Posted: Sun Sep 13, 2009 10:27 am Post subject: SIGINT
Here is a request for help
If you were having to create a display in a museum to illustrate, typify, the work of Sigint what would you do. Let's leave aside the full ashtrays and empty glasses which well may have been typical, just for the moment.
I am after ideas for the Intelligence Corps Museum which is sadly lacking in this area, as is the Sigs Museum at Blandford.
Well Paul, Going back to our time the obvious thing is someone sitting at a radio set and taking either morse or voice which is the collected by a member of the Int Corps, analysed and passed on to GCHQ.
What happens these days I do not know.
Tom
Thanks Tom.
Currently we have the chap who manned the set at Konigslutter on duty again but in Khaki shorts with the HRO. Since he is I Corps we presume he is taking voice. He could represent Capt. Makower who got the MC for taking voice intercepts whilst under fire during the seige of Tobruk.
So Tom, we're both stuck with the same idea so far.
That is one of the main problems with any depiction of Sigint, Paul, it is all so ethereal, there really isn't a great deal to see, and technical descriptions of how it works tend to bore Joe Public no end.
With Capt. Makower you have hit on about the one personality the I Corps Sigint side can boast of. (That's why he appears in the Corps' Cuneo painting).
In the 20th century the work remained pretty much the same whatever the theatre, just the uniforms changed. Voice op, traffic analyst, transcriber, reporter, if you wanted to show the full flow chain of information, the timeframe could be just about anywhere between 1939 and 1985-ish, when the computers began to appear in force, and our working changed radically.
I remember when 14 Sigs used to host so-called "EW study days" for staff officers who hadn't the foggiest about what we did and/or could do. They were treated to a film and various briefings and then took off to look round the vehicles most of which looked all the same. The only time they showed any interest was when the EW chopper (US Army) flew in.
Posted: Mon Sep 14, 2009 9:41 am Post subject: SIGINT
What about a mock-up of a DF station with the I.Corps voice op sitting next to th Royal Signals man operating the goniometer. Perhaps also a map showing our DF sites (in 1956) at Effeld, Räbke, Dannenberg, H. Base, and Nordholz with an example of their respective bearings crossing at the location of a Red Army transmitting station in the GDR.
I like that Ted. It ties in nicely with something else we had in mind. I like the idea of making it applicable to German operations. The snag is that we have the Langeleben Voice Op and we planned to have him at the seige of Tobruk. As a good Int Corps historian you will know that this was where Capt Makower earned his MC. So, its difficult to have 2 v/o's.
Making a DF 'table' is a good idea. I'll send you a drawing of what we have in mind. Visitors could do the acvtual triangulations too, which is always good to have in a museum display 'Interactive' is the in word.
They had not introduced (or invented) electronic warfare in my day. Dave T did his best to educate me but failed. I have, I suppose to explore this area too. There are a couple of good books but a glance at the indices show that the Int Corps (and the R. Sigs) aren't rated. Could it be that nothing has yet been revealed of their activities - at least to us.
Then, there is the old chestnut of inter-service stuff. In my time the RN had six main collection activities, the largest was Perkar, the successor to HMS Anderson Ceylon, Kiel Cyprus and Turkey. The RAF certainly had Germany Cyprus and the F. East.
There was also the de-civilianisation of GCHQ resulting from the ETU efforts and then its reversal.
There were, by 1966 according to George Wigg, 3500 service perssonnel in the Combined Signals Organisation, on 'collection' alone,
Does ANYONE really know what was going on?
JR, when did the morse side disappear? What replaced it? If anything. I am not clear where Mercury Grass fitted in, particularly timewise.
You are all being most helpful. Keep going!
Hi Paul, It’s only a part of the plot I know, but it might help to explain things if you had a map of the battlefield area, with our voice op listening out, and named enemy formations in their locations with their callsigns alongside. It could include the DF plots if required, and using your Tobruk theme, you could include Romel’s Headquarters in the ORBAT. It was infact in the desert that Sigint really proved its worth. Dave _________________ Dave Thomas 2 Sqn 13 SR, '63-'66
You may recall, Dave, the map of Germany that JR produced for Konigslutter. There is another copy in the Museum so perhaps we could use that plus Ted's ideas of marking up the Df sites.
Indeed Sigint was excellent in everything except the first battle and our security then was diabolical. It was called 'Battleaxe' I think.
I'll try it out. The trouble with the desert from the DF point of view is that just about everything was on a straight East/west line, 1,000miles long
I have got the complete Orbat for 3rd Shock from the web. It's a good job they stayed where they were. I think they might have won!
Just a germ of an idea, Paul, which may or may not have mileage in it. What about an illustrated flow chart, on display boards, showing the activities involved from the receipt of an enemy signal through to the dissemination of info to the tactical planners.
For example, the first board could include an op working, and indicate that he has found something interesting on a target frequency – a picture of a message form - call signs identified to a unit – D/F alerted. Then on to second part of display - collation of messages belonging to the group and a chart of activity between outstations. Is there a marked increase in traffic? Are any signals obviously not practice? Is the group on the move? Etc. etc.
Maybe an example similar to the Italian exercise we used in Sigint training could be used as an illustration.
This sounds very out of date – but then it is a museum. We would need a group of knowledgeable chaps, like yourself of course, with a sympathetic arty – crafty type to put this all together. What do you think?
Ron, more memories come flooding back. Skelton and the Italian campaign. "Bari" I recall being one of the places.
