Piercing the Fog - Air Force Historical Studies Office

Piercing the Fog
aeronautical developments in progress. This proposition had merit, but the Air
Service did not think its appropriations would stand the expense of so much
foreign travel. The Engineering Division dismissed a countersuggestion that it
send development engineers on temporary duty to European capitals, perhaps
on a yearly basis. Too few commissioned air engineering officers were left in
the postwar Air Service to allow such a dispersion of effort.” The Air Service
and its successor, the Air Corps, nevertheless looked with favor upon overseas
travel by air officers on leave time. In 1928, for example, one active-duty
engineering officer, Lt. Victor E. Bertrandais, visited Great Britain and France
and filed a very astute report on aviation factories he had visited. Bertrandais
concluded that “the United States surpasses England and France in production
methods and as a whole our workmanship and aircraft practices are far superior
to anything observed in England and France.”’6 (In World War 11, Bertrandais
would be an effective chief of supply and maintenance for General Kenney in
the Southwest Pacific.)
The creation of the Air Corps in 1926 had little immediate impact on air
intelligence in a functional sense, although it did result in the inevitable
restructuring in Washington. An Air Corps Information Division, Office of the
Chief of Air Corps (OCAC), replaced the Air Service Information Group.
Divided into four sections-air intelligence, photography, publications, and
press relations-the Information Division was charged to collect “essential
aeronautical information from all possible sources.” This information would
include “the uses of aircraft in war, including the organization of the various air
forces of the world, tactical doctrines, types of aircraft used, and organization
of the personnel operating and maintaining aircraft.”” Except for the responsi-
bility of the intelligence section to support War Department strategic planning,
the Information Division of OCAC remained a collection agency. The
intelligence section routinely received foreign intelligence through the MID and
maintained liaison with the Air Branch. A magazine and book library was
begun. The intelligence section also tried to compile digests of foreign aviation
information and compare foreign air forces. This potential workload far
exceeded the Intelligence Section’s capabilities, since for many years it was
manned by only one officer and two to five civilians.”
Air Intelligence in the Early 1930s
While the assistant military attaches in the major European capitals remained
the principal source of information on foreign aviation developments, the Air
Corps detailed an officer once each year to visit Japan and compile a report on
aircraft developments there. These efforts notwithstanding, the Air Corps by no
means considered itself fully informed about aircraft development overseas,
primarily because foreign nations now imposed restrictions on information of
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