Piercing the Fog - Air Force Historical Studies Office

Piercing the Fog
Chennault, commanding the Fourteenth Air Force, retained direct access to both
Chiang Kai-shek and President Roosevelt. By the end of 1943, a new Eastern
Air Command (EAC), the air component of Allied Command, South East Asia,
would be superimposed on this already complex structure.
The convoluted command and vituperative relationships among the
numbered air force commanders during this period appear to have had relatively
little impact on the relationship between intelligence and air operations. It is
possible to address air intelligence, planning, and operations through 1943 by
adopting the AM’S own India-BurmdChina approach. Certainly, overlaps
occurred. Both Tenth and Fourteenth Air Forces defended the air transport route
over the Himalayas. Different interpretations of Japanese activities and
subsequent differences over where to employ limited resources marked the real
break between Chennault and Bissell. The realities of geography and the nature
of the tasks assigned make the India-BurmdChina separation useful.
Early air intelligence operations in India and China were handicapped by
both the hasty organization of the American air forces and their lack of trained
personnel. Chennault’s first A-2 in the CAW was Col. Merian C. Cooper.
Cooper, highly respected by many in the AAF, was a man of great energy and
varied talents who had served in France with the Air Service during World War
I and who fought in Poland during that country’s war with the Soviet Union.
Later Cooper went to Hollywood, where he produced and directed motion
pictures (among his best remembered were The Four Feathers and King Kong).
Cooper was a prodigious worker who served simultaneously as Chennault’s
A-2, his chief of staff, and A-3. Cooper’s abilities were greatly admired by
George Kenney who later arranged with Washington for Cooper’s assignment
to SWPA. As intelligence officer, Cooper for some time had only two assistants,
2d Lt. Martin Hubler and 2d Lt. John Birch. The latter was a resident missionary
who had helped some of the Doolittle raiders to safety and then had been
commissioned in the AAF. In China, the A4F lacked photointelligence; had few
target folders, which were poor; and depended almost entirely on Chinese forces
for target and threat data. Matters began in India in a similar fashion, with few
trained intelligence specialists and little growth in the number of people
available for such work. By early 1943, HQ IATF had only three intelligence
officers assigned, matching the general poverty of the field in China. Subordi-
nate bomber and fighter groups had a few intelligence officers on their staffs
and in squadrons, and most were untrained in the specialty. In India the
Americans relied initially on British and Indian intelligence resources.2
In 1942, the threadbare air intelligence arrangement did not adversely affect
the small American air operations in the CBI Theater, as the Japanese Amy
ground forces and shipping targets were rather plentiful and the CATF’s
mission was not an offensive one. But the limited number of trained people kept
a strain on the A-2 staffs, especially in China. At the time, the Tenth Air
Force’s primary task was defensive: protect the India-China air ferry route and