Piercing the Fog - Air Force Historical Studies Office

Introduction
and dealt with the other services or agencies that supported air intelligence
around the world.
Two numbered air forces far removed from one another illustrate the
differences that far-flung air intelligence officers experienced. Facing the
Lufhyafse, the Eighth Air Force in Great Britain could draw on the RAF’s years
of air intelligence experience and on the products of ULTRA’S penetration of the
German Enigma encryption device. From the earliest days of American air
operations in Europe, the Eighth’s intelligence office (and then that of the U.S.
Strategic Air Forces in Europe [USSTAF]) possessed advantages unknown to
airmen in the same line of work in other theaters. Across the Pacific Ocean,
facing Japan’s army and naval air forces, the Fifth Air Force in Australia and
New Guinea had built its air intelligence on the slim base of trained Australian
specialists and the experience of some American airmen who had escaped from
the Philippines and the Netherlands East Indies. The Japanese encryption
methods, particularly those of the Japanese Army, proved extremely difficult
to penetrate, and ULTRA sources in that region were for many months limited
to extracts from the MAGIC diplomatic summaries and to the fruits of US. Navy
intelligence efforts in Honolulu, where direction finding, traffic analysis, and
entry into some of the Japanese Navy’s encryption systems shed light on some
of the enemy’s important capabilities and intentions. The size and tasks of air
intelligence in Alaska, China, India, Egypt, or the Central Pacific had to be
tailored to fit the needs of the local Allied command structure and the enemy
situation.
Nor did the number of people assigned in one locale reflect the extent of the
problems addressed or accomplishments made by air intelligence elsewhere.
Differences in enemy forces, climate and terrain, commander’s priorities, chain
of command, availability of information, and the application of new technology-all
created different circumstances that affected the local A-2’s
involvement in planning, strategy, and tactics. For example, the RAF’s practical
experience in aerial photography operations, its excellent cameras and
reconnaissance aircraft, and, above all, the skilled photointerpreters at RAF
Medmenham (the main British photoreconnaissance center) strongly influenced
creation of a similar and highly productive AAF effort in the British Isles.
Interwar American photographic experimentation had resulted in development
of the wide-angle strip camera excellent for terrain mapping, the long-distance
oblique camera, and high-altitude cameras plus a wide variety of film. The RAF
and the AAF were ideally suited in the advantages each brought to the
Alliance.6 Photoreconnaissance and photointerpretation became extremely
important tools for air and ground intelligence everywhere, but, until 1944, in
no other theater were its practitioners as proficient as the American and British
Allies in the United Kingdom.
When American air officers in Great Britain realized the importance of
photointelligence to tactical and strategic bombardment, they were convinced
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