The High Cost of Faulty
Intel
By Jeff M. Moore
Naval History, February 2005
COURTESY OF WORLD WAR II 50TH ANNIVERSARY COMMITTEE
Despite the best of intentions, intelligence collected by a joint information
center prior to the assault on Iwo
Jima -- in the above photo, shrouded in naval gunfire smoke -- underestimated
Japanese defenses and troop strength, making a tough battle all the more
difficult for the Marines who stormed the beach.
On 19 February 1945, the U.S. Marine Corps launched one of history's bloodiest
amphibious operations. The 3d, 4th, and 5th Marine Divisions, supported
by hundreds of ships and tactical aircraft, battled for more than a month
on Iwo Jima, an island two miles long and five miles wide. It was a ferocious
fight that resulted in legendary feats of heroism. Marine
and Navy casualties totaled 28,686, with 6,821 killed in action, one of
the highest U.S. death tolls in the Pacific War.
1 The Japanese made the battle tough with their expertly engineered defensive
positions and fanatic refusal to surrender. But inadequate knowledge of
the enemy's capabilities and intentions made it tougher. For Iwo Jima,
U.S. intelligence underestimated the number of Japanese combatants on
the island, their weapons, their defense, and the terrain they occupied.
The Joint
Intelligence Center, Pacific Ocean Areas (JICPOA), was the main intelligence
provider for the Iwo Jima operation. The military established it at Pearl
Harbor's Makalapa Crater in September 1943 after nearly two years of merging
smaller intelligence entities together and adding to them. With a staff
of 1,767 Army, Navy, and Marine intelligence specialists, the center processed
all-source intelligence from secondary-source research, reconnaissance
photographs, enemy prisoner of war (POW) interrogations, captured documents,
and enemy communications. In the last category, however, the JICPOA worked
jointly with a U.S. Navy communications center called the Fleet Radio
Communications Unit, Pacific (FRUPAC). Army Brigadier General Joseph J.
Twitty served as the commander, and Navy Captain W. J. Holmes served as
its second in command. The JICPOA's mission was to provide Admiral Chester
Nimitz, Commander in Chief, Pacific, with intelligence on Japanese military
capabilities and intentions-in other words, the information he needed
to beat the Japanese into unconditional surrender.
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The Iwo Jima Intelligence Operation
The JICPOA began collecting information on Iwo Jima after Nimitz authorized
its seizure in August 1944 through Operation Detachment.
2 He needed the island as an air base to support strategic bombing operations
over Japan. Furthermore, Japanese fighters based on Iwo harassed bombers
flying from the Marianas to Japan, a threat he had to neutralize.
JICPOA sources for the Iwo intelligence operation included aerial and
submarine photographs, POW interrogations, intercepted communications,
and captured documents from the 31st Army Headquarters on Saipan, which
the Marines overran in June 1944. The documents included maps of the target
island, navigational charts, and order-of-battle plans.
Many months prior to D-Day, units such as the U.S. Army's
7th Air Force, based on Saipan, flew more than 200 photoreconnaissance
missions over Iwo Jima for the JICPOA. Unfortunately, directors of the
operation focused most flights on the area immediately surrounding Airfield
No. 1, likely because it bordered the landing beaches. Marine after-action
reports stated that these photos were of no value in analyzing the whole
of the island.
3
Closer to D-day, P-38 Lightnings from the 28th Photographic Reconnaissance
Squadron flew missions over Iwo Jima as low as 50 feet and produced the
best photographic coverage of any campaign carried out under Nimitz. These
contributed to a "Joint Enemy Installations Map" printed on 11 February
1945 and distributed to the ground element as it cycled through Guam and
Saipan before cruising to the final objective.
Tragically, the JICPOA did not have seasoned intelligence analysts review
the late photographs from the P-38 missions.
4 Why?
Because toward the end of January 1945, it lost all of its experienced
photographic analysts to the Advanced Intelligence Center (AIC) just starting
on Guam and to a U.S. Navy rotation policy that transferred officers in
"administrative-type" occupational specialties to different locations
or jobs at regular
intervals. Those officers who had begun
their intelligence careers at the JICPOA as photo interpreters simply
had arrived at their time of transfer, so they left. In his report of
intelligence activities at the end of the war, General Twitty said the
incident, "left JICPOA for the moment without adequate experienced personnel"
and "handicapped the work then in progress. . . ."
5
Nevertheless, the JICPOA managed to publish its main Iwo Jima intelligence
report on 10 January 1945. Weeks later, and as D-day neared, Marine intelligence
followed with a last-minute update that revealed startling details on
Iwo's defenses. It said that by 10 February 1945, the Japanese had increased
their firepower and defensive fortifications by 100% in some cases. These
increases, however, did not represent defense capabilities beyond the
JICPOA's original estimates for Iwo Jima, so neither Nimitz nor his subordinates
recommended altering the attack plan.
Notes
1. Richard Wheeler,
Iwo (New York: Lippincott
& Crowell, Publishers, 1980) p. 234. [
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2. Whitman S. Bartley,
Iwo Jima: Amphibious Epic
(Washington, DC: Historical Branch, G-3 Division, Headquarters Marine
Corps, 1954), pp. 19-21. [
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3. Headquarters, Expeditionary Troops, Task Force
Fifty-Six, G-2 Report on Iwo Jima Operation, 1 April 1945, p. 1. [
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to article]
4. G-2 Report on Iwo Jima Operation, 1 April 1945,
pp. 1-2. [
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5. Joseph J. Twitty,
Report of Intelligence Activities
in the Pacific Ocean Areas, “The Growth of JICPOA,” Pearl Harbor,
HI, 15 October 1945, p. 7. [
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