The subject of this thread will be the electronic warfare history of the Battle of the Bulge.
This history is almost unknown in military history circles, let alone the public, because there have been exactly two articles on it in 75(+) years. 1/
STRATEGIC JAMMING IN PERSPECTIVE.
Long range jamming platforms have been the focus of air campaigns against integrated air defense system (IADS) since WW2. There have never been enough of them and their allocation is a strategic level concern in every war fought since 1945. 2/
The 8th Air Force's 36th Squadron was its heavy jamming unit. It supported 8th AF bomber streams forming up to attack German with VHF band barrage jamming to prevent the Luftwaffe hearing formation chatter & it had a jamming major role during the D-Day invasion of Normandy. 3/
Where the 36th HBS gets involved in the Ardennes involves ART-6 through ART-11 "Jackal" series communications jammers. The photo below shows one of a series of six jammers targeted against German tank radio traffic. 4/ aafradio.org/countermeasure…
The "American Jackal" jammer was a piece of kit that duplicated a British tank radio jammer used in the Western Desert to cover 8th Army in Wellington twin engine bombers.
Despite the highly classified nature of the 36th Jamming Sqd’s capabilities, their were liaison teams of the British Branch of the American MIT Radiation Laboratory (BBRL) all over North West Europe from two months before D-Day to the Ardennes offensive. 6/
Starting in April 1944 BBRL was briefing every senior US Army staff officer it could catch. The flag rank briefer was named John Trump, the uncle of Pres. Donald J. Trump. So Ninth and Third Army senior staff would have been well aware of the capabilities of 7/
...the British build Jostle and American built Jackal tank radio jammers in the 36th Squadron’s B-24’s.
The problem with this 36th HBS Jackal tank radio jamming capability was the 8th AF bomber generals hated it.
They didn't want to share B-24's penny packet with the Army. 8/
Spaatz, Doolittle etc wanted to pass this mission to Ninth AF medium bombers.
This wasn't practical for the simple reason training up & equipping a medium bomber sqd to the 36th's capability would take too long. 9/
Now that we have the context established, lets get to the meat of the 36thJamming Squadron's involvement with the Ardennes offensive.
Short form: Everyone in Allied high command knew where the German Ardennes offensive attack force was.
With one exception, everyone 10/
...thought it was a _DEFENSIVE_ counter-attack force waiting for an allied attack.
The sole exception being 1st Army's G-2 intelligence officer Colonel Benjamin "Monk" Dickson.
As Jörg Muth author of "Command Culture: Officer Education in the U.S. Army and the 11/
...German Armed Forces, 1901–1940" recently put it on the H-War e-mail list:
12/
The full story of Colonel Benjamin "Monk" Dickson's Intel report 37 has to await another Ardennes thread, but it gives context to US Ninth Army's G-2 not only identifying 6th Panzer Army's assembly area, but also convincing Lt. Gen. William Hood Simpson to request the 36th 13/
Heavy Bombardment Squadron (RCM) to fly sorties to jam their radios days before the attack.
A request which was "officially" denied by 8th Air Force because of the German IADS heavy Flak gun threat B-24 to jamming planes. 14/
This is how Maj. Richard Riccardelli's 1985 article "Electronic Warfare in WWII" described the process by which Ninth Army asked for and was denied jamming support. 15/
The word that jumps out is -staffing-. The Ninth Army request for jamming had to be well staffed to make it through the approval process to get to 8th AF & get rejected there on the grounds of vulnerability to German Flak gun concentrations in the proposed jamming orbit of 16/
...Sixth Panzer Army radio emitters.
This staff work for requesting the 36th Jamming Sqd's support was akin to a request asking for the Operation Cobra type carpet bombing and had to include as a minimum the following: 17/
So, to be clear, LTG Simpson & staff, General Bradley & Staff, General Eisenhower's SHAEF staff, and 8th AF all knew where the Sixth Panzer Army was and its capabilities.
LTG Simpson wanted to do something about it and was denied. 18/
After the German's attacked, things changed.
General Patton's 3rd Army asked for the 36th HBS (RCM) to provide support. The 36th flew jamming missions on the 28th & 31st of Dec 1944 near Bastogne.
Three more jamming missions were flown 2 - 7 Jan 1945 supporting Patton. 19/
The biggest reason the EW history of the German Ardennes Offensive is unknown has less to do with the esoteric nature of EW than the light it places on the Allied command decisions before the attack.
The surprise of the attack wasn't intel failure. It was command failure.
/End
Article P.S.
Maj. Richard Riccardelli, "Electronic Warfare in WWII", Army Communicator, Winter 1985, pages 40 - 49 ibiblio.org/cizewski/signa…
Article P.P.S.
William Cahill, "The Unseen Fight: USAAF radio counter-measure operations in Europe, 1943 to 1945," Journal of Aeronautical History June 2020 aerosociety.com/media/15088/20…
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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.
2/
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.
3/3
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%."
3/
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.
2/
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.
2/
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).
3/
This will require a Russian military railway service train to be deployed to this spot for possible future Ukrainian Switchblade 600 follow up strikes.