Piercing the Fog - Air Force Historical Studies Office

The Pacific and Far East
throughout the area, spending considerable time at Thirteenth headquarters
whenever he was needed. Sherman’s staff prepared air OB and other operational
air intelligence for both Harmon and Twining. Because Admiral Halsey’s
intelligence officer would not provide Harmon’s staff with a regular flow of
ULTRA, early in 1943 and over the objections of Halsey’s intelligence officer,
Sherman arranged with General Willoughby to receive locally derived and
Washington SIGINT information from Brisbane. Sherman sent as much of this
material as possible to Twining and the Thirteenth Air Force A-2.2’
In 1942 and 1943, the SPA and SWPA commands maintained operational
and intelligence liaison to obtain mutual support. Especially in the early
operations on Guadalcanal, the services of SWPA’s Australian coast watchers,
who used battery-powered or crude pedal-driven radio transmitters to send their
observations down the Solomons chain, were of great utility. Although the
watchers were under SWPA’s Allied Intelligence Bureau, the Australians
stationed an officer with COMSOPAC as coast-watcher coordinator. Despite
the command liaison, reports continued to describe problems in intelligence and
operational liaison between forward echelons in each theater. In Brisbane, Col.
Benjamin Cain, who eventually became Fifth Air Force A-2, asserted that
SWPA gave the U.S. Navy all the intelligence it obtained but said the Navy
frequently held up distribution when it did not think SWPA needed to know.
Cain was not willing to lay any blame on old Army-Navy rivalries. “The trouble
actually was,” he reminisced, “the fact that it took so long to realize how much
each one of the services needed the other.” Such benevolent views as Cain’s
were not universal. Given his proclivity for centralized control, it was not
surprising that Willoughby had stronger feelings. “The Navy” he complained
in 1945, “has shrouded the whole enterprise [SIGINT] in mystery, excluding
other services and rigidly centralizing the whole enterprise. . . . the Melbourne
station is under direct orders of Washington, is not bound by local responsibilities,
forwards what they select, and when it suits them. The possibility of
erroneous or incomplete selection is as evident now as it was in 1941.””
After the June 1944 reorganization that brought Thirteenth Air Force into
General Kenney ’s new FEAF, Thirteenth’s intelligence office drew upon the
resources of the AAF Directorate of Intelligence. The Thirteenth’s A-2
throughout World War I1 lacked functions peculiar to other A-2 organizations.
The Thirteenth’s staff was well suited to using technical data to aid the flying
groups in drawing up tactical air operations plans and to aid them in avoiding
Japanese defenses while attacking.
The American Fifth Air Force also had an intelligence section, but unlike
his appreciation for the work of Hewitt and the Australians, Kenney often
groused about the Fifth A-2’s lack of ability. As late as May 5,1943, he noted
that he needed a Fifth Air Force intelligence officer to give him “more
intelligence and imagination than I have now.” He appointed Cain, a trusted
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