Thread by @TrentTelenko

@GoodClearTweets @CalumDouglas1 @militaryhistori Another book to go with those three economic tomes is John Stubbington's “Kept in the Dark – The Denial to Bomber Command of Vital Ultra and Other Intelligence During World War II.”

This link is to a review—

speedreaders.info/293-bomber_com…

@GoodClearTweets @CalumDouglas1 @militaryhistori “Kept in the Dark” is -NOT- light reading. There is a lot of organizational ground to cover in documenting the growth of the UK’s wartime intelligence structure supporting the Combined Bomber Offensive. And explaining how it came about that the UK Air Ministry didn’t provide...

@GoodClearTweets @CalumDouglas1 @militaryhistori ...ULTRA intercepts to the U.K. based RAF Fighter, Coastal and especially Bomber Commands.

While at the same time it did so with British military over seas commands and first the American 8th Air Force and later the United States Strategic Air Force in England.

@GoodClearTweets @CalumDouglas1 @militaryhistori “Kept in the Dark” has several real gems that are worth the hard slog beyond Air Marshall Bottomley’s Feb. 1945 ULTRA postmortem.

1. The USAAF chose not to create it’s own intelligence system in the UK and relied upon the intelligence system supporting Bomber Command.

@GoodClearTweets @CalumDouglas1 @militaryhistori 2. The US Military traded everything it had on the Japanese codes to get full access to Bletchley Park’s ULTRA materials in real time.

3. The USAAF was thus a very poor consumer of intelligence as it had no idea as to it’s real value, particularly regards materials from the...

@GoodClearTweets @CalumDouglas1 @militaryhistori ...UK’s Ministry of Economic Warfare (MEW). The flawed intelligence on German ball bearings that resulted in the Second Raid on Schweinfurt in October 1943 came from MEW.

Air Marshall Harris on the other hand — unlike the USAAF leadership — knew where the MEW had started...

@GoodClearTweets @CalumDouglas1 @militaryhistori ...and how truly awful the MEW’s intelligence was.

Harris had both the moral courage and operational authority to tell them to “sod off” regards when he termed “Panacea Targets” (ball bearings, etc) that were beyond the capability of his night bombers to strike accurately.

@GoodClearTweets @CalumDouglas1 @militaryhistori But unlike the USAAF, Harris had of nothing value to trade the UK intelligence bureaucrats for direct ULTRA access.

So they cut him out.

This set a bad behavior precedent for the UK’s Air Ministry and Whitehall which would make itself felt after D-Day via withholding Ultra...

@GoodClearTweets @CalumDouglas1 @militaryhistori ...intercepts of German Railway detailing the effects of allied bombing on railway marshaling yards from General Eisenhower and SHAFE.

@GoodClearTweets @CalumDouglas1 @militaryhistori @threadreaderapp unroll