Rise of the Mavericks: The US Air Force Security Service and the Cold War, 1948–1979 by Philip C. Shackelford. Naval Institute Press, 2023, 212 pp.
In the late 1940s, the fledgling US Air Force faced many critical challenges, including establishing its identity as an independent service with a preeminent role in the nation’s defense establishment; ending segregation in the ranks; and developing the doctrine, tactics, and weapons systems needed to meet the postwar threat posed by the Soviet Union. The ultimate success of Airmen in winning these battles—many fought in the glare of congressional and public scrutiny—set the foundation for the world’s greatest aerial fighting force, one that still dominates the skies almost 80 years later.
But one of the service’s most important fights was waged largely outside the spotlight, in the halls of Congress and the rings of the Pentagon. It marked the struggle to establish an independent communications intelligence (COMINT) capability within the Air Force, ensuring the service could meet its ever-growing need for critical threat information and assume its rightful place as a key player in the nation’s expanding Intelligence Community. It is the story of the Air Force Security Service (AFSS), which, in less than 20 years, grew from a nascent organization with a small staff, meager resources, and limited expertise, to the military’s preeminent COMINT command, with global capabilities that have made exceptional contributions to the nation’s defense.
This transformation was engineered by an exceptional group of Air Force innovators whose work is detailed in Philip Shackelford’s Rise of the Mavericks. Shackelford, South Arkansas Community College’s library director, gained interest in the topic through his grandfather, a Mississippi farm boy who joined the Air Force in 1952 and found himself assigned to AFSS as a cryptologic specialist posted at Royal Air Force Kirknewton in southern Scotland. For Shackelford, interest in the security service’s early days is clearly personal, and Mavericks reflects his passion for the subject.
Drawing upon government records, oral histories, and previous works on the Intelligence Community, Shackelford artfully places the security service in its proper time and context. At its June 1948 creation, the memories of World War II—with its intelligence failures and triumphs—were still fresh; leaders were determined to avoid future military “surprises” like Pearl Harbor; and those with access to Ultra understood COMINT’s role in divining an enemy’s strategy and operational intentions. Those realities created an ideal environment for the military to expand and enhance its signals intelligence (SIGINT) collection, analysis, and reporting capabilities, with the promise of even larger budgets, greater resources, and more influence for military intelligence organizations who could meet customer demands.
In this hyper-competitive environment, the AFSS found itself at a disadvantage. The Army’s Signal Intelligence Service and the Navy’s legendary SIGINT outfit, OP-20-G, dominated American COMINT during the war years and had no desire to surrender—or even share—their position. Making matters worse, air intelligence had long been something of a backwater in G-2 circles, “frequently excluded from important information and forced to accept intelligence processed by other organizations that did not fully appreciate its needs” (50). While conditions—and capabilities—had improved during the war years, the new security service faced an enormous loss of talent during the massive demobilization that followed Germany’s and Japan’s surrender.
Navigating this bureaucratic and personnel minefield fell largely on the shoulders of Colonel Richard Klocko, one of the early mavericks in Shackelford’s narrative. A 1937 West Point graduate commissioned into the Air Corps, Klocko was a fighter group commander in North Africa when he was shot down and captured by the Germans. After two years as a prisoner of war, Klocko was repatriated and sent home, but a promised convalescent leave was cut short by orders to report to the Pentagon, where he was assigned to “monitor the activities of the Army Security Agency” and get a “robust education in the basics of cryptology” with an eye toward creating an independent COMINT organization when the Air Force became a separate branch of the armed forces (74). He proved to be a fast learner.
Klocko and other senior Air Force leaders were also successful in defending their turf during other bureaucratic battles, namely the proposal to create a unified military COMINT organization, known as the Armed Forces Security Agency (AFSA). While supporting consolidation along with the Army, the Air Force also gained permission to move much of its COMINT organization from Washington, DC, to Kelly Air Force Base, Texas. The move proved fortuitous; when it became apparent AFSA had been a failure—and would be replaced by the National Security Agency (NSA)—much of the new organization’s military staff was drawn from the Army and the Navy, while the Air Force’s cryptologic arm, clustered in Texas, lost only a handful of officers and noncommissioned officers to the NSA, an important victory for the security service, which was trying to train and retain needed talent.
While Shackelford’s account of the turf wars is the book’s most valuable aspect, he also does a commendable job recounting AFSS’ baptism under fire in Korea. Like the rest of the US military, the security service was caught flat-footed when communist forces invaded South Korea. Efforts to task in-place assets in support of the air war were thwarted by the Army, and shipments of needed communications gear were delayed, slowing the cryptologic response.
But, as the author notes, this early setback was offset by AFSS success in intercepting Russian and Chinese tactical communications after US adversaries switched to very high frequency radios—a capability the Army and the rest of AFSA could not match. AFSS also established an effective direct support unit, co-located with the Tactical Air Control Center on Cho-do Island, off the east coast of North Korea. This allowed intercept operators to provide real-time intelligence to pilots and weapons controllers, contributing to the lopsided 15:1 kill ratio enjoyed by American pilots in air battles with their adversaries.
Shackelford also does a fine job in detailing AFSS’ maturation as a SIGINT organization, highlighting its support of two critical missions—strategic collection and tactical support—during the Vietnam War and the middle stages of the Cold War. While remaining responsive to national-level tasking through the NSA, the security service could, when requested, devote considerable resources to high priority tactical missions, such as Operation Bolo, the famous aerial deception that led to the downing of seven North Vietnamese MiGs in only 12 minutes, thanks in part to timely and accurate threat warnings from AFSS operators flying aboard Air Force SIGINT platforms.
Still, the section on the security service’s participation in Vietnam covers only 10 pages, and the rest of the command’s history (1975–79) is summarized in just three paragraphs. Obviously, AFSS remained quite active between the Vietnam War’s end and its redesignation as Electronic Security Command on August 1, 1979. This truncated approach is a bit disappointing, but clearly Shackelford’s primary interest is in the Air Force SIGINT’s origins rather than the mature organizations that eventually emerged. To be fair, other works cover some of the same territory, including Bill Grimes’ The History of Big Safari (Archway, 2014) and G. F. Schraeder’s Hognose Silent Warrior (Outskirts, 2017).
Shackelford also faced the dilemma confronting any author who tackles this subject: many who served in COMINT units are reluctant to discuss their work, bound by non-disclosure agreements both real and imagined. Here’s hoping the door will crack a bit wider, and more stories will emerge. Indeed, the only real fault with this expertly researched, well-crafted, and concise history is that more mavericks are not included. Secrecy considerations aside, there is much publicly-available information about the men and women who built AFSS, including Delbert Lang, the Air Force intelligence officer and first American-trained Chinese linguist who established that critical fusion post on Cho-Do Island during the Korean War—and rebuilt the capability to support air operations over North Vietnam in 1972, under Operation Teaball. Or how about the legendary Major General Doyle Larson, who pioneered new uses of the RC-135 for strategic and tactical collection, and flew over 70 combat missions in Vietnam?
Then, there’s a contemporary of Shackelford’s grandfather, another Southern boy who served as a manual Morse operator at an AFSS site in Germany. By 1953, it was clear the young Air Force noncommissioned officer would pursue a music career, but he remained skilled in his military duties, and on March 5 of that year, he became the first American to learn that Soviet dictator Josef Stalin had died, based on the Russian Morse traffic he intercepted. The name of that AFSS technician? Johnny Cash.
But this is a relatively minor quibble with a fine work that sheds new light on a largely forgotten—but critical chapter—in the history of American intelligence. Here’s hoping that Philip Shackelford returns to this subject, with a greater emphasis on the human side of Air Force COMINT.
Major Gary Pounder, USAF, Retired