Piercing the Fog - Air Force Historical Studies Office

Taking the Offensive
Maj. Gen. Willis H. Hale Maj. Gen. Robert W. Douglas, Jr.
new organization absorbed the support and services units of Seventh Air Force,
leaving the Seventh only the VII Bomber and VII Fighter Commands. General
Harmon became AAFPOA’s commander and Deputy Commander of Twentieth
Air Force. Harmon’s charge from Washington was to coordinate support for
both the Seventh and the XXI Bomber Command. In reality, AAFPOA was an
agency to satisfy Nimitz’s insistence on control of theater air operations through
the task forces while streamlining the logistic and administrative support of the
B-29 organization. Harmon’s position was to be roughly analogous to, though
much less influential than, the positions of Generals Spaatz, Eaker, and Kenney
in other theaters, where they responded to theater commanders for all air
operation^.^^
The AAFPOA arrangement, however, was not entirely a paper command.
AAFPOA’s staff included a Directorate of Intelligence as part of the office of
the Deputy Chief of Staff for Plans and Operations. Though similar to
intelligence operations set up by the AAF elsewhere in the Pacific and CBI, it
lacked several specific services. Technical intelligence officers on AAFPOA’s
roster served at JICPOA, where a joint Army-Navy team pursued information
from crashed or captured Japanese aircraft and equipment. Flak analysis was
also a joint undertaking at JICPOA because of the vital interest in the subject
by Army, Navy, and Marine aviators. The Special Intelligence Branch at
AAFPOA collated AA defense information, commonly called flakintel, and
delivered it to XXI Bomber Command and Seventh Air Force units that
operated near Japanese-held territory. Along with the flakintel information, the
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