Piercing the Fog - Air Force Historical Studies Office

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 photointer-
pretation 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
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