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Trent Telenko Profile picture
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2 Jan, 29 tweets, 13 min read
Given the enormous interest in the "Electronic Warfare during the Battle of the Bulge" thread.

I'm posting a new thread whose subject is the historiography of EW in WW2 with foundational books, a road map of available primary sources, & recent research

1/
The late Alfred Price's "Instruments of Darkness: The History of Electronic Warfare, 1939–1945' is the foundational WW2 electronic warfare history.

It has been in continual print since 1969 with the last edition in 2020.

amazon.com/Instruments-Da…
2/
"Instruments of Darkness..." provides the some of the history of the "Battle of the Beams" but focuses on RAF Bomber Command's war with German integrated air defense system (IADS)
3/
UK Prof. R. V. Jones book "Most Secret War" is part memoir, part WW2 electronic intelligence (ELINT then called Scientific Intelligence) primer.

Jones as a wonderful written voice and a sense of humor in explaining a very esoteric technical subject.
4/
 amazon.com/Most-Secret-Pe…
The 3rd foundational WW2 EW book was Alfred Price's "History of US Electronic Warfare. Vol. I. Years of Innovation-Beginnings to 1946" that was published by the Association of Old Crows.
5/
 amazon.com/History-Electr…
It was a public audience version of his 1985 Loughborough University PhD doctorate:

"The evolution of electronic warfare equipment and techniques in the USA, 1901 to 1945"

And it is available for download:
6/
 repository.lboro.ac.uk/articles/thesi…
Price's doctorate covered US Pacific theater electronic warfare and remained the only work covering the over all work of MacArthur's Section 22 radar hunters to any serious degree until 2015.

7/
Brian Johnson companion book "The Secret War," to the 1970's BBC television documentary series of the same name, provided many more details and useful infographics to supplement Jones and Price's books on the "Battle of the Beams" & RAF Bomber Command.
8/
 amazon.com/Secret-Sword-M…
Martin Streetly's book "Confound and Destroy: 100 Group and the Bomber Support Campaign" is the most detailed on Bomber Command premier EW unit with photos, ops & A/C #'s.

It's a modeler's dream w/great infographics. (See the picture in the 1st tweet)
9/
 amazon.com/Confound-Destr…
The 1982 book THE ENEMY IS LISTENING - The Story of the Y-Service by Aileen Clayton is about the RAF's low level code breaking Y-Service. The paperback version has the best MTO SIGINT/ELINT unit location map of the July 1943 period of any I've found.

amazon.com/gp/product/B01…
10/
The problem with these books is their sources were frozen ~1985.

The declassifications of the late 1990’s are not part of the ‘historiography’ of WW2. This left the Pacific w/o a full book on E.W.

Part 2 of this thread will be links to Post-Cold War E.W. docs.
11/
The most important of the Post-Cold War declassifications is the following document:

"Summary Technical Report of Division 15, NDRC, Vol. 1, RADIO COUNTERMEASURES"

Chapter 14 is the ETO/MTO & 15 is the PTO.
12/
archive.org/details/radioc…
The single most important wartime primary document on-line for the Pacific war Electronic Warfare is the following:

13/
This is the only detailed primary source institutional history of New Zealand's considerable contribution to Electronic Warfare in the Pacific War.
14/
This is the mission history of the RAAF No. 20 Catalina Sqd. mission to mine the Port of Manila during the Leyte Campaign.

It was Australia's biggest E.W. mission of WW2 in the Pacific.

The USN only admitted their single PBY did the mission.🤬🤬
15/
This on-line Australian Archives document is a partial copy of the "Current Statements" Section 22 issued to Allied air & naval units on Japanese radars & E.W. capabilities, equipment & tactics.
16/
In any international military operation, there are also politics.

This Australian document is on the interaction of Section 22 with the British military.
17/
There are far more primary source WW2 electronic warfare documents that the above now available.

So, now we turn to part 3. What some of the Section 22 Special Interest Group have done with those documents.
18/
This is Craig Arthur Bellamy's Honor's paper on Section 22 Field Unit #6 operating out of North West Australia in WW2.
19/
This is William Cahill's article on Section 22's electronic warfare operations in support of the 13th Air Force in the South and South West Pacific Theaters.
20/
This is William Cahill's 2018 article on Section 22's support of the 5th Air Force & the over all Far Eastern Air Forces preparing for the invasion of Japan.
21/
This 2020 PhD doctorate by Craig Arthur Bellamy of Charles Darwin University is the only book length treatment of electronic warfare in the Pacific theater.

It concentrates on the previously undocumented Australian origins of Section 22.
22/
Craig & William's work marks the end of mission for the Section 22 SIG was far as documenting Section 22's archival footprint in Australia, the USA & New Zealand.

It wasn't the end of the email list's mission to write EW into the Pacific war & tell you 'Who were those guys?'
23/
Now, part 4. The social media outreach effort of the Section 22 SIG.

As list admin, power point ranger & social media outreach for the list, I've made it my mission since Sept 2020 to spread the knowledge of Section 22's role in the Pacific War.
23/
...here on twitter and on other social media platforms like Facebook.
24/
 facebook.com/groups/1414345…
Our first major outreach success was on CIMSEC' Bilgepump's Episode 38 podcast.

