Piercing the Fog - Air Force Historical Studies Office

Piercing the Fog
naval superiority over the U.S. Navy in the rather unlikely event of a RED-
ORANGE attack.
It was under these circumstances that Army Chief of Staff General Douglas
MacArthur and the Chief of Naval Operations, Admiral W. V. Pratt, reached an
agreement concerning coastal defense. As described by MacArthur, “Under it
the Naval air forces will be based on the fleet and move with it as an important
element in performing the essential missions of the fleet afloat. The Army air
forces will be land based and employed as an element of the Army in carrying
out its missions of defending the coasts, both in the homeland and in overseas
p~ssessions.”~~ The Army Air Corps took seriously its responsibility to defend
the United States and its territories from naval or air attack. One of the
considerations in its efforts to develop a long-range bomber (the B-17 and later
the B-29) was the militarily sound principle of locating and defeating an enemy
as far from one’s shores as possible. The issue of the air forces’ strategic
defensive role would become entangled in doctrinal and bureaucratic struggles
with the U.S. Navy and in debates over strategic offensive operations. In March
1938 the Air Corps identified its primary task as defense of the United States
against air attack, to be achieved by “destruction of enemy aviation at its
bases.’’32
The strategic focus of RED-ORANGE planning marked a change from earlier
War Department emphasis on intelligence training for field combat to training
and preparation for hemispheric defense. In 1926, War Department Training
Regulation (TR) 210-5 had focused wholly on intelligence support for Army
surface combat. By 1932, the Command and General Staff School (C&GSS) at
Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, responsible for the Army’s principal intelligence
training, began to advance a tentative doctrine more suited to strategic
intelligence. This approach argued intelligence estimates had to be determined
by enemy capabilities existing at a given time and projected into the future.33
Such an approach called for an analysis of the enemy’s potential as well as his
current capability; this, in turn, required greater insight into his industrial
structure. The requirement for air forces to strike the enemy at a distance from
the United States called for a more detailed knowledge of areas at least within
the Western Hemisphere and, as technology progressed, perhaps even farther
afield. At any rate, the 1938 objective of achieving air defense of the United
States by destroying the enemy at his bases clearly called for a broader scope
of intelligence requirements than was needed simply to support ground forces.
The thrust of strategic thinking toward hemispheric defense also caused
subtle changes in the status of the Information Division, OCAC, even though
no changes were made in its official charter. According to War Department
regulation, the OCAC Plans Division provided information for the General
Staff‘s strategic planning. The office could not meet the demands placed on it,
so others moved to fill the void. In July 1933, Lt. Col. Walter R. Weaver, chief
of the Information Division, complained to the acting executive officer of the
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