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

Wed Nov 10 11:17:00 EST 2021

Likewise!

73 Chris NW6V

On Wed, Nov 10, 2021 at 8:12 AM Michael Kashuba via CW <cw at mailman.qth.net>
wrote:

> Great stuff. Love the stories… I really wish my rack mounted Collins
> manufactured R390A and Hammarlund SP600 could talk… bet they would have
> some classified military stories to share on messages passed…
> Mike K6LQ
>
> Sent from my iPhone
>
> On Nov 9, 2021, at 6:33 PM, Hans Brakob <kzerohb at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> 
> The only time that a U2 located a Russian submarine it was sitting in dry
> dock at Murmansk.
>
> If you want an aircraft to locate a submarine at sea (in those days) you
> send a Navy P2 with MAD.
>
> 73, de Hans, KØHB
> “Just a Boy and his Radio”™
> ------------------------------
> *From:* cw-bounces at mailman.qth.net <cw-bounces at mailman.qth.net> on behalf
> of Tommy Judson via CW <cw at mailman.qth.net>
> *Sent:* Tuesday, November 9, 2021 7:14:01 PM
> *To:* D.J.J. Ring, Jr. <n1ea at arrl.net>
> *Subject:* Re: [CW] A Canadian opens up about her secret wartime work —
> eavesdropping on Japan
>
> About the story concerning the threat by President Kennedy - I haven’t
> heard that before but with the info the U.S. had collected in other parts
> of the world that I am familiar with it would most likely be the same there
> so he could have said that should he wanted.
>
> During that time many U-2 overflights were undertaken and one of the only
> two U-2s lost was over Cuba.  Those aircraft were shot at many times and
> that one happened to get hit with a piece shrapnel from the nearby
> explosion of a missile's warhead.  It pierced the flight suit of the pilot
> who died instantly causing the aircraft to eventually crash.
>
> On Nov 9, 2021, at 6:27 PM, D.J.J. Ring, Jr. <n1ea at arrl.net> wrote:
>
>
> Tommy, I don't know which mail group you belong to, these replies come
> from the CW at mailman.qth.net list.
>
> See below to subscribe.
>
> DR
>
> ---------- Forwarded message ---------
> From: *spud roscoe* <spudrve1bc at outlook.com>
> Date: Tue, Nov 9, 2021 at 12:49 PM
> Subject: Re: [CW] A Canadian opens up about her secret wartime work —
> eavesdropping on Japan
> To: CW Reflector <cw at mailman.qth.net>
>
>
> Hi Tommy:
>
>
>
> Most interesting. I worked a U2 going over the Yukon Territory into Russia
> in 1963 or 1964. I was operating an Aeradio Station up there.
>
>
>
> Before that I was radio officer in a square-rigger just off Cuba in
> October 1962 when President Kennedy told the Russians to get out of Cuba.
> We were told Kennedy told Russia exactly where each of their subs were and
> that they would not be home for supper if they did not get out of Cuba, and
> that is the reason they backed down.
>
>
>
> Is there any truth to that?
>
>
>
> 73
>
> Spud VE1BC
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> Sent from Mail <https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=550986> for
> Windows
>
>
>
> *From: *David J. Ring, Jr. <djringjr at gmail.com>
> *Sent: *November 9, 2021 12:43 PM
> *To: *cw at mailman.qth.net
> *Subject: *Re: [CW] A Canadian opens up about her secret wartime work —
> eavesdropping on Japan
>
>
>
> 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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