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In this episode, we continue our look into the world of Electromagnetic Spectrum Operations (EMSO) through the first large-scale use of radar and Electromagnetic Warfare (EW) in WWII. The episode shares how the began collecting radio transmissions and turning these signals into tactical intelligence. And that’s where we begin today, at Bletchley Park, the home of Britain’s top-secret code breakers. The episode also covers the important role that EW played in the Battle of Hamburg and Berlin and how it paved the way for Allied Forces on D-Day.
The Evolution of Electromagnetic Spectrum Operations (EMSO)
This podcast will take you on a journey throughout time and around the world to meet the inventors, the battles, and the technology that has not only shaped military operations - how we fight - but also how we live. The History of Crows will cover some of the most important discoveries, battles, and events that shaped what we know today as electromagnetic spectrum operations. Episodes that take you deeper into our history will be added periodically.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
This episode is sponsored by BAE Systems, the global leader in next generation electronic warfare systems. With more than 60 years of experience and 33,000 people as part of its global defense, aerospace and security business, BAE Systems Electronic Warfare systems are found on the most advanced military platforms in the US and around the world. Learn more at baesystems.com/ew.
Speaker 2 (00:35):
Welcome to The History of Crows, podcast on the evolution of Electromagnetic Spectrum Operations or EMSO, and the men and women, the crows, who change the way we conduct military operations and the way we live around the world. The History of Crows will help you navigate the intersection of military history, technology and scientific discovery through insights and stories from the people in war fighters who know how to fight in the electromagnetic spectrum. We take you through the important discoveries, inventions, battles, and developments that make the Crow motto true, to be the first in and the last out in any military operation today. The History of Crows is brought to you by the Association of Old Crows or the AOC, an international professional association comprised of people who are experts in the fields of Electromagnetic Warfare and Signals Intelligence. To learn more about the AOC, please visit www.crows.org. Thank you for listening.
Speaker 2 (01:53):
The first large scale use of radar and electronic warfare had now taken place in combat during the Battle of Britain, the Blitz, and the Beam Wars, but something was happening beneath the surface and these battles weighed on. It wasn't sufficient enough to just fend off German fighters and bombers when they approached and prevent them from hitting their targets, something more needed to be done. The Allies needed to know everything about their enemy, meaning they needed to create an accurate picture of enemy forces to better plan and prepare for battle. So what did the allied forces do? They begin collecting radio transmissions and turning these signals into intelligence. And that's where we begin today, at Bletchley Park, the home of Britain's top-secret codebreaker. The British had been mastering their code breaking for some time now, the most well known of their intelligence came in the form of what is known as the Enigma Reports. To help us learn more about these reports we turned to Jennifer Wilcox, from the National Cryptologic Museum.
Jennifer Wilcox (02:59):
At the end of World War I, the Germans were looking for a new way to encrypt their communications, and they found a commercial machine called Enigma that was intended for companies to use to encrypt messages that would be sent over the telegraph and things like that. But they thought it would be perfect for their military communications. So they bought up all the patents and then promptly changed the machine, because the commercial one had been sold and they didn't want anyone who had a commercial machine to be able to read their military messages. The commercial machine that they were looking at had four wired rotors, and it was using this relatively new technology of a wired rotor to encrypt messages. They promptly changed that, they took out a fourth rotor, put in a reflecting plate, added a plug board, and that became their tactical level workhorse for their encryption system.
Jennifer Wilcox (03:51):
It was the allies job to find the key settings for the Enigma so that they could break the messages that they were intercepting over the radio. And they had a machine that they devised called a bombe that would simply go through checking every possible combination, looking for the answer to find the key setting for that day. Now, it wasn't just one key setting that they had to find. They had to find different key settings for all the different networks for the army, the air force, the secret police, weather stations, trains, U-boats, [ship horn 00:04:23], all of those. So there was a lot to find. But these machines were able to find the keys, the allies were able to break into the Enigma messages without the Germans ever knowing it, and it helped to turn the tide in the battle of the Atlantic and change some of the battles that were fought in the European theater.
Speaker 2 (04:39):
The Enigma reports paved the way a for a new type of intelligence that the British would gather. This intelligence emerged from the collection of radio frequency transmissions of German forces. What became known as the BMP Reports. To share the story of the codebreakers at Bletchey Park and how their reports impacted the war, we welcome Mr. John Stubbington, a retired RAF wing commander whose career and expertise spans electronic warfare and defense intelligence.
