The electronic warfare history of the Battle of the Bulge

Discussion in 'NW Europe' started by davidbfpo, Dec 29, 2021.

  1. davidbfpo

    davidbfpo Patron Patron

    I know there are threads on The Battle of the Bulge, this new thread was created after a search if the subject was covered - apparently not.

    The catalyst for this is Twitter and a long thread by Trent Telenko @TrentTelenko . He opens in three tweets (sixteen others follow) with:
    Electronic Warfare is not my focus and I know a little about the Battle of the Bulge, so the suppression of a US Army intelligence report (known as Intel Report 37 by Colonel Benjamin "Monk" Dickson's; another thread is to follow) on the forthcoming attack caught my attention. His last thread:
    The two articles are cited:

    1) Maj. Richard Riccardelli, "Electronic Warfare in WWII", Army Communicator, Winter 1985, pages 40 - 49. Via http://www.ibiblio.org/cizewski/signalcorps/114/EWWW2.pdf
    2) William Cahill, "The Unseen Fight: USAAF radio counter-measure operations in Europe, 1943 to 1945," Journal of Aeronautical History June 2020 via: https://www.aerosociety.com/media/15088/2020-06-36-bs-rcm-ops-18-nov-20.pdf

    On a very quick skim the RAF equivalent 100 (Special Duties) Group get a section in the later. A specimen passage:
     
    ltdan likes this.
  2. P-Squared

    P-Squared Well-Known Member

    I don’t understand the third para of that first quote,
    “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.”
    If you tried to jam to stop the Luftwaffe hearing ‘formation chatter’ (and I presume that means chatter in USAAF formations) you’d jam your own frequency, of course! Of course, you could position yourself closer to the Luftwaffe listening units and ensure you only used enough power to create noise the Luftwaffe could hear, but not strong enough to reach the B17s, etc, forming up…but that would be quite complicated, fraught with risk of overdoing it and jamming friendly forces, not to mention being vulnerable to enemy fighter interception.
    (My background is as an RAF Fighter Controller - air defence radar operator - so I do understand quite a bit about Electronic Warfare.)
     
    Chris C likes this.
  3. davidbfpo

    davidbfpo Patron Patron

    Mr Telekenko @TrentTelenko has added twenty-seven tweets with web links etc to additional material, which is on a quick read far wider in scope and area than the Battle of the Bulge.
     
  4. Blutto

    Blutto Banned

    Coincidentally, last night I was watching the Memphis Belle war time documentary. In the film it shows a raid plan that involved a large number of B24s staging a fake attack into the far north of Germany. It didn't seem plausible to me that they would send that many aircraft and not drop any bombs. Perhaps the reality behind the story was that they were using a small number of EW B24s to create an apparent bomber formation.
     

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