[CW] We really were (radio) smarter years ago

[Bob via CW]

David,
Thank you very much for bringing this info to light, I was not  aware of 
it. On a smaller scale I was in Germany during the Berlin Wall and  Cuban 
Blockade time period. I was an intercept operator that did high speed  Morse 
intercept, we had fields of antennas out in the middle of what we called a  cow 
pasture, the intercept was copied on a mill. That was long ago now, I was 
18  years old then and am now 73. The antennas are gone, the base became a 
shoe  factory at some point and the last I heard the base had turned into 
apartment  buildings.
When you copy CW every day all day long for two and a half  years you get 
to know who is sending it by the characteristics of the send  signal.
 
Thanks again for sharing the story,
Bob  K6OSM
 
 
 
 
In a message dated 7/15/2015 8:49:14 P.M. Pacific Daylight Time,  
k5kvm5 at gmail.com writes:

 
 
THANKS DAVID


I REALLY ENJOYED THAT  STORY

73

BENNY K5KV


On Wed, Jul 15, 2015 at 7:33 PM, D.J.J. Ring, Jr. <_n1ea at arrl.net_ 
(mailto:n1ea at arrl.net) > wrote:

Fascinating story about Chopmist Hill ... Rich K2RR
Rhombic Antennas on Chopmist Hill (Rhode  Island) Help Win World
War II 
The bristling antennas, miles of wire and all the technicians are  gone
now, but the old Suddard Farm on Chopmist Hill in Scituate is  still
dotted with the ghostly reminders of one of World War II's  best-kept and
most important secrets.
For it was here on Chopmist Hill  in March, 1941, that the Federal
Communications Commission (FCC) under  Commissioner George E. Sterling,
established and began operating a  top-secret, radio-monitoring station.
It was the largest in a nationwide  network of 13 similar installations,
and -- due to peculiarities of the  terrain and certain atmospheric
conditions -- it was the most effective.  The station on Chopmist Hill
could intercept distant radio signals with  astonishing clarity, and in
wartime, that was a critical  advantage.
While Rhode Island joined the nation in home-front sacrifice  -- severe
gasoline rationing, ersatz chocolate and horsemeat instead of  beef, to
name a few -- the band of 40 radio operator-technicians from the  FCC's
Radio Intelligence Division (RID) conducted a superb spy operation  that
directly affected the waging and final outcome of the  war.
Personnel in Scituate routinely monitored weather reports that were  a
key to troop movements and bombing missions in Europe. With  uncanny
frequency, the station intercepted the radio transmissions of  German
spys positioned in South America and North Africa. Chopmist's  reception
of North Africaa was so good, in fact that the station had no  difficulty
picking up -- and turning to good use -- radio transmissions  between the
tanks that comprised the Desert Fox's infamous Afrika  Korps.
But to this day -- 40 years after Japan's devastating attack on  Pearl
Harbor and 36 years after the war ended -- few Rhode Islanders are  aware
of the spectacular battles fought on the little hill right in their  own
backyard.
"C'mon, you're pullin' my leg" or "You gotta' be  kidding" typify the
responses of skeptics when told or asked about the  illustrious history
of the North Scituate farm.
Originally, the  station was set up in peacetime to police the airwaves
for illegal radio  transmissions and to assist in air-sea rescue
operations. On one  occasion, actress Kay Francis, en route home from a
USO tour in Europe,  was aboard a plane that was lost off the coast of
Florida. No formal  radio installation on the seaboard was able to pick
up the pilot's  signals, but the Chopmist Hill station did, and the
monitors in Scituate  directed the plane home safely.
As the war intensified, so did the role  of the Chopmist Hill station --
and the secrecy surrounding it.
The  installation became a virtual mini-city, complete with its  own
power-generating station in the concrete blockhouse. Nearby stood  a
wooden barracks building that housed the RID crew. Antennas  were
everywhere, anchored by guide (sic) wires attached to heavy metal  plates
cemented to the ground.
The station itself was jam-packed with  supersensitive radio receivers,
transmitters and direction finders, and  it was all so top-secret that
not even the 40 technicians working there  knew its purpose. Armed guards
patrolled the area, and even visitors on  official business could not
approach the farm without a state police  escort.
Even the Narragansett Electric Company, which played a key role  in
establishing the Chopmist Hill station, didn't realize just what it  was
doing.
Company crews were sent to the station with instructions  not merely to
install utility poles, but to sink them more deeply into  the ground than
normal, thereby ensuring that the tops of the poles would  be below
tree-top level and hidden from view outside the farm.
No  sooner was the work completed than Thomas B. Cave, who supervised  the
facility for the RID, ordered all the poles moved to a different  spot.
"I thougth we'd have a revolt on our hands in Scituate," said  former
commissioner Sterling. He is 87 now and lives in quiet retirement  with
his wife, Margaret, on an island in Maine's Casco Bay. "The folks  at
Narragansett (Electric Company) thought we were crazy. We called  in
their utility crews to dig holes and install a whole bunch of  telephone
poles. Next day, we called them back to move all the poles  about two feet."
Regardless of how much consternation and confusion the  unexplained move
may have caused, the relocated utility poles gave the  station optimum
radio reception. By the end of the war, the inconvenience  was gladly
forgiven anyway. When the role of the Chopmist Hill station  was
publically explained, a Narragansett Electric official said, "Hell,  if
I'd known what they were doing up there, I would gladly have dug  holes
all the way to Cairo!"Z
But no one knew.
Clandestine  messages, encoded cryptographically, were being intercepted
and copied  verbatim by radio operators working 24 hours a day, who would
then relay  the messages to Washington, D.C., for deciphering.
Commissioner Sterling  said during a recent interview that he has never
