Piercing the Fog - Air Force Historical Studies Office

Piercing the Fog
a Joint Staff planners’ cable to him and others at the conference, expressing
doubt as to the COA’s conclusions on the effects of attacking coke ovens.*
After conferring with Colonel Moss of A-2 and COA and with General Bissell,
Moss’s new superior at A-2, the Joint Staff plans office replied to Hansell that
destruction of three coke plants representing 61 percent of Japan’s capacity
would immediately reduce steel production by 25 percent. This would result in
an estimated 53 percent reduction in Japanese steel production for the twelve
months after destruction. Certain members of the COA believed that the cable
to Cairo was inaccurate and that it understated both the number of plants that
should be hit and the effects of such attacks. Nevertheless, the confirming cable
from the Joint Staff plans office, based upon A-2’s approval, helped Hansell
establish the MATTERHORN plan for B-29 operations in China and India.3’
Shortly thereafter, the Air Staff intelligence office and the COA renewed
their rivalry. On December 4,1943, the Joint War Plans Committee of the JCS
sought from the JCS’s JIC an analysis of the optimum timing and deployment
of B-29s against the Japanese targets listed in the COA’s report. The JIC, in
turn, referred the question to A-2 and to Commander Bitter at the office of the
Deputy Chief of Naval Operations, Air. The A-2’s representative, at a meeting
on December 18, argued against the conclusion reached by the COA on coking
plants as targets, preferring instead to place primary emphasis on selected
electric power facilities. The discussions continued until April, when the joint
plans office prepared a formal position paper for the JCS stating that the best
early use of the B-29s was attacking coke ovens in Manchuria and oil refineries
in the NEI, primarily at Palembang. Essentially the joint planners overlooked
the A-2’s wishes and endorsed the COA recommendations on shipping, the
petroleum industry in the NEI, iron and steel in the form of coke ovens, urban
industrial areas, aircraft plants, antifriction bearings, and electronic^.^^ The
problem remained of finding and identifying precise target sites.
The COA’s conclusion late in 1943 that the Allies possessed insufficient
information about Japan to go beyond general target objective studies and make
careful target selections assumed greater significance in light of the AAF’s
operational experience in Europe. The precision bombardment of Germany had
not succeeded to the extent that the air war planners had hoped, in large measure
due to difficulties of weather and because German defenses impeded the use of
optical bombsights. The Norden sights were not always effective from the
*Col. Perera, one of the few full-time members of the COA, intimated in
memoirs drafted long after ,the war that the first cable to Cairo came at the
instigation of some in A-2 who opposed the COA’s activity. Perera, a Boston
attorney in civilian life, continued in his memoirs to explore very guardedly the
tense relations between the A-2 office and the COA. Perera believed that
Sorenson’s opposition to the COA led to his replacement, perhaps at the instigation
or urging of Brig. Gen. Laurence S. Kuter, the AC/AS, Plans. Perera, “Washington
and War Years,” passim.
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