlated with other data and yielded the cues needed to search out 

ships either in convoy or sailing alone. The waters that received most attention 

were the most heavily used Japanese merchant seaways; thus the chances of 

success in sinking enemy shipping were greatly enhanced. Between October 

1943 and May 1944 the Fourteenth claimed the sinking of 83,100 tons of 

shipping. With the arrival in China of a squadron of B-24s equipped with seasearch radar similar to the type used by the Thirteenth Air Force in the SOPAC, 

the Fourteenth combined naval intelligence information with radar-directed, 

low-altitude attacks that sent tonnage claims to 248,665 between May 24 and 

October 31, 1944.* The campaign from the bases in eastern China against 

Japanese merchant shipping far exceeded similar low-altitude bombing 

operations of the Fifth and Thirteenth Air Forces in the SWPA and Much 

of the credit for success was due to the artful ULTRA intelligence analysis that 

sent the bombers, unknown to their crews, to the most lucrative areas. 

Orgapization (SACO) and a far-flung intelligence-gathering operation. 

Claims for sinkings had to be supported by a confirmed sighting of sinking or 

at night by an explosion and fire. With the use of radar, confirmation could be a 

target’s disappearance from the radar scope, subsequent to an attack and bomb hit. 

317 
Piercing the Fog 

On February 22, 1944, the SWPA SIB carried the comment, “Due to air 

attacks by [our] China-based planes [Japanese] shipping along the China coast 

has been routed; beginning February 18, 100 miles ~ff-shore.”~~ The intercept 

confirmed the success of Chennault’s and Miles’s antishipping campaign, 

employing both aerial attacks on ships at sea and in harbors, and the aerial 

mining of harbors and select sea lanes. But what the Japanese thought to be a 

corrective action sent their ships into deeper water where American submarines 

waited. ULTRA via Honolulu had directed the submarines to the position of 

enemy shipping. Much of Honolulu’s information had come from China. The 

growing threat to shipping and airfields represented by the Fourteenth could 

hardly be ignored by the Japanese military authorities in China. The results, in 

fact, were already being seen on the Chinese mainland. 

By September 1943, Japanese leaders knew that they had to deal with the 

American airfields supporting the Fourteenth Air Force, whose depredations 

continued to harm their army. The Japanese wished also to pressure China into 

withdrawing her forces from northern Burma. This time Japan intended to “deal 

a crushing blow to the enemy”47 in a strong, well-coordinated campaign. The 

Japanese generals assessed the Fourteenth’s strength at about 500 combat 

aircraft, quite a bit above the Fourteenth’s summertime operational totals. 

Among the targets were airfields at Kweilin and Liuchosien. The operation, 

titled “lchi-go,” was to be prepared in strict secrecy. Despite the security, the 

Japanese concluded that their enemy understood what was transpiring even 

before Zchi-go was under way, although they were mystified as to how the 

information had leaked out. However much of the Japanese plan Chennault 

knew, the garrulous, offensive-minded general seems to have overestimated the 

ability of the small Fourteenth Air Force to carry the load that China could not, 

and he seems to have underestimated the Japanese Army’s reaction to his 

success and its capacity for a sustained drive aimed at his eastern China 

airfields. The Japanese were also wary of the possible use of Chinese airfields 

by long-range bombers; this was added incentive to chase out the Americans. 

Chennault’s 68th Composite Wing’s bases came under increasing danger from 

the Japanese early in 1944.48 Even if Chennault miscalculated Japanese intent, 

it is difficult to see how he could have acted differently. To have withheld the 

Fourteenth from the fighting was not in Chennault’s nature, nor would it have 

been acceptable in the eyes of Arnold or Roosevelt. 

As the Japanese moved toward Chennault’s bases, he made increasing use 

of one of his most important intelligence assets, the 5329th AGFRTS. 

AGFRTS, staffed largely by people from Fourteenth Air Force and operating 

as a joint AAF-OSS venture, spread agents and radio direction-finding teams 

across much of Japanese-occupied China, including major ports and key cities. 

The Fourteenth carried AGFRTS on its books as an AAF unit, but from its 

inception in April 1944, AGFRTS was strongly influenced by the OSS. The 

organization quickly became an important part of Fourteenth Air Force’s 

318 
Fourteenth Air Force B-25s bomb the I 

Brig. Gen. Clinton D. Vincent 

319 
Piercing the Fog 

intelligence structure, something of a rival to the Navy’s unit in China that also 

supported Chennault. AGFRTS, in addition to its OSS-peculiar duties aimed at 

disrupting Japanese control, provided the airmen with weather reports and 

information on lucrative targets such as ships and major Japanese troop 

movements. Liaison teams serving with Chinese field army headquarters 

reviewed, validated, and forwarded requests for air support and supplied 

information upon which interdiction and close support missions could be 

~lanned.~’ 

Of special importance during the Japanese offensive of 1944 were the 

AGFRTS and Naval Group China agent reports that gave the location of 

Japanese front lines and information on infiltration tactics and supply columns. 

Using these reports, Brig. Gen. Clinton D. Vincent, commander of the 68th 

Composite Wing, launched frequent attacks on the enemy columns nearing his 

bases. Other reports allowed Vincent’s men to strike Japanese supply depots 

and transshipment points. As if they were not busy enough, AGFRTS field 

teams also assisted in the rescue and return of downed Allied airmen.50 

In the spring of 1944, to support forward air operations, the Fourteenth Air 

Force’s intelligence officer moved a section of his operation to Lianshan to 

coordinate more rapidly with the field intelligence teams and to expedite 

photointerpretation. As the Japanese pressed their offensive in the Tungting 

Lake region, they forced evacuation of several Fourteenth Air Force bases. 

Working with the 68th Composite Wing and the Fourteenth Air Force’s Air 

Service Command, AGFRTS agents began systematic destruction of roads and 

bridges as they reported Japanese positions and movements. Lacking coherent 

information from the rapidly deteriorating Chinese Army, Vincent had to 

depend on the field people and observations by his aircrews for warning and 

information upon which to plan evacuation of Lingling and Hengyang airfields. 

The Japanese advance had disrupted the ground situation, making it difficult for 

AGFRTS teams to provide a constant flow of information. At the advanced 

Fourteenth Air Force intelligence center, field team reports, photography, 

Chinese military information, and other data were reviewed, sorted, and melded 

into usable assessments of enemy movements and probable intentions. The 

result was a speedy processing of information during the Japanese offensive that 

allowed a series of interdiction strikes from early December 1944 through 

March 1945. A bombardment of Hangkow’s docks and warehouses by Maj. 

Gen. Curtis E. LeMay’s China-based B-29s supplemented the Fourteenth’s 

attempts to deflect the Japanese dri~e.~’ 

By mid-November 1944, most of the major American air bases in eastern 

China had fallen to the Japanese. Even before then, however, the Americans 

began to make changes in the theater’s command and intelligence structure. In 

October 1944, Chiang Kai-shek rid himself of a long festering sore when he 

succeeded in getting President Roosevelt to recall Stilwell, replacing him with 

Lt. Gen. Albert C. Wedemeyer. This was when the CBI Theater became the 

320 
Taking the Offensive 

Maj. Gen. Claire Chennault meets his new theater commander, Lt. Gen. Albert C. 

Wedemeyer. 

India-Burma Theater and the China Theater. Wedemeyer took charge of the 

latter, simultaneously becoming Chiang’s chief of staff. With the change in 

theater alignment came a change in the OSS’s (and AGFRTS’s) position. 

Previously, Stilwell, grudgingly, to be sure, but to keep peace with Chiang and 

because of his duties in India, allowed Chiang and Chennault to go about their 

business more or less undisturbed. It was logical then that AGFRTS should be 

in effect part of the Fourteenth Air Force, as that was the only military 

organization that it served directly. Wedemeyer prepared for a move of the 

Tenth Air Force to China later in 1945, and he decided to take greater control 

of military operations in that country. Wedemeyer had his staff supervise 

AGFRTS’s functions and those of the Naval Group China in January 1945. In 

February, the new theater commander established an air intelligence section in 

his S-2 office in Chungking, staffing it partly with experienced people from 

Chennault’s air force, but generally excluding Miles’s Navy group.52 

Both Chennault and Miles objected loudly. Miles believed his operations 

were restricted so as to force him and his men out of China. The final six 

months of the war in China engendered bitterness in Miles, as his organization 

slowly lost the position it had created over several years. The close relationship 

between AGFRTS and the Fourteenth deteriorated into quibbling and finger 

pointing. In a letter of February 4,1945, Chennault reiterated to Wedemeyer his 

321 
Piercing the Fog 

need for AGFRTS and his fears that it would no longer furnish the information 

and services his airmen had for so long put to good use. Chennault closed by 

asking, rather petulantly, for the return to his command of those people from the 

Fourteenth who originally staffed AGFRTS the year before and who now 

wanted to leave the OSS.53 

Despite the troubles that arose with the new command arrangement in 

China, the relationship beteen the Naval Group China, AGFRTS, and the 

Fourteenth Air Force continued to yield information upon which commanders 

could make decisions. Chennault also had alternate sources on which to rely as 

the war entered its final months. To apply greater pressure on the Japanese, and 

to make militarily valueless the areas they occupied, the Fourteenth Air Force 

engaged in a campaign to destroy railroads. The impetus for the effort came 

originally from the JTG in Washington. In one of its first projects related to the 

Fourteenth, the JTG assessed both the economic and military impact of a 

railroad interdiction campaign in China. Concluding that the Japanese used 

large areas of China proper (excluding Manchuria) as a source of raw materials, 

the group decided that any effort to attack scattered quarries, mines, and 

agricultural collection points would not be economically worthwhile. On the 

other hand, certain rail lines provided the bulk of military transportation for 

Japan’s army in China, especially south of the Yangtze River. The JTG 

recommended dividing the Chinese rail system into different zones and then 

concentrating air attacks within selected zones on railway lines, bridges, and 

other facilities upon which the Japanese depended. Such tactics would make 

repairs very difficult. When one zone’s rail lines were out, the effort would 

target another. The first railways recommended for saturation attacks were those 

from Peking to Hangkow, from Tientsin to Pukow, and from Tatung to Puchow. 

The group’s members reasoned that if these lines, which had heavy military use, 

were destroyed, lateral and ancillary lines would have only local importance. 

Only certain segments of the three lines need be attacked to make the plan 

effe~tive.5~ 

The JTG recommended that efforts by fighters to strafe locomotives and 

water towers would be an added benefit because such attacks were easy to 

make, were economical, and would force a heavy load on repair facilities. To 

achieve military success and to meet the Fourteenth Air Force’s mission of 

directly supporting the Chinese armies, Chennault’s staff had to choose the 

specific segments carefully and closely coordinate the resultant attacks with the 

ground forces. The JTG’ s studies also allowed Chennault to better manage the 

always critical fuel supply by avoiding superfluous or uneconomical raids.55 

The resulting fighter sweeps early in 1945 destroyed some 145 locomotives 

plus a good number of bridges, railway lines, and rolling stock. Attacks on 

nearby roads and canals prevented their use as alternate routes. When 

intelligence reports indicated that the Japanese were taking damaged locomotives to shops in north China, B-24s hit those shops and adjacent railyards in 

322 
Taking the Offensive 

March 1945. When the operations planners judged that B-24 strikes consumed 

too much fuel, Chennault ceased using the large aircraft and moved them to 

India to haul supplies over the mountains. Fighters took over the railway attack 

task, but they, too, soon had to reduce their efforts to conserve gasoline. The rail 

targets remained known to Chennault and available, but he lacked the means to 

destroy them as rapidly as he wished. This was the same situation that had 

obtained so often in China since the AAF’s arrival in July 1942. Always ready 

to fight the Japanese, the American airmen had too few aircraft, too little 

gasoline, or too much of a need for parts and aircraft tires. The Fourteenth’s 

bombardment and attack planning had been a function partly of knowing the 

enemy’s whereabouts, but more importantly it was a question of how much of 

a force could be mustered on any given day to hit the most worthwhile targets.56 

Despite the supply problems, the Fourteenth had hit rail targets successfully, and senior military leaders in Washington drew on ULTRA to oversee the 

extent of those successes. General Marshall’s understanding of the railway 

interdiction plan became the basis for some of the discussions at Potsdam in 

July 1945. At the Allied Tripartite Meeting on July 24, Marshall told the Soviets 

of the AAF’s destruction of railroads in Japanese-controlled China as he 

encouraged the Soviet leadership to draw up plans to enter the war in Asia. He 

noted that the bombing and sabotage had by that time substantially reduced 

Japan’s ability to move troops from China proper to counter Soviet moves in 

Manchuria. The Americans told also of the 500,000 Japanese troops that they 

believed were on Kyushu, but they pointed out that naval and AAF mining of 

Japanese waters had cut Japan’s ability to move her army from the home 

islands. Arnold then added remarks that outlined rather specifically Japan’s 

current air operations, her air logistics situation, and her ability to continue air 

warfare; like Marshall, Arnold based his account on ULTRA intercepts plus 

photographic reconnaissance of Japan’s airfield^.^' 

Although Chennault had formal access to ULTRA information from at least 

March 1944, a special security officer did not arrive at Fourteenth Air Force 

headquarters in Kunming, China, until October of that year. Before then, such 

ULTRA information as Chennault saw came to him via the special security 

representative in New Delhi, India, or from Stilwell’s office in Chungking 

which was served, in turn, by the radio facilities of the U.S. Naval Group China. 

Because of the distance and time required to carry the material, Fourteenth Air 

Force probably received little ULTRA data on a regular basis before March 1944. 

The amount of other intelligence information derived from Japanese message 

traffic available to the Fourteenth Air Force is unclear. Occasional data reached 

Chennault, as in the December 1942 message from Washington. Miles, discreet 

in discussing SIGINT, also hinted in his memoirs that his communication 

people decrypted information valuable to the AAF in China and elsewhere in 

the Pacific. 

323 
Piercing the Fog 

With an SSO in Kunming, this changed. Regular Japanese air OB estimates 

arrived from the War Department in 1945, as they did in other AAF commands 

in the Pacific. Low-level radio interception and traffic analysis by Navy, Army, 

and OSS personnel was much more common and of more immediate use. Even 

with B-24 heavy bombers assigned, General Chennault ran an air force that was 

far more tactical than strategic, so his need for intelligence centered on material 

for ready use. When the B-29s of the XX Bomber Command flew from 

Chengtu, they could use more sensitive information. Yet even this demand in 

China was far less than that of the air forces in other Pacific theaters.’* 

Several factors affected the ways that air intelligence analyses influenced 

Chennault’s war in China. The Fourteenth’s A-2 did basically the same work 

as the planners and staff officers elsewhere, but with substantially less ULTRA 

content until well into 1944. Agent teams watching and reporting on Japaneseheld areas paralleled similar efforts in Europe and the Southwest Pacific, but 

porous control by the Japanese of areas they occupied in China made the work 

of such teams broader in scope and of more importance to the Fourteenth than 

to other major AAF units, even to the Tenth Air Force in Burma’s jungles and 

mountains. 

The Central Pacific 

Intelligence studies and support for air operations in the Navy-controlled POA 

came largely from the MIS in Washington and from the Intelligence Center, 

Pacific Ocean Area (ICPOA), in Honolulu. ICPOA, and its associated FRUPac, 

was part of Admiral Nimitz’s headquarters and grew from the prewar Combat 

Information Center originally used to track the movements of enemy and Allied 

ships into an all-encompassing intelligence-gathering and analysis organization. 

On September 7, 1943, in recognition of its multiservice composition and 

analysis role, ICPOA became the Joint Intelligence Center, Pacific Ocean Areas 

(JICPOA). In many ways, JICPOA was Nimitz’s version of MacArthur’s G-2 

SWPA in Australia; it served primarily the main Navy theaters-the SOPAC 

Area and the POA-but it provided considerable information (especially on 

enemy OB) throughout the Pacific. JICPOA and G-2 SWPA maintained a good 

working relationship with much mutual interchange that affected the course of 

the war. The great distances and long travel times in the Pacific enforced a 

separation on the two organizations that limited the joint effort’s effecti~eness.~’ 

Radio intelligence quickly became a prime source of information, most of 

which went to support the Navy’s surface and submarine fleets. Air intelligence, 

too, came from JICPOA, but it was applied differently than was the CB’s 

product in Brisbane. The Navy task force organizations in the POA included 

naval, Marine, and AAF air units, but these organizations were subordinate to 

their task force commanders. The Seventh Air Force functioned as an integral 

324 
Taking the Offensive 

operational air unit even less than had the Thirteenth under SOPAC. The 

Seventh’s groups and squadrons flew for the various task forces, while the 

headquarters gave administrative and logistic support. Although the Seventh Air 

Force’s position (or plight, depending upon one’s point of view) caused other 

AAF leaders like General Kenney much grief throughout the war years, the 

organization served Admiral Nimitz well and suited the Navy’s operational 

style. The Seventh’s commander, Maj. Gen. Willis Hale, rarely used intelligence in forming plans and assigning tasks until late in the war. These functions 

fell instead to the various air commanders of the task forces.60 

The air intelligence produced by JICPOA and used by the Seventh’s groups 

included regular interception of Japanese weather reports from an excellent 

system of observation, air OB information, and air operations analyses, plus a 

variety of charts, maps, books, and similar materials. The Seventh Air Force’s 

intelligence officer had little to do with original analysis; early in the war he 

served largely as a briefer and an information conduit. Not until the campaign 

for the Gilberts late in 1943 and the Marshalls early in 1944 did the Seventh’s 

intelligence section achieve any real importance; even then it was still 

subordinate to the Navy’s air operations and did little to influence war planning. 

Although size comparisons can mislead, the number of people authorized for 

the Seventh Air Force’s A-2 section varied between 1943 and 1945 from onefourth to less than one-half that of the Fifth Air Force ADVON A-2 in New 

Guinea. In April 1943, of the 10 officers assigned to the Seventh Air Force’s 

A-2 section in Honolulu, 1 worked with combat intelligence, 2 handled the 

command’s public relations matters, 6 were photointerpreters, and 1 did 

counterintelligence. The director and his administrative and executive help 

rounded out the officer authorizations, while 24 enlisted men completed the 

staff. A July 1943 request to increase the A-2 section’s strength to 27 officers 

and 57 enlisted found favor locally, but not at AAF headquarters in Washington, 

which saw little reason to assign scarce talents to offices that did secondary 

work. The demands of the Gilbert and Marshall Islands campaigns taxed the 

limited intelligence staff, which leaned increasingly on the resources of 

JICPOA, especially for radio-intercept data, air OB formulations, and technical 

intelligence, In recognition of the large amount of photointerpreter work being 

done by the Seventh both in Hawaii and at its advance echelon on Tarawa, the 

AAF added a photographic intelligence detachment on February 7, 1944. The 

detachment had authorizations for 43 officers and49 enlisted. All personnel had 

to come from General Hale’s own organizational resources; the supply of 

trained people was slim. 

The situation on Hale’s staff reflected in part the very haphazard growth of 

the A-2 section through the first two years of fighting. The state of the 

intelligence office’s manpower strength also reflected the reluctance of the 

AAF’s headquarters to assign people to jobs that could or should be accomplished by Admiral Nimitz’s joint center. Washington’s reluctance to add to 

325 
Piercing the Fog 

General Hale’s strength was probably increased by the realization that any such 

additions could be drained away by the theater commander, if he so desired. 

There remained a compelling bureaucratic reason to send qualified intelligence 

officers and men to other locations where they could have a more direct and 

continuing effect on Air Force operations.61 

Despite the troubles, the Seventh contributed substantial operational air 

intelligence to the Gilbert Islands campaign as photoreconnaissance aircraft 

overflew Japanese-occupied islands, recording enemy positions and activities. 

Aerial reconnaissance by the Seventh’s B-24 crews provided information 

crucial to Admiral Nimitz’s planning for the Marshall Islands campaign. When 

photographs showed that the Japanese had failed to adequately fortify 

Kwajalein and Eniwetok, those islands instead of the more heavily protected 

Wotje and Maloelap became the targets of amphibious landings. Nimitz’s bold 

stroke into the center of the Marshalls group succeeded after extensive 

bombardment by Seventh Air Force B-24~.~~ 

For the taking of the Gilbert Islands, code named Operation GALVANIC, the 

Seventh’s bomber force became Task Group 57.2, commanded by Hale, and the 

fighters became part of Task Group 57.4, the Ellice Defense and Utility Group, 

under Marine Brig. Gen. L. G. Merritt. Hale’s bombers neutralized Japanese 

airfields on Tarawa and Makin Islands and made photoreconnaissance missions 

in support of Task Force (TF) 57’s commander, Vice Adm. John H. Hoover. 

Other targets selected to prevent significant Japanese interference with 

GALVANIC were Kwajalein, Maloelap, Mille, and Jaluit. Tactical intelligence 

to support these missions came from the Seventh’s A-2, who compiled maps, 

aerial photographs, and weather information and passed on information from the 

headquarters of Admirals Nimitz and Hoover.63 

Continuing AAF expressions of concern for the integrity of Seventh Air 

Force led in 1944 to an alteration of the command arrangement in the Central 

Pacific. On May 1, Nimitz created TF 59 which comprised all shore-based 

aircraft in the forward area except for the Army and Navy transport commands. 

Hale assumed the command of TF 59, simultaneously becoming also COMAIRFORWARD; he relinquished command of the Seventh, which then fell to Brig. 

Gen. Robert W. Douglas, Jr. These changes gave the AAF partial operational 

control of its assets, although TF 59 remained a subordinate part of Admiral 

Hoover’s TF 57. Although the Navy in the Pacific still controlled Hale’s force, 

the change allowed Hale a greater degree of operational direction of his men. 

The small-island targets, widely scattered across thousands of miles of ocean, 

and Nimitz’s overall strategy frustrated Hale’s ambitions and limited the AM’S 

practical application of intelligence data developed both in Honolulu and by the 

Seventh’s own reconnaissance 

On August 1, 1944, to prepare for the arrival of B-29s in the Pacific, the 

War Department created Army Air Forces Pacific Ocean Area (AAFPOA). The 

326 
Taking the Offensive 

Maj. Gen. Willis H. Hale Maj. Gen. Robert W. Douglas, Jr. 

new organization absorbed the support and services units of Seventh Air Force, 

leaving the Seventh only the VII Bomber and VII Fighter Commands. General 

Harmon became AAFPOA’s commander and Deputy Commander of Twentieth 

Air Force. Harmon’s charge from Washington was to coordinate support for 

both the Seventh and the XXI Bomber Command. In reality, AAFPOA was an 

agency to satisfy Nimitz’s insistence on control of theater air operations through 

the task forces while streamlining the logistic and administrative support of the 

B-29 organization. Harmon’s position was to be roughly analogous to, though 

much less influential than, the positions of Generals Spaatz, Eaker, and Kenney 

in other theaters, where they responded to theater commanders for all air 

 operation^.^^ 

The AAFPOA arrangement, however, was not entirely a paper command. 

AAFPOA’s staff included a Directorate of Intelligence as part of the office of 

the Deputy Chief of Staff for Plans and Operations. Though similar to 

intelligence operations set up by the AAF elsewhere in the Pacific and CBI, it 

lacked several specific services. Technical intelligence officers on AAFPOA’s 

roster served at JICPOA, where a joint Army-Navy team pursued information 

from crashed or captured Japanese aircraft and equipment. Flak analysis was 

also a joint undertaking at JICPOA because of the vital interest in the subject 

by Army, Navy, and Marine aviators. The Special Intelligence Branch at 

AAFPOA collated AA defense information, commonly called flakintel, and 

delivered it to XXI Bomber Command and Seventh Air Force units that 

operated near Japanese-held territory. Along with the flakintel information, the 

327 
Piercing the Fog 

Special Intelligence Branch designed and had built flak computers that could be 

used to determine AA artillery patterns at several altitudes from 15,000 feet to 

30,000 feet. These computers aided mission planners in determining the safest 

route to a target area. The Special Intelligence Branch also kept close contact 

with the Directorate of Communications, whose job included radar countermeasures (RCM) analyses. From the data supplied by the communicators, AAFPOA 

A-2 prepared radar coverage maps to supplement the flakintel information sent 

to field units. To reduce danger to the B-29s on bombing runs over Japan, the 

XXI Bomber Command and AAFPOA’s VII Fighter Command cooperated to 

reduce Japanese radar coverage. 

Beginning in mid-May, the Bomber Command extended RCM flights to 

cover much of Japan. First, RCM B-29s picked up radar signals and found their 

points of origin by triangulation. Nisei radio operators on board listened to the 

associated Japanese radio transmissions to and from the stations. Once the 

bomber crews plotted the information, the B-29 command passed the data to 

AAFPOA’s VII Fighter Command. Based on information from the RCM 

aircraft, P-5 1 s of the 15th Fighter Group struck radar stations on Chichi Jima 

with strafing, rocket, and dive-bombing attacks on June 27,28, and 29, 1945. 

The weather was too poor to observe results, but the operations highlighted the 

prompt exploitation by one air command of intelligence collected by another.66 

AAF-Navy cooperation carried out by the Seventh could also be seen in the 

aerial minelaying around the Bonin Islands during November and December of 

1944. At other times, Seventh Air Force B-24s and P-47s attacked shipping and 

Japanese airfields on Iwo Jima, Haha Jima, and the Pagan Islands. Many armed 

reconnaissance missions near the Bonins sought targets in those waters. At other 

times, Seventh Air Force B-24s and P-38s escorted Navy or AAF reconnaissance aircraft overflying Japanese-held islands. On May 25, 1945, VII Fighter 

Command and its subordinate units came under control of Twentieth Air Force 

as the latter carried out strategic bombing of Japan. From that day, the longrange P-47s flew more and more frequently against Japanese home island 

targets. In mid-July, the remainder of the Seventh became part of General 

Kenney’s FEAF on Okinawa. Only at the very end of the war did the Seventh 

become an integral air force, able to use intelligence information to plan its own 

operations. By then there was no war left to fight.67 

In April 1945, JICPOA’s Air Estimates Group moved from Hawaii to 

Guam to support the advanced theater headquarters there. That move broadened 

the flow of intelligence to the AAF as the XXI Bomber Command received 

better and more frequent estimates of Japanese air strength and dispositions in 

the home islands. This improved intelligence and resulted in better mission 

planning for the remainder of the war. The close proximity to FEAF’s 

operations in the Philippines also increased cooperation between JICPOA and 

G-2 SWPA in preparation for the final assault on Japan.68 

328 
Taking the Offensive 

B-29 Operations Against Japan 

During the autumn of 1942, General Arnold traveled through the Pacific, 

visiting his air forces, commanders, and men in the SWPA, SOPAC, and 

Central Pacific. He sought the air power views not only of the flyers but also of 

MacArthur, Nimitz, and Halsey. As a result of the trip, as he noted after the war, 

Arnold concluded that lack of a unified command meant that the AAF’s new 

very long-range, very heavy B-29 bombers due to become operational in 1944 

could be easily misused by a theater commander searching for a quick solution 

to local problems. To ensure their most effective employment, Arnold believed 

he would have to retain control of the B-29s once they were deployed. The 

alternative would be fragmentation of the force and dispersion of B-29s among 

several commands; worse still, the B-29s would be controlled by commanders 

who were not airmen. That Pacific trip may have planted the seed for control of 

the XX Bomber Command and later the Twentieth Air Force in Arnold’s mind, 

but immediate and constant nourishment for the idea came from operational 

frustrations in Europe. Despite elaborate theories for heavy bomber employment, the AAF had not, by the end of 1943, clearly demonstrated the undisputed 

value of strategic air power. The American air generals in North Africa and 

Europe faced pressure to break up numbered air forces and use airplanes to 

satisfy the desires of ground commanders clamoring for tactical support. Some 

Army generals believed that B-17 and B-24 bombers should support frontline 

troops; others denied that strategic air power was a significant factor in the war. 

As Arnold and his key supporters steadfastly held to a belief in the importance 

of an independent strategic bombardment force, intelligence analysis became 

a key element in the complicated relationships of interservice competition, air 

power advocacy, and operational preparations.6Y 

Faced with the possibility that the war might end without the AAF proving 

its strategic worth, and losing thereby the chance for continued autonomy, not 

to mention independence, Arnold and several supporters, including Brig. Gens. 

Haywood S. Hansell, Jr., and Laurence S. Kuter, began a doctrinal offensive in 

Washington to convince the joint chiefs and senior policy makers of the value 

of precision bombardment. At the Cairo conference in December 1943, Hansell 

continued to push for an independent strategic bombardment force, and he 

successfully persuaded the combined staff planners that instead of the final 

victory against Japan depending upon invasion of the home islands, “the defeat 

of Japan may be accomplished by air and sea blockade and intensive air 

bombardment from progressively advanced bases.”70 

Arnold persuaded the JCS to retain control of the new, very heavy bomber 

force and to make him, Arnold, its commander and their executive agent in 

directing its operation. This not only kept the B-29s out of the hands of 

admirals and generals who would be tempted to use the new aircraft in tactical 

329 
Piercing the’Fog 

Maj. Gen. Laurence S. Kuter 

roles, it also created a pressing need for intelligence that would guide Washington in developing target lists and effective operational plans.” 

Even before command arrangements for the Twentieth Air Force had been 

resolved, Arnold told the COA to recommend appropriate targets. The 

committee’s work followed an even earlier target study done by the Air Forces 

Intelligence Service. Arnold’s desire was to have the committee verify 

independently the Air Staff‘s analysis, which had selected fifty-seven main 

targets and had a target-industry priority list of aircraft, nonferrous metals, naval 

bases and shipyards, iron and steel, petroleum, chemicals, automobile engines, 

and rubber. The COA began work in May 1943 to assess each different 

industry, seeking to determine the following in each case: 

The indispensability of its product to Japan’s war economy. 

The industry’s position as to current production, production capacity, 

and stocks on hand. 

Japan’s requirements for various degrees of military activity. 

The possibility of successful substitution or decrease in use of products 

without affecting front line strength. 

330 
Taking the Offensive 

The number, locations, and vulnerabilities of vital installations within 

each industry. 

That industry’s recuperative power. 

The time lag between destruction of installations and the desired effect 

on frontline strength:’ 

The study, by its nature, required substantial understanding of the industrial, 

transportation, and military relationships in Japanese society. This knowledge 

remained skimpy and ill-defined. 

In September 1943, the COA began working with Hansell, who had by then 

become the Chief of Staff of the XX Bomber Command, the unit that was to 

deploy to India and China and be the first to use the B-29 in the war. The 

committee sought information as to the new airplane’s capabilities which gave, 

in turn, a chance for the XX Bomber Command to correlate its intelligence 

actions with thoseof theCOA.’3 In making its assessments, the committee faced 

difficult problems. Information on Japan was fragmented, limited, and of 

undetermined worth. In some cases it quickly became clear that analyses would 

have to be drawn inferentially, by comparing Japan’s supposed industrial 

operation with that of America and of other countries. The members labored 

throughout the summer and fall of 1943 to assemble material and form their 

 recommendation^.'^ 

The Cairo conference of Allied leaders in November and December 1943 

became the first stage on which the COA’s recommendations about Japan 

would play. To achieve an immediate role for the B-29s, Generals Arnold, 

Hansell, and Kuter presented their employment proposal based upon a 

preliminary assessment from the COA of the Japanese iron and steel industry 

and its vulnerability to attacks on coke ovens in Manchuria. These ovens at 

Anshan and Penshian (near Mukden) produced 56 percent of Japan’s coke. 

Since coke does not last in open storage, the committee believed that destruction or disablement of the ovens (they could be damaged by shock from near 

misses and take up to two years to repair) would have a substantial effect on 

sheet steel fabrication, and thereby reduce shipbuilding. The Allied leaders at 

Cairo approved use of B-29s for attacks on Japanese industry; with that 

approval came a plan to base the aircraft in India, stage them through bases at 

Chengtu, China, and hit the ovens along with other targets. The plan, called 

MATTERHORN, was to be carried out by the XX Bomber Command under Brig. 

Gen. Kenneth B. Wolfe.*’’ 

*Preparation of an earlier version of the MATTERHORN plan miscarried because 

of logistics problems. In that plan, 280 B-29s would fly from Chinese bases near 

Chengtu, supported by 2,000 B-24s converted to cargo duties. Such an amount of 

33 1 
Piercing the Fog 

MATTERHORN had immediate importance to Arnold, Hansell, and Kuter for 

reasons other than the pure wish to carry the war directly to Japan. In Australia, 

and on visits to Washington, Kenney agitated for assignment of B-29s to him, 

to be based in Darwin. With Kenney’s continued interest and prestige, and 

MacArthur’s support, the JCS might see their way to giving Kenney his wish. 

In China, Chennault wanted the B-29s so he could strike farther and hit more 

targets than were possible with B-24s. With Chiang’s support and Roosevelt’s 

sympathy, Chennault might get some of the new aircraft too. Hansell abhorred 

the idea of giving B-29s to local commanders; he knew that the B-29s were 

difficult to handle and had many developmental problems, and he feared, like 

Arnold, that once so lost, the strategic bombers might never be recovered for 

integral air operations. Moreover, JCS planners and even Air Staff members had 

considerable sympathy for such a use as Kenney proposed. Thus, the pressure 

on Arnold and his supporters to make a success of long-range bombing 

continued to increase?‘ 

On February 6, 1944, as the organization and training of the XX Bomber 

Command continued, COA members rendered an early opinion on the use of 

very heavy bombers to the Air Staff. They prepared a memo listing their best 

opinion of the primary target systems within range of possible bases at Chengtu, 

Davao, and Saipan: 

Merchant shipping and harbor concentrations. 

Coke production in Manchuria, amounting to 56 percent of the total 

Japanese production. 

Urban industrial areas. 

Aircraft production, because all of the most important targets in the 

industry group could be hit from Saipan. (Virtually none, however, 

could be reached from Chengtu.) 

Antifriction bearings, also because the major targets in this category 

could be reached from Saipan. 

Electronics, because the industry was not well established in Japan, 

had little redundancy, and because of evident problems in production 

and distribution of parts such as radio and radar tubes.” 

flying from India to China was too impractical, and Arnold judged it not worth the 

cost. 

332 
Taking the Offensive 

The list produced in early 1944 resulted from considerable debate between 

members of the COA and representatives of the Air Staff intelligence office and 

the Navy. The Air Staff‘s intelligence people had advocated more emphasis on 

electronic systems and oil production. The February recommendations were 

something of a compromise, noting that attacks on oil were primarily a function 

of reducing shipping capability. Oil transport was ideally suited for submarine 

and air interdiction which, in turn, could be well cued by ULTRA sources, of 

which the COA was unaware. Electronics remained fairly high on the list, but 

the committee did not view electricity as a primary target because of Japan’s 

decentralized power grids. In addition, the main hydroelectric plants were too 

well constructed and would probably withstand bombardment?’ On April 6, the 

JCS issued a directive that cited the COA’s target list as the one best suited for 

the B-29s. The JCS paper noted that the most promising early uses for the 

bombers were the Manchurian coke ovens and petroleum refineries in the NEI, 

primarily those at Palembang. Throughout 1944, the COA continued to study 

target systems in the light of newly developed intelligence inf~rmation.~’ 

The XX Bomber Command prepared for its deployment to China. One of 

the key members of the COA, Col. Guido Perera, became a permanent 

representative of the COA to the staff of the newly activated Twentieth Air 

Force, thus integrating more closely intelligence, COA evaluation, and 

operational employment of the B-29s. Hansell, the Twentieth’s chief of staff, 

relied a great deal on the committee’s advice.80 

The first B-29 in a combat theater landed in India in April 1944; the first 

B-29 combat mission was a shakedown raid on Bangkok, Thailand, on June 5. 

Tactical operations of the XX Bomber Command from bases in China also 

began in June. Chengtu was the only base from which the B-29s could reach 

key Japanese facilities, and only a few were within range from there. Following 

the recommendations of the COA, on June 15, 1944, the coke ovens at the 

Imperial Iron and Steel Works at Yawata, Japan, became the first mission’s 

primary target; secondary were the nearby coke and raw materials loading 

facilities at Laoyao harbor. Following the COA’s recommendations and the lead 

of General Kenney (but with a target Kenney believed to be incorrect),* the oil 

refinery at Palembang was the next target, along with the Moesi River, which 

the B-29 crews mined to restrict river traffic to Palembang. The B-29s made 

but a single raid on Palembang, staging through Ceylon. The attack inflicted 

*Kenney had argued for Balikpapan because his intelligence information 

showed it to be a far more important producer of oil products for the Japanese. 

Balikpapan, however, was beyond the range of B-29s flying from Ceylon. To hit 

Balikpapan, the aircraft would have had to use the base at Darwin, which Arnold 

and his people remained reluctant to do. Part of the reason for the target decision 

seems to have been the continuing fear that MacArthur, at Kenney’s urging, might 

have tried to keep the planes in his theater and under his control. 

333 
Piercing the Fog 

little damage on the refinery, but all of the mines fell into the river channel. The 

XX Bomber Command directed subsequent missions at iron and steel plants at 

Anshan, Manchuria. Operations from China were few, as logistics problems and 

the difficulty of using the new, not fully developed B-29 greatly restricted 

flying. Frequent poor weather over the targets further hindered the overtaxed 

operations. Weather information had always been an important element in 

intelligence planning. Now it assumed an even greater role, yet there was no 

way to accurately forecast weather en route to or over a target so far away. 

The problems were not unanticipated, and the XX Bomber Command's 

intelligence officers sought to alleviate some over which they had a measure of 

control. Chinese and Allied observation stations gathered and reported current 

weather data in an attempt to understand the Japanese cloud cover and winds 

they would encounter." Much of the spring of 1944 saw the target section of the 

Assistant Chief of Staff, Intelligence of the XX Bomber Command preparing 

and assembling route and target materials, both radar and visual. By May 18, 

the individual bomb groups knew of steel and aluminum targets in Manchuria; 

they even had stereoscopic photographs. Four days later, the flyers had a 

preliminary estimate of the state of Japan's petroleum production. The 

operational intelligence section of the A-2 office prepared information on 

Japanese fighter tactics and combined that data with the enemy air OB in the 

areas of China and Japan over which the B-29s would fly. The staff reviewed 

or prepared air and ground rescue plans and issued training materials and 

equipment to aid crew members in escape and evasion should their aircraft be 

shot or forced down. The information was to stand many of the crews in good 

stead in the coming months. 

In August 1944, aXX Bomber Command staff reorganization abolished the 

position of Assistant Chief of Staff, A-2, substituting a tri-deputy organization. 

Part of the reason this change was possible was the heavy involvement of the 

Air Staff A-2 in Washington, who did much of the target analysis work for the 

Twentieth Air Force. Intelligence in the XX Bomber Command became a 

section reduced in size under the Deputy Chief of Staff, Operations. Col. James 

D. Garcia became its chief. Some of the duties previously managed by A-2, 

such as search and rescue, moved to other staff agencies. To accommodate the 

smaller intelligence office, the commander discontinued various reports. During 

busy periods, outside personnel not fully employed elsewhere (and not 

necessarily qualified in intelligence work) were pressed into service." In spite 

of the growing influence of Washington, a number of things simply could not 

be done outside of India and China. 

The AAF and the Navy had since 1942 slowly expanded and improved 

their electronic warfare capabilities. Often the two services had worked 

together, reaping joint benefits. One result was that the B-29s came from the 

factory ready to incorporate a wide variety of radar and RCM equipment. On 

June 29, 1944, B-29s equipped with radar-detection and warning sets began 

334 
Taking the Offensive 

recording the locations and characteristics of Japanese radar stations. The ferret 

aircraft continued to fly with each bombing mission; they also flew alone to 

map Japanese electronic defenses in eastern China and Manchuria, and later in 

the home islands. Data from these early recording missions and similar flights 

in Burma had considerably broadened Allied understanding of Japanese radar. 

The American bomber crews quickly began using their detection equipment to 

avoid AA defenses by taking evasive action when their ships came under 

observation and fire?3 

Maps of AA gun positions prepared by the A-2 supplemented the radar 

information. The maps issued to flight crews indicated the locations, types of 

guns, their estimated number, and any detected patterns of movement between 

locations. Within a short time, the Americans had drawn fairly comprehensive 

maps of enemy defenses. This information allowed for flight planning that took 

advantage of open areas to reduce the likelihood of detection and the risk of 

aircraft damage by Japanese gunfire. At the same time, a flight of B-29 

photoreconnaissance aircraft greatly improved target information by mapping 

large areas of China, Manchuria, and Korea. To support MacArthur’s drive 

through the Philippines and Nimitz’s seizure of Okinawa, the photo B-29s also 

covered both Okinawa and L~zon.~~ 

By the summer of 1944, Japan’s strategic position no longer seemed as 

favorable as it had been a year earlier. In order to capitalize on any apparent 

weakness, General Arnold directed committee analysts to review their report 

and either validate their original recommendations or create a new target 

priority list. In that review, completed on October 10, 1944, the committee 

recommended B-29 attacks on the Japanese aircraft industry and urban 

industrial areas and, where feasible, their mining of sea lanes. In a disquieting 

note, the COA observed that “lack of information remains a major obstacle to 

careful target selection.” To correct the problem, it recommended increased 

efforts at reconnaissance and other information gathering, such as POW 

interrogations and technical analyses of captured documents and eq~ipment.’~ 

The problem of inadequate knowledge of Japanese target areas was shortly to 

assume greater importance. 

The COA’s recommendations, and the information gathering and mapping 

done by the XX Bomber Command’s intelligence staff, became the basis of 

B-29 operations from Chengtu. As a result of his unhappiness over the 

performance of the bombers, Arnold fired General Wolfe (who returned to the 

States) and replaced him with General LeMay on August 29, 1944. LeMay was 

a known perfectionist. He insisted on mission accomplishment, but his demands 

conflicted with the very imperfect understanding of enemy targets.’6 

In the Pacific, east of China, B-29s of Hansell’s XXI Bomber Command 

began landing on Saipan in mid-October 1944, as soon after that island’s 

capture as their airfields were ready. When Hansell’s crews arrived, they, like 

LeMay’s, found target information poor. Photoreconnaissance of Japan had 

335 
piercing the Fog 

Maj. Gen. Kenneth B. Wolfe Brig. Gen. Curtis E. LeMay 

been nil except for the limited work done by XX Bomber Command flying from 

China. Radar maps were not ready, either, so early radar bombing had to depend 

on educated guesses by the bombardiers as much as on anything else. The XXI 

Bomber Command stood ready to bomb Japan, but Hansel1 lacked much of the 

target data and weather information to do a credible job.” 

Not until November 1, 1944, did Hansel1 have a photoreconnaissance 

version of the B-29 (called the F-13) to survey Japan. On that day, the first 

plane of that type in the Pacific arrived from the United States, and the crew 

made an immediate run over Japan. Luckily, the weather was clear. The men 

took some 7,000 pictures of the Tokyo and Nagoya areas. There followed in the 

next few days 16 more photography runs, some of which found virtually 

complete cloud cover, obscuring the land below. Cloud cover was to become an 

increasingly greater problem for the B-29s, forcing commanders into decisions 

made from a narrowing list of options. Although Japanese air defenses made a 

concerted effort to attack the reconnaissance aircraft, either their fighter 

controllers and pilots could not gauge correctly the F-13’s speed and altitude, 

or their fighters could not reach the high-flying airplane. By November 24, the 

date of the XXI’s first mission to bomb Japan, enough information existed to 

plot the main targets. The first target for Hansell’s bombers was the Musashino 

plant of the Nakajima Aircraft Company, located near Tokyo. Based on studies 

of maker’s plates from crashed Japanese aircraft, air intelligence specialists 

believed that the plant produced an estimated 30-40 percent of all Japanese 

aircraft engines. Besides its being a major weapons production facility, the 

Americans believed that if they struck a plant close to Tokyo, the will of the 

336 
337 
Piercing the Fog 

Japanese to fight might be weakened. At the very least, the attack on Musashino 

would serve notice that the strategic bomber force had the power to hit whatever 

it wanted to.88 

The results of that first mission, like those of most of the precision attacks 

that followed in the ensuing months, were disappointing. Despite an occasional 

reasonably successful strike, such as the one on December 18 at Nagoya’s 

aircraft facilities, the main difficulties arose from a combination of crew 

inexperience, operating the aircraft at extreme range limits, and, worst of all, 

atmospheric conditions over the targets. Cloud cover was no new problem for 

the AAF; air crews had lived with it for more than two years over Europe. The 

problem in Japan, however, was compounded by the extreme wind velocities-up to 200 knots-encountered at 25,000 to 30,000 feet, the normal 

preplanned bombing altitudes. Attempting to fly in tight, self-defending 

formations in such winds proved almost impossible; worse, if the formation 

succeeded in finding the target, 

. . . drift was difficult to correct and bomb runs had to be charted directly 

upwind or downwind. Attacking Japan’s best-defended cities directly in 

the teeth of a 200-knot wind was unthinkable; going downwind the B-29s 

reached ground speeds in excess of 500 miles per hour, in which case 

neither bombsights nor bombardiers could function properly. Moreover, 

the high winds made it impossible for crews to make a second pass if the 

run-in failed; if a navigational error brou ht a plane in downwind from 

target it might not be able to attack at all. 8$ 

Early in January, impatient over the results thus far achieved and having 

decided to close down XX Bomber Command’s operations from India and 

China, Arnold moved the unit to the Marianas to join Hansell’s XXI Bomber 

Command and directed a full-scale reorganization. Hansell was relieved; 

LeMay replaced him and reported immediately, with the remainder of his 

command following in increments over the next several months. As senior air 

officer in the theater, LeMay commanded the XXI Bomber Command, soon to 

be redesignated, with the XX Bomber Command, as Twentieth Air Force. Like 

Wolfe, Hansell returned the the United States. 

LeMay quickly departed from Hansell’s pattern of high-altitude attacks. He 

introduced low-level attacks and began to,conduct experiments with various 

types and loadings of incendiary bombs. On the night of March 9/10, 1945, 

LeMay sent out the first massive, low-level, night incendiary raid. The raid 

established a pattern that continued through July, interrupted by a lengthy 

incendiary bomb shortage, by a short diversion in April of bombing airfields on 

Kyushu in support of the Okinawa invasion, and by the minelaying campaign. 

LeMay’s incendiary bombing decision was long in coming, having been amply 

studied for many years. The COA’s 1943 recommendations on Japanese targets 

contained one of the first endorsements of urban-area fire bombing. The 

recommendation appeared again in the 1944 review of the earlier work on 

338 
Taking the Offensive 

Japan. The committee assumed, for the first part of its report, that Japan was to 

be defeated by combined aerial bombardment and naval blockade, to include 

mining of the seaways. In its report to Arnold, the COA reiterated the refrain 

that ran through its deliberations the previous year, telling the commanding 

general that a “lack of intelligence remains a major obstacle to careful target 

selection.” Nevertheless, the committee also recommended a strategic bombing 

campaign to encompass antishipping attacks and attacks on the aircraft industry, 

as well as attacks on urban areas, followed by a review to determine what 

changes might then be needed. For the second portion of the report, which dealt 

with an invasion of Japan, the COA recommended “an attack on the aircraft 

industry and on urban industrial areas and an intensification of the attack on 

shipping by all available methods [including B-29s].”” During the same time, 

AAF intelligence officers prepared several studies along similar lines, but with 

more specifics. 

Lacking full knowledge of Japan, the A-2 staff based their calculations 

supporting urban area attack recommendations on the damage inflicted by the 

RAF Bomber Command on German cities during 1943. The data that air 

intelligence used came from appraisals of aerial photographs of German cities 

and industrial areas, the tonnage of bombs dropped, and reports originating from 

unspecified ground intelligence sources (much of it apparently ULTRA) on the 

continent. Using this information, and comparing the relationships between 

urban area destruction and apparent effects on industrial production for the 

hardest hit cities, the A-2’s vulnerability specialists tried to determine the 

probable impact of urban attacks. Their work was inconclusive. They believed, 

however, that to affect production, bombardment had to destroy at least 30 

percent of the housing that supported it. Extrapolating from the effects of the 

September 1, 1923, earthquake and fire that destroyed much of Tokyo and 

Yokohama, A-2 analysts prepared some rough guidelines for attacking Japanese 

urban areas. The COA then modified these guidelines in their November 1944 

revised report on Japan. The committee concluded that attacks would be 

effective if “On each urban industrial area they were pressed to the point of over 

fifty percent damage within about a month, and attacks on the most important 

urban industrial areas were completedl within two or three months.”” 

The idea of firebombing Japanesft cities was more than just an analytical 

proposal by some of the A-2 staff foryarded by the COA; it caught on within 

the AAF at a much more practical leyel. Late in 1943 the Chemical Warfare 

Service began a series of incendiary bomb tests at Dugway Proving Ground, 

Utah. The tests involved, so the AAF’s senior chemical officer told the chief of 

the air staff, a prototype village, “. . . the construction of which was as nearly 

Japanese as could be reproduced in this country.”y2 By dropping large quantities 

of various types of incendiary bombs on the village, the Chemical Warfare 

Service concluded that the six-pound, oil-filled bomb probably would be most 

effective on Japanese urban areas. Separately, in January 1944, Arnold visited 

339 
Piercing the Fog 

Eglin Army Air Field, Florida; while there, he initiated another effort to test 

incendiary weapons for use on Japan. These latter evaluations continued into the 

summer of 1944, using as targets several small, wooden villages constructed for 

the purpose. At Eglin, the testing showed promise as a means of predicting the 

damage that combustible buildings would sustain when hit by certain mixtures 

of high-explosive and incendiary bombs. Again, as in Utah the previous year, 

the six-pound bomb was most effective at starting a conflagration that existing 

firefighting equipment could not control. As demonstrated at Dugway and 

Eglin, the potential for incendiary attacks matched the prospects in the COA’s 

examination of the topic, but the final decision on the matter came about for 

reasons farmore complex than just weather and winds, or the nature of Japanese 

targets .y3 

Although the primary B-29 offensive had gotten underway from the 

Marianas in November 1944, the results had not met expectations. The number 

of sorties was less than desired, while target damage seemed to be less than 

necessary to reduce Japan’s continued resistance. High winds, poor weather, the 

need for more crew training, and disappointing accuracy from radar bombing-all contributed to the poor showing. In Washington, Arnold experienced 

increasing pressure to make the B-29s live up to his claims. Between September 

1942, when the new aircraft first flew, and the start of operations in China in 

1944, the B-29 had shown continued development problems. The Wright 

R-3350 engine was prone to catch fire, and many types of equipment subassemblies could not be delivered to meet assembly-line demands. Tools and 

necessary ground equipment for the huge airplane were in short supply, and the 

AAF lacked the experience needed to absorb the aircraft, with its attendant 

development difficulties, and to create operational bomber groups. The B-29s 

failed to meet Arnold’s expectations when flying from Chinese bases, and he 

replaced the first commander there with LeMay, who showed decided promise 

as a tough organizer and leader. Yet congressional critics and doubtful senior 

military officers were prepared to compare the high and growing costs of the 

B-29 program to its continued troubles. Arnold, as the airplane’s main 

proponent, was their chief target.’4 All of these factors plus the generally 

accepted intelligence analysis that postulated Japanese manufacturing 

dependence on innumerable small workshops in urban areas surrounding the 

factories combined over time to move the American strategic air campaign 

away from precision daylight bombing. 

There appears to have been no operations order issued by Twentieth Air 

Force headquarters in Washington to start the urban bombing campaign directed 

at destroying many of Japan’s major cities. There are, however, substantial 

records that trace the process of the decision and illustrate the role of intelligence in that process. LeMay had become familiar with the potential represented by incendiary bombs while in Europe, and in December 1944 his B-29s 

in China teamed up with Chennault’s Fourteenth Air Force to destroy with 

340 
Taking the Offensive 

incendiaries large portions of the Japanese dock and storage areas along the 

Yangtze River in Hankow. In that raid, the B-29s arrived over the target in four 

distinct groups, each carrying a different type of incendiary bomb, as if to test 

which was best. Confusion in scheduling and as a result of heavy smoke raised 

by the first bombs dropped caused several sections of aircraft to miss their 

targets, considerably diminishing the effectiveness of the raid. Nevertheless, 

riverfront buildings and some other Chinese-occupied parts of the city suffered 

extensive damage. Interviewed twenty years after the war, LeMay took only 

partial credit for the decision to use incendiaries on Japanese cities in 1945, 

saying it was a “combination of several people’s ideas.’’9s 

Brig. Gen. Lauris Norstad, serving in Washington as Twentieth Air Force’s 

chief of staff, seems to have been one of those to whom LeMay referred, a key 

player in the evolution of the firebombing decision. Norstad’s position made 

him the intermediary, not only between the ever-impatient Arnold and his 

proxies in the Pacific-first Hansell and then LeMay-but also between the 

A-2, the JTG, and the operational commanders. Relying on the A-2’s and 

COA’s analyses and the plans for the Twentieth that envisioned urban-area 

attacks as a last resort, Norstad had agitated for incendiary bombing since 

November. The apparent success at Hankow fortified his position. Pushed by 

Norstad toward a fire raid on Nagoya, Hansell objected that the tactic was 

inappropriate and not compatible with the mission of “destruction of primary 

targets by sustained air attacks using precision bombing methods both visual 

and radar.” Hansell’s case was not strong; he still lacked the intelligence needed 

to locate enough primary targets to bring the Japanese to conclude the war. 

Norstad relented temporarily, but he continued to discuss the matter with 

Brig. Gen. Lauris Norstad 

34 1 
Piercing the Fog 

Arnold, telling him on January 2, 1945, of an incendiary test set for the near 

future.‘6 That test, made by Hansell the next day, proved inconclusive; clouds 

and smoke obscured the scene from photoreconnaissance and from the 

intelligence officers on Guam for some days. 

Summoned from China to Guam early in January, Curtis LeMay found he 

was to replace Hansell. Arnold, pressed by the JCS to get results with the B-29s 

and increasingly frustrated with what he viewed as a lagging effort, had decided 

on a new commander. Because Arnold did not wish to fire Hansell himself, 

Norstad carried the message to both men in the Marianas. Within a few days, 

Arnold suffered a serious heart attack and was temporarily removed from 

participation in the course of the decision. For his part, LeMay knew full well 

that he was expected to find success, and to do so soon. Although incendiary 

attacks occurred only after much discussion in Washington, the final decision 

resulted from a chain of circumstances. LeMay, seeing little chance of success 

for precision bombing because of the winds aloft and heavy cloud cover over 

Japan, decided to use night, low-level delivery of incendiary bombs, beginning 

with a March 9/10, 1945, raid on Tokyo. That decision, though LeMay’s in 

form, had a much different substance. In April 1945, LeMay wrote Arnold that 

“. . . during my first six weeks [at MI Bomber Command in the Marianas] we 

had one operational shot at a target.” LeMay added that he found the poor 

weather, which nullified any chance for precision, high-altitude bombing by 

almost constantly obscuring the targets, to be his “. . . worst operational 

en ern^.'''^ LeMay well understood the stress under which Arnold operated as 

commander of the Washington-controlled Twentieth Air Force, a radical 

departure from the rule that the theater commander would control all military 

assets in the area. Both men desired intensely that the strategic air force succeed 

in its mission of forcing Japan’s capitulation before the scheduled November 

1945 invasion of Kyushu, Japan’s southernmost main island. 

Reading the COA and A-2 analytical studies of the layout and composition 

of major Japanese cities, LeMay believed that incendiary attacks would 

succeed. The test bombing of January, although inconclusive, had yielded some 

encouraging results along the lines predicted, supporting the work in Washington and at the proving grounds in Florida and Utah. Local intelligence analysis 

of Japanese flak defenses indicated to LeMay that they were much lighter and 

less accurate than those he and his men had faced over Germany. By opting for 

a night attack, LeMay further reduced the risk; intelligence studies and the air 

OB summary, produced from ULTRA by MIS, indicated that Japan had a 

negligible radar-directed night-fighter capability. General LeMay believed that 

he could afford a low-level approach that stood a good chance of success, yet 

one that did not depend upon the poorly developed art of long-distance 

meteorology. LeMay’s decision seized upon the clearest course of action, one 

long spelled out in studies of targets and Japanese defenses that both the Air 

Staff and his staff on Guam had made. The first major fire raid on Tokyo 

342 
Taking the Offensive 

Photo of one of the fire-bomb raids on Tokyo by Twentieth Air Force B-29s. 

consumed one-fourth of the city’s buildings; in terms of casualties, it was the 

single most destructive attack upon any Japanese city during the war. Much of 

the specific target planning for that raid and others following it had been done 

in Washington, where the Air Staff selected the impact areas as a compromise 

between industrial importance and susceptibility to fire. But the Air Staff‘s 

deliberations had long suffered from an incomplete understanding of Japan. As 

the planners’ confidence in the tactic grew, they placed greater stress on hitting 

the industrial areas in the major Japanese cities.’R 

Urban-area attacks were necessary to end the war sooner than would have 

occurred otherwise, and despite the continuing discussion of the propriety of 

firebombs as weapons used this way, those who decided the issue in 1945 did 

so after extended consideration. LeMay himself was careful to reason through 

the many tactical aspects of the problem. Although he has stated publicly that 

343 
Piercing the Fog 

he alone made the final decision on the use of incendiary weapons on Japanese 

cities, he had reached that point as the final player in a year’s long process of 

group dynamics.w 

Precedent in the AAF existed for LeMay’s action, as did substantial 

pressure for it from the highest levels in the service. When he carried the news 

of LeMay’s appointment to command the XXI Bomber Command on Guam, 

Lauris Norstad told him to solve the training problems, deal with the high winds 

and bad weather, and get the job done, or, as LeMay recalled, “If you don’t get 

results, you’ll be fired. If you don’t get results, also, there’ll never be any 

Strategic Air Forces of the Pacific. . . . If you don’t get results it will mean 

eventually a mass amphibious invasion of Japan, to cost probably half a million 

more American lives.”100 

Norstad’s remarks could not be taken lightly. The weapons had been 

shipped to the Pacific and were available, and there seems to have been a clear 

acceptance by General Arnold that the tactic was to be used. The Eighth Air 

Force had dropped a limited number of incendiary weapons on German targets, 

notably the heavy attack on transportation and administration centers of Berlin 

on February 3, 1945.”’ In the Far East, the Hangkow raid and the test 

incendiary bombing of Nagoya, made over Haywood Hansell’s objections, 

indicated a willingness to depart from the doctrinal policy of attacking specific 

military or war-support targets with precision bombing. Precision bombing had 

not been very accurate, and the constant pressure of proving that the B-29 was 

worth its cost led first to Norstad’s and then to LeMay’s decision to use 

firebombing. The immediate reasons for the attacks on Japan’s urban areas 

derived not just from bureaucratic and political pressures, but also from the 

demands of warfare and the wish to use the fastest, most effective method to 

end the war. In this regard, the perceived lack of intelligence about Japanese 

targets that existed for years at the A-2 office in the Pentagon and later on 

Guam played strongly in the minds of all the participants. The lack of clarity 

about the targets, and about Japan’s true capacity to resist to the end by 

inflicting heavy losses on an invader, was a powerful consideration. 

XXI Bomber Command’s difficulties with the weather over Japan were 

complicated by the fact that even in late 1944, no liaison existed between the 

Joint Intelligence Center in Honolulu and the Twentieth Air Force, even though 

JICPOA had for years been reading the Japanese weather observation radio 

traffic. In fact, for much of Hansell’s time with the XXI Bomber Command, no 

SSO was available to support him. When finally an SSO did arrive at Hansell’s 

headquarters, he had to fill in for the A-2 and assistant A-2, both of whom were 

delayed by an air crash on Eniwetok. This meant that the SSO, Maj. Charles T. 

Kingston, could do little else until early January.”’ When JICPOA’s Air 

Estimates Group moved from Hawaii to Guam in April 1945, special intelligence became much more readily available to the airmen. By then ULTRA’S 

capabilities had, in many ways, become superfluo~s.’~~ 

344 
Taking the Offensive 

The crew of the B-29 Enola Gay. Col. Paul W. Tibbetts (center, wearing khakis) was 

commander of the 509th Composite Bomb Group and pilot on the first mission to drop 

an atomic bomb. 

One of the most productive AAF uses of intelligence late in the war 

benefited the antishipping campaign. This joint AAF-Navy effort drew upon the 

previous Seventh Air Force experience in the Bonins and saw an extensive 

seeding of naval mines by B-29s. The newly laid minefields radically affected 

Japanese shipping by either sinking a number of vessels that had the misfortune 

to encounter them or isolating ships in harbors with unswept approaches. 

Japanese records reported that the aerial mining campaign sank or badly 

damaged 670 ships, including 65 combat ships, after March 1, 1945. Mines 

accounted for 63 percent of all Japanese merchant shipping losses during the 

final half-year of the war. Aerial delivery of naval mines depended heavily on 

adequate intelligence. The 3 13th Bombardment Wing carried the mines to 

Japan’s ports and the Inland Sea, based on an assessment of the most vulnerable 

sea lanes and harbors and an analysis of Japanese mine-clearing efforts. An 

extensive target study indicated that delivery was best made at night from 

altitudes of 5,000-8,000 feet. Follow-up reconnaissance surveys indicated 

where the Japanese had swept channels. Regular remining promptly closed 

345 
Piercing the Fog 

these routes. The result was an almost complete cessation of Japanese shipping 

after March 1945.’04 

On July 19,1945, General Carl A. Spaatz arrived on Guam to command the 

newly organized U.S. Army Strategic Air Forces (USASTAF), composed of the 

Twentieth and the Eighth Air Forces plus much of AAFPOA’s staff and support 

functions. The Eighth had recently transferred without aircraft from Europe and 

was to be equipped with B-29s on Okinawa. The creation of the Strategic Air 

Forces did not, however, bring all of the intelligence planning under its 

headquarters’ A-2, Brig. Gen. Norris B. Harbold. Harbold served as one of five 

assistant chiefs of staff: A-1 was personnel and administration: A-2, intelligence: A-3, operations: A-4, transportation, supply, maintenance, and logistics: 

and A-5 encompassed strategic planning and policy, organizational requirements, unit moves, and plans liaison. Under General Spaatz’s direction, the 

headquarters staff was to be streamlined, with its effort confined to planning 

and supervising the Eighth and Twentieth. Also in the headquarters were seven 

special sections, including a Joint Target Committee. Clearly, Spaatz wanted to 

recreate his successful European experiences in the Pacific. The A-2’s function 

in this arrangement was to direct the collection, evaluation, and dissemination 

of information about the enemy’s capabilities. The A-2 office had divisions 

dealing with operations reporting, air liaison, special intelligence, central 

evaluation and interpretation, photoreconnaissance, target matters, processing, 

interpretation and reproduction of photographic and related materials, and 

intelligence liaison. Twenty officers performed all of this work: in the 

headquarters, only the A-5, with eleven officers, was smaller. Spaatz expected 

that much of the staff work, including intelligence, would be done by the two 

numbered air forces.’05 

The task facing the Strategic Air Forces’ planners was clear: effect the final 

defeat of Japan. Although nobody foresaw Japan’s immediate collapse, the warfighting means available to the USASTAF included a wholly new type of 

weapon-nuclear explosives. The 509th Composite Group, selected and trained 

to drop the atomic weapons, had its headquarters in a compound on North Field, 

Tinian, where it awaited word to fly its missions. Spaatz, on leaving Washington, brought instructions that the atomic bombing was to begin after August 3; 

he also received the target list based upon planning done in Washington. There 

was little more for him to do except carry out the instructions, although he did 

have the authority to select the day and time to accord with weather and tactical 

considerations. LeMay, who had recently become Chief of Staff, Twentieth Air 

Force, saw to the final mission planning, meeting with the 509th’~ commander, 

Col. Paul W. Tibbets, and the bombardier, Maj. Thomas Ferebee, to select the 

aiming point for Hiroshima. The Aioi Bridge, near Second Army headquarters, 

was the best and most recognizable spot: it had been amply depicted in aerial 

reconnaissance photographs. Weather over Japan, the old bugaboo for the 

B-29s fromas far back as the China operations, remained the key factor. When 

346 
Taking the Offensive 

The mushroom-shaped cloud 

second and last atomic bomb 

on Japan-target Nagasaki. 

from the 

dropped 

on August 5 the forecast for Hiroshima seemed favorable, Spaatz decided to go 

the next day. En route to Hiroshima, the three B-29s avoided heavy flak 

concentrations. On board, the RCM specialist checked to see that the frequencies where the bomb's radar proximity fuze operated were clear; they were, and 

there was no danger of a premature detonation. Finding the clouds broken 

enough to allow visual release, Major Ferebee dropped the weapon at 8: 15 AM 

Hiroshima time.'" 

