Piercing the Fog - Air Force Historical Studies Office

Early Intelligence Organization
existed only superficially. A great shortcoming existed in RAF intelligence: The
target folders contained little analysis of the targets as elements within the
German industrial fabric.’” The earliest strategic air plan, AWPD-1, suffered
from the same shortcomings that affected earlier conceptual thinking and which
would later plague early U.S. air operations in Europe: the lack of information
on enemy economic and industrial systems sufficiently comprehensive and
detailed to permit accurate determination of the vital systems and selection of
critical nodes within any one system. Only the experience of war would reveal
the full ramifications of the relation between strategic bombing doctrine and the
collection and evaluation of intelligence-and would prove just how difficult
were the collection and assessment of such information in the midst of conflict.
Air Intelligence on the Eve of Pearl Harbor
The gaps in strategic air intelligence notwithstanding, U.S. military intelligence
was, in general, better prepared to support a war in Europe than to serve the
defense of the Pacific theater of operations. The anomaly of this situation is
particularly striking in view of long-standing American interests in the Pacific
and the fact that the Army’s Signal Intelligence Service was reading lowergrade
Japanese codes and ciphers by early 1939, while Navy code breakers had
tapped into the Japanese secret diplomatic code that they called MAGIC.
When the Japanese attacked China in 1938, the US. Joint Army-Navy
Board called for a revised ORANGE plan based upon a new international
situation, but still providing for a position of readiness in the strategic triangle
of Alaska-Hawaii-Panama. The recognition by late 1939 that the United States
was much likelier to become involved against several powers rather than against
Japan alone led to the development of a series of RAINBOW plans to replace the
old single-color plans. RAINBOW 4, which was approved by the Secretaries of
War and Navy and tacitly accepted by Roosevelt in June 1941, assumed the
United States would be allied with Great Britain and France against Germany,
Italy, and Japan. RAINBOW 5 called for the adoption of a strategic defensive
position in the Pacific until victory over the European Axis would allow transfer
of resources adequate for an offensive against Japan.
Even before the adoption of RAINBOW 5 in the summer of 1941, the AAF
had started to build up strength in the Pacific. In mid-February 1941, the AAF
began to send more modem fighters to Hawaii. In early April, General Arnold
committed twenty-one B-17 bombers to Honolulu, the delivery flight being
completed the next month. With the transfer of part of the U.S. Pacific Fleet to
the Atlantic in the summer of 1941, War Department planners suggested
sending four additional groups of B-17s to the Pacific-two each to Hawaii and
the Philippines-where their presence might act as a threat to keep the Japanese
at bay. Even though the AAF had a total of only 109 B-17s, and with bombers
51