Piercing the Fog - Air Force Historical Studies Office

Piercing the Fog
photography and mapping, codes and communications between air and ground,
and advice on special studies. The first head of the Air Section was an
experienced Air Corps officer, Maj. Joseph T. McNarney. As specified by the
Air Corps Act, in 1930 the G-2 Intelligence Branch absorbed the separate Air
Branch.2o
Within the Air Service, air intelligence organizations and functions also
changed in the immediate postwar years. In January 1919, Maj. Gen. Mason M.
Patrick, Chief of the Air Service, approved a plan to phase out the Information
Section, Air Service, AEF, and transfer its key personnel and printing
equipment to Washington to join a new Information Group, the Office of
Director of Air Service. In May 19 19, Air Service orders specified the principal
function of this Information Group as “the gathering and dissemination of all
information of value to the Air Service.” The Air Service reorganization
required that the new Information Group maintain a library, and the Air Service
declared it “essential that copies of all reports, manuals, pamphlets, and
publications of a tactical, technical, or engineering nature received in the Air
Service be furnished that Group in order that its library may be kept up to
date.””
Maj. Horace Hickam, the first Information Group Chief, divided his office
into collection, dissemination, and library divisions, plus a special division
charged with responsibility for preparing congressional correspondence and
distributing information to the public press. Hickam also believed the
Information Group should be “the central publishing office of the Air Service,
whether the output be rigging charts, handbooks, folders, tactical bulletins,
curricula, technical reports, organizational diagrams, or the like.” Such
freewheeling notions drew protests from others within the Air Service. One
charge stated the Information Group was “attempting altogether too much and
a good part of the work being undertaken is of little or no value to the service
in general.”22
The Information Group also specified that all assistant military attachts for
air (in Paris, London, Rome, and The Hague) should be conversant with new
aeronautical developments in the United States and the countries to which they
were accredited. Toward this end, the Air Service Engineering Division in
January 1920 prepared a questionnaire for London and Paris specifying
technical information wanted in the fields of electrical equipment, instruments,
parachutes, radios, and aerial photography. From London, the air attache
remonstrated that it was no simple matter to secure technical information (the
individual had to be versed in aviation developmental programs). Regardless
that the British Air Ministry was quite reluctant to release technical information,
the questionnaire technique persisted ne~ertheless.’~
Despite the activities of the attachts, in 1920 Brig. Gen. Billy Mitchell
complained about a lack of aeronautical information from overseas. Allegedly
to get the flamboyant Mitchell off the scene while the Washington Naval
18