Piercing the Fog - Air Force Historical Studies Office

CHAPTER 1
Early Intelligence Organization in the
Army Air Corps
INSTITUTIONALIZING MILITARY INTELLIGENCE in the United States
began only in the last years of the nineteenth century, and air intelligence has
been a distinctly twentieth-century phenomenon. The evolution of American air
intelligence-in the decades preceding World War I1 was marked by contention.
Compounding the problems of establishing and then of implementing the new
air intelligence organizations and functions was the relationship between these
issues of air intelligence and the broader questions of the role and position of
the American air forces.
An air force intended primarily to provide direct support to ground forces
would require intelligence different from that required by an air force that had
expanded, “independent” missions. Determining the most effective organization
for the collection, evaluation, and dissemination of air intelligence depended on
both the purpose of the air arm and its position within the military establish-
ment. Given the lack of consensus throughout this period on either the role or
the position of American air forces, the Army’s uncertainty regarding air
intelligence was inevitable.
As late as one month before its entry into World War I, the U.S. Army
lacked any form of air intelligence organization. In the course of that war, the
development of the U.S. Army’s Air Service spawned several organizations,
both in Washington and with the American Expeditionary Force (AEF) in
France, concerned with air intelligence or air information, as it was variously
called. Despite the broad application of air power during that conflict, most
American Army officers came away convinced the Air Service would remain
subordinate to the dominant ground forces. To the extent they thought about it,
air intelligence (by whatever title) involved primarily the use of airplanes and
balloons to obtain information regarding enemy military forces to support an
Army commander’s decisions. At times, it also included the collection and
evaluation of information regarding the air forces of real or potential enemies:
on this information British, French, and, later, American flyers planned their
earliest counterair missions in attacks on German airfields.
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