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ULTRA and the Army Air Forces in WWII

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ULTRA and the Army Air Forces in WWII ULTRA MEMOIR The ground echelon, which included intelligence officers, went on the Queen Mary. The living was not posh. There were seventeenthousand troops on the Queen Mary, more people than it had ever carried before or since. The Ist Infantry Division, the entire division, was aboard. I was appalled when we sailed out of New York Harbor in broad daylight. I was then a first lieutenant, and I found myself assigned as the last man to a stateroom that normally accommodated two people, and there were fifteen other peo- ple already there. They had put bunks four high. I had one up next to the ceiling. I was the commanding officer of the ground echelon of my squadron, so I was in on the daily briefing by the captain of the ship. After we had been out about three and a half days, he told us that the Admiralty had advised-and it may have been UL TRA-that there were U-boats in the normal route. We then went all the way north of Iceland or made a big turn in that direction. We were a day and a half late getting to England. Our group ended up on a base in East Anglia. It was a temporary air base not far from Norwich. I took my wife back there four or five years later, and we could not find it at first. We finally did locate the runway. We trained there not knowing what we were going to do because we were in a twin-engine bomber group, not a four-engine group, and it seemed curious to be operating out of England against Germany with that type of aircraft. It turned out that England was just a stop for a couple of months on the way to North Africa. Army Col. Egmont F. Koenig receives old Harrisburg Academy keys. 3 UL TRA MEMOIR Powell's unit "messing" at Tafaraoui air base. Courtesy Lewis F. Powell, Jr. Powell: I thought this information came-as it often did-from Coastal Command reconnaissance, but I really did not know. I'll move on, and then I'll answer your question in a different way. When my group was taken out of operations, sometime in late February of 1943, rather than go back to Morocco, where the group was to rest and refit with additional planes and fresh crews, I was sent to the Twelfth Air Force headquarters and was put into its operational or combat intelligence unit. I have no idea why I was sent to headquarters, but was happy to avoid the inaction of refitting my group. Twelfth Air Force was then headquartered in Algiers. After I was there for only a brief period, it was moved to Constantine, a fascinating city in the Atlas mountains, perhaps fifteen miles north of Telergma, where my group had been based. General Spaatz had come down from England and succeeded General Doolittle, and then General Cannon became commander of the Twelfth Air Force.11 George McDonald was its chief intelligence IIBrig. Gen. James H. Doolittle (1896- ) assumed command of the Twelfth Air Force (12th AF) on September 23, 1942, in England. Five months earlier, he had led sixteen B-25s on the daring raid over Japan for which he won the Medal of Honor. He was promoted to major general in November 1942, while commanding the 12th AF in North Africa. Maj. Gen. Carl A. "Tooey" Spaatz (1891-1974) succeeded Doolittle as commander of the 12th AF on March 1, 1943; two weeks later he was promoted to lieutenant general. He also commanded the newly established Northwest African Air Forces (NW AAF), which included the 12th AF. Maj. Gen. John K. Cannon (1892-1955) replaced Spaatz as 12th AF commander on December 21, 1943; he also commanded the Mediterranean Allied Tactical Air Command and was responsible for all air operations for the invasion of southern France in August 1944. 7 UL TRA IN WWII Maj. Gen. Carl A. "Tooey" Spaatz (left) and Air Chief Marshal Arthur Tedder . officer. 12 Before the Germans surrendered in North Africa in early May, as I recall, the Northwest African Air Forces were formed.13 At least for air 12Brig. Gen. George C. McDonald (1898-1969) became the Director of Intelligence for the 12th AF in December 1942 and subsequently assumed the same responsibility for the NW AAF . In February 1944 he was named Director of Intelligence for the U.S. Strategic Air Forces in Europe (USSTAF). During World War I, McDonald was trained as a pilot and served with the 5th Aero Squadron. His interwar service included assignments with aerial photographic units. From 1939 to 1941 he was the Assistant Military Attache for Air and the Assistant Military Attache at the American Embassy in London. During this tour, he reported on the Battle of Britain. In October 1941 he was appointed to the Military Mission, Office of the Coordination of Information (later named Office of Strategic Services). During the war, McDonald helped to establish the Allied evasion and escape system to help downed AAF personnel. After Y-E day, he became Director of Intelligence for U.S. Air Forces in Europe (USAFE), and upon returning to the United States in January 1946, became Assistant Chief of Air Staff, Intelligence. In 1947, he was named Director of Intelligence for the U.S. Air Force, a forerunner post to the present day position, Assistant Chief of Staff, Intelligence. McDonald retired in 1950 as a major general. 