Piercing the Fog - Air Force Historical Studies Office

Piercing the Fog
On February 22, 1944, the SWPA SIB carried the comment, “Due to air
attacks by [our] China-based planes [Japanese] shipping along the China coast
has been routed; beginning February 18, 100 miles ~ff-shore.”~~ The intercept
confirmed the success of Chennault’s and Miles’s antishipping campaign,
employing both aerial attacks on ships at sea and in harbors, and the aerial
mining of harbors and select sea lanes. But what the Japanese thought to be a
corrective action sent their ships into deeper water where American submarines
waited. ULTRA via Honolulu had directed the submarines to the position of
enemy shipping. Much of Honolulu’s information had come from China. The
growing threat to shipping and airfields represented by the Fourteenth could
hardly be ignored by the Japanese military authorities in China. The results, in
fact, were already being seen on the Chinese mainland.
By September 1943, Japanese leaders knew that they had to deal with the
American airfields supporting the Fourteenth Air Force, whose depredations
continued to harm their army. The Japanese wished also to pressure China into
withdrawing her forces from northern Burma. This time Japan intended to “deal
a crushing blow to the enemy”47 in a strong, well-coordinated campaign. The
Japanese generals assessed the Fourteenth’s strength at about 500 combat
aircraft, quite a bit above the Fourteenth’s summertime operational totals.
Among the targets were airfields at Kweilin and Liuchosien. The operation,
titled “lchi-go,” was to be prepared in strict secrecy. Despite the security, the
Japanese concluded that their enemy understood what was transpiring even
before Zchi-go was under way, although they were mystified as to how the
information had leaked out. However much of the Japanese plan Chennault
knew, the garrulous, offensive-minded general seems to have overestimated the
ability of the small Fourteenth Air Force to carry the load that China could not,
and he seems to have underestimated the Japanese Army’s reaction to his
success and its capacity for a sustained drive aimed at his eastern China
airfields. The Japanese were also wary of the possible use of Chinese airfields
by long-range bombers; this was added incentive to chase out the Americans.
Chennault’s 68th Composite Wing’s bases came under increasing danger from
the Japanese early in 1944.48 Even if Chennault miscalculated Japanese intent,
it is difficult to see how he could have acted differently. To have withheld the
Fourteenth from the fighting was not in Chennault’s nature, nor would it have
been acceptable in the eyes of Arnold or Roosevelt.
As the Japanese moved toward Chennault’s bases, he made increasing use
of one of his most important intelligence assets, the 5329th AGFRTS.
AGFRTS, staffed largely by people from Fourteenth Air Force and operating
as a joint AAF-OSS venture, spread agents and radio direction-finding teams
across much of Japanese-occupied China, including major ports and key cities.
The Fourteenth carried AGFRTS on its books as an AAF unit, but from its
inception in April 1944, AGFRTS was strongly influenced by the OSS. The
organization quickly became an important part of Fourteenth Air Force’s
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