Piercing the Fog - Air Force Historical Studies Office

Early Intelligence Organization
for air intelligence information gathering by the air staff. Marshall seems to
have seen the lack of logic in having an air force that did not understand its
potential enemies; he approved an expanded air attache role with limited
participation by Captain Hansell and Major White, who laid out the information
gathering requirements.’“
Hansell also recalled Arnold’s earlier involvement in the complex
bureaucratic wrangling over intelligence responsibilities that arose from apaper
Hansell had prepared in 1940 proposing U.S. Army engineers be sent to survey
the Burma Road leading into China. When the paper got into the hands of
General Miles, he sent it to the Deputy Chief of Staff, Maj. Gen. William
Bryden, with the complaint that the OCAC had no business intruding in such
matters. The Deputy Chief passed the complaint to Arnold, noting stiffly that
if the officers of the OCAC Information Division had no more useful occupa-
tion than this, he was prepared to disband the division and transfer its personnel
to G-2, where their talents could be directed to some useful purpose. General
Arnold was miffed, most probably because he had not known about Hansell’s
original paper. He sent the correspondence back to the Information Division
with the laconic comment, “I am inclined to agree with Gen. Bryden.”’”
The staff officers in the OCAC, and then in the new AAF, pushed hard for
greater autonomy from G-2. Two weeks before establishment of the AAF, the
Chief of the Intelligence Division, Col. Robert C. Candee, prepared a critique
of his division’s relations with G-2 for General Brett. He recalled the G-2’s
resentment about the informal Burma Road proposal and said that Arnold’s
chief of staff had refused to pay for Air Corps proposals to send air observers
abroad and to collect technical intelligence information from New York
industrial concerns. A week before General Arnold assumed his new position
as head of the AAF, Brett told him that if all intelligence for air force operations
had to come from G-2, the Air Corps Intelligence Division would be practically
eliminated and air force operations would be at a standstill. A month later, on
July 5, 1941, Colonel Candee made a detailed comparison of intelligence
functions of MID and the AAF for Arnold. His report concluded, “The AAF
desperately needs freedom to prepare for war. Therefore, its intelligence
functions should not be restricted by the views and routine channels and
practices of the MID.”’o8
With the establishment of the AAF, Arnold brought Brig. Gen. Martin
Scanlon back from his post as military air attach6 in London to become the first
AC/AS, Intelligence (A-2). Both Scanlon, and Lt. Col. Harold L. George,
AC/AS, WPD, considered the AAF to be virtually autonomous. George argued
that the Air War Plans Division (AWPD) was the proper agency to formulate
all plans for employment of air power. General Scanlon believed A-2 should
provide all the air intelligence upon which to base the plans. “It is apparent,” he
wrote, “that all restrictions which tend to limit the reliability and efficiency of
the Air Intelligence Division should be removed.” According to Scanlon, air
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