347 

CHAPTER 7 

Planning the Defeat of Japan: 

The A-2 in Washington, 1943-1945 

BASED UPON THE EXPERIENCES of the first two years of fighting, the 

AAF had matured considerably by the spring of 1943. Similarly, the Air Staff‘s 

intelligence capabilities and performance matured. Close relationships had 

grown between the offices of A-2 and RAF intelligence, as well as with the 

US. Navy and theater air commanders. Still lingering were the competing 

interests of the War Department’s G-2 and its air section; that competition 

continued to trouble air intelligence throughout the remaining war years as the 

nascent AAF’ s leaders sought to assert their independence. 

By early 1943, the COA, based upon intelligence information available for 

Germany, completed one of the most far-reaching analytical efforts of the war, 

with recommendations for the air campaign in Europe (see Chapter 4). General 

Arnold received the committee’s report in March 1943 and sent it immediately 

to Ira Eaker, his air commander in London. There Eaker, his staff, and R4F 

representatives extensively reviewed the COA’s work. Eaker then flew to 

Washington and, on May 18, presented his views of the report to the JCS and 

the CCS. Both groups of senior officers, already familiar with the scope and 

purposes of the COA’s work, approved it as written that day.’ The approved 

report and Eaker’s plan accompanying it became the basis for the Allied CBO 

that continued virtually to the end of the fighting in Europe. The completion of 

the committee’s report was one of the last major efforts of the Air Staff A-2 to 

participate in the field of operational intelligence for Europe and the Mediterranean. For the remainder of the war, the A-2’s office worked to influence the 

planning and operations against the Japanese in the Pacific war. 

In Europe, the air intelligence functions of the Eighth, Ninth, Twelfth, and 

Fifteenth Air Forces increasingly gained confidence throughout the final years 

of the conflict. The American air intelligence staffs of the numbered air forces 

worked under the tutelage of the more experienced and extensive RAF 

intelligence structure and personnel, with the Allied air operations guided by 

centralized analysis of the German and Italian enemies. From its inception, 

operational air intelligence for the CBO was done largely in London, with some 

349 
Piercing the Fog 

completed in Italy for use by the Fifteenth Air Force. ULTRA material drawn 

from Japanese sources flowed from Washington to Europe on completion of the 

Anglo-American intelligence-sharing agreement in mid-1943. The eastward 

flow, however, was far less than the amount of similar material on Germany 

derived by the British Government Code and Cypher School’s ULTRA operation 

at BP. 

The success of the air intelligence arrangement in the European-Mediterranean region led the Anglo-American Allies to divide intelligence worldwide 

along more formal lines. In February 1944, the RAF, U.S. Navy, U.S. Army’s 

G-2, and AAF concluded an agreement giving the Americans primary 

responsibility for air intelligence collection and analysis in support of the war 

with Japan. Despite the intelligence rivalries, the Americans had come to realize 

that dividing intelligence activities among the agencies best able to meet the 

particular requirements of that field would be the most effective way to pursue 

the gathering of information about Japanese capabilities and intentions. 

Deciding how to apportion those responsibilities was not a simple task. 

Tactical air warfare in the Pacific and Far East was the province of the 

Navy, of Marine Corps aviation, of the AAF’s numbered air forces’ commanders, and of the various Allied air forces. That region, far from Washington, had 

no central air intelligence function, although the different AAF commands 

produced some first-rate analytical products and exchanged information with 

one another and with Nimitz’s Navy headquarters in Honolulu. Radio intercept 

operations of the Army and Navy in Washington and Honolulu sponsored the 

very important collection and preparation of periodic air OB lists, which 

supported the various tactical air campaigns. Much more work had to be done 

to support the planned strategic bomber offensive of the Twentieth Air Force. 

AAF headquarters in Washington also served as the staff of the Twentieth, and 

the A-2 quickly assumed a significant part of the role of intelligence support for 

the B-29 very long-range bomber program. The problems facing the target 

planners were considerable, for they had little data about Japan on which to base 

a coherent analysis or to create target charts. This had already been recognized 

in the spring of 1943 when a major reorganization of the A-2 office aimed at 

improving intelligence production. That reorganization, however, was but one 

of many that accompanied the changes incident upon the relentless Allied 

prosecution of the war against Japan.’ 

The period 1943-1945 in Washington saw five men serve as AC/AS, 

Intelligence, a turnover rate that produced problems. Brig. Gen. Edgar P. 

Sorenson held the job from June 22, 1942, until October 22, 1943; he served 

also as a member of the COA. He seems to have left in some disfavor, as Arnold 

was not happy with the overall state of air intelligence and possibly also with 

Sorenson’ s opposition to the COA’ s recommendations about Japan and to the 

COA’s very existence. The next incumbent, Maj. Gen. Clayton Bissell, served 

for only a few months before handing the job to Brig. Gen. Thomas D. White 

350 
Planning the Defeat of Japan 

General Thomas D. White Maj. Gen. James P. Hodges 

(later to become Air Force Chief of Staff). White held the post for nine months, 

from January 5 to September 4, 1944, during which he tried unsuccessfully to 

get G-2 to relinquish the function of air intelligence to his office. Before 

returning to the Pacific, White sent a memo to General McDonald in London, 

at the bottom of which he wrote a postscript, “I have never had an unhappier job 

tho’ few people know it; A-2 will forever suck hind tit in the AAF.”3 That 

thought would have held cold comfort for White’s successor, Maj. Gen. James 

P. Hodges, who got the job September 2, 1944, after his B-24s in France, 

pressed into a tactical role to help the Allied breakout in Normandy, released 

their bombs in confusion away from the bomb line, killing Lt. Gen. Leslie J. 

McNair and a number of others. Hodges’s tenure lasted less than a year, and 

when he left on June 1, 1945, Maj. Gen. Elwood R. Quesada returned from 

Europe and command of the IX TAC to take the job. 

The wartime incumbents of the A-2 office were not chosen at random, nor 

were they without experience for the taxing job. Bissell, for all of his fusty 

personality and the dislike he engendered in people like Kenney and Chennault 

(see Chapters 5 and 6), was in Arnold’s eyes, “an excellent staff officer who 

carefully worked out every operation before he undertook it, or said he could 

not do it.”4 White, during the interwar years, had served as air attach6 to France 

and the Soviet Union. His experience and judgment were so well regarded that 

in August 1939 the chief of the Air Corps’ Plans Division requested he be 

appointed to a board of officers to study “the scope and form of the military 

intelligence required for the initial operations of Air Corps units; as to the 

35 1 
Piercing the Fog 

means of obtaining and processing the information required, and as to the Air 

Corps intelligence procedure.” Despite the embarrassment attendant on General 

Hodges’s transfer from Europe to the A-2 job, he, too, had been requested as 

a member of the August 1939 intelligence study board. Hodges as well as White 

understood the relationship among intelligence collection, analysis, and 

dissemination for air operations.’ 

Arnold, the commanding general who presided over the AAF throughout 

the war, quickly came to appreciate the importance of comprehensive, wellfounded air intelligence. At first he lacked the time to pursue the subject 

extensively and was not privy to all the intelligence that pertained to the AAF. 

Writing after the war, he noted that before the conflict began, “. . . one of the 

most wasteful weaknesses in our whole setup was our lack of a proper Air 

Intelligence Organization. . . . I know now there were American journalists and 

ordinary travelers in Germany who knew more about the Luftwaffe’ s preparations than I, the Assistant Chief of the United States Army Air Corps.” Arnold’s 

postwar assessment of the information gained from the Spanish Civil War was 

that the U.S. Army’s flyers knew less than half of what they should have about 

German air operations. He regretted that the Army had no effective way to 

rectify that situation, since the attach6 system usually provided only the most 

cursory and inadequate reports6 

Before the war, Arnold was busy trying to coax money from Congress and 

obtain support within the Army for greater aircraft production and crew 

training. He did not then have access to the products of what came to be called 

the MAGIC Diplomatic Summaries and to the other decryption efforts that were, 

as yet, extremely limited. As Arnold admitted in his postwar autobiography, he 

did not fully understand the thrust of the Japanese air and naval expansion 

within her mandated Pacific territories. He quickly acquired a greater appreciation of intelligence; it was he who arranged for the aerial photography of 

Japanese islands by B-17s en route to the Philippines in November 1941. In 

1942, when he dispatched Cooper to be Chennault’s chief of staff (Cooper 

simultaneously served as the A-2 in China), Arnold took advantage of Colonel 

Cooper’s prewar experience in Russia. Cooper, the peripatetic adventurer, flyer, 

and motion-picture director, was to learn all he could of the Soviet-Japanese 

situation in Siberia, including the locations of Soviet airfields the United States 

might be able to use. He was to report his information directly and secretly to 

Arn01d.~ 

Throughout the war, Arnold continued his personal intelligence-gathering 

efforts, either through agents like Colonel Cooper or personally in his 

conversations with other commanders or world leaders. The commanding 

general remained displeased with the official arrangement of his A-2’s 

relationship to the War Department’s G-2. The G-2, so he believed, had not 

allowed the AAF’s intelligence office freedom of operation to perform air 

intelligence work as it saw fit because the G-2 feared such duplication would 

352 
Planning the Defeat of Japan 

diminish its own authority and position. Before the war, Arnold noted, G-2 had 

not allowed the AAF to assemble its own target folders on locations in possible 

enemy countries. Later, when the AAF desperately needed such information, the 

service had to seek out knowledgeable civilians who had worked on the 

financing or construction of facilities in Germany and Italy. When Arnold or his 

people had particular trouble getting data on Japan or Japanese-occupied areas, 

he often turned to Brig. Gen. William Donovan, whose OSS he respected, but 

even that source was not overly fruitful. In summary, Arnold came to believe 

that the intelligence departments of the old Army and the old Navy were not 

prepared for the new kind of warfare, nor were they ready to adapt to the needs 

of a large, modem air force in a global conflict. At the same time, the inability 

of the War Department’s G-2 to comprehend the needs of aerial warfare left the 

AAF’s intelligence office in the difficult position of trying to make up for lost 

opportunities while meeting resistance within the Army itself to its growing 

responsibilities. * 

General Arnold’s access to ULTRA information (and access by the people 

on the AAF’s staff in Washington) came slowly. At the time of Pearl Harbor, 

he did not see the decrypted Japanese messages, although he had occasionally 

heard bits and pieces of information in conversations with General Marshall or 

Admiral Stark. After the Japanese attack, the AAF Commanding General 

regularly read the MAGIC Diplomatic Summaries, yet in September 1943, when 

C Section of Special Branch began to draw from ULTRA, appending a military 

and naval supplement to the MAGIC Summary for select readers, Arnold was not 

among them. In February 1944, a separate Japanese (later called the Far East) 

summary appeared along with a European summary, replacing the military and 

naval supplements. Although at some point Arnold and his staff began reading 

the ULTRA-based supplements, the date is unclear, as no records of the specific 

grant of access exist. Originally, only the Chief of Staff, the Army’s Assistant 

Chief of Staff, Operations Plans, and the G-2 received the MAGIC supplements 

and the surnmarie~.~ George Marshall did not during the war grant Arnold 

formal access to ULTRA, but clearly Arnold learned of the effort, probably from 

several sources. It is very difficult to believe, for instance, that George Kenney 

in March 1943 would have talked to his commanding general, whom he had 

known well for many years, described the battle of the Bismarck Sea, and not 

mentioned the origin of MacArthur’s information that had led to the victory. 

Arnold surely would have realized the implications of what he heard. Again, 

when in July 1943, Air Chief Marshal Portal, chief of the RAF’s Air Staff, sent 

his emissary to Arnold’s office to discuss the nature and location of expanded 

German fighter production, most probably the intelligence source for that 

information was stated, if mutedly.” 

Arnold’s lack of complete access to the sensitive intelligence material was 

not the serious impediment it might have been. ULTRA-derived operational 

intelligence went from Great Britain to Washington, but only slowly at first. In 

353 
Piercing the Fog 

the fall of 1943, cryptographic intelligence played a far less important role in 

Washington than it did in Europe. For the AAF staff, concerned more with 

logistics, training, and deployment matters, this hardly constituted a serious 

flaw in their day-to-day work or in the AAF’s headquarters operations. 

From his Washington office, Arnold kept a close eye on his men in the 

field. The air commanders in war theaters, and Allied airmen as well, could 

expect to hear from him if he believed their judgment wanting. In the autumn 

of 1943, he became exasperated at what he saw as the inadequate use of combat 

intelligence during the Regensburg raid. Before the attack on Regensburg, 

Arnold had been pushing Ira Eaker to step up the level of bombing directed at 

GAF production sources as a way of reducing Germany’s air power prior to an 

invasion of Europe. At the same time, Arnold had sought to have Portal use his 

RAF fighter force offensively, to help protect the bombers as far as their range 

would allow. On October 14, 1943, he wrote Portal to express some of his 

unhappiness with the progress of the CBO. After chiding Portal for not 

following up on his previous pleas for greater fighter involvement, Arnold 

remonstrated: 

In the case of the Regensburg raid [of August 17, in which the Eighth Air 

Force lost thirty-six B-17~1, for example, it was known in England that 

fighters had moved south from Denmark and north from Brest to German 

and northern French bases to meet the Regensburg bombers and to stop 

them on their withdrawal. At the time, we apparently had the great 

majority of the German fighter force on known airdromes refueling at 

known periods of time. Nothing was done about it. Why should not all of 

our medium bombers and vast numbers of your Spits (equipped with belly 

tanks and bombs) have smashed the Germans while they were pinned to 

their refueling airdromes?” 

The difficulty of organizing such a precise fighter and medium-bomber attack 

on a truly fleeting target, and the possibility that doing so might have tipped off 

the Lufhyaffe to the compromise of its encrypted radio transmissions, seems not 

to have influenced Arnold’s opinion. The biting tone of the letter was pure Hap 

Arnold, reflecting the pressure under which he operated and his ever-present 

drive for accomplishment. The letter also showed his wish that intelligence data 

be used promptly and advantageously, an attitude which he retained throughout 

the war. It is possible, and perhaps likely, that this incident between Arnold and 

Portal brought Arnold’s full, formal initiation into the ULTRA world. Based on 

Arnold’s remarks to Portal, it is doubtful that he was fully aware of the extent, 

function, and rules regarding the sensitivity of ULTRA in mid-October. Yet he 

could not have been excluded indefinitely, and Portal, or perhaps Spaatz seeking 

to avert future conflict, may have suggested Arnold’s entry into ULTRA 

knowledge. At some point after October 1943 (possibly in December 1943 or 

January 1944), the AAF’s commanding general and his A-2 regularly saw and 

understood the origin of the special signals intelligence attachments to the 

MAGIC Summaries.” 

354 
Planning the Defeat of Japan 

Knowledge of ULTRA was not a panacea by any means. The A-2 knew, but 

could not tell his staff, who continued to labor at projects that brought them into 

contact and conflict with those in the G-2 office who had broader knowledge 

of many aspects of air intelligence. At the same time, and mitigating some of 

the problems, improvements in the systematic handling and preparation of 

intelligence information sped the delivery of analytical products to the AAF’ s 

field commanders. 

Organization and Interservice Relationships 

The Air Staff reorganization of March 29, 1943, greatly broadened the A-2 

office’s scope of affairs, giving the air staff‘s intelligence operation new stature 

and opening avenues for expanded work. The combat liaison branch of the 

Operational Intelligence Division became a separate division teamed with 

training coordination. The former Administrative Division disappeared and a 

new Historical Division came into being. The latter division represented AAF 

headquarters’ method of meeting President Roosevelt’s and General Arnold’s 

directions to record the operations and activities of the war, something that had 

not been done in the conflict in Europe until after the 1917-1918 American 

involvement there. Where the reform of the War Department in March 1942 had 

created equal AAF, Army Ground Forces, and Army Service Forces, these 

changes one year later resolved some of the nagging problems that various air 

staff offices believed impeded their ability to function effecti~e1y.I~ 

The AAF Intelligence Service (AFIS), the operating agency working under 

the A-2 since 1942, lost its separate identity. From March 1942, the AFIS and 

the A-2 had some overlapping functions; in the spring of 1943, Arnold 

combined those AFIS activities most directly related to staff intelligence with 

the A-2. Some other tasks went elsewhere. For example, the supervision of 

policies related to the safeguarding of military information and the processing 

of security clearances for training shifted to the Air Provost Marshal’s office. 

With few other changes, the March 1943 reorganization shaped the A-2 office’s 

form and function for the remainder of the war years. Unlike the 1943 

reorganization, lesser changes of 1944 and 1945 within the A-2 office related 

to the need to change focus periodically to provide data to the operating 

commands, primarily the Twentieth Air Force, engaged in the strategic 

campaign in the Pacific war.I4 The A-2 was the Twentieth Air Force’s A-2 as 

well, and much of the Air Staff‘s intelligence work was related to the B-29 

operation. The chart on the facing page shows the A-2 office’s functions after 

the 1943 reorganization. 

Through 1943, many senior officers working in military and naval 

intelligence in Washington saw the duplication of work by several agencies. 

The overlap was especially evident in the relations between the WDGS’s 

355 
Organization: A-2, US. Army Air Forces 

May 29,1943 

Deputy Executive Projects 

AC/AS Intelligence Special 

Off ice of Technical Off ice t Information Services 

Operational 

Intellicrence 

Divisk 

Target 

Information 

Photointelligence 

Air Movements 

Counten'ntel- Intelligence 

ligence Information 

Division Division 

I I 

Systems Control Collection and 

Requirements 

Special Liaison Intelligence 

Liaison 

Current 

Tactical and 

Technical 

Duplication 

Service 

Combat Liaison Historical 

and Training Division 

Division 

I I 

Combat Current 

Liaison Narratives 

Training Administrative 

Requirements History 

Operational 

History 

Biographical 

Source: USAF Collection 142.01 

356 
Planning the Defeat of Japan 

Assistant Chief of Staff, G-2, whose MIS had a substantial air analysis unit, and 

the office of the AC/AS, Intelligence. In some areas, the two intelligence offices 

complemented one another’s work; in other areas, they clashed. The MIS air 

unit used the closely controlled ULTRA intercepts to create estimates of enemy 

and neutral air OB, which it provided to the Air Staff in the form of finished 

studies and reports. For the AAF, the question revolved around more than the 

bureaucratic intricacies of afew agencies in and near Washington. Many airmen 

saw G-2’s position as contributing to their subservience. The March 1943 Air 

Staff reorganization centralized the AM’S intelligence in one office. As a 

consequence, the A-2 could improve his product and tend to problems outside 

his office, such as the restrictions that the War Department’s G-2 imposed on 

his domain.15 

In the autumn of 1943, after he returned from India, Clayton Bissell became 

the AAF’s chief intelligence officer. Bissell held the job for only a few months. 

During his tenure from October until early January 1944 he proposed to Maj. 

Gen. George V. Strong, the War Department G-2, that the responsibilities for 

joint intelligence matters related to Japanese air intelligence be more clearly 

defined for each of the services. Strong moved slowly on the proposal because 

he and Bissell could not agree on how to handle sensitive radio intercept data 

and compile Japanese Army air OB. The air OB came from radio intercept, and 

its compilation had to be controlled similarly. The Army was most reluctant to 

imperil the security of this prized source by allowing an excessive amount of 

direct knowledge and access. In January, Bissell replaced Strong as G-2, with 

Brig. Gen. Thomas D. White named as A-2. Now the G-2 and A-2 were both 

airmen, and both saw the chance to improve interagency relationships. Bissell 

dropped the radio intercept and air OB questions from the joint intelligence 

proposal, and together he and White gained support of the JCS’s JIC for a 

coordinating group, the Ad Hoc Committee, to oversee air intelligence. That 

group would soon include RAF representation.16 

On February 24, 1944, Air Vice Marshal F. F. Inglis, the RAF’s ACAS (I), 

and Rear Adm. R. E. Schuirman, the U.S. Navy’s Director of Intelligence, with 

Bissell and White, signed the air intelligence working agreement. By its terms, 

an Allied, primarily EUF, center in London controlled air intelligence about 

Germany. A similar setup in Washington was to handle information on the 

Japanese, but it was almost entirely American in staffing and control. The 

agreement recognized the existing situation based on the two Anglo-American 

ULTRA intercept centers, but it did not itself address the sensitive cryptanalysis 

questions. Both the Americans and the RAF would keep all interested parties 

of both countries, especially theater commanders, fully apprised of crucial air 

intelligence matters. The new agreement also formalized the preeminent place 

of the Americans in the Pacific war’s intelligence arrangements. The AngloAmerican agreement did not greatly affect the positions of the air intelligence 

offices in MacArthur’s command, in Nimitz’s Central Pacific, or in the CBI. In 

357 
Piercing the Fog 

the first two cases, MacArthur and Nimitz were very senior officers with strong 

personalities; their command structures were too well insulated and tightly 

controlled by their staffs. In the last instance, CBI was too far removed from 

Washington; both the Americans and British were too busy elsewhere, and Lord 

Louis Montbatten’s South East Asia Command had a firm hold on affairs in his 

region.I7 

The agreement was the basis for regularizing over time the methods of 

handling and securing ULTRA and conforming it to the manner that the British 

had developed at BP. Where handling systems in the SWPA had previously 

been rather lax in comparison with those found in Europe and the Mediterranean, the agreement formed the basis for new, more stringent and more 

technically secure procedures that used approved War Department transmission 

equipment and circuits. New sensitivity about handling ULTRA was followed by 

the arrival from MIS in Washington of Army SSOs to serve in many more 

places in the Pacific and Far East than they had served previously. At last, SSOs 

could now be found with MacArthur’s GHQ, at Kenney’s FEAF headquarters, 

and at the headquarters of both the Fifth and Thirteenth Air Forces. In midNovember 1944, the SSO assigned to GHQ SWPA, Capt. Phil Graham, wrote 

to Colonel Clarke in Washington that Kenney was very happy with the 

additional service, especially the direct access to OB compilations and the 

special studies such as those on jet propulsion and aviation fuel additives like 

butanol that had now become available. At first hesitant about the intrusion into 

his territory, Graham noted that FEAF’s A-2, Colonel Cain, became a willing, 

even happy, user of the MIS services. Understanding the nature of Japanese 

alcohol and butanol production led to a Fifth Air Force campaign to destroy 

such manufacturing sites on Formosa. By mid-July 1945,75 percent of alcohol 

production capacity on Formosa had been eliminated, and Fifth Air Force units 

were paying special attention to shipping the product to Japan. RAF SLUs also 

arrived in Australia to give Australian forces their own ULTRA transmission 

systems, to allow Australia direct access to ULTRA data from London, and to 

lessen Australia’s dependence on what had become the American-dominated 

intelligence operation at GHQ SWPA. Although some might have looked upon 

the RAF SLUs in Australia as a violation of the agreement, more than anything 

else, the service they provided was largely one of secure transmission, an 

extension of the British Commonwealth’s facilities from India. The RAF SLUs 

did, however, accompany Australian forces to Morotai and New Guinea late in 

1944.18 

The agreement did not automatically clarify questions of authority in 

Washington, nor did all of these changes occur in rapid order. After the signing 

of the document, several weeks passed during which the intelligence staffs 

haggled over responsibility, until the members of the JCS JIC finally settled the 

issue in July 1944. The Americans divided air intelligence assessment tasks 

among the various service offices they believed best able to deal with specific 

358 
Planning the Defeat of Japan 

areas. AAF intelligence acquired primary responsibility for the following: 

enemy airfield information and reporting; air facilities and air route data 

through Alaska ‘and Siberia to China and through Asia or Africa to Japan; 

aviation target material; and target damage assessment of strategic targets 

(except shipping). The Army G-2 became responsible for aerial photointerpretation for the SWPA and Asiatic theaters, for POW interrogation, for processing 

captured Japanese documents, and for aircraft nameplate analysis (i.e., 

determining production rate and location of manufacture). The Director of 

Naval Intelligence dealt with air facilities and route data across the Pacific to 

Japan and China; for building terrain and relief models (used for crew target 

recognition training); for the status and target damage assessment of Japanese 

shipping (a natural outgrowth of naval ULTRA); for aerial photointerpretation 

covering North, Central, and South Pacific theaters; and for technical intelligence (i.e., the study of captured Japanese equipment and weapons).” 

Many of the senior AAF staff officers in Washington thought the agreement 

satisfactory if only because it protected the most important AAF concerns, most 

notably, strategic intelligence to support the B-29 program. Some objected, 

with one of the strongest opinions coming from General McDonald, Spaatz’s 

intelligence chief in London. In June 1944, McDonald had learned of the 

agreement before all of the organizational details had been settled when he saw 

an Air Ministry directive on the subject. The British officer who composed the 

paper in London, Group Capt. A. J. Miley, was under the impression that the 

agreement gave the U.S. Navy “primary responsibility on behalf of both British 

and U.S. Services for intelligence on the Japanese Air Forces.” McDonald, 

seeing the official British document, became livid. He wrote White a highly 

critical letter (apparently with Spaatz’s approval and support), noting that he 

and others found “it difficult to see the propriety of the Navy’s position in this 

over-all air intelligence [arrangement].” McDonald believed that the AAF had 

by far the best U.S. air intelligence organization, and he held that giving the 

show to the Navy was “an anachronism almost too discordant to suffer.” 

McDonald’s real concern, and possibly also that of Spaatz and others in 

USSTAF, came at the end of the letter when he said, “It seems to me that when 

a Service gives away dominion over its intelligence . . . it has in fact given up 

its independence.” Independence for the AAF was the burr under McDonald’s 

saddle blanket, and infringement pained him. The airmen’s unhappiness with 

domination by the Army had come to the surface as McDonald saw the AAF 

once more on the outside. General White settled the immediate problem with 

a call to the director of intelligence at the British Joint Staff Mission across 

town, and he cabled McDonald the same night to point out the error and calm 

the people in Europe. That did not resolve the irritation at the more deep-seated 

issues.20 The problem of G-2-A-2 relations remained at the surface of the A-2 

staff‘s work throughout the war. 

359 
Piercing the Fog 

White was quite aggressive in trying to set up his A-2 operation as a 

separate and independent function, but it was an almost constant struggle. On 

February 7,1944, White wrote to the Chief of the Air Staff to comment on both 

General Arnold’s and his own lack of confidence in and dissatisfaction with the 

AAF’s air intelligence. Arnold’s specific feelings of unease centered on 

preparation for the B-29 air campaign against Japan, upon which he had staked 

his reputation and the Air Forces’ future. Arnolc had earlier made these feelings 

known when he had assigned the COA to review the A-2’s work. Some in the 

A-2 office, including possibly Sorenson himself, resented the intrusion of the 

outside analysts. The commanding general’s feelings probably contributed to 

Sorenson’s reassignment in October 1943, but Arnold continued to find fault 

with his intelligence office. The extent to which Arnold’s unhappiness, if any, 

contributed to Bissell’s short stay as A-2 is hard to judge. He was replaced by 

White in January 1944.’l It was White who set about trying to effect a major 

refocusing of the A-2 office toward the war against Japan and postwar 

operations. 

White went further than just seconding Arnold’s apprehensions, expressing 

his belief that the A-2 had too many extraneous functions and an excessive and 

needless interest in Europe, where McDonald’s people were doing good work 

with the RAF, and that it was poorly prepared to assure good quality air 

intelligence analyses. Hardly had the ink dried on the first letter when White 

again wrote to the Chief of Air Staff to discuss his views of the relationship 

between G-2 and A-2. In the latter correspondence, White pointed out that 

Arnold needed a completely integrated and uninhibited intelligence staff, and 

until he got such, he could not be a full partner on the JCS. Whereas the Army 

and Navy chiefs had independent intelligence, White contended that the AAF 

was largely dependent upon G-2 and was organized on a pre- 1941 basis. By the 

latter remark, he seemed to mean that the A-2 lacked permanent status within 

the Army and that it was not equal to G-2 and ONI. In closing, White advocated 

the transfer of all air intelligence responsibility from G-2 to A-2. The proposal 

faced an enormous bureaucratic resistance from well-entrenched opponents. 

White’s proposal failed, for to have allowed the transfer would also have raised 

the question of an independent Air Force. That idea was premature in the midst 

of a war for which the military had just become organized and fully effective.’* 

White’s focus, and Arnold’s too, remained on the war with Japan. They 

believed that long-range air power could be decisive in the Pacific and that 

demonstrating it could set the stage for postwar Air Force independence. To 

pursue that issue and to plan appropriately, the two men needed adequate 

strategic targeting information, and their subordinate commanders and A-2s in 

the field needed good tactical intelligence. In an air war, where both sides had 

fast-moving, destructive operations, radio intelligence became increasingly 

important. 
Planning the Defeat of Japan 

Army Air Forces’ Y-Service 

Shortly after the war began, the Army had created and assigned to the AAF five 

signal intelligence companies. The AAF found these companies satisfactory so 

long as they worked within the United States, where they served as stationary 

operating agencies of numbered air forces. Their primary function was to 

intercept encrypted, coded, and voice transmissions; they also performed radio 

direction finding. It soon became apparent that these companies could be 

valuable overseas in gathering air intelligence; they began moving to combat 

areas in 1943, where AAF headquarters attached them to numbered air force 

headquarters. Once in the combat areas, the commanders realized that the table 

of organization dictated companies that were clumsy and ill-suited to the mobile 

type of air warfare of the early 1940s. By the summer of 1943, the AC/AS, 

Intelligence staff believed that a number of changes should be implemented. To 

start with, Maj. Virgil 0. Johnson returned to Washington from New Guinea 

where he had served as a radio intercept expert in General Whitehead’s Fifth 

Air Force advanced headquarters. Johnson’s new task was to help formulate 

plans for an entirely new AAF radio intercept organization. Both G-2 and the 

Signal Security Agency gave initial, informal approval to the undertaking; the 

Army’s intelligence staff knew that they needed to make some changes to better 

support the field air units, and overseas commanders were anxious to have 

better radio intercept operations. Johnson, on his arrival in Washington, 

delivered a letter from Whitehead, pleading for much improved support. 

Whitehead was not alone, for late in 1943 Brig. Gen. Howard Davidson sent 

Hap Arnold a letter from Tenth Air Force in India seeking better intercept 

assets. Although Davidson had a radio intercept squadron, it could not do what 

he needed because it lacked Japanese language specialists who could translate 

and make useful the informaticin overheard by the operators. Davidson closed 

his letter by telling Arnold, “The Japanese are great talkers over the radio [while 

in flight], but unfortunately we have no way of knowing what they are 

saying.”23 

The resulting Air Staff actions altered the original companies into what 

were known as radio squadrons, mobile-units that could move rapidly with the 

area air headquarters and do more of the things that air generals needed. The 

new squadrons were larger, acting as would an air force signal intelligence 

service or signal security agency unit, providing not only intercept and direction 

finding but also translation, analysis, and evaluation for the air commander. 

Each squadron served an air headquarters that was unique as to region, mission, 

and composition; thus each squadron differed in what it did and how well it did 

it. Typical, if one could use that word fur one of these units, was the 1st Radio 

Squadron (Mobile), which in August 1943 superseded the 138th Signal Radio 

Intercept Company in New Guinea. The squadron was fortunate in that it 

inherited much that SWPA’s CB had helped set up for the AAFSWPA 

361 
Piercing the Fog 

Maj. Gen. Howard C. Davidson 

operation. At the air headquarters the squadron had seventy-nine men. Intercept 

operators fed messages captured in the clear or in low-grade code or cipher to 

the analysis section, which in turn translated or decoded for the intelligence 

evaluation section. From there, the evaluators sent information to Fifth Air 

Force headquarters, to the AA command, or to the air defense fighter controllers. Messages of higher grade cipher were transferred to Brisbane for 

decryption and analysis. Other sections of the squadron repaired equipment, 

encrypted and transmitted messages, or performed various support functions. 

Detachments from the squadron served Thirteenth Air Force or various 

advanced air headquarters in New Guinea or the Philippine Islands.24 

In addition to the decryption work in the Philippines, the 1st Radio 

Squadron’s direction-finding teams ran an around-the-clock listening service 

that covered the Japanese Army and Navy air forces’ operations. Overhearing 

enemy transmissions, translators noted the content. Direction-finding teams 

simultaneously reported locations of probable enemy airfields or the bearing of 

approaching aircraft beyond radar range so that operations planners could 

schedule air strikes or direct fighters to intercept. Similarly, in Europe after Dday, the 3d Radio Squadron worked as an adjunct of the Ninth Air Force, 

feeding reports of radio intercepts to the A-2. Detachments of the squadron did 

the same for the IX and XIX TACs’ A-2s and for the intelligence officers of 

subordinate air units. This arrangement of squadrons deployed worldwide 

formed, in effect, a signals intelligence service that remained at the disposal of 

the air force commanders. All radio squadrons could and did pass encrypted 

information at the air commanders’ behest, and they scrutinized the various air 

362 
Planning the Defeat of Japan 

forces’ radio practices to detect possible faulty American tendencies that could 

provide information to the enemy. Such overseas units, scattered across Europe, 

the Mediterranean, CBI, and the Pacific, formed the basis of an AAF tactical YService. Other squadrons, like the 6th, assigned to Fourth Air Force at Hamilton 

Field, and stationed in the hills above Daly City, California, immediately south 

of San Francisco, worked on a more strategic level. This squadron intercepted 

Japanese and other countries’ transmissions and forwarded them to Arlington 

Hall Station in Virginia for decryption and analy~is.’~ 

On a more extensive plane, the A-2 increasingly drew radio intelligence 

from MIS in Washington after the spring of 1943, when the Allies began to 

have more success with Japanese Army cryptology. Most of the decrypted 

message information, except for that read by the A-2 himself (who became an 

ULTRA recipient), was in finished form, i.e., it came to the Air Staff as reports 

or assessments of German or Japanese capabilities and intentions. Within the 

A-2 office by war’s end was a small department, the Special Sources Section, 

Collection Branch, that received and handled MAGIC diplomatic decrypts but 

not the more general, operationally related ULTRA. Access to the MAGIC 

material was tightly controlled. Although the Collection Branch’s chief and the 

executive officer knew of the material’s existence, neither had authorization to 

see it. The most important for the A-2 staff was, of course, ULTRA related to the 

Japanese air war, as that part of the conflict was A-2’s main task. Despite the 

increased use of the ULTRA source, the AAF’s intelligence analysts remained 

frustrated throughout the final two years of the conflict, both because of the 

method by which MIS conveyed Japanese ULTRA to them, and because of the 

secrecy and restrictions imposed on its use. 

MAGIC decrypts, rewritten for use by the A-2, tended to cover specific 

topics extracted from regular diplomatic radio traffic, whereas the rest of the 

ULTRA resembled that being taken by the British from German messages. 

Because ULTRA was too fragmentary in its decrypted form, G-2 could not 

prepare analyses or reports from a particular message or even groups of 

messages. The best intelligence from Japanese Army ULTRA was very often 

derived from the long process of decrypting, collating, analyzing, and refining, 

very much like that which the MIS’s Anglo-American counterpart carried on at 

BP. Final information, e.g., the OB summaries, thus reached A-2 without 

notation of source, and without explanation of the reasons for restrictions on its 

use and dissemination. Fueling their grumbling was not knowing the reasons for 

the reports’ formats and the constraints on freedom to use the data as the A-2 

staff saw fit. The worst part, of course, was that the normal air intelligence 

officers could not be let in on the secret, even by the A-2 himself, who knew 

the source?6 The A-2 analysts, not knowing the origin, could not trust the 

product. 

Still, secrecy and source protection alone did not explain entirely the 

dissatisfaction, for Hodges and Quesada, themselves ULTRA readers, made 

363 
Piercing the Fog 

similar observations. Much of the problem centered on the uncertain availability 

of the material related to work that was vital to the A-2 but over which the AAF 

had no control. An excellent example of this type of report was the air OB 

compilations, prepared by a small group of officers in Special Branch. In April 

1944 this function became even more centralized and further from the AAF’s 

control and understanding when preparation of the weekly Japanese air estimate 

shifted from G-2’s air unit to Special Branch. Beginning in November, Special 

Branch published and circulated to the Air Staff a combined Japanese ArmyNavy air strength list. The list had appended to it a detailed section on estimates 

not only of Japanese air capabilities but also of intentions, based upon the 

current situation. Other reports to the Air Staff from MIS contained information 

on Japanese plans and operations, major changes in air dispositions, new types 

of aircraft, weapons, defenses, tactics, supply, and aircraft production and 

replacement. Much of the data on Japanese shipping that made possible the air 

and submarine antishipping campaign came from the MAGIC Diplomatic 

Summary and other military ULTRA assessments. Reference to the combined 

Japanese Army-Navy air forces report was the only way in which planners in 

Washington, Honolulu, and elsewhere could grasp fully the true state of 

Japanese air power. The irony was that from early 1943 on, as air intelligence 

improved, the Japanese became less and less able to carry on air warfare. The 

heavy losses of their best pilots in the long and bitter Solomon Islands campaign 

greatly reduced the overall experience of the flyers. The declining level of 

Japanese capabilities was not clearly perceived everywhere. The issue at hand 

was winning the war, and the A-2’s people chafed under their perception that 

they were restrained from meeting the challenge and their frustration of 

knowing that another air intelligence staff, whose size and sources they did not 

fully comprehend, was doing the work that they should have been doing.27 

Far East Target Analysis 

At the time that the AAF organized the Eighth Air Force and Arnold sent 

Spaatz to England, the AAF also delineated responsibility for studying potential 

targets. Information for industrial objectives in Europe was to be handled by the 

Eighth and the RAF. The Far East, and especially the Japanese home islands, 

was the province of the A-2, although some European analyses would be done 

by the Air Staff. Theater A-2s in the Pacific and CBI exercised their own local 

authority on problems peculiar to their areas or operations. In March 1943, the 

Air Staff received from the AIS its first target study of Japan, Korea, and 

Manchuria, recommending fifty-seven key targets from a priority list including 

aircraft production, nonferrous metals, naval bases and shipyards, iron and steel, 

petroleum, chemicals, automotive assembly, and rubber processing. The basic 

information supporting the intelligence services study came from the BEW and 

364 
Planning the Defeat of Japan 

MID. At the urging of General Fairchild and over Sorenson’s objections, who 

thought his men’s study sufficient, the COA also began to analyze the target 

vulnerabilities of Japanese industry. Throughout the study, the COA and A-2 

worked together, exchanging information and opinions. Colonel Moss, an A-2 

officer highly regarded by people like Haywood Hansell, also worked with the 

COA and was a regular link between the two organizations.28 The COA applied 

the same methodology it had used in scrutinizing Germany the previous year. 

For the Japan study, senior committee members believed it necessary to have 

naval representation on the analytical teams, so they approached the office of 

Admiral Ernest J. King’s staff chief. The Navy agreed to the idea, but it was 

slow to appoint members. Not until mid-July 1943 did three naval officers join 

the main committee. As an illustration of the range of experience on the 

committee, one of the men, Capt. H. W. Wick, was career Navy; another, 

Comdr. Francis Bitter, had come to war service from MIT and was an air 

technical analyst in the office of the Deputy Chief of Naval Operations, Air. The 

third, Lt. Comdr. Albert E. Hindmarsh, was normally a professor of history at 

Harvard. Hindmarsh was then serving in the ONI.29 

The committee’s analytic approach for the German and Japanese studies 

has already been described. One difference between the Japanese and German 

studies was their consideration of the possibility of attacks on urban areas. In 

fact, the area attack idea had been under quite serious discussion by COA 

members since May 1943. The idea also had support within the A-2 office, 

which prepared a report for the COA on the expected effects of incendiary 

attacks on Japanese industry. Mr. Horatio Bond, of the Office of Civilian 

Defense, and Mr. R. N. Ewell, of the National Defense Research Committee, 

worked with the A-2 staff preparing the substance of the report. The A-2 report 

reasoned that “Japanese war industry was more highly concentrated in a few key 

cities than was the case in Germany, that these cities were far more inflammable 

than those in Germany, and that 1690 tons of incendiaries, effectively placed, 

would be sufficient to destroy 20 of the most important cities of Japan, having 

a total population of 16,600,000.” The report went on to state that these urban 

areas contained 74 percent of the priority sites that appeared in the A-2’s March 

1943 report on Japanese targets. The full committee, not having independently 

analyzed the whole question of incendiary city attacks, simply adopted the A-2 

report. But the COA found it difficult to express in precise terms the effect of 

urban area attacks, holding that such targets should be considered important, 

“though not one taking priority over precision target systems.” There appeared 

throughout the record of the committee’s examinations a recurrent theme: a 

paucity of precise information about Japan.30 

The COA’s report and recommendations placing the destruction of coking 

facilities high on the air operations target list became a topic of discussion at the 

Joint Staff plans office in Washington while the Cairo conference was underway 

in November 1943. Haywood Hansell, in Cairo, had requested confirmation of 

365 
Piercing the Fog 

a Joint Staff planners’ cable to him and others at the conference, expressing 

doubt as to the COA’s conclusions on the effects of attacking coke ovens.* 

After conferring with Colonel Moss of A-2 and COA and with General Bissell, 

Moss’s new superior at A-2, the Joint Staff plans office replied to Hansell that 

destruction of three coke plants representing 61 percent of Japan’s capacity 

would immediately reduce steel production by 25 percent. This would result in 

an estimated 53 percent reduction in Japanese steel production for the twelve 

months after destruction. Certain members of the COA believed that the cable 

to Cairo was inaccurate and that it understated both the number of plants that 

should be hit and the effects of such attacks. Nevertheless, the confirming cable 

from the Joint Staff plans office, based upon A-2’s approval, helped Hansell 

establish the MATTERHORN plan for B-29 operations in China and India.3’ 

Shortly thereafter, the Air Staff intelligence office and the COA renewed 

their rivalry. On December 4,1943, the Joint War Plans Committee of the JCS 

sought from the JCS’s JIC an analysis of the optimum timing and deployment 

of B-29s against the Japanese targets listed in the COA’s report. The JIC, in 

turn, referred the question to A-2 and to Commander Bitter at the office of the 

Deputy Chief of Naval Operations, Air. The A-2’s representative, at a meeting 

on December 18, argued against the conclusion reached by the COA on coking 

plants as targets, preferring instead to place primary emphasis on selected 

electric power facilities. The discussions continued until April, when the joint 

plans office prepared a formal position paper for the JCS stating that the best 

early use of the B-29s was attacking coke ovens in Manchuria and oil refineries 

in the NEI, primarily at Palembang. Essentially the joint planners overlooked 

the A-2’s wishes and endorsed the COA recommendations on shipping, the 

petroleum industry in the NEI, iron and steel in the form of coke ovens, urban 

industrial areas, aircraft plants, antifriction bearings, and electronic^.^^ The 

problem remained of finding and identifying precise target sites. 

The COA’s conclusion late in 1943 that the Allies possessed insufficient 

information about Japan to go beyond general target objective studies and make 

careful target selections assumed greater significance in light of the AAF’s 

operational experience in Europe. The precision bombardment of Germany had 

not succeeded to the extent that the air war planners had hoped, in large measure 

due to difficulties of weather and because German defenses impeded the use of 

optical bombsights. The Norden sights were not always effective from the 

*Col. Perera, one of the few full-time members of the COA, intimated in 

memoirs drafted long after ,the war that the first cable to Cairo came at the 

instigation of some in A-2 who opposed the COA’s activity. Perera, a Boston 

attorney in civilian life, continued in his memoirs to explore very guardedly the 

tense relations between the A-2 office and the COA. Perera believed that 

Sorenson’s opposition to the COA led to his replacement, perhaps at the instigation or urging of Brig. Gen. Laurence S. Kuter, the AC/AS, Plans. Perera, “Washington 

and War Years,” passim. 

366 
Planning the Defeat of Japan 

altitudes at which the B-17s and B-24s flew as they evaded German fighters 

and AA fire. Newly developed radar bomb sights had not improved bombing 

accuracy. Radar’was an immature technology, radar displays were inexact, and 

systems were too new to be well understood by the crews who used them. The 

equipment did not always perform as expected and could not compensate for the 

many problems the bombardiers faced. In the months’ long effort to reduce the 

German synthetic oil refinery complex at Merseburg-Leuna, for example, the 

use of radar did not overcome problems presented by clouds, undercast, or 

German smoke screens that covered much of the area around the complex. 

Since the B-29s were to be equipped with optical and radar aiming devices 

similar to those used in Europe, the AAF’s intelligence analysts and planners 

had to understand what factors would affect operations over Japan. Japan’s 

weather (knowledge of which was a critical piece of air intelligence) was every 

bit as unreliable as the weather in northern Europe. Because the aircraft coming 

off the production lines represented an enormous investment both in terms of 

dollars and personal credibility, Arnold could not afford to have them stand 

idle.33 

As the B-29 formations gained training experience and the time for the air 

campaign against Japan drew closer, A-2 officers realized they lacked proper 

target folders of the Far East. Such folders as existed had to be revised to 

incorporate new material and to respond to requests from field units, especially 

the Fourteenth Air Force which lacked extensive analysis and production 

capability. In the spring of 1944, the A-2’s Far East Analysis Branch of the 

Analysis Division headed by Lt. Col. DeForest Van Slyck began work on a 

comprehensive revision effort, but time was short and growing shorter. Hansel1 

needed objective folders of specific targets, and he desired that the A-2 office 

prepare a series of large-scale base maps of objective areas from which target 

charts could be produced in the field. The gathering and analysis of data 

required the services of offices outside of A-2, such as the OSS, the U.S. 

Foreign Economic Administration, G-2’s MID, Naval Intelligence, and the Air 

Ministry, among others. Added to the press of time was a dearth of people to do 

the work and a dependence upon other government agencies (principally MID 

and the Coast and Geodetic Survey) for printing the necessary material.34 

The MID’s New York office, although little known, played a key part in 

gathering target intelligence data. A number of U.S. institutions had had 

extensive dealings with the many Americans who had lived in Europe or 

worked with German companies. At Colonel Moss’s suggestion, the New York 

office set out to find the companies, banks, executives, or engineers who knew 

their counterparts in Germany. Banks that had loaned money to companies in 

Axis or occupied countries, for example, had extensive maps, diagrams, or 

information about the facilities for which the money had been intended. At 

MID’s request, this information came out of the files for minute scrutiny and 

use in objective folder preparation. People who knew the regions in question 

367 
Piercing the Fog 

gave the benefit of their experience to the military. For Europe, the information 

was extensive, but not so for Japan where few Americans had lived or worked. 

While German emigrees held important positions in the United States, most 

who had immigrated from Japan were working-class people. As a general rule, 

the Japanese-Americans were not trusted, and whatever information they may 

have had was not so well e~ploited.3~ 

The A-2 staff had built good working relationships with the other services 

in Washington, and despite the nagging annoyance of the Air Forces’ senior 

officers on the question of service independence, the objective folder and target 

production effort moved ahead toward the November 1944 goal. The growing 

interagency effort that represented the Japanese intelligence project led the 

JCS’s Ad Hoc Committee, originally created to settle the problems associated 

with dividing the Japanese intelligence effort among the services, to propose 

more closely integrated work on aviation target material and target damage 

assessment. By mid-May 1944, the Ad Hoc Committee had recommended that 

these two functions be done within the A-2 office rather than by a new 

committee or agency, with the consequent bureaucratic tangles and delays. A-2 

was the logical location since the AAF’s long-range and very long-range 

bombers would consume the target documentation. In mid-May 1944, Van 

Slyck and an associate, Maj. Philip G. Bower, met with representatives of the 

Director of Naval Intelligence to lay the groundwork for cooperation. The Navy 

intended to prepare target charts of Japan for use by its carrier aircraft, using 

AAF information. The Navy’s plan included employing the target numbering 

system of A-2, and the naval officers at the meeting suggested the need for a 

common map-grid numbering system. The common grid would not only 

simplify joint intelligence preparation and map and chart production, it would 

allow specific instructions to be sent in short form to all users by cable or radio, 

thus increasing the services’ ability to coordinate attack plans.36 

The work of the Ad Hoc Committee on Joint Service Intelligence led the 

JCS to study the worth of a more formal organization for air intelligence of 

Japan. In September 1944, several recommendations aimed at expediting and 

streamlining target information led to the creation of the Joint Target Analysis 

Group (shortened to “Joint Target Group” the following month). The JTG had 

the mission of integrating and coordinating preattack and postattack intelligence 

analyses of air targets in the war against Japan. It was also part of the A-2’s 

office, thus keeping central analysis within an existing organization. An AAF 

brigadier general, John A. Samford, in a new position of Deputy AC/AS for 

Intelligence for Targets, headed the JTG; all of the group’s personnel came from 

existing offices of the services and agencies whose work it performed. For 

example, the A-2’s Analysis Division handed over to the JTG a substantial 

portion of its Far East and Tactical and Technical Branches, including the air 

target material and air target damage assessment work previously addressed by 

the Ad Hoc Committee. The Navy added a number of similar functions. The 

368 
Planning the Defeat of Japan 

JTG did all of its work in the name of Arnold as Commanding General, AAF. 

A special panel of consultants stood ready to offer advice. This consultative 

group comprised several people from the COA, including Colonel McCormack 

of G-2 whose unique sources Of ULTRA information would be most important. 

In charge of the panel was Dr. Edward Bowles, Arnold’s science advisor, who 

had contributed greatly to the design and use of airborne radar bombing aids and 

other electronic warfare advan~es.~’ 

The services saw the JTG as an organization created for a specific 

task-assessing information for the aerial attack on Japan. The group had no 

table of organization; its member agencies, primarily from the AAF and Navy, 

contributed personnel at the request of the AC/AS, Intelligence. The group was 

an analytical body charged with making recommendations on Japanese targets 

and giving advice to field commanders; it could not direct any actions, but 

Samford could keep contact with any service or office he felt appropriate. The 

group’s organization and functional authority left it a creature of AAF 

headquarters and a true staff extension of the AC/AS, Intelligence, with General 

Arnold and his intelligence chief as, in effect, executive agents overseeing the 

JTG’s operation. For Arnold and the AAF, the importance of the JTG’s creation 

and position was a clear recognition of air power’s importance and of the AAF’s 

and the B-29’s key roles in air warfare plans of the United States. 

The JCS directive gave the JTG a broad selection of responsibilities and 

functions including preparation and distribution of a list of all air targets 

important to Japan’s general economic and military strength; production and 

distribution of strategic target information; listing the priority of target systems 

and specific targets in each system; recommending the most suitable munitions, 

fuzing, and loads for targets; and indicating the forces to be used against each 

target. The JTG was charged with preparation of damage assessment reports and 

reports on the repair and reconstruction of damaged targets; the creation of 

special studies; and the liaison with using agencies to ensure adequacy and 

acceptability of the group’s work. Among the JTG’s first projects were the 

organization and distribution of the Air Target Index Japanese War, and the 

adjunct air target system folders, which covered each target or collection of 

targets described in the index. Because the JTG lacked extensive information 

on Japan, the European experience in analyzing bomb damage, especially that 

which the Germans had inflicted on London, became vital to studies of Japanese 

targets. The JTG’ s Physical Vulnerability Section, for example, tried to quantify 

the areas of effectiveness of bomb blast and bombing patterns on industrial 

areas, industrial structures, and urban areas to form the basis of a comparative 

analysis applicable to Japan. Many of the people who worked in the Physical 

Vulnerability section were veterans of the similar British organization in 

London called R.E.8. Many had also done extensive bomb damage analysis 

work for the RAF and Eighth Air Force between 1940 and 1944. It was largely 

from the studies done in Washington that the group devised its recomrnenda369 
Piercing the Fog 

tions on the mix of high-explosive and incendiary bombs to be dropped and the 

fuze sensitivities to be considered for each type target.38 

There were in the handling of Japanese target intelligence by the JTG and 

the AAF both similarities and significant differences over the work that had 

been done in Europe. In 1943, when Ira Eaker received the COA’s recommendations for attacking Germany, he, as the Eighth Air Force’s commanding 

general, chaired a board in London that approved the COA’s work and then 

prepared an estimate of the forces needed to accomplish the progressive 

destruction of the targets. Late in April 1943, Eaker flew to Washington and 

made his recommendations to the CCS. In May, the CCS approved the AngloAmerican CBO. In 1944, when the JTG began work, the operations analysts’ 

previous recommendations relative to Japan carried the weight of the committee’s prominence and reputation, even though its work had been done from an 

admittedly poorer base of intelligence data. Although the COA was by now 

largely out of business, it retained its influence within the JTG by virtue of its 

stature in Arnold’s eyes, the past quality of its work, and the presence of a 

number of its members on the JTG’s panel of consultants. Arnold in this case 

stood as Eaker had previously done, except that Arnold commanded both the 

AAF and the Twentieth Air Force and he was determined to see air power 

through to success in the war. The fragmented air effort in the Pacific also 

figured prominently. The U.S. Navy (and through it Nimitz and the Seventh Air 

Force), Marine Corps air, Kenney’s FEAF, and the China Theater’s Fourteenth 

Air Force could all be reasonably expected to play an important part in the 

attack on the Japanese homeland. Sheer logic, if not Arnold’s determination, 

demanded first-rate air intelligence and an effective unit to produce it. Thus the 

JTG became the prime agency and the AC/AS for Intelligence, the most 

important player in the eff~rt.~’The lack of understanding of Japan was to cause 

continuing difficulty for target analysis. Nowhere was the air intelligence need 

greater than in the requirement for adequate target photography. 

Of all the varied sources of information used by the AAF headquarters 

intelligence staff, none came in larger amounts than photography from aerial 

reconnaissance. In the summer of 1945, one of the A-2 officers described it as 

“probably the most important source or form of air information that came to the 

headquarters during this war.’” The officer, Maj. A. W. White of the Air 

Information Division, speaking to the senior intelligence officer course at the 

AAF School of Applied Tactics, went on to say that some of the people in the 

A-2 office were of the opinion that 90 percent of the intelligence used in 

planning the war against Japan came primarily from AAF and Navy combat 

yhotography, with some from the OSS. Estimates such as White’s were highly 

subjective, influenced greatly by the visible volume of material. The piles of 

photographs did not translate directly into high-quality analysis; in fact, White 

himself pointed out that the staff spent a great deal of time in sifting and 

scrutinizing, yet it could not keep up with the growing collection. Clearly, for 

370 
Planning the Defeat of Japan 

target analysis and damage assessment of the Japanese homeland, first-rate 

aerial photography was vital, yet it did not begin in substance until November 

1944 when Hansell’s F-13 crew made their initial flight. 

White noted also that the AAF’s pictures, most taken from high altitude, 

were inferior to those of the Navy, usually made from 6,000 to 8,000 feet. The 

low-altitude photographs were much more useful, for they showed the areas 

observed in greater detail. The appreciation of photography displayed at 

headquarters reflected the experience of air commanders in India-Burma and in 

Europe. Good aerial photography served the target planners well, for despite its 

drawbacks it was more quickly adaptable to the analytical process than was the 

written, sometimes more ephemeral or arcane, collection of data from captured 

documents, POWs, crashed aircraft, and intercepted messages that might 

indicate the enemy’s capabilities or intention^.^' The dearth of information on 

Japan, especially photographic, had serious consequences in operations 

planning, directly affecting decisions on the tactics and types of bombs to be 

used on Japanese cities. 

German and Japanese Interchanges and Implications 

for the War on Japan 

As the Allies moved across France in 1944, Arnold’s thoughts centered more 

and more on how to deal with Japan and the postwar shape of his Air Force. The 

thoughts became linked in his mind late in the summer as he formulated several 

ideas dealing with both topics. In September of that year, President Roosevelt 

directed Secretary of War Stimson to organize an “impartial and expert study 

of the effects of the aerial attack on Germany.”42 The study, actually one that 

Arnold sought, was to be all-encompassing, covering both direct, physical 

damage and the indirect consequences of the CBO on the German economy. In 

its final form, this study was the product of civilian-led group and came to be 

called the USSBS. In charge of the survey was Franklin D’Olier, chief executive 

of the Prudential Insurance Company. The origins of the USSBS were many and 

diverse; A-2’s Target Information Section, in particular Maj. Ralph A. Colbert, 

chief of its European Branch in early 1944, played a key role. In Colbert’s view, 

his section required a continuing evaluation of the effects of its recommendations regarding targets to be struck. “Plans should be prepared now,” he wrote 

to General White on March 27, 1944, “for the establishment of a Commission 

of experts, headed by USAAF Intelligence, prepared upon Germany’s defeat to 

conduct an investigation inside Germany that will disclose the true facts 

concerning the Strategic Aerial Bombardment of Europe. . . .” As things 

eventually turned out, AC/AS, Plans subsequently took the lead away from A-2 

in establishing the survey, but Major Colbert managed to follow up his initial 

interest by getting himself assigned to the survey and serving in its Economic 

Section in Eur0pe.4~ 

37 1 
Piercing the Fog 

Another group appointed by Arnold to study air warfare issues was the 

AAF Evaluation Board. Its task was to scrutinize the military aspects of the air 

campaign in Europe. Neither the Bombing Survey nor the Evaluation Board 

were intelligence agencies, but Arnold and his A-2 clearly saw the intelligence 

and data-gathering value of each. To take advantage of the vast amount of 

German information, the intelligence staff, with widespread support elsewhere 

on the Air Staff, organized the extensive Post-Hostilities Intelligence Requirements Survey of the German Air Force, and later of the Japanese air forces. The 

posthostilities study of the Germans was to be done largely by General Spaatz’s 

people in Europe, but several Air Staff offices decided to send additional teams. 

To coordinate the collection and assessment of the anticipated information, 

Generals Hodges in Intelligence and Kuter in Plans pushed hard for the central 

AAF intelligence ~urvey.4~ 

According to the collection plan, the primary purpose behind this datagathering foray was to obtain “all information pertaining to the Japanese Air 

Force available in Germany.”45 This effort had two main objectives. First, the 

AAF staff needed to know what technology or understanding of the Allied 

military Germany had transferred to Japan. ULTRA had, from time to time, 

indicated that such transfers had been made, primarily by blockade-running 

submarines. Now the Air Staff believed it imperative that they confirm what had 

transpired between the Axis partners. With such an understanding, the Allies 

could then postulate the existence of new or previously unobserved Japanese 

defenses. The second direction of these studies was to determine from the 

German bombing experience how Japan, her economy, and her military might 

hold up under a concentrated Allied onslaught. 

The survey teams that descended upon Germany after her surrender in May 

1945 found enormous collections of material, among which were indications of 

the types of data the Axis nations had exchanged. At the German Air Ministry’s 

offices at Berchtesgaden, Allied inspectors found documents that noted limited 

transfers of air warfare material to Japan between June 1943 and March 1945. 

Also reaching Washington was a report covering German proximity fuze 

experimentation based on radio, optic, and acoustic principles. The American 

investigators in this case noted Japan’s apparent awareness of the work, but they 

doubted Japan had received either substantive data or design models. Proximity 

fuzes were of concern to the AAF because if Japan had such a capability, she 

would be able to increase greatly the effectiveness of her AA artillery, thereby 

threatening the B-29 offensive, which most people believed would continue 

into 1946. Other areas of specific intelligence and operational interest were the 

extent to which missile, infrared, radar, and jet engine and aerodynamics 

technology had reached Japan. The May 1945 capture of the German submarine 

U-234 heightened Arnold’s interest in the subject of information transfer when 

it was found that the craft carried several German and Japanese officials plus 

large amounts of documentation bound for Japan. The flow of material arriving 

372 
Planning the Defeat of Japan 

from Germany was so fast that the AAF’s specialists in Europe and at Wright 

Field found it impossible to absorb and study all that they received!6 

As the previously mentioned studies were underway, at least two other 

major study groups turned up in Germany seeking information. One was the von 

KhmAn mission, a pet endeavor of Arnold’s led by the chief of his Scientific 

Advisory Group, Dr. Theodore von Khh. This group had been charged by 

Arnold to “think in terms of developments to be anticipated over 20 years and 

thus provide guidance to AAF as to goals to be achieved.” As Arnold noted, von 

-An and his people were to observe, correlate, and draw conclusions from 

all possible enemy developments, those in being or under consideration. Von 

UrmAn’s group had no intelligence analysis charter as such, but by the very 

nature of their work they would deal in such matters. When the von Khh 

team members arrived in Europe in May 1945, they ran into another group, Maj. 

Gen. Clayton Bissell’s ALSOS mission.* Bissell had dispatched the ALSOS 

mission from G-2 to carry out a number of the War Department’s scientific 

intelligence goals, but the primary purpose was to ferret out as much information as possible about Germany’s atomic energy development. In addition, the 

group was to find all available records on enemy scientific research and 

development, especially those with a military application. This included 

aeronautical research, but the AAF was not represented on the mission’s staff.47 

Not only were the two teams surprised to find each other making similar 

inquiries, but an inevitable clash quickly found its way to Washington when the 

von Khh group, assisted by Spaatz’s representatives, tried to lay claim to 

material unearthed by the ALSOS team. As a further complication, the U.S. Navy 

and the British voiced legitimate claims to the German secrets. Arnold 

instructed his deputy, Eaker, who had recently moved to the new job in 

Washington, to settle the problem, but to be careful how he did it. Arnold was 

explicit in stating that he did not object to joint work, nor did he want the Amos 

and von KhnAn teams consolidated. He wanted von KArmh’s conclusions and 

recommendations sent directly to AAF headquarters-von UnnAn’s work was 

not to be commingled with either ALSOS or AT1 reports. Arnold did not object 

to facts jointly developed being jointly reported. Under no circumstances, 

however, was any information “which definitely discloses our intentions and 

programs for future air research and development” to be disclosed to anyone 

outside of Arnold’s Washington domain!* Whatever course of action the AAF 

was to take in postwar operations and development, Arnold wanted it decided 

by the air leaders first. Arnold seems to have feared that premature disclosure 

*ALSOS was a cover name for the mission, not an acronym. The team was to 

determine the extent and success of Germany’s nuclear research and to locate other 

significant scientific intelligence data. Few people knew of the AMOS mission’s 

existence. 

373 
Piercing the Fog 

might endanger such plans, and he sought at the outset to protect what he 

believed was the AAF’s proprietary information. 

The interservice and interallied competition for information became so 

intense so quickly, and the volume of material so great, that the orderly 

collection and analysis process broke down by the end of May. Hodges at one 

point told Eaker that the entire intelligence collection scheme that was 

originally to have been governed by G-2 SHAEF was “in a state of To 

resolve the problem, Hodges urged immediate action to bring the entire effort 

under the control of a joint air policy advisory council with an AAF general in 

charge and also having Navy and National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics 

members, as well as a representative of the U.S. aircraft industry. In June, an 

agreement prepared by the CCS gave the British the first good article of each 

type to be discovered. Spaatz objected, pointing out that many important oneof-a-kind articles had escaped American control. He feared they would be lost 

for use in the war against Japan if the process was not quickly reversed.* The 

flow of documents became so great that the question of who would get what 

soon disappeared. Neither the British nor the Americans could cope with 

matters independently. The upshot was an agreement between the USSTAF A-2 

and the Air Ministry to set up in London the Air Documents Research Center. 

