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by Michael E. Bigelow, INSCOM Command Historian
CORPS G-2 DESCRIBES SOURCES FOR COMBAT INTELLIGENCE
On 19 January 1945, Col. Washington Platt, the XIX Corps G-2, issued a 3,000-word memorandum on the sources available to tactical intelligence officers. Written as the American Army entered its fourth year of war, Platt’s paper provided a thoughtful assessment on not only the sources, but also their limitations and opportunities for improvement.
Platt was a bit of an oddity on the XIX Corps staff. At the fifty-five, he was older than his corps staff colleagues. He had an Ivy League—Yale and Columbia—education rather than, like most of the other staff chiefs, a West Point one. Amongst the group of Regular Army officers, he was a reserve officer; during World War I, he received a reserve commission in the Chemical Warfare Service. He had been recalled to active duty in 1942 and served as the corps chemical officer until August 1943, when he assumed duties as the corps G-2.
After almost six months in England, Colonel Platt and the XIX Corps headquarters had landed in France on 11 June 1944. It fought in Normandy, across France, and into Belgium and Germany. When Platt issued his paper, the corps was holding a sector just east of Aachen, some twenty miles from the on-going Battle of the Bulge.
After noting sources of intelligence were many and varied, Platt pointed out that “their value and reliability changes with changing situations.” He believed an intelligence officer needed to have “a knowledge of their capabilities [as well] limitations [to] make possible the fullest use of Intelligence agencies and reports.” Consequently, he characterized both the strengths and weakness of the major sources from the front-line units to the army headquarters.
Although Platt’s document was more explanative than evaluative, he did single out several sources as particularly worthy. He asserted the corps artillery’s sound and flash battalion was an excellent source and interrogation of civilians provided “information of unique and outstanding value.” Also, “many have stated,” Platt noted, “that the Cub planes provided more enemy information of direct value to the troops than all of the U.S. Air Forces combined.” Platt readily agreed with that assessment and generally regarded tactical aerial reconnaissance as crucial. He believed aerial assets gave G-2s their only opportunity “to detect the more distant enemy road, rail and off the road movements.” Most important, however, was the interrogation of prisoners of war, which amassed “more than one half of the definite information of the enemy having direct tactical value.”
In his discussion of source limitations, Platt stated that often immediate improvement could be made with better training or, at least, application of current training. He also held that sources like patrols and interrogators would yield more meaningful intelligence if they received better briefings on the general enemy situation, and the unit’s essential elements of information (EEI). Moreover, the ability of “our present [agencies],” Platt emphasized, “to detect even large night movements either by road or by railroad are almost negligible.” The inability to see into the night effectively and efficiently was the Army’s greatest “opportunity for improvement.”
Colonel Platt, perhaps more than any other World War II G-2, worked earnestly to capture tactical intelligence techniques and procedures. He gathered a variety of his section’s written and graphic product for instructional use. Toward that end, an enlarged and improved version of this memorandum on sources became a reference document for the postwar Intelligence School at Fort Riley, Kansas. Platt’s 1945 “Present Sources of Combat Intelligence: A Critical Estimate of their Present Value and Reliability with Recommendations for Improvement” is available at: https://cgsc.contentdm.oclc.org/digital/collection/p4013coll8/id/5478/rec/1.
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| Date Taken: | 01.12.2024 |
| Date Posted: | 01.12.2024 13:56 |
| Story ID: | 461773 |
| Location: | US |
| Web Views: | 107 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
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