Piercing the Fog - Air Force Historical Studies Office

Piercing the Fog
the JIC was informal; the Army had not provided any explicit authority for such
membership. The JCS itself was not a body with a specific charter ordering it
to perform certain functions. Almost everything connected with the JCS was
equally informal, seen through much of the conflict as wartime expedients.
Sensing the approach of independence from the Army and equal status with the
Army and Navy in the postwar military, two intelligence chiefs-Hodges and
Quesada-prepared for the change.86 Hodges had begun the studies that were
to guide postwar intelligence organizations on the air staff.
Then, immediately following V-J Day (September 2, 1945), Quesada
reformed his office, making the last in a series of wartime shifts designed to
meet current needs and changing situations. Reduced in size, the A-2 office
now contained an Air Information Division, an Air Intelligence Division, and
a small Executive Division. It also marked the end of a four-year evolution
under the direction of eight men who filled the office or function of the chief of
AAF intelligence. With the new ground rules that came into play at the end of
the war, Quesada supervised the air intelligence study of foreign air forces, their
offensive capabilities in relation to American strategic vulnerability, and their
defensive potentials. The office scrutinized the United States’s strategic
objectives in foreign countries, including their strategic vulnerabilities. The
A-2’s office also collected information on foreign airfields, meteorology,
terrain, logistics, and air operation^.^^
With the end of World War 11, the air intelligence office changed its focus
from combat data analysis to that of trying to ensure the prevention of strategic,
tactical, or technological surprise, and of amassing air intelligence required by
the AAF for future war operations. Many of the people who had served
throughout the war soon left the service, but enough remained to staff the
office’s new components. The Air Information Division’s collection branch
kept many of its wartime functions and had the special task of watching
developments related to very high-level security information and signals
intelligence. This section did not prepare its own signals intelligence analyses;
G-2 still provided them. The air attache branch assumed greater responsibility
for selecting and briefing its new members, an improvement over the absolute
control by the G-2. The new Air Intelligence Division contained branches
analyzing enemy offensive air power, defensive capabilities, worldwide air
facilities, and enemy strategic vulnerabilities. This new branch was essentially
the old JTG, scaled down and lacking the other service members and British
representatives; the target vulnerability studies it performed were similar to
those of its wartime predecessor. The Executive Division directed the
administrative, counterintelligence, and plans and policy activities of the office
of the A-2. The attention once focused on Germany and Japan and which had
been building slowly for two years to a scrutiny of the USSR now assumed
greater importance.88
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