Piercing the Fog - Air Force Historical Studies Office

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, set for 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 pre-
HUSKY 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
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