If you have a couple of hours Peter Dunn, Craig & I talk Section 22 with the full Bilgepumps crew
25/
I spent the week prior to the podcast's publication posting an 82 slide presentation that I sold the Bilgepumps crew with on Twitter.

Check it out:

26/
Our next big success was with @WW2TV

27/
The current outreach project is a round table proposal for the Society of Military History's 88th conference in Ft Worth Texas in April/May 2022.

Wish us luck.
/End.

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More from @TrentTelenko

Trent Telenko Profile picture
29 Dec 21
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/
Read 22 tweets
Trent Telenko Profile picture
11 Dec 21
@ArmouredCarrier @smooreBofB1940 @AC_NavalHistory @Drachinifel @MilAvHistory @MilHiVisualized @CBI_PTO_History @DrydockDreams @TheBaseLeg IJNAS single engine planes in service in 1941 were equipped with the Type 1 Ku 3 RDF system. This included the Mitsubishi F1M Type Zero Observation Seaplane, Allied reporting name Pete.

So IJN cruiser spotters could & did use the Yamamoto C3I System within range of the beacons.
@ArmouredCarrier @smooreBofB1940 @AC_NavalHistory @Drachinifel @MilAvHistory @MilHiVisualized @CBI_PTO_History @DrydockDreams @TheBaseLeg MacArthur's Central Bureau tracked single engine IJN float planes as a operational pattern warning of a major troop convoy before enciphered message traffic arrived.

I hadn't figured out how they were doing that until the role of M/F radio beacons came along.
@ArmouredCarrier @smooreBofB1940 @AC_NavalHistory @Drachinifel @MilAvHistory @MilHiVisualized @CBI_PTO_History @DrydockDreams @TheBaseLeg Those IJN float planes worked at night hunting for PT-boats as well as submarines by day.

They needed the beacons up to accomplish their missions.

When Central Bureau hear the beacons. They knew a troop convoy was in-bound.
Read 5 tweets
Trent Telenko Profile picture
10 Dec 21
The subject of this thread is the IJNAS C3I system behind the destruction of Force Z.

(I'll be using clips from Angus Konstam's book to illustrate this thread)
ospreypublishing.com/store/military…
1/
The anniversary of the sinking of Force Z is on the minds of many #twitterhistorians

For example, @ArmouredCarrier has three really nice videos on YouTube about the sinking of HMS Repulse
2/
 youtube.com/results?search…
Konstam's book is wonderful for most of the journalistic "Who, What, Where, When, How, & Why" on Dec 10, 1941, but it leaves out how the command control, communications & intelligence worked for the IJNAS Rikko Kokutai and why it came into existence in time to destroy Force Z.
3/
Read 26 tweets
Trent Telenko Profile picture
9 Dec 21
@Vausterlitz1 It was not a "dumb" question.

It is just one that has not been well answered.

On 11 January 1942, the IJA completed a study on whether Hawaii could be successfully invaded and, if it could, what would be needed to retain the islands.
@Vausterlitz1 They concluded:

Yes, we can capture it, but supplying would be very hard due to shipping tonnage shortages.

Namely, food to feed 500,000 Americans plus the Japanese Garrison would have to be carried across 4,000 miles of ocean;
@Vausterlitz1 because these were the breakdowns by food grown on Hawaii for consumption:

fruit (84%)
rice (10%)
dairy products (28%)
fish (30%)
eggs (40%)
meat (41%)
vegetables (46%)

The IJA officer noted that 2.9 million tons of supplies had been sent by the US to Hawaii during 1941; or
Read 7 tweets
Trent Telenko Profile picture
8 Dec 21
"MacArthur's Pearl Harbor" AKA the Dec 8, 1941 destruction of FEAF air power at Clarke Field is the subject of this thread.

(Photo: Destroyed P-35 fighters on Clark Field)
1/
One of the important things to know about General Douglas MacArthur was that almost nothing said or written about him can be trusted without extensive research to validate its truthfulness.

There were a lot of reasons for this. The biggest being that if the Clinton era
2/
political concept of “The Politics of Personal Destruction” had been around in the 1930s through 1950s, Gen. MacArthur’s face would have been its poster boy.

Everything he did was personal & that made everything everyone else did in opposition to him “personal” to them. Thus

3/
Read 23 tweets
Trent Telenko Profile picture
7 Dec 21
The subject of this thread is "The Forgotten and Buried Intelligence Lessons of Pearl Harbor, December 7th, 1941."

It is both a 2019 column of mine on the Chicagoboyz blog & an enduring lesson for today.

chicagoboyz.net/archives/61235…
1/
The successful surprise Kido Butai carrier fleet movement to Pearl Harbor was the result of a sophisticated the denial and deception measures to blind allied signals intelligence as to their movements.
2/
A deceptive movement that worked thanks to the hard work & diligence of both Adm Isoroku Yamamoto's staff planners as well as pre-war Japanese intelligence.

The IJN played the US Pacific Fleet's operational tendencies like a harp.

3/
Read 42 tweets

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