Piercing the Fog - Air Force Historical Studies Office

Tools of Air Intelligence
have taken us longer-in fact, I know it would have taken us much longer-but
in the end we would have destroyed the German economy.”75
In the areaof targeting, ULTRA’S contribution lay not in the initial selection
of target systems but in the “absolutely un-arguable proof’ it provided that the
policies and target systems American airmen had selected were indeed correct.76
This unique insight largely overrode the normal tendency in the face of the
unknown to hedge one’s bets by spreading resources across a spectrum of
targets in the hope of getting parts of many, if it was not possible to get them
all. It enabled American airmen to press the strategic bombing offensive against
selected targets-first the Lujbvafle and aircraft industry, and then oil-with a
degree of assurance they otherwise would have lacked. Perhaps more importantly,
it enabled them to convince others of the validity of their arguments.
A second responsibility of intelligence in the strategic air war was to assess
the damage inflicted on targets, its impact on the enemy’s industrial production,
and, ultimately, its effect on his military capability. Here, too, Enigma provided
only occasional glimpses, since much of this information did not ordinarily flow
through military channels. According to the USSTAF analysis, throughout most
of 1943 many ULTRA reports were “too vague and general to be of importance
operationally.” They were, for much of this period, too sporadic or incomplete
to provide the basis for evaluation or, more importantly, future targeting
decisions. Aerial photography remained the best way to assess bomb damage.77
Even in this period, ULTRA reports that identified specific structural damage
enhanced photointerpretation by enabling interpreters to correlate visual
evidence with German reports of structural damage. The result was an improved
method for estimating impact and blast damage.78
During 1944 the volume and accuracy of damage reportage carried by
Enigma increased to the point that the enemy provided “a considerable amount
of information on [bombing] result~.”~’ By that fall, USSTAF received ULTRA
signals of target damage the day after a raid, which were followed up the next
day with aerial reconnaissance to confirm and clarify the Enigma intelligence.*’
Since 1944 was also the year the American strategic bomber force grew to
significant size and possessed at least a limited capability to engage in radar
bombing, the impact of this more detailed intelligence was magnified beyond
what it would have been in previous years.
While photointerpretation remained a fundamental part of the process of
assessing the damage to a facility’s productive capability, ULTRA provided a
special perspective. As skilled as the Allied photointerpreters at Medmenham
had become, only ULTRA could advise intelligence officers and operational
planners that a damaged facility expected “resumption of production in
approximately 8 days ” Reports indicating no interruption to production
provided an invaluable counterbalance to the tendency to assume that physical
damage to a plant automatically reduced or halted production!’ By the last year
of the war, ULTRA was not only providing a better glimpse of the enemy’s
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