Trent Telenko Profile picture
Apr 3, 2021 14 tweets 5 min read Read on X
This is another thread on Imperial Japanese radar countermeasures in WW2.

This thread will also include the US inter-service intelligence/classification/budget wars between the Joint Chiefs & MacArthur's Section 22 radar hunters.
1/ Image
The information in this thread is coming from a 28 May 1945 training document from Boca Raton Army Air Field.

William Cahill of the Sec 22 Special Interest Group found it in Late Feb 2021. 2/ ImageImage
What Cahill found in RCM Digest 14 was yet another bit of Japanese radar countermeasures.

One utterly unique in the history of electronic warfare. 3/
It was an air dropped radar dipole reflector that was neither window, nor rope.

It was a wire corner reflector assembly. It had a parachute to slow and stabilize the assembly while a hydrogen gas generator filled a balloon that would keep the decoy airborne for a 1/4 hour(+) 4/ Image
I mentioned the Japanese use of balloon born dipole reflectors in Section 22 Week. This wasn't that. (See photo)

It was aircraft dropped to inflate & was not released from the ground.

The Kriegsmarine, USN & Royal Navy had nothing like it. 5/ Image
The US Navy's "NAVTECHJAP" investigative mission said nothing about it after the WW2.

This willful exclusion of Japanese RCM technology was par for the WW2 US Navy's course under COMINCH Adm. King. 6/ Image
What stood out about this bit of RCM kit was there is no record of its existence in Section 22 records.

The US Navy held back information on IJN doxing Allied IFF signals starting in March 1944 to Sept 1944 & on IJN airborne radar after Iwo Jima to the end of WW2. 7/
In fact, the USN was holding out on itself on Japanese RCM tactics in WW2. See pg 248 of 328, paragraph 35, in the attached document "Report on the Capture of the Marianas" below.

Enemy RCM tactics were a step below sigint, but above that ships crews were authorized to know. 8/ Image
This lack of intelligence information made things rather difficult for US Navy and USMC radar operators.
9/
The 1st use I can find of this IJN para-balloon corner reflector was in a "Great Marianas Turkey Shoot" AAR.

It was not recognized for what it was because the balloon failed to inflate and the device fell into the ocean.
10/
It was used extensively by the IJN in the Okinawa campaign and was seen by picket destroyers, who termed them "kites" because of their duration.

The CVE's South East of Okinawa reported their use on 12 April 1945.
11/ Image
What is shocking here is that the Boca Raton Radar & RCM facility of the USAAF was not telling Sec. 22, which was supporting the Fighter Commands of 5th & 13th Air Forces, about this Japanese radar decoy.

This was a massive change in the relationship between Sec. 22 & Boca Raton
A direction to Boca Raton to not support US Army Air Forces in combat could only have come from USAAF Headquarters in Washington D.C.

The post-war internal budget wars came early for the USAAF Bomber Mafia.

General Kenny would not be allowed to be CoS USAF...at any cost.
/End

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More from @TrentTelenko

Aug 19
I've gotten a lot of comments on this thread here and via DM. I'm going to share one from a Cold War gray beard on the engine that powers the FP-5.

"FP-5 is around 4 x Tomahawk in mass.

FP-5 Engine🧵
...With a similar configuration, drag will not be dominated by lift induced wing drag but will form drag which is typical for 500 knots air speed jets and missiles with low aspect ratio wings.

2/
...So a rule of thumb estimate is that you will need around 4 x the thrust of a Tomahawk F107-WR-402 700 lbf (3.1 kN) engine for an FP-5 Flamingo GLCM.

3/
Read 7 tweets
Aug 19
Slowly, with a lot of notice, Trump is morphing into Pres. Biden

This territorial concession malarkey is exactly what the Biden Administration was playing games with in Nov 2021 via an op-ed by Samuel Charap of RAND in the Nov 19, 2021 Politico.

1/
That Op-Ed advocated, in effect, that the US abandon Ukraine to Russia in exchange for other concessions by Russia, greenlighting Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

It was understood in Nov. 2021 era DC that Charap...


2/rand.org/pubs/commentar…
...was Jake Sullivan's totem animal for surfacing ideas of "de-escalation" with Russia.

Former Estonian President Ilves and Prof Stephan Blank utterly shredded the Charap/Sullivan thought balloon.

Seeing Trump revive that Charap/Sullivan thought ballon now is sickening🤮

3/3 Image
Read 4 tweets
Aug 18
The issue for Russia with the FP-5 is that its range makes Russian national air defense practically impossible.

Ukraine can reach facilities on the other side of the Urals and north to Murmansk with the FP-5.

Once Ukrainian drones overwhelm a border SAM battery sector.

1/ Image
FP-5's sent through the drone peak saturation area can 'squirt through into a great empty' low at high subsonic speeds.

Only an AWACS with late production SU-30 with look down/shoot down PESA radars can deal with them.

H/T @DrnBmbr
2/ Image
Furthermore, FP-5's are going to have electronic counter measures (ECM) and counter-countermeasures (ECCM) installed as standard.

The FP-5 will have at least a 24 element CRPA element layout to beat GPS jamming...

3/
Read 5 tweets
Aug 12
Pres Zelenskyy of Ukraine just made an interesting statement:

"Let me give an example from yesterday, roughly like this: the Russians suffer about a thousand losses per day — that’s 500 killed and 500 wounded.

1/
I’m not even counting the 10 prisoners and so on. More precisely, 968 losses for Russia: 531 killed, 428 wounded, and 9 captured.

We had 340 losses in one day: 18 killed, 243 wounded, and 79 missing in action," he said."

2/
500 Russian KIA versus 18 Ukrainian KIA is a 29.5 to one ratio in favor of Ukraine.

Total Russian casualties of 1,000 versus 340 Ukrainian is a 2.9 to one ratio in favor of Ukraine.

3/
Read 5 tweets
Aug 12
Actually, the Soviet Union in the "Great Patriotic War" did suffer worse casualties and win.

It is that fact which powers the "Russian WW2 exceptionalism" myth that Putin used to zombify Russians over 20 years to make suicidal assaults over and over again.

1/
I said something like what Chuck just said about Russian casualties in July 2024.

Chuck now, like I did then, underestimates how powerful cultural conditioning is in making armies able to take horrific losses and continue.

2/
As long a Putin's propaganda keeps Russians believing they are winning by taking miniscule slivers of Ukrainian land.

The Russians will keep coming.

It doesn't mean Russia will win. It means Russia is paying a disproportionate blood debt which will have to be paid.

3/
Read 17 tweets
Aug 11
The map below underlines a real innumeracy issue with lots of Western analysts of Ukraine's OWA drone strategic bombing campaign.

BLUF: 40,000/52 weeks is ~769 Ukrainian OWA drones launched a week on average for the whole year.

Ukrainian OWA Drone🧵
1/
Historic war mobilization production curves are heavily back loaded.

That is, the production rates of B-17's and B-24's bombers in the 3rd quarter of 1943 versus the 3rd quarter of 1944 showed a much higher production rate in late 1944.

2/ Image
Image
We are mid-way through the 3rd quarter of the 2025 where Ukraine's OWA drone annual production goal was 40,000.

Ukraine should be around 850-950 OWA drones a week in August 2025 and will be close to 1,200 a week in the 4th qtr. of the 2025.

3/
Read 5 tweets

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