Piercing the Fog - Air Force Historical Studies Office

The European Theater of Operations
Intelligence gained through radio intercepts could often contribute to
immediate air action. According to the IX TAC history, intercepted SIGINT
passed to aircraft already in the air resulted in the claimed destruction of 180
enemy planes between June 1944 and March 1945. This figure does not include
the results of missions planned specifically to take advantage of a second
benefit of SIGINT: the analyses of enemy operational patterns. Such analyses
enabled intelligence officers to predict enemy actions. On October 6,1944, for
example, the IX TAC SIGINT officer advised fighter control that enemy aircraft
operating around Aachen would most probably return to base by flying directly
from Aachen to Bonn. Scrambled fighters, directed to intercept the enemy en
route when the latter were low on fuel and out of ammunition, shot down
twenty.lgO
By mid-August the condition of the opposing air force was obvious. At the
highest theater air level, General McDonald wrote, “It does not appear to be an
overconfident statement that the German Air Force is at present time powerless
to influence our Allied ground armies’ operations.’”’’ At the cutting edge of air
operations, the special security officer assigned to First Tactical Air Force
operating with the Sixth Army Group observed, “Allied air operations almost
completely disregarded the GAF.’”’*
During the first days of NEPTUNE, in addition to neutralizing enemy air
power, Allied air forces provided direct support to troops on the beach and
focused on isolating the battle areas through interdiction. In the fluid situation
that prevailed, intelligence arrived from several sources. The photoreconnaissance
that had covered all of northern France in the preceding months now
guided fighter-bombers and medium bombers against bridges that had not been
destroyed for deception purposes, including the important spans across the
Loire River. Visual reconnaissance proved the most important source for the
transient intelligence needed to discover and attack troops on the move. At the
same time, ULTRA decrypts and intercepts of German Army low-grade radio
signals both eased the task of tracking enemy formations. Most accommodating
in this regard was a German army inspector general’s report only two weeks
before D-day that provided the location of every major German armor unit in
France and the Low C~untries.”~
On June 16, Captain Kindleberger, a member of the EOU and at the time
working as an ULTRA handler with 21st Army Group, prepared an interim
assessment of German reserve movement by rail, listing the location of virtually
all enemy units then moving toward Normandy. The information contained in
this document came from photointelligence, tactical air reconnaissance, air
liaison officers assigned to U.S. Army units, and visual reports by Eighth Air
Force fighters on escort duty with bombers, as well as from SIGINT.’’4
The successful landing of Allied ground troops in Normandy on June 6,
1944, opened a new dimension to the air war in western Europe and thus placed
new demands on air intelligence. The nature of air intelligence in support of
23 1