The newly acquired material could be screened, indexed, and reproduced so that 

all of the interested Anglo-American agencies could receive copies. Of primary 

importance in this effort was the locating and examining of material pertinent 

to the Japanese war. The agreement averted an unseemly squabble between 

Allies over the intellectual and intelligence spoils of the European war. 

Eventually an agreement between the RAF’s intelligence chief and General 

McDonald resulted in a process of copying documents so that each country 

would receive a full set of German records and research reports.5o 

When it came to the B-29 program, Arnold’s interest never flagged. He 

quickly saw the potential for trouble that the German technology transfers 

represented. He sent LeMay a letter outlining his fears on July 5: “Recent 

intelligence from Germany,” he wrote, “emphasizes the interest the [Japanese] 

have had in aircraft developments along the lines of the Me 163 and 262.” 

Arnold went on to instruct his subordinate on how to spot evidence of aircraft 

of unusual design-look for “lengthening of, lengthened or paved runways.” 

Blast marks were especially important, as that “. . . was how we first noted 

German jets. Use your photo-reconnaissance people, PW [POW] interrogators, 

*Some of the items cited by Spaatz as unavailable to his people were one Ju 

290 airplane believed to be the only surviving example of this four-engine type; one 

two-stage turbine supercharger; one flyable Ta 152, the two-stage version of the FW 

190; one Ju 388, a late development of the Ju 88; one Ho 9 jet-powered flying wing; 

one Ju 222 featuring a %-cylinder, radial liquid-cooled engine: and one 48-cylinder 

aircraft engine. 

374 
Planning the Defeat of Japan 

all sources of intelligen~e,”~’ continued the note. On Guam, LeMay read 

Arnold’s directive, but he doubted that the commanding general’s fears would 

be translated into much of a threat. As a man respectful of Arnold’s position, 

ability, and temperament, LeMay tried to calm Arnold’s apprehensions by 

replying, “The [Japanese] now have little time for experimentation and 

development of new aircraft types. Available production must be utilized to its 

full capacity upon established models and replacement parts and engines.” 

LeMay went on to note his belief, “All available air strength is currently being 

used to counter, by large scale attacks against massed amphibious forces, an 

expected invasion of the h~meland.”~~ 

LeMay correctly assessed the situation, but with the war’s end indefinite, 

Arnold wanted no resurgence of Japanese defenses and tactical ability, not even 

temporarily. The AAF’s commanding general was tired of the war, suffering 

from heart problems, impatient to a degree rarely seen in other people, and 

constantly concerned about his Air Force. As accurate as were the air intelligence assessments of Japan’s remaining strength, Arnold knew that the reports 

sent to him daily could be wrong or could have missed important details. By the 

end of July, the Japanese government showed signs of surrender. T?e final 

blows came early in August, delivered by the very-heavy bomber force over 

which Arnold had worried and fussed for ~ears.5~ 

An early-July air intelligence analysis of Japan’s ability to continue the war 

stated: “Japan’s war-making capability is not comparable in strength to that of 

Germany [toward the end]. It [Japan] is already so weakened that imposition of 

a high rate of combat expenditure would cause collapse.” Japan did not have 

high combat losses, as she did not face conflict on her home temtory except for 

the AAF-Navy air offensive. The intelligence analysts applying the lessons 

brought home by some of the USSBS’s teams could not predict with any 

accuracy either the course of combat Japan would follow or the time when the 

war would end. Nor should they have tried to make such a prediction; that 

would have violated one of the basic tenets of intelligence analysis and placed 

them into a position of advocating a particular point of view. Such advocacy 

could have easily guided them away from other, possibly more productive, 

endeavors in impartially gathering and assessing information. Because of the 

indeterminate nature of the Pacific conflict, Maj. Gen. Elwood R. Quesada, 

recently appointed ACIAS, Intelligence, played his hand conservatively, 

holding the position that “Japanese war-making capability may retain 

significant menace for a long time.” Quesada had no choice but to adopt that 

view; he recognized that Japan’s leaders alone would have to decide how to 

continue the fight against the Allies. The USSBS analysts who had returned 

from Europe to help formulate the final assault on Japan now assumed much of 

the role formerly held within the AAF by the COA?4 

375 
Piercing the Fog 

A difference of opinion quickly arose as to how to prosecute the air war. 

The Bombing Survey people, upon returning from Europe, proposed a target list 

to include, in priority order, the following: 

The Japanese transportation system, including the sea blockade and 

attacks on coastal shipping and on railways. 

Attacking central ammunition reserves if intelligence could confirm 

that such reserves were in central dumps and that they could be 

destroyed. 

Attacking nitrogen and synthetic oil production and any radar, aircraft, 

propeller, and heavy AA plants remaining. 

Destruction (in 1946) of Japan’s rice crop and eliminating coke 

production at Anshan. 

Attacking urban industrial concentrations, but only if such an attack 

had at least a one in three chance of hitting any of the above precision 

targets or if it was probably the most efficient way of destroying 

precision targets. 

The JTG had also analyzed Japan’s remaining targets. They did not agree with 

the USSBS recommendations. The JTG’s target groupings placed overwhelming emphasis on rail transportation and shipping, followed by heavy attack on 

concentrations of end-product industry and then clean-up attacks on radar, 

airplane engine, and specialized armament industries. Urban attacks figured 

prominently in the end-product industry category, as the target group’s analysis 

indicated that these industries were very vulnerable to incendiary attacks. The 

JTG’s inner circle seems to have believed strongly that if fire could destroy 

large quantities of war mattriel, it would produce heavy expenditures similar 

to those caused by heavy combat. Sustained consumption was important to 

reduce Japan’s fighting capacity. To reduce it to a point as low as possible, the 

JTG harked back to the analysis of Japanese cities as targets because group 

members believed that Japan’s major production and storage facilities were to 

be found throughout the cities. Furthermore, urban areas lent themselves to 

bombing in poor weather, since precision bombing was not necessary for such 

 mission^?^ 

By mid-1945, intelligence officers and the Air Staff had accepted the 

operational reality that the weather over Japan simply would not allow the type 

of precision bombing for which the B-29 force had practiced at home. The JTG 

disparaged nitrogen and petroleum production as targets. Ammunition 

fabrication and distribution would suffer, they reasoned, from disrupted 

376 
Planning the Defeat of Japan 

transportation. By scrutinizing the air OB and comparing it to the observed rate 

of flying, the JTG’s staff became convinced that the Japanese had moved 

aviation gasoline to where they needed it and had then hidden it and reduced 

flying to cut consumption to the absolute minimum. The JTG found no 

profitable targets there. By similar reasoning, food supplies would be needed by 

the occupation commander to sustain the population under his dominion, so the 

AAF and Navy had no reason to try to poison the rice crop at the start of the 

next growing cycle. Overall, the JTG believed that attacks on their targets 

would accelerate the strain on Japan’s economy, leading to collapse when the 

inevitable engagement of land forces came.56 

As the intense target studies were being made of Japan, Robert A. Lovett 

traveled to Europe to view firsthand the war’s effects. Lovett served from 1941 

to 1945 as Assistant Secretary of War for Air. His primary job was to oversee 

procurement, but he did much more for the AAF in informal ways. The 

relationship between the hard-driving, often unreasonable Arnold and the 

assistant secretary was close, and Lovett thoroughly understood and was a 

strong supporter of air power. He was also a moderating influence on Arnold, 

the enfant terrible who drove the AAF through the war as much as he led it. 

Thus it was that in June 1945, when Lovett returned from his trip, he brought 

back a series of questions about the AAF’s intelligence future that caused the 

senior air officers in the Pentagon to take notice. Lovett’s concern lay with the 

emerging separation of the AAF from the British intelligence services, from 

which it had gained so much during the European war. Now that the Air Forces 

could concentrate on the war in the Far East, Mr. Lovett wanted to know the 

quality of American air intelligence as compared to that available for the justconcluded war with Germany. He also wanted to know what new organization 

the staff had planned for the changing situation and how the AAF intended to 

find the trained intelligence officers needed for the job. Lovett’s questions were 

also instructive in that they revealed his understanding that the U.S. AAF 

intended to carry as much of the air war as possible. The British presence in the 

Pacific would be minimal, their continental contacts of no use, and Britain’s 

ULTRA net unproductive. The AAF did not especially want the RAF’s 

operational squadrons in the Pacific, in part due to a lack of airfields on 

Okinawa and the other islands for the use of the Americans and their allies. The 

AAF wanted the freedom to prove itself, its aircraft, and its doctrine. That 

meant an unencumbered campaign based on target lists prepared with good 

intelligence analysis. If Lovett was going to support his airmen, he needed to 

know more about how they were going to meet the new requirements?’ 

Eaker and Quesada wasted little time in putting together an answer, and it 

was one that acknowledged a number of shortcomings. The generals claimed 

that the British national defense organization with its equal status of army, navy, 

and air force was much more effective in gathering air intelligence than was the 

American system. According to Eaker, the Air Ministry’s intelligence gathering 

377 
Piercing the Fog 

and assessment had “a certain cohesion and single-mindedness of purpose that 

is totally lacking in Wa~hington.”~’ The most nettlesome problem that Eaker 

saw in Washington was the JCS’s decision in 194.4 to fragment intelligence 

responsibilities among the services. His statement that the British system was 

intrinsically more effective than the one in America was difficult to prove, but 

it was a good way to approach the question. What made the British system so 

responsive, Eaker believed, was its tremendous signals intercept and photointerpretation capabilities so near the fighting, readily available to the military and 

naval commanders. Eaker and Quesada pointed out that the Pentagon was 7,000 

miles from the Pacific fighting and that the Americans had always had a paucity 

of information about the Japanese. This lack of data made it very difficult to 

assess targets or predict Japanese reactions to bombing. It was not possible, they 

contended, for the system in Japan to ever be as good as the one in Europe had 

been. This argument, as far as air power went, applied mostly to strategic air. 

Kenney and Nimitz had excellent operational air intelligence. The air war over 

Japan was soon to become more tactical than strategic with the projected 

November 1 invasion of the Japanese home islands. In answering Lovett’s 

questions, Eaker and Quesada hit again on one of the AAF’s continuing 

concerns: subordination of the air to the ground army, in this case, of A-2 to 

The two generals contended that the AAF had been enjoined from gathering 

primary intelligence information, except for photography. Worse, but carefully 

worded for security reasons, G-2 controlled ULTRA analyses and decrypts, 

giving the Air Staff only finished studies, not the information from which the 

reports had been drawn nor information from which air analysts might reach 

other conclusions. The memo to Lovett stated, “In some cases, G-2 only gives 

us ‘evaluated’ information, i.e. conclusions deduced from unknown facts, and 

restricts us rigidly in the way we use these conclusions.”60 Air attach& were 

likewise controlled by the War Department, not the AAF, and their effectiveness suffered as a result. Eaker and Quesada opined hat many of these 

deficiencies could be offset by the experience gained in Europe; they also 

proposed a realigned intelligence office, able to concentrate on the tasks 

allowed them by the Joint Chiefs and to have in place an air intelligence 

operation comparable to the Air Ministry in London and capable of supporting 

an independent air force, should one be organized after the war. As a follow-on 

to the reorganization, Eaker’s letter told Lovett that sufficient intelligence 

officers from Europe were in training in Florida and at Lmgley, Virginia, for 

the Pacific war and for use as posthostility intelligence experts. The latter claim 

regarding training was true on its face, but was a misconception on Eaker’s part. 

Many of the officers who came to the intelligence training from Europe had 

been of the impression they were on their way home; others had no interest in 

participating in yet another war in a far-off place of indeterminate length and 

G-2.59 

378 
Planning the Defeat of Japan 

Maj. 4 Sen. Richard C. Lindsay 

unknown sacrifice. These men were unhappy, and their performance showed it; 

their value as intelligence officers was open to question.61 

One need not read between many of the lines of the letter to Assistant 

Secretary Lovett and the supporting documents that accompanied it to see again 

the airmen’s frustration with Army control and all of its attendant encumbrances. This time there was a difference. Unlike General White’s organizational agonies of early 1944, there now seemed a real possibility that the AAF 

would escape from the Army once the war was over. To that end, the AC/AS, 

Intelligence office shed its unwanted appendages. History, motion picture 

services, and the operational activities that could be delegated to subordinate 

commands all disappeared from the organizational chart. The A-2 office now 

had two branches: the JTG and the Director of Air Intelligence. Organizationally and functionally, the JTG remained the same with its panel of consultants 

and its evaluation and production divisions. The Director of Air Intelligence had 

the counterintelligence, intelligence collection, photographic, analysis, and 

technical intelligence divisions. The spring of 1945 saw AAF intelligence reach 

its largest size in terms of people assigned. Once the focus of war shifted 

entirely to Japan and the structure of the strategic air force in the Pacific became 

firm, that staff began to diminish rapidly. By July 7,1945, in fact, Spaatz, on his 

way to take over the new strategic air operation, was advised by his prospective 

chief of staff, Brig. Gen. Richard C. Lindsay, that Washington’s efforts in 

support of the Pacific war should be limited, replaced by intelligence analysis 

in the theater, principally at the numbered air forces on Guam and Okinawa. 

The centrifugal forces that large operating commands created, with local people 

better apprised of situations, began to draw the work away from AAF 

379 
Piercing the Fog 

headquarters, just as had occurred in Europe several years earlier. Had the war 

continued, Spaatz’s stature and reputation, plus the magnitude of the work to be 

performed, would probably have drawn the JTG itself (or at least much of its 

work) to Guam.62 

Army Air Forces Intelligence and the Atomic Bomb 

The United States embarked upon development of atomic energy for military 

uses at the urging of Albert Einstein and a number of prominent physicists. At 

first, the work was spread out among a number of facilities under the overall 

direction of the Office of Scientific Research and Development (OSRD), headed 

by Dr. Vannevar Bush. In the fall of 1942, atomic research came under the 

purview of the U.S. Amy’s Manhattan Engineer District and came to be called 

the Manhattan Project. Brig. Gen. (later Maj. Gen.) Leslie R. Groves headed the 

Manhattan District, but he received ample supervision from Bush, Dr. James B. 

Conant, Chairman of the National Defense Research Committee (part of the 

OSRD), General Marshall, and Secretary of War Stimson (from May 1, 1943, 

Stimson had overall responsibility for the endeavor). Over the course of the 

following few years, Groves also assumed responsibility for all of the security, 

counterintelligence, and military intelligence related to the United States’s 

development of nuclear physics. Ultimately, of course, President Roosevelt and 

his successor in 1945, President Harry S. Truman, bore final responsibility for 

the nuclear development effort, but both kept a loose rein on the work, allowing 

Stimson and primarily Groves to bear the main effort of guiding the design and 

construction of the atomic bomb.63 Concurrently, the AAF assembled and 

trained the 509th Composite Group to deliver the atomic weapons. 

Early in March 1945, Stimson began to take an increasing interest in the 

employment of the atomic bomb. Since 1942, the Secretary of War had assumed 

that when completed and tested, such a weapon would be used. On March 5, 

Stimson conferred with his assistant, Harvey Bundy, and later with Marshall, 

advising both that within a short time they would be involved with the final 

decision of whether or not to use the weapon on targets in Japan. At about the 

same time in early March, Groves and Marshall discussed the bomb’s use, 

Groves pointing out the need to coordinate with the War Department’s 

Operations Planning Division, which Groves had assumed would draw up final 

plans. Marshall demurred. Citing security needs, he told Groves. to do the job 

within his own organization and to keep the number of people involved to a 

minimum. Groves then formed a target committee consisting of his deputy, 

Brig. Gen. Thomas F. Farrell, Lauris Norstad from Arnold’s office, three of 

Groves’s subordinates (Col. William P. Fisher, Dr. J. C. Stearns, and Dr. D. M. 

Dennison), and Dr. William G. Penny of the British team at Los Alamos. Drs. 

John von Neumann and R. B. Wilson also came from the Los Alamos team to 

380 
Planning the Defeat of Japan 

be part of the committee. Maj. J. H. Denny, one of Groves’s assistants, filled out 

the committee’s initial membership. Although other men participated in target 

planning from time to time, this group handled most of the work. Active 

planning began at a meeting in Washington on April 27.“ 

At the committee’s first gathering, immediate problems arose relative to 

concerns about the weather and the few visual bombing days over Japan each 

month in the summer. Committee members were concerned with the fact that 

meteorologists could give at most only twenty-four hours’ notice of a possibly 

good operational day. A second problem was the continuing campaign of the 

Twentieth Air Force which, if not restricted, would soon bomb all Japanese 

locations that might be targets. To begin the target selection process, Norstad 

sent a memorandum to General Samford at the JTG requesting specific data, 

phrasing his request so as to conceal both the bomb’s existence and the planning 

process then underway. Norstad’s memo gave aplausible reason for the inquiry, 

telling Samford to have his people assess a number of targets suitable for a 

12,000-pound British Tallboy high-explosive blast bomb to be detonated at an 

altitude of 200 feet. In general terms, Norstad said that he wanted Samford’s 

people to select reasonably large urban areas, at least three miles in diameter, 

having high strategic value on the Japanese main islands between Nagasaki and 

Tokyo. Norstad added to his request a list of possible sites, including Tokyo 

Bay, Kyoto, Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Nagoya, Kokura, Sasebo, Yokohama, Kobe, 

Yawata, Shimonoseki, Yamaguchi, Kawasaki, Fukuoka, and Orabe. The JTG 

was to eliminate from consideration cities previously destroyed by bombardment.65 

Notably absent from Norstad’s request was the need for any information on 

defenses. Japanese aerial defenses were not one of the committee’s primary 

concerns, and those considerations it left almost entirely to LeMay and the 

operational mission planners in the Pacific. There was, throughout the selection 

process from the earliest date of the target committee’s meetings, the desire to 

strike a city yet undamaged. The reasons were twofold: to destroy a major 

military-related area in a single attempt that dealt the Japanese Army a heavy 

blow and then to give the Manhattan District’s engineers and physicists the 

chance to use the damage to compute the effects of the bomb’s detonation with 

more precision than previously possible. What the committee sought as much 

as a wartime target was a laboratory setting for an operational bombing raid of 

unprecedented proportions.66 

Once the target material had been collected by the JTG, three members of 

the committee, acting under cover of Norstad’s Tallboy request, visited the 

A-2’s offices to review the data and prepare a final list. Kyoto, Hiroshima, 

Nagasaki, Niigata, and Kokura emerged as the best candidates. Kyoto gained 

the most prominence because of its size, its industry, its location as a center of 

transportation, and the fact that many government and industrial leaders had 

evacuated there from other damaged cities. Kyoto was also attractive because 

381 
Piercing the Fog 

of its topography. Lying in a bowl formed by mountains, the committee 

believed that the bomb’s energy would be better focused there than anywhere 

else. Hiroshima (est. pop. 350,000) was an “Army” city, the committee 

believed, as well as was a major port. From the target information, the men 

concluded that the city contained large quartermaster supply depots, had 

considerable industry, and was the location of several small shipyards. Nagasaki 

(est. pop. 210,000) was the major shipping and industrial center of Kyushu. 

Kokura (est. pop. 178,000) had one of the largest Army arsenals and ordnance 

works and the largest railway shops on Kyushu, with large munitions storage 

areas to the south. Niigata (est. pop. 150,000) was an important industrial city, 

making machine tools, diesel engines, and heavy equipment; it was also a key 

port for shipping to and from the mainland. The initial selection now completed, 

Manhattan Project member Stearns searched the target data to determine all that 

he could about the cities, including the exact locations of strategic industries. 

He also had to obtain the best possible aerial photographs and from them 

determine the general nature of construction and the contents of the buildings, 

the heights of prominent structures, and the total square footage of roofs. On 

May 30, Groves asked General Marshall to direct Arnold to prohibit bombing 

of the five cities by the Twentieth Air Force; he also asked that MacArthur and 

Nimitz receive similar instruction^?^ 

In the process of target selection, target committee members sought 

distinctly military reasons for their choices, but they recognized that substantial 

collateral damage would be incurred by the bomb’s detonation. Since the AAF 

had concluded in its own and from the COA’s analyses that Japanese manufacturing was dispersed among many modest shops in urban areas and in regions 

surrounding industrial sites, the preliminary atomic bomb planning followed the 

general thrust of the AAF’s intelligence assessments of Japanese targets. Not 

Steams nor any other Manhattan Project people were intelligence analysts. They 

accepted for their own purposes the data as presented, and they lacked the time 

or background to make any independent studies. 

Above all, General Arnold was a commander who was not playing a major 

active role in the atomic bomb targeting decision, not even through Norstad 

who, though a member of the target committee, was less active than the 

specialists in the selection procedure. Marshall had given target selection 

responsibility to Groves and the Manhattan Project people, not the air warfare 

specialists. From the time that the 509th Composite Group began training in 

Utah, Groves and Farrell-through the general planning process that worked out 

the details of the unique mission and then through the target committee-gained 

substantial operational control of the 509th. Colonel Tibbets, its commander, 

often attended regular planning meetings at Los Alamos and met with the 

committee in Washington.68 

Arnold, Norstad, and LeMay saw the 509th as their unit, and so it was in 

official terms. Formal transfer of the 509th to the Manhattan District was not in 

382 
Planning the Defeat of Japan 

question, and during training Tibbets knew that he and his men would go to the 

Pacific and fly as part of the AAF’s Twentieth Air Force. The Manhattan 

Engineer District, by virtue of its organization, was incapable of supporting a 

very-heavy bomber unit. Yet the highly technical, unusual nature of the atomic 

bomb project and the need for secrecy in target selection made the operational 

control question a moot point. The flow of the war, General Marshall’s desire 

for security, and the long-assumed intent to use the weapon decided the issue 

of the 509th’~ control, just as it did the direction of the atomic weapon decision 

making. Tibbets, when selected for command of the 509th, was told by Maj. 

Gen. Uzal G. Ent, the Second Air Force commander, “The only man you’re 

going to be responsible to for getting the job done is General Groves; you’ve 

got to satisfy him.” At the time that he retired from the Air Force, Tibbets 

recalled that within the AAF he worked for Arnold, with an intermediary to 

solve problems, but he rarely saw Arnold. On Tinian, the 509th was attached to 

the 313th Bomb Wing for logistical support, but Groves solved the operational 

questions, acting through LeMay.6’ 

In addition to the target committee, a second stream of planners and policy 

makers in this undertaking centered on Stimson, who, like Norstad, was a 

junction between the Manhattan Project and the AAF. Stimson dealt largely in 

matters not related to the AAF. His long service in government as well as his 

education, his somewhat fragile health (he was nearly 78 at the time and 

suffered heart trouble), and his legal background inclined him toward a 

preference to stay out of direct military decision making. Discussions between 

Stimson and Marshall and then between Stimson and Truman had resulted in 

creation of the Interim Committee, appointed to outline a program of action on 

the bomb’s use. Groves seems to have viewed the Interim Committee as what 

may be termed the predecessor of the postwar Atomic Energy Commission, but 

with the function of advising on news releases and drafting postwar legislation 

on atomic energy. Stimson’s concept of the group was quite different; he wished 

it to set immediate policy, but not until May 28 did the Secretary of War decide 

to make the atomic bomb his primary concern. Even then, the press of daily 

business, his health, and his age restricted his ability to concentrate on the 

problem. Stimson had difficulties stemming from the secrecy of the Manhattan 

District’s true purpose. So few people knew of the atomic bomb project’s 

existence (or the weapon’s soon to be completed assembly and initial test) that 

policy could not be formed with an appreciation of the weapon by all the people 

involved. This severely limited Stimson’s ability to intervene significantly in 

the planning and operational preparations then ~nderway.~’ 

Sometime between the first and sixth of June 1945, President Truman and 

Secretary Stimson reaffirmed the intent to use the atomic weapons on Japanese 

targets, based mostly on the view of Stimson and a number of others that the 

weapon was necessary to avoid American casualties that would be sustained in 

the invasion of Japan. Stimson was by this time in the midst of a conflicting 

383 
Piercing the Fog 

duality of thinking. On the one hand, he had lectured Arnold on the problems 

associated with urban-area attacks, and he did not want the United States to 

gain, as he said, the “reputation of outdoing Hitler in atr~cities.”~’ On the other 

hand, he was concerned that the airmen might so bomb Japan that “there would 

be no good background on which to use the weapon,” thus apparently losing the 

opportunity of convincing the Japanese that further resistance was futile.* On 

June 19, Stimson met with Under Secretary of State Joseph C. Grew, with 

whom he often conferred on this and similar questions. These men concluded 

that it “would be deplorable if we have to go through with the military program 

with all its stubborn fighting to a finish.”72 They wanted to find a way to induce 

Japan to surrender, and that way seemed more and more to be the atomic bomb. 

Warnings to Japan preceding the invasion could, in Stimson’s mind, include 

atomic attack.73 The nature of that attack and its target, whether city or relatively 

unpopulated area, Stimson did not say. 

Stimson, Marshall, and Truman faced the uncertainties of the new weapon’s 

use in the war with some doubts. ULTRA seems to have been one of the factors 

that helped them resolve their dilemma. In April 1945, Willoughby had sent 

MacArthur his estimate that the Japanese would defend Kyushu, site of the 

projected November landing in the Japanese home islands, with at least eight 

and probably ten divisions. This was to prove conservative. Through May, June, 

and July, decrypted Japanese messages analyzed in Washington revealed a 

burgeoning defense preparation effort on Kyushu. Air and naval suicide units 

supplemented an assembly of armored brigades and combat divisions 

transferred from Manchuria and elsewhere in Japan. Newly formed divisions 

and garrison troops added to the strength. In all, ULTRA identified thirteen of the 

fourteen Japanese divisions on the island, supported by considerable air power. 

ULTRA counted 600,000 Japanese with 6,000 to 7,000 aircraft; in fact, the final 

Japanese total was more nearly 900,000 armed men. Although Japanese air and 

land forces were no longer the well-armed, efficient fighting units of 1942, the 

Japanese had demonstrated repeatedly their ferocity and willingness to fight to 

the death. Stimson’s concern, as he noted in his diary, clearly grew when he 

examined the numbers (although he did not note ULTRA as his source). General 

Marshall had substantial doubts about the proposed landings as well, and so told 

Truman at the July Potsdam Conference. Storming ashore in the face of a 

bloodbath did not appeal to Washington policy makers, who were concerned not 

only with the immediate cost in dead and wounded but also with the prospect 

of an uncertain length to the war, with possible Soviet military involvement that 

*At that time, MAGIC had not yet picked up the messages between Prime 

Minister Togo in Tokyo and Ambassador Sat0 in Moscow. Their communications 

indicated that the Japanese government was willing to consider peace with some 

conditions, primarily retention of the emperor. MAGIC Diplomatic Extracts, 

SRH-040. MAGIC intercepts on this topic did not begin until July 11, 1945. 

384 
Planning the Defeat of Japan 

seemed less appealing with the passage of time. With these factors in mind, 

Truman approved the use of the weapon late in July 1945.74 

The initial decision by the president and Stimson to drop the atomic bombs 

was not made on the basis of intelligence information either provided by or in 

the possession of the AAF. It seems to have grown from the running course of 

events. Material on hand in the JTG provided the basis for assessing the 

prospective targets and preparicg for postattack surveys of the cities bombed. 

Descriptions of this course of events given by both General Groves and 

Secretary Stimson were remarkably alike in that regard. Senior government 

officials, having presided over the expenditures of billions of dollars and the 

creation in several states of technical and scientific complexes unrivaled 

anywhere, assumed all along that such a weapon, if created, would be used 

against an enemy power. Probably the only person who could have stopped the 

use of the atomic bomb during the last weeks before its delivery was the 

president, and Truman saw no compelling reason to do so in light of the bitter 

fighting that many thought would last well into 1946. Quite the contrary; 

Truman, Stimson, and Marshall were deeply concerned about the human cost 

of an invasion and the subsequent fighting. Truman remarked during a meeting 

with the JCS on June 18, 1945, that he “hoped that there was a possibility [by 

using the bomb] of preventing an Okinawa from one end of Japan to another.”” 

Admiral William D. Leahy, for most of the war President Roosevelt’s personal 

representative to and a member of the JCS, was equally cautious, fearing that 

the Americans would suffer as many as 268,000 casualties in fighting for the 

Japanese home islands (after refined intelligence of Japan’s home defenses 

became available, the medical planners’s estimate for treatable casualties-not 

including dead-rose to over 394,000, just for the invasion of Ky~shu).~~ 

The question of whether or not the atomic bomb’s use was necessary to end 

the war without an invasion of Japan has never been settled and in all probability can never be. Influential arguments supported the bomb’s use: in Secretary 

Stimson’s words, an invasion would “cast the die for a fight to the finish”; use 

of the bomb was essential to save the lives of Americans who would have to 

bear the brunt of the effects of the landing and fight across the enemy homeland 

in terrain favorable to the Japanese defenders. Strong arguments also opposed 

use of the weapon: Japan had sent peace feelers to the Soviet Union seeking 

Stalin’s intercession to end the war, and the United States knew of the Japanese 

government’s position through reading of MAGIC decrypts. ULTRA had 

indicated the military collapse of Japan and the military leaders’ understanding 

of their country’s peril. But ULTRA-based analyses could not predict enemy 

actions in so desperate a situation.” 

Many of the men deciding the issue struggled with questions of military 

usefulness and moral, ethical, and political implications of the bomb’s use. 

Many had serious doubts. Stimson wavered repeatedly; he clearly saw the 

atomic bomb as more than just a new weapon that could cause a bigger blast. 

385 
Piercing the Fog 

On May 31 he met with J. Robert Oppenheimer, Ernest 0. Lawrence, Enrico 

Fermi, and Arthur H. Compton, the most prominent physicists involved in the 

project. Then, and at other times, Stimson described the atomic bomb as “a 

revolutionary change that held great promise and great danger for 

ci~ilization.”~~ In the summer of 1945, the true effects of the new weapon were 

unrealized, and it had not yet acquired the quasi-mystical qualities some would 

later ascribe to it. More than anything else, the lack of information on Japan 

dogged the efforts of the A-2 in studying the country and lent little knowledge 

to the men who decided the question of using atomic weapons. 

Planning for the bombing of Japan faced several serious problems. For years 

the A-2’s analysts and the COA had recognized the significantly poorer level 

of intelligence available for Japan. Unlike their fairly substantial knowledge 

regarding Germany, where active British aerial photography and data collection 

efforts preceded the war’s beginning, the Americans understood the relationships of the several segments of Japan’s industrial base only incompletely. 

Compounding the problem of insufficient target information, the AAF’s 

strategic bombardment program, while well conceived theoretically, fell victim 

to an inability to meet the technical demands of precision bombing. In Europe, 

bombardiers had difficulty finding German targets and then in hitting them 

accurately, once found. These difficulties were only slightly alleviated when 

radar was used. Due to its technical immaturity, radar failed to satisfy the needs 

of Spaatz and his people in Europe. Intelligence could not compensate for the 

technical deficiencies, but an extensive interplay between technology and 

intelligence existed. Once the Pacific bombing effort began in earnest, the 

frailties of the equipment were magnified. The 200-mile-per-hour winds in the 

jet stream high above Japan prevented accurate visual aiming from nearly 

30,000 feet. Radar provided some help, but it could not overcome problems 

associated with weather over Japan, where clear days were no more frequent 

than they were over Germany. When General LeMay remarked to Arnold that 

weather was his worst operational enemy, he added, “Our attempts to bomb 

precision targets at night have failed because we do not have the proper tools to 

do the job. Bombardiers have not been able to synchronize on the target with the 

flares and [bomb] sight we ha~e.”~’Arnold, faced with justifying the cost of the 

huge strategic bomber force, required results, and he insisted on them when 

dealing with his subordinates. Facing pressures to use the new aircraft 

effectively, the military also had to contend with the prospect of fighting 

Japanese troops on the ground. 

From the engagement at Guadalcanal in August 1942, the Japanese had 

fought American forces in the Pacific bitterly, bravely, and to the death virtually 

every time contact occurred. The fanatical resistance encountered on Saipan, 

Iwo Jima, and Okinawa was simply the culmination of long combat experience. 

Secretary Stimson recognized the cost of a campaign in Japan’s home islands 

386 
Planning the Defeat of Japan 

when he wrote in his diary the remarks about an invasion casting the die for a 

fight to the finish. The outcome of that fight, Stimson believed, he would be a 

high casualty list for Americaand a Japan left in “a worse shambles than we left 

Germany.””Added to the apprehensions about casualties was the distaste many 

Americans (including the senior military commanders) felt for Japan, stemming 

from the Pearl Harbor attack and the brutal behavior of Japan’s troops 

throughout Asia. The mistreatment of American POWs, about whom a good 

deal of infonnation had filtered back to Washington from Philippine guerrillas 

via the SWA G-2, no doubt contributed to this mind-set.” 

Discussions in mid-June between the JTG and the USSBS served as a 

forum for airing differing views of the American strategic bombing effort for 

Japan. The USSBS members who had come back to the United States spent 

considerable time reviewing the bomber program. Although the bombing survey 

representatives were reluctant to force upon the AAF lessons drawn from the as 

yet incompletely analyzed CBO, these joint discussions were fruitful in 

providing consideration for new directions. Of particular interest was the 

inference drawn by Quesada that Japan’s war-fighting potential did not match 

Germany’s, and that the Japanese had concentrated their much more limited 

economic assets in specific areas while they lacked resources to defend them. 

There grew in the opinion of Quesada and the JTG the importance of transportation as a target along with ammunition reserves and petroleum, relegating urban 

areas to a somewhat lower priority. 

Two factors complicated matters for both sides. One was the basic 

uncertainty about the state of Japan’s will and ability to fight on. The Soviets 

had an interest in the Far East and in participating in the peace settlement; as 

such, they were reluctant to end the fighting too quickly until they had some 

part in it. Another complication was the dearth of knowledge about the 

independent target study and of the air campaign being prepared by the 

Manhattan Project. Among the few places where these two issues converged 

was with Lauris Norstad, the Twentieth Air Force’s chief of staff and an officer 

very close to Arnold. Norstad could discuss the atomic weapon secret with only 

a few people while Arnold was preoccupied with a very busy schedule, his 

recent heart attack, and the future of the Air Force. Norstad, who had advocated 

the fire-bombing raids, apparently now became also a champion of the atomic 

bomb as a key to the AAF’s future through a demonstration of air power. 

The upshot of all of these discussions and differing opinions came on July 

25, when Spaatz received a new air campaign mission directive based on a 

formal JCS position. Transportation was the first objective, followed, in order, 

by aircraft production, ammunition storage areas, and urban industrial areas. It 

was too late to effect a change in the atomic bomb decision; the first weapon 

was to be released over Hiroshima on August 6. Whatever the change to the air 

campaign might have been, how quickly such change might have been 

accomplished, and the results can never be judged with accuracy. That Japan 

387 
Piercing the Fog 

would have capitulated is certain. What is less sure is when and under what 

circumstances she would have ceased to struggle.82 

Within days of Japan’s surrender announcement, General LeMay wrote 

Clayton Bissell thanking him for the work that MIS had done in support of the 

campaign against Japan by the XXI Bomber Command and the Twentieth Air 

Force. Specifically, LeMay credited to MIS (not entirely correctly) the original 

concept of aerial mining, the intelligence analysis that supported the effort, and 

the rapid transfer of information that made readjustment of the mine-laying 

pattern possible. LeMay also recalled that Washington passed to him via secure 

radio circuits information available there that allowed for adjustments in target 

planning as the air campaign progressed. The general was appropriately grateful 

that MIS had gone so far as to send one of its best photointerpreters to Guam, 

where he did as-needed, on-the-spot industrial analyses of any of 180 Japanese 

urban areas. Another specialist came to do the same for studies of Japanese 

petroleum production. Of particular interest in LeMay ’s letter was his comment, 

“When it became evident that the Target Analysis Section of [Twentieth Air 

Force’s] A-2 would have difficulty keeping abreast of the scale of effort 

maintained by the command, a civilian analyst who for four years had been 

working on the Japanese industrial systems came to Guam from MIS to help.”83 

LeMay directed his remarks to G-2, not to the air intelligence staff of the 

AAF. In doing so, he echoed and reinforced the feeling within some parts of the 

AAF that its air intelligence office had not done well in the war against Japan. 

Moreover, many in the Army believed that the A-2’s function was a wartime 

expedient, to be disbanded or greatly reduced when peace came. In fact, 

intelligence assessments of Japan done in Washington did not match the scope 

and breadth of those made by the Allies in the war with Germany; this was so 

for many reasons, not all of them properly laid at A-2’s doorstep. Japan had 

concealed much of herself before the war, and for many years she lay far 

beyond the prying eyes of photoreconnaissance pilots and photointerpreters. 

Hap Arnold summed up matters after a fashion when, in December 1944, he 

told the OSS’s General Donovan of the necessity for translating the German 

bombing experience into a method for evaluating the potential effects of attacks 

on Japan. Using the German information as a basis for study was a perfectly 

fine idea; the problem was that strategic judgment of Japan still had a long way 

to go on the eve of the B-29 campaign. The frustration with the lack of 

adequate data on Japanese target systems, locations, vulnerabilities, and 

relationships to Japan’s economy had a significant effect on the.course of the 

strategic aerial war in the Pacific.84 
Planning the Defeat of Japan 

The Reorganization of 1945 

By the end of April 1945, the A-2 office in Washington had begun preparing 

for peace, even as they laid out targets for the final assault on Japan. Although 

many believed that the AAF’s accomplishments and the position of air power 

in modern war portended an independent air arm for the United States, when 

this would happen was uncertain. The A-2’s survey of the responsibilities and 

authority of his office, done to answer Assistant Secretary Lovett’s questions, 

reported that authority for air intelligence in the Army remained firmly under 

the control of the War Department’s G-2, with the A-2 operating either as G-2 

directed or with G-2’s tacit approval because G-2 could not undertake 

everything it wanted to. The general legal authority for A-2’s existence was 

Army Regulation 95-5, which established the AAF as a major command and 

authorized Arnold as Commanding General to create the agencies he needed to 

perform his mission. Despite Arnold’s authority, the G-2’s office retained 

virtually all control of intelligence activity, approving very little independent 

AAF intelligence work, and then only with the understanding that A-2 first 

determine if the War Department could provide the services and information 

requested. Theoretically, this was an efficient, logical position for the Army to 

adopt, but since the G-2 could not hope to do all the work, it hampered the 

AAF’s development to independence and frustrated the A-2’s staff. An example 

of the quandary in which the air intelligence office found itself was liaison with 

the Navy and other agencies. 

During the war, the A-2 had established extensive contacts with the other 

services. To continue these contacts, A-2 had requested, at G-2’s insistence, 

approval by G-2 of the arrangements, but it had never received a reply. No 

authority existed for motion-picture production, something in which Hap 

Arnold believed strongly and which he promoted effectively before and 

throughout the war years. Nor were the extensive historical analyses begun 

under the A-2’s direction authorized to the depth and scope that the AAF was 

pursuing them. Air attach6 activity remained so tightly under G-2’s control that 

the air intelligence staff questioned whether the AAF could maintain necessary 

and productive foreign contacts with the return of peace. Other areas of concern 

remained a lack of radio and radar analysis capability for the air headquarters 

(as opposed to the gathering of information in the field to be processed by 

others) and the AAF’s ability to control the overall gathering of air intelligence 

in generaLx5 

The ambiguous position of AAF intelligence at the headquarters in 

Washington stemmed very much from General Arnold’s own ambiguous 

position as a member of the JCS and from the general attitude surrounding the 

AAF’s more or less autonomous position within the American military and 

naval structure. Since Arnold sat on the JCS, his A-2 served as a member of the 

JIC along with the other services’ chiefs of intelligence. The A-2’s position on 

389 
Piercing the Fog 

the JIC was informal; the Army had not provided any explicit authority for such 

membership. The JCS itself was not a body with a specific charter ordering it 

to perform certain functions. Almost everything connected with the JCS was 

equally informal, seen through much of the conflict as wartime expedients. 

Sensing the approach of independence from the Army and equal status with the 

Army and Navy in the postwar military, two intelligence chiefs-Hodges and 

Quesada-prepared for the change.86 Hodges had begun the studies that were 

to guide postwar intelligence organizations on the air staff. 

Then, immediately following V-J Day (September 2, 1945), Quesada 

reformed his office, making the last in a series of wartime shifts designed to 

meet current needs and changing situations. Reduced in size, the A-2 office 

now contained an Air Information Division, an Air Intelligence Division, and 

a small Executive Division. It also marked the end of a four-year evolution 

under the direction of eight men who filled the office or function of the chief of 

AAF intelligence. With the new ground rules that came into play at the end of 

the war, Quesada supervised the air intelligence study of foreign air forces, their 

offensive capabilities in relation to American strategic vulnerability, and their 

defensive potentials. The office scrutinized the United States’s strategic 

objectives in foreign countries, including their strategic vulnerabilities. The 

A-2’s office also collected information on foreign airfields, meteorology, 

terrain, logistics, and air operation^.^^ 

With the end of World War 11, the air intelligence office changed its focus 

from combat data analysis to that of trying to ensure the prevention of strategic, 

tactical, or technological surprise, and of amassing air intelligence required by 

the AAF for future war operations. Many of the people who had served 

throughout the war soon left the service, but enough remained to staff the 

office’s new components. The Air Information Division’s collection branch 

kept many of its wartime functions and had the special task of watching 

developments related to very high-level security information and signals 

intelligence. This section did not prepare its own signals intelligence analyses; 

G-2 still provided them. The air attache branch assumed greater responsibility 

for selecting and briefing its new members, an improvement over the absolute 

control by the G-2. The new Air Intelligence Division contained branches 

analyzing enemy offensive air power, defensive capabilities, worldwide air 

facilities, and enemy strategic vulnerabilities. This new branch was essentially 

the old JTG, scaled down and lacking the other service members and British 

representatives; the target vulnerability studies it performed were similar to 

those of its wartime predecessor. The Executive Division directed the 

administrative, counterintelligence, and plans and policy activities of the office 

of the A-2. The attention once focused on Germany and Japan and which had 

been building slowly for two years to a scrutiny of the USSR now assumed 

greater importance.88 

390 
Planning the Defeat of Japan 

By early 1945, the Soviet Union’s role in the defeat of Germany was 

abundantly clear to senior officers in Washington. Although a difficult and at 

times perverse and puzzling ally, the USSR had been recognized by the 

Americans as crucial to the war effort against the European Axis. Clayton 

Bissell assessed the Soviets’ important role in the summer of 1944 when he told 

General Marshall, “The defeat of Germany this year is dependent primarily on 

Russian military action and secondarily upon the effectiveness of AngloAmerican military operations.”8y 

As far back as February 1943, Arnold had harbored ambivalent feelings 

about the Soviet Union when he advised General Marshall not to give heavy 

bombers to the Russians. Arnold’s primary reason for the recommendation was 

that he had too few of the aircraft to outfit his own service, the Navy, and the 

Marine Corps, let alone another country that might not employ them effectively. 

Arnold told Marshall in this case that he fully supported the policy of helping 

Stalin so as to hurt Germany. He added that “There is, moreover, a growing 

uncertainty as to where Russian successes will lead. I for one am willing to 

accept the risk to us created by possible Russian misuse of aid or abuse of 

successes, so long as her successes are necessary for our success.”Nevertheless, 

when in May 1945 Arnold turned down a request for P-59 and P-80 jet aircraft 

from Maj. Gen. S. A. Piskounov, Chief of the Aviation Department, Soviet 

Government Purchasing Commission, his refusal was not overtly based on 

distrust of Soviet intentions. He justified the refusal on lack of Munitions Board 

approval and on the need for British consent, which he did not have.” 

At a lower level in the AAF, an assessment of Soviet intentions of early 

1945 that circulated among the A-2 staff contained doubts about what the Red 

Army planned in the immediate future vis-h-vis the Wehrmachf. The basic 

thrust of the paper was that nobody understood what to expect from the Soviets, 

either in Europe or in Asia. It was this uncertainty more than anything else that 

shaped the AAF’s assessment of her enigmatic ally. A minor A-2 staff 

reorganization proposed for early 1944, for instance, included an officer 

position to assess events in the Soviet Union, a position separate from the 

foreign liaison and air OB functions. Perhaps one reason for this action was the 

need to keep tabs on the huge Allied nation to which America committed large 

numbers of aircraft and other air warfare-related matkriel under Lend-Lease. 

This could not have been an overriding factor, however, as the A-2 office had 

little to do with Lend-Lease. The most pressing reason had to have been the 

uncertainty with which some on the Air Staff viewed the Soviet Union, the 

difficulties experienced in dealing with her, and the need to know more about 

the country. Not until Japan had been defeated did the staff have time to assess 

the state of relations with the Soviet Union, but very quickly questions arose.” 

Colonel Grinnell Martin, chief of the new Offensive Air Branch of A-2, 

prepared a short memorandum discussing the strategic vulnerability of the 

United States in September 1945. That memo noted that, for the foreseeable 

391 
Piercing the Fog 

future, only Canada, the United Kingdom, and the USSR posed a threat to 

America. Martin dismissed Canada and Great Britain as benevolent, presenting 

no serious problem. The USSR was another story. Having interned at least two 

B-29s that had landed in Siberia before their entry into the war against Japan, 

the Soviets could use the aircraft as patterns for similar aircraft of their own, 

Based upon American design and manufacturing experiences with the B-29, 

Colonel Martin predicted that in no less than five years the Soviets would have 

between 50 and 100 such airplanes operational.’* 

In mid-November of 1945, the G-2 office sent A-2 an estimate of probable 

developments that might require the use of U.S. forces in the next five to fifteen 

years. Prominent in the discussion within that report was the emerging conflict 

between the USSR and the Western Allies. In defining the factors that 

constituted a threat to the United States, the G-2 analysts drew disturbing 

parallels between the Soviet activity, both prewar and postwar, and the trends 

of prewar German actions, including rigid police states, absolute political 

control, occupation of or attacks upon foreign neighbors (for the USSR, this 

included the Baltic States, Finland, and Poland), closed economies, and 

exporting political doctrine inimical to democratic proce~ses.’~ 

The report also noted that the war had placed the USSR in a position where 

from five to fifteen years might be required for the Soviet Union to develop its 

war-making capability to the point that it could directly threaten the United 

States. The assessment concluded that a potentially unfriendly Soviet strategic 

air force would not emerge until about 1950 to 1955 and that the USSR could 

take until 1960 to recoup its manpower and industrial losses of World War 11. 

Thus, the immediate threat seemed small except for the nearly certain effort by 

the USSR to push hard to develop a nuclear weapon. The analysts translated this 

nuclear research and development into a five- to ten-year growth period. Of 

overriding concern to military planning, according to the report’s conclusion, 

was the lack of understanding by the American people of Soviet intentions. This 

lack, and the wish of the people to demobilize, meant that little chance existed 

for maintaining an American armed force able to cope with the clearest possible 

danger the USSR presented: an ability to move west and occupy large amounts 

of Europe. With this view of a mixed state of affairs, the AAF entered the 

postwar period as an enormously strong organization, but as one rapidly 

declining in size and ~apability.’~ 
CHAPTER 8 

Retrospection 

INTELLIGENCE PLAYED A CRUCIAL ROLE as the AAF pursued the air 

war from 1941 to 1945. It provided an analytical framework through which 

American airmen estimated their opponents, allocated their resources, and 

calculated the results and impact of their attacks. Consistently throughout the 

war, intelligence provided substantial clarification of the ambiguities of a war 

conducted in a new medium. Whatever the difficulties with American air 

intelligence, it is worth contrasting the American (and British) experience with 

what occurred in the Italian, German, and Japanese intelligence agencies. Had 

Allied intelligence capabilities and those of the Axis been reversed, the results 

of the war, or even of major campaigns, might not have been reversed, but the 

road to victory would have been far more costly and difficult. 

American air intelligence in World War I1 faced enormous difficulties, none 

of which was open to easy solution, and few of which were ever completely 

solved. Paramount was thevery nature of the war. Operational commanders and 

intelligence organizations almost always had to work on the basis of less than 

complete information, even when interception and decryption of enemy 

message traffic provided a direct avenue into the enemy’s mind. Given the 

conditions of war, the best intelligence could provide only fleeting glimpses of 

the enemy’s intentions and capabilities; it was then a matter of how well and 

how imaginatively intelligence formed its estimates of the Axis forces. 

From the beginning, large problems confronted American intelligence in 

the conduct of the air war. The great military organizations of 1943, 1944, and 

1945 that crushed the Axis had evolved from minuscule services that possessed 

virtually no intelligence capabilities in 1940. Surely one of the greatest 

American triumphs of World War I1 involved turning America’s immense 

economic potential into military capabilities. Beyond the mobilization problems 

of an unprepared nation, air intelligence in Washington at the A-2 office found 

itself hampered by dependence on the War Department’s G-2. The Army’s 

close hold on intelligence sources, especially those having to do with special 

intelligence, caused difficulties. Those impediments were less significant in the 

various theaters in which the AAF operated. Particularly in Europe, British 

393 
Piercing the Fog 

capabilities and the RAF’s position as an independent service were a boon to 

American tactical and strategic air intelligence. The British provided a model 

and the extensive cooperation to make American air intelligence more effective 

and valuable than it otherwise would have been. At war’s end, Ira Eaker 

observed that the British system operated more effectively because of the equal 

status of the air, land, and naval forces.’ The way the British integrated their 

intelligence and operational systems served as a model for Americans into the 

postwar period. Their experience and contact with the other European powers 

was what the Americans lacked. In the operating theaters, commanders and 

subordinates exhibitFd a level of cooperation not typical of Washington. 

The lack of consistent support for the A-2 may have had its strongest 

impact in the area of intraservice and interservice rivalry that pervaded 

Washington throughout the war. In the absence of a single, national agency to 

coordinate intelligence gathering, analysis, and dissemination, the services 

resorted to measures that alleviated some problems but dealt effectively with 

only a few. A case in point was the 1944 division of analysis and production 

tasks between the Army, Navy, RAF, and AAF to reduce duplication and to 

place some of the work in the most logical areas: in London for Europe and in 

Washington for Japan. In most instances, the rivalries and turf fights in 

Washington continued. The OSS could not develop to its full potential because 

it was excluded not only from certain geographical areas like SWPA, but from 

functional and analytical tasks as well. Lack of access to ULTRA probably 

retarded its research work and, moreover, effectively kept the OSS from full 

partnership in intelligence tasks. The AAF made enormous strides in use of 

information about the enemy between mid- 1941 and September 1945. Of all the 

sources available, one in particular proved especially useful and flexible in all 

of the areas around the world where Army airmen fought. 

Tactical reconnaissance served as the basis of AAF’s intelligence analysis 

and operational target planning in combat theaters worldwide during World War 

11. It provided information on terrain, weather, and hydrography (especially for 

mining sea lanes and ports); location and employment tactics for communication and electronic equipment (such as radar) and the lines of communication 

among and within enemy units; and location, disposition, composition, 

movement, and logistical status of enemy air, land, and sea forces. Aerial 

photography, as an element of reconnaissance, provided an important and 

consistent source of information about the enemy. This form of information 

could be viewed by intelligence specialists within hours of its acquisition and 

immediately compared to previous days’ photographs, making a basis for timely 

tactical decision making. ULTRA, by contrast, was far better suited to strategic 

decision making or to an air commander’s need for overall planning guidance. 

This conclusion did not always apply; reconnaissance and ULTRA sources 

provided immediate insights with direct application in certain circumstances. 

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Neither source could be exclusionary; each complimented other information and 

analyses. 

Although intelligence was crucial to Allied victory, its contribution to the 

focus and conduct of operations could not be termed the single most decisive 

factor in winning the air war. The American and British services in Europe and 

the American success in the Pacific reflected a capacity to integrate intelligence, 

skillfully and in a timely fashion, into operations. American airmen proved 

responsive to the contributions that intelligence could make to their campaigns, 

something that stood in stark contrast to their opponents’ ability to incorporate 

such information. Intelligence involved more than a simple depiction of the 

enemy and his capabilities in combat. It demanded a willingness to learn from 

the experiences of others and a capacity to analyze both combat and other 

lessons honestly. Allied success depended on more than intelligence officers 

and organizations in the building of a coherent intelligence picture of the Axis 

enemies. 

Doctrine, Intelligence, and Air Power: 

The Prewar Preparations 

In the period between 1920 and 1939, intelligence, as understood today, hardly 

existed in the United States. Henry Stimson’s remark that “gentlemen do not 

read other gentlemen’s mail” as he shut down work aimed at penetrating 

Japanese diplomatic ciphers was suggestive of the American approach to 

intelligence during the prewar period. In his political undertakings, President 

Roosevelt sent special messengers and intelligence gatherers to Europe to 

pursue his sometimes ambiguous policies. The most important of these 

emissaries was the future Maj. Gen. William “Wild Bill” Donovan, head of the 

OSS, who visited Italy in 1935 in an attempt to discover Mussolini’s intentions, 

and perhaps even to enlist him in an anti-German coalition.’ But, for the most 

part, American intelligence relied on the routine efforts of military attachts, 

often poorly supported at American embassies. These military attachts were 

largely naval and army officers whose knowledge and training predisposed 

them toward ground and maritime matters, which meant that air intelligence 

received scant attention. The information that was garnered depended on the 

reports of junior officers whose training and background did not prepare them 

to perform sophisticated analyses. Some frightening reports of German air 

power (such as Charles A. Lindbergh’s) in the late 1930s and early 1940s 

exercised more influence on the popular press than on the government. The 

reports attributed exagerated capabilities to potential opponents, particularly to 

the Luhuffe, and suggested that the United States had little chance of catching 

up. While such reports attempted to persuade the American people to stay out 

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Piercing the Fog 

of a European conflict, they helped Roosevelt mobilize support for the initial 

buildup of American air and naval power. 

Hap Arnold’s May 1939 meeting at West Point with Lindbergh was a prime 

example of the problem facing the AAF. Arnold, dealing with what he believed 

was a gross lack of information about enemy air power, thought that Lindbergh 

passed him a great deal of useful material, which he probably did. After all, 

starting from a baseline of virtually no information, any information helped. But 

that Arnold personally had to gather intelligence to make his own assessments 

of the GAF illustrated the magnitude of the problem. 

Assistant military attach& for air confronted an almost impossible task in 

their intelligence-gathering mission. No one possessed a clear conception of 

what was needed. What was important was often unclear. Considering the 

technological revolution occurring in the late 1930s, performance characteristics 

of enemy aircraft and other design developments were enormously important. 

Equally important were the production capacities of aircraft industries, not to 

mention the force structures being cast by potential opponents or allies. Any 

eventual American employment of its Army Air Corps depended on a thorough 

understanding of the capacity, capabilities, strengths, and weaknesses of enemy 

economic systems. Little information was available and less was used by the 

government or Air Corps in their preparation of production plans for strategic 

bombers in the last years of peace. 

Much of the intelligence gathered by the attach& tended to overlook the 

tactical employment doctrines (e.g., the Germans in the Spanish Civil War) in 

favor of technical and quantitative intelligence. That any one officer or even a 

small group of officers serving as attach& could address all these demanding 

areas was beyond the realm of the possible. Two factors saved American 

intelligence and its strategic position from disaster. The first was the time and 

space available for the United States to address critical failings and weaknesses 

in its intellectual and physical preparations for war. Other people, most notably 

the British, paid a terrible price learning lessons that Americans could use. 

Second, at least in Europe, the United States had the inestimable advantage of 

having the British build an effective intelligence system from which the 

American military could draw from and then graft onto their own intelligence 

capabilities. 

The American problem in gathering intelligence on potential opponents in 

the 1930s also suffered from other weaknesses beyond a lack of resources. The 

Japanese covered their developing air power most effectively, so that American 

intelligence remained blind to this technological and operational potential. The 

Japanese largely excluded American observers from territories they controlled, 

and complexities of the Japanese language as well as differences between 

Japanese and American cultures made the task of American intelligence 

analysts all the more difficult. American belief in the inherent superiority of the 

white race further exacerbated difficulties in understanding the nature of the 

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danger. The estimate of the assistant naval attach6 in Tokyo underlined these 

deeply ingrained prejudices: 

Originality is certainly not a trait of the Japanese and this quite evidently 

applies to their aviation equipment. Everything is basically of foreign 

origin-planes, engines, and instruments. They do build well, however, 

and the results are creditable, but being copied from foreign developments 

their equipment must necessarily be at least a couple of years behind that 

of the leading occidental powers. . . . I believe that there is no doubt that 

we are markedly superior to the Japanese in the air-in piloting skills, in 

material, and in ability to employ our aircraft effectively on the offense 

and defen~e.~ 

The information on the other Axis powers was almost the opposite: too 

much information of uncertain origin and value. In the 1930s the Germans, 

through skilled manipulation of observers, proved to be masters in persuading 

foreign intelligence services that they possessed extraordinary capabilities and 

potential. The most famous example involved the visit of the chief of staff of 

the French Air Force, General Joseph Vuillemin, to Germany in August 1938. 

The aerial display made such a frightening impression on him that he returned 

to Paris to advise his government that the French Air Force would last barely 

two weeks against the LufnYuffee4 Such assessments led the Foreign Minister, 

George Bonnet, hardly a strong reed himself, to beg the German ambassador in 

early September 1938 that Germany not put France in a position where she had 

to honor her treaty obligations-this, at the same time he was delivering a 

“warning” that a Nazi attack on Czechoslovakia would result in a French 

declaration of war? The British were no less confused by German claims! One 

should not be surprised, therefore, that the minimal American effort to estimate 

the German potential was similarly in error; but the damage was considerably 

less, for in the long run it had the beneficial impact of speeding up American 

rearmament, especially in the air, the one arena where a potential enemy might 

strike directly at the United States. 

While the world situation steadily deteriorated in the late 1930s, American 

airmen, particularly those at ACTS, had evolved a complex theory of air power. 

That theory strongly influenced the development and conduct of the later 

American strategic bombing offensives against first Germany and later Japan 

in the Second World War. American air doctrine rested on two basic premises. 

The first was that unescorted, large formations of heavily armed bombers could 

fight their way deep into enemy territory, without suffering exorbitant losses, 

and then drop their bombs on selected targets with precision. The second, and 

arelated premise, was that the bombers could attack certain specific target sets, 

the destruction of which would lead to such widespread dislocations that the 

enemy’s economic system would collapse. It was an attractive theory that 

promised not only justification for an independent air force, but it would also 

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Piercing the Fog 

avoid the catastrophic losses of soldiers that had occurred in World War I.’ The 

doctrine had important implications for intelligence. 

Only combat could test the assumptions on which the first premise rested. 

The second assumption demanded excellent intelligence on potential enemy 

economies, and that intelligence did not exist. As Captain White accurately 

bemoaned in 1938, the general lack of intelligence precluded an air campaign 

effective in causing economic dislocation.* Unfortunately, devotees of strategic 

bombing at the ACTS never seemed to have recognized the role of intelligence 

in determining the weak links in an enemy’s economic structure. Such 

economic analysis as did occur largely rested on studies performed on similar 

American industries. While such studies were useful, they carried with them the 

danger that conditions peculiar to America were not necessarily mirrored in 

Germany or Japan. 

In fairness to the Americans who developed the concept of precision 

strategic bombardment, precious little information existed on which any 

analysis could establish a coherent picture of potential opponents. What seems 

astonishing today in a time of bountiful information was the general lack of 

intelligence in the United States as World War I1 broke out. While the American 

military had some general understanding of the German military and economic 

situations, ground and maritime intelligence needs were scantily supported. 

Virtually no resources were available for the gathering of air requirements. 

The crucial turn came only with the creation of the Air Corps Intelligence 

Board. The interest of both President Roosevelt and the new Army Chief of 

Staff, General Marshall, also helped the creation of an air intelligence 

capability. But the real problem, as with all the services from 1939 through 

1942, lay in building an effective intelligence organization from thin air. Here 

the American penchant for flexibility and unorthodox solutions held particular 

value.’ By bringing civilian expertise, such as engineers, professors, lawyers, 

and economists, into intelligence organizations that grew exponentially, the 

capabilities of AAF intelligence generally matched the demands that war placed 

on them. One has only to consider the success of the American ULTRA 

organization, with talent that included some of the greatest legal minds in the 

United States, to understand what the skillful addition of civilians to intelligence was able to accomplish. On the negative side, while civilian talent may 

have made a long-term favorable contribution, it could not address the 

immediate problems of intelligence shortcomings in the war’s early years. The 

United States paid dearly for such weaknesses in the first six months of its 

participation in the conflict. 

With the outbreak of war in Europe in September 1939, the pace of 

America’s rearmament quickened, but the weaknesses of the American military 

presented extraordinary problems. The entire structure, operational as well as 

support, had to be built from scratch. With doctrinal conceptions for air power 

largely in place, considerable gaps in understanding continued. Particularly 

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dangerous was the air planners’ failure to recognize the enemy’s potential to 

organize an effective air defense to thwart American efforts at implementing 

strategic bombing doctrine or the enormous flexibility that the enemy’s 

economic system possessed. The intelligence organization and knowledge did 

not exist to support the implementation of AWPD-1. German economic and 

industrial systems were broadly misunderstood; perhaps more serious was the 

fact that American airmen were unaware of the extent of their ignorance. The 

fog and friction of war made it difficult to acquire that knowledge. American air 

plans for the destruction of the German economy consequently carried with 

them serious misconceptions from the beginning as to how Germany worked 

and what its most serious weaknesses were. 

The two years preceding America’s entry into the war provided time for 

further preparations and, perhaps more important, the opportunity for the 

American military to learn from the experiences and mistakes of others. The 

British, particularly after Churchill became Prime Minister, willingly shared 

combat and intelligence experiences; American airmen were able to observe the 

course of the air war over Europe from a front-row seat. Their willingness to 

learn the lessons of combat achieved at the expense of others was somewhat 

open to question. 

The Battle of Britain provided a laboratory experiment to test the theories 

of strategic bombing. The Lufhvuffe, in many ways the most up-to-date air force 

in the world in 1940 (with technological devices such as blind bombing aids 

that the RAF and AAF would not possess until 1943), formed up across the 

English Channel to strike a decisive blow.” The Germans, with geographic 

advantages that Allied air forces would not enjoy until the end of 1944, failed 

utterly. Why they failed is obvious today, fifty years later, but it may not have 

been so obvious then. Above all, the Germans did not devise and follow through 

on a strategy aimed at gaining air superiority. They did not persevere in the face 

of adversity, and they lacked either a coherent or a strategic approach. Among 

other important lessons, it was apparent that a modern bomber force could not 

accomplish its mission in the face of enemy fighters unless it had the protection 

of a fighter escort. British society and industry proved adaptable, flexible, and 

resistant to sustained bombardment from the air. The capacity to inflict 

effective, long-term damage was going to prove far more difficult than prewar 

air theorists had thought. 

American observers saw little of this. American assessments attributed 

heavy Luftwuffe bomber losses to inadequate bomber defenses and airframe 

size, the low level at which the Germans flew their missions, and to poor 

formation-flying discipline.” AWPD-1 argued the following summer that “by 

employing large numbers of aircraft with high speed, good defensive power, 

and high altitude,” American bombers would be able to penetrate deep into the 

heart of Germany without unbearable losses.’* The impediment that enemy 

fighters might represent still did not appear in the AAF’s plans. Escort fighters 

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lacked drop tanks, and American airmen continued on a course of fighting the 

Germans with unescorted bomber formations until the second disaster over 

Schweinfurt in October 1943. As the American official historians suggested, 

such an oversight “is difficult to account f0r.’’I3 

Even before America entered the war, its attention centered on Europe. 

