Piercing the Fog - Air Force Historical Studies Office

Piercing the Fog
operations, the study recommended that several Air Corps officers recently
graduated from ACTS should be detailed to G-2 for the sole purpose of
initiating and carrying out air estimate studies. The study recommended that
data from the G-2 information collection agencies (military attaches, foreign
missions, and other nonpublicized agencies) should be arranged and compiled
into objective folders by the OCAC, with the OCAC Plans Section required to
initiate, build, and serve as custodian of these files. Since a need to gather
detailed information concerning hostile air forces was present in peace and war,
the study also recommended that the Air Corps establish an effective intelligence
section to obtain information from new sources. This section would
provide information to operational Air Corps units in an appropriate form.’4
The Air Corps was not represented on the Joint Army-Navy Board which
began in 1939 to draw up the series of RAINBOW war plans, and the joint
planners in the WPD rarely called for Air Corps assistance. The result was a
tendency to create plans that called for air force employment only in direct
support of ground arms. Moreover, wrote Lt. Col. Carl A. Spaatz, Chief of the
OCAC Plans Division, to General Arnold in August 1939, air intelligence
required to support air operations under any of the several U.S. strategic plans
was not being maintained ready for use.” Arnold convened on August 23 a
board of officers under the presidency of Maj. James P. Hodges which included
Maj. Thomas D. White, Capt. Robert C. Oliver, and Capt. Gordon P. Saville.’6
After six days of meetings, the board filed the most comprehensive analysis
of Air Corps intelligence requirements to that time. It concluded that the
expansion of the Air Corps and the War Department’s acceptance of the concept
of possible strategic employment of Army air power necessitated a consideration
of the effects of air power in all war planning. This, in turn, imposed on
information collection and processing agencies an additional, and perhaps
major, task. The Air Corps needed intelligence that would permit the Chief of
Air Corps to make recommendations relative to strategic planning and other
defense projects and would permit technical planning in aircraft development.
The report agreed that War Department intelligence responsibilities should be
located where means and facilities were available. G-2 could continue to
maintain general, nontechnical information about foreign air forces. The Chief
of Air Corps should be responsible for gathering technical information on
foreign aviation and for processing all information on the use of aircraft for AA
defense. The OCAC already processed information on potential landing fields,
airdromes, and air bases, and this should remain an Air Carps function.”
The Air Corps Intelligence Board’s report was not formally submitted to
the General Staff; instead, Brig. Gen. George V. Strong, Assistant Chief of
Staff, WPD, a member of the earlier War Department Air Board, handled it. In
a memo to Arnold on October 5, 1939, Strong completely accepted all the
requirements specified as necessary for intelligence support for air matters.
Observing that the G-2 was reestablishing a separate Air Section to coordinate
40