[CW] A Canadian opens up about her secret wartime work — eavesdropping on Japan

[David J. Ring, Jr.]

Another story of secret wartime work by Tommy Judson,
Being a Navy Spook

My Cold War Military Experience

I declined the invitation to become an Army Officer by not accepting the 
contract offered me at the end of my second year at college thinking I 
would not have to go into the armed services - HA!

Fast forward a few years and just a couple months after my 23rd birthday 
my draft notice arrived in the mailbox.  Checking around I found the 
Navy had an active duty program the same length as what an army draftee 
would spend away from home so signed up.

Shortly thereafter packed my bags and left to go on active duty.  My 
first experience was ending up being immersed in studies at a Defense 
Language Institute manual morse Russian Language school many miles from 
home.

The school lasted six months and after graduation I was sent to 
Karamursel Turkey near the border between Turkey and Russia.  The U.S. 
Air-force had a manual morse communications facility there to work with 
the aircraft surveillance program based in Nicosia Cyprus.

U-2s and RB-47s that were launched at the base in Cyprus used all the 
distance from south to north across Turkey to reach a very high 
operational altitude.  They had a planned preflight route that 
incorporated a complex set of turns forming different shapes in the 
sky.  The Air Forces’s reason for us to monitor the Russian 
communications was to determine when the Russians first spotted planes 
approaching their boarder and just how good their early warning system 
was working as well as determine the system’s blind spots.  It was also 
very important to learn the ability of the Russian system to accurately 
track the overflights.

Navy manual morse intercept operators would copy the Russian manual 
morse circuits so the flight path could be plotted just the same as the 
Russians were doing to see how close it was to the planed diagram we had 
already traced upon the large clear glass wall separating those of us 
reading the traffic from the analysts. (I worked a job on both sides of 
that wall.)

Sometimes the flight paths actually penetrated into Russian  territory; 
however, U-2 overflights from Nicosia, Cyprus to Keflavik, Iceland and 
back again had been discontinued shortly after Gary Francis Powers was 
shot down in 1961, the year I was drafted.

When our intercept showed that Russian fighters were being scrambled we 
would immediately flash a message to designated U.S. area commanders.  
All this required the ability of several intercept operators with 
back-ups to monitor multiple frequencies used by Russian tactical and 
early warning systems at bases located around the perimeter of the country.

We always watched subsequent flights closely because they usually had a 
predetermined flight path that took the aircraft directly toward any 
observation site that seemed weak in the previously intercepted 
traffic.  We would compare that to any other military ground movement 
communications to see if any new equipment or troops had been moved 
there enhancing their early warning and defense capability.

However my official Navy job was to work with intercepted submarine 
traffic to ID Russian submarines and to determine how they were being 
sent overland to the Black Sea from the main sub base located at 
Murmansk on the north sea.  We found there was a system of canals 
linking several lakes and the Volga River allowing the subs to sail 
overland all the way to the Black Sea.  This was a crucial move by the 
county because all their other sea ports were iced in most of the year 
even though they had a massive ice breaking fleet.  The Bosphorus Strait 
leading out of the Black Sea into the Mediterranean Sea was their only 
route to deploy their subs worldwide most of the year. (See notes below 
for more information on that route.)

About 3 months into my tour in Turkey orders came for me to go to a new 
base opening in Edzell Scotland.  I remember being called into the 
division officer’s office and being told there was something wrong and 
they would try to work it out.  They told me that no way in hell an E-4 
“R” brancher would be sent to a new state of the art intercept facility 
and be placed into the Processing and Reporting division as the orders 
outlined.  (I had no idea what they were talking about but they still 
blamed me for requesting the transfer through my congressman.) The 
Division Officer and Division Chief said they both had been trying to 
get sent there for the couple years that the the big state of the art 
Wullenweber system was under construction.

That “dinosaur cage” antenna was being built to allow superior listening 
capability of Russian military communications by the National Security 
Agency to be part of a world wide system of intercept sites.  Canada and 
Great Briton were partners in this world wide endeavor.

They couldn’t stop me from getting that new billet so I hopped a flight 
in Istanbul and left Turkey, neither wished me well.

My specific job once in Edzell was to develop and maintain a logging 
system of all callsigns used by everyone in the Russian Navy in the 
Baltic and North Sea areas.  The purpose was to specifically determine 
their communications network design and ship deployment along with their 
chain of command. As the file developed, all Russian sites on land and 
at sea were connected on a large diagram to help us determine how the 
Russia navy worked and what it was doing at any given minute.