John Stubbington (05:04):
Many People have heard about the Enigma Reports, but very few will ever have heard about the BMP Reports. The name comes from three members of the German Air Section at Bletchley, who had the initial idea. They were Mr. Bonsall, Mr. Moyes, and Flight Lieutenant Prior. B-M-P, simple as that. Bill Bonsall was later to become director of GCHQ.
Speaker 2 (05:30):
These three men were part of the German Air Section at Bletchley Park. And this section thought of a strategy to track German air force operations.
John Stubbington (05:39):
The German Air Section believed that an accurate picture of German Air Force fighter operations could be produced from the semi-plain language radio transmissions, RT, intercepted by the Royal Air Force Y service. Detailed accounts of enemy reactions to RAF bomber raids were produced. Over time, that tactical intelligence became a daily feature of raid planning by the allied bomber forces
Speaker 2 (06:09):
Signals were collected through the RAF Y service, which was a network of sites used for British Intelligence signal collection. This kind of tactical intelligence was a powerful tool for military operations, but the BMP Reports developed an additional way to know the enemy. This new strategy was called signal intelligence. Signal intelligence is the gathering of intelligence through intercepting the enemy's radio transmissions. Britain would take the lead in building this capability
John Stubbington (06:38):
Within the RAF Y service, RAF Cheadle, RAF Kingsdown, and the many small outstations, which were known as Home Defense Units, HDUs, had provided a valuable service to fight a command during the battle of Britain and the blitz, giving advanced warning that enemy radio aircraft were preparing to take off from their air fields. These warnings came from the enemy tuning of their radio equipment before takeoff, well before they could be seen by the new RAF radar and reporting system. The RAF Y service also supplemented the radar coverage in real time with information about flying heights and whether enemy aircraft formations were bombers or fighters.
Speaker 2 (07:25):
This new intelligence strategy seemed critical in knowing the enemy better, but not everyone was on board with it, particularly the British Air Ministry.
John Stubbington (07:33):
Well, The Air Ministry was a serious obstacle. It assumed that because the RT was mostly plain language, and that the Y service would therefore need no help. But the HDUs needed help in interpreting map grid references and code words. And in July 1940, the HDUs RT logs were sent to Bletchley. That analysis involved understanding what the RT was all about, which led to the generation of further information about the German air force fighter activity. However, the Air Ministry ordered this practice to stop on the grounds that it amounted to the production of intelligence, and therefore was not a task for Bletchley Park.
Speaker 2 (08:19):
The Air Ministry believed that the purpose of Bletchley Park was to decrypt, not to produce tactical intelligence
John Stubbington (08:26):
Bletchley Park was set up to decrypt Enigma traffic and send translated reports to the authorities in London, that was cryptology. It was assumed that any and all intelligence would be extracted by those authorities in London, but through 1941 it became obvious to the German Air Section at Bletchley that they could produce useful intelligence on day fighter and night fighter reactions to our own bomber raids. This was rejected by the Air Ministry on the grounds that it constituted intelligence as distinct from cryptology. A clear example of misunderstanding and obstruction in the intelligence reporting process.
Speaker 2 (09:12):
The intelligence reporting process is very streamlined, everyone has a clear role and deviating from that role can cause problems. So when the German Air Section at Bletchley Park deviated from just decrypting to also producing intelligence, well, the Air Ministry found this too risky. But the information Bletchley Park provided was incredibly valuable.
John Stubbington (09:32):
Well, Air Ministry estimate of enemy day fighter strength had been seriously wrong. The Bletchley Park German Air Section reported that the enemy's strength in the Pas-de-Calais area was about 140 fighter aircraft, and that in the Brest peninsula there had been reinforcement by a further 20 aircraft. The first statement was supported by the unexpectedly heavy opposition encountered by RAF bomber forces in the Calais area, and the second was supported by the enemy air support to the Channel Dash by the three German battleships from Brest through the channel in February 1942. Two attacks by Bomber Command in April 1942 encountered heavy opposition, which surprised the Air Ministry. The Bletchley park German Air Section was able to demonstrate the reasons for that. One report showed that over a hundred fighter aircraft were deployed against an RAF bomber raid on the 12th of April, and partly as a result of this evidence, a daily report on enemy fighter reactions was authorized, which signified the birth of the BMP reports.
Speaker 2 (10:56):
The Air Ministry did not immediately understand the kind of intelligence that was available to them through this new tactic that was the BMP Reports.