I think it is becoming clearer. I wonder how we could illustrate how we went from callsign to unit and from a collection of callsigns to networks.
The idea of a flowchart to bring it all together is the way forward. I now have a vision of something like JR's map that he put up in Konigslutter with perhaps models of Langeleben which already exists and has been up on the Forum with models of the different DF outstations with lines coming from them centreing, say, on Magdeburg or Halle with details of the units that were there. I have the breakdown of the 3rd Shock already listing all of the component units. Can we get models of the little Df hut and could we model Dannenburg (that's aimed at our ARch Modeller)
Back briefly to Tom S. We finished the course early, I recall and he decided to teach us some unarmed combat. I do believe he did know what he was talking about but thankfully only once did I need to try it out.
By the way, were you at Reservoir Barracks for your course too? I forget.
Regarding Mercury Grass (MG), if it's any help to you, Paul, our detachment at RAF Gatow began intercepting what became known as Mercury Grass in the late summer of 1957. I was posted to Gatow in February 1958 and the popular belief there at that time was that MG had been accidentally "discovered" by I. Corps Corporal Graham Smith.
The story goes that he was idly doing some postcoital knobbing in the VHF band (80-100 Mc/s) of the radio at his girl friend's flat in uptown Berlin. Voice ops in those days only trawled the HF band (2.5-4 Mc/s), so Grahm was surprised to hear Russian voice traffic which - although quite unlike the tank-tank stuff which was our daily bread and butter - nevertheless sounded a bit military-like. On returning to camp he was able to reproduce this phenomenon. Recordings were made and sent to GCHQ for identification. The order came back to give priority to the logging of this traffic under the code name Mercury Grass, the Grass part allegedly in recognition of GRAham Smith.
I can't vouch for the accuracy of this little tale because Graham had already been demobbed when I arrived on the scene. However, by that time 2 splendid new Eddystone 770R receivers had been installed exclusively for MG traffic.
As distinct from HF traffic of the type which were were familiar with, MG -apart from usually being load and clear - was not essentially tactical. Indeed, often a certain Soviet major would call the operator and say "Give me the flat" upon which he would be put through to his wife at their private living accommodation.
Another unique feature was the use of a voice scrambler. The operator would say "Switch over to the second" which would prompt us to switch on our own descrambler - known as the D90 - and carry on logging as usual. If the command "oduvanchik" (the Russian word for dandelion) were given, the Soviet operators would switch from voice to teleprinter communication - which we could also read.
To my knowledge, bearing in mind that I left the army in March 1960, MG was only intercepted by us at RAF Gatow and by the Americans at Berlin-Tempelhof.
Don't know if this is the sort of information you were looking for, Paul, but for what it's worth, be my guest.
Yes, Paul, I was at Reservoir in August, I think you followed in the October. For some reason the only names I could remember from the Italian exercise were Leghorn and Rimini. Leghorn doesn’t even sound Italian and as it isn’t on the road maps I thought I was losing my marbles altogether. The place is actually called Livorno.
Enough digression. Tom Shelton was the chap who told us about the blind volunteer ops working in back rooms and garden sheds during World War II. I think they deserve a mention.
Tell me Ron, how did the blind Ops record the messages. I can't recall coming across this before but then there is so much information coming out nowadays that if I forget it isn't surprising.
Do you remember Reservoir barracks? I recall the baths for washing cutlery particularly, boiling hot. And how much better was the catering than at Maresfield. I had been at Maresfield for Corps day in June and my parents came along. The food was magnificent. Typical showing off by Army cooks, you know, tarted up salmon type of thing. My Mother was highly impressed and delighted that the Son and heir was being looked after so well. Hollow laughter!
Yes, I was there for Oct/Dec. which I can confirm as it was at the time the Remembrance Day Parade took place. We had no place in it but wandered down to the Cathedral anyway. You must have come across the chaps in the 'Glorious Glosters' who had returned from Korea too I suppose. They were not a happy bunch of 'Heroes' and criticised Speakman very very strongly. Col Carne took a bashing too.
I have got a copy of the wartime training schedules for us lot which are very much like our course from a book by Hugh Skillen. Unfortunately there are no log sheets.
I wonder why we did all that cryptography, Viginere, Playfair. I can only suppose that the idea was that, if there was a war, we would be able to attack low grade ciphers in the field. Fat chance of that! We would have been too busy hurtling off to the Rhine. I remember arriving at Munster and going on shift having been given a pile of 'HUN and 'POL' stuff and not having the vaguest idea what I was supposed to do with them.
Fortunately, within days we were off to Munchen Gladbach and a week later to Langeleben.
Funnily enough, I have recently discovered that the Germans used a version of Playfair for communications in the field.We would have been honed to perfection for 1939-45!
According to Tom they were recorded on ordinary log sheets. He had complained to his boss in the early years, not knowing the source of the sheets, that some of the logs were barely legible and that call signs weren’t in the boxes properly, etc . He was told that considering the situation, the ops were doing a damn fine job and he was sent off with a flea in his ear.
I, too, was impressed with the catering facilities at Gloucester compared with Maresfield – they did not even have to wash there own dishes!
Munster. The first job they gave me was to look through reams of continuous computer stationery (yes, computers in 1954). The Americans had sorted and listed hundreds of messages, call signs and the first ten groups . An absolutely pointless exercise because no one was clear about what I was looking for.
Re the course. Do you think the person who introduced those codeword puzzles now appearing in the Telegraph had been on a Sigint course and found a way of making money out of it?
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