Piercing the Fog - Air Force Historical Studies Office

Piercing the Fog
prisoner of war interrogations. . . .7’138 Lt. Gen. Ira Eaker, in his report covering
Eighth Air Force activities from February 1942 through December 1943, noted
only that the Eighth had been asked to draw up and execute plans for the August
and September operation^.'^' On August 11,1943, Col. Richard Hughes, then
the Eighth Air Force chief of plans, but an officer with extensive intelligence
experience with Eaker, attended a meeting in the office of the RAF’s ACAS,
Operations, at which an attack was specifically discussed. According to the
minutes of that meeting, Hughes reported that “by arrangement” no directive
had been or would be issued to the commanding general, but that “General
Anderson” (presumably Brig. Gen. Orvil A. Anderson, then chairman of the
Anglo-American committee to coordinate air operations) was “conversant with
the whole position in regard to BODYLINE,” the code name for the British
attempt to define the existence of and the threat posed by the V-2.140
In October 1943 Prime Minister Churchill informed President Roosevelt by
message of the intelligence gathered on the V-weapons, and the British Chiefs
of Staff agreed to pass intelligence to senior American leaders in Washington
and England. Several days later the MEW was authorized to discuss the subject
with the EOU and other appropriate American agencies. An Anglo-American
committee, now operating under the code name CROSSBOW, was organized in
November. 14’
New surprises awaited the Allies. Through October and early November,
CIU interpreters, advised that the size of the V-weapons required rail transport,
pored over photographs of northern France, looking for activity around railroad
tracks. The first week in November, a French construction supervisor passed
along the location of eight unusual sites on which he was working. Photoreconnaissance
flown on the basis of this tip revealed all eight sites, each including
several long buildings with an upward curving end, from which they collectively
produced the name ski sites. None was near a rail line. With the
characteristic buildings to alert them and the knowledge that they needed to
expand their search away from railheads, the interpreters went back to previous
photographs. Within 48 hours they identified 26 additional ski sites. By mid-
December, more than 75 sites had been di~covered.’~’
Although these sites might be related to the pilotless aircraft or flying
bomb, this was not confirmed until the end of November 1943 when CIU made
a dual discovery, the first link between buildings at Peenemunde and those at
the ski sites. Alerted to look for “a very small aircraft, smaller than a fighter,”
keen-eyed British interpreter Constance Babington-Smith went back to
photographs of Peenemunde taken the previous June and picked out a small,
winged projectile leaning against a wall. Several days later another was seen on
a launch ramp.143
Having determined the flying bomb represented the more immediate threat,
the Allies decided in early December to strike 26 ski sites judged to be at least
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