Piercing the Fog - Air Force Historical Studies Office

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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