Among other reasons, Roosevelt and his advisors determined that Germany 

represented the greatest strategic threat to the security of the United States. Nazi 

hegemony over the European continent might be irreversible, while the prospect 

seemed small that Japan could defeat the United States. Europe and Germany 

were known entities, familiar and calculable to most Americans; therefore the 

natural proclivity was to concentrate on the known. If American understanding 

of German capabilities was poor, the understanding of Japan was far worse. 

Intelligence estimates reported that the Japanese built battleships, airplanes, 

tanks, and other weapons, but estimators could not conceive that they could 

come close to the performance of Western technology. Nor could Americans 

believe that the Japanese could launch effective military operations or 

understand that they would have a differing approach in their calculations of 

war risks or of the relationship of means to ends. 

The war in the Pacific should hardly have come as a surprise. The last 

prewar issue of Time magazine had the following to say about the situation: 

Everything was ready. FromRangoon to Honolulu every man was at battle 

stations. And Franklin Roosevelt was at his. This was the last act of the 

drama. The US position had the single clarity of a stone wall. One nervous 

twitch of a Japanese trigger, one jump in any direction, one overt act, 

might be enough. A vast array of armies, of navies, of air fleets were 

stretched now in the position of track runners, in the tension of the 

moment before the starter’s gun.I4 

Despite the efforts of historians to discover a smoking gun that would 

implicate the Roosevelt administration in the Pearl Harbor disaster, the real 

cause of the catastrophe lay in the assumptions and attitudes of American 

civilians and military. Ignoring Admiral Togo Heihachiro’s surprise attack on 

the Russian Far East Fleet at Port Arthur in 1904, few could imagine that the 

Japanese would or could launch another surprise attack in 1941.15 The result 

was a tactical and operational defeat in the Philippines and Hawaiian Islands. 

A peacetime mentality clouded the judgment of American commanders. The 

Pacific fleet at Pearl Harbor had made minimal preparations to resist air attack. 

The Army (including the AAF) assumed that the Navy was handling matters, 

despite the fact that the AAF’s mission in Hawaii was to protect the fleet.I6 

The real causes of the Pearl Harbor disaster had more to do with faulty 

assumptions and a general unwillingness to take enemy capabilities seriously 

than with a failure to gather intelligence. The destruction of American air power 

in the Philippines resulted from slightly different factors. Pearl Harbor had 

occurred eight hours earlier; American aircraft remained parked wing tip to 

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wing tip, reflecting a peacetime belief that one will be able to do anything one 

wants to an adversary in war, while the opponent in turn will be able to do 

nothing in reply. One can doubt whether more intelligence could have averted 

disasters in the face of such facile assumptions. 

Intelligence and the Air War in Europe 

The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and Hitler’s ill-considered declaration of 

war on the United States propelled the United States into a two-front war. The 

German declaration of war allowed Roosevelt to portray the Nazis and Japanese 

as representing a close alliance (in fact little connection or strategic cooperation 

existed between the two powers); the Americans were able to pursue a Europefirst strategy with only minor modifications despite the overwhelming desire of 

the American public to smash the Japanese. As early disasters in both the 

Atlantic and Pacific underlined, two years of preparation were not sufficient to 

ready U.S. forces for combat against well-prepared enemies. The resulting 

deficiencies led to disastrous defeats. The American military faced the difficult 

tasks of conducting combat operations, rapidly expanding their forces, and 

building up the logistics and intelligence structure required to support those 

forces once deployed and in combat. 

For the AAF, creation of an intelligence capability represented an especially 

difficult task: only the most superficial formal air intelligence organization 

characterized the interwar American military services. While airmen scrambled 

to remedy the problem, they failed to understand until 1943 how dependent their 

theories of air power employment were on economic analyses. Ira Eaker’s 

comment that “almost no information regarding targets in Germany, strength, 

and disposition of the German air force, etc. was available in the United States” 

defines the intelligence deficit with which the AAF began the air war.” 

The United States first had to build an intelligence organization that could 

effectively support operational commanders. Here the American penchant for 

adaptability and flexibility showed to full advantage. By drawing from a wide 

variety of civilian backgrounds, the U.S. military created capabilities in a 

surprisingly short time. The presence of individuals such as Telford Taylor 

(later a chief prosecutor at Nuremberg, eminent historian of the Third Reich, 

and leading Wall Street lawyer as well as professor of law at Columbia) and 

Lewis F. Powell, Jr. (later an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court) suggests 

the capacity and willingness of the rapidly expanding U.S. intelligence 

organizations to attract and assign positions of responsibility to first-class talent. 

But the inchoate American intelligence organizations were ill prepared for the 

challenges of 1942 and even 1943. They had to learn, as did American combat 

forces, on the job. 

40 1 
Piercing the Fog 

Particularly in the area of targeting and economic analysis, the air 

intelligence organization had little choice but to depend on outside talent. Here 

the willingness of the great American universities and their faculties proved 

crucial. The intellectual competence of the academically trained economists, 

political scientists, and historians provided a level of skill and expertise that 

airmen and their counterparts in the other services simply did not possess. The 

AAF in particular proved willing to reward talent and expertise with appropriate 

rank and status and to utilize such talent in positions of trust and responsibility. 

The initial classes of those selected and schooled as air intelligence officers 

turned out to be surprisingly good. They were products of a school system that 

had virtually no experience in the field.18 The capabilities of the first classes in 

the intelligence school at Harrisburg had little to do with their schooling; all the 

students were volunteers from a wide variety of professions and disciplines. 

Nearly all those trained had been successful in civilian life and were highly 

motivated volunteers, so it is hard to see how any schooling could have failed. 

This excellence, unfortunately, soon declined as the number of volunteers was 

exhausted and as the intelligence school rapidly expanded its student body to 

accommodate the insatiable demands of combat commands for more intelligence officers. With a rapidly expanding student body, Harrisburg found itself 

forced to draw its faculty from among its graduates, the best of whom bitterly 

resented any assignment to remain at the school. One also suspects that as the 

demand for intelligence officers leveled off, bureaucratic concerns began to 

determine those who would receive assignment to the basic course. Whatever 

the weaknesses of the schooling system, in a surprisingly short time the 

American military, and the AAF in particular, fielded efficient intelligence 

organizations. At their best, American intelligence officers assigned to the 

European and Mediterranean theaters stepped in and worked hand in hand with 

their British intelligence organization counterparts. The American success, 

similar in many ways to the success of the British, stands in stark contrast to the 

generally ineffective intelligence undertakings of the Axis. 

American air intelligence benefited enormously from its close cooperation 

with the British. In every aspect of intelligence-from signals, to cryptanalysis, 

to photoreconnaissance, to the resistance networks, and to economic analysis-Americans found enormously useful the open-handed aid that the British 

extended. Such British aid was not entirely unselfish; the British desperately 

needed the support of American industrial production and the eventual 

participation of American air and ground forces in battling into Fortress Europe. 

Even before the United States entered the war, the British proved to be 

remarkably forthcoming with many of the products of their intelligence system 

(although they remained circumspect with regard to ULTRA). With America’s 

active participation assured by Japan and Germany, the British provided a more 

systematic form of help to the struggling American forces. As early as spring 

1941, the British and Americans cooperated extensively through the MEW on 

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questions dealing with oil and the economic position of the Axis powers. 

Cooperation on sharing other crucial raw materials was slower to develop; 

through 1943 the Americans relied heavily on British assessments of the 

German economic situation.” 

From the beginning, cooperation between Eighth Air Force’s growing 

intelligence organization and the RAF’ s already well-organized and skillful 

intelligence effort was close and fruitful, remaining so to the end of the war. 

Throughout the war the British Y-Service, responsible for intercepting and 

determining the location of German radio transmissions, provided its intelligence directly to the U.S. Eighth Air Force as well as to the RAF, much of it 

(i.e., the intercepted high-grade encrypted messages) going directly to BP, the 

central analysis agency. Close cooperation between the U.S. War Department 

and British military intelligence provided a forum through which the British 

could funnel their experience and capabilities into the growing U.S. intelligence 

network?’ The American Air Staff in Washington found the system less than 

satisfactory since there was a pervasive feeling that the G-2 was filtering out 

key pieces of the puzzle, not through malice but because of its ignorance of air 

matters. Key pieces were being filtered out for that reason and to protect ULTRA 

sources worldwide. 

In Europe, direct contacts with British intelligence were enormously 

important for the development of American air intelligence. Even before the 

United States entered the war, the R4F had trained eleven AAF officers in the 

techniques of photographic interpretation. Those officers returned to the United 

States in October 1941 to help in the creation of an American photoreconnaissance effort.” By spring 1942, the British had agreed to establish a combined 

office with the Eighth Air Force to interpret all photographic intelligence at a 

common location, the CIU. There, the results of British and American 

photoreconnaissance over the continent could be gathered, collated, and passed 

back to the using units.” While relations between the British and the Americans 

were often rocky, the overall impression of American airmen involved was one 

of unparalleled honesty and openness in the working relationships between the 

intelligence organizations of these two powers. 

By summer 1942, the first American long-range bomber units had arrived 

in the United Kingdom; almost immediately they launched the first daylight 

raids onto the continent against targets relatively near their home bases. The 

British made every effort to persuade American airmen that daylight, unescorted 

bomber raids against German air defenses would have unwanted results. 

Certainly the British experience thus far in the war had provided a salient 

warning. The disastrous raid of Wellington bombers against the Heligoland 

Bight in December 1939, the heavy losses involved in the 1941 CIRCUS 

operations by RAF fighters and bombers over the continent, and finally the 

pummeling of a low-level Lancaster attack on the M.A.N. works in 1942-a11 

lent considerable support to the British position. But American airmen insisted 

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Piercing the Fog 

on doing things their way.23 Still wedded to an untried doctrine, they believed 

that British bomber formations had never achieved the critical mass required to 

defend themselves. 

American air operations over the continent in summer and fall 1942 rarely 

moved beyond the framework of a protecting cloak of RAF fighters. Ira Eaker 

was claiming by late fall that experiences thus far indicated the B-17 could 

“cope with the German day fighter.” On the basis of the first 1,100 sorties, he 

argued, German fighters were no match for close formations of American 

bombers; losses on the bombing missions onto the continent had averaged only 

1.6 percent. What Eaker failed to mention was that most of those missions had 

enjoyed heavy fighter support; in raids flown beyond fighter range or when no 

diversionary efforts were flown, the attacking bombers had suffered a loss rate 

of 6.4 percent, and no missions had yet flown over German territory.” Yet 

American intelligence estimates seem to have supported Eaker in his belief that 

the answer to the problems involved in penetrating deep into the Reich would 

only require formations consisting of ten bomber groups. In particular, the 

Americans believed that the Luftwuffe had thinned its forces along the outer 

perimeter of Fortress Europe and that, once past this defensive system, their 

bomber formations would have a relatively easy time over Germany. 

These early Eighth Air Force missions raised two important issues, one 

dealing with the analysis of intelligence and how doctrinal “belief” clouded 

judgments; the other, with technological assessments. American air intelligence 

was hardly an effective or efficient organization at this time; one can wonder 

how much clout it enjoyed with operational commanders. Not surprisingly, it 

provided no suggestion that American doctrine might be fundamentally flawed. 

First, experience thus far in the war suggested that deep penetration bomber 

raids into Germany would have substantial problems unless they were defended 

by escorting fighters. Intelligence analysts did not argue this point. This state 

of affairs underlined one of the major difficulties confronting AAF intelligence 

organizations: their general unwillingness to involve themselves in critiques of 

the doctrine and performance of their own forces. To do so would probably have 

involved them in serious disputes with their operational masters. Not doing so 

may have resulted in needless losses of aircraft and aircrews in both Europe and 

the Pacific. 

The second issue has more to do with technological assessment than with 

intelligence. Reinforced by the silence of intelligence and operations on 

questions of basic doctrine, a disastrous effect was the near loss of the daylight 

strategic bombing campaign. British and American airmen did not believe that 

a long-range fighter with suitable air-to-air capabilities could be constructed to 

escort bombers on deep penetration raids into Germany. Churchill had 

suggested to the Chief of Air Staff in 1941 that long-range escort fighters might 

be aconsiderable boon to Bomber Command; Portal, perhaps basing his opinion 

on the performance of the deficient German Me 1 10 during the Battle of Britain 

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the previous year, replied that such a fighter could never hold its own against 

short-range day fighters. A chastened Churchill responded that such a view 

closed “many American airmen were no more prescient with their 

intelligence analyses; their reading of loss rates in 1942 suggested that escort 

fighters were unnecessary. Eighth Air Force attitudes were summed up by a 

letter that Eaker sent Spaatz in October 1942: 

The second phase, which we are about to enter, is the demonstration that 

day bombing can be economically executed using general fighter support. . . in getting through the German defensive fighter belt and to help our 

cripples home through this same belt; the third phase will include deeper 

penetrations into enemy territory, using long-range fighter accompaniment 

of the P-38 type in general support only and continuing the use of shortrange fighters at critical points on a time schedule; the fourth phase will 

be a demonstration that bombardment in force-a minimum of 300 

bombers--can effectively attack any German target and return without 

excessive and uneconomical losses. This later phase relies upon mass and 

the great firepower of the large bombardment formations?6 

Eaker’ s letter is remarkable for more than his assumption that great formations 

of B-17s could defend themselves without protection by escort fighters. It is 

clear from his letter that, as with the Lu&u$fe’s intelligence before the Battle 

of Britain, he assumed enemy defensive forces would array themselves in a 

narrow and rather well-defined belt, downplaying the German option of a 

defense in depth. 

Luckily for the Americans, their theories were not tested at the end of 1942 

and the first half of 1943. Because of Operation TORCH (the landings of AngloAmerican forces in Morocco and Algeria) a substantial portion of American air 

assets was shifted to the Mediterranean, site of one of the crucial air battles of 

World War 11. The impact of the TORCH diversion on American air operations 

onto the continent was suostantial. Between November 1942 and March 1943 

Eighth Air Force could launch only two raids of more than 100 bombers, a force 

by Eaker’s own calculation incapable of fighting its way into and back out of 

the Reich.*’ The shift to the Mediterranean in retrospect was wholly beneficial 

for American ground and air forces. Leading American airmen and their 

intelligence officers had to address the problems of air power in joint tactical 

operations. The doctrine of precision bombing attacks against highly specialized 

segments of the German economy had little relevance in a theater where those 

targets were out of range, where the crucial problem from the first involved the 

winning of air superiority, and where the major mission of Allied air forces after 

gaining air superiority was to cut the sea lanes of communication supporting 

Axis forces in North Africa. In Northwest Africa, joint service cooperation was 

a must, and not surprisingly the leading air and ground commanders emerged 

to command the landing on the European continent in the next year. 

Intelligence was crucial to Allied success in the Mediterranean. Here a 

close cooperation quickly evolved between British and American intelligence 

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Piercing the Fog 

organizations, replicating what was occurring in England. ULTRA was a critical 

factor:' but success came only when it was included among other sources; 

ULTRA confirmed what Allied commanders already suspected. Other means of 

intelligence, such as photoreconnaissance, provided a framework for information from ULTRA. ULTRA'S continuing success owed much to the extraordinary 

carelessness of the Germans.29 Not only did flawed signals discipline on the part 

of the German military provide the Allies with the cribs that allowed access to 

the ciphers, but when operations suggested that something was terribly amiss 

with their signals security, the German intelligence experts consistently 

assumed that treachery marred the high command or that the Italians were guilty 

of both incompetence and trea~hery.~' 

ULTRA, in combination with the other intelligence sources, placed Allied 

commanders in the position of a man playing poker and knowing with a fair 

degree of accuracy what cards his opponents held. Had the Germans enjoyed 

overwhelming superiority (as they had in the Balkans campaign of spring 1941), 

such intelligence might have done the Allies little good. Given the overwhelming superiority that Anglo-American forces enjoyed in 1943, the excellence of 

Allied intelligence helped to hasten an inevitable end. Intelligence aided Allied 

air operations against the Lujbvufle by indicating enemy air operations, the 

disposition of his forces, and his strengths and weaknesses in the theater. In 

both Tunisia and Sicily, ULTRA and Y sources not only gave the Allies a clear 

picture of how German forces were deployed, they allowed Allied airmen to 

maximize their air potential by concentrating attacks on the German air bases. 

Dispersal fields did the Germans no good, because the Allies knew of their 

location, often before hjbvuffe units could begin operations. Similarly, ULTRA 

indicated when and where Axis seaborne convoys or air resupply movements 

would be. By March 1943, Allied air attacks on naval convoys moving from 

Sicily to Tunisia had become so effective that the Germans and Italians were 

forced to shut them down entirely; the information as to their exact course and 

timing made air and naval attacks on such movements doubly effective. The 

Axis air bridge to Tunisia was no more effective, because Allied air intelligence 

was consistently on the mark with correspondingly high German and Italian 

losses. The resulting air attacks severed the lines of communication between 

Italy and Tunisia and helped bring the campaign in North Africa to a successful 

conclusion. 

The largest contribution of theMediterranean theater to Allied victory may 

have been the training and preparation it provided airmen like Spaatz and 

Doolittle. The war in the Mediterranean did not look like the war posited by 

prewar doctrine. The interdependence of the services and the importance of 

cooperation were underlined for all to see. The war for air superiority brought 

a level of realism about the survivability of the bomber that was not present in 

England until the autumn of 1943. As early as that spring, Doolittle was 

pressing Arnold for long-range fighters to support medium and heavy bombers. 

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Retrospection 

He argued that the presence of such fighters would significantly reduce bomber 

casualties while their use “as intruders would greatly increase the effectiveness 

of our strategic ~perations.”~~ 

While Allied air forces battered the Lufiufe in the Mediterranean, Eighth 

Air Force finally reached a level of forces that allowed attacks into the Reich. 

For the first time the theory of self-protecting bomber formations would receive 

a full test. The problem confronting Eighth Air Force lay in a force structure 

that was not sufficient to absorb the punishment that theLufmuffe would inflict. 

Eighth Air Force’s strength severely constrained the number of targets it could 

strike; that number was further reduced by demands in the POINTBLANK 

directive that mandated high bombing priorities for U-boat construction sites 

and dockyards; these were not the targets that intelligence studies had indicated 

held the most profit potential. Thus Eighth Air Force operated with severely 

restricted target choices. 

The limited availability of bombers made the American decision to strike 

ball-bearing factories, in particular those at Schweinfurt, almost inevitable. 

Allied intelligence analysts believed no other target system provided so few 

crucial targets that could by their destruction do such extensive damage to the 

German economy as a whole. An offensive against the Reich’s petroleum 

industry, in contrast, would have demanded attacks on somewhere between fifty 

and sixty major targets, while target systems such as electricity or transportation 

demanded the destruction of an almost infinite number of targets. Destruction 

of the ball-bearing industry would have a serious impact on aircraft engine 

production, thus destroying German industry supporting the Lufmufe. The 

offensive did not develop as air planners had hoped. The damage of the two 

Schweinfurt raids looked spectacular from the air; reconnaissance flights soon 

confirmed that the first raid in August 1943 had done substantial damage to the 

structure of the buildings. The machinery that produced ball bearings was only 

lightly damaged; photoreconnaissance missions that flew over Schweinfurt in 

the aftermath of the raid could not reveal this information. 

The Germans and their armaments minister, Albert Speer, recognized the 

attack on Schweinfurt for what it was: an effort to cripple the German economy 

by taking out one of its critical components. Speer’s comments after the war 

suggested a number of weaknesses in the ability of U.S. air intelligence to 

assess bomb damage.32 Damage to the Schweinfurt ball-bearing facilities did 

indeed look impressive from the air, but the Germans soon recovered production. Other factors mitigated the overall impact of the Schweinfurt attacks. 

Many of the German armament industries had stocked substantial supplies of 

ball bearings to meet the vagaries of wartime supply. Swedish and Swiss 

industrial concerns stepped in and took up much of the German shortfall, and 

the Germans found a number of ingenious means of getting around their 

shortages. In other words, human ingenuity under the pressures of war proved 

adaptable and flexible in finding alternative solutions.33 

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Piercing the Fog 

Speer’s postwar comments that a more sustained attack on the ball-bearing 

industry would have led to industrial collapse underlines a fundamental 

difficulty in the American situation. Even had American air intelligence 

understood the advantages of more attacks, it is unlikely that much more could 

have been done. Despite the POINTBLANK directive, Bomber Command was 

unwilling to cooperate in attacking what its commander viewed as a panacea 

target, although the British Air Ministry exerted considerable pressure in 

support of the American attacks on ball bearings.34 The losses of bombers that 

Eighth suffered in the August Schweinfurt-Regensburg attack made it 

impossible for Americans to return to Schweinfurt on a regular basis. When the 

Americans attacked again in October 1943, German efforts to disperse the 

industry or to find alternative sources of supply were already underway. The 

damage inflicted did not compensate for the temble drubbing that the Eighth’s 

bombers took over Schweinfurt in the second raid, nor did it place the Germans 

in an impossible situation. 

What was occurring in the skies over Germany was an enormous battle of 

attrition that played an important role in the air victory of 1944. Allied signals 

intelligence and ULTRA were able to pick up the movement of German day 

interceptors from the various fronts to defend the skies over the Reich from 

American attack. But what intelligence could not fully grasp was the level of 

attrition that Eighth’s bombing raids inflicted on the Lufnyafse’s fighter forces, 

in part because so few intelligence officers had exposure to flying, much less 

air-to-air combat?’ While American intelligence discounted the wilder reports 

of bomber crews on the numbers of German fighters shot down, Eighth Air 

Force was still too optimistic over the summer and fall 1943 on the damage that 

it was inflicting on its foe.36 The Germans suffered serious casualties over this 

period, but not enough to blunt the ferocious defense that they were mounting. 

The reported level of casualties inflicted on the German fighter force led to 

serious miscalculations or at least serious overestimates of the level of success. 

Eaker himself suggested that there was evidence of “severe strain and some 

signs of eventual collapse.” In Washington, Arnold was suggesting that the 

Luftwufe was on the brink of collapse;37 others declared, “Aerial supremacy on 

a continental scale had been 

American air attacks were severely affecting Germany’s strategic situation, 

both in terms of the serious attrition imposed on the Lujiwufe and the effect of 

bombing on German aircraft production. American aerial attacks became more 

difficult as the Germans shifted production facilities to the east, making bomber 

missions longer and more hazardous. Historians have generally tended to 

underestimate the impact that American bombing had on the production 

capacity of Germany’s aircraft industry, because the Germans counted the repair 

of seriously damaged aircraft as new production, thus inflating the reports on 

the number of aircraft produced. If historians face difficulties in this area, the 

fact that air intelligence personnel during the war experienced the same 

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conundrum should not be surprising. Intelligence could estimate German 

production on the basis of ULTRA and other sources, but correlation seemed 

lacking between losses claimed in air-to-air action and the subsequent reports 

of front-line strength, attrition, and production?’ 

By the end of 1943 the Allies were on the way toward winning the 

intelligence war. Through a variety of sources, they built a coherent and 

generally clear picture of the enemy’s capabilities and intentions. In the 

Mediterranean, Allied airmen used that intelligence to win a series of major 

victories over Axis forces. In the skies over Germany, that advantage did not 

translate into victory because the targets were too numerous and the bombers 

too few, and because the Luftwufle’s fighter forces were fighting on their home 

ground. The attacking bombers still had to deal with the defenders before hitting 

the targets on which the American precision bombing campaign rested. All the 

intelligence in the world could not change the fundamental equation of fighter 

versus bomber. 

Indeed, the attack on Schweinfurt in October 1943, the infamous “black 

Thursday” raid, represented the nadir of the American strategic bombing effort. 

It came close to ending the daylight campaign, and the damage to the morale of 

Eighth Air Force was nearly catastrophic. But two improvements in late 1943 

changed the balance in the air and gave American airmen the means to execute 

their plans and make full use of the extraordinary advantages that intelligence 

would give them in 1944. The first was the steady growth of the bomber force, 

despite heavy losses, in the period from summer 1943 through summer 1944. 

While Eaker had at his disposal a daily average of 459 bombers in June 1943, 

by December the Eighth had more than 1,057 on hand, and by June 1944 the 

total reached 2,547.@ The American bomber force could absorb far heavier 

losses, while attacking progressively larger target sets on a more sustained 

basis. Finally, a true long-range fighter, the P-51, appeared in the European 

theater. Long- range fighter escort support now allowed the Americans to attack 

the Lufcwafle anywhere in the skies over the Reich. Although appearance of the 

P-51 did not lead to any significant decrease in bomber losses until May 1944, 

it drastically increased the price that the Luftwafle had to pay,41 eventually 

resulting in the German fighter force’s collapse prior to D-day. 

Intelligence was particularly helpful in discerning how Allied changes in 

tactics affected German defensive capabilities. Doolittle’s decision in March 

1944 to release escorting fighters from the restrictions of flying close escort 

missions with the bombers and to allow them to seek out German fighters 

anywhere and everywhere received considerable support from intelligence. 

ULTRA messages confirmed that American fighters were causing the Germans 

difficulties as they attacked airfields and aircraft landing and taking off!2 

ULTRA confirmed that the American air offensive was also causing desperate 

shortages of pilots, parts, and supplies in the enemy fighter f0rces.4~ 

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Piercing the Fog 

With the Normandy invasion in June 1944, ULTRA gave away the German 

movement of fighters to the invasion front and enabled Allied covering forces 

to destroy many of the German aircraft and much of their supporting infrastructure before the Germans ever got it in place.44 Similarly, ULTRA indicated on 

June 9 and 10 the exact location of Geyer von Schweppenburg’s Punzer Group 

West’s headquarter^.^^ The resulting air attack not only destroyed most of the 

panzer group’s communications equipment, but it also killed seventeen staff 

officers, including the chief of The strike effectively robbed the Germans 

of their only organization capable of handling a large number of mobile 

divisions on the western front. 

The greatest contribution of intelligence information in 1944 came on the 

strategic level. Intelligence kept the focus on the Luftwaffe through spring 1944 

by pointing out the severe difficulties under which the Germans were operating, 

while it suggested the extraordinary measures that the enemy was taking to 

escape those difficulties. By May 1944, Spaatz and Doolittle had persuaded 

Eisenhower that the German petroleum industry now represented the crucial 

Achilles’ heel of the whole Nazi war effort, military as well as economic. On 

May 12, Eighth Air Force struck the synthetic oil plants at Zwickau, MerseburgLeuna, Brux, Lutzkendorf, Bohlen, Zeitz, and Chemnitz. Speer recalled in his 

memoirs that he immediately warned Hitler of the extraordinary danger: 

The enemy has struck us at one of our weakest points. If they persist at it 

this time, we will soon no longer have any fuel production worth 

mentioning. Our one hope is that the other side has an air force general 

staff as scatterbrained as 

Speer was being a bit unfair to his own air force and was missing a 

substantial point: in war it is extraordinarily difficult to estimate the long-range 

effect of military actions on an enemy’s capabilities. This was especially true 

for the air war up to 1944, where damage was consistently difficult to estimate. 

The result had been a tendency of airmen to hedge their bets by attacking a 

number of different target systems in the hope that one would provide the key 

to success; the Luftwuffe high command’s conduct of the Battle of Britain was 

an especially good example of this approach. In terms of the American conduct 

of the oil offensive in 1944, intelligence, and particularly ULTRA, played a 

crucial role in keeping the interest of air leaders firmly centered on one target 

system. At this point, with the vast growth in its force structure, Eighth Air 

Force, supported by the Fifteenth Air Force in Italy, struck on a continuous 

basis at the relatively few oil facilities available to Germany. 

Within days of the opening of the oil offensive on May 12, BP was 

forwarding decrypts indicating a substantial movement of flak forces within the 

Reich to defend the petroleum sites.“’ On May 21, another intercept from an 

unspecified German source ordered: 

Consumption of mineral oil in every form.. . be substantially reduced. . . in view of Allied action in Rumania and on German hydrogenation plants; 

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Retrospection 

extensive failures in mineral oil production and a considerable reduction 

in the June allocation of fuel oil, etc., were to be expected:’ 

By early June, after a second series of strikes had done an even more thorough 

job of disrupting the German petroleum industry, BP forwarded another ULTRA 

decrypt from the Oberkommando der Luftwaffe, the Luftwaffe high command: 

To assume defense of Reich and to prevent gradual collapse of readiness 

for defense of German air force in east, it has been necessary to break into 

OKW (Oberkommando des Wehrmachts-armed forces high command 

[oil]) reserves. Extending, therefore, existing regulations ordered that all 

units to arrange operations so as to manage at least until the beginning of 

July with present stocks or small allocation which may be possible. Rate 

of arrival and quantities of July quota still undecided. Only very small 

quantities available for adjustments, provided Allied situation remains 

unchanged. In no circumstance can greater allocations be made. Attention 

again drawn to existing orders for most extreme economy measures and 

strict supervision of consumption, especially for transport, personal and 

communications flights.” 

The special security officer at Eighth Air Force Headquarters underlined 

after the war ULTRA’S contribution to the success of the offensive against oil. 

His claim that intercepts proving that petroleum shortages resulting from raids 

were general and not local convinced “all concerned that the air offensive had 

uncovered a weak spot in the German economy and led to exploitation of this 

weakness to the fullest e~tent.”~’ For the remainder of the war, ULTRA and 

photoreconnaissance allowed the Allies to keep close tabs on German repair 

efforts; follow-on air raids destroyed the German efforts to reconstruct 

petroleum production facilities. This consistent focus kept the German 

petroleum industry from recovering from the lethal blow that it had received 

over the summer. 

In the war’s last year, intelligence, particularly photoreconnaissance, made 

major contributions to the waging of the two great transportation plans executed 

by Allied strategic and tactical air forces.52 The first isolated the Normandy 

battlefield and enabled Anglo-American forces to win the logistical race of the 

buildup. The second was even more successful and led to a general collapse of 

the German railway system over the winter of 1944-1945; this success 

prevented the German anns industry from resupplying the weary, badly battered 

Wehrmacht during the winter of 1945. As German defenses rapidly collapsed 

in spring 1945, fanatical Nazis were unable to wage a last-ditch, desperate 

struggle on the ruins of the Reich. The execution of the transportation attacks, 

as well as the intelligence contribution, suggests much about the difficulties in 

using intelligence effectively and the problems in integrating intelligence into 

operations. 

The first of the transportation campaigns was largely limited to the tactical 

and operational arena. It sealed off the coastal areas of France from reinforcement and made German logistic difficulties so great as to prevent a rapid 

41 1 
Piercing the Fog 

buildup to contest OVERLORD. Contributing to the German failure to reinforce 

the Normandy battlefront was a successful deception effort that completely 

misled German intelligence as to the possibility of another landing. Considerable squabbling between the airmen and those advocating landing on the 

continent centered on the question of how best to isolate the battlefield. Should 

the brunt of attack be on marshaling yards or on bridges and other choke points? 

The benefits accrued by either approach are still not entirely clear today. What 

is clear is that Allied air forces possessed sufficient strength and knowledge to 

pursue both. By late May, the railroads in the west of France were in a state of 

complete collapse,53 leading to the Germans’ difficulty in building up to meet 

the invasion and support the battle of attrition. Throughout the period, ULTRA 

decrypts indicated to Allied air commanders the extent of damage to the French 

railways.54 Photoreconnaissance also revealed the extent to which tactical and 

strategic air attacks had closed supply routes. The aerial interdiction effort in 

Normandy succeeded far beyond a similar effort in Italy because of the 

enormous battle of attrition that occurred with the relentless pressure exercised 

by the Allied armies seeking a breakout. 

In early fall, the success of the Normandy interdiction effort led Eisenhower’s deputy, Air Marshal Tedder, to suggest an equivalent campaign to 

destroy the Reich’s transportation system. Tedder ran into substantial 

opposition from both Air Marshal Arthur T. “Bomber” Harris and Spaatz. 

Nevertheless, some of the strategic bombing effort bled over into the transportation plan. Bomber Command’s main targets were the German population 

centers, and in the heart of most German cities were located the railway stations 

and marshaling yards for theReichsbahn (the German railways). Spaatz agreed 

to support Tedder’s plan when bad weather obscured the oil targets and the 

Eighth could not execute precision bombing attacks. 

While considerable information was available on the impact that Allied air 

attacks had on the French transportation system, air intelligence underutilized 

ULTRA. In February 1945, a review of ULTRA information, initiated by Air Vice 

Marshal Norman H. Bottomley, the FUF’s Deputy Chief of Air Staff, indicated 

that the Combined Strategic Targets Committee had systematically suppressed 

ULTRA data on the Reichsbahn and on the German economy, intelligence that 

underlined the extent of the enemy’s diffi~ulties.~~ One relevant message, 

unused since its decryption in October 1944, indicated that by that date, due to 

transportation destruction and bottlenecks, “from 30 to 50 percent of all 

[factories] in West Germany were at a ~tandstill.”~~ As one historian of the 

attack on the German transportation network has suggested: 

Only when the weather improved in January 1945, when it was realized 

that ULTRA had unlocked important secrets, when Upper Silesia was 

overrun . . . only then were the paralysis of the Reichsbahn and the coal 

famine perceived and a new consensus formed behind the transportation 

campaign. Ultimately, after much misunderstanding, segments of the 

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Retrospection 

Allied air intelligence community and all the Allied air commanders 

agreed to set bombing priorities in line with Tedder’s conception?’ 

During late fall and early winter, intelligence organizations minimized their 

estimates of damage imposed by the offensive against the transportation 

network; their approach largely reflected a desire to support the views of the 

commanders of the strategic bombing forces. In effect, they prevented the full 

fury of Allied air capabilities from destroying the German transportation 

network before winter began, and thus they may have extended the war by 

several months. In the end, the German transportation system did collapse in 

late winter with devastating effects, ending the production of arms; the result 

was the collapse of Nazi Germany in March and April 1 945.’8 

Intelligence and the War in the Pacifii 

The most crucial difference between air intelligence operations in the European 

and Pacific theaters lay in the fashion with which American society, specifically 

its military, judged and estimated their potential opponents, Germany and 

Japan, both before and during the war. In the former case, many, including the 

president (who spoke fluent German and read Hitler’s speeches in the 

~riginal),’~ were intimately acquainted with Germany, its history, its society, 

and its culture. Even in the last years before the outbreak of war, Germany had 

remained a relatively open society from which Americans could readily acquire 

much information. Many Americans spoke and read German because of 

background, education, or family ties. Little of this was true with regard to 

Japan. Throughout this period the Empire of the Rising Sun remained a society 

that even Westerners who spoke the language found difficult to penetrate. Few 

Westerners tried, and even fewer succeeded, to learn the language. The result 

was a general ignorance of Japan, its society, and its military institutions; that 

ignorance, combined with a general sense of racial superiority, led Americans 

to belittle Japanese capabilities and potential, whether one talked about 

strategic, operational, tactical, or technological levels of war. That arrogance 

carried into the post-Pearl Harbor period; the crushing defeat inflicted on the 

U.S. Navy at Savo Island in August 1942 underlines the persistence of such 

attitudes well into the war.6o 

Luckily in one area, cryptanalysis, American intelligence had made 

significant strides before the war, a base on which the country could expand 

intelligence efforts. Even here, difficulties abounded in language competence 

and in understanding enemy capabilities and intentions. The Pearl Harbor 

disaster resulted not from a lack of intelligence, but from a general unwillingness to understand or to recognize its import. Intelligence analysts and 

operational commanders simply assumed that the Japanese would not (or 

413 
Piercing the Fog 

perhaps even could not) attack the Hawaiian Islands. Such fundamental 

misconceptions would have been hard to shake until the bombs began to fall. 

Perhaps the greatest single difference between the European theater and the 

Pacific from the point of view of the American air intelligence effort lay in the 

very size of the latter. In Europe one can talk of one theater, even though 

operations were conducted in two distinct areas: the Mediterranean and western 

Europe. In both, the nature of the enemy and hence the intelligence-gathering 

efforts remained quite similar throughout the war. From both, the Allies would 

launch major strategic bombing efforts onto the European continent with similar 

targets as their objectives. Both areas supported ground and amphibious efforts 

that struck against enemy land forces able to draw from the resources of the 

continent. The efforts from the Mediterranean and from England confronted 

tenacious and effective air defenses on the continent. So one sees a combined 

intelligence effort which evaluated the same kinds of information. Airmen 

would transfer from one area to the other with ease; the most famous example 

is the transfer of Ira Eaker to the Mediterranean and his replacement in Europe 

by Spaatz and Doolittle from the Mediterranean. 

The intelligence situation confronting American airmen in the Pacific was 

radically different from that which existed in Europe. In the Central and South 

Pacific, AAF units remained under the control of the Navy; their intelligence 

organizations consequently were dependent on their sister service. In the 

SWPA, General Kenney’s efforts occurred in an Army theater of operations. In 

the CBI, the American effort involved considerable interallied difficulties with 

the British and a clash in strategic goals between American interests that aimed 

at keeping open the link to China and British interests that aimed at regaining 

the southeast Asian empire lost so disastrously in the first months of the Pacific 

War. American airmen in China waged a valiant effort to support a weak and 

corrupt Chinese nationalist regime as they prepared the base for long-range 

strategic bombing attacks with B-29s against the Japanese home islands. Within 

China, a nightmare of conflicting interests, the incapacity of the nationalist 

government to work with Stilwell, unseemly squabbles between Stilwell and 

American airmen, and Japanese capabilities combined to make this theater one 

of the least successful American undertakings of the war. The differing natures 

and demands of the four Pacific theaters resulted in substantially different 

organizations as well as substantially different requirements from intelligence. 

Points of comparison were fewer in the Pacific than they were in Europe. ’ 

Of all the American airmen in World War 11, George Kenney displayed the 

greatest adaptability and flexibility in difficult and challenging circumstances. 

From the tactics of low-level skip bombings against ships to a brilliant 

operational employment of his resources against the Japanese air base structure, 

ground forces, and sea lines of communications, Kenney showed himself to be 

a master of operational art. Crucially important to his success was how he 

employed intelligence. 

414 
Retrospection 

From the first, Kenney displayed a keen sense of how intelligence could be 

used. He was not well served by MacArthur’s staff because special intelligence 

from Honolulu and Washington unfortunately was funneled into the SWPA 

through General Sutherland. Sutherland in turn passed what he thought was 

significant to MacArthur directly, often leaving the intelligence organizations, 

including MacArthur’s chief of intelligence, in the dark. Kenney and the air 

effort were hurt less than might have otherwise occurred. He inherited an air 

intelligence organization originally created to meet the needs of Field Marshal 

Wavell’s combined command. Kenney was integrated into the extensive British 

and Australian net which read low-grade Japanese codes and ciphers in the 

theater, made radio traffic analyses, and gathered intelligence from the effective 

and efficient coast-watching effort established before the war by the Australians. Kenney’s personality, abrasive at times but certainly not imperial, 

matched Australian sensibilities far better than was true with either MacArthur 

or most of his staff. 

In time, Hewitt, Kenney’s intelligence chief, and the SWPA headquarters 

became responsible for the long-range intelligence planning, while Fifth Air 

Force’s (and eventually Thirteenth Air Force’s) intelligence organizations were 

responsible for the day-to-day operational and tactical intelligence. Throughout 

the war, Kenney proved himself a commander who consistently and coherently 

used intelligence to accomplish his mission. Whether it be the reports of coast 

watchers or the deciphering of high-level messages, he incorporated intelligence 

to its best advantage to attack Japanese weaknesses, to avoid their strengths, or 

to deceive the enemy as to his own intentions. The classic example of Kenney’s 

skillful utilization of past and present intelligence undoubtedly came in the 

Battle of the Bismarck Sea. Past intelligence indicated how the Japanese would 

probably move a major reinforcing effort, and ULTRA indicated when that move 

would begin. In combination, Kenney and his subordinates constructed a 

realistic and effective campaign plan that allowed them to smash the Japanese. 

This skillful use of intelligence, combined with extraordinary flexibility and 

adaptability to the actual conditions of war, probably made Kenney’s employment of air power the most effective, given the resources employed, of all 

Allied air power in World War 11. 

Kenney’s first contributions were strikes at Rabaul in 1942 in support of the 

landings at Guadalcanal; special intelligence almost immediately confirmed for 

him and MacArthur that the ability of the Japanese to use the airfields at Rabaul 

had been upset if not reduced. In September 1942, Kenney had flown an 

infantry regiment into Port Moresby to help defend southern New Guinea, an 

action that was not exactly in line with the accepted, narrowly defined view of 

air power held by many within the Army. The interdiction of the Japanese sea 

lines of communication from Rabaul to New Guinea during the following year 

showed the talents of Kenney and his very able subordinate, Ennis Whitehead, 

to their greatest advantage. In that case, the patient collection, collation, and 

415 
Piercing the Fog 

interpretation of signals and special intelligence indicated that the Japanese 

were about to make a major move to reinforce Lae. At the same time, a major 

refitting of American B-25 medium bombers carried out on the scene gave 

aircrews enhanced capabilities to strike targets at low level. Finally, Kenney and 

his subordinates (operators as well as intelligence officers) carefully reconstructed the routing that the Japanese had used in previous convoys to Lae. The 

result of all this care and patience was a devastatingly effective attack on the 

Japanese convoy, exactly where Kenney and Whitehead had planned to strike 

(and almost at the exact time). All the supply ships were sunk and a number of 

Japanese soldiers were rescued, although without arms, ammunition, or supplies 

they were worse than useless.6’ For the Japanese, the effect of the losses in the 

battle of the Bismarck Sea were immediate and adverse. Allied success had 

turned on the extraordinarily competent integration of intelligence with tactical 

flexibility and adaptation. No better example exists in World War I1 of the 

skillful combination of intelligence and operational capabilities in battle. 

Despite occasional troubles such as those in the Admiralties and during the 

first Philippine landings brought on by exuberance and an unwarranted 

contempt for his enemy’s abilities, George Kenney’s use of intelligence after 

the Bismarck Sea operation retained by and large this level of effectiveness 

because of two factors. First, he picked excellent subordinates and used them 

well; he gave them the authority and support to get on with the job. In 1943, 

Kenney’s handling of Allied air units broke the back of the Japanese air power 

operating in New Guinea. By understanding that the heart of the Japanese 

defensive system lay in their well-stocked bases used to shuttle aircraft back and 

forth within the theater, he struck at the bases themselves. With the base 

structure severely debilitated, Japanese air power simply withered, and 

Kenney’s forces gained general air superiority in the skies over New Guinea. 

The second major factor that allowed General Kenney to continue his successful 

use of intelligence was the extraordinary extent to which the Allies in SWPA, 

Pearl Harbor, and Washington had penetrated Japanese signals transmissions. 

By 1944, intelligence was providing MacArthur and his land, sea, and air forces 

with a continuing reading of Japan’s overall situation and her plans for air 

operations. 

By 1944 the Japanese armed forces were in retreat, but they could still 

muster a substantial air task force in reaction to Allied landings. The appearance 

of their task forces came by surprise, since ULTRA had not detected the units 

well in advance. Despite this unexpected development, Japan’s weakness 

prevented her from sustaining an effective air campaign as a barrier to further 

Allied advances. Having defeated Japanese air power, the question then became 

less one of holding air superiority in support of the Philippine campaign than of 

supporting the Army and Navy in combat with the Japanese ground and naval 

forces in the Philippine Islands. Again Kenney showed himself to be a master 

at adapting to the conditions. By the end of the war, he was concentrating his 

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Retrospection 

air power on Okinawa to support Operation OLYMPIC, MacArthur’s great 

invasion of the home islands, scheduled for November 1,1945. By then Kenney 

controlled not only Fifth Air Force, but also Thirteenth from the South Pacific 

and Seventh from the Central Pacific. Such was the high regard with which he 

was held. 

Contrasting the Allied success at intelligence exploitation in the Pacific, the 

problems in the CBI Theater reflected three distinct difficulties. First, British 

and American war aims were so divergent as to make military cooperation 

difficult. The common need to defeat the enemy meant that, at lower levels, 

useful cooperation occurred. This cooperation was partially due to a growing 

awareness of the need for more combined air intelligence centers, much like 

those found in Europe. Second, the organization of the theater left much to be 

desired (the organization can only be described as being inversely proportional 

to the size of the forces being led and to their military effectiveness, at least in 

the early days of the fighting). Finally, one can only note a general lack of 

geniality and level of trust among senior commanders--Chiang, Stilwell, 

Wavell, Chennault, and Bissell-that made relationships in the Allied high 

command in the European theater appear to be problem-free. 

Within the CBI Theater, intelligence was critical. In particular, the nature 

of the terrain in Burma and India made HUMINT particularly important. The 

clandestine organizations established in this area by the American OSS and the 

British Special Operations Executive proved crucial in passing useful 

intelligence to airmen. Allied intelligence officers did an effective job in 

analyzing the geography of the theater. The mining of the Rangoon estuary on 

the basis of an analysis of Burmese landforms and railways is an excellent case 

of how an intelligence organization can spot weaknesses in the enemy’s 

situation merely by thinking through the problem and using information readily 

at hand. As with other theaters of war, all sources of intelligence proved 

enormously helpful to air operations; signals intelligence was as useful as it was 

in other areas. Photoreconnaissance was invaluable in both target selection and 

damage assessment. 

In China an enormous philosophical difference existed between Stilwell and 

the indigenous political and military leadership (Chiang and his nationalist 

regime), the latter being supported by one of Stilwell’s subordinates, Claire 

Chennault. Stilwell regarded the creation of a well-trained and disciplined 

ground force as sine qua non for effective military operations against the 

Japanese in the theater, but that demanded substantive reform of the Chinese 

nationalist regime, something that Chiang either would not allow or could not 

accomplish. In effect, Chennault offered a shortcut for the military and strategic 

defeat of the Japanese, one that would allow Chiang to husband his strength for 

the coming struggle against the communists. That shortcut involved the 

supposed use of air power to redress the deficiencies of Chinese ground forces. 

Chennault believed that his air units could beat the Japanese first in China with 

417 
Piercing the Fog 

his Fourteenth Air Force and then in the home islands by B-29 raids launched 

from Chinese bases. Events proved Stilwell right and Chennault wrong. 

Chennault overestimated the ability of his air units to carry the load for China 

and underestimated the Japanese Army’s capacity and intent for a sustained 

drive aimed at his eastern China airfields. When the Japanese recognized the 

threat of B-29 raids from bases in China, they simply captured the air bases in 

a great land campaign. The result reflected a considerable intelligence failure 

at the level where intelligence was the most difficult to perform: strategic and 

operational assessment. Strategic assessment at the highest levels demanded a 

real knowledge of one’s own allies and one’s opponents that involved far more 

than a simple counting of enemy units; it demanded a knowledge of the 

language, history, cultures, and politics involved in complex strategic situations. 

The last significant air intelligence area in the Pacific was the great strategic 

bombing campaign launched against the Japanese home islands by the B-29s. 

Here prewar American ignorance of Japan-some was inevitable, given the 

secretiveness of Japanese society, and some was self-induced by a belief in 

racial superiority--came into play. Virtually no aerial photoreconnaissance of 

the home islands existed until very late in 1944. The initial conceptions for the 

campaign reflected the flawed prewar precision bombing doctrine. As the COA 

review of bombing priorities noted in October 1944, “lack of information 

remains a major obstacle to careful target selection.”62 General LeMay ’ s 

decision to abandon the initial precision bombing campaign for an approach 

reminiscent of the British area bombing campaign resulted from the operational 

realities confronting American airmen. Precision bombing attacks could not be 

made to work in the face of intense operational problems and the lack of current 

target and weather information. Aside from operational demands, the AAF 

leadership was under constant pressure to prove the worth of the B-29 and to 

justify the creation of an independent service after the war. 

The experience and lessons from Allied operations in Europe made their 

way to Washington and to and throughout the Pacific and Asian war theaters, 

usually with good results. On the Air Staff, the A-2 and A-3 grew in their 

abilities and their mutual accomplishments in affecting air planning and 

operations. In the course of this development, a number of individuals came to 

prominence in the interplay between intelligence and air operations. The 

personality of the AAF’s commanding general appeared often in the direction 

and organization of the service. Hap Arnold was a singular character, unmatched by any other individual in the wartime AAF; his interests ranged from 

design of aircraft and support equipment to tactics and operations of air power. 

Intelligence in general and the A-2 office in particular received his attention, 

although his influence may not always have been wholly beneficial. The May 

1939 meeting with Lindbergh was but the first of his many independent 

418 
I‘ 

. .. , . 
Piercing the Fog 

plans and B-29 operations, observed that Arnold “habitually distrusted his own 

staff. He was always under the impression that there were some brilliant people 

out there somewhere if he could just get his hands on them.” As a result, Arnold 

often took a suggestion in a draft paper and turned it into policy, disrupting the 

Air Staff‘s normal process. These sorts of actions have their place and can keep 

bureaucratic organizations from self-justifying lethargy. But in Arnold’s case, 

such practices at times negated the value of an air intelligence staff applying 

hardheaded analysis to a very complex set of pr0blems.6~ 

The demands for action and abrupt changes in policy could be detrimental 

to the effective working of the Air Staff. As an example with far-reaching 

consequences, Hansell cited the creation of the COA. For all of the potential 

good that the COA could do, Arnold’s perhaps overly quick decision on its 

organization and purpose may have pushed the group into making operational 

recommendations for which its members were unqualified, rather than studying 

intelligence data in a quest for a reasoned analysis of enemy weak points. In 

Hansell’s opinion, even the name of the group was incorrect, implying that it 

had an operational function.@ 

General White’s biting remark of September 1944 that the “A-2 will 

forever suck hind tit in the AAF‘’65 probably arose as much from Arnold’s style 

of leading the service and his unwillingness to take the A-2 office seriously as 

it did from any other single source, like the G-2’s obstructionism or other Air 

Staff office problems. Hansell was even more critical of the manner in which 

senior AAF officers treated the relationship between intelligence and command. 

Hansell believed that most of the AAF’s generals spent too much time focusing 

on operational flying problems and goals and not nearly enough time thinking 

about targeting and adequately using the intelligence resources at hand. As 

Hansell pointed out, commanders had to give their intelligence officers 

instructions on what to look for, the classic essential elements of information 

(EEIs), to support planning. If a man did not understand the nature of target 

objectives, Hansell doubted that he could effectively contemplate EEIs and 

direct the formulation of air warfare plans. Hansell’s criticisms along this line 

also fell on intelligence officers, who, he believed, too often reacted to 

operational demands and failed to use their analytical expertise and the assets 

of their offices to examine critically the accomplishments of the force in 

meeting the enemy. Hansell himself believed such work might have alleviated 

the heavy losses of bombers attempting to attack strongly defended German 

targets without fighter escorts. 

Hansell’s thoughts on these subjects emerged well after the war with all the 

advantages of hindsight. During the conflict, senior officers could take little 

time for reflection. Had they been better prepared to do so, such self-critical 

thinking might have served to prevent Chennault’s loss of the eastern China 

bases in 1944 and other misjudgments elsewhere in the Pacific, as air commanders allowed themselves to assume that the enemy would do as the Americans 

420 
Retrospection 

thought best, rather than do what best suited the enemy’s own needs. The 

operational bent was surely the case for some, Arnold included, but not for all. 

Hansell singled out Spaatz and Maj. Gen. Frederick Anderson as exceptions. 

Kenney was operationally oriented, but he and Whitehead were more than 

capable of understanding the nature and importance of targets, and both gave 

targets ample thought.66 Even Chennault can be faulted only partially on this 

score, as he was forced by logistic circumstances to carefully judge the value of 

targets before committing precious gasoline to a raid. 

Hansell did not stint in criticizing his own go-along attitude, either. He 

considered his worst wartime mistake to have been failing to oppose the COA’s 

target recommendations that he thought were inappropriate. The most 

prominent error he saw was the COA’s effective removal of Germany’s electric 

power generation capacity from the the CBO target list. At the time, in 1943, 

Hansell justified his actions as those of a good team player who refused to act 

to the possible detriment of the Am, still struggling for serious consideration 

as a wartime service. He believed that to oppose the COA would challenge the 

very agency that the AAF had created to study the goals of strategic bombing. 

The result of strong objections might have been to “have industrial targets and 

the whole idea of strategic air warfare eliminated altogether” by those on the 

JCS and elsewhere who did not understand air power. In other words, Hansell 

was a loyal soldier who supported Arnold and his service, first and foremost. 

But Hansell may also have considered that his action fostered too many poor 

ideas, including urban area attacks. His opposition to that tactic seems to have 

contributed strongly to Arnold’s decision to remove him from Guam and the 

XXI Bomber Command in 1945.67 

Conclusion 

Clearly, intelligence played a crucial role in the Allied victory in World War 

I1 and contributed to a shortening of the war. In large part, the success of 

American air intelligence rested on the significant and timely commitment of 

resources and sustained effort by senior air commanders, even in the darkest 

days of 1941 and 1942. 

Intelligence did not and could not fully illuminate the enemy’s situation.68 

It rendered a significant contribution by suggesting the parameters within which 

the Germans and Japanese worked, allowing Allied commanders to see with 

some clarity occurrences in the enemy camps. At the strategic level, it provided 

the American leadership with a sense of those attacks that were having the most 

significant effect on the German situation. In 1942 and 1943, the AAF was not 

in a position to act on such intelligence; the losses at Schweinfurt, for example, 

prevented repetitions of the attack with sufficient frequency to shut down the 

German ball-bearing production. Nor could intelligence’s knowledge of 

42 1 
Piercing the Fog 

Sweden’s sale to Germany of ball bearings have led to military interdiction of 

that source of supply. Consequently, intelligence could not compensate for the 

gap created by operational or diplomatic weaknesses. 

The Schweinfurt raids raised other significant problems for air intelligence 

analysts, most notably the difficulty of evaluating the economic and strategic 

effect of attacks on certain target sets. That problem unleashed a host of other 

questions which depended for their answers on knowledge that even in 

peacetime would be beyond the ability of intelligence organizations to answer: 

How dependent is the enemy on any particular industry? What are his 

alternative sources of supply? How rapidly can he disperse his production? 

What is the capacity of his industry to repair significant damage? How long will 

it take him to feel the effects of damage done to particular target sets? Indeed, 

the enemy himself may have a hard time in calculating his own capacity to 

adapt to the damage on his military or economic structure. Seeking the answers 

remained a prime task of intelligence, one not fully resolved, but one met with 

ingenuity and skill in most instances. 

As with strategic intelligence, the growth of operational and tactical air 

intelligence analysis skills were of considerable help to command planning. It 

was useful for American airmen to know in 1943 that a substantial portion of 

the Lujlwaffe’s fighter force was moving from the eastern and Mediterranean 

theaters to the defense of the Reich. In a strategic sense, this information 

suggested that damage to targets selected for daylight bombing was hitting the 

Germans hard. In an operational sense, such intelligence could not alter the 

reality that American bombers had to fight their way through an increasingly 

effective German air defense. 

On the tactical level, intelligence had to be timely; by 1944 the cooperation 

of operations and intelligence had become so refined in the American tactical 

air forces that the flow of information created frequent, if fleeting, opportunities. Thus, Lujlwafle fighter-bomber formations that moved to Normandy 

following the successful Allied lodgment on June 6 were savaged even before 

they landed. Similarly, intelligence providing the location of Panzer Group 

West enabled American fighter forces to destroy one of the crucial links in the 

German command and control system. The significant aspect of intelligenceoperations cooperation was the fact that both worked to a high level of 

understanding for each other’s needs and requirements. The close relationship 

between commanders and their intelligence deputies fostered cooperation that 

made the whole greater than the sum of its parts. But that level of cooperation 

was established over a long period and after considerable trial and error. 

Intelligence was not the servant or handmaiden of operations; it was rather a 

partner, and that partnership played a major role in winning the war more 

effectively, quickly, and at less cost. 

The American military did an impressive job in creating effective 

intelligence organizations out of minuscule cadres. First, the British provided 

422 
Retrospection 

considerable support onto which the American airmen could graft their young 

intelligence organizations in Europe. Second, with two notable exceptions, 

weaknesses in ifitelligence organizations did not lead to any serious failures 

early in the war. Admittedly, Pearl Harbor and the Philippines were terrible 

defeats, but distance and the heavy commitment of Axis forces to other theaters 

had a shielding effect on American military forces. Moreover, America had two 

full years to prepare for conflict, while its Allies bore the brunt of battle. Had 

the United States not shortchanged and fragmented its intelligence organizations 

so badly in the interwar period, it might have significantly mitigated the 

problems it confronted in building up the intelligence organizations under the 

pressures of wartime. 

423 

Notes to Pages 1-9 

NOTES 

INTRODUCTION 

1. Henry H. Arnold, Global Mission 

(Blue Ridge Summit, Pa., 1989), pp. 

2. Ray S. Cline, Secrets, Spies and 

Scholars, Blueprint of the Essential CIA 

(Washington, D.C., 1976), p. 18. 

3. Intvw, Col Thomas A. Fabyanic, 

USAF, Ret, with Maj Gen Haywood S. 

Hansell, Jr., USAF, Ret, Jan 21, 1987. 

4. Hansell intvw, Jan 21, 1987, pp. 

4-1 1; Haywood S. Hansell, Jr., The Strategic Air War Against Germany and Japan: AMemoir(Washington, D.C., 1986), 

5. One of the few exceptions to this rule 

occurred late in the war and involved the 

B-29 force. Because Arnold served as the 

executive agent in charge of this force (the 

Twentieth Air Force) for the JCS, the Air 

Staff intelligence office served as the 

operational A-2. 

6. See George W. Goddard, Overview, 

A Life-Long Adventure in Aerial Photography (Garden City, N.Y., 1969) for a 

review of the development of the AAF’s 

aerial photography capabilities leading to 

World War 11. 

7. See Hansell intvw, Jan 21, 1987, p. 

26, for the operational problems. Hansell 

was the first B-29 commander in the 

Pacific; Curtis E. LeMay commanded the 

B-29 force in China before he moved to 

Guam. 

8. Von Khan directed the AAF rocket 

research project at the California Institute 

of Technology and would later head for 

Arnold what became known as the Air 

Force Scientific Advisory Board. 

188-189. 

pp. 20-4-4. 

9. Before 1947, the nation’s defense 

establishment consisted of the Navy Department and the War Department, each 

with its own secretary. There was no 

secretary of defense responsible for all of 

the armed services. 

10. For the G-2’s position in this matter, see Memo, Col Carter W. Clarke, 

MIS, to Adm J. R. Redman, Dir Naval 

Comm, Dec 2,1943, in OP-20-G File on 

Army-Navy Collaboration, 1931-1945, 

SpecialResearchHistory No. 200 (hereafter SRH-200), National Security Agency 

11. Memo, E. E. Stone to Dir, Naval 

Comm, Mar 9, 1943, SRH-200, pt 1, pp. 

156-157. The allocation agreement of 

which Stone spoke was the division of 

responsibility in 1941 whereby the Army 

and Navy pursued code and cryptography 

systems of their opposing Japanese service, with the Army also working on the 

Japanese diplomatic traffic known as 

MAGIC. See Chapter 2. 

12. The U.S. Navy special operations 

mission that claimed the life of Admiral 

Yamamoto Isoroku, commander in chief 

of the Japanese Combined Fleet, is discussed in Chapter 5. Cf. Anthony Cave 

Brown, “C, ” The Secret Life of Sir Stewart Graham Menzies (New York, 1987), p. 

469, and R. Cargill Hall, Lightning Over 

Bougainville: The Yamamoto Mission 

Reconsidered (Washington, D.C., 1991), 

passim. 

13. Intvw, John F. Kreis with Forrest C. 

Pogue, Jan 7, 1991. 

(NSA), Pt 1, pp. 222-225. 

425 
Notes to Pages 13-18 

CHAPTER 1

1. Bruce W. Bidwell, History of he 

Military Intelligence Division, Department of the Army General Staff: 1775- 

1941 (Frederick, Md., 1986) (hereafter 

History of MID), pp. 109-1 18; John Patrick Finnegan, Military Intelligence: A 

Pictorial History (Arlington, Va., 1985), 

p. 22; Peyton C. March, The Nation at 

War (Garden City, N.Y., 1932), pp. 226- 

227. 

2. Victor H. Cohen, “History of Air 

Intelligence to 1945” (unfinished Air 

Force Hist Div MS), USAF Collection 

203.6, chap 2, pp. 5-11; Air Mat6riel 

Command, “Collation of Air Technical 

Intelligence Information of the Army Air 

Arm, 1916-1947,” Dec 1948,203.6, vols 

1-10; Concepts Div, Aerospace Studies 

Institute (ASI), “Air Attach6 System,” 

Mar 1964, 239.04621-2, app pp. 40-44. 

(Hereafter, only the index citation number 

will be given for material in the possession of the U.S. Air Force when the original document is in the collection at Maxwell AFB, Ala., or a microfilm copy is 

held by the Air Force History Support 

Office at Bolling AFB, D.C. When the 

material cited exists only as an original 

document located at the Air Force History 

Support Office, the notation will include 

the designation “AFHSO’ immediately 

preceding the index number for the specific item.) 

3. Concepts Div, ASI, “Air Attach6 

System,” Mar 1964, app pp. 40-44; Russell McFarland, “Foreign Mission,” Jul 

21, 1919, 203.6, vol 1, doc 36. 

4. Final Report of General John J. 

Pershing, Commander in Chief American 

Expeditionary Forces (Washington, D.C., 

1919), p. 16; Maurer Maurer, ed, The U.S. 

Air Service in World War I, vol 1, The 

Final Report and a Tactical History 

(Washington,D.C., 1978), pp. 214-217. 

5. Final Report of General Pershing, p. 

16; Maurer, Final Report and Tactical 

History, pp. 214-217. 

6. Maurer Maurer, Aviation in the U.S. 

Army, 1919-1939 (Washington, D.C., 

1987), p. xix. 

7. Mauer Maurer, comp and ed, The 

U.S. Air Service in World War I, vol 4, 

Postwar Review (Washington, D.C., 

1979), pp. 298-303; “Development of the 

Information Section and Organization of 

Intelligence Section,” 203.6, vol 1, docs 

38, 101. 

8. Maurer, Postwar Review, pp. 298- 

303; “Development of the Information 

Section and Organization of Intelligence 

Section,” vol 1, docs 38, 101. 

9. Maurer, Final Report and Tactical 

History, pp. 214-217; ltr, Maj James 

Barnes, Ofc, CNS (OCAS), AEF, to 

CNS (CAS), subj: Recommendation for 

Information Section, Mar 19,1918,203.6, 

vol 1, doc 30. 

10. Final Report of General Pershing, 

p. 15. 

11. Thomas G. Ferguson, British Military Intelligence. 1870-1 914 (Frederick, 

Md., 1984), p. 233, citing Field Marshal 

Viscount Sir John French, 1914, pp. 43- 

44. 

12. S. F. Wise, The OfSicial History of 

the Royal Canadian Air Force, vol 1, 

Canadian Airmen and the First World 

War (Toronto, 1981), p. 340. The evaluation of Von Kluck’s reliance on supposed 

Anglo-French intentions appeared in Maj 

Edwin E. Schwien, Combat Intelligence, 

Its Acquisition and Transmission (Washington, D.C., 1936), pp. 11-13. 

13. Erick von Ludendorff, My War 

Memories (London, n.d.), pp. 204-205. 

14. Lect, Wing Comdr T. L. LeighMallory, RAF, before the Royal United 

Service Institution, Aug 21, 1930 (MID, 

G-2, War Department: Washington, D.C., 

Sep 24, 1930), 248.501-53. 

15. Final Report of General Pershing, 

p. 16. 

16. “Organization and Duties of the 

Office of Air Intelligence, GHQ AEF,” 

pp. 1-17. 

17. Ibid. 

18. Ibid. 

19. Bidwell, History of MID, pp. 247- 

20. Ibid., pp. 300-302. 

259. 

