Piercing the Fog - Air Force Historical Studies Office

Piercing the Fog
might endanger such plans, and he sought at the outset to protect what he
believed was the AAF’s proprietary information.
The interservice and interallied competition for information became so
intense so quickly, and the volume of material so great, that the orderly
collection and analysis process broke down by the end of May. Hodges at one
point told Eaker that the entire intelligence collection scheme that was
originally to have been governed by G-2 SHAEF was “in a state of To
resolve the problem, Hodges urged immediate action to bring the entire effort
under the control of a joint air policy advisory council with an AAF general in
charge and also having Navy and National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics
members, as well as a representative of the U.S. aircraft industry. In June, an
agreement prepared by the CCS gave the British the first good article of each
type to be discovered. Spaatz objected, pointing out that many important one-
of-a-kind articles had escaped American control. He feared they would be lost
for use in the war against Japan if the process was not quickly reversed.* The
flow of documents became so great that the question of who would get what
soon disappeared. Neither the British nor the Americans could cope with
matters independently. The upshot was an agreement between the USSTAF A-2
and the Air Ministry to set up in London the Air Documents Research Center.
The newly acquired material could be screened, indexed, and reproduced so that
all of the interested Anglo-American agencies could receive copies. Of primary
importance in this effort was the locating and examining of material pertinent
to the Japanese war. The agreement averted an unseemly squabble between
Allies over the intellectual and intelligence spoils of the European war.
Eventually an agreement between the RAF’s intelligence chief and General
McDonald resulted in a process of copying documents so that each country
would receive a full set of German records and research reports.5o
When it came to the B-29 program, Arnold’s interest never flagged. He
quickly saw the potential for trouble that the German technology transfers
represented. He sent LeMay a letter outlining his fears on July 5: “Recent
intelligence from Germany,” he wrote, “emphasizes the interest the [Japanese]
have had in aircraft developments along the lines of the Me 163 and 262.”
Arnold went on to instruct his subordinate on how to spot evidence of aircraft
of unusual design-look for “lengthening of, lengthened or paved runways.”
Blast marks were especially important, as that “. . . was how we first noted
German jets. Use your photo-reconnaissance people, PW [POW] interrogators,
*Some of the items cited by Spaatz as unavailable to his people were one Ju
290 airplane believed to be the only surviving example of this four-engine type; one
two-stage turbine supercharger; one flyable Ta 152, the two-stage version of the FW
190; one Ju 388, a late development of the Ju 88; one Ho 9 jet-powered flying wing;
one Ju 222 featuring a %-cylinder, radial liquid-cooled engine: and one 48-cylinder
aircraft engine.
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