Re: Arthur T Harris: Not cleared for ULTRA?

"Rich Rostrom" <rrostrom.21stcentury@xxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:e53ddb6e-e6be-4f2f-9916-46712abe4337@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Did not Bomber Command often attack German
airfields, as early as the Battle of Britain?

Not often but yes during the Battle of Britain some daylight raids
were flown against airfields, given the lack of fighter support they
tended to be on bad weather days. The raids largely happened
in July and August, September was bombing the channel ports.

Ultra decrypts (especially from the RED key
gave the British exact information about the
status of those airfields, so they would know
which were out of service, and which had been
repaired and needed bombing again.

Ultra in 1940 was not that reliable and in any case the bomb loads
of even 12 Blenheims were not going to knock out an airfield. Most
of the raids had fewer aircraft per airfield, they were meant as
harassment and to force the Luftwaffe to allocate some fighters for
defence.

Ultra intelligence also informed the British
about the availability and deployment of
German interceptors and night fighters.

Yes and the information was used, without revealing the source
to people like Harris.

Please note though night fighters on established bases and in
particular in Germany, had much less need of radio.

Bomber Command would need this information.
Was no one in Bomber Command cleared?

I suspect someone was but not Harris. It looks like Portal decided
to end the argument with Harris by revealing the source of information.
So Harris was cleared in early 1945.

And it seems very odd that the absolute chief of
British strategic bombing would not be cleared
when at least three American bomber commanders
were (Spaatz, Eaker, Doolittle).

Fundamentally the British were more conservative about clearing
people for Ultra, things like the Luftwaffe order of battle and
bases could be explained by other sources, prisoners, radio
traffic without decryption and so on. It seems apart from some
reports on oil attacks Ultra rarely gave information of great help
to Bomber Command.

Brigadier General A W Vanaman, recently appointed (May 1944)
head of intelligence at 8th Air Force HQ, he was Ultra cleared but
was allowed to go on a raid as an observer.

The date was 27 June 1944, strikes on V weapons sites in the
Pas-de-Calais area, the B-17 he was in was hit by flak causing
a fire, the order was given to bale out, 5 men did so, including
Vanaman before the fire went out. The aircraft then returned to
England, damage proved to be so minor it was ready for
operations the next day, apparently a severed fuel line had fed
fuel to the exhaust of a damaged engine, causing a spectacular
fire trail while the fuel lasted but no real damage.

The claim is the way of his arrival meant the Germans were
suspicious he was really a plant and did not make much use
of the information they managed to extract from him.

If in fact he was Ultra cleared then it was a major breach of
security, one that should have produced repercussions at
8th Air Force.

Harris apparently flew to the weekly meeting at SHAEF HQ
when it was in France.

Geoffrey Sinclair
Remove the nb for email.

.

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