Brief History of Army MI - Fort Huachuca - U.S. Army

A BRIEF HISTORY OF U.S. ARMY MILITARY INTELLIGENCEtions made him preeminent in thefield. His series of Army texts, MilitaryCryptanalysis, are the most lucidpresentations on the solution of basicciphers that have ever been published.As the Army mobilized for WorldWar II, the Signal Corps cryptographyeffort expanded under the leadershipof Major General JosephMauborgne, Chief Signal Officer, andFriedman. He reached the peak ofhis career when he and his team solvedthe Japanese PURPLE code system in1940. The strain of this endeavor,however, led to a nervous breakdownand his medical retirement as a colonelin the Signal Corps reserves.Friedman and the other inventorsin the SIS developed the M-134ACode Converter in 1937, signing theirindividual patent rights over to theSecretary of War. The machine sawlimited production because of smallbudgets and only 69 were in use justafter Pearl Harbor. Used for highlevelcommunications, it was calledthe SIGABA.The Corps of Intelligence Police,continued after the war, performingsecurity tasks for the Versailles peacetalks, conducting investigations in theU.S. Army occupation forces in Germany,and functioning in Army departments,notably in the 8th CorpsArea which encompassed the MexicanBorder. The number of noncommissionedintelligence police hit anall-time low of 15 in 1934. The organizationwas revitalized in 1940when its authorized staff was raisedto 288. The were redesignated theCounter Intelligence Corps, U.S.Army, on 1 January 1942.Attaches continued, between thetwo world wars, to be a first line sourceof information on foreign militarydevelopments. In major countries theattache was authorized an assistant inthe form of an Air Attache to look atthe technology of air warfare. Theattache in Germany was especially activebetween 1935 to 1939, makinggood use of the U.S. officers who wereattending the German War Academy.Chosen for their proficiency in theGerman language, these student officersmingled at the highest levels inthe German War ministry and wroteauthoritative studies on various assignedaspects of the German Army.Their reports found their way backto the Intelligence Branch. (The PositiveBranch was reorganized in February1922 and emerged three yearslater as the Intelligence Branch ofMID.)The National Defense Act of1920 created a military intelligencereserve within the Officers ReserveCorps. It became effective on 4 August1921, adopting the secretiveSphinx as its symbol. The ACofS,G-2, WDGS, Brig. Gen. Dennis E.Nolan, saw this as a way to expandthe number of military intelligencespecialists in time of war. But becauseof a number of factors, not the leastof which was the lack of an authorizationto grant commissions to recentlydemobilized intelligence personnel,the MI Reserve never reachedits full potential, averaging only about635 officers in the years 1921 to 1941.At the time of the Japanese attack, theMI Reserve was “woefully inadequateto fulfill its assigned mission of providinga proper cadre of military intelligenceofficers for required use inwar,” according to Maj. Gen. ShermanMiles, the G-2 at the beginning ofWorld War II.Electronic warfare got its startearly in the century, according toAlfred Price’s book, The History ofU.S. Electronic Warfare. During the1904 Japanese bombardment of theRussian naval base of Port Arthur, aRussian radio operator on shore heardradio signals from Japanese scoutingcraft used as spotters and correctlyguessed their mission. Using his sparktransmitter, he successfully confusedthe signals and unwittingly opened theera of electronic warfare. Some of theearly landmarks in EW follow. Anelementary radio direction was placedaboard the U.S. Navy coal ship Lebanonin 1906. The Navy bureau chiefwrote that “the system will have a farreachingeffect on the safety of vesselsat sea, and will possibly play an importantpart in naval warfare by makingit feasible to locate the directionof the enemy’s fleet.” Scientists at theNaval Research Laboratories atAnacostia discovered in 1922 that theradio signal that they were sendingacross the Potomac River was interruptedby passing ships, leading to thediscovery of a principle upon whichradar would be founded.A provisional Radio IntelligenceDetachment was organized at FortMonmouth, NJ, in 1934. In 1936engineers at the Naval Research Labbuilt a 28 Mhz pulsed radar thatcould detect aircraft 10 miles away.Subsequent models increased therange with the addition of megahertz.With information from NRL, theSignal Corps Lab at Fort Monmouthalso tested a 110 Mhz pulsed radar.The NRL also developed a grounddirection finder.Between wars the Regular Armyintelligence staff was again pared awayto peacetime levels. Now called theWar Department G2, there were 20officers and 48 civilians on staff.General Dwight Eisenhower remem-Write Fort Huachuca Museums; U.S. Army Intelligence Center and Fort Huachuca; ATTN: ATZS-PAM; Fort Huachuca, AZ 85613-6000.25