John Stubbington (11:04):
The Air Ministry presumed that it knew best, but this was a whole new ballgame and there were no textbooks to show how things could be done. After a few specimen reports, the BMP series provided a comprehensive picture of the German air defense system in action, and it became a daily event from June 1942 until the end of the war. The sources of the enemy air information embraced all the relevant RAF signals intelligence material. There was some Enigma traffic, but the more prolific sources were the day and night fighter RT logs taken and recorded at Kingsdown and the HDUs, diary of the German air force tactical codes, signals traffic from the German observer core, plots of the German RDF stations as transmitted as wireless telegraphy, enemy airfield serviceability reports, special fighter weather reports, and by no means least German Y service broadcasts. This information was continuously analyzed and made available to the authors of the BMPs and their supporting staff.
John Stubbington (12:25):
A BMP report number one for the night of the 30-31st of May 1942, covered the first 1,000 bomber raid on Cologne. The format of the report changed as the war progressed, but the information was always within the following three topics, Bomber Command's plan for the night, the number of aircraft, targets, times, routes, reaction of the German aircraft reporting organization, and by no means least reaction to the German night fighter forces. These BMP were an illustration of what we now know as data fusion, where information from a variety of sources was merged into a single intelligence product. With their eventual of official approval the Bletchley Park German Air Section became a fully fledged intelligence producing center, and its status and orientation were profoundly altered.
Speaker 2 (13:25):
This was the beginning of data fusion. These early efforts paved the way for what is so critical now to military operations today. The Air Ministry did not fully embrace the BMP reports, but the value and usefulness of these reports continue to shape tactical intelligence. And as the tide of the war began to change, this gave Great Britain and the Allied forces a tremendous advantage.
John Stubbington (13:47):
There was continuing obstruction preventing the Bletchley Park German Air Section having direct contact with the most important customer, namely Bomber Command. However, by October 1942 the preparation of the daily BMP report was sufficiently well established to allow them to be tailored to particular user requirements. Following visits to Headquarters Bomber Command, the Command Operational Research Section became one of the most important recipients. Their need for details of night fighter patrols and pursuits resulted in changes to the BMP format with additional details such as overall times, average height, direction of pursuit and vectors, and any significant remarks within the RT. And a map was added showing the specific location of patrols operating against a given raid. Cheadle was intercepting transmissions from the little screw radio beacons, and this new information revealed a relationship between the geographical location of the beacons, their times of activity and the roots of the bombers. This was significant to understanding the German ground controlled intercept system known as the Himmelbett system, that led to a change in Bomber Command operational tactics, moving to heavier concentration of bombers to swamp the German GCI system.
Speaker 2 (15:23):
At first, the early BMP reports were distributed very limitedly, this was to help plan strategic bombing missions. Eventually, the reports found their way to fighter commands where they became particularly useful in planning air-to-air combat.
John Stubbington (15:36):
While the BMP were distributed to the eighth USAF Command, at least by September 1942, but in January 1943, there was the start of a new direct liaison between Bletchley and the eighth USAF. The operational exploitation of Y service intercepts was discussed at a meeting with Air Ministry intelligence, the eighth USAF and the German Air Section from Bletchley, which at that time was represented by flight Lieutenant Prior, you'll remember that he is the P in the BMP abbreviation. That meeting discussed the immediate use of Y service intercepts by 11 group of fighter command during their fighter sweeps. These sweeps were primarily over France at the time. However, the first priority of the escort fighters for the heavy bombers was the defense of those bombers and the use of Y service by the eighth USAF needed a high degree of judgment in assessing their significance. I would say just in passing that as time went by, it was the eighth USAF fighter command that was actually making more tactical use of that intelligence because they were getting direct, almost real time information on German fighter reactions, day fighter reactions.
John Stubbington (17:09):
Now, the ground by stage to use in Kent were receiving progressively less enemy RT messages, because as the bomber raids moved deeper into Germany, the enemy began using VHF rather than HF radios. The interceptive signals traffic still provided many valuable clues, such as an indication of the effectiveness of our jammers working against radars, such as the Freyas. Now here's a starter, in June 1943 Mr. Bonsall, the B in the BMP abbreviation, put forward the idea that enemy RT signals could be intercepted by aircraft flying with the bomber raids. That was quickly followed by a meeting within the Air Ministry, which agreed to conduct a trial in coordination with eighth USAF operations.
John Stubbington (18:03):
The USAF became very proactive in this activity, and it was to pay rich dividends as the war progressed. Indeed, one USAF general declared that he would not authorize a bombing mission unless there was at least one bomber equipped for the intercept of enemy RT traffic. The outstanding lesson is the compelling need for informed and timely intelligence to be delivered to the operational user in a manner and format that he can understand, supported by immediate dialogue to clarify and resolve any issues.
