Piercing the Fog - Air Force Historical Studies Office

CHAPTER 8
Retrospection
INTELLIGENCE PLAYED A CRUCIAL ROLE as the AAF pursued the air
war from 1941 to 1945. It provided an analytical framework through which
American airmen estimated their opponents, allocated their resources, and
calculated the results and impact of their attacks. Consistently throughout the
war, intelligence provided substantial clarification of the ambiguities of a war
conducted in a new medium. Whatever the difficulties with American air
intelligence, it is worth contrasting the American (and British) experience with
what occurred in the Italian, German, and Japanese intelligence agencies. Had
Allied intelligence capabilities and those of the Axis been reversed, the results
of the war, or even of major campaigns, might not have been reversed, but the
road to victory would have been far more costly and difficult.
American air intelligence in World War I1 faced enormous difficulties, none
of which was open to easy solution, and few of which were ever completely
solved. Paramount was thevery nature of the war. Operational commanders and
intelligence organizations almost always had to work on the basis of less than
complete information, even when interception and decryption of enemy
message traffic provided a direct avenue into the enemy’s mind. Given the
conditions of war, the best intelligence could provide only fleeting glimpses of
the enemy’s intentions and capabilities; it was then a matter of how well and
how imaginatively intelligence formed its estimates of the Axis forces.
From the beginning, large problems confronted American intelligence in
the conduct of the air war. The great military organizations of 1943, 1944, and
1945 that crushed the Axis had evolved from minuscule services that possessed
virtually no intelligence capabilities in 1940. Surely one of the greatest
American triumphs of World War I1 involved turning America’s immense
economic potential into military capabilities. Beyond the mobilization problems
of an unprepared nation, air intelligence in Washington at the A-2 office found
itself hampered by dependence on the War Department’s G-2. The Army’s
close hold on intelligence sources, especially those having to do with special
intelligence, caused difficulties. Those impediments were less significant in the
various theaters in which the AAF operated. Particularly in Europe, British
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