How did the Brits do it?

On 10 Mar 2004 14:01:30 GMT, (ArtKramr) wrote:

I think back to the war and the RAF heavies on their night missions. Missions
flown in the winter usually were in atrocioius weather where there was no view
of the gound and the sky above was overcast. There was no way to shoot at star
fix or take a dirft reading from the ground. Working dead reckoning from
England deep into Germany and any change in wind dorection or velocity that
went undetected made dead reckoning navigation a hit and miss proposition.
Often it was not just miss, it was gross miss. Knowing all this how could the
RAF ever hope to pull off these winter night missions successfully? What was
the logic that made them keep flying under these hopeless navigation
conditions? Anyone know?


Arthur Kramer
344th BG 494th BS
England, France, Belgium, Holland, Germany
Visit my WW II B-26 website at:
http://www.coastcomp.com/artkramer

One way used was radio direction finding nad measuing the angles on
the source of german propraganda broadcasts...

Lord Haw Haw was apparantly used a fair bit as he was begining his
nightly braodcasts to reach the british public on dark winter nights
as the bombers were crossing the channel

ironic isn't it... the germans providing their own targettign for the
brits

In message , rnf2
writes

snip

One way used was radio direction finding nad measuing the angles on
the source of german propraganda broadcasts...

Lord Haw Haw was apparantly used a fair bit as he was begining his
nightly braodcasts to reach the british public on dark winter nights
as the bombers were crossing the channel

ironic isn't it... the germans providing their own targettign for the
brits

The Germans shut down their B/C transmitters in groups as the bomber
stream passed over. This allowed the high power transmitter Aspidestra
at Crowborough (800 kW) to butt in on their frequency and play dance
tunes and relay false news programmes. Sefton Delmer 'Black Propaganda'.

Mike
--
M.J.Powell

rnf2 writes:


One way used was radio direction finding nad measuing the angles on
the source of german propraganda broadcasts...

DF on known emitters is an old ploy. You can tell where YOU are, or
where IT is. That was why Eisenhower's SHAEF transmitter was in the
area of Patton's First US Army Group.

There was also one German navaid that was not jammed but spoofed; a
receiver at one end of England listened to the modulated German
transmitter. The audio went across Britain to where a transmitter
on the same frequency rebroadcast it. Since the UK transmitter
was closer to the bomber.......

--
A host is a host from coast to
& no one will talk to a host that's close........[v].(301) 56-LINUX
Unless the host (that isn't close).........................pob 1433
is busy, hung or dead....................................20915-1433

"David Lesher" wrote in message
...
rnf2 writes:

There was also one German navaid that was not jammed but spoofed; a
receiver at one end of England listened to the modulated German
transmitter. The audio went across Britain to where a transmitter
on the same frequency rebroadcast it. Since the UK transmitter
was closer to the bomber.......

Operation "Domino"
This was Y-Gerat (Y-Device) or Wotan II. The transmitter used was the
old 1930's Baird TV
transmitter at Alexandra Palace. It was a very effective
countermeasure. Wotan was the Norse god
with only one eye (one beam). It was also known as 'Benito'.
Basically the Y-Gerat worked by transmitting a single beam with Lorenz
characteristics, morse dots
received if you were on one side of the beam, dashes on the other and an
equisignal of continuous tone
if you were in the centre of the beam and on course. The bomb release
point was done by means of a
kind of remote Distance Measuring Equipment, in that a signal was sent
to a transponder in the aircraft and
a response returned, by measuring the delay between transmission of the
interrogation pulse and reception
of the response it was possible to calculate the distance fairly
accurately. A signal was sent to the aircraft to
release the bombs at the correct point allowing for altitude, speed and
distance to target etc.
The countermeasure involved intercepting the aircraft transponder signal
and retransmitting it through the
TV transmitter, which caused a false distance reading.

The earlier Knickebein (crooked leg) 2 beam system and the multi beam
X-gerat (X-device) had already
been countered. The loss of these was actually quite a blow, as the
later Y-Gerat was only capable
of handling one aircraft at a time, whereas Knickebein was in every
bomber. The Germans created a "Pathfinder"
force of their own, KG100, to use it.
Knickebein worked on the normal Lorenz frequencies around 30mhz and the
first jammers (code name 'Aspirin'
to counter the beams which were code named 'Headache') were actually
medical diathermy units which produced
powerful broadband noise.


The CO