Speaker 5 (18:43):
At BAE systems, we're developing full spectrum, multi-domain electronic warfare capabilities that outpace the threats. Our electronic warfare systems are designed to be open, reprogrammable and exportable to deliver on the us air Force's operational vision of the electromagnetic spectrum. We're committed to delivering electromagnetic spectrum superiority to the war fighter where it matters most. Learn more baesystems.com/ew, that's baesystems.com/ew.
Speaker 2 (19:09):
The BMP reports were an important contribution to what we know today as signals intelligence, and this was an important advantage that ultimately helped the Allies win the war. They were able to know the Germans better than the Germans knew them. With this knowledge we returned to the war raging across Europe. Summer 1943, German forces were mired in a bloody invasion against Russia on the Eastern front, while the allies were conducting an aggressive air campaign over Germany.
John Stubbington (19:51):
The Germans had to protect their backs, of course, and they'd not been idled in doing that. From the June 1940 onwards, fully 12 months before the invasion of Russia, Major Kammhuber gradually set up a defensive line of radars, guns, search lights, and night fighters known as the Kammhuber Line, which would stretch from Denmark into France and along the Atlantic coast. The principle radars were the Freya early warning radar and the Wurzburg short range radar for fighter control. Later, those radars would be upgraded with larger antenna for longer range. The Freya's big brothers being the tall Wassermann and the broad Mammut, and the Wurzburg added the huge dish antenna of the giant Wurzburg. One obvious weakness, keeping the same electronics, meant that all these new radars were just vulnerable to jamming.
Speaker 2 (20:51):
This vulnerability didn't stop the Germans at first. Soon after Germany implemented the Kammhuber Line, the USA entered the war after Pearl Harbor. And at first it did not go well for the allies.
John Stubbington (21:04):
At first, a chapter of disaster, the Japanese tour through British and US territories in the far east, Russia had lost massively in the German advances towards Moscow, the German introduction of a new model of Enigma meant that Germans submarines enjoyed rich pickings along the Atlantic seaboard and the Germans installed interception radar in their night fighters. But there were positive signs in this gloom. British commandos raided Bruneval in Northern France on the coast on the night of the 27, 28 of February 1942, bringing back key items from a Wurzburg radar to yield up its secrets, and the newly appointed air Marshall, Arthur Harris at Bomber Command Headquarters, began aggressive night bombing of Germany using the Gee radio navigation system to concentrate his bomber stream and smash through the Kammhuber Line.
Speaker 2 (22:03):
But the Germans quickly found a way to counteract the allies attacks.
John Stubbington (22:13):
They increasingly jammed Gee, reducing its range dramatically. The British responded with the airborne jammer Mandrel to blind the German early warning Freya, and they used the bomber's own radio transmitters to blank out the German HF night fighter control channels. The RAF also introduced a new, accurate blind bombing system called Oboe, but by December 1942 the RAF still had no idea of the frequencies used by the German night fighter radar Lichtenstein.
Speaker 2 (22:45):
The RAF needed details on German and radar, so they came up with a plan to get them, but it amounted to a suicide mission. They were going to have a bomber fly in to receive the radar details.
John Stubbington (23:06):
The bomber, this Wellington, was equipped with a special wireless receiver and its job was to get attacked by a German night fighter and radio back the radar details. If, of course, it survived. The attack duly took place in the bomber crew, some badly wounded and in a badly damaged bomber, radioed the information back and just managed to fly the aircraft back to the British coast where the crew parachuted out of the plane before it ditched, fortunately they all survived. This was one of the most courageous episodes in the history of airborne countermeasures, and led to the development of the Serrate AI jammer, which was subsequently used very effectively against Lichtenstein.
Speaker 2 (23:46):
The Germans next move was to develop a device called the [foreign language 00:23:49], an offshoot of their early warning radar device that could locate British airborne jammers. With [foreign language 00:23:55], the Germans aimed to home onto the Allies Mandrel transmission jammer and bring out a new fighter control radio that operated on very high frequency, also known VHF. However, the Germans were let down by a defector who flew to Britain in May 1943. He flew in with one of their latest night fighters, and the Allied scientists were able to learn Germany's radar and EW secrets. After learning these secrets, the Allies took their radar countermeasures called chaff or window, as the British called it, and they cut it into the exact wavelength needed to jam German radars. This countermeasure worked, but almost too well because it ended up jamming British radars as well.
