Piercing the Fog - Air Force Historical Studies Office

Piercing the Fog
GHQ Air Force commander would be required to submit his detailed plan of
operations, whether the plan was for independent air action or operations in
connection with surface force warfare.38
The GHQ Air Force had clearjurisdiction over the instruction, training, and
tactical employment of its combat units and personnel, including intelligence
personnel. Not enough Air Corps intelligence officers were available to perform
the required intelligence activities in the operating units. Since such people were
thought to be chiefly useful in times of combat, intelligence sections (called S-2
in lower-level units) in each of the three GHQ Air Force combat wings were
usually first to experience staff reductions. S-2 sections were called upon to
give most of their time to public relations, considered an intelligence function
because it involved release of military information to the public, counterpropaganda,
and, in time of war, cen~orship.~’Some time was required to work out
these contentious issues, and remnants of disputes among combat air forces, the
central air establishment, and the G-2 would linger throughout World War 11.
The Air Corps Tactical School and Air Intelligence
The different interpretations regarding responsibility for air intelligence that
existed within the Air Corps in the 1930s would shortly be overshadowed by
even more serious disagreements between soldiers and airmen. At the center of
these disputes were the fundamental issues of the role of air power and an air
force’s position in the national defense establishment. These larger issues
affected basic questions of air intelligence, including what constituted air
intelligence, and which groups were best able to obtain, evaluate, and
disseminate this material. These questions would not be resolved .before the
United States entered the next world war, but the center for much of the Air
Corps’ prewar air warfare thinking was the ACTS at Maxwell Field. Most of the
AAF’s World War I1 combat leaders spent one or more assignments at ACTS,
and its influence on plans, doctrine, and the personal relationships of these men
should not be overlooked.
Differences regarding the employment of air power were clearly evident in
1934 when General MacArthur called upon the WPD, WDGS, to prepare an
Army position on air warfare to be published as TR 440-15, Employment ofthe
Air Forces of the Army. The initial draft by WPD asserted that the “land
campaign” was “the decisive factor in war.” While air operations would be
intensive at the beginning of a war, the advantages of “‘alluring’ air mission at
such a time should be weighed against the requirement to keep superior air
forces in being to support operations which would take place after the ground
armies made contact. The greatest part of the [draft] paper dealt with the
employment of air forces in continental defen~e.”~’
24