426 
Notes to Pages 18-29 

21. Ltr, Maj Gen Mason M. Patrick, 

Chief Air Svc AEF, to Dir Mil Aeronautics War Dept (WD), subj: The Future of 

the Information Section, Air Service 

A.E.F., Jan 18, 1918, 203.6, vol 2, doc 

134; Ofc Dir Air Svc Cir 39, May 13, 

1919, 203.6, vol2, doc 45. 

22. Memo, Maj H. M. Hickam for Dir 

Air Svc, May 22, 1919, 203.6, vol 2, doc 

48; Air Svc stencil 4-292, “Function, 

Information Group,” n.d., 203.6, vol 2, 

doc 49; memo, Col Wm. P. Pearson, 

Admin Ex0 Dir Air Svc, for Col [Oscar] 

Westover, Ofc Dir Air Svc, Apr 7, 1920, 

203.6, vol2, doc 50. 

23. Concepts Div, ASI, “Air Attach6 

System,” Mar 1964, pp. 45-46; memo, 

Hickam for Admin Ex0 Dir Air Svcs, 

subj: American Air Attaches Abroad, Mar 

17, 1920,203.6, vol2, doc 47; Robert F. 

Futrell, Ideas, Concepts, Doctrine (Maxwell AFB, Ala., 1974), p. 21; memo, Asst 

Chief of Staff (ACIS), WD, for Chief Air 

Svc, subj: Cooperation with the Services 

in Obtaining Information from Civilian 

Channels, Jun 23, 1921,203.6, vol2, doc 

111. 

24. Ltr, Dir MID to Chief Air Svc, Dec 

3,1920, subj: InformationDesired by You 

from Foreign Armies, Dec 3, 1920,203.6, 

vol2, doc 91 ; ltr, Military Attach6 Paris to 

ACIS G-2, subj: Information Requested 

by the French Air Service, Apr 25, 1922, 

203.6, vol2, doc 119. 

25. Ltr, L. W. McIntosh, Chief Engineering Div, to Chief Air Svc, subj: Air 

Attach& Mar 3, 1924; 1st Ind, W. H. 

Frank, Exec OCAS, to Chief, Engineering 

Duracon, Mar 10,1924; 2d Ind, McIntosh 

to CNS, Mar 17, 1924, 203.6, vol 2, doc 

151. 

26. Ltr, Lt V. E. Bertrandais, Off Chief 

Materiel Div, to Chief Materiel Div, subj: 

Reports of Aeronautical Activities in 

France andEngland, Dec 22,1928,203.6, 

vol 3, doc 77. 

27. Cohen, “History of Air Intelligence,” chap 4. 

28. Ibid. 

29. Bidwell, History of MID, pp. 327- 

30. Ibid. 

338. 

3 1. Futrell, Ideas, Concepts, Doctrine, 

32. Memo for ACIS, WPD, Air Force 

Study, Mar 14, 1938, in AAG 321, Misc 

Staff, Corps or Department. 

33. Schwien, Combat Intelligence, p. 

10. 

34. Memos, Lt Col W. R. Weaver, 

Chief Info Div, for Actg Exec OCAC, Jul 

1, 1933, Weaver, for Exec OCAC, Jul24, 

1933, and Lt Col J. W. Chancy, Actg Exec 

OCAC, for Chief Info Div, Aug 1, 1933, 

all in 203.6, vol4, docs 64-68. 

35. Memo, Weaver, Chief Info Div, for 

Actg Exec OCAC, Jul 1, 1933. 

36. Memo, Chancy, Actg Exec OCAC, 

for Chief Info Div, Aug 1, 1933. 

37. Bidwell, History of MID, pp. 303- 

304. 

38. Cohen, “History of Air Intelligence,” chap 6, sec “GHQ Air Force.” 

39. Ibid. 

40. Futrell, Ideas, Concepts, Doctrine, 

41. Ibid., pp. 40-41. 

42. Hansell intvw, Jan 21, 1987. 

43. Hansell, Strategic Air War Against 

Germany and Japan, pp. 7, 12. 

44. Donald Wilson, “Origin of a Theory 

for Air Strategy,” Aerospace Historian, 

45. Futrell, Ideas, Concepts, Doctrine, 

p. 40. 

46. Hansell, Strategic Air War Against 

Germany and Japan, p. 12. 

47. ACTS, “Committee Study on the 

Northeastern Theater, 1935-1936,” 

48. Ibid. 

49. ACTS Lect, Capt Robert C. Oliver, 

Instr Mil Intel, Apr 29, 1939, 248.500 

50. ACTS, “Brief Remarks . . . by Lieutenant Colonel E. M. Almond, Inf.,” Apr 

5 1. OCAC, “G-2 Information Prepared 

by Information Division, 1934-1938,” 

248.501-57,1938; Cohen, “History of Air 

Intelligence,” chap 6, sec “GHQ Air 

Force.” 

52. Rprt, WDGS G-2, Japan (Aviation-Military), “Annual Aviation Intellip. 34. 

p. 40. 

Mar 1971, pp. 19-25. 

248.501-33, 1936. 

8-13.1938-1939. 

29,1939,248.500 8-13,1938-1939. 

427 
Notes to Pages 29-37 

gence Report as of July 1, 1935,” Aug 8, 

53. Rprt, G-2 Japan (Aviation), “Summary of Aeronautical Inspection, May 

1-25, 1936,” 203.6, vol 4, doc 127; ltr, 

Maj J. F. Phillips, Nichols Field, Philippine Islands, to Brig Gen A. W. Robbins, 

Wright Field, Jun 11, 1936, 203.6, vol4, 

doc 130. 

54. WDGS G-2, “Aviation Statistical 

Summary [Japan],” Jul 1, 1938, Ref MA 

55. Lects, Lt Cdr R. A. Ofstie, “Aviation in the Sino-Japanese War,” given at 

Navy Dept, Jan 1938,248.501-65,1937- 

39; Bemis in William M. Leary, “Assessing the Japanese Threat, Air Intelligence 

Prior to Pearl Harbor,” Aerospace Historian, winter 1987, pp. 272-273. 

56. Ofstie lects. 

57. Rprt, Capt Patrick W. Timberlake, 

ACTS, “An Analysis of the Air Operations in the Sino-Japanese War,” n.d., 

248.501-65A. 

58. Ltr, C. L. Chennault, Capt USAF 

Ret, to The Adjutant General (AG), U.S. 

Army (USA), May21,1938,248.501-65; 

Leary, “Assessing the JapaneseThreat,” p. 

274. 

59. WDGS (3-2, “Aviation Statistical 

Summary [Japan],” Jul 1, 1938. 

60. Rprt, Capt Thomas D. White, 

ACTS, “Japan as an Objective for Air 

Attack, 1937-1938” (thesis), 248.501-65. 

61. Ibid. 

62. Claire Lee Chennault, Way of a 

Fighter (New York, 1949), 93-94; Leary, 

“Assessing the Japanese Threat,” p. 274. 

63. Hansel1 intvw, Jan 21, 1987. 

64. Diaries, Martin F. Scanlon, 1935- 

1939, AFHSO, USAF microfilm; Rprt, 

WDGS G-2 England (Aviation), “Royal 

Air Force,” Apr 1929, MA London, Rprt 

65. Rprt, WDGS G-2 England (Aviation), “Air Defense,” Jan 16, 1939, MA 

London, Rprt 29764,248.501-53. 

66. Rprt, WDGS G-2 Great Britain 

(Aviation), “Annual Aviation Intelligence 

Report as of July 1, 1938,” Sep 17, 1938, 

MA London, Rprt 39638,248.501-53. 

67. Rprt, WDGS G-2 Great Britain 

(Aviation), “Air Defense System,” Mar 

1935, MATokyo, Rprt 7896,248.501-65. 

Tokyo, NO. 235-37,248.501-65,1938. 

2501 1,248.501-53. 

428 

29, 1939, MA London, Rprt 40025, 

68. Ibid. 

69. Rprt, MID, WDGS G-2 Germany 

(Aviation), “German Policy Pertaining to 

Air, General,” May 8, 1935, MA Berlin, 

248.501 -53. 

Rprt 14,065, 248.501-57. 

70. bid. 

71. Ltr, Maj Truman Smith, Military 

Attach6 Berlin, to Chief MID, WDGS, 

subj: Conditions Existing in the German 

Air Ministry, Nov 16, 1935,248.501-57. 

72. Telford Taylor, Munich: The Price 

ofpeace (New York, 1979), pp. 757-758, 

760-762; Truman Smith, “The Facts of 

Life: A Narrative with Documents,” Truman Smith Personal Papers, file, “The 

Facts of Life: 1893-1946,” p. 92. 

73. Rprt, WDGS G-2 Germany (Aviation), “Use of Air Force in the ‘Anschluss’ 

between Germany and Austria,” Mar 19, 

1938, MA Berlin, Rprt 15,809, 148.501- 

57. 

74. Rprt, WDGS G-2 France (Aviation), “Spoken Views on National Defense 

Policy, General Information on European 

Combat Air Situation,” Sep 18,1938, MA 

75. Robert Hessen, ed, Berlin Alert: The 

Memoirs and Reports of Truman Smith 

(Stanford, Calif., 1984), pp. 118-1 19. 

76. Taylor, Munich, pp. 760-761. 

77. Matthew Cooper, The German Air 

Force, 1933-1945: An Anatomy of Failure (London, 1981), p. 58. 

78. Memo, Lt Col Thomas D. Finley, 

Chief, Western European Section, WDGS 

MID, with Capt Townsend Griffiss, subj: 

The Air Warfare in Spain and Its Effect 

upon the Air Rearmament, Aug 1 1,1938, 

79. Rprt, Capt Townsend Griffiss, Asst 

Mil Attach6 for Air, Valencia, “Special 

Report on Spanish Government Air 

Force,” Feb 21,1937, MA Valencia, Rprt 

80. Futrell, Ideas, Concepts, Doctrine, 

p. 45. 

81. ACTS, Capt &mas T. Craw, “An 

Analysis of the Air Operations in the 

Spanish Civil War, 1937-1938,” quoting 

Maj Gen James E. Fechet, “Has a Modem 

War Been Fought?’ 248.501-790,1936. 

Paris, Rprt 24519-W, 248.21 1-26. 

248.50 1 -79C. 

6471,248.501-79A. 
Notes to Pages 37-47 

82. Futrell, Ideas, Concepts, Doctrine, 

83. Arnold, Global Mission, p. 169. 

84. Annual Rprt, WD, Report of the 

Secretary of War to the President, 1938 

(Washington, D.C., 1938), pp. 29-30. 

85. Futrell, Ideas, Concepts, Doctrine, 

p. 46. 

86. Maj Gen Sir Kenneth Strong, Intelligence at the Top: The Recollections of 

An Intelligence OfJicer (Garden City, 

N.Y., 1969), pp. 23-24. 

87. Uri Bider, The Shadow of the Bomber: The Fear of Air Attack and British 

Politics, 1932-1939 (London, 1980), pp. 

88. Arnold, Global Mission, p. 169. 

89. Williamson Murray, Strategy for 

Defeat: The Lufhvaffe, 1933-1945 (Baltimore, Md., 1985), pp. 18-23. 

90. Futrell, Ideas, Concepts, Doctrine, 

pp. 4849. 

91. Ibid., pp. 49, 51. 

92. kct, Capt Robert C. Oliver, ACTS, 

“Military Intelligence MI-l-C,” Apr 3, 

93. Ibid.; handwritten lect, Oliver, 

1938-1939. The Army Command and 

General Staff School was currently emphasizing a preference of intelligence 

“capabilities” over “intentions,” and the 

matter would be included in the Army 

Staff Officer’s Field Manual dated Aug 

19, 1940. See Bidwell, History of MID, p. 

512. 

94. Oliver handwritten lect, Apr 29, 

1939; ACTS, “Military Intelligence Required for Initial Operations of Air Units,” 

n.d., 248.501-25, 1938-1 939. 

95. Cohen, “History of Air Intelligence,’’ chap 7, p. 8. 

96. OCAC, Personnel Order 192, Aug 

17, 1939. 

97. “Report of a Board of Officers 

Convened by the Chief of the Air Corps to 

Consider Air Corps Requirements for 

Military Intelligence,” n.d., 142.0201-1, 

1939. 

98. Memo, Brig Gen George V. Strong, 

AC/S WPD, for CAC, subj: Air Corps 

Intelligence, Oct 5, 1939, 142.0201-1, 

1939. 

p. 45. 

55-56,127-160. 

1939,248.5008-1,1938-1939. 

ACTS, Apr 29, 1939, 248.5008-13, 

99. Bidwell, History of MID, p. 386. 

100. Cohen, “History of Air Intelligence,” chap 7, pp. 16-17. 

101. Bidwell, History of MID, p. 305. 

102. Memo, Maj Gen H. H. Amold, 

CAC, for Chief, Info Sec OCAC, subj: 

Evaluation of Foreign Information for Air 

Corps Command and Staff Use, Oct 23, 

1940,145.9340, Sep 1940-Mar 1941. 

103. OCAC, “Organization of Intelligence Division,” Dec 1940, 142.021; 

Hansell, Strategic Air War Against Germany and Japan, p. 23. 

104. Cohen, “History of Air Intelligence,” chap 7, pp. 29-32. 

105. Ibid. 

106. Hansell, Strategic Air WarAgainst 

Gennany and Japan, p. 21, 

107. Ibid., pp. 20-21; Hansell intvw, 

Jan 21,1987. 

108. Cohen, “History of Air Intelligence,” chap 7, pp. 32-36. 

109. Ibid., pp. 4446. 

110. Ibid., pp. 40-42. 

11 1. “List of Air Corps Attachts and 

Military Missions,” ca. Jan 1942, 

1 12. Futrell, Ideas, Concepts, Doctrine, 

113. Bidwell, History of MID, p. 386. 

114. Cohen, “History of Air Intelligence,” chap 7, pp. 4142. 

115. Ibid., pp. 4546; memo, Brig Gen 

M. F. Scanlon, ACIAS, Intelligence (A2), for UAS, subj: Responsibility for Air 

Intelligence, Sep 8, 1941, 145.91-221, 

Jun 1941. 

116. Bidwell, History of MID, p. 306; 

Cohen, “History of Air Intelligence,” chap 

117. Cohen, “History of Air Intelli118. Ibid. 

1 19. Futrell, Ideas, Concepts, Doctrine, 

120. Brig Gen Carl Spaatz, CPlans Div, 

OCAC, and Col R. C. Candee, C/Intel 

Div, OCAC, “An Air Estimate of the 

Situation,” Mar 22, 1941, 142.0302-10. 

121. Bidwell, History ofMID, pp. 386- 

387. In the main, these individuals were 

not held in high regard by Brig Gen Raymond E. Lee, U.S. Army Military Attach6 

142.0201-2, OCt 1939-Jan 1942. 

p. 53. 

7, pp. 48-52. 

gence,” chap 7, pp. 52-53. 

p. 59. 

429 
Notes to Pages 48-61 

to the United Kingdom. See The Raymond 

E. Lee Papers, a 5-volume diary (Carlisle 

Army Barracks, Carlisle, Pa.), for Jun 3, 

1940, to Jan 23, 1941, and for Apr 8 to 

Nov 29,1941, pp. 168,423, and 467468. 

Lee’s assessments, however, were influenced perhaps by his negative views on 

the use of air power for strategic bombing; 

e.g., see p. 459. 

122. Hansell, StrategicAir WarAgainst 

Germany and Japan, p. 24. 

123. Ibid., pp. 2541; Futrell, Ideas, 

Concepts, Doctrine, pp. 59-61. 

124. Hansell, Strategic Air WarAgainst 

Germany and Japan, pp. 25-41; Futrell, 

Ideas, Concepts, Doctrine, pp. 59-6 1. 

125. Hansell, Strategic Air War Against 

Germany and Japan, pp. 25-41; Futrell, 

Ideas, Concepts, Doctrine, pp. 59-61. 

126. Research Paper, Col C. W. Strand, 

Air War College, “Philosophy, Concepts 

and Doctrine for Air Intelligence,” Jan 

1952, USAF Collection, pp. 20-21. 

127. Memo, Maj H. S. Hansell, for Gen 

Arnold through Gen Chaney, subj: An Air 

Estimate of the Situation for the Employment of the Air Striking Force in Europe 

(ABC-I), Aug 11, 1941, 145.96-32, 

1941-1942. 

128. Hansell intvw, Jan 21, 1987. 

129. Arnold, Global Mission, pp. 266- 

273. 

130. Rprt, Gen William (Billy) Mitchell 

(for the Secy War), untitled, unpublished, 

AFHRC, Gen Ennis Whitehead files. 

13 1. Among those suggesting Japanese 

involvement are Fred Goener in Search 

forAmelia Earhart (New York, 1966) and 

Paul Briand in Daughter in the Sky (New 

York, 1960). A contrary view is presented 

by Elliott R. Thorpe in East Wind Rain 

(Boston, 1969). 

132. Intvw, Donald M. Goldstein with 

Cdr Chihaya Masataka, Feb 1987. 

133. “Eleven-Nation Allied Military 

Tribunal” (unpublished, 1946), National 

Archives and Records Administration 

(NA). 134. Hearings before the Joint Committee on the Investigation of the Pearl Harbor Attack (hereafter PHA), pt 27, pp. 

58-65. 

135. Ibid., pp. 89-91. 

136. Bidwell, History ofMID, pp. 461- 

137. PHA, pt 27, pp. 54-74. 

138. bid., pp. 89-90. 

139. Ibid., pp. 54-74. 

140. Gordon W. Prange, Pearl Harbor: 

The Verdict ofHistory (New York, 1986). 

141. Arnold, Global Mission, pp. 168- 

169. 

462. 

CHAPTER 2 

1. Constance Babington-Smith, Air Spy: 

The Story of Photo Intelligence in World 

War I1 (New York, 1957), p. 1. 

2. Ursula Powys-Lybbe, The Eye of 

Intelligence (London, 1983), pp. 3245. 

3. Diane T. Putney, ULTRA and the 

Army Air Forces in World War I1 (Washington, D.C., 1987), p. 80; Patrick Beasley, “ULTRA and the Battle of the Atlantic: 

The British View,” symposium presentation, U.S. Naval Academy, Annapolis, 

Md., Oct 28, 1977, p.1; David Kahn, 

Hitler’s Spies: German Military Intelligence in World War II (New York, 1978), 

pp. 193-195,218-222. 

4. F. H. Hinsley et al., British Intelligence in the Second World War: Its Influence on Strategy and Operations (London, 

5. Putney, ULTRA and the AAF, p. 76. 

6. Hinsley, British Intelligence in the 

7. Ibid. 

8. Ibid., pp. 945-960. Appendix 30 

contains the most up-to-date (as of 1988) 

discussion of the relative contributions of 

the Poles, French, and British in the cracking of Enigma. 

9. Putney, ULTRA and the AAF, p. 77. 

10. Hinsley, British Intelligence in the 

1981), VO~ 3,Pt 2, pp. 778-780,946. 

Second World War, vol3, pt 2, p. 946. 

430 
Notes to Pages 61-70 

Second World War, vol 3, pt 1, pp. 477- 

482. 

11. Peter Calvocoressi, Top Secret 

ULTRA (New York, 1980), p. 6. 

12. See Ralph Bennett, ULTRA in the 

West: The Normandy Campaign, 1944-45 

(New York, 1980), pp. 15-17, for a bibliographic discussion of ULTRA signal 

records. 

13. Ronald Clark, The Man Who Broke 

PURPLE (Boston, Toronto, 1977), pp. 

154-157. 

14. Thomas Parrish, The ULTRA Americans: The US. Role in Breaking the Nazi 

Code (New York, 1986), pp. 94-95. 

15. Putney, ULTRA and the AAF, pp. 

16. Operations of the Military Intelligence Service, War Department, London, 

Special Research History No. 1 10 (hereafter SRH-1 lo), National Security Agency 

(NSA), pp. 3940. 

78-81. 

17. SRH-110, pp. 40-41. 

18. Parrish, ULTRA Americans, p. 176. 

19. SRH-110, pp. 13-14; Use of (CW 

MSS ULTRA) by the United States War 

Department, 1943-1945, SRH-005, pp. 

6-9. 

20. SRH-110, pp. 44,18. 

22. SRH-110, pp. 24,18,33. 

21. Putney, ULTRA and the AAF, p. 86. 

23. Synthesis of Experiences in the Use 

of ULTRA Intelligence by US. Army Field 

Commanders in the European Theater of 

Operations, SRH-006, p. 12. 

24. Marshall Letter to Eisenhower on 

the Use of ULTRA Intelligence, Mar 15, 

1944, SRH-026. 

25. Capt Langdon Van Norden, in Reports by US. Army ULTRA Representatives 

with Army Field Commands in the European Theater of Operations 1945, pt 2, 

SRH-023, p. 114. 

26. Lewis F. Powell, Jr., in Putney, 

ULTRA and the AAF, pp. 29-31,6041. 

27. Rprt, Maj Ansel E. M. Talbert, in 

SRH-023, p. 26. 

28. Intvw, Dr. Robert C. Ehrhart with 

Gen Robert M. Lee, May 21,1988, p. 2. 

29. Intvw, Dr. Robert C. Ehrhart with 

Lt Gen Francis Gideon, May 18, 1988, p. 

22. 

30. Rprt, Maj Harry M. Grove, in SRH023, p. 104. 

31. Rprt, Lt Robert S. Whitlow, in 

SRH-023, p. 38. 

32. Talbert, in SRH-023, p. 26. 

33. Problem of the SSO System in 

World War 11, SRH-107, pp. 22-23; Talbert, in SRH-023, p. 21. 

34. Rprt, Capt Van Norden, in SRH023, p. 113. 

35. See, e.g., Capt Loftus E. Becker, in 

SRH-023, p. 97. 

36. Rprt, Lt Col James D. Fellers, in 

SRH-023, p. 59. 

37. Whitlow, in SRH-023, p. 40. 

38. Grove, in SRH-023, p. 107. 

39. Fellers, in SRH-023, p. 63. 

40. Rprt, Maj Lucius A. Buck, in SRH023, p. 10. 

41. SRH-107, p, 34. 

42. Whitlow, in SRH-023, p. 41. 

43. Grove, in SRH-023, p. 105. 

44. Rprt, Lt Col James D. Fellers, in 

Trip Reports Concerning Use of ULTRA in 

the Mediterranean Theatre, 1943-1944, 

SRH-031, p. 7. 

45. Rprt, Maj Warrack Wallace, in 

SRH-031,p. 111. 

46. Rprt, Lt Col Rood, in SRH-031, p. 

50. 

47. Fellers, in SRH-023, p. 66. 

48. Rprt, Lt Col John W. Grieggs, in 

49. Talbert, in SRH-023, pp. 20,23,27. 

50. Putney, ULTRA and the AAF, p. 3 1. 

51. Grove, in SRH-023, p. 104. 

52. Whitlow, in SRH-023, p. 45. 

53. SRH-006, p. 17. 

54. Putney, ULTRA and the AAF, p. 11. 

55. Grove, in SRH-023, p. 104. 

56. Fellers, in SRH-023, p. 67. 

57. Rood, in SRH-031, p. 49. 

58. SRH-006, p. 18. 

59. Whitlow, in SRH-023, p. 44. 

60. Rprt, Maj Leo J. Nielson, Jr., in 

61. SRH-006, p. 6. 

62. Fellers, in SRH-031, 6; Powell, in 

Putney, ULTRA and the AAF, app 3, “Excerpt: Recommendations Section from 

Report on Visit to Operational Air Commands in Mediterranean Theater (4 

April-10 May 1944),” p. 170. 

SRH-023, p. 110. 

SRH-023, p. 116. 

63. SRH-031, p. 14. 

43 1 
Notes to Pages 70-84 

64. Whitlow, in SRH-023, p. 49. 

65. Ibid., p. 44. 

66. Putney, ULTRA and the AAF, p. 93. 

67. Allied Strategic Air Force Target 

Planning, SRH-017, p. 15. 

68. See, e.g., Grieggs and Fellers, in 

SRH-023, pp. 110-111 and 47, respectively; Parrish, The ULTRA Americans, pp. 

138-139; andPutney, u~~~~andtheAAF, 

p. 70. 

69. Bennett, ULTRA in the West, p. 15. 

70. Whitlow, in SRH-023, p. 47. 

71. Grieggs, in SRH-023, pp. 110-1 11. 

72. Whitlow, in SRH-023, p. 53. 

73. Hinsley, British Intelligence in the 

Second World War, vol2, p. 273; Bennett, 

ULTRA in the West, p. 58. 

74. SRH-017, p. 3. 

75. Powell, in Putney, ULTRA and the 

AAF, p. 50. 

76. Talbert, in SRH-023, p. 31; SRH017, p. 2. 

77. SRH-017, pp. 12, 3, 11. 

78. Ibid., p. 11. 

79. Ibid., p. 6. 

80. Powell, in Putney, ULTRA and the 

81. SRH-017, pp. 16, 17. 

82. Cited in SRH-017, p. 31. 

83. William Haines, ULTRA and the 

History of the United States Strategic Air 

Force in Europe vs. the Gennan Air Force 

(Frederick, Md., 1980) (hereafter Haines 

Report) p. 61. (This is a commercially 

printed version of a report prepared by Lt 

Col William Haines, dated Sep 24, 1945.) 

84. Wesley Frank Craven and James 

Lea Cate, The Army Air Forces in World 

War If, vol 3, ARGUMENT to V-E Day 

(Chicago, 1948), pp. 26,34-48. 

85. Ronald Lewin, ULTRA Goes to War 

(New York, 1978), p. 118. 

86. Powell, in Putney, ULTRA and the 

87. History of the Intelligence Group, 

Military Intelligence Service, WDSG, 

Military Branch, pt 1, SRH-131, pp. 

88. Powell, in Putney, ULTRA and the 

89. Bennett, ULTRA in the West, p. 19. 

90. Lee intvw, May 21, 1988, p. 12. 

91. Rood, in SRH-023, p. 18. 

AAF, p. 41. 

AAF, pp. 27-28. 

21-23. 

AAF, p. 20. 

92. Buck, in SRH-023, p. 1 1. 

93. Rood, in SRH-023, p. 18. 

94. Lee intvw, May 21, 1988, p. 7. 

95. Rood, in SRH-031, p. 50. 

96. Bennett, ULTRA in the West, pp. 

97. Rood, in SRH-031, p. 50. 

98. SRH-017, p. 19. 

99. Whitlow, in SRH-023, pp. 44,48. 

100. Fellers, in SRH-031, p. 8. 

101. Ibid., p. 19. 

102. Rood, in SRH-031, p. 50. 

103. Rprt, Maj Hitchcock, SRH-023, p. 

104. Rood, in SRH-031, p. 51. 

105. SRH-006, p. 25; Putney, ULTRA 

106. Rood, in SRH-031, p. 17. 

107. Intvw, Dr. Thomas Fabyanic with 

Maj Gen Haywood S. Hansell, Jan 21, 

108. War Diary, R&A Br, OSS London, 

Economic Outpost in the Economic Warfare Division (hereafter OSS War Diary), 

NA, RG 226, entry 91, vol5, p. 57. 

109. Rood, in SRH-03 1, p. 52. 

1 10. Minutes, HQ USSTAF/Directorate 

Intel, “Meeting of A-2’s of American Air 

Forces in Europe, Held 090&1800 Hours, 

Jan 23, 1945,” Library of Congress (LC), 

Spaatz Collection, box 121. 

11 1. Glenn B. Infield, Unarmed and 

Unafraid (New York, 1970), pp. 61-63, 

66-67. 

162-1 63. 

52. 

and the AAF, p. 34. 

1987, pp. 32-33. 

112. Infield, Unarmed, p. 70. 

113. Roy M. Stanley 11, World War II 

Photo Intelligence (New York, 1981). p. 

68. 

114. Infield, Unarmed, p. 130. 

115. Ltr, Col George D. McDonald to 

Maj Gen Clayton Bissell, AC/AS, Intelligence, Nov 17, 1943, USAF Academy 

Library Special Collections (USAFA), 

Gen George D. McDonald Collection, box 

2. 

116. Babington-Smith, Air Spy, pp. 

181-187,204. 

117. Msg, Spaatz to Eaker, Feb 8,1944, 

LC, Spaatz Collection, box 215. 

118. Fellers, in SRH-031, p. 7. 

119. Infield, Unarmed, p. 92. 

120. Stanley, Photo Intelligence, p. 68. 

121. Infield, Unarmed, p. 119. 

432 
Notes to Pages 84-96 

122. “Photo Intelligence,” in HQ USSTAF, History of the Directorate of Intelligence, United States Strategic Air Forces 

in Europe, January 1944-May 1945, Sep 

8, 1945 (hereafter History of the Directorate of Intelligence, USSTAF), LC, Spaatz 

Collection, box 290. 

123. History of the Directorate of Intelligence, USSTAF. 

124. Babington-Smith, Air Spy, p. 69. 

125. Ibid., p. 199. 

126. “Photographic Reconnaissance and 

Intelligence,” in History of Directorate of 

Intelligence, USSTAF, pp. 5,7. 

127. Babington-Smith, Air Spy, p. 167; 

Infield, Unarmed, p. 76. 

128. Stanley, Photo Intelligence, p. 65. 

129. Ibid., pp. 65-70; Infield, Unarmed, 

130. Infield, Unarmed, p. 114. 

13 1. Daily Activity Summary, 10th AF, 

Mar 16, 1942, 830.641. 

132. Wesley Frank Craven and James 

Lea Cate, The Army Air Forces in World 

War 11, vol 4, Guadalcanal to Saipan 

(Chicago, 1948), pp. 458,515. 

133. Admin Hist, 12th AF, vol3, annex 

1, “Mediterranean Allied Tactical Air 

Force,” 650.01. 

134. Marvin Downey, ed, “History of 

the Fifteenth Air Force,” HQ Air Matkriel 

Command, Dec 20, 1945,670.01-1. 

135. History of the Directorate of Intelligence, USSTAF. 

136. See, e.g., Spaatz’s comments in 

“Minutes of Conference Held in the Office of Gen. Spaatz on 2 March 1944,” 

LC, Spaatz Collection, box 122. 

137. See, e.g., draft letter from Brig 

Gen George McDonald to AD1 (P), dated 

Feb 15, 1944, contained in History of the 

Directorate of Intelligence, USSTAF. 

138. History of the Directorate of Intelligence, USSTA F. 

139. HQ 8th AF, “Intel Rev, 1944,” Jan 

9, 1945, 520.602, p. 18. 

140. History of the Directorate of Intelligence, USSTAF. 

141. Minutes, HQ USSTAFDirectorate 

Intel, “Meeting of A-2’s of American Air 

Forces in Europe.” 

142. Comments, Elliot Roosevelt, in 

Ibid. 

p. 111. 

143. Powys-Lybbe, Eye of Intelligence, 

p. 155. 

144. USSBS (Europe), vol 4, Aircraft 

Division Industry Report, NA, RG 243, 

pp. 48-54, 73-75; ibid., vol 175, Ammoviawerke Merseburg-Leuna Germany, 

NA, RG 243, pp. 209-21 1; ibid., vol581, 

The Effects of Strategic Bombing on the 

Germun War Economy, NA, RG 243, pp. 

4445. 

145. Memo, Col Guido Perera to Maj 

Gen Kuter, subj: Past Effectiveness and 

Future Prospects of Eighth Air Force 

Effort Under POINTBLANK as of 1 August 

1943,520.422B. 

146. Babington-Smith, Air Spy, pp. 

204205. 

147. Powys-Lybbe, Eye of Intelligence, 

pp. 195-197; Hinsley, British Intelligence 

in the Second World War, vol 3, pt 1, p. 

424. 

148. Babington-Smith, Air Spy, p. 190. 

149. Powys-Lybbe, Eye of Intelligence, 

150. Ibid., pp. 10, 35. 

151. Ibid., p. 142. 

152. Ibid., p. 140. 

153. Putney, ULTRA andthe AAF, p. 82; 

Aileen Clayton, The Enemy Is Listening 

(London, 1980), passim. 

154. Hinsley, British Intelligence in the 

Second World War, vol 3, pt 2, p. 781; 

Parrish, ULTRA Americans, pp. 94-97; 

History of the Special Branch, MIS, War 

Department, 1942-1944, SRH-035, pp. 

20-21. In The Enemy Is Listening, Clayton gives an account of the integration of 

American SIGINT into field operations. 

155. Rprt, “Airborne R/T Interception 

by M.A.S.A.F.,” Mar 21, 1944, 

520.6251-1; rprt, “Status of Y Intelligence in Eighth Air Force,” May 1, 1945, 

520.6251. 

156. Narration, Maj Herbert R. Elsas, 

A-2 Sec, HQ 8th A.F, to Maj Leon Benson, A-2, HQ USSTAF, “Outline History 

of Operational Employment of Y Service,’’ Jun 6, 1945, and memo, Maj Elsas 

to Dir Intel HQ 8th AF, [no subj], May 5, 

1945, both in LC, Spaatz Collection, 

Boxes 295,296,297. 

157. Memo, Elsas to Dir Intel, HQ 8th 

AF, May 5, 1945. 

p. 172. 

433 
Notes to Pages 96-105 

158. Rprt, Lt Jakob Gotthold, HQ AAF, 

Air Comm Ofc, “Airborne Interception of 

R/T Traffic Carried Out with the Fifteenth 

Air Force,” Nov 1, 1944, USAFA, McDonald Collection, box 1 1. 

159. Intvw, Dr. Thomas Fabyanic with 

Brig Gen Harris B. Hull, Feb 20, 1987. 

160. A.I.4, “The Contribution of the Y 

Service to the Target Germany Campaign 

of the VIII USAAF,” n.d., LC, Spaatz 

Collection, box 295. 

161. HQ 8th AF, Ofc Dir Intel, “Status 

of Y Intelligence in Eighth Air Force,” 

May 1945, LC, Spaatz Collection, box 

295. 

162. Clayton, The Enemy Is Listening, 

163. Narration, Elsas, “Outline History 

of Operational Employment of Y Service,” Jun 6, 1945. 

164. Rprt, Gotthold, HQ AAF, Air 

Comm Ofc, “Airborne Interception of R/T 

Traffic Carried Out with the Fifteenth Air 

Force.” 

165. Minutes, “Meeting of A-2’s of 

American Air Forces in Europe.” 

166. Memo, Elsas to Dir Intel, HQ 8th 

AF, May 5, 1945. 

167. Ltr, Col George D. McDonald to 

Maj Gen Clayton Bissell, AC/AS, Intelligence, HQ AAF, subj: Development of 

Radio Intelligence for the Pacific Theatre, 

Dec 27,1943, USAFA, McDonald Collection, box 2. 

168. Admin Hist, 12th AF, vol3. 

169. Ibid. 

170. Ibid. 

171. G/C R. H. Humphreys, “The Use 

of ‘U’ in the Mediterranean and Northwest African Theatres of War, Oct 1945,” 

in Reports Received by US. War Department on the Use of ULTRA in the European 

Theater in World War 11, SRH-037. 

172. Whitlow, in SRH-023, p. 5 1. 

173. Alexander S. Cochran, Jr., “MAGIC, ULTRA, and the Second World War: 

Literature, Sources, and Outlook,” Military Affairs, Apr 1982, pp. 88-92; Edward 

J. Drea, “ULTRA and the American War 

Against Japan: A Note on Sources,” Intelligence and National Security, Jan 1988, 

174. Hinsley, British Intelligence in the 

pp. 269-270. 

pp. 195-204. 

Second World War, vol I; Donald Cameron Watt, “British Intelligence and the 

Coming of the Second World War,” in 

Ernest R. May, Knowing One’s Enemies 

(Princeton, 1984). 

175. Lewin, ULTRA Goes to War; Ronald Lewin, The American MAGIC: Codes, 

Ciphers, and the Defeat of Japan (New 

York, 1982). 

176. Edward Van Der Rhoer, Deadly 

MAGIC (New York, 1978). 

177. Gordon W. Prange, At Dawn We 

Slept (New York, 1981); Roberta Wohlstetler, Pearl Harbor: Warning and Decision (Stanford, 1962). 

178. The Role of Radio Intelligence in 

American-Japanese War, August 1941- 

September 1942, SRH-012, vol 2, pp. 

179. Clark, The Man Who Broke PUR180. SRH-035, p. 5. 

181. Ibid., p. 16. 

182. Alexander S. Cochran, Jr., The 

MAGICDiplomatic Summaries (New York, 

1982). 

183. Alexander S. Cochran, Jr., “The 

Influence of ‘MAGIC’ Intelligence on 

Allied Strategy in the Mediterranean,” in 

Craig L. Symonds, New Aspects of Naval 

History (Annapolis, Md., 1980). 

184. For instance, see MAGIC Diplomatic Summary (hereafter MDS) 37 1, Apr 

1, 1943, MDS 420, May 20, 1943, MDS 

514, Aug 22,1943, and MDS 535, Sep 12, 

1943, all in M~~~~Summaries, SRH-549. 

185. In particular, see MDS 1027, Jan 

233-250,282-283. 

PLE. 

16,1945, MDS 1084-6, Mar 15-16,1945, 

and MDS 1104, Apr 3,1945. 

186. Cochran, MAGIC Diplomatic Summaries. 

187. Douglas M. Homer, “Special 

Intelligence in the South-West Pacific 

Area during World War 11,” Australian 

Outlook 32 (Dec 1978), pp. 315-316; 

Rprt, “Radio Intelligence in the Fifth Air 

Force,” n.d. [1944], 730.625. 

188. SRH-035, p. 31. 

189. The Role of Communicationslntelligence in Submarine Warfare in the Pacific, SRH-01 l. 

190. SRH-035, pp. 4142. 

191. Ibid., pp. 10-16, 26. 

434 
Notes to Pages 105-116 

192. Ibid., pp. 35-36. 

193. Ibid., p. 49. 

194. Japanese Order of Battle Bulletins, 

195. Proceedings of the Pacific Order 

of Battle Conferences, SRH-056, SRH097, and SRH-098. 

196. SRH-035, p. 49. 

197. SRH-012, vols 1,2. 

198. Reminiscence of LTC Howard W. 

Brown, Aug 1, 1945, SRH-045. 

199. Narrative of the Combat Intelligence Center, Joint Intelligence Center, 

Pacific Ocean Area, SRH-020; W. J. 

Holmes, Double-Edged Secrets (Annapolis, Md., 1979), pp. 112-120. 

SRH-129. 

200. SRH-012. 

201. Intvw, with Maj Gen Spencer B. 

Akin, USA, Sep 12,1960, US Army Military History Institute Archives (USAMHI), Carlisle Army Barracks, Carlisle, 

Pa. 

202. Information on Central Bureau is 

found in GHQ Far East Command, A Brief 

History of the G-2 Section, GHQ, SWPA 

andAfSiated Units, Jul8, 1948,710.600, 

vol 3, pp. 66-69, and Homer, “Special 

Intelligence in the South-West Pacific 

Area during World War 11,” pp. 310-313. 

203. Alexander S. Cochran, Jr., “MacArthur, ULTRA, et le guerre du Pacificique”, Revue d’histoire de la guerre 

mondaile et des conflits contemporains, 

Jan 1984. 

204. ULTRA Material in the Blamey 

Papers, SRH-219. (This source, like 

several other SRHs, is a collection of 

papers in which the pages are unnumbered.) 

205. Intvw, A. S. Cochran with Capt A. 

H. McCollum, Dec 3 1, 198 1. Additional 

evidence of this transfer is found in the 

Charles A. Willoughby Papers, USAMHI, 

and in the Office Diary, 1942-1944, NA, 

RG 200, Papers of General Sutherland. 

206. SRH-219. 

207. hid. 

208. Brief History of the G-2 Section, 

vols 4,5. 

209. Ltr, Marshall to MacArthur, subj: 

The Use of ULTRA Intelligence, May 23, 

1944, in SRH-034. 

210. Use and Dissemination of ULTRA 

in thesouthwest PacificArea, 1943-1945, 

SRH-127. 

CHAPTER 3 

1. Testimony, Brig Gen Hayes A. Kroner, Sep 13, 1944, in MIS, War Dept, US. 

Army Investigations into the Handling of 

Certain Communications Prior to the 

Attack on Pearl Harbor, 1944-1945, 

SRH-115 (NSA declass, 1981), p. 53. 

2. Kroner, in SRH-115. 

3. Hearings before the Joint Committee 

on the Investigation of the Pearl Harbor 

Attack, Congress of the United States 

(Washington, D.C., 1946), Seventy-ninth 

Congress, pt 14, pp. 1368, 1406. 

4. Gordon W. Prange, with Donald M. 

Goldstein and Katherine V. Dillon, Pearl 

Harbor: The Verdict of History (New 

York, 1986), chap 31, p. 552. See also 

Wohlstetler, Pearl Harbor, p. 74. 

5. Testimony, Brig GenSherman Miles, 

6. Kroner, in SRH-115, p. 56. 

7. Miles, Sep 14, 1942, in SRH-115, p. 

42. 

8. Testimony, Col Rufus Bratton, Sep 

14,1944, in SRH-115, p. 94. 

9. Bidwell, History of MID, p. 477. 

10. Ibid., pp. 475,471. 

11. Ibid., pp. 477,456. 

12. PHA, pt 14, pp. 1368, 1406. 

13. Rprt, Army Pearl Harbor Board, Oct 

14. Cited in Bidwell, History of MID, 

15. Cited in Prange, Verdict, p. 514. 

16. WD GO 6, Jan 23, 1942,203.6, vol 

in SRH-115, p. 6. 

20, 1944, p. 240. 

pp. 480-48 1. 

435 
Notes to Pages 116-125 

5, pt 2, doc 316; Maj Gen Otto L. Nelson, 

jr., National Security and the General 

Stajf(Washington, D.C., 1946), p. 399. 

17. Nelson, National Security, p. 589. 

18. Memo for ACIS G-2, subj: Survey 

of Intelligence Activities and Army Air 

Forces, Nov 9, 1945,203.6, vol8, doc 31. 

19. Cohen, “History of Air Intelligence,” chap 8. 

20. Ibid., chap 9. 

2 1. Ibid. 

22. Memo, Lt Harry C. Greene, Jr., 

Chief, Organizational Planning Div, Management Control, Dec 31,1943, in 107.99. 

23. Ibid. 

24. Memo, Brig Gen Thomas D. White, 

ACIAS, Intelligence, for CIAS AAF, subj: 

I.G.D. Investigation, Feb 27, 1944,203.6, 

vol 7, doc 30. 

25. Ibid. 

26. Rprt, Wing Comdrs Allom and 

Luard, “Report of Air Intelligence in the 

U.S. Army and Its Relationship to Air 

Intelligence at the Air Ministry,” Mar 30, 

1942,203.6, vol5, pt 2, doc 332. 

27. Memo, Lt Col W. W. Dick, Air AG, 

for CI (Attn: G-2 Div), subj: Staff Contacts etween Army Air Forces and Air 

Minist , Jun 25, 1942,203.6, vol5, pt 2, 

doc3 3. 

28. emo, Maj Gen George E. Stratemeyer CIAS, for CIS, subj: Direct Communic tion between Headquarters, Army 

Air F i rces, and Air Units Not Under Its 

Command, Oct 7, 1942, 203.6, vol6, doc 

35. 

29. Ibid. 

30. Memo, Col T. J. Betts, Ofc ACIS 

G-2, and Col W. M. Burgess, Ofc ACIAS, 

Intelligence, for AClS G-2 thru ACIAS, 

Intelligence, subj: Relationships Between 

G-2 and the Assistant Chief of Air Staff, 

Intelligence, in Air Matters, Jul31, 1943, 

203.6, vol6, doc 220. 

3 1. Rprt, “Informational Intelligence 

Division, AIS,” Nov 1942, 142.01. 

32. Memo, White for CIAS, Feb 22, 

1944. 

33. Rprt, “Organization, Functions and 

Key Personnel of the Operational Intelligence Division, AFDIS,” Nov 7, 1942, 

242.01. 

34. Final Rprt, Lt Gen Ira C. Eaker, Dec 

31, 1943, exhib 6, “Intelligence, Development of A-2 Section VIII Bomber Command, Problems and Solutions,” 

520.101 A. 

35. Target Info Br, ACIAS, Intelligence, “Index to Reports and Publications” (hereafter “Index to Rprts & 

Pubs”), Feb 23, 1943, 142.022-10. 

36. Operational Intel Div, A-2, AAF, 

“Progress Report for October 1942” 

[amended to include 19431, Nov 7, 1943, 

142.01. 

37. “Index to Rprts & Pubs.” 

38. Cohen, “History of Air Intelligence,” chap 13. 

39. Ibid. 

40. ”Index to Rprts & Pubs.” 

41. Routing and Record Sheet, Maj Gen 

M. S. Fairchild, AF Dir Mil Requirements, to AF Dir Intel, subj: Intelligence 

Concerning Enemy Capabilities, Oct 4, 

1942, 203.6, vol6, doc 3 1. 

42. Cohen, “History of Air Intelligence,” chap 1 1. 

43. Ibid. 

44. Ltr, Sorenson to CGs, All Air Forces, et d., subj: Technical Air Intelligence, n.d. 

45. Ltr, Cdr S. Teller, Bur Aeronautics, 

USN, to Col W. M. Burgess, subj: Joint 

AN Technical Aviation Intelligence Organization-Proposal for Jun 8,1943,203.6, 

vol6, doc 170. 

46. Ltrs, Col George C. McDonald, 

ACIS A-2, NAAF, to Sorenson, May 6, 

1943, and Sorenson to McDonald, May 

18, 1943, both 203.6, vol6, doc 170. 

47. hid. 

48. Memo, Maj Gen 0. P. Echols, ACI 

AS, Mathiel, Maintenance, and Distribution, for CIAS, subj: Technical Intelligence, Jun 13, 1943, 203.6, vol 6, doc 

190. 

49. Memo, Burgess, Chief Informational Intel Div AAF, for Col Bentley, 

Nov 10, 1943,203.6, vol6, doc 105. 

50. Memo, AFABI for Dep ACIAS, 

Intelligence, subj: Technical Section, Nov 

3, 1943,203.6, vol6, doc 105. 

51. Memo, Burgess, Chief Informational Intel Div AAF, for Col Bentley, 

Nov 10,1943. 

52. AAF Management Control, “Re436 
Notes to Pages 126136 

view of the AAF Headquarters Air Intelligence Function,” Sep 22, 1943, 107.99. 

53. Cohen, “History of Air Intelligence,” chap 9. 

54. Ibid. 

55. Ibid. 

56. Brett, in ibid. 

57. Brown, in Ltr, Sorenson to McDonald, May 18, 1943. 

58. Ibid. 

59. Ibid. 

60. Final Rprt, Col E. F. Koenig, Comdr 

AAFAIS, to CG, 1st District, AAF Tech 

Training Commd, Sep 30, 1942,266.1-1, 

1942. 

61. Memo, Lt Col Carl H. Norcross, 

Asst A-2, VIII Born Comd, for ACIS, 

subj: Army Air Forces Intelligence 

School, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, Jan 22, 

62. Koenig Final Rprt, Sep 30, 1942. 

63. Ibid. 

64. Memo, Lt Col Norcross for ACE, 

65. Ibid. 

66. Rprt, IG, “AAF Air Intelligence 

67. Cohen, “History of Air Intelligence,” chap 9. 

68. Hist, AAF Air Intel School, 1942- 

1945. 

69. Ltr, Sorenson to CG 5th AF, subj: 

Intelligence Material and Information, 

Apr 18, 1943, and 1st Ind, Lt Col Benjamin B. Cain, Asst Chief, A-2, 5th AF, 

Apr 27, 1943, 203.6, vol6, doc 157. 

70. Cohen, “History of Air Intelligence,” chap 9. 

7 1. Ibid. 

72. Koenig Final Rprt, Sep 30, 1942. 

73. Hist, AAF Air Intel School, Oct 29, 

74. Cohen, “History of Air Intelli75. Eaker Final Rprt, Dec 31, 1943. 

76. Rprt, Air Ministry, Air Historical 

Br, “ Anglo-American Collaboration,” Aug 

1946, LC, Spaatz Papers, box 70. 

77. Rprt, Lt Gen Ira C. Eaker, “USAAF 

in the United Kingdom, Feb 1942-Dec 

1943” (hereafter Eaker Report), LC, Eaker 

Papers, box 20. 

78. Intvw, Dr. Robert C. Ehrhart with 

1943, 266.1-1, 1942. 

A-2, Jan 23, 1943,266.1-1, 1942. 

School,” Mar 18, 1943, 266.1-1, 1942. 

1943Sep 2, 1945, vol2. 

gence,” chap 9. 

Brig Gen Harris B. Hull, USAF, Ret, Feb 

13, 1988. 

79. See note 76 above. 

80. Memo, Lt Col Weicker to CIS, HQ 

8th AF, Dec 5, 1943, LC, Spaatz Papers. 

81. Intvw, Dr. Edward Hopper, 8th AF 

Historian, with [General Charles P.] 

Cabell, Jul 9, 1944, LC, Spaatz Papers, 

box 135. 

82. Eaker to Spaatz, Mar 18, 1942, LC, 

Spaatz Papers, box 322. 

83. Hull intvw, Feb 13, 1988. 

84. Hist, 8th AF, Activation and Establishment, Jan 28, 1942, to Aug 17, 1942 

(HQ Eighth Air Force, Feb 1945), 520.01, 

vol 1, p. 254. 

8th AF, Apr 2 1,1943, LC, Spaatz Papers, 

box 328. 

85. Ltr, A-2, HQ 8th AF, to A-1, HQ 

86. Eaker Report, p. E-2-2. 

87. Hinsley, British Intelligence in the 

Second World War, vol2, p. 51. 

88. Ibid., p. 49. 

89. Ltr, S/L G. E. Daniel, O.C. RAF, 

Photo-Interpretation Course, to HQ 10th 

AF (Attn: Lt Col Wright), Jun 14, 1942, 

830.365; Hinsley, British Intelligence in 

the Second World War, vol2, p. 51. 

90. Hinsley, British Intelligence in the 

Second World War, vol2, p. 51. 

91. 8th AFHist, vol 1. 

92. Ltr, Eaker to Air Vice Marshal 

Medhurst, Mar 27, 1943, LC, Eaker Papers, box 19. 

93. 8th AF Hist, vol 1, p. 346. 

94. Ibid., pp. 225-226. 

95. Eaker Report, p. B-2. 

96. Minutes, Committee on Coordination of Air Ops, Oct 5, 1942, LC, Spaatz 

Papers, box 121; Hull intvw, Feb 20, 

1987. 

97. Rprt, Maj Gen Ira Eaker, “Fundamental Lessons Learned on the First Ten 

Heavy Bombardment Raids over Enemy 

Temtory,” Oct 2, 1942,523.609A. 

98. 8th AF Hist, vol 1, p. 90. 

99. Monthly Intel Rprt, A-2 to VIII 

Bom Comd CIS, Dec 26,1942,523.6042. 

100. A-2, VIII Bom Comd, “Sources of 

Information on German Defense Installations,’’ Dec 14, 1942, LC, Spaatz Papers, 

box 220. 

10 1. Ltr, Arnold to Eaker, Jan 13, 1943, 

437 
Notes to Pages 13G.145 

and draft A-5 response, n.d., both LC, 

Eaker Papers, box 16. 

102. OSS War Diary, vol4. See also Sir 

Charles Webster and Noble Frankland, 

The Strategic Air Offensive Against Germany, 1939-1 945, vol 1, Preparation 

(London, 1961). 

103. OSS War Diary, vol4, pp. 13-15. 

104. 8th AF Hist, vol 1, pp. 228, 345- 

346. 

105. Powys-Lybbe, Eye of Intelligence, 

p. 155. 

106. Memo, Lt Col Hughes to Col 

Robert Bacon, A-2, HQ 8th AF, Jull942, 

LC, Spaatz Papers, box 120. 

107. Intvw, Dr. Bruce C. Hopper with 

Col Hughes, Sep 15, 1943, LC, Spaatz 

Papers, box 135. 

108. Cited in OSS War Diary, vol4, p. 

20. 

109. OSS War Diary, vol4, pp. 20,26, 

29. 

110. 8th AF Hist, vol 1, p. 349. 

11 1. OSS War Diary, vol4, p. 38. 

1 12. Ibid. 

113. Ibid., pp. 29-30. 

114. Hughes intvw, Sep 15, 1943. 

115. Hist, 8th AF, vol2, Experimentation and Frustration, I7 August I942 to I 

May 1943 (HQ 8th AF, Jul1945), 520.01, 

116. Memos, Ministry of Home Security, subj: Brief Outline of Research and 

Experiments Department, n.d., and subj: 

American Personnel in R.E.8, Aug 5, 

1943, both in LC, Spaatz Papers, box 186. 

1 17. Memo, Ministry of Home Security, 

subj: Brief Outline of Research and Experiments, n.d. 

1 18. Powys-Lybbe, Eye of Intelligence, 

119. Haines Report, p. 36. 

120. Ltr, Eaker to Arnold, Apr 5, 1943, 

LC, Eaker Papers, box 16. 

121. Cited in Hinsley, British Intelligence in the Second World War, vol2, p. 

756. 

122. “Special Report on Bremen,” n.d., 

LC, Spaatz Papers, box 326; Roger A. 

Freeman, Mighty Eighth War Diary (London, 1981), p. 54. 

123. Babington-Smith, Air Spy, pp. 

184-1 85; OSS War Diary, vol4, pp. 63- 

pp. 353-356. 

p. 35. 

64. 

124. 8th AF Hist, vol2, p. 8. 

125. Ibid. 

126. Ibid., p. 5. 

127. Ltr, Eaker to Maj Gen James Chaney, CG USAFBI, cited in ibid., p. 41. 

128. Eaker Report, p. E-2. 

129. Memo, to CG, 8th AF, Aug 1942, 

LC, Spaatz Papers, box 143. 

130. 8th AF Hist, vol2, p. 16. 

131. Ibid., p. 20. 

132. Hist, 8th AF, vol 3, Growth, Development and Operations, p. 1. 

133. Memo, [General Eisenhower] for 

General Spaatz, Oct 13,1942, LC, Spaatz 

Papers, box 16. 

134. 8th AF Hist, vol2, pp. 5-6. 

135. Ltr, Eaker to Spaatz, Oct 14,1942, 

LC, Spaatz Papers, box 16. 

136. Ofc Dir Intel, HQ 8th AF, “Target 

Priorities of 8th Air Force,” May 15, 

137. Ltr, Eakerto Spaatz, Oct 14, 1942. 

138. Eaker Report, p. E-2; folder, Antisubmarine Intelligence Reports, LC, 

Spaatz Papers, box 10. 

139. Rprts, A-2, VIII Bom Comd, Oct 

140. Rprt, MEW, “Bombing Attacks on 

the German U-Boat Yards,” Jul21, 1942, 

LC, Spaatz Papers, box 222. 

141. Rprt, RAF Bom Ops, “Submarine 

Building Yards,” Aug 1942, contained in 

annex C, A-5, HQ 8th AF, “An Appreciation of the Air Effort Against Submarines,” Jan 16, 1943, LC, Spaatz Papers, 

box 71. 

142. Intel Rprt, Nov 20, 1942,523.432. 

143. N.I.D. report, n.d., LC, Eaker Papers, box 16. 

144. Hull intvw, Feb 20, 1987. 

145. HQ 8th AF, “An Evaluation of the 

Air Effort Against Submarines,” Jan 16, 

1943, LC, Spaatz Papers, box 297, p. 15. 

146. Air Intel Rprt, Jan 7, 1943, cited in 

Intel Svc, HQ AAF, “An Evaluation of the 

Air Effort Against Submarines (to Jan 1, 

1943),” Feb 12, 1943, 142.042-6. 

1945,520.323-A. 

1942-Jan 1943,523.604. 

147. See note 145. 

148. Ibid. 

149. Hull intvw, Feb 20, 1987. 

150. Ltr, Morse to Mason, Feb 10, 

1943, 118.1511. 

43 8 
Notes to Pages 145-155 

151. Ltr,EakertoArnold, Jan 11,1943, 

LC, Eaker Papers, box 16. 

152. Wesley Frank Craven and James 

Lea Cate, The Army Air Forces in World 

War II, vol 2, Europe: TORCH to POINTBLANK (Chicago, 1948), pp. 305-306. 

153. 8th AF Hist, vol2, p. 6. 

154. Craven and Cate, TORCH to POINT155. Hinsley, British Intelligence in the 

Second World War, vol2, pp. 754-756. 

156. Hist, USSTAF Dir Intel, Jan 

1944-May 1945, p. 4, LC, Spaatz Papers, 

box 297. 

157. Rprt, “Accuracy of Bombardment“ Missions,” Aug 27, 1942, LC, 

Eaker Papers, box 5. 

158. Ltr, Eaker to Arnold, Jan 11, 1943, 

LC, Eaker Papers, box 16. 

159. OSS War Diary, vol4, p. 56. 

160. Hinsley, British Intelligence in the 

Second World War, ~012,142. 

161. Webster and Frankland, vol 1, 

Preparation, p. 476. 

162. Hinsley, British Intelligence in the 

Second World War, vol 2, pp. 141-149; 

OSS War Diary, vol4, p. 57. 

163. Haines Report, pp. 235-236. 

164. Hinsley, British Intelligence in the 

Second World War, vol2, pp. 271-272. 

165. bib., pp. 238,521,517. 

166. Ltr, Spaatz to Col Berliner, Mar 

26,1943, LC, Spaatz Papers, box 11. 

167. Ltr, Arnold to Eaker, Dec 23, 

1942, LC, Eaker Papers, box 16. 

168. Hull intvw, Feb 13, 1988; ltr, 

Eaker to 8th AF A-2, Dec 1943, LC, 

Eaker Papers, box 17. 

169. Ltr, Eaker to Stratemeyer, Jan 30, 

1943, LC, Eaker Papers, box 17. 

170. Ltr, Arnold to Spaatz, Dec 7, 1942, 

LC, Spaatz Papers, box 10. 

171. Special Rprt No. 9, A-2, HQ 8th 

AF, 520.6314. 

172. Haines Report, p. 18. 

173. Hinsley, British Intelligence in the 

Second World War, vol2, p. 521. 

174. Craven and Cate, vol2, TORCH to 

POINTBLANK, p. 708. 

175. Ibid., 708-709. 

176. AWPD-1, cited in Haywood, S. 

Hansell, Jr., The Air Plan That Defeated 

Hitler (Atlanta, Ga., 1972), p. 298. 

BLANK, p. 313. 

177. Memo, Pres Roosevelt to Gen 

Marshall, Aug 24, 1942, 145.82-4. 

178. Ltr, Marshall to USFORLONDON, n.d., LC, Spaatz Papers, box 

66. 

179. Hansell, Strategic Air War Against 

Germany and Japan, p. 100; Hull intvw, 

Feb 13,1988. 

180. AWPD42, 145.8242. 

181. Ibid. 

182. See nn. 140, 141. 

183. Hansell, Strategic Air WarAgainst 

Germany and Japan, p. 106. 

184. AWPD-42. 

185. Air Est, Intel Svc, HQ AAF, 

“Transportation in Axis Europe,” Dec 1, 

1942, 142.042. 

186. Hansell, Strategic Air WarAgainst 

Germany and Japan, p. 145; intvw, Dr. 

Thomas Fabyanic with Guido Perera, Jun 

10, 1987. 

187. Hansell, Strategic Air WarAgainst 

Germany and Japan, p. 148; Pereraintvw, 

Jun, 10,1987; Hist, COA, Nov 16,1942- 

Oct 10, 1944, 118.01. 

188. Memo, C/S to Col Gates, Dec 9, 

1942, in COA Hist. 

189. Hansell, Strategic Air WarAgainst 

Germany and Japan, p. 148. 

190. Perera intvw, Jun 10, 1987. 

191. COA Hist, pp. 34. 

192. Perera intvw, Jun 10, 1987. 

193. COA Hist, p. 6; Perera intvw, Jun 

194. COA Hist, pp. 6-7. 

195. Memo, Howard Bruce to Col Sorenson, subj: Foreign Experts, Dec 12, 

196. Minutes, Committee Mtg, Jan 15, 

197. Ltr, Eaker to Andrews, CGETOUSA, Mar 27, 1943, LC, Eaker Papers, 

box 18; Ltr, Eaker to Perera, Feb 3,1943, 

LC, Eaker Papers, box 17; Perera intvw, 

Jun, 10, 1987. 

10, 1987. 

1942, 118.051-1. 

1943, 118.151-1. 

198. COA Hist, pp. 36-37. 

199. Ibid., pp. 36-38; Perera intvw, Jun 

10, 1987. 

200. Memo, to Gen Arnold, subj: Report of Committee of Operations Analysts 

with Respect to Economic Targets Within 

the Western Axis, Mar8, 1943, 118.01. 

201. Ltr, Spaatz to Arnold, Apr 21, 

439 
Notes to Pages 155-165 

1943, LC, Spaatz Papers, box 11 1. 

202. Hansel1 intvw, Jan 21, 1987. 

203. Rprt, COG, “Economic Targets 

Within the Western Axis.” 

204. Webster and Frankland, vol 1, 

Preparation, p. 2 17. 

205. Special Rprt No. 3, EOU, Jan 5, 

1943, 118.1511. 

206. “Feasibility of Air Attack on European Axis Transport,” Jan 21, 1943, 

118.04-4. 

207. Sir Charles Webster and Noble 

Frankland, The Strategic Air Offensive 

Against Germany, 1939-1945, vol 2, 

Endeavour (London, 1961), p. 220. 

208. CCS 166/1/D, cited in Craven and 

Cate, vol2, TORCH to POINTBLANK p. 305. 

209. Rprt, AS/G2, “An Estimate of 

Possible Axis Moves into North and 

North-west Africa,” Dec 24, 1941, 

119.04-2.5; memo, for ACE, WPD, subj: 

C.P.S. 2/2-SuperGymnast, G2/I, Feb 14, 

1942, 119.04-2.5. 

210. FO 1, Oct 15, 1942, annex 2, 

21 1. Hinsley, British Intelligence in the 

212. Ibid., pp. 474-475. 

213. Humphreys, “Use of ‘U,”’ SRH214. FO 1, Oct 15,1942, annex 2. 

215. Hinsiey, British Intelligence in the 

216. Ibid., p. 489. 

217. Ibid., pp. 487,491. 

218. Craven and Cate, vol2, TORCH to 

POINTBUNK, p. 88. 

219. Ibid., pp. 162-163. 

220. Humphreys, “Use of ‘U,”’ SRH037, p. 28; Craven and Cate, vol2, TORCH 

to POINTBLANK, pp. 120-121. 

221. Diary entry, Thurs, Feb 18, 1943, 

LC, Spaatz Diary, box 10. 

222. Humphreys, “Use of ‘U,”’ SRH037, p. 28. 

223. Lt Col P. M. Barr, Ofc AC/AS, 

Intelligence, HQ AAF, “Survey of Air 

Intelligence in North West African Theater, February 12-April 13,1943”oereafter Barr Report), 142.0471-2. 

224. Barr Report, p. 12. 

225. Rprt, Maj Earl Smith, VIII Ftr 

Comd, “Combat Intelligence in North 

650.327-5. 

Second World War, vol2, p. 465. 

037. 

Second World War, vol2, p. 487. 

AfricaTheatre of War, Jan 30,1943,” LC, 

Spaatz Papers, box 121; Barr Report, p. 

13. 

226. “Visit to 97th Bomb Group, Mar 

22, 1943,” in Barr Report. 

227. Rprt, HQ NAAF A-2, “U.S. Navy 

Combat Intelligence Officers . . . May 

1943, Jun 9, 1943,” 612.608. 

