One of the most difficult issues in researching & writing about electronic warfare in WW2’s Pacific Theater is it’s systematic exclusion from the USN’s official histories. This exclusion was as systematic was it was intentional.
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The war diaries of the US Navy are both digitized and available on the Fold3.com service.
A simple search on the radar decoy code name “Window” in the WW2 War Diaries gets thousands of hits. 2/ fold3.com
Window was one of the names for radar dipole decoys dropped from A/C, rockets, bombs and artillery.
The Japanese were both technically skilled and increasingly proficient in its use by 1945.
And, like those thousands of Fold3.com war diary hits, their efforts 3/
...using window didn't make USN WW2 institutional history.
My trail of Japanese window use started with a spread sheet from MacArthur’s Sec. 22 files that detailed 53 locations and 54 specific instances of Japanese window use.
These occurred between 31 Aug. 1943 & Jan. 1945. 4/
The first window use against a SWPA radar was at Hammond Island, Queenland, Australia.
This Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) radar site worked with No. 3 Fighter Sector (3FS) in covering the Torres Strait facing New Guinea, which operated between 1942 and 1943. 5/
The Japanese plane that did it was likely a IJN flying boat operating from Salamaua.
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The last Section 22 tactical window reference was from Jan 1945 to a cache of window captured from a belly landed Jill bomber found in Caguray River Bed (Philippines). 7/
Lt. Commander Sudo Hajime’s gima-shi “deceiving paper" was 1st used a Guadalcanal in May 1943.
In addition to pre-dating the Hammond Island drop, this was well before the Operation Gomora firebombing raid on Hamburg.
The USMC 10th Defense Battalion March 1944 war diary while on Kwajalein shows successful Japanese air raids on 8 March 1944 were aided by the use of gima-shi radar countermeasures vs it's 2-meter band SCR-268 GFC radars.
SSgt Jacob Marty from USMC Air Warning Squadron-1 was killed in that March 1944 attack.
Subsequently the 10th's SCR-268's were replaced by US Army SCR-584 to support 90mm gun while USN Mark 20 radars were adapted to ground based searchlight work.
Thomas Kolesa modified his Mk 20 at Okinawa to extend it's range from 25,000 to 30,000 yards when the Japanese figured out it's range based on when their planes were being illuminated.
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Returning to 1944, the 1st US Navy mention of a warship seeing Japanese window in FOLD3.com was 12 Feb 1944 at ~0200 in the morning by USS Mustin (DD413).
She was escorting CVE's off Roi Island. 13/
Pretty much every USMC amphibious landing from Eniwetok to Okinawa saw Japanese use of window.
The USMC early warning teams attached to IIIMAC & US Army XXIVth Corps at Okinawa recorded 43 separate window drops the nights of 12-19 April 1945.
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Yet how many naval histories of the Pacific War mention that even once?
There are a lot of history PhD's awaiting the ambitious willing to run this down.
The defence-blog -dot- com website reported a very important observation on the production quality of current Russian Shahed production.
It's individual quality is declining, _Hard_.
1/ Russian End Run Production 🧵
From the article:
“The Russians have adapted these drones to their needs, but due to a lack of components and efforts to reduce costs, their quality has declined,” Kulchytsky explained.
Earlier iterations of Shahed drones contained numerous foreign-made components,
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...including Japanese-manufactured bearings and precision-built servo drive rods.
However, recent versions have shown a transition to simplified bearings and direct rod assemblies, indicating a shortage of high-quality components."
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The US Navy, as an institution, had a really horrid record of "friendly fire" in WW2, to include shooting down a FM-2 Wildcat fighter coming of the catapult of the CVE USS Tulagi in Kerama Retto on 6 Apr 1945.
Another FM-2 Wildcat, damaged in the same Kerama Retto engagement resulting in the USS Tulagi's FM-2 getting shot down, was in turn blown out of the sky by panicked USN gunners over Kadena airfield causing massive damage to fighter fuel logistics & strafing Army troops ashore. 3/
Congress being held accountable for stealth legislation & pork barrel spending _BEFORE THE VOTE IS CAST_ is my most unexpected and welcomed result of Artificial Intelligence large language models (LLM) in 2024.
It would take eight speed reading lawyers with eidetic memories 16 to 24 man hours to parse a 1000 page piece of legislation.
Specialty lawyers charging hundred of dollars an hour working for K-Street lobbyists.
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Now any competent person can feed huge pieces of legislation to Grok, or other LLM, for nearly no cost and generate a similar work product in minutes to post to social media.
K-Street lobbyists in DC, & Congressmen/Senators sucking up their cash, just had their world burn.
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I've been involved with three US Army FMTV reset programs.
So this newest report from Ukraine's Defense Express on the the repairability problems with Russian AFV's out of their reserves is so much fun to share with you all.
Defense Express pulled an article from the No. 10 issue of the Russian magazine "Material and Technical Support" on how horrid the vehicles coming out of reserve are plus problems with battle damaged reserve vehicles.
"The central takeaway from this publication is that the actual repairability of Russian tanks is 3-5 times lower than what is claimed in official manuals. This discrepancy has extended repair times for equipment by at least 15-20%."
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The infographic figure below is a typical commercial production line curve.
Ukraine's stated production and use of the Peklo (Hell) cruise missile marks it as being on the 'start of production to market entry' ramp up part of the curve below.
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Over two dozen Peklo were shown in this public unveiling by Ukraine, which is over 1/4 of the stated production to date.
How many were pre-production prototypes or low rate initial pilot production models isn't knowable. 3/
"According to Andriy Klymenko , head of the Institute for Black Sea Strategic Studies , both vessels are very old and have a "river" class, which implies certain limitations.
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He published and commented on the relevant map, which indicates the approximate location of the tanker disaster.
"It is about 8 miles from the seaport of Taman (a transshipment port south of the Kerch Strait).
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