been able to figure out  why the United States was caught napping at
Pearl Harbor 40 years ago  tomorrow. He said that for several months
before the December 7, 1941,  attack, the Sictuate monitors were
routinely intercepting Japanese  messages that indicated military action
was pending.
RID supervisor  Cave said that "Every three weeks, like clockwork, a
Japanese submarine  would surface in Tokyo Bay and broadcast to higher
military headquarters  the number of foreign ships that went in and out
of the bay during the  period" Cave recalls.
The Scituate monitors helped thwart the Japanese  attempts to bomb the
United States with TNT-laden hot-air balloons. To  keep track of the
silent craft, the Japanese placed radio transmitters on  aboard the
deadly balloons. But the RID eavesdroppers heard the signals,  related
the information to Washington and U.S. fighter planes were  promptly
dispatched to destroy the balloons.
In the entire course of  the war, only a few balloons penetrated the
electronic screeen; one  landed harmlessly in Wisconsin, and others
drifted off into the Canadian  wilderness.
One of the most important jobs of the Scituate station was to  intercept
German weather reports from Central Europe. Broadcast in such  a
frequency that they could not be picked up in England, the  signals
bounced across the Atlantic Ocean to Chopmist Hill. the  information
played a vital part in British planning for bombing raids  against Nazi
Germany.
Most amazing was the stations ability to  intercept virtually all radio
transmissions sent by German spies in South  America and North Africa. In
fact, said Cave, who is now 79 and lives in  Holmes Beach, Fla., Wilhelm
Hoettl, one of Germany's foreign intelligence  area chiefs, affirmed
during his interrogation by the U.S. Third Army in  June, 1945, that
German intelligence had not been able to establish a  single wireless
connection, either in the United States or England.
It  was the Chopmist Hill station that discovered installations of  German
transmitters on the West coast of Africa. Even the British, who  had
their own monitoring stations in the region, were totally unaware of  the
existance of the enemy stations. It wasn't long, said Cave, before  the
British, via Washington, were breathing down the necks of  Scituate
operators for more and more information.
Little wonder.  During the seesaw battles between British forces and
General Erwin  Rommel's infamous Afrika Korps, the Chopmist Hill station
frequently  picked up coded messages containing battlefield strategy from
the German  military leader to his subordinate commanders. The
information was  relayed to the British, who under Field Marshall Bernard
Montgomery  defeated the legendary Desert Fox at El Alemein.
"That's nothing," Cave  said. "At one time, we saved the British liner
Queen Mary, from being  sunk with more than 10,000 Allied troops on board."
The Queen Mary was  docked in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil awaiting departure
for Australia. German  spies in South America learned the ship's sailing
schedule and precise  Southerly route down the Atlantic, around Cape Horn
and across the  Pacific Ocean. The information was radioed to Nazi forces
in Africa, then  relayed to German submarine wolf packs prowling the
ocean. Orders went  out to sink the pride of England's maritime fleet.
"We intercepted the  German transmissions, alerted the British, and they
ordered the ship to  change course," Cave said. "Who knows," he said with
a chuckle, "maybe  there's still a U-boat commander out there somewhere
wondering where the  hell the Queen Mary is."
On another occasion, the British asked the RID  operators in Scituate to
determine the nationality of a remote  transmitter near the Aleutian
Islands. It turned out to be a Russian  station and, therefore, was
spared the annihilation which was planned for  the suspected Japanese
facility.
Does it seem far-fetched? Is it  asking too much to believe that a secret
radio station up on Chopmist  Hill in little old Rhode Island could have
done so much so efficiently  for so many?
Early on, the U.S. Army was skeptical, too, Cave said, so  Army officials
challenged the RID operators on Chopmist Hill to prove  themselves. RID
supervisor Sterling picked up the gauntlet. He told Army  brass that his
operators could pin down the exact location of any station  within 15
minutes from the time it began operating.
So, the Army set  up a phony station inside the Pentagon, without
notifying the FCC, and  began transmitting. Sure enough, the team on
Chopmist Hill pinpointed and  identified the source within seven minutes.
Perhaps, like people, every  place has its day in the sun, too. World War
II was Chopmist Hill's. It  could not be so again.
"The problem with Scituate now is one of  population growth," said
Anthony M. Gates, a former Navy radioman now  employed by the FCC as a
program analyst in Washington.
"There are a  lot of new homes, buildings and factories in the area, all
of which tend  to produce extensive interference with radio signals,"
Gates said. "that  was not the case during the '40's."
After the war, the station site was  used as headquarters for Rhode
Island's office of Civil Preparedness. The  agency moved to Providence in
1965.
Today, the rusting steel door to  the blockhouse groans in protest every
time farm owner Frederick Leeder  goes inside to get some hay for his
small dairy herd. The barracks  building is gone, and its cement-slab
foundation now serves as a platform  for Leeder's large woodpile.
The small concrete blockhouse is there,  guarded still by its six-foot,
barbed-wire topped hurricane fence. And  nearby, a few stubby telephone
poles still stand in the pasture next to  Darby Road, like dedicated
sentries ready to carry messages that will  never come.
Reproduced with permission of the Providence  Journal-Bulletin.
Originally authored by Journal-Bulletin staff writer  Jim McDonald. First
printed December 6, 1981.
Special thanks to John  "Cranston John" O'Rourke W1LZY (first licensed
April  1939)

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