(Had been issued my own personal “GUHOR” stick - a circuit diagramming 
tool.)

My one person office was a very popular place and when the other 
analysts came to gather info from my files they would take a break and 
talk a while.  I learned about their jobs, their families and plans 
after retirement.  I was privileged to know more about work being done 
at the work station they represented than nearly any other individual 
besides themselves.  I usually remembered what each had told me about 
their jobs and would look for any info in the reams of data I was going 
through I thought they might be interested in and send it to them.  That 
way my extra set of eyes would help catch pertinate intelligence data 
and make their jobs easier and sometimes more comprehensive.  Most were 
very senior E-8’s and E-9’s along with a couple junior 1615 crypto officers.

Keeping up with the Russian Navy was made especially difficult because 
of Gary Francis Powers being shot down. The Russians changed their 
communication encryption system shortly thereafter.  However we were 
slowly breaking the codes but had a long way to go.

Note:
To this date I do not play word games at all after staring at all the 
gibberish copied by the collection department and attempting to 
understand it!  It was a game to see who of the connected U.S. stations 
could first fill in the one time code pad blanks that were changed every 
morning at 3 A.M.  This is where being a ham paid off - we could usually 
remember an operator’s quirks from before the pad changed to after and 
at the very least recover callsigns and sometimes the names of their 
superiors almost immediately.  This would give us good info to fill in a 
handful of squares on the new blank matrix.

Therefore we (hams - only two of us were there) could usually follow 
commanders as they traveled through the military commands and ships - 
they took their own Manual Morse operators with them and we could 
readily pick them out.

All of the above is typical military - my school training was all about 
Russian submarines and their part in the cold war chain rattling.  Did 
have to pick out any sub traffic from the volumes of paper sent back to 
us from Collection to the Processing and Reporting department and send 
activity reports every four hours to NSA, GCHQ (British Intelligence 
Agency) and CBNRC (Canadian Intelligence Agency).

I did many different jobs while working for the Naval Security Group and 
the time spent there flew by.

Upon returning home I was contacted, because of having a Top Secret 
Codeword security clearance, by the Air Force Security Service out at 
Kelly field on the outskirts of San Antonio, my home town.  I went to 
see about working there and found out I would have to travel quite 
extensively to different sites around the globe to check the accuracy of 
their equipment and adjust it if necessary - no thanks. Had been away 
from home long enough and wanted to get back to my chosen profession - 
structural engineering, a job I enjoyed and retired from after 
collecting 35 years longevity toward a great lifelong retirement pension.

Note:
About ten years ago my spouse and I took a boat ride from St. Petersburg 
Russia through some of those same linked lakes and on down the Volga to 
Moscow where I had so closely monitored the subs traveling to and from 
the black sea.

I took my Garmin handheld GPS loaded with their latest international 
mapping software along to check out the sub route I had previously 
watched while in the Navy.  Sure enough the route we were taking was 
quite a distance from the route shown on the Garmin map.  It showed our 
boat was traveling overland quite a distance from the canals and lakes 
on some occasions. We went through many of the locks associated with the 
channels linking the North Sea sub base with the Black Sea. This 
misinformation had been provided world mapping systems on purpose in an 
attempt to provide security for this very vital submarine route to a 
warm water port.

It was interesting to me that when we had concluded the trip and were 
being taken to the airport in Moscow to fly home I was sitting in the 
back of the bus away from others trying to organize my photos and our 
tour guide sat down close to me.  She moved closer and looked me 
directly in the eyes then in a whisper asked just how come I knew so 
much about her country. I froze, caught my breath and gave a cover story 
about taking classes in school about the history of the Second World 
War.  No way in hell was I going to tell her I was a Russian language 
qualified communications cryptologist for the U. S. National Security 
Agency.

She explained she asked because she figured I must be able to at least 
read Russian because I never asked directions especially where the 
bathrooms were located.

I don’t know why but I was really shaken but calmed down as the plane 
lifted off the runway headed home.

Tommy Judson, CTRC (RET), November 9, 2021

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ecNojn1ZDvQ<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ecNojn1ZDvQ>

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z5D9pHfiBBo<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z5D9pHfiBBo>

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mRX7JCL2R5E 
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mRX7JCL2R5E>
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