John Stubbington (24:35):
Well, fortunately supplies of the latest American night fighter radar, the SCR-720, called AI X by the British, arrived in the UK and it proved less vulnerable to counter measures than the British radar. Up to now, the RAF had been very reluctant to use chaff in case the Germans copied the idea and used it against us, little did they know that the Germans had independently developed chaff, but held back from using it for exactly the same reason. Very heavy use was made of chaff by the allied bomber forces in late July, early August 1943, during the Gomorrah series of raids designed to destroy Hamburg, the RAF also used their microwave blind bombing radar, H2S.
Speaker 2 (25:27):
The results were devastating. German radar was totally blinded and its defenses were completely overwhelmed. Much of Hamburg was destroyed, and the German High Command feared that if six more cities were attacked in this way, the war would be lost. But this wasn't the end for the Germans. They quickly took control of the situation.
John Stubbington (25:47):
Before that week was over the German defenses were fighting back sending day fighters to fly high over the city so that when their pilots looked down, they could see the bombers in silhouette against the flames. Very quickly they developed ground receivers to track British H2S radar. They developed to radar to trigger and track RAF bomber IFF, and anti-jamming systems on their other ground radars. At the same time, their night fighters were being equipped with a device called Flensburg to track bombers by homing onto their rear warning radar. They also began to roll out the new air intercept radar SN-2 in the 90 megahertz band, which we were not monitoring. Through the winter of 1943-44, when the RAF targeted the German capital in the Battle of Berlin losses rose progressively, until by March 1944 they became almost unsustainable. But by this stage, though, there was other business to be done. Bomber Command was needed to attack targets in France, both to counter the German rocket, some cruise missiles, the V weapons, and also to prepare for D-Day.
Speaker 2 (27:13):
Germany's grip on Europe was beginning to slip. Russia was halting the Nazis advance in the east, and a key turning point arrived, a Turning point that would become regarded as the greatest military operation of all time. The landings by the Allies on the channel coast of Normandy, France, on sixth of June 1944, D-Day. But what we're about to find out is that D-Day would also be one of the most complex and detailed electronic warfare plans to date. To share these untold EW stories from D-Day, we return to Dr. Phil Judkins from Leeds university.
Dr. Phil Judkins (27:50):
It was, of course, obvious that the allies were going to land on the north coast of France. EW was part of a bigger deception plan to make the Germans think that the landing was going to be at a different time and place from the reality, keep that deception going for as long as possible, and so confuse the German defenses that the allied casualties would be minimized.
Speaker 2 (28:14):
But this was the challenge. The allies needed to hide 160,000 men, 8,000 ships and 11,000 aircraft from an enemy that was just 25 miles away. And 25 miles on the sea on a clear day, not very far. The allies wanted the Germans to think that they were going to take the shortest route across the English channel and land on the Pas-de-Calais, when in fact they intended to land 200 miles west from there in Normandy. So they turned to EW to implement this plan.
Dr. Phil Judkins (28:43):
Obviously one key element was to blind the German coastal radars and listening stations and silence their jammers. So from 1943 onwards, British radar intercept stations were set up to locate all the German radars and jammers, and in the months before the landings allied fighter bombers worked over those sites, but carefully attack sites both around Calais and in Normandy, so as not to give the game away, and equally carefully left some radars operational as part of the deception plan. Plan was that on the morning of D-Day, there would be two completely fictitious fleets code named Taxable and Glimmer setting sail from England, one against Calais and one against the mouth of the river Seine further west. These fleets would not be real, though they would appear real on German radar. They were made up of aircraft dropping Chaff, and small, fast motorboats flying balloons containing metal reflectors and carrying sound recordings of ships at sea, and then dropping anchor. Other aircraft carried the Moonshine decoy jammer, which simulated multiple aircraft on German radar screens.
Speaker 2 (30:06):
Between these two fleets, other aircraft carried carpet jammers to blind German decametric radars, and Cigar jammers to [brown 00:30:14] German VHF communications. The allies didn't need to be too worried that Germany would fly reconnaissance missions and discover their plan, most German aircraft had been diverted to the Russian front and the allied air forces were present in overwhelming strength. The few German aircraft left in Northern France were only able to fly on occasional reconnaissance missions.
