Piercing the Fog - Air Force Historical Studies Office

Piercing the Fog
December 1944-resulted not from a lack of evidence, but from a failure to
interpret that evidence correctly.
The Importance of ULTRA in the European Theater
The importance of ULTRA in the air war against the European Axis became
very complex. In the first place, there were several air wars in Europe and the
Mediterranean, some of which occurred simultaneously, each having its own
character. ULTRA’S role differed at least slightly among all. ULTRA’S influence
changed significantly through the course of the war. Not until the spring and
summer of 1943, for example, did it affect strategic air planning and operations
to any important degree.‘3 Finally, the very procedures established to shield its
existence increased the normal problems of establishing direct linkages among
intelligence, planning, and operations.
ULTRA’S influence in American strategic air operations against Germany
fell into three broad categories: target selection, damage assessment, and
information about the primary opponent: the Lujbvufle. Until 1944 ULTRA
provided only limited assistance to the selection of target systems or individual
targets. None of the strategic air plans prepared through 1943-AWPD-1,
AWPD-42, the Casablanca Directive, the Eaker Plan, or even Operation
ARGUMENT (the concentrated campaign against the German aircraft industry
and GAF)-was based primarily on ULTRA. The USSTAF recommendation of
March 1944 that the GAF was sufficiently weakened to permit a refocusing of
effort was supported in large part by ULTRA. At the same time, the targets
recommended for next attention, the German oil industry, had long been
considered a critical objective which awaited only the capability for the mass
attacks that Eighth Air Force finally acquired that winter.
Because information regarding industrial capacity and conditions only
occasionally went through German military communications channels, Enigma
transmissions rarely provided the kind of information upon which strategic
planners depended. The basis for selection of broad target systems was the
economic analysis developed by such groups as the COA and the EOU,
interpreted and adjusted by operational considerations such as distance,
weather, and size of the available bomber force. A USSTAF study on the use
of ULTRA material and the strategic air war concluded in 1945 that “on the
whole it seems fair to say the major decisions on the employment of strategic
air power would have been the same had ULTRA not been a~ailable.”’~ This
assessment was supported by others intimately connected with intelligence and
the planning of strategic air operations. Looking back thirty years later, Lewis
Powell came to a similar assessment: “I think even if there had been no ULTRA,
that with aerial reconnaissance, primarily, plus the work of scholars and
economists, we would have identified the target systems in Germany. It may
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