228. Barr Report, p. 6. 

229. Rprt, HQ NAAF A-2, “U.S. Navy 

230. NAAF, Weekly Intelligence Report 

231. NAAF, Weekly Intelligence Re232. Barr Report, p. 8. 

233. Msg, to C/Ss, Jan 6, 1943, LC, 

234. Minutes, Air Comdrs Conf, Mar 

235. Ibid., Feb 19, 1943. 

236. Hinsley, British Intelligence in the 

Second World War, vol2, pp. 742-743. 

237. Humphreys, “Use of ‘U,”’ SRH037, p. 25. See also John F. Kreis, Air 

Wa~are and Air Base Air Defense, 1914- 

1973 (Washington, D.C., 1988), pp. 160- 

169 for a discussion of Allied air defense 

problems. 

238. Rprt, Sq Mr D. J. Wiseman, CIO, 

NATAF, “Wireless Intelligence,” May 13, 

1943,614.430-2; Barr Report. 

239. NAAF, Weekly Intelligence Summary, Mar 30, 1943,650.607. 

240. Ibid. 

241. Humphreys, “Use of ‘U,”’ SRH037, p. 27. 

242. Haines Report, pp. 21-22; Humphreys, “Use of ‘U,”’ SRH-037, p. 25. 

243. Hinsley, British Intelligence in the 

Second World War, vol 2, pp. 575-576; 

Humphreys, “Use of ‘U,”’ SRH-037, pp. 

26-27. 

244. Humphreys, “Use of ‘U,”’ SRH037, p. 26. 

245. Ibid., p. 20. For an example of the 

lengths to which commanders resorted to 

conceal ULTRA, see Hugh P. Lloyd, 

Briefed to Attack: Malta’s Part in African 

Victory (London, 1949). Lloyd spent almost eighteen months as the air commander on Malta when he directed a continuing antishipping campaign against Axis 

Combat Intelligence Officers,” p. 3. 

File, 620.607. 

port, Apr 12, 1943. 

Spaatz Papers, box 10. 

17, 1943, LC, Spaatz Papers, box 10. 

440 
Notes to Pages 165-177 

supply lines to North Africa. He not only 

had to provide a plausible excuse to the 

Germans and Italians for his search success, he had to provide equally good rea- sons to his own people, some of whom 

almost guessed that he had some special 

source. Lloyd’s book, of course, was 

written well before ULTRA was open 

knowledge, so he imparts to readers the 

same cover. 

246. Haines Report, p. 26. 

247. B. H. Liddell Hart, ed, The Rom248. Hinsley, British Intelligence in the 

249. Ltr, Tedder to CG, NAAF, Mar 7, 

250. NAAF A-2, Weekly Intelligence 

me1 Papers (New York, 1953), p. 282. 

Second World War, vol2, pp. 576-577. 

1943, LC, Spaatz Papers, box 13. 

Report, Feb 28, 1943, 612.607. 

251. Craven and Cate, vol 2, TORCH to 

252. Hinsley, British Intelligence in the 

253. Ibid., pp. 573,607. 

254. Craven and Cate, vol2, TORCH to 

POINTBLANK, p. 182. 

255. Ibid., p. 184. 

256. Ibid., p. 151. 

257. NATAF, “Situation on Air PlanTunisia,” n.d., pp. 9, 23-24,614.430-2. 

258. Ibid., pp. 10,22. 

259. Craven and Cate, vol2, TORCH to 

POINTBLANK, pp. 195, 184. 

260. Ibid., p. 192. 

261. HQ NASAF, “The Battle of 

FLAX,” Apr 14, 1943, LC, Spaatz Papers, 

box 10. 

262. NATAF, “Situation on Air PlanTunisia,” p. 30. 

POINTBLANK, 147. 

Second World War, vol2, pp. 607-608. 

CHAPTER 4 

1. Marvin Downey, ed, History of Fqteenth Air Force (HQ Air Matkriel Command, Dec 20, 1946), 670.01-1, p. 303. 

2. Craven and Cate, vol 2, TORCH to 

POINTBLANK, p. 419. 

3. “Bombing of Communications-(In 

Support of Army Operations), Air Intelligence Section, Force 141,” USAFA, McDonald Collection, box 10. 

4. Craven and Cate, vol 2, TORCH to 

POINTBLANK, pp, 435438. 

5. Hinsley, British Intelligence in the 

Second World War, vol3, pt 1, pp. 80-82. 

6. HQ NAAF A-2, “Strategic Analysis-Air,” May 13, 1943, 612.317-1. 

7. Humphreys, “Use of ‘U,”’ SRH-037, 

p. 31. 

8. Clayton, The Enemy Is Listening, p. 

256. 

9. Ibid., p. 245; Alfred Price, The History of US. Electronic Wa$are (Arlington, Va., 1984), vol 1, pp. 72-76. 

10. Price, History of U.S. Electronic 

Warfare, vol 1, pp. 72-76. 

11. Ibid. 

12. Contributions of Combat Intelli13. Clayton, The Enemy Is Listening, p. 

14. Humphreys, “Use of ‘U,”’ SRH037, p. 31. 

15. Craven and Cate, vol 2, TORCH to 

POINTBLANK, p. 285. 

16. Personal, C/AS for Welsh, Jul 26, 

1943, cited in Alexander Cochran, “Spectre of Defeat: Anglo-American War Planning for the Invasion of Italy in 1943” 

(Dissertation, 1983). 

17. Ibid., p. 410. 

18. Cochran, in his “Spectre of Defeat,” 

does an excellent job of addressing this 

whole subject and is the first to include 

recently released ULTRA decrypts and 

assess their influence on Portal and Arnold. 

19. Craven and Cate, vol 2, TORCH to 

POINTBLANK, p. 518. 

20. Clayton, The Enemy Is Listening, p. 

283. 

21. Ibid., p. 275. 

gence. 

247-248. 

441 
Notes to Pages 177-191 

22. Hinsley, British Intelligence in the 

23. Rprt, Lt Col Leslie L. Rood, in 

24. Craven and Cate, vol 2, TORCH to 

25. Craven and Cate, vol 3, ARGUMENT 

26. Ibid., p. 329. 

27. Hist, MAAF, Dec 1943Sep 1, 

1944, vol 5, “Combat Intelligence Data,” 

app A, 622.01-5. 

28. Fellers and Rood, both in SRH-03 1, 

pp. 6, 50. 

29. Rood, in SRH-03 1, p. 52. 

30. Ibid., p. 50. 

31. MAAF Hist, Dec 1943Sep 1944, 

32. Ibid., vol5, app C. 

33. Admin Hist, 12th AF, pt 2, vol 1, 

annex 1, 650.01-1. 

34. Ibid., vol 3, annex 1, “Mediterranean Allied Tactical Air Force.” 

35. Downey, History of Fifeenth Air 

Force, p. 207. 

36. 12th AF Admin Hist, vol3, annex 1, 

“Mediterranean Allied Tactical Air 

Force.” 

37. Ibid., vol 4, “Historical Record, 

January-June 1944.” 

38. Ibid., vol 4, “Historical Record, 

JulySeptember 1944.” 

39. Ibid., vol 4, “Historical Record, 

October 1944-December 1944.” 

40. Rprt, Maj Warrack Wallace, in 

41. Rood, in SRH-03 1, p. 50. 

42. Downey, History of the Fifeenth 

43. Comments, Maj Murphy, cited by 

44. Rood, in SRH-031, p. 50. 

45. Downey, History of the Fifteenth 

Air Force, pp. 222-235; Rood, in SRH03 1, p. 49. 

46. HQ NAAF A-2, “Strategic Analysis 

of Italy-Rail,” Jun 11, 1943, 622.61 11. 

47. Special Rprt No. 64, “Communications (Italy): Interdiction of Rail Traffic 

Supplying Enemy Forces in Central Italy,” 

Dec 24,1943, USAFA, McDonald Collection, box 10. 

Second World War, vol3, pt 1, p. 175. 

SRH-03 1, p. 49. 

POINTBLANK, p. 576. 

to V-E Day, pp. 326-328. 

vol5, annex 3. 

SRH-031, pp. 11 1-1 12. 

Air Force, p. 201. 

Rood, in SRH-031, p. 50. 

48. Rprt, “Air Attacks on Rail and Road 

Communications,” Dec 1943, LC, Spaatz 

Collection, box 24. 

49. Rprt, Dir Ops to Dep Air Commander in Chief, “Interruption of Italian 

Rail Communications,” Feb 13,1944, LC, 

Spaatz Collection, box 24. 

50. Cited in MAAF Hist, Dec 1943Sep 

1944, vol 1, “Narrative,” 622.01-1, p. 

191. 

51. Memo, Lt R. H. Dorr (OSS) to Col 

W. F. Chapman, A-3 Sec, HQ MAAF 

(Adv.), subj: Comments on Air Attack on 

Marshalling Yards, Feb 8, 1944, LC, 

Spaatz Collection, box 24. 

52. Rprt Extracts, AFHQ, CSDIC 

[Combined Services Detailed Interrogation Centre], Special Sec, Jan 8,1944, LC, 

Spaatz Collection, box 24. 

53. Ltr, CG, XI1 Bom Comd, to CG, 

12th AF, subj: Intelligence Requirements 

in Connection with Current Plans for 

Interdicting Enemy Lines of Communication, Oct 6, 1945, in Report on Operation 

STRANGLE, 19 March-I1 May 1944 (HQ 

MATAF), annex G, 626.430-15. 

54. Report on Operation STRANGLE, 

annex D. 

55. Ibid., annex G. 

56. Ibid., addendum B, “Sources of 

Information”; War Diary (R&A/OSS, 

London), vol5, p. 66. 

57. “Bridge Busting: A Report on the 

Tactics of Medium Bombardment as Used 

in Italy for the Disruption of Rail Traffic,” 

Apr 16, 1944, in Report on Operation 

STRANGLE, annex G. 

58. Ltr, Eaker to Devers, Apr 1, 1944, 

LC, Eaker Collection, box 24. 

59. Report on Operation STRANGLE, 

annex J, “Railroad Traffic Interdictionzentral Italy-March-April 1944,” 

n.d. 

60. Rood, in SRH-031, p. 51. 

61. Ltr, Eaker to Brig Gen Hansell et 

al., Apr 2, 1943, LC, Eaker Collection, 

box 17. 

62. Hansell, Air Plan, p. 157. 

63. HQ 8th AF, “The Combined Bomber Offensive from the U.K.,” Apr 12, 

1943, LC, Spaatz Collection, box 67. 

64. “Priorities for Air Attack Among 

442 
Notes to Pages 191-205 

Economic Targets in 1943,” n.d., cited in 

8th AF Hist, vol2. 

65. Hansell, Air Plan, p. 162. 

66. CCS 217, “Plan for Combined 

Bomber Offensive from the United Kingdom,” May 14, 1943, 118.04W. 

67. Briefing Book for General Arnold, 

“German Situation,” 1943, 119.01-1. 

68. CCS 217. 

69. Col Kingman Douglass, “Jockey 

Committee: Its History and Functions,” 

n.d., LC, Spaatz Collection, box 137. 

70. Ibid. 

71. Ibid. 

72. Ltr, Anderson to Doolittle, subj: 

G.A.F. Targets, Jockey Committee, No. 

80, Dec 28, 1944, LC, Spaatz Collection, 

YJX 215. 

73. Memo, Col Hughes to Maj Gen 

Eaker, subj: Relative Priority of the German Aircraft Industry as a Target, Mar 23, 

1943,520.4231C. 

74. Memo, Col Hughes to CG, 8th AF, 

subj: Estimate of Force Required for Attack on German Aircraft Industry, Mar 22 

1943,520.4231C. 

75. HQ 8th AF, Dir Intel, “Target Priorities of the Eighth Air Force,” May 15, 

76. Memo, Hughes to CG, Mar 22, 

77. Freeman, Mighty Eighth, pp. 64-84. 

78. Rprt, R&A/OSS, “Geographical 

Shifts in the German Aircraft Industry,” 

Aug 17, 1943, USAFA, McDonald Collection, box 8. 

79. Eaker to CGs, NAAF and 9th AF, 

Jul 14, 1943,520.4231D. 

80. Memo, Hughes to CG, Mar 22, 

1943. 

81. EOU, “Handbook of Target Information,” n.d. [prepared in spring or summer 19431, LC, Spaatz Collection, box 

216. 

1945, 520.323-1, p. 11. 

2943. 

82. EOU, “War Diary,” p. 11. 

83. HQ 8th AF, Dir Intel, “Target Priorities of the Eighth Air Force,” p. 12. 

84. Ibid. 

85. Craven and Cate, vol 2, TORCH to 

POINTBLANK, p. 705. 

86. Msg, Eaker to Arnold, Oct 15,1843, 

LC, Eaker Collection, box 16. 

87. Ltrs, Arnold to Eaker, and Marshall 

to Eaker, both Oct 15, 1943, LC, Eaker 

Collection, box 16. 

88. 8th AF, “Narrative of Operations, 

115th Operation,” Oct 14, 1943,520.332. 

89. Ltr, Eaker to Arnold, Oct 15, 1943. 

90. CIU Interpretation Rprt, Oct 16, 

91. Ibid., Oct 20, 1943, 520.332. 

92. HQ 8th AF, Dir Intel, “Target Priorities of the Eighth Air Force”; “Joint Intelligence Committee Report,” cited in 

C/AS, RAF, and CG, 8th AF, “The Combined Bomber Offensive Progress Report, 

February 4, 1943-November 1, 1943,” 

annex P, LC, Spaatz Collection, box 67. 

93. Craven and Cate, vol 2, TORCH to 

POINTBWK, p. 704. 

94. Msg, Eaker to Arnold, Oct 15,1943. 

95. Msg, Eaker to Arnold, n.d., Eaker 

Collection, box 16. 

96. Ltr, Col McDonald to AC/AS, Intelligence, subj: State of German Air Forces 

in Mediterranean Theater, Nov 16, 1943, 

USAFA, McDonald Collection, box 2. 

97. “Current Items of Air Intelligence 

from ACIAS, A-2, Oct 18,1944,” cited in 

Craven and Cate, vol2, TORCH to POINT98. R&A/OSS, “Major Targets in the 

German S/E Fighter Aircraft Industry,” 

Aug 17, 1943, USAFA, McDonald Collection, box 8. 

1943,520.332. 

BLANK, p. 712. 

99. Haines Report, p. 41. 

100. Off Dir Ops, HQ USSTAF, “Information Supplementary to the Outline of 

Method for Implementation of the ‘Big 

Week,’” n.d., LC, Spaatz Collection, box 

169. 

101. Ltr, McDonald to Brig Gen 

Thomas D. White, AC/AS, Intelligence, 

Jul23, 1944, USAFA, McDonald Collection, box 2. 

102. HQ 8th AF, Dir Intel, “Target 

Priorities of the Eighth Air Force,” p. 9. 

103. Cited in ibid., p. 10. 

104. Special Intel Rprt [No. 651, HQ 

MAAF A-2, “Air Attack on German 

Single-Engine Fighter Production,” Dec 

26, 1943, USAFA, McDonald Collection, 

box 9. 

105. Craven and Cate, vol 2, TORCH to 

POINTBLANK, pp. 748-754. 

106. Directive to CGs, 8th and 15th 

443 
Notes to Pages 205-220 

AFs, Jan 11, 1944, LC, Spaatz Collection, 

box 143. 

107. Combined Ops Planning Committee, “Tactical Plan for the Air Battle of 

Leipzig . . . ,” Nov 29, 1943, LC, Spaatz 

Collection, box 147. 

108. HQ VIII Bom Comd A-2, “ARGUMENT Target Suggestions,” NOV 23,1943, 

520.4231B. 

109. Special Intel Rprt [No. 631, HQ 

NAAF A-2, “Strategic Targets,’’ Dec 24, 

1943, 617.608. 

1 10. Craven and Cate, vol3, ARGUMENT 

to V-E Day, pp. 33-44. 

11 1. Memo, Capt J. C. Reed to Col 

McDonald, Feb 26, 1944, LC, Spaatz 

Collection, box 143. 

112. Teletype Conf Script, Feb 27, 

1944, LC, Spaatz Collection, box 67. 

11 3. “Use of Strategic Air Power After 

1 March 1944,” Feb 28, 1944, in War 

Diary, pp. 70ff. 

114. Craven and Cate, vol3, ARGUMENT 

to V-E Day, p. 45. 

115. Hinsley, British Intelligence in the 

Second World War, vol3, pt 1, p. 317. 

116. Haines Report, p. 82. 

117. Ibid., p. 83. 

118. Ibid., p. 92. 

119. Ibid., p. 86. 

120. Ibid., p. 92. 

121. Ibid., p. 91. 

122. Carl Boyd, “Significance of 

MAGIC and the Japanese Ambassador to 

Berlin: (1) The Formative Months Before 

Pearl Harbor,” Intelligence and National 

Security, Jan 1987, pp. 150-1 5 1. 

123. Memo, Maj Gen F. L. Anderson, 

Feb 12., 1944, LC, Spaatz Collection, box 

61. 

124. Rprt, Capt Harold J. Bamett, “The 

Use of Strategic Air Power after 1 March 

1944,” pp. 70ff. 

125. Ibid. 

126. HQ USSTAF, “Plan for Completion of the Combined Bomber Offensive,” 

Mar 5, 1944, LC, Spaatz Collection, box 

61. 

127. “Petroleum Industry,” n.d., atched 

to Ltr, Capt Kindleberger to Col Hughes, 

subj: M.E.W. Comment on USSTAF Plan 

for Attack Against Oil Installations, Mar 

25,1944, LC, Spaatz Collection, box 144. 

128. Ltr, Kindleberger to Hughes, Mar 

25, 1944. 

129. Dir Bom Ops, “Notes on the Employment of the Strategic Bomber Forces 

Prior to ‘OVERLORD,”’ Mar 19,1944, LC, 

Spaatz Collection, box 144. 

130. COA, “Requested Comment on 

JIC 106/2,” Jan 12, 1944, and “Report on 

German Aviation Gasoline Position,” Jan 

18, 1944, both in LC, Spaatz Collection, 

box 67. 

13 1. Ltr, Spaatz to Eisenhower, Mar 5, 

1944, LC, Spaatz Collection, box 144. 

132. HQ USSTAF, “Plan for the Completion of the Combined Bomber Offensive.” 

133. See, e.g., Memo, Capt Kindleberger to Col Hughes, subj: Summary Account 

of Meeting of 25 February 1944, Norfolk 

House, Feb 26, 1944, LC, Spaatz Collection, box 144, and Memos, Lt R. H. DOK, 

USNR, OSS, to Col W. F. Chapmen, A-3, 

MAAF (Adv.), subj: Comments on Air 

Attack on Marshalling Yards, Feb 8,1944, 

and subj: The Value of Marshalling Yards 

as Targets: Mediterranean Example, Feb 

22, 1944, both cited in EOU, “War Diary,” pp. 86-90. 

134. AD Ops (SO), “The Battle of the 

Flying Bomb,” n.d., pp. 1-2, and D of I 

(0), “CROSS-BOW: Summary of Information,” Jun 12, 1943, both in LC, Spaatz 

Collection, box 171; Ltr, Hughes to CG, 

8th AF, Aug 1 1, 1943, LC, Spaatz Collection, box 171; Powys-Lybbe, Eye oflntelligence, pp. 90-91, 188, 191; Hinsley, 

British Intelligence in the Second World 

War, vol 3, pt 1, pp. 371, 363-364, 390- 

393. 

135. “Battle of the Flying Bomb.” 

136. Hinsley, British Intelligence in the 

Second World War, vol3, pt 1, p. 385. 

137. Ibid., p. 399n. 

138. “U.S. Army Air Forces Activities 

in United Kingdom Covering Period from 

February 20, 1942, to December 31, 

1943,” LC, Spaatz Collection, box 20. 

139. Minutes, mtg to discuss attack of 

installations in northern France, Aug 11, 

1943,519.4311.1. 

140. Hinsley, British Intelligence in the 

Second World War, vol3, pt 1, p. 399n. 

141. “Battle of the Flying Bomb,” p. 2; 

444 
Notes to Pages 220-230 

Powys-Lybbe, Eye of Intelligence, p. 196. 

142. Babington-Smith,AirSpy, pp. 223, 

143. Msg, Eaker to Eisenhower, Dec 

26, 1943, LC, Spaatz Collection, box 171. 

144. See sample lists in CROSSBOW 

File, 520.323B. 

145. “Battle of the Flying Bomb,” pp. 

5-6. See also R. V. Jones, The Wizard 

War, British Scientific Intelligence, 

1939-1945 (New York, 1978), chaps 38, 

39. 

146. Hinsley, British Intelligence in the 

Second World War, vol 3, pt 1, pp. 424- 

426. 

147. EOU, “War Diary,” p. 50; Spaatz 

to Eisenhower, Jun 25, 1944, and Jul 10, 

1944, both in LC, Spaatz Collection, box 

171. 

148. Hinsley, British Intelligence in the 

Second World War, vol 3, pt 2, pp. 538- 

539. 

227-228. 

149. Ibid., p. 542. 

150. Ltr, RAF ACAS (I) to Dir Intel, 

HQ USSTAF, Jul 8 1944, LC, Spaatz 

Collection, box 17 1. 

151. Memo, McDonald to Maj Gen 

Anderson, Jul8,1944, LC, Spaatz Collection, box 17 1. 

152. Ltr, McDonald to Air Vice Marshal F. F. Inglis, Jul 15, 1944, LC, Spaatz 

Collection, box 171. 

153. “CROSSBOW, 9 July through 15 

July 1944,” Jul 16, 1944, LC, Spaatz 

Collection, box 17 1. 

154. Committee on Operations Planning 

Coordination, “Preliminary Report on the 

Possibility of Reducing the Flying Bomb 

Activity to an Acceptable Scale and on the 

Sterilization of the Large Rocket,” Jul28, 

1944, LC, Spaatz Collection, box 149. 

155. Cited in Ltr, HQ AEAF to Air 

Comdrs, Jul25, 1944, LC, Spaatz Collection, box 172: 

156. Hinsley, British Intelligence in the 

Second World War, vol 3, pt 2, pp. 542- 

543. 

157. EOU, “War Diary,” p. 51. 

158. Powys-Lybbe, Eye of Intelligence, 

p. 192. 

159. Hinsley, British Intelligence in the 

Second World War, vol 3, pt 1, pp. 436, 

443,450. 

160. Cited in Babington-Smith, Air Spy, 

161. EOU, “War Diary,” p. 50. 

162. CCS 217. 

163. Craven andcate, vol3,ARGUMENT 

to V-E Day, pp. 71-72. 

164. Freeman, Mighty Eighth, pp. 212- 

259; HQ 8th AF, Dir Intel, “Target Priorities of the Eighth Air Force,” p. 72. 

165. Rprt, “Ninth Air Force Activities, 

April Thru June 1944,” n.d., LC, Spaatz 

Collection, box 166. 

166. Draft Hist, IX TAC, “A-2,’’ Mar 

1945, LC, Quesada Collection, box 3. 

167. Hinsley, British Intelligence in the 

Second World War, vol 3, pt 2, pp. 113- 

114. 

p. 236. 

168. Ibid., p. 104. 

169. A.I.3(b), “Employment of the 

G.A.F. Against ‘OVERLORD,”’ Mar 15, 

1944, USAFA, McDonald Collection, box 

8. 

170. HQ AEAF, “Overall Plan for Operation NEPTUNE,” Apr 15, 1944, LC, 

Spaatz Collection, box 166. 

17 1. “Ninth Air Force Plan for Operation NEPTUNE,” annex I, “Intelligence,” 

Apr 26, 1944, LC, Spaatz Collection, box 

151. 

172. IX TAC Ops Plan, May 3 1, 1944, 

LC, Spaatz Collection, box 65. 

173. Hinsley, British Intelligence in the 

Second World War, vol 3, pt 2, pp. 103- 

104. 

174. Haines Report, p. 120-124. 

175. Bennett, ULTRA in the West, p. 54. 

176. Ltr, Arnold to Spaatz, Apr 24, 

1944, LC, Spaatz Collection, box 143. 

177. Minutes, mtg of Air Commanders 

in Chief, May 26, 1944, LC, Spaatz Collection, box 143. 

178. Haines Report, p. 110. 

179. Lt Col Whitlow, “Commands,” pt 

180. Haines Report, p. 108. 

181. Bennett, ULTRA in the West, p. 67. 

182. Ibid., p. 86; Powell, in Putney, 

183. Signal XL 8081, LC, Microfilm 

184. Signal XL 8444, LC, Microfilm 

185. Haines Report, p. 119. 

2, SRH-023, p. 50. 

ULTRA and the AAF, p. 20. 

Sec, ULTRA Files. 

Sec, ULTRA Files. 

445 
Notes to Pages 230-239 

186. Ibid., p. 128. 

187. Ibid., p. 130. 

188. Draft Hist, IX TAC, “Signals 

Intelligence,” Mar 1945, LC, Quesada 

Collection. 

189. Ibid. 

190. Memo, McDonald to Anderson, 

Aug 17,1944, LC, Spaatz Collection, box 

143. 

191. Rood, in SRH-023, p. 16. 

192. Bennett, ULTRA in the West, p. 49. 

193. Capt Charles Kindleberger, to G-2 

(Air), 21 Army Grp/HQ 2d TAF, “An 

Interim Report on the Rail Movement of 

German Reserves,” Jun 16, 1944, cited in 

W. W. Rostow, Pre-Invasion Bombing 

Strategy: General Eisenhower’s Decision 

of March 25, 1944 (Austin, Tex., 1981), 

app F, pp. 122-137. 

194. Intvw, Dr. Robert C. Ehrhart with 

Gen Robert M. Lee, May 21,1988. 

195. Lee intvw, May 21, 1988. 

196. Buck, in SRH-023, p. 8. 

197. Hists, IX Ftr Comd and IX Air 

Support Comd, monthly from Oct 1943 

through Feb 1945, LC, Quesada Collection, box 2. 

198. Draft Hist, IX TAC, “A-2,’’ Mar 

1945, LC, Quesada Collection. 

199. Draft Hist, IX TAC, “Operations 

Intelligence,” Mar 1945, LC, Quesada 

Collection. 

200. Kindleberger, “Interim Report,” in 

Rostow, Pre-Invasion Bombing Strategy. 

201. IX Ftr Comd Unit Hist, Jul 1944. 

202. Rprts, Fellers, Whitlow, and 

Grove, all in SRH-023. 

203. Draft Hist, IX TAC, “A-2, Recce 

Sec,” Mar 1945, LC, Quesada Collection. 

204. Lee intvw, May 21, 1988; Griggs, 

in SRH-023, p. 34. 

205. Buck, in SRH-023, p. 8. 

206. SHAEF G-2, “Interdiction Handbook,” LC, Spaatz Collection, box 215. 

207. Bennett, ULTRA in the West, p. 68. 

208. Grove, in SRH-023, p. 108. 

209. Signal XL 8339, LC, Microfilm 

Sec, ULTRA Files. 

210. Signal XL 8038, LC, Microfilm 

Sec, ULTRA Files. 

21 1. Air Sunset 248, Oct 28,1944, cited 

in Hinsley, British Intellligence in the 

Second World War, vol3, pt 2, p. 408. 

212. Air Sunset 260, Dec 6, 1944, cited 

in ibid., p. 428. 

213. CravenandCate, vol ARGUMENT 

to V-E Day, pp. 675-68 1. 

214. Bennett, ULTRA in the West, pp. 

199-201; Hinsley, British Intelligence in 

the Second World War, vol 3, pt 2, pp. 

406-438. 

215. Hinsley, British Intelligence in the 

Second World War, vol3, pt 2, p. 406. 

216. Air Sunsets 253 (Nov 7, 1944), 

254 (Nov 9, 1944), and 255 (Nov 12, 

1944), cited in ibid., pp. 901-905. 

217. Ibid., pp. 410,424. 

218. Ibid., p. 438. 

219. Lee intvw, May 21, 1988, p. 11. 

220. Craven and Cate, vol3, ARGUMENT 

221. Hinsley, British Intelligence in the 

222. Haines Report, p. 167. 

223. Lee intvw, May 21, 1988. 

224. Ltr, Spaatz to Arnold, Sep 30, 

1944, LC, Spaatz Collection, box 143. 

225. Memo, McDonald to Anderson, 

Apr 9, 1944, USAFA, McDonald Collection, box 3. 

226. Rostow, Pre-Invasion Bombing 

Strategy, p. 56n. 

227. Haines Report, pp. 98-99. 

228. HQ USSTAF, “Plan for the Employment of the Strategic Air Forces,” Jun 

10, 1944, LC, Spaatz Collection, box 145. 

229. G-2 SHAEF, “Use of Air Power 

Against Enemy Military Transport and 

Supplies,” Jun 7, 1944, in “Plan of 10 

June 1944,” annex F, LC, Spaatz Collection, box 145. 

230. Memo to ACIAS, Plans, subj: 

Review of Basic Study, Report of the 

Committee of Operations Analysts, Mar 8, 

1943, Jun 21, 1944, LC, Spaatz Collection, box 67. 

to V-E Day, p. 665. 

Second World War, vol3, pt 2, p. 442. 

231. EOU, “War Diary,” p. 23. 

232. Memo, McDonald to Anderson, 

Aug 1,1944, USAFA, McDonald Collection, box 3. 

233. Ltr, Spaatz to Arnold, May 24, 

1944, LC, Spaatz Collection, box 143. 

234. Charles Webster and Noble Frankland, Strategic Air Offensive Against 

Germany, 1939-1945, vol 3, Victory 

(London, 1961). p. 225. 

446 
Notes to Pages 239-245 

235. Haines Report, p. 104. 

236. Ibid., p. 119. 

237. Ibid., p. 117. 

238. SRH-017, p. 25. 

239. Haines Report, p. 128. 

240. Ibid., pp. 134-135. 

241. Ibid., p. 150. 

242. Ibid., p. 134. 

243. Ibid., p. 160. 

244. HQ USSTAF, “Plan for the Employment of the Strategic Air Forces,” Jun 

10, 1944. 

245. Spaatz to CGs, 8th and 15th AFs, 

subj: Target Priorities, Sep 1, 1944, 

520.323B. 

246. Ltr, Spaatz to Amold, Jull7,1944, 

USAFA, McDonald Collection, box 3. 

241. “A Counter Air Force Program for 

the Period from Now until the German 

Collapse,” Oct 24, 1944, LC, Spaatz Collection, box 143. 

248. A.I.3(b) Air Ministry, “The Threat 

of the German Air Force to Our Planned 

Strategic Air Operations,’’ Oct 23, 1944, 

USAFA, McDonald Collection, box 9. 

249. Dir Ops, HQ USSTAF, “The 

Threat of the German Air Force to Strategic Operations,’’ Nov 5, 1944, USAFA, 

McDonald Collection, box 9. 

250. Minutes, “HQ USSTAF Meeting 

Regarding the German Air Force,” Nov 1, 

1944, LC, Spaatz Collection, box 143. 

25 1. Powys-Lybbe, Eye of Intelligence, 

252. Minutes, “Meeting of the A-2s of 

American Air Forces in Europe,” Spaatz 

Collection, box 121. 

253. Memo, subj: Terms of Reference, 

Oct 13, 1944, LC, Spaatz Collection, box 

186. 

pp. 67-68. 

254. EOU, “War Diary,” p. 125. 

255. Hinsley, British Intelligence in the 

Second World War, vol3, pt 1, p. 54. 

256. Powell, in Putney, ULTRA and the 

AAF, p. 41. 

257. Bennett, ULTRA in the West, pp. 

226-227. 

258. HQ USSTAF, History of the Directorate of Intelligence, United States 

Strategic Air Forces in Europe, January 

1944-May 1945 (Office of the Directorate 

of History), LC, Spaatz Collection, box 

290. 

259. Directive No. 2, Spaatz to CGs, 8th 

and 15th AFs, “Control of Strategic Air 

Forces in Europe,” Nov I, 1944, LC, 

Spaatz Collection, box 146. 

260. HQ 8th AF, Dir Intel, “Target 

Priorities of the Eighth Air Force,” pp. 

261. “Current German Railway Situation and the Problem of Air Attack,” Jan 

10, 1945, cited in ibid., p. 32. 

262. Memo, McDonald to Anderson, 

Jan 5, 194[5] (misdated 1944), 519.323. 

263. Rprt, A.1.2(g), “German Air Force 

Developments,” Jul 19, 1944, USAFA, 

McDonald Collection, box 9. 

264. Babington-Smith, Air Spy, pp. 

2 10-2 1 1. 

265. A-2 3d Bom Div, “Enemy Jet 

Propelled Aircraft,” Aug 25, 1944, 

520.65 1-1; Hinsley, British Intelligence in 

the Second World War, vol 3, pt 1, pp. 

266. A.I.2(g), “German Air Force Developments,’’ Jul 19, 1944. 

267. Hinsley, British Intelligence in the 

Second World War, vol3, pt 2, p. 597. 

268. Ltr, Spaatz to Arnold, Jul22,1944, 

LC, Spaatz Collection, box 143. 

269. Ltr, Spaatz to Arnold, Sep 3, 1944, 

LC, Spaatz Collection, box 143. 

270. HQ 8th AF, Dir Intel, “Target 

Priorities of the Eighth Air Force.” 

271. Minutes, mtg, “Underground Factories in Germany,” Sep 20, 1944, LC, 

Spaatz Collection, box 215. 

272. Dir Ops, “The Threat of the German Air Force to Strategic Operations,’’ 

Nov 5, 1944, and A.I.3(b), “The Threat of 

the German Air Force to Our Planned 

Strategic Air Operations,” Oct 23, 1944, 

both in USAFA, McDonald Collection, 

box 9. 

273. Hinsley, British Intelligence in the 

Second World War, vol3, pt 2, p. 59. 

274. Haines Report, p. 165. 

275. Ibid., pp. 166, 172; Hinsley, British Intelligence in the Second World War, 

vol3, pt 2, p. 600. 

276. McDonald to SHAEF Air Staff, 

Dec 20,1944, USAFA, McDonald Collection, box 3. 

277. Memo, McDonald to Anderson, 

subj: Estimated Buildup and Use of Me 

3 1-32. 

348-349. 

447 
Notes to Pages 245-252 

262s and Ar 234s, Dec 29,1944, USAFA, 

McDonald Collection, box 3. 

278. Memo, McDonald to Spaatz, subj: 

Allied Air Supremacy and German Jet 

Planes, Jan 3, 1945, USAFA, McDonald 

Collection, box 9. 

279. Ltr, Spaatz to Arnold, Jan 10, 

1945. 5 19.3 181-1. 

280. Craven and Cate, vol3,ARGUMENT 

to V-E Day, p. 722. 

281. “Analysis of G.A.F. Reactions 

Since 1 January 1945,” Mar 20, 1945, 

USAFA, McDonald Collection, box 2. 

282. Ibid. 

283. Douglass, “Jockey Committee.” 

284. Craven and Cate, vol3, ARGUMENT 

to V-E Day, p. 754. 

CHAPTER 5 

1. U.S. Signal Security Agency, Reminiscences of Lieutenant Colonel Howard 

W. Brown, Aug 14,1945, SRH-045 (hereafter Brown Report) [this report is also in 

the Air University Library, M-U43294- 

32, and has been reprinted in Ronald H. 

Spector, ed, Listening to the Enemy (Wilmington, 1988), pp. 43-76], pp. 4244; 

Air Ministry, Draft RAF Narrative, The 

Campaigns in the Far East, AFHSO, vol 

2, pp. 62-63. See also John B. Lundstrom, 

The First Team, (Annapolis, Md., 1984), 

p. 480 for comments on the American 

understanding of the Zero fighter. 

2. S. Woodburn Kirby et al., History of 

the Second World War, The War Against 

Japan, vol 1, The Loss of Singapore, 

(London, 1957), app 3; Wesley Frank 

Craven and James Lea Cate, The Army Air 

Forces in World War II, vol 1, Plans and 

Early Operations (Chicago, 1948), pp. 

3. Craven and Cate, vol 1, Plans and 

Early Operations, pp. 410, 480-483; 

Ronald Lewin, The American MAGIC: 

Codes, Ciphers, and the Defeat of Japan 

(New York, 1982), pp. 92-93. 

4. Craven and Cate, vol 1, Plans and 

Early Operations, pp. 428438,451-454; 

Ibid., vol 4, Guadalcanal to Saipan, pp. 

5. Craven and Cate, vol4, Guadalcanal 

to Saipan, pp. 405-434; Allison Ind, Bafaun, The Judgement Seat (New York, 

1944), pp. 2-3,9-10; Walter D. Edmonds, 

They Fought With What They Had: The 

Story of the Army Air Forces in the South243-245,366,376,396. 

70-74,88-89,209-211,290-291. 

west Pacific, 1941-1942 (Boston, 1951; 

Washington, D.C., 1992), pp. 22-23 [a 

copy of the WD CIS Memo for the Secy 

General Staff, subj: Air Offensive Against 

Japan, Nov 21,1941, is appended to Rear 

Adm Edwin T. Layton, with Capt Roger 

Pineau and John Costello, “And I Was 

There,” Pearl Harbor and Midway-Breaking the Secrets (New York, 

1985), following p. 5281. 

6. Brown Report. 

7. Ibid. 

8. Ibid. 

9. Ibid., pp. 50-52. 

10. Cited in Robert F. Futrell, “Air 

Hostilities in the Philippines, 8 December 

1941,” Air University Review, Jan-Feb 

1965, pp. 33-45. 

11. Edmonds, They Fought With What 

They Had, pp. 80-81; Maj Gen Charles A. 

Willoughby and John Chamberlin, MacArthur, 1941-1951 (New York, 1954), pp. 

25-26; Futrell, “Air Hostilities in the 

Philippines,” pp. 33-45. 

12. Brown Report, pp. 58-67. 

13. Craven and Cate, vol 1, Plans and 

Early Operations, pp. 403426. 

14. Air Eval Bd, SWPA, “Fifth Air 

Force Intelligence Evaluation, Combat 

Intelligence in SWPA (A General Review 

of Growth from April 1942 to June 

1944);’ 706.601-1; intvw, Current Intel 

Sec A-2, AAF, with Lt Col Reginald F. 

Vance, Senior Staff Off, Allied Forces, 

Port Moresby, Sep 11, 1942, in 142.052; 

HQ Allied Air Forces SWPA Directorate 

Intel, Serial No. 1, May [ 19,] 1942 (mis448 
Notes to Pages 253-259 

dated May 18, 1942). 

15. HQ Allied Air Forces SWPA Directorate Intel, Serial No. 1, May [ 19J 1942. 

16. General Willoughby’s story and the 

narrative of GHQ SWPA Intel is told in 

the multivolume Brief History of the G-2 

Section, GHQ SWPA, and Afiliated Units 

vokyo: July 8, 1948), 710.600. Something of a summary appeared in GHQ Far 

East Comd, Operations of the Military 

Intelligence Section GHQ SWPMFEC/ 

SCAP [Supreme Commander Allied Powers] (Tokyo: Sep 30, 1950). The quotations are from vol 3, Sep 30, 1950, p. 4, 

and chap 2, n.p. See also Willoughby and 

Chamberlain, MacArthur. 

17. Allison Ind, Allied Intelligence 

Bureau, Our Secret Weapon in the War 

Against Japan (New York, 1958), pp. 

1-13; Lewin, American MAGIC, (New 

York, 1982), pp. 181-184; Desmond J. 

Ball, “Allied Intelligence Cooperation 

Involving Australia During World War 

11,” Australian Outlook, Dec 1978, pp. 

299-309; Homer, “Special Intelligence in 

the South-West Pacific Area,” pp. 310- 

327; D. M. Homer, High Command: 

Australia and Allied Strategy, 1939-1945 

(Canberra, 1982), chap 10, “Allied Intelligence Co-operation in the SWPA,” pp. 

224-246. 

18. Papers of General George C. Kenney, entries for Aug 1942, AFHSO (hereafter Kenney Papers); George C. Kenney, 

General Kenney Reports (hereafter Kenney Reports) (New York, 1949; Washington,D.C., 1987), pp. 31,6142. 

19. Haywood S. Hansell, Jr., The Strategic Air War Against Germany and Japan (Washington, D.C., 1986), p. 148; 

Lewin, American MAGIC, chap 12; Reports 

by US. Army ULTRA Representatives with 

Field Commands in the Southwest Pacijic, 

Pacific Ocean and China Burma India 

Theaters of Operations 1944-1945, 

SRH-032, pp. 5-17; Kenney Reports, pp. 

26-28, 52-53; Kenney Papers, Aug 4, 

1942; Use and Dissemination of ULTRA in 

the Southwest Pacijic Area, I943-1945, 

SRH-127, pp. 6-28. Kenney’s regular, 

direct access to ULTRA material sent from 

Washington seems to have begun late in 

1943 or 1944. The amount and type of 

such information he received is difficult to 

determine; by the time of the Philippine 

campaign, the SSOs in Brisbane were a 

conduit for intelligence from ChinaBurma to the SWPA forces (see SRH127, pp. 145-148) as well as from outside 

the theater. In any event, Kenney had 

daily briefings from his intelligence staff 

and from the SSO assigned to HQ FEAF. 

Kenney’s papers contain no remarks to the 

effect that he resented Sutherland’s control of special security information or that 

Sutherland kept anything of importance 

from him. Kenney knew so much of Sutherland’s bad side that he must have understood the SSO problem, yet Kenney had 

been content to work with theater data and 

with what MacArthur told him of air 

operations matters in SSO reports. See 

also the Brown Report for a description of 

the beginning of American Army intercept 

operations in the SWPA. 

20. Hist, 13th AF Intel Sec 1943-1945, 

750.600. 

21. Memo, Van Slyck for Brock, ca. 

Mar 1943; ltr, Col L. C. Sherman, AC/S 

G-2, US. Army Forces in South Pacific 

Area (USAFISPA), to Col William C. 

Bentley, Dep ACIAS, Intelligence, AAF, 

Mar 5, 1944, vol 7, doc 38, 203.6; ltr, 

Sherman to AC/S G-2, WDGS, subj: 

Intelligence Net, South Pacific Area, May 

29, 1943, in 705.603.1. 

22. Diary, L. C. Sherman, AFHSO, pp. 

12, 17, 21, 26-27. 

23. Lect, “Intelligence Experience 

during World War 11,” Col Benjamin 

Cain, Dec 10, 1946, Air War College, 

K239.7 16246-6. 

24. Air Eval Bd, SWPA, “Combat Intelligence in SWPA,” Jun 1944,730.601-2. 

See also,e.g.,5th AFADVON,“Summaries of Principal Activities,” 730.606. The 

Summaries for Oct 30 and Nov 26,1943, 

are illustrative, but there are many others, 

including Brief History of the G-2 Seclion, vol3, p. 31. 

25. “Air Forces and Units in SWPA,” 

706.204; Brief History of the G-2 Section, 

pp. 9-10; 13th AF Intel Sec Hist. 

26. Brief History of the (3-2 Section, 

pp. 86-87; Eric A. Feldt, The Coast 

Watchers (New York, 1946), pp. 143, 

449 
Notes to Pages 259-274 

170,209-210,270. 

27. Brief History of the G-2 Section, 

pp. 86-87; HQ Allied Air Force SWPA, 

suppl No. 1 to MIS-X annex, “Evading 

Capture in Southeast China,” 730.614. 

28. Brief History of the G-2 Section, 

“Introduction,” pp. 3840. 

29. Kenney Papers, entries for 1943, 

passim, and included correspondence with 

General Whitehead; draft rprt, “Radio 

Intelligence and the Fifth Air Force,” n.d. 

[1944], 730.625. 

30. Kenney Papers, entries for Nov 

1942. 

31. Craven and Cate, vol4, Guadalcanal to Saipan, pp. 108-127. For the 

ground campaign in Papua, see Samuel 

Milner, Victory in Papua (Washington, 

D.C., 1957). 

32. See 5th AF ADVON, “Summaries 

of Principal Activities.” 

33. See Brief History of the G-2 Section, “Introduction”; Kenney Papers, Jan 

34. Kenney Reports, p. 76; Kenney 

Papers, entries for Feb 22 and 25, 1943; 

Samuel Eliot Morison, History of United 

States Naval Operations in World War II, 

vol6, Breaking the Bismarcks Barrier, 22 

July 1942-1 May 1944 (Boston, 1950), p. 

54. The messages themselves may be seen 

in Radio Intelligence in World War II, 

Tactical Operations in the Pacific Ocean 

Area, February 1943, SRH-144, pt 2, pp. 

35. Ltr, Kenney to Whitehead, Kenney 

1-5,1943. 

44548,531-532,564-576. 

PaDers, Feb 25, 1943. 

56. Kenney .Papers, entry for Feb 26, 

1943. 

37. Ibid., entry for Feb. 27, 1943. 

38. Ibid., entry for Feb. 28, 1943. 

39. Ibid., entries for March 14, 1943; 

Morison, Breaking the Bismarcks Barrier, 

pp. 62-64. 

40. Life Magazine, Mar 22, 1943. The 

accompanying article reported the battle 

in substantial, but inaccurate, detail, repeating the claim of much higher losses 

than had been sustained; Kenney maintained the incorrect information in his 

postwar book (Kenney Reports, p. 205), 

although he had access to the correct data 

in Japan. The original claims by the aviators were erroneous but understandable, 

given the confusion of combat. Why Kenney did not correct the final account in his 

book is unknown. Conversation, John 

Kreis with Capt Roger Pineau, USN, Ret, 

Apr 1, 1991. Pineau wrote the note on 

pages 63-64 of Morison’s Breaking the 

Bismarcks Barrier and discussed the issue 

with MacArthur in Japan after the war. 

41. Kenney Papers, entries for Mar 

10-Apr 6, 1943, including ltr, Arnold to 

Kenney, Mar 30, 1943; Kenney Reports, 

42. Kenney Papers, entry for Mar 22, 

1943. 

43. Ibid., entries for Apr and May 1943; 

Kenney Reports, pp. 233-240, 247-248. 

See also SWPA Special Intelligence Bulletins (hereafter SIBS), pt 1, SRH-203, May, 

Jun 1943. 

44. Memo, Air Comd, Solomon Islands, 

Maj Victor Dykes, Jun 1944,749.01. 

45. Intvw, USAFAcademy faculty with 

Gen Nathan Twining, Nov 3, 1967, 

K239.05 12-636; Craven and Cate, vol 1, 

Plans and Early Operations, pp. 45 1452; 

Ibid., vol 2, TORCH to POI~TBUNK, pp. 

88-89, 210-21 1; Ibid., vol4, Guadalcanal to Saipan, pp. 33-34, 332. 

46. Craven and Cate, vol4, Guadalcanal to Saipan, pp. 41-42. 

47. Intvw, Dr. Robert Ehrhart with Lt 

Gen Francis C. Gideon, USAF, Ret, May 

48. U.S. Navy Direction Finder Station, 

49. Kreis, Air Warfare, pp. 225-230. 

50. Ibid., p. 231. 

51. Records, First Marine Div, Daily 

Intel Summaries, entries for Oct, Nov, 

Dec 1942, box 8, C 4-3, U.S. Marine 

Corps Historical Archives. 

52. Layton, “And I Was There,” pp. 

474-476. 

53. Price, History of US Electronic 

Warfare, pp. 48-51,133-153. 

54. Gideon intvw, May 20, 1988; SIBS, 

daily entries on air and naval movements, 

55. Ltr, Brig Gen Ray L. Owens to 

COMAlRSOLS (Twining), Sep 18,1943, 

LC, Twining Papers, box 121; Craven and 

Cate, vol 4, Guadalcanal to Saipan, pp. 

p. 215. 

20, 1988, pp. 1-2. 

Guadalcanal, SRH-188. 

SRH-203. 

450 
Notes to Pages 274-288 

228-229. 

56. Ltrs, Kenney to Whitehead, Oct 21, 

24, 1943, in Kenney Papers; Craven and 

Cate, vol 4, Guadalcanal to Saipan, pp. 

246-255; SIBS, Oct 1943 (tracing Japanese air and naval activity and reinforcements of aircraft to the region), SRH-203. 

57. Ltrs, Kenney to Whitehead, Oct 19, 

21, 24, and Nov 2, 1943, in Kenney Papers; SIBS, Nov 1943, SRH-203; Craven 

and Cate, vol 4, Guadalcanal to Saipan, 

pp. 317-328; ltr, Twining to Arnold, Nov 

14, 1943, LC, Twining Papers, box 121. 

58. Memo, Air Comd, Solomon Islands, 

Dykes, Jun 1944; Memo, subj: Brief History of the Thirteenth Air Force, 750.006; 

Memo, 13th AF Intel Sec, 1943-1945, Jul 

1945,750.006; Kenney Papers, entries for 

June 10-20,1944, 

59. Kenney Papers, entry for May 17, 

1943; Gideon intvw; Feldt, Coast Watchers, pp. vii-ix, 270. 

60. Feldt, Coast Watchers. 

61. Ltrs, Kenney to Whitehead, Aug 16, 

18,20, 1943, Kenney Papers. 

62. Kenney Papers, entries for Aug 

16-18; ltr, Whitehead to Kenney, Aug 21, 

1943, Kenney Papers. 

63. Ltr, Whitehead to Kenney, Aug 21, 

1943; Kenney Papers, entries for Aug and 

Sep 1943. 

64. Kenney Papers, entries for Feb 

23-24, 1944; ltr, Kenney to Whitehead, 

Feb 24, 1944, Kenney Papers; see also 

SIBS, Jan, Feb 1944, SRH-203; John 

Miller, Jr., CARTWHEEL: The Reduction of 

Rabaul (Washington, D.C., 1959), p. 321. 

65. Kenney Papers, Feb 28,1944. 

66. Craven and Cate, vol4, Guadalcanal to Saipan, pp. 555-567; Miller, CART67. Kenney Papers, entries for Mar 6-8, 

including Itr, Kenney to Whitehead, subj: 

“Outlining the Hollandia Preparations,” 

Mar 6, 1944; Craven and Cate, vol 4, 

Guadalcanal to Saipan, pp. 571-573. 

Some of Kenney’s misgivings are recounted after the fact in a somewhat ambiguous two-page summary of activities 

for the time of the Admiralties planning. 

Although the summary’s author is anonymous, it was clearly a person very close to 

Kenney, perhaps his aide. Kenney Papers; 

WHEEL, pp. 339-349. 

see also Miller, Cartwheel, pp. 335,348- 

349. 

68. SIBs, Apr 1-6, 1944, SRH-203. 

69. Ibid., Apr 8,9, 1944; Itrs, Kenney to 

Whitehead, Mar 6, 1944, and Whitehead 

to Kenney, Mar 9, 1944, both in Kenney 

Papers; Kenney Reports, p. 377. 

70. Memo, 5th AF A-2 to Whitehead 

and Kenney, subj: Reduction of Wewak, 

Mar 29, 1944, Kenney Papers; Kenney 

Papers, entry for Mar 26; Kenney Reports, 

pp. 374-377; Craven and Cate, vol 4, 

Guadalcanal to Saipan, p. 589. 

71. Kenney Reports, p. 374; msg, Cmdr 

5th AF ADVON, to Kenney, Mar 31, 

1944, Kenney Papers; Kenney Papers, 

entries for Mar 30, 31, and Apr 1. For 

Kenney’s information on the indications 

of Japanese aircraft replacement, see his 

entry for Apr 17. 

72. Kenney Papers, entry for Apr 18, 

1944. 

73. Craven and Cate, vol4, Guadalcanal to Saipan, pp. 598-609. 

74. SIBs 496,497, and 502 for September 15/16, 16/17, and 21/22,1944, respectively, SRH-203. 

75. Craven and Cate, vol4, Guadalcanal to Saipan, pp. 601-602; Kenney Reports, pp. 378-379,419,426. 

76. Wesley Frank Craven and James 

Lea Cate, The Army Air Forces in World 

War Zl, vol 5, MATIERHORN to Nagasaki 

(Chicago, 1949), pp. 316-322; Kenney 

Reports, pp. 436442; SIBs 517, 519, Oct 

77. Kenney Papers, Sep 16, 17,1944. 

78. Ibid.; SIBs 511, 522, 523, 525, and 

530, Sep 30/0ct 1, Oct 11/12, 12/13, 

13/14, and 19/20, 1944, respectively, 

79. Craven and Cate, vol 5, MATIER80. bid.; Kenney Papers, Nov 24-25, 

617,819 1944, SRH-203. 

SRH-203. 

HORN to Nagasaki, pp. 357-372. 

1944; SIB 551, NOV 9/10, 1944, SRH203. 

81. SIBs 532, 534, 542, and 543, Oct 

21/22, 23/24, 31/Nov 1, and Nov 1/2, 

82. SIBs 532, 534, 542, and 543, Oct 

21/22, 23/24, 31/Nov 1, and Nov 1/2, 

1944, SRH-203; Kenney Papers, Oct 28, 

Nov 10,11,1944. 

1944, SRH-203. 

45 1 
Notes to Pages 288-300 

83. Kenney Papers, Oct 28, Nov 10,11, 

1944. 

203. 

85. SIB 586, Dec 14/15, 1944, SRH203. 

86. Craven and Cate, vol 5, MATTERHORN to Nagasaki, 393-401; Kenney 

Papers, Dec 20, 26, 1944; SIB 594, Dec 

87. SIB 596, Dec 24/25, 1944, SRH203; Kenney Papers, Jan 10, 1945; “Philippine Sea Frontier, Air Intelligence 

Notes,” in Kenney Papers, Jan 1945. 

88. Kenney Papers, Jan 21, 1945; Craven and Cate, vol5, MATTERHORN to Nagasaki, pp. 413-415. 

89. Alvin D. Coox, “Flawed Perception 

and Its Effect Upon Operational Thinking: 

The Case of the Japanese Army, 1937- 

1941,” Intelligence and Military Operations (London, 1990), pp. 239-254. See 

also Michael Howard, Strategic Deception, vol 5 in F. H. Hinsley et al., British 

Intelligence in the Second World War, 

(London, 1990), pp. 203-221. Howard, in 

discussing deception efforts in the South 

East Asia Command, illustrates Japanese 

intelligence flaws similar to those of the 

Germans, resulting in an overestimation of 

Allied strength. The overestimating came 

about for similar reasons: an inadequately 

developed military intelligence organization unable to pursue hard-headed analytical goals. See also The Japanese Intelligence System, Sep 4, 1945, SRH-254. 

90. Coox, “Flawed Perception”; Masa84. SIB 5.69, NOV 27/28, 1944, SRH22/23,1944, SRH-203. 

nobu Tsuji, Singapore, the Japanese Version, Margaret E. Lake, trans (Sidney, 

1960), pp. 44-52. 

91. HQ South East Asia Command, 

“SEA Translation and Interrogation Centre Bulletins,” Nos. 76, 79, May 19, 25, 

1945, 820.605; SIB 317, Mar 19, 1944, 

92. SRH-254, pp. 21, 28A, 52; Japanese Signal Intelligence Service, 3d ed, 

SRH-203; SRH-254, pp. 21,28A, 52. 

NOV 1, 1944, SRH-266, pp. 5-14; SIB 

569, NOV 27/28, 1944, SRH-203. 

93. SIBs 277,279,292,296, all in Feb 

1944, and SIB 569, Nov 27/28, 1944, 

SRH-203. See also SRH-266, pp. 41-46, 

94. SIBS 277,279,292,296, all in Feb 

1944, and SIB 569, Nov 27/28, 1944, 

SRH-203. See also SRH-266, pp. 41-46, 

95. SIBs 277,279,292,296, all in Feb 

1944, SRH-203; Kenney Papers, entries 

for Jan 5, 1943, and succeeding days. 

96. SIBS 315, 327, Mar 17, 29, 1944, 

and SRH-254, pp. 34-38. 

and SRH-254, pp. 34-38. 

SRH-203. 

97. SIBS 296,308,311, and 317, SRH203. 

98. See Alvin D. Coox, “Japanese Military Intelligence in the Pacific Theater: Its 

Non-Revolutionary Nature,’’ and Takahashi Hisashi, “A Case Study: Japanese 

Intelligence Estimates of China and the 

Chinese, 1931-1945,” The Intelligence 

Revolution, Proceedings of the 13th Military History Symposium, U.S. Air Force 

Academy, October 1988 (Washington, 

D.C., 1991), pp. 197-222. 

CHAPTER 6 

1. Intvw, John F. Kreis with Lt Gen 

Devol Brett, USAF, Ret, Feb 15, 1985; 

Robert Lee Scott, Jr., The Day I Owned 

the Sky (New York, Toronto, Sidney, 

Aukland, 1988), pp. 74-75; Jack Samson, 

Chennault (New York, 1987), pp. 89,91, 

138,180; Kenney Papers, entry for Jan 18, 

1943; Joseph W. Stilwell, The Stilwell 

Papers, edited and arranged by Theodore 

H. White (New York, 1948), pp. 35-38. 

2. Kenney Reports, pp. 183, 240-241; 

draft rprt, “The China Air Task Force,” 

n.d. 862.057; intvw, with Capt John M. 

Birch, Mar 20, 1945, 14th AF Hist Files, 

862.01; ltr, Chennault to Bissell, subj: 

Tables of Organization, Nov 15, 1942, 

452 
Notes to Pages 301-311 

864.311. 

3. Ltrs, Chennault to Bissell, Nov 15, 

1942, and Bissell to Chennault, Nov 25, 

1942, both in 864.31 1; Birch intvw, Mar 

20, 1945, p. 9. 

4. Rprt, “Technical Intelligence Conference, Aug 10-15, 1943,” 830.365. 

5. Ltr, Stratemeyer to Lt Col Richard P. 

Hepner, Chief, OSS, SEAC, Jun 29,1944, 

820.605. 

6. Lewin, American MAGIC, p. 244. 

7. Memo, Target Selection, 10th Air 

Force Style, n.d. [Feb-Mar 19441, 

830.323; SRH-032, p. 81. See also the 

MAGIC Diplomatic Summaries of the 

period that discuss commercial activity in 

the area and Japanese reactions to Allied 

attacks; memo, HQ 10th AF, subj: Information Obtained from Lt Col Boater, G-2 

for General Stilwell, Jun 13, 1942, 

830.605; rprt. Col Robert L. Scott, Jr., to 

CG USAAF, “Bomber Escorts and Night 

Fighter Tactics for China Air Task Force,” 

Dec 22, 1942, 862.3102. 

8. Stilwell Papers, pp. 160-165; msgs, 

Chennault to Bissell and Bissell to Stilwell, Oct 3, 8, 12, and Nov 5, 26, 1943, 

864.1621. 

9. Rprt, “Intelligence Estimate of the 

Situation, A-2, Tenth Air Force,” Aug 27, 

10. Daily Activity Summary, 10th AF, 

Mar 16, 1942, 830.641. 

1 I. “Compilation of Objective Folders, 

IATF,” 827.605. 

12. Intel Est, Aug 27, 1942,830.609-1. 

13. Ltr, Intel Ofc, 436th Bom Sq (H), to 

14. Ltr, A-2 HQ IATF to 10th AF, Dec 

15. Comments, S-2 to IATF CG thru 

16. Rprt, “Conference with Pacific Air 

17. loth AF, WIS, annex A, Feb 28 

18. 10th AF, WIS, Mar 20, 1943, 

19. HQ AAF, Aug 27, 1942, 863.549. 

20. 10th AF, WIS, Apr 29, 1943, 

21. Daily Intel Extr, Jan 13, 1943, 

1942,830.609-1. 

10th AF, Nov 22, 1942, 827.605. 

22, 1942, 827.605. 

Col Necrason, May 24, 1943,827.605. 

Force’s A-2s,” Oct 1943, 830.605. 

1943, 830.607. 

830.607. 

830.607. 

830.6062. 

22. Rprt, Col Harold B. Wright to CG, 

10th AF, “Dropping of Magnetic Mines in 

Rangoon River,’’ Jan 13, 1943. See also 

subsequent reports of Feb 25 and Mar 21, 

1943, on the same subject; Craven and 

Cate, vol 4, Guadalcanal to Saipan, pp. 

473474. 

23. Memo, Tenth Air Force Targets and 

Target Selection, Mar 1944, 830.323; 

memos, Vulnerable Points of the Burma 

Railroad System, Apr 16 and 19, 1943. 

See also “Photographic Interpretation 

Reports” in 830.635. 

24. HQ Air Comd, SEA, Policy Directive No. 1, Dec 15, 1943, 862.600, Draft 

Hist, EAC Intel Sec, 862.600. 

25. “Chatter of Combined Photographic 

Interpretation Centre, South East Asia,” 

May 1, 1944,820.600. 

26. Rprt, “Technical Intelligence Conference”; Tenth Air Force Targets and 

Target Selection; ltr, HQ Air Comd SEA, 

John Baker, to Maj Gen Stratemeyer, Mar 

4, 1944, w/atched Allied Tech Intel Org 

proposal. 

27. Rprt, Lt Cot Emile Z. Berman, 

“Special Report on Activities of Detachment 101, OSS in Relation to Air Force 

Action in North Burma,” 830.601.1; Itr, 

Stratemeyer to Hepner, Jun 29, 1944; 

Hist, Det 101, Jul2, 1944,859.01 1; Richard Aldrich, “Imperial Rivalry: British and 

American Intelligence in Asia, 194246,’’ 

Intelligence and National Security, Jan 1, 

28. Rprt, Berman, “Special Report on 

Activities of Det 101, OSS.” 

29. Rprt, “Average Daily Duties of S-2 

Section,” Mar 15, 1943, 830.6031; rprt, 

Berman, “Special Report on Activities of 

Det 101, OSS.” 

30. HQ SEAC, “Formation of E Group 

South East Asia and India Commands,” 

Apr 6, 1944,805.614; record and routing 

slip, AAF India-Burma Sector, CBI, Apr 

13,1944,805.614; rprt, “The 13th Report 

of F/Lt R. G. Huxtable, ‘E’ Group Officer,” Jan 1945,805.614. 

31. See note 30 above; memo, HQ 

Strategic Air Force, SEAC, subj: Proposed 

Tactical Air Intelligence Center, Oct 27, 

1944, 820.605; memo, 17th AAF Photo 

Intel Det, Radar Intel, May 18, 1945, 

1989, pp. 22-28. 

453 
Notes to Pages 311-321 

860.613-1; rprt, HQ XX Bom Comd, 

“Enemy Ground Defense Bulletin No. 1 ,” 

Jun 1, 1944,761.646. 

32. Memo, HQ Strategic Air Force, 

SEAC, Oct 27, 1944; memo, 17th AAF 

Photo Intel Det, Radar Intel, May 18, 

1945; rprt, HQ XX Bom Comd, “Enemy 

Ground Defense Bulletin No. 1,” Jun 1, 

1944. 

33. Ltr, with attachs, Stratemeyer to 

A/C F.J.W. Mellersh, HQ Strategic Air 

Force, and to HQ Air Comd SEA, Oct 27, 

1944, 820.605. 

34. Ltr, Stratemeyer to CG, USAAF 

(A-2), subj: Deterioration of the Japanese 

Air Forces in the India Burma Theater, 

n.d. [Apr 19451, 820.605. 

35. Ltr, Chennault to CG, 10th AF, Jan 

8, 1943, 864.311; ltr, Chennault to CG 

American AAF CBI, subj: Intelligence 

Reports, Dec 2,1942,864.600.1; rprt, HQ 

China Air Task Force, “Intelligence Summary,” Dec 26, 1942, 864.600.1; rprt, 

China Air Task Force, “Review of A-2 

Activities,” Dec 31, 1942, 864.311. 

36. See note 35 above. Chennault’s 

close personal interest and small size of 

his operation allowed him a greater involvement in intelligence than was possible for many other commanders. He saw 

many messages reporting Japanese activities. On some he noted his doubts or requested information. Some intelligence 

reports that came to him were too vague 

for action or dealt with areas beyond the 

reach of his airplanes. 

