4. Fundamentación teórica
5.4. Utilización educativa del libro
5.4.1. Contextualización
Aviation Intelligence, History
❚ J U D S O N K N I G H T
As lengthy and complicated as any aspect of modern espionage, the history of aviation intelligence has in- volved the use of aircraft both as intelligence-gathering platforms and as objects of study. These two aspects of aviation intelligence are known as aerial reconnaissance and air technical intelligence, respectively. Over the dec- ades, the United States has emerged as a leader in both regards, from the earliest studies of the British DeHaviland fighter in World War I, to investigations of Soviet MiG fighters during the Cold War. From prop planes to mis- siles, from rickety biplanes to modern satellites high above
Aviation Intelligence, History
From the Cuban missile crisis overflights to missions in support of United Nations weapons inspection teams in Iraq, the U-2 spy plane performs a diverse array of intelligence gathering operations. ©CORBIS SYGMA.
Earth’s surface, aviation intelligence has involved a vari- ety of tools since the time of its inception, just a few years after the birth of flight.
History
The use of aircraft as instruments of both combat and reconnaissance began with the Italo-Turkish War of 1911–12. On October 23, 1911, the Italians first used an aircraft to conduct reconnaissance, against Turkish troops near Tripoli in what is now Libya. On November 1, the Italians again made aviation history when they conducted the first aerial bombing raid against an enemy. In 1912, during the same war, an Italian officer took the first aerial photographs of enemy forces from an airplane.
Aircraft also figured in the U.S. military action against Pancho Villa’s Mexican rebels in 1911, and in the 1912–13 Balkan Wars. Yet at the beginning of World War I, the U.S. Army aeronautical division was woefully unprepared to gather intelligence in or on aircraft. To redress this short- coming, the Army Signal Corps established an air techni- cal intelligence (ATI) facility at McCook Field near Dayton, Ohio. There, in July 1917, they studied their first foreign aircraft, a British DeHaviland-4.
Meanwhile, in Europe, both sides in the world war conducted extensive aerial surveillance, with the Ger- mans alone taking some 4,000 photographs a day. Despite Russian shortcomings in many aspects of military tech- nology and tactics, Russia produced the most notable spy plane of the First World War: the Il’ya Mourometz bomber. Regarded as the world’s first strategic reconnaissance aircraft, the Il’ya Mourometz was also the first operational four-engine plane, and could fly deep behind German lines at an altitude beyond the reach of what passed for antiaircraft artillery at the time.
By 1920, the Army ATI facility in Dayton had become the Technical Data Section (TDS), which relocated in 1927 to Wright Field (today known as Wright-Patterson Air Force Base) near Riverside, Ohio. TDS studied more than 300 captured German aircraft, as well as hundreds of British, French, and Italian planes. Weapons, parachutes, and various airplane parts were also among the materials examined by TDS.
During the interwar years, the Germans perfected the airship, which offered considerable promise as a recon- naissance platform at a time when the use of aircraft for this purpose in its infancy. In fact, the Graf Zeppelin, most famous of the airships, would barely see service in a reconnaissance capacity during World War II, and then
Aviation Intelligence, History
only in the early months of the conflict. On the other hand, as the Allies would discover after hostilities began, the Germans had studied reconnaissance aircraft, which yielded results in the high-altitude Ju (Junker) 86P and 86R, as well as the extremely durable Ju 88.
Other totalitarian powers also used the interwar years to build up their aerial capabilities. The Fascist Italians set the altitude record, and the Communist Russians the dis- tance record, for aircraft during the 1930s, while the Nazi Germans established speed records. In 1939, more than a decade before jet aircraft came into use, the Germans even demonstrated a turbojet. Also during the 1930s, the Italians in Ethiopia, the Italians and Germans in Spain, and the Japanese in Manchuria, each gained considerable experience at aerial combat.
The most significant effort in aviation intelligence conducted by the British and French during the interwar years was a series of overflights in western Europe. French pilots conducted reconnaissance over western Germany beginning in 1936, and throughout 1939, British and French intelligence agencies sent Australian aviator Sidney Cot- ton on several flights over German and Italian facilities in Europe and North Africa. Using a specially modified Lock- heed 12-A Super Electra, Cotton took a great number of photographs, and continued his reconnaissance missions throughout the war.
World War II.
During World War II, the U.S. Army Air Force (established in 1941) modified a number of aircraft, includ- ing the B-17 Flying Fortress, B-24 Liberator, and P-51 Mustang, for reconnaissance missions. The United States also developed a few special photo-reconnaissance planes, primarily the F-11 and F-12. By the end of the war, the U.S. Ninth Air Force alone was flying some 600 photo recon- naissance missions a month from bases in the United Kingdom and western Europe.Beginning with a U.S. Navy B-17 mission over the Solomon Islands in 1942, Allied forces also used aircraft to collect electronic intelligence (ELINT). These efforts con- tinued and escalated throughout the remainder of the war. At the same time, captured German and Japanese aircraft provided valuable material for study at Wright Field’s ATI facility. Officers there learned to glean intelli- gence from the most seemingly innocuous details; for example, studies of ball bearings on German planes led to a number of successful bombing runs against German ball-bearing plants in 1943. Similarly, the nameplates of Japanese aircraft provided a wealth of target data on defense manufacturing plants in Japan.
Both sides used aircraft as a means of penetrating enemy territory and inserting intelligence operatives. This was an area in which the Germans particularly excelled, using captured Allied aircraft so as to appear less con- spicuous as they dropped troops behind enemy lines. The Germans even developed a special three-man container for parachuting operatives and their equipment into hos- tile territory.