Piercing the Fog - Air Force Historical Studies Office

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 comman-
dant, 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
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