37. Bissell quote in Birch intvw, Mar 

“Review of A-2 Activity, Jul 4-Dec 31, 

1942,” 864.31 1; Itr, 1st Lt Carl G. Nelson 

to Col W. M. Burgess, Dec 16, 1943, 

862.6032.1; 1st Ind; Itr, Chennault to CG, 

l0thU.S. AirForce, Jan& 1943,864.311; 

ltr, Bissel to Chennault, China Air Task 

Force, Sep 25, 1942, 864.311. 

38. Samson, Chennault, p. 91; R. M. 

Smith, With Chennault in China (Blue 

Ridge Summit, Pa., 1984), pp. 93-105; Itr, 

Bissel to Chennault, Sep 25, 1942. 

39. “Review of A-2 Activities,” Dec 

31, 1942; Itr, Chennault to CG, 10th AF, 

Jan 8,1943. 

40. Ltr, 1st Lt Carl C Nelson to Col W. 

20, 1945, pp. 7-10; rprt, HQ CATF A-2, 

M. Burgess, Dec 16, 1943, 862.6032.1. 

41. HQUSAFarEast,ArmyOperations 

in China, December 1941-December 

1943, 1956, Japanese Monogr 71, pp. 71, 

42. Craven and Cate, vol4, Guadalcanal to Saipan, pp. 436-441,450-45 1. 

43. Bernard Osgood Koopman, Search 

and Screening: General Principles with 

Historic Applications (New York, 1980), 

pp. 1.1-23; rprt, AAF Eval Bd, India, 

Burnia, and China Theaters, “Effectiveness of Air Attack Against Japanese Merchant Shipping,” Dec 15, 1944, 138.74. 

44. Milton E. Miles, A Different Kind of 

War (Garden City, N.Y., 1967), pp. 307- 

316; Oscar P. Fitzgerald, “Naval Group 

China: A Study of Guerrilla Warfare 

During World War 11” (Unpublished 

Dissertation, USN Library, Washington, 

45. Miles, Different Kind of War, pp. 

307-322; rprt, Seymour J. Janow, 14th AF 

Ops Anal Off, to Chennault, subj: LAB 

[Low -altitude Bombing] Operations, Aug 

21, 1944, 862.3102; rprt, AAF Eval Bd, 

“Effectiveness of Air -Attack Against 

Japanese Merchant Shipping.” 

46. SIB 291, Feb 22, 1944, SRH-203; 

Miles, Diyerent Kind of War, pp. 307-3 16. 

47. Japanese Monogr 71, p. 158. 

48. HQ USAFarEast,Army Operations 

in China, January 1944-August 1945, 

1956, Japanese Monogr 72, pp. 13-30; 

Craven and Cate, vol 4, Guadalcanal to 

Saipan, pp. 521-525. 

49. R. Harris Smith, OSS: The Secret 

History of America’s First Central Intelligence Agency (Berkeley, Calif., 1972), p. 

261; rprt, 5329th AGFRTS (Prov.), “Organizational Report for July, 1944,” 1944, 

862.6001; Itr, 24th Stat Control Unit, 14th 

AF, subj: StrengthReport by Base, Jan 15, 

1945, 862.204. 

50. Msgs, AGFRTS Liaison Team to 

Wedemeyer, Chennault, Vincent, et al., 

862.63 1 1. 

5 1. Rprt, 5329th AGFRTS, “Organizational Report, August-September 1944,” 

862.6001; Birch intvw, Mar 20, 1945, pp. 

14-15. 

52. Craven and Cate, vol 5, MATTERHORN to Nagasaki, pp. 227-232.; msg, 

79-86,122,138. 

D.C.), pp 72-75. 

454 
Notes to Pages 322-334 

Wedemeyer to Chennault, Feb 4, 1945, 

862.631 1; Miles, Different Kind of War, 

pp. 456-473. 

53. Ltr, Chennault to Wedemeyer, Feb 

54. Rprt, OSS, “Strategic Air Campaign 

Against Railroads in Occupied China,” 

859.607; see also msg, Wedemeyer to 

Chennault, No. 32488, Feb 6,1945. 

55. Rprt, OSS, “Strategic Air Campaign 

Against Railroads in Occupied China”; 

Craven and Cate, vol 5, MAWERHORN to 

Nagasaki, pp. 262-264. 

56. HQ US Forces China Theater, “Periodic G-2 Reports for Feb-Mar 1945,” 

855.607; Craven and Cate, MAWERHORN 

to Nagasaki, pp. 262-263; Hist, 308th 

Bom Gp; rprts, Comdr 308th Bom Gp to 

CG 14th AF, “Mission Reports of Mar 

1945.” 

57. US Dept State, “Minutes of the 

Tripartite Military Meeting, Jul24,1945,” 

in Foreign Relations of the United States, 

Diplomatic Papers: The Conference of 

Berlin, 2945 (Washington, D.C., 1960), 

58. SRH-032, p. 83; Procedure for 

Handling ULTRA Dexterlntelligence in the 

Sec. “JaDanese Air Order of Battle in 

4, 1945,862.609-1. 

pp. 349-35 1. 

CBZ, SRH-046, p. 3; HQ 14th AF, A-2 

China”; Miles, Drfferent Kind of War, pp. 

3 16-3 18. 

59. SRH-020, pp. 4,9, 10, 12; ltr, Brig 

Gen J. J. Twitty, JICPOA, to Col F. H. 

Wilson, G-2, SWPA, in Hist, G-2, 

SWPA, vol 3 (hereafter Twitty ltrs), pp. 

60. Craven and Cate, vol 5, MAWERHORN to Nagasaki, pp. 534-536; Kenney 

Papers, entries for Apr 13 and May 10, 

1945; HQ AAFPOA, History of the Air 

War in the Pacific Ocean Areas (hereafter 

History of AAFPOA-USASTAF), vol 4, 

chap 10, “Task Force Organization of 

AAF Units,” 702.01. 

61. SRH-020, pp. 4-14; Craven and 

Cate, vol5, MAWERHORN toNagasaki, pp. 

290-302; Hist, A-2 Sec, HQ 7th AF, 

“Daily Diary, A-2,’’ 740.600. 

62. USSBS (Pacific), “The Seventh and 

Eleventh Air Forces in the War Against 

Japan,” pp. 5, 16-17; Craven and Cate, 

vol 5, MATTERHORN to Nagasaki, pp. 

81-83. 

290-3 10; rprt, Air Off, US AFICPA, “Seventh Air Force Participation in the GALVANIC Operation, 13 November 1943-6 

December 1943,” pp. 24,740.306-6A. 

63. Craven and Cate, vol4, Guadalcanal to Saipan, pp. 290-3 10; rprt, Air Off, 

USAFICPA, “Seventh Air Force Participation in the GALVANIC Operation.” 

64. Craven and Cate, vol 5, MAWERHORN to Nagasaki, pp. 675-677. 

65. History of AAFPOA-USASTAF, 

vol4, chap 3. 

66. Ibid., pp. 525, 593494; Itr, Brig 

Gen F. L. Ankenbrandt, subj: Summary of 

Ferret Operations, 15 to 26 June 1945, Jul 

15, 1945,740.310-5. 

67. Craven and Cate, vol 5, MATTERHORN to Nagasaki, pp. 692-694; Ellis A. 

Johnson and David A. Katcher, Mines 

against Japan (Silver Spring, Md., 1973), 

p. 26. 

68. SRH-020, pp. 17-18; Twitty ltrs. 

69. Craven and Cate, vol 5, MAWERHORN to Nagasaki, pp. 3040; Arnold, 

Global Mission, pp. 347-348; Hansell, 

Strategic Air War Against Germany and 

Japan, pp. 139-141. 

70. See note 69 above. 

71. Hansell, Strategic Air War against 

72. COA Hist, p. 63. 

73. Ibid., pp. 89-91. 

74. Ibid., pp. 59-67; memo, Col A. W. 

Brock for C/AS A-2, subj: Japanese Target Data, Mar 20, 1943. 

75. COA Hist, Tab 40, “Japanese Coke 

Ovens as a Strategic Bombardment Target,” and Tab 42, “Effect of the Destruction of Coke Ovens on Japan’s War Effort.” 

76. COA Hist, Tab 42, pp. 76-78; Kenney Papers, entries for Jan 1944 (covering 

a visit to Washington, D.C.); Hansell, 

Strategic Air War against Gennany and 

Japan, pp. 141-142. 

77. COA Hist, Tab 45, “Strategic Economic Targets for VLR Operations from 

Davao, Chengtu and Saipan.” 

78. Ibid., pp. 77-78. 

79. Ibid. 

80. Ibid., pp. 112-1 13. 

81. Ltr, Kenney to Arnold, Oct 23, 

1943, in Kenney Papers. 

Germany and Japan, pp. 158-160. 

455 
Notes to Pages 334-347 

82. Historical Rprts, HQ XX Bom 

Comd, A-2 Sec, Jun 7 and Sep 10, 1944, 

761.600. 

83. Radar Countermeasures Rprts, XX 

Bom Comd, “Missions 1-24,” Jan 1945, 

761.907. 

84. XX Bom Comd, “Enemy Ground 

Defense Bulletin,” Jun 1, 1944, 761.646; 

XX Bom Comd, “Radar Coverage Map,” 

Jan 25, 1945, 761.654.1; HQ 20th Air 

Force, “Plan for Army VLR Photography 

of the Far East,” n.d. [ 19441; memo, subj: 

The Weather Factor in Bombing Japan 

from Bases in the Marianas and Bonin 

Islands, 760.626.1; HQ 20th AF, “Flak 

Intelligence in the Pacific,” Jul 29, 1945, 

760.646.1; Craven and Cate, vol 5, MATTERHORN to Nagasaki, pp. 163-165. 

85. COA Hist, pp. 113-1 15. 

86. Craven and Cate, vol 5, MATTERHORN to Nagasaki, pp. 157-174. 

87. Hansell, Strategic Air War against 

Germany and Japan, p. 212. 

88. Ibid., p. 179; History of AAFPOA89. See Craven and Cate, vol 5, MATTERHORN to Nagasaki, pp. 546-576, for 

the initial campaign from the Marianas 

and the operational difficulties encountered; the quotation is from p. 576. The 

preceding and following paragraphs are 

adapted, with the author’s permission, 

from David MacIsaac, Strategic Bombing 

in World War 11: The Story of the US. 

Strategic Bombing Survey (New York, 

90. Memo, COA for General Arnold, 

subj: Revised Report of the Committee of 

Operations Analysts on Economic Targets 

in the Far East, Oct 10, 1944, in COA 

Hist, Tab 97. 

91. Prelim Rprt, COA, “The Economic 

Effect of Attacks in Force on German 

Urban Areas,” 118.04.2. 

92. Memo, subj: General Arnold’s 

Directions to AC/AS Operations: Commitments and Requirements from the Chief of 

the Air Staff, Feb 18, 1944, and ltr, Brig 

Gen E. Montgomery, Air Chem Off, to 

C/AS, subj: Test of Incendiaries, Feb 24, 

USASTAF, VO~ 4, pp. 1-3,23-24. 

1976), pp. 105-106. 

1944, LC, Arnold Papers, box 1 17. 

93. Ibid.; ltr, Brig Gen Mervin E. Gross, 

Ofc AC/AS, OC&R, subj: Test of Incendiaries, May 5, 1944, LC, Arnold Papers, 

box 117. 

94. Marcelle Size Knaak, Post-World 

War 11 Bombers (Washington, D.C., 

1988), pp. 482487. 

95. Intvw, Col Bill Peck with Gen Curtis E. LeMay, Mar l l, 1965, USAFHRC 

785, pp. 6-9. This differs from LeMay’s 

account in his autobiographical Mission 

with &May, written by him with McKinlay Kantor (Garden City, N.Y., 1965). 

96. Hansell, Strategic Air War against 

Germany and Japan, pp. 2 17-2 18; Craven 

and Cate, vol 5, MATTERHORN to Nagasaki, pp. 563-565; memo, Norstad to 

Arnold, subj: Notes for Conference with 

the Secretary of War, Jan 2, 1945, AFHSO, Norstad Papers, microfilm reel 

328 1 1, frame 477. 

97. Ltr, LeMay to Arnold, Apr 5, 1945, 

LC, LeMay Papers, box 1 1, Arnold folder. 

98. Ibid.; Alvin D. Coox, “The Air 

Assault on Japan,” in Case Studies in 

Strategic Bombardment, R. Cargill Hall, 

ed (Air Force History and Museum Program, Washington, D.C., forthcoming), 

chap 4. 

99. LeMay, Mission, pp. 347-352. 

100. Ibid., p. 347. 

101. Richard G. Davis, “Operation 

Thunderclap: The U.S. Army Air Forces 

and the Bombing of Berlin” (Unpublished 

MS), AFHSO. 

102. Rprt, Maj Charles T. Kingston, in 

SRH-032, pp. 4546. 

103. SRH-020, p. 17. 

104. Johnson and Katcher, Mines 

against Japan, pp. 29, 110, 116; Hansell, 

Strategic Air Warfare against Germay and 

Japan, pp. 198-200. 

105. History, vol4, chap 11, Reorganization and Changes. 

106. R. Mets, Master of Airpower, 

General Carl A. Spaatz (Novato, Calif., 

1988), pp. 302-303; Craven and Cate, vol 

5, pp. 712-713, 716-717; Wyden, Day 

One, p. 239. 

456 
Notes to Pages 349-361 

CHAPTER 7 

1. Ltr, Arnold to Hany L. Hopkins, asst 

to Pres Roosevelt, Mar 25, 1943, LC, 

Arnold Papers, box 39 (this letter clearly 

spells out the overall importance with 

which the AAF’s CG viewed the accomplishments of the COA); COA Hist, pp. 

44-47; rprts, COA, atched to COA Hist. 

2. The clear difference in the amount of 

staff effort directed by A-2 toward the 

war with Japan is evident from a review of 

the records of ACIAS, Intelligence, 

142.01f. Although Germany continued to 

participate in intelligence operations at 

HQ AAF, the great bulk of the A-2’s 

efforts centered on the question of Japan 

and preparations for the final assault on 

that island nation. 

3. Memo, White to McDonald, Aug 1, 

1944, USAFA, McDonald Collection. 

4. Arnold, Global Mission, 419. 

5. Ltr, CIS, Plans Div, to Exec, OCAC, 

subj: Appointment of Board of Officers 

and Travel Orders, Aug 16, 1939, 

145.91414. 

6. Arnold, Global Mission, pp. 168- 

169, 174. 

7. Ibid., p. 209; Corr, Arnold with Merian C. Cooper, LC, Arnold Papers, box 38, 

CBI folder, and box 39, Russia folder; 

SRH-035, pp. 1-2. 

8. Arnold, Global Mission, pp. 533- 

535. 

9. Ibid., p. 209; SRH-005, pp. 12-13; 

History of Military Intelligence Service, 

WDGS, Reports Unit, SRH-062, p. 42; ltr, 

John F. Kreis to Henry Schorreck, Oct 20, 

1990, NSA Hist Ofc, and conversation, 

Kreis with Schorreck, Nov 28,1990. 

10. Intvw, John F. Kreis with Forrest C. 

Pogue, Jan 7, 1991; see also Personal, 

C/AS for Welsh, Jul 26, 1943, cited in 

Cochran, “Spectre of Defeat,” p. 410. 

11. Ltr, Arnold to Portal, Oct 14, 1943, 

145.95. See also ltrs, Arnold to Portal, Sep 

25, and Portal to Arnold, Oct 14, 145.95. 

12. SRH-005, p. 13. 

13. Chase C. Mooney and Edward C. 

Williamson, “Organization of the Army 

Air Arm, 1935-1945,” USAF Hist Div 

Study 10, Jul 1956, pp. 4045. 

14. Org charts and notes, Ofc ACE (I), 

1942-1 945,142.01. 

15. Memo, for the ACIS, G-2, subj: 

Relationships between G-2 and the Assistant Chief of Air Staff, Intelligence, in Air 

Matters, Jul 31, 1943, vol 6, doc 220, 

203.6 

16. Memo, Gen Bissell for Gen White, 

Jan 20, 1944, wlatched memo, to CIAS, 

Jan 22, 1944, subj: Coordination of Japanese Air Intelligence, vol7, doc 9, 203.6. 

See also ltr, Bissell to Lt Gen Ira C. Eaker, 

Feb 2, 1944, in LC, Eaker Collection, box 

26, folder, “Correspondence with the War 

Dept.” 

17. Memo of Agreement, subj: Responsibility for Coordination of Aviation Intelligence, Feb 24,1944,142.0212-1. 

18. Ltr, Capt Phil Graham, SSO, GHQ 

SWPA, to Col Carter W. Clarke, Nov 16, 

1944, in Military Intelligence Service, 

War Department-Special Security Offi- cer and Other Correspondence Relating to 

Special Intelligence in the Pacific Ocean 

Area, SRH-119, pp. 3441; Homer, High 

Command: Australia and Allied Strategy, 

pp. 244-246; Craven and Cate, vol 5, 

MATTERHORN to Nagasaki, pp. 482485. 

19. Memo, ACIAS No. 44-59, subj: 

Changes in Functions of AC/AS Intelligence, Resulting from Agreements of 

Service Members, JIC, Respecting Japanese Air Intelligence, Jul 18, 1944, 

142.0212-1; memo, Brig Gen White for 

CIAS, subj: Ad Hoc Intelligence Committee, Mar 13, 1944, vol7, doc 40, 203.6. 

20. Ltr, McDonald to White, Jun 4, 

1944, wlatched docs and corr, vol7, doc 

69, 203.6. 

21. COA Hist, pp. 98-100; ltr, White to 

CIAS, subj: Japanese Air Intelligence, Feb 

7, 1944, 142.0212-2. See also memoirs, 

Guido R. Perera, “Washington and War 

Years,” 1973, 168.7042, pp. 101- 102, 

108, 119. 

22. Ltr, White to CIAS, subj: Transfer 

of Air Intelligence Activities from G-2 to 

A-2, Feb 28, 1944, vol 7, doc 33, 203.6; 

ltr, White to CIAS, Feb 7, 1944. 

23. Memo, for Chief, Hist Div, ACIAS, 

457 
Notes to Pages 362372 

Intelligence, Aug 21, 1943, 142.0212-2; 

Hist, 1st Radio Sq (Mobile), AFHSO; ltr, 

Davidson to Arnold, Dec 19, 1943, LC, 

Arnold Papers, box 105. 

24. Hist, 1st Radio Sq (Mobile). 

25. Hists, lst, 3d, Sth, 6th, and 8th Radio Sqs (Mobile). 

26. SRH-062, p. 13. See also lect, Maj 

A. W. White to senior intel offs, AAFSAT, n.d. [summer 19451,248.502A. 

27. SRH-062, pp. 14-16. See also 

SRH-035, pp. 37-54. 

28. Hansell intvw, Jan 21, 1987, pp. 

6-7. 

29. COA Hist, pp. 2-3, 59-61; memo, 

Col A. W. Brock, Jr., Dir AAFIS, for 

C/AS, A-2, Mar 20, 1943, subj: Japanese 

Target Data, 118.01. 

30. COA Hist, pp. 63-64, 73-74, 80, 

90-9 1,93-94. 

31. Ibid., pp. 92-93; Hansell, Strategic 

Air War against Gemny and Japan, pp. 

145-148. 

32. COA Hist, pp. 96-98. 

33. “Report on Bombing Accuracy on 

Operations Against Leuna Synthetic Oil 

Plant during the Period from May through 

November 1944,” LC, Spaatz Papers, box 

77; rprt, Lt Gen Ira C. Eaker, “U.S. Air 

Force Activities in the U.K., February 

1942 to December 31, 1943,” LC, Eaker 

Papers, box 20; Donald R. Baucom, “The 

Radar War,” draft chapter in AFHSO. 

34. Minutes, “Conference on 1 October 

1943 with Pacific Air Forces A-2s,” 

142.025-6; memo, for AC/AS, Intelligence, subj: Target Information Publications and Additional Data on Far East 

Objective Folder Revision Schedule Submitted 18 May 1944, n.d. [May-June 

19441, 142.021-3; ltr., Brig Gen Hansell, 

HQ 20th AF, to AC/AS, Intelligence, subj: 

Far East Target Data Program of AC/AS 

Intelligence, May 25, 1944, 142.021-3. 

35. Memo, [A-21 to A/CS G-2, subj: 

Usefulness of MID New York Office to 

A-2 (bearing the handwritten notation, 

“Dispatched Mar29” [1944]), 142.021-3. 

See also Hansell intvw, Jan 21, 1987, pp. 

6-7. 

36. Memo, [A-21 to ACS G-2; memos, 

Capt H. D. Alexander, subj: MID-NY and 

Target Information Section [AC/AS] 

Working Procedure, May 22,1944, and Lt 

Col De F. Van Slyck for Chief, Anal Div 

[AC/AS], subj: Plans for Implementation 

of Ad Hoc Committee’s Recommendations, May 15, 1944, 142.021-3. 

37. Extract, JCS Decision 1020, Sep 4, 

1944, vol 7, doc 110, 203.6; Directive, 

Joint Target Analysis Group, AC/AS, 

Intelligence, Sep 11, 1944, LC, Arnold 

Papers, box 11 5; memo, Ofc Dir JTG, 

subj: Current Organization and Projects, 

Dec 28, 1944, JTG memo 3, vol 7, doc 

164, 203.6. 

38. Rprt, JTG, Precis, n.d. [19451, 

142.6601-4; rprt, J. Bronowski, “The 

Work of the Joint Target Group,” Jul 

1945,142.6601-5 (Dr. Bronowskiwas the 

Senior Science Officer of the Research 

and Experiments Office, Home Office, 

London, assigned to work with the JTG). 

39. Intvw, Hugh N. Ahmann with Gen 

Lauris Norstad, Feb and Oct 1979, pp. 

540-550, K239.0512-1116; LeMay 

intvw, Mar 11,1965, pp. 6-9; rprt, Lt Gen 

Ira Eaker, “U.S. Air Force Activities in 

the United Kingdom, February 1942 to 

December 31, 1943,” LC, Eaker Papers, 

box 20. 

40. White Lect, n.d. [summer 19451. 

41. Ibid. 

42. Ltr, Roosevelt to Secy War, Sep 9, 

1944, copy in 142.04-15. 

43. Colbert, in civilian life a Cleveland 

attorney, came to AC/AS, Intelligence, 

from the staff of the Air Intelligence 

School at Harrisburg. For his career with 

the Survey, see MacIsaac, Strategic 

Bombing in World War 11, pp. 27, 28, 38, 

43, 48, 49, 58, 59, 179; for the jurisdictional squabble between Plans and Intelligence, see ibid., chap 2, “A Question Is 

Raised: How Effective Is Bombing?” pp. 

44. Ltr, Kuter to Spaatz, subj: PostHostilities Intelligence Objectives in 

Germany, Mar 13, 1945; rprt, Air Staff, 

“Post-Hostilities Intelligence Requirements Plan,” n.d. [Sep-Nov 19441 (this 

document spells out the types of information desired by several staff offices in 

Washington); see also ltr, Arnold to Spaatz, Sep 2, 1944, w/atch: “The Objectives 

of the AAF in Post-Hostilities Planning 

21-29. 

458 
Notes to Pages 372-380 

and Activities in Europe”; memo, ACIAS, 

Intelligence, for CAS, subj: Post-Hostilities Air Intelligence Objectives, Oct 6, 

1944, all in 142.04-15. 

45. Rprt, Air Staff, “Post-Hostilities 

Intelligence Requirements Plan,” n.d. 

46. Memos, ACIAS, Intelligence, for 

Dep CG, AAF, subj: Daily Activity Report, Jun 6,1945, and subj: Daily Activity 

Report, Jun 15, 1945, 142.0323. See also 

the Daily Activity Reports, May 12, 14, 

and 24,1945, and the memo from Hodges 

to Arnold, in 142.0323. The Daily Activity Reports may also be found in LC, 

Arnold Papers. 

47. Memo, Bissell for CG, AAF, subj: 

Duplication of Effort in War Department 

Scientific Intelligence, May 12, 1945, vol 

7, doc 228, 203.6; memo, Arnold to Eaker, May 22, 1945, in ltr, ACIAS, Mattriel 

and Services, to Dir, AAF Air Tech Svcs 

Comd, subj: Functions Prescribed for Dr. 

Theodore H. von Khntin’s Scientific 

Advisory Group by the Commanding 

General AAF, Jun 23,1945, vol8, doc 23, 

203.6. (The letter quotes in its entirety the 

memo describing Arnold’s desires for the 

von Khntin’s group. The Arnold memo 

can also be found in LC, Arnold Papers, 

box 79.) See also Vincent C. Jones, Manhattan: The Army and the Atomic Bomb 

(Washington, D.C., 1985), p. 286. 

48. Memo, Arnold to Eaker, Mar 22, 

1945. 

49. Memo, Hodges to Eaker, subj: AAF 

Post Hostilities Intelligence Activities 

[late May 19451, 142.04-15. (The best 

copy of the document is barely readable; 

thus no date can be discerned.) 

50. Ltr, Spaatz to Arnold, May 12, 

1945, in LC, Arnold Papers, box 115; 

draft hist, “Air Technical Intelligence,” 

51. Ltr, Arnold to LeMay, Jul15,1945, 

LC, Arnold Papers, box 11. 

52. Ltr, LeMay to Arnold, Jul25,1945, 

LC, Arnold Papers, box 11. 

53. Norstad intvw, Feb and Oct 1979, 

pp. 540-550. Arnold was possessed of a 

ferocious temper and an impatience that 

knew no bounds, as Norstad so clearly 

points out. During the war, Arnold drove 

himself so hard that he suffered several 

pp. 11-58-1 1-59, 106.19. 

heart attacks. At one point his doctors 

removed him to Florida to recover and get 

away from business in the Pentagon. See 

also ltr, Maj Gen E. R. Quesada to CIAS, 

Jul 12, 1945, subj: Discussions between 

D’Olier Committee and Joint Target 

Group. This letter and the attached “Report on USSBS and JTG Conferences” 

laid out the Air Staffs assessment of 

Japan’s ability to continue the war. Quesada doubted that Japan could hang on for 

long. 

54. Ltr, Quesada to CIAS, Jul 12, 1945; 

“Report on USSBS and JTG Conferences.” 

55. Ltr, Quesada to CIAS, Jull2,1945; 

“Report on USSBS and JTG Conferences.” 

56. Ltr, Quesada to CIAS, Jul 12,1945; 

“Report on USSBS and JTG Conferences.” 

57. See Norstad intvw, Feb and Oct 

1979, p. 563, for the Arnold-Lovett relationship. See entries for Jun 1945 in LC, 

Kenney Papers, where Lovett describes 

the problems and plans for airfield preparation for the final assault on Japan. See 

also ltr, Eaker to Quesada, subj: Intelligence Study, Sun 23,1945, in LC, Arnold 

Papers, box 97, and in 142.021-1, as well 

as ltr, Maj Francis B. O’Mahoney and 

Capt Raymond K. Perkins to ACIAS, 

Intelligence, subj: Survey of the Office of 

the Assistant Chief of Air Staff, Intelligence, Apr 21, 1945. 

58. Memo, Eaker to Asst Secy War for 

Air Lovett, subj: Intelligence Study, Jul6, 

1945. 

59. Ibid. 

60. Ibid.; draft hist, “Air Technical Intelligence,’’ pp. 11-45-1 1-49. 

61. Memo, Eaker to Asst Secy War for 

Air Lovett, Jul 6, 1945; draft hist, “Air 

Technical Intelligence,” pp. 11 -45-1 1-49. 

62. Ltr, Brig Gen Richard C. Lindsay to 

Spaatz, subj: USASTAF Intelligence, Jul 

7, 1945, in LC, Spaatz Papers, box 11; 

memo, Brig Gen Louis J. Fortier, WDGS, 

MID, to ACIS, G-2, subj: Survey of Intelligence Activities of Army Air Forces, 

Nov 9, 1945, 142.01. 

63. Leslie R. Groves, Now It Can Be 

Told: The Story of the Manhattan Project 

459 
Notes to Pages 381-388 

(New York, 1962). pp. xi-xiii; Diaries of 

Henry L. Stimson, 50 and 51 (microfilm 

ed, reel 9) (hereafter Stimson Diaries), 

entries for Mar 5, Apr 24,25, and May 28, 

1945, Manuscripts and Archives, Yale 

University Library, New Haven, Conn.; 

Henry L. Stimson and McGeorge Bundy, 

On Active Service in Peace and War (New 

York, 1948), p. 613. 

64. Groves, Now It Can Be Told, pp. 

266-267; Records of the Manhattan Engineer District (hereafter MED Records), 

NA, RG 77, Microfilm Roll M1109, folder 5, sec D, “Report of the Target Committee Meeting, Apr 27, 1945”; Stimson 

and Bundy, On Active Service, p. 613. 

65. R&R C/S 20th AF (Norstad) to Dir 

JTG, subj: Target Information, Apr 27, 

1945, and “Report of Target Committee,” 

Apr 27, 1945, both in MED Records. 

66. R&R CIS 20th AF (Norstad) to Dir 

JTG, subj: Target Information, Apr 27, 

1945, and “Report of Target Committee,” 

Apr 27, 1945, both in MED Records. 

67. Memos, Maj Deny and Dr. N. F. 

Ramsey to Groves, subj: Summary of 

Target Committee Meetings of 10 and 11 

May, May 12, 1945, and Col John N. 

Stone to Arnold, subj: Groves Project, Jul 

24, 1945 (the Stone memo gave Arnold 

the specific reasons why the cities had 

been chosen, except for Kyoto, which had 

by then been stricken from all lists by 

Stimson), both in MED Records. 

68. Groves, Now It Can Be Told, chap 

19, “Choosing the Target”; see also planning meeting records of the Target Committee for the general course of the 

509th’~ position; intvw, Arthur K. Marmor with Brig Gen Paul W. Tibbets, Jr., 

Sep 1966, K239.0512-602, pp. 17-22. 

69. Tibbets intvw, Sep 1966, pp. 17-22. 

70. Stimson Diaries, entries for May 1, 

2,28, 1945; Groves, Now It Can Be Told, 

p. 327. 

71. Stimson Diaries, entry for Jun 6, 

1945. 

72. Ibid., entry for Jun 19, 1945. 

73. Ibid., entries for Jun 6, 19, 26-30, 

1945. 

74. Edward J. Drea, MacArthur’s 

ULTRA: Codebreaking and the War 

Against Japan, 1942-1945 (Lawrence, 

Kans., 1992), pp 202-223. Drea’s work is 

particularly useful in understanding MacArthur’s policy and command decisions in 

the SWPA. It goes beyond the SWPA, 

however, to open new insights into Washington’s decision to use atomic weapons, 

and it should not be overlooked by a 

reader interested in this subject. 

75. Minutes, JCS mtg with Truman, Jun 

18, 1945, NA, RG 165. 

76. Ronald R. Spector, Eagle Against 

the Sun (New York, 1985). p. 543. 

77. Stimson Diaries, entry for Jul 2, 

1945; SWPA SIB, Jul 15/16, 1945 (the 

semimonthly review). For a review of the 

literature (as of late 1990) relating to the 

use of this weapon, see J. Samuel Walker, 

“The Decision to Use the Bomb: A Historiographical Update,” Diplomatic History, 

winter 1990, pp. 97-1 14. 

78. Stimson Diaries, entry for May 31, 

1945. 

79. Ltr, LeMay to Arnold, Jul25, 1945. 

80. Stimson Diaries, entries for Jun 

26-30, Jul 2; memo, Norstad to Arnold, 

subj: Notes for Conference with Secretary 

of War, Jan 2, 1945, AFHSO, Norstad 

Papers, microfilm reel 328 11, frame 477; 

Itr, Arnold to Lt Gen Barney M. Giles, 

C/AS, Feb 16, 1945, AFHSO, Norstad 

Papers, microfilm reel 3281 1. Arnold, in 

writing to Giles, spelled out as clearly as ever his position on why the B-29s had to 

produce results. Having built nearly 2,000, 

he could not explain satisfactorily why the 

AAF could not put even 100 over a target. 

See also ltr, Arnold to Brig Gen William 

J. Donovan, OSS, Dec 30,1944, AFHSO, 

Norstad Papers, microfilm reel 3281 1, 

where Arnold noted that the B-29 operations were carried out on the basis of 

information from the experience over 

Germany, not on accurate intelligence of 

Japan. 

81. Schaffer, Wings of Judgment, chap 

8. 

82. Diary entry, Aug 11, 1945, LC, 

Spaatz Papers, box 21; “Interim Report of 

U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey,” Jun 18, 

1945, LC, LeMay Papers, box 1 1. See also 

MacIsaac’s Strategic Bombing in World 

War I1 (pp. 99-102) for a discussion of 

the influence of the USSBS on the future 

460 
Notes to Pages 388-398 

course of the conventional bombing campaign in the Pacific. 

83. Ltr, LeMay to Bissell, Aug 21, 

1945, LC, LeMay Papers, box 11. 

84. Ltr, Arnold to Donovan, Dec 30, 

1944, AFHSO, Norstad Papers, microfilm 

reel 328 1 1. 

85. Internal A-2 rprt, “Survey of the 

Office of Assistant Chief of Air Staff, 

Intelligence,” Apr 21, 1945, 142.021.1, 

file, “Memoranda and Correspondence”; 

see also memo, for Dep Chief, Plans and 

Policy Staff, subj: Analysis Division-Functions, Organization, Personnel 

and Policy, Apr 24, 1945, vol 7, doc 217, 

203.6. 

86. Internal A-2 rprt, “Survey of the 

Office of Assistant Chief of Air Staff, 

Intelligence,” Apr 21, 1945; see also 

memo, for Dep Chief, Plans and Policy 

Staff, subj: Analysis Division-Functions, 

Organization, Personnel and Policy, Apr 

24, 1945; Herman S. Wolk, Planning and 

Organizing the Postwar Air Force, 1943- 

1947 (Washington, D.C., 1984), pp. 31- 

44. 

87. Memo, for AC/S, G-2, subj: Survey 

of Intelligence Activities of Amy Air 

Forces (which contains an extract of 

AAFR 20-1, Organization, pertaining to 

the office of A-2), Nov 9, 1945, 142.01. 

88. Ibid. 

89. Memo, Bissell for CIS, Jul 3, 1944, 

90. Ltr, Arnold to Marshall, subj: 

Heavy Bombers for Russia, Feb 26,1943, 

LC, Arnold Papers, box 39. 

91. Memo, subj: Soviet Intentions in 

Eastern Europe, n.d. [Dec 1944 or Jan 

19451, 142.0302-8; memo, for AC/AS, 

Intelligence, subj: Reorganization, Feb 4, 

1944,142.0202-1 3. 

92. Memo, Col Grinnell Martin for Air 

Intel Div (Col Adams), subj: Strategic 

Vulnerability of the United States, Sep 27, 

93. Memo, G-2, with cvr Itr of Maj 

Virgil 0. Johnson, AC/AS, Intelligence, 

142.0302-8. 

1945, 142.12-1 3. 

NOV 16, 1945, 142.12-1. 

94. Ibid. 

CHAPTER 8

1. Memo, Eaker to Asst Secy War for 

Air, subj: Intelligence Study, Jul6, 1945. 

2. Williamson Murray is indebted to 

Professor Brian Sullivan of the strategy 

department of the U.S. Naval War College 

for bringing this episode to his attention 

and for underlining its significance. 

3. Lects, Lt Cmdr R. A. Ofstie, “Aviation in the Sino-Japanese War,” given at 

the Navy Dept, Jan 1938, 248.501-65, 

4. For General Vuillemin’s visit to 

Germany, see Documents diplomatique 

francais, 2d ser, vol 10, doc 401, 18.8.38, 

doc 429, 21.8.38, and doc 444,23.8.38. 

5. Akten zur desutschen auswiirtgen 

Politik, ser D, vol 2, doc 377, 26.9.38. 

6. For the course of British intelligence 

estimates as to the German air danger (and 

danger in general), see Wesley Wark, The 

1937-1939. 

Ultimate Enemy: British Intelligence and 

Nazi Germany, 1933-1939 (Ithaca, N.Y., 

1985). 

7. For discussions of the development 

of air doctrine in the AAF, see Thomas H. 

Greer, The Development of Air Doctrine 

in the Army Air Force, 191 7-41 (Maxwell 

AFB, Ala., 1955), and Thomas Fabyanic, 

“A Critique of United States Air War 

Planning, 1941-44” (dissertation, St. 

Louis University, 1973). See also the 

discussion in Murray, Luftwaffe, app 1. 

8. ACTS, Capt Thomas D. White, “Japan as an Objective for Air Attack, 1937- 

1938,” 248.501-65. 

9. See Williamson Murray, The Change 

in the European Balance of Power, 

1938-1939: The Path to Ruin (Princeton, 

19851, chap 1, for an indication of how 

historians even after the fact have misesti46 1 
Notes to Pages 399-407 

mated German economic and military 

potential. One of the traditional views of 

Americans is the belief that adaptability, 

flexibility, and independence have much 

to do with our success in war. That view 

has been fundamentally undermined by 

Martin van Creveld’s Fighting Power: 

German and U.S. Army Peformance, 

1939-1945 (Westport, Conn., 1982) 

which indicates that the performance of 

American ground units in World War I1 

left much to be desired, especially in 

comparison with the German Army. Nevertheless, a point is worth making here: 

American flexibility, adaptability, and 

independence of mind made major contributions in the support areas: logistics, 

intelligence, and scientific and technological development. In these areas the skills 

of civilian life best translate into military 

effectiveness. 

10. For the best account of the Battle of 

Britain, see Francis K. Mason, Battle Over 

Britain (New York, 1968). 

11. Haywood S. Hansell, The Air Plan 

That Defeated Hitler (Atlanta, 1972), pp. 

53-54. 

12. Craven and Cate, vol 1, Plans and 

Early Operations, p. 149. 

13. Ibid., p. 604. 

14. Time, Dec 8, 1941, p. 15. As it does 

today, Time appeared on the newsstands 

before the date on the cover. This issue 

was actually being sold as early as December 4. 

15. Such attitudes suggest that the present-day American ignorance of and contempt for history represent a consistent 

theme in our history. After all, had not the 

Japanese Navy begun the Russo-Japanese 

war with a surprise attack on Port Arthur, 

an attack that was greeted with considerable approval by the American and British 

press? 

16. Bidwell, History of MID. 

17. Eaker Final Rprt, Dec 31, 1943, 

exhib 6, “Intelligence Development of 

A-2 Section VIII Bomber Command, 

Problems and Solutions.” 

18. Memo, Lt Col Carl H. Norcross, 

Asst A-2 VIII Bom Comd, for ACE, 

subj: Army Air Forces Intelligence 

School, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, Jan 22, 

19. Hinsley, British Intelligence in the 

20. Ibid., pp. 49-50. 

21. Ibid., p. 51. 

22. Ibid. 

23. In fairness to American airmen, no 

matter how wrongheaded their analysis of 

the operational arena might have been, it 

is uncontestable that the daylight bomber 

offensive was the crucial factor in winning 

air superiority over the European continent and that, without that air superiority, 

OVERLORD would have faced nearly insurmountable odds in driving the German 

Army back from the coast of France. See 

Murray, Lujiwaffe, chaps 56. 

24. Fabyanic, “Critique of United States 

Air War Planning,” pp. 125-127. 

25. Webster and Frankland, vol 1, Preparation, p. 177. 

26. Ltr, Eaker to Spaatz, Oct 1942, 

quoted in Fabyanic, “Critique of United 

States Air War Planning,” pp. 129-130. 

27. Craven and Cate, vol 2, TORCH to 

POINTBLANK, pp. 670-672. 

28. For an outstanding recent study on 

the impact of ULTRA on the Mediterranean 

campaign, see Ralph Bennett, ULTRA and 

the Mediterranean (London, 1989). 

29. For this side of the story, the reader’s attention is drawn to Gordon Welchman’s extraordinary book, The Hut Six 

Story (New York, 1982). 

30. Haines Report, p. 26. See also 

Erwin Rommel, The Rommel Papers, B. 

H. Liddell Hart, ed (New York, 1953), pp. 

3 I. Ltr, Doolittle to CG AAF thru CG 

NAAF, subj: Escort Fighters, 22.5.43. For 

an interesting discussion of the development of fighter escort for bomber formations in the Mediterranean and the early 

conclusion of Doolittle about the importance of fighter escort, see Bernard Boylan, “The Development of the LongRange Escort Fighter” (unpublished MS, 

Maxwell AFB, 1955), AFHRA, pp. 74- 

76. 

32. See Albert Speer, Inside the Third 

Reich (New York, 1970), p. 285. 

1943,266.1-1, 1942. 

Second World War, vol2, p. 46. 

266-268,282. 

462 
Notes to Pages 407416 

33. For example, beginning in fall 1943 

the Germans began to use roller bearings 

rather than precision ball bearings in their 

tank turrets; the former made it more 

difficult but not impossible to rotate tank 

turrets. By so doing, the Germans realized 

a considerable savings of precision ball 

bearings for more crucial uses. 

34. Webster and Frankland, vol 2, Endeavour, p. 62. 

35. This problem is even more clearly 

illustrated by reference to the British 

experience. Toward the end of 1943 some 

British crews on night missions began to 

report that they were attacked by German 

night fighters that had positioned themselves underneath the bomber and had 

then fired upward with a cannon slanted 

diagonally behind the cockpit. What British crews were seeing was the highly 

effective Schruge Musik system that the 

Germans had developed. Because British 

intelligence officers simply discounted 

these reports as the work of distraught 

crews, this valuable information was not 

generally passed along to those flying the 

missions. 

36. For further discussion, see Murray, 

Lufmaffe, chap 5. 

37. Msg, Eaker to Arnold, LC, Eaker 

Collection, box 16. 

38. Rprt, AC/AS, Intelligence, A-2, 

“Current Items of Air Intelligence,” Oct 

18, 1944, cited in Craven and Cate, vol2, 

TORCH to POINTBLANK, p. 712. 

39. And it is still almost impossible to 

correlate these figures since many of the 

German records were lost in the war and 

because the Luftwaffe was clearly falsifying the records to make its production 

totals look better when they were presented to the Fuhrer. 

40. Murray, Luftwaffe, tables 33, 50. 

41. Ibid., table 50. 

42. For ULTRA confirmation, see the 

messages in ULTRA History of US. Strategic Air Force Europe versus the German 

Air Force, SRH-013, pp. 153, 156. 

43. Ibid., pp. 155, 157. 

44. Murray, Lufmaffe, pp. 266-267. 

45. Bennett, ULTRA in the West, p. 68. 

46. L. F. Ellis, Victory in the West (London, 1968), vol 1, pp. 271-274. 

47. Speer, Inside the Third Reich, pp. 

48. PRO DEFE 3/156, KV 4021, 

16.5.44, 05582. 

49. PRO DEFE 3/159, KV 4762, 

21.5.44,20542. 

50. PRODEFE 3/166, KV 6673,6.6.44, 

23562. 

51. PRO 31/20/16; Maj Ansel M. Talbert, U.S. Army Air Corps, “Handling of 

ULTRA Information at Headquarters 

Eighth Air Force,” in SRH-023. 

52. This comment is based on the firstrate study of the impact of the transportation plan on the German transportation 

system. Alfred C. Mierzejewski, The 

Collapse of the German War Economy, 

1944-1945: Allied Air Power and the 

German National Railway (Chapel Hill, 

N.C., 1988). 

53. Murray, Luftwaffe, tables 55-57. 

54. Among many other messages, see 

PRO DEFE 3/47, KV 3015, 6.5.44, 

13162; DEFE 31153, KV 3300, 9.5.44, 

23012, and KV 3292, 9.5.44, 16592; 

DEFE 3/155, KV 3763, 14.5.44, 04122; 

DEFE 3/158, KV 4690, 21.5.44, 05342; 

DEFE 3/161, KV 5446, 27.5.44, 21312; 

DEFE 3/162, KV 5626, 29.5.44, 11072; 

DEE 3/162, KV 5622, 29.5.44, 08172; 

DEFE 3/163, KV 5825, 31.5.44, 00392; 

and DEE 3/163, KV 5999, 1.6.44, 

15162. 

55. Mierzejewski, Collapse of the German War Economy, p. 167. 

56. Ibid., p. 167. 

57. Ibid., p. 162. 

58. Mierzejewski’s argument on this 

point is compelling. See ibid., chap 8. 

59. Williamson Murray is indebted to 

Dr. William Emerson, Director of the 

FDR Library in Hyde Park, New York, for 

this information. 

60. At Savo Island in August 1942, in a 

night attack, a force of Japanese heavy 

cruisers sank four American and Australian heavy cruisers with virtually no damage to themselves, despite the fact that the 

Americans possessed the advantage of 

radar. The Allied force was caught com- pletely by surprise, eight months after the 

beginning of the war. 61. See Chapter 5. 

346-347. 

463 
Notes to Pages 418-421 

62. COA Hist, pp. 113-1 15. 

63. Hansell intvw, Jan 21, 1987. 

64. Ibid. 

65. Ltr., White to McDonald, Aug 1, 

66. Hansell intvw, Jan 21, 1987, pp. 

67. Ibid., p. 15. 

68. This comment should be qualified 

in one important area: the battle of the 

Atlantic from the summer to December of 

1944. 

14-15. 

194 1. During this period, ULTRA intelligence by itself entirely illuminated the 

disposition and movement of German Uboats in the North Atlantic. This allowed 

the Admiralty to move the great convoys 

entirely around the submarine patrol lines 

and to reduce drastically British losses. No 

other factors come into play during this 

period. For a more specific discussion see 

Beesley, Very Special Intelligence, chap 6. 
GLOSSARY 

A-2 

AA 

AAF 

AAFPOA 

AAFSWPA 

AAI 

ABC 

ABDA 

ACIAS, Intelligence 

ACAS (I) 

ACTS 

ADVON 

AEAF 

AEF 

AFHQ 

AFIS 

AFV 

AGFRTS 

A.I. 

AIS 

ALSOS 

AT1 

AVG 

AWPD 

BDA 

BEW 

BIO 

BP 

CATF 

CB 

Assistant Chief of Air Staff, Intelligence (United 

Antiaircraft 

U.S. Army Air Forces; occasionally, Allied Air Forces 

Army Air Forces, Pacific Ocean Area 

Allied Air Forces, Southwest Pacific Area 

Allied Armies in Italy 

American-British Conversations 

American-British-Dutch- Australian 

Assistant Chief of Air Staff, Intelligence (United 

States); see also A-2 

Assistant Chief of Air Staff, Intelligence (British) 

Air Corps Tactical School 

Advanced echelon 

Allied Expeditionary Air Force 

American Expeditionary Force 

Allied Forces Headquarters 

AAF Intelligence Service 

Armored fighting vehicle 

Air Ground Forces Resources and Technical Staff 

Air Ministry, Intelligence (British) 

Air Intelligence Service 

G-2 Intelligence Summary Mission (Europe) 

Air technical intelligence 

American Volunteer Group 

Air War Plans Division 

States); see also ACIAS, Intelligence 

(Southwest Pacific Theater) 

Bomb damage assessment 

Board of Economic Warfare (United States) 

Branch intelligence officer 

Bletchley Park 

China Air Task Force 

Central Bureau 

465 
Piercing the Fog 

CBI 

CBO 

ccs 

C&GSS 

CIU 

COA 

COMAIRFORWARD 

COMAIRSOLS 

COMSOPAC 

CPIC 

CSTC 

DF 

EAC 

EEI 

EOU 

FBI 

FEA 

FEAF 

FRUPac 

GAF 

GHQ 

HUMIT 

IATF 

ICPOA 

ISAS 

JCS 

JIC 

JICA 

JICPOA 

JTG 

MAAF 

MAC 

MACAF 

MAGIC 

China-Burma-India 

Combined Bomber Offensive 

Combined Chiefs of Staff 

Command and General Staff School 

Central Interpretation Unit (British) 

Committee of Operations Analysts 

Commander, forward air forces 

Air Commander, Solomons 

Commander, South Pacific 

Combined Photographic Interpretation Centre (India) 

Combined Strategic Targets Committee 

Direction finding 

Eastern Air Command 

Essential element of information 

Enemy Objectives Unit 

Federal Bureau of Investigation 

Foreign Economic Administration 

Far East Air Force (American) 

Fleet Radio Unit, Pacific 

German Air Force 

General Headquarters 

Human resources intelligence 

India Air Task Force 

Intelligence Center, Pacific Ocean Area 

Information Section, Air Service 

Joint Chiefs of Staff 

Joint Intelligence Committee 

Joint Intelligence Collection Agency 

Joint Intelligence Center, Pacific Ocean Area 

Joint Target Group 

Mediterranean Allied Air Forces 

Mediterranean Air Command 

Mediterranean Allied Coastal Air Force 

Intercepts from Japanese diplrlmatic messages 

466 
Glossary 

MAPRW 

MASAF 

MATAF 

MEW 

MID 

NAAF 

NACAF 

NAPRW 

NASAF 

NATAF 

NEI 

NID 

OB 

OCAC 

ocs 

ON1 

OSRD 

oss 

POA 

POL 

POW 

RAAF 

RAF 

RCM 

R.E. 

RlT 

SAC0 

scu 

SHAEF 

SIB 

SIGINT 

SIS 

SLU 

SOPAC 

SPA 

sso 

Mediterranean Allied Photographic Reconnaissance 

Mediterranean Allied Strategic Air Force 

Mediterranean Allied Tactical Air Force 

Ministry of Economic Warfare (British) 

Military Intelligence Division 

Wing 

Northwest African Air Forces 

Northwest African Coastal Air Force 

Northwest African Photographic Reconnaissance Wing 

Northwest African Strategic Air Force 

Northwest African Tactical Air Force 

Netherlands East Indies 

Naval Intelligence Division (British) 

Order of battle 

Office of the Chief of Air Corps 

Officer Candidate School 

Office of Naval Intelligence 

Office of Scientific Research and Development 

Office of Strategic Services 

Pacific Ocean Area 

Petroleum, oil, and lubricants 

Prisoner of war 

Royal Australian Air Force 

Royal Air Force 

Radarhadio countermeasures 

Research and Experiment (British) 

Radiotelegraph 

Sino-American Cooperative Organization 

Special communications unit 

Supreme Headquarters, Allied Expeditionary Force 

Special Intelligence Bulletin 

Signals intelligence 

Signals Intelligence Service (U.S. Army Signal Corps) 

Special liaison unit 

South Pacific 

South Pacific Area 

Special security officer 

(Europe) 

467 
Piercing the Fog 

SWPA 

TA 

TAC 

TAIC 

TR 

TRG 

TO 

ULTRA 

USAFISPA 

USASTAF 

USSBS 

USSTAF 

WDGS 

WIR 

WIS 

WPD 

Southwest Pacific Area 

Traffic analysis 

Tactical Air Command 

Technical Air Intelligence Centre (Southeast Asia) 

Training Regulation 

Tactical Reconnaissance Group 

Table of organization 

Material derived from intercepted messages transmitted 

by the Germans on their Enigma machine 

U.S. Army Forces in the South Pacific Area 

U.S. Army Strategic Air Forces 

United States Strategic Bombing Survey 

United States Strategic Air Forces, Europe 

War Department General Staff 

Weekly Intelligence Report 

Weekly Intelligence Summary 

War Plans Division 

468 
PRIMARY SOURCE MATERIALS for this volume came largely from the 

U.S. Air Force’s record collection kept at the Air Force Historical Research 

Agency, Maxwell Air Force Base, Alabama. A microfilm copy of these records 

is available at the Air Force History Support Office, Bolling AFB, D.C. In 

particular, the various files of the Office of the Assistant Chief of Air Staff, 

Intelligence, contain material related to internal planning and assessment as well 

as the administration of the office as it evolved through several reorganizations 

during the war. The records of the AC/AS (I) also contain material related to 

work with other Air Staff agencies; these documents are crucial to assessing the 

influence of intelligence on the U.S. Army Air Forces’ plans and operations, 

Closely related to the A-2’s file records are the files of the Committee of 

Operations Analysts. Review of the COA’s work is necessary, since the 

committee exercised a significant influence over the Air Staff‘s responsibilities 

related to planning the air war both in the Pacific and Europe. Beginning with 

1944, the records of the Joint Target Group (a part of the A-2) become of value 

in tracing planning for the aerial assault of Japan. 

Similarly, the records of the Manhattan Engineer District at the National 

Archives are important to understand how the district employed the 509th 

Composite Group and used air intelligence in target planning. The district’s 

records are open to the public, although they are incomplete. Some of the 

material was withdrawn from microfilming and release because of its sensitivity. For purposes of this study, records of the Manhattan Project that are not 

available do not appear to be an impediment. 

The Library of Congress’s Manuscript Division holds a number of 

collections of wartime officers whose understanding of the relationship of 

intelligence to the AAF’s plans and operations was far-reaching. Paramount are 

the assembled papers of General of the Air Forces H. H. Arnold, the man who 

led the service throughout the war. These files were organized largely (though 

not entirely) by use of the Army’s index file system. This is not a serious 

impediment to a researcher unversed in the system, as a card file gives clues to 

the possible locations of important items. Also in the Manuscript Division are 

collections of the papers of Generals Carl A. Spaatz, Ira C. Eaker, Thomas D. 

White, and Curtis E. LeMay. LeMay’s papers are particularly useful for 

understanding the relationship between intelligence and operations in the 

Pacific. The papers and diaries of Henry Lewis Stimson are in the Yale 

469 
Piercing the Fog 

University Library, New Haven, Connecticut. A microfilm copy is available in 

the Library of Congress’s Manuscript Division. The Stimson papers for this 

period are mostly of a personal nature; few bear on the question of AAF 

operations and intelligence. The Stimson Diaries, however, are quite different. 

Stimson made daily and often extensive entries, many of which bear on the 

atomic bomb decision. Prior permission to cite or quote from the Stimson 

Diaries must be obtained from the Yale University Library, Manuscripts and 

Archives Division. 

The Ira C. Eaker Collection, useful for its coverage of early strategic air 

operations out of England, is much skimpier for the time after the general 

moved to the Mediterranean in January 1944. Most likely this reflects Eaker’s 

focus in his new position on diplomacy and policy in contrast to immediate 

operational concerns. General Carl Spaatz’s papers contain a wealth of material 

on all aspects of the air wars in both the Mediterranean and European theaters. 

The reports and records of the United States Strategic Bombing Survey are 

found in the National Archives, Record Group 243. They are also available in 

a few major libraries nationwide. This material is an excellent after-the-fact 

review of the bombing of Germany and Japan. Little in the reports, however, 

describes or records the day-to-day intelligence operation by the Air Staff. 

In addition, the personal and professional papers of two other key airmen 

proved valuable for understanding air intelligence in the latter half of the war 

in Europe. The USAF Academy Library Special Collections section holds the 

papers of Brig. Gen. George C. McDonald, who served as Spaatz’s Chief 

Intelligence Officer, Northwest African Air Forces, then as Director of 

Intelligence, United States Strategic Air Forces in Europe, from January 1944 

until the end of the war. Although much more limited than either the Eaker or 

Spaatz Papers, and less well organized internally, they contain some material 

that does not appear in other collections of papers or in the files of HQ USSTAF 

contained in the USAF Collection. Also in the Academy’s Special Collections 

are the papers of Maj. Gen. Haywood S. Hansell, Jr. Although limited in 

content, the papers of Lt. Gen. Elwood R. Quesada held in the Library of 

Congress contain information that proved most helpful in determining the role 

of signals intelligence and photointelligence in tactical air operations from the 

spring of 1944 to the spring of 1945. 

Primary sources dealing with ULTRA and MAGIC for both the Eurcpean and 

Pacific war fall into two categories. The first includes the National Security 

Agency Special Research Histories (SRHs), most of which are available at the 

AFHSO at Bolling AFB. These studies are collections of declassified wartime 

reports. Essential for an understanding of the handling and application of 

ULTRA at the various air commands in Europe are SRH-031, Trip Reports 

Concerning Use of ULTRA in the Mediterranean Theater, 1943-1944, and 

SRH-023, Reports by US. Army ULTRA Representatives with Army Field 

Commands in the European Theater of Operations, 1945, part 2. The former 

470 
Bibliography 

contains reports submitted by Bletchley Park-trained special security officers 

on their get-acquainted tours of Mediterranean Allied commands prior to their 

assignments with the U.S. forces in western Europe. The latter contains the 

after-action reports by SSOs who dealt primarily with air intelligence derived 

from ULTRA after the invasion of Normandy. What is striking about all these 

reports are the efforts these individuals exerted during the war to understand 

ULTRA’S place within the broader intelligence framework (even though few had 

had prior intelligence experience) and the candor of their comments. Also useful 

are SRH-006, Synthesis of Experiences in the Use of ULTRA Intelligence by US. 

Army Field Commands in the European Theater of Operations and SRH-107, 

Problems of the SSO System in World War ZZ. These histories provide useful 

synopses of such experiences, but they rarely identify the sources of their 

information, much of which came from SSOs assigned to Army rather than Air 

Forces commands. 

The SRHs and related reports produced by the National Security Agency 

are of mixed value, requiring careful consideration and judicial use. They are 

incomplete, censored, and not always objective. Of particular concern when 

reviewing these special histories is the problem of not always being able to 

determine why an item was deleted, especially when what appears to be similar 

information may appear elsewhere in the document. A researcher has no way 

to compare the the subject matter available with that in other volumes yet to be 

declassified and released for public review. Most of the writers or compilers had 

specific goals or assignments as they prepared their volumes. Although these 

special research histories should be used with great caution, they have value in 

determining the overall importance of message decryption and the control of 

ULTRA material in the war against Japan. Some are quite explicit and helpful, 

such as the message files related to the Battle of the Bismarck Sea and the 

MAGIC Diplomatic Summaries. 

The second major category of primary ULTRA-related material encompasses 

the intercepted messages themselves, extracts of the messages, and signals sent 

from intercept facilities to the operational field commands. Those from 

Bletchley Park are now on file at the British Public Record Office in London. 

As of December 1988, the Library of Congress held 257 microfilm rolls 

covering the period November 1941 to May 1945. The signals are grouped 

strictly chronologically without regard for subject, geographic location, or units 

involved, and no index is available to assist the researcher other than the 

microfilm roll list arranged by date. Even more than when they were transmitted 

(since the original recipients maintained a frame of reference in their heads and 

in their files), these signals are isolated documents which must be placed within 

a broader context to be assessed and used properly. Some of the SRHs contain 

either decrypted messages or the extracts and commentary such as the 

Willoughby bulletins of the SWPA. 

47 1 
Piercing the Fog 

Interviews with Lt. Gen. Francis S. Gideon (wartime Director of Operations, Fifth Air Force) and General Robert M. Lee (Director of Operations, 

Ninth Air Force, fall of 1944 to war’s end) were particularly helpful for the 

insights they provided into the tight controls imposed on the dissemination and 

use of ULTRA. 

The number of secondary works dealing with ULTRA expands yearly. Of 

these the most important for the present work have been the first three volumes 

of British Intelligence in the Second World War: its influence on Strategy and 

Operations (F. H. Hinsley et al.). Reflecting the increasing quality of ULTRA in 

the last eighteen months of the war, volume 3 (which was published in two 

parts) tends to be largely a narrative recitation of ULTRA signals. Without 

reading the earlier two volumes, the casual reader might overlook the importance of other intelligence tools and organizations. British Intelligence is likely 

to remain the standard work on this subject for both the depth and the breadth 

of its information. 

Little unclassified material is available on USAAF signals intelligence 

above the basic tactical and technical level, although several SRHs do cover 

day-by-day activities of some Signals Intelligence Service units. A Draft 

History, IX Tactical Air Command, dated March 1945, contains several short 

but informative papers on the tactical air forces’ use of Y intelligence. These are 

contained in the Library of Congress’s Lt. Gen. Elwood R. Quesada Collection. 

The Spaatz Collection contains several documents prepared by American and 

British officers on the significance of Y-Service for strategic air operations in 

western Europe. The unit histories of the USAAF’s Radio Squadrons (Mobile) 

vary both in completeness and quality. Several give good data on the Air 

Force’s Y-Service units. Topics covered include organization, stations of 

service, relationships to the air commanders, and the extent of work performed. 

The two most useful sources for providing information on the methodology 

and role of photographic intelligence in Europe were written by former British 

WAAF officers intimately involved in activities at Medmenham. Constance 

Babington-Smith’s Air Spy: The Story of Photo Intelligence in World War II is 

personal-account history at its best. It combines Babington-Smith’s experiences 

with methodology and techniques. It also provides concrete examples of the use 

and misuse of this special resource. The Eye of Intelligence by Ursula PowysLybbe takes a more detached, clinical approach, organizing chapters not 

chronologically, but by the various aspects of photointelligence, especially 

photointerpretation. As could be expected, both focused on the British 

experience, although Air Spy contains good information on key Americans. 

For the American side of photointelligence, Roy M. Stanley’s World War 

IZ Photo Intelligence does an excellent job of explaining the technical aspects 

of photoreconnaissance and interpretation. Of particular value are the numerous 

photographs and diagrams employed to clarify the text. Although cited only 

occasionally in this work, the general understanding Stanley’s book offers is 

472 
Bibliography 

invaluable. Complementing the technical information presented by Stanley is 

the narrative approach offered in Unarmed and Unafraid. A survey history of 

air combat reconnaissance, its chapters on World War I1 are especially useful 

for providing a sense of the problems American aerial reconnaissance faced in 

the early period of the war. 

Material on both photoreconnaissance and photointerpretation is scattered 

throughout the records of the numerous air commands contained in the files of 

the Air Force Historical Research Agency. Useful official material is in the 

folders on Photo Intelligence in the General Carl Spaatz Collection at the 

Library of Congress and in the HQ USSTAF “History of the Directorate of 

Intelligence” in the same collection. Both contain documents regarding the 

debate over the creation of an independent American photointelligence 

capability. 

The most useful secondary source-indeed, one of the very few-for Y 

intelligence is The Enemy Is Listening by former British WAAF Aileen Clayton. 

Clayton, like Babington-Smith in photointerpretation, was an early entrant into 

signals intelligence. She had extensive and intensive experience in Britain and 

the Mediterranean, and her ability to explain the technical aspects of this 

somewhat arcane and unromantic aspect of intelligence is unsurpassed. 

For the strategic air war in Europe, the USAF’s collection of Eighth and 

Fifteenth Air Force records is essential. Particularly useful both in identifying 

the main issues and in providing guidance to other primary documents is the 

multivolume “History of the Eighth Air Force” prepared by that headquarters 

throughout and immediately after the war. Air Force records in the 142 series, 

Assistant Chief of Staff, Intelligence, and Predecessors, are useful for providing 

the Air Staff intelligence perspective on specific issues, including operations 

against the submarine pens, and detailed studies by the Air Intelligence Service 

on strategic target systems in Germany. Also invaluable for the European air 

war is the War Diary of the Research and Analysis Branch, OSS London, 

volume 5, “Economic Outpost with Economic Warfare Division,” RG 226, 

National Archives. Although written in the “weren’t-we-great’’ style characteristic of many organizational histories, this study is must reading for an understanding of the organization and methodology of the Enemy Objectives Unit, 

crucial in the Eighth Air Force targeting and damage assessment effort. RG 226 

also contains the many detailed target studies prepared by EOU. 

