Piercing the Fog - Air Force Historical Studies Office

Tools of Air Intelligence
emplacements, and factories. Area coverage might provide the basis for
searches for very specific targets. This was the approach used in the search for
the German V-1 and V-2 launching sites in northern France, Belgium, and
Holland in 1943 and 1944.
Point missions flown against specific, and usually static, objectives almost
always resulted in large-scale photography for detailed analysis of specific
targets. Such missions provided the photographic basis for target selection for
strategic air operations, including identification of aiming points, location and
nature of defensive systems, and changes and modifications of installations over
time. It was thephotointerpreters’ analysis of the region around Marienburg that
elicited the strong suspicion that the airfield was a factory producing Focke-
Wulf fighters. Once technical analysis of the maker’s plates of several crashed
FW 190s established Marienburg as a good target, the Eighth Air Force
launched a highly successful attack on the aircraft manufacturing complex in
early October 1943.Ii6 The results of these types of missions provided the
framework and core of strategic, and sometimes tactical, mission target folders
in all theaters. Coverage of specific targets also provided the basis for the bomb
damage assessments (BDAs) essential not only to understand the accuracy of
an attack but also to evaluate the impact of the damage on a facility’s productiv-
ity. Evaluation played a critical role in decisions regarding the need for and
timing of reattacks. Photointerpretation was an art that demanded great skill in
assessing photographs and an ability to reason and deduce facts from images.
The presence of camouflage indicated some enemy interest in preventing
observation; it caught an evaluator’s eye. Photointerpretation depended upon
aerial photography’s producing good-quality images, something not always
possible in the European weather. Serendipity also mattered. If the reconnais-
sance pilot chanced to see an interesting sight, he might turn on his camera, as
in May 1942 when a British pilot photographed Peenemunde’s airfield and new
construction.
Just how important air commanders considered this information to be was
reflected in a February 8, 1944, message from Spaatz to Lt. Gen. Ira C. Eaker,
while the latter was commanding the Mediterranean Allied Air Forces (MAAF).
It was, declared Spaatz, “of utmost importance” that first-phase interpretation
reports (based on recce misfons flown within two hours of a strike) of a
projected Fifteenth Air Force raid on February 9 be furnished to him immedi-
ately. Because the “determination of [follow-up] operations depends on PRU
[Photographic Reconnaissance Unit] reports,” the acquisition and interpretation
of the necessary photographs were “of the highest priority, over all other
a~tivity.””~
Where land force operations were planned or underway, a great deal of
aerial photography as well as visual reconnaissance supported such activity. In
Italy, close air support to the US. Fifth Army was based on “extensive use of
annotated photographs. . . .”“8 Between May 6 and 20,1944, the American 10th
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