Piercing the Fog - Air Force Historical Studies Office

Piercing the Fog
the territory east of the Bramaputra River and other locations that might, from
time to time, prove
As the Allies became more proficient in organizing intelligence gathering
and analysis in the theater, they made increasingly greater use of agents in
Burma as a source of information. The British Special Operations Executive ran
Force 136, incorporating within it aspects of agent infiltration, a long-range
patrol unit, and political intelligence operations throughout the region. In
September 1942, the American OSS sent about twenty agents to eastern India
as its Detachment 101. That was to be the beginning of an increasingly
important OSS operation that became a locus of AAF air intelligence collection
both in India-Burma and in China. By informal and formal agreements between
the OSS commander William J. Donovan and the British, as well as due to the
course of events, most of the OSS’s work occurred in northern Burma, China,
and Indochina. From mid-1 944 on, the two clandestine organizations became
prime AAF sources, although they did not work as a combined unit. OSS and
the British covert intelligence organizations in Southeast Asia and China often
collided over questions that arose from differences between American and
British postwar intentions for Asia and the European colonial empires. By mid-
1944, OSS had in Burma more than 400 Americans supervising some 6,000
Kachin tribesmen. Reports from this widespread organization came by radio
detailing targets with such refinement (so many feet or yards in a given
direction from a specific landmark) that pilots carrying photographs of the area
could spot the intended target with ease. Agent reports had exceptional value:
they pinpointed the location of equipment and supplies camouflaged in villages,
jungles, or fields, hidden from aerial observation and photography.”
In September 1944, Lt. Col. Emile 2. Berman, the Tenth Air Force’s
assistant chief of staff for intelligence estimated that “at least 80 percent of all
[our] information on Japanese Camps, dumps, movements, etc., came from
Detachment 101 .” The only other sources Berman had for tactical ground target
intelligence were aerial observation and photography; neither could be as
accurate regarding a target’s contents and importance. Agents could at times
reenter an area after an attack and send back precise damage reports?’ That
level of assessment equaled or exceeded the follow-up reports from resistance
teams in the highly developed photoreconnaissance operation in Europe.
HUMINT from agents on the ground in Japanese temtory was not the only area
where Allied operations excelled.
Like the escape and evasion operations in the SWPA, the Allies cooperated
closely in similar functions in the CBI Theater, despite their other differences.
In Burma, the AAF set up an escape and evasion training program soon after the
Tenth Air Force arrived on the scene. Almost from the beginning, the sheer
numbers of British and American agents in Burma and the large areas of
northern Burma inhabited by friendly Kachin and Karen tribes helped in the
rescue and recovery of downed pilots. Detachment 101 provided regular
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