Air intelligence in North Africa is more difficult to track through the 

documents than are operations in and from the United Kingdom. In part this 

reflects the transient nature of all aspects of North African operations when 

contrasted with the more permanent organization, location, and facilities 

available in the UK. Additionally, the several changes in command structures 

and the joint nature of operations and intelligence necessitate a broad sweep 

through sources. Important files include those of the Twelfth Air Force 

(AFHRA Gp 650), Northwest African Air Forces (AFHRA Gp 61 2), Northwest 

473 
Piercing the Fog 

African Strategic Air Force (AFHRA Gp 615), and Northwest African Tactical 

Air Force (AFHRA Gp 614). Particularly useful in understanding the role of 

ULTRA in North Africa was Group Captain Humphreys’s “The Use of ‘U’ in the 

Mediterranean and Northwest African Theaters of War,” in the National 

Security Agency’s SRH-037, Reports Received by U.S. WarDepartment on the 

Use of ULTRA in the European Theater, World War II.” Volume 2 of Hinsley’s 

British Intelligence in the Second World War also provided essential material 

on signals intelligence, including ULTRA, especially with regard to the 

antishipping campaign which occupied so much of the strategic air forces’ 

efforts. 

The intelligence files of the Fifth, Tenth, and Fourteenth Air Forces contain 

varying amounts of relevant material about the AAF in the Pacific and CBI, due 

largely to the difficult conditions and the widespread nature of the war in that 

region. The operations records of the three numbered air forces usefully 

supplement the intelligence files. Other records, such as those of AAF 

Headquarters, provided valuable data, especially in the case of B-29 operations, 

where many of the general mission objectives were reached based upon the 

predeployment work of the COA and the Air Staff. The contents of the records 

of the Seventh and Thirteenth Air Forces are distinctly less productive than 

those of the Fifth, Tenth, and Fourteenth. This reflects the Navy command 

structure under which these two organizations worked for much of the war. 

Most operational decisions of the air units subordinate to the Navy were not 

taken by the air commanders, and no commander of either Air Force reached the 

prominence of either Kenney or Chennault. The records reflect the reactions to 

task force directives, not the extent of or reasons for Air Force planning. 

The best single source to trace the thoughts and actions of specific 

commanders of the Far East region is the collection at the AFHSO known as the 

George C. Kenney Papers. This aggregate of letters and of diary and journal 

entries covers events from 1941 through the end of the war. It was supplemented by General Kenney in the months after the war as he incorporated some 

of it into his book, The General Kenney Reports. Used with an understanding 

of its origin and purpose, this book is almost unmatched among the legacies of 

America’s Pacific air generals for judging the influence of information upon 

plans and operations. The papers of Generals Nathan Twining and Curtis E. 

LeMay in the Library of Congress’s Manuscript Division proved a most helpful 

resource, as did the oral histories and individual collections at AFHSO. 

Especially useful for an understanding of ULTRA and the air-ground relationships in the SWPA is Edward J. Drea’s MacArthur’s Ultra. 

Libraries in the Washington, D.C., area, the Library of Congress, Army 

Library, and the Air Force History library provided a great deal of information 

about the war. Much of it is operational, with few accounts of intelligence work. 

In part this is so because of the wartime and postwar strictures on revealing 

sensitive information. Probably this also reflects the less glamorous aspect of 

474 
Bibliography 

intelligence studies and their underrated importance when compared to the 

actions of fighters and bombers. 

In the chapter notes, citations refemng to material in the possession of the 

1J.S. Air Force, either the original documents at Maxwell AFB, Alabama, or the 

microfilm copies at Bolling AFB, carry the notation, USAF Collection, 

followed by the index number the first time that such a reference appears in the 

book. Thereafter, only the AFHR4 index citation number appears. In instances 

when the documentary material exists only in the original at the AFHSO, the 

notes carry the notation “AFHSO’ and the index number for the specific item. 

Material in the National Archives cames the notation NA followed by record 

group and box numbers, as appropriate. Documents in the Library of Congress’s 

Manuscript Division are identified as LC, the name of the collection, such as 

Arnold Papers, and the appropriate box and folder number. 

475 
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482 
“Air Estimate of the Situation for the 

Employment of the Air Striking Force 

in Europe” (ABC-I), 48-50 

branches of, 379 

need for independence, 377-79 

organization of, 355-60 

preparations for peace, 389-90 

relation to G-2. 389-90. 393 

A-2, U.S. Army Air Forces 

responsibilities distinguished from those 

of G-2.359 

ABC-1 Agreement, 11 1 

Administrator of Export Control, 153 

Admiralty Intelligence Board, 143 

Admiralty Islands, 277,291,416 

Advisory Committee on Bombardment 

analysis compared with AWPD-42, 

(later COA), 152-54 

154-57 

AEAF, 212-13 

Aerial mining, 328 

by B-29s, in Pacific, 345 

Rangoon River, 306-7 

importance in North Africa, 163 

importance of, 394 

Aerial reconnaissance 

in Burma and Thailand, 307 

target photography, importance of, 

bombing role in air power, on, 38-39 

Aerial photography 

370-7 1 

Air Board 

Air Combat Intelligence Center, 256 

Air Command South East Asia, 308 

Air Corps 

81 

aerial photography school established, 

creation of, 20 

Information Division, OCAC (later 

Intelligence Division), 20, 22-23, 

41-42 

Air Corps Act, 12,17-18,21 

Air Corps Intelligence Board, 4041,398 

Air Corps Tactical School, Maxwell Field, 

12,24-28,50,126,397 

Aircraft, British 

Mosquito, 81 

Spitfire IX, 81 

Spitfire XII, 81 

Aircraft, German 

Ar 234,244 

Bf 109,125,201 

He 111,34 

He 177,163 

He 280,149,244 

FW 190,124,158,162-63,197,205 

Ho 9 jet-powered flying wing, 374 

Ju 52,34 

Ju 87 Stuka, 34 

Ju 88, 197 

Ju 222,374 

Ju 290,374 

Ju 388,374 

Me 110,404 

Me 163,149,244,374 

Me 262,149,244,245,374 

Me 323,163,169 

Me 109G, 124 

Ta 152,374 

Mitsubishi Betty bombers, 271 

Nakajima Type 97 (Nate), 31 

Type 96 Mitsubishi (Claude), 30 

Type 99 (Val), 122 

Zero, 247,271, 306 

Aircraft, Japanese, 288 

Aircraft, U.S. 

A-20, 166,275 

B-17, 25, 51, 106, 139, 166, 168, 175, 

201,206,226,249-50,254,268,271, 

B-24, 166, 167, 192, 206, 210, 226, 

295,352,404-5 

26748,271,274-75,280,285,294, 

306,307,315,317,322,324,328 

307,313,315,316,319,416 

B-25,167,265,269,277-78,294,304, 

B-25C-1,265 

B-26, 167,168 

B-29,285,293,320,324,327-28,419 

483 
Piercing the Fog 

campaign against Japanese home 

islands, 41 8 

Enola Gay, 345 

Japan’s proximity-fuze capability 

MATTERHORN plan for, 366 

operations against Japan, 329-47 

raids from Chinese bases, 418 

reconnaissance, 8 1-82 

and, 372 

DB-7,166 

F-4 (P-38E), 81 

F-5 (P-38G/H), 81 

F-7,81 

F-9,81 

F-13,336,419 

P-38, 82, 166, 168,265, 270-71, 277, 

280-81,287,294,307,328,419 

P-39,82,269,294 

P-40,82,106,281,294,304,313 

P-47,226,268,328 

P-51,82,95, 172,206,226,307 

P-59,391 

P-80,391 

P-400,269 

Ohio, 175 

Aircraft Radio Laboratory, Wright Field, 

Air Documents Research Center, 374 

Air Force General Information Bulletin, 

Air Forces (numbered). See individual air 

Air Ground Forces Resources and Techni120 

forces, by number 

cal Staff (AGFRTS), 301 

Air Intelligence Service (AIS), 117 

Airlift, German, 168 

Air Mattriel Command 

Air observation 

Air Service 

5329th, 318-22 

Technical Data Laboratory, 122 

in World War I, 15-16 

Engineering Division, 18-20 

Information Group, 18,20,23-24 

Air Target Index Japanese War, 369 

Air War Plans Division (AWPD), 43 

AWPD-l,46-51,74,150-52 

AJAX (VIII Fighter Command), 95 

Akin, Spencer B., 107 

Allied Air Forces Southwest Pacific Area 

(AAFSWPA) 

Directorate of Intelligence, 252-53 

AlliedAir Forces SWPA Intelligence Summary, 253 

Allied Intelligence Bureau, 108,259,261 

Allied Sixth Army Group, 232 

Allied Translator and Interpreter Section, 

Allied Tripartite Meeting, 323 

ALSOS mission, 373 

American Air Service 

American-British Conversations-1 

American-British-Dutch- Australian 

American Expeditionary Force (AEF) 

American Far East Air Force (FEAF) 

108-9 

aerial photography use, 81 

(ABC-l), 46-47 

(ABDA) Command, 248 

intelligence in, 11-16 

Pearl Harbor attack and, 25 1 

victory in Philippines, 290 

lurgical Engineers, 153 

American Institute of Mining and MetalAmerican Seventh Army, 232 

American Volunteer Group (AVG), 87, 

Anacostia Naval Aircraft Factory, 124 

Anderson, Frederick L., 69, 71, 194-95, 

306 

205,222,42 1 

Big Week, on, 207 

Eaker Plan and, 191 

planning for European invasion, 208 

Anderson, Kenneth, 160 

Anderson, Orvil A., 69,71,220 

Anti-Comintern Pact, 29 

Antisubmarine operations 

AWPD-42, 151,156 

COA, 156 

policy and outcomes, 142-46 

ARCADIA conference, 11 1 

Ardennes counteroffensive, 235-36,245 

Armies (numbered). See individual armies, by name 

Army Air Forces (AAF) 

birth of intelligence organization in, 1 12 

disbands Air Staff intelligence operaEvaluation Board, 372 

Historical Section, 117 

Intelligence Service (AFIS), 355 

Proving Ground Command, Eglin Field, 

Technical Training Command, 127 

Army Air Forces Air Intelligence School 

(later, Intelligence Division of the 

School of Applied Tactics), 127, 132, 

370,402 

tions unit, 6 

Florida, 125 

484 
Index 

Army Reorganization Act of 1920,17,21 

Army War College 

on aviation, 36 

Arnold, Henry H., 1,50 

access to sensitive information by, 8-9, 

28,4243,103,353 

ambivalence toward Soviet Union, 391 

and Kenney’s requests for reinforceappreciation for intelligence, 352 

assessment of Japan’s likelihood of 

character and use of intelligence, 418- 

creates COA, 6,420 

details officers to British Air Ministry, 

direction and operation of B-29, 329- 

displeasure with A-2lG-2 relationship, 

dissatisfaction with AAF intelligence, 

enlists outside experts to develop intellifears OVERLORD air battle, 229 

fires General Wolfe, 335 

Hitler’s power of intimidation, on, 38 

importance of Joint Target Group to, 

initiation into ULTRA, 354 

interest in information transfer, 372-75, 

perceives decline in GAF, 148,408 

Promotes and defends B-29. 340. 342 

ments, 267-68 

attack, 53-54 

20 

118 

30 

352-53 

360 

gence, 6-7 

369-70 

388 

refuses Kenney’s requests for B-29s, 

285 

reports from Spain, on, 37 

requires access to intelligence, 1 18-19 

sends bombers to Hawaii to block attack, 5 1-52 

strategic air campaign to weaken Germany, 190,202-3 

study groups appointed by, 371-73 

suffers heart attack, 342 

supervision of air commanders, 354 

competition with other service intelligence agencies, 7 

limited knowledge of ULTRA by, 8 

responsibilities of, 4-5 

AAF intelligence and, 380-88 

Assistant Chief of Air Staff, A-2 

Atomic bomb 

Attach& 

military, 18,20, 28, 3 1-32 

prewar role of, 395-96 

7th Division, 263 

handling of intelligence by, 108 

Australia 

Australian Special Wireless Group, 108 

Avord, France, 197 

AWPD-1, “Munitions Requirement of the 

AWPD-42,74,150-52 

AAF,” 46-5 1,14, 150,399 

analysis compared with COA’s, 154-57 

estimates time for European invasion, 

157 

B Section, 105-6 

Babington-Smith, Constance, 92, 220 

Balkan Air Force, 178 

Ball bearing industry, 201, 203, 407-8, 

Barnett, Harold J., 209 

Battle of the Bismarck Sea, 8, 247, 265- 

Battle of Britain, 261,399,404 

Battle of the Coral Sea, 1067,248 

Battle of the Marne, 15 

Battle of Midway, 8,248 

Battle of Mons, 15 

BELCONNEN (Navy signal intelligence), 

Bemis, Harold, 29 

Berliner, Henry, 141 

Berman, Emile Z., 310 

Bertrandais, Victor E., 20, 281, 282 

Betts, T. J., 119 

Big Week, 2068,228,229 

Birch, John, 300, 313 

Bissell, Clayton, 19, 350-5 1, 360 

422 

Bm, P. M., 162-63 

68,415 

253 

AAF chief intelligence officer, 357 

ALSOS mission, 373 

assesses Soviet role in war, 391 

intelligence requirements of, 112 

commands IATF, 298,301-2,304 

Bitter, Francis, 365-66 

Blamey, Thomas, 107 

Bolling Field, 127 

Bombe machine, 61 

Bombing Survey, 376 

Bombs 

British Tallboy, 381 

Bombsights, 366-67 

Bond, Horatio, 365 

485 
Piercing the Fog 

Bonin Islands, 328 

Bonnet, George, 397 

Bottomley, Norman, 412 

Bower, Philip G., 368 

Bowles, Edward L., 7 

Bradley, Omar, 232 

Bratton, Rufus, 115 

Brereton, Lewis H., 251 

Brett, George H., 42, 126 

British Air Ministry, 18 

coordination with, 1 18 

estimates GAF fighting value, preOVERLORD, 228 

technical intelligence section, 122 

British Eastern Air Command, 160 

British Eighth Army, 181 

British Government Code and Cypher 

British Joint Planning Staff, 157 

British Royal Flying Corps 

reconnaissance by, I5 

Brown, Grover C., 49 

Brown, Harold W., 8 I, 250, 252 

Brown, Harvey C., 126 

Brux, Czechoslovakia, 92 

Bryden, William, 43 

Buck, Lucius, 78,232,234 

Bufton, Sidney, 191 

Bullitt, William C., 38 

Bundy, Harvey, 380 

Burgess, W. M., 119, 125 

Bush, Vannevar, 380 

Butler, William C., 119 

Cabell, Charles, 132 

School, 8 

Eaker Plan and, 191 

planning for European invasion, 208 

Cain, Benjamin, 257-58 

special OB study by, 280, 283 

use of MIS service by, 358 

Cairo conference, 32 8 , 331,365 

California Institute of Technology, 7 

Candee, Robert C., 43,47 

Cannon, John K., 178 

Canterbury Digest, 96,98 

Caroline Islands, 275 

Casablanca Directive, 74, 145, 156, 190 

CAST (Navy signal intelligence), 250 

Catalina flying boat, 285 

Central Bureau (CB), 107-8 

Chandler, Charles DeForest, 14 

Chaney, James E., 47 

Chemical Warfare Service, 339 

Chennault, Claire, 30-31, 247, 254, 321, 

417-21 

air-raid warning net of, 314 

antishipping campaign of, 317-18 

commands CATF, 298,301 

commands Fourteenth Air Force, 297 

intelligence requirements of, 112 

photoreconnaissance equipment availraids Hong Kong, 304 

relationship with AFGFRTS, 321-22 

wants B-29,332 

able to, 87 

Chiang Kai-shek, 247,298,320,417 

Chicago Herald Tribune, 63, 101 

Chihaya Masataka, 52 

China 

aid to Americans by, 259 

failures of American undertaking in, 

formal assault plans of Allies, 284 

Fourteenth Air Force in, 312-24 

need for valid target information on, 

414 

297 

China Air Task Force, 87 

China-Burma-India (CBI) Theater, 82, 

comparative air intelligence functions 

complexity of command structure, 298, 

difficulties in intelligence exploitation 

low American priority of, 298 

photoreconnaissance in, 87 

split into sectors, 315, 320-21 

ARCADIA conference, 11 1 

informs Roosevelt of V-weapons, 220 

long-range escort fighter recommendaorders assault into North Africa, 157 

297 

in, 303 

300 

in, 417 

Churchill, Winston, 50 

tion, 404 

Clark Air Field, 106 

Coast Guard 

Coast watchers, 276 

Colbert, Ralph A., 37 1 

Colley, A. W., 122, 125 

Color-coded war plans, 21-22 

Colossus machine, 61 

Combined Bomber Offensive (CBO), 76, 

cryptanalytical projects of, 4 

349 

broad basis for, 190 

initiation of, 172 

486 
Index 

objectives, 1944,208,224 

POINTBLANK, 194,221 

targets of, 197 

Combined Bomber Offensive from the 

United Kingdom. See Eaker Plan 

Combined Chiefs of Staff (CCS), 1 18,370 

German fighter strength, on, 192,194 

place all air forces under Supreme Allied Commander, 2 12 

Combined Photographic Interpretation 

Centre (CPIC) South East Asia, 

Combined Strategic Targets Committee 

(CSTC), 24142,412 

Command and General Staff School 

(C&GSS), Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, 

22, 126 

308-9 

Commands (numbered) 

VII Bomber, 327 

VII Fighter, 327-28 

VIIIBomber, 95, 130-31, 134, 137-38, 

VIII Fighter Command, 95, 141,226 

VIII Support Command, 141 

XXI Bomber, 327-28,338,421 

IX Fighter, 98 

IX Tactical Air (IX TAC), 230-34,362 

XI1 Air Support, 164 

XI1 Bomber, 161, 169 

XIX Tactical Air (TAC), 66, 67, 362 

XX Bomber, 308, 311, 331, 333-34, 

Committee of Operations Analysts 

analysis compared with AWPD-42, 

catalyst for reconsideration of air powendorses urban-area fire bombing, 

influence on CBO, 172,349 

influence on Eaker Plan, 191,349 

influence in JTG, 370 

target priorities of, 201,212,349 

target recommendations for Arnold, 

target study of Japanese industry, 365- 

use of air intelligence by, 6-7 

14043,205 

338 

(COA), 152-54 

154-57 

er, 190 

338-39 

330-33,335,421 

66 

Compton, Arthur H., 386 

Computers, flak, 328 

Conant, James B., 380 

Condor Legion, 35 

Coningham, Arthur, 163-64 

Cooper, Merian C., 278, 300, 313, 352, 

Craig, Malin, 37 

Crash analysis 

Crash intelligence, 122, 124 

CROSSBOW, 220,222 

gence, 222-23 

Cryptanalysis 

60-61 

419 

difficulty of, in China, 314 

and reorganization of Allied intellidecipherments of Enigma messages, 

success of West in, 58 

Czechoslovakia. 38 

Daily Intelligence Summary, 162 

Damage assessment 

destruction of German aircraft factories, 

European experience applied to Japan, 

by R.E.8, 13840 

ULTRA and, 75-76 

Dargue, H. A., 26 

Davidson, Howard C., 361-62 

Dayton, Lewis, A., 130 

Dennison, D. M., 380 

Denny, J. H., 381 

Dilly Project, 84 

Direction finding (DF), 57-58 

Director of Naval Intelligence, 359 

Divisions (numbered) 

1st Cavalry, 278-79 

9th Bombardment, 70 

77th, 289 

D’Olier, Franklin, 371 

Donovan, William J., 310, 350, 388, 395 

Doolittle, James H., 69,72, 161, 163-65, 

202,207 

369 

195 

airfield raids, 168 

bombing tactics of, 409 

lessons of Mediterranean theater learned 

by, 4067,414 

need for photoreconnaissance, 163 

persuades Eisenhower to bomb petroleum industry, 410 

replaces Eaker, Eighth Air Force, 205 

Douglass, Kingman, 194 

Douglass, Robert W., Jr., 326 

Douhet, Giulio, 37 

Dugway Proving Ground, Utah, 339 

481 
Piercing the Fog 

E Group, CBI, 3 1 1 

Eaker, Ira C., 91,414 

aircraft factory t,argets, 201 

antisubmarine plans, 142 

asserts success of unescorted B-17 

bombing missions, 404-5 

attacks on German aircraft factories, 

201-2 

availability of intelligence, on, 120 

bombing program, 156 

British model for intelligence, 394 

commands MAAF, 178,205 

conclusions on interdiction, 188 

damage assessment by, 13940 

directed by Arnold to reduce German 

establishes intelligence to complement 

establishes photointerpretation facility 

Harrisburg graduates evaluation by, 13 1 

on intelligence deficit at war’s start, 401 

intelligence requirements of, 112 

perceives weakness of GAF, 146-47 

recommends independence for AAF 

size of bomber force available to, 409 

strategic air plan against Germany, 

target choices, 141 

V-weapons and, 220 

Eaker Plan, 74, 172,190-91,349,370 

Earhart, Amelia, 52-53 

Earle, Edward Mead, 152 

Eastern Air Command (EAC), 300,308- 

Echols, 0. P., 125 

Economic analysis agencies, 93 

Eglin Army Airfield, Florida, 221, 340 

Ehrhart, Robert C., 66 

Eichelberger, Robert, 283 

Eighth Air Force, 67,74,76,349 

A-2 responsibilities, 134-35 

air campaign against Germany by, 

attacks V-weapon targets, 222 

bombing German rail system, 214,226 

briefing chart, 197 

Eaker Plan and, 191 

early intelligence operations of, 14046 

flaws in bombing doctrine ignored by, 

air power, 354 

British agencies, 132 

at Mount Farm, 84 

intelligence, 377-79 

190-91 

9,312 

A-5,136-37 

11 1-12 

404-5 

mission of, 140 

number of bombers available to, 1943- 

organizing intelligence in, 132-40 

photographic interpretation capability, 

photointelligence, development of, 6 

primary objectives against GAF and 

relation to COA, 153-54 

reliance on British intelligence by, 

restricted target choices of, 407 

supports Twelfth, 141 

and ULTRA, 9 

use of incendiary weapons in Germany, 

use of RAF air intelligence by, 5,403 

WIDE WING, 134 

Y intelligence in, 95,98 

Einstein, Albert, 380 

Eisenhower, Dwight D., 37 

44,409 

85 

aircraft industries, 194,201 

120-2 1 

344 

focus on transportation networks, 172 

importance of photoreconnaissance, on, 

states mission of Eighth Air Force, 140 

strategic air operations to weaken 

German industrial base, 237 

submarines as targets, on, 142 

targets German transportation network, 

163 

212-14 

Eizo, Hori, 296 

Electronic warfare capabilities, AAF and 

Navy, 334 

Eleven Nation Military Tribunal, 52-53 

Eleventh Air Force, Alaska, 119 

Embick, Stanley, 37 

Employment of the Air Forces of the 

Engines 

Army, TR 440-15,24-25,37 

48-cylinder (German), 374 

Wright-3350,340 

Enigma, 60-62, 145. See also ULTRA 

Ent, Uzal G., 383 

Escape and evasion training, 259 

Eubank, Eugene L., 25 1 

Ewell, R. N., 365 

Ezaki Yoshio, 278-79 

Fabian, Rudolph J., 250,253 

Fairchild, Muir S., 12, 123 

in CBI Theater, 310-1 1 

air target selection, 152,365 

488 
Index 

need for technical intelligence, on, 122 

Farrell, Thomas, F., 380 

Fechet, James, 36 

Federal Bureau of Investigation, 102 

Fellers, James, 79 

Ferebee, Thomas, 34647 

Fermi, Enrico, 386 

Ferret aircraft, 175, 335 

Fifteenth Air Force, 70, 76, 79-80, 181, 

cryptanalytical projects of, 4 

349 

bombing German rail system, 214 

bombing of oil plants, 210 

heavy bomber operations, 182 

in Mediterranean theater, 178-79 

missions against German communicaphotoreconnaissance and interpretation 

strategic role of, 190 

targeting strategy, Mediterranean thetion lines, 172 

capability, 89 

ater, 183 

Fifth Air Force, 3 16, 325 

Admiralties, fight for, 279 

Advanced Echelon (ADVON), 258 

air intelligence used by, 5 

campaign to destroy Japanese alcohol 

crash intelligence by, 122 

day-to-day operational and tactical indirectorate of intelligence, organization 

innovative use of land-based air power 

intelligence, 257-58 

intelligence methods, resources of, 261 

intelligence section of, 257-58 

Japanese intelligence on, 295 

seeks Harrisburg graduates, 130 

use of annotated photographs to supuse of intercept information by, 361-62 

and butanol production, 358 

telligence by, 415 

chart, 262 

by, 112 

Fifth Army, 181 

port, 83 

Firebombing, 33844 

First Army, 233 

First Tactical Air Force, 78 

First Tactical Air Force (Prov.), 232 

Fisher, William P., 380 

Fitch, Aubrey, 274 

Flak, 84 

Flak maps, 136 

Flakintel, 327-28 

Fleet Radio Unit, China, 3 17 

Formosa 

formal assault plans of Allies, 284 

lack of intelligence concerning, 249-50 

Fort Belvoir, Virginia, 126 

Fort McKinley (near Manila), 250 

Foulois, Benjamin D., 23 

Fourteenth Air Force, 259,297-98,367 

campaign to destroy railroads, 322-23 

role in China, 112 

supply problems of, 315,323 

ULTRA access, 323 

war in China, 3 12-24 

Fourth Air Force, 363 

France 

Vichy forces’ control of North Africa, 

158 

Franco, Francisco, 35 

Frankland, Noble, 156 

French Air Force, 15, 158,397 

Friedman, William F., 63-64,94 

Fuller, H. H., 35 

Fuque, Stephen D., 36 

Galland, Adolph, 244 

Garcia, James D., 334 

Gates, Byron E., 26 

Geerlings, Gerald K., 135 

Geheimchreiber (Fish), 61,76 

General Electric, 3 1 

General Motors, 3 1 

George, Harold L., 43, 149 

German Air Force (GAF), 33-34 

bombardment advisory committee, 152 

air campaign countering, 146-49 

Allied underestimates of stiength of, 

assessments of preparedness of, 35,38 

in Battle of Britain, 399,410 

communications security in, 77 

dawn attack against Allied air bases, 

domination of by Allies, 229-30 

effectiveness in Tunisia, 160 

fighter strength, production, late 1943, 

fighting value estimates, pre-OVERin Italy, 177-78 

losses, spring 1944,207-8 

rebuilding of, 33-34 

reduction of, 194345, 172-73 

replacement rates, late 1943, 204 

14649,203-5,235,408 

235-36 

. 192 

LORD, 228 

489 
Piercing the Fog 

restricts fuel use, 23940 

strength estimates, March 1943, 174 

strength for OVERLORD, 228-29 

ULTRA information on, 158,160 

ULTRA-provided information on, 77,78 

information on Japan held by, 372 

German Air Ministry 

German Ministry of Aircraft Production, 

German rail system, 214,225 

German weapons 

204 

V-1 flying bomb, 83, 84,93,213,216, 

V-2 rocket, 83, 91,93,213,216, 218- 

aircraft industry, 80, 91-93, 176-77, 

aircraft industry and production, 194- 

atomic energy development in, 373 

careless signals discipline of, 406 

commanders’ speculations on sources of 

confidence in and use of Enigma, 60 

information on, in World War I, 15-16 

intelligence by, 59 

introduction of jet aircraft 172-73 

oil industry, 172 

postwar studies of intelligence in, 371- 

radar network and flak defenses, 175 

transportation system, 141,172 

218-21,223 

21,223 

Germany 

408-9 

95, 197,201,240-41 

Allied information, 165-66 

80 

Ghormley, Robert L., 47 

GHQ Air Force, 23-24 

GHQ Southwest Pacific Area 

Gideon, Francis C., 66,276 

Gilbert Islands, 326 

Goddard, Robert, 8 1 

Goering, Herman, 33,239-40 

Government Code and Cypher School, 

Bletchley Park (BP), 59, 61, 65, 72- 

73,78 

Graham, Phil, 66,358 

Great Britain 

G-2, MIS-X, 259-60 

air defense systems, pre-WWII, 32-33 

assistance to American intelligence, 

claims to German secrets, 373 

control over Enigma-generated 

dominance in MAAF intelligence, 

394,399,402-3 

intelligence, 62-64, 70 

179-80 

dominance of SIGINT, 94-95 

fear of aerial bombing, 38 

friction with Americans, in India and 

intelligence in CBI, 300, 304-5 

photoreconnaissance experience, 8 1 

Secret Intelligence Service, 92 

Burma, 307-8 

Grew, Joseph C., 384 

Griffiss, Townsend, 36 

Groups (numbered) 

11 (RAF), 98 

3d Photo Reconnaissance, 181 

5th Bombardment, 256 

7th Bomb Group, 305 

7th Photo Reconnaissance, 85,89 

10th Reconnaissance, 83-84 

1 lth Bombardment, 256 

12th Army, 68,232,234 

15th Photo, 181 

21st Army, 231 

67th Tactical Reconnaissance (TRG), 

71st Reconnaissance Group, 84 

91st Bomb, 139 

97th Bomb, 162 

303d Bomb, 139 

305th Bomb, 139 

375th Troop Carrier, 268 

380th Bomb, 268,294 

509th Composite, 346,380,382-83 

Groves, Leslie R., 380, 383, 385 

Guadalcanal, 247,269 

Navy intercept station on, 270 

Gunn, Paul I. 265 

Hale, Willis H., 325-27 

Halsey, William F., 256, 272 

assaults Bougainville, 274 

recommends Leyte landing, 285 

strikes Luzon, 287 

Hamilton, Fowler, 152-53 

Hamilton Field, 363 

Hansell, Haywood S., Jr., 3, 25, 31, 41, 

access to RAF intelligence by, 47-49 

air estimate, Europe, 42 

Eaker Plan and, 191 

expanded air attache, 43 

photoreconnaissance, on, 80 

233 

49,150, 155,254,329,331-33,336, 

338,36547,419-21 

Harbold, Norris B., 346 

Harmon, Millard F., 256-58, 269, 327 

490 
Index 

Harris, Arthur T., 412 

Harrisburg Academy, 127 

Harrisburg Intelligence School, 81,85 

Heligoland Bight, 403 

Hewitt, Joseph E., 252,257-58 

Hickam, Horace, 18 

Hindmarsh, Albert E., 365 

Hiroshima, Japan 

Hitler, Adolf, 33, 38 

Hodges, James P., 40, 351-52, 363-64, 

Holland, Harvey N., 128 

Hollandia, 279-83, 295 

Hoover, John H., 326 

Hopkins, Harry, 103 

HQ Eighth Air Force 

HQ Mediterranean Allied Tactical Air 

photoreconnaissance and interpretation 

nuclear bombing of, 346,387-88 

390 

ULTRA clearance, 66 

Force 

capability, 89 

HQ Ninth Air Force 

ULTRA clearance, 66 

Hubler, Martin, 300, 3 13 

Hughes, Richard, 69, 134, 136-37, 150, 

Hull, Harris B., 96, 131, 132, 14344, 

191, 195,201,203,220 

179-80 

authors AWPD-42,150 

agents in Burma, 310 

coast-watchers, 261 

German aircraft replacement rates, on, 

importance in CBI Theater, 417 

jet aircraft, on, 244 

Mediterranean theater, in, 18 1 

target locations and types, Pacific, 302 

V-weapon campaign, on, 216 

Human intelligence (HUMINT) 

204 

Humphreys, R. H., 164-65, 174, 176 

Iba Air Field, 106 

Imperial Defense College, 37 

Incendiary bombiilg against Japan, 338- 

Index Guide for Procurement of Military 

India 

44 

Intelligence, 28, 39 

cryptanalysis center in, 303 

ULTRA representative stationed in, 

302-3 

India Air Task Force, 87 

Inglis, F. F., 357 

Intelligence Center, Pacific Ocean Area 

Interdiction 

(ICPOA), 324 

campaign against Italian transportation 

North Africa, 166-67 

reliance on photographic intelligence, 

network, 183-84, 186-89 

190 

Interim Committee, 383 

Interservice Topographical Section 

(U.K.), 142 

Italy 

German withdrawals from, 171-72 

invasion of, 177-78 

limited impact of air intelligence and air 

operations, 190 

photoreconnaissance over, 163 

Japan 

Allied view of air intelligence of, 292- 

96 

American attitudes toward, 387, 397, 

413 

attitudes and assumptions as limiting 

use of intelligence, 413-14 

B-29 operations against, 329-47 

coke production, 331, 365-66 

difficulties moving fuel, troops, 284 

encryption systems, 100-101 

estimates of U.S. aircraft types vs. actual strength, 294 

invades China, 29 

JN-25 naval code, 104 

most valuable intelligence accomplishments of, 293 

naval base building by, 52-53 

offensive of 1944,3 18-20 

prewar intelligence on, 20-21, 29-30 

primary responsibility for intelligence 

of, 350 

radar production and employment, 272 

rapid expansion, 1942,247-49 

rearmament, 53 

resistance to surrender, 386-88 

secrecy surrounding development, 396 

suicide squadrons of, 287 

surprise attacks by, 400 

target study of, 364 

use of small barges with fighter cover, 

weakness of prewar air intelligence on, 

268-69 

51-52 

49 1 
Piercing the Fog 

weather as factor in attacks on, 338 

weather problems encountered, 344, 

346-47 

Japanese Air Force 

Japanese Army 

information available in Germany, 372 

discounts value of intelligence analyses, 

underestimates of strength of, 29-3 1 

gasoline storage capacity in Philippines, 

292 

Japanese Army Air Force 

Japanese Combined Fleet, 247 

Japanese Naval Air Force 

defenses of oil refineries, 285 

kamikaze of, 287,290 

TAttack Force, 287-88,291 

gasoline storage by, 284 

284 

Japanese Navy 

Japanese Order of Battle Bulletins, 105-6 

Jet aircraft, 241,243-46 

JICPOA Air Estimates Group, 328 

Jockey Committee, 19695,241,246 

Joffre, J. J., 15 

Johnson, Virgil O., 361 

Joint Army-Navy Board, 40, 116 

Joint Army-Navy Planning Committee, 

Joint Chiefs of Staff 

116 

Ad Hoc Committee, 368 

ambiguous position of Arnold and AAF, 

chooses COA target list for B-29,333 

creates Joint Target Group (JTG), 9, 

Joint Target Analysis Group, 368-69 

Joint Intelligence Board, 113 

Joint Intelligence Center, Pacific Ocean 

Areas (JICPOA), 324-25 

Joint Intelligence Collection Agency 

(JICA), 124, 303 

Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC), 116 

Joint Oil Targets Committee, 239,241 

Joint Photo Reconnaissance Committee, 

Joint Strategic Committee, 116 

Joint Target Group, 369-70,37677,380, 

Joint War Plans Committee, 366 

Jones, Bryon Q., 36-37 

Jones, R. V., 222 

Kamikaze, 287,290 

389 

322 

89-90 

387 

492 

Kfumh, Theodore von, 7,373 

Kasserine Pass, 166 

Kelly, Wilkes D., 308 

Kendall, Douglas, 88 

Kenney, George C., 9, 108,112 

battle for Leyte, 285-88 

becomes air commander, Southwest 

Pacific, 253-54,256 

bombs Rabaul airfields, 254, 265, 269, 

415 

diary noting information sources, 261, 

263 

interprets intelligence for major victory 

at Bismarck Sea, 265-68 

Mindoro landing, 289, 291 

presses for assignment of B-29, 332 

requests B-29s for oil production 

skillful use of intelligence by, 277,29 1, 

takes Hollandia, 279-83 

Kesselring, Albrecht, 165, 167 

Kimmel, Husband, 114-15 

Kindleberger, Charles, 68, 23 1, 233 

King, Ernest J., 316, 365 

Kinkaid, Thomas D., 278 

Kingston, Charles T., 344 

Koenig, Egmont F., 127-28 

Koenig, Theodore, 33-34 

Korea 

target study of, 364 

Kroner, Hayes A., 1 13 

Krueger, Walter, 287 

Kuter, Laurence S., 48,91,329-30,366 

Lamont, Thomas W., 152 

Lanphier, Thomas G., 153 

Launch sites, V-weapons, 217-22 

Lawrence, Ernest O., 386 

Layton, Edwin T., 270 

Leach, W. Barton, 153 

League of Nations, 52 

Leahy, William D., 103,385 

Lee, Raymond E., 32,47 

Lee, Robert M., 78,236 

Leigh-Mallory, Trafford L. 15,212-13 

LeMay, Curtis E., 320,335,336 

509th Composite and, 382-83 

abandons precision bombing, 418 

becomes Chief of Staff, Twentieth Air 

comments on Japanese weather, 386 

estimates of Japanese weakness, 375 

attacks, 28685 

414-16 

Force, 346 
Index 

incendiary bombing by, 338-42 

reflects opinion of A-2 problems in 

Pacific war, 388 

Lend-Lease, 391 

Leyte, battle for, 285-88,291 

Life magazine, 267 

Lindbergh, Charles A., 1,3635,395-96, 

Lindsay, Richard C., 379 

Lingayen, 289-90 

Lloyd, Hugh P., 178 

Los Negros, 277-79 

Lovett, Robert A., 50,377 

418 

concerns for air intelligence without 

British assistance, 377-79 

Lowe, James T., 41 

Lowry Field, Colorado, 81 

Ludendorff, Erich, 15 

Luftwaffe. See German Air Force 

Luzon invasion, 289-90 

MacArthur, Douglas, 22 

Army position on air warfare and, 24 

attack on Philippines, 285 

command of, 249 

controls New Guinea, 283 

dismissal of SIGINT from Washington, 

infighting with Nimitz, 290 

intercept intelligence priorities, 107-8 

Pearl Harbor attack and, 25 1 

provision of intelligence to, 416 

seizure of Admiralties, 278-79 

Berlin as center for, 208 

failure to interpret regarding Pearl Harhandling by Special Sources Section, 

109 

MAGIC, 5 1 

bor, 11 3 

Collection Branch. 363 

Japanese declining power information, 

288 

Japanese plans, 1943,302 

significance in Pacific theater, 99-105 

MAGIC Diplomatic Summaries, 8, 103-5, 

Malaya, 292 

Malta Air Force, 160 

Manchuria 

target study of, 364 

Manhattan Project, 6, 380 

Manus Island, 278-79 

Mapping, 134-35 

304,352,354,364 

of AA gun positions, Japan, 335 

CBI theater, 305, 335 

Far East targets, 367 

flak maps, 136 

landfall identification maps, 135-36 

perspective target maps, 135 

March, Peyton C., 13 

Mareth Line, 168 

Marine Corps, 269 

Marshall, George C., 9, 150,202,323 

12th Air Group Corsairs, 289 

combat intelligence at Guadalcanal, 256 

and atomic bomb, 380 

policy regarding Japanese ULTRA, 109 

reluctance to invade Japan, 384 

role in development of intelligence, 398 

SSOs, on, 66 

use of air power, and, 38 

withholds ULTRA access from Arnold, 

353 

Martin, Grinnell, 391 

Mason, Edward S., 145,152 

Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 7 

Materials 

laminated methyl methacrylate, 124 

MATTERHORN, 331-32,366 

Maxwell Field, Alabama, 12 

McCormack, Alfred, 64, 66, 94 

establishes B Section, 105 

Special Branch and, 108 

McDonald, George C., 82,93, 148 

A-2lG-2 relations and, 359 

air intelligence in North Africa, 161 

comments on Sicily, 175-76 

criticizes elaborate folders from Washestablishes Mediterranean Photo Interfrustrations with British intelligence, 

priority targets identified by, 206, 243, 

sharing of intelligence with RAF, 374 

view of Italian interdiction campaign, 

view on strength of GAF, 203-5,231 

ington, 121 

pretation Centre, 180 

222 

245 

183-84, 188 

McNair, Leslie J., 35 1 

McNarney, Joseph T., 18,42,46-47 

Medhurst, C.E.H., 132 

Mediterranean Air Command (MAC), 160 

Mediterranean Allied Air Command, 70 

Mediterranean Allied Air Forces 

Mediterranean Allied Coastal Air Force 

(MAAF), 178-80 

493 
Piercing the Fog 

(MACAF), 178 

Mediterranean Allied Photographic 

Reconnaissance Wing (MAPRW), 87 

Mediterranean Allied Strategic Air Force 

(MASAF), 178 

Mediterranean Allied Tactical Air Force 

(MATAF), 178,180-81 

Mediterranean Theater, 173-90 

Merritt, L. G., 326 

Milch, Erhard, 147 

Miles, Milton E., 316-18, 321, 323 

Miles, Sherman, 28, 114-15 

assessment of Japan’s likelihood for 

attack, 53 

delineation of responsibility for 

intelligence, 42,44-45 

technical evaluation, on, 42 

Miley, A. J., 359 

Miller, William A., 294 

Milling, Thomas D., 14 

Mining 

by Fourteenth Air Force, 3 17,323 

Ministry of Economic Warfare (MEW), 

U.K., 136-38, 155,209,220 

Mitchell, William (Billy), 18-19, 19 

Modeling of targets, 86 

Montbatten, Louis, 358 

Montgomery, Bernard, 236 

Morale 

German, 151 

relation to overestimates of damage 

claims, 148 

Morse, Chandler, 145 

Moss, Malcolm W., 41-42, 120, 152-53, 

Munich agreement, 38 

Mussolini, Benito, 177, 395 

Nagasaki, Japan, 347 

Nakajima Aircraft Company, 336, 338 

National Defense Research Committee, 

Naval Group China, 321 

Naval Intelligence (OP-20-G),8 

Naval Research Laboratory, Washington, 

Navy and National Advisory Committee 

Navy Department 

cryptanalysis by, 21 

Nelson, Carl G., 313 

NEPTUNE, 224,228-30,233 

Neumann, John von, 380 

366-67 

365,380 

D.C., 175,271 

for Aeronautics, 374 

New Guinea 

importance of Japanese supply lines to, 

attack on Yamamoto, 270-71 

command of, 249 

creates TF 59,326 

fears Japanese air force reaction to Hollandia invasion, 280-81 

infighting with MacArthur, 290 

intelligence available to, 325 

265,269,416 

Nimitz, Chester W., 10, 107 

Ninth Air Force, 67-68, 70, 78-80, 167, 

bombing German rail system, 214, 

chief American air contributor to 

OVERLORD, 226 

colocated air and ground equivalent 

headquarters, 232 

plans for NEFTUNE, 228 

relation to 3d Radio Squadron, 362 

349 

225-26 

Noonan, Fred, 52 

Norden bombsight, 366-67 

Norstad, Lauris, 184, 187, 341-42, 344, 

380 

North Africa 

Norcross, Carl H., 128-29 

champions atomic bomb, 387 

Operation TORCH, 157-69 

Y intelligence and tactical air operations 

Northwest African AirForces (NAAF), 82 

A-2 functions, 162 

changes handling of air intelligence in 

North Africa, 161 

dissemination of information, 162-63 

Northwest African Coastal Air Force 

(NACAF), 160-61 

Northwest African Photographic 

Reconnaissance Wing (NAPRW), 87, 

Northwest African Strategic Air Force 

in, 99 

161- 62 

(NASAF), 160 

antishipping campaign, in, 166-67 

launches Operation FLAX, 168-69 

Northwest African Tactical Air Force 

Nuclear weapons, 346 

(NATAF), 160,166-68 

AAF intelligence and atomic bomb, 

Soviet push for, 392 

380-88 

O’Connor, Morgan B., 313 

494 
Index 

O’Connor, William J., 88 

Office of the Assistant Chief of Air Staff, 

Intelligence (AC/AS, Intelligence) 

A-2 creation, responsibilities, 43, 116- 

25 

Air Intelligence Service, 116 

duplication of work with G-2, 119 

operational intelligence work of, 119- 

relations with G-2,45-46 

technical intelligence, 121-25 

training responsibilities, 129 

see also A-2 

prewar, 102 

21 

Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI) 

Office of Scientific Research and DevelOffice of Strategic Services (OSS), 303 

opment (OSRD), 380 

Detachment 101,310-11 

Enemy Objectives Unit (EOU), 6,137- 

38,201 

EOU report on feasibility of target systems attack, 209 

Officer Candidate School (OCS), 127-28 

Ofstie, Ralph A., 29-30 

Olive, J. F., Jr., 41 

Oliver, Robert C., 39,40 

Operation ARGUMENT, 74, 76-77, 203, 

USSTAF intelligence assessment of, 

205-8 

206-7 

Operation AVALANCHE, 177 . 

Operation BODYLINE, 220,222 

Operation BOLERO, 182 

Operation DIADEM, 189 

Operation DRAGOON, 232 

Operation FLAX, 168-69 

Operation FRANTIC, 178 

Operation GALVANIC, 326 

Operation HUSKY, 168, 173 

coordination of intelligence for, 174-75 

Operation OLYMPIC, 417 

Operation OVERLORD, 78, 89, 172-73, 

information requirements, ground and 

Operation POINTBLANK, 194-95, 224, 

Operation STRANGLE, 18 1, 184-89 

OperationToRCH, 81,86,98,141,157-69 

air support for ground operations, 173 

impact on American air operations, 405 

Oppenheimer, J. Robert, 386 

212-13,412 

logistical systems, 224 

407-8 

Oshima Hiroshi, 208 

Otopeni, Italy, 197 

Owens, Ray L., 272-73 

Pacific Ocean Area (POA), 107 

Pacific theater 

Partridge, Earle E., 187-88 

Patrick, Mason M., 18, 19 

Patton, George, 69 

Pearl Harbor, 3,4,8 

Fleet Radio Unit, Pacific (FRUPac), 107 

evolution of photointelligence in, 87 

air intelligence implications of, 1 13-15 

causes for disaster, 400401,413-14 

failure of intelligence, as, 52-55 

rise in Japanese activity preceding, 

250-5 1 

Penny, William G., 380 

Perera, Guido, 91, 152-53, 333, 366 

Pershing, John J. 13, 15 

Petroleum 

German, 209-12.237-40.410-11 

Japanese, 28445,334 

Philippine Islands, 3,4, 53, 247-48 

consolidation of American power in, 

formal assault plans of Allies, 284 

projected use of air power against, 

recovery of downed and captured men 

290 

1930s, 249 

in, 259 

Phillips, James F., 29 

Phoenix, 278 

Photointelligence, 80-94 

British photointerpretation school at 

German rail system, on, 226 

mission categories, 82-84 

photointerpretation, phases of, 83-85 

V-weapons, on, 216,223 

by British, 5 

of Japan, 336 

OVERLORD demands for, 233-34 

role for Twelfth Air ForcelMATAF, 

value in Mediterranean theater, 180 

Karachi, 305 

Photoreconnaissance 

189 

Piskounov, S. A., 391 

Ploesti, Romania 

German oil refineries in, 19 1-92, 206, 

210 

Polifka, Karl L., 180 

Port Moresby-Milne Bay, 263 

495 
Piercing the Fog 

Portal, Charles, 176,353-54,404 

Post-Hostilities Intelligence Requirements 

Survey of the German Air Force, 372 

Potsdam Conference, 384 

Powell, Lewis, F., Jr., 69, 401 

photoreconnaissance, on, 80 

ULTRA information, on, 74-75, 77 

Pratt, W. V., 22 

Prince of Wales, 248 

Princeton University, 152 

Prisoners of war (POW) 

Prudential Insurance Company, 371 

PURPLE (code) machine, 208,250,253 

Quesada, Elwood R., 41, 69, 71, 351, 

Japanese interrogations of, 294-96,387 

36344,375,377-78,390 

Rabaul, Simpson Bay 

attacks on, 254,265, 269,273-74,415 

importance to Japan, 272,293 

RABID intelligence, 108 

Radar 

in B-29,334 

intercept in Pacific war, 271 

limitations of, 367, 386 

sea-search, 317 

use by Japan, 335 

Radar countermeasures (RCM) analyses, 

RAF. See Royal Air Force 

Ramsey, DeWitt C., 46 

Reed, Gerald E., 3 13 

Repulse, 248 

Research and Analysis Branch, OSS, 137 

Research and Experiment (R.E.) 

Reserves, Air Corps 

in intelligence, 41 

Richardson, A. T., 308 

Rommel, Erwin, 167 

328,334 

interdiction report, Italy, 189 

Department (R.E.8), 138-39 

speculations on sources of Allied 

information, 165-66 

Rood, Leslie L., 78 

Roosevelt, Eliot, 87, 90-91 

Roosevelt, Franklin D., 41, 50, 82, 395, 

398 

ARCADIA conference, 11 1 

commissions USSBS, 37 1 

focus on German rather than Japanese 

meets with and responds to Kenney, 

threat, 400-401 

267-68 

orders assault into North Africa, 157 

orders increased aircraft production, 38 

requests production requirements, 48 

Root, Elihu, Jr., 152-53 

Rostow, Walter, 213 

Royal Air Force (RAF) 

Central Interpretation Unit (CIU), Medcombined intelligence with, 4 

Eaker Plan and, 191 

Eighth Air Force personnel assigned to, 

Intelligence School, 132 

photointerpretation training, 126-27 

quality of prewar infomation, 47, 

representation on air intelligence 

strategic air operations and, 37 

Y-Service, 95, 133,403 

Y-Service collection responsibility in 

Royal Air Force Bengal Command, 305, 

Royal Air Force Bomber Command 

menham, 585-86,88 

133,403 

50-5 1 

committee, 357 

India-Burma, 3 1 1 

308 

attacks Peenemunde, 216 

attacks V-weapon sites, 222 

mapping needs of, 135 

urban area attacks by, 339 

crash intelligence, 122 

Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) 

Royal Naval Intelligence Division (NID), 

Runnalls, J.F.B., 302 

Russian Far East Fleet, 400 

Samford, John A., 36849,381 

Saville, Gordon P., 40 

Scanlon, Martin, 32,4346 

Schneider, Max F., 48 

Schuirman, R. E., 357 

Schweinfurt, Germany, 201-3,400,408- 

Schweppenburg, Geyer von, 410 

Scientific Advisory Group, 373 

Seventh Air Force, 32628,345 

Sharp, A. C., 150 

Sherman, L. C., 256-57 

Sherr, Joe R., 250-51 

Shigemitsu Namoru, 288 

Shipbuilding 

139 

9,421-22 

reduction of Japanese, 33 1 

496 
Index 

Shipping 

antisubmarine campaign effect on loscampaign against Axis, 166-67 

Japanese, 271-72,364 

stoppage of Japanese, 34546 

ULTRA information on Axis, 164-67 

ses, 1943, 145 

Short, Walter C., 114 

Sicily 

Allied attacks on, 168-69 

use of information for sorties against 

roads and railways, 174 

see also Operation HUSKY 

Signal Intelligence Service, U.S. Army, 

Signal Security Agency, 361 

Signals intelligence (SIGINT), 57-58, 62 

American units in Mediterranean, 180 

Far East operations, 106-9 

forces, 98 

independent service units created by 

low-grade signal interception and appliresponsibilities divided between War 

role during invasion of Sicily and Italy, 

value against GAF, 230-3 1 

180 

American tactical air forces, 98 

cation by, 94 

and Navy departments, 102 

176 

Sino- American Cooperative Organization 

Sixth Army, 28 1,283,287,295 

SKF (Swedish firm), 153 

Slessor, John C., 46 

Smith, Truman, 33,35 

Smith, Wilfred J., 313 

Solomon Islands, 263 

Sorenson, Edgar P., 7, 1 17, 122-24, 129, 

Sources of information 

(SACO), 316-17 

defense of, 270 

152,350,360,365-66 

A-2, 134-35 

COA, 153 

coast watchers, 276 

for OVERLORD, 226 

for STRANGLE, 188,190 

on targets, 1945,242-43 

Southwest PacificArea(SWPA), 107,253 

Soviet Army, 178 

Soviet Union, 391-92 

Spaatz, Carl A., 19,92,379-80,414,421 

aerial reconnaissance and antishipping 

campaign, 163 

campaign mission directive July 1946, 

commands USASTAF, 346 

commands USSTAF, 172,178 

competition for German secrets, 374 

difficulties evaluating damage, 239 

directive on Eighth Air Force’s mission, 

directs VIII Bomber Command against 

directs attack on German oil industry, 

directs or controls Eighth, Fifteenth, 

establishes HQ NAAF, 161 

intelligence requirements of, 112 

jet production targeting, 244-45 

lessons of Mediterranean theater learned 

oil campaign, on, 213 

opposition to antisubmarine policy, 145 

persuades Eisenhower to bomb petrophotoreconnaissance and, 83, 89 

prewar air estimate by, 47 

readiness of air intelligence, on, 40 

strategic air forces’ priorities, 1944,205 

target priorities of, 155 

transportation system bombing, 412 

ULTRA access, 66 

387 

140 

submarines, 142 

23740 

Ninth, 205 

by, 406-7 

leum industry, 410 

Spanish Civil War, 35-36 

Special Intelligence Bulletin, 108 

Special Operations Executive, British 

in CBI, 310 

Special security officers (SSOs), 65-73 

covers of, 67 

recordkeeping by, 68 

role in air force organizations, 358 

Speer, Albert, 147,407-8,410 

Squadrons (numbered) 

1st Radio (Mobile), 361-62 

3d Radio, 362 

3d Radio Detachment 3 (Mobile), 98, 

5th Radio (Mobile), 311-12 

6th Radio Squadrbn, 363 

16th Reconnaissance, 180 

17th Reconnaissance, 87 

436th Bomb Squadron, 305 

230 

Stalin, Joseph, 171 

Standard Oil, 31 

Stark, Harold R., 53 

Stearns, J. C., 380, 382 

497 
Piercing the Fog 

Stilwell, Joseph W., 298, 304, 320-21, 

Stimson, Henry L., 21,50,59,64,395 

414,417-18 

and atomic bomb, 380,383-86 

code breaking funding, 101 

forms Special Branch, 102 

Stone, E. E., 8 

Strategic Air Command 

nucleus of, 9 

Strategic air attack concept, ACTS, 26-28 

Stratemeyer, George E., 119, 123, 298, 

Strong, George V., 4042,357 

Strong, Kenneth, 37 

Submarines, German 

308,311-12,315 

attack policy of U.S., and outcomes, 

efficacy of Allied attacks on Japanese 

use against Japanese ships, 318 

14246 

shipping, 284 

Sutherland, John R., 307 

Sutherland, Richard K., 250, 256, 267, 

Switzer, Byron R., 124 

Tactical Air Intelligence Centre (TAIC), 

Target analysis, Far East, 64-71 

Target development and analysis of 

differences in AmericanIBritish 

415 

312 

specific target data 

requirements, 136 

ULTRA and, 74-75.78 

Target selection 

Taylor, Richard, 3 13 

Taylor, Telford, 35,64-66, 94,401 

Technical Air Intelligence Centre, New 

Technical intelligence 

early 1940s, 121-25 

Tedder, Arthur, 160,213,412-13 

Tenth Air Force, 298, 300-301 

Delhi, 308 

China Air Task Force (CATF), 297-98, 

combined into EAC, 308 

India Air Task Force (IATF), 297-98, 

intelligence available to, 305-6 

role against Japan, 112 

301,304 

305 

Teramoto Kunachi, 28 1 

Third Army, 66 

Thirteenth Air Force 

activated in the Solomons, 256 

intelligence, 256-57 

reinforcements for, 268 

under navy control, 269 

Thirteenth Air Task Force 

based in Admiralties, 279 

bombardment of Woleai, 282 

Thorsheimer, 167 

Tibbetts, Paul W., 34546,382 

Timberlake, Patrick W., 30 

Tizard, Henry, 62 

Tizard Mission, 62 

Togo Heihachiro, 400 

Tokyo, Japan 

raids on, 342-43 

Traffic analysis (TA), 58 

Training 

122 

132-33 

126-32 

air technical intelligence (ATI) course, 

Eighth Air Force personnel, in U.K., 

evolution of Air Intelligence School, 

Transportation systems 

Allied successes against German, 41 1 

Burmese, 307 

German railways, 212-13,241,411-12 

Italian railways, 181-82,187-88 

Truk Atoll, 275 

Truman, Harry S., 380,383,385 

Tsuji Masanobu, 292 

Tsunoda Koshiro, 287 

Tunisia 

Allied failure to capture, 160 

Twaddle, Harry L., 126 

Twelfth Air Force, 78, 141, 349 

absorbed into NAAF, 161 

becomes tactical under MATAF, 178 

intelligence on Italian railways, 18 1-82, 

relationship with MATAF intelligence, 

509th Composite and, 383 

bombing restricted before atomic 

Twining, Nathan, 112, 178,254,256-57, 

187-88 

181 

Twentieth Air Force, 333 

attacks, 381-82 

268 

becomes COMAIRSOLS, 272 

ULTRA, 59-74 

British withhold information of, 348 

Chennault’s access to, 323 

civilian contributions to intelligence, 

498 
Index 

398 

clues of German offensive, 235-36 

comprehensiveness on German army 

contribution to successful campaign 

crucial role in air war, North Africa, 

discloses Japan’s regional defense planhandled under air intelligence working 

identifies kamikaze, 287 

importance in American strategic air 

importance in last years of WWII, 173 

indicates GAF losses, 208 

information on German oil shortages, 

information regarding GAF, 230 

input for tactical air command, 79 

intelligence-sharing agreement and, 350 

Kenney’s use of, 296 

leads to deception around New Guinea 

coast, 28 1 

limited access of A-2 to, 363 

limited American clearance, in Mediterranean theater, 180,18 1 

limited role in damage assessment, 203, 

208 

locations of fuel and ammunition 

dumps, 234 

policy level of, 189 

reasons for success of, 406 

relationship to Allied tactical air operareliability on unit strength, 204 

reveals Japanese plans to defend Kyureveals Japan’s study of Allied air operreveals location of panzer headquarters, 

role of, 394 

role in battle for Leyte, 288 

role in Mediterranean theater, 182-83, 

separation of Anglo-American intellisignificant information on German 

strategic implications of information, 

units, 182 

against oil industry, 41 1 

163-69 

ning, 284 

agreement, 358 

operations, 74-77 

239-40 

tions, 78-80 

shu, 384 

ations, 293 

234 

406 

gence regarding, 134 

movements, 410 

242 

underutilization by air intelligence, 

use by Australia, 108 

use in Operation HUSKY, 174-75 

use in Operation TORCH, 158 

use in Pacific and CBI, 99-105 

use against Japanese shipping, 317 

usefulness in damage assessment, 139 

value against GAF, 147 

negative response to COA, 153 

postwar strategic vulnerability of, 391- 

2d Signal Service Company, 107, 250, 

18th Photointerpretation Unit, 3 17 

32d Division, 263 

138th Signal Radio Intercept Company, 

837th Signal Service Detachment, 107 

849th SIGINT Company, 98, 180 

Air Service, 11 

interservice rivalries during WWII, 8 

Manhattan Engineer District, 380, 383 

Signal Intelligence Service, 5 1 

United States Army Basic Field Manual, 

United States Army Signal Corps’ SIG412-13 

United Kingdom 

United States 

92 

United States Army 

252-53 

36 1 

Military Intelligence, 49 

INT Service (SIS). 101 

radio intercept at FOG Santiago, Manila, 

250 

United States Army Strategic Air Forces 

United States Board of Economic Warfare 

United States Joint Army-Navy Board, 51 

United States Naval Group China, 259, 

United States Navy 

(USASTAF) 

creation of, 346 

(BEW), 137-38 

323 

Air Technical Section. 125 I ~~ 

air intelligence working agreement and, 

357.359 

breaking of Japanese codes by, 104 

claims to German secrets, 373 

crash intelligence by, 124 

defeat at Savo Island, 413 

exclusion from CB, 108 

Far East target identification work by, 

intelligence, 5 1 

368-69 

499 
Piercing the Fog 

intelligence failures, Pearl Harbor, 

intelligence operations in Manila, 247 

Japanese code breaking, 59 

Joint Intelligence Center, Pacific Ocean 

Area, relations with Army and mining 

by, 345 

Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI), 30 

presence in China, 312 

quality of photography, 370-71 

signal intelligence units (CAST and BELCONNEN), 250,253 

stages Yamamoto mission, 8 

strategic offensive debates with, 22 

withholding of SIGINT from air force, 

113-15 

257 

United States Pacific Fleet, 51 

United States Strategic Air Forces, Europe 

(USSTAF) 

creation of, 172 

information to assist targeting, 1945, 

oil plan of, 212-13 

24 143 

United States Strategic Bombing Survey 

planning for operations against GAF, 

postwar analysis by, 90 

Universities’ contribution to intelligence, 

University of Maryland, 127 

Van Norden, Langdon, 67 

Van Slyck, DeForest, 367-68 

Vanaman, Arthur W., 34,48 

Vance, Reginald F., 252 

Vandenberg, Hoyt, 69,72,232 

Verville, Alfred, 19 

Vincent, Clinton D., 319-20 

Vuillemin, Joseph, 397 

Walker, Kenneth, 48,295 

War Department 

(USSBS), 371,375-76,387 

205 

402 

creates Army Air Forces Pacific Ocean 

cryptanalysis by, 21 

delineates intelligence responsibilities, 

directs establishment of intelligence 

General Staff G-2, Army Intelligence, 

intelligence failures, Pearl Harbor, 

Area (AAFPOA), 326-28 

4546 

sections, 41 

3,7-8 

113-15 

mapping responsibilities, CBI, 305 

TR 210-5,22 

Victory Program, AWPD-1,3,63 

ACTS scenarios, 26-27 

color coded, 21,22 

RAINBOW, 40,48,51 

Conference, 2 1 

war plans 

Washington Naval Disarmament 

Washington Naval Treaty, 21 

Wavell, Archibald P., 248,415 

Weapons 

Weather 

334 

SO-caliber machine guns, 265 

difficulty forecasting distant targets, 

report interception, 97 

reporting by Fifth Air Force, 261 

Weaver, Walter R., 22, 123, 129 

Webster, Charles, 156 

Webster, Robert M., 26 

Wedemeyer, Albert C., 320-21 

Weekly Intelligence Report, 162 

Western Desert Air Force, 168-69 

Wewak airfields, 276-77,28 1 

Weyland, 0. P., 69,71 

White, A. W., 370,420 

White, Thomas D., 30-31, 40, 43, 350- 

52,398 

on A-UG-2 relationship, 360 

named A-2,357 

struggle for an independent A-2, 360 

prepares for Battle of the Bismarck Sea, 

receives regular reports of Japanese air 

use of intelligence with Kenney, 29 1 

Whitehead, Ennis, 25849,361,415 

266,416 

activity, 275-76 

Wick, H. W., 365 

Williams, C. G., 208 

Williams, Jesse C., 313-14 

Willoughby, Charles A., 108,253,384 

complains of navy, 257 

estimates troops on Los Negros, 278 

Willoughby Bulletin, 108 

Wilson, Donald, 26 

Wilson, Hugh, 38 

Wilson, R. B., 380 

Wilson, Woodrow, 13 

Wings (numbered) 

8th Photographic Reconnaissance 

(Prov.), 82, 85, 89-90 

500 
Index 

42d, 188 

68th Composite, 3 18, 320 

3 13th Bombardment, 345,383 

325th Reconnaissance, 90 

see also Northwest African Photographic Reconnaissance Wing 

Wireless Experimental Center, 105 

Wise, S. C., 87 

Wolfe, Kenneth B., 331, 336 

World War I 

air intelligence in, 12-1 7 

use of aerial photography in, 81 

Wright Field, Ohio, 31, 122, 125 

Wurtsmith, Paul B., 261 

3U.S. QJVERNNEmI PRINTING OFFICE : 1996 0 - 404-420 (62061) 

XI1 Tactical Air Force, 69 

XI1 Air Force Photo Center, 18 1 

Y intelligence, 94-99 

Y -Service 

of AAF, 361-64 

tracking of aircraft movement by, 175 

use in North Africa, 164 

Yamamoto Isoroku, 247,270-71 

Yamashita Tomoyuki, 289,292 

Yardley, Herbert O., 21 

Zuckerman, Solly, 184,187,213 

501