13At the Casablanca Conference, January 14-23, 1943, attended by President Roosevelt, Prime Minister Winston S. Churchill, and their military advisers, the assault against Sicily, codenamed HUSKY, was agreed upon. In preparation for HUSKY, the Middle Eastern and Northwest African theaters were merged, and Air Chief Marshal Arthur Tedder became overall air commander for the Mediterranean, under General Eisenhower's Allied Force Headquarters. NW AAF were activated on February 13, 1943, commanded by General Spaatz, as one of three subordinate commands to Tedder's Mediterranean Air Command. The other two were Malta Air Command and Middle East Command. Although the 12th AF aircraft and personnel were transferred to the NW AAF , its headqu~ers continued to function as the adlninistrative organiza- tion for American elements in the NWAAF. See Howe, Northwest Africa, pp 354-55, 486; Wesley F. Craven and James L. Cate, eds, The Army Air Forces in World War II, 7 vols (Chicago, 1948-58), Yo12: Europe: Torch to Pointblank. August 1942 to December 1943, pp 113-14, 161. 8 UL TRA IN WWII An AAF intelligence officer in North Africa inspectsreconnaissance photograph to detect enemy activity, 1943. and disposition of the German Air Force and also of the German army units. Italian armed services were in total disarray. When I arrived at the Pentagon, I was told that I was to be on tem- porary duty at the Army Air Forces Intelligence School to update one or more of its manuals and also to share my combat experience. I think I was perhaps the first American intelligence officer who had combat experience to come back to this country. It is possible I was called back because I had teaching experience. (1 had taught economics at the evening school at the University of Richmond for three years.) I went to the intelligence school, and I did work on the manuals. I also was sent with one of the professors at the school on a three weeks' trip to air bases in this country that were training bomber groups to go to the European theater. I shared what I had learned with the intelligence of- ficers and the operations officers on these bases. 14 UL TRA MEMOIR Capt. Lewis F. Powell, Jr., in combat gear somewhere in North Africa. Courtesy Lewis F. Powell, Jr. 23 UL TRA IN WWII General Spaatz. The inscription reads: "To Col. Lewis F. Powell, with greatest appreciation for his splendid work in World War II. Carl Spaatz." Courtesy Lewis F. Powell, Jr. 30 ~ UL TRA IN WWII air over England and western Europe there could be no invasion. The first series of targets, as I recall, were the airframe factories. After the war, I believe Albert Speer said we should have hit the air engine plants.54 We were still hitting aircraft factories as one of the ways to bring the German Air Force up, and bearing in mind that the primary objective was to gain con- trol of the air, the way to do that was to knock the German Air Force out. By D-Day that had almost totally been accomplished. Very few except Air Force people ever will give the United States Army Air Forces credit for that. Our victory in the air made the land invasion possible on D-Day. Kobo: Indeed, it was the strategic forces in effect that established air superior- ity, command of the air, for the tactical forces. Powell: It is important to remember, however, that both the strategic and tactical air forces complemented and supported each other. Often-prior to Ruins of Kugeljischer ball bearing factory in Schweinfurt which was hit by AAF B-17s on August 17, 1943. 54Albert Speer (1905-1981) was Hitler's Minister for Armaments and Munitions and in his memoirs wrote that in February 1944 the Allies ". ..bombed the enormous airframe plants of the aircraft industry rather than the engine factories, although the most important factor in airplane production was the number of engines we were able to turn out. Destruction of the plants making these would have blocked any increase in aircraft manufacture, especially since, in contrast to the airframe plants, engine factories could not be dispersed among forests and caves." See Albert Speer, Inside the Third Reich (New York, 1970), p 347; Williamson Murray, Strategy for Defeat: The Luftwaffe, 1933-1945 (Maxwell Air Force Base, AL, 1983), pp 190-91.
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