Dr. Phil Judkins (30:35):
On the days before invasion, much of the English south coast was hidden from German radar view by several screens of aircraft carrying the Mandrel jammer to blind the German coastal radars. The invasion fleet assemble behind this Mandrel screen, which steadily advanced in front of the fleet. The capital ships of the fleet all carried jammers, operating on every wavelength that the Germans were known to be using, and these were switched on when the fleet eventually emerged from behind the Mandrel screen.
Speaker 2 (31:09):
The allies needed to use other radars, however, to ensure greater accuracy in executing this massive invasion,
Dr. Phil Judkins (31:16):
The Allied fleet needed absolutely accurate navigation to be able to keep to sea lanes which been swept clear of mines, and to land its troops safely on their chosen beaches. They achieved this by every boat and larger aircraft carrying the British Gee hyperbolic lattice radio navigation system. Where greater accuracy was needed, Doppler navigation systems were used for the first on the large scale.
Speaker 2 (31:44):
The result of these initiatives should have been that the remaining German radar scene showed this; first a fleet seemingly advancing towards Calais; then a fleet apparently sailing towards the mouth of the river Seine for the west; and at the same time, when the radars looked north towards Normandy, they should have shown a fog of jamming that would clear to reveal a real major fleet off the coast of Normandy that then disappeared behind further jamming.
Dr. Phil Judkins (32:10):
It worked pretty well. Not perfectly, but good enough.
Speaker 2 (32:15):
The Allies had to guard against the Germans jamming these systems. So they attacked the German jamming stations and also used radio navigation frequencies which had never been used during the war to ensure the Germans were not monitoring them. But there was another issue. With thousands of Allied owned radar systems operating, mutual interference threatened the plan.
Dr. Phil Judkins (32:36):
The Allied scientists said, "Guess mutual interference might be a problem." So they tested one of each of their radars in close proximity against all the others, identified the problems and sorted out solutions, such as retuning or sensitive filters. As far as German jamming went, the Ally solution had been to develop series of radars, which operated very close to German radar frequencies, but not exactly on them, so our own jamming wouldn't affect them. And then Mount these special radars on converted ships, called fighter direction tenders, to control our own attack aircraft without interruption.
Speaker 2 (33:19):
Using these radars to neutralize German targets required very fine accuracy. So the allies used particular operating systems.
Dr. Phil Judkins (33:27):
Microwave centimetric radar in both the Oboe and H2S blind bombing radars, and incidentally also in the air-to-surface vessel radars, which largely kept the seas free of German submarines and surface craft. These radars made use of the cavity magnetron, whose secret the British had shared with the US back in autumn, 1940. The Germans made little headway and microwaves during the war, so the allies did not fear jamming on those frequencies.
Speaker 2 (33:59):
The landings were made successfully and D-Day would go down as being the largest Naval air and land operation in history. The tide of war change on June 6th, 1944, and for the first time in a long time, the allies saw hope that a victory to end the war was possible, though this came at great cost. The allies suffered around 10,000 casualties on D-Day. It was a great sacrifice made by allied soldiers on Normandy beach, and had allied forces not implemented EW to deceive the Germans the body count would've been much higher. It was this combination of sacrifice and detailed electronic warfare that changed the course and the outcome of the war. The allied forces now had the foothold they needed to begin pushing back the Germans and free Europe from their domination.
Speaker 7 (34:48):
And one result of the allied advance was that an increasingly large hole was torn into the German early warning system, through which bombers could be routed to attack Germany. The RAF 100 group, the first ever dedicated to EW group, had been formed in December 1943, and its strength was now substantial.
Dr. Phil Judkins (35:08):
In the winter of 1944-5, 100 group shot down 258 German night fighters for the loss of 70 of their own. EW and aviation fuel starvation reduced the Luftwaffe to virtual impotence, though it must be emphasized that its air crew fought very bravely to the end.
Speaker 2 (35:31):
The allies had now gained the upper hand in world war II and were edging closer to victory. The battle of Britain, the BMP reports from Bletchley Park, decryption of radio signals and progressive chains of command. Without all of these advancements the war could have had a far different outcome, with an even greater loss of life. But as the allies were able to learn the Germans quickly, understand their tactics through tactical and signal intelligence, and use these against them, the tides of world war II began to change. In our next episode, we're going to return to the Pacific to explore the impact of electronic warfare from the end of World War II to the Korean War. This podcast is brought to you by the Association of Old Crows. Thank you to our episode sponsor, BAE Systems. Learn more at crows.org/podcast. Thanks for listening.
Speaker 8 (36:45):
Ms. Jennifer Wilcox participation in this podcast is for informational purposes only, and does not imply an endorsement of any product, service or enterprise.