Piercing the Fog - Air Force Historical Studies Office

Piercing the Fog
With an SSO in Kunming, this changed. Regular Japanese air OB estimates
arrived from the War Department in 1945, as they did in other AAF commands
in the Pacific. Low-level radio interception and traffic analysis by Navy, Army,
and OSS personnel was much more common and of more immediate use. Even
with B-24 heavy bombers assigned, General Chennault ran an air force that was
far more tactical than strategic, so his need for intelligence centered on material
for ready use. When the B-29s of the XX Bomber Command flew from
Chengtu, they could use more sensitive information. Yet even this demand in
China was far less than that of the air forces in other Pacific theaters.’*
Several factors affected the ways that air intelligence analyses influenced
Chennault’s war in China. The Fourteenth’s A-2 did basically the same work
as the planners and staff officers elsewhere, but with substantially less ULTRA
content until well into 1944. Agent teams watching and reporting on Japanese-
held areas paralleled similar efforts in Europe and the Southwest Pacific, but
porous control by the Japanese of areas they occupied in China made the work
of such teams broader in scope and of more importance to the Fourteenth than
to other major AAF units, even to the Tenth Air Force in Burma’s jungles and
mountains.
The Central Pacific
Intelligence studies and support for air operations in the Navy-controlled POA
came largely from the MIS in Washington and from the Intelligence Center,
Pacific Ocean Area (ICPOA), in Honolulu. ICPOA, and its associated FRUPac,
was part of Admiral Nimitz’s headquarters and grew from the prewar Combat
Information Center originally used to track the movements of enemy and Allied
ships into an all-encompassing intelligence-gathering and analysis organization.
On September 7, 1943, in recognition of its multiservice composition and
analysis role, ICPOA became the Joint Intelligence Center, Pacific Ocean Areas
(JICPOA). In many ways, JICPOA was Nimitz’s version of MacArthur’s G-2
SWPA in Australia; it served primarily the main Navy theaters-the SOPAC
Area and the POA-but it provided considerable information (especially on
enemy OB) throughout the Pacific. JICPOA and G-2 SWPA maintained a good
working relationship with much mutual interchange that affected the course of
the war. The great distances and long travel times in the Pacific enforced a
separation on the two organizations that limited the joint effort’s effecti~eness.~’
Radio intelligence quickly became a prime source of information, most of
which went to support the Navy’s surface and submarine fleets. Air intelligence,
too, came from JICPOA, but it was applied differently than was the CB’s
product in Brisbane. The Navy task force organizations in the POA included
naval, Marine, and AAF air units, but these organizations were subordinate to
their task force commanders. The Seventh Air Force functioned as an integral
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