One of the crying shames of academic WW2 history is it's unwillingness to address what we now call electronic warfare.

The Ham radio community is both different & far more useful.

See:

German WW2 ECM
(Electronic Countermeasures)
Adam Farson
VA7OJ
ab4oj.com/nsprog/german_…
Now to explain why Ham radio guys can be a whole lot more useful that academic & archival historians** for EW -- the 2 August 1939, LZ130 Graf Zeppelin flight.

**Note: Every field has it's weak points. Extremely few academic tract historians are radio geeks...
2/
...and being a radio geek is a better skill set for the subject matter than most PhD's not awarded to Dr Alfred Price.

LZ130 flew one of the first ELINT missions ever, against the UK Chain Home system with 25 RF engineers aboard.
3/
along with the engineers, LZ130 had broadband radio receivers covering 2 -100 MHz.

Luftwaffe General Wolfgang Martini thought that the British CH towers might be radar and put together this flight and an earlier on in May 1940.

Neither found radar.
4/
The German engineers believed that Britain was developing radars in the same 100-150 MHz
range as Germany, so the team concentrated on that band.

Up to this point, we are in the "standard narrative" historiography.
5/
This is where Adam Farson being a Ham radio guy comes in for "non-standard" history.

He understands the affect of the Mains cycle or powerline hum.

This hum from the UK power grid played a huge role
6/
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mains_hum
...in why General Martini's boffins missed the CH signal.

The Luftwaffe signals boffins picked up pulsed signals of CH modulated by 'mains hum' in the 20-50 MHz range, but discounted these as ionosonde signals or mains powerline hum from the UK national grid.
7/
According to Mr. Farson, the British grid was synchronous.

To avoid grid electromagnetic interference (EMI) interference, the 250 kW peak pulse CH transmitters were keyed from different points on the 50 Hz mains cycle to avoid co-channel interference between stations.

8/
This clever synchronization scheme of the CH radar builders to avoid the UK National Grid's mains cycle/powerline hum from screwing up their radar ended up camouflaging the CH signal from the Luftwaffe radar signals intercept boffins.

9/
Where have you heard that bit of electronic warfare history in the "Battle of Britain" narrative?

Even Dr Alfred Price and Dr. R. V. Jones missed this one.

/End

• • •

Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to force a refresh
 

Keep Current with Trent Telenko

Trent Telenko Profile picture

Stay in touch and get notified when new unrolls are available from this author!

Read all threads

This Thread may be Removed Anytime!

PDF

Twitter may remove this content at anytime! Save it as PDF for later use!

Try unrolling a thread yourself!

how to unroll video
  1. Follow @ThreadReaderApp to mention us!

  2. From a Twitter thread mention us with a keyword "unroll"
@threadreaderapp unroll

Practice here first or read more on our help page!

More from @TrentTelenko

12 May
@boys_ian @Steveho25139795 @clark_aviation Radar proximity fuzes were a UK concept & engineering development that it took American industrial capacity to make real. (photo)

Time fuzes came in 2 flavors.

Flavor 1 was mechanical like an old Swiss watch. Flavor 2 was a burning pyrotechnic fuze.

Flavor 1 kept better time Image
@boys_ian @Steveho25139795 @clark_aviation Flavor 2 was far lighter and MUCH cheaper.

This meant barrages and director controlled pointer fire using mechanical fuzes were much more consistent in altitude.

But the pyrotechnic fuzes could reach higher flying USAAF bombers in 1944 that mechanical could not.
@boys_ian @Steveho25139795 @clark_aviation This article (link) is a good one for explaining German AA gun defenses as a system.

The key pacing item for German flak defenses were the directors, mechanical-analog fire control computers. (photos)

nationalinterest.org/blog/reboot/ge… ImageImage
Read 10 tweets
11 May
@lookner

This James Dunnigan strategypage.com article lists the export customers for the Israeli Iron Dome system. The listed nations are as follows:

Azerbaijan
India
Romania
USA

Air Defense: It Just Works
strategypage.com/htmw/htada/art…
@lookner
Text from the posted article:

"Using Iron Dome effectively has always been a matter of numbers. In the 2014 50-day war with Hamas, Iron Dome intercepted 735 Hamas rockets, which were 90 percent of those headed for populated or military base areas...
...That was up from the eight-day 2012 war where there were 421 intercepts and of those 84 percent were headed for populated or military base areas.

@lookner
Read 4 tweets
8 May
@DrydockDreams has put up another Coral Sea post modeling ships & US Navy CAG William Ault plus his disappearance returning from the strike against IJN CarDiv 5.

This thread goes into what the role of preventable HF communications failure played in that

...disappearance.

To do so I will be using screen captures from Squadron Leader A. L. Hall, RAAF, presentation "farewell to communication failures" reprinted in the Aug 1944 CIC magazine

This is a clip showing the beginning of S/F Hall's manuscript.

WW2 wartime military periodicals often have 'retro' or 'era specific' high tech buried in the articles that modern eyes will not understand.

3/
Read 16 tweets
7 May
@DrydockDreams has a great post up on the Battle of Coral Sea with models of the ships sunk there.

This thread is going to take a lessor known road in exploring that battle.

Namely, why search plane radio communications sucked in the battle.
1/

When people remember the Battle of Coral Sea. These are the sort of strategic and tactical maps people use to understand the battle.
2/
This map is not one normally used for the Coral Sea, but is absolutely necessary backdrop to it.

These are the active Japanese seaplane search sectors in May 1942.

So...why didn't they both spot USN CV's & pass on data to the Japanese CV's?
3/
Read 15 tweets
4 May
This thread is the fourth visit to the logistical disaster known as Operation Iceberg.

1/
The three previous threads have dealt with the hidden friendly fire, USN doctrine & a horrid staff planning error that left far too few staffers to plan because of a grand standing USMC general/Deputy Chief of Staff in 10th Army .

"Failing to plan is planning to fail."

2/
This thread focuses on how unexamined CentPac & 10th Army staff assumptions in changed combat conditions turned around and bite them all in the assets.

3/
Read 35 tweets
30 Apr
@BoneyAbroad @ReassessHistory @greg_jenner The twin flaws with most histories of the strategic bombing campaigns in WW2 are factually illiteracy & projecting current identity/moral values on people living the 1930's & 1940's.

Two world wars in 21 years makes democratic peoples very bloody minded.
@BoneyAbroad @ReassessHistory @greg_jenner And as far as factual illiteracy goes, I have a "bozo filter" resource list on strategic bombing that I use to judge a book's credibility.

1. Richard P. Hallion's "America's Pursuit of Precision Bombing, 1910-1945

2/
@BoneyAbroad @ReassessHistory @greg_jenner 3. Charles W. MacArthur's "Operations Analysis in the U.S. Army Eighth Air Force in World War II"

4. James K. McElroy, Chapter Nine in "Fire and Air War" by the National Fire Protection Association

3/
Read 19 tweets

Did Thread Reader help you today?

Support us! We are indie developers!


This site is made by just two indie developers on a laptop doing marketing, support and development! Read more about the story.

Become a Premium Member ($3/month or $30/year) and get exclusive features!

Become Premium

Too expensive? Make a small donation by buying us coffee ($5) or help with server cost ($10)

Donate via Paypal Become our Patreon

Thank you for your support!

Follow Us on Twitter!

:(