From POW to the Pentagon

Richard P. Klocko and Air Force Cryptology

Richard Klocko was angry.

He had been back in the United States for only a short time, having been on assignment in Puerto Rico, then Europe, for the past five years. This included more than two years in captivity as a prisoner of war in Germany, taken into custody after his P-39 was shot down during a mission over North Africa. Originally slated for sixty days’ rest at his home in Miami Beach, Klocko found himself instead ordered to Washington with little explanation, and he was none too happy. Demobilization was in full swing, releasing enlisted troops and officers who had served in the European theater. While many soldiers returned to civilian life, others were reassigned. Despite his recent return, Klocko was assigned to the War Department General Staff in the Pentagon, to begin working on the policy staff of the G-2 Military Intelligence Division.

Klocko admittedly knew next to nothing about intelligence work, or staff work, for that matter. A 1937 graduate of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, Klocko completed flight training in 1938 and was assigned to the 36th Pursuit Squadron headquartered at Langley Field, Virginia. In January 1941 he was transferred to the 36th Pursuit Group in Puerto Rico, where he would become Group Commander. Called to Washington in June 1942, Klocko and a few others were assigned to General Dwight D. Eisenhower’s general staff in London, England. Klocko spent three months on Eisenhower’s staff before seeking a way back to a role he knew and enjoyed, assigned to command the 350th Fighter Group.

The 350th and the 81st, which Klocko also came to command, relocated to North Africa and began flying ground support missions as the Allies pushed back Nazi troops under Field Marshall Erwin Rommel in 1943. On February 24, 1943, Klocko was flying his P-39 low over the Sahara when he was hit in the fuel tank by anti-aircraft fire from below. Flames eating away the metal of his plane, Klocko released his door and landed flat in the desert sand. Quickly surrounded by members of the local Arab population supporting the Germans, he was soon taken into Nazi custody and eventually transferred to Stalag Luft III, the now famous prison camp featured in the film The Great Escape.

Klocko would spend the next two years, two months, and six days as a prisoner of war.

As the Allies advanced through Europe and Nazi defeat became certain, Klocko and his fellow American and British prisoners were marched from Stalag Luft III to Moosburg, Germany, where the Nazis left them to retreat in the face of advancing Soviet and American forces. Upon being released and transferred back to the United States, Klocko reunited with his wife and planned some leisure activities to enjoy during his sixty days’ rest period.

Unfortunately, it was not to be.

The end of the war came as Klocko worked in his new assignment at the Pentagon, navigating the challenges that demobilization brought to the Army’s G-2 division. After a year in the policy staff Klocko was personally reassigned by Carter W. Clarke, Assistant Chief of Staff for G-2, to head the Special Resources Branch. Importantly, and at Clarke’s direction, Klocko’s introduction to the world of communications intelligence included a robust education in the basics of cryptology from none other than Frank B. Rowlett, a talented protégé of William F. Friedman and head of the cryptanalytic branch of ASA at the time. His new assignment placed him at the vortex of the American military’s transition from one wartime footing to another as the United States and its Western allies navigated the early tensions of the emerging Cold War.

Then—as the National Security Act of 1947 transformed the Army Air Forces into an independent U.S. Air Force—the purpose of Klocko’s intelligence education became clear. He was one of the initial few officers reassigned from the Army to the Air Force, and was immediately tasked with laying the groundwork for an independent communications intelligence capability for the young service. That organization, formally established as a command in 1948, was the U.S. Air Force Security Service.

Air Force leaders understood that an effective cryptologic capability would be crucial for maintaining and enhancing their new service as a strategic and decisive component of America’s national defense. Successfully deploying air-atomic strategy in the event of a future war would require reliable information on the capabilities, intentions—and potential targets—of an opposing force, the Soviet Union in particular. Communications intelligence would be a critical source of this information. Klocko, with his recent experience working alongside the Army communications intelligence, was just the man they needed to set up a comparable agency in the Air Force.

As the 1950s unfolded and the Cold War waged on, Klocko would find himself exploring other assignments, first as a student at the Air War College, then an instructor. In the 1960s, however, Klocko would return to the Security Service and eventually serve as its commander, leading the organization through conflict in Southeast Asia, the Cuban Missile Crisis, and bureaucratic entanglements with its counterpart—and competing—intelligence agencies. The organization he built would continue to serve the Air Force, through a name change in 1979 and throughout the end of the Cold War.

Read more in Rise of the Mavericks: The U.S. Air Force Security Service, released in April 2023 from the U.S. Naval Institute Press.

Available now:

Amazon: https://amzn.to/3zqHGYO   

Naval Institute: https://bit.ly/3czy70M   

*Cover